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- [00:01]
John Podhoretz
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- [00:27]
Seth Mandel
Hope for the best Some preach and pain Some die of thirst no way of knowing which way it's going Hope for the best, expect the worst welcome to the Commentary Magazine Daily podcast. Today's Tuesday, February 4, 2025. I am John Pot Horitz, the editor of Commentary magazine, importuning you yet again. To sign up for our daily newsletter written by our own Abe Greenwald, go to commentary.org go. You'll see the top menu right there when you pop in. In the middle of the top menu is the word newsletter. You click on newsletter, you put in your name, you put in your email address and you will be receiving a daily newsletter from our own Gabe Greenwald around 4pm every weekday, along with links of interest from commentary.org and our magazine. The articles on commentary.org, the blog posts are largely written by our own Seth Mandel. The articles come from a variety of writers in every month and indeed over the course of the almost 80 years that we have been publishing. So that is a Greenwaldsnewsletter commentary.org right at the top. Newsletter. Click on it Name Email address. You'll get it. You'll love it. People are loving it. Got thousands of people reading it. It's only been around for a couple of weeks. Very positive feedback for our friend Executive editor Abe Greenwald. Hi Abe.
- [02:04]
Abe Greenwald
Hi John.
- [02:05]
Seth Mandel
And for his colleague, Senior editor Seth Mandel. Hi Seth.
- [02:08]
John Podhoretz
Hi John.
- [02:10]
Seth Mandel
So we talked over the weekend about how there was this moment where I can't even remember now because everything's going so fast. Was it that we were taking the Panama Canal or we were going to invade in Greenland and everybody was hysterical and then by the time the people were tweeting, the news had already shifted to something else. Like that was Sunday. Do you remember?
- [02:36]
Abe Greenwald
That was Columbia.
- [02:37]
Seth Mandel
Excuse me, Colombia. You see? You see, I missed the country. So Colombia. Okay, so we have just been taken yet again by the trade war and I'm feeling a little shame faced because we did spend much of yesterday earnestly talking about the dangers of a trade war and tariffs and what they might portend and the McKinley administration and the Jackson Ministry. How much money were raised by tariffs versus how much is raised by income taxes. Why this is really not a workable system. Trump announces these tariffs on Mexico, Canada and China. And by the end of the day, Trump is taking off the shelf already extant programs from Mexico and Canada, saying, see, they've bent to my will. They are doing what I want them to do, things that they had already done and I've won. And then the funny part is liberals like Katherine Rampel of the Washington Post saying, Trump got rolled. Now, you would think that she would want to praise the fact that the trade war didn't happen, but of course, like most people, what she really wants is to score a political victory against Trump. I'm just feeling like the guy. It's like Lucy in the football, or the guy who exits the tent because he reads something that says this way to the egress or I should have known. Got eight years of Trump, nine years of Trump, 10 years, actually 30 years, 35 years of Trump. As a New Yorker, I should have known that this was vaporware, that he was announcing it, that there would be a band aid put on it, that he would claim victory. Shouldn't have taken it seriously or literally, maybe, because, of course, it's a 30 day pause. And I guess we could go into a trade war at the end of February, but it's getting to feel a little like the Dread Pirate Roberts and Wesley on the boat in the Princess Bride, where every single day, Wesley, the stowaway, says to the Dread Pirate Roberts, good night, Dread Pirate Roberts. And Dread Pirate Roberts says, okay, well, I may kill you tomorrow. And then 25 years later, Wesley is the Dread Pirate Roberts. He sort of takes over the Dread Pirate Roberts franchise. And I think that's probably more likely to be the case in the world of the Trump trade war, given what happened yesterday. Well, that's my deep, cynical, but I think meliorist interpretation. Since I do not want there to be a tariff war, I think it would be catastrophic. So this is better than that.
- [05:30]
Abe Greenwald
But it's not like we're the only ones who took it seriously. Justin Trudeau went in front of cameras and said, look, here we are. We don't want to be here. But if there's going to be this tariff war, we're going to, we're going to launch our side, too. I mean, there was every reason to think that it was going to happen. What I'm truly curious about is whatever deals are worked out. I mean, I know that Mexico is supposed to send troops to the border.
- [05:57]
Seth Mandel
To the border, because there's nothing you like more than the Mexican army, right? I mean, when you're talking about effective prevention, military prevention, you're talking the Mexican army. 1836 has the Mexican army pittance so cited in the American news.
- [06:15]
Abe Greenwald
My cynical hunch is that whatever deals are. Happened, have happened with Canada and Mexico were on the table before he announced this trade war.
- [06:25]
Seth Mandel
Well, we know they were. That Trudeau. Trudeau's answer, the thing that made Trump back down. Our policies that Trudeau enacted in December. And he just said, oh, maybe you may not know about how we've created. And we're gonna. Oh, and we're gonna create a fentanyl task force, right?
- [06:48]
John Podhoretz
That's always the key. The task force.
- [06:50]
Seth Mandel
Yeah. I mean, that is gonna be a trade war.
- [06:54]
John Podhoretz
Somebody mentioned a task force, and then the task force solves all the problems. It's like the federal government. But I'll give you reason to care about this stuff, even when it's like Kayfabe, even when it's like a wrestling, you know, half scripted thing, because they say, all right, Canada's not doing its job. We're going to have a trade war with them. And then the opposition party in Canada, which is the Conservatives, Pierre P. And who is somebody that a lot of Conservatives are pretty excited about replacing outside of placing Justin Trudeau, right? And suddenly he. He has to become a Canadian nationalist and sort of, you know, defend his land and his people, whatever, from Trump. And then he gets into it.
- [07:49]
Seth Mandel
Trump.
- [07:49]
John Podhoretz
And then the vice President of the United States, for some bizarre reason, will take to Twitter and say, oh, cry me a river. Cry me a river. That the Canadians are our best friends, that they've been dying alongside us, and blah, blah, blah, this and that. And so then we. It starts as, you know, a kind of skit. Let's do the tariff skit, right? We start off and let's do the tariff skit, right? They'll end. You gotta end the set with Freebird, but at the beginning, you have to play something familiar when you first come out on the stage. That's the tariff set. And. But it turns into, like, the executive, you know, the. The president and vice president, like, taunting Canada over, you know, denying that, like they've ever made sacrifices or, oh, they're not really our friend, or this. And it turns into a kind of nasty thing.
- [08:48]
Seth Mandel
No, nasty. No, really, it's so surprising. Look, the whole basis, the legal basis, from what I can tell, to the extent that there's a legal basis of the idea of imposing these tariffs, has to do with fentanyl. Right. Has to do with the idea that we are being poisoned by these illegal imports that the governments of Mexico and Canada and China, by the way, which we can get to, are not interdicting properly. And they are, this stuff is coming into our country from there and it's killing us. And so they better stop it or we are going to cut off their economic lifeblood because they are poisoning our population. And then two hours later, JD Van says, they've always been screwing us. They've been screwing us for 70 years. What kind of allies are these anyway with their lumber and their whatever. And they're this and they're that. And you're like, wait a minute, I thought this was about fentanyl. I'm a little confused. What Trump said was, we don't need Canada, we don't need their lumber, we don't need their cars. We can do this perfectly fine on our own. And Vance is like, they're screwing us with their lumber and that's why we're doing this. It's like, could you read from the same hymnal?
- [10:04]
John Podhoretz
Right?
- [10:05]
Seth Mandel
Could you just get. Just, just stick one point because you're driving everybody crazy. And, and also, you know that J.D. vance doesn't believe this, which is one of the reasons why if you're in for a penny, you're in for a pound, you're going to start talking about Canada as though it's Iran. You know, you're going to start, you're going to start characterizing the country with which we have the closest relationship on earth. So close that until really, until just before 9 11, you literally didn't have to use a passport either to go in or come out of Canada from, if you were an American. Like, that's how, that's how little we feared Canada or believed. We need to keep, we needed to keep track of Canadians on our, you know, on our shores or whatever. And that's, you know, only three decades ago or two and a half decades ago or something like that. And, and, and so, you know, okay, a lot has changed. But, but, but Vance gave the game away, which is like, we're for tariffs because we just want make tariffs happen and we're going to give you some reasons and we'll see which reason sticks. And then by the end of the day, it's like, okay, the tariffs are suspended for 30 days. We're all a bunch of suckers. We're a nation of suckers. And that's why, you know, I would say maybe it's A little bit of a mistake to have done this so early because you want to keep your powder dry. Because if you're going to basically try to claim early victory on tariffs now, don't you want to take that very powerful arrow out of your quiver later when you really need it? When you really are in a standoff on something that's. We're not a standoff with them about anything. We're not a standoff about chips. We're not in a standoff about. We're no standoff. We're closing our border. We're asking them to close their border. They're going to help close the border a little bit from Mexico. I don't know what it means to close the border to Canada. From what I hear. It's like a giant pain now just to come in and out of the. Because of cars and your global entry card and everything like that already. But I mean, I have friends who drive back and forth all the time to Toronto and Montreal and you know, like their cars get searched, so. And they're like 60 year old Jews. Like, I don't think they got fentanyl.
- [12:35]
John Podhoretz
It's annoying. But they, even still, they move things pretty quickly. We had, we were in Canada at the Niagara Hotel on Passover, at a Passover thing, and My kid, my 3 year old at the time, hurt his leg, pulled a chair down, one of those giant chairs onto his leg. And you know, it was a Passover thing. So the hotel was full of doctors and one of them, you know, took a look and said I'd get it X rayed. I think it actually is broken. I think his leg might actually be broken. And so we had to drive across the border because it was easier to drive to Buffalo or wherever to a children's hospital than to stay in Canada and think about that stuff. So even now, after all the 911 stuff and the border closings and stuff like that, there's still something almost silly, it feels almost silly about the whole debate.
- [13:24]
Seth Mandel
It's a very suspicious story. I know that you had fentanyl strapped to your, to your tape, fentanyl to your kid's body. Brilliant. It was a brilliant, brilliant system. I know. I'm trying to pay you enough, Seth, but I know your family got sick.
- [13:40]
John Podhoretz
Now I can't use that trick again. John.
- [13:42]
Seth Mandel
Oh, I blew it. I blew it. I blew it. Okay, to move from the ridiculous to the, I wouldn't exactly say sublime. So Maga and Trump are going to claim a victory here, right? They got what they wanted just by just. By waving their hand around a little bit, they got what they wanted. But did they? I mean, again, we've got four years to go yet. And, you know, if you're gonna bluff, there's a point at which people say, well, you're a bluffer. And yeah, I know. It's the madman theory of history. You never know if he's bluffing or is not bluffing. And he's America, so he's always got to have a good hand to play and all of that. But it just seems to me like, you know, you know, it's the Bugs Bunny. Daffy Duck. Daffy Duck finally, you know, beating Bugs Bunny with the audience's applause by, you know, swallowing a hand grenade and blowing up, and Bugs Bunny saying, that was great, Daffy. They're calling for more. And Daffy says, I can only do it once. I mean, how many times can you play this card?
- [14:44]
Abe Greenwald
You know, it started before he got into office. I was thinking about this yesterday. His threat to bring all hell to Hamas unless every hostage was released by the time he got into office turned into what, 30, 33, taking the off the shelf Biden plan of cutting a deal with Hamas. And he called this also a win because of his threat.
- [15:14]
Seth Mandel
Right. So the. This happens a lot. This happened a lot in the first term where, you know, he spent three years praising himself for his intervention in Syria. Was it where he, you know, where he staged the raid because they were, you know, torturing children or something. And then it was like, I changed the world with my ra. You know, it's like you don't. It's not just one thing. You know, you need to, like, have a policy and pursue it relentlessly to make sure that you get that whatever victory you secure, you then harden and you make sure that the people that you're fighting don't come back and don't re. Establish themselves and. And all of that, which may be a good moment in which to turn to the visit of Prime Minister Netanyahu to Washington, which is very serious, and I think a lot is on the table. And the reason I say that is that he has extended his visit through the moment next weekend when the next batch of hostages is due to be released. Something for which he would ordinarily wish to be in Israel, as it happens, but believes that there is more to be done in Washington than that would be better for his country and its future, and indeed his own PR future, than going. Going home. And let's just. Let's try to try to, like, put Lay out what we think is on the table, what he's doing here, one of which is he's trying to establish a relationship with the new Trump administration. He knows all these guys, right? He's first of all, he is the longest live, longest surviving Western leader. He has been. It will be 29 years. It's 29 years this year that he was first elected prime minister of Israel. Now there was a 10 year gap in the middle of that period and where he was not prime minister from 99 to 2009. And there was a three year gap from 2021 or two year, two and a half year gap from 2021 to 2023 when he, or 20, whatever, 18 months, two years, I can't remember now. But, but basically for 12 of, for 18 of the last 30 years he has been prime minister of Israel. So he probably met Marco Rubio online at shaking hands on a line in Florida when Marco Rubio was a junior prosecutor, you know, and Mike Waltz was probably an intern somewhere that he met when he was whatever. And of course there's, there's Trump. And so that's the thing, right?
- [17:59]
John Podhoretz
When in 2012 it was like, oh, Mitt Romney, my former colleague at Bain Capital.
- [18:04]
Seth Mandel
Yeah, right. Yeah. So he is like, he doesn't need to meet these people. He knows all these, he knows everybody in the Senate. He knows everybody, he knows everybody in America. So it's not like a getting to know you thing. But there is this question of whether or not Trump's non interventionism or Trump's advocacy of the idea that he was going to get involved in ruinous wars and you know, he's a peacemaker and all this. Where, where, where does the rubber meet the road with, with Israel? And this very open question now of what happens when the six week period in which these 38 or 33 or whatever. 30, I guess it's 38 now because the Thai, the Thai hostages came out and they were not part of the original number in the deal. So the 38 hostages are supposed to be out by the end of February and then begins phase two. And phase two for the Israelis is the war starts again and phase two for the not Israelis is what can we do to prevent the Israelis from starting the war again? You know, I'm not the best sleeper and through my life I've tried to figure out different ways to improve on my sleeping. Going to bed at the same time every night, people say, is a good thing. Making sure your phone is not in reach so that you can't Grab for it at any moment to overstimulate yourself and making sure that my dog doesn't sleep in my bed, which has actually been pretty successful. But these, these take constant effort. They don't show the best results. And I've come to believe that if you really want to change the way you sleep, you might need to deal with your materials that you sleep in. And so I'm talking about upgrading to Boland branches 100% organic cotton sheets. You'll fall asleep faster with that luxurious softness that puts you in instant relaxation mode. You'll spend every night in buttery, breathable comfort and feel your sheets get softer with every wash. Then you can discover the difference. With Bolan branches 30 night guarantee look, you can feel the quality differently. You can feel how it differs from other sheets, that there's no sandpapery feel, there's no nothing itchy. It's just smooth and soft and gets softer and softer and softer. So they're made different so you can sleep better at night. They're woven with the finest 100% organic cotton on earth, crafted by artisans who earn the pay and respect they deserve. Designs and colors for every bedroom and mattress size. They have this breathable, unmatched softness to start, as I've mentioned. And you can try bowling brand sheets for an entire month. Seriously, you can wash, style, feel the difference for yourself risk free. And if they don't change the way you sleep, you can send them back for a full refund. Now's your chance to change the way you sleep with bowl and branch. Get 15% off plus free shipping on your first set of sheets at boleandbranch.com commentary that's B O L L A n D b r a n c-h.com commentary to save 15% exclusions apply. See site for details. Okay, I gotta talk to you once again about quince. So quince, as you may know, is the go to for luxury essentials at affordable prices. When Quinn started to advertise on our podcast, they let me get one item for free. I got a sweater that was so glorious that I have in the months since purchased seven more several shirts and I just purchased a down puffer jacket from them. So as I talk to you about quints, just you should know that I have become a rabid quint fan and a enthusiastic quints customer. Because who doesn't love the good things in life? I mean, I like a little luxury, but I have three kids in private schools in college and it doesn't mean that I can always afford luxury. And that's one of the many reasons that I love Quince, which offers a range of high quality items at prices within reach, like 100% Mongolian cashmere sweaters from 50 bucks, washable silk tops and dresses, organic cotton sweaters and 14 karat gold jewelry. The best part, all Quint Items are priced 50 to 80% less than similar brands. By partnering directly with top factories, Quince cuts out the cost of the middleman and passes the savings on to us. And Quint only works with factories that use safe, ethical and responsible manufacturing practices and premium fabrics and finishes. So give yourself the luxury you deserve with quintessential quints. Go to quints.com commentary for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. That's Q U I N C E.com commentary to get free shipping and 365 day returns. Quints.com/complyment. I think Trump is here to take the temperature of the United States. On it. On it. Starting the war again, Seth, how do you feel like, based on what we've been reading the last two days, that effort to say to America, we need to finish this up and destroy Hamas and not give in to the temptation to stop the war and claim victory that we haven't really achieved? How do you think that's going?
- [23:56]
John Podhoretz
I, I mean, I think that it's an uphill battle, honestly. I think Trump wants the deal to stay in place and I think he does not want this conflict to flare up again if there's any way he can prevent it. I think Bibi has something of a tall order to convince Trump because he's basking in a certain amount of adulation now. And Steve Witkoff is as well. The Israelis love Witkoff. Right. Because the deal was very important to them and he got to meet the families and, you know, and sit with them and be part of that.
- [24:29]
Seth Mandel
I hear a lot of, I hear Israelis who don't like Woodcock.
- [24:32]
John Podhoretz
Well, there's, I, there's, you know, two Jews, three shoes. But I just mean he's public, the public face of this, the things that we're seeing in public are videos of Steve Woodkoff singing with freed hostages and their families. Trump saying, you know, throwing his weight around, saying, look, we got the deal. I said get the deal, we got the deal. I think that's one part of it. The other part of it is that they're also going to be clearly talking about Iran this week because New York Times reported. Was it? Yes, just yesterday. I think that Iran was, they think Iran Officials believe Iran is working on a, what they call a cruder but faster method of creating a nuclear weapon. There's a mad dash sense to this. They've got a window, as we've said all along, there's a window now. Their air defenses are down. If we want, we being the United States, if we wanted to end their nuclear program tomorrow, we could do it, you know, tomorrow and be back for lunch. And they know this. And so the Times is, has this report about how they're scrambling to try to find a, a different way that would get them faster to a bomb. I don't know exactly what it means. Cruder, I mean, if it's a bomb and it works. If it's a nuclear bomb and it works.
- [25:52]
Seth Mandel
Right.
- [25:52]
John Podhoretz
I mean, so I don't, I don't know exactly what that means. But the point is that he's here to discuss also this Iran stuff, and Trump's perspective on this is why Definitely don't want both of these flaring up. I really want the ceasefire to hold in Gaza and I'm absolutely open to the idea that we need to just end the Iranian threat, especially if they're doing some sort of mad dash to a bomb, and especially if it's going to happen on my watch and I'm going to get blamed for it and this and that. So I think that he's really open on one thing, but he wants the Gaza thing closed in order to do that.
- [26:35]
Abe Greenwald
Abe, I don't, I don't see how one fails to affect the other. I mean, you know, an attack on the Iranian nuclear program, which of course I'm in favor of, I think necessarily puts an end to the, to the Gaza hostage, cease fire deal. I don't see how that doesn't happen, given that.
- [26:58]
Seth Mandel
Okay, well, the larger question, so we have the deal and then we have Hamas. What we don't know is does Hamas survive an attack on Iran jointly by the United States and Israel? By which I mean, does Iran, does Hamas either have sufficient independent standing, sufficient funding, or sufficient organizational know how to continue to function? We've seen in the streets of Gaza that Hamas is not, you know, it's not just total chaos in Gaza. The gunmen and the thugs are sort of like doing street patrols and shooting people in the foot if they try to take aid off the trucks and stuff like that. Doesn't mean that they're doing any governance, it doesn't mean that they're providing any services. It just means that they do seem to have nominal control of the streets. But can, is there, is Iran the oxygen? And if you kill Iran off as a, as a, as an aggressive actor, do you essentially then choke? You know, is it like the death. If you blow up the Death Star, then, you know, then, then the, then the little ships around the Death Star are also going to die? Or does Hamas have sufficient independent standing and, and fortuit of, you know, sort of fortitude to, to keep going? That, that would be the. So you could sort of do phase two if you hit Iran. Now, you're right. That. How, how, why is Iran, why is Iran deterred from going, you know, sort of going back into the field or killing the hostages or whatever? And that's. That, that's ultimately the, the Israelis are not going to get out of this without having to face the existential, unbelievably painful reality that they are either going to have to understand that they're not getting everybody home or Hamas is going to be destroyed. That they have been playing on these two tracks. It's never made sense. It doesn't make logistical sense for Hamas. It doesn't make moral sense for them to be releasing thousands of Palestinian murderers to go back and kill people while, you know, all this is going on just because of the cognitive dissonance of the we must destroy Hamas and bring them home now, which are mutually, in weird ways, mutually exclusive goals. So either Israel is going to refuse to face this point at which they say, okay, we've thus far, no farther, we've gotten everything we can. We've sacrificed already an enormous amount in terms of these releases and, and our loss of a strategic position in northern Gaza while Hamas reestablishes itself in some fashion in a territory that people, you know, fought and died to hold and maintain and, and keep from becoming terrorist cells.
- [30:14]
Abe Greenwald
So Israel and Iran's air defenses are not going to be down forever. I mean, this is all time on.
- [30:23]
Seth Mandel
The clock here right now. But where. I'm not sure that you're right, Seth, or where this is even more ambiguous is okay, granted, this doesn't mean that they'll be used, but of course the administration has gone ahead and approved a billion dollars, the release of a billion dollars in armaments that we were lied to for months. I mean, openly lied to. I know, I know. We shouldn't be surprised. But here's what happened. We would say Israel, some people in Israel are saying that the Biden administration is withholding certain arms and the answer was no. No, no, no, no. They're only withholding 2,000 pound boundaries. 2,000 pound bunker busters. Everything else is going to Israel. And we now know that this was a lie. This was an open, naked, contemptible lie. They told the American people or whoever was listening and cared that the pipeline was open, except for this one thing that they didn't want Israel to do, which was drop giant bombs on potentially civilian areas. And it turned out that they were withholding bulldozers, they were withholding bullets, they were withholding all kinds of stuff. They're liars. Sullivan's a liar, Blinken is a liar, Austin is a liar. And of course, Biden is a liar and Kamal is a liar. And they all disgrace themselves with their lies. And Trump, both because, I guess he thinks it's fine for Israel to have this stuff and also because he would like it on the record, you know, just going out the door. He loves nothing but to punch down, Biden's out of office, signing up with CAA to sell off. You know, I don't know what they're gonna do. Sell off container, little, little vials of his drool to people, you know, as a, as a, as a souvenir item for show business purposes. So he gets to, you know, like, shove it in his face.
- [32:20]
John Podhoretz
But I'm hoping where the. You. They'll, you know, you. You pay like 50 bucks. And he, and he records a video birthday.
- [32:28]
Seth Mandel
Cameo.
- [32:28]
John Podhoretz
Cameo. Yeah, maybe.
- [32:29]
Seth Mandel
Yeah, he could go on cameo. That would be good. He could start his own truth social. You know, it would be amazing. Anyway, so they are going to release, excuse me.
- [32:42]
Abe Greenwald
Called Mumble.
- [32:43]
Seth Mandel
Mumble. Right. It's an old person dating site.
- [32:48]
John Podhoretz
That would be good.
- [32:49]
Seth Mandel
Bumble. Okay. So he's going to give Israel the tools that it needs to restart the war. The question is, will Will Witkoff, will he have vanity? And will Witkoff impress upon him the need to have the vanity to say, I'm the peacemaker, I'm the peacemaker. I'm the peacemaker. And I guess that's your skeptic. You are worried if you think the war should restart, that impulse, which has been my fear since from the get go, would prevail.
- [33:27]
John Podhoretz
Yeah, that Trump likes a certain type of press, he likes a certain type of narrative. His favorite thing in the world is being the deal maker. And it's. And he's just, he's very susceptible to it. I mean, it's, you know, there, we saw over the past few days, there are these billboards in Israel, right, where there's a billboard of Trump and the Saudi crown prince and it says, like, time to get the deal that we're ready, we're ready. And then there's a billboard next to it that says, you know, bring the rest of them home, meaning the hostages. So, like, they're appealing to the thing, the thing you appeal to if you were, if you want to get at Trump, this is, this is the top of the totem pole of his ego is I'm the deal maker. So I think there's a very. There's a sort of a base thing where, you know, the deal will work because he wants it to work, because he doesn't want it said that the deal didn't work. Like, it's very. It's very sort of simple with him. I'm the deal man. I cut the deal. And now you see this appeal to him. Go get this Audi deal. You're the deal man. Come on, deal man. Go get this Audi deal. Go get the rest of them home. You know, this sort of thing. And the attention is being funneled to, hey, Mr. President, the world wants more deals. Look, we got more deals.
- [34:56]
Seth Mandel
We're not done.
- [34:57]
Abe Greenwald
I gotta say, also, I mean, I agree with Seth and I don't think Trump wants this war to start up again at all. Because this is also part of Trump's narrative that says, this is all Biden mess that I've cleaned up. We're not going back to the Biden mess. We're now in the Trump age, where peace prevails, where deals get made, and we put that behind us. And the thing about ceasefires is they're popular, you know, even among people who are the majority of Americans who are on Israel side. Yes. They don't want to see the war start up again.
- [35:39]
Seth Mandel
However, there's a way out. So the deal has three stages. So stage one is not going to be interrupted. So we got the deal through stage one, Hamas made the deal through stage two impossible, not releasing the rest of the hostages. All right, we, we got the deal. Look at all. Look. Look how many lives we saved now. Israel goes and finishes the job now. And there are little bits of evidence that this really may well be how he is looking at this. He did this weird thing yesterday on his desk where he had a pen on his desk. And he said, look at this pen. This pen sitting on this large desk, I guess it's the Resolute desk, is Israel in a sea of hostility. And it's amazing what Israel has been able to accomplish given what we see as a, you know, visual aid on my desk and very clearly making it clear that he doesn't care about the rest. The area on the desk. He really only cares about the area covered by the pen. That. Not that he's a, you know, he's Aesop and is or you know, he's like using. He's an analogy user. But that was a signal of some kind that, you know, all things being equal. And this by the way, was also dealt with west bank annexation. Right. This isn't just about the war. It was, you know, people pressing him and saying, should Judea and Samaria be integrated into Israel or be annexed by Israel? And Trump saying, as we know, Trump believes in territorial expansion since he wants Panama and Greenland for the United States. It's like, well, boy, Israel's really small. There's a little chunk of land right there could make itself a little bigger. I don't know. None of that is hostile or not conducive. And as I say, he did get, he will be able to claim that he's the first person to be involved in a successful trend hostage, you know, like mass hostage transfer deal and no one else could do it and Biden couldn't do it and Biden sucked and everything was terrible and that it's all on Hamas if, if, if, if phase two doesn't go any further. So he has an out to go with Israel if that's the case. And while he doesn't, he likes things that are popular and doesn't like things that are unpopular like everybody else. You know, there are numbers out on tariffs. He loves tariffs. Tariffs are remarkably, by the way, to be. I'm surprised to see these numbers. Tariffs opposed. Only a third of Americans support the imposition of tariffs. According to Harry and at CNN, 32% now actively supporting, actively opposing is like 44%. The rest don't know. But those aren't good numbers on tariffs. And so, you know, he is willing, I think at least logistically, to occupy a place that seems unpopular if he can claim a win later. If Israel comes to him with an off the shelf battle plan that says, and I don't know what they're coming to him with, we can finish off Hamas in six weeks, you and I, we should strike the Houthis. We have a plan to strike the Houthis and let's take out, let's take out the rest of Iran's program. He doesn't want to be at war in the Middle east in February or March. Right. I mean, I think we can all presume that he would rather not have that. But imagine a world in which he can claim that he has reset the politics of the Middle East 120 years after even Saud got control of Saudi Arabia and set the world on this course of massive instability because of oil power. That also connects to his domestic agenda. I'm not saying it's going to happen. I don't trust him that it's going to happen. There are forces fighting inside the administration. You know, he has, he has all these Zionists at the top and then he has white supremacist, psychotic lunatic, psychopath filth in the second aisle there. You know, from you know, this guy Darren Beatty to Michael Dimino to whoever at the Pentagon and at the State Department. I don't think they can. They're gonna outrank Rubio the Zionist waltz, the Zionist, you know, Hegseth the Zionist and even Vance the pseudo Zionist. But. And of course he's got his son in law and he's got, you know, his old friends but there is a fight and so I just, I, there's just no way of knowing.
- [40:58]
John Podhoretz
He's also talked himself into things that are mutually exclusive with that right, which is the population transfer idea. He's got it in his head that we can, we'll move the Palestinians from Gaza temporarily to Egypt or wherever and then we'll rebuild Gaza which is a rational approach to rebuilding A like, it's like redevelopment, right? This is a redevelopment plan, a main street redevelopment plan. And, but they don't want the Palestinians. So he has to decide which way.
- [41:37]
Seth Mandel
He should send them to El Salvador because Bukele, the president of El Salvador just said he would take Americans, he would happily accept Americans in Salvadoran prisons, American citizens in Salvadoran prisons. Trump would say okay, you know what, we don't have Americans for you but we got about 2 million gossips, you know, good sense, you know.
- [42:02]
Abe Greenwald
On a serious note, I to connect this to the first part of the show. We were talking about the, the, the bluffs regarding the tariffs and stuff. The thing about the way this administration is operating where it's inventing these giant super bowl halftime show rollouts every day of earth shattering policy that it makes everyone go crazy and it's not even real. Said there's going to be real things that you're going to have to do and it makes it harder because A no one knows if you're telling the truth, if this is going to come to anything and B, you've already got everyone crazy about your every move before this. It's not a good place to be. He should, you know, reserve the seismic moves for Actual seismic moves, not the pretend ones.
- [43:05]
Seth Mandel
Okay, so let's move on and talk about, you know, the co president, the new figure. Every Republican administration has a figure. Every Republican. When Republicans get predominant in politics, somebody becomes the tar baby and the whipping boy and the, and the evil, the locus of evil in our time rarely but sometimes happens. It happened. Trump was that locus of evil in his own first administration. But we've had many others, right? We've had Newt, right? We had Rick Santorum, we had Matt Gaetz, we had Marjorie Taylor Greene. So Elon Musk is the new monster demon who is terrifying millions of federal workers and is going to steal all of the government's secrets and control them as an oligarch as he flies off to Mars and blows the earth up. I don't know what on earth they're thinking. And so Musk and Doge, the Department of Government Efficiency, are going around the government trying to get data and information on how the government budgets, how it spends, where the money goes, where it comes out. We are told, we were told last night that what they have in some of these places, including treasury and others, is read only access. Let's say that they can look at things, but they can't, they can't change anything. Right? It's like when you can look at a, an Excel spreadsheet at your corporation, but you don't have the right to edit it. That's, that's what I think Caroline Levitt, the press secretary, said yesterday. And Musk. So I don't know what's going on and I don't understand. I'm not going to. But this thing came out and it's in the New York Times. Okay, in an article in the New York Times, I want to read this to you and then say, does Trump, who is going to speak before the House, I think, on March 4, does Trump have a giant bomb to drop on Democrats in the form of what Musk finds out through Doge? And I think he does because listen to this in the New York Times piece about how Musk is a monster, there is this quote, Mr. Musk has told administration officials that he thinks they could balance the budget if they eliminate the fraudulent payments leaving the system. It is unclear what he's basing that statement on. Okay, so it's in other words, if we can eliminate waste, fraud and mismanagement, we can balance the budget. Right. Which is something that people have said for decades. Clinton said it, Reagan said it, all of that. Then the Times goes on to say this. The federal deficit for 2024 was $1.8 trillion. The Government Accountability Office, this is Biden's Government Accountability Office, estimated in a report that the government made $236 billion in improper payments, 3/4 of which were overpayments, across 71 federal programs during the 2023 fiscal year. $236 billion is a third of the defense budget. $236 billion is. I'm trying to figure this out. Is it. It's. It's a sixth or a seventh of the entire federal deficit. And nobody knows where that money is, which means it's likely been siphoned off through fraud. And this is a 2023 report. That is an estimate. And Musk is clearly. And his people are going to go agency by agency to see where the balance sheets are in these books that nobody looks at. Can Trump realistically go to the joint session of Congress in what is effectively his first State of the Union address, and say, we have uncovered half the federal deficit in fraudulent payments outside the federal government and we're going to stop them, and by next year, the deficit will be cut in half? This is a New York Times story. I'm not making this up. I didn't come up with it. This is easily the biggest piece of news to come out of Doge. I don't care about whether they're closing this or they're closing on that website or something like that that they have independent support for. The idea that the size of the federal government's waste is larger than the GDP of many, many, many nations on the planet Earth entirely is pretty staggering and totally believable.
- [48:20]
John Podhoretz
Oh, yeah.
- [48:21]
Seth Mandel
I mean, yeah. And you know what? You know, and wait till they get to Covid. Right. Wait till they get to the. To Biden's three bills, right? Because we haven't even gotten to Biden's three bills. What about the story that everybody is still haunted by and no one has done the kind of like, follow on, which is there's $40 billion to build electric charging stations across the United States for electric cars, and eight were built. Where's that money? Where is the money?
- [48:56]
John Podhoretz
Right?
- [48:57]
Abe Greenwald
Or the.
- [48:57]
Seth Mandel
Or the WI fi.
- [48:59]
Abe Greenwald
The WI fi that was supposed to.
- [49:00]
Seth Mandel
Go to everybody sitting there ready to be used, or has it gone missing? Like all the goods from the base in Catch 22 that Milo Minder binder is stealing and selling on the black market. Somebody is stealing hundreds of billions of dollars from the federal government, from us, from taxpayers. And Democrats don't like to look under the hoods of this stuff because what they love is the big number and they don't really seem to care very much about the implementation. They want the electric cars. We don't give a crap about the electric cars. Why aren't they yelling and screaming about where the charging stations are? Why was it left to the Trump administration to yell and scream at the charging stations? I don't even know what department that's under. But if it's under transportation, where was Pete Buttigieg? I guess he was on paternity leave. We're trying to figure out what state to move to, to carpet bag to try to stay in politics.
- [50:03]
John Podhoretz
Well, I mean, I think it's definitely, it's true because the Democrats are, I think, already showing their hand a bit. You know, Dan Goldman, the congressman from New York yesterday was like, we all agree that there's waste, fraud and abuse. We all agree there's red tape and waste, things we need to cut. And then there's a lot of stuff that we need to fix about. This reminded me in a lot of ways, it reminded me of the judicial reform argument in Israel for a year where they had this massive reform of the judicial system, a total overhaul. And the opponents of it were going like, well, we all agree the court needs to be reined in. We all agree that the Supreme Court has too much power and it's unaccountable. But this is too, we're hearing the same sort of thing, right? Well, we all agree that there's a lot of waste for on abuse, let's get it. But, but we don't need to shut down USAID and this program and that, you know, stuff like that. So I think what you're seeing, first of all is just a very clear concession that there is there, there. I don't know to what extent that means. There is visible corruption in the spreadsheets that, you know, Musk and his guys are looking at, but, or that can be traced to specific lawmakers or anything like that. But there's a general concession. Yes. If you open the books, you're going to see some things and it's going to be pretty ugly. And we all agree with that. So that's a hedgehog.
- [51:31]
Seth Mandel
That's what the USAID story is, right?
- [51:34]
John Podhoretz
Yeah.
- [51:35]
Seth Mandel
I don't think Musk has any particular, himself has any particular bugbear about usa. They, they, they went and they looked and they said there's no money. There's money there. What they're spending money on. You won't believe your eyes.
- [51:51]
John Podhoretz
Here's his tweet this is Musk's tweet. At 11 o'clock last night, all Doge did was check to see which federal organizations were violating the POTUS executive orders. The most turned out to be usaid. So that became our focus. In other words, he's just sort of going hunting. Where are people trying to hide something, right? Where won't people open those books?
- [52:13]
Seth Mandel
Right?
- [52:14]
John Podhoretz
And now let's go to the where, where that money is going. He is following what he considers to be suspicious behavior, essentially.
- [52:22]
Seth Mandel
Right?
- [52:23]
John Podhoretz
And, and he's doing that. I don't think the, I think the ideological basis of any of this stuff really comes down to dei. It does not come down to USAID specifically or any agency specifically. And I don't think they came in thinking, you know what we got to do, we got to, we got to bury US Aid. I think they came in thinking we're going to look for waste. And DEI is a sort of Rosetta stone, right? Because everybody thinks all that DEI stuff is waste. So let's go find it, tally it up and cut it.
- [52:57]
Seth Mandel
So USAID has a budget of $50 billion. Most of that is granted out, right? So first of all, there's, there's the, there's the headline DI stuff that they're citing, you know, transgender comic books in Paraguay or whatever. And then there is the question. It's an agency of 10,000 people, it spends $50 billion. You know, that used to be a lot of money. Now it's nothing. So it is actually relatively, given the scale of the federal government, it is a, you can get under the hood relatively easily, right? It's not the Pentagon. It's not an $800 billion organization. It's not Health and Human Services, which is a 1.8 trillion dollar organization or something like that. $50 billion. And it is a pass through. It's designed to be a pass through. It's there for the American government to give money that's going to go out the door to help other countries. And they're just supposed to find the other countries and give the money there. So it's a relatively simple forensic audit that you have to do. It's kind of double entry bookkeeping. You get in $10. How much of that $10 is going out the door to PEPFAR or whatever, whoever you're giving money to. And apparently it's horrifying to look at. And so they're like, we're shutting it down now. Maybe they can't shut it down. Maybe they need an act of Congress to shut it down. But I'm sorry, two, three weeks of this and revelations. I suppose Democrats can, and you have 53 Democrats can die on the Hill if they're going to save usaid. If more and more stuff comes out about what actually USAID has been misappropriating or stealing or whatever, you know, giving to the, giving to bad actors. But it's also like an ongoing story and we don't know where it's going to end. And I don't know that seven Democrats in the Senate aren't going to say, I'm not voting for this. I'm up for Ferman.
- [55:14]
John Podhoretz
What's Fetterman's not. We already know how people like John Fetterman are going to vote.
- [55:18]
Seth Mandel
Right.
- [55:18]
John Podhoretz
There's one or two that are almost givens.
- [55:21]
Seth Mandel
But I'm saying I. You want to have, you want to hand your opponent, including, by the way, your primary opponent, 2026, say you supported the fact that we're sending, you know, $100 million to a dictatorship in, you know, we're sending to South Sudan to do X, Y and Z that it's just using to kill people. And that's the US Government. Is that what we want? I'm just making that up. That's not a, that's not a real thing. But you start digging down into it and we don't know what the story is. We also don't know what things are being buried.
- [55:55]
Abe Greenwald
My only caveat here is that we have to have to be prepared for the possibility, because I think he has this in him, that Musk goes about this somehow so recklessly that he blows it.
- [56:08]
Seth Mandel
Well, I think he's already going about it recklessly in a way that means that he blows it. In other words, there they're shooting first and asking questions later.
- [56:16]
Abe Greenwald
Yeah.
- [56:16]
Seth Mandel
Like he could every single day stand up and say, we have gone through, we're at aid and man, this is horrible. I'm going to give you 10 details about it. And we are systematically going through every single piece of paper at that agency. And at the end of the week, I'm going to tell you where we are. He's like saying, close it down. I've seen enough. Close it down. It's reckless. It's, it's, it's, it's, you know, he's used to having that kind of organizational power behind him as the head of SpaceX and Tesla, and he does, and the Boring Company, and he doesn't have it here. And so there would be better ways to do this. But of Course, you know, who's going to gain? Say, who am I? I'm sitting here, you know, paying. Paying a mortgage, you know, that I can. There are months when I'm struggling to get the money in the bank and he is the richest man in the world. So who are you going to listen to, him or me?
- [57:13]
John Podhoretz
You know, this is almost an exact replay of the Twitter files. This is the musk mo, right? Crack open the books, bring in people who know how to carry out these key searches and look through it and have a steady drip, drip of revelations that whatever else you find, those revelations can stand on their own as bad things that people recognize are bad.
- [57:41]
Seth Mandel
Right. Do we have anything else we should discuss today that I'm thinking of? Because I'm going to make a recommendation and I need to preface the recommendation by saying it's a limited series. It's on Hulu. I only watched the first episode and I can't tell you anything about it because it's, It's. It's not what it appears to be. So when I tell you that it's not what it appears to be, if you turn it on, you start watching it. You need to say to yourself, this is not what it appears to be. Because what it appears to be in the first 10 minutes is a relatively generic story about a president or an ex president and his secret and the Secret Service agent who runs his detail, which we have seen 10,000 times before. We've seen. You know, it's the Olympus's Fallen movies are like this and in the Line of Fire and I don't know, whatever else, right? But it's not what it appears to be. And I really enjoyed it and I enjoyed the way in which it's not what it appears to be. However, several people that I recommended it to are not positively inclined toward it. So if you want to give it a shot, just know that it's already controversial from the jump and that you should know that so that you don't get mad at me. But it's. It's with Sterling K. Brown, one of the best actors in America, the star of this is Us, and James Marsden, an extraordinarily underappreciated and incredibly versatile, strangely versatile supporting actor who is not only the star of the Sonic the Hedgehog movies, but was also Courtney Collins and Hairspray and was. Did this amazing job on this show Jury Duty as the fake, as the act, as himself on this fake jury, this hilarious series where there's one. One person was not in on the joke and they have a fake trial. And James Marsden is one of the jurors playing himself as the most egotistical, vainglorious, second rank Hollywood celebrity there could possibly be. And he's the president in this, in this show. Paradise on Hulu. Give it a shot. Don't blame me if you don't like it. And if you like it, you can credit me. Okay. That's my recipe.
- [60:16]
John Podhoretz
He's a huge. He's, he's very popular in my house because we. With the Sonic movies.
- [60:21]
Seth Mandel
Yeah.
- [60:22]
John Podhoretz
Don't know.
- [60:22]
Seth Mandel
He's also very. If you've never seen Hairspray, he is fantastic in Hairspray. So anyway, that's, that's Paradise. Hulu. We'll be back tomorrow for Seth and Avon. John Paur's Keep the Camel Burn.