Autopens and Executive Actions

Summary

The Commentary Magazine Podcast: "Autopens and Executive Actions" Episode Summary

Release Date: June 5, 2025

In this engaging and comprehensive episode of The Commentary Magazine Podcast, hosts John Podhoretz, Abe Greenwald, Matthew Continetti, and Christine Rosen delve into pressing political issues surrounding executive actions, administrative integrity, and the evolving landscape of the Democratic and Republican parties. The conversation seamlessly navigates through recent developments, offering insightful analysis and sharp critiques. Below is a detailed summary capturing the key discussions, insights, and conclusions from the episode.

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1. Karine Jean Pierre's Departure from the Democratic Party

The episode opens with Christine Rosen introducing the topic of Karine Jean Pierre, the former White House Press Secretary, who recently announced her departure from the Democratic Party to declare herself an independent. This move has significant implications for the Democratic Party's coherence and future trajectory.

Christine Rosen [02:04]:

"She is the first one saying, no, no, they betrayed my guy. Biden's the guy. He was okay, I guess, is the point, right?"

Matthew Continetti [02:04]:

"It's another grift, as many of her colleagues are calling it."

John Podhoretz [03:25]:

"What if she's being true to herself, that she spent two years being untrue to herself as Biden's press secretary because she is in fact too progressive for the Democratic Party?"

The hosts explore whether Jean Pierre's exit signifies internal fractures within the Democratic Party or is merely a career-driven move aimed at rehabilitating her public profile post-White House tenure. Matthew Continetti emphasizes the personal nature of her departure, suggesting it stems from dissatisfaction with the party’s alignment and her own career aspirations.

Matthew Continetti [05:15]:

"It's tied to careerism, that is tied to this kind of bizarre way in which former Biden people are going to try to rehabilitate their public profiles."

John Podhoretz adds a historical perspective, comparing current political dynamics to past administrations, pondering the broader implications for the Democratic Party up to the 2028 elections.

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2. Biden Administration's Executive Actions and Autopen Use

A significant portion of the discussion centers on concerns regarding President Biden's capacity to execute presidential duties, particularly the alleged use of autopens to sign executive documents. This raises questions about the legitimacy and integrity of executive actions taken during Biden's administration.

John Podhoretz [17:03]:

"Did Biden himself approve and sign the documents, the legal documents that a president must execute for policy to be made? Did he do it or not?"

The conversation highlights the absence of thorough media scrutiny on Biden's administrative actions, contrasting it with past administrations where media played a more aggressive role in uncovering internal malpractices.

Matthew Continetti [10:29]:

"It's yet another data marker is that she's not going to be the last, as Matt says, not going to be the last Biden official trying to sort of sinuously weave themselves around what they did to the American people."

The hosts argue for the necessity of Congressional investigations to ascertain the truth behind these executive actions, suggesting that media reliance on official statements has hindered public understanding.

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3. Trump's Executive Actions Targeting Biden's Administration

Shifting focus, the podcast examines recent executive orders issued by former President Donald Trump aimed at scrutinizing and potentially reversing actions taken by the Biden administration. This includes intensified investigations into presidential pardons and the reinstatement of travel bans.

Abe Greenwald [27:00]:

"This is an administration that is relentlessly going after the enemies of the Jews in the United States and in international organizations."

John Podhoretz criticizes the political motivations behind these actions, suggesting they serve to delegitimize Biden's administration rather than address genuine policy concerns.

John Podhoretz [36:00]:

"Trump is fighting the Ivies, fighting Columbia and Harvard."

The discussion extends to legal challenges these executive orders face, particularly focusing on the reinstated travel ban and its comparison to Trump's initial 2017 order. The hosts debate the effectiveness and public reception of these policies, noting differences in their legislative and judicial responses.

Matthew Continetti [37:32]:

"They're not being reported, they're not. They're just treated."

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4. Targeting Higher Education Institutions

A contentious topic covered is Trump's executive actions against elite educational institutions like Harvard and Columbia University. The orders allege violations of Title 6 of the Civil Rights Act, specifically concerning unequal treatment of Jewish students, which critics argue is a veiled attack fueled by anti-Semitic motives.

John Podhoretz [45:59]:

"Imagine the situation in reverse, that the Biden administration had issued some such document about some university because of mistreatment of black students. Would there be mass protests on op-ed pages? There wouldn't have."

Abe Greenwald [50:47]:

"He is targeting them for reasons connected to the fact that they are anti-Semitism factories anyway."

The hosts debate the legal and ethical implications of singling out specific institutions, with Abe Greenwald arguing that broader policy reforms are necessary rather than targeted punitive measures.

Abe Greenwald [50:47]:

"If it's a principle, apply it to everyone. I don't think any of these schools should have wealthy Chinese, you know, dictators' children driving around in Lamborghinis."

John Podhoretz further critiques the strategy, suggesting it appears vindictive and may not hold up legally when targeting individual universities without broader applicability.

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5. Foreign Policy Updates

The episode also touches on international relations, particularly focusing on Trump's recent interactions with Russian President Vladimir Putin and the ongoing conflict in Ukraine.

John Podhoretz [63:23]:

"Zelensky isn't, you know, going to the Grammys and doing whatever and going to visit Democrats in Pennsylvania. He's given it to Putin hard. And Trump admired that."

The hosts analyze Trump's strategic maneuvers in foreign policy, including his veto of a UN resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza. They discuss the implications of these actions for U.S. alliances and global diplomacy.

Matthew Continetti [64:55]:

"The United States vetoed a UN Resolution that was calling for a ceasefire that did not condemn Hamas."

The conversation underscores the complexities of balancing national interests with international obligations, highlighting Trump's unique approach to foreign policy compared to his predecessors.

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6. Antisemitism and Policy Enforcement

Returning to domestic issues, the podcast examines the Trump administration's stance on combating antisemitism, contrasting it with traditional liberal approaches. The hosts argue that Trump's policies, though controversial, are a more assertive response to rising antisemitism compared to what they perceive as the Democratic Party's ineffective measures.

Christine Rosen [68:18]:

"I think he is going after them in good measure because of anti Semitism, even if he's not. So what? Like it's all, it's all part of the same brew anyway."

Matthew Continetti [71:34]:

"Where has Holocaust education and conflict resolution gotten us? The worst outbreak of antisemitism in the history of this country is where it's gotten us."

The debate centers on the effectiveness of punitive versus educational strategies in addressing hate crimes and discrimination, with the hosts advocating for more direct action as seen in the Trump administration's policies.

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Conclusion

Throughout the episode, the Commentary Magazine team provides a critical lens on contemporary political maneuvers, highlighting concerns about administrative integrity, partisan motivations behind executive actions, and the broader implications for American democracy. By integrating notable quotes and timestamped insights, the podcast offers listeners a nuanced understanding of complex political dynamics shaping the United States in 2025.

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For those interested in exploring these discussions further, listening to the full episode is highly recommended to grasp the depth and breadth of the analysis provided by the hosts.

Transcript

[John Podhoretz]

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[Matthew Continetti]

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[John Podhoretz]

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[Matthew Continetti]

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[John Podhoretz]

Which way it's going Hope for the.

[Christine Rosen]

Best Expect the worst Hope for the best.

[John Podhoretz]

Welcome to the Commentary Magazine daily podcast. Today is Thursday, June 5, 2025. I'm John Pod Horowitz, the editor of Commentary magazine still nursing a cold. So please excuse the sound of my voice, but enjoy the sounds of my fellow colleagues voices. Executive editor Abe Greenwald. Hi, Abe.

[Christine Rosen]

Hi, John.

[John Podhoretz]

Washington Commentary columnist Matthew Continetti. Hi, Matt.

[Matthew Continetti]

Hi, John.

[John Podhoretz]

And social commentary columnist Christine Rosen. Hi, Christine. Hi.

[Abe Greenwald]

Hi, John.

[John Podhoretz]

So, Christine, you have a particular topic you wanted to get to. It's not the most important topic of the day, but it's maybe the first, the only fun one. And that is the announcement yesterday that former White House press secretary Karine Jean Pierre has a book coming out in which she declares herself independent. So only six months from the time at which she was standing at a podium lying for Joe Biden, she has now declared that the Democratic Party does not accurately or adequately reflect her views and her opinions. And she is now an independent.

[Abe Greenwald]

Yeah, I just wanted to throw this out there as a kind of gateway drug into some of the more important issues today, particularly one of the executive orders Trump signed targeting Biden himself and some of his some of his executive orders because Karine Jean Pierre, who I think it's fair to say has been the worst press secretary ever. She was terrible at the job. Anyone who pointed that out or criticized her was called racist and homophobic for saying so because she was this, you know, she was the first this and the first that. But really she was just terrible at her job, lying to the American people, you know, being condescending and awful to the press corps, who were, of course, couldn't have been more sycophantic to the administration. But even still. So I think it's pretty hilarious at the moment where we have all these books coming out by media figures wringing their hands saying it was such a terrible cover up. The chief spokesperson for the COVID up of the administration is now washing her hands at the Democratic Party. So it's just, it's yet another. It's a grift, as many of her colleagues are calling it. She had, she wanted to be a co host on the View. She wanted a sort of media career post White House. And I hope, just as I hope that the Jake tappers of the world get their comeuppance that people will not hand that to her on a platter. She, she did a disservice to the American people by lying about the President's condition for four years and we shouldn't reward that.

[John Podhoretz]

Okay, let me, let me take it out of this simply careerist mode and talk about what it says potentially about the Democratic, the larger Democratic Party in the Democratic experiment, informed by my, by my sad and depressing viewing of last night's New York City Democratic mayoral primary debate. Which is to say, what if she's being true to herself, that she spent two years, two and a half years being untrue to herself as Biden's press secretary because she is in fact too progressive for the Democratic Party? She took the job because it was offered her. Charming on tv. I used to be on MSNBC with her. She's a very likable person, very pleasant, easy to work with, obviously a huge career move to become the White House press secretary. But in fact, in her heart, she is way more left wing than even the Biden administration. And I think that is the big question between now and 2028 is what is the Democratic Party? If it is some weird amalgam of Bidenism and Sanders ism, it may well be that a whole bunch of people are, have come to the point, kind of like maga. The MAGA then came back and took over the Republican Party who are like mainstream left. Liberalism is unsatisfying to me and ideologically inappropriate for me. And now that we're out of power, I am gonna take off the mask that I put on and come out as my true self.

[Matthew Continetti]

I don't think Karine Jean Pierre is Judith Butler or Hannah Arendt. She's not writing a philosophical ideological tome here. She's accusing the Democratic Party of betraying Biden. She's not saying that she's an independent because of what she saw behind the scenes. She's saying she's an independent because the Democratic Party abandoned her boss. It seems to Me to be extremely personal. And, you know, I also appeared on television with Karine Jean Pierre when she was first making that transition from progressive activist to media personality. And she was nice, friendly. But all that we've heard in the reporting from the White House surrounding the announcement of this book is she was.

[John Podhoretz]

Horrible to work with.

[Matthew Continetti]

You couldn't say a contrary word if she was blindsided by a reporter. That is to say, if a reporter asked her something that the network hadn't telegraphed to her in advance, she would blow up. Of course, she had huge insecurities and insecurities based in reality, which is why the administration had to bring in Admiral Kirby to brief the press whenever actually something important happened. So I think this is just a fantastic little Washington drama that is tied to careerism, that is tied to this kind of bizarre way in which former Biden people are going to try to rehabilitate their public profiles. Another interesting detail from this story is apparently she was looping a publicist onto internal White House emails toward the end of the administration because she was looking to land an MSNBC or CNN gig like her predecessor, Jen Psaki, and she. She didn't. And so this book, which she unwrapped, unpackaged in a viral video yesterday, was her way of trying to get back into the public conversation. You know, I've said before, I have a real problem with Biden spokespeople going into media because I don't believe there's a way you can take them seriously after what they did for four years, gaslighting this country, not just about Biden, but about what was happening in the United States and around the world. And I hope that we would apply what's the Jean Pierre rule To other Biden spokespeople, though that doesn't seem to be happening.

[Christine Rosen]

It's interesting that she's the first, as far as I could tell, to come out of the Biden presidency on Team Biden, you know, not. Not talking against them about how they threw up. Threw up a fog and tried to keep everyone away and tried to fool everyone. She's the first one saying, no, no, they betrayed my guy. Biden's the guy. He was okay, I guess, is the point, right? I mean, if she considers the party to have betrayed him by forcing him out of the race, then I guess her argument is that he was okay.

[Abe Greenwald]

He's a real victim, Abe.

[Christine Rosen]

He.

[Abe Greenwald]

He's the real victim. Yes.

[John Podhoretz]

So I have to reveal truth about myself yesterday to explain how I got this so wrong. In Matt's view. Which is, of course, I read absolutely nothing about this. I only saw the tweets.

[Matthew Continetti]

And you watched the debate. I think that New York debate got you.

[John Podhoretz]

Yes, but all I knew was that she had released this book and had declared herself an independent. And therefore I was simply going off of that and extrapolating from it. And I'm only bringing this up not only as an apologia for what I said, which might have been very silly, but also to point out what it is like now to live in a news stream, which is at 2 o' clock, Karine Jean Pierre announces she's an independent. At 2:10, a judge comes out and stays. The deportation of the firebombing family. At 2:23, this happens. 47, that happens. And you kind of have to pick and choose what you're gonna delve into. And frankly, Karine Jean Pierre is of no interest to me. So I just think that's a sort of interesting snapshot of my day yesterday that I couldn't even bother to take 2 minutes to read the story because I'm not gonna read her book. I don't care what she has to say and I really don't find her particularly interesting. So maybe yes, but she won't.

[Abe Greenwald]

The reason I think it's. It will, you might retrospectively see it as an important data marker is that she's not going to be the last, as by, as Matt says, not going to be the last Biden official trying to sort of sinuously weave themselves around what they did to the American people. Trust in the Biden administration.

[John Podhoretz]

I don't know if that's true because I'm now going to use an example from my own past. So I contracted in 1992 to write a book about the cris George H.W. bush was running for reelection. And the title of the proposal was Suicide Attempt. The book eventually was published as Hell of a Ride. My idea was if they got to election day and lost, what I was going to be describing was an act of political suicide that Bush had gone from 91% in the approval ratings to losing the election. And he did it. It was self inflicted, or if he won, I was going to call it suicide attempt because the idea would be despite his effort to take himself down, he won anyway. Bring this up, because the entire first Bush administration. No books. One book inside the White House by a guy named Charlie Cobb. Brett SCOWCROFT and George H.W. bush wrote a book together about their foreign policy. A couple of things dribbled out later, but this was a failed administration of no interest to anybody in the world of publishing and media. And it was memory hold. The people who had participated in it didn't want to write about it because it would have been writing about a legacy of failure. And I just don't know. And now that Tapper and Thompson.

[Abe Greenwald]

But that's a Republican administration. This is a Democratic.

[John Podhoretz]

I'm aware of that. But I think the failure part is very important here. I don't like to read about defeats.

[Matthew Continetti]

Well, and the, you know, the sales of Biden books throughout his moment in the sun in American politics have been very low. They do like 1 *, 1 *. On your very good point about the lack of HW books, a very successful book came out of that administration, which was My American Journey by General Powell, which is kind of the exception that proves the rule. Right. Because General Powell had presided over the high point.

[John Podhoretz]

The one good.

[Abe Greenwald]

I'm going to push back though, John, because I think what people do like is some sort of scandal narrative. And the Biden administration was indeed a scandal. We don't, we haven't uncovered it yet. And these are preemptive attempts to kind of position oneself amid the narrative that will emerge, I hope, after an investigation.

[Matthew Continetti]

So to Christine's point, you know, the question is who will be the George Stephanopoulos of the Biden administration, who will be the close aide who for reasons all his own and all peculiar to the Beltway culture, decides to write this tell all book that, you know, talks about his former boss's strengths, but also gets into his former boss's heavy personal weaknesses? And I don't know who that beat will be. I don't know if anyone got close enough. And this maybe is the way to segue into, right, the Trump admin, the Trump order. You know, and you mentioned the three Trump orders that came at around 7:30, between 7:30 and 8:00pm Eastern time yesterday evening. The third of them, or one of the three was a directive to the Justice Department to begin an investigation into the auto pen, into how Biden's pardons came about. And this investigation itself is not all that unusual. People have been calling for it for some time. Trump has been calling, calling for it for some time. Ed Martin, who was the Acting U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, then the Senate stopped his appointment and so he moved to the Justice Department to look at these cases. He's been calling for it. What was unusual was the reaction from President Biden's Twitter account because as Mark Halpern points out in his morning newsletter, Today, Trump attacks Biden daily, talking about how he was a terrible president. The border, inflation. Right. The good parts of the economy are Trump's. The bad parts are Biden's. Biden usually doesn't respond. His account responded last night. And this is the depth of cynicism and suspicion that the Biden administration plunged this nation into. Which is this statement that came out of Biden's Twitter feed denying Trump's charge and saying he was in control at all times. Can't be trusted.

[John Podhoretz]

Who wrote it?

[Matthew Continetti]

Did Dr. Jill write it?

[Abe Greenwald]

Although the media trusted it.

[Matthew Continetti]

Did Hunter Biden write it? I don't think Biden wrote it. But it also is revealing that this is the issue that he's pushing back on. Because you know what? There might be something more. I know that there's more that we have to discover.

[John Podhoretz]

I am. What is happening here is unexpectedly important as a matter of national political hygiene, by which I mean because of the nature of the press's role in the COVID up of Biden's infirmities. The natural political pressure to cast daylight and sunlight on the internal workings of an administration at a time of crisis, with the exception of this one book, have been lacking. And the question that is being asked here, which is, did Biden himself approve and sign the documents, the legal documents that a president must execute for policy to be made? Did he do it or not? And is it reasonable to ask the question? And clearly outside sources chose deliberately not to ask the question.

[Abe Greenwald]

And by that, do you mean the Tapper book?

[John Podhoretz]

No, no. What I'm saying is the media in general seeing Biden saying there seems to be something wrong with him, but the administration is effectuating policy. Is he making the policy? And in particular, is he signing the documents that execute the policy? Because that's all we have. It's like the King's seal in medieval times. How do you know that something that comes out of the, out of the castle or out of the palace is real? And the only way that you know it's real is that it has the signet ring.

[Abe Greenwald]

And that's, that's why, that's why actually an external investigation of some sort is required. Because the Tapper book was an attempt to craft a massive alibi for all of the mainstream media, which deliberately avoided asking that question at the time, even though it was clearly in front of them. The Karine Jean Pierre is interesting because it's trying to cast Biden as a victim of his own party. So they're all positioning, but the only question that needs that that can be answered is to actually summon those people before Congress and question the people who were in that immediate orbit. As Matt says, that very tight palace guard that kept him, managed his time, did everything for him, who knew what when and put them under oath and ask them. It is a scandal and the media's response to to the executive order yesterday shows you that they are still not up to the job of asking those questions because they all took the Twitter statement, as Matt said, as gospel. It's like, well, Biden denies it. So there we go, problem solved.

[John Podhoretz]

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C site for details My I think ordinarily under other circumstances I would be mildly horrified at this breach of protocol. President is gone. He's. He's now the ex president. He's old, he's infirm. Leave him alone. Leave him to heaven. You know enough. Right. That would be my general and I think probably emotionally in the newsrooms and stuff like it's like they're just being so mean to him. Look, he's in such reduced, such a reduced condition and they're being mean. And the fact is that there was potentially a genuine breach and a constitutional crisis if in fact he was so bad off that yes, that Joe Biden was submitting things to the auto pen because she could not trust him to sign them or he didn't know what he was doing. That's a question that it is legitimate to ask that under other circumstances in other presidencies might simply seem like a witch hunt or an act of or an evasive or a move of just sort of regnant hostility in an effort to continue to Destroy somebody.

[Matthew Continetti]

This is why the second Trump administration is different and is being received differently by the public than the first one. You talk about breach of protocol. Well, there was another breach of protocol when the Democratic Party and the sitting president decided to launch a lawfare campaign against the former president.

[John Podhoretz]

Right.

[Matthew Continetti]

So that was Biden.

[Abe Greenwald]

He.

[Matthew Continetti]

I mean, you know, I hate to sound like the kid who gets in trouble at a playground fight, but he started it. Okay, so there's that. Then there's the circumstantial evidence that points to there was something going on in the White House. For example, Speaker Mike Johnson has often told the story about a meeting between Speaker Johnson and President Biden where Speaker Johnson said, look, you know, you just signed an executive order banning LNG liquid natural gas exports. This is terrible for my state of Louisiana. It's terrible for the country and for America's prospects of becoming an energy superpower. And Biden looked at him and said, I don't know what? I didn't do that. I didn't do that. Yeah, you're wrong. So who did it?

[Christine Rosen]

Yeah, I think, you know, John, to your point about sort of the instinct is to feel bad, but I sort of went through that cycle myself. Like, I started out saying, I don't want to. I don't want. I sort of don't want this for us. In a way.

[John Podhoretz]

Yeah.

[Christine Rosen]

But then I thought, you know, actually, I do want this for us, because if no heat came down on the White House while they were pulling these shenanigans, it's good that there's heat now, so that no one ever thinks to try to pull anything like this again in any future administration. You cannot simply convince everyone about the condition of the president for this stretch of time.

[John Podhoretz]

That's why I called it political hygiene. And remember, the other thing that's different about the second term than the first is that Trump did exactly what I'm talking about with Hillary Clinton. Remember what was the chant during the 2016 campaign? Lock her up, lock her up, lock her up. And when he came into the presidency, he said, I could pursue her, but I'm not going to because I want to move on. I want to move forward. Then, as Matt says, he was president four years. Turns out she initiated, inaugurated an investigation, the design of which was to trigger an FBI investigation into him that they hoped would bear fruit before the 2016 election, would turn something up before the 2016 election and hope, and then hoped.

[Matthew Continetti]

Would force him from office and then hope afterward.

[John Podhoretz]

And so he, in a weird way, played. He played Ball. He played conventional. The most unconventional politician ever played ball. He said, she's. I'm not. I'm not bothering with this. George W. Bush, Clinton did these scandalous pardons. Other stuff. He didn't go there. Now, I don't even think that Trump, as I say, I don't even view this as Trump's hostility toward Biden. And I mean, not that I think that he's a responsible president worried about making sure that the procedures of the Constitution are being followed appropriately and adequately. I don't believe that about him at all. It's situational. It's a. He has a situational advantage. He's got a lot of mishigoam working for him who would like nothing more than to spend years, you know, like, tearing Biden's jugular out. But in terms of the national interest, do we need to. Do we need to clarify this and close the book on it about legislation and things that happened in 2023 and 2024? Because do we need 50 years of conspiracy theories about what happened in the White House to govern our political dialogue from now until the time I die? I'd really rather not. So if we could clear this up in 2025 and say, yes, Biden signed everything, or in a really egregious act of horrible misbehavior that is without. Has only one precedent, which is Edith Wilson and Woodrow Wilson, the Biden family and his closest associates made policy in his stead. And we need to know that and shame them and name them. So, as Abe says, nobody ever does it again because the consequences will be.

[Matthew Continetti]

Very dire just before I segue to the next topic. But just remember that because Biden pardoned his entire family, they have to testify, right?

[John Podhoretz]

They. They have no First Amendment. They have no Fifth Amendment.

[Matthew Continetti]

They can't. They. Because they're pardoned. So on one hand, it would mean that they're immune from any legal reprisals unless that, you know, looking forward, the Trump administration tries to revoke the pardons on the basis that they were not legitimately accurate. Yeah, but then that also means during the investigation, they have to talk about. They have to talk. Where is this headed? I mean, I think that this is opening investigation, like a lot of Trump projects just opening or just beginning. Something is meant to, you know, satisfy certain constituencies. It's meant to get stories in the media, might discover some facts, probably won't go anywhere in particular, because the people around Biden, the folks that Tapper and Thompson called the politburo in their new book, are I mean, so kind of entrenched and so kind of connected and tied together with one another. But it's, it's deserved. I fully believe it's deserved.

[John Podhoretz]

But it is a Justice Department investigation. The Justice Department has the power of subpoena. And I guess maybe what's interesting is that Trump decided to do this on his own, kind of let Congress alone. I mean, you know, he could have said, I demand that Congress open an investigation into the pardons and leave it to the Government Oversight Committee. Right. Of the House and the Senate to do this. Decided not to go that path. I think he's actually done John Thune and Mike Johnson a solid here because that would turn into a sideshow and a freak show with Marjorie Taylor Greene becoming the lead, you know, abuser of Jake Sullivan as he stood, as he sat there earning sympathy because he was sitting before this crowd of, you know, braying jackals, going for his throat. Now, these, this investigation to take can take place under seal, you know, confidentially, you know, without, you know, no one has to release anything, affidavits, depositions, all of that that are not public matters. And if they have stuff that comes out of it that they can release, they can release it and say, oh, it really happened. And otherwise it's actually better for the people who are going to be investigated that this take place out of public view.

[Matthew Continetti]

Well, just to talk about DOJ and FBI for a moment, remember that the Attorney General, Pam Bondi, FBI Director Cash Patel, Deputy FBI Director Don Bongino, Dan Bongino, have come under fire from the maga, Right. Parts of the maga, Right. Because their investigations say into the Kennedy assassination or Jeffrey Epstein and Jeffrey Epstein's suicide have not turned up what the more conspiracy minded folks imagine is there. And I, I have a feeling that this will be a similar thing in the end, even though I do think there was a lot of shenanigans and wrongdoing in the Biden White House. But I'm not sure how even doj, with the power of the executive branch, will be able to get to the bottom of it.

[Abe Greenwald]

I mean, these people were willing to lie to the American public for four years. You think they wouldn't lie under oath to a. That's what I mean, official.

[Matthew Continetti]

You need someone, you would need someone to turn, which we were just talking about with Karine Jean Pierre, that hasn't happened. Or you would need some type of physical evidence. So it's hard. But on the topic of how, you know, it's a running theme on this program, the difference between Trump 2 and Trump 1, I think we can also look at another of the executive orders that he issued, and that was reinstating the travel ban. So we all remember one of the first acts Donald Trump made as president in 2017 was a travel ban.

[John Podhoretz]

Eight Muslim countries affecting eight.

[Matthew Continetti]

Yeah. Majority Muslim countries. Based on his seminal pronouncement in December 2015 that because of the San Bernardino terrorist attack, we need to stop all Muslims immigration into the United States until we figure out what the hell is going on. Right. That, by the way, won him the Republican primary. That, that announcement at that time, for the political junkies out there, that was a time when Dr. Ben Carson.

[John Podhoretz]

Yes.

[Matthew Continetti]

Was gaining on Trump, and Trump won, kind of threw just the kitchen sink at Dr. Ben Carson. And then, then, you know, I think crystallized what a lot of Republican voters were thinking in the aftermath of San bernardinito with this announcement. So he enacts the travel ban, I think, on day one or two of his first term. And it was a chaotic, huge backlash. There were scenes, you'll recall, at international airports of just chaos, people crying, people not understanding what was going on.

[John Podhoretz]

Well, protesters. There were protests.

[Matthew Continetti]

Then there were the protesters who had just appeared. Immediately, of course, they were riding that energy that came out of the Women's March around the time of Trump's inauguration. And then Trump and his administration had to revise the protest. In fact, I think this was one of the first District Court injunctions of a Trump policy, was, I believe a judge in Hawaii issued a nationwide injunction against the original travel ban. By the time Trump left office, the travel ban remained in place because the administration revised it twice in order to conform with the law and to get it through the Supreme Court. And the Supreme Court ultimately upheld it. So Biden comes in office, he immediately revokes the travel ban, along with pretty much everything else Trump issued through executive order, except the tariffs on China. And, well, we have the immigration, and we have, you know, immigration crisis. Trump's back. This time. He waits. This is June 4th. He issues the. The new travel ban months into his presidency. And I think he waits for a couple reasons. One, they wanted to get it right. And two, they also wanted to have the. Have a different emphasis. So instead of immigration causing all the commotion and the chaos and the panic, it was Doge. Doge did it right. Which is different. It was very different type of thing. And by the way, the politics of immigration have completely changed. Yeah. And he's issuing this the day after or two days after the flamethrower. Terrorist attack in Boulder, Colorado.

[John Podhoretz]

Right.

[Matthew Continetti]

And so even though the media is treating this ban exactly as it treated the previous one, I have a feeling that the public is just going to like, say, okay, we're fine with it. Let's go through. And the courts, even though there have been immediately legal challenges, I think the courts are going to find it hard to overturn.

[John Podhoretz]

We have. When Trump put in the travel ban in 2017, he was fulfilling a campaign promise without a predicate. That is to say, I'm shutting this down. There was the event that you mentioned, the San Bernardino shooting had taken place 14 or 13 months before. Here we have essentially an emergency action in response to a very specific event has a precedent which was the Supreme Court finding that under the 1952 National Security act, the president did in fact have the right to do what he had done with the travel ban, as amended. Because the drafted. The original draft of travel ban was a constitutional calamity, was essentially like a press release and not an actual executive order. This one, I haven't read the entirety of it, but I read the exceptions and they're very careful in which they're.

[Matthew Continetti]

Not being reported, by the way.

[John Podhoretz]

Exceptions?

[Matthew Continetti]

Yeah, they're not. They're just treated.

[John Podhoretz]

The Department of Justice and the Secretary of State have the right to open the door to people who have the virtue, who will bring, who will advance U.S. interests by being present in the country. That could be on individual cases, it could be in mass cases. We it's not specified athletes are given a pass. It looks like actors, celebrity, like people who are hired to be in movies or TV shows. And a couple of things.

[Abe Greenwald]

Afghanis who provided service to the American military are still allowed in.

[John Podhoretz]

Yeah. So there are, I think, 14 different exceptions that make this a much less, let's say, vulgar blanket thing than the 20s. The original 2017 travel ban and the fact that they are there will likely have a salutary effect on core challenges. And as I say, the core challenges are already going to have a versis of climbing because the president's right to act in this manner as a matter of national emergency under actual law has been affirmed by the supreme was affirmed by the Supreme Court in 2017.

[Abe Greenwald]

It's very. But isn't it telling about what the public, and particularly the elite media class in particular has gotten the point they've gotten to with regard to immigration is in a sense, de facto open borders. We've long had travel restrictions on people, on diplomats from certain countries, when we're in negotiations with certain countries. And Depending on the type of visa, for example, that a person is applying for, there can be restrictions placed on those. All of this is actually common. It's not, you know, he's not busting through the norms. And Matt's correct that this is a much more carefully drafted and worded statement. But the idea that, just saying that people from certain regions that hate our country and want to destroy it, we might, you know, not be so eager to fling the doors wide open, particularly after a homegrown terrorist attack by one of them, although Egypt not included on that list. And this, the Egypt, the guy who did the firebomb attack was there, but.

[John Podhoretz]

He came to America, which is on there.

[Abe Greenwald]

But I think, I think it's really interesting in terms of the broader cultural shift on immigration that the Democratic Party and a lot of the elites in our media class have completely missed, which is people look at this and go, yeah, that makes sense. I mean, look at, look at what's happening. Of course we should have a stricter set of rules for people who come from regions that might sponsor terrorism.

[John Podhoretz]

And Trump's statement last night was very, again, in contrast to the way he usually deals with this, was very carefully worded. He said, we are not properly vetting the people we are allowing into the United States as our guests. And we need to have foremost in our minds the safety and the security of the American people living in the United States. That is why we have immigration laws. And those laws have not been enforced, were not being enforced, and there have been deleterious consequences from that. And I am taking action to respond to those deleterious consequences that were not of my making. And remember the difference between 20 in 2017, Obama had. You know, I believe Obama believed that he had made a terrible mistake in 2013 when he announced his liberalized immigration policy, which he defended till the end of his presidency. And then there was this rush to the border. I don't think Obama thought that was a totally unintended consequence. He did not expect it. They did not think that the word would go forth, you know, in Central and South America, that if you could just get yourself across the border, you could get yourself legal forever. And they created the kids in cages, right? They were the ones who created open air detention camps.

[Matthew Continetti]

Jeh Johnson, his Secretary of Homeland Security, was a big deporter. He was somebody who was tougher.

[John Podhoretz]

They meant that that's not what they had wanted. They wanted to create an amnesty and path to citizenship for, for people already here. They did not want a surge to the border Trump comes in, the surge to the border ends in a trickle because like he's. There's a lot of threats. Right. His first Attorney general, Jeff Sessions says, you know, we're going to separate you from your, you know, we are going to separate you from your kids.

[Matthew Continetti]

Right.

[John Podhoretz]

In part because, you know, we're not going to throw kids in jail, but.

[Abe Greenwald]

We legally, they have to they cannot house children with adults.

[Matthew Continetti]

That's many of children were coming across were not clear it was their parents. But yes, that was the child separation.

[John Podhoretz]

Cruelty is the point. And oh yeah, that was but it was an effective. However you want to slice it, it stopped and then Biden came in and literally opened the gate that the Democratic Party had gone so meshuggah that it opened the gates on the grounds that Trump was a monster and that this was heartless. And what's the number? Six to seven million people are now in this country who we don't even know where they are. There's no. They're not tracked. The gotaways, all of that. And it makes the policies that Trump is pursuing look like they are a serious response to a specific problem, a policy problem enacted by his predecessor that he has to correct.

[Matthew Continetti]

That's a great way to get into the third.

[John Podhoretz]

Yes.

[Matthew Continetti]

Executive order, which was Trump revoking the student visa program status for his favorite punching bag, Harvard University. And now on one, on one hand, this executive order basically, I guess, restates what the Department of Homeland Security had already done by saying that Harvard student visas were ineligible, illegitimate. And then a judge, of course, enjoined that order almost as soon as it happened. So the Trump's executive order here, I guess, kind of codifies or at least has it coming from the office of the President. Instead, it's still going to be tied up in legal litigation for some time. But to what you're saying, John Trump is fighting the Ivies, fighting two Ivies, Columbia and Harvard.

[John Podhoretz]

Well, Linda McMahon, we should also announce yesterday, the Department of Education sent to the universities in order to get funding and all of that have to be accredited by a system of accreditation. And this is the, I guess Mid Atlantic or Northern States Accreditation Association. And Linda McMahon wrote a letter saying Columbia University deserves to be to lose its accreditation because of its violations of Title 6 of the Civil Rights act of 1964 in relation to its unequal treatment of Jewish students. So we have Columbia moved on legally in a. By the way, again, imagine the situation in reverse, that the Biden administration had issued some such document about some university because of mistreatment of black students. Would there be mass protests on op ed pages that letter had been sent out? You know there wouldn't have. You know there wouldn't have. So who's pretending to be?

[Matthew Continetti]

And then just finally, I mean, how events have played into this. Of course, people watched what's happening on campus since October 7, 2023. They have seen the conduct, they've seen the harassment. They have seen the university president refused to condemn genocide under oath in Congress. They've seen the resignations. And so there is a certain legitimacy in the public to what Trump is trying to do forcing these two major institutions to complying with federal law. Also not forget in the, in the Biden administration, the Supreme Court ruled that race based affirmative action is unconstitutional and violates the 1964 Civil Rights Act. And we know that these elite institutions of higher education have been trying to evade that ruling as soon as it occurred. So there's a difference in not just, I think, capacity with this administration as opposed to the first one, but there's just a difference in the public mind and attitude on every issue except trade.

[John Podhoretz]

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[Abe Greenwald]

I just want to push back a little bit because I think they've made an error in targeting specifically Harvard so much because a lot of what Obama effectively, and his Department of Education in particular, was effective at doing were these blanket things that applied to all higher education if they receive federal funds. The Title 9 nonsense about sexual harassment on college campuses and sexual assault, the dear colleague letters, they didn't distinguish about Harvard or Columbia. And I know there are these specific cases in which I think administratively Department of Education should be sending out these sorts of missives, but an executive order that says I'm going after Harvard there, I think the public's tolerance is still there. As Matt, you're correct to say that, but it starts to look a little specific and vindictive and legally, I'm not sure he's lost challenges before for just singling out certain universities. And in that sense, the legal strategy might not be as, as thoughtful. And the point is, as Matt says, this has been going on all over the country. It's not just Harvard. So the weird, weird little burr in the saddle that Harvard represents for Trump, I think it would be helpful if he really does want to change higher education policy more broadly to let that go a little bit.

[John Podhoretz]

I, I agree with you in theory, but I think if you divide out the constitutional strategy or the effort to, you know, enact policy changes, that will be far reaching. Target cases are good, not bad. Making focusing on an individual institution as an exemplar of the whole, which is essentially the legal strategy of the left in most cases, unless you're doing class actions so that you have a good or you think you have a good case, you go at this case and Harvard is the perfect antagonist in a populist administration. It is elite, it is filthy rich, it can run itself without a single federal dollar. Nothing that the administration can. Can or would do to. It will close it. So the question will be. I'm sorry, the question will be, why isn't it doing that? There was an interesting sort of like, you know, the classic horror story of the withholding of funding, right? Some doctor at Harvard saying she's two years away from a vaccine that will cure cancer or, you know, cure something, and all she needs is her $60 million grant and then she can do it. And the administration has suspended that grant and now will not get that vaccine. Oh, really? Well, how about the Harvard Corporation send her the check for 60 million if this is going to.

[Abe Greenwald]

Chinese national at Stanford has just as much access to cause mischief and trouble as a, as a foreigner coming to Harvard. I just, I feel like it's not the foreigner coming trees like making Harvard a symbol I get. But at a certain point, if your strategy long term is to reform higher education, you're going to bump up against this limitation of why are you just focusing on this one place? And he's not filing a lawsuit against Harvard. I mean, we saw with affirmative action.

[John Podhoretz]

No, no, Harvard is filing a lawsuit against him.

[Abe Greenwald]

Exactly. But the orders are a different exercise of power than just filing a lawsuit.

[John Podhoretz]

The argument against moving on Harvard is an argument about how intellectual inquiry is conducted in the United States and whether or not politicians are permitted or should be permitted or whatever to interrupt the intellectual inquiry. Using the power of the government to stifle by withhold, by withholding money or taking legal action or something like that. That is a very serious business. And I don't mean to belittle it or act like. Good, let Harvard fry. I am saying that there is a second day argument in the. Oh my God, look what they're doing to us here at Harvard, which is. You have a rainy day fund. Use it. My house burns down. I can't wait for FEMA to go through the two year process of, you know, of getting me money to help rebuild it or my insurance company. Maybe I gotta. I have a year's worth of money as a crisis. Maybe I can help fix my living room and bedroom so I can move back into my house. They have a $51 billion endowment, right?

[Abe Greenwald]

This is about admissions. This is not. This is about admissions, like who they.

[John Podhoretz]

Are or are not allowed to admit broadening. The reason I brought this up. I brought this up in relation to the, to this vaccine sob story, which is a classic governmental sob story. It's the. If you cut off pbs, they'll shut down Sesame Street, Right? It's like if you cut Harvard's funding off, a vaccine will not be created and then everybody will die. But Harvard is not dependent on the federal government for its. It's not, it should not be. If it were smart, it would never have put itself in this position except that it's viewed it as free money, which it was until 2025. The argument about the foreign students and the visas and all of that is a, is a secondary. And again, it gets to the point that nobody is, has a right to come to the United States. There is no blanket right to come to the United States as a student, as a guest worker, even as a vacationer. These V. This is why there is a visa system. If there weren't a visa system, then everybody would have a right to come in and stay visa system in order to vet or in order to do this or in order to do that. And the assertion has been that Harvard and these institutions have an absolute right to admit whomever they want, to bring in whomever they want. It's that presumption. And he is saying, yeah, I don't like you and I don't really know why. As a matter of constitutional fact.

[Abe Greenwald]

Yeah, but then if it's a principle, apply it to everyone. I don't think any of these schools should have these wealthy Chinese, you know, dictators, children driving around in Lamborghinis. And that schools are doing it because it brings in money. They charge these kids a huge amount of money. The parents pay it. And how that for me, it's because it removes opportunities for American kids to attend these campuses too.

[Matthew Continetti]

I think there's so many different policies happening. 1 1, I think the foreign students is a national pol. I'm pretty sure it's a national policy because Rubio is involved in that and that announcement, or at least as it applies to Chinese student visas. Then there, then there's the Harvard, Harvard specific, you know, like the grant, the freezing of federal grants. That, that's kind of universal. But then it's also tied to the schools that the administration says are violating Title 6. And then there's a Harvard specific policy. And where I think you're right, Christine, is legally it makes the policy harder to defend because if it's just a case of targeting a single institution, then the judges might have a harder time accepting it. But then at the same time there's like freezing funds or having specific retaliatory policies against Harvard in order to bring it heel to heal. And then there's immigration law, where the president does have this tremendous amount of power, as we were discussing earlier. So it's all up in the air. You know, one helpful tool for thinking about this is, you know, the difference between President Trump's control of the executive branch. Right. Whereas President, he, I believe he has the authority to control the executive branch and executive policy. He is the president. President. And then there's Trump's ability to control everything else, which he seems to think he has, about which the courts, I think, should. Should constrain him. And so these types of issues have to be adjudicated on what, which bucket they fall into. I do think, though, we should just spend a couple minutes on some developments in foreign policy.

[John Podhoretz]

Before you do that, I have to bring up one thing. Harvard, as you know, with a big anti Semitism problem, President Alan Garber, or interim president, has, you know, promised to act in ways to affirm their commitment to, you know, being, doing the right thing. And Harvard yesterday made a stunning announcement that they have named a new professor of Modern Jewish studies in residence at the Harvard Divinity School, home to many people. One of them, Commentary contributor John Levinson, who is a biblical scholar who has written for Commentary over many decades, the new professor of modern Jewish studies in residence. His name is Shaul Magid. Shal Magid, who has been a Dartmouth for much of his career, is an anti Zionist Jew, openly, committedly anti Zionist Jew, whose latest book, reviewed in the pages of Commentary last year, is called the Necessity of Exile. And he is among the most controversial. If you are talking about somebody whose appointment was intended by Dean Marla Frederick to engage critically and compassionately with the complexities of religious life today. He represents a fringe view in the Jewish community and a fringe view outside of the world of Middle Eastern studies. He is a believer that the Diaspora is, is the true home of the Jewish people and that the Jewish state is not the true home of the Jewish people. And I believe that the bubble at Harvard is so impermeable that it believed that if it named, if it named a professor, a Jew named Shaul who writes about Jewish matters, that they could go out and say, hey, we get. We did you a solid Jews, look, we hired a Jew, Wave us the flag, go tell Trump he's bad. Instead, they find a fringe lunatic intellectually disgraceful, you know, kind of gadfly, and put him at the hot center of the American conversation about antisemitism and Judaism and the modern Jewish experience. So I'm not saying that that should give Trump the right to deny students.

[Matthew Continetti]

Well, you had another way of putting it. You had Another way of putting it.

[John Podhoretz]

Yesterday, very simply, which was.

[Matthew Continetti]

It used a four letter word. Yeah.

[John Podhoretz]

But I mean, it's like, just sink into the Charles already. Like, I'm like, what are you gonna do? Like, are you this. Did anybody, like, ask John Levinson what he thought about Shaul Magid? Did anyone think to ask David Wolpe who was on the Harvard Anti Semitism Commission and left to, you know, because running, fleeing for his intellectual life away from the COVID story that he was supposed to help provide them, or Dara Horn who was on that committee or anybody to say, hey, this is a person we're thinking of. What do you think? And saying, are you crazy?

[Matthew Continetti]

Well, the Divinity School in particular is a hotbed.

[John Podhoretz]

Right. Okay. I just needed to get that out so that people know that this happens. So you just know it happened. Okay.

[Matthew Continetti]

Just briefly, you know, Russia, Ukraine and Iran, Israel. There are a couple of things I wanted to mention. One, Trump spoke to Putin yesterday. We learned in a truth, as Trump said, it was a conversation that will not, probably not lead to peace anytime soon as we can infer from all of the public statements coming out of Moscow. Russia's war aims have not changed. Trump also said that Putin's likely to retaliate for the extraordinary Ukrainian drone attack. Not sure what that means, but it's another kind of tapping, you know, Putin tapping Trump along. This is happening. There's some activity on Capitol Hill about the Graham sanctions bill. But eventually Trump has to make up his mind here and do something to increase the pressure on Putin and then on Iran.

[John Podhoretz]

Can I just also point out that Zelensky did himself a very. I mean, the Ukrainians did themselves a huge favor with what they did here, not only strategically and tactically, but also in Trump's eyes because he announced for the first time in a long time that what the Ukrainians had done was badass and strong.

[Matthew Continetti]

You know, Trump was telling that to people.

[John Podhoretz]

Yeah.

[Matthew Continetti]

And then it's reported back and strong.

[John Podhoretz]

So suddenly Zelensky isn't, you know, going to the Grammys and doing whatever and going to visit Democrats in Pennsylvania. You know, he's, he's given it to, to Putin hard. And Trump admired that.

[Matthew Continetti]

Which is different, by the way, than MAGA thought, thought leaders who have said that what Ukraine did was, you know, the most provocative action in the history of modern warfare. Iran. The Ayatollah has dismissed the latest Trump proposal. Maybe left a little bit of wiggle room for continued negotiations, which of course the Iranians want, because they just want to drag this out until they restore all their defenses. And so, once again, diplomat in chief Steve Witkoff, you know, is he going to make another concession in order to get to the table, or is Trump going to realize that this is leading nowhere? He needs to up the pressure on Iran and finally on Israel. It's important. The United States vetoed a UN Resolution that was calling for a ceasefire that did not.

[John Podhoretz]

Immediate ceasefire.

[Matthew Continetti]

Immediate ceasefire. Did nothing to condemn. Hamas, was playing off this disinformation campaign we've been discussing about the new food distribution program. But the United States stuck with Israel, vetoed the resolution. Rightly so. And, you know, I think it's worth noting because, of course, there have been all these stories in the media, probably partly leaked by enemies of Israel within the administration, about growing separation between Trump and Netanyahu. As complicated as that relationship, that personal relationship may be, and as complicated as Bibi's political situation in Israel might be, it's again, something that would not have happened if Kamala Harris were president today. The U.S. vetoing a U.N. resolution calling for immediate ceasefire.

[John Podhoretz]

I think even, even more notably is the argument that has been proffered over the last week, again, that while Trump looks like he is an opponent of anti Semitism, he deserves no such credit because he platforms, yeah, anti Semites and had dinner with Nick Flint.

[Matthew Continetti]

Terrible dinner. Yes, after the election, it's terrible.

[John Podhoretz]

But the proof of the pudding is in the eating. This is an administration that is relentlessly going after the enemies of the Jews in the United States and in international organizations and likely with Iran's continued recalcitrants, not only against Gaza, and of course, we were firing on the Houthis for 30 days, but who knows what Khamenei's insulting rejection of Trump's outstretched arm for peace will lead Trump to say, which is, you know what? I did what I could eff him, hit him, go at them. That's very much in his wheelhouse. He doesn't like war, doesn't want there to be wars on his watch and all of that. But, you know, there is a moment at which he's going to start feeling humiliated by Khamenei. He's the one who wrote Khamenei the letter. He's the one who initiated and inaugurated these negotiations.

[Matthew Continetti]

Two month deadline he gave for the inaugurations. And we're now in for the negotiations and now we're in June.

[John Podhoretz]

Right.

[Christine Rosen]

So I just want to say one thing about that point. When people say things to me like, if you think Trump is deporting people and going after the Ivies because of anti Semitism, you have no idea what's going on. You know, I have a bridge to sell you. And first of all, I agree with you. I think he is going after them in good measure because of anti Semitism, even if he's not. So what? Like it's all. It's all. Cuz it's all part of the same brew anyway. He's going after them for reasons that are connected to the fact that they are anti Semitism factories anyway. So, you know, it's like, I don't. How pure do I need his motivations to be to do this?

[John Podhoretz]

What they want is for him to not do it, right? They want him not to go after universities, they want him not to support Netanyahu, and then they want to be able to say that because he is effectively in support of the Israeli government's aims in Gaza, because he is using the Department of Education and the Department of Justice and his own executive orders to target anti Semitic activity, illegal anti Semitic activity in the United States, that he is not a friend of the Jews. And I'm sorry, but go f yourself. You know, seriously, I mean, I'm. Friday, I spent the entire podcast railing against what I took to be Trump's very tenuous connection to legality in terms of his financial dealings and his family's financial dealings. I am not standing here to carry the MAGA flag and celebrate, but I know what my eyes show me. And as you know, what was it George Orwell's famous phrase? Right? I mean, it can be an extraordinarily difficult thing sometimes to see what is plainly right in front of your face. And what I see is an administration consumed with the idea that it is been put on this earth in part to combat this evil. Whether Trump feels it morally in his. I don't think. I think he's a relatively amoral person and that that's not his motivations. But is it Lyndon McMahon's motivation?

[Matthew Continetti]

Leo Terrell seems to be waking up every day wanting to fight anti Semitism.

[John Podhoretz]

Marco Rubio. People inside the White House who aren't the, you know, JD Vance wing. This is the through line from January 21st to today. This tariffs and border stuff are the three through lines. And yes, not only wouldn't Kamala Harris be doing it, she would be joining the jackals. So that's just the truth of it. And Peter Baker can write 150 billion words a day on how Trump isn't really a friend of the Jew.

[Matthew Continetti]

I think you made a very important point there, which is, you know, what is the alternative policy? And I think many of the liberal critics of the Trump administration's approach to antisemitism would prefer he he followed the traditional liberal response to anti Semitism, which to say, oh, it's so terrible a thing, it's making me feel so fearful and anxious.

[Abe Greenwald]

Well, they can't even say it. They call it anti Semitism, Islamophobia.

[Matthew Continetti]

And you know what we need to do? We need to change hearts and minds through conflict resolution and Holocaust education. And, you know, where has that gotten the American Jewish community? I'm sorry? Where has that gotten us? The worst outbreak of anti Semitism in the history of this country is where it's gotten us. Yeah. So maybe it's time to do a rethink.

[John Podhoretz]

We'll be back tomorrow. For Matt, Christina, Dave, I'm John Bot Horitz. Keep the candle bur.