Bad Deal

Summary

The Commentary Magazine Podcast: "Bad Deal" – January 14, 2025

Hosted by John Podhoretz and featuring Commentary Magazine's senior editors Abe Greenwald, Seth Mandel, and Christine Rosen, the "Bad Deal" episode delves into pressing geopolitical and domestic issues, offering a critical analysis of recent developments in U.S. foreign policy and legal investigations surrounding prominent political figures.

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1. Biden’s Valedictory Address and U.S. Foreign Policy

The episode opens with a discussion of President Joe Biden's first valedictory address at the State Department. John Podhoretz critiques Biden’s portrayal of U.S. strength, stating, “He was taking credit for things. He was claiming that the US is in a much stronger position than it was when we took office...” ([00:55]).

Abe Greenwald counters Biden’s assertions by highlighting the administration's defense spending cuts and the resulting vulnerabilities in the military. He remarks, “We actually do need to spend some money rebuilding our defense...” ([08:01]).

2. The Hostage Deal Between Israel and Hamas

Christine Rosen introduces the central topic of the episode: a hostage deal between Israel and Hamas. She vehemently opposes the agreement, describing it as “a horror and it's an unambiguous horror” ([06:18]). The deal involves the release of 33 out of 98 hostages over 16 days, predominantly women and children, leaving the majority in captivity.

Podhoretz expresses his disapproval, noting, “I hate the deal” ([14:55]). The panelists discuss the implications of leaving two-thirds of the hostages behind and the potential for continued instability in the region.

3. Implications for Israeli Politics and Security

Seth Mandel elaborates on the strategic setbacks of the deal, particularly the Israeli military’s withdrawal from the Natzarim Corridor—a critical security zone. He explains, “It's just named after a settlement that is no longer in existence... pulling out of this corridor” ([17:06]).

Christine Rosen warns of the potential for renewed conflict, stating, “They're going to start dropping 2,000 pound bombs on Gazan civilians...” ([20:28]). The discussion highlights the precarious balance Israel faces in maintaining security while negotiating hostage releases.

4. Prospects of Trump's Role in Future Negotiations

The conversation shifts to former President Donald Trump’s involvement in the negotiations through his associate Steve Witkoff. Rosen criticizes the approach, arguing, “What a great deal, what a terrific deal that is...” ([14:55]).

Mandel speculates on Trump’s possible stance if the deal falters, suggesting, “He is not going to want this... he is doing the devil's work, not the Lord's work” ([27:01]). The panelists express skepticism about Trump's ability to secure all hostages, questioning his commitment to the deal’s follow-through.

5. Special Prosecutor Reports: Jack Smith vs. David Weiss

A significant portion of the episode is dedicated to analyzing reports from Special Prosecutors Jack Smith and David Weiss. Podhoretz reads excerpts from Smith’s report, which alleges that the investigation into former President Trump was expedited to influence the presidential election: “The office had no interest in affecting the presidential election...” ([61:28]).

Greenwald contrasts this with Weiss’s report on Hunter Biden, highlighting perceived biases: “He [Weiss] issued a report that was extremely striking in its scolding of the Biden administration...” ([62:47]). The panelists argue that these reports demonstrate a partisan imbalance within the Justice Department, undermining public trust.

Christine Rosen argues that Trump’s actions should have been addressed through impeachment rather than prosecution, stating, “He was impeached by the House in 2021. He just wasn't convicted... There shouldn't have been a prosecution of him for this” ([66:03]).

6. Conclusion: The Path Forward

As the episode concludes, the hosts emphasize the complexities and potential repercussions of the hostage deal and the ongoing legal battles involving high-profile political figures. Podhoretz advises listeners to “keep the candle burning” amid the turbulent political landscape ([74:45]).

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Notable Quotes:

• “He was taking credit for things. He was claiming that the US is in a much stronger position than it was when we took office...” – John Podhoretz ([00:55])

• “I hate the deal.” – John Podhoretz ([14:55])

• “It's a horror and it's an unambiguous horror.” – Christine Rosen ([06:18])

• “We actually do need to spend some money rebuilding our defense...” – Abe Greenwald ([08:01])

• “He is doing the devil's work, not the Lord's work.” – Christine Rosen ([27:01])

• “The office had no interest in affecting the presidential election...” – Jack Smith (Excerpt via John Podhoretz) ([61:28])

• “There shouldn't have been a prosecution of him for this.” – Christine Rosen ([66:03])

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Summary:

In "Bad Deal," Commentary Magazine's panelists critically examine President Biden's recent address, a controversial hostage deal between Israel and Hamas, and contentious legal reports involving former President Trump and Hunter Biden. The discussion underscores concerns about U.S. foreign policy's effectiveness, the strategic integrity of Israeli security measures, and perceived partisan biases within the Justice Department. Through incisive analysis and pointed critiques, the episode offers listeners a comprehensive overview of the intricate interplay between domestic politics and international relations as of early 2025.

Transcript

[John Podhoretz]

Hope for the best, expect the worst.

Some preach and pain Some die of.

[Christine Rosen]

Thirst the way of knowing which way it's going Hope for the best Expect the worst Hope for the best welcome.

[John Podhoretz]

To the Commentary Magazine daily Podcast. Today is Tuesday, January 14, 2020. I'm John Potwartz, the editor of Commentary. Later today, Tuesday, Our February issues content should be [e-mail] for your perusal. If you are a subscriber, this is a good day to subscribe. The issue is sensational, featuring not only the first Christine Rosen social Commentary column about the regrets, a lot of the regrets caused by present day feminism, but a really remarkable, very authoritative, large scale epic piece by Noor Rothman called A Clockwork Blue, which is about the gradual history of the left and progressives embracing political violence that begins in 1999 and moves to the present. I'm very proud of this piece, A Clockwork Blue by Noah Rothman that is will be available for your perusal. We have a piece by Joseph Epstein on virtucrats. We have a piece by Stephen Pollard on the grooming gangs and because we don't have enough Christine Rosen content, Michael J. Lewis, the professor of art at Williams College, has written an essay based around Christine's book the Extinction of experience. Bill McClay on Christopher Cox's book about Woodrow Wilson. Mayor Soloveitchik on what it means that the song Imagine was played at Jimmy Carter's funeral. Jim Megs on the possibility that there might be a new pandemic on the way for which we remain as unprepared as we have been prepared for previous pandemics and the like. So this is a very strong issue. Go to commentary.org, click on subscribe. Subscribe. You should subscribe if you are a listener and a regular listener. That's one of the ways that we keep our lights on and keep things going, is for you to actually help pay for our institution, 501c3 nonprofit. If this is not a donation, this is a service that we provide you in the form of a monthly magazine and content on the website. But that would be not only helpful, but I think salubrious for you, for your intellectual life and for the life of the nation. Very quickly, you guys. Joe Biden went to the State Department and gave the first of his valedictory addresses.

[Abe Greenwald]

Haven't said hello. I. I can't.

[Christine Rosen]

Oh. Oh my God.

[John Podhoretz]

We haven't said hello.

[Abe Greenwald]

Pleasantries, pleasantries.

[John Podhoretz]

Let me introduce executive editor Abe Greenwald. Hi Abe.

Hi, John.

[Christine Rosen]

The person who just attacked me. Viciously even though not only do we have a piece by her, but a piece praising her in the issue. And nonetheless, she comes at me with a dagger. Social commentary columnist and AEI senior fellow Christine Rosen. Hi, Christine.

[Abe Greenwald]

Hi, John.

[John Podhoretz]

And senior editor Seth Mandel.

[Christine Rosen]

Hi, Seth.

[Seth Mandel]

Hi, John. That was very much like when after everybody washes for the challah on Friday night and nobody can speak yet, and the person who hasn't washed yet can speak.

[Christine Rosen]

That's a very good reference. But that is so obscure that we have to explain that one of the rituals of a Friday night Shabbat dinner is that you say prayers over the wine and bread and then you do what is called natilat yadayim.

[John Podhoretz]

You go and wash your hands. And when you come back from washing your hands, you are not supposed to speak until the challah is cut and.

[Christine Rosen]

You take your first bite of the meal.

[John Podhoretz]

I don't really understand this ritual or.

[Christine Rosen]

This, as we call it, this minhog, but it is the minhog. So, Seth, I'm. You now know something, if you did not know this, that you could use.

[John Podhoretz]

I don't know, as a drinking game.

[Christine Rosen]

Or you could like, or you could, like, go to a Shabbat meal at somebody's house.

[John Podhoretz]

And when they.

[Christine Rosen]

You're not gonna be able to see.

[John Podhoretz]

This unless you're watching us on YouTube.

[Christine Rosen]

But when, if they start talking, you can raise your finger and like, wag it at them very sensoriously and make them feel bad. That's a big reason, I think, why.

[John Podhoretz]

We do natila yadaim is, is in.

[Christine Rosen]

Order to cause the person who does.

[John Podhoretz]

Remain silent to lord it over anybody who forgets and starts talking, particularly children. Because, you know, you put those kids in their place.

[Christine Rosen]

That's right.

[Seth Mandel]

And you know, there's, there's, there's one, there's one loophole. The Jewish people, we, the Jewish people have, seem to make an exception for the word new. You could, you could say new.

[John Podhoretz]

New.

[Christine Rosen]

Now we have to introduce the word new. The word new, which basically means so or well or something like that Yiddish word. Yeah. If you say new, somehow that, that does seem to be like a way you can escape the congestion pricing plan in New York by zipping in and out of the zone.

[John Podhoretz]

Now we're really getting into the weeds.

[Christine Rosen]

Okay. Yesterday, Joe Biden gave the first of his valedictory addresses. And we're now told, by the way, that he will be interviewed on television on Thursday night by Lawrence O'Donnell. So, you know, that's going to be a hard hitting, tough resolute interview in which the underside of his foot will not be licked. But he did speak yesterday at the State Department. Please enlighten us, my fellow panelists, as to his, the glories of his appearance there.

[John Podhoretz]

Well, what struck me so forcefully about it was that he was taking credit for things. He was claiming that the US Is in a much stronger position than it was when we took office and our enemies are in a worse position. He was particularly talking about Iran and Russia and then on the other side, the strengthening of NATO. This is mostly his taking credit for things that were done by our allies in spite of US Policy. Iran is in big trouble security wise because Israel stopped heating the Biden administration and went to take it, to take their take on their enemies on every front. Unapologetically, Ukraine has kept Russia from swallowing it up because it's been unbelievably brave, not defeatist, as the Biden administration was from day one when they thought that, that Russia was going to take Ukraine in a matter of weeks. And they, and Ukraine has been unbelievably innovative because the Biden administration hasn't given it everything it needs. And NATO is stronger and I'll give some Biden credit here, but NATO has come together because they have a huge Russian threat on their hands. And that was gonna, that was gonna, they were, they had, they were gonna have to do something about that no matter what.

[Abe Greenwald]

I was struck by his claim that, and I do want to quote it, he says my administration is leaving the next administration with a very strong hand to play. Now, whatever that means, it certainly doesn't mean in terms of the strength and might of our military, which in every budget that Biden proposed had defense spending cuts and due to the runaway inflation under his leadership, meant that our military is actually in a pretty dire place right now. We actually do need to spend some money rebuilding our defense, updating it for the 20 for 21st century warfare. This will be, I hope, one of the things that Pete Hegseth, who's the nominee for, for defense secretary, hopefully he'll be asked about what the Trump administration hopes to do with that.

[Christine Rosen]

But his hearings begins, begins this morning, right.

[Abe Greenwald]

He's he, in about an hour. He's going to be sitting in front.

[Christine Rosen]

Of an hour from when we're talking. By the time you hear this, it will have been on for a couple of hours probably.

[Abe Greenwald]

And although I know he's likely to, Hegseth is likely to have to answer a lot of questions about his personal life. The, the future of our military is of Great concern. And for Biden to sort of glibly declare, well, look, I'm handing you this platter full of, you know, bountiful armed forces is ridiculous. So it is a strange sort of self congratulatory tone he's adopted about the one issue that we know voters don't trust him on, that the rest of the world's various crises reveal he wasn't successful about. And I, I'm sure Lawrence O'Donnell will ask him very pointed questions about his legacy in this regard. She said sarcastically.

[Christine Rosen]

Okay, so that is the Biden. The Biden valediction is part one. Part one, yes, because we're going to get domestic stuff later. Of course, what it's going to look like on January 20th is that he will be leaving with Los Angeles in partial ruins and actually a kind of the stock market going through some kind of a very nervous, shaky moment. So it's going to be at a lower place than it's been in the last four or five months. I mean, I'm not saying that people are going to say, oh my God, look, you know, look, look at what he handed Trump necessarily, but it's, it's pretty much there. Now we should talk about what he is handing Trump or what he and Trump are now handing the world in the form of what appears to be a hostage deal or a ceasefire hostage arrangement between Israel and Hamas that is likely to be announced later today. We are told, and I don't know how to sugarcoat this, it's a horror and it's an unambiguous horror. What is happening here. We can go into the specifics. We will go into the specifics now. We are talking about 33 out of the 98 hostages that we know are in Hamas captivity, some dead, some alive, 33 that are going to be released after the deal is struck over the a period of 16 days, not 98. 33, we are told, or we were told a couple of days ago, but, but this not hasn't necessarily been updated, that they will be children, women and the injured, although some of them may be dead. So that won't actually be a hostage release.

[John Podhoretz]

It will be a release release of.

[Christine Rosen]

A, of a dead body to be, you know, appropriately and adequately taken care of under Jewish law and buried. So two thirds of the hostages will be left in Hamas captivity for at least two more weeks. After the 16 days, assuming the ceasefire holds according to these terms, negotiations will begin on more hostage releases, which means that we know from little bits of pieces of testimony, including the Noah Argaman's testimony and others that the treatment of the hostages on a day to day basis is nightmarish in the extreme. And the question is why, with Iran on the back foot, Hamas almost destroyed and this new administration that promised hell coming in, to my mind, this deal which Trump has participated in, in the form of his negotiating friend Steve Witkoff joining the negotiations and apparently yelling at Bibi Netanyahu on Sunday that he better agree to this deal. And you know, deals have, if you're going to make deal, you have to make concessions. I don't know what concession it is to say, okay, you get to keep 65 kidnapped people in your custody. That's that. What a great deal, what a terrific deal that is. In exchange for us, not in exchange for us not killing you, you get to keep 65 of our hostages. Trump's announcement that there would be hell to pay or hell was going to be unleashed if those hostages aren't released apparently had a big asterisk there that it wasn't that all the hostages had to be released. And he is clearly going to join in some kind of a victory lap. He and Witkoff, who has already been making weird victory laps, including going on TV on Sunday night and saying that Gutter the nation that is Hamas's financial sponsor and protector, is doing the Lord's work in representing Hamas's interests at the negotiating table. You can say, oh well, anyone can say anything in the middle of a negotiation except maybe we'll be doing the Lord's work. If all 98 hostages came out. If all 98 hostages don't come out. He is doing the devil's work, not the Lord's work. And no Jew, and no billionaire American Jew and no suck up to Donald Trump should be saying that this guy is doing the Lord's work. It's a shameful, horrible thing to say about Gutter. It's a shameful, horrible thing to say about any deal where if you have to say, look, we had to do something, we have to do something to start the process of getting them out, you know, this is not what we wanted, but this is what we're going to have to have. That's not what's going on. There's going to be like a triumphalist tone to this monstrous deal. John, that's where I'm starting from.

[John Podhoretz]

I hate the deal. But isn't there, aren't there supposed to be follow on phases where I just.

[Christine Rosen]

Said after the 16th day, then you get to negotiate more hostage releases? As I read it Seth, you're muted. Go ahead.

[John Podhoretz]

And there's also the. What Israel, who Israel is supposed to release.

[Seth Mandel]

Right. So one thing we don't know is when the withdrawals happen exactly over the course of the deal. But part of what makes the deal bad is the Israeli military withdrawals from Gaza. So it's not just about the trade. It's also about the fact that they're supposedly going to set up checkpoints to return to Alao Palestinians in southern Gaza to return north to their homes, but only unarmed Palestinians. But also, according to every draft of the deal or every reporting on the deal, Israel is vacating the Narim Corridor, which is a road that goes from the Israel Gaza border about maybe 60% the way up Gaza. And it cuts in half laterally to the Mediterranean. So it goes from Israel to the Mediterranean. And what you actually have are north Gaza and south Gaza. It's a sort of demarcation line. And that corridor, which Israel has been expanding at times as needed, is what serves as stopping people from going north to south or south to north with weapons. So this idea that they're going to pull out of the eightzarem corridor and. And the other thing we should note about the corridor is that the corridor is known as Natzarim Corridor, Nature Junction, because there was a settlement in Gaza right around that spot called Netzari, but within the Israeli.

[Christine Rosen]

Israeli settlement.

[Seth Mandel]

Israeli settlement right before the pullout.

[Christine Rosen]

The pullout was in 2005. Right. So within Israeli settlement, Israel had three settlements in Gaza. There were three of them. 8,000 people lived on these three settlements and they were pulled out in 2005. There has been no Jewish presence in Gaza except for when soldiers have to invade in 20 years. Right.

[Seth Mandel]

And so they. It's just named after a settlement that is no longer in existence, but was there in the area. But to the idf it's called the BE Junction or the BE Corridor because it is right outside Kibbutz Ba? Eri, which was one of the main kibbutzim that was hit hard by the October 7th attacks. And the entrance to the. It's a ream corridor is pretty much right outside Bayri Forest.

[Christine Rosen]

Like 500. It's like 500 meters. Yeah.

[Seth Mandel]

And right side the.

[Christine Rosen]

From the last building, right in Kibbutz.

[Seth Mandel]

Bay, you can wave and there. And there are other kibbutzim that are also practically within spitting distance. But the point is that it hold the Bay corridor within the IDF because it basically goes from the kibbutz that was massacred through bisecting Gaza when they Pull out of this corridor. That will essentially be. That is the last preventive measure from Hamas going wherever it wants to in Gaza whenever it wants. They will be marching all this stuff out right past Kibbutz Barry. There will be a kind of funeral march almost in watching this. It will be extraordinarily difficult and it will, it will be a symbolic, I don't want to say victory for Habas. It will be a symbolic long.

[Christine Rosen]

Oh, it's not even a symbolic victory for Hamas. Hamas is. Hamas is all but dead, right? Hamas is all but dead. That's what we keep. Which is one of the reasons why the negotiations started up again. Also because Trump is coming in and the Iranians are worried about him. Whatever. Hamas is almost dead. Where they are picking off the remnant of Hamas is precisely what you. Where you are talking about in the depopulated northern Gaza where they are apparently hiding in the tunnels and build and remnants there that have yet to be blown up. So you are not only moving people north, you are moving people north who are going to be standing atop, on the Hamas remnant that is underground. And what are you going to start doing then? You're going to start dropping 2,000 pound bombs on, on Gazan civilians that you have just allowed to move back in to the war zone where right now Israelis are getting killed four or five a day. There is fighting going on there exactly where the ceasefire is going to allow Gazans to move back. So you're also creating a strategic nightmare.

[Seth Mandel]

They'll be doing so before most Israelis could move back to these parts. They'll you know, these areas in other words in the Gaza envelope that they'll be sort of, you know, walk of shaming out of Gaza into. They will be letting Palestinians in Gaza homes before Israelis can come back and repopulate most these Gaza envelope.

[Christine Rosen]

We need to explain what this is. The Gaza envelope is the area, the neighborhood, the area of Israel that abuts the Gaza border. And the most famous place in the Gaza envelope is a town city called Derot which was for, for the last 20 years one of the most bombed places on earth before the, before the Ukrainian war because it was constantly receiving Hamas rocketry fire because it was so close, it was so close they could shoot off rocket launch, you know land based rocket launch grenades and stuff like that at it didn't necessarily have to engage with Iron Dome which is the Israeli preventive umbrella and steroid has, has been a ghost town now for a year and two or three months. And yeah, the Israelis are going to be moving out Moving north, moving, you know, east and north in Israel past their road. Are people going to go back to sterote? What is the circumstance? And should the ceasefire not hold, what happens then? Then Israel has to go back in and repop. Re occupy the area around the Netzerim crossing because Hamas misbehaves.

[Seth Mandel]

And we should note that, by the way, pulling troops out of the corridor is not just. It's not just a road. It's. There are military structures. There are, you know, this is, this is. It's a base. It's like a base that makes shift. They're makeshift, but they're going to have towards. The idea of going back in would require sort of, you know, doing it all over again.

[Christine Rosen]

Right, so the point about the ceasefire that took place when 80 hostages came out, this is now 14 months ago, when the 80 hostages came out, was that everybody stood in place. Like the Israelis who had gone into Gaza didn't leave Gaza, they just stopped firing their guns. We're actually talking about withdrawals from Gaza. And as I say, the repopulation of this somewhat denuded area looks a lot like the Pacific Palisades. Weirdly enough, if you look at pictures of northern Gaza and you look at the fires in the Pacific Palisades, I mean, it's been. It's a ruined area. Ruined because the Israelis had to take out all the structures under which Hamas might have been hiding or was hiding or where there were tunnel entrances or whatever. Anyway, so that's the Israeli strategic crisis raised by this deal, which is that they're going to pull out and then, and then there is a 50 chance they're going to have to go back in. And if they go back in and there's this new administration, and this new administration is walking around waving its flag and beating its own breast on how it made this wonderful change where it brought an end to this thing that Biden couldn't bring an end to. How is Trump going to feel about Bibi re about Bibi reinvading Gaza if it is necessary, you think? We all say he doesn't care. He wants Israel to win the war and do what he wants to do. Not if his fingerprints are all over this deal. He is not going to want this. He's not going to want it said the first big deal that he was involved in came a cropper, didn't work.

[Seth Mandel]

Not, we should note, and not if the war is something that that is seen as a sort of new ish conflict that he will wholly own. Everybody stands in place and there's like.

[Christine Rosen]

A two week pause.

[Seth Mandel]

He can say, you know, I inherited Biden's war. We're trying to end it. If he moves everybody out and says, look, I ended the war, then he's going to be defensive of the peace.

[Christine Rosen]

Yeah, right. It's his P. And look, that means. And we got to say, because, you know, Biden's talking about leaving the world safer than he found all this. Jake Sullivan, Biden's an idiot, right? Jake Sullivan is stupid. Tony Blinken is terrible. Jake Sullivan sold Steve Witkoff, Trump's negotiator, a bill of goods and Witkoff bought it because he doesn't know anything. Got no idea what's going on. He's just a negotiator. So what happens? Sullivan says, this is the best deal we can possibly trust. B, we've been doing this for 14 months. This is the best deal we can get right now. You and I can march out hand in hand. Trump can get credit, Biden can get credit, Bibi will get. Oh, it's so wonderful. My friend Yair Lapid over here, head of the opposition, he thinks it's just fantastic. And Wykoff's like, and my friend, the Emir of Qatar, he's great too. He's doing the Lord's work. And then they're going to walk out hand in hand, making this deal with 65 hostages left in Hamas custody. In custody is not even the right word. Why are they negotiating? Why aren't they ultimatuming? The whole point of what Trump did when he started saying we're going to unleash hell like you've never seen was an ultimatum. It wasn't supposed to turn into the deal that, you know, Jake Sullivan has been trying to get Israel to agree to for a year that Hamas has scuttled. This is what we know from Blinken, right? Tony Blinken told this to Lulu Garcia Navarro, the New York Times, every time they went with the deal, it was Hamas that scuttled the deal. Looks like Hamas isn't going to scuttle this deal.

[Seth Mandel]

Why would they?

[Christine Rosen]

Okay, now here's why. Because, of course, as Aba Eben famously said, right, the most famous quote of his career, Abba Eben was a, was a major Israeli political figure with a thick British accent, said the Arabs never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity. So this is the best deal they could possibly get. They shouldn't be getting a deal at all. This is like saying, okay, you're done, Hitler, don't worry, we're going to pull out of Germany and then you know, maybe you can stay in your bunker. We'll try. Or maybe, you know, you know, where's the maybe?

[John Podhoretz]

But there's. It's not maybe. Yeah, I mean, there's no talk. I mean, that's what scares me. Is that any deal? Let's say that Moss follows this to the letter and that there are, that the supposed three phases actually happen and every prisoner and every body is released. Any deal that leaves the remnant of Hamas to live, reconstitute, govern and fight another day is the height of absurdity.

[Christine Rosen]

Well, so the presumption of the deal is that Hamas doesn't really exist anymore in the way that it did and therefore it can't exactly reconsider. We don't even know. Muhammad Sinwar, Yahya's brother, the now dead Yaya's brother is apparently the commander on the ground in Gaza, we're told. And it's he who will have to do the final sign off on the deal. Which of course is absolutely ridiculous because it's Iran. That is the final sign off on the deal. That is say if Iran says you better do this, they have to do it because they have no other sponsors or friends. And if Iran says don't do it, then they won't do it because they have no other sponsors or friends. Nonetheless, when you look at that now, now we should move away from us and Witkoff and Trump and Sullivan and Biden just say this is not a promising beginning to the Trump foreign policy. I am sorry the way Witkoff has been talking and behaving. This is the first major move of the Trump administration, even though the Trump is not in place. And it should not be making anybody who listens to this podcast, who voted for Trump be feeling wonderful about what's going to be going on here. Because it does suggest that Trump's hunger to claim victories is greater than his care about what the claim, what the victory is. He wants to rack up successes. That's great. He should rack. We've been talking about how it, you know, it's like very fertile fruit. There's a lot of low hanging fruit for him to rack up successes. But if he does them in cheap third rate ways, you know, like bargain basement discount ways, rather than doing stuff that will have lasting and positive consequences that speak to what America's position in the world and, and conservatism's position in the American political firmament are, then it's things are not going to be as positive as people. Now, we should talk about Israel now, because this now gets very Complicated. This is a deal to which Bibi would never have agreed six months ago. He was never put in the position of having to agree or not to agree to it because Hamas always rejected the deal that appears not to be happening. And here's what's complicated. People that I know who are people on the right in Israel say his government cannot survive this deal, particularly the two parties run by Ben GVIR and Smotra cannot accept this deal and that they will pull out of the coalition that is the 64 seat coalition that Likud, that Bibi's party controls and tank the government with a vote of no confidence. Bibi remains prime minister until another election. But he. It's a caretaker system. Except that Yer Lapid, as I say the mentioned before, the head of the, the actual head of the opposition in Israel with his party having, I don't know what did it get, 24 seats or 22 seats or something like that, has said, said last night that he will instruct members of his party to support the coalition. They will cross over and vote to sustain Bibi's coalition should Ben GVIR and Smotrick pull out. That is how important it is for him to. To be part of the hostage deal. Israel is now about to undergo a potential massive emotional civil war because there are 98 hostages. There are these hostage families. They have enormous emotional power over the rest of Israel. What if your kid, what if your soldier kid is one of the 65 who remains in captivity while you are hearing about the tortures and starvation and monstrous treatment and we're going to hear more about it once the hostages come out. Country is going to go bananas because there's nothing to celebrate here. There is nothing to celebrate if the government has agreed to stand as equals with Hamas in a negotiation and then not to get what should be axiomatically unquestionable, which is we're not doing anything to not see you die unless every single one of our people is out of your hands. Then maybe we could arrange safe passage for a couple of people or the prisoners that you have, who are murderers that you want released, are released into custody in Tanganyika or on New Caledonia or like on an island in Antarctica somewhere far away where they can't come back and get, get at us. Right? That's part of the terms here. But not if they're holding onto the hostages. And I, I don't know. So Bibi's got. Maybe Lapid will, will support Bibi's government and maybe he won't. But if Bibi has to have his bacon, if you'll excuse me for putting it that way, pulled out of the fire by a Earl of Pede. He also won't, won't survive. He won't survive another three months because the next time there was a political issue, he won't be supported by your lapid. And then the government will fall because Smotrich and Ben Gavir will have pulled out of the government, and that's it. He'll have 48 seats instead of 64, and that'll be the end of him. So that's that. That's the Israeli side.

[Unknown Speaker]

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[Christine Rosen]

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[Christine Rosen]

None of us seems to, I, I'm trying to think of what good there is here. The only good is if you clear the pl, if you clear the decks here. That doesn't mean that Israel can't strike Iran.

[Seth Mandel]

Well, it's, it's more than, doesn't mean they can't strike it. The only thing that anybody can think of for why this deal would be signed by Israel or agreed to is that they got something else that's not part of this deal from the Trump administration. That's the, that's the ongoing. I think that that's a dangerous assumption because I think the Trump administration, the incoming administration is strong arming, is just, you know, is pushing people into, you know, round square pegs, into round holes and whatever they can. And they're not actually doing any sort of broader regional thing, strategic thing here. But the hope, I think, is that this clears the way for some kind of, for the maneuvers to take out Iran's nuclear program. That is that, is what people who are trying to think of what could possibly be good about this deal and what could possibly be good about this deal is, are things that are not part of this deal and that we won't really know. We can't know for sure. If Trump says, you know, yeah, we'll, we'll, you know, we'll, we'll bomb the Iranian nuclear sites underground and finish it off in gratitude for giving Mr. Trump a win, you know, to start his, his, his presidency. But again, it's, it's always very dangerous with anybody, not, not specifically even Trump, but with anybody to make one deal on the promise or a handshake of a different deal on a different thing.

[John Podhoretz]

I also think it doesn't, that that expectation doesn't make sense when you look at the players. Wouldn't Israel striking Iran's nuclear programs scuttle the, quote, peace between Israel and Hamas? I mean, Hamas is going to do nothing when it's its number one sponsor, is, is, is seeing its nuclear program taken out. I mean, yeah, I think the idea.

[Christine Rosen]

That they would just kill, yeah. That they would just kill the remaining hostages because Iran, right. Had been really mortally wounded, that would seem to be an obvious, it's like, it's like firing. It's like firing. I mean, the one thing is that Hamad, these hostages are worth their weight in gold. So you don't necessarily just get rid of them or tell people that you've gotten rid of them, you know, because then really, you know, they're, nothing is left. But it's a little like part of.

[Seth Mandel]

These, part of these deals is that you don't have to say what happened to the hostages. Israel doesn't know exactly for sure who's alive.

[Christine Rosen]

They still, we don't know what they know.

[Seth Mandel]

We don't know what they're said. They, they, they think, they, we think Most of the 33 hostages at this round are alive. But the point is that they could, if, if, if this proceeded as, you know, in, in this hypothetical and they wanted to kill the hostages, they could continue, they would continue negotiating with Israel over the hostages and not say what, you know, what they've done with them. Israel has gotten itself into this, this kind of, kind of Chinese finger trap of the situation here.

[Christine Rosen]

I mean, look, Israel has gone through this just almost unimaginable emotional roller coaster unlike almost anything in any war that I can think of. It was brutalized on October 7th. You know, it, it, it invaded Gaza with 90%, 90% of the population supporting the, you know, the Idea that they were going to go into Gaza for real on the ground with hundreds of thousands of people and do what they had to do to take out Hamas once and for all. And then have been through this, being withheld, being accused of genocide, having, you know, aid workers say that the aid is not going through when the aid is being held up by Hamas or being stolen by Hamas and then, you know, sort of like months of nothing getting more depressed. So many people in the reserves who are, who are, you know, not able to see their families or, you know, do their jobs or whatever, and then they're sort of frozen in place by the American demand that they don't go into Rafah. Finally, they go into Rafah, they have success in Rafah. And then there is this huge emotional turnaround with the series of strikes on the axis of evil, right? I mean, the strike against Khaled Mashal in Iran, the pager explosions, the take, the taking out of the rest of Hezbollah, the killing of Sinwar, all of that sort of. Then they have this kind of manic moment of, of chi, of, of return of national self confidence. And I, look, I'm going to just say it outright, like if Kefir Bibas, the nine month old who was taken in October is dead, the country is going to go insane. It's going to be like the last 15 months have been for nothing. That little boy, that tiny little boy is now the stand in for the entire country, its mood, its spirit, whatever victory it may achieve will no longer will be like ashes in the mouths of everyone. I know it sounds weird to put it to this level, but you know, Israel was completely overturned for five years between 202006 and 2011 by the Hostage taking of a single soldier, Gilad Shalit, who ended up Getting traded for 1127 Palestinian terrorists, among whom was Yaya Sinwar, who then lived to plan. October 7th. If Kfir and his and his older sibling are dead, you know, BB, not only will BB's government fall, but you know, like he'll be, you know, they'll march him out of, out of his house and you know, throw him into, you know, into Sheol. I mean, it's, it's, this is a very emotionally very fraught moment. And if you are a hostage family whose per, whose family member does not come out in those 16 days, what are you going to say on TV? What are you going to say at the Saturday night rally in what's called now called Hostage Square in Tel Aviv? What are you going to do? Who are you, whom are you going to hold responsible? It's a, it's a nightmare situation and we have made it worse. America has made it worse because everybody here was just so eager to get to a deal not to achieve victory through ultimatum, which is what should have been the case. Right. But a deal not supposed to be making deals. You can give Israel, you can forgive Israel for making a deal In November of 2023, what was it, two months into the war, to see how many hostages? And if the, and if Hamas hadn't started firing rockets again, 80 came out, they could have still been releasing eight a day until they all got out, but Hamas had had enough and then started firing the rockets again and scuttling the, scuttling the ceasefire. Yeah.

[Seth Mandel]

And we should also. Yeah, go ahead.

[Abe Greenwald]

I was going to say this is a reminder, a painful reminder, but since Inauguration Day is Monday, it's a painful reminder of some of the ways in which Trump's first term might return in this one, in terms of how he governs, his impulsivity, his desire to be seen as always making new and fresh and interesting deals where he comes out on top. And, you know, we domestically, we're seeing this in his reversal on something like, for example, TikTok and the case before the Supreme Court and his tough words on China, which have now been completely reversed. So we shouldn't forget that those characteristics of his temperament as a leader, particularly the impulsivity, are going to make a lot of these very difficult foreign policy situations that he is inheriting from Biden and that Biden did make worse, much more fraught. As we, as we move forward, he's going to need some very clear thinking, back of the room, people who aren't going on television and talking about these things to make smart decisions the way he had in his first term with the Abraham Accord negotiations. And, I mean, he's capable of finding those people and letting them do their work. But right now, he doesn't seem to be signaling that that's, that's the way.

[Christine Rosen]

Look, it's important that when he wanted somebody to go, oh, sorry, please go ahead.

[John Podhoretz]

I'm just going to say the irony here is that, as John, you said this was, this is Biden gave him this deal off the shelf. But Israel wouldn't agree. Israel wouldn't do this under Biden. But what we don't know.

[Christine Rosen]

We don't know that. I mean, we think that because Israel was never really put to the test, right? It was because.

[John Podhoretz]

Let me put it, let me put. Yeah, let me put it this way, there's a large added incentive for Israel to do it now or a pressure for Israel to do it now because otherwise it gets in bad with the new Trump administration off the bat.

[Christine Rosen]

Right.

[John Podhoretz]

Which is a different scenario.

[Seth Mandel]

Yeah.

[Christine Rosen]

And it was very telling that when he decided to send someone into these negotiations in Doha, he didn't send Jared. I know Jared's out of politics, but if he had said to Jared, you got to go to Dohan and finish this up, you think Jared Kushner wouldn't have gone if the president, the incoming, had asked him to, or David Friedman, his former ambassador, or, or, you know, or there are five or six different people that, that he, that he could have had, including, like, former secretaries of state. You know, I know he's got weird opinions about Pompeo right now, but he could ask.

[Seth Mandel]

He has. Jason Greenblatt also. He has, like he did.

[Christine Rosen]

He wanted a guy, he sent in a guy who knows nothing about this because he wanted a negotiator, somebody who is very vain about his negotiating skills and therefore would not come to this with priors, so that he could get to a deal. And if you're that, then you're like, well, here's what Hamas wants, here's what Israel wants. Everybody gets half of what they want. So the Democratic ally in the Middle east that is fighting the cause for right and justice and is destroying one of our greatest adversaries in the form of America's adversaries, in the form of this Iranian axis, is essentially being treated as equivalent to the monstrous, terrorist, vicious evil that we have been fighting America and Israel for the last 15 months.

[Abe Greenwald]

But this is one of the, this is one of the key drawbacks of our populist moment. It's not just here in the US but elsewhere, is that there's this impulse to believe that someone who thinks outside the box, who does things differently, isn't also abandoning moral principle, because sometimes they are. I mean, the way to think outside the box doesn't mean completely walking away from what a. What your country should represent in terms of how it behaves on the national stage. But there's a greater acceptance that just simply doing things differently is the same as doing things better or in a more moral and forceful way that is desperately needed right now on the world stage. So confusing those two things, unfortunately, is another thing to watch for in the incoming administration.

[Unknown Speaker]

Right.

[Seth Mandel]

And the irony is that he's brought in an outsider. But the outsider, the deal the outsider has struck, is about the conventional wisdom, as you could possibly Leave, leave remnants of Hamas in place, try to rebuild Israel, go out, and if there's trouble again in Gaza, Israel can go back in. Right? That's literally the story of the entire conflict. And so it's a deal that, you know, it's what happens when, you know, when, when you had the Abraham Accords and you had people say, think outside the box, you actually had people saying, let's take these things that are right part of the discussion, part of the history and put them outside and let's just focus on some of the narrow interest stuff. And this is sort of the opposite of that because we've, we've gone all the way around and now we're back to what, you know, again, if Jake Sullivan hands you a deal just because you, Steve Witkoff, are an outsider, if it's Sullivan's deal, it's Sullivan's deal and Sullivan is an ins.

[Abe Greenwald]

Well, they're in the box and Jake Sullivan is the jack in the box clown that keeps popping up, right?

[Christine Rosen]

I got another one.

[Abe Greenwald]

I don't realize they're in the box.

[Christine Rosen]

I got another one for you. Let's take it out of the realm of morality and solely in the realm of realpolitik and how America pursues its foreign policy going forward. You don't get all the hostages out. What statement are you making about the use of hostage taking as a tool of foreign policy? Trump said they better let all the hostages out or there's going to be hell to pay. Then they don't come out. Maybe you take some hostages if you're China. China takes hostages in weird ways. They arrest a businessman, they arrest a, they arrest, you know, journalists in Afghanistan right now, we have two hostages in Afghanistan right now. Russia does, obviously what Russia does is Trump. One of the things that I thought was clear from what Trump's behavior here was, was a kind of understanding that this had larger consequences. He was saying, don't you ever take an American or I am going to drop, you know, a two megaton bomb on your head. And now it's, oh, take some hostages and we'll have a nine month negotiation like we did with Brittany Griner, or a year long negotiation like we did with Evan Gerskovich. We're no different. This is Sullivan's deal. Congratulations. Entering the new administration and the new world. How scary are you that you got out 33 of 98 hostages? Donald Trump, you know how scary you are? You're not scary at all. You just, you just basically unicized yourself when it comes to toughness. And I think people here who have been very, you know, people listening to, who have been very celebratory about the coming of the Trump administration, we don't know that the deal is done yet. We don't know that everything is out. We don't know what's going to happen later today. This is not a good start, even if you are as MAGA as you possibly want, because it means he's not as tough as you think he is. Yeah, he'll yell at your, he'll, he'll, he'll, he'll, he'll call Gavin Newsom, Gavin Newscomb. But when it comes down to it, and there are a hunt, there are 98 hostages sitting in a, sitting in a tunnel, being tortured. That's too hard for him to go to go, as you know, to go into that room in Doha and say, I'm not kidding, 98 out, or Israel is blowing everything up and we're going to take out Iran. Sutton, that's what I need by, by, by Monday the 20th.

[Seth Mandel]

And there's the, there's a, that's what.

[Christine Rosen]

That'S what didn't happen.

[Seth Mandel]

And there's the worry that if, if, you know, we expect the remaining American hostages to come out in the first wave of this deal, that's a big part of this. What's the incentive for Trump then to get tough later at any other time? Right. What's, what's to keep his interest in fulfilling the second half of the deal, in making sure the other hostages come home and all this stuff. He got up at the press conference and he said, you know, they're holding Americans. I've got American parents coming to me and saying, can you at least get my daughter's body back? You know, and all these things. And he, you know, the win is not even so much that he's going to be able to say, look, we got a deal and ended the war. I think first and foremost, he's going to say, I came in. I said, you don't, you don't hold Americans hostage. I got the Americans out.

[John Podhoretz]

You know, we, in the run up to this, you know, all throughout the election, in the campaign, Trump would say things like, you know, I back you. I'm on Israel side. Israel has to win, but it has to win fast. And people somewhere around our camp wanted to hear the Israel has to win part, but didn't want to hear the fast part. And Trump's more interested in the fast part than in, than in the wind part. And I think part of this problem Here is even the threat that was with it in. Without the larger context, the threat to bring hell there was. Seemed laudatory on its own. Saying by the time I, by the time I take office was bad because it actually made Trump desperate for something. Instead of. Instead of, yeah, it was a bad negotiating.

[Christine Rosen]

Was a bad negotiating point because it's set right. It's like you, you, you set a hard deadline to reach, and then maybe it's like, well, they're not going to let out 98, but they'll let out 33. How's that? Is that going to be good? As long as they're the Americans and you go, yeah. And then we take the win. So suddenly we're back to taking the win, which of course, was what Biden constantly said to Bibi when, in instructing him not to finish off or to, or to, or to win the war. This is also a sign that Trump, like every other American president, blinks during the end game. Like, that's Schwarzkopf in, in, in, you know, Kuwait And Iraq in 1991, when Saddam said, can I just have my helicopter so I can fly around and survey the damage? And Schwarzer said, oh, sure, that's fine. Okay, I'm now going to kill 25,000 Kurds with my helicopters. But what are we going to do? Go back in and take them out then? Like, this is not how you end things. People are desperate at the end, and they're going to do brutal, vicious, horrible. You know, if they can, they'll do whatever they can to go out. And they're like Macbeth. They'll go out in a blaze of glory trying to kill as many people as they can, you know, if there's nothing left. And so this is.

[Seth Mandel]

And boy, as a side note, as just as a side note, boy, if I'm Ukraine watching this, I mean, I.

[Christine Rosen]

Don'T know what Ukraine, I mean, you know. Yeah, it's more like because he, he come into office, we better start sending drones directly into Moscow. Right?

[Seth Mandel]

I mean, Trump, Trump's team comes into office with, you know, with the impression that, you know, they want Israel to win. He's been saying, we want Israel to win, Israel should win. But he never says stuff like that about Ukraine. So this is, this is the war he wants our ally to win.

[Christine Rosen]

Yeah.

[Seth Mandel]

What about the war that he doesn't really care as much about anyway.

[Christine Rosen]

So that is the framework, I think, in which to think about today. By the time you listeners hear this, we might already have heard that a deal has been struck and so we are now prophesying what might happen. But maybe not. Maybe the deal won't be struck yet, and maybe there can be an, there can be 11th hour moments of, you know, dark nights of the soul where it's like, no, this is not good. We shouldn't, we shouldn't be doing this. Let's conclude with a brief summation of special prosecutor Jack Smith's. The Release of this 137 page report, or 174 page or something like that report last night of his. What, what, what would have happened had Trump not won the election and thus triggered the Justice Department policy that you don't pursue presidents in their, you know, in their, during their presidencies? I just want to read a little bit from the report and then ask you guys what you think. So the main sentence that people are quoting is he made. I'm sorry, that's not the one I wanted. One sec. Where is this? The office had no interest in affecting the presidential election, and it complied fully with the letter and spirit of the department's policy regarding election year sensitivities. What that means is that he is saying that he rushed an indictment of Trump in the summer of 2023 because he was cognizant of the fact that Trump was running for president. And so he wanted to get it in before they could be accused of trying to affect the presidential election. Are you kidding me? You're rushing it to get it in so that it will affect the presidential election. I mean, he actually says they kind of rushed it. And then the main quote. Oh, yeah. And then, and then at the end, he says to all who know me well, the claim for Mr. Trump that my decisions as a prosecutor were influenced or directed by the Biden administration or other political actors is, in a word, laughable. Oh, to all of those who know you. So now we're supposed to take your, we're supposed to take on faith the fact that people, according to you, people who know you, think you have integrity. That's not how this works. You don't get credit because you say, other people say that you're just terrific, what a great guy you are. You're just. You are the cat's pajamas. And every. No one thinks I'm not the cat's pajamas. You know, thinks he's not the cat's pajamas. Me, I don't know him, but he ain't the cat's pajamas. He was doing exactly what it looks like he was doing. And this is the line that I wanted to read off. But for Mr. Trump's election and imminent return to the presidency. The office assessed that the admissible evidence was sufficient to obtain and sustain a conviction at trial. Okay, this is the sentence that is quoted at the top of all the news stories today. Of course, he thinks that every process, you are not supposed to bring a prosecution at all if you think the evidence is not sufficient to obtain a conviction. Like, now he's supposed to be praised for believing that he had sufficient evidence.

[Abe Greenwald]

So this is actually, this is where there's a contrast that we have to make, because I want to make sure people also read another prosecutor's report that is not getting as much attention because of Jack Smith's report by prosecutor David Weiss, who, who was investigating Hunter Biden and all the sort of tentacles of the Biden family business. And he issued a report that was extremely striking in its scolding of the Biden administration and of President Joe Biden in particular. He said the president's characterizations, both of his own prosecution and of the department and Justice Department in general, are incorrect based on the facts. On a more fundamental level, they are wrong. I mean, these are very tough words. And he talked about politicians who attack the decisions of career prosecutors as politically motivated when they disagree with the outcome. Undermines the public's confidence in our criminal justice system. That is, I mean, it's been reported on. But I think the contrast, because both of these reports came out at the same time between the attitude of Jack Smith and the sort of political motivation we know and David Weiss, who's, who's really gotten a lot of scrutiny for, for daring to do the thing that the Democratic Party didn't want him to do, which is look into the Biden families and Hunter Biden's activities in particular. So the contrast in tone between those two prosecutors, sort of striking.

[Christine Rosen]

So I had a little email colloquy with our friend Andy McCarthy, the prosecutor of the Blind sheikh, of course, legal affairs correspondent for National Review, the best person on these matters. And he said, look, Jack Smith is probably right that, say, if he could have gotten it before a jury in D.C. he would have secured a conviction. That's why he tried him in D.C. that's why he ended up judge shopping and getting Judge Tanya Chutkan, who found in every particular, in every way she possibly could for him and, like, was going to put her finger on the scale at trial for Jack Smith. And, yeah, he probably could have put, could have secured a conviction. None of that has anything to do with whether or not the case was justly broad. And his, and his assertions are that because Trump only went to friendly officials during the period when he was seeking to find evidence that the election had been improperly decided, you know, that the votes, there were votes to be had and he only went to Republicans. And he wasn't really doing a fact finding mission. And that's really terrible. I agree that Trump's behavior was unconscionable. The issue is whether it rises to a condition of criminal prosecution. And indeed he says that he did not indict under the Insurrection Act.

[Abe Greenwald]

They couldn't find enough evidence for that.

[Christine Rosen]

Couldn't find enough evidence for that. And therefore, I think he shouldn't have brought this case at all. Why? Because a Trump has free speech rights, which means he can call somebody and say, can you find 11,000 votes without it being a conspiracy? That's number like Trump could say, I'm allowed to. Every American is allowed to make a phone call and ask a question. Was I putting unseemly pressure on Brad Raffensperger of Georgia? Maybe I was, maybe I wasn't. The very fact that he didn't accede to the pressure says something about whether the pressure would have been successful. It wasn't successful. That's one thing. And the other thing is that we have a process by which presidents are to be disciplined for their unseemly or illegal political behavior. And it is called the impeachment process. And he was impeached by the House in, in, in 2021. They impeached him. He just wasn't convicted. And so then Jack Smith and Fani Willis and Alvin Bragg and, you know, whatever, come in and take over and seek to do what the political system, in dealing with presidents and their misbehavior, what our Constitution tells us is supposed to happen. And that is why there shouldn't have been a prosecution of him for this. That this is, by the way, entirely separate from the classified documents case, which at the very least happened after his presidency. And therefore he was a private citizen and could not be held accountable. You know, could be held accountable like any other private citizen. He has no special standing as a former president.

[Seth Mandel]

Well, that's why I thought that this, one of the most interesting parts of this report is where he says, I, I couldn't charge him with insurrection. Right, The Civil War era insurrection statute, whatever, because we have no precedent for charging a sitting government official with the crime of insurrection while they're in government. In other words, if you use the logic of this, as I see it in Jack Smith's Report is that every, and he kind of, and he says this is that every insurrection was somebody outside the government trying to bring down the government. Right. We never had an insurrection, something we called an insurrection. Legally, that was somebody in office using their office to stay in office. But that is the whole, the whole entire premise of all the charges is someone in office accusing this person in office of using their office to stay in office. Right. So there's an unprecedented nature to all of this. And it just kind of feels like Jack Smith saying, well, you know, obviously I can't, you know, I can't chart them legally with insurrection because, you know, it's not an insurrection, but smells like an insurrection. And if somebody else had been charged with insurrection, you know, it feels like one of these working the refs thing where you can say, you know, hey, it matches. It's like the political scientists going like this was a self coup. Because here are all the signs of the self coup when so and so in Kazakhstan self couped in 1971 and Trump, all the first seven of 10 on the list Trump makes and whatever, this is an insurrection. It checks the boxes of insurrection, but, you know, whatever. And that sort of feels a bit like handing a, you know, if you, if you're a prosecutor and you're saying what you have and what you don't have, I feel like if you don't have insurrection, you should just say we don't have insurrection, instead of saying we could have insurrection or perhaps had things gone differently, we may haps have had insurrection. And I think that sort of the innuendo, the leaving it open to these sort of assumptions and allowing people to take what they want from the report is not really what we're supposed to have.

[Abe Greenwald]

Prosecutorial audience, Jack Smith's audience. He's creating, creating a narrative arc at the beginning of Trump's second term. He knows who he's talking to in that report. And it is not fellow fellow prosecutors and justice seeking Americans. It is a narrative.

[Christine Rosen]

And so how dare you? How dare you. Everybody who knows him knows he would never do such a thing.

[Abe Greenwald]

Never met the man, he would never.

[Christine Rosen]

Ever do such a thing.

[John Podhoretz]

And his audience ate it up. I mean, that's. So we have these headlines that as John notes, are ridiculous. You know, like this is a big breaking news story that, that he believes in his case.

[Christine Rosen]

Yeah, but by the way, Seth gets at a final thing which is maybe you should have charged him with insurrection. Like it was already unprecedented that he was pursuing a former president for actions while in office, attempting to prevent the swearing in of the new president. So if you're going to pursue a novel prosecution, why didn't you go that way and say, well, you know, there are many forms of insurrection. Saying you don't have evidence, that's itself proof that what you just said about how you weren't looking at this politically is you're like, I can't charge him with insurrection. That's going to look like I'm going too far. As it turns out, just raiding his house at Mar a Lago looking for improperly purloined classified documents, as we now know, was going way too far. It ended up turning Trump's fortunes around that he did that, that he pursued that if he would. If he. It appears he was politic enough to understand that there could have been huge boomerang consequences from pursuing the insurrection. Insurrection charge. So he says he didn't have sufficient evidence. Well, screw that. He had as much evidence for that as he had for anything else. Well, the reason why is the blood.

[Abe Greenwald]

Rap charges that came along the way. Way John, like everything they.

[Christine Rosen]

Yeah, I know. I'm just saying if Brad, if calling Brad Raffensberger is a form of whatever it is that he was charged with, why can't you call that insurrectionary? These are, after all, terms that go that it's a, it's something dating back to the Civil War. It's something that's hardly ever been used be novel. Stretch it. He knew he couldn't do that.

[Seth Mandel]

And he, and it's picking.

[Christine Rosen]

Maybe he knew he couldn't do that because he consulted with political officials in the Biden administration that he says he never consulted with. When we know, as Christine says that David Weiss says that. Now, granted, this was about Biden himself and his son, so it's a slightly different story. But we know that political officials were interfering with special counsel investigations because somebody just told us on this very same day that the president United States was interfering with his special counsel investigation. So how are we not to assume that the same thing wasn't going on with the Trump investigation when he knew Trump was likely to be the nominee of the Republican Party and his rival in 2024? It just doesn't pass the smell test. None of this passes the smell test. All right, I'm going to quickly make a recommendation, then we can go. I've been watching this quite astonishing show on Netflix. I've watched four of six episodes. It's called American Primeval, and it's about the Mountain Meadows massacre and the aftermath In Utah in 1857 when a. A wagon train was beset and 120 people were killed by what it was assumed were Native Americans, members of the Shoshone tribe. And that was the report. It turned out over time that it was a weird, paranoid, lunatic thing that Mormon settlers in Utah had done, fearing for complicated reasons, and that they had staged it to look like the Shoshone had done it when they hired Paiute Indians to. To help them and that they also did it, but they were wearing hoods on their heads. Anyway, this is a fictionalized account of this massacre and the aftermath of it. It is. Imagine, I was just telling a friend, it's like, it should be called Fear the Walking Deadwood. Imagine Deadwood. But it is so violent and so like denuded of color that it is almost like a zombie, like a heart. It's like a historical account as a horror film. Just about the sheer unbelievable brutality of the life that these wagon trainers and these settlers and the Mormons who were being. Who were being chased across the country by. By the, by the military and the army and the Native American tribes themselves who were incredibly brutal toward settlers and toward each other. And it is as graphic as you can imagine. So if you can't take violence, do.

[John Podhoretz]

Not watch this thing.

[Christine Rosen]

But it is gripping, it is stunningly acted and, and it is like a. It is like Deadwood, a little bit like 1883, the Taylor Sheridan pre prequel series to Yellowstone and like some other stuff. This kind of like. You know what? Enough with the, Enough with the sugar coating of the experience in the, in the Old West. This was as bad as bad could get. Like this was. This is what happens when you live in a world without law. That's really what it's about. There are no laws. There are no settlements. The United States does not have control of this territory. Nobody has rights, nobody has anything. And so it is like Hobbes. It's like watching the world before the Leviathan, as Hobbes would describe it, sounds.

[John Podhoretz]

Like a little bit like in. It's part of Cormac McCarthy's world. Blood Meridian or something.

[Christine Rosen]

Exactly. It's very. Actually, it is the best. That's a brilliant analogy. It is like the best rendition of Coleman Cormac McCarthy that Cormac McCarthy didn't write. Although it doesn't. It doesn't have about it. It's not like there is a looming evil. That's the one difference. Because McCarthy's books are always dominated by a sense that the world is controlled by evil. This is just chaos. And it is. And when you live in chaos and lawlessness, then anything can happen at any time to anybody. Anyway, it's very powerful. On Netflix, American Primeval. All six episodes are available for your viewing. So we will be back tomorrow. Maybe we'll have better news than the news that we anticipate. And if we don't have better news, we'll start talking about the fallout from the worst news as it begins. So for Seth, Christine, Abe, I'm John Pothoritz. Keep the candle burning.