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- [00:04]
Seth Mandel
Hope for the best, expect the worst.
- [00:11]
Mark Halperin
Some preach and pain Some die of.
- [00:14]
John Podhoretz
Thirst the way of knowing which way it's going.
- [00:19]
Mark Halperin
Hope for the best, Expect the worst.
- [00:22]
Abe Greenwald
Hope for the best.
- [00:25]
John Podhoretz
Welcome to the Commentary magazine daily podcast. Today is Wednesday, May 21, 2025. I am John Pot, Horace the editor, Commentary. With me as always, executive editor Abe Greenwald. Hi, Abe.
- [00:36]
Matthew Continetti
Hi, John.
- [00:37]
John Podhoretz
Senior editor Seth Mandel. Hi, Seth. Hi, John Washington, Commentary columnist and director of Domestic Policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, Matthew Continetti. Hi, Matt.
- [00:48]
Seth Mandel
Hi, John.
- [00:49]
John Podhoretz
And joining us today, man, with the number one podcast in America, I believe. Well, at least on one chart.
- [00:59]
Abe Greenwald
Number one. Number one new podcast.
- [01:01]
John Podhoretz
Well, number one new podcast in America.
- [01:03]
Abe Greenwald
Not competing with the granddaddy of them all, the commentary.
- [01:06]
Unknown
Number one in your hearts.
- [01:07]
John Podhoretz
Number one. Anyway, number one new podcast, all In. Mark Halperin, welcome again. Welcome back. Welcome again.
- [01:14]
Mark Halperin
Welcome.
- [01:15]
Abe Greenwald
Thank you. Are you saying my podcast is call all in or you were saying I'm all in.
- [01:19]
John Podhoretz
You're all in. But it's not called All In.
- [01:20]
Abe Greenwald
No, it's called next up.
- [01:22]
John Podhoretz
Next up. I'm sorry.
- [01:23]
Abe Greenwald
That's okay.
- [01:25]
John Podhoretz
I was driving in New Hampshire yesterday because I had to go, my daughter's in boarding school in New Hampshire. And I drove past a billboard that said all in. And then it was like, hire this lawyer. Like hire this team of lawyers. They're all in with you, to get a contingency fee. So I was very amused by that. And that's why it stuck in my head. Mark, you being one of the few people in the media who you told me last year that the extent of the general over the last couple of years, that the extent of the general corruption in the Biden world is way deeper than we, than we know, and that the story of the Biden family and Biden's own behavior as a politician is more deeply corrupt than anybody has been acknowledging. So this double whammy of the Tapper Thompson book and the cancer diagnosis and the release of that information, how does that, is this the fulfillment of your, your expectation that at some point the chickens were going to come home to roost and Joe Biden was going to sort of be exposed as the, as.
- [02:43]
Mark Halperin
The corrupt person or the leader of.
- [02:47]
John Podhoretz
A corrupt enterprise that you thought.
- [02:49]
Abe Greenwald
I mean. Yes, but I, you know, I'm so baffled by this because this is not like some great deep sourced reporting or investigative work that I've done. You look at, to give you a thousand examples, but particularly Biden Inc. Particularly how they dealt with allegations about Hunter's business dealings and how they dealt with the COVID up of his, of his obvious mental decline. There are other examples and I'm not, I'm not saying that Joe Biden is a morally worse person than Donald Trump. I'm not, I'm not saying that, that he's not like other politicians. I'm saying he is like other politicians, but that the examples for him are in such sharp relief because he's got elected president of the United States in part because of the COVID up again of those two big stories, but other things as well. And it's, it's, it, it juxtaposed with the, with the press's general treatment. He's gone through tragedy of his life. He's such an empathetic, great guy. They're such an, they're such a wonderful family. Again, I'm not here to throw stones at them or to say they're, they're, they're worse than others. But this to me, as you said, it's just, it's just the putting in sharp relief something that's been in plain sight forever, which is that they're, they're pretty prone to lie whenever it's in their personal interest to do it.
- [04:02]
John Podhoretz
Okay. By the way, I have a couple of corrections I have to make to things I've said in the last couple of days. First of all, yesterday I referred to the Gibson score of nine. It's the Gleason score. Got a lot of emails about, about that. So my, I had a, I had a brain freeze and need a cognitive test, the kind that Biden apparently didn't take. The second is a real disagreement among our listeners about my characterizing the Biden, the, the possibility that Biden only found out about his prostate cancer last Friday as being remarkably cynical because they cited various reports over the last couple of days that this kind of cancer being discovered in metastasis in this way that in something like 3 to 7% of cases, that is something that happens with prostate cancer at this stage.
- [05:04]
Abe Greenwald
I don't think you should be so quick to apologize for that one because I happen to know that in those studies that say 3 to 7%, none are sitting precedents.
- [05:12]
John Podhoretz
Right, but I mean, right, there's that, but I'm also, what happened is people said, I said that it was, they say that that doesn't mean that it's rare. And my point is that in 90, the point is you've got to flip it around and say this is an exculpatory piece of data. And that means that 93% of people are in the other camp. So is it extraordinarily rare? Yes. That's three to seven out of a hundred. Not. And so there was this again, I got these emails saying fair, you're saying rare and it's not really rare. And if that's not rare, I don't really know what rare is.
- [05:52]
Seth Mandel
The point is that Biden has no credibility.
- [05:54]
John Podhoretz
Right?
- [05:55]
Seth Mandel
That's the point. We don't know the full facts here. He had a spokesman come out yesterday, say that he hasn't had the PSA Test since 2014, over a decade. And then there is other Biden friendly media sources reporting today that, you know, medical guidance says that after 70 you don't need to get the PSA test. But as Mark points out, the sitting president, the current president right now just got one in February and they detailed it. And so given the history of the Biden family that Mark laid out, given the more the current debate over how the Biden family, his closest aides and the broader media obscured, covered up, deflected from his obvious mental and physical decline, there's reason to be curious. And it's not just, it's not just another conspiracy theory. It's amazing that Biden, the Democrats and the Biden aligned media have trotted out the same line they've been using for the past five years, which is anyone who says maybe there's more to this story here, or maybe, guess what, the Bidens aren't being totally honest. We're engaging in conspiracy theories and misinformation, the same code words. Whenever you hear those code words, I've now become determined that you're on the right track asking questions.
- [07:20]
Mark Halperin
Right?
- [07:20]
Abe Greenwald
Amen.
- [07:21]
John Podhoretz
Okay. I'm not saying that one shouldn't ask questions. I also want to point out two interesting things that happened yesterday with Jake Tapper and Nick Thompson, who went on your, your colleague Megan Kelly's podcast, Alex Thompson. I'm sorry, it's the other guy. Is the other Thompson with a book out with, with, with Ezra Klein. Anyway, Nick Thompson and Jake Tapper go on.
- [07:46]
Seth Mandel
That's Derek Thompson.
- [07:47]
John Podhoretz
Derek.
- [07:48]
Seth Mandel
Nick Thompson. I think edited Wired at some point, but that's the only Nick Top right I could think of.
- [07:53]
John Podhoretz
Well, you know, being someone, as is the case with you, they're all playing of your name in the media.
- [07:59]
Seth Mandel
They're all playing the Gibson guitar.
- [08:01]
John Podhoretz
Yeah, thank you very much. Anyway, all right. Tapper and Thompson go on Katie Couric's podcast and they. And I think. And go on Megyn Kelly's podcast and on the first Amazing thing that happened on the Katie Couric podcast was Jake Tapper saying Hunter Biden was running the show. He was effectively the chief of staff, first of the family and then effectively he was running the show, which means that a crackhead was running the United States of America. Which is really a thrilling thing to find out. Secondly, Katie Kirk says something like, well said something like, well, why are you so negative about Hunter Biden or something? And he said, well, I mean, you have to consider Hunter Biden's mother moral, you know, his depravity or something like that. And then I expected him to go into Biden Inc. Stuff, but that's not where he went. He said, look, he had this affair with his brother's wife after his brother died of cancer and got her addicted to crack. He's a bad person. So Hunter apparently fired back. Or there was something where Hunter said Jake had been, had called him when Beau was dying to demand some scoop or something like that. But Tapper just like, basically, you know, which is fine with me, threw a grenade, you know, at Hunter Biden as part of this rollout yesterday. And then was the exchange with Megan Kelly where she basically said, how dare you? You were on TV every day. You could have said this every day. In fact, all we have record of you doing is covering up or like pooh, poohing. And, and then Jake Tapper said, we acknowledge that the conservative media got this right. We acknowledge that we ignored it and the conservative media got it right. So I spent last night, I didn't really read the book. I searched through the book for evidence that that point is in the book and it is not in the book. So he goes on the number one, one of the highest rated conservative media podcasts, one of the highest rated podcasts in America and butters up the audience by saying conservative media were right here. But that is not, that is not a conclusion that he comes to in the book or does any mea culpaing, as far as I can tell, in the book. Does that jibe with what you got? I mean, that's, again, I didn't read it. I was sort of searching words like media and this and that and talking Tapper and trying to find evidence of a point at which he talks about the media's complicity in the COVID up. And he, he, he alludes to it, but he never goes into it.
- [10:55]
Abe Greenwald
Well, first of all, in your summary of the Hunter Biden stuff, you left out something that people, people are doing a lot of work on Twitter to juxtapose Tapper before and Tapper after. Jake Tapper previously had derided people who had criticized Hunter Biden and said it was, you know, indelicate and, and unfair to, to criticize his personal life. And, and when I talk about Jake Tapper, I'm just using him as an example because he's the guy who wrote the book. But there's, there's a thousand other Biden friendly reporters who, who did the same thing. They just didn't try to profit off of changing course. This, this excuse of, this mia culpa of I wish I had done better. If I'd only known now then, what I knew now is not in the book. It's, it's been concocted by his advisors in the face of a relentless exposure of his hypocrisy in the run up to the release of the book to try to keep the book tour from being all about this hypocrisy. And, and I say again, as I've been saying all week, I don't, I don't understand how anybody can make the claim that they were surprised by Biden's performance in the debate or that they wish they had done better because they hadn't done enough reporting. You didn't need to do any reporting. You just needed a C SPAN subscription. And, and it's impossible to credit anyone saying when Greg Kelly and Rob Finnerty and Newsmax and others were reporting on this every night when I was reporting on it regularly because, because now you want to say, oh, this was an incredible cover up. It was actually a relatively inept cover up because we all saw it and the polling of the American people made it quite clear everybody saw it. The only people who didn't want to talk about it and wanted to attack those who did were Biden advisors and their allies in the media.
- [12:44]
John Podhoretz
I mean, the other, I think, important point is who. So the COVID up did not involve covering things up for the American people because as, as early as, you know, 2022, 2/3 of the country was saying he was too old to be president for a second term. But what the book does reveal are things like he didn't see people in the Cabinet for eight or nine months. So maybe the secret of the COVID up is that it was a cover up within the administration to keep Biden as invisible as possible from the people who could pull the trigger on the 25th Amendment.
- [13:20]
Abe Greenwald
That was part of it. But it was also, don't do interviews with the New York Times and the Washington Post. Keep a very light schedule don't have press conferences. I mean, again, do we think he didn't do the super bowl interview for any reason besides that they were trying to shield him? So there's no doubt that the book has some details. I don't know if they're accurate or not, but it has some details, like the Cabinet stuff that fleshes out the particulars of their failed effort to hide from the American people what was happening. But the point is it was clear to people that it was failed because I saw it in 2017. Again, you didn't need secret sources. It was clear. And those polls that said he's too old, I wish we could go back in time and have the pollsters ask it a different way. I don't think the American people would say someone his age was too old if they didn't see infirmity. It's not about his age, but the questions were that way. And it allowed people like Jake Tapper and others to frame it to the extent they deign to talk about it as a question of polling or politics as opposed to not just a candidate for president, but the commander in chief sitting in an office where he could, during his bad moments, not function. He had many good moments. And, and, and I think some people on the right over state the degree to which his decline was pervasive and non stop. Like lots of people who have whatever it is he has comes and goes, good moments and bad moments.
- [14:45]
Matthew Continetti
You know, I think this point about how it was an inept cover up is very on point. And in fact it wasn't really a cover up at all because it was all out there. They gave him the small steps they would guide him to when he didn't know where he was going. They sort of signaled for him to stop. Jill has signals for him to sort of stop talking. And also it wasn't a cover up at all. It was just the denial. It was just about saying, no, he's fine. And the Biden family did it, the White House did it, the Democratic Party did it and the media did it. And that, that's really the whole of it. It wasn't this elaborate cover up.
- [15:27]
Seth Mandel
There were some moments when he would slip the leash, so to speak. And I keep thinking of the hastily called press conference in the Oval Office after the release of the her report, right after the release of the special counsel saying he wouldn't bring charges against Biden for withholding classified information after he was vice president because if this would, if the case went to jury, no jury would convict a elderly well Meaning or a well meaning elderly man with a poor memory. Biden was clearly furious to have. And he had this moment in the Oval Office and that I, that for me. And this happened slightly before he declined the super bowl interview. That was, that was, it was clear that this, this guy could not run for president or be president for another four years because he was yelling at the press. He confused in the middle of denying that he was mentally incapacitated or troubled, he confused Iraq and Mexico. It was a moment where you got to see him in a kind of ad hoc angry fashion outside the control of his handlers. And when people saw it, there is no other question that he could not serve another term.
- [16:42]
John Podhoretz
One important piece of data also is this clip that people have surfaced of Biden giving a speech in 2022 in which he says he has cancer. He says those of us who are fighting cancer or something like that. And that. So looking at it either way would. People sort of dropped. Conservatives focused on it and then liberals and people in the media said, well, you know, it was just a moment where he, he spoke confusedly or he'd had skin cancer or something like that. So you can look at this one of two ways. Either he said he had cancer and nobody followed up on it to say what, wait, wait, you have cancer? Can we see medical records with that? Or he's senile because he said he had cancer and he doesn't have cancer. There's no third thing here except to say, well, he was just a little forgetful and now we know he probably wasn't a little forgetful or now all the increasing evidence is that this was a, this was a persistent condition. And as, as I think Matt said, like you can't believe anything that they say. That's, I think the ultimate problem here is you just, they've lost all. One has lost all capacity to give them the benefit of the doubt. And it may well be that he didn't have a prostate exam or he did whatever, but you don't know that. You just don't, you can't know.
- [18:09]
Abe Greenwald
It's impossible to me say there's only two choices. Either he never had a prostate exam and his doctor should be sued for malpractice, or they're lying. There's just, there's no way. I don't care that he's 70. And the recommendation, he's not a normal 70 year old. The downsides, the reason they don't recommend the test for people in their 70s don't apply to the President because they get false positives. If he got a false positive, they could test him a thousand more times. The reason they don't want 70 year olds to get tests is because they get a false positives and they freak out or they demand, you know, treatment that they don't need. If they really cared about disclosure and clearing this up, which would be in their interests, if the facts are fine and in the public interest so people can understand what's going on, they wouldn't have put out a, you know, a short statement saying he just found out he had cancer, he hasn't been tested for, you know, 10 years. They'd have the doctor who's never answered questions from the media come out and lay out the whole chronology and explain why he chose to not test a president who ended up getting a very advanced form of cancer.
- [19:16]
John Podhoretz
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- [20:28]
Mark Halperin
Wherever your customers are scrolling or strolling.
- [20:30]
John Podhoretz
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- [21:03]
Mark Halperin
Hey, it's.
- [21:04]
John Podhoretz
John here and you guys know how much I love quints. You know that I wear quint sweaters. I got a Quint's winter jacket and now here it is it's time for summer and I have picked up a few new pieces from Quint's. First things I reach for in my closet or in my dresser. Lightweight, comfortable and always on point. The ones I just got are polo shirts, you know, button down, short sleeve, incredibly comfortable, organic cotton, silk. They got European linen beach shorts. They got comfortable pants that work for everything from backyard hangs to nice dinners for the summer. And the best part, as ever, everything with quints is priced 50 to 80% less than what you'd find at similar brands. By working directly with top artisans and cutting out the middleman, Quince gives you luxury pieces without the crazy markups. And Quince only works with factories that use safe, ethical and responsible manufacturing practices and premium fabrics and finishes. So elevate your closet with quince. Go to quince.com commentary for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. That's Q-U-I-N C E.com qu/complyment to get free shipping and 365 day returns. Quint.com/complyment Another point I think is you said that you shouldn't ask the press, the press shouldn't have asked it or the media pollster shouldn't have asked the have the question, was he too old? But it would be interesting now to ask this question of the American people in relation to Donald Trump. Who is the age that Biden was when he started the, you know, in his first year of the presidency. Now, I don't think the question was asked in that year, so maybe it would have to wait till next, the following year. Would anybody say that Trump is too, first of all, he can't run again. So that's not the, that wouldn't really be the question. Would anybody say that Trump looks like he's too old to be president? This, of course, is the problem with age limit, the whole argument of age limits and stuff like that. There are people who defy things like age limits. But I don't think anybody can look at Trump over the last couple of months and say he's too old.
- [23:23]
Seth Mandel
Age was an issue with Reagan of Both, both times 80 and 84. But the electorate found that despite Reagan's age, he was up to the job.
- [23:35]
John Podhoretz
And he was younger than either of these men are now.
- [23:38]
Seth Mandel
He was, he was 69 when he was elected, I believe, and in 80. And then of course course was shot four months in and recovered and also had cancer. He had tumors removed during his eight years in office. And so the public nevertheless saw him as an active, engaged president. And, and same thing with Trump. I think Trump's first term, he, when he was elected in 2016, he was then the oldest president elected, surpassing Reagan.
- [24:08]
John Podhoretz
No.
- [24:08]
Seth Mandel
1, the critique of Trump being out of it is very different than what it means to critique Biden for being out of it. Right. And so I think they, there is just a difference here in both the performance of the chief executive and in the public reaction to it.
- [24:26]
Unknown
So, and also we should say that they did ask that, that that question was occasionally asked of both candidates. And in, in once the general election in 2024 was set, the times in Siena College did ask of both of them. And so they got a look at what voters had to say. And registered voters were 74% said the question is, you know, share of voters who agree that Biden or Trump is, quote, just too old to be an effective president. So registered voters were 74% said Biden is just too old to be an effective president. And that same share that registered voters said, 43% of them said that about Donald Trump. So you break this down over, you know, in partisan numbers. And the Democrats who responded said Trump slightly more Democrats who responded said Trump was too old to be an effective president. But it's about, even the number of the, the, those who said it about the number of Republicans who said it was not split. 82% of Republicans said Biden is the guy that's too old. But so Democrats were sort of like trying to hold on. In other words, you see these numbers are neck and neck, but you look at registered voters, it's overwhelmingly the same exact question, right? Biden is too old to be an effective president. And you look at independent voters. Yeah, but just overwhelmingly.
- [25:59]
Seth Mandel
Just look at the schedules, right? I mean, from 2020, the basement campaign on to through his election, as Mark was laying out earlier in the show, he hardly did anything more than one event a day. There was all this time he was, you know, I think what the hours between 10 and 4 were, his working hours that was reported while he was in office. And then you look at Donald Trump and he's, he does seven things a day. And then after everyone in the country goes to bed, he posts truth truths, you know, in the middle of the night for everybody when we wake up. So there's, it's apparent with your own eyes the difference in physical energy and capacity.
- [26:42]
John Podhoretz
So let's talk about Trump yesterday, right? Two big things. Yesterday, Trump announces he wants a. He announces the Golden Dome proposal. The basically essentially a space, a defense against incoming missiles like Iron Dome. In Israel, somewhere between 200 and $500 billion would be the cost. I think the Trump proposal says it'll cost 170 billion. Other people say it'll. It'll cost as much as half a trillion dollars to do.
- [27:15]
Unknown
It's Iron Dome, but the Interceptors are made of 14 karat gold.
- [27:20]
John Podhoretz
Exactly. They look like. Yes, they look like the new. The new decorations behind Trump's head in the Oval Office. And so that's in the afternoon. In the morning, he went to Capitol Hill to convince bully the Republican caucus into unanimously agreeing to pass the one big, beautiful bill, the budget bill, with the tax cut plan. He said it's time to stop negotiating and start. And start voting. So that's pretty interesting. Like, he was basically. He basically had a pretty busy day, proposed this massive, maybe the largest single defense expenditure program in American history. Like, of one sort.
- [28:12]
Seth Mandel
Well, I mean, I guess it depends on how you grade the cost of what the Iron Dome is based on, which is the Strategic Defense Initiative announced by Ronald Reagan in 1982. And, of course, Trump mentioned Reagan in outlining Iron Dome and said Golden Dome, and said, we're completing Reagan's work. I was struck, and I'm interested in Mark's take on this, too, watching the feat of Trump's arrival at the Capitol to give the pep talk to the House Republicans. He gave two separate press availabilities. I thought he was very high energy. He was, like, optimistic Trump, which you don't see as often, I think, in public, but is very, very charismatic. Very good. And then all the readouts of the speech that he gave to the, to the conference suggest that it was a pretty big hit. And of course, there's, you know, the egregious Thomas Massie, who is not never going to vote for anything that advances the interests of this, of the Republican Party or the country. But I think it did make some sway with some of the other Freedom Caucus members who will be crucial to the vote that Speaker Johnson wants to hold tonight.
- [29:27]
John Podhoretz
Right, okay. So the point here is that Trump was persuasive with the people that he should be able to persuade. But also, this is the vigor that we're talking about that Biden was never able to display, not even for a single day in the White House. It was sort of like if he did something vigorous, it was shocking and surprising. And it's not like Trump having a day like this is anything out of the ordinary. He had this whole week, last week in the Persian Gulf in which he was clearly just sort of full of, you know, full of beans, however you feel about what he said, and I didn't like a lot of what he said and all of that. He's clearly deeply engaged in the job of being president, even in a way that he wasn't in the first term. Like, there's a lot of substantive stuff going on here, world historical stuff in the Middle east, in with Ukraine and Russia, with, with the big beautiful bill, all of that, that he is getting his hands dirty with or really, you know, plunging into it. And, and as I say, that's something that we basically didn't see from Biden, period, ever. Maybe he made some calls, you know, when a bill was in trouble, but, you know, much of his domestic ended up being, well, when he did.
- [30:39]
Seth Mandel
I mean, I want to mention, I want to hear from Halperin, but remember when he was trying to bully Manchin into supporting the other BBB?
- [30:47]
John Podhoretz
Yeah.
- [30:48]
Seth Mandel
It failed. And it wasn't until summer 22 when suddenly Schumer struck a deal with Manchin to get the Inflation Reduction act, so called, through the Congress. So if anything, when Biden intervened, it made it worse. It made it worse.
- [31:02]
John Podhoretz
Yeah. Right.
- [31:03]
Seth Mandel
Okay.
- [31:05]
Abe Greenwald
On missile defense, it'd be great if we had a foolproof way to shoot incoming attacks on the United States. But what you see if you go back to the SDI debate under Reagan is it's unlikely that the technology will be perfect. We see that in Israel, Golden Dome, you know, Iron Dome shoots down a lot, but it's not perfect. And the problem is it's destabilizing. It lulls the United States into thinking that we are impregnable. And it encourages our enemies who do have the missile capacity to shoot at the United States to say, well, we can, you know, in a certain circumstances, we can shoot a ballistic missile, intercontinental ballistic missile at the United States and America can shoot it down. And so, you know, we're not going to be escalating the conflict. Those are dangerous things. So I don't care how much they spend on it. I'm deeply skeptical that the United States could build such a system, particularly in the age of drones that would actually defend the country. I think it's a colossal waste of money unless somebody can prove before we spend a dollar that it will actually work.
- [32:03]
Matthew Continetti
So I have a related problem with it. It's. I'm actually all in favor of a countrywide missile defense, you know, top of the line missile defense system, if it's legitimate. My concern with this and a number of things that Trump does is that these Rollouts. These announcements are like deep fake visions. Like, they kind of resemble reality, but they're very fantastical. And it's going to be the greatest. We have things that, that are, that are, you know, sci fi, that no one can imagine. It's a golden dome and it'll be done before I get out of office. And my fear is that the announcement and the reality are too far apart often. And he makes this fantastical announcement, and then he has some tech zealots say, don't worry, we're gonna take care of the rest. And then it fizzles out somewhere, and that's what I don't want to see.
- [33:02]
John Podhoretz
So I think this is a very smart point, which is to say that he's a real estate guy. And in New York, here's what you do when you have a real estate plan. You make, literally, you make pictures, you say, here's this area. Here's what it's going to look like when I'm done with it. Look, there's a park, and there's a park on top of a building, and here are people walking in the park around the beautiful buildings and all of that. And you sort of make people go, that looks fantastic. And you go, yeah, yeah. I just. You just need to make sure that the city sells me the land and that I get a, you know, $5 billion in loans and you can get this. It's great. So that this is part of the way that salesmanship of his prior career plays a game here. But SDI was fantastical in 1984 when Reagan mentioned it in the State of the Union address. And now what we have is almost 20 years of Israel deploying a missile defense that is 90 to 95% successful. I mean, you know, for. During the 2014 war in Gaza, Iron Dome intercepted, I don't know, 4,000 missiles.
- [34:14]
Abe Greenwald
How about the one that. How about the one that hit near the airport the other day? No.
- [34:17]
John Podhoretz
No. Okay. No, Right. No, you're right that it's not impregnable, because nothing is. But imagine this scenario 10 years from now. Just imagine this scenario 10 years from now, not when Trump is in office, because it'll never be done while Trump is in office. That's a delusion. But imagine that there is a terrible moment when a missile strike hits New York or Washington or something like that. And then the American people say, wait a minute, Israel has had missile defense for 20 years. Now Israel got this psychology mark that you talk about, which is that they thought they were impregnable and Then they took their eye off the ball in Gaza with Hamas and did not say, wait a minute, maybe we need to have better intelligence on Hamas, because maybe they got something cooking. That was the conceptia that failed so horribly. And, and, and depressingly, as Jonathan Foreman laid out in his piece on how Israel failed on October, on October 7th in, in commentary last month. But no one would ever be able. It would sort of be like 9, 11, where it's like, what do you mean you didn't know that Al Qaeda was coming?
- [35:32]
Seth Mandel
Can I make a historical point, too? I mean, this is the commentary podcast, so my hockery is going to come out here, but a couple things. One is, you're right, you don't want to have missile defense provide a sense of false security. And that's why it's important to also plus up your strategic arsenal, right, your nuclear arsenal, in order to continue deterring foes. And you need to plus up your conventional forces, your army, Navy, air force and space force, which is what was part of the Reagan overall Reagan Doctrine, not the specific Reagan Doctrine Charles Krauthammer identified in 1985, but the broader Reagan approach to defense. The other thing about SDI was, even though the technology was very pie in the sky when Reagan announced it in 82 and led to, you know, Ted Kennedy calling it Star wars, we now know from the Soviet archive that the Communists were extremely troubled by it. And it was a game changer in the sense that it was another proof of America's qualitative technological edge. And when Reagan finally met with Gorbachev in Geneva and Reykjavik in 86, Gorbachev's sole demand was give up SDI. Give up SDI.
- [36:48]
John Podhoretz
And Reagan said, no, give it to you.
- [36:51]
Seth Mandel
Well, Reagan said, we'll give you the.
- [36:52]
John Podhoretz
Technology, we'll give it to you. But when you have it and we have it, and then if that, if that's how you want to do, Reagan.
- [36:58]
Seth Mandel
Walked out of Reykjavik. And eventually, of course, the, the negotiations began, inf start and so forth. So I think the value of this program, obviously there's the potential value in defending the country from strategic weapons, but there's also the value of showing that America is invested in the technological competition with China, in particular in space. And if you recall, last year or so, there was a big hubbub in the Congress over then Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Turner saying that the Russians were about to launch a space weapon. That was extremely alarming. The space, whether we like it or not, is going to be the next domain of competition between the great powers. And so why I like Iron Golden Dome is that it's here just with Space Force, Trump is actually pretty forward looking in thinking about what our defense policy should be.
- [38:05]
John Podhoretz
Okay.
- [38:05]
Unknown
But I mean, I think the Space Force is a good example of it because they laughed at him and they laughed it, they called it Star wars with Reagan. Right. And they laughed at it and they laughed at Space Force. But obviously Space Force makes sense, you know, on a, on a basic level. But the other concern is that, you know, Israel is getting ready to roll out its. And, and I don't want to scare Marjorie Taylor Greene, but its Jewish space lasers are, are, you know, probably less than a year away from at least getting tested in the field. And so you also wonder, you wonder if there is an ability, Trump's ability, as Matt says he is seeing he is kind of ahead of the curve sometimes when things might seem silly otherwise or people might poo poo them. But the other, the opposite concern is that what if he's sort of like, you know, we say general is always fighting the last, or what if he's funding the last war? Like, what if the future is not actually the type of missile defense that he's drawing a big beautiful picture of? What if that by the time that, that would be ready, that is not what, you know, we should be investing in, in a future system. Now, that's the other concern.
- [39:23]
Abe Greenwald
And of course there should be a part of the American defense capability should be the ability to shoot down incoming missiles. But to go back to what Abe said about this hucksterism, if you promise the American people, which is what Reagan effectively did and what Trump is doing, that we're going to pay whatever it costs to build a system that will make us impregnable. You're misleading the American people and you're creating a destabilizing dynamic with our enemies.
- [39:49]
John Podhoretz
I think, look, the point about, the point about Iron Dome in Israel was that it was very practical, right? It wasn't visionary, although it ended up being effectively visionary and in a way had wild unintended consequences over time. But it was, what are we going to do? Like, how do we handle this? They started thinking about this in 91 because of the Scuds that were sent from, you know, from Iraq by Saddam Hussein into, into Israel. You know, 39 buildings were destroyed, 40, you know, there were hundreds of casualties. Mostly it didn't, they, they landed, you know, away from population centers. But there were a couple of strikes. These things were fired off sort of without knowing where they might land because there was no telemetry or targeting. But Israel's like, oh, my God, this is. We're showing a real weakness. We have to think about this and do something practical because, you know, Hamas is right on our border, and it's not that hard to fire a missile from the ground unless we invade. So it wasn't conceived of as this world, epic world historical system that was going to change the world as we knew it. It was more like, how do we protect Tel Aviv from Gaza if they're, if they're going to buy missiles and fire them, or if Iran is going to provide the missiles? Like, what do we do? So, yeah, this starts. This is an American thing, which is like Reagan saying, you know, we're going to have here, we're brilliant pebbles. We're going to shoot a bullet with a bullet. We can do all these things. But as I said, Matt says, the weird part is that it had this practical consequence with the Soviets, which is that we were all skeptical. And Bill, William Broad was skeptical, the New York Times, and everybody was like, what is he talking about? This is nonsense. And the Russians are like, they're so much better than we are. You know, they're, they, they're so good. We're so, we're so behind them. How do we know they can't do it? You know, I mean, Gorbachev basically said, this is what took the Soviet Union down. This is why he did glasnost. And perestroika was not only the Star wars proposal, but like when he went and saw a farm in Canada which was producing millions of acres of wheat, and he said, how many people work on this farm? And the guy said, nobody, because it's all done by robots. And this was in 1982 or night when he wasn't even premier yet. So there is the practical thing of saying to the Chinese, oh, yeah, you think we're not able to deal with you as an adversary? We're going to jump 20 years ahead of you now, maybe it won't work and all of that. And also, this is where I want to get to the big beautiful Bill. Like, where is this half a trillion dollars going to come from? Because the Republican Party only has a couple of votes in the House, you know, a majority of a couple of votes in the House. They're having huge arguments about what to spend and what to spend on. You can't just spend a half a trillion dollars out of nowhere. I mean, you could if it were Covid or something like that, but you can't here. And the big argument is on how much money Republicans can provide to these five congressmen essentially in New York and California to try to save their seats so they can maybe maintain a majority after 2026 while not being fiscally irresponsible, which is which they are. And Trump is, because of course, what did Trump say to them when they came in? He said, don't F around with Medicaid. And he didn't say F. He used the other three letters. He said, do not F around with Medicaid. Medicaid is the only place where you can get major savings since you're not going to cut anything else. So Medicaid, it was its work requirements and various other things. And I remind people Medicaid is not Medicare. Medicaid is funding for health care for the poor. And it is half.
- [44:04]
Seth Mandel
It's supposed to be health care funding for the poor.
- [44:07]
John Podhoretz
Right.
- [44:07]
Seth Mandel
But now is that it has expanded to basically include working people to close to middle class income status.
- [44:18]
John Podhoretz
Right.
- [44:18]
Seth Mandel
So that's where the savings would have to be. But that's where Trump is so troubled by political consequences of that.
- [44:25]
Mark Halperin
Right.
- [44:25]
Seth Mandel
And so it does seem like they're going to rely on things like verification, making sure that the benefits only go to citizens of the United States or resident immigrants of the United States, as well as the work requirements. And one big debate was in the initial proposal, the work requirements saying that, you know, if you're getting Medicaid at this certain level, you need to have a job. They were postponed until the final year of Trump's term. And so the latest proposal has brought them earlier to satisfy the Freedom Caucus.
- [45:00]
John Podhoretz
So for budget, in other words, I think fine savings.
- [45:03]
Seth Mandel
The Medicaid debate is one, is just one way in which the communications around this bill has been flawed.
- [45:10]
Mark Halperin
Right.
- [45:11]
Seth Mandel
Because ultimately what we're doing with this bill is we are preventing one of the largest tax hikes in history. And every Democrat who votes against this bill is endorsing a huge tax hike at the end of this year. And the other thing that's happened is that this bill is also enacting one of Trump's most popular proposals during the campaign. I'm not saying it's a good proposal. I'm saying it's a popular proposal and that's no tax on tips. And in fact, the power of that proposal was just evidenced in the Senate yesterday when Jackie Rosen of Nevada brought a no tax on tips measure to the floor of the Senate and Ted Cruz leapt up to endorse it. And all of A sudden, it passed. So why aren't we hearing about the no tax on tips? Why aren't we hearing about let's stop the largest tax increase in decades? Why aren't we hearing about making sure that benefits only go to American citizens? Instead, we're just hearing about the bbb. And I find that a problem for the Republican Party.
- [46:13]
Mark Halperin
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- [47:11]
John Podhoretz
Say, of a cheap date when it.
- [47:12]
Mark Halperin
Comes to wanting to read something that I gotta pay for. And I then subscribe and, you know, just all goes out the window.
- [47:21]
John Podhoretz
So. And I don't really need it too.
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Mark Halperin
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- [50:50]
John Podhoretz
Me ask you this. So the Republican Party is doing this, I would say, and not messaging as Matt suggests, because it is in the interest of certain Republicans to look like they are going at government spending with a hatchet. And that's in their interest. And practically speaking, they're staying there saying we need more savings, we need more savings, we need to cut, we need to cut, we need to cut. Because that's the message they want to deliver to their constituents. The federal government is too big, it's too bloated and this is our job. This is what we have to do. And a lot of them are principled about this, right? They genuinely think the country is going to go over the fiscal cliff sooner than people think. And that means the government goes broke and that I don't even know where the number is now. Like Paul Ryan said 2032. Some people say now it could be 2029 if on this, on the current trajectory. So you have Republicans who want to be seen as being budget hawks, and Johnson and the leadership are just practically dealing with the how do we get this, how the hell do we get this thing passed? When you have some people who are budget hawks and then you have these five Republicans or whatever it is, eight Republicans who are like, we're not going to vote for this unless you give us way more in the state and local tax deduction category than we can have. So, you know, it's a classic problem of who's. Whose interest is best served. You're saying for Trump it would be better to say, and for Republicans in general, stop the tax hike. You know, was stop the tax hike. That's what we're doing is we're preventing a giant tax hike. But that, but as I say, individual Republicans then with, in weird collusion with the media who want to portray them as evil monsters who want to destroy Medicaid. I mean, it reminds me of how when the, when the Moral Majority became a gigantic controversy in 1981, and, you know, Moral Majority emerged and it was the first one of these, by God, there's a secret force in American politics that's controlling everything, getting people votes. And Bart Giamatti, the president of Yale, gave his commencement, gave a speech at Yale at the commencement about how they would fight the evil of the Moral Majority with every fiber of their being. And of course, the Moral Majority had only an interest in saying, yeah, we're as powerful as you say we are. We control everybody. We're, you know, bow before us. You know, it's sort of the same thing with the budget hawks, which is bring it on. Keep talking about how we want to cut. We want cuts. Like that's what we want people to think of us.
- [53:39]
Abe Greenwald
I'll try to say I think four things that are all true and briefly, one is the president did yesterday you mentioned his two encounters with the media as he arrived to speak to the conference yesterday. On occasion, he did produce the message that I think is, is most Republican strategists would like him to say, which is, we're trying to prevent the biggest tax increase where the we're the party of cutting taxes and we're the party of restraining the growth of government, not cuts, restraining the growth. Number two, if you're not dealing with Social Security and Medicare, you're not serious about restraining the growth of government through, through dealing with programs that take up a high percentage. And the President's taken that off the table. I hope he'll deal with it later in his term, but that's not going to be dealt with now. Three, their theory of the case, which is the right one, which Bill Clinton proved, is that the only way to deal with the debt and deficit is robust economic growth. And if this bill, if they're right, that this bill, in combination with the tariffs and energy policy and other deregulation policies, produces GDP growth above 3%, that's their theory for how to reduce the deficit. They have optimistic projections about growth that most people don't believe. But I applaud them for aspiring to high growth because that is, I think, within the reach of America, if we believe in it and do the right things to bring it about. Finally, this bill is, you know, the product of sausage making. It's not, it's not anything that, you know, that it's being described as in a complete way. It's a big mess, and it's a big mess intended to be get enough votes to pass the House and then the Senate and everybody who wants to say, as President Trump likes to say about anything he touches, that this is perfect. It's just not. No matter what you believe in, it's not a perfect bill.
- [55:26]
John Podhoretz
Matt, what do you think the prospects are for some version of this bill passing the Senate?
- [55:35]
Seth Mandel
So this version, what passes the House won't pass the Senate. There will be major modifications to it, and then there will be a reconciliation process. So this is going to go on. You know, we talk about forcing mechanisms. The first that's going to come up is the debt ceiling vote sometime later this summer. And the current bill under consideration in the House includes a debt ceiling increase that would get us through at least the next couple of years. So one reason to pass it sooner rather than later, the whole package, is that you avoid a debt ceiling fight later this summer. The second forcing mechanism is December 31, 2025, when at midnight and the dawn of the new year, all of the tax rates will go back to where they were before the 2017 bill. So I expect that, I do expect the Republicans to pass this legislation sometime in 2025. Failure to do so would be a huge mess. It would Be like the original bbb. There'd be, have to be some kind of improvised way of getting the pieces of it over the next couple, you know, before the midterms. But I think it is that Republicans understand it's necessary to pass. The question is just when Johnson wants to pass it out of the House by this weekend. That's a promise he made. And what we're just monitoring now. Well, we're not sure whether that's actually going to happen or not.
- [57:07]
John Podhoretz
Mark, what do you think the prospects are for, let's say, the Senate agreeing to the salt number, which is now raising the deduction to $40,000 a year for state and local taxes for people with incomes, $500,000 and under. Do you think the Republicans in the Senate will go, Is that, or is that one of the things that will disappear when the, when the Senate votes?
- [57:39]
Abe Greenwald
May I ask you a question before I answer?
- [57:41]
John Podhoretz
Yeah.
- [57:42]
Abe Greenwald
I find it very confusing the notion that these members will lose their seats if that, if, if it's capped at 30% as opposed to 40%. I can't imagine any constituents except for the super wealthy people in their district who care about it. Am I, am I wrong? I see, I see. Like if you vote for Medicare cuts or Medicaid cuts, I could see that being in an ad, but what's the negative ad? He didn't, he didn't fight to get it to 40% as opposed to 30.
- [58:10]
Seth Mandel
He only brought you a 10% increase in the salt cap.
- [58:13]
Abe Greenwald
Yeah, I don't, I, so I don't get it. If you guys have an answer, I'd love to hear it. You can treat as a rhetorical question, but I just find it confusing that, that, that, that they're acting as if their seats will be in jeopardy if they, if it's 30 as opposed to.
- [58:26]
John Podhoretz
You know, 40, their seats are in jeopardy anyway.
- [58:29]
Abe Greenwald
Right. Correct. I don't, I don't deny that. But, but normally when people talk about walking the plank and you know, compromise, whatever, it's on something where they could, they could understandably say if, if you ask me to vote for this, I'm going to lose my seat. But I don't, I just don't understand 30, 30 versus 40 being like a voting issue in these districts.
- [58:50]
Seth Mandel
The Republican circular firing squad is something to behold. Yeah, I mean, it's just, and it never goes away. They're all, they're always ready to point at each other.
- [58:59]
John Podhoretz
But I think Trump's argument, the point that you made, which is what we, what is needed to save their seats is robust economic growth. What they need is for people to feel like the country's on the right track and that they're, they're, they're in.
- [59:13]
Abe Greenwald
They got a plan. They got a plan to do it right.
- [59:16]
John Podhoretz
Not just a plan, but you could actually see robust economic growth.
- [59:20]
Abe Greenwald
They've got a plan that they're doing. The answer to your question is the Senate's a little confusing in terms of what will this will of the Senate do to this House bill because it's not unidirectional. Right. Within the Republican conference in the Senate, there are some people who will want to push it one way and there's some Republican senators who want to push it the other. I have very little doubt that they will work their will and they all produce another bill. I think that the decisive question about whether this bill will pass is will the House, except being jammed by the Senate version, because the Senate will change it in ways that will disrupt the carefully calibrated politics that are probably within the next 48 or 72 hours going to produce initial House passage of the bill. But I think that the real focus is regularly speakers of both parties work with their Senate colleague, if they're, if they're in the majority in both chambers to, and sometimes if it's bipartisan, to jam the House to basically say we're just going to tell the House when the bill comes back from the Senate, we have to vote for it because the alternative is to figure out how to pass a new House bill and then repass it in the Senate. And this never ends. So I think that's the question is not exactly, I don't think how will the Senate change the bill? It's will Speaker Johnson and the president convince the majority of House Republicans we're just going to have to swallow what the Senate gives us, even though it disrupts the bargain that we struck on initial passage.
- [60:44]
John Podhoretz
It's, it's just the, it's impossible to game out. Because I just think, for example, your point I think is very solid, which is, you know, 40 or 20, like, you know, a lot of people don't pay much more. I mean, how much, how much do people pay in state and local taxes with an income under $500,000? I mean, depending on what state you're in. But I mean, for example, in New Jersey, which is a, you know, which is a particular focus or, or New York State, the problem in some of these counties, like Westchester county, is more property taxes than it is state and local taxes. And, you know, People I know relatively affluent in these places, unless you're really rich, you're not. You're not getting to $40,000 in a deduction. I mean, that's where actually the number 500,040 is, is not. Is pretty good. Because I'm not sure that people who make 500,000 or less don't. Won't be completely satisfied with that number. But I don't know that that's worth, you know, having this fight over. And then, you know, Trump's. Maybe the way Trump looks at it is he can't game out November 2026 for Mike Lawler and Lalota and these people who are young Lee, these people who are insisting on this. So he needs the bill to pass, and the country needs the bill to pass, and the Hope for Economic Growth needs the bill to pass. So they should go along with it and go in with him on the same bet that he's making. Because. And if that means that they get this, they don't get the number that they want, are they really, in the end, going to tank the bill? Is Mike Lawler going to tank the gigantic bill that in that features the, you know, make sure that there isn't this tax hike at the end of 2025? I find it kind of hard to believe that when push comes to shove, he won't say, all right, I got no choice now, and I think I did it.
- [62:50]
Seth Mandel
I got people believe that this bill will pass right by the end of the year.
- [62:54]
John Podhoretz
Okay, so very quickly, because Mark's got. We. We have a situation in which Israel has now Gideon's. What is chariots. Chariots. Thank you. I think yesterday I said Gideon Shield. Gideon's chariots is moving in Gaza. And we have the prime ministers, the president, Prime Minister Macron, Starmer and Carney all insisting that Israel stop immediately or there are going to be consequences from these allies of Israel in the form of England, France and Canada. Very confrontational language in this letter. Domestic politics are playing a real role here in these countries, which, as Stephen Pollard wrote about for commentary last year, the Labour Party is now very dependent for maintaining its majority on Muslim voters and that, that, that they must show the flag in this way. Simultaneously release of a story from the UN that unless Israel allows aid, in which it did allow 93 trucks in yesterday from the UN that 14,000 children were going to die in the next 48 hours of starvation. As, as Nicole Lappard points out on Twitter, there was a story this got spread all over the place. NBC News reported it and the story is actually that a report from the Integrated Food Security phase classification stated that there would be 14,000 severe cases of acute malnutrition between April 2025 and March 2026 if there was no aid brought in. And this number was then perverted into the notion that 14,000 kids are about to die of starvation now, which is a psychotic number, no matter how you slice it, because how can you know whether someone's going to die of starvation now and where they get 14,000 from?
- [65:10]
Unknown
But also, you look at the numbers of casualties in this war, and you say 14,000 children dying over the next 48 hours is obviously insane and, like, not something that Hamas has even tried to claim. That that's. That's the thing here, is that the UN has gone so far beyond what Hamas and others have tried to claim. They're just making up numbers. And when asked about it, they, you know, they said, well, the important thing is that people will die. You know, they sound like people on Twitter now, like net neutrality. People will die. That's just their response to virtually everything. But the other thing about the UN is that of those 93 trucks, how many did the UN say made their destination? It's fewer than one. The UN says zero trucks of those 93 made their destination because of things like security problems and traffic. Now, we all know the roads in Gaza are clogged this time of year. It's big tourist season. You know, there's. There's all sorts of. There's all sorts of concerts in the amphitheaters and stuff like that. It's. It's baseball season. You know, there's lots to do, traffic. The thing about the UN is that they. They have so completely lost the plot that. That what they're trying to do is say, you know, Israel says you. If we hand it over to you, the UN and just let you bring these trucks in, they're going to go to Hamas. And the UN says, well, no, no, no, but we don't really care. And then they bring in 100 trucks, and 100 trucks go to Hamas. They're not. I promise you, they're not stuck in traffic at Columbus Circle.
- [66:51]
John Podhoretz
It's not just that, by the way. It's also that they don't want to deliver the aid because they want to stop the war. In other. In other words, if Israel allows aid in and they can say, yeah, we're getting the aid to people, then Israel will have done what Trump asked and what Trump asked, which is let aid in. If you're going to go all the way. And it is therefore in their ideological interest to say, well, we can't get the aid to anybody. So double time, Israel has to stop the war. Which is why this letter is so alarming to so many people and why Israelis, a lot of the Israeli elites are freaking out at the thought that we've lost France, Britain and Canada. But of course, if they're, if they've lost them over this, they've lost them over everything, in my view. So, you know, you can't, you can't sort of make, make nice with them, but.
- [67:47]
Unknown
Right, but that's exactly right. They delivered. I mean, the story is probably that the UN delivered 100 trucks of food and supplies to Hamas yesterday, which means the public is not going to get it. And so the other side of what you're saying there, the other side of the double game, is then they can also say tomorrow 14,000 children are also going to die because nobody got any aid. Why did nobody get any aid? Well, that wasn't Israel that prevented. Israel said, we have a different plan to bring in aid and make sure it gets to the people who need it, but we have to establish certain security barriers in order to do that. And the UN said no, just drive the trucks in. And so, no, but nobody's getting aid anyway. And they can continue the famine thing while Israel is doing exactly what they're asking.
- [68:32]
Seth Mandel
So we have to, we have to wrap up. But I just want to make the point that it's the dog that hasn't barked yet and that's the United States. Why did the food go in? Trump said, you have to put the food in, but he didn't say stop the war.
- [68:45]
Mark Halperin
Right.
- [68:46]
Seth Mandel
And in fact, the negotiations seem to have broken down in Qatar. Right. And until Trump says it's time to stop Bibi, the war is going to continue.
- [68:55]
Mark Halperin
Right.
- [68:56]
Abe Greenwald
So totally agree. And what's going on between these two guys is very opaque right now. But Trump and Yahoo. But there's obviously a lot going on.
- [69:04]
John Podhoretz
A lot. Okay, Matt, do you want to make your recommendation?
- [69:09]
Seth Mandel
Can I make it very quickly, very quick because, you know, we love our friends here on the show Commentary podcast. I just want to recommend Quickly the new book from my friend and colleague Christopher J. Scalia. The book is called thirteen Novels Conservatives Will Love but Probably Haven't Read. It is a great collection of literary essays about 13 novels you probably haven't read. And John Pot Horace is one of the most well read people on the face of the planet Earth. So I'm curious whether he has read some of these novels. They range from Samuel Johnson's Rasselas to Christopher Beha's the Index of Self Destructive Acts which came out in 2020. So wide ranging English novels, no novels in translation, English language novels from both sides of the Atlantic. It's a delight. It will be great for book clubs. It will inspire different book discussions. He has some actual study questions or discussion questions in one of the appendices. That's Chris Scalia's 13 novels conservatives will love but probably haven't read. Buy it today.
- [70:15]
John Podhoretz
Very exciting. And I've in fact read Christopher Beha's novel and Rasselas but I, I don't.
- [70:20]
Seth Mandel
Know what I told you. I just that the name to mind but you should look at the other 11.
- [70:24]
John Podhoretz
Right. I think there's a Cormac McCarthy on there. So Abe will be very satisfied with that. Anyway, Mark Halperin, thank you so much for joining us and bringing us your insights. And of course I, I would promote your podcast but your podcast has way more listeners than our podcast has. So as everyone knows, number one America, you promote our well, very kind about it on two way, your other, your other platform. Your daily, your daily platform. 9:00am show, 6:00pm show. You got Meghan McCain show, you got Michael Moynihan show, the, the blossoming two way universe. Yeah.
- [71:04]
Abe Greenwald
I'm grateful to you gentlemen for hosting me. I love, I love coming on and I've told you this before, there's nothing else I appear on. I get as much feedback promise when I'm on with you, your audience is they say in the trades is sticky. So thank you for letting me be part of your stickiness.
- [71:20]
John Podhoretz
A real pleasure. Okay.
- [71:21]
Abe Greenwald
Thank you guys.
- [71:22]
John Podhoretz
Thank you. And for Matt, Seth and Abe, I'm John Pothorc. Keep the candle bur.