Breaking the Wave

Summary

The Commentary Magazine Podcast

Episode: Breaking the Wave

Date: July 21, 2026

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Episode Overview

This episode of The Commentary Magazine Podcast delves into the state of American politics in the summer of 2026, focusing on the upcoming midterm elections, the dynamics of voter intensity versus polling, the implications of the ongoing war with Iran, and a deep exploration of leftist activism’s influence on the Democratic Party. The conversation is lively, layered, and at times sharply irreverent, with the panel unpacking historical parallels, current polling uncertainties, and the profound effects of party base enthusiasm (or lack thereof). Notable recurring topics include the Republican Party’s struggles, the Democratic Party’s leftward shift, and the growing radicalization on college campuses.

Panelists:

• Jon Podhoretz (Host)
• Abe Greenwald (Executive Editor)
• John Washington
• Seth Mandel (Senior Editor)
• Eliana Johnson (Washington Free Beacon Editor)
• Chris Stirewalt (Guest: The Hill columnist, AEI Senior Fellow, contributor at The Dispatch)

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Midterm Election Dynamics and Polling

[01:22-07:10] Roundtable on Midterm Wave Predictions

• Host Jon Podhoretz opens by pondering the likelihood of a Democratic “wave” in the upcoming midterms, referencing historically low presidential approval ratings and rising gas prices, but notes that generic ballot polling only slightly favors Democrats (+3%), far below historical “wave” indicators.
• Chris Stirewalt clarifies that the predictive value of generic ballots is overrated. Voter intensity and propensity, not topline polling, are key to understanding midterms.
  • “My point here is you should pay more attention to voter intensity than you should to the top line.” (Abe Greenwald, 04:49)
• Insight: Republican reliance on “low propensity” voters (non-college educated, rural, working-class) is a disadvantage as these voters are less likely to turn out for midterms. Democratic base is more energized due to negative partisanship, especially opposition to Trump.

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2. GOP & Democratic Strategies and Voter Base Challenges

[07:10-12:04] Republican Approaches and Structural Factors

• Discussion of Trump’s attempts to activate his nontraditional base (e.g., “caravans are coming” fear-mongering in 2018) and current strategies like calling Democrats “communists,” holding a Texas convention, and emphasizing voter fraud.
  • “If I was a Republican, I would be handing out ballots at every cracker barrel...” (Chris Stirewalt, 11:29)
• Eliana Johnson notes Republican chances rest on structural advantages (gerrymandering, Supreme Court decisions, fundraising superiority) and candidate quality.
  • Highlights Democratic infighting in Michigan versus a more stable GOP approach.

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3. Iran War: Political and Policy Implications

[12:04-35:08] Discontent on Both Sides, Strategic Uncertainty

• Jon Podhoretz’s frustration: Even as an outlier hawk, he feels lost with the current administration’s unclear objectives in the Iran conflict.
  • “If you’re losing me... you think you have a political problem with an unpopular war? You ain’t seen nothing yet.” (Jon Podhoretz, 13:24)
• Eliana Johnson: Both hawks (like herself) and anti-interventionists are dejected—the former by lack of clarity, the latter by US involvement at all.
• John Washington and others highlight new intelligence (centrifuges moved to Pickaxe Mountain), questioning whether any tangible gains have been made, as Iran’s capacity is intact and US has yet to define “victory.”
• Seth Mandel: Administration discord cited (“J.D. Vance, the VP, thinks Iran’s nuclear issue is handled; Trump says otherwise”).
• Jon Podhoretz: Calls for disruptive action or clear retreat; ongoing tit-for-tat is seen as both militarily and politically disastrous.

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4. The Democratic Party’s Internal Crisis: Leftward Push and Radicalization

[46:47-67:30] On Michigan, DNC Weakness, and Israel/Palestine

• “Kamala Harris lost the 2024 election because she seemed like a nincompoop. And prices were too high.” (Abe Greenwald, 46:52)
• Discussion: Whether leftist activism—especially around Israel/Palestine—will permanently reshape the party, or if perceived shifts are being overstated.
• Eliana Johnson shares reporting on Abdul El Sayed’s campaign and familial connections to radical campus activism (e.g., his half-sister at University of Chicago, described as a “vicious anti-Israel activist”); reflects broader party drift.
  • “She chastised Bernie Sanders... for condemning Hamas.” (Eliana Johnson, 52:09)
• Examination of the distinction between radical “true believers” and politicians adept at strategic ambiguity (El Sayed vs. Mamdani).
  • “Rootless cosmopolitanism has its advantages in politics.” (Abe Greenwald, 62:19)
• Jake Sullivan’s role: Seen as an ambitious figure, repositioning himself to align with rising leftist priorities, including on Israel/Palestine.

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5. Historical Parallels and Warning Signs

[67:30-78:27] SDS, DSA, and The Shadow of 1970s Radicalism

• Jon Podhoretz and others reflect on the historical trajectory from the 1960s SDS (Students for a Democratic Society) to the present-day DSA, warning of spillover from rhetorical radicalism into actual violence, referencing Bernadine Dohrn and the Weather Underground as cautionary tales.
  • “How long before Bernadine Dorn 2026 turns into bombs 2028. How long?” (Jon Podhoretz, 71:57)
• Notable anecdote: Commentary magazine rejected the original SDS manifesto in the 1960s—a “hinge moment” in leftist intellectual history.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

“If you’re losing me, I swear, if you’re losing me, I don’t know. You think you have a political problem with an unpopular war? You ain’t seen nothing yet.”
— Jon Podhoretz (12:39)

“I would not put any... If I was a Republican, I would say, vote by mail, vote by smoke signal, vote by any means that you can. Just do it. We need you.”
— Chris Stirewalt (11:45)

“The only thing worse than an unpopular war is losing an unpopular war.”
— Abe Greenwald (35:20)

“Rootless cosmopolitanism has its advantages in politics.”
— Abe Greenwald (62:19)

“We are what we pretend to be, so we should be careful about what we pretend to be.”
— (Citing Kurt Vonnegut), Abe Greenwald (74:47)

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• Midterm Election Prognostications & Generic Ballot Debate:
  [01:22–07:10]

• Voter Intensity, Structural GOP Advantages, and Michigan Senate Race:
  [12:04–17:27]

• Iran War: Disunity, Escalation, & the “Pickaxe Mountain” Dilemma:
  [12:04–35:20]

• The DNC & RNC: Powerlessness, Campaign Finance, and Dark Money Discussion:
  [19:58–24:28]

• The Leftward Drift: Michigan, Abdul El Sayed, and Campus Radicalism:
  [46:45–62:19]

• Radical History and Warnings from the 1960s:
  [67:30–78:27]

• Commentary Anecdote: Sidestepping the SDS:
  [78:27–80:09]

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Conclusion

Theme:
The episode’s recurring motif is the unpredictability and volatility of both American politics and global affairs in 2026, paralleled by an almost cyclical interplay between historical radicalism and present-day activism. The panel’s humor and pessimism, combined with vivid analogies and historical references, make for an episode that’s as analytically rigorous as it is bracingly entertaining.

Final Note:
“Among the many wise decisions my father made in his life, that may have been among the wisest.” — Jon Podhoretz (on Commentary rejecting the SDS manifesto, 78:27)

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For listeners and readers seeking to grasp the emotional temperature and strategic complexity of mid-2020s American politics, this episode is a masterclass in skeptical, history-minded punditry.

Transcript

[Abe Greenwald]

Foreign.

[Jon Podhoretz]

Expect the worst Some drinks and pain

[Matt Eberts]

Some die of thirst no way of

[Jon Podhoretz]

knowing which way it's going Hope for the best, Expect the worst Hope for the best. Welcome to the Commentary Magazine daily podcast. Today is Tuesday, July 21, 2026. I am Jon Potwartz, the editor of Commentary magazine. With me as always, Executive editor Abe Greenwald.

[John Washington]

Hi, Abe. Hi, Jon.

[Jon Podhoretz]

Senior editor Seth Mandel. Hi, Seth. Hi, John Washington Free Beacon editor Eliana Johnson. Hi, Eliana.

[Eliana Johnson]

Hi, John.

[Jon Podhoretz]

And joining us today, Eliana's one time co host of my favorite podcast, aside from this one, which they canceled for reasons that then allowed us to have Elian on this podcast, host of the Hill on Sunday, columnist with the Hill, participant in the Dispatch, our friend Chris Stal. I don't know, I don't know what your title is.

[Abe Greenwald]

I contributed the Dispatch, contributor senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. Eliana Johnson, enthusiast.

[Jon Podhoretz]

So many titles.

[Abe Greenwald]

Bestselling author. What do you want?

[Jon Podhoretz]

So many are your titles. Only Adam White has more titles than you as far as I can tell. It is like Shadow Chase. I mentioned all of Adam White's titles. It would go 55 minutes and then I have to go right to the recommendation. So you're close, but let us now take you take advantage of your presence here, Chris, to go into what Jonah would call rank punditry. Cause I threw this question at you that is very interesting, but may have a very simple answer. All signs point classically to a Democratic wave in the midterm elections. Presidential approval rating, incredibly low, gas prices going up. You know, party in power always loses in the midterm election, very close margins in the House and Senate and so on. And yet according to the last three national polls, the generic ballot, that is the question when you were asked if you were to vote today, would you vote for a Democrat or for a

[Abe Greenwald]

Republican for or sometimes is asked, would

[Jon Podhoretz]

you prefer, would you prefer that these polls are in the Democrats favor but by about 3%? And in previous wave elections that actually went wave, those numbers were often at this point close to double digits or in double digits from the party.

[Abe Greenwald]

I don't know about that.

[Jon Podhoretz]

When in 2010?

[Abe Greenwald]

I don't know about no Republican.

[Jon Podhoretz]

No.

[Abe Greenwald]

I sent you my column for today.

[Eliana Johnson]

I have.

[Abe Greenwald]

I'm sorry I sent it to you. I, I sent it to you.

[Jon Podhoretz]

I was busy trying to send you the link. I didn't read it.

[Abe Greenwald]

I know. I blame Christopher Nolan, by the way.

[Jon Podhoretz]

I've been wrong about many things. And you know, my wife said to me, don't you think you should correct X, Y or Z. And I said if I were to correct every mistake I made on this podcast, we would never actually have another version of the podcast. So double check anything I tell you before you tell anybody. So I'm wrong about this. The generic ballot isn't often double digits, but we are in a. Okay, so, Chris, you want to read you the lead.

[Abe Greenwald]

I'm going to read you the lead.

[Jon Podhoretz]

Okay.

[Abe Greenwald]

It's halfway through the summer, and despite the midterm curse that's hammered the party with the White House in all but three midterms since the Civil War, the home team is looking a lot better than expected. The best evidence? A generic ballot that is pretty well tied. Even though the incumbent president is underwater with voters, many race watchers are starting to wonder if the administration's happy talk about a truly competitive general election may be more than just spin. The party out of power is being convulsed by a radical insurgency, and the candidate quality coming out of the contested primaries is dubious. Even the suggestion by higher ups that the majority party might even lose the House was starting to sound blasphemous. For all the dire forecasts of the springtime, this year might actually be different. Or at least that's what the political class was thinking in July of 2010, as then President Barack Obama and his party were trying to grind out a win against a Republican party still shattered by the debacle of the 20002008 election and beset by Tea Party fueled internal struggles.

[Jon Podhoretz]

A twist. There was a plot twist in that paragraph.

[Seth Mandel]

So

[Abe Greenwald]

I went back through the generic ballot, 2010 and beyond. In July, the only time that the generic ballot was predictive was in 2018, in July. Other than that, it's done exactly this. And my point here is you should pay more attention to voter intensity than you should to the top line. So the short explanation, the shorter explanation is the midterm electorate is a third smaller than the quadrennial electorate. You lose the the reason the Republicans are in for a beating is it's the midterm curse. And it's all of those things, but also their reliance on lower propensity voters. Right? So the the Trump coalition, they do 65% with the people who are less likely to vote. That's rough. But basically that's it. If you're a low propensity voter, which means strong correlations to non college educated, working class, rural, small community, Trump kills with those voters. And Republicans have done well 2016, 2020 and 2024 with those voters but typically, and by the way, those are people who substantially supported Barack Obama and substantially supported George Bush. You get to the midterm and those people don't show up. Those are the people who you lose. So you're left with a more engaged electorate and that means a more partisan electorate. So the essential question isn't, we asked a bunch of people, including a third of whom are not likely to vote, who are you? Who do you prefer to control Congress? And in a surprising turn they say, I don't care, I hate them both, and I don't particularly care. So now you peel it back and you say, let's look at the voter intensity number. And Democrats are just slaughtering Republicans on their base. The Republican base is dispirited and disappointed and frustrated. And the Democratic base, while hating the Democratic Party, hates Donald Trump and Republicans more.

[Jon Podhoretz]

I mean, I can, you know, so you have now answered definitively my question. And the question. So now I'm reminded of things that happened in the past to try and stave off the wave. And I think about 2018, where Democrats won 40 seats in the House, which was way beyond what anybody, I mean,

[Abe Greenwald]

I think their best performance since Watergate.

[Jon Podhoretz]

Right. But we were like, you know, people were having pools and stuff like that. And I think I was like on the higher end of the pool that I was in and I said 30. So the 40 number was pretty staggering. And remember what Trump tried to do was gin up that low propensity voter thing with the caravans. They're coming, they're coming. They're marching up like army ants through Central America, up through Sinaloa and they're hitting the border and oh my God, here come the caravans. And it didn't work. And I think we can presume that he has another gimmick. He will come up with something up his sleeve, some of this. Nick Katoggio, your colleague at the Dispatch, in his nightly news or, you know, almost nightly newsletter yesterday said if you want to know why Trump keeps saying they're communists, they're communists, they're communists. About the Democrats, remember the word socialist, which is what they is now not in such terrible odor, but the word communist is still very, very negative. And if he can get Americans to believe that the Democrats are communists or the low propensity voter, that the communists are coming, maybe he can mitigate the damage. The

[Abe Greenwald]

stated strategy, the public facing strategy of Susie Wiles and the President's political team, Tony Fabrizio, et cetera, et cetera, is what you always do when you're losing an election. And it works, sometimes worked for Democrats in 2012. For example, you say this is not a referendum on the party in power. This is a choice election. You have to choose between two governing visions for the country. And on the one hand, you have the devil you know, and we know you're not happy, but on the other hand, you have radical, disruptive, destructive, chaotic, grand platinarian Abdul El Sayed. You have the danger that's out here. And if you let these people control Congress, then, you know, the dogs and cats living together, all of, all of that stuff it as. So that's the stated and obvious strategy. The strategy. And then the Republicans have overlaid two things on that. One is they're having a convention, a midterm convention, which Democrats tried to do back in the 70s, which was a total failure. Because obviously what you want to do when you're the party in power is have maximum wiggle room for your vulnerable incumbents. You don't want strong branding for the national party. You want, like, you know, if you think about how a lot of Republicans survived 2006, it was like, I'm going to pick spots where I can disagree with George W. Bush and slink my way through this in a competitive district. So strategy one is Trump wants to fire up the base by having a big party. They're doing it in Texas, and they want to, like, go have a big rah rah. The other thing he's doing, which is also dubious, is the election interference, the voter fraud stuff. And this is difficult for them in two ways. One, it increases Democratic voter intensity. You tell black voters in Georgia your vote is in peril. You are just. Every time I think that Democratic voter intensity can't get higher, they get frothier, number one. And number two, any place where you make voting harder, I'll put it this way. If I was a Republican, I would be handing out ballots at every cracker barrel, every wherever large numbers of my voters congregated, I would be there just handing out, like, go, just vote. We're going to make it as easy as possible. Please, we're begging you to vote. I would not put any. If I was a Republican, I would say vote by mail, vote by smoke signal, vote by any means that you can. Just do it. We need you.

[Jon Podhoretz]

Eliana. Chris has laid out the problem with Republicans and intensity. And we're sitting here. It's July 21st. Let me put it this way, and I'm not going to say this. I'm going to preface it so that people who might want to clip this out and like, say that I'm an evil person will know that I'm saying this in an amused way, okay? Nobody likes war more than I do, okay? No one likes a good American aggression against Muslim totalitarianism more than I do. And I'm sitting here with this 10 day campaign against Iran and I am saying, what the hell is going on? What are you doing? Now? The Iranians, you said they were basically destroyed and now they seem to be able to fire ballistic missiles at will. They're hitting American positions in Jordan. They're hitting all of the Gulf states that are allies of ours. The Houthis are now threatening to close the strait near them. What's the plan? Because if you're losing me, I swear, if you're losing me, I don't know. You think you have a political problem with an unpopular war? You ain't seen nothing yet. Because I am not losable. And I am, you know, I am way moving down the road toward being losable.

[Eliana Johnson]

I think the President's in a bad place where those of us who support the war effort are dejected and confused by what's going on in this murky middle ground where we're playing tit for tat with Iran, but not moving toward a clear and achievable objective. This is, as the Wall Street Journal reports, that Iran's progress toward a nuclear weapon and their ability to continue to produce nuclear material is more advanced than we thought, that they moved material, not just material, but centrifuges, into the Pickaxe Mountain facility. And so folks like us are confused, dejected and unsatisfied by the ground that we're treading right now. And the anti interventionists are angry that the President embarked on this project in the first place, and they view the territory that we're on as proof of the correctness of their opposition to the war effort in the first place. Beyond that, I do think the President's in a tricky position right now. We've just lost three more American service members and oil prices are going back up again. And the Strait of Hormuz is not open to commercial traffic. I think this middle ground is going to be tricky to sustain and he's actually better off choosing one path or the other. As to what you and Chris are discussing, the Republican argument I've best heard in the elite political circles we travel in is we have a shot because we have structural advantages that will, if not overcome, at least give us a shot to compete with Democrats who have the enthusiasm and Those structural advantages come from the gerrymandering efforts and the Supreme Court decision in Calais. And Republicans have more money than the Democrats do because of Ken Martin's pathetic stewardship of the Democratic National Committee and also in part because of candidate quality, where Democrats are in a messy, nasty primary fight in the state of Michigan, which they have to pick up if they're going to take the Senate. And Republicans have had a candidate in Mike Rogers for months and they had a real shot in Maine. And I think that is getting to be a longer and longer and longer shot as the they had their primary race, but they lost their candidate. And nobody knows, nobody's ever heard of these other candidates who are vying for that seat. And they've like Graham Platner. None of these people have been vetted.

[Eric Gertler]

From the State House to the courthouse, in the emergency room and in the classroom, Americans are losing trust in their leaders. In a 2025 U.S. news and World Report survey, 85% Americans said government leaders care more about their own power than the people they serve. 73% are disappointed in healthcare leaders, 72% in business, and 68% in education. But there are still leaders worth believing in. I'm Eric Gertler, CEO and executive chairman of U.S. news World Report. This is the Best Leaders podcast sponsored by the Noble Reach Foundation. On this show, we'll go deeper into the stories, challenges and lessons of extraordinary leaders across public service, business, healthcare and education. You can find the Best Leaders podcast from U.S. news World Report on YouTube, Apple, Spotify, Amazon Music or wherever you

[Jon Podhoretz]

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[Seth Mandel]

That brings up an interesting point by the way. Is the DNC like in real trouble with all this anti establishment stuff or is it just like one of those down seasons for them? Because the hatred, the boiling anger toward the establishment. I had forgotten about the DNC entirely like you brought it up and I had not even been thinking about the DNC playing in these races. They are so far from top of mind and they seem to be for the voters too. That's something I feel like they should need to correct. Even if there will be up years and down years and everything is cyclical and blah blah blah. This is one of those moments where they also have a target on their back, don't they?

[Abe Greenwald]

Seth, let me keep it real sexy for you by talking about campaign finance laws, okay? The Mitch McConnell was right about McCain Feingold and now even Democrats are able to acknowledge the catastrophe. Now they're gonna put the blame on the Supreme Court. But McCain Feingold was an abominable piece of legislation and it was ill conceived and poorly executed. So the soft money to the parties that made that John McCain and Russ Feingold and others said was the problem in politics went away and was replaced by the super PAC money. Democrats in the 20122014 cycle said we abjure we're not taking the dark money. And Republicans, Karl Rove, American Crossroads others were like, yes, we are opening giant pillowcases. Throw as much super PAC money into this place that we can't. The Republican Party, the Republican National Committee was doesn't exist. There isn't a Republican National Committee. If you think the Democratic National Committee doesn't matter, quick tell me who the chairman of the Republican National Committee is. It's Joe Grutters. And nobody knows and nobody cares because it just, it doesn't matter because the Republican National Committee is an empty vessel now. It's an empty vessel with a lot of money in it because here's what happened. Democrats wouldn't play the super PAC game. Then belatedly they said an ActBlue was part of this and other groups were part of this. They were like, shoot, we've Got to get our billionaires lined up and we've got to play the game too. We're going to fight fire with fire. So they moved toward what they call dark money. They shift over that way. Republicans and the Vance case in Ohio that gave us the decision that Eliana Sagaciously referenced is the Republicans said, we're going to win, we're going to win this. So they moved their resources because the. The net benefit for the parties is that now they can take that money that previously would have been in packs competing with toilet paper and erectile dysfunction ads, paying top dollar for the spots. Now they can be run in conjunction with the candidate and they can run at the reduced political rate. So it's a 3x multiplier for all that money. So the Republicans predicted that they would win. They moved the money into the nrsc, the NRCC and the rnc. And that money will now flow out

[Jon Podhoretz]

just to define that these are the

[Abe Greenwald]

committees for the Senate, for the House, and for the.

[Jon Podhoretz]

One for the House and one for the party itself. Okay.

[Abe Greenwald]

And the Democrats are trying to catch up on that front. And the Ken Martin. Did you read the Mark Leibovich piece about Ken Martin's tenure where it was about, can we not do land acknowledgments? Burn in hell, bastard. How dare you. He tried to do in office work two days a week and got basically picketed. It was a totally dysfunctional space. And whether you are a moderate who thinks that Ken Martin is on the right track or you're a far left, progressive, radical, democratic, socialist, it's a bad risk. So the DNC is fallow and this is the wrong cycle for them to be fallow. If in a rational arrangement the DNC would be matching the rnc, but basically it just doesn't exist.

[John Washington]

I don't want to pick back up on the Iran point if we're not done with this. So we started down that road, then

[Jon Podhoretz]

we came back more part of it than you, than you, than we're yet getting to. And we need to bring them together.

[John Washington]

Yeah. I found the. The exclusive story in the Journal. Shockingly upsetting actually, because it's the story

[Jon Podhoretz]

that they've moved the. The.

[John Washington]

That they move the centrifuges to.

[Jon Podhoretz]

Into pickaxe. Mountain Mountain.

[John Washington]

Because, John, I think in some sense I was even less losable on this than you in that I've been saying, look, as long as the Iranian nuclear program has been rubbled, yeah, we gotta see to some other things there before we get out. But it's hard for me to look back on an American effort that killed off the Iranian nuclear program as ultimately a mistake. So now at this point, what was accomplished, you know, this is sort of assuming the worst about the general report and assuming that it's completely accurate. There is certainly no regime change. There's the help on the way for the Iranian people that never came. Iran clearly has an effective missile and drone capacity still, and the nuclear program isn't dead, and they are still pressuring the strait. So this is, you know, I thought Trump was in a bad situation yesterday. He's in a much worse one today, as far as I can say.

[Jon Podhoretz]

Okay, so let's talk about the worst situation, because is he in a worse situation or is he not? If this Israeli intelligence, which is what the Wall Street Journal said, where they derive the fact of this, that the centrifuges are located in a single spot and we have these bombs and they're called bunker busters, they're 2,000 pound bombs. We can blow up Pickaxe Mountain in about an hour from now. All he has to do is give the order. And what's more, the Israelis who have been sitting on the sidelines and are happy to sit on the sidelines because the strait, if the strait is the issue, Israel is not involved in the strait. Israel's involved. Israel has specific things to deal with in Lebanon with the proxy war, and it has specific things to deal with Iran on the nuclear program. If they have discerned this in Pickaxe Mountain, if that intelligence is reliable, one can assume that this leak exists as a spur to focus the administration's attention on the fact that it has a big fat target sitting there, stationary target, not mobile missiles, not things on the shoreline. They know where it is. And Trump every now and then says, we'll blow up Pickaxe Mountain and then doesn't do it. If he does it. Action is what changes political dynamics. The tit for tat is an air version of World War I trench warfare in which for four years nothing happens and people move like 45ft in a month out of the trench they're in and then have to dig yet another one. So either he's going to change the facts on the ground here that you laid out really well about how the goals that were systematically part of the Iran effort, none of them has been achieved and he will attempt to achieve them, or I think Eliana's right, then he should just turn tail. Yeah,

[John Washington]

the problem is that he's simultaneous. I mean, there's a renewal of stories about intimations of resumed negotiations, resumed talks. So he's, while we're getting this report about Iran moving centrifuges, he's seemingly also on this negotiating track. So that's the problem right now because he's sort of instituted one plan that runs counter to the other, which is, the other is based on the facts on the ground.

[Seth Mandel]

Right. Well, and J.D. vance made, made an interesting comment on this, on the Rogan, on the, on the 47 hour Rogan hangout that he did. The, the Rogan philosopher. Yeah.

[Jon Podhoretz]

I thought at the end they were both going to sing you'll Never Walk Alone and Weep, you know,

[John Washington]

but they,

[Seth Mandel]

you know, he said at one point he's, he, J.D. vance, the person responsible for overseeing the general architecture of these talks. Right. Said that the thing that needed to be done regarding Iran's nuclear program has already been done. This is the fundamental thing. I don't know whether he's right or not, but he said the thing that had to be done was to stop Iran from, you know, to, to, to, to bomb its, its nuclear installations, to make it so that they couldn't race to a bomb and, and to make it so that they can't rebuild their bomb building infrastructure. And J.D. vance, the vice President, said that's what we did. So that, that is within the administration there is this belief that none of this is necessary while the President is out there saying this, at least part of this war is about Iran's nuclear program and really finishing it off. But the guy negotiating on behalf of the United States doesn't believe that. And so Trump, Trump doesn't believe it

[Jon Podhoretz]

either because Trump says they're finished, they're through, they're finished. They're through, they're finished. They're through. Then, then they fire a missile at Kuwait. It hits something. They fire a missile at Jordan, they kill three of our guys. 400Americans have been wounded, it turns out, in Iranian attacks since the war started. Now that's a small number, but we haven't committed troops on the ground anywhere. So that means we're talking about service personnel that are just stationed in the Middle east getting hit in the crossfire. He's the one. He still is hewing to the line that what's going on here are kind of like, I don't know, death rattles or it's just the last desperate efforts of a dying man trying to fight us off or something like that. And that flies in the face of reality. From what we can tell, Ruel Gorecht and Rey Takea Have a piece in the Wall Street Journal this morning that explains how really Trump's conduct of the war has caused a form of solidarity inside Iran that did not exist before the war. That it's not the rally round the flag thing that you would think it might be right, that the public is like, how dare you attack us? It is that the disparate elements of the regime now realize that they will either hang together or they will surely hang separately. The IRGC is working in tandem with the political elements and the mullahs and all of that, and that the negotiations as well as the fire as well as the missiles, and these are all part of a singular strategy that gives Iran's renewed purpose. And that the triumph of the Hormuz strategy is like we're showing, we're showing the Great Satan that it's a hollow shell or they're a bunch of fools. And therefore.

[Seth Mandel]

And also. And also demoralizing to the public. Like, even if it's not causing the rally around the flag with the public, it's pretty demoralizing. If you are in the public and you've been the target of these crackdowns and you see this, you can, you know, you can. As Bob Dylan said, you know, you don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind is blowing.

[Jon Podhoretz]

Right.

[Seth Mandel]

And so I think just.

[Jon Podhoretz]

Okay, so. But I do think. And Chris held me out here, so things are not, you know, nothing in politics is baked in the cake. We didn't know Graham Platner was gonna like, collab.

[John Washington]

Okay.

[Jon Podhoretz]

Chris on the video did a. Eh, some things are baked in the cake.

[Abe Greenwald]

I'm ready to call 25 states in the 2028 presidential election.

[Jon Podhoretz]

Fair enough.

[John Washington]

Okay.

[Jon Podhoretz]

Yes, fair enough. Okay. But what I mean is that politics is dynamic. It responds to real world events and real, you know, and if we. I don't even know what I'm talking about here. But if we won the war in Iran. Cuz he's not defining what victory is, but if we won the war in Iran before October 15, even though Democrats don't seem to care, and even though it's foreign policy and Americans don't care and all of that, but if it were an undeniable fact that we had achieved our aims in Iran, which is why I think he said he always wanted to get the dust. He wanted a ceremony where they would hand him the dust.

[Abe Greenwald]

Nuclear materials at the FIFA stadium. They would have. The FIFA president would hand him. Hand him the dust. Yes.

[Seth Mandel]

And he would, he was, he was going to scatter them like ashes over the Gulf of America.

[Abe Greenwald]

Like Salt Bay. Yes.

[Jon Podhoretz]

No, he was going to run into the picture where they're handing in the so. So but if, if there were a decisive moment where Trump scored a personal triumph of some sort or the Republicans scored a triumph of some sort of. It's July 21st. The election is November. What November 2nd, 4th, I don't know.

[Abe Greenwald]

Yes, I'll definitely be there.

[Jon Podhoretz]

We are. I mean that would be something. I mean

[Abe Greenwald]

the only thing worse than an unpopular war is losing an unpopular war. And what the Republican. So do you remember when the President was saying to the Iranians for public consumption and Democrats were pouncing they pounceth on I don't care about people's finances, I don't care about midterms. I'll do anything that I want. I'll destroy your civilization. Nothing matters to me going madman theory. And the world looked at that and said that's not true, that's not true. This is when you talk to hawkish Republicans, the appetite for any kind of ground troops is basically zero. Right there. There's this. I'm sure if we talk to Tom Cotton or whoever, there'd be somebody who would make the case for we have to seize territory on the strait. We've got to be credible deterrent that I'm sure we could find people individual Republicans, rip Lindsey Graham, who would, who would make a forceful case for why the deployment of U.S. forces inside the territorial boundaries of Iran is important and necessary to bring the war to a successful conclusion. 90% of Republicans are going to be no, they're just going to say it's a midterm. We're not putting we. The psychology. JD Vance is so interesting in this and his stuff about Israel is undermining. It's a cointelpro secret effort by the Israelis to sabotage these negotiations and make me look bad. It's like brother, you don't need any help from Israeli intelligence to make this look bad. This has looked bad from the beginning. It has been unpopular the whole time. And the idea that at this point there is any appetite even among maga, like, you know, the three kinds of republic, the three kinds of Republicans, always Trump, never Trump and always Republican. The always Republican. The people who are like just tell me where to vote. You just tell me where to vote cuz I'm voting, I'm here to vote against Democrats. There's no appetite among those people for any kind of ground troop commitment. The Iranians pretty obviously knew that this was the limiting reagent on Trump's undertaking. And you guys would know this better than I do. I assume that what happened was that back in January the Pentagon said, okay, here's how we could, we could proceed against Iran. And there's scenario one, which is we get lucky, it's a Venezuela situation, four to five weeks, we knock out the leadership and the whole thing falls apart. And we find ourselves with, like we did in Syria, a compliant partner in da da, da, da, da. And then I assume that General Kaine or whomever was like, and then there's scenario two, and then there's scenario three, and then there's scenario four. And scenario four is we have to go all in on Iran, right? We gotta, like, we gotta go. And I assume that what happened was Donald Trump and the power of positive, the Norman Vincent Peale presidency, that Donald Trump was like, no, I'll take a. And they said, no, no, no, no, we don't mean that. You get to pick which one of these we're telling you these are the potential kinds of scenarios that are gonna play out. And he'd stop listening, started it. And when the scenarios that had been laid out for him, other scenarios start to come to pass, he's like, nope, I want to go back to scenario A. I want to go back to scenario. I want a. I told you guys I want a. And now I'm mad at you. And my reading of history tells me that when you have a conflict like this, where you are in an escalation trap and neither side can figure out how to untangle themselves, that you end up with a bigger war. Right? Like, I don't know that that's true, but I don't think that there's a way, I don't see the way right now that this ends without a substantial U.S. commitment against Iran. I just. Whether we do it now or whether we do it, whether vice. The beautiful rhyme of history would be that President J.D. vance gets to be the one who gives the address to the nation about why the first expeditionary force is landing in Iran. But I don't see the way we get out of this in a poof with a handshake and some dust.

[Jon Podhoretz]

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[Matt Eberts]

I started with one shop. No college degree, no big investors. It was just a willingness to work. Over time that one shop turned into a multi billion dollar business called Crash Champions. All the lessons I learned along the way came from the grind. And that's what my show Pod Crash is all about. We have real conversations with people who've built things the hard way. We talked to founders, athletes and blue collar leaders who kept going when things got tough. You'll hear stories of grit, leadership and growth, plus real world lessons you can take back to your team and your life tomorrow.

[Jon Podhoretz]

When you get momentum, you step on the gas.

[Seth Mandel]

That's how you get separation from everybody else.

[Abe Greenwald]

I was at Harvard Law School. I was blah blah, blah. I looked up, let me tell you something, there's kids in my neighborhood putting in sheetrock that are smarter than you. AI is going to disrupt a lot of stuff.

[John Washington]

It is never going to disrupt physical

[Jon Podhoretz]

blue collar trade skill. And the guy just looked at me and he said, it's bloody impossible. So I asked him this question.

[Eric Gertler]

I said, it's impossible.

[Matt Eberts]

Unless that's Podcast with me, Matt ebert, watch on YouTube and listen wherever you get your podcasts.

[Jon Podhoretz]

So politically, Trump lives partially in a reality of his construction that he has actually successfully constructed and then partially in a fantasy that he has not been able to turn into a reality. And I think your description of the I like a thing is very, very well put. That when you provide a leader with the possible results of action. And he says, no, I want this end. And you're like, no, we can't get to the end. We don't know. And then he doesn't define the end. I mean, ultimately, I mean, I keep saying this like the day that we started the war, I think Abe and I both said, like, if this war doesn't Involve regime change, you're not gonna get your ultimate desideratum. The Iranian nuclear program, you know, is. What was it that that guy Bill Mitchell said? You know, MAGA was in our hearts all along or whatever. Like the Iranian nuclear program is in the hearts of the. Of the mull irgc. It doesn't matter.

[Seth Mandel]

Maybe the Iranian nuclear dust were the friends we made along the way.

[Jon Podhoretz]

They can start at any time if they have the money. They already have the plans for the centrifuges. I mean, it's like they have to go away. For the nuclear program to go away, ultimately the regime has to end if the nuclear ambitions are to end. Since he refused to define it that way because he was trying to hew to his prior commitment to not do regime change wars, when in fact he was doing a regime change war. But he wouldn't admit it. Here we are in the classic formulation that Bismarck used that I think that Kissinger quoted woe betide the statesman whose reasons for the war he began are less clear at the end than they were at the beginning beginning.

[Abe Greenwald]

Which is why JD Vance has to blame Israel. Right?

[Jon Podhoretz]

Right.

[Abe Greenwald]

It can't be that they went off on a lark, have had a misadventure and now find themselves. This is like, this is like Tony Blair where it's like, oh well, I was misled. If I would have known, I was insource sold. I was pulled into this conflict. I do not. I think there's a very small number of Americans on the left and the right who are obsessed with Jew hatred, who are obsessed with Israel, who are consumed by it. I think the number is very small. I think the political salience of the people. No group, the power of no group has been as overstated as the antisemite and anti Semitic curious on the left and right and their power. Like if we think about Michigan right now, the claim of the Democratic socialists and the claim of Abdul El Sayed is. Kamala Harris lost the election because of Israel. It's not true. There is an argument that I do not find ultimately persuasive, but I find interesting that in Michigan, which has the largest Arab American population in the country, quarter million Muslim Americans in the. Mostly in Wayne county in metro Detroit,

[Jon Podhoretz]

I think it's closer to 400,000 actually.

[Abe Greenwald]

But in the electorate.

[Jon Podhoretz]

450 in the electorate.

[Abe Greenwald]

Okay. Yeah. So if we, if we, so we say, is it possible that. That actual crossovers to Trump in this. That Michigan was close enough, it was the closest state of the battleground states. Is it possible? And the answer is, yeah, maybe it's possible. Then I look over to Wisconsin. No, there are not enough college campus radicals. There certainly are not enough the margins everyplace else. Kamala Harris lost the 2024 election because she seemed like a nincompoop. And prices were too high, by the

[Jon Podhoretz]

way, just to move to that point that you bring up. And then, Eliana, you got some stuff to tell us about the El Sayed family. Jake Sullivan. Jake Sullivan, the National Security Advisor to Biden, effectively told the New Yorker this week that Abdul El Sayed claim is true. According to Jake Sullivan, the Biden administration made a mistake in indulging Israel. And forgive me for forgetting, when they indulged Israel, since all I saw after the first six weeks of support was pull back. Don't do that. Yes, you can. No, you can't. Where's the ceasefire? You're being too mean. Where's the food? Stop the food. Have a ceasefire. Forget the hostages. Go in, go out. I've seen the maps. And Jake Sullivan, who wants to be Secretary of State in the next Democratic administration, has decided and has a wife who is a Democratic congressman from New Hampshire, has decided to join what is now increasingly a mainstream idea in the Democratic Party, if he is holding it, that this thing that you say is not true, which is that Kamala lost the war because of Biden being too soft on Israel or therefore because of Israel. That's a pretty astounding thing for him to say about people.

[Seth Mandel]

And by the way, Maggie Goodlander is his wife and she voted for the Massie amendment. Just so we know, she and Jake Sullivan are not the same person. All the caveats. But since we mentioned the New Hampshire connection.

[Jon Podhoretz]

So she voted to cut. Right. So she voted to cut off military assistance to Israel.

[John Washington]

Okay.

[Jon Podhoretz]

Anyway, this, to me, is a Rubicon crossing, because it means that the thing that happened to the liberals and the Left in the 1960s is now really happening full bore in the Democratic Party, as represented by the vote for the Massey Amendment. And by this moment, which is they are looking to the future and saying, those guys are the future. Abdul El Sayed, Graham Platner, Mamdani, Dariel, Aza, Chevalier. They are the future. And we are going to jump on their bandwagon. We are not going to fight them, we are not going to oppose them. We are not going to fight them for the soul of the party. We are going with them. Now, here's a good reason why they should be more prudent. From Eliana having to do with this key candidacy That's a great tease.

[Abe Greenwald]

What a good, that's, that's, that's a Sunday show level tease right there. That's excellent.

[Jon Podhoretz]

Thank you. Okay, well, you know, if you ever, you know, if you ever take vacation, I'd be happy to sit in for you.

[Eliana Johnson]

Real quickly on Sullivan. Yeah, I was not surprised at all to hear him say this. I think this is a finger in the wind statement about where he not thinks but knows the Democratic Party is going. Because he is maybe the most ambitious foreign policy figure in the Democratic Party. And if we look back to the last time he made headlines in early May, it was for rebooting the Democrat, you know, the outside Democrats foreign policy group, National Security Action, which he and Ben Rhodes are chairing. And they tapped to lead that group a Biden National Security Council official and anti Israel activist by the name of Maher Bitar, who is an El Sayed type. And that was a decision endorsed by Sullivan for again, these very reasons. That's where he thinks the party is going.

[Jon Podhoretz]

Thank you.

[Abe Greenwald]

But you've got scoop on El Said. That's what I'm, that's what I'm here for. That's what was promised.

[Eliana Johnson]

All right, so you know the Beacon has been doing lots of reporting on El Sayed. And this morning our piece is about his half sister who is a professor in the Department of Comparative Human Development

[Jon Podhoretz]

at my alma mater. Yes, I am sorry. I apologize to the American people for what you're about to hear at the

[Eliana Johnson]

University of Chicago, Chicago, who I was most struck that she chastised Bernie Sanders in the wake of October 7, 2023 for condemning Hamas. And she was arrested last July at an anti ice protest for spitting on the cops and made headlines. Then she has a different last name. Her name is Aman Abdelhadi. And so she hasn't been connected to El Sayed. I'm sure you guys will be shocked to hear he hasn't been featuring her in campaign videos or bringing her out the campaign trail. Although he just did do. And he just did start airing an ad campaign with his step grandparents who have the last name Johnson, your cousin

[Jon Podhoretz]

right there.

[Eliana Johnson]

Ms. Abdelhadi has not been featured. She also is a vicious anti Israel activist and a campaigner against the police. We have a tweet embedded in the piece where she says, good morning Joma Mubarak and f the police. And she savaged. She herself appears to be gay, but she savaged participants in a gay rights protest after the A Pulse nightclub shooting for praising the cops who were protecting them. The University of Chicago has also launched an investigation into her for her participation into an event where she got up and said, f the University of Chicago, described the university as a colonial landlord and a police force, and said essentially that she had only decided to stay engaged in the university because she realized it was a potent source of, you know, people who she could organize for her Palestine activism.

[Seth Mandel]

Okay, I love, by the way, just as an aside, I love that academia is like this. This place somehow where you can stand up and say, f my employer. And it's just like it's not actually a big deal.

[Abe Greenwald]

Response was, abe does it all the time. That's all Abe ever does.

[Eliana Johnson]

That actually was their respons.

[Jon Podhoretz]

Okay, I'm now going to take this on a slight tangent because everything is coming together here. I just want to read to you. So she is a member of the Department of Comparative Human Development at the University of Chicago. What is that now?

[Abe Greenwald]

What is comparative human development?

[Jon Podhoretz]

Let me explain that. When I was at the University of Chicago, there were majors in major. The studies world had not yet happened. The breakup into studies and the sort of Balkanization of these sorts of things. So this sort of thing did not happen when I was there, but I did graduate 43, 44 years ago. About the Department of Comparative Human Development on the University of Chicago's own website, quote, the Department of Comparative Human Development is an interdisciplinary program at the critical edge of thought and research in the social sciences, examining what it means to be human during a contemporary moment marked by rapid social, technological and ecological chains, massive global developments of people and ideas, and wide ranging forms of inequality. We conduct interdisciplinary, holistic and comparative research and scholarship focused on individual lives within various changing and heterogeneous contexts. Is this sociology? Members are committed to examining each other.

[Eliana Johnson]

It used to be in sociology.

[Abe Greenwald]

Oh God.

[Jon Podhoretz]

As simultaneously sociocultural, biological and psychological beings who change over development and historical times. It's a unique space for research addressing topics including difference, equality, power in multicultural societies, the development, symbolic and embodied processes involved in learning and socialization, and the social shaping of vulnerability and resilience in relation to shifting categories such as gender, race, class, age, sexuality and ability, among others. And finally, they do research in both non us and us settings using diverse methods, which includes qualitative interviewing and field research with, quote, non human animals. So apparently this is the new term. You cannot just refer to animals. You have to say non human animals, since humans are of course animals. And this seems to be privileging humans over, you know, let's say you Know, cockroaches. Okay, so they're getting what they paid for at Chicago. Like she is. She's right there. She's like, puzzle piece fits right there in the middle, makes, you know, completes the puzzle of psychotic campus turnover to radical bullshit. And there she is, you know, I mean, it is amazing. And there she is. And her brother is, you know, talking about giving Medicare for all, while his wife, her sister in law, doesn't take Medicare for her patients.

[Abe Greenwald]

Can I just point out the challenge of Abdul El Sayed. So he is often styled as the Midwest Mamdani. And while I know I speculate that there are not a huge number of Mamdani fans on this podcast currently, that I am not that New Yorker.

[Eliana Johnson]

Yeah, Matt left. So, yeah.

[Abe Greenwald]

So I assume that this is not a DSA hangout. Zoran Mamdani is a gifted politician who is really. He thinks about communication constantly. That is an Instagram account with a mayor's office attached to it and is really good. And the other thing that Mamdani is very good at is he is very flexible. Right. He is loose as a goose. Brother, you want me to go down and hang out with Donald Trump and bring him a dummy front page to make him feel. Yeah, sure, whatever. Mamdani has had multiple identities in his life. He's been the rapper, he's been the activist, he's been whatever. And I'm not saying that he doesn't believe anything, but I don't think his faith or what I think these things are, I think he wears them loosely. Abdul El Sayed is a believer, right? He believes things. And when you look at his family, when you look at his life, when you look at his career, when you look at what he's about, he believes in these things. He is adamant. And where Mamdani and I was out in Michigan, nexstar hosted a debate out there. I was there. I saw him. I saw him in the reporter scrum. I watched him do all the stuff. And El Sayed is glib, he's quick, he is good at staying on message. But I think the reason he is struggling to put that away in Michigan is that he is actually, and I don't mean this in a pejorative way, he is actually radical. He has actually radical ideas and he has actually radical beliefs. And I think the reason that he's getting creamed with black voters, which is if he loses this election, it will be because of black voters, mostly in Wayne County. If you saw the Detroit News poll, he's down 2 to 1 with black voters in Michigan Democratic politics. You don't want to be down 2 to 1 with black voters. And I think his ultimate problem is that he is a true believer. And in 2026American politics, that can be. That can be a hindrance.

[Seth Mandel]

Yeah, I mean, I think that's exactly right. Mamdani is like. Is. Is what he is, which is like a. He looks like a woke liberal. He sounds, I should say, like a woke liberal raised through academia. He doesn't sound like an Islamist, you know, sleeper agent of some kind. You know, whatever. Mamdani seems like he's just totally from a different world than that.

[Jon Podhoretz]

Dariel Chevalier seems like an Islamist. I mean, she's a convert to Islam after October 7th. Oh, yeah.

[Eliana Johnson]

Yeah, she is.

[Jon Podhoretz]

Oh, yeah, she is.

[Eliana Johnson]

I don't think that El Sayed, though, is any more of a true believer than Mamdani, particularly on the Israel issue. Look at Mamdani's wife. Look at his father. That really is the through line of his career. I. Despite El Sayed's political talent, which I think is significant, I just think he's worse at hiding it than Mamdani, who is a real talent, or just. It's either that or he's less willing to give in on it out of principle. In that interview with Tapper over the weekend, it would have been, yes, was

[Abe Greenwald]

I was gonna raise.

[Eliana Johnson]

Right.

[Abe Greenwald]

Yes.

[Eliana Johnson]

It would have been quite easy for El Sayed to say, you know what? That was silly. The ayatollah's dead. He was an oppressor of Muslims. I mean, the third possibility is he's actually afraid of this dearborn Muslim community. I mean, he is obviously sympathetic to them. And that's something Mamdani didn't have to contend with.

[Abe Greenwald]

This is my point, which is rootless. Cosmopolitanism has its advantages in politics. And I think I see Mamdani as a citizen of the world who is fluent in many cultures and in many places. And the Obama comparison there, for me is pretty obvious. Like, he's kind of an internationalist. He's kind of a whatever. And he knows how to. He's a smoothie. Right. And I see that. But whether it is. So you raise the possibility. Very legitimate possibility of fear. Right. That he's captured by his base, that he'd like to be as pliable as Mamdani publicly, but he's afraid of his base. So I don't know how much it is that he is a true believer and how much of it is he is captured by the base that he's in. But the radicalism of. And this goes back to the original point about how salient is Israel as an issue really? And for many of those 250,000 voters in metro Detroit, it is the number one issue. Right. And what I am observing in the Democratic Party right now is not dissimilar to what I observed in the Republican party in the 2010s, which is on large and important questions that have implications for the future. The party establishment says. And was it which. Whose wife is the congresswoman? Which guy?

[Eliana Johnson]

Jake Sullivan.

[Abe Greenwald]

Jake Sullivan, yeah. So for the Jake Sullivans, for the Republicans, the Republican equivalent of Jake Sullivan in 2010, where it's like, is Barack Obama a secret Muslim? Look, we're not going to, let's not waste time on that. We're focused on cap and trade. Is Lou Dobbs right? That a caravan loaded with Muslim extremists, Islamists, is snaking towards the US Border as part of an invasion to replace us? Let's not focus on these things. Let's go ahead and stipulate. So I watched the Republican Party lose its mind out of hoping that they. That the crocodile would eat them last. Right. I watched the Republicans give in. Give, just give in. Just give in. So what I'm watching Democrats do right now on the question of Israel, but on the questions of antisemitism more broadly, is we don't need this heat right now. Just give them what they want. Let's take this issue off the table. We just don't. I just don't want to talk about it right now. And because it's a low salience issue with persuadable voters, it makes political sense at the beginning. I'm not going to have a fight over this right now. They just want to cut off funding for Israel. Israel says they want funding cut off, too. Let's just like just, let's burn this one and go on. What they don't know is that they will be captive in the same way that the Republicans became captive.

[John Washington]

If I could I say I just want to just. On this Mamdani El Sayed comparison, to my mind, there's no clear way to really discern who's more of a true believer here. I think they're both pretty much true believers. I mean, look, I wrote way back when that I think to understand Mamdani's animus toward Israel and involvement in groups that support Hamas and so on, that if you're looking at it through an Islamist lens, that's wrong. It's the radical socialist lens. So to that extent. I think that's true, although I'm less certain of that as time goes on, but I think that's true. But I think the real deal difference here is that Mamdani is usually superficially more pleasant than El Sayed. But, I mean, if you look at how they both handled the question of do you believe in Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state? It's arguable that Mamdani's line was sort of more inflexible than El Sayed. El Sayed was asked this by Livia Rheingold a few months back or a few weeks back, and he said, well, what is it? What do you mean by a Jewish state? You know, and he sort of, you know, he actually tried to, I don't know, you know, be philosophical about it. What did Mamdani say? I do not believe in any. I cannot support any state that privileges one religion over another. It's false, but. And inflexible answer. So it's very hard for me to really, you know, to tease out the differences. If you're saying Mamdani's more gifted politician, I agree.

[Jon Podhoretz]

Okay, so I want to talk about the selling of the soul for a second here, because I was. I've been reading, I recommended this last week.

[Abe Greenwald]

Make me an Offer, John.

[Jon Podhoretz]

Now, I was reading last week I recommended this pretty remarkable book by Zaid Dorn, the son of Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dorn, the two Weather Underground people. And it just came out, his memoir, Dangerous, Dirty, Violent and Young. And I hit a passage that I think is incredibly resonant for now about the Democrats and where they're going and the danger posed to them by the concessions that they are making. And it is Bernadine Dorn who ended up as a domestic terrorist who was on the run for more than a decade with her family after the after several criminal events in which she was materially involved. And in 1968, she had not yet become a radical, violent terrorist. She had actually, in 67, done some work for Martin Luther King trying to find out who the bad landlords were in Chicago when she was a student at the University of Chicago Law School. And then she joined the Students for a Democratic Society, which was the the umbrella group that was started at the University of Michigan in 1962 that was essentially the national group of leftist organization on college campuses and against the war in Vietnam and others. And when they had a meeting two months after King's death, Zaydoorn writes, sds held a meeting to elect new leadership. And even though she had been a member of the group for less than a year, Bernadine was put forward as a candidate, part of the revolutionary youth movement Slate, promising to take SDS in a more militant, radical direction. They met in plenary session to ask questions of the new candidates. Bernadine, the only woman on stage, faced vocal skepticism about her radical bona fides. Do you consider yourself a socialist? A man in the audience called out, drawing jeers and mocking laughter from the crowd. Now remember, in our context, the word socialist now is in very good odor with Democrats. Democrats have a favorable view of the term socialist, okay? Bernadine stared him down for a long moment of silence. I consider myself, she said finally, a revolutionary communist. She was elected in a landslide. Suddenly, at 26, Bernadine was one of the three co./2 national leaders of SDS. That same year, the movement of the organization served above 100,000. There is no way to be committed to nonviolence, Bernie. In total crowd of SDS members in the middle of the most violent society history has ever created. And 18 months later, she was involved in bombings and the making of bombs that led to the blowing up of a townhouse in Greenwich Village. And she was on the run. And why do I bring this up? Because the DSA is the sds, and we are seeing a nascent. A boulder is rolling down a hill. Now they're doing an interesting thing because they are actually running for office, which SDSNICs didn't really start doing until after 1972, after the wave of terrorism. And they realized that they needed to sort of, like, get out of it and start, like, functioning in proper society. But if this socialist movement gained steam, and since so many of them, as we hear them on TikTok and others say they're not really socialists, but they are communists and they are revolutionaries and they believe in armed resistance, and their heroes are Hamas, who are violent resisters and all of that. How long before Bernadine Dorn 2026 turns into bombs? 2028. How long?

[Seth Mandel]

Well, the SDS posters have been all over campus with the. We should say with the. Excuse me. The Tentifada has had, you know, SDS was the Bring the War Home post. One of their more famous, you know, posters was Bring the War Home. The tentifata folks held up signs that were designed in, you know, to reflect modern. The modern Gaza left. But the general design was borrowed from the sds. And the words on the sign were Bring the War Home. I mean, literally, they are. They are aping them they are copying them. They are using the banners. And there was even an SDS political cartoon that was the subject of some controversy at one of the university. I don't remember which it was, but I want to say Harvard. But it was basically accused. You know, it was trying to resuscitate tensions between black students and Jewish students. And it was using an actual SDS ad and cartoon from an earlier time.

[John Washington]

So they.

[Seth Mandel]

They've gone to the archives, and they are building their movement in large part based on this.

[Jon Podhoretz]

Right? So this is something. So if that's what Jake Sullivan wants to start associating himself with, with the sort of Cassius Hatheline and hungry look strategy that he is adopting here to figure out his way through to having a powerful political role behind the scenes in American politics for the rest of his life, he better keep his powder dry, because yesterday somebody threw a Molotov cocktail at the ice station in lower Manhattan. Now, a Molotov cocktail is not a bomb yet. It's not a bomb yet.

[Abe Greenwald]

It was not to diminish. He dumped gas. He dumped some. To be technical, in our definition of Molotov of cocktails, Molotov is. It's supposed to go kaboom. He dumped gasoline on the ground in front, and he's obviously, it goes without saying, he's unwell.

[Jon Podhoretz]

It's ice, but that's ice. So we do have. Ice is becoming the institution. If an institution triggers actual armed resistance, and you could say that we've seen some elements of this over the last year, it will be ice.

[Abe Greenwald]

Kurt Vonnegut, my favorite. Is this a pro or anti Vonnegut podcast? Where are we?

[Jon Podhoretz]

It depends on. It's pro Harrison Bergeron and anti warehouse podcast.

[Abe Greenwald]

All right, I gotta read. I've gotta read. Now, the Vonnegut line that always comes back to me these days is, we are what we pretend to be, so we should be careful about what we pretend to be. And I see people pretending to be SNCC members and aping the violent radicalism that plagued the Nation in the 1970s. And Weather Underground cosplay. I see people doing brown shirt cosplay and pretending to be Nazis. And I think you all are going to fool around. And what. Elian has heard it many times, so bear with me as I repeat it. It is my theory of the pumpkin spice latte, which is Starbucks does not care whether you enjoy your pumpkin spice latte ironically or sincerely, as long as you buy it. And it's even better if you tweet it right. It's Even better if you want to make fun of buying a pumpkin spice latte and say that you're a basic bee and wearing ugg boots and tweet it out and make fun of it. Great. Engaging with the product is even better. As long as you're buying. And I think we have this thing among over educated or well educated elites looking for meaning in their lives in a. What's his name? A shumpetarian hellscape where we lack creative destruction and we have this surplus elite problem that we have all these people pretending to be dangerous things and they will end up becoming those dangerous things. It will come to pass. And when I. Did you. Did you see one battle? What was the review. What was the Padoretz review of one battle after another.

[Jon Podhoretz]

I thought it was very brilliant. And it does have ultimately a pretty evil message at the end, which is that failed revolutionaries can give birth to successful, wonderful revolutionaries using the same tactics in a more modern fashion.

[Abe Greenwald]

I agree there was a Pollyanna ish like, and then we'll be the good revolutionaries in the future. But when I started watching that movie, my son, the brilliant Newman Steinerwald, was like, no, you should see it. And I was like, I don't want to see this agit prop garbage. I'm not interested. I don't need that. And it's too long. And when I finally did watch it, I was like, oh, and I agree with you about the conclusion and the sunny uplands of history part, but I thought, oh, we're closer to this than I thought. We're closer to this than I thought we were. And things like people dumping gas on the ice, like, how many? How many? How much of this stuff does it. How many of these do you take? How many Charlottesvilles? How many? Whatever does it take? Until we're like, well, I guess we're just doing it now. Now we're just actually doing it. And it is a concern.

[Seth Mandel]

Okay, well, Chris, my favorite thing about the dsa, about the sds, rather, is this story that William F. Buckley, when he wrote out the phrase Students for a Democratic Society would put a parenthesis sic next to the word democratic.

[Jon Podhoretz]

Okay, I gotta finish with an anecdote about Commentary magazine.

[Abe Greenwald]

I want it.

[Jon Podhoretz]

1962, a manuscript comes into the offices of Commentary magazine, then edited by my father by Tom Hayden, and it is the manifesto of the Students for a Democratic Society. As Commentary was then thought to be the vanguard publication of a young, active, exciting left that was unsatisfied with present day liberal nostrums and that sort of thing and he read it and he thought it was pretentious, ridiculous gobbledygook, and he rejected it and sent it back to Tom Hayden. And so there is. That was one of those hinge moments in history where Commentary could have been, could have been the surfacer of the Students for Democratic Society in intellectual circles. But that was, that was not to be so. Among the many wise decisions my father made in his life, that may have been among the wisest. Anyway, Chris Styrolt, I was about to

[Abe Greenwald]

see you at Port Huron.

[Jon Podhoretz]

I was about to call you. Yeah, the Port Huron statement. Exactly. I was about to call you Jim Traficant because that's the name that you put on your zoom here and just gave me wonderful memories of America's most demented, comically demented politician in our lifetimes.

[Abe Greenwald]

Mobbed up and nutty as a peach orchard boar. Youngstown's finest, James Trafficant.

[Jon Podhoretz]

There we go. Him. He. And yes. So congrats. So to our pseudo gym Trafficant. Chris Starwald, thank you for joining us again. And for Abe, Seth and Eliana, I'm John Pod Horitz. Keep the camel burning, Sam.