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- [00:00]
John Podhoretz
Hey, it's John. I want to talk to you about Shopify. A lot of people talk to me about starting podcasts. This podcast is 10 years old. It's in a different place from a lot of podcasts because we're obviously part of a nonprofit institution and it's not a way that we are seeking to earn our livelihoods. But a lot of people look at this and say this is something I can really do to create a business and run the business and do it in a really comfortable, practical and serious way. Gotta wear a lot of different hats when you start your own business. Can be very intimidating. But one of the things that I know from a lot of people is that if your to do list is growing and growing and growing and that list starts to overrun your life, you need a tool that not only helps you out, but simplifies everything that can be a game changer for millions of businesses. That tool is Shopify, the commerce platform behind millions of businesses around the world and 10% of all e commerce in the US from household names to brands. Just getting started. You get started with your own design studio. With hundreds of ready to use templates, Shopify helps you build a beautiful online store to match your brand style. You can accelerate your content creation because it's packed with helpful AI tools that write product descriptions, page headlines, and even enhance your product photography. You get the word out like you have a marketing team behind you. Easily create email and social media campaigns wherever your customers are scrolling or strolling. And best yet, Shopify is your commerce expert with world class expertise in everything from managing inventory to international shipping to processing returns and beyond. If you're ready to sell, you're ready for Shopify. Turn your big business idea into kaching. With Shopify on your side, sign up for your $1 per month trial and start selling today at shopify.com commentary go to shopify.com commentary that's shopify.com commentary hope for the Expect a worse Some preacher.
- [02:25]
Matt Continetti
Pain Some die of thirst no way.
- [02:29]
John Podhoretz
Of knowing this way it's going Hope for the best expect the worst welcome to the Commentary Magazine Daily Podcast. Today is Monday, August 4, 2025. I am Jon Podhoritz, the editor of Commentary Magazine, reminding you that on October 19th here in New York, we will be having our 15th annual roast, the annual event of Commentary, Inc. The organization that publishes the magazine that produces this podcast that produces our website. It is our annual fundraiser. It is a remarkable event unlike any kind of fundraiser you have ever been to. An evening of hijinks. Hilarity good comedy. And it's over in two hours, and people love it. And if you want to find out more about it and about our roastee, Cliff asness, go to commentary.org roast and I believe we also have one more announcement before we go, and I will turn to Matt Continetti, our booster, our video booster.
- [03:37]
Noah Rothman
Well, thank you, John, for that. I just want to remind everyone to go to our YouTube channel, the Question Commentary Magazine podcast, YouTube channel, to like and subscribe our our channel and perhaps to watch the podcast on video, if you so desire. I say this because I gave a reminder last week to go out and do the like and subscribe to our channel. And we picked up about over 200 subscribers over the weekend. We are now at 18,600 subscribers. You know, I set the goal of reaching 20,000 by Labor Day weekend, the end of the summer. I think we can do that if we maintain this pace. So as I said last week, you know, when your family members aren't looking, when they. When they set their iPhones down, hack into. Hack into the phone, you know, pick it up. I'm sure you know the password. Go straight to YouTube and like and subscribe. You can also accost strangers on the street maybe, you know, do whatever you can get us up to 20,000. And when we do that, I think we're going to have a reward in mind. Also, while I have the mic, I want to give a shout out to the Commentary podcast listener who introduced himself to me on the flight back from Las Vegas yesterday. Yes, I was in Las Vegas over the weekend, and I didn't catch the name of the listener because you don't want to interrupt the boarding process. You know, big stickler. Got to get to your seats, got to get in there so they can shut the door and we can get the flight in the air. But it was great seeing our listeners. We have the best audience in podcast land, I really do believe.
- [05:22]
John Podhoretz
I think that's absolutely true. And now I have to ask you, before we move on, I have to ask you this question. Do you check the bag or do you carry on the bag?
- [05:32]
Noah Rothman
We carried on. All right, we carried on. But, you know, not oversized.
- [05:38]
John Podhoretz
No, you can't.
- [05:39]
Noah Rothman
And very quick.
- [05:41]
John Podhoretz
Okay, So I have now this summer, been doing an experiment where sometimes I check and sometimes I carry on. And depending on the size of the airport, I think checking isn't a bad option anymore. It used to be kind of you were worried you'd lose your bag as long as you're going nonstop. Like, if you're going from New York to la, and the walk from the gate to the baggage claim and the exit is like 15 minutes. It's not so bad to check because by the time you get there, the bags are coming off the carousel. So. And. And obviously you then don't have to carry. Have the bag with you for an hour before you get on the plane. So I am changing. I am maybe shifting.
- [06:30]
Noah Rothman
I think you're a cultural leading indicator here, because I have sensed a shift in the conventional wisdom toward checking. And sometimes we check as well. A direct flight. That's great. Yeah. And it does work out much, much better than before. But in this case, we carried on.
- [06:47]
John Podhoretz
Okay. I just wanted to. Okay. Because I'm trying to. I'm trying to delay getting to the heart of the matter today because I'm so upset about so many things. Wait, before.
- [06:59]
Abe Greenwald
Before that, I want to weigh in. Yeah, I. I check everything because I don't want to deal with that fierce scramble for overhead space. Everyone has now become a competitive expert on, you know, where, what fits where. And it used to be that what you carried on was above you, and that never happens anymore.
- [07:27]
John Podhoretz
That's now ruined one of the many.
- [07:29]
Abe Greenwald
Many differences in flying today from years ago, and I don't want to deal with that. So I'd rather wait and I lose bags. But to me, anything's better than having to go through that process once I.
- [07:43]
John Podhoretz
Get on the plane. You now you have to.
- [07:46]
Christine Rosen
I have to weigh in with my personal luggage philosophy, so I. I can't really choose. I see the trend changing, and I agree that I'll probably check more often. But I also, like, I went to Japan for two weeks with, like, an oversized backpack that I checked, so I can pack really light. But I also, I think for longer trips now, I'm going to try this because I'm with Abe. I hate the. The fighting that goes on. And you can just slip an airtag in your checked bag now, and you can just track it the minute you get off the plane. And it's harder to lose or steal luggage now because of the air tag. So I'll try it. We'll see. I might turn over a new leaf.
- [08:20]
John Podhoretz
Okay. The airtag is very important for trains, by the way, in my opinion, because people can very easily steal your bag off a. Off a train if you put it in the rack on Amtrak by the door. And so I know a couple of people who have found their bags because they have an air tag in it. All right, just to introduce you guys, formerly executive editor, A. Greenwald High Abe Hi, John saying hi. Okay, social media column, social media, social commentary columnist Christine Rosen. Hi, Christine.
- [08:53]
Christine Rosen
Hi, John.
- [08:53]
John Podhoretz
And Washington commentary columnist Matthew Donnati.
- [08:56]
Noah Rothman
Hi, John. I have one more piece of fan service, and that is during the mailbag episode. I put out a request to again, our wonderful audience asking if there had been any Catholic theological arguments made in defense of America's use of atomic weapons to end the Second World War. And two, two readers sent me very excellent, well written, lengthy explanations and pointed to different arguments that have been made at a different theoretical and philosophical levels. However, as I mentioned, I was in Las Vegas over the weekend, so I haven't had time to really delve into the substance of these. But I do want to let everybody know such an argument from a Catholic perspective in defense of the use of atomic weapons has been made very controversial, as one might imagine. But it has been made and we have.
- [09:49]
Christine Rosen
I believe you don't read Catholic theology when you're in Vegas, Matt.
- [09:52]
Noah Rothman
I mean, come on. Too many flashing lights.
- [09:55]
John Podhoretz
All right, well, we are going to talk some just war stuff later. But before we do that, the big story in Washington over the weekend and in the sort of precincts of elite opinion was the really startling dismissal by the Trump administration and by Donald Trump of the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics following the release of the pretty bad jobs numbers on Friday and the fact that even more important, and that's what was what I want to get to revisions of the numbers for June and May that basically knock down the idea that there has been any job growth during the Trump administration because these numbers were revised downward by hundreds of thousands of jobs. And so the administration's answer was something must be rigged and they fired the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics. And the wailing and gnashing of teeth and the pulling out of the hair and the, this is the, this is something that happens in banana republics. You know, you tell the leader a number he doesn't want to hear and he has you killed. And I am sympathetic to that argument that, you know, trying to tag the person who runs the Bureau of Labor Statistics with the fact that their numbers did not come in well is bad and sets a very bad precedent. However, and this is the however, there is something very, very, very broken about how we calculate the number of jobs and the unemployment rate and the condition of American employment that is revealed by these constant revisions. I have a chart here I sent to you guys about an hour ago of the jobs reports for the last 30 months. This is January to June, January 23rd to June 25th. So we're talking about most of it is the Biden administration. Okay? Over the course of this period, there have been 30 revisions. 30 revisions. 25 of them have been downward revisions, and five of them have been upward revisions. This is. They do two revisions, right? They do revision the first month, and the revision the second month and the second revision because. Becomes the official number for all time. So, you know, they have a quick and dirty number for a month, and then the next month they go and check their math, and then the month after that, they check their math again. And some of these revisions are really staggering. Okay, I'm just gonna throw them out. Like January 2023, the revision downward from the original reading was 73,000. In March 23 was 151,000. In May 23 was 112,000. These are all downward. In September, it was 178,000. In January, it was 234,000. In June 24, it was 119,000. In March of 2025, it was 108,000. Last month, it was 133,000 downward after two months. Here are the numbers that were revised upward. June 23, 48,000 upward from the initial reading. October 23, 36,000 up. December 23, 53,000 up. And then we have October 24, 32,000 up. November 24, 34,000 up. And December 24, 67,000 up. So I texted a friend of mine and I said, hey, why are they releasing these numbers monthly? Like, they should stop releasing. Releasing these numbers monthly. They're wrong. They're always wrong. They're never right, and they're never even right. Within, like, a margin of error that is explicable. Like, if they were within the margin, if they were, like, 10% off, that would be one thing. If they're 50 to 60% off routinely, nobody should be making economic macroeconomic guesses or stock choices or, you know, bond decisions or anything like that based on these numbers at all. We do not release GDP numbers except quarterly. Those, by the way, are also revised after they're released. But Trump may be behaving like, what.
- [14:53]
Noah Rothman
Did your friend say when you sent them?
- [14:54]
John Podhoretz
He said, okay, and he's a. He's a. He's a market analyst. He said, hold on. That's been discussed. But the argument is that the Fed, private business actors and markets want something more frequent. Well, congratulations to them. So what? Like, I would like, you know, there's also. I would also. I would also like to eat a box of Edmonds Donuts and not gain weight. But that I want to doesn't mean that I should or that I. Or that. Or that, you know, I mean, I guess I should be allowed to buy a box of Edmonds Donuts and eat all of them at once. But that markets want them, but they have an entirely distorting effect, not only on the markets, but on the political conversation. I don't care what the markets want.
- [15:47]
Noah Rothman
This, this conversation has reminded me of something that Erwin Stelzer once said. Irwin Stelzer, an economist, an investor, someone very important in the creation of the Weekly Standard magazine, wrote for the Weekly Standard throughout its history, still has a substack that I, I enjoy frequently. But I. This is 15 years or so ago. I was talking to Irwin about some editorial matter and he just made the offhand comment. He said, macro is nonsense. It's nonsense. Gdp, unemployment rate, labor statistics, they're all revised upward, downward. No one really has a clear idea of what's going on in the macro economy. And so he always focused on the micro, what you could see, what you could actually see in consumer behavior and, and productivity even. But the statistics are very amorphous, so they're always worth taking with the large grain of salt. The issue here is the number. You know, the data won't change if you swap out the person in charge, the actual commissioner. You know, she, she, I don't think she had much influence in the fact that no one really knows what's going on with the labor market at any given time.
- [17:10]
Christine Rosen
Well, and Trump's impulsivity in this case, I think harmed him politically in this sense. He had a bunch of his, you know, economics folks out there talking on the Sunday and weekend news shows, sort of playing up the numbers, saying, look at what Trump's done, these great things for the economy, promoting the tariffs and whatnot. And then they were asked, yes, but he just said all those numbers are bunk. And so that left them kind of stuttering and sputtering about how to respond to that. So he didn't need to do that. And Alicia Finley has a great opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal today where she points out, look, a lot of the problem here is actually structural, as John mentioned. And so to Matt' changing out the person at the top is not going to make a difference unless you either educate the public about what these numbers actually can and do predict and show, or as Alicia points out, you get more small businesses to report their numbers, you have a better, broader view of how the economy is actually Working in terms of hiring. So all of these things, there could be some structural issues. He didn't, his timing suggests this wasn't a structural issue. Sort of decision making moment on his part.
- [18:12]
John Podhoretz
Okay, I want to push back on this for a minute because I'm not saying that she is responsible at all because they had, they had a system. She came in, she oversees the system. She clearly wasn't hired to revolutionize the system, but she is a cog in the system. Her career, she worked at the Census Bureau on employer household dynamics. She was the labor markets economist in the Census Bureau center for Economic Studies. She worked for the Treasury Department. She was on the non political staff of the Biden Council of Economic Advisers. What I mean to say here is not that she has an ulterior motive in doing anything, but if this, if there needs to be a challenge to the way that the Bureau of Labor Statistics does business, or if we have this issue as we've had for 40 years with macroeconomic stats, we've had them forever. How do we calculate inflation? Huge issue. Because before the 1990s, inflation was calculated on a model that had been invented in the 1920s involving a basket of household goods, many of which most households no longer consumed in the numbers that they were. Like milk, like the price of milk, which is actually, oddly enough, the consumption of milk has dropped by like 80% per household or something from what it used to be. And so it's not as important as a measure of inflation. And so but somebody's got to make the decision to fix it. And of course, then there are all kinds of interests that say don't, don't remove that. Like milk is, you know, they're milk subsidies and whatever. I don't know. The basket of commodities rule on inflation had to be revisited. Productivity stuff had to totally be revisited because they were going on factory floor stuff rather than say what services were doing to enhance productivity. The idea that what appears to be a decade of bad measurement, as evidenced by the fact that there are two measures of employment issued by the Labor Department that are wildly in conflict with each other every month there's a household survey and then there's an employer survey and they don't say the same thing and never do. And they're way off from each other.
- [20:40]
Noah Rothman
Well, and think about just all the lessons we've learned about public polling over the course of the past 10 years.
- [20:48]
John Podhoretz
That's an important point.
- [20:49]
Noah Rothman
You know, so it's. And polling is essentially the way in which the BLS gets the labor data each Time. So who do you poll? Who responds this. These are all questions. So, yeah, I think that you're right. There's this structural issue that. That goes into all data.
- [21:08]
John Podhoretz
Yeah.
- [21:08]
Noah Rothman
That we're beginning to realize has to be looked at critically. Has to with incredulity, and you have to not take any one number as the most important datum. You need to have a larger sense of not only different figures, but also change over time. So this is an example of Trump kind of in his blunderbuss way, identifying a problem, but reacting to it in such a way that it causes this huge chorus of people saying, oh, this is the authoritarian playbook. It's just what Putin does. Now we're like China, where we don't. No one takes the Chinese economic. Economic data seriously. As, as an aside, you know who does take the Chinese economic data seriously? The mainstream media, because they always report how well China is doing without any skepticism whatsoever. But now they turn around when they can hit Trump and say, oh, no one believes China's data because they're an authoritarian state. So we have. It's like a classic Trumpian moment with the firing of the BLS head.
- [22:20]
Abe Greenwald
I agree. I think, you know, it's sort of, with all these things that Trump does, you have to remember, and I, I'm saying this not as a dig, because I'm very pleased with a lot that's gone on recently with the Trump administration, but there is still this element where everything is kind of still half idiocracy and half, oh, he's onto something, you know, and obviously the idiocracy part hits first. That's what everyone goes crazy about. And then as that fades, come the genuine arguments saying, you know, we have an actual problem here. He's identified something that would have otherwise gone on indefinitely.
- [23:04]
John Podhoretz
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- [24:31]
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- [24:58]
John Podhoretz
I mean, I wish that were the case in this case. I'm my observations here are really my own. I haven't seen anybody making this argument that I'm making here this morning, but I will tell you this story in 2012, the I'm so sorry. In 2012, yes, we get letters and people say John has to clear his throat. And I do have to clear my throat sometimes and and suck it up. That's all I'm saying before I go on in 2012. In September 2012, the Bureau of Labor Statistics released a very good employment number in the middle of the Obama reelection effort against Mitt Romney and the most respected corporate executive in America, if not the world at that time, though he was retired, was Jack Welsh. The former head of George Jack Welch had retired, but he was still a man of immense like reputation. And he said, there's something fishy here. How convenient this number is coming out this way. And within about 10 minutes his reputation was ruined forever. The entire world came down on him like a ton of bricks. And here's what they said. They said, Jack Welch doesn't know anything about how these statistics are gathered. You wonder how they're gathered. They there are these people, they're in a room in the Labor Department, they're in the basement. They are so secure. This number is so important to keep it secure. And without anybody knowing what it is, they have curtains on it so no one can even look in. Curtains on the windows. And like no One could get. They have a code and you have to scan the eyeball. I mean, it was, that was like getting into an ICBM silo is what they made it sound like. That's how seriously the security is. Nobody could play with the numbers. It is, you know, it's like there are 12 mathematicians who have never seen the light of day. There are the precogs from Minority Report lying in a, lying in basins of water. And that's where it comes from. And how dare he. And that was the end of Jack Welch. Now I'm going to tell a story about 1988 and the month of October in 1988. Because at 6:30 in the morning when I got to work as a speechwriter at the White House for Ronald Reagan in the last couple of months of the Bush, of the Reagan presidency and the Bush election effort, I was summoned into the White House chief of staff Kenneth Duberstein's office because at 8:30 or 9:30, wherever it was, the jobs report was going to be issued. And, and that, and they needed remarks for Reagan to deliver in the Rose Garden, which is now a giant pavilion without any grass, one of Trump's many.
- [27:56]
Noah Rothman
Garden is on the sides.
- [27:57]
John Podhoretz
Fair enough.
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Noah Rothman
Okay.
- [27:59]
John Podhoretz
And Ken Duberstein handed me the jobs report two hours before it was going to be released because it was really good and they wanted to get the numbers out. Now, I'm sorry, but I was told 24 years later that what had happened to me, the handing from the White House chief of staff into my hands a speechwriter, though I did have security clearance numbers that no one saw until the, you know, the magicians who created the Oobleck were going to release them through the window and, you know, pass the biometric scanning. So the minute that this happened, I was like, this is total bullshit. Of course the Obama White House had the job numbers early because if they had them early, if Reagan had them early, did they stop? Did somebody purify the system and say, I'm sorry, we can't possibly get these numbers early. That was an evil that was done by an earlier, much more corrupt administration. We, we the Clintons or we the Obamaans or we the Bushes will. We would never do such a thing. So I'm only saying this because when you hear the pins to the, to the political, the fact that this is just not a Larry Summers saying there's no way you could politicize this report and you couldn't and maybe you can politicize the data in the report. I'm not saying that you can't. But I have real world, real time evidence that politicians got their grubby little hands on the jobs report hours early, which was why it's so secretive and why you're not supposed to touch it, so that nobody could front run and start buying and selling stock before, you know, and save themselves or, you know, get themselves, you know, a leg up.
- [29:58]
Christine Rosen
But this is why the lack of discipline on Trump's part is unnecessary and harmful to him, because he made this specious claim that Kamala Harris, you know, got the numbers early and they, you know, that the numbers were manipulated to help her in the, in the election to make it look like things were better, when in fact, that didn't happen. The opposite happened, actually. The numbers came out during the election campaign, and they were bad for the Biden administration, not surprisingly. So I think that, you know, he has these instincts, but they're also very personal. You know, it's very much about this, this person is, is screwing us. So we're going to get rid of this person. Then the problem, I think in his own mind, maybe that presents an opportunity for the people around him to fix some of these issues. But that doesn't necessarily mean that's his goal. And I think this was, I'm sorry, I don't. This is not a win for Trump, just politically in terms of the messaging about how he behaved.
- [30:42]
Noah Rothman
But, you know, he really wants to fire someone.
- [30:45]
Christine Rosen
Yes.
- [30:46]
Noah Rothman
And that is, he wants to fire Fed Chairman Jerome Powell, who did not lower interest rates. I mean, the board did not lower interest rates with two dissents, but earlier last week, and Chairman Powell made that announcement saying that they're going to hold steady and they're still worried about inflation, only to have this job report come out 48 hours later showing, well, there may be weakness in the labor market and maybe the Fed should have lowered the interest rate just by a little bit, if nothing else. And so what does Trump do? Well, has he. He's, as he's been telling interviewer, interviewers, he, he doesn't want to. He won't. He has no plans to fire Jerome Powell because he's worried that markets would go haywire, there might be many financial crisis, something like that. So instead, he displaces that frustration on the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The bottom line for me is what is the actual state of the economy? And it seems to be very uncertain. And there are multiple inputs into that uncertainty. One is the tariffs. Clearly, they're having some effect. It's not quite the effect. Maybe that was feared last year. You're muted, John.
- [32:14]
John Podhoretz
So the GDP number that came out suggests that the reason that the tariffs didn't bite is that or didn't seem to be biting was that in the first quarter of 2024, everybody was buying like crazy to get inventory before the tariffs hit. And then they bought so much that in the second quarter they weren't importing anything, they weren't buying anything and economic activity slowed and the second quarter GDP number was pallid. And now what we don't know is what's going to happen between now and the end of the third quarter is.
- [32:53]
Noah Rothman
Yeah, well, it's actually because they bought so much in the first quarter, that number was low. And then a second quarter number came out and because of the, again, David Bonson talks about the screwy way that we calculate GDP, we had a 3% GDP in the second quarter. That's pretty good all things considered. Right, but underneath that data, there were some signs that maybe the tariffs are having a deleterious effect on the margins of the economy.
- [33:19]
John Podhoretz
Yeah, no, I did that. That's why.
- [33:21]
Noah Rothman
And then you combine that, you combine that with the interest rate, especially in the housing market. But at the same time, the we have this huge AI boom that's clearly affecting productivity in a great way. And it's also contributing to a lot of capital investments which, which are very good. The job numbers are interesting because what we found is that the growth in the job market is all private sector, which typically as a conservative you would champion. It's actually the government that's been shedding jobs, unlike during the Biden administration when government was a huge source of jobs. And the other interesting thing about the labor data is we're finding that the new jobs are going to native born Americans. From a Trump perspective, that's a win too because the Trump MAGA coalition wants these jobs to be taken by native born Americans instead. Of course, immigrants were during the Biden years, that was the huge source of job growth was through immigrant labor, as you might imagine, since we had so many immigrants coming in legally and illegally. So I would say right now the data is very murky and soft. And what it suggests is one, the Fed needs to lower rates, not by as much as Trump wants, but they need to lower rates. And two, we really need to start thinking about the pro growth agenda here as opposed to the more redistributive elements, including tariffs that Trump has been emphasizing.
- [34:57]
John Podhoretz
I think the larger point that I wanted started with and I want to end with here before we move on is that people feel like government is broken. And it is stuff like this that actually, without anybody really specifying it, helps with the attitude the government is broken. Because if Trump says, wait a minute, they're revising the jobs down, where all they do is revise, and then this comes out and it looks bad and I don't like it and I'm firing this person. And then the establishment says, nothing is wrong, nothing to see here. While the fight. While in the original and better Naked Gun, as opposed to the remake, Frank Drebin is standing in front of the fireworks factory as it's exploding, saying, there's nothing to see here. Clearly, there is a lot to see here. The federal government's way of measuring the US Economy and the data that they collect to measure the US Economy is deeply flawed. And there is no incentive inside the federal government, among the people who generally rise and attain positions of power and all that within the permanent bureaucracy, there is no incentive to alter the system, which is disruptive and difficult. And maybe you do it wrong, for all you know, maybe they've been testing new ways of doing it for 10 years, but they're keeping it quiet in another secret room with a. With biometrics and people precogs in a. In a tank. I don't know. But saying there's nothing wrong when clearly there's something wrong is no way to encourage people to feel as though the government is working well in service of the American people. And people like Larry Summers and others who decide to defend the system when the system is clearly broken are doing the system no favors. Because what happens then is Trump fires the head of the bls, as opposed to someone going to him saying, what the hell is going on? And they're like, we're about to roll out a new way of counting jobs numbers that we've been working on for five years, going to them and saying, it's not her fault. No one can do anything about this. This is just the way it's always been done is not reformist. It's not. It's, you know, it's wrong. And we have an entirely new kind of economy built over the last 50 years that clearly is not being measured properly by the way we count these things. Maybe we shouldn't count these things at all. Maybe there should be no centralized employment number, because we can't do it. We have 330 million people in the United States. There are, you know, 175 million of them are employed. Maybe it's impossible to measure on this scale.
- [37:45]
Christine Rosen
Well, we also have, I mean, as much as I want to see the movie made of your Minority Jobs report screenplay, that we actually are measuring in fine detail to Matt's earlier point, where you've got private equity, you've got investment. Anyone who does any sort of investment, insurance, anything business related in terms of future risk prediction is doing granular kind of analysis of this type of industry by industry for their investors, but also for their own knowledge. And those sorts of reports are all in the private sphere. But we have the capability of measuring this. And I think some of the most interesting economic projection right now is exactly about AI investment. These companies are propping up our economy with the amount of capital investment they're making in infrastructure for power plants and whatnot. But whether that will translate into human jobs in these new industries Right now, construction jobs obviously are booming because of this. But what that looks like 10, 20 years from now is a fascinating and, you know, somewhat terrifying question, particularly for college, recent college graduates. But those sorts of things aren't. We do have that capability whether the government should be doing it or whether it actually can. Trump is in a position, he's very pro I, he is in a position to actually shift things and have a new.
- [38:57]
John Podhoretz
By the way, I just something that I heard on Friday, which I think is very interesting and pregnant in relation to what you just mentioned is someone I know I had lunch with who is an investor and, and and has had, has been a. Held a major position in a small unknown company. You've never heard of that. That. And one of the things that it does is insulation. And because of AI, as you mentioned, the amount of power generation that is going to be necessary to deal with these farms, these, you know, just to run the computers that are doing AI which are going to eat up and gobble up colossal amounts of energy. And you need to put these things in facilities and the facilities need to be cold so that the machines don't overheat. And so they, so there's been a boom in air conditioning. Did you know that? Massive boom. Okay, now take my friend, small company involved in insulation. Insulation, huge. Because you got to insulate the facilities. You don't just put in, you know, central ac, you got to insulate them to a fairly well so that the, so that the heat doesn't come in or so that the cold doesn't escape. This is an ancillary tertiary condition in a gigantic boom. But what if there are suddenly 100,000 new jobs in insulation as they build these facilities everywhere, everywhere they're going to have to be everywhere because of the amount of AI generated material. So that's another thing. Maybe BLS can't measure that.
- [40:55]
Noah Rothman
I feel like we're in the beginning of the graduate and insulation is the new plastics. You're giving everyone career advice.
- [41:03]
John Podhoretz
I know. I mean, I just think it's.
- [41:05]
Noah Rothman
Can we talk about another example of Trump. Trump derangement at work? And that is the other story that the New York Times was horrified by over the weekend. And the, the, the newest threat to democracy, which is the ballroom that Trump is planning to build on the White House grounds to increase the size, the capacity of, of, of parties, of state dinners. Because, you know, mostly state state dinners are held in the East Room, I believe. And that's, you know, it's big, but it's not that big. And so Trump wants to build a large ballroom. I think that with a capacity of 600 people. And I open up my paper over the weekend to learn that historians, they do not like this idea.
- [41:57]
John Podhoretz
The experts. Not historians. Okay, experts, Historians.
- [42:02]
Noah Rothman
Oh, okay, yes.
- [42:02]
John Podhoretz
And preservationists and architects and just random experts.
- [42:12]
Noah Rothman
Yeah, yeah. On this. I didn't realize they were ballroom experts, but they are there. And the New York Times found them and they are not happy. And they're not happy. And this too is now another sign of the impending apocalypse that Trump wants to build another room to the White House.
- [42:31]
John Podhoretz
Here's the line, why aren't they happy? Because it's ugly. They say aesthetically, it's horrible. Charlie Sykes, a couple of other people. It's Ceausescu's ballroom. It is a totalitarian, socialist, realist ballroom. You know, I think he meant, I think he actually meant Saddam Hussein, but said Ceausescu like, it's the ballroom of a tyrant. It's guilt and white. And you look at the design and it's nauseating. And how could you possibly. And ladies and gentlemen, from the time I was a small child, weddings, bar mitzvahs, very fancy bar mitzvahs, fancy weddings, annual dinners, not a commentary dinner, but various other annual dinners. The place to have them in New York until it closed for renovations five or six years ago was the Waldorf Astoria Hotel on 49th and Park Avenue, which had the ballroom that everybody wanted. It was 365 open 365 days a year. And for the purposes that were important to some people, like me, kosher. Had a kosher kitchen. It didn't. Wasn't you. You could have, you can use the non kosher kitchen. But they had a fully staffed kosher kitchen so you could have events for Jews that were kosher. The Trump design for the ball, the design for the ballroom that Trump wants to build looks exactly like the Waldorf Astoria ballroom. It does not look like Saddam Hussein's palace. It does not look like Ceausescu's palace. It looks like the big ballroom in New York that Trump went to a thousand times. Now Trump has a hotel, had a Hotel on 42nd street, the Commodore, that he renovated into Ohio. And it too was an important ballroom because it also had a kosher kit. It was also open 365 days. It was like the second busiest ballroom, I think, in New York City until that hotel also underwent renovations. But it really wasn't as nice. And Trump knew perfectly well it wasn't as nice and it wasn't as fancy and it wasn't. And this is the White House. And he wants the best ballroom. And yes, he likes guilt, so he likes a good yellow gold looking thing. But you know who else liked it? The Gilded Age in New York, which is when Waldorf, which is what the Waldorf design is based on the specs I saw.
- [44:55]
Noah Rothman
It wasn't that gilded. No, no, it was heavily white.
- [44:58]
John Podhoretz
It seems like the chairs are gilded, mainly windows.
- [45:01]
Christine Rosen
It's like an entire wall.
- [45:02]
Noah Rothman
I thought it was very pretty.
- [45:05]
John Podhoretz
So this is where it's like, enough with you people. Like, get over yourselves. I don't like the stuff in the Oval Office with the weird things sticking out of the wall.
- [45:20]
Noah Rothman
It's crowded. It's like his office at Trump Tower.
- [45:23]
John Podhoretz
I don't like it. It's his office. When someone else comes in, they can change it. I kind of like one of the great things about the White House as a phenomenon is the fact that here in the United States we're so plain and we're so un hierarchical and all of that. That, that the most important public building is called the White House. It's not called the palace. It's not called a pavilion. It's called a house. It was called. It's the White House.
- [45:49]
Christine Rosen
It's very small.
- [45:50]
John Podhoretz
It is very, very small. And like the.
- [45:53]
Noah Rothman
It was, I think, the largest structure built in 18 in the states when it was constructed just for some context.
- [46:00]
John Podhoretz
Yeah, but you know, like there is literally a McMansion down your block that is bigger than the White House. And so. And so he. Yeah, so he wants to extend out beyond the east wing on this large piece of property that is the. The grounds of the White House, a ballroom that will be perfectly fine and will look very Nice. And the next president will be very happy to have events there where he will be able to invite 600 rather than 200 people to a state dinner. And you're all crazy. And stop being crazy. Attack him for the right things. If you attack him for everything, you discredit the attacks that you're delivering.
- [46:41]
Noah Rothman
You know, I think the problem is just the attacks aren't sticking in this time around. And that's maybe contributes to kind of the continued search for another target. Because think about the Qatari plane, right? Here's the plane that the Qataris have gifted to the United States or to Trump himself. It's a little bit unclear. He's. There is this news that he might take the plane and put it in the, the museum when, when it's done. Like Reagan's old Air Force One hangs in the Reagan library. This is, you know, this is a legitimate story here. This is a foreign government of, let us just say, dubious provenance, giving the President of the United States a new Air Force One. And it's going to cost a lot of money to refurbish. There was a story just, I think, last week about how the potential cost of modifying the jet to be Air Force One is several hundred million dollars. Okay, let's talk about that. I think that's legitimate, that, that we should go into that, but it just hasn't landed. It's the same thing with the meme coin and the crypto.
- [47:53]
John Podhoretz
Huge story.
- [47:54]
Noah Rothman
You know, the price, the president. United States has a cryptocurrency that you can invest in right now, and it's crypto. So we really don't know who's invested.
- [48:04]
Christine Rosen
In the TikTok ban, which has not yet been enforced. That's another one, the TikTok thing again.
- [48:09]
Noah Rothman
TikTok ban has been held up by Trump, abrogated by Trump, now going on to its eighth month, despite bipartisan majorities of Congress and the supreme court saying that TikTok should not be operating in the United States at this very moment. So there are, there are ways that you can get at Trump and get at the business connections, but instead, what it all boils down to in the end is precisely kind of the Charlie Sykes take, which is just esthetic. But I just, I hate this guy. I hate his taste. He's terrible. This is the latest outrage@blinds.com.
- [48:49]
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- [49:18]
Matt Continetti
Hi, everyone, I'm Matt Ebert, CEO and founder of Crash Champions. Welcome to Pod Crash. On Pod Crash, we'll dive deep with industry leaders and game changers because we want to uncover their secrets to success. We're going to explore everything from building trust, building a rock solid team, to champion blue collar work. And we also want to talk about creating explosive growth in your business. You'll hear actionable advice, real leadership and business lessons, along with what's worked for these incredible people throughout their career. We're even going to go in depth into what I call a Champions mindset. This is the very philosophy that I use to champion people and take crash champions from one single shop to over 650 locations today. And now I want to share that information with you. Watch or listen to pod crash on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcast.
- [50:12]
Abe Greenwald
See, I think it may be the other way around in the sense that. Not that they're going after these things because the larger stories haven't landed. The larger stories haven't landed because they're going after.
- [50:25]
Noah Rothman
Right. So they can't concentrate.
- [50:28]
Abe Greenwald
Yeah, they can't concentrate.
- [50:29]
John Podhoretz
And the.
- [50:29]
Abe Greenwald
And the news consumer assumes it's all a manifestation of this desire to get him wherever they can.
- [50:38]
John Podhoretz
And some people want that and some people don't want it. And so you end up.
- [50:42]
Abe Greenwald
If you want it, it's landing for you.
- [50:44]
John Podhoretz
Yeah. Where you are. So two things have bitten in the last couple of weeks. One relating to Trump and one not relating to Trump. As far as I can tell, things that are sticky and have legs and you wouldn't think necessarily sticky with legs is kind of a gross image. I'm sorry, but like, one is Epstein, which clearly. And then. And then there are things that are going on with Epstein that are deeply weird and concerning. Like why is Gillan Maxwell's now in.
- [51:13]
Christine Rosen
A minimum security prison?
- [51:14]
John Podhoretz
So she can hang out with Elizabeth Holmes and go jogging with Elizabeth Holmes, by the way. That's fine. I don't know why she's in a maximum security prison in the first place, but. Okay, so we don't know what that's about. That's right. Number one. And then the Maxwell. The Maxwell story. Is concerning to people, and they're interested, and they're interested on all sides, and he can't get away from it, and he wants to. And so that's. That's one thing. And the other is the Sydney Sweeney ad, which won't go away and got new legs because somebody went and dug up her Florida voter registration, discovered that she was registered as a Republican.
- [51:59]
Noah Rothman
The best meetings I had all weekend.
- [52:00]
John Podhoretz
Well, that's what Trump said. That's what Trump said.
- [52:03]
Noah Rothman
I know. He and I reacted exactly the same way. Yes.
- [52:06]
John Podhoretz
Yeah, okay. But it's like, okay, so, you know, now you're turning this thing into a partisan issue. And here's where I don't feel bad for Sydney Sweeney at all. But here's what I can say. People in show business who want to keep their political affiliations quiet, I have deep respect for. I know a bunch of them on the right who don't want to come out and. Because what they say is, if you ask them, it's not that they're cowardly and it's not that they're worried that they're going to lose jobs. It's that they want the largest number of people possible to like them, because that is how they are popular. And their ability to ply their trade and get good work and continue is for them to be popular. And if they start becoming provocative and, you know, and sort of having people dislike them for their politics on either side, this becomes a liability to them rather than a benefit. Now, obviously, it's worse for people on the right than people on the left. People on the left seem to get away with it a lot more, they think, but, you know, maybe not. And so I. That Sydney Sweeney has not been walking around issuing statements about how she supports Trump. Now she's been sort of outed.
- [53:41]
Christine Rosen
Well, this is the point. The compulsory nature of how everything is politicized, including popular culture, means I actually do feel badly for her because she's allowed to vote for whomever she wants. She's not political in any way, shape.
- [53:52]
John Podhoretz
Or form, and the ballot is supposed to be secret.
- [53:54]
Christine Rosen
Exactly. So I think any performer, any celebrity who, particularly the ones who don't do political work of any kind, are certainly not. Should never be compelled to reveal their political preferences, not just because it might harm their box office, but because it's just un American. Like, you're allowed to have all kinds of views, many contradictory. Hold them in your mind and never be compelled to tell everybody what you believe. That's actually an important right. Right to your own Thoughts, your own privacy. And I do feel like the. The liberal celebrities who sort of, you know, easily say whatever they want and promote only Democratic candidates, that's fine, but there's still a large number of liberal celebrities who don't say a word about politics, and good for them. So she's now about to be embroiled in this new political politicized popular culture. And I do feel badly for her. She didn't ask for that.
- [54:43]
Noah Rothman
But, you know, I think there's some differences between earlier cancellation episodes and controversies and this current controversy over the American Eagle ad. The first is neither Sydney Sweeney nor American Eagle has apologized for the ad. On the contrary, Sydney Sweeney has not said anything. And American Eagle posted another picture of her and said that we look forward to continuing to have our apparel sold to all Americans. If this were five years ago, the apologies from both the star and the corporation would have been over the top lacrimose, and they would have scurried into their corners to make the beating stop. I don't think the beatings are very effective. And so you don't have this fear from. From this corporation that has made. Made the ad. The other difference is one poll I heard about showed that, unsurprisingly, most people like seeing Sydney Sweeney model close. And the ad itself is popular. And so it's another 70, 30 issue where the left is on the complete minority side and totally out of touch.
- [56:06]
John Podhoretz
Can we talk about.
- [56:07]
Abe Greenwald
Can I just say a point here? Let's say, and I don't think it's true, let's pretend the ad is a dog whistle, right? A white supremacist dog whistle. Who would care about a dog whistle anymore when you have people saying, globalize the intifada from the river to the sea.
- [56:29]
Noah Rothman
Right.
- [56:30]
Abe Greenwald
Like a dog whistle.
- [56:31]
John Podhoretz
I wish we were back in the.
- [56:33]
Abe Greenwald
Age of dog whistles.
- [56:35]
Noah Rothman
They're just whistles now.
- [56:36]
John Podhoretz
Yeah, yeah, yeah. That is an absolute. That's a towering point.
- [56:41]
Noah Rothman
And this is today's newsletter.
- [56:43]
John Podhoretz
Yeah. Okay, so we're 51 minutes into this podcast, and the truth is that I've thought very little about the stuff that we have talked about over this course of this weekend. Most of what I thought about this weekend and have been dealing with internally is rage and upset at the coverage of Israel and Gaza and starvation and the war. And my emotions are so wrought and to the point of overwroughtness that. That I hardly know where to begin in my discussion of the fact.
- [57:24]
Noah Rothman
I'll make it simple for you. Please just spend a few minutes talking about David French.
- [57:32]
John Podhoretz
Okay, well, what Matt is referring to.
- [57:34]
Christine Rosen
That'S called poking the bear, by the way. I just wanted to.
- [57:37]
John Podhoretz
That is very unjust of you because that, of course, is one of the major. That was one of the major things that ruined my day yesterday. But I'm going to say something flat out here that, you know, is. I don't think it's going to alarm our audience, but, you know, can be plucked out by some enterprising psychotic who is like, transcribing every word that we say and trying to store things to show that could humiliate us later. But I don't believe that there is any starvation in Gaza. I do not believe the Gazans are starving. I think that there are two people we know are starving and those are the two hostages whose images we saw over the weekend. Why do I not believe people are starving in Gaza? Because I believe that if there were bodies of people piled up dying of starvation or dead of starvation in Gaza, there would be massive amounts of photographic evidence of same. And instead, the big issue, the big image that dominated last week was a false image of a child with, I believe, probably cerebral palsy, but it could have been any other conditions designed to look like a Rembrandt painting or like a version of the Pieta held, held by his mother while cut out of the photo on the front page of the New York Times was his perfectly healthy brother standing two feet away from him while this baby was being held. That would be an unnecessary act of editorial coverage and distortion if there were Buchenwald, Auschwitz, like evidence of bodies piling up, dead of starvation. I therefore do not believe that people are starving in Gaza. I believe that this is a gigantic blood libel and it is very hard for me to take emotionally, to talk about in any way, shape or form without losing my cookies. So. David French, David French, now columnist for the New York Times. Old acquaintance. I wouldn't say he's a close friend, but he's a acquaintance, you know, verging on friend. We went on a couple of National Review cruises together. He's a sweet guy, very pleasant. Did a lot of good work early in his career on free speech issues on campus. You know, served his country as a JAG in Iraq. Impressive, you know, good guy. And he committed a blood libel on Sunday in the New York Times and defamed my people, defame the country where my sister lives and where my nieces and nephews and their children live, where my nephew was nearly killed defending his country in Gaza almost a year ago on his fifth deployment into Gaza since the age of 19. He is now nearing 40, or he is 40, anyway. But what I will tell you. So David French said that Israel, he's a Christian Zionist, but now Israel has gone too far. It's gone too far and it's bad and it's doing bad and it's really bad. And they're deliberately engineering a famine in Gaza for political purposes. And I am beside myself because I almost can't believe that he has done this, because I want to think, well of David French as a human being. And I don't know how well I can think. This is not a matter about which I believe that you can say that Israel is deliberately trying to kill children for its own evil political purposes and Bibi Netanyahu's political career. Something, again, that, like my sister, wholeheartedly and unreservedly supports, though she has, you know, as. As I said, a son who spent 200 days in Gaza in his late 30s defending his country. And I can't. The cognitive dissonance that I have been experiencing is very, very painful. And I'm, I, I'm only making this personal because, I mean, I spent an hour writing an email to David that I have not sent. I don't know if I'm going to send it, but I will say this one thing, and it is that seven or eight years ago, our former colleague Saurabh Amari, I think, actually while he was working here, began attacking David French, who defended the infamous Drag Queen Story hour, efforts to shut down Drag Queen story hours on the grounds that these were assaults on free speech. And Saurabh said this was David Frenchism. It was all a form of trying to look ideologically pure about your issues when what mattered wasn't the purity of the issue, but the effect of the policy that you were defending. And that this was all a tribute to his own personal virtue and that he was preening rather than being serious about the threat that was posed by this radical effort to redefine personhood and gender and the family and what children should learn and all of that. And I defended David against Saurabh, both personally to Saurabh and then elsewhere on the grounds that David was a free speech advocate. That was basically his major job, had been his major job before he was a journalist, and that this is, you know, this was a view that should be understood or reckoned with, even if you disagreed with it. And to condemn somebody for holding it was an injustice. This was. This was on the spectrum of available, proper opinion. Well, now David has proven Sohrab, right, in the sense that this piece that he published on Sunday is a work of moral preening, the purpose of which is for him to establish his own virtue by creating a strawman that is a leftist strawman, that is a Zoran Mamdami globalized the intifada strawman about Jews killing non Jews for nefarious reasons, largely having to do with the advancement of their own personal political power. And what's even more horrifying is of course, that because this involves Jews now, Saurabh Amari and David French are now allies because Saurabh has spent the last two weeks turning from what I would call a Zionist position to an anti Zionist position in record speed, in land speed. He has gone from saying, I'm very distressed by what I'm seeing in Gaza to mocking Israel, to mocking anybody who says the story is more complicated to anyone who says that the guilt or the real villains here are Hamas. And I'm going to finish up by saying this. Every single death, injury, second of suffering that has taken place in Gaza since October 7th is morally on the hands and in the head and on the souls and on the shoulders of Hamas. Hamas started a war. Hamas is refusing to leave the battlefield and let the war conclude. It is holding 20 Israelis whom it is torturing to death. And every single drop of Arab blood in Gaza is on Hamas and not on Israel. And it is a moral infamy that we even have to be having this conversation. And it is extraordinarily disappointing to have old friends turn into new enemies. And it is heartbreaking to me. And I wish I weren't saying this about David French. I've long since made my peace with Saurabh, what I consider to be Saurabh's betrayal as a former employee of Commentary. But David is a slightly different story. And shame on him. And I hope that the better angels of his nature will recapture his spirit. But the rewards that he has garnered for taking this kind of turn I think are probably too great and too socially, too socially acceptable for him to revisit the evil that he did yesterday in the New York Times. There, you happy? You happy? I did it.
- [66:52]
Noah Rothman
I got you above the target and you hit it. And now there's nothing more to be said actually for today on that talk.
- [67:00]
John Podhoretz
Okay, Christine, so well, so let us, let us, let us shift gears and have a moment of levity as Levity, not levity, but whatever. Christine, you have a COMMENTARY recommends?
- [67:10]
Christine Rosen
I do. I'll give a. Because we were talking about the ballrooms earlier it did remind me that for any of our listeners who haven't seen Baz Luhrmann's Strictly Ballroom, you do have to go see. You have to see. That movie came out in the 90s. It was great. That was not my recommendation. I actually read a really great short novel called Fat City by Leonard Gardner.
- [67:27]
John Podhoretz
Oh, my God.
- [67:28]
Christine Rosen
Which is fantastic. It's so. It's. It's pitched set in Stockton, California, where Gardner himself was raised. Gardner was an amateur boxer in his youth, and so he's drawing on this. But it's not a typical boxing story. All I can say about it is it follows both a young boxer and a sort of over the hill boxer. And it goes back and forth between their two stories, very much centered in the Central Valley. There are incredible descriptions of the day laborers who go out into the fields and, you know, harvest onions and nuts and, you know, everything that the agricultural economy at the time ran on. But the thing about Gardner, this was his sort of big novel. He's still alive, still lives in California in his 90s now. He is one of the few fiction writers, modern fiction writers, who understand the importance of tempo and the pacing in this book. Whether he's talking about an actual boxing match or he's talking about an argument between a girlfriend and a boyfriend, or. Or he's describing laborers in the fields. It's different for each activity as it is in real life. And that's incredibly difficult to do as a writer. And he knocks it out of the park. The other thing he does is he does not glamorize boxing, which many boxing stories love to do. You know, the little scrappy guy who makes it to the top and becomes a champion. That is nowhere near what this novel is about. And he's just a compelling and extraordinary writer. So I would highly recommend Fat City by Leonard Gardner. New York Review Books has reissued it. It's a wonderful, powerful, slim little book. But I think some of our listeners would really enjoy it.
- [69:02]
John Podhoretz
I mean, it's almost 60 years old and it's the only novel that Leonard Gardner ever wrote. It is also the source of a remarkable late John Huston movie, terrific movie in which the older and younger boxers are played respectively by Stacy Keach and Jeff Bridges in one of Jeff Bridges early performances where he was still playing a kind of naive, you know, kind of pretty boy. Naive. I mean, it's, it's. It's very depressed. The movie is very depressing. Yeah. The book's not a pick me up, pick me up. Although it's not as depressing.
- [69:36]
Christine Rosen
Right.
- [69:36]
John Podhoretz
As the movie. But that is actually two recommendations and one Gardner's remarkable novel, which I haven't read in 40 years and I didn't even know it was being. So that's a, that's a, that's a wonderful thing and amazing to pay tribute to New York Review Books, which is this publishing. This is a, is a peerless re releaser.
- [69:57]
Christine Rosen
Yeah.
- [69:57]
John Podhoretz
They do wonderful reprints of American fiction and memoir and all of that. And then John Houston's movie from 1970.
- [70:07]
Christine Rosen
And Strictly Ballroom, if you do want something like that.
- [70:10]
John Podhoretz
Yes. Yes.
- [70:11]
Noah Rothman
All right.
- [70:12]
John Podhoretz
We'll be back tomorrow for Christine, Matt and Ava Johnson on boards. Keep the camera.