Cherry-Pickaxe

Summary

The Commentary Magazine Podcast — "Cherry-Pickaxe"

Date: July 28, 2026
Participants: John Podhoretz (host), Abe Greenwald, Seth Mandel, Eliana Johnson, Matthew K. Nettle

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Episode Overview

This episode delves into several timely political events and policy debates, focusing on the presence of two key world leaders—Volodymyr Zelenskyy (Ukraine) and Benjamin Netanyahu (Israel)—in Washington for high-stakes meetings with President Trump. The panel discusses America’s shifting foreign policy with respect to Iran, Ukraine, and Israel, and examines changing dynamics in warfare and political alignments. The second segment shifts to a heated Democratic primary in Michigan, while the final discussion unearths explosive revelations about Anthony Fauci’s COVID-19 diary and the ongoing fallout from the Biden administration.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Zelenskyy and Netanyahu in Washington: Foreign Policy Crossroads

• A Sign of Changing Alliances: Both Zelenskyy and Netanyahu are visiting Washington; each faces shifting fortunes. Ukraine’s position in the US alliance is on the rise after a successful NATO meeting and the US decision to permit production of Patriot missiles on Ukrainian territory. Israel’s relationship with the US is more complicated but remains crucial, with Netanyahu providing Trump with intelligence on Iran’s nuclear efforts.
• Trump and ‘Pickaxe Mountain’
  • Netanyahu’s meeting with Trump reportedly centers on Iran’s nuclear program, specifically a facility known as “Pickaxe Mountain,” considered highly impervious to attack.
  • Trump’s reaction:

    “I don’t need Bibi to tell me what’s going on with Pickaxe Mountain. We have eyes in space... It’s not a big problem.” — John Podhoretz quoting Trump ([03:02])

• Uncertainty Over Iran Policy: The US position vis-à-vis Iran is muddled:
  • Indecision over escalation strategies.
  • Leaks suggesting both hawkish and dovish intentions.
  • Lingering questions about Trump’s motives for strategic ambiguity.

[05:04] Matt K. Nettle untangles the dynamic:

“Zelenskyy is now up. And Bibi, by contrast, it’s not quite that he’s down…but the unity that characterized Trump and Netanyahu’s relationship…has turned into more of a distant contact…Netanyahu, I think, [is] supplementing Trump’s decision making with new intelligence about all the bad business the Iranians are up to.”

• Israel-Lebanese-Hezbollah Developments
  • A brokered arrangement now pits Israel and Lebanon functionally on the same side against Hezbollah, reducing immediate regional tensions.

  “Secretary of State Rubio brokered an arrangement…that put [Israel and Lebanon] on the same side against Hezbollah.” — John Podhoretz ([07:46])

• "Limbo" Between War and Deal: Neither outright war nor diplomatic settlement—combined with a US-led economic blockade—creates a fragile and temporary peace.

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2. Shifting Battlefields: The Evolution of Modern Warfare

• The Role of Innovation: Ukraine is portrayed as the epicenter of modern military adaptation, pioneering anti-drone capabilities and sharing those lessons internationally.

  • Quote:

    “This is the future of warfare playing out before our eyes. Ukraine is adapting, in some cases magnificently…Trump is beginning to see that…” — Abe Greenwald ([18:20])

  • Russia and Iran are turning to AI and fiber-optic-guided drones; these innovations are spreading to actors like Hezbollah.

• Implications for US Defense Policy:

  • The panel discusses the inadequacy of purely conventional military strategies (e.g., airstrikes alone) in achieving US aims, especially against Iran.
  • Innovations may lead to interminable, low-casualty, high-tech "forever wars."

    “Every change in warfare…[is] not going to be great.” — Matthew K. Nettle ([29:54])

• Trump’s Calculus on Escalation:

  • Preference for blockades and economic pressure over high-intensity conflict.
  • Reluctance to risk American lives or engage in ground operations.

    “He doesn’t like death, he doesn’t like killing much. As he talks a big game. And oftentimes when he’s talking the biggest, it is a sign that he’s about to back off.” — Seth Mandel ([33:20])

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3. Michigan Democratic Primary: Stevens vs. El-Sayed

• The Debate:

  • Focus on former AIPAC support, Israel policy, and progressive bona fides.
  • El-Sayed repeatedly attacks Stevens over her pro-Israel funding; Stevens struggles for a robust response.

    “Her responses were insufficient. She did not handle them head on…She seemed ashamed of it, she seemed afraid of it.” — Seth Mandel ([41:00])

  • John Podhoretz observes that demographic realities and a changed Democratic base constrain what candidates can say:

    “The part cause their primary electorate is functionally anti-Semitic now—it’s just the fact of the matter.” ([42:04])

• Campaign Messaging & Electorate:

  • Stevens leans hard on local, “boring,” practical politics and incrementalism; El-Sayed runs as an ideological, national figure.
  • The panel agrees there is no clear polling; Gretchen Whitmer’s endorsement of Stevens is seen as a sign the race may be close or in her favor.
  • Notable discourse on the DSA’s growing influence within Michigan politics, and broader implications for national Democratic alignment.

• Personalities & Political Styles:

  “She is running a deliberately counter-ideological race. She’s there to deliver for people in Michigan. Whether or not this now depends on what…the Democratic electorate in Michigan looks like a week from today.” — John Podhoretz ([52:16])

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4. Domestic Political Accountability: Biden, Harris, and the Democratic Party

• The Biden-Hur Transcript:

  • The recent release of the Robert Hur investigation transcript resurfaces the issue of Biden’s declining cognitive fitness.
  • There’s commentary on the media and party’s collective willingness to look past Biden’s condition—to the point of a hasty handoff to Kamala Harris.

    “It’s amazing to me how quickly the public and the media have just moved on from Biden…” — Matthew K. Nettle ([60:20])

• Future Democratic Primaries:

  • The panel speculates whether Harris will have to answer for a perceived conspiracy to hide Biden’s infirmity.
  • Discussion about whether there will be any intra-party reckoning, predicting that only left-wing Democrats might force the issue.

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5. Fauci Diary Bombshell: COVID-19 Revisited

• Lab-Leak Theory Vindicated?

  • Fauci’s own private notes from January 2020 admit the “probable” lab origin for COVID-19, in stark contrast to his public statements and orchestrated consensus later in 2020.

    “He said he believed that it was probably out of the lab, and then he was talked into the idea of saying that it wasn't from the lab…by three months later, anybody who said it was from the lab was being deplatformed and attacked…” — John Podhoretz ([66:01])

• Media Collusion & Narrative Control:

  • Fauci’s deep ties to media figures and the subsequent persecution of dissenting scientists are highlighted.

    “We [now] get a glimpse of the fact that he’s having dinner with Jake Tapper…calling Chris Cuomo every day…” — Seth Mandel ([69:40])

  • Rand Paul’s relentless pursuit is credited with exposing “the diary.”

• Long-Term Political Fallout:

  • Parallels drawn between COVID-19’s impact on public trust and earlier crises like the 2008 financial meltdown.
  • Matthew K. Nettle connects COVID-era irrationality to subsequent public manias, including anti-Semitic trends.

Notable Quote

“This is Fauci’s internal monologue as he was directing the country’s response…and controlling American lives.” — John Podhoretz ([75:16])

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Trump’s Approach to Winners:

  “He will back a winner. And it again gives the lie to Russiagate…because he’s perfectly willing to back Ukraine when he sees success demonstrated on the battlefield.” — Seth Mandel ([22:55])

• On Warfare Innovation:

  “This is the future of warfare playing out before our eyes.” — Abe Greenwald ([18:20])

• On Democratic Party Dilemmas:

  “It’s hilarious that…what the [Israel] position…that is the hardest line possible is fantasy.” — John Podhoretz ([44:34])

• On Fauci and COVID Narratives:

  “You rarely see such a robust…example of people being hoisted by their own petard.” — Eliana Johnson ([69:40])

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Key Timestamps

• 00:22-03:34: Introduction, panel banter, and setup for Zelenskyy and Netanyahu’s D.C. meetings
• 03:34-13:56: Trump’s Iran policy, Netanyahu intelligence on Pickaxe Mountain, and the Israel-Lebanon-Hezbollah triangle
• 13:56-20:00: Ukraine’s resurgence, warfare innovation, and international military collaboration
• 22:55-36:31: Trump’s shifting foreign policy “North Star”; technological “forever wars”; strategic implications in the Middle East
• 39:27-51:15: Michigan Democratic debate: AIPAC, Israel, and local-vs-national messaging
• 57:32-59:35: Stevens vs. El-Sayed: political style and the Michigan electorate
• 59:35-62:27: Biden, Hur transcript, and the Democratic Party’s succession crisis
• 64:37-76:01: Fauci “diary” revelations and the enduring political legacy of COVID-19
• 76:02-77:38: Book recommendation: “Oxford History of the French Revolution” by William Doyle

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Final Thoughts and Recommendations

• Book Rec:
  • The Oxford History of the French Revolution by William Doyle, recommended by Matthew K. Nettle as a parallel to today’s political turmoil.

Closing Tone:
Engaged, analytical, slightly exasperated with the current political and media climate; a tone of existential concern over both domestic and international trends, balanced by dry wit and thoughtful historical analogy.

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For further insight and ongoing analysis, subscribe to The Commentary Magazine Podcast at Ricochet.com or your podcast provider of choice.

Transcript

[Abe Greenwald]

Foreign.

[John Podhoretz]

Expect the worst.

[Matthew K. Nettle]

Some drinks and pain Some die of thirst no way of knowing which way it's going.

[Seth Mandel]

Hope for the best.

[Matthew K. Nettle]

Expect the worst. Hope for the best.

[John Podhoretz]

Welcome to the Commentary magazine daily podcast. Today is 20. Tuesday, July 28, 2026. I am Jon Podhortz, the editor of Commentary. With me, as always, Executive Editor Abe Greenwald. Hi, Abe.

[Eliana Johnson]

Hi, John.

[John Podhoretz]

Senior editor Seth Mandel. Hi, Seth.

[Abe Greenwald]

Hi, John.

[John Podhoretz]

Washington Free Beacon editor, Eliana Johnson. Hi, Eliana.

[Seth Mandel]

Hi, John.

[John Podhoretz]

And Eliana's predecessor as editor of the Washington Free Beacon, former Commentary, Washington Commentary columnist, now a columnist with free expression at the Wall Street Journal and Pooh Bah at the American Enterprise Institute. Matthew K. Nettie. Hi, Math.

[Matthew K. Nettle]

Hi, John. Full CV available upon request.

[John Podhoretz]

Yes. No,

[Matthew K. Nettle]

all my publications upon request.

[John Podhoretz]

Let's do more Free Press. You were calling us Free Press. I don't know. Okay. Weekly Standard. Okay, we're done. We're done.

[Matthew K. Nettle]

Okay.

[John Podhoretz]

Now, two world leaders in town.

[Abe Greenwald]

He's written books, too, you know, he's written.

[Matthew K. Nettle]

They can write in. And I'll send it to them for the full resume if that's the audience wants. Okay.

[John Podhoretz]

Volodymyr Zelensky and Benjamin Netanyahu in Washington today for meetings with Donald Trump. Interesting to note whether Vice President Vance will be in the room to yell at both world leaders, as he seems want to do.

[Matthew K. Nettle]

Well, we have some intel on that.

[John Podhoretz]

Oh, we do. Okay.

[Matthew K. Nettle]

Apparently, he will be present for the Netanyahu meeting. Ah. But not the Zelensky meeting, because he has to make his way to Capitol Hill to speak at the Lindsey Graham memorial service.

[John Podhoretz]

Vance.

[Matthew K. Nettle]

Correct.

[John Podhoretz]

Vance. Okay. Cause Trump is speaking at the funeral

[Matthew K. Nettle]

and then Trump is speaking. Yes. At some point, I'm not sure which event. There's a memorial at the capitol beginning at 10am to today, July 28, and then the funeral is in the afternoon. Right.

[John Podhoretz]

And Bibi also nominally in town to attend the funeral.

[Matthew K. Nettle]

Yeah. I think both world leaders will go to the funeral.

[John Podhoretz]

Right. As they should, since he was the last remaining profound Republican interventionist, warmongering supporter of the Democratic Freedom Agenda, I would say.

[Abe Greenwald]

And Yair Lapid is also going so to represent the opposition. So that's also Israel wants.

[Matthew K. Nettle]

Yeah.

[Eliana Johnson]

Yeah.

[John Podhoretz]

That's interesting as well. The one interesting thing that I did see that raises interesting questions about what this conversation between Bibi and Trump will be about is that somebody said to Trump, Bibi is going to. Is coming to talk to you about Pickaxe Mountain. That's the site where it has been leaked to us that the remaining nuclear program or what remains of the nuclear program has been moved to this site that is very hard to bomb, apparently, because it's very, very high, and whatever they need to bomb is very deep. And so a bunker buster bomb alone won't do the trick. And Trump got angry at the question and said, I don't need Bibi to tell me what's going on with Pickaxe Mountain. We have eyes in space. Our eyes are in space and they can see everything and they know everything, and it's not a big problem. I don't know what the its there refers to in the phrase. Is it that Pickaxe Mountain is not a big problem or that getting intelligence on Pickaxe Mountain is not a big problem? But he already sounds annoyed about this meeting or having this meeting, and he said Bibi just wants to be involved. I don't know what to make of any of this because, of course, we are in the middle of this total chaos of, are we moving forward? Are we going to attack Iran? Are we backing off? Do we not have enough missiles? Is the leak that we have enough missiles actually intended to help Trump not go forward? Or is it an attempt to convince Trump not to go forward by leaking the information? We are a total. We are in a mess about understanding what the motives, motivations and ideas are behind where we are with Iran. And maybe, Matt, you can just untangle the Gordian knot for us. Shall we?

[Abe Greenwald]

Sure.

[Matthew K. Nettle]

I'll be happy to try. John, I think the first place to start is to go back a year. Consider President Trump's relations with these two leaders a year ago. In 2025, Bibi makes the first of his eight visits to Trump this term and says, we get out of that Trump's declaration that America would take over the Gaza Strip and rebuild it into a luxurious resort community. And Bibi's just is kind of gobsmacked, like all of us. And it's a sign of how there was no daylight between the United States and Israel. And then a month later, we have the infamous visit of Zelensky in the Oval Office, getting chewed out by the Vice president, being told by President Trump there are no cards. And it seemed like a disaster in America's alliance with Ukraine against Russian aggression. Now we're in 2026. Zelenskyy is actually on the rise in the Oval Office with a very successful NATO meeting, Trump's decision to allow Ukraine to produce Patriot missiles in Ukrainian territory. And Zelenskyy is coming here to D.C. one to continue that good relationship with Trump. But two, actually, he has to convince some Democrats who are leery of the sanctions bill originally co sponsored by Lindsey Graham. That would give President Trump more discretion in levying these secondary sanctions and anti Russia, anti Iran sanctions. So Zelenskyy is now up. And Bibi, by contrast, it's not quite what he's down. That's unclear. But it's also the case that the unity that characterized Trump and Netanyahu's relationship at the beginning of Operation Epic Fury and Operation Roaring lion has turned into more of kind of like a distant contact, distant friendship. And Netanyahu, I think, coming not necessarily make the case to restart the war, as some of us have made in public, but kind of supplementing Trump's decision making with new intelligence about all the bad business the Iranians are up to.

[John Podhoretz]

I am very confused because Trump, in the end, policy wise, I don't see much in the way of daylight between Trump and Netanyahu, in part because the Lebanon issue was resolved into Israel's benefit. So remember that the first point of real contention was that the Iranians had insisted that an Israeli halt on striking Hezbollah be part of the Memorandum of understanding and the ceasefire. So not only is the memorandum of understanding gone, and that was never really an important part of it, and then as this was going on, Secretary of State Rubio brokered an arrangement between Israel and Lebanon that put the government of Israel and the government of Lebanon on the same side against Hezbollah.

[Matthew K. Nettle]

And that seems to be going forward relatively well. In contrast to J.D. vance's MOU, which of course is just non operative at this point.

[John Podhoretz]

So this is all sort of imagistic. That is to say, I think everybody presumes that Bibi is a super hawk in relation to Iran and would just like America to bomb Iran until Iran no longer exists. I don't know actually how true that is. That is to say, I don't know, depending on what they think the situation is with the nuclear program that they certainly, the Israelis certainly don't need to play an active role in the question of the Strait of Hormuz. That's not in their bailiwick and that's not part of the reason that they would be involved. Obviously making the rubble bounce on the nuclear program would be something that they would enjoy or at least think was, you know, sent the cardinal message to whatever this new version of the Iranian regime is.

[Matthew K. Nettle]

And they're also not party yet to the Houthis attack on Saudi Arabian shipping.

[John Podhoretz]

Right.

[Matthew K. Nettle]

So what seems to have happened? Remember, Israel did not participate in the 13 days of bombings that Trump initiated. When the MOU broke down, of course, Iran retaliated throughout this period, and that led to the deaths of our soldiers in Jordan. Israel is not a part. And the understanding, or at least the sense was that Iran didn't want to attack Israel because they didn't want to get hit by Israel in return. And of course, it didn't want Hezbollah hit because Hezbollah has been quiet in the past month or so. So what we have now is we have no war. We have no war in the sense that the United States and Iran are not fighting. We also have no deal, which is fine with Israel because. And it's fine with me, too, because it means we're not paying the Iranians money and we have the blockade back in place. And so we're kind of in this limbo state that I think Trump is okay with, because the Iranians aren't shooting. We're not shooting. But we do have the economic pressure from that blockade. However, I'm not fine with it because it's just a matter of time before Iran starts shooting again. I mean, it seems to me that it's just a matter of time before one IRGC commander or the, the head of the IRGC says, you know what, we need to extract more from the Americans. They're not serious about giving us the money we need. So let's just shoot up some stuff, and then we're right back where we started.

[Eliana Johnson]

We also have the ever present specter of talks. You know, Trump claiming that Iran wants to talk, Iran says they don't. And at this point, I don't even know what the talks would be aimed at.

[Abe Greenwald]

At.

[Eliana Johnson]

You know, what is. I mean, really, what's left.

[Matthew K. Nettle]

Same thing they've been talking about since last year. It's, you know, I mean, I think Amit Seagal had a good catch in his newsletter this morning where he was saying, you know, Trump said on Air Force One on his way to Michigan yesterday that talks are going well, they're going great. And then Amit had a quote from Trump on, like, February 22, 2026, earlier this year, rather, where Trump said, talks are going well, talks are going great, Iranians want a deal. And then, of course, five days later, Trump launches the war in coordination with Israel. So. Right. What is the talks? The talks buy Iran time because they can resupply, they can reassert their control. We have news today that they are preparing a large public square for public executions of dissidents. Once again, they're continuing their murderous campaign against their Own people and it just buys them time they can sell, they can try to smuggle more money, oil to China, get some funds that way buys Trump time because Trump clearly is constrained by the markets. You know, he pauses when oil was above $100, Brent crude, he pauses the attacks and now it's dropped now to below $90 a barrel. And so that means he gets some short term relief, both economically and then it takes a couple days, couple weeks, but you'll get it politically as two. However, it doesn't solve the underlying situation which is Iran's regime and its attempt to exert control over the Strait of Hormuz and to build a nuclear weapon that it can terrorize the world with.

[John Podhoretz]

I don't know that we have much more to say, except I think it is important to talk about the difference between the visit that Zelenskyy is making today and the visit that he made last year. The conduct of J.D. vance during that meeting was shocking and appalling. And Vance riled Trump up. Trump said this thing about how you have no cards, you don't have the cards, you don't have the cards. And here we are a year later and Ukraine is on the offensive. Ukraine has shown unbelievable amount of innovation and audacity in the way that it is conducting its effort to get Russia to back down, get out and end the conflict that it so foolishly started four and a half years ago. And I think that Trump is responding cuz he likes a winner. And Zelensky has pulled a third quarter, you know, I mean, you know, he's like the Knicks. I mean it's like he's down 20 and then suddenly he's tied, you know, and that's very impressive. And he has. The Ukrainians are very impressive and the Russians are not. And so I just think that's. We find ourselves at an interesting moment at which why wouldn't Trump be happy to have Zelensky there advocating on Capitol Hill that he have more power? That is essentially what the sanctions bill that Lindsey Graham was championing is about. Give the President more tools to go after Russia basically, since he doesn't wanna go after them by giving Ukraine a lot of arms or money or anything like that. But this is the most passive but most powerful way that he can do it. And so they are actually now on the same side. And I don't think that anybody would have guessed that this is where we would be here at the end of July 2026 after that horror show which was, I don't know what was it may of 25, something like that. I don't remember.

[Matthew K. Nettle]

No, it was like, February. It was early.

[Abe Greenwald]

I tried to black it out.

[John Podhoretz]

Yeah, black it out. So, I mean, this is a sign. History is contingent. Like, people change facts on the grounds. The Ukrainians have changed the facts.

[Abe Greenwald]

In that sense, the future is also what Trump needs to hear about from Zelenskyy, and I think he's starting to get that right. The other day, this Ukrainian writer, Alexander Lutsenko, translated for the Times of Israel a report that was put together entirely in Ukrainian by a Ukrainian think tank about Russia's drone strategy. And it was very interesting because I don't read Russian or Ukrainian. And so these are things that I wouldn't necessarily come across. And seeing it, you notice two things. One, the extent to which the Ukrainians are paying obvi. Not that this is surprising in itself, but paying close attention to everything that Russia does and what it means. And also the networks that Russia is a part of, we have more insight into that. And this particular report was about how Russia is using fiber optic drones, because they can't be jammed. Fiber optic drones are attached by fiber to essentially a wire to the person controlling it. And they can go up to.

[Eliana Johnson]

Some.

[Abe Greenwald]

Can go up to 30, 40, 50 miles, I think even. I mean, they're getting better at that. And he points out that Hezbollah is looking at those. And Hezbollah has killed Israelis with. You know, they don't have the huge stockpile of this that Russia has or the huge industry, but it's migrating around the world. The future of warfare is changing along with the battlefield in Ukraine. Russia is adapting to the fact that Ukraine figured out how to stop its onslaught of drones, and they are now investing huge amounts of money in unjammable drones, which means they have to build. You know, they have to build the factories that can build all the things and all the pieces they need, the materials they need. These are.

[Seth Mandel]

All.

[Abe Greenwald]

The drones are constructed differently. The wires are constructed differently. But the larger point is that this is an actual, real shift in warfare. It's not limited to Ukraine, although even saying limited to Ukraine is silly because it's a land war in Europe. So, you know, this is. This is the future of warfare playing out before our eyes. Ukraine is adapting, in some cases magnificently. And they are doing it on kind of a shoestring budget in a way, but they're using their brains. And I think that Trump is beginning to see that when he can, when Zelensky says, I'll go to the UAE and help them understand how to how to, you know, put some sort of umbrella system in the air to stop Iranian drones from falling on them. That is a crossover. It's like that old Marvel, you know, crossover joke, Zelensky to the UAE in the middle of the. And then you see how all this works. Everything is connected. Nothing. None of this. The other part of that report is that none of this is possible without China because of the raw materials needed for all of this. And so you are seeing, here's how the sanctions work, here's what the sanctions miss, here's how they get around them, here's everything that people are going to need for future warfare. It's coming out of Ukraine. And I think you'd be crazy at this point not to try to download everything that's in Zelinsky's brain and, you know, and put it, and put it with your own staff.

[John Podhoretz]

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[Seth Mandel]

I think it's another reminder that the closest thing Trump has to a North Star or a guiding principle in foreign policy that's morally based is that Iran can have a nuclear weapon, which he's reiterated again and again for decades, but otherwise he will back a winner. And it again gives the lie to Russiagate and Russia, Russia, Russia, because he's perfectly willing to back Ukraine when he sees success demonstrated on the battlefield. And I think he's been quite impressed with what Zelensky has demonstrated the ability to do in Ukraine.

[Matthew K. Nettle]

And there's one other aspect too, which is I think becoming clear, is that a strong Ukraine helps Trump reduce America's involvement in the NATO alliance. And we saw this come out by the undersecretary of policy, Bridge Colby announced a whole new operational concept for America's relation with NATO over X yesterday. Again, a reduction in force American forces. Ukraine has the largest army in Europe. It has huge and expanding defense industrial base. We're going to help them increase it further with this licensing of the Patriot production. And a stronger Ukraine, I think might appeal to Trump in the sense that, well, let the Ukrainians and the Poles and the kind of frontline nations who are most concerned about Russian aggression increase the burden, take the burden and America can leave. So it's a somewhat cynical outcome, but I think it's another factor here at work.

[John Podhoretz]

I mean, I do think that and then we should move on. But I do think it's important that Seth's point about how warfare is changing in real time as a result of these two wars. Or you could actually say, beginning with the Ukraine war in 22 and then moving on to the Israeli war in Gaza 23 onward and then onto this conflict with Iran. We are acting relatively conventionally, right? We're using airplanes to drop bombs and then defensive munitions to protect what we can protect. But all of these innovations, including what the Iranians are trying to do, obviously using the cheapest weapons to do the most damage, all of that signals a kind of revolution. People used to talk about the revolution in military strategy 25 years ago and moving to a quicker, fleeter, more advanced, more technological military. And this is now, I assume, what is going to happen, that we are not going to say, okay, here's what we do. We're just going to rebuild our military back to the military that it was after the, you know, before the Iran war. We gotta build a different military. And we now have real world anecdotal evidence and hard evidence of what kinds of things we're gonna need in the future. And so to the extent that Ukraine has been a canary in the coal mine because it had a conventional army of gigantic size, move toward it in a way that should have and everybody thought would eat it up in three weeks, and it's now four and a half years later, and they've taken what, like 10% of the territory they thought they might take in those four years, means infantry wars are not what's going to be the way things go. And our conventional bombing of Iran not ending the regime suggests that there are other ways that we need to go. And so this is. There are two militaries in the world that are innovative enough and fleet enough and on our side enough to be partners with us in this. One of them is our partner, Israel, which was the junior partner, according to Trump, in this war. And there's Ukraine, which Trump does not want to think of as a partner for whatever reason, for whatever's going on, for whatever.

[Matthew K. Nettle]

I mean, what I would say is, again, ironically, the change in warfare with the autonomous warfare drones and missiles. We debuted our autonomous surface vessels, rescuing the Apache pilots earlier this summer. That actually, I think, increases the likelihood of forever wars. You mentioned the open warfare. The direct war invasion of Ukraine by Russia happened in 2022. And here we are midway through 2026, and Russia's still fighting, Ukraine's still defending. Ukraine, of course, now launching attacks with these massive drone swarms inside Russia, including Russia's capital, Moscow, blowing up oil infrastructure, going after economic infrastructure like this massive retailer Wildberries I think is the name. They hit the big warehouse last week. And then Russia responds and fires the missiles that Ukraine has a harder time defending against. That's why Zelenskyy wants the Patriots, because you need anti missile defense is different from an anti drone defense. And then these missile barrages kill two dozen civilians. Something like that. It just goes on and on. And there's something similar emerging in the Strait of Hormuz, absent a escalation by Trump, which is, you know, a drone. One drone hits a ship going through the Strait of Hormuz and the price of oil jumps 10%. And then that means Trump fires some missiles back. And so this huge change in warfare, which I agree is completely transformative and just wait until these drones have AI in them and are making decisions autonomously. That's transformative. But it's like every change in warfare, it's not going to be great.

[Eliana Johnson]

A related point, something to look out for with all this, excuse me, is that the more high tech all this war fighting gets and the more. And the more autonomous the weaponry, the more it makes the idea of ground troops seem like an anachronism. And that's, you know, to a US that's already allergic to, to the idea.

[Matthew K. Nettle]

Well, until the ground forces are autonomous. That's the other lesson. I just think from the transformation is that what I've seen in both conflicts is that the new technology of warfare seems to give the advantage to the defense. You can build in great. And you're, you just kind of fire these things back and it's preventing any force from, from kind of occupying space and territory.

[John Podhoretz]

I mean, look, the question is whether everything has now moved backward or tossed upside down. Which is to say that the reason that the war in Iran is not over and that we did not win the war in Iran is that we made a deliberate, conscious decision, the United States, to fight this war without ground troops. It's not that you would have started or troops or like boots on the ground. Let's not say troops, let's say it's forces, because that's like 100,000 people. That's not what I'm talking about. If you combine incredibly solid air campaign that has them reeling with a strategy that involves special forces or whatever or various other things that then after you do the bombing and throw them totally off kilter and off key, then you go and do stuff on the ground secondarily, you soften the battlefield, then you go in and you go in with no, you Know, with very little opposition. That's when you're like, okay, now we have something to talk about. You want us to get out, we'll negotiate. You want us to leave your territory, we'll negotiate. But as it happens, we don't have much to negotiate with. Cause we're not holding anything of theirs that they want back. So in that sense, we've always had the idea that, you know, you need to use your real war is a war that involves going in on the ground.

[Matthew K. Nettle]

Well, I think, you know, there was a plan, the Israeli plan was to arm the Kurds and to use intelligence to foment a rebellion. And then, you know, as I was arguing at the time that the war started, the ground force would be the Iranian people, Right? That would be the ground force. And that's essentially what happened in Libya. There was already an armed faction that was fighting Gaddafi. And then NATO and the United States provided the air cover for. And then, of course, we never got involved in the Syrian civil war. But once Turkey supplied Jelani's forces, Shiraz forces, whatever name he goes by now, they were able to go and make the final assault on Damascus and send him into exile. Trump stopped that. Because I think it's clear that Trump is more worried about regime collapse than he is about an indefinite and prolonged no deal, no war type scenario. And to your point, John, that is effectively deterring the United States from accomplishing its goals.

[Seth Mandel]

I also think he clearly also doesn't want to do a real escort operation through the strait. He announced that and backed off of it. And he's resisted doing a real operation with B2 bombers that would attack Pickaxe Mountain and send in ground troops to obtain and remove the nuclear material. I do have the sense that he was spooked by these three deaths because we got word the three deaths of American combat troops, because yes, and we know through the first Trump administration and this Trump administration that this president doesn't. He doesn't like death, he doesn't like killing much. As he talks a big game. And oftentimes when he's talking the biggest, it is a sign that he's about to back off. And I do think this spooked him. He knows that it's bad for his poll numbers and that the American public isn't really behind this war. But those are two other options that he's considered and not gone with. And he is going with really the lowest cost, lowest return, longest, the most prolonged operation here, which is the blockade that's gonna take the longest to see Any kind of return and to exert pain on Iran a year.

[John Podhoretz]

Right. And then we should move on. But it's very important that you brought that up because there are people, as I said this yesterday, and we've said over the weeks that there are people who think that that is the right strategy. That in fact the way to bring the regime down without, since you couldn't bring it down with the decapitation, is to literally choke it till it collapses. And the only way to do that is the blockade of its export capacity. And that is a serious program and will take a year. And the virtue of it, I guess, is that it does feature. It means you're doing a very low intensity conflict. You're not doing tit for tat bombing. You are just squeezing and squeezing and squeezing and squeezing. Now that means that the war is longer, although not particularly deadly. I mean, that's the thing, is that it could be the best of both worlds for Trump also, because it effectively removes the war from the front pages anyway. Because if there aren't like active, constant active skirmishes and all of that, except what there is is we maybe do start escorting ships if this strategy pays off and we're just letting making it impossible for them to get their stuff out.

[Matthew K. Nettle]

I know we want to move on, but that leaves out the Iranians who also have agency. And that's why we're just going to get right back to where we were two weeks ago.

[Seth Mandel]

They did just kill under these conditions. They did just take out three American service members.

[John Podhoretz]

Right? Well, I mean, again, three is not 300, three is not 1,000. And yeah, if it's a harbinger of things to come and Trump reads the tea leaf there as we better come up with a different way to go forward here, then you may be right. I find it hard to believe that the US Military changes an entire war strategy on the basis of the deaths of three people because they were unable to intercept a missile that they otherwise might have intercepted. But you could well be.

[Matt Ebert]

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% of 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 extreme 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 get your podcasts. 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 talk 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.

[John Podhoretz]

When you get momentum, you step on the gas.

[Abe Greenwald]

That's how you get separation from everybody else.

[John Podhoretz]

I was at Harvard Law School. I was blah blah, blah.

[Abe Greenwald]

I looked up, let me tell you

[Matt Ebert]

something, there's kids in my neighborhood putting

[John Podhoretz]

in sheetrock that is smarter than you.

[Abe Greenwald]

AI is going to disrupt a lot of stuff.

[John Podhoretz]

It is never going to disrupt physical blue collar trade skill.

[Abe Greenwald]

And the guy just looked at me

[John Podhoretz]

and he said it's bloody impossible. So I asked him this question.

[Matt Ebert]

I said, it's impossible unless that's Pod Crash with me, Matt ebert. Watch on YouTube and listen wherever you get your podcasts.

[John Podhoretz]

So yeah, last night in Michigan, Haley Stevens and Abdullah Sayed had a debate. It was an interesting debate. Some of us watched it all the way through, some of us watched pieces of it. And the election is a week from today. So I've been going around asking pundits and others, friends of mine what they thought, who won, who lost, whatever, and nobody seems to be able to come up with much of an answer. Although the El Sayed campaign is so adept or so determined that it there was an online poll of the Detroit News and within an hour the respondents to the online poll, meaning you just log in and vote, was 96 to 4. For El Sayed that he won 96% to 4%.

[Seth Mandel]

Well, he certainly overrepresented among the online trolls, that's for sure.

[John Podhoretz]

Yeah, we know my he just used

[Abe Greenwald]

Rand Paul's email list.

[Seth Mandel]

Yeah, my takeaway was that pro Israel Democrats have got to come up with a better response to those who are supported by AIPAC and who are going to be pro Israel, who are pro Israel have got to come up with a better response. Because it seemed to me throughout the debate, her responses were insufficient. She did not handle them head on. And that was his main attack line against her was $46 million of APAC support. $46 million of APAC support and she dodged them the whole time. She seemed ashamed of it, she seemed afraid of it. And her response that I'm going to be a workhorse and he's a show horse seem to me insufficient. And I'm not sure if she's noticed but we're electing a lot of show horses to the United States Congress and it would be nice to see a Democratic candidate say I'm happy to have their support, I'm proud of their support and I stand with Israel and the Jewish people. Perhaps you can't say that in Democratic politics anymore. But I was not impressed by the responses and I don't think they're gonna do it. They have gotta come up with a better response.

[John Podhoretz]

Well they can't because the part cause their primary electorate is functionally anti Semitic. Now just the fact of the matter. So Haley Stevens couldn't say what you wanted her to say because to say so would be suicide. I mean political suicide. I wish that weren't the case but it seems to be the case particularly in a state where Muslims outnumber Jews. Not that you know, 250,000 Jews in a say 11 million people aren't going to like flip a vote. But there are 400,000 Muslims, 250,000 Jews. This is the one state in which this is the case. And so she is functioning in a very, very difficult atmosphere.

[Seth Mandel]

I understand that. But you know, I think she could have said if you want to stand with the would be bomber of a synagogue down the street, that's on you. If your position toward that is anybody who's hurt can go bomb a synagogue filled with four year olds, that's on you. That hurt people. Hurt people.

[Matthew K. Nettle]

You know, I think you're telegraphing Mike Rogers message as soon as El Sayed becomes the nominee.

[John Podhoretz]

But that's the problem is it's Mike Rogers message. Too many people in the electorate that she is facing would not be motivated by what she says about this. Cuz they don't care about it. And it might alternately motivate the people who want to vote for Syed to drag themselves over glass to vote for.

[Matthew K. Nettle]

You know she did say one thing. She said that she supported the two state solution between Israel and the Palestinians. And by contrast she said Al Said can't even say whether he exists, whether he supports Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state. That seems to be kind of the bright line that I'm detecting in Democratic politics, which I mean is amazing to consider the red shift now that that's what they're fighting, that's what they're potentially fighting over. Because of course, I'll say it shares this refusal to support Israel as a Jewish state with America's most prominent anti Semite Zoran Mamdani. And that's kind of the cutting edge. So I was struck actually by the fact that she would say even that, that you know what, I do support a two state solution and you can't even say that Israel has a right to exist.

[John Podhoretz]

But I think it's hilarious that we've gotten to now what the position that you can take. That is the hardest line possible. Position is fantasy.

[Matthew K. Nettle]

Position in the Democratic Party, right.

[John Podhoretz]

Is even a policy possibility.

[Matthew K. Nettle]

Well, it's a European thing, you know, if Europe does it then you know, progressive Democrats have to do it too.

[John Podhoretz]

It was the default position of the United States, both parties for what, 50 years.

[Matthew K. Nettle]

Bush adopted, well for the Democrats for quite a bit and then, you know, for 30 years. And then Bush adopted it in 02. Right, in the speech, the June speech, right, where he said I support a

[John Podhoretz]

two state solution, right. But effectively the idea of Palestinian separation between Israel and the Palestinians that involved Palestinian self governance at the very least was a position dating back to the Nixon administration.

[Matthew K. Nettle]

Can you all help me understand this? My puzzle for this primary has always been is that the polls up until there are not many polls in this

[John Podhoretz]

Democratic primary, amazingly how few.

[Matthew K. Nettle]

But basically up until two weeks ago, Stevens was winning in the polls even though the poly market has had El sayed favored for months now. And then we had this one poll from Data for Progress, which is a left wing polling organization, came out again about two weeks ago, mid July showing him with a 13 point lead. And that's the last poll that's on the Real Clear Politics tracking here. So I'm not sure whether it's as clear cut in his favor.

[John Podhoretz]

Oh, I don't think so at all.

[Matthew K. Nettle]

As we are being told from every direction. That's why I just can't figure out,

[John Podhoretz]

you have got to look at the fact that Gretchen Whitmer, the governor of Michigan endorsed Haley Stevens.

[Matthew K. Nettle]

Right? Yeah.

[John Podhoretz]

If she were losing, if it were the consensus inside the Michigan Democratic Party that look, we gotta face it, she's losing by 10 points, Gretchen Whitmer would not endorse her. It would be foolishness. And Gretchen Whitmer is an extremely cautious politician. Undocumented. So I think they are seeing this race as winnable for Stevens or that Stevens is actually ahead. Because as you say, there is no

[Matthew K. Nettle]

evidence that that's where that online poll that you mentioned plays into this. It's because the base of the, of the socialist wing of the Democrats is so online and so energized and so active. It does kind of create, like we always say with social media, this Plato's cave effect. And so that's. But then there's that one poll. I mean, the 13 point lead is pretty, is pretty big. But again, it's, it seems like to me an outlier. There's one other aspect which is interesting here, which is that the moderator asked El Sayed whether he was a socialist and then added, not that there's anything wrong with that. Which, you know, come on, please.

[Seth Mandel]

It was amazing.

[Matthew K. Nettle]

Do you need to editorialize? Yeah, yeah. You need to replay a Seinfeld episode.

[Abe Greenwald]

The moderator is also afraid of the dsa.

[Eliana Johnson]

That's, that's the.

[Matthew K. Nettle]

But he said he's not. That was fascinating.

[John Podhoretz]

He said he was a capitalist, which is a lie.

[Matthew K. Nettle]

Like everything he says is a lie, including his resume as Eliana and the Free Beacon of employee. But the fact that he felt forced to say it or because he's a slippery character, felt that that was the more politic response does suggest to me again, he's a little bit worried about some of the political atmospherics of being branded far left.

[Seth Mandel]

He is trying to run away from the DSA and to say he is not a part of them. And the Beacon did a piece on this showcasing all the fundraisers he's done with the dsa. He has raised money for them. He is photo been photographed arm in arm with Rashida Tlaib.

[Matthew K. Nettle]

And the platform is the DSA platform.

[Seth Mandel]

His platform is the DSA platform, just like Troy Jackson out in Maine. And. But he is now in the closing days of the race, making real efforts to run away from them. And I think it is because he is seeing polling and Haley Stevens capitalized on this. And this was the other interesting part of the debate, showing real weaknesses among black voters. And she talked about going to campaign in small businesses owned by African Americans. And she, I think understands clearly that this is where his weakness is. And she accused him of neglecting the black community and not paying attention to them. And he seems to understand that acutely.

[Matthew K. Nettle]

She's got to keep pressing it because

[John Podhoretz]

yeah, she had, she had, he had an agenda that Eliana laid out very well, which is corporations are Buying Haley Stevens and Jews are. Buying Haley Stevens and corporations and Jews are the same thing. And $46 million and, and she's standing on the soldier. And I don't take money from corporations or aipac.

[Seth Mandel]

I only take money from my Hamas father in law. That's the only person I take money from. You know, $300,000 uncorruptible.

[Abe Greenwald]

Because he's a, because he's a land. Because he's a landlord. He's a global landlord. So what does he need to take money from people for? He's got. He just raises rent out from wherever.

[Seth Mandel]

Indians and Emiratis and my wife's psychology practice that doesn't accept Medicaid. And it is amazing he was not asked about that.

[John Podhoretz]

Yeah, okay, so my point, he had a message and I thought it got monotonous. Now, again, I don't think people are going to watch the. As is always the case, it's the clips that they show on Michigan TV or whatever, they're gonna matter. I don't know what those are. There was no moment of any particular poof that you can say, well, that's what they're gonna cut out and run for either side. But she also had a very deliberate, practiced strategy. She was, I'm talking about Michigan. And implicitly it's, this guy is talking about Israel and I'm talking about Michigan.

[Matthew K. Nettle]

And it was also talking about 2028.

[Seth Mandel]

Exactly.

[John Podhoretz]

It's a playbook.

[Matthew K. Nettle]

Just the other day, hey, how he's gonna reshape the primary field and primary Fetterman, force him out of. Fetterman might not be a Democrat by 2028, but nonetheless, he clearly has huge ambitions. So it's smart of her to say, I wanna represent you Michigan nerds.

[John Podhoretz]

Yeah. So I don't know. I mean, I think in a funny way she's running the way Susan Collins runs.

[Seth Mandel]

I was about to say, okay, her message is, I'm going to be the next Susan Collins. I'm going to put my head down, I'm going to work, you're not going to see my name in lights. And this guy, he writes books, he went to host a podcast. After he lost, he decided to make himself famous and he's going to be the next DSA national superstar. And he wants to be rich and famous. You know, I'm not a millionaire. I'm a humble public servant and I'm gonna deliver for Michigan.

[John Podhoretz]

Anyway, I think the battle lines are drawn that he is running an ideological race and she is running an anti ideological race. She is Running a deliberately counter ideological race. She's there to deliver for people in Michigan. And whether or not this now depends on what the electorate, what the Democratic electorate in Michigan looks like a week from today. Will it be dominated by, or will it be disproportionately Ann Arbor and Lansing and people and sort of those sorts of people who will go overwhelmingly for El Sayed and Dearborn and whatever? Or will it be the Michigan, the suburbs of the ring suburbs of Detroit and other places where Democrats live and survive in Michigan who are gonna be like, as you say, and the African American community will be like this. What? I don't wanna hear the word AIPAC anymore. This guy is obsessed with AIPAC and oil prices are at $5, and she says she'll fight Trump and that's good enough for me. So it's an interesting test case. She's running as a normie, he is running as a shatterer. And this state will be a very interesting test of what the Democratic electorate in a large space. Right. This is not a huge state, but it's a pretty. You know, it's 11 million people. So, like, it's bigger than Maine, it's bigger than New York City. And so it's statewide. And this is the first real statewide challenge for the dsa. And so, you know, we'll just. We got.

[Eliana Johnson]

You know, there's something else I noticed. I don't know if all of you will agree with me or not. I don't know how other people see this, but Steven strikes me as one of those figures who show up and remarkably awkward. Strange. You're not sure what to make of her. And then you find without, before you know it, that she's grown on you in some strange way. There's something endearing. And I think in particular, it works. It may be working for her because El Said is so slick.

[Matthew K. Nettle]

He's so Parks and Rec affect.

[John Podhoretz]

Yeah, right. Yeah.

[Matthew K. Nettle]

We kind of like those people on that show, you know?

[John Podhoretz]

Exactly.

[Eliana Johnson]

Exactly.

[Matthew K. Nettle]

Right.

[Eliana Johnson]

But it also does a lot.

[John Podhoretz]

And he's Stalin. You know, it's like, who would you

[Matthew K. Nettle]

rather have represent you? It's pretty easy.

[Eliana Johnson]

Yeah, yeah.

[John Podhoretz]

And I think that's true. I mean, she's playing that, right? I mean, like, yeah, there's the jta.

[Abe Greenwald]

Yeah, she did this. She did the jta, did the story about how somebody who's already voted for El Sayed approached her in a diner and. And she sat down. She didn't know he had already voted, you know, for El Said. But they're talking about it this guy is all in on anti Israel stuff. He loves El Sayed because He's says he's 100% on voting on the Palestinians. And the way that Haley Stevens handles the discussion is very interesting, but a great example of this. And the last line in the sheets, you know, it says, she says she, she name dropped a Palestinian supporter of her. She mentioned legislating legislation targeting China that she's worked on with my colleague Ro Khanna. She, you know, she just sort of bakes this stuff in and then, you know, she, the last line in the pieces. She also turned to her staff and excitedly indicated to Singletary who was the guy who voted against it. He voted for Abdul in the primary. And he came here to talk to me like, look, he doesn't like me and he came here to talk to me anyway. How great is that? Look at this guy. He's so interesting. He voted for, for Abdul. We're going to, we're going to have a conversation. It's like the most Midwestern thing you could possibly imagine is being able to feign genuine excitement at sitting with somebody who has already voted against you. When you're spending 23 hours a day eating, sleeping, and, you know, breathing the campaign trail and all that stuff. And you really don't have much, you know, 45 minutes to waste on a guy who just wants to tell you why he already voted against you. But she does it with a smile and that. I think she's betting on that Persona. She's betting on the fact that she goes to all, you know, when she told El sayed in the debate, you, you know, you really ought to visit Michigan sometime. Essentially, she's, she's betting that people will remember the way she is in these personal settings. No one's gonna, no one's gonna care that this guy Singletary was there because he voted for, you know, for her opponent or whatever. The point is that she wants to rack up the miles and the hours of Michiganders just seeing her being a Michigander and that that's going to be enough. And it might be.

[John Podhoretz]

So, in other words, he's internationalizing the race and she is localizing the race. And that's just an interesting face off. I mean, they are both playing to their strengths and they are going to their corners and they're gonna fight this fight this way. And I don't know that anybody has the foggiest clue how this is gonna, how this is gonna end up, but in some ways it's a useful barometer for what life is left in the Democratic Party for people who do not want the Democratic Party to focus on issues that aren't directly related to what is going on with them. He is talking about Medicare for All. Right. So at least he's talking about healthcare that he had. That's his one. That's like his one domestic thing that he talks about. He doesn't talk about anything else. She talks about. She's like, I did the Corn and subsidy act of 2018, and she's talking boring details because that's what Congress is. It's boring. Bring home the bacon stuff. And I don't know where we're going now. I do know where we want to go because I think we really do want to talk about these two leaks or two releases of information. One, Anthony Fauci's diary and the other, the public release of the Hur of the testimony and stuff surrounding the Robert Hur investigation into Joe Biden's handling of classified information. If you famously remember that Hur said that he had enough evidence to indict Biden, but that he chose not to on the grounds that no court would ever convict his client or his. Not his client, the opposite of his client, because he was essentially senile. I mean, he didn't say senile, but that's what he said. And so the transcript, what we saw yesterday bears this out.

[Seth Mandel]

He said, you know, well, meaning man with poor memory. Something like that.

[John Podhoretz]

Yeah. So, which of course, we all understand, and I think most of America now understands that Biden was, you know, was intellectually infirm through much of his presidency. But of course, that just brings us back to the question of the Democratic Party's handling of power and whether or not this cover up of Biden's incapacity will be among the most irresponsible uses of power or the hunger for power that we'll ever see.

[Matthew K. Nettle]

Well, I certainly think so, but two things. The first is it's amazing to me how quickly the public and the media have just moved on from Biden and what was done to cover up Biden's condition and the extremely haphazard way in which Biden dropped out of the race in 2024 and Harris kind of seized the nomination. Already we're talking about 2028. Axios pronounced Harris the front runner. This story, which is interesting story, it should be a much bigger story. And it should have been a bigger story for months, not only after Biden dropped out, but for the months leading up to the debate with Trump where his condition was exposed and we got a Brief revival of the story when Jill Biden's memoir came out. But then that kind of faded away as well.

[John Podhoretz]

It's not out yet. The news of his memoir.

[Matthew K. Nettle]

No, Jill Biden's Jill Biden.

[John Podhoretz]

I thought you said Dr. Biden's memoir

[Matthew K. Nettle]

when it came out. Yes, and she made the rounds. And then, yeah, the news of. He has his mem. But you know, we have to think about what kind of publicity he will even do. There was a story recently about how his circle is tightening, tightening, tightening. You know, he doesn't get out much. And the other thing I would just say about this is we just went through this again with Platner. It's the same thing. The Democratic establishment says, don't look here, don't look here, don't look here. The major media institutions parrot them until all of a sudden the problem becomes undeniable. And then they quickly scurry around, find a new solution and then pretend that nothing happened and everything is hunky dory. It's fascinating to watch it work. They haven't learned anything. And this is going to be the pattern that will characterize future screw ups like this.

[John Podhoretz]

Okay, I want to propose a scenario to you for 2027. Late 2027, Kamala Harris is in the race.

[Abe Greenwald]

I thought you were going to say Fauci is in the race.

[John Podhoretz]

Kamala Harris is in the race. It's early debates and there are 12 people in the race. Somebody is going to say you were in on. We had an infirm president and you were in on the conspiracy to keep him in office. And had he not had the debate that he had, you wouldn't have ended up as the nominee losing in your own right. But also, what if he had gotten elected? You stood by knowing that this man who could not serve because he was senile was running for reelection for the presidency. You support it. You knew better. I think that's.

[Matthew K. Nettle]

Let me just say one, that assumes she debates because just think if she has a commanding lead and she look at what Trump did in 2024 and we know that she doesn't want to debate. But two, who's going to make that case? It's going to have to be the socialist candidate who does it. But that presents their own. Because I don't think any Buttigieg isn't going to make it. Newsom. Newsom, who's like decided that Hunter Biden's gonna be his running mate. He's not gonna make it.

[John Podhoretz]

I don't know. I don't know.

[Matthew K. Nettle]

Emmanuel's not gonna make it. So it's gonna have to come from an outsider in order to do that. And I just think that the way the Democrats work is they don't admit fault or disagreement. That doesn't happen, you know, unless it's. Unless it's this insurgent force that is trying to take away their position.

[John Podhoretz]

Okay, so let's move on to Fauci, because this is a story so big, you know, we've given ourselves barely any time to talk about it, but this story is huge. And it's so huge that despite the effort to avoid covering it, finally this morning, mainstream media outlets are covering it, having refused to cover it yesterday and the day before. So the story is Fauci pretty. I mean, I think the only real story is Fauci saying In January of 2020, it probably came from the lab, and then the animals were an accelerant. That's two weeks before the February 2 group meeting of the epidemiologists and virologists, deciding that they were commonly going to say that it was from the wet market, and structuring this group of people to create a kind of phalanx to hold firm to that line. As 2020 went on and then 2021, and then starting to go literally at the throats of. And the careers of anybody who dared say, this smells to me this. There's a virology lab right there where they were doing gain of function research. It beggars belief that that's not where this came from. That's the smoking gun. And for some reason, the New York Times story and stuff like that, quote it, but then say there's nothing new because he said something like it in an interview two weeks later, which I don't remember. I mean, I guess, and they didn't quote it. But I'm just saying, like, he said he believed that it was probably out of the lab, and then he was talked into the idea of saying that it wasn't from the lab. And then by, you know, by three months later, anybody who said it was from the lab was being deplatformed and attacked, and people wanted to, you know, get them fired from their university positions. And the Great Barrington declaration was suppressed. All of that, with Fauci's foreknowledge, that it was probably a lab leak.

[Abe Greenwald]

It's also unclear why they. Looking back, why they had to go through all that too.

[Matthew K. Nettle]

Oh, it's not.

[John Podhoretz]

It's not because I'm gonna tell you. No, because you don't remember the atmosphere. The atmosphere was trump. Is a xenophobe who is trying to, who is trying to make anti Asian hate.

[Seth Mandel]

And if you say it came from a lab, you're contributing to an atmosphere of hostility towards Chinese Americans and to the Chinese in general. And Fauci and the NIH were also funding this gain of function research and his friends in the nonprofit NGO Health community had been participated. Yeah, Peter Daszak were participating in this research and had personal interest in this particular research, while his political adversaries, in particular Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas were the first ones out there because of their understanding of the Chinese and how the Chinese operated. And the Chinese interest in suppressing dissent and transparency were the first ones out there to say, hey, this came from Wuhan. There's a virology lab there. And the most likely explanation of this is that it emerged from the laboratory. And if there is a more salient, searing case of why conservatives don't trust quote, unquote, experts and government expertise, it is this.

[Eliana Johnson]

But, you know, I also love, I also love this, the whole diary revelation because at the time liberals and media were saying, you know, thank God, look, Trump is a liar and a narcissist. Thank God there's Fauci, you know, to keep things on track, to be honest with us, the people. He knows what's happening, you know, and what do we know from Fauci's diary? He is an off the charts narcissist and as we've just been discussing, a very consequential liar. This is incredible to me. I mean, it's not incredible to me, but you rarely see such a robust and by the way of people being foisted by their own copy.

[Seth Mandel]

Not that we didn't know this, but we also see in the diaries the media collusion with all this. We saw it during the pandemic, but we get a glimpse of the fact that he's having dinner with Jake Tapper and hanging out with these people. And they shared in the ad he

[John Podhoretz]

was calling Chris Cuomo every day. When Chris Cuomo had Covid to check in on him, to see how he was doing in his basement in East Hampton.

[Abe Greenwald]

Well, beyond and beyond. On that note, just beyond the media, you know, comfiness with the government angle of that, Cuomo was at the center of another Covid scandal, which is that his brother was governor and reportedly making available medications and, and, and shots that were really supposed to go to elderly and infer people whose immune systems couldn't handle it much more than Chris Cuomo was expected to. And, and things were Being diverted. Doctors, right, were being diverted to resources, state resources to fight this pandemic. It turned diverted to the governor's brother, who also was the CNN anchor and also was talking to Fauci every day.

[Matthew K. Nettle]

Yeah, I don't usually say this, but credit to Senator Rand Paul because he has been dogged in pursuit of Fauci and he's the reason we have the diary. And he subpoenaed Fauci to testify before his committee, I believe tomorrow, Wednesday. And that if Rand Paul just limited himself to pursuing the truth about the government and Covid, he'd be in my top five senators.

[Eliana Johnson]

Look,

[John Podhoretz]

just as the financial meltdown of 2008 had consequences for electoral politics in the United States for at least four election cycles after it, including the next presidential election, we are not done with COVID Covid is not done with us as a political issue. People, we have slight amnesia about the extraordinarily extreme national response to this disease and the harms that it did. Now, if you're not a parent of a teenager, who was a teenager, then you know it less or a kid, then less. And you know, as we know, that not fewer people are children and all of that. But there is no one on earth who reminded of COVID does not get angry about it. And so this as it comes, continues the two extreme political efforts, the efforts on the extremes to say you cannot trust government and you need to overthrow it. Right. That's the sort of Trump Maga we'll do anything deep state. And then there's the dsa, which I think, weirdly enough, may be the Democratic, twisted Democratic version of the response to Covid because things are responded to in weird ways. And if the idea is Biden was corrupt because he, you know, he gave Bibi too much latitude in Gaza, that's what they may say. But a mass of voters may be saying Biden was bad, but what they really think that Biden was bad about was Covid.

[Matthew K. Nettle]

John, the people who were voting for DSA liked Covid. They were the ones triple masking. They were the ones who still wear masks out in public. They liked Covid. They liked the experts telling them what to do. That I don't think I have to just part with you there. I think the DSA is something that has been a plan in the making that predates Covid. And in fact, of course, to the degree that Republicans outperformed expectations in 2020, it was the DSA that was responsible for it because of the George Floyd summer and because of Green New Deal, Medicare for all Bernie Sanders. So I agree with you that, yes, we're not done with COVID but I think the DSA is something slightly different.

[John Podhoretz]

Okay. Anyway, we're going to talk more about Fauci over the, over the course of the week because this is a very, this is a very, very big, very big deal. Generationally big deal. It's just, it's a, it's. It's like a slow moving bomb that will, you know, explode. It's already exploded for a lot of us. But I don't know the extent to which it, the public health disaster, community stuff has exploded the way that it will explode as time goes on here with this, you know, like White House tapes thing out of COVID here. I mean, it's that level. It's that level. It's like the release of the tape of the Nixon tapes. This is Fauci's internal monologue as he was directing the country's response. And the closure of schools and all of that and controlling American lives.

[Matthew K. Nettle]

I just connected a little bit. I mean, the mania, the mania that kind of expressed itself in ultra Covid awareness. Don't leave your house for years, triple mask, all that then transmuted into George Floyd, racial reckoning. Then we had also transmuted into the trans hysteria. It's now, it's now anti Semitism. It's not the Jews. I mean, that's where. That's the latest iteration of whatever this kind of irrational mania is that's been haunting us now for almost a decade. And it's all concentrated on the Jews. And of course, that's something we have to fight against every day.

[John Podhoretz]

Okay. Matt, you have a recommendation?

[Matthew K. Nettle]

I believe I do, John. Thank you. I taught a class for the Hertog Found, which is an educational nonprofit I'm associated with and any college age student who's listening to my voice or watching us on YouTube where I hope you like and subscribe. Thank you. They should look up the Hertog Foundation. I taught a class on conservatism and revolution this summer. I won't go into the details, but it was a great. I really enjoyed teaching it. And it was an opportunity for me to learn about more about the French Revolution, which, you know, I knew the basics, but I didn't quite know the exact chronological order. And so I just want to recommend a book which is one of the best history books I've ever read. It's called the Oxford History of the French Revolution by the British historian William Doyle. It's been through several editions. I think the current one is a third edition since he first wrote it. And it's just an excellent introduction to the French Revolution, covering every aspect, the causes, the development, the outcome. And Doyle is a brilliant writer and someone who has a very kind of tragic view of history and also kind of a very dry wit. So I would like to recommend a book. It's been a while since I've done that, and I think if you want, you're interested in learning more about the French Revolution and its disturbing parallels to today, you should check out the Oxford History of the French Revolution by William Doyle.

[John Podhoretz]

Thank you so much. Nice elevated offering.

[Matthew K. Nettle]

I told you to be academic.

[John Podhoretz]

Absolutely. So we will be back tomorrow. Thanks to Matt and for Eliana, Seth and Abe, I'm John Pothoric. Keep the candle burning.

[Matthew K. Nettle]

Sam.