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- [00:04]
Jon Vadhorets
Hope for the best, expect the worst.
- [00:10]
Abe Greenwald
Some drinks champagne, Some die of thirst
- [00:14]
Jon Vadhorets
no way of knowing which way it's going. Hope for the best. Expect the worst. Hope for the best. Welcome to the Commentary magazine daily podcast. Today is Monday, May 11, 2026. I am Jon Vadhorets, the editor of Commentary magazine. With me, as always, executive editor Abe Greenwald. Hi, Abe.
- [00:35]
Seth Mandel
Hi, John.
- [00:36]
Jon Vadhorets
Senior editor Seth Mandel. Hi, Seth.
- [00:39]
Eliana Johnson
Hi, John.
- [00:39]
Jon Vadhorets
Washington Free Beacon editor Eliana Johnson. Hi, Eliana.
- [00:43]
Unidentified Female Speaker (likely a guest or contributor)
Hi, John.
- [00:44]
Jon Vadhorets
And joining us today, our contributing editor, Pooh Bah at the foundation for Defense of Democracies. If you're watching on YouTube, you can see their really beautiful fleece merch, probably available somewhere on the FTD website. I want one. I'm going to get one. Jonathan Schanzer, welcome. Welcome back, Jonathan.
- [01:05]
Jonathan Schanzer
Hi, John.
- [01:06]
Jon Vadhorets
All right, Jonathan, as our expert, do
- [01:09]
Eliana Johnson
alumni get a get a free fleece? Asking for a friend.
- [01:14]
Jonathan Schanzer
You get it at a discount. I don't know about free.
- [01:16]
Eliana Johnson
I'll take it.
- [01:17]
Jon Vadhorets
All right, so. Boy, a confusing weekend. So much news around the Iran war and the negotiations thereto. Therefrom Trump issuing a proposal, the Iranians counter, proposing that they should be paid money, they should be given uranium, they should have a nuclear bomb they can drop on anybody. They should be given a parade down Fifth Avenue. I don't know what their counter proposal was. Trump very unhappy, said they will laugh no more. Seems to feel humiliated by how they treated his proposal. And so the question is, are we going back to war soon or not, or what kind of war? And will there be. Will it be just on the water? Will we resume airstrikes? Will there be ground forces involved, whatever. So, Jonathan, you have. I'm giving you 90 seconds to tell us what's going to happen, who's going to win, and where we're going to be in 2100 when all of this is over. So I'm setting my timer. Okay, go to it.
- [02:39]
Jonathan Schanzer
In short, the war is exactly where we left it, which is to say that Trump continues to dangle ceasefires that he says the Iranians want, but they clearly do not. They are standing firm. I think they have a strategy. They're gonna try to outlast the president. I don't know if they can outlast the president because the economic situation in Iran is starting to really bite. You may have seen there was a piece on Saturday, I think it was in the New York Times, that was kind of explaining the way in which the economic war, economic fury, as we call it, is truly starting to have an impact on the, on the economy of the Islamic Republic, I think that's a good thing. But I will say patience is running out here at home. People want to know what the story is, why it costs so much to fill up their car with gas and how much longer we're going to keep expending these munitions. And I got to say, the munitions is the big one. If you saw there were reports over the weekend from Margaret Brennan from cbs, I believe, apparently Mark Kelly, Senator Mark Kelly came out after a classified briefing saying that we've blown through way too many munitions, that we're at critical levels, that we may have enough to continue
- [04:01]
Abe Greenwald
this war, but we wouldn't have enough in the event that there was a crisis in Taiwan or perhaps some other place. And so munitions, I think, are prominent now in this debate. This probably explains why we've not been dropping more bombs on the Islamic Republic. In other words, we've reached a place where we've realized that there's a point of diminishing returns with these munitions. And so it looks like we're stuck. I think the Pentagon is saying no mas, which by the way, I think also has some interesting implications for Israel because they depend on us for their munitions. So this could have an impact not only on the Iran war, but also on the war with Hezbollah or a possible war with Hamas, not to mention what's going on in China. The arsenal of democracy appears to be
- [04:48]
Jonathan Schanzer
under strain right now. And that's really what I'm watching above all else. I think that might have been more than 90 seconds, but that's as good as that.
- [04:55]
Jon Vadhorets
That was excellent. Thank you very much. Now I'm going to go and I'm on a first floor, so if I jump out the window, I actually won't really do much damage to myself. That's a very depressing report. I don't, I would like to add some other things that sound depressing, but I think actually give me heart. So the war is being come at from all sides. Bob Kagan has a piece in the Atlantic saying Trump has gotten himself into a box he can't get out of with destroying America's strategic position forever. Bob, who never met an American action he didn't like, suddenly doesn't like an American action cuz he doesn't like Trump. Another person whose conversion experience has completely turned him into the opposite of the person that he was for the first 60 some odd years of his life, which I find it very dist fact for somebody that I once considered a friend and somebody that I Deeply respected. Nonetheless, I will take him at his word that he believes that this is the case, that this is the situation that we find ourselves in, that simply threatening Hormuz has changed the entire balance of the power of world history. Simply by saying we can close Hormuz. Hormuz is closed. Hormuz will be closed forever. Shipping will change. Everything will be terrible. Trump suspended the Project Freedom effort to escort ships out of Hormuz. There was kinetic action in the Strait of Hormuz last week. But here's where I am on this. That makes me a little more confident. So we're out of munitions, we're out of this. An intelligence report says that they've retained most of their ballistic missiles and they can restart their program. And all of this. And something is hinky in all the positive reporting on Iran's tactical and strategic position. It seems to suggest that Iran is somehow winning this war flies in the face of all logic and leads me to believe that a lot of this stuff is information that we are getting strictly for the purposes of interfering with the effort to let Trump secure a victory here, let America secure a victory, and to win. And it just leads me to utter skepticism about what Mark Kelly says, what we're hearing from the Pentagon. A lot of people have lost heart or don't want to go on or thought it was going to be short or whatever, and. And they're just collecting whatever pieces of circumstantial evidence they can. Some obviously true, some maybe not so true. And I don't know how to look at this, but to say we sat here and watched for six weeks as the United States and Israel targeted sites in Iran, decapitated the Iranian political leadership, and the mullahs, did this, did that, did the other thing, and now we're being told that it was all ineffective. All all Iran had to do was raise its pinky and say we're closing the Strait of Hormuz to freeze the two best militaries in the world. Panic them, panic the markets, create a gigantic inflationary spiral. There's gonna be a grocery shock, there's an oil shock. The Iranians have done almost nothing in their own defense. I mean. Or we're told that the Iranians did a huge amount in their own defense and destroyed a lot of our munitions, but we're lying. We're lying about it. We're not saying that they had success at hitting our bases and sites in the Middle east, and we're lying to the American people. We have no more munitions, and they blew up our munitions and they closed the Strait of Hormuz, and they have all the nuclear material, and they have 70% of their ballistic missiles. And the crippled and seemingly comatose Mullah Ayatollah Mujtaba is still running things, even though he's comatose.
- [08:57]
Unidentified Female Speaker (likely a guest or contributor)
And.
- [08:57]
Jon Vadhorets
And all of this seems a kind of like argument that is backed only by the desire to somehow get us out of this in the following way. Trump is humiliated and America doesn't win, and Israel somehow doesn't win. So I don't have countervailing evidence except the evidence of my own senses from February 28th until the 1st ceasefire, which was that we were kicking ass. So were we not kicking? Were we just bombing rubble? That doesn't compute. This story that we're being told does not comport with the reality through which we just lived until the ceasefire was declared. After Trump scared himself by saying, I'm going to destroy Iran's civilization, that he clearly said, I don't really want to destroy the entire civilization, so I better, like, come up with a way of, like, freezing things in place while we figure out where to go next.
- [10:02]
Jonathan Schanzer
So let me. Let me respond to that by saying this. There are a number of things that can be true at the same time. I do believe that the kinetic war was a success. I think that the United States and Israel did an immense amount of damage to the Islamic Republic, to its military capabilities, to the top political echelons, to a whole bunch of infrastructure and the economy. And I believe that the Islamic Republic is reeling. I believe that it was a successful military campaign. And then I believe we probably started to run short on weapons. And we paused with the idea that maybe we'd be able to get out of this without having to do more and to ultimately solve for the straight of Hormuz and to be able to move on from there. The Islamic Republic, this shouldn't surprise anybody, right? They've trained these other terrorist organizations to essentially be martyrs, right? That they continue to throw themselves at their enemy and lose, but by just surviving in small numbers or just surviving
- [11:09]
Abe Greenwald
at the end of this, they win. That seems to be sort of what the Islamic Republic is trying to do here, that they have been bruised and bloodied and battered, and yet they have not yet surrendered and are not likely to. And this is going to frustrate the Trump administration. It's going to frustrate the Israelis.
- [11:30]
Jonathan Schanzer
And that leaves us to, okay, well, if we can't expend munitions and we don't have this kind of. I don't know, brilliant strategy for defeating them in a kinetic way. Then what? I think, again, we've talked about this. There is an economic war that can be waged that I think might be a little bit slower than what the average American wants because they wanted this thing wrapped up yesterday. That's not likely to happen here. It clearly hasn't happened. So what I think we're looking at is this blockade process that could take weeks. That's when we'll see the Iranians cap their wells. That's where we'll see them start to, you know, I think, run out of hard currency they'll have to spend through their gold stores that they have in their central bank. That's where I think things start to get messy for them. If we can block the Russians and the Chinese from replenishing them, I think there is still a way out of this because they're already weakened, they're already battered, they're already bruised. We're in, we're in a fine shape, I think here in the US I think the Israelis are too. So I think there's, you know, I think there's a different narrative. It's not the one that Mark Kelly is telling us. It's not the one that you're reading about in the New York Times. It's not what you're hearing from the White House or the Pentagon. It's somewhere in the middle. Obviously that nuance doesn't ever come through in the media these days.
- [12:52]
Jon Vadhorets
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- [13:52]
Seth Mandel
Jonathan, you may be the wrong person to ask. I don't know. I'm having a hard time figuring out how and why it would be that the US Would run out of munitions. Suddenly there was a long preparation for this operation. Did we fire more off than we had expected to. Did we lose so many in Iranian counter strikes? I mean, it's a weird thing to shoot, shoot, shoot, shoot, shoot and go. Oh. Oop, that's it. That's what I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around here.
- [14:34]
Jonathan Schanzer
I'm having a hard time with it too. And look, my understanding is, and this is just cursory stuff, but that we've gone through, I don't know, let's say a third of our stockpile of some of these munitions, give or take, and that that's already too many. You'd think that we either would have had a plan to put it on fast forward to get our, our day of our defense industrial base primed and working overtime to make sure that we could replenish those stocks, but apparently we haven't. Look, I don't have all the, all the hard data here. I don't like, let me just say it up front. I don't like that a senator is coming out and talking about this. That drives me nuts. Even if there's some truth to it, this is stuff that we shouldn't be wrestling with out in the public sphere.
- [15:22]
Seth Mandel
Specifically saying we won't have enough to handle China on the eve of Trump's meeting with Xi. I mean. Yeah.
- [15:30]
Jon Vadhorets
Okay, look, just to interrupt here for a second, right. The classic military planning involves two elements, right? What do you need for now and what do you need to hold in reserve either for later or for other sets of circumstances? And you know, this is an age old battle about resource preservation versus we got it, we built it to use it, now we gotta use it. You don't husband it like this was Lincoln's fight with McClellan during the Civil War, is that McClellan wouldn't actually act because he was too busy, you know, doing potential battles with his troops to actually engage in setting up supply lines that he would never use. And all of that so we can go back in history and say you gotta maintain your supply line, you gotta maintain your supply chain, you gotta do this, you gotta do that. And sometimes in military planning places or at Pentagons, like the maintenance of the cash cache, not cash, becomes an end in itself. So that Mark Kelly saying, we're really going to need all those munitions for the war we're going to fight with Taiwan. A. Are we really planning to fight an actual war over Taiwan? Are we planning to hold billions of pieces of materiel to fight a war with China? Maybe we are. Maybe we should be, in theory making such plans. I kind of think that That's a very weird way to deal with a war that we are currently fighting, which is we wanna win this war so that we don't have to fight the war with China because China will go, man, we're not fighting, we're not getting into this if the Americans are gonna fight us. Look what they did did to Iran. They just showed how you can raise the cost of fighting to a very high level. So we're going to belay it. The war itself changes the sets of circumstances here. And the idea of we have this nice, shiny, incredible depot with unbelievable amounts of wonderful weaponry. We have to keep polishing it instead of deploying. It seems very likely a view inside the Pentagon because there's like tens of thousands of people who work on exactly this. And it's like, no, we have to, we need to keep the stuff at Fort Collins because what are we going to do if we get attacked by the Russians like that, like that kind of theoretical planning.
- [18:19]
Jonathan Schanzer
Look, I gotta say, I think you framed it the right way. I think there's a choice that needs to be made at the executive level with the Pentagon. And it seems like maybe they haven't made that decision yet. And it may be that indecision that has left us in this very uncomfortable place as we all try to determine what's happening with the war. And it would be great to get some clarity here from the Pentagon and from the White House after Mark Kelly's. You know, I gotta say, I think there should be consequences for what this guy has leaked. And I hope that there's a discussion that comes about that there should be some kind of censure of this man for having talked about things that should not be public. But I wanna raise something. This actually tracks back to the last time I was on the program. You know, the rules of war today demand that we use these exquisite weapons that are incredibly precise and hard to manufacture and by the way, require rare earth minerals from the Chinese primarily because they control those supply chains. We have a problem here, it looks like, right? We don't know how to win by just bombing our enemies into submission any longer. We're only hitting them with very precise things according to the laws of war. And we have enemies that don't want to surrender. And so we find ourselves in this very uncomfortable spot. I think there does need to be a rethinking of the US led rules based world order.
- [19:48]
Eliana Johnson
Right?
- [19:48]
Jonathan Schanzer
Like the way that we fight wars is not working right now. Clearly if we're stuck here because we have to keep using precise weapons that are more expensive and difficult to produce, and we're running out of those. Well, then, but we still probably have lots of other munitions and lots of capabilities. We just can't use them. We have a problem here. And I think this is a more systemic, big picture problem than just, oh, where do we get the next 1,000 or 5,000 bombs that we just blew through? And I don't know who's talking about it yet, but man, do I think we need to have that conversation.
- [20:24]
Jon Vadhorets
I mean, one thing to be said, and then I want Eliana to jump in here, is the Trump administration has dealt with this as follows, which is to say it's gone to Congress and said we need to. We need a trillion five in new defense spending to replenish, restock and make sure that we have the military at the size that we need the military. If Democrats and everybody are gonna scream about how Trump has like wasted and blown through all of our munitions and everything, they're putting themselves in a bit of a bind because they are making the argument that that extra trillion five needs to be spent. And I thought they are the ones who don't want to spend money on the military if they can help it. So not Mark Kelly, by the way, necessarily. But you know what I mean. I have a dog named Georgie. Love her, but, you know, hard to understand dogs. They do weird things. They don't speak. So if your dog is acting weirdly at 2 o' clock in the morning, you're googling like, is this normal? Do I have to call the vet? You're not alone. These moments of panic come with pet ownership. And they're exactly why I'm here to talk to you about ASPCA pet health insurance. It helps take the financial question out of the equation so when something feels off, you can focus on getting your pet the care they need instead of stressing over the cost. When you Enroll in an ASPCA pet health insurance plan program, you could get a $25Amazon gift card. It's a little treat for you while you're doing something great for your pet. It's been around for almost 20 years, has covered nearly 1 million pets in that time. To explore coverage, visit aspcapetinsurance.com commentary that's aspcapetinsurance.Com commentary. Eligibility restrictions apply. Visit and listen to this carefully. ASPCA Peter petinsurance.com Amazonterms for more info. This is a paid advertisement. Insurance is underwritten by either Independence American Insurance Company or United States Fire Insurance Company. And produced by PTZ Insurance Agency Ltd. The ASPCA is not an insurer and is not engaged in the business of insurance. I'm happy to come talk to you again about quints. It's spring and for me that means it's time to take out my Quince linen, clothing, pants, shirts, buy some new ones. The linen breathes. It is the most comfortable for the spring and summer months. It's handsome, it is attractive and we're talking about stuff that costs 50 to 80% less than you'd find from similar brands. Because Quince works directly with Ethan Electrical factories cuts out the middleman. You're getting premium materials without the markup. So refresh your everyday with luxury you'll actually use. Head to Quince.com commentary for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns now available in Canada too. That's Q-U-Y-N-C-E.com commentary for free shipping and 365 day returns. Quince.com commentary.
- [23:48]
Unidentified Female Speaker (likely a guest or contributor)
John, I wanted to ask you, I think the conventional wisdom is that the Trump administration is worried about sort of continuing the status quo of a non ceasefire ceasefire, keeping the blockade on and allowing Iran to keep, you know, gumming up the Strait of Hormuz and operating on the assumption that this is more painful for them than it is for us because of the rising gas prices as the midterms approach. However, we heard Treasury Secretary Scott Besant float the idea of a gas tax holiday in order to bring down gas prices. And also I'm curious in your thoughts and about what the how the administration may be weighing in terms of the negotiations and the quote, unquote, cease fire. That's not a cease fire. The negotiations with China, Trump's, Trump's summit with Xi, how that may be playing into this, what you think may be on the agenda as it pertains to Iran and whether we may actually resume conflict when, you know, on, on the back end of of that like is the conventional wisdom, right? What are they going to talk about as it pertains to Iran and how might the summit impact all of this?
- [25:20]
Jonathan Schanzer
You're asking all the big questions, Eliana. I mean, obviously trade is the big thing heading into this, but Trump has asks now of Xi. I mean, he doesn't want the Chinese to be providing the Iranian regime with the restock of missiles or missile parts, drones or drone parts and other things that will help this regime survive. And so if Trump makes that ask, there's obviously always the horse trading that goes on at These summits, these are the two most powerful men in the world. And they're trying to carve up spheres of influence around the world, and they're trying to establish new rules for the road as it relates to trade. And I don't know how Trump is gonna prioritize one over the other. Right now he's got a war that will be his legacy, but he also has this rivalry with China. And I will give him full credit. He was the guy that really brought the great power competition of the four during Trump won. And so he's got sort of two big legacy issues that he's gonna be wrestling with. With basically two and a half years left in his presidency, he's got a lot that he's gonna have to weigh here. I don't know what is first priority and what's second for him. I'm assuming it's the big trade picture that's the big one for him. But I think I'm afraid of concessions that he might make over this war. That's something that we're going to have to watch.
- [26:54]
Jon Vadhorets
Well, so where we stand now is we are moving into a new phase of the war. So epic fury is over. Economic fury is ongoing, but is not actually a kinetic war. It's a economic. It's a war by other means, as somebody once said. And we are clearly gonna be re engaging. So there are three ways we can engage or reengage. Campaign from the air, campaign on the sea, campaign on the ground. That's it. Or under the sea. Right. Cause there are some. Now the Iranians are claiming they have a submarine fleet. They're gonna start, you know, zooming around the Strait of Hormuz, underneath which.
- [27:51]
Eliana Johnson
And the dolphins.
- [27:52]
Jon Vadhorets
And of course the dolphins. So they have the dolphins and the submarines. The dolphins will be leading the submarines. They're probably like, you know, they're probably pulling the submarines like a team of horses. So something's gonna happen because Trump has already said they will laugh at me no longer. So what does that mean? And I'm not. None of us is a. We're not military planners, so we don't know. But I think it is likely that he does not wish to meet G with when all guns are blazing in the straight or on Kharg or wherever. And yet it's gonna have to do something. He just said he has to do something. He said it. I'm not saying it. I think he does. But, I mean, I'm not saying.
- [28:52]
Seth Mandel
Couldn't that something also be that we keep up the blockade and the regime goes broke.
- [28:59]
Jonathan Schanzer
I think that is something.
- [29:01]
Unidentified Female Speaker (likely a guest or contributor)
That's my question. Like, why not continue the status quo, give Americans a gas tax holiday?
- [29:08]
Jonathan Schanzer
Look, I think that, that, you know, I mean, to your point, Eliana, I think there, you know, we need to keep a close eye on Scott Basset. He's the guy that could be sort of, you know, taken over for, for hegseth in terms of these, you know, updates to the media and everything else. I mean, minus the push ups and, you know, other expressions of.
- [29:29]
Unidentified Female Speaker (likely a guest or contributor)
He's gotten in some important fistfights behind the scenes.
- [29:32]
Jon Vadhorets
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. No push ups. He's gonna have to set up a ring. So him and Kevin Hassett, three rounds. Winner gets to choose what the number of the economic growth number is going to be for 2020. Is it going to be 6%? Is it going to be 12%? Crazy stuff coming out of the White House about how big economic growth is going to be this year anyway.
- [30:00]
Jonathan Schanzer
Yeah, but, but I mean, I think to the, to the point here, I think there's a lot that the treasury can do. And you know, I mean, we've talked about this. There's additional sanctions, there's additional tariffs. We can cut the Iranian banks off. We can bomb certain, you know, let's say centers of economic activity that we've not yet touched with the regime. There's the capping of the wells. There's a lot of damage. Right. And we've already assessed. My colleague Miyad Maliki at FDD has talked about how this, this blockade is costing the regime something like $430 million a day. And it's gonna get worse when they cap the wells. And once they cap the wells, it's gonna be hard for them to restart the pumping of oil again. There's a whole bunch of things here that I think could be quite positive, but I think that you have a, for whatever reason, you've got a president that has not said that economic fury is the strategy. He's doing the diplomatic thing, still threatening the military thing, not acknowledging the potential of this economic thing. I mean, this is classic Trump, right, that maximum flexibility. He's kind of got all the balls in the air and he's juggling all of them right now. It might make sense for him to say, look, we're pausing this thing. We're going full force on the economic war. Besant, you're my guy. Let's give updates every day. This is the war that we're fighting for the moment and we can think about whether we want to go back to kinetics when the time's right. In the meantime, we are going to continue to protect ships going through the Strait of Hormuz to ensure that there is at least some flow of oil. That I think sounds like a strategy for the time being.
- [31:38]
Abe Greenwald
But again, I think the President has been loathe to come out and say
- [31:42]
Jonathan Schanzer
this is what we're doing, because that's
- [31:44]
Abe Greenwald
just not the way that he operates.
- [31:46]
Jon Vadhorets
Can I just add one.
- [31:46]
Jonathan Schanzer
Can I ask about the. Yeah, just one more.
- [31:48]
Jon Vadhorets
I just want to add one dimension
- [31:49]
Seth Mandel
to all this because, you know, last week, some of us were quite worried that Trump was looking to make a deal here and it was gonna be a bad deal. And for all the talk and, you know, I was watching Morning Joe today, I just couldn't believe what I was hearing. I mean, people are talking as if this is the worst American foreign policy catastrophe of our lifetimes. You know, we've done. It's also silly to me. And for all the talk that Trump's in a box and he wants an off ramp and an off ramp and an off ramp, he just rejected another off ramp. I mean, you know, he didn't. There was no subtle. It wasn't like, they talk a big game, but we're kind of here and they're kind of there and we can meet. No, it's totally unacceptable and they won't be laughing.
- [32:36]
Jonathan Schanzer
I think it's all very sustainable, what we're doing right now. Yes, the price of oil is up, and there will be some instability in the markets as a result of what we do here. But I don't see this as being some kind of existential threat to the United States. And I don't think that all this portends abject failure. I think that it's a challenge. Wars go through these sorts of ups and downs. I think we've got smart people, at least I hope we do, looking at possible ways forward with the economic part of this, with the kinetic part of it, with diplomacy still at work. There's nothing wrong with any of those things. I mean, I certainly. I feel for those that are having a harder time making ends meet as a result of the spike in cost of fuel and the other things that are related to that. And yes, I think there will be some fallout with the midterms if we don't solve this by then. But this is not catastrophic. There is still victory to be had.
- [33:31]
Eliana Johnson
Is the, you know, the corner that nobody's talking about is the Arab corner, the Saudi Arabia, the Sunni Arab Gulf states, right? And we've. We've seen in recent days, like we saw last week, for example, the Saudis and the Kuwaitis said, you know, they basically, you know, they basically called a timeout, and then they let the war, you know, go on. The, the Operation Project Freedom, whatever it was, you know, to get. To get ships that help ships out of the Strait. What is. What is Trump's. What is his contact with the Arab states? Like, what role is that playing? What do the Arab states want? What do the Saudis actually want? Because we know that the Saudis were pushing publicly, in fact, strangely, publicly for mbs, pushing publicly to be seen as supporting the war. Right? And before the war, we know that although, you know, the Times did the story that people misinterpreted, I think, to suggest that Bibi Netanyahu was the force behind the war, really revealed that Mohammed bin Salman was just as much a presence in Trump's conversations with foreign leaders in the lead up to the war. And the Saudis, and then the other Gulf states say, finish the job. No ceasefire. Finished a job. The UAE says we'll leave OPEC if it helps the war go on, you know, because it'll lower gas, whatever. So what do they want exactly from all this and what does that mean to Trump?
- [35:17]
Jonathan Schanzer
Look, the UAE wants what Israel wants. I mean, they've been the most clear about this, right? We can recall that piece from Yusuf Al Utaiba, the ambassador, in the Wall Street Journal, basically saying, like, let's sweep the leg. Let's get this regime completely torched. You've got the Qataris, who I think are in the opposite side of this. They're just like, end the war. We want to go back to selling natural gas and just gorging ourselves on Western dollars. And then you've got some of these countries that are somewhere in the middle. It's interesting, I saw over the weekend that Saudi Aramco, their national energy company, is making record profits right now. There is a scenario in which some of these countries are gonna just sort of sit back and enjoy this, even as they're getting bombed, they're getting wealthy. I gotta say, I don't see clearly. I don't think we see a unified GCC position right now. The Gulfies, I think, are kind of all over the map. And that may be also part of the problem for Trump as he tries to triangulate here and to come up with a strategy. If the Saudis, Kuwaitis, Qataris, Emiratis are not on the same page, and he's speaking to each one of them as partners that, you know, that could make things even a little bit messier. As we try to wade through this,
- [36:39]
Jon Vadhorets
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- [37:40]
Jonathan Schanzer
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- [37:58]
Jon Vadhorets
Let's move on to talk a little bit about a discomforting story relating to Trump for just a couple of minutes, which is the dedication of this statue at the Doral Country Club of a golden Trump standing there, blessed by his favorite Maga pastor. I said on Twitter that the last time that anybody did anything this idolatrous, the people were stricken with leprosy. That's, you know, the golden calf. While Moses was up receiving the Ten Commandments, which apparently nobody in America, anybody any longer knows what the Ten Commandments are. That was another fun piece of news to get this weekend. The show the Boys on Amazon bring this up. Because of the eerie similarities here. The show the Boys on Amazon has been making it very clear that its key villain, a superhero named Homelander, is a Trump stand in. And the plot of the fifth final season of the Boys is that Homelander decides that he's God and wants the company that basically makes the superheroes to market him as God. And there is an image in the show at a church of a Statue of Homelander 22ft high or something floating over the bema, the dais, whatever, the part of the church, the stage of the church, and the similarities between that image and the image of the Trump statue at the Doral Country Club is genuinely eerie. And every time that one is put, placed in a position to sort of try to have a serious conversation about what Trump is trying to do, seriously to do this, do that, do the other thing, these moments intercede stuff about his corruption, stuff about. And then moments like this where you really do kind of despair about the ability to make a serious argument on Trump's behalf when stuff like this is happening simultaneously. And I don't know what to do or say about it, except to say that we can all go, aha. Well, that's Trump. But it's like, it makes your skin crawl. You want to go dive into the nearest dumpster to get away from whatever the hell is happening. Is there any case to be made that this is negligible or. Because whatever happened in the lionization of Barack Obama and the idea that he was a lightworker who was going to make the oceans recede and all of that, I don't think anybody made a godlike statue of him all in gold.
- [41:37]
Eliana Johnson
So, I mean, I think that one of the interesting things about this is that I feel like it highlights this one dichotomy of Trump, which is abroad. He's like the liberty guy and freedom. And we're gonna liberate the Iranians, we're gonna liberate the Gazans from Hamas, we're gonna liberate the. And he seems to have a general idea. Obviously he has spot with Ukraine and all that, but he, you know, he has a sort of. He goes to the Middle east to be a kind of liberate. And at home he has like, this undeniably authoritarian leaning instinct to just do things in the way he does on foreign policy. And that's hard for a president to balance, right? Which is like, on foreign policy, a president really can just give orders. Much of the time he's the commander in chief and he plays that role. But at home, we also saw, like, way overreaction with ice agents and, you know, things like that. In Minnesota that were, you know, clearly they were not, you know, there were stories about, like, why were they not trained to handle the situation so well? And it was like, well, they, they had to do. They reduced the hours of training, of ice training to 47 hours because it was. It's the number of Trump's presidency or whatever, you know, like, there are, on the, on the Domestic home front, there are these like, I am the Republic, the Republic is me instincts. And abroad, where he actually has the power to just snap his fingers and make things happen. He, it sort of, he uses that force for, you know, what I would say a lot of times for good, for, you know, for, for the idea of freedom and liberation, stuff like that. And it's just this contrast that is very hard to, you know, square. But it should help people abroad understand why Americans get so conflicted about this stuff. Because he may come to, you know, the Middle east and say, you know, we're going to liberate you. And they go, why do Americans, why are they so bothered by Trump? He's not a dictator. And at home, you know, he has the same kind of, you know, I, what I say goes. Instincts, John.
- [43:48]
Seth Mandel
I got to admit, I'm in the oh, well, that's Trump category.
- [43:54]
Unidentified Female Speaker (likely a guest or contributor)
Me too. I was about to say, I mean,
- [43:57]
Jon Vadhorets
he didn't build the statue. We should make that clear.
- [44:00]
Unidentified Female Speaker (likely a guest or contributor)
Okay. But I mean, even if he did, I guess I don't really understand why, like, what's so difficult about holding two ideas in one's mind? I mean, it's at his club. Trump is a narcissistic, thin skinned, you know, whatever. This is bad, it shouldn't be there. Okay. I can think that lots of things he does and says are bad. And I'm happy to think that and say that at the same time. He's doing a lot of good for the world and for the country. For the country and the world. And in my view, the latter outweighs the former.
- [44:51]
Jon Vadhorets
Fair enough. I don't.
- [44:56]
Eliana Johnson
What about melting down the gold to pay for the gas tax holidays?
- [45:01]
Jon Vadhorets
I mean, it's probably not gold. It's probably like cement with gold paint on it. I mean, it's not a golden statue, you know, but the American people don't
- [45:15]
Eliana Johnson
have to know that.
- [45:18]
Jon Vadhorets
And, you know, I mean, I wish I could think that it was funny and, you know, that there are things I think are funny, honestly. And it might be that you guys don't watch the boys. So you didn't see this happen two weeks ago and then it happening here in real life. And I'm not saying the boys is prophetic and I'm annoyed by the boys on the nose political likening of this galactic monster to Trump. I don't think that that's. It's a satire. So satire gets a pass in many ways, but it's not my favorite way of doing this. But it's still kind of eerie. That it happened. And trust me, if you are watching it, it's genuinely eerie. And you know, he likes it. He wants passports to have his picture on it. He wants to build a 250 foot arch that will probably end up with a picture of him somewhere on the arch, if that ever happens. I mean, I am a supporter of many of the things that he has done, and as a Jew, I'm very grateful for what I take to be his genuine philo Semitism. But I feel like he can't sort of let this go. It's like it's not nothing. It's really a weird impulse that does not conform with how we understand our leaders in the United States who are our employees. The president is our employee. He is our employee. Like we're not supposed to worship our employee. I'm sorry. And you know these.
- [47:06]
Unidentified Female Speaker (likely a guest or contributor)
Well, I'm not gonna go worship at it. I'm not gonna do that.
- [47:10]
Jon Vadhorets
Okay?
- [47:11]
Unidentified Female Speaker (likely a guest or contributor)
And I don't worship him. But John, believe me, and you know me, so you will know when I say this, it has taken me a long time to come to this view and to not be. To try. I still have to try to not be so black and white about everything. You know, to realize that life is gray and life involves trade offs. And if I had to make the choice to give Trump his statue and give Trump his face on the dollar bill and give Trump his 500 foot arch or whatever it is, and I had to trade that for, you know, moving the cap, the moving the embassy to Jerusalem and bombing Iran's nuclear program and doing some of the things he'd done, I would take that trade. That's the way I think of it. And keeping Kamala out of the Oval Office. And if I could add seeing this war to a proper conclusion, I don't know if that will happen. Okay? I would take that trade any day of the week.
- [48:14]
Jon Vadhorets
Okay.
- [48:14]
Unidentified Female Speaker (likely a guest or contributor)
That is what I think when I see these kinds of things.
- [48:19]
Jon Vadhorets
Okay, but doesn't he have to bring the word to a successful conclusion?
- [48:23]
Unidentified Female Speaker (likely a guest or contributor)
Well, no, because I would still take it even if he didn't.
- [48:27]
Jon Vadhorets
Okay, See, I wouldn't.
- [48:28]
Unidentified Female Speaker (likely a guest or contributor)
Okay, you would rather have Kamala.
- [48:30]
Jon Vadhorets
No, no, no. Okay. What I mean is, he rolled these dice. He made this choice. He has got to see it through. The thing that I'm worried about is that, and granted what Abe said, he's not taking the off ramps. He isn't taking the off ramps. And maybe the prosecution of the war through a longer term strategy of letting the economic sanctions work despite the political cost to him and his party in terms of declining approval ratings and things like that, that this is the way he is going to see it. He is going to be resolute in a way that he often isn't by hardening himself with the idea that eventually this is going to have the effect that we want it to have, which is not only has he destroyed or basically made the nuclear program a non issue, but that the economic damage done to Iran is going to be so significant that the regime will effectively collapse. Which is ultimately how, maybe not this version of the war, but how this has to end if we are to get where we want to get here, which is that Iran has to no longer be a threat. The only way for Iran to no longer be a threat is for it no longer to be the Islamic Republic of Iran. That is the only way. Because of this. Well, maybe we'll close the straight or maybe we won't. There needs to be a different regime. We may not want to be the direct cause of the regime change, but the indirect cause of the regime change could be a complete economic collapse that leads to basically the entire leadership class fleeing the country so that they can spend their $20 billion and go live in their houses in Mayfair that they bought that they can live in. But that's gonna have to happen if we end this year with a sense in which America has, as Jonathan might say in the piece he wrote about victory, winning without having a surrender. If this ends irresolutely, his presidency is a failure. And all of this will have been a setback. It just will. I mean, America's, we're going to have basically ended up for the third or fourth time in the century, not being able to follow through on a decision to whatever, achieve the aim that we seek to achieve. When we start down a very serious road that involves hundreds of billion dollars worth of munitions that we then have to replace. Jonathan, where are you on that again?
- [51:26]
Jonathan Schanzer
I gotta say, I keep coming back. I think that your concerns are real. I think they're valid. I think that we actually could end up there. Although I would say Donald Trump never. I just, I never see the guy lose a narrative battle. And so don't, don't.
- [51:41]
Jon Vadhorets
He lost 2020, so he's lost a narrative battle.
- [51:44]
Jonathan Schanzer
Well, I mean that. Let me just say he, he continues to insist that he didn't lose. And his followers buy that. You know, his supporters buy that. And so that's part of the narrative. I don't think that he will ever see defeat on this. But again, I just keep coming back to this notion that we have tied our own hands with the way that we fight these wars. We are relying on a certain kind of a precision battle plan always. And the rules that we created are not serving us. And I gotta say, this is. I mean, again, I don't think anybody's talking about this, but if we continue to try to fight these wars and we're like, oh, well, we just ran out of these exquisite munitions and so therefore, we can't bomb our enemy any longer, and I guess they're just going to declare victory. That seems like a huge problem. That's like a big picture issue. And I don't know how we're going to. Like, a conversation has not started about this yet. It needs to.
- [52:45]
Jon Vadhorets
With whom?
- [52:48]
Abe Greenwald
With ourselves.
- [52:49]
Jonathan Schanzer
In other words, this is like.
- [52:51]
Jon Vadhorets
But who are we? By which I mean what we are describing. As I've said 50 times since this war started or since really since the ceasefire is. Trump is negotiating with himself over how far he is willing to go. This is his war. He's the one who said he would destroy their civilization and then backed off. He is the one who said, we're going to have Project Freedom and then he backed off. He is negotiating inside his own head with himself because he. If he tells General Kane, excuse me, you know, if he tells General Kane and Admiral Cooper that he wants to do X, Y and Z, they are going to do it. They are loyal, they are patriotic, they believe in the chain of command. They are not going to, you know, like, be traitors and not do what the commander in chief tells them to do. So it's all in his court. The ball is in his court.
- [53:50]
Jonathan Schanzer
Then I guess he's got some decisions to make.
- [53:52]
Jon Vadhorets
Yes, he's got some decisions to make. Okay. I want to note the passing of Abraham Foxman at the age of 86 yesterday. I should note that his daughter Michelle is a very, very close friend of mine. So some of this is personal, but this Abe Foxman was the most, probably the most effective, the most enduring and the most beloved Jewish communal leader of our time. As the director of the Anti Defamation League for decades, both behind the scenes and then as the head, as others, as others were nominally in charge. But he was sort of really running the show until his extremely unfortunate deposing by a board that believed that he was not leftist or democratic or helpful enough to domestic democratic causes, and replaced him with the least effective, least useful and maybe most damaging communal leader in American Jewish history, Jonathan Greenblatt. Abe was a remarkable Person who led an extraordinary and very dramatic Life. Born in 1940 in Belarus. His parents knew they were being sent into a ghetto and then, possibly to the worst possible fate they could receive. And they left him in the care of their nanny, who gave him a different identity, had him baptized, and raised him until the age of five. And then, when his mother miraculously escaped from the ghetto and started working secretly in Vilnius to help support the nanny and her son without revealing herself to be his mother, miraculously, his father survived and went back to Vilnius. And then they went to claim their child back from the nanny who would not give him up. Because in the weird parallel to the Edgardo Mortara case, she said, he has been baptized. He has been saved in the blood of Christ. He should remain a Catholic, and I'm not giving him up. And they actually had to go to court and sort of various legal proceedings. And it took five years for them to get him back. And then at the age of 10, they successfully retrieved him. He referred to this moment as the moment I took off the cross. They moved to the United States. They moved to Brooklyn. And remarkably, for people who went through the journey that they went through, they remained Orthodox Jews. They raised him as an Orthodox Jew. He went to yeshiva, he went to City College, he went to law school. And then he started working on behalf of Jewry. And his central concern was antisemitism. As the head of the Anti Defamation League, he was America's foremost activist against antisemitism. And the thing that happened in the course of his career was that while antisemitism was both a significant phenomenon on the right and a phenomenon on the activist left, both as time went on, the right became more and more and more philo Semitic, while the left became more and more and more anti Semitic, particularly the African American organized political left. And he went where they went, he attacked them where they stood, and he did not trim his sails. Because the people that he had to criticize more or take on more were in the political camp that most American Jews were in. And asked about why it was that he took these positions that were in opposition to the polling that said that most Democrats were liberals and supporters of the Democratic Party. He famously said, I work for the Jews who Care. These are polls of all Jews. I represent the Jews who Care. By which he meant the Jews for whom Jewish issues were at the center of their lives, and issues relating to anti Semitism in Israel and Jewish belief and Jewish practice were at the center of their lives as opposed to people who were Jewish. But whose political identity was at the center of their lives and they held that higher than their relation to their Jewishness. And so there he was. And before for his resolution, he was ousted by the board of the ADL in a really shameful display of naked political Obama suck uppery and replaced by the disgraceful Jonathan Greenblatt, who got better after October 7th. But I mean, that's. You don't get a lot of credit for that in my book. Seth, what are your thoughts on the passing of Abe Foxman?
- [59:17]
Eliana Johnson
Yeah, I mean, I like to joke that he's the. I think he's the only mainstream American Jewish establishment leader who started out in Baytar as a child, Baytar being the Jabotinskyite right wing youth organization and which his parents were involved in, in activism. But the truth is that that's part of the larger story of Foxman, which is that he was, in his work, non ideological. He was. If you were on the right and you were an anti Semite, he would come after you. If you were on the left and you were an anti Semite, he would come after you. He didn't. And he personally was very far as people knew him, knew he was very far from a right winger. He didn't grow up, you know, to be a Jabotinsky, you know, in training. And that got him in trouble, especially in right around. There's this period in 2007 where things blew up. And I always considered that year momentous as a, as an indication of how good he was at his job and how reliable he was. And one of the things that happened that year was Keith Ellison was a congressman. He was the first elected Muslim member of Congress in Minnesota. And he is not a nice guy and he was not a friend to the Jews. And at one point he made, he accused George W. Bush of ginning up his own Reichstag fire, a Nazi analogy about, you know, a pretext to then crack down on, on, on people and destroy democracy and all that other stuff. And a, A, you know, hated it and he hated Nazi analogies like that. And he said so. And behind the scenes and Ellison was approached by the local chapter in D.C. of the ADL and he talked to them and he said, all right, fine, I'll back down. And, and they, you know, they negotiated, they talked about a statement, whatever. And finally, right before Ellison's office put out the statement, Abe Foxman, the national director, put out a statement condemning Keith Ellison for the remarks. Ellison's office was infuriated by this because they said, we've been Talking to the local chapter for two days about, you know, how to make a statement. We were gonna walk it back. And Foxman's response was, that's right. You were talking to a local chapter for two days. Two days in which I didn't say anything. And Foxman realized that he was essentially being. He was. Ellison was trying to play Abe Foxman, and you didn't play Abe Foxman. He was trying to control the narrative on his own. And Foxman believed that you don't let the people who say anti Semitic things control the narrative around their own anti Semitic comments. That was a key point here. And he would never, he would never cede that sort of power from the Jewish community to those who were going after the Jewish community. And that, that really was essential to him and Ellison's. Ellison's office put out a statement that said, this is no way to treat a friend. And, you know, they were right. Abe Foxman is not Keith Ellison's friend. He's our friend. That was the key misunderstanding about Abe Foxman. He was looking out for the Jews at all times. And however polite he was and however he got along with you, Keith Ellison, and others and people he wanted to work with, he was not on your side. He represented American Jews. And those who misunderstood that learned the lesson.
- [63:11]
Jonathan Schanzer
Okay, well, can I please. I want to raise something here. I've been thinking a lot about anti Semitism since hearing about Abe Boxman's passing. And, and I gotta say, I mean, I, I, I've seen all the critique of Jonathan Greenblatt from, from, from here. Let me frame it this way. I think that antisemitism was bound to come out again. We lived in a golden age for some time, and Abe Boxman presided over it. I think that right now we are going through a moment of mass upheaval. Like the globe is right. When you think about COVID and the Ukraine war and the October 7th war and the rise of AI and a whole bunch of other things that I think have absolutely destabilized the planet. I, I think there's a lot of fear. And I think we, as we've seen historically that when there is a lot of fear among humans, they look for people to be angry at. And I think, you know, Jews are, like, first in line for that. And I think there's a certain amount of, you know, maybe it's just natural, unfortunately. But this is what we've seen time and again with humanity. And I, and I'm sort of glad that, that Abe Foxman didn't have to live through something like this. I wonder how he would have handled it. But there was something else. I was reading this book as Dr. Morocis here I was reading a book about antisemitism in the Catholic Church, because if you've seen over the course of the last two and a half years, it's been a lot of Catholic countries that have come out against Israel. There's been a lot of critique coming from those places in Europe in particular, and certainly actually even among some of the right here in the United States. There is a connection there. And in this book, I found this quote, and I'm just going to read it really quickly. And this has just been sticking with me over the weekend. There's a guy named Richard Rubenstein wrote this in 1962, and he said, once the fantasy of murdering Jews has become a fact, it invites repetition.
- [65:12]
Abe Greenwald
And I began to think about after October 7th. We saw on October 8th, the antisemitism really began to accelerate. And I do wonder whether there was a connection there, that when you finally see these jihadis come out and murdering Jews, that it's actually inspired some of this. And so, look, this is not to take anything away from Abe Foxman, because the guy had an amazing life and an amazing career, and he did wonderful things for, I think, the Jewish people.
- [65:40]
Jonathan Schanzer
But there's a lot happening right now that he did not have to contend with. And it's just counterfactual. We have to ask ourselves, which is, you know, what would Abe Foxman do right now when faced with these challenges? I don't know the answer, but it is something that I've been thinking about since reading about his death.
- [65:59]
Jon Vadhorets
I feel like the answer is contained within his life's career, which is that he would have been out on the barricades against the squad, against. Against the politicians in the United States who were normalizing antisemitism and would have been a great proponent publicly of the war against the antisemites on campus, which was a major issue for the ADL dating back to the late 1970s, early 1980s, the rise of explicitly antisemitic themes in curricula and matters like that. They were among the organizations that began to highlight some of these things. Predecessors at the ADL like Nate Perlmutter and others who were focusing on how antisemitism was becoming normalized in elites, not, you know, not, you know, AM radio listeners late at night who were, you know, coming up with conspiracy theories. All of this now has dovetailed. And one of the reasons that I still hold the negative views of Jonathan Greenblatt that I do, despite I think him saying many proper things since October 7th is this question that I It just is not at all clear to me that he does not privilege the fate of American liberalism over the fate of American Jewry. And that is not what that job ought to be, not what that job should be, not why that organization raises the kind of money it does. And I think that is a shonda. And I would say the same thing. Had Trump turned into the person I thought in 2016 Trump was likely to be, I would have been a resolute opponent of him and what he was standing for. And then he went in a direction that I did not expect. When Joe Biden in the first two months of the Hamas war took a more resolute line and took a firmer stance on all of that, I praised him and thought that he deserved support. And thanks for how strong he was being until he got scared by his own party's clear descent into wrongness. So we gotta wrap up. We will be back tomorrow for Abe, Eliana, Seth, and thank you Jonathan Chanzer, our semi regular voice of even more crushing morosity. I'm John Pot Horitz. Keep the candle burning.