Destroying Nuclear Sites Is Good, Not Bad

Summary

The Commentary Magazine Podcast: "Destroying Nuclear Sites Is Good, Not Bad"

Release Date: June 23, 2025

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I. Introduction and Overview

In the episode titled "Destroying Nuclear Sites Is Good, Not Bad," Commentary Magazine delves deep into the recent developments surrounding Israel's strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities. Hosted by John Podhoretz, along with Executive Editor Abe Greenwald and Washington Commentary columnist Matthew Continetti from the American Enterprise Institute, the discussion centers on the strategic and political implications of these actions, the response from various political factions, and the broader impact on American and global politics.

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II. Israel's Strikes on Iran's Nuclear Facilities

The podcast opens with a detailed analysis of Israel's strategic strikes on multiple Iranian targets, including the infamous Evin Prison, often compared to Russia's Lubyanka due to its role in detaining and torturing dissenters. Podhoretz emphasizes the precision and symbolic nature of these attacks:

John Podhoretz [06:15]: "Hope for the best, expect the worst... Israel is hitting hundreds of targets inside Iran... blowing the door off the prison to help people escape if they could."

Abe Greenwald adds that these strikes signify an expansion from merely targeting nuclear infrastructure to directly undermining the Iranian regime's ability to maintain control and respond militarily:

Abe Greenwald [07:14]: "The strikes are an expansion of targets from the nuclear program to regime-level targets. This sets back the Iranian bomb by a long time."

The hosts discuss the strategic messaging behind these actions, highlighting how Israel aims to pressure Iranian leadership into negotiations by showcasing its capability to target key military installations and command centers.

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III. Media Coverage and Asymmetry

A significant portion of the discussion focuses on the perceived asymmetry in media coverage between Israeli and Iranian actions. Greenwald criticizes the Western media's limited visibility into Iran's internal situation, contrasting it with the transparency enjoyed by American and Israeli narratives:

Abe Greenwald [10:50]: "We have a very clear picture of what's happening inside Israel... it's very hard for us to assess what is actually happening on the ground in Iran."

Podhoretz echoes this sentiment, pointing out the challenges in verifying reports from Iran due to restricted media access and government control, which contrasts sharply with the visible and immediate responses observed in Israel.

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IV. Trump Administration's Policy on Iran and Non-Proliferation

The conversation shifts to the Trump administration's stance on Iran, particularly regarding nuclear proliferation. Podhoretz criticizes former Secretary of State Ben Rhodes and the non-proliferation establishment for downplaying the effectiveness of the strikes:

John Podhoretz [16:00]: "Ben Rhodes is saying Trump is willing to bomb Iran, which is devastating to non-proliferation."

Greenwald adds that the administration's focus on protecting international treaties over addressing tangible threats is misguided:

Abe Greenwald [21:22]: "For liberals and progressives, what matters is the paper. Reality doesn't matter. The paper matters."

Podhoretz underscores the failure of previous administrations to curb Iran's nuclear ambitions despite significant financial investments:

John Podhoretz [24:02]: "Under Obama, $150 billion was spent to retard Iran's progress, yet they reached the one-yard line of a nuclear bomb."

The hosts argue that the new strikes mark a decisive shift in U.S. and Israeli policy, moving beyond diplomatic efforts to active military intervention to prevent Iran from achieving nuclear capabilities.

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V. Liberal vs. Conservative Perspectives on Non-Proliferation

A heated debate unfolds between the hosts about the differing views of liberals and conservatives on non-proliferation. Greenwald criticizes the liberal emphasis on international treaties over practical security measures:

Abe Greenwald [21:38]: "We signed the Paris Accords... the Non-Proliferation Treaty. We have to protect the piece of paper."

Podhoretz counters by highlighting the real-world implications of Iran's nuclear trajectory and the inadequacies of purely diplomatic approaches:

John Podhoretz [31:19]: "Whatever uranium is there, it is not bomb level... destroying the facilities that make the equipment... sets back the Iranian bomb by a long time."

The discussion emphasizes the conservative view that tangible actions, such as strikes on nuclear sites, are necessary to ensure national and allied security, contrasting sharply with what they perceive as the liberal over-reliance on treaties and diplomatic rhetoric.

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VI. New York Mayoral Race and Its Implications

Shifting focus to domestic politics, the hosts analyze the New York City mayoral race, highlighting the rise of Zoran Mamdani, a Democratic Socialist whose anti-Zionist stance is gaining traction. They discuss how this reflects broader trends within the Democratic Party and its relationship with anti-Semitism:

John Podhoretz [54:35]: "If Mamdani wins, it will mean the Democratic Party is turning anti-Zionist, aligning with anti-Semitic sentiments."

Greenwald warns that the success of candidates like Mamdani signals a dangerous shift in the party's core values, potentially alienating pro-Israel voters and strengthening anti-Semitic elements within the party:

Abe Greenwald [65:14]: "It's a danger. It will redound to the Democrats because New York City, believe it or not, is not representative of the United States as a whole."

The hosts express concern over the Democratic Party's trajectory, suggesting that the embrace of radical leftist candidates could undermine its traditional support base and national standing.

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VII. Conclusion and Future Outlook

In wrapping up, Podhoretz and Greenwald reiterate the significance of Israel's actions against Iran's nuclear program, framing it as a necessary and strategic move to protect global security and Jewish communities worldwide. They caution against the Democratic Party's current direction and its potential to foster anti-Semitism under the guise of progressive policies.

Podhoretz concludes with a firm stance on Trump's policies, commending his administration's proactive measures and asserting that strong leadership is essential in combating existential threats:

John Podhoretz [69:33]: "The bottom line is Trump is the best friend to the Jews that has ever been in the Oval Office."

Greenwald emphasizes the importance of maintaining support for Israel and countering the rise of anti-Semitic rhetoric within political discourse, calling for vigilance and proactive measures to preserve democratic values and security.

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Notable Quotes with Timestamps

• John Podhoretz [06:15]: "Hope for the best, expect the worst... Israel is hitting hundreds of targets inside Iran... blowing the door off the prison to help people escape if they could."

• Abe Greenwald [07:14]: "The strikes are an expansion of targets from the nuclear program to regime-level targets. This sets back the Iranian bomb by a long time."

• John Podhoretz [16:00]: "Ben Rhodes is saying Trump is willing to bomb Iran, which is devastating to non-proliferation."

• Abe Greenwald [21:38]: "We signed the Paris Accords... the Non-Proliferation Treaty. We have to protect the piece of paper."

• John Podhoretz [31:19]: "Whatever uranium is there, it is not bomb level... destroying the facilities that make the equipment... sets back the Iranian bomb by a long time."

• John Podhoretz [54:35]: "If Mamdani wins, it will mean the Democratic Party is turning anti-Zionist, aligning with anti-Semitic sentiments."

• John Podhoretz [69:33]: "The bottom line is Trump is the best friend to the Jews that has ever been in the Oval Office."

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Final Thoughts

This episode of The Commentary Magazine Podcast provides a robust analysis of the intersecting issues of Middle Eastern geopolitics, U.S. foreign policy, and domestic political shifts within the Democratic Party. Through a critical lens, the hosts argue for the necessity of proactive measures against nuclear proliferation while warning of the dangers posed by internal political realignments that may compromise national and global security.

Transcript

[Abe Greenwald]

At Chipotle, we also have a playlist. Guacamole as it's being hand mashed. The sizzle of adobo chicken on the grill, the chopping of onions and cilantro. We call our playlist Real Order now. Chipotle for Real. Hope for the best, expect the worst.

[John Podhoretz]

Some drink champagne.

[Matthew Continetti]

Some die of thirst.

[John Podhoretz]

The way of knowing which way it's going. Hope for the best, Expect the worst. Welcome to the Commentary Magazine daily podcast. Today is Monday, June 23, 2025. I am John Pot Horz, the editor of Commentary magazine, asking you to go to our [e-mail] and read the contents of our July August issue, one of the best issues we have ever put out. And I say that guardedly, I'm very proud of this issue. Its theme is the war against the war against the Jews. And while it was put to bed before the United States entered in the war in Iran, it evokes many of the themes that the president himself evoked on, has evoked in the last 48 hours about why we did so. And I want to talk today with my colleagues here about Donald Trump, Israel and the Jewish people, because that is weirdly on the ballot tomorrow here in New York City, I think in the mayoral race that has taken some interesting turns, but we will get to that with my colleagues, Executive Editor Abe Greenwald. Hi, Abe.

[Unnamed Speaker]

Hi, John.

[John Podhoretz]

And Washington Commentary columnist and Director of Domestic Policy Studies at the American Enterprise Institute Institute, Matthew Continetti. Hi, Matt.

[Abe Greenwald]

Hi, John. And may I also urge our viewers or listeners to go to The Commentary Magazine YouTube page where you can like and subscribe. Like and subscribe. I had, Yeah, I announced the goal of 15,000 subscribers to our YouTube channel. I think we're well on our way to that. I was hoping to get that by the end of the summer. So if you haven't gone there, just go there like and subscribe. Don't have to watch us on television. Why you wouldn't want to, I don't know.

[John Podhoretz]

Hold on.

[Abe Greenwald]

How many are we?

[John Podhoretz]

We are at 13.7. 13,700 followers. So we only need 1300 more to get to 15,000. Matt's goal. I think we can do it at 10,000. When. Matt? Yeah, we can do it at the goal. So please, people, you will do us an enormous favor. You expose the, you expose more people to, to the algorithm. The algorithm will look at that number and say, well, 15,000 people like it. Surely another 15 million will like it as well. They'll see it, they'll click on it. They will join in the pleasure of the commentary.

[Unnamed Speaker]

Shouldn't we be offering something in response? Like if we hit the goal.

[John Podhoretz]

Okay, if we hit the goal.

[Unnamed Speaker]

A revelation or something. I mean, not that I want to reveal.

[John Podhoretz]

Let's think, what could that be? Because there is, of course, there's of course, like we could tell a secret or we could reveal. I don't know, I, I thought, I.

[Abe Greenwald]

Was thinking we could play a clip of Jerry Lewis in the final hours of the telethon to think the final.

[John Podhoretz]

Minutes, the final bit where he was, you know, he was kind of as the, was wearing off.

[Abe Greenwald]

Yeah, exactly.

[John Podhoretz]

Or go. Or, or working or whatever.

[Unnamed Speaker]

Yeah, well, we could do it. We could do a number, you know.

[John Podhoretz]

That's right. That's true. That's true. All right, so yes, please do that. And if you are of a mind to. We never say this. Every podcast says this. If you subscribe on Apple, you would do us a huge favor by giving us a five star review, which again also helps expose us in. When people sort of do the browsing function on, on their phones in the Apple podcast universe to say, hey, got a lot of light, got a lot of five star reviews. Maybe, maybe somebody who listens to political podcasts would like this one as well. So I don't like to pester people except to subscribe to the magazine, which I should do more of. But, but here we are, we are making two asks like, and subscribe on YouTube and maybe give us a five star review on Apple podcasts. And that's all we're asking for the, for the things we do for you. Surely you can do this for us. Would it be, would it kill you? Would it take food, bread out of the mouths of your children? I don't think so. Amazing morning. Israel is hitting hundreds of targets inside Iran, including and remarkably symbolically the world's most notorious prison, the Evin prison, which is where Iran takes anyone who talks smack or does anything remotely anti regime focused, throws them in there, tortures them and you know, it's sort of the Lubyanka of the Islamic fundamentalist world. And so a strike, there was a strike essentially on the, on the doorframe. I mean that's what's interesting is the specificity of these attacks. Like they basically blew the door off the prison to help people escape if they were, if they could. That Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps barracks, I believe that is the elite of the elite fighting force that defends regime leadership and is the like combination of the Marines, the SEALs, the Royal Grenadier, like They're, they're, they're top soldiers in an army of a million, like 125,000 people said to be in the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps. And they are being killed by the hundreds. And I think all of this is just a relentless message to the Iranian leadership, interestingly enough, that they should come to the table and say uncle, because the noose is tightening. They're literally zeroing in on them as targets, going after secondary targets with the clear message that they, the leaders, Khamenei and his and his ilk are the primary targets and that Israel knows where they are and can get them at a moment's notice. The other major thing is the bombing, continued bombing at Fordow to make sure that there is no escape from the underground bunkers in case any of the fissile material is in Fordow or in Natanz, that the, the exits are blocked literally by rubble.

[Abe Greenwald]

Right.

[John Podhoretz]

So.

[Abe Greenwald]

Well, I think what we see with the Israeli strikes is a expansion of targets from the command and control, the missile stocks and missile launchers and the nuclear program to regime level targets. The irgc, the gate to Evan prison. There are reports that Israel also destroyed the Doomsday Clock. This was the Iranian equivalent of the debt clock in New York City. Our debt clock counts upward, the national debt. Apparently the Iran Doomsday Clock counted downward to the destruction of Israel, but no more. Israel has destroyed doomsday Clock. And this comes as President Trump 15 hours ago yesterday, Sunday evening, afternoon, posted this to True Social. It's not politically correct to use the term regime change, but if the current Iranian regime is unable to make Iran great again, all caps, why wouldn't there be a regime change? Question mark, question mark, question mark Miga. Exclamation point, exclamation point, exclamation point. What I think you're seeing here is combined Israeli and American pressure on Iran to say do not escalate, do not attack American targets, prepare to stand down or you will risk the regime collapsing.

[Unnamed Speaker]

I mean, I think it's also though, yes, it is a message in that sense. It also serves this very practical purpose of, you know, collapsing the regime's ability to organize and fight back and do anything. You know, I mean it can do. It's not that it can't do anything, but it's certainly making it harder and harder operationally for any offensive action against Israel in Iran.

[John Podhoretz]

So what we have left and what the Iranians threatened over the weekend was asymmetrical warfare, right? Not that, not that. So they are firing missile last night they fired one missile at Israel. One. Now, by the way, firing one missile at Israel is weirdly, and weirdly, if you're doing it as a psychological torture game, is no different from firing 100. Because the siren goes off at 3 o' clock in the morning. It goes, they don't have the precise telemetry. So the siren goes off over half the country. Everybody wakes up, everybody has to go into the shelter. A night sleep is disrupted. The war of attrition, psychological attrition continues. And so you can see how even if you don't really have targets in your Iran, you would want to do this like one a night, do it at 3 o' clock in the morning just to make sure that your, your adversary's civilian population just doesn't get enough sleep at the very, at the very least. But either that is simply that or the Iranians are going to, are having real difficulty finding, getting missiles launched. And while they were able to launch, I don't know, 30 the night before, something like that, they launched one on Sunday night and Monday morning. And that's a interesting development. We'll see whether that development holds over the course of the next couple of days.

[Abe Greenwald]

Point out an asymmetry in the media coverage because, you know, it's not like me to criticize the media or anything. No, I rarely do it, but in.

[John Podhoretz]

This case, very dangerous. It's very dangerous what you're doing here because you know our freedoms. Yeah, yeah, okay.

[Abe Greenwald]

By the way, that's the reason I just learned that one very prominent foreign policy writer in the Atlantic opposed the Iran strike, which is not his belief that it would not work. That was also his belief. But he wrote more importantly that it's because America's already on the road to dictatorship that he opposes the Iran strike.

[John Podhoretz]

Yeah, yeah. That writer was my roommate, by the way, 40 years ago.

[Abe Greenwald]

So I got to that sentence in his.

[John Podhoretz]

Not having a reunion anytime soon.

[Abe Greenwald]

Well, I just got to that sentence in his I'm sure 7,000 word piece and I was like, you know, I'm not going to go any further, but that's an aside. That's the Atlantic.

[John Podhoretz]

Seven thousand for him would be a sonnet, by the way, but go ahead.

[Abe Greenwald]

My point about the media is this is what happens when you deal with democracies versus dictatorships. We have a very clear picture of what's happening inside Israel whenever Iran launches one of these missile barrages. We can see, we know the alerts, we get the notices to go into the shelters, we see the damage, there's video it's very hard for us to assess what is actually happening on the ground in Iran. On the other hand, now there is video on social media that shows, you know, the smoke, the blast sites. There, of course, has been satellite imagery from Fordo.

[John Podhoretz]

Abe is very disappointed in the satellite. It is disappointing.

[Unnamed Speaker]

Yeah, well, it's not that I'm very disappointed. And look, I say this like it means nothing because my eyes are not trained in reading satellite imagery.

[Abe Greenwald]

Right.

[Unnamed Speaker]

But you sort of expected, you know, when you see the before and after images to see, you know, you see the before this elaborate network of, you know, buildings and.

[John Podhoretz]

And.

[Unnamed Speaker]

And trails and roads to places, and then you see it afterwards, and it looks kind of the same with, like, some gray smudges here and there.

[John Podhoretz]

Right.

[Abe Greenwald]

That's because it's underground.

[John Podhoretz]

Yeah, yeah, I know why it's not.

[Abe Greenwald]

The best, you know, example. Right. But I agree with you. I had the same reaction. It's like, well, hold it. And then the captions on the social media posts are like, well, you can see the three tunnels where the holes. Yeah. The mops penetrate. It's like, where. In any case, we don't know, other than these images, what is actually happening within Iranian command and control. We have these reports that the Ayatollah Khamenei is in hiding, that it's almost impossible to reach him. That's one explanation given for why there was not this meeting in Ankara last week that could have prevented the American strike. So we just don't really know what's going on inside Iran. I mean, there are obviously Iranians who are able to communicate to Western sources, but at the same time, the Internet is down in Iran, the media is down. We, of course, had that fantastic video clip last week of Israel bombing Iranian state television while the fanatic woman newscaster was broadcasting, and she had a rush out of the studio. She seemed to be unharmed, by the way she appeared on a later program I saw. But nonetheless, the media here just simply takes whatever the Iranian authorities are saying as. As gospel without actually having the sources on the ground to see what is going on on the streets. And this is, of course, very similar to how the Western media has treated Hamas and its.

[John Podhoretz]

Its.

[Abe Greenwald]

Its authorities in Gaza. But it presents a very misleading picture, I think, of the reality of the war.

[John Podhoretz]

I want to talk about the response in the last 24 hours. Yesterday, if. If people listen to our emergency podcast, we talked about sort of the leftist or liberal or Democratic pooh, poohing or, you know, talking about the failure to secure Congressional authorization for a surprise strike. And how preposterous we thought that was. But things moved yesterday in a, in a, in a more specific institutional, organizational and direction, I would say, represented by two polls of world opinion. One of them being Ben Rhodes, the former Obama alter ego person who sold the Iran deal to the American people through what he called the, what did he call it? The echo chamber of the media. He said they're 27 years old, they don't know anything. I can tell them anything and they'll do what I tell them. That's the famous piece by David Samuels, now a tablet in the New York Times Magazine about the manipulation of the young new Washington press corps by the Obama administration. Remarkable piece of reporting. That was Ben Rhodes, now sort of MSNBC guy, and he let me find the specific tweet he tweeted out yesterday. Something that is kind of brain numbing when you think it through, which was this Trump's message to the world. If you have nukes like North Korea, I'll trade love letters with you. If you don't, I'll pull out of agreements you're keeping and bomb you during diplomacy. Just devastating to non proliferation. So let's just unpack this. Ben Rhodes, the leading, in some ways, foreign policy voice of the Obama administration, is saying Iran is holding to its deal in what it's doing and Trump is willing to play kissy face with North Korea, but will bomb Iran and that this is devastating to non proliferation. Non proliferation being the doctrine that says that there needs to be a treaty to prevent an international treaty to prevent, you know, the other countries in the world from going nuclear. Let's think about what he is saying. He is saying that Trump, acknowledging, in effect acknowledging reality, having to deal with a nuclear North Korea took a certain tack that I think we are all like him, extremely discomfited by. Nice, right? He went nice with Kim Jong Un. Right.

[Abe Greenwald]

But can I make an observation there?

[John Podhoretz]

Yeah.

[Abe Greenwald]

Remember our history. He did go nice with Kim Jong Un, but when push came to shove in the Hanoi summit, Trump did not give in to North Korea's demands. He walked away. And so it's actually pretty similar treatment.

[Matthew Continetti]

Hi, everyone, I'm Matt Evert, CEO and founder of Crash Champions. Welcome to Pod Crash. On Pod Crash, we'll dive deep with industry leaders and Game Changer because we want to uncover their secrets to success. We're going to explore everything from building trust, building a rock solid team to champion blue collar work. And we also want to talk about creating explosive growth in your business. You'll hear actionable advice, real leadership and business lessons along with what's worked for these incredible people throughout their career. We're even going to go in depth into what I call a champions mindset. This is the very philosophy that I use to champion people and take crash champions from a single shop to over 640 locations today. And now I want to share that information with you. Watch or listen to pod crash on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Matt Evert]

Hello, this is Dr. Rob Williams, executive director of the USC Shoah Foundation. Survivors of the Holocaust have long been the bravest voices speaking out against anti Semitism and all forms of hate around the world, whether it's European antisemitism of the 1930s and 1940s or the anti Semitism we see on our streets and campuses today. We'll explore it on the USC Shoah Foundation's new podcast, Searching for Never Again. We'll hear stories that are heartbreaking and stories that are inspiring every Tuesday on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever fine podcasts can be found.

[John Podhoretz]

Fair enough. Okay, so I'm not. So maybe I wasn't being fair to Trump there. But point is he's saying, oh, so you, so you make nice with North Korea but you bomb Iran. Yes. And that is non proliferation in this sense we have to do we have to deal with North Korea as it is. It is a nuclear power. It went nuclear despite our efforts to buy it off, gave it money throughout the 1990s or prevent it from happening. And then in 2002, George, the George W. Bush administration announced to the world that North Korea had gone nuclear. And by the way, the non proliferation people at that moment went ballistic, if you'll excuse the terrible pun, because they thought it was terrible to acknowledge that North Korea had gone nuclear because that would harm the non proliferation Treaty. It would harm the regime of non proliferation.

[Abe Greenwald]

We can't hurt the treaty.

[John Podhoretz]

Right. That's what he is saying here, which is Trump hit and the Israelis are hitting have hit Iran because it was going nuclear. And the non prolifera. The non proliferate. It's an interesting tongue twister. The non proliferation people regime failed to prevent Iran from getting to what John Ratcliffe, the CIA director, called the essentially the one yard line that it had marched 99 yards to a nuclear bomb and that it was one yard away from getting the enriched uranium to put in a missile to make it an existential threat to Israel.

[Abe Greenwald]

This is such an important point about the liberal mindset because for liberals and progressives what matters is the paper. Reality doesn't matter. The paper matters. Don't you understand? We have this piece of paper, all these people signed it.

[John Podhoretz]

The Paris Accords.

[Abe Greenwald]

Yeah, we signed the Paris Accords.

[John Podhoretz]

We solved climate change.

[Abe Greenwald]

We signed climate change. We outlawed war in the 1920s with Cal Aggriand. And now we have this Non Proliferation Treaty. We have to protect the piece of paper.

[John Podhoretz]

What are you doing, Chart?

[Abe Greenwald]

Stop destroying the program.

[Unnamed Speaker]

Yeah, but you know, in reality, as you say, which is different from liberal papers, this is the first actual event of non proliferation that I could think of, I think since.

[John Podhoretz]

Well, except for the Syrian reactors.

[Unnamed Speaker]

Right, well, but since Libya gave up its, renounced its nuclear program in 2023, 22,003 rather.

[John Podhoretz]

Yeah, right. Iran is part of the Non Proliferation Treaty. Iran, over the course of its, of its signing and presence in the Non Proliferation Treaty developed at least five secret sites to create enriched uranium for a bomb. That's how wonderfully successful the Non Proliferation Treaty has been that one of the few countries in the world that is actually actively seeking a nuclear program got one, got paid off. $150 billion by the United States to retard its progress, remember? And I want to thank our friend Omri Saran for making this point yesterday on social media. Part of the JCPOA was an acknowledgment that Iran had the right to, to continue its work at the Fordow site that's in the jcpoa. We agreed to the idea that for now was somehow outside of the terms. In other words, it could keep doing research and do stuff as long as it didn't go nuclear. Like there's any difference. Like it only takes a day. Once you get the uranium enriched to 60%, it takes a couple of days to get it to weapon level. That's the point about the 60% enrichment number. So we had agreed under Obama to allow Iran to get to the one yard line pretty much at will while paying $150 billion in those pallets of cash.

[Abe Greenwald]

And the deal would have gone kerplunk this year. This was the sunset ten years in. @ that point Iran could do whatever it wanted.

[John Podhoretz]

Right. Then Obama would tell you that actually because of the way the deal is structured, they got like an extra sort of like in your real estate contract, they got an extra two years on the, on the back end, you know, so it would actually have been 2027.

[Abe Greenwald]

Oh, can we say also as of now, Obama has not said a single thing right about the strike, nor has Biden said a single thing about the strike.

[John Podhoretz]

Again, Biden was having ice cream.

[Abe Greenwald]

Reminder. Well, he's on the Amtrak as the New York Post reported this weekend that he is riding Amtrak every week and people are coming up to him in selfies. But apparently he's violating the cardinal rule of the quiet car.

[John Podhoretz]

He's talking in the quiet.

[Abe Greenwald]

He's talking loudly.

[John Podhoretz]

But I wanted to make the second mention the second person. I said there were two voices here that were very important. Right. Ben Rhodes, who represents a kind of assumed American liberal view about, as you say, paper over reality. And then there was the fact that on Matt's in my morning hate. Listen up. First from NPR in their story, they first quoted or played tape of Donald Trump's speech on Saturday night. And then the respondent with the alternating view was Mr. Grossi, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency speaking yesterday at the UN saying that this could lead to devastating, consequent worse. Everything will be worse and it will be now. Iran will leave the non Proliferation Treaty and it's all terrible. Now, I just want to talk about the dramatics here or like let's just talk about the Matt said there's transparency. We're a democracy, Israel's a democracy. All of the debating discussion, everything that's going on is going on in public with everybody getting the right to say their piece. Right. Donald Trump was elected by, was it 77 million people? I don't even remember what the number was of his vote tally. Mr. Grossi, an Argentine professional foreign service officer who was an ambassador to Podunkia and something else before he went into international organizations. I looked it up. That's why I can't remember whatever. The Argentine ambassador, high profile assignment, very key position in the world of international diplomacy, of course, ends up as head of the International Atomic energy agency in 2019 after sort of like the conclave, after like four ballots in a vote of 35 people who are all commissioners of the IAEA, who have become commissioners of the IAEA by vote of previous commissioners of the IAEA replacing themselves with new commissioners of the IAEA. So you have the leader of the world's most powerful democracy, 77 million votes, 70s explaining why the United States struck. And then you have a guy representing no one with no authority for anything.

[Abe Greenwald]

But he does. Yeah, he has a remarkable fashion sense.

[John Podhoretz]

He does.

[Abe Greenwald]

As we as we learned in the FT when the FD had lunch with him a few weeks ago. And this was before Operation Rising lion. And yet Iran was definitely on the radar. So I actually took the time to read this lengthy piece for me was about 2,000 words. I read the piece and I learned that Rafael Grossi aspires to be the UN Secretary General. He is very public about that. And also he's a good dresser and he knows all the best restaurants in Vienna. And he, he watches his way. So he ordered the Bronzino. So that's, that's, that's the.

[John Podhoretz]

Yes, that's the leader, what is right.

[Abe Greenwald]

Of the opposition here to the strikes.

[John Podhoretz]

But let's again talk about the, the dynamic here. The leader of the free world, the president, United States, the duly elected leader of Israel, the most contentious democracy in the world, get together, put their heads together for this mission, the purpose of which is to prevent an irredentist, millenarian, religious fanatic, totalitarian regime from getting a nuclear bomb. And the person who runs the agency, whose own report it was that said that Iran was days away from being able to reach weaponized enrichment levels, is attacking us at the U.N. yeah, because it's part of his campaign to become Secretary General of the United Nations, a completely irrelevant organization.

[Abe Greenwald]

Yeah.

[John Podhoretz]

That is how NPR wished to frame this.

[Abe Greenwald]

But, you know, I think it's important too, because I've been noticing something. It's not just Rafael Grossi and it's not just NPR There other voices in American media don't seem to understand what an a nuclear program is because since the strike on Saturday night, we keep hearing that the stocks of enriched uranium in Iran seem to be largely intact. I don't know where some of them are. Did some of the highly enriched uranium leave Fordo before the strike? We don't know. Are there chambers apparently near either Natanz or Isfahan?

[John Podhoretz]

No, I think it's Natanz. There's some, some underground storage area ye.

[Abe Greenwald]

Next door that has not been hit. And all of these examples are used to say that the strike, and by the United States, and the strikes, plural, by Israel, have not destroyed the Iranian nuclear program. I'm sorry. It takes more than enriched uranium to have a program. Right. The Iranians can have this enriched uranium in a truck and drive it all around central Iran, but without the facilities, without the tunnels, without the scientists, without the launchers, and without the missiles, there is no real program. Now, I'm not saying that we shouldn't care about fissile material just running around a country because you don't know who the Iranians might give it to you. You don't know who might capture it. But I think we need to make this distinction between the stockpile of uranium and the actual program, it's part of the program, but there are a lot of other parts of the program that Israel and the United States have now destroyed, which set back the Iranian bomb by, by a long time.

[John Podhoretz]

This is so important because, look, I wouldn't know anything about this except that one had to learn about this in between 2013 and 2015, as the negotiations that led to the JCPOA were taking place. And so a lot of us had to bone up on what it meant, what centrifuges were, what it meant to have, how, how you milled uranium, how you, how you converted it into, you enriched it over time and all of that. And the central point here is that whatever uranium is there, it is not bomb level. If it were, the Iranians would have announced that they had achieved a nuclear breakout and would have forestalled this attack by the very fact that they had gone nuclear. That's the Ben Rhodes idiocy is that we can't just bomb North Korea now. I mean, we can and we. But I mean, you can't just, you have to be mindful of the fact that there is a potentially emotionally unstable person with nuclear weapons in North Korea who could do something if you go at him. That's why he has them. That's why Iran wanted to have them, not only defensively, but offensively against Israel. That material is useless until it gets to weapons grade, and it's useless after it gets to weapons grade if it cannot be placed in certain types of containers that can be placed in certain types of rockets so that when the rocket is launched, it does not ignite the nuclear material inside the rocket. It's shielded from the heat of the rocket so that it doesn't blow up on launch and kill everybody in Tehran. So if you destroy the facilities that make the equipment that not only get it to weapons grade, those are the centrifuges, but the facilities that are making the casings and that are constructing the bombs and that are, and then are finessing the launchers. The uranium itself is meaningless. I mean, it's not, it's not, it's not meaningless because, yeah, you could sell it to North Korea and give.

[Abe Greenwald]

It's radioactive, right?

[John Podhoretz]

Radioactive. And it's, it's, so it's, it's, it's. But therefore it's dangerous to them if they have it on a truck, driving it around somewhere or in some facility, whoever is there is going to get radiation poisoning and die.

[Unnamed Speaker]

Well, well, but we should add though, with that point that, you know, one of the concerns that People who were against a strike had was that, well, if we hit these facilities with these massive ordinance weapons, that then there will be giant radiation leaks, you know. But that has not been detected, first of all.

[John Podhoretz]

That has not been detected. And again, I think it goes to a misunderstanding of what this stuff is. It's not like, you know, dynamite, you know, where if you like. Or it's not like, you know, you're lighting it's quicksand or die. It's like it's stuff in a thing. And yeah, I suppose if you really blow it up real good, somehow it can get blown up too. But it's not that. It's not like careful explosives. It's uranium, right. It's explosive. It's not that the uranium is. It's that if you start off a chain reaction effect inside a tiny little nuclear essentially reactor, which is what you build to make the bomb.

[Abe Greenwald]

Right.

[John Podhoretz]

Work.

[Abe Greenwald]

That's what then it gets explosive. Right. This is why we all need to rewatch Oppenheimer to better understand that what's going on here because we're not getting any help from the media. I really think that's the case.

[John Podhoretz]

And of course the people who are experts in. Then you get sort of experts in this who are propagandists for the paper.

[Abe Greenwald]

Oh, yeah, right.

[John Podhoretz]

Okay. So that I think, which is, I think Matt's really, really good point that, that, I mean, I said there's a, there's a, there's a guy named Jeffrey Lewis who tweets under the name Arms Control Wonk and you know, said, I'm really not impressed by this strike because it left this facility here and that. And of course he's against any action against Iran. And why? Because the action against Iran calls into question the Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty. And to me, after, after what happened on Saturday night and after the Israeli, the, you know, 10 days of Israeli strikes following, followed by the American and I'm still not clear whether it was six or 12 bunker buster bombs. I heard as many as 17. Trump said six. It's very confusing. What? What?

[Abe Greenwald]

Well, there are bunker busters and then there are the massive ordinance.

[John Podhoretz]

Right. Massive ordinance penetrators that we have entered a new realm. And these people who are living in the. Oh, what matters is the nuclear non proliferation regime are like Stasi officers going to the office after the Berlin Wall has fallen and the East German government has collapsed and is no more. You know, there were these people showing up to work at the East German Secret Service headquarters in 1989 after their country no longer existed because that's what they do. You know, it's Thursday morning, they take their lunch pail and they go to the, they go to, they go to the office serving a regime that no longer exists. And that is what is, that is, that is what's going to have to dawn on people that we have now moved into a realm in which the United States has declared as its new policy that if you are going to try to go nuclear, we are going to drop a giant bomb on your program. Israel set the stage with the attacks on the Osirak reactor and the Syrian reactor in 1981 and 2007. The United States has now taken this to the next level. If we discern, if we perceive that you are looking to go nuclear, having failed to do this in North Korea so that now Trump get, has to have these letter exchanges with this tin pot dictator of the world's poorest nation. We're not going to let that happen anymore. Now, I don't know if we are. Who knows who's, you know, if, if, you know, if Zoran Mandami becomes president in 2029 then, or AOC, then maybe they'll let everybody go nuclear. Who knows? We have, but we have established a new American posture going forward. That is, that is beyond paper.

[Abe Greenwald]

Right. You might even call it a doctrine not to get back to our conversation yesterday.

[John Podhoretz]

God, mad. No, but it's like, it's like saying.

[Abe Greenwald]

We'Re not going to let you get the weapon. We're not going to get you with weapons grade uranium and actually detonate a bomb. Before we go to New York, I want to talk a little bit about intra administration dynamics, which I think are really interesting. A couple points, you know, we know, we said how during Trump's speech on Saturday night, he was backed by Vice President Vance, Secretary of State Rubio and Secretary of Defense Hegseth. Hegseth then gave a briefing yesterday morning while we were recording our emergency podcast with the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Kane. It was a very good briefing, very effective. Raisin Cain, I mean, and you see the division and I think why Hegseth is there? Because Hegseth is there. He laid out the case for the act. Then he spent a lot of time praising our soldiers, calling them warriors, increasing morale.

[John Podhoretz]

Boys. Called the boys. That's not allowed.

[Abe Greenwald]

No, not by the New York Times.

[John Podhoretz]

Boys.

[Abe Greenwald]

New York Times kind of, you know, kind of saying, no, no, Pete, they're also women. Yeah, he knows, he knows.

[John Podhoretz]

He knows. It's his issue.

[Abe Greenwald]

He knows. Right Exactly.

[John Podhoretz]

Literally, it's his issue. There shouldn't be women in the mind.

[Abe Greenwald]

Yeah, but, but I thought he did very well. And I thought, General Kaine, you can see why Trump was impressed by him because he just straight to the point, laid it all out. Extremely impressive strike. Then you had Vance and Rubio go on the Sunday shows. And what I thought was interesting about Vance was he continues to stake out the most restrainer, friendly position within the administration, even after the strike. So he made it a point to see, say, that we are not at war with Iran, we are at war with Iran's nuclear program. He reiterated that if the Iranians came to the table, Trump is open to an agreement that would remove the enriched uranium from, from Iran. He talked about 25 years of failed foreign policy. He talked about how this. There are going to be no boots on the ground in Iran. And he laid out these points while supporting Trump's decision. And so it was a revealing glimpse into his mindset, his calculations, how he thinks about this during his appearances. Rubio was. Rubio, very forceful communicator for Trump. And then I noticed that The Rapid Response 47 account, which is very good account, just clips of. To follow what's happening inside from the White House communication. Yeah. And, yeah, so much happens within a Trump administration that you actually kind of need an account like this to follow it all. But the Rapid Response account posted a photo of Tulsi Gabbard in the Situation Room during the strike. And, you know, was she Photoshopped? I don't know. I don't know. I'm not. I'm just asking questions. I'm just asking questions like a guest on Tucker Carlson. But let's say she was actually there. I thought there, too. It's an interesting sign that the administration's communications team's posting this photo of her while it's clear that the President can't stand her. And I just wonder, what do you do if you're, if you're Tulsi Gabbard? I mean, how can you remain in your job? Now, the President has said on multiplication.

[John Podhoretz]

He does not care.

[Abe Greenwald]

He does not care what you think.

[John Podhoretz]

Yeah.

[Unnamed Speaker]

And he said, she's wrong. Was, Was the last one.

[Abe Greenwald]

Yeah, she's wrong. I don't know what you think.

[John Podhoretz]

Yeah, yeah, well, you know, I don't think she quits. She starts a podcast.

[Abe Greenwald]

Right.

[John Podhoretz]

She starts just asking questions. She has on Martyr Maid. And then they start attacking Churchill. And, and that's, you know, that's the, that's the path for Tulsi Gabbard, former Democratic nominee, former candidate for the Democratic nomination for president in 2020 well, you.

[Unnamed Speaker]

Know, I just want to say something about this, which is that obviously the most important benefit of the strike is that it's crippled Iran's nuclear program. There is this other benefit which we see, you know, in Chrysalis with the Tulsi story, which is that it's also kind of cleansing MAGA because people had to come down on one side or another of this. And those who really couldn't stomach the strike have turned into Trump's enemies or detractors. And that's healthier for his movement to get these people out or on board with him rather than continue to be a voice or a shaper of policy.

[John Podhoretz]

I wanna, because I mentioned this at the beginning, and then we should talk a little about New York, an issue that is of deep concern to us and has been a very important discussion point about Trump since 2015, which is the Jewish question. And there is no question that Trump's arrival on the scene in 2015 did something on the right that he is not responsible for, but that his opening up of the rhetorical or his shattering of all rhetorical boundaries in the conservative or right wing conversation was responsible for, which was the emergence of openly anti Semitic voices, social media attackers, all of that that have continued apace from that day to this and are now find their closest expression on these, I wouldn't call them Trump aligned podcasts, but this world of far right wing media that Tucker Carlson is the apotheosis of. But Candace Owens, Theo Vaughn, all these other people that are raising questions about the validity of World War II, did the Holocaust happen? Only asking questions, all of that. And that this then has caused people in the Jewish community to say Trump is no friend to the Jews and is no friend to Israel. Of course, some of that is very convenient because they don't like him for all sorts of other reasons and they want to use their Jewishness or their, you know, their righteous representation of the being bulwarks against anti Semitism or whatever as a weapon against him. Like Deborah Lipstadt, famously the historian at Emory University, who was the anti Semitism coordinator in the Biden administration and was became famous because she was involved in a lawsuit against the Holocaust, denying historian David Irving that she won and was remarkably played in a movie by Rachel Weisz, who looks as much like Deborah Lipstadt as George Clooney looks like me. So I would hope that George Clooney would play me in a movie that that's how realistic that was. Nonetheless, that's Deborah Lipstadt. Deborah Lipstadt is like, we can't trust Trump on all of this Harvard stuff and what he's doing against anti Semitism on campuses because, you know, he's just weaponizing it and he's making it. He's going to make it worse for Jews on campus by weaponizing. And he's not friendly to the Jews. Again, a Biden administration official. So take that as it is. And then you have all these other voices saying if he's aligned with Israel, but, okay, so here's the bottom line. The bottom line is Trump is the best friend to the Jews that has ever been in the Oval Office. That is now unambiguously, in terms of policy domestically and in foreign policy terms. The speech he gave on Saturday night, blessed is asked God to bless Israel before he has God to bless America. He said, in contradiction to months of reporting that he had been working hand in glove with the prime Minister of Israel in a way that no one has ever worked together before. It's true. It is true.

[Abe Greenwald]

We've never done anything like this before.

[John Podhoretz]

Right.

[Abe Greenwald]

We've never done anything before.

[John Podhoretz]

Right. And essentially we used Israel. Israel is like our Seal Team 6. Israel was in this operation. In the end, even though it's all, basically, a lot of it is for Israel's benefit, Israel softened the ground, did the initial actions, took all the risks, you know, went in, softened the sites, made sure there would be no by eliminating the air defenses last year and then doing what it did for nine days before, before America dropped the bombs, it cleared the battlefield for the United States. So it was the forward, it was essentially the tip of the spear of this campaign against Iran. But it is the spear. The spear is an American Israeli spear. And so that is an extraordinary development. And anyone who tells you here on end, and I say this to somebody who, as I've said before, I did not vote for Trump three times, I didn't vote for Trump. And, but, you know, if, if, you know, God bless him. God bless that he's in the. God bless what he has done since January 20th. I am profoundly grateful for what he is doing for my people. And my people who are not grateful for it should know that they are privileging matters of above the survival and existence of the Jewish people and the full freedoms of Jewish Americans to go where they wish to go and do what they want to do and study what they want to study and walk unmolested in the streets of our cities and on our College campuses, they are elevating something above that. And I think that is shameful.

[Abe Greenwald]

Well, just look at the contrast. So Donald Trump takes this extraordinary action, US and Israel partnering to destroy the Iranian nuclear program the day that that strike happened. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, one of the most prominent Democrats in the country, makes it a point to greet Mahmoud Khalil upon his release from ICE detention and escort him and his wife and their child, the stroller by the way, draped in a Palestinian flag, to the, to the press. Right? And this same Democratic figure, Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, has endorsed and campaigned with Zoran Mamdani, the Democratic Socialist who in the latest round of polls is creeping up on Andrew Cuomo in the Democratic primary for mayor of New York. So on the one hand you have Donald Trump fighting anti Semitism at home and destroying the Iranian nuclear program abroad. And on the other you have either silence from Democratic elites, like I mentioned earlier, outrage at Trump for taking this act out. And at the most extreme level, one of the faces of the Democratic Party openly aligning with anti Semites and anti, I mean openly openly aligning this is their party.

[John Podhoretz]

Zoram Hamdani, the reason that you mention this is that is that the fact is there's been polling over the last two months. So the race in New York is a ranked choice ballot race meaning you got a ballot, you can put up to five names down of people or maybe even more that you wish in the order that you would vote for them. And then those ballots are tabulated and it takes several rounds of counting. Don't make a certain number your voter, your the people who voted for you as at the top of the ballot you're that you go down to the second choice and then the third choice. It's too complicated to explain. In every poll in the last two months, while Mamdani ended up becoming the alternative to disgraced former governor Andrew Cuomo, who has been in the lead since he entered the race, Mamdani kind of consolidated the anti Cuomo leftist vote in the primary and Cuomo is the everything else vote. And so he has been. But Cuomo has been in the lead by anywhere from 8 to 12 to 15 points in head to head or in, in in this ranked choice voting universe. And that is the case with the latest poll which has Mamdani, which has Cuomo, I'm sorry Cuomo at 36.4 and Mamdani at 33.7. The final, this Emerson poll. So this is the closest that they've been with Mamdani within, within three points of Cuomo. It is that that may make this an outlier poll. There are seven other polls that have shown other results, including last week. But maybe he's surging, maybe he's that close. So what we have here in New York is the first ballot test of the post of the Trump second presidency and how the Democratic Party in its strongholds, because the Democratic nominee will likely be the victor in November in the race. This is a primary race, how they are going, how they are responding to the world after October 7th and after Donald Trump's victory in 2024. And Mamdani has made no secret, has not tried wisely, I think, because it wouldn't work to refine his message of anti Zionism. He has not exactly like, he's not like making ads about how evil Israel is, but he has held firm to where he is on that while advocating extreme socialist policies that actually deserve to be called communist in nature. Publicly owned grocery stores, price freezes, rent freezes, all kinds of things that the government should simply not be allowed to do. And that somehow the door was opened into the idea that it was okay to do that by Covid and a little by Andrew Cuomo. So let him suffer the consequences of his own fascistic tendencies during COVID You.

[Unnamed Speaker]

Know, I'm saying, I think the whole Mamdani surge and his existence in the race and what success he seems to be having so far, it shows how successful the squad model has been and how institutionalized in our politics it has become. Where you have, you get young, telegenic, ethnic minority, radical left, people who know how to make news, and they sort of ride this wave. And I think something interesting here is that if this is the, you know, if Cuomo beats him, you know, is this sort of, is this the last gasp for that phenomenon? Have we, have we, you know, is it the sort of the beginning? Well, the beginning of the end has already happened. But is this like really, you know, it's sort of. That chapter is coming to a close, I think.

[Abe Greenwald]

I don't think it will be the end of the phenomenon. It will show its limits politically because of course, remember the squad lost in two key primaries last cycle. Anti Semitic candidates, both lost. But there's a parallel here to what's been happening on the right, which is the influencers are not that influential in the end. This is the mirage that, that so many of us confront when we look at American politics today. There are a lot of attention grabbing personalities that know how to succeed in the attention economy by saying outlandish things or by spending all of their time online or by live streaming their deepest thoughts or their latest explorations of the culinary arts like Alexandria Ocasio Cortez. But at the end of the day, their actual appeal, their actual influence in the real world is rather limited. It's the same thing with Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens, even Steve Bannon in the war room. They make a lot of noise. They have big audiences. But Trump decided what Trump was going to do. And the polls show that Republicans and MAGA voters back him on that. So even if Mamdani loses tomorrow, as I pray he does, there will still be similar Phillips, you know, in the political scene of people who are kind of flashes and everyone gets excited about them and the left raises them up, but their actual trajectory is ultimately downward.

[John Podhoretz]

Well, let's, let's assume that this Emerson poll is correct. It has a great many assumptions. It says that Mamdani will prevail ultimately in this incredibly elaborate process and that the vote that is going to the other major leftist candidate, Brad Lander, will ultimately tip over to him and put him in lead in the eighth ranked in the eighth counting of the, of the ballot. It's like, it's like the pressing of grapes. This is like, you know, you get the most disgusting form of, you know, after dinner wine from the 10th pressing of the grape.

[Abe Greenwald]

But this whole process is so ridiculous. It means that we are in for weeks of ballot counting potentially. Right, Right. And when you look at New York City, when you look at California and how it takes months for the authorities in California to actually count the ballots, don't you think that the pro democracy crowd in the United States would actually be good at democracy? At the actual ballot counting? Seemingly. No, they're terrible at the actual process of democracy. They're just their pro democracy advocacy means pro progressive Democrat results. That's what it means.

[John Podhoretz]

Right. So just, just to let you know. So the reason for optimism that Mamdani, that this poll is an outlier or the other polls that did not show any anywhere near this result and the second is that this is the second ranked choice election. Eric Adams won the first ranked choice primary in 2021. He won that primary with 30. He, he prevailed on election night with 31%. The first bat first count was 31% and he eventually went over 50 and became the Cuomo, at the very least is polling constantly higher than Adams. I mean, I think the average until this poll, which is in like 34, was like 38 to 40. So he has a lot less ground that he has to make up to get to 50% of the vote than Adams did. And Adams did have a moment when it looked like he might lose to someone named Catherine Garcia. And there were absentee ballots out, and so no one knew where those were going and all of that. But if Cuomo does what the other polls said he would and is in the high 30s to 40 after the first count, it's going to be almost impossible for Mamdani to win. So that's the thing to watch for. And as I say, there's only one piece, piece of data. That's this poll that suggests that Mamdani will, will win. Now, it could be right and everything else could be wrong, or it could be the latest and that the surge is real. But again, let's assume that the poll is right. It is going to mean something, I mean, aside from, in policy terms, what it means for New York City and whether or not, you know, I should, like, sell my apartment and get the hell out of here and figure out what, what to do and take a loss or go somewhere else.

[Abe Greenwald]

We'll devote a special episode to that. What it means for John. Yeah, Yeah.

[John Podhoretz]

I mean, it's already been. It's been, it's been, it's been crappy in New York for seven to eight years, and it's pretty crappy now, and I can't even imagine how crappy it's gonna get awful later. But what does it say about the future of the Democratic Party and this and this condition? New York City was always a very interesting player in this respect because it's a city with a 4 or 5 or 6 to 1 Democratic voting majority. And yet until, you know, from 1993 until 2013, for 20 years. And then you could also say, arguably from 1977, when Ed Koch was elected, till 2013 with this one term that David Dinkins won, that the city ended up being governed by the most, as William F. Buckley, Jr. Would have said, the most conservative viable candidate. Koch in 77, Giuliani in 93, Bloomberg in 2001. And that the city saved itself from its own leftist Democratic base by sensible voters, largely outside of Manhattan, saying, what are you crazy? Like, we have to live here and you want to. You're going to encourage crime, you're going to induce homelessness, the subways are terrible. And, and, and you're going to spend us into the, into the poor house. That was a white ethnic vote that saved New York. And now if New York is ruined, it will be A white non ethnic vote. It will be young moron, tech age. People born after 1995 who know nothing, understand nothing. And like Zoram hamdani because he's 33 and young and they like that he is a radical because they've never had to live with the consequences of having a genuine radical running the politics of the place that they live and or.

[Abe Greenwald]

Their privilege makes them immune to the consequences. This is the Park Slope co op crowd.

[John Podhoretz]

Right? Right. But the parks. The Park Slope co op Crowd also spent 30 years hating the safe government that they had that made their lives pleasurable. They hated Giuliani and they hated Bloomberg. They probably didn't hate Bloomberg as much, but that was a 20 years that made their housing go up in value three times. Made it so that they could take their, their kids could ride on the subway by themselves, that they could walk at night in Prospect park, that they could do all kinds of things that no would ever have done before. And they took it for granted. Like all liberals do with conservative governance. They take all of the benefits, they take no response. They take, they have no understanding of what got those benefits and made those benefits possible. And everyone else is going to reap the whirlwind. So. But getting to the question of what it will mean for the America's largest city that the Democratic nominee will be an anti Zionist radical.

[Abe Greenwald]

Right. Well, but also, I mean, look, we don't know the result, but what does it mean for the Cuomo strategy? Obviously Cuomo is a terribly flawed candidate in his own right.

[John Podhoretz]

Yeah.

[Abe Greenwald]

Given his history, given the pandemic. But let's not forget that Donald Trump did very well in New York City in 2024 compared to previous Republican candidates is right. And you see in New York and New Jersey that the multiracial, multiethnic working class Republican coalition is present. And so if you're running against Mamdani, it seems to me you need to activate that coalition if there's hope. In other words, it's that the minority working class voters in New York recognize a socialist ideologue who's going to make their life worse when they see one. And they'll be the reason that New York dodges a bullet. If it does dodge a bullet. Not, not the, not the white liberal crowd that is cheering on this socialist revolution.

[John Podhoretz]

Right. I mean, we should say that when you said that Trump did well in New York City in 2024, he doubled his vote.

[Abe Greenwald]

Right. Comparatively.

[John Podhoretz]

Yeah, no, he got, he got, he got, excuse me, got 30% of the vote across the city compared to Harris's 70. So. But that was double or even, maybe even triple, what he got in 2016.

[Abe Greenwald]

I'm sure it was higher in the outer boroughs as well.

[John Podhoretz]

And that's the same thing, only in the outer. Right, so it's the same. It's that map. It's that same map where the arrows all moved red. Shifting.

[Abe Greenwald]

Right.

[John Podhoretz]

Including in New York City. But he. But he didn't prevail like he.

[Abe Greenwald]

No, of course not.

[John Podhoretz]

No. But look, Cuomo's run a complete. Cuomo's run a campaign where he's like, vote for me. I'm here, and I'm not crazy. And I built the Second Avenue subway and I built. I rebuilt LaGuardia, and so I can get things done. And these people are all crazy. And it seemed like a pretty good message because the other candidates in the race, other city hack candidates, like this guy Brad Lander, who was the controller, and Scott Stringer, who was the controller and whatever, all these guys were ineffectual and they were not going to end up being mayor. And then this guy comes out of nowhere and where is all his money from? 80% of his money he raised 9 or $10 million comes from outside. So where does that come from? It comes from the very people that scared the Biden Harris team into being so repulsively wimpy on. On issues relating to anti Semitism because it would get people in Dearborn, Michigan, angry. There's a lot of money behind them. They have a lot of power. They're willing to spend it. They are enemies of the United States within the United States. They are a fifth column inside the United States about the real security and decency and good working order of the United States. And they are on the march if he wins. I mean, that's. That. That's the. That's the flip side of your, you know, analysis of the influencer thing is that he could win. And then, then that will be just as 2024 suggested. Don't be a squad member. You're going to get targeted and nailed. If you're Cori Bush or you're Jamal Bowman, you're in the house, you're one of the 10 people in the squad. You're gone. This is like local elections. Brandon Johnson wins in Chicago. He has a 6% approval rating, but he won in Chicago. And everybody who voted for him in the mayoral election in Chicago had, knew exactly who he was. Now they don't like him. He didn't hide who he was.

[Abe Greenwald]

Right.

[John Podhoretz]

Karen Bass wins over that Guy Gary. What. I can't remember his name. Like, this is. What's that? This is what's. Yeah, you know what I'm talking about. This is what's happening in these cities. And it is the polar, the American polarization is going to be much more extreme. And there is a real danger that the Democratic Party is going to look at this and say, we're going to follow labor in England and you know, and, and the Macron Party and others and start turning anti Zionist because there's money there and there's support there from a weird new Democratic base.

[Abe Greenwald]

So it's a danger. I think ultimately that danger would redound to the Democrats because New York City, believe it or not, not representative of the United States as a whole.

[John Podhoretz]

Boy, is that ever. Take it from someone from New York. You have no idea how unrepresentative it is.

[Abe Greenwald]

That's my understatement of the day.

[Unnamed Speaker]

You know, part of this process here is also that someone like Joe Biden, as flawed and terrible as he was, would say, I am a Zionist. He's of an era and a generation of Democrats that is, you know, fading or faded. You know, so wherever the counterweight is to this, I don't see it.

[John Podhoretz]

You know, the only counterweight comes if they lose. If they lose. If this strike is popular, if Israel destroys Hamas and gets the hostages back and the cause that everybody rose, the Omni cause moves on to a different lead leader in the front. The idea that, that, that siding with this is a winner, that, that is the. That is, that is the thing to be hoped for. If this is where, this is where you're going, and if it's not where you're going, then the, the thing that we saw start, I think, not that one didn't see signs of it for 30 years, but that moment, that staggering moment at the 2012 Democratic convention when, when the voice vote from the floor shouted down the idea that Jerusalem was the capital of Israel. And the mayor of the then mayor of Los Angeles, Antonio Villagarrosa, said the ayes have it meaning Jerusalem is the capital of Israel. And then there was massive booing because that was what the Democratic platform was supposed to. To say, because that's what Obama needed it to say. And that was the moment at which the Democratic Party had made it clear there were two tracks and that this populist track of anti Zionism was a real motive force. And that is what we've seen gain force and power in the last 12, 13 years and this election tomorrow in the primary is going to be a very important moment in tracking that degeneration of the Democratic Party's soul. Okay, so we're done. We'll be back tomorrow, hopefully. We're not done. We're just getting New York. Going to call my. My friend Scott, the real estate agent and see what, you know, see what he thinks we could get for my apartment. He's a listener, so. I'm only kidding. Don't call me Scott. Love you. But nonetheless, I don't know. It's an interesting question of what's gonna, you know, are. Is p. Are people putting stuff on the market? If he wins on. If Wednesday looks like he's won, but you guys don't have that. Well, Abe rents and rents could go down maybe. Who knows? He'll freeze your red.

[Abe Greenwald]

Frozen.

[John Podhoretz]

Yeah. And Matt lives in the suburbs. Glenn Youngkins. Glenn Youngkins. Paradise Formatting. I'm John Potter. It's Keep the Candle Burning.