Loading summary
Transcript71 lines
- [00:00]
John Pothor
Chronic migraine 15 or more headache days a month, each lasting four hours or more, can make me feel like a.
- [00:05]
Abe Greenwald
Spectator in my own life.
- [00:07]
John Pothor
Botox Onobotulinum toxin a prevents headaches in adults with chronic migraine. It's not for those with 14 or fewer headache days a month. It's the number one prescribed branded chronic.
- [00:16]
Advertisement Voice
Migraine preventive treatment prescription Botox is injected by your doctor. Effects of Botox may spread hours to weeks after injection causing serious symptoms. Alert your doctor right away as difficulty swallowing, speaking, breathing, eye problems or muscle weakness can be signs of a life threatening condition. Patients with these conditions before injecting are at highest risk. Side effects may include allergic reactions, neck and injection site pain, fatigue and headache. Allergic reactions can include rash, welts, asthma symptoms and dizziness. Don't receive Botox if there's a skin infection. Tell your doctor your medical history, muscle or nerve conditions including als, Lou Gehrig's disease, Myasthenia gravis or Lambert Eaton syndrome and medications including botulinum toxins as these may increase the risk of serious side effects.
- [00:54]
John Pudwartz
Why wait?
- [00:55]
Abe Greenwald
Ask your doctor. Visit botoxchronicmigraine.com or call 1-844botox to learn more.
- [01:04]
John Pothor
Hope for the best, Expect the worst.
- [01:11]
John Pudwartz
Some preaching pain Some die of thirst 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 Thursday, January 15, 2026. I'm John Pudwartz, the editor of Commentary magazine. With me, as always, Executive Editor Abe Greenwald.
- [01:38]
Eliana Johnson
Hi Abe.
- [01:39]
Seth Mandel
Hi John.
- [01:40]
John Pudwartz
Senior editor Seth Mandel. Hi Seth.
- [01:43]
Christine Rosen
Hi John.
- [01:44]
John Pudwartz
Social Commentary columnist Christine Rosen. Hi Christine.
- [01:47]
Abe Greenwald
Hi John.
- [01:48]
John Pudwartz
And Washington Free Beacon editor Eliana Johnson.
- [01:51]
Eliana Johnson
Hi Eliana.
- [01:52]
John Pothor
Hi John.
- [01:54]
John Pudwartz
So there seems to be a blink. Trump seems to have blinked in relation to Iran, I think calling it blinking. I did it, you guys didn't do it. So you don't have to defend my calling it blinking is a little unfair because this is, after all, a vastly more complicated matter to deal with than even Venezuela was. Nation of 90 million people with a totalitarian regime that has had the country wired and under its defiant not it's defiant, but under its entirely controlling boot for more than two generations. And Trump apparently wanted a to be able to deal a decisive death blow to the regime and is being told by his people, from what we can tell that it just isn't that simple, that it's not gonna not it's not gonna fall over like a like a house of cards and that he is really not in. He is not in it for a massive war to enact regime change, which is, after all, something that he has said he has been opposed to since the minute he came down the escalator in 2015 and being presented with options, does not like his options and is trying to find a way to say, I'm doing it anyway, I'm succeeding at what I want, which is to get the massacring to stop and the regime is responding to me. I'll take a little win as opposed to taking a risk of going for the big win and finding that I'm in over my head. Would that seem to be the right description to you guys of the last 12 to 18 hours?
- [03:53]
Seth Mandel
I'm less sure. He may be backing out of this. He may not be. I think you can still. We're still early enough and unclear enough on what's going on that you can never tell. I will also say this about John, about your point about the complexity of it. Look, I think there is good. I'm absolutely. For toppling the regime one way or another. I think there's good reason to wonder what effect, how a strike on the regime would help the protesters. I think that's an open question. But my problem is put the US Credibility on the line if you're not really going to do was always a complex proposition. It was a complex proposition when he said to the protesters, keep going, stay out there in the street. Help is on the way. I'll be your vengeance or whatever. Now we have a now. After having built up so much credibility as the American president, as the commander in chief who backs up his threats with action, he's, he's. There's a good chance of his undoing that if he in fact doesn't make good on his word this time.
- [05:27]
John Pudwartz
I just flashback. I noticed personally because I was not alive then, as none of us was, but I. I flash back to 1956 and the first genuine revolt against a communist regime. That was the Hungarian Revolution of 1956. And there was immense pressure on the United States, within the United States and elsewhere to intervene and to help liberate Hungary from the jackboot of Soviet communism. And being a satellite of the Soviet communist regime. And the Eisenhower administration was very inconstant in how it behaved, by which I mean, again, without any precedent, without anything before it, suggesting what might happen. It seemed to encourage the revolt, the protesters, the effort to overthrow the regime, but really did not intend to get our hands dirty in the effort itself. And history suggests in A lot of archival material and archives that were opened up after the war was over and indeed, political rhetoric inside the United States in the immediate wake of the crushing of the Hungarian revolution, that.
- [06:57]
John Pothor
A lot.
- [06:57]
John Pudwartz
Of people died and a lot of blood was spilled because there was an expectation that the United States was going to intervene and that this was a moral stain on the United States, that either it chickened out and should have done it and didn't, or it should never have given the false impression that the cavalry was riding to the rescue of the Hungarian people. And we have a little bit of that moral dilemma here today. When we read about, when Trump says, don't do it, don't do it, don't do it to the, to the regime about, you know, about slaughtering the protesters. And we hear about people cheering for, I don't know, Pahlavi, the pretender, the pretender Shah outside of Iran and all that. This idea that after Venezuela, after the strikes on the nuclear program and all that Trump might ride to the rescue if he's not going to. And this is going to lead to hundreds of thousands of people remaining in the streets and sitting there like sitting ducks for a regime that is willing to turn its guns on its own people. And there's very little evidence so far of the military, say, refusing to, to do that, saying, I'm not shooting on my uncle. You know, I'm not, I'm not going to shoot on my own people. Without those signs, people within the administration who do not want us to get involved kind of have the upper hand of the argument that not enough is happening, from what we can tell, to suggest that we come in and we're already, we're just there to push over, you know, the last remnants of a teetering Jenga, you know, that has already had its, its integrity compromised and that. And that all we need to do is come and, you know, do a little bit of stuff, and then everything goes that, that may not be the case. And so that is what the Trump administration is facing.
- [09:04]
John Pothor
I think I have a slightly different take on this. And again, we're very much in the middle of events. We were talking beforehand about how during operation, Before Operation Midnight Hammer, Trump said, I'm going to make a decision in the next two weeks when in reality, he had already decided to strike. And it's possible we're in one of these moments where a decision has been made and it appears he's, you know, not made a decision and he isn't going to act. We just don't know. But I think that you can look at the current situation in a couple different ways. First, the President did speak out in favor of the protesters and made clear on whose side he stands. And that in itself, I think is an unmitigated good. It's more than some of our previous presidents have done. He can argue, you know, we don't have great visibility into what's happening inside the country. But I think he can argue that Iran, for the time being has stopped the killing, even when in reality the regime, the regime has merely been successful in tamping down the protests. But in the bigger picture, he's made clear that he's an adversary of this regime. Taking out Suleimani, doing Operation Midnight Hammer, and now speaking out in favor of the protests. That much is clear. I think the bigger dilemma for Trump is that the underlying conditions that cause these protests have not changed. If they are to pick back up again, if and the regime starts slaughtering its own people again, then he has a real dilemma on his hands. He may have bought himself time with this gambit and been able to argue that, okay, I said stop killing the protesters and they stopped killing the protesters. But what happens if they start doing it again? What does he do?
- [11:02]
Seth Mandel
Can I just say, Eliana, I think you have a good point regarding Trump, his posture toward the regime, toward the protesters. But the problem, if there's no strike this time, the problem remains nonetheless that he's created a problem for the US in that up until this moment he had built up a record that gave our enemies and adversaries reason to be concerned about our threats and his bluster. And now they have a little more justification for saying, eh, he talks a big game and that that doesn't help us in, you know, all sorts of areas.
- [11:47]
John Pothor
I don't think that reason went away. If I were them, I'd still be nervous. You know, they may have more reason to doubt it, but if I were the mullahs, I'd still be quite nervous given the record that he's accumulated. I actually don't think Trump needed to strike. They could have gone in and turned back on the Internet. There were non kinetic options here that they appear not to have themselves of either.
- [12:11]
Abe Greenwald
Well, and that's, that's the challenge, isn't it? Because he doesn't, the administration isn't good about communicating a, the options they are considering and be then explaining to the American people what the plan is. And I mean, I was thinking as we were talking before we started recording that, you know, he, his reputation with foreign policy, what he wants to be known for is the uncertainty in the minds of these foreign leaders. And it can be very powerful. He's a disruptor. So he was a disruptor in the Gaza conflict. They're about to enter stage two of the cleanup part of that process. He was a disruptor in Venezuela, but.
- [12:45]
John Pothor
Now we're seeing Gaza. There's another area in which he's not always followed through on his threats.
- [12:50]
Abe Greenwald
Right, right. So that, so there's that. And then in Venezuela we're now getting, we had the sort of, the first attempt at polling the Venezuelan people post raid and they want Mikado, they want some sort of democratically elected official in charge. There is very little public support for the current regime that's there. And then we have Iran. And I, I found his remarks yesterday strange because he was asked about the protesters and he said that he had it on good authority that the killings and executions had stopped for the time being. And he said, I hope it's true. Who knows, right? And there was something very cavalier about the way he said that. And then at the same time yesterday, this meeting with officials from Greenland where he talked quite tough about Greenland. So that disruptive power is useful in lots of contexts. But I think it's true that even if it's true, and I hope it's true that they've stopped slaughtering people in the streets. But to Eliana's point, we don't have good information. There's still people in prison. The Iranian regime is known for torturing and producing confessions, some of which we're now seeing coming out of Tehran. So I would like to hope that our CIA and other, other operatives are in there trying to gain more information and that we are exploring those non kinetic options. The communications one being important, but there are financial levers that we can continue to pull. But he has so far it was the cavalier way he spoke about it yesterday that was a little disconcerting.
- [14:16]
Christine Rosen
Well, yeah, I mean, I think that's one thing I would say is that I also don't have a good look at what's happening inside Iran. But I can, I feel pretty confident in saying the executions are continuing. People are being left to die in prison cells in dungeons. People are being tortured to death. Right. People are, I mean no public executions is good. But I'm, my worry is that Iran's leadership mooted a, a, an idea that was so extreme that they then sounded like they made a concession when they took it off the table. And our reaction really should be, well, of course you're not going to publicly execute protesters or will bomb you, like, what are you, animals? And the reaction instead is while the public executions, you know, I'm told, have stopped or whatever, nobody believes that the repression has stopped. And the less we see of the protests, the more evidence that is there is for the regime continuing to suppress them. So we have to figure out a line. We know the regime is suppressing the protests and, you know, free expression and the opposition. The question is, at what point does that suppression become something that crosses a red line for American strategic interests? And I don't think we should. And I think the public execution thing feels kind of like a ruse. It feels kind of like a distraction when nobody believes that people are suddenly safe or being given medical treatment in, you know, in notorious Tehran prisons and things like that. So I think that we have to decide how, if we don't know, we have to figure out a way to find out and not, you know, take words. But I also think we have to be very careful not to allow, you know, what happened in the type of thing that happened with Syria during the Obama administration, where Lavrov and John Kerry were like, well, what if we do this? We'll just get rid of all the weapons. And it sort of rid of all the chemical weapons. And it just sort of paused things, and then the pause itself just continued on. And now we have a pause in America's pressure on Iran in this situation. And the pause can very easily just turn into, you know, the end of the. Of the maximum pressure.
- [16:54]
John Pudwartz
I want to go grander or zoom out and say, we have spent nine years, 10. 10 years almost trying to understand Trump's views on foreign policy. And they resist comprehensive. They have resisted comprehensive theory. You know, magazines were started, publications were started. Entire intellectual group around Claremont and others attempted to create a Trump doctrine and kept getting tripped up. I think that we are seeing something that is now starting to resemble a doctrine that is new. It is an aggressive foreign policy that does not mind striking at the heart of regimes, but is not organized around the theory of regime change and is very interventionist, but not in an overarching frame that involves freedom. Trump is perfectly happy to work with Darcy Rodriguez in Venezuela rather than with the opposition. He is perfectly happy to talk about the Iran matter in terms of, we're going to come ride to your rescue from the regime trying to kill you. We're not going to let the regime kill you. But he does not want around saying, you know, he says, make Iran great again, Miga, but he doesn't Say, we're doing this to free you because human freedom is at the heart of, you know, of every. Of every human being. That is the promise of the Declaration of Independence. And he's willing to talk about seizing, you know, a property from an ally, an explicit American ally in the form of Denmark, and to say, we want it and we're just going to take it. So it's an interventionist foreign policy that has. I wouldn't call it amoral, but it's because that. But that is not organized around a moral frame. And if that's right, and I'm getting somewhere, that is new, like, one of the reasons that Eisenhower was on his back foot about Hungary was that we had just fought a war 11 years before the Hungarian revolution, dedicated to the proposition that the world needed to be rid of these two monstrous, tyrannical regimes that were spreading their shadow across the planet, Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan, and that this was a moral quest, not just a territorial. You can't just go invade other countries in Europe and go. You can't just take China and get it. You can't just bomb us at Pearl Harboring it. You can't just bomb London and get away with it. This was a battle between good and evil. And when evil rose up, when people rose up to say, we want to combat the evil of communism imposed on us here in Hungary by the Soviet Union and its, you know, sort of its clients, and then we didn't do it, that we were guilty of a crime against what we had promised the world and what we had just done 11 years earlier. Trump makes no such promise.
- [20:46]
Abe Greenwald
But that's the problem, I think, in the sense that it exposes a kind of inconsistency, I would push back a little bit and say if there's any coherence at all. The coherence is Trump as a disruptor in foreign policy. And he likes to strike quickly, lethally, and then disappear, and everything shakes out. Except that that's not what happens once you do something deeply disruptive. It takes a while for things to shake out. So he'll. He'll. If you don't have any sort of central animating principle like freedom is good people should be free, which is pretty vague, but actually quite as we see right now in the streets of Tehran and all across that country, incredibly motivating for people who've lived without it. Instead of saying that, though, he's negotiating with us with a bunch of radical social, you know, socialists in Venezuela, he's taking on Greenland, which itself is basically a Massive welfare state. Denmark just sends tons of money to them. They, you know, it is basically a welfare state. But then at home, he has the opposite message. Socialism bad, welfare terrible. Let's. So there is that inconsistency, I think, is why, from a domestic perspective, at least, I find it frustrating. I really, I think the, the fact that the Claremont people in the first term and now we're doing. Everyone's doing it now, the fact that we're trying to find a framework to understand what he's doing suggests he has a problem communicating what he's doing. And that's where I think the disruptor. If you just embrace being a disruptor, that would be explanatory.
- [22:13]
John Pothor
One thing that I think is clear is that Trump's many people, a lot of people, misunderstood Trump's attacks on neoconservatism for isolationism and characterized him as an isolationist as a result. It is all obvious now he is not an isolationist, even though there are many people in his administration and many Trump allies who would like him to be. I think Trump has no problem projecting American power around the globe. And I think his use of power, Power, I think he would characterize it as a battle of good against evil. I think that's what it is in his own mind. I think it is in his mind moral. And I think what he is doing is projecting power to advance Americans.
- [23:09]
Seth Mandel
Can I just say something? I think we're leaving one important dimension out of this, which is commerce. And that's a huge part of all his thinking in this. Getting other countries natural resources, making investment deals and so on. That, that, that, to him, that's the. That supplants the liberty, freedom element. It's, it's the. Let, let, let's. Let's do business.
- [23:42]
John Pudwartz
You know, colder days, New Year, it's.
- [23:45]
Eliana Johnson
Been a cold winter. This is the moment your winter wardrobe really has to deliver. And if you're craving a winter reset, start with pieces truly made to last season after season. And you know, I'm going to tell you that you need to talk to quince. Quince brings together premium materials, thoughtful design, and enduring quality so you stay warm, look sharp, and feel your best all season long. Not only do I have a quince puffer jacket, but after I had such a great experience with the puffer jacket, I got my son Isaac the same puffer jacket.
- [24:16]
John Pudwartz
Isn't that an amazing thing?
- [24:17]
Eliana Johnson
Isn't that an endorsement? That's what I call an endorsement. So, look, I've had the sweaters. I now have the puffer jacket. Get them, trust me. Each piece made from premium materials by trusted factories that meet rigorous standards for craftsmanship and ethical production. And that outerwear really is especially impressive. Down jackets, wool coats, Italian leather outerwear that keep you warm when it's actually cold. Classic styles you'll love. That hold up year after year. So refresh that winter wardrobe with Quince. Go to quince.com commentary for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. Quince.com commentary now available in Canada too. That's Q-U-I-N C E.com commentary As I'm.
- [25:05]
John Pudwartz
Talking to you, my dog Georgie, who's four, is sitting at my feet. I didn't want her in the first place. We got her for the kids. It was Covid. They felt bad. They needed some entertainment from a dog. We got a dog and now she's kind of my dog. She comes to the office with me. I walk her. I walk her at night, I walk her in the morning. She is a new love of my life. So here's a quick message from today's sponsor, the ASPCA Pet Health Insurance Program. These days we insure just about everything. Cars that lose value the second we drive them. Phones we trade in every two years. Trips we we haven't even taken yet. But our pets, who are truly irreplaceable, often go unprotected. With ASPCA pet health insurance, you can get help with unexpected vet bills and make sure your dog or cat gets the care they need when they need it. And if you're looking out for them, there's a little extra something in it for you too. Because when you enroll in an ASPCA pet Health insurance plan, you could get a $25Amazon gift card. It's a little treat for for you while you're doing something great for your pet. So to Explore coverage, visit aspcapetinsurance.com commentary that's aspcapetinsurance.Com commentary. Eligibility restrictions apply. Visit aspcpetinsurance.com AmazonTerms for more info. This is a paid advertisement. Insurance is underwritten by either Individual independent American Insurance Company or United States Fire Insurance Company and produced by PTZ Insurance Agency Ltd. The ASBCA is not an insurer and is not engaged in the business of insurance. Right. Well, I mean, he's a unilateralist. That what we can say based on what Eliana said. Well, he's not a neoconservative. He is a unilateralist. And to the extent One of the reasons, I think, that he feels such commonality with Israel and with Israel's efforts is that Israel is a unilateralist nation by default because it cannot get itself any real allies outside of the United States. And then it has to act. And when it acts, it acts unilaterally. And its leadership, and by the way, both, you know, across the Israeli political spectrum, aside from the radical left, says we have no choice. We are existentially threatened by these forces and we are going to strike them whether or not the UN Says it's okay, whether or not Europe says it's okay. Are there consequences for those kind, the, for our, the bad opinion of us in these places and in these capitals? Yes. But we have an overarching need to defend ourselves and create a space and a zone where we can survive and flourish into a second century at the very minimum. And I think that resonates with Trump, who is like, I'm not going to not do what I want to do because I'm part of the NATO alliance. Screw the NATO alliance. If the NATO alliance is, is a handcuff on me in terms of what it is that I think I want to do. I'm not this, in my analysis here, I am not supporting, defending or advocating for this approach or these views. I'm trying to make sense out of what connects his support for Israel, what he did in Venezuela, what made him pull up, if he has, in fact pulled the reins on an effort in Iran, and indeed what Abe was saying about the commerce, which is the United States has interests about advancing its own economic needs and aims and goals in terms of rare earth minerals and oil and keeping oil prices down and doing this and doing that and doing the other thing. And all I see is that the world structure, such as it is, wants to make this harder for the United States. And I don't accept that. I don't accept that being woven into a community of nations is a good idea if it means that I don't have a free hand.
- [29:36]
Abe Greenwald
This creates some own goals. So who's the Canadian prime minister meeting with this week? China. He has the commerce part of it is central. I'm glad he brought it up because the tariffs punished people who we didn't, who were close to us in our hemisphere. So this idea that we want to, like, retreat to our own hemisphere, we've actually driven away some people in our hemisphere, including Canada, into the arms of powers that actually do have, who I think we should define as our long term strategic enemies. So that's the sort of thing where that there, there are some serious contradictions in his pursuit of some of these goals.
- [30:12]
Christine Rosen
Yeah, well, also, I mean, I think that there's, there's a, the contradiction is, or the seeming contradiction is that he's an agent of chaos in terms of his policy. But if there's anything that threads his foreign policies together, it's that he doesn't like chaos. Right. He's not. He said yesterday this Pahlavi guy seems like a nice guy, but I don't know, because does he have the, you know, does he have the influence and the, and the support to run Iran? I'm not really sure. You know, Machado won the Nobel Peace Prize. You know, she is a sort of clear opposition leader in Venezuela and he just, he's not impressed with her. He doesn't think that she could be handed the transition and so he's not handing it to her. Greenland is, you know, it's going to be, he believes with good reason it's going to become an area of conflict if nobody lays serious claim to it, that the waterways around Greenland are going to become an area of conflict. That, you know, that digging for minerals around Greenland are going to become a competition. That all this stuff is going to become a competition very soon and nobody seems to be doing anything about it. So NATO shows up when Trump says I'm going to show up. But Trump's point is somebody has to, somebody has to put the West's flag like the non Russian, non Chinese flag here. And if nobody's going to do it, I'm going to do it. So I think that, you know, the.
- [31:47]
Abe Greenwald
Non western flag has been part of Denmark has had control over that territory and granted it greater autonomy for almost a century. I mean, he's making an argument that untrue, they are our ally is, is, you know, in charge of that territory. And so that's where I think in his mind, if you're describing that as, as how he thinks, then his thinking is wrongheaded or historically obtuse maybe.
- [32:10]
Christine Rosen
But I think he just thinks that, that they're, that they're a sitting duck is really my point. Not that, not that, not that Denmark is enemy. Not that it's an enemy hands, but that they're just, they're not prepared, they're weak for a power struggle over what is coming. And he thinks he is right.
- [32:28]
John Pudwartz
I mean, they're neither weak nor strong. They are, this is a kind of overhang of a long vanished world that Denmark should be in control of Greenland, like Denmark was in control of the U.S. virgin Islands until 1917. And we purchased the Virgin Islands from Denmark, of all places, for $25 million in 1917. And you might look at the map and look at Denmark and look at the world and say, what on earth was Denmark doing in possession of the Virgin Islands? Why does Denmark have Greenland? It has Greenland because it had Greenland before it had Greenland. Is Greenland. Ordinarily, though, Greenland doesn't seem to want to be a country. There are only 45 people who live in that, you know, sort of that rock. But, you know, anti colonialist action would lead you to believe that Denmark, of all places, wouldn't like be owning Greenland 4,000 miles away from its.
- [33:34]
Abe Greenwald
They don't really own it. It's been granted. They have their own autonomy and their own decision making and they don't. Greenlanders don't want to be owned by the US Either.
- [33:43]
John Pudwartz
I understand that. I get that. But I'm just saying, I'm looking, I'm trying to look at this through Trump's eyes, which is, I mean, what, what the. Greenland is Denmark.
- [33:55]
Christine Rosen
Well, he also not a student of history, so American, the American public doesn't seem to like it either. Which is the other things that he, Christine, was mentioning before about how he's, you know, he doesn't present his case for things. And here's what we're trying to do. And in some of those cases, I get it, because the madman theory of foreign policy is something that he, you know, he plays out quite effectively in my mind. I don't know what he's going to do in Iran. I genuinely don't, I don't think the Iranians. But in this case, if you have like three quarters of the American public against this thing that you're, you know, that you're constantly saying you want to do, I think you do have to go out there and make some argument, change, change the polls in some way. Well, because now you have them again. You have Greenland is against it, America is against it. You have to do something to change that equation.
- [34:44]
Abe Greenwald
And if he's triangulating that, look, there is an effect. If this is his strategy, it's smart. If he's triangulating that to get greater military capability for the US And Greenland, which Greenlanders have said that they're willing to negotiate over, then this is a strategy that, that might prove useful for our country's strategic interests. But I do think on all these.
- [35:03]
Seth Mandel
Things, larger point that John's making about trying to figure out Trump doctrine here, you know, John I remember right after the US snatched Maduro, you wrote a piece saying that Trump has cut the Gordian knot. And then yesterday Glenn Reynolds had a good piece in the New York Post saying how Trump has cut the Gordian technocratic knot on sort of everything. We have a border problem. Well, crack down on the border, we have illegals, go get isis. You know, it's just sort of cutting to the chase or bringing things down to a kind of binary simplicity. If there's a problem, there's a solution lying in wait. Just use it. It's as simple as using it. And I think when Trump looks out at the world, he sees a sort of simple proposition which is that America has this unparalleled strength and he thinks it's a sin to let that strength and influence just sit there unused. So if there's anything that could be our advantage, whether it be Greenland or Venezuelan oiler, we can get it.
- [36:23]
Eliana Johnson
Yeah.
- [36:27]
John Pudwartz
Using the Gordian knot analogy, that's what he may have been convinced of in Iran, which is the Gordian knot, of course is the legend that Alexander the Great is posed as he is marching through and about to take over Persia. And there is this. A prophet says, unless you can untie this knot, you will not succeed in taking over Persia. It's the world's most complicated knot. And he looks at it, he sees it and then he takes his sword out and he cuts through the Gordian knot. Like that's the solution. It's like Indiana Jones shooting the guy who is, you know, spinning the, you know, the, the sword at in his face and he's like, how the hell with this and shoots him. What if there is no Gordian knot? What if, in other words, Venezuela is my problem is Maduro, so I'm just going to snatch Maduro and then we'll see what happens. The Iranian regime may not, there may not be a Gordian knot solution to what is going on in Iran. Or at least in my head, he is being convinced by skeptics inside his administration that this model cannot be adapted to Iran. The regime is too strong and it's willing to do things that other regimes are not willing to do. And our involvement isn't a matter of taking out a sword and cutting through a knot. It may be a weeks long engagement. It may involve putting boots on the ground and not boots on the ground like for five hours was the case in Venezuela. And he is not willing if he sees a Gordian not solution. He thinks tariffs are accordion, not Solution. They're not one of the, easily, I think, the biggest mistake of his presidency, but that's what he thinks. We apply our power. We say, if you don't do X, we are going to make all your goods cost way more. And then we say, well, it doesn't make their goods cost way more. It makes the American taxpayer pay way more for the goods that they are trying to sell us. He's like, yeah, don't, you know, don't. Don't mess me up with the confusing things like that. But I don't think that expressing a moment's prudence about what it means to get involved with an effort to topple the Iranian regime, this is not fecklessness on his part. And I speak as somebody who, like, I think all of us wishes to see nothing more and thinks that the toppling of the Iranian regime could be the most important event of the 21st century in terms of the projection of American power and the change in the world that we would like to see in terms of old adversaries who continue to exist to make trouble for us. But somebody's got away the cost. The cost and benefits. And somebody has got to say, I'm willing to do this, but I'm not willing to do this unless, you know, or, you know, you go to, you go to the military. And they say, well, yeah, we can do this. We need a hundred thousand people on standby in case everything goes haywire. What if we drop in Delta Force and they get kidnapped? What if they. What happens if it doesn't go like clockwork? And he's like, well, I only want something that you can promise me is going to go like clockwork.
- [40:12]
John Pothor
I mean, I'm just spitballing here, but there's real risk in taking some kind of action, whether it's strikes or a Special forces action. Like, you're talking about John, and the regime not toppling. I mean, that's risky. And there's also risk. So. So to a certain extent, one could argue that the mistake is Trump's in issuing the threat in the first place. I mean, he could have easily said, we stand with the protesters in the streets and not said like, stop killing the protesters or I'm going to, you know, I'm going to do something.
- [40:56]
John Pudwartz
Right? Well, ultimately, the whole thing, that neo. He's an enemy of the neocons and everyone hates the neocons or blah. This is a total misunderstanding of what if there was ever a thing called neoconservatism. Neoconservatism stood for neoconservatism was re injected into the global conversation. The concept of containment, which had been laid out famously in an article in Foreign affairs in 1947 by George Kennan called the Sources of Soviet Conduct, which said, if you just contain Soviet adventurism, you don't let the Soviets spread their doctrine where they are, freeze them in place, let them live inside the world that they have created thus far but no farther, and then they will fall apart of their own contradictions. The containment doctrine, which a lot of people on the right were opposed to because they believed in rollback, the liberation of communist countries from Soviet dominion containment was squishy, liberal, you know, blah, blah, blah. How do you know? Like you're just a bunch of wimps. But in fact, containment was really, really hard. And it was, it was hard on the American political conversation because it provided no creative possibilities for finding ways to work with the Soviet Union or with China or with communist regimes or to make, make a world in which they had a, they had a, an on ramp to a greater degree of freedom and all that. It was, you can't work with these people, but it's too dangerous to try to overthrow them. So keep them inside their boundaries. Right? This was a moderate position between two extremes. One is just, you know what, we don't care about how evil they are. We'll just do business with them and we'll. The problem is the conflict. And if we just lower the terms of the conflict, it'll be nice and the world will be nicer or we need to face them down and take them down and liberate their peoples from. This was the middle position. And Trump, So Trump's not a neocon, but everybody misunderstands what it means to be a neocon. That's not what neoconservatism ever was. And in some senses, Trump has moved into a kind of rollback. It's odd because for being a non interventionist or saying that all this interventionism was stupid, he's now an interventionist rollbacker without any framework.
- [43:46]
Abe Greenwald
Well, but in this, to go back to your, to your Gordian knot example and not to mix all of our mythological metaphors, but his Achilles heel is actually that he does see almost every problem as a Gordian knot style problem. A complicated thing just requires bold action. And the whole point of that legend is that that's true for some problems, but not every problem. So you can send, you can close up the border and stop the flow of illegal folks, but there's this complicated downstream Effect of how do you, how do you deal with the people who are already here, who got here illegally? So that's a complicated problem. Where decisive action is perhaps not always warranted and where pragmatic, this is where the conservatives actually have, have historically been better. You have to do things pragmatically. You might have to cut deals with people across the aisle about policy discussions around these things. He doesn't like that. And I think he has his sword. And he's striking through all these problems. And then the aftermath, he says, and he's the reason he got elected twice, is that we, the pragmatic solution also disappeared. We had technocrats just telling people, we'll fix this, you trust us. And that trust eroded for good reason. So it is a weird transitional moment where we don't really have any true pragmatic leaders who can explain what they're trying to do and how it might get accomplished.
- [45:06]
John Pothor
And, you know, it's an interesting analogy, John, and I'm just thinking, I mean, in the Kennan essay about containment, the remarkable line in there and the observation he had was that these regimes contain the seeds of their own demise, that if you managed to contain them, they would collapse on their own because they were unsustainable over time. But he wrote that in 1947, you had to wait decades, you had to contain them and wait decades for the Soviet Union to ultimately collapse. Trump, as you note, he's not really a wait decades kind of guy. He's like now, now, now. And I think you're right that he's a rollback kind of guy. Because if presented with the opportunity to take out a bad guy like Maduro or like Soleimani or, you know, like perhaps like the Ayatollah, if he had a good option, he's going to take it. I don't think he's a temperamentally a Canon esque figure at all.
- [46:26]
John Pudwartz
I carry a lot of responsibility in my household. If something happened to me, there are real consequences, like, for example, payments, tuition, everyday bills that don't just disappear. Thinking about that used to feel overwhelming. So taking steps to protect your family, that's the kind of thing that can really change your life for the better. That's why you should consider getting life insurance through Ethos. Ethos makes getting life insurance fast and easy 100% online. You can get a quote in seconds, apply in minutes and get same day coverage. There's no medical examination. You just answer a few simple health questions, you can get up to $3 million in coverage. Some policies are as low as $30 a month as of March 2025. Business Insider named Ethos the number one no medical exam instant life insurance provider with 4.8 out of 5 stars on Trustpilot with over 3,000 reviews. So protect your family with life insurance from Ethos. Now by going to ethos.com commentary in as little as 10 minutes, you can get your free quote and up to $3 million in coverage@ethos.com commentary that's E T H O S.com commentary ethos.com commentary application times and rates may vary right? Well, the containment people would say that one of the reasons that it took two generations for containment to work. And Kennan himself became a critic of his own containment strategy because he also didn't think it was going to take two generations from the publication of the essay to the collapse of the Soviet Union and therefore decided that this had not been the best strategy. Was that true? Containment never really was tried. We spent decades testing the possibility of coexistence with the Soviet Union and doing things that then maybe led the Soviets to believe that they had us believing that they were going to last forever and that therefore, you know, we weren't going to face them down when they did all kinds of stuff because we were too interested in a nuclear test ban treaty or assault treaty or a START treaty. We wanted it more than they did. We wanted these things more than they did. And we were negotiating with ourselves and not on the basis of making sure that at the end of the day, our object was their collapse. So you could say that true canonism never actually, never actually was the policy of the United States, which was inconstant in its application of containment. Trump is I'll do it. If you tell me it's going to work, I'm going to do it. And I think Israel had the had the ability during the his return to power of saying, we can take Hamas out, let us loose, we'll go into Rafah, we'll go into these places. We will do what is necessary, and we will. And you keep helping us keep focus on the hostages. And we are going to come up with these plans, including the plans to take out the nuclear program or to strike or to deal with the Houthis and all of that we have. And we're going to lower the cost to you of involving yourself with us, because we're good, we're winners, and we can ride on your back and you can ride on ours. And that's the kind of alliance that he likes. He's got no one to ally with.
- [50:00]
Seth Mandel
Not just that, John.
- [50:03]
John Pudwartz
I mean, look at how difficult it is for that. Look how difficult it is for the Europeans or the UN or anybody even to say we stand with the protesters in Iran because they're all, they're all quizzlings because of its oil.
- [50:19]
Seth Mandel
Talk about rollback. That's exactly what Israel did with Iranian power influence. I mean, it got them, it got roll back their influence in Lebanon, Yemen, Gaza, you name it. You know, like it. That was not, that was not an exercise in containment.
- [50:44]
John Pudwartz
Right, exactly.
- [50:45]
Christine Rosen
Well, but that, but so that's actually, I only disagree on this point, which is true. Containment is not any different from rollback. I think the idea of containment is broadly misunderstood. You can't build a fence around the Soviet Union and you can't, you know, block satellites from, you know, you can't block their, their phones and Internet from reaching outside the Soviet Union. Containment requires rollback. Containment means what happens if they roll into Hungary or, you know, somewhere else and they're near abroad? Well, you're not containing them if you just wave at them. Containment means you have to put up some sort of barrier to stop them. And when they try, you roll them back into place. And I think that that's the combination we've seen with Israel, with Israel and the US Regarding Iran and its proxies, which is, you know, Iran can't be contained just by leaving things in place because they have satrapies in Gaza and Lebanon and they had in Syria and they have in Jenin in the west bank and you know, all this stuff, I mean, you know, the Ring of Fire as they call it around Israel. The only way to contain Iran is to roll back its influence in those areas and put it back within the Iranian borders and then you can contain it if you're willing to, you know, stop the outflow of, you know, this, this ideology that the Iranians have been exporting since 1979.
- [52:24]
John Pudwartz
Well, so Hamas is a good example. So Israel tried to contain Hamas. That would literally try to contain Hamas in Gaza. Right. And what it failed. What, what the United States had in the course of the Cold War that Israel, it turned out, did not have was it had the ability to retard Soviet efforts to strike at the United States. It had better nuclear weapons, it had a better army, it had a better alliance structure. It had all kinds of things that made sure that the Soviets at the very least were not going to hit us or that it would be suicide to hit us. And Israel lost its containment power over Hamas because Hamas never accepted the idea that it was going to be contained within Gaza. Its purpose was always going to be to destroy Israel. And so the inevitability of October 7th, which we can see, starting with the release of Yahya Simar from an Israeli jail in 2011, right, that there was an inevitability to this in retrospect, that Israel believed that it could contain. Now, Iran is a different story because Israel, the United States have contained Iran to some degree as a result of 2024, what's happening here and some of 2025, what's happened certainly with Operation Midnight Hammer in 2025, what's happening here is a situational circumstantial thing has arisen, which is that there was a collapse of the economy, the merchant class started protesting in the streets, the banks are now in total crisis and the real is worth nothing. Right. And so there was a total economic calamity and people are out in the streets. And this was not predict. We didn't know this was going to happen in November of 2025. It all happened really quickly. And then it's like, oh, the Iranian regime may fall. Wow, what an opportunity. Let's help it fall. Because it's being handed to us on a silver platter. And I think that's what Trump was thinking, maybe. And then in the last two or three days, people said, well, it's not really a silver platter. Like it's in really bad shape, don't be fooled. Like it's the uranium regime. It's horrible and they're in terrible trouble. And they have this gerontocracy malacracy and they don't know how to handle it and all that, but us going in. And it's not just that they're gonna be knocked down able because we raise our hand like we pulled Maduro out. And that's why I say if he is showing prudence in relation to what's going on in Iran, or at least just doesn't want to go in this week, or didn't want to go in yesterday or whatever. It's. I wish he would. I wish. But I'm not willing to sit here as an armchair quarterback and say that the advice that he has been given that says hold up there, buckaroo isn't sound.
- [55:46]
Abe Greenwald
Well, I'm going back to what Abe said earlier about the commerce point, because in a way, and he did talk about Venezuela this way as well, he often sees other countries as distressed assets. And then if you just put in a new CEO and maybe he has to be the interim CEO. You know, in Venezuela, like, we're going to run it for a little while and then we'll figure it out. I mean, if you see things in that way, it can be quite effective for, again, for disrupting the old way of viewing power and can lead to some very good things, as we've already seen, certainly in the Middle east and transforming that region. But if you see a country as a distressed asset, it's a very. You're not seeing everything that goes with it in the region. And I think that's where I think he genuinely does believe that the Iranian people should have their freedom. But that doesn't hold with how do you. How do you make sure that the country is going to be governed by someone or some group? And that's why I think the comment about Pahlavi was interesting that Seth brought up earlier was sort of like, yeah, I mean, you know, he seems like a nice guy. That's what he said about Machado as well in Venezuela.
- [56:47]
John Pudwartz
But by the way, the Pahlavi thing is really interesting. Eli Legg was on the show two days ago and talked about Pahlavi and what he should be doing and why isn't Pahlavi, he should be in Azerbaijan, like, on the border, ready to march in and all this. But I thought, okay, what example is there of the overthrow of a regime that then led to a democratic transition? The only one I could think of per se was Spain with the death of Franco and then the installation of Juan Carlos, who was from the Bourbon ruling family in 1975 or whenever that was. And so I was like, oh, well, there's a good example. He came in from outside and, you know, became the king, and everybody rallied around him, and it was great. And then I looked into it because, of course, I know, you know, this is some idea I have in my head that something went on when I was 13 years old and Juan Carlos was in Spain. Juan Carlos lived in Spain. He was part of the Spanish military. He was a colonel or general in the Spanish military. And he was not a rebel figure, an exile living outside who was then parachuted in to help with the transition. He was a personage who had committed himself to Spain's future, had not decided to live a life of comfort in Paris or whatever, but was there, had his family there, all of that. And so he was a Spanish figure who was sitting there at the ready to be elevated with inside the country. Pahlavi has not lived in Iran since 1979. He has no standing inside him personally. Maybe people are chanting his name in some cities and stuff like that. But does he have any military experience? Does he know anything about Iraq? Hasn't lived there for 47 years. It does seem like a little bit of a fantasy that you take a nation of 90 million people and you say, oh, this guy who has been living, you know, in Los Angeles, let's let him run it. Because his great. Because his. When he was 3, his father ran the country. That's not a realistic. When Trump looks at that and says, I don't know about this Pahlavi guy, that's not, that's not an unrealistic view. It's true that when they, when the Baltic nations and others, when, when the Soviet Union collapsed and these countries had to establish themselves as new democracies, and weirdly enough, a whole bunch of people who had been living in the United States ended up going back to populate their ministries and their government because they were all educated, like, you know, foreign ministers, economics ministers, even prime ministers in the case of a couple of countries. But they had been, they'd literally been in exile. The country had been taken over. And, you know, if they'd gone back, they would have been imprisoned and shot or whatever. So there's that kind of experience. But when Trump says, I don't know if Pahlavi can do this, that's rational, that's not irrational. I don't know that, Paul. Who would know if Pahlavi could do. Has anyone ever heard Pahlavi give a speech? I mean, you know, does he give the, you know, Henry V, we marry few, we Band of Brothers speech? He's like a, he's like an exiled aristocrat out of a, out of an early 20th century novel. Like, that's not, that's not a realistic possibility, you know, as far as I know. I mean, there was the case of Cambodia, of Prince Sino coming back into power after the Khmer Rouge, but he had been in power. He had actually been. He had been somebody who had run the country before he came back to be the ruler after the, after the deposition of this. John, I agree with you on all these points.
- [60:50]
Seth Mandel
So I guess I'm just bothered that Trump, I mean, I'll just say it again, but put US Credibility on the line in such an emphatic way beforehand. As I said before, the Pahlavi question was all. Was tenuous back when he did that. I mean, you know, this is, none of this was simple from the start, and he acted as if it was. And that. That is that is the problem.
- [61:25]
John Pudwartz
I hate being put in the position of defending because I want the United States to be materially involved in the deposition of this evil regime that has caused us nothing but trouble for almost 50 years. I really do. But. But what he said was, help is on the way. Right? He said, I don't want. Dude, I don't want protesters to be shot and help is on the way. What he started saying yesterday was, that's.
- [61:48]
Seth Mandel
Not all help came. He said.
- [61:49]
John Pudwartz
He said, stop.
- [61:50]
Seth Mandel
They're not protesting. Take down the names of your tormentors. Help is on the way. I'm done talking to the regime. I mean, he really went out there, right?
- [62:03]
John Pudwartz
Well, that. That would be a moral staying on the United States. This is the other problem, which is that he can decide that it's bad that we can't sacrifice our blood and treasure to knock over the Iranian regime, which we have, of course, rendered toothless. I mean, there is a way in which you say, look, I did what I had to do. We took out the nuclear program. That's the most important thing, geopolitically and strategically. Like, what happens inside Iran is really. It's terrible and sad and awful, but it's not really our problem. We just needed to make sure that Iran couldn't project its power outside its borders. The moral stain is if people stayed in the streets out of a realistic expectation that the United States, again, was going to be the cavalry and riding in to save them. I'm not sure that he did enough to make to give that impression. Unlike the United States in 1956, which really did give a lot of Hungarians the impression that we were going to. To intervene on their behalf, and they were, you know, killed in the streets as a result, which has been a cautionary tale since. I mean, it's like the. Don't. Don't poke the bear. Like, don't think that just, you know, that American words don't have consequences. If you start telling people you're going to help liberate them, they're going to start behaving in ways that might be really dangerous to them. And if you did don't mean it, you're doing the wrong thing by giving them false hope. All right, we will leave it there. And we haven't even talked about Minnesota, but we'll do that tomorrow because I'm sure more horrible things are going to happen today.
- [63:45]
John Pothor
Surely Tim Walls will give another utterly embarrassing and shameful speech. There's 24 more hours for him to do it again.
- [63:55]
John Pudwartz
Yeah. And Jacob Fry, I just can't wait for another interview with Jacob Fry. So we'll be back for Christine, Abe, Eliana and Seth. I'm John Pothor. It's Keep the Candle burn.