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- [00:00]
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- [00:34]
Abe Greenwald
Hope for the best, Expect the worst Some preach.
- [00:41]
John Podhoretz
And pain Some die of thirst no way of knowing which way it's going Hope for the best Expect the worst for the best. Welcome to the Commentary magazine daily podcast. Today is Thursday, November 13, 2025. So happy Felix Unger Divorce Day. To all who celebrate. Yes, today, November 13th, Felix Unger was asked to remove himself from his place of residence. That request came from his wife. Deep down, he knew she was right, but he always knew that someday he would return to her. With nowhere else to go, he appeared at the home of his childhood friend, Oscar Madison. Several years earlier, Madison's wife had thrown him out, requesting that he never return. Can two divorced men share an apartment without driving each other crazy? I'm John Pot Horty, editor of commentary. With me, as always, executive editor Abe Greenwald. Hi, Abe.
- [01:37]
Unnamed Male Panelist
Hi, John.
- [01:38]
John Podhoretz
Social Commentary columnist Christine Rosen. Hi, Christine.
- [01:41]
Eliana Johnson
Hi, John.
- [01:42]
John Podhoretz
And Washington Free Beacon editor Eliana Johnson. Hi, Eliana.
- [01:46]
Abe Greenwald
Hi, John.
- [01:47]
John Podhoretz
So, yes, the Odd Couple is and will always remain my favorite television show. And you can watch it, I believe, on Paramount plus and some other places if you I doubt that it would have the resonance that it had for me as the most New York, one of the most New York shows ever, and something that I watched every day as a teenager because they put it on channel 11. And it was just the moment that my sense of humor was maturing. And there we are with me, caught stuck in the 70s with Tony Randall and Jack Klugman. So that's a great cultural moment. Another great cultural moment, of course, is that the world's longest shutdown is now officially over. House passed its bill. It's going to go to the president. I guess the president will sign it today and the shutdown will be over. If he hasn't signed it already.
- [02:39]
Eliana Johnson
He signed it last night.
- [02:40]
John Podhoretz
I'm sorry, you signed it last night. So it is over. Shut down.
- [02:44]
Unnamed Male Panelist
Over.
- [02:45]
John Podhoretz
And as Matt Cottonetti, our not late but lamented former colleague, would say, that's it. Like anybody who thinks that this is going to have any further meaning down the road about how People feel about Republicans or who they're going to blame for this or who they're going to blame for that is foolish. Because now the shot, every, every presidency is going to have a shutdown, maybe more than one. This is the game. Everyone has had them. Everyone's going to have them. I guess maybe Bush didn't have a shutdown, but everybody else from Clinton onward, actually from Reagan onward, has had a shutdown once. The shutdown was like six hours long. But so shutdowns have no impact. Having once had a gigantic, colossal impact in 1995 did play an enormous role in turning around the fortunes of Bill Clinton, who looked like he was on his back foot and on his way out history's door until the Republican overreach of 1995 brought him back and a booming economy. So we're back to the world in which the economy matters, but Washington's behavior matters a lot less. Am I right or do people think there's more to be gained by either Democrats or Republicans from this 43 day?
- [04:19]
Eliana Johnson
Well, one thing that was fascinating to watch unfold or unravel, depending on how you see things, was the Democrats trying to pin the failure of Obamacare on the Republicans because the Republicans didn't want to extend subsidies to prop up failing Obamacare. So that, that little loop has been fascinating. And you know, this gives us till what, end of January, Then they have to figure this all out. So they're back at the negotiating table. But the how the Republicans are going to handle the health care issue will matter a lot to voters in the midterms. But this debate didn't seem to move anything forward or backward. It just got stuck. So it'll be interesting to see how Johnson will handle this going forward. And we'll see. But the whole Obama, those of us who remember the battle of over Obamacare and now to watch Democrats sort of not want to acknowledge the obvious about how the program's failures have required these sorts of subsidies. It's just interesting, particularly if you're a health care person, which I am not. But I've, I had to go on Obamacare and I was one of the people penalized because of its policies because I was a freelancer for many years and I don't have really good feelings about Obamacare, about what it did to our health insurance system. But I think that the byzantine nature of our health care system right now is an opportunity for Republicans if they actually want to do something reform minded.
- [05:38]
Unnamed Male Panelist
I do also think, John, in addition to the fact that we've, we've already been through too many shutdown dramas to care. And the fact that people are more concerned about the economy. There is the idea that any government antics at this point would have to be pretty spectacular to get out of Trump's shadow. He is still the chief news driver, newsmaker. The story's still about him no matter what else happens.
- [06:15]
John Podhoretz
So I was reading this week in a liberal newsletter, very popular liberal newsletter, written by a dear friend of mine, that we're always looking at the wrong target and Trump always redirects us to the wrong target. And that the real story of this year is that the administration went and it took a pickaxe to USAID. And 600,000 people have died this year as a result of what happened with USAID. Now that number is self evidently preposterous. 600,000 people did not die because there was some interruption or cut in funding for usaid. If that were the case, then the United States should be heralded and celebrated every year that it exists all around the world with parades and celebrations. Because that would mean logically then, that every single year America is saving 600,000 lives through USAID. And that therefore in this century, in this century alone, and we're back at Math Corner, you would have to multiply 600,000 by 24 just to get a sense of the sheer numbers of human beings who have been directly saved by this relatively modestly funded government program. I bring this up to say that for a lot of people, the shutdown of small beer, that the world of Trump criticism has now cast him as a mass murderer. Him and Doge and Rubio now running USA State and all of that. And that's another reason why you can't make hay out of the shutdown, because it's not grotesque enough for a, you know, world in which not only Trump makes news, but where the anti Trumps have to make louder news just to in their, in their own precincts and to satisfy their own audiences than than Trump does. And that requires this. So A, he's Hitler. So of course B, that means he's committing mass murder. So C, that means that he's killed 600,000 people this year with USAID cuts. And so we're basically living in a world in which Trump is proposing 50 year mortgages. Liberals are saying that there are, you know, that Trump has murdered hundreds of thousands of people through a bad policy or just, just by November. In other words, it's not going to be an aggregate and lifetime of our existences that USAID's lower budgets will lead to over a generation these number of deaths, which I think might be a defensible argument in some longitudinal sense. So no wonder the shutdown doesn't matter. I mean, the shutdown is nothing like what is the shutdown some government workers are going to get got their pay delayed. I mean, not that I feel that way. I don't actually feel I'm just saying in the world where we have these conversations about what Washington does and what it means. Right.
- [09:51]
Eliana Johnson
Well, Trump has a lot of problems on his own flank right now, not even talking about the Epstein files, which I know you guys did yesterday. Thank you for, for doing that when I was not on the podcast. That was a huge gift. I slept so peacefully last night.
- [10:04]
John Podhoretz
Oh, don't think you're not going to have to talk about it.
- [10:06]
Eliana Johnson
Someone will be got. The cops are at my door. No, I was going to say so you know, he's just announced he wants, you know, hundreds of thousands of Chinese students here. Scott Besant goes on television and says basically announces a quasi redistributionist $2,000 checks for anyone earning under $100,000 because of the tariffs. What he none of the stuff he's doing is typically Republican or even mildly conservative. And it's getting interesting in the Republican coalition now because people who would otherwise be fairly loyal to Trump, whatever he did, given the benefit of the doubt, give him some room to run with these ideas are now talking back quickly. And his numbers on the economy among Republicans, certainly among independents are bad, but among Republicans are quite bad, the worst of any any of his first or second term. So that's really got to be front of mind, as we say to him. And there were some stories about how they might want to send him out into the, into the United States to talk about the economy, which reminded all of us of what you know, that something Biden tried to about inflation. So he has a lot of trouble on his own side and he needs to start coming forward with some ideas about the economy and ideas about affordability because so far we've heard we all we've heard him be is defensive and outright denialist about what's going on with the economy.
- [11:25]
John Podhoretz
Eliana, I want to ask you a question about one of my least favorite politicians, my senior senator, Charles Schumer, a shameful person in my view in many ways, but he appears to be the chief victim, political victim of the shutdown. He's got leftists in New York state politics, student Democrats of New York State calling for his immediate resignation. All this talk about how it's his fault to shut down. They got nothing and it's his fault and all of that. And far be it for me to defend Chuck Schumer, whom I've spent 30 years making fun of, for claiming that he is the show mayor at the gates of Jerusalem protecting the Jewish people. But I'm actually at a loss as to understand how a guy who is the minority leader of the Senate and the Senate is notorious as a place in which every single senator feels himself to be his own personal majority leader and is caught in a trap because they need six, they need Democrats. At some point, Democrats were going to have to vote to open the government up. And eight people voting with the Democrats decided to cut an independent separate deal, which is how things work. And why is he the just why is he the bad guy to them? What was it that he was supposed to do exactly? How, what punishment mechanism does he have in the minority against Democrats who are like, this has gone on too long. Let's just move on and fight another day.
- [13:17]
Abe Greenwald
Here's what struck me about this vis a vis Schumer. Schumer made a deal with the Republicans in March to keep the government open, and he was absolutely flayed by members of his own party for that. Schumer, as a result, conducted himself differently this time around. He shut down the government and said, we're making a stand to continue. We need to make, we're taking a stand for health care. Health care costs are going to rise and until the Republicans make a deal to continue subsidies, we're not making any deal to reopen the government. Schumer then was not part of the gang of eight Democrats plus independent who made a deal to reopen the government. And nonetheless, Chuck Schumer got flayed by members of his own party. And so what struck me is Schumer's tried both approaches and he gets beaten like a pathetic dog either way. And so it strikes me that a, like Schumer doesn't really have a handle on the members of his party. Like, this would not have happened, I don't think to Mitch McConnell. He ran the Republican. He had an iron grip on the members of the Republican Senate Conference. And two, that Schumer hasn't figured out how to like, effectively rally against Trump. He actually seems like a minor character in this whole thing. So that was striking. And number two, this is separate from that. But on the whole Obamacare thing, like, Democrats are basically trying to hang the rising costs of Obamacare, which Republicans predicted back when Obama passed it. They're trying to hang this around the necks of Republicans. And it would be nice to have Trump or some Republicans go out there and say, sorry, but like, we're not actually fans of this program. And when it was passed, the we predicted this wasn't economically feasible. We said costs were going to balloon and sorry, like we're not going to come save your, you know, what's now.
- [15:42]
Unnamed Male Panelist
Except Trump likes to pat himself on the back and talk about how he saved Obamacare.
- [15:49]
Abe Greenwald
Well, all right, so not Trump, you know, but some Republican.
- [15:53]
John Podhoretz
Well, you know, that puts me in mind of the fact that one of the dogs that doesn't bark when we talk about health care anymore is single payer. And of course, the signature debate from 2008 onward, actually signature debate as healthcare became a major American political issue, which it did, people don't even remember this. Only in 1988, the first major political national confrontation over health care came with the passage of catastrophic health insurance under Ronald Reagan. And then in 1991, there was a special Senate election in Pennsylvania that a then unknown political consultant named James Carville decided to push his candidate Harris Wofford to say there's a health care crisis in America. Taking Richard Thornburg, the Republican candidate who was a law and order guy, completely like throwing him on his, on his back foot and Wofford winning. And then Clinton runs in 92 on healthcare and we're off to the races for the next three, three decades. Amazingly enough, healthcare was always going to be an issue because of the fact that the federal government cannot afford the promises that it has made to the American people on how it pays for healthcare that it does supply universally to people over 65 and people of very low income. But nonetheless, healthcare has been an issue for 30 years. And the issue has always been fundamentally, all these other countries have universal health care, have single payer health care through the government. Why don't we have that? That's the simplest. It would be constitutional, unlike much of Obamacare, in my opinion. But John Roberts being the sort of the villain there who decided that at some points it's a tax and at other points it's a fee. But that, you know, single payer healthcare can be passed by legislation like any spending bill signed by a president. And it's rational, it's simple. It's simple, it makes sense. As a matter of argument, we have this jury rigged, bizarre system that has all kinds of weird and perverse incentives. So wash it all away. Government administers health care for everybody. And that is what Democrats really wanted. Right? That's what they really, really wanted from Teddy Kennedy onward, what they really wanted was universal health care, single payer system. And when Clinton came to power, excuse me, Obama came to power and it really was time for there to be a major Democratic push for a gigantic expansion of government and health care. They went out to test the waters on single payer and the public didn't want it. And Joe Lieberman then, you know, an independent Democrat caucusing with the Democrats, said, I'm not even going to be the 60th vote to cast to make sure that your health care bill passes. If there is anything that you call the public option, if there's even a pilot program on how to create a system where the government runs the health care system, I'm not going to vote for it. And it will never leave committee, will never come for a vote on the floor of the Senate. And they had to give it up. And here we are 15 years later and they haven't gone back to it and they're not talking about it. And it's the dog that doesn't bark because they're position on health care now is health care is bad and the Republicans are bad. So we need to support Obamacare, which is actually a program to subsidize just some people, not help everybody to subsidize some people who have difficulty maintaining continuation of care. What happened, like if health care is getting worse and everything is terrible, is it really the case that Democrats can't go back and start proposing the thing that they really want?
- [20:26]
Eliana Johnson
Well, it would require a massive amount of reform of things like the health care exchanges, which in some states it was supposed to be a marketplace and a kind of pool of competitors so healthy people could get cheaper insurance and everyone was insured coverage. And it ended up, look, in D.C. when I had to go on the exchange, there was one option, you had to choose it and you were required by law to choose that one. If you were not, if you didn't have insurance tied to your employer, I mean, you could start by suggesting polling the American public. Would you like insurance to be tied to your individual position or would you like it tied to your employer? That's one of the huge challenges of our insurance system, our private insurance system, is that it's tied to your employment status and to your, what your employer is willing to provide. There are all kinds of interesting things that could be done to reform it, but I think the Democrats are unlikely. I mean, let's think about welfare reform, which only happened after decades of Republicans, you know, banging the drum about it and then finally a more centrist Democratic president agreeing, you know, to support that idea. You would need something, I think that seismic in terms of Democratic leadership to do that. I don't. I can't name a single Democrat in Congress right now who would be willing to take on that burden.
- [21:37]
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- [23:13]
John Podhoretz
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John Podhoretz
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John Podhoretz
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- [24:17]
Unnamed Male Panelist
It's also interesting, it goes to show how squad types for, for all their radicalism are so focused on identity issues and not, you know, traditional left wing economic issues that, that, that they would never.
- [24:40]
John Podhoretz
That.
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Unnamed Male Panelist
That this isn't their issue. This isn't their project either.
- [24:46]
John Podhoretz
You know, that is an excellent point and it is very striking that they don't have public policy stands as we would understand them. Even if they call themselves Democratic socialists are now the most prominent Democrats except.
- [25:03]
Eliana Johnson
For defunding the police.
- [25:06]
John Podhoretz
Okay, so you know we're about to have a democratic socialist mayor of New York City. What does he want? Free buses? You know how many people take buses in New York? Not, not, not a whole, not a whole lot. They're not even proposing grand large scale public work support programs. They're talking about. Mom Diane is talking about freezing the rent which is the form of a. Of taxation on landlords. It's not. I'm going to build 200,000 units of housing by raising taxes from the wealthy and then building or whatever. Whatever it is that a democratic socialist you expect to say we're going to seize the means of production and do X, Y and Z to help the poor and you know, have a preference preferential option for the poor identity. Yeah, go ahead.
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Abe Greenwald
With regard to Mamdani, it's also why it was interesting that Christine you mentioned defund the police with regard to the squad. But, but for mom Donnie, I mean he said it seemed everything was negotiable. Okay, Jessica Tisch can stay. I'm reaching out to the CEOs. The scenic Quanon for him was Israel. That's the position on which he would not moderate.
- [26:25]
John Podhoretz
Right. Which is my. Which is.
- [26:27]
Abe Greenwald
And it's true of these squad people too.
- [26:29]
John Podhoretz
Right.
- [26:30]
Abe Greenwald
They will not give an inch on that position.
- [26:33]
John Podhoretz
So we're dealing with a different kind of democratic leftism. Then democratic leftism for 100 years was redistributionism. That was the key element of democratic leftism. High taxes, extremely progressive tax system, create benefit structures for the poor, mire them in them so they can't get out of them and then keep them going. And now they are jury rigging positions on matters that even I, editor of the most important Zionist publication in the United States do not think are the central issues for the American electorate or even their own constituencies, which is Middle Eastern policy. Which is not either for the House of Representatives, where the squad is, or for the mayor of New York City who has no foreign policy role enumerated in our Constitution. They're not talking. We keep saying, Christine drums beats on this drum every day. And it's good. Trump is not talking enough about the economy. He's not doing enough about the economy. But all of leftist sort of socialist communist thinking is economic thinking. And now they've discarded that in favor of a kind of grab bag of identity issues.
- [28:15]
Eliana Johnson
So, see, I would say they're actually much more like classic 20th century communists in this sense. They want to seize the means of production. So they want to. They want to control the grocery stores and drive out a Whole Foods or any Trader Joe's. They want to be the technocratic, highly educated wealth accruing still elite who redistributes everything else and punishes those who earn their wealth or who profit from wealth that previous generations have earned. And so in that sense, it's. I mean, look at the career of Bernie Sanders. He is the most prominent Democratic socialist in our nation and he is a multimillionaire. That's why he. There was a moment in his rhetoric where he stopped lambasting millionaires and only talked about billionaires because he became one himself. He has not really passed a great number of bills despite his many, many decades in the Senate. And he doesn't negotiate well. But he's really good at being a spokesperson for these technocratic elite ideas on the left. And I think that is actually what the squad and these rising generations like Mamdani are mimicking. It's a very popular PR strategy to tell people that we want to give you free things and those terrible Republicans on the other side just want to help the wealthy. But at the end of the day, they have to get results. And that's where I mean, Mamdani will have to get results. And it will be impossible for him to hide behind rhetoric if crime goes up, if really good businesses are leaving the city, if people are selling and leaving because they don't want to pay higher taxes, and if the people who are stuck in New York, the working poor and the lower middle class are complaining. So that's where I think. And the squad has the same problem. Go talk to people in AOC district. She doesn't do much for them. When they have trouble, they often call congressmen at nearby districts because those guys get stuff done.
- [29:55]
John Podhoretz
She's harmed them. She actively harmed them. Amazon was going to, was going to create 40,000 jobs in her district.
- [30:03]
Eliana Johnson
Ideology over constituency. Yes.
- [30:05]
John Podhoretz
Yeah. So what's interesting is just to, just to amend you slightly. So you said, you know, they want to seize the means of production, but grocery stores are not the means of, of production. They're the means of distribution, not the means of production. Not that Mamdani has the power to seize.
- [30:22]
Eliana Johnson
You know, they want to seize control of corporation, basically control corporate profit.
- [30:27]
John Podhoretz
And, and in fact, Lina Khan, the, the notorious head of the Federal Trade Commission is. May well end up being a major figure in his administration or their floating her name.
- [30:43]
Eliana Johnson
She's heading the transition team right now. Right.
- [30:46]
John Podhoretz
So, so that's, you know, the, you know, Miss. Ms. Anti Merger. Because, you know, New York doesn't benefit from mergers at all in terms of the fees that Wall street earns managing mergers. And Wall street, of course, is the engine of all of New York City's wealth. And when I say all, I mean all I mean Wall street broadly understood as the financial industry. 90% of New York. You know, New York, you know, somebody makes a shirt in Brooklyn on Etsy, you know, and then there's Wall street. And that's about it. That's all New York has because the media doesn't make any money anymore.
- [31:31]
Eliana Johnson
The Etsy shirt makers are like Trustafarian. So they're subsidized already.
- [31:35]
John Podhoretz
That's true. Okay, so can I jump in with.
- [31:38]
Abe Greenwald
Like a totally unrelated question and ask, do we want to talk about the Newsom Chief of Staff indictment?
- [31:47]
John Podhoretz
Oh, sure. Go start. Let's move. Go.
- [31:51]
Abe Greenwald
Okay. Because I'm. I have a bone to pick. You know, this indictment.
- [31:59]
Eliana Johnson
Yeah.
- [32:00]
Abe Greenwald
So Christine, you know, in our, in our text sends this news of this indictment last night. And I'm like reading in this essentially for listeners who haven't read about it. Gavin Newsom's former chief of staff, a woman by the name of Dana Williamson, was indicted for funneling money from Xavier Javier Becerras dormant campaign account. So when he went to be the Secretary of Health and Human Services, he had all this money in a campaign account from when he was Attorney General of California that he couldn't touch. And she devised a scheme to funnel money from that dormant account to Becerra's chief of staff's spouse. So essentially to Becerra's chief of staff paying the Becerra chief of staff via the spouse $10,000 a month, supposedly for consulting work, to babysit this campaign account. Did I get all that right?
- [33:06]
John Podhoretz
Yeah.
- [33:07]
Abe Greenwald
And then, so that's count One was wire fraud as relates to this dormant campaign account. Count two is this former Newsom chief of staff is listing as business expenses on her tax returns things like a $15,000, $15,500 Chanel bag and ring, a private jet flight to some birthday party in Mexico, I believe, and, you know, other luxury items. Hold on, because I actually circled this in the indictment. I got a $9,589 watch for a close friend, a $6,300 couch for her house. Oh, yeah, 21 grand for the private jet, $15,000 luxury hotel stay for her birthday. Anyhow, she did a lot of bad things, allegedly. And this recalled to me. Newsom's. We've talked. We're talking about him as a potential 2028 candidate.
- [34:22]
John Podhoretz
A.
- [34:23]
Abe Greenwald
When Newsom learned that the chief of staff was under federal investigation, he apparently placed her on leave. You know, he didn't. He didn't cut ties with her. He just placed her on leave. And number two, it did recall the COVID French Newsome dining at French Laundry. Some rul rules for me. Some rule. Other rules for the whole thing. And I think this whole thing, this is about the conduct of the highest, the people working in the highest echelons of California politics and raises serious questions about what's going to come out when Newsom gets serious about a presidential bid. And by the way, we should note, this investigation started during the Biden administration and just came to fruition now. And I think suggests Newsom Becerra, these California politicians have not been vetted seriously and does raise questions about how serious of a presidential candidate this guy may be, because this is rough stuff.
- [35:28]
Eliana Johnson
The elitism part is what's interesting to me because that is what stuck in people's minds about the exact excess waste of money spent by, for example, the Black Lives Matter leadership when they were buying, like, Malibu real estate. Because the typical argument is that, like, the French don't care about sex scandals, but care about their politicians being involved in financial malfeasance. And we're. We have typically been the opposite. We only care about sex scandals and financial malfeasance. We're like, that's, you know, it's like us with Math Corner. We're like, it's so confusing, so many numbers. But I think that's changing because if you look at what they're spending it on, it is, in a democracy, exactly what, you know, the hoi polloi look at and say, wait a minute, you're elected officials and you're flying private and you're buying, you know, they know what time it is time to spend money on luxury watches. I mean, that really does stick. And for Newsom, who is, who's been ping ponging between being, you know, being the scion that he is of governor as governor, but also trying to get down and dirty and have a podcast and be like, I'm with the people. He hasn't even settled yet on where he is on the kind of populist left spectrum in terms of a potential candidacy. So it'll be fun to watch.
- [36:36]
John Podhoretz
There is this phenomenon all over the country. I mean, it is actually what fueled Andrew Cuomo's bid for the mayoralty of New York City after his disgrace. These pools of money that sit all over the place that are raised in excess of the amount spent on a campaign, and then there's no modality to return them to the people who give that they're not tax deductible. They're not sometimes. So they sit there. Andrew Cuomo had $15 million in the bank after he resigned from the governorship of New York. And the money was just sitting there burning a hole in his pocket. So he decided to run for mayor of New York. With the results that we have seen, this Becerra story strikes me as the tip of the iceberg of a national iceberg. I mean, there are House campaigns, Senate campaigns, senators often run all but unopposed in states. And they do go around and they continue to raise money and they don't have to spend them because they're not, you know, if you're in Idaho or something, you don't really have major media markets in which you have to, like, spend millions of dollars on your television commercials. But it's not like they're not raising money and they're not sort of like making sure that people in the know in their states and otherwise don't pay them fealty in the form of campaign donations. And where is, where is that money? What happens to that money? Where who is administering it? Who is watching it? Is it in escrow? Do people get fees for running it the way you do? If, like, you're, you know, the representative of an estate, you know, you get some 2 or 3% for, you know, managing an estate.
- [38:28]
Abe Greenwald
Well, that's what this was. These people were getting paid $10,000 a month to babysit Sarah's account. And I agree with you, it is, I think it is the tip of the iceberg. I saw my former colleague Dan diamond, who's at the wash, covers health policy for the Washington Post. He Tweeted last night, the arrest of Gavin Newsom's former chief of staff is getting the headlines, but my phone is suddenly blowing up with messages about Sean McCluskey. That's Becerra's chief of staff, who served as HHS chief of staff to Becerra during the Biden years and was not always a popular figure in the building. As a former HHS reporter, I'm suddenly hearing all kinds of stories about McCluskey tonight. I wish people would have shared between 2021 and 2025. So I suspect there's more to come there. And, John, I didn't even get to the bone. I had to pick in my rant about this thing. So. So I go to my morning newsletters this morning, Politico, Playbook, and Axios, and whatever. This story is not in there. It's all about Trump and Epstein. I mean, this is like a huge national news story with potential implications for the 2028 presidential race, and all we get are Trump and Epstein. And meanwhile, part of the Trump Epstein story is apparently that Epstein claimed he gave the Russians insight into Trump. But I thought, like, you know, five years ago it was Trump is colluding with the Russians. But now, apparently, like, Jeffrey Epstein was giving the Russians the dirt on, you know, the insight into Trump. But we're the top of the New York Times right now is Epstein, Epstein, Epstein. It's freaking four stories about Jeffrey Epstein and nothing about this. Five. Five stories about Jeffrey Epstein.
- [40:07]
John Podhoretz
Well, all she did was buy a handbag and a couch and take a private jet. I mean, you know, the editor of the New York Times is worth $500 million, Joe Kahn. So I don't know what you're complaining about. You think Joe Kahn doesn't buy $6,000 couch?
- [40:22]
Eliana Johnson
She had to rent the private jet. She didn't own it. I mean, come on.
- [40:26]
John Podhoretz
I mean, really. I mean, let's talk turkey here. I mean, you think your hands are so clean. How much was your couch? I mean, there does. There is that weird quality sometimes to these stories about government embezzlement as America has gotten richer and richer and richer and richer and. Or let's put it this way, as the sort of the. As the elite class has gotten wealthier, or the barriers between wealth and privilege and opinion and. And social standing have all kind of collapsed, that people really do think, yeah, that's not much. And then, of course, compared to, like, the Trump crypto fund and the whole question of whether or not the Trump administration has become a giant promotion for, you know, Very, very questionable investments and very questionable financial instruments. You know, is that worse? Yeah, but I mean, this is bad, literally.
- [41:33]
Eliana Johnson
Can I interrupt for a second? Can I inter for a second? The distinction, it is, it is worse. I completely agree. But the conceit with Trump and crypto is that everyone can profit. You can buy it. I can't get a ride on Gavin Newsom, Chief of Staff's private jet. No way.
- [41:49]
John Podhoretz
Chanel.
- [41:50]
Eliana Johnson
Right, exactly. I want the bag. No, but that's, but there is that conceit, I think, on, on with Trump's grifting is that you can all be part of the grift. That's always been something he's been proud messaging. Right, Sorry, so I interrupted. Go on.
- [42:07]
John Podhoretz
Bring the entire country into, into. Yeah, you buy crypto and then you sell it. You buy the crypto fund, you sell it to your friends.
- [42:13]
Eliana Johnson
I mean, it's ridiculous.
- [42:16]
John Podhoretz
And, and, and all that. Speaking of which, by the way, and talking about things about which I understand nothing and should speak about them even less. But, but I did remember I had this niggling memory in my brain reading.
- [42:32]
Abe Greenwald
Good, wind up reading.
- [42:34]
John Podhoretz
Well, thank you. Because you'll see why when I get to the point. 2006, 2007, reading in the New York Times the writing of Gretchen Morgenson and others and in the Wall Street Journal about this problem that was happening with adjustable rate mortgage, subprime mortgages, and how people all across the country were underwater on their mortgages and really didn't have anywhere to go and they were defaulting at very high rates. And yet these mortgages that people probably shouldn't have gotten in the first place were still being handed out and that there was a problem. We had no idea how deep the rot went that, you know.
- [43:16]
Quince/Brooklyn Bedding Advertiser
Leading basically.
- [43:17]
John Podhoretz
To the financial meltdown of 2008. And I remember, as I say, early 2007, going, what is going on here? I don't even understand what a subprime mortgage is, but this sounds bad. And on the one hand, I'm reading all this talk about how AI is transformative, it's going to save, is going to destroy all our jobs and save the world, and destroy jobs and save the world. But then we're going to be in a new world and we need these data centers to power AI and all of that. And meanwhile, it's kind of looking like the AI bubble is starting to burst. And the AI bubble is the entire growth of the US economy from what we can tell in 2025, is attributable to, you know, the capital spending and the, and the money that is being raised to deal with AI.
- [44:07]
Eliana Johnson
And now you know why there was why most of the funding for the new ballroom at the White House from big tech and big AI. And this is why they have been cozying up to Trump since the moment he won reelection.
- [44:19]
John Podhoretz
So, you know, Nvidia is now the most valuable corporation in the world. This, you know, very, you know, talk about, like, striking it rich. Like this company that made a chip that was particularly good for gaming, and then it turned out that it had this peculiar quality of being particularly good for a high. Suddenly it's worth $5 trillion or something like that. This, this one company and everybody is rushing to invest in AI and all. And then now it appears that the people who were smart about getting into this early and saw the gold rush coming are getting out. And Michael Burry, who is one of the four people profiled in the big short by Michael Lewis, the people who saw the subprime mortgage crisis coming and move to short bank stocks because they saw the disaster that was about to fall. Michael Burry said that the AI is a bubble and that we're about to undergo a huge crash. And so we're constantly looking in the wrong direction at things. I think that's part of the point that Eliana is making about the morning newsletter. So now we're talking about Jeffrey Epstein, who has been, you know, who is dead and whose entire business and personal transaction array with Donald Trump dates back 20 years. Now, if Trump was bad and did bad things with Epstein, I have no problem with all of that being surfaced and him having to be held to account for it. Even if Epstein paid people off so that, you know, these stories should never come to light. But it is old news. I mean, it's like the definition of old news. The main player here is gone from this earth and is, you know, currently residing in hell. And yet we have all of these other matters that then just go by the wayside and you just like, flash this, you know, shiny flashlight and everybody looks in that direction.
- [46:34]
Eliana Johnson
But people do feel, I think there is this. And it's hard to. I don't think this is a partisan sensibility like many scandals where the, the leading star, you know, either dies or is imprisoned with Epstein. I think there's a sense among some of the public who follow this scandal that there actually wasn't justice done among all the people who might have participated in his insanely awful lifestyle and perhaps even been either aware of and didn't report or participated themselves. In some of the crimes that he committed. So I think that's where there's no. There's not a lot of sense of closure that the people who were in his orbit were effectively punished. And Maxwell was moved to a Kushier prison recently. Why? I mean, there are questions that people raise that I think are not just conspiracy theorizing, but a sense of injustice with regard to the people who Epstein and his circle harmed. I think that's a legitimate question. I don't get into the conspiracy stuff, but even though he's gone, a lot of the people who participated in with him have not ever been held accountable.
- [47:37]
Oliver Darcy
I'm Oliver Darcy.
- [47:38]
John Passantino
And I'm John Passantino.
- [47:40]
Oliver Darcy
We have spent years covering the inner workings of the news media, tech, politics, Hollywood, and power. Now through our nightly newsletter, status.
- [47:48]
John Passantino
And we're bringing that same reporting and sharp analysis to a new podcast, Powerlines.
- [47:54]
Oliver Darcy
Every Friday, we're breaking down the biggest stories shaping the industry, explaining why they matter and saying the things most people are thinking but too timid to say out loud.
- [48:02]
John Passantino
No spin, no fluff, just sharp analysis that isn't afraid to call it like it is. We also pull back the curtain via our exclusive reporting to take you behind the scenes.
- [48:12]
Oliver Darcy
My understanding, having reported this is that the Pentagon protested to CNN and tried to effectively exile the CNN producer. And when the moment calls for it, we've got some hot takes. I just think Brad Pitt, honestly, he kind of seems a little washed up.
- [48:28]
John Passantino
Oh, my God. That's Power Lines presented by Status. Follow power lines and listen on Apple, Spotify, Amazon Music, or your favorite podcast app.
- [48:43]
Unnamed Male Panelist
The thing about Epstein, the story is that so much is unknown and it involves so many parties all across the political spectrum, across the world. And if you are at all conspiratorially minded, you think this unlocks everything. You think if you get to the bottom of this, it will explain everything. Trump, Clinton, the Jews, all of it, which is everything to them.
- [49:22]
Eliana Johnson
I'm standing on flat earth right now, Abe, and you couldn't be more correct. We just have to get to the bottom of it.
- [49:27]
John Podhoretz
Look, I don't think that Epstein is not a story. I do. I said yesterday I thought that this was one of these stories that will ever die. I mean, like 100 years from now, people will be talking about the Jeffrey Epstein scandal in part because it will not be resolved and we will never get to the bottom of it. And that's how these things stay. Stay alive, you know. And so I think your analysis of the reason of the feeling the Emotion that is generated by something here isn't right. And it involves powerful people manipulating the conversation in the United States or the legal system in the United States to their own ends in a way that wouldn't, in a way that nobody else could ever achieve. And that's just not right. And it's a burr in the saddle of my understanding of fairness and justice and all of that. That's real. But that doesn't explain the newsletters, Eliana's newsletters, and the front pages of the papers.
- [50:33]
Eliana Johnson
Well, it's a useful distraction for Democrats to have, to have Mr. Populist, whose message was entirely what you described. He ran on it twice successfully. To be embroiled in the scandal, to be actually part of the problem, rather than the person pointing to the problem of elite manipulation.
- [50:48]
Abe Greenwald
The explanation for the newsletters is simple. It's something that could cause a problem for Trump versus something that could cause a problem for Democrats.
- [50:58]
John Podhoretz
Right? Oh, you're so vulgar. So vulgar. It's such a. You're so simplistic. That was the great charge in the 1980s about anybody on the right. We were so simplistic. You know, things are multi causal and our relations with the Soviets, just calling these Soviets an evil empire because they had murdered 60 million people in subdued 12 countries and were, you know, funding murderous totalitarian regimes all over the world. So simplistic to call them evil. So negative, you know, so that, yeah, so basically right, this looks like a good way to hammer Trump. And Trump will then participate in keeping the story alive by calling Lauren Boebert and Marjorie Taylor Greene and saying drop it. There's nothing to drop anymore. Right. I mean some whole bunch of things were released yesterday. Thousand, dozens of emails released yesterday. The. I, I've not had a chance to delve into this stuff, but I gather the main takeaway is that neither Jeffrey Epstein nor Larry Summers can spell. That seems to be the whole thing. Larry Summers, brilliant guy, you know, genius economist, president of, past president of Harvard, apparently does not know how to spell or. These emails are so old that spellcheck had not yet emerged in, in, in our email systems.
- [52:21]
Abe Greenwald
I mean literally the top of the New York Times right now. Top, top of the fold, electronic digital virgin. After Trump split, Epstein said he could take him down. The coming House vote on releasing the Epstein files. What newly released emails tell us about Epstein and Trump? Michael Wolff, chronicler of elites, advise Epstein about Trump. And then the perfect Thanksgiving sweet potato casserole. There's nothing else. I mean, it's insane. There's not one other story that Americans might be interested in above the fold here.
- [52:56]
John Podhoretz
Well, a sweet potato, a good sweet potato casserole, you know, with Thanksgiving coming.
- [53:00]
Abe Greenwald
I mean that it's bananas. There's no way to justify this level of interest in a single story. Look, I'm interested in the Trump Epstein story. I read those, the Larry Summers emails. I wanted to know what they were talking about. But I'm not interested in it to the exclusion of every other story happening in America. Above the fold.
- [53:23]
John Podhoretz
Yeah, like, for example, the possibility that there is a gigantic, that there is a gigantic bubble about to burst that has been ballasting the US Economy. Maybe that's not really a New York Times top of the, top of the page lead because it hasn't happened yet and we're still in the growth phase or whatever. But I mean that if that's real, that is clearly the biggest story in the world because we are going to go into a severe recession with many people's, you know, 401ks and retirement holdings collapsing. You know, I'm about to turn 65, so I'm not taking anything out. And I don't, you know, I have my retirement money across, you know, 10 fidelity funds. So I'm trying to hedge it that way. But, you know, if there's a, if the stock market crashes by 40%, everybody's portfolios crash by 40%. And that is the kind of power centrality that the AI bubble has for the stock market. That it's a, you know, that one of the 20 dominoes starts falling. And we don't know where that, you know, we don't know where that, where that leads. But let's talk about a sex scandal from 20 years ago.
- [54:57]
Eliana Johnson
Well, and there were, there have been some signs that the industry leaders, this is where, you know, there've been a few AI summits recently. And several industry leaders have have signaled and said things like, well, this is why government partnerships are really important, you know, as a backstop, as a, so they are looking for a federal government to make sure they are too big to fail. If they do fail and if the economic effects are big. So it is. There are some interesting sort of echoes of earlier financial crises, but this is where I think the regulatory regime under Trump with regard to some of these companies is really fascinating and is another story to Eliana's earlier point, that should be covered with a great deal more alacrity than it has been since he took his second term in office.
- [55:39]
Unnamed Male Panelist
You know, John, the more, the more I think about your point here about how this is the biggest story. It is because not only is there the actual financial impact on everyone, but remember what these crises unleash in the culture, the anti capitalist fervor, the late be back in late capitalism land again and all that. But worse, you know, because nothing, nothing rhymes exactly. And given where we are culturally and protest wise and everything, I don't know that we the country can afford that. Another wave of a new anti everything movement.
- [56:28]
John Podhoretz
And you know, when the subprime mortgage led to the financial meltdown and we had all of the ancillary results from that Occupy Wall street. And I think ultimately, as you know by view, Trump is the ultimate thing that emerged politically to deal with the fallout from the financial meltdown as that was happening with a lot of people not paying that much attention. An entire new industry in the United States was being created that probably saved the country from going into a massive depression which was hydraulic fracturing the fracking industry, turning America into a net exporter of natural gas, which really started in 2007. Imagine an America in which we had had the subprime mortgage crisis but had not had fracking, creating tens of billions of dollars or hundreds of billions of dollars of investment opportunities and export profits over time. And where we are here with the AI bubble is that it could be A, a bubble and B, it's the fracking. So unless it, unless it manifests the way people, optimists think it is going to manifest in the sense that it will be this world altering new form of technology in mass use that will throw off hundreds of thousands of new jobs and do X, Y and Z. It's both an investment bubble and the only hope for the future. Because I don't think that there's something else coming up the pike maybe, I just don't know. But I mean there doesn't seem to be anything else in it that there doesn't seem to be some major innovation in the American economy that is broadening out the 2020s AI boom. Except for crypto, which is itself the definition of a bubble.
- [58:45]
Eliana Johnson
There was a, there was an interesting story, it was either in the Times or the Wall Street Journal about a very nimble and entrepreneurial solar panel company who is suing some one of these AI companies. Because the way the AI generated a description of these, this company included all kinds of false information about them having been sued or in breach of various rules and regulations. So that if someone was looking for a good solar company, they wouldn't choose this company. Because of what I had surfaced and there are a lot more of those lawsuits coming. So ironically, if you're a small entrepreneurial part of our economy right now, you too are going to be subject to whatever power AI is exercising in the minds of consumers and the minds of regulators. And it is very difficult. I mean that to me, that struck me as a story that 10 years from now we'll have a lot more resonance because people are relying on this stuff to be reliable and it is not. The companies are telling us it's reliable and that they're constantly tweaking this. It is not. That is not the case. They do not always know how to reverse engineer their mistakes with AI in the way that they could with algorithms. So that story to me is exactly another part of another layer of this challenge with AI, which is that if some of these things fail, even the recovery type businesses that might bring us back into more equilibrium with the economy are themselves suffering from the impact of some of these AI tools right now. It's just a fascinating story.
- [60:14]
John Podhoretz
I recommend. Unless somebody else has a recommend. No. Should I do it? Okay. Because I've been doing it all week and I feel like I'm hogging it. But I've been reading the memoir of Cameron Crowe, who is the writer of Fast Times at Bridgemont High, the director of Jerry Maguire and say Anything and Singles, has not really had much of a success as a motion picture creator in the 21st century and is now, you know, in his early 70s. And he has written a memoir called Uncool. And the story of Uncool is the story that he tells about himself in Almost Famous, the movie he won an Oscar for in 2000, which is his life as a teenager in Southern California as the rock era, as the sort of the album Rock glam rock, massive California rock world was exploding. And then how at the age of 14, in a very unlikely set of circumstances, he ended up becoming a kiddie interviewer for Rolling Stone and Cream and other publications of acts as various as the Eagles and When He Was and Led Zeppelin and who really the subject of of Almost Famous and various other bands while being the child of this extremely difficult mother who was a kind of autodidact professor at a community college in San Diego, who hated rock music. She was very left wing, but she hated rock music. And she was also very Catholic and had very deep opinions about everything and was very hortatory toward her son. And the portrait of his mother, of the world of these kind of young rock stars begins with. You read about 23 year old Glenn Frey and 22 year old Don Henley backstage as the Eagles were just emerging as a major band and stuff like that. He's a very, very good writer. He was a journalist before he became a screenwriter. And in fact the only book of his that I read, I read before it came out was the book on which Fast Times at Ridgemont High is based. When he went and spent a year at a high school. Cause he was so baby faced, he was 22 years old and he just basically hung around this high school in the Valley, in the San Fernando Valley and wrote about the kids there. It's kind of nonfiction novel. It's a remarkable book actually and you know, sort of tougher and cruel, tougher and more, less sentimental and less jokey than the movie is, obviously, which is a, which is a teen comedy. But it turns out he can still write. And, and one little detail before I, before I go. His mother, who was half Spanish, was the head at the, at the San Diego Community College of the Chicano Studies Department. Chicano being the earliest term for Latinx, the term that politically conscious people of Mexican descent in California wanted to call themselves and align themselves with Cesar Chavez, the agricultural laborer, union chief. And she was hounded out of the job in 1971 on the claims that she was not authentic enough a Chicana, even though her mother was Chicana. But she looked white and she sounded white and she acted white. And it was a great torment to her that this had been done to her. But then once she was ousted, she then redirected her energies elsewhere and continued on for like 30 or 40 years as the kind of guiding force of this community college and in San diego. Just interesting 55 years ago to see this whole question of like, oh, really, Mary Crow, you're a Chicana? I don't think so. You don't look Chicana. Crow makes very little of it. Of course, if I were writing this memoir, I would write 200 pages about this treatment of his mother. But that's not his story. Anyway, I'm only.
- [65:06]
Unnamed Male Panelist
What's the name of the book?
- [65:07]
Abe Greenwald
Book?
- [65:07]
John Podhoretz
It's called Uncool.
- [65:09]
Unnamed Male Panelist
Oh, Uncool.
- [65:09]
John Podhoretz
That's right, Uncool. And it's. And Cameron Crowe. C R O W E For those who, you know, don't. The.
- [65:19]
Quince/Brooklyn Bedding Advertiser
Excuse me.
- [65:20]
John Podhoretz
It's called the Uncool. This is what happens when you read books on the Kindle, right? You never see the, like, the jacket is insane.
- [65:27]
Eliana Johnson
I won't say it, I won't say it. Paper's always better.
- [65:30]
Quince/Brooklyn Bedding Advertiser
You know what I Got to tell.
- [65:32]
John Podhoretz
You, my eyesight is getting worse and it's getting very hard for me to read up, to read a codex without, you know, like getting. Putting in contact lenses and then putting on like a second pair of reader glasses. Like. So I'm wearing contacts and reader glasses.
- [65:50]
Unnamed Male Panelist
Because the types, I go through the same thing. I go to different rooms, different lighting, I pull it away, pull it close, and then I prefer.
- [65:59]
John Podhoretz
I believe that you retain more information reading on paper than you do on a screen. And I believe that this is a less, this is a worse way to read. But I find it hard to read. You know, I mean, I just remember 50 years ago reading these Penguin classic versions of Russian novels and stuff. I picked one up out of my bookcase to give to my daughter and it was like reading, you know, box scores.
- [66:30]
Eliana Johnson
Well, and then if there were, if they were really old ones, I have a couple of these where they're printed on acid free paper and they're crumbled. Like you turn the yellow pages and you're just like, be careful. Yeah, some, some improvements are good for readers.
- [66:42]
John Podhoretz
But anyway, but I, I'm with you. And I wish I were reading it on paper, but I'm not. So the Uncool by Cameron Crowe is my recommendation. Okay, we'll be back tomorrow. So for Eliana, Christine and Abe. I was about to say for Eliana, Christine and John, because our names are in this like kind of Brady Bunch checkerboard thing. So that's how, that's how old I'm getting. For Eliana, Christine and Abe, I'm John Pagor. It's Keep the candle.