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- [00:04]
John Podhoretz
Hope for the best, expect the worst Some preach and pain Some die of thirst the way of knowing which way.
- [00:18]
Abe Greenwald
It'S going Hope for the best, expect the worst.
- [00:25]
John Podhoretz
Welcome to the Commentary Magazine daily podcast. Today is Tuesday, April 22, 2025. I am John Podhoritz, the editor of Commentary magazine. With me, as always, executive editor Abe Greenwald. Hi, Abe.
- [00:37]
Seth Mandel
Hi, John.
- [00:38]
John Podhoretz
Senior editor Seth Mandel. Hi, Seth.
- [00:40]
Abe Greenwald
Hi, John.
- [00:41]
John Podhoretz
And Social Commentary columnist Christine Rosen. Hi, Christine.
- [00:45]
Christine Rosen
Hi, John.
- [00:46]
John Podhoretz
I want to talk a little bit more about what we talked about yesterday, which is the mess, the sort of Trump mess, and this question of whether or not a mess that we adduce we see with all of these agencies getting into trouble, whether this is a media plot to undermine the Trump administration's aggressive efforts, or whether what we're seeing is something that Trump and his people need to correct if they want to have a successful presidency. And I think the outcome of this conversation is extraordinarily important because it's one thing to make a public show of keeping your coalition together by saying that the media are being unfair to you. This is a, an effort to discredit important things that are going on. And don't take your eye off the ball and take account of who your enemies are and why they are trying to stop you from doing what you should be doing. And the warning signs of a complete train wreck ahead. In other words, the private and the public can be different. Trump can say, I'm backing Pete Hegseth 100% and this is all an unfair war. MAGA can say this about Pete Hegseth, even though the people who are attacking Pete Hegseth are themselves MAGA people.
- [02:19]
Unknown
Who.
- [02:20]
John Podhoretz
He seems to have gotten crosswise of. But when they talk internally and look internally at what it is that is going on, are they aware that they are heading into thickets of trouble that they might want to clear out before they keep going on, or are they high on their own supply? They believe that this is all unjust and that you have to sort of pretend that none of the bad stuff is happening in order to keep your coalition together and to move forward. Or do they believe it? Do they actually believe that somehow liberals inside the Pentagon who are actually Trump conservatives are destroying Pete Hegseth and therefore destroying the Trump MAGA goal. And we don't know the answer to that question. But I think the answer to that question is actually going to define whether or not this presidency is successful or a train wreck. Does anybody have any problems with that proposition that I've just laid out? No.
- [03:28]
Seth Mandel
I think that's right. I mean, I think it also comes down to Trump himself, because if Trump doesn't believe that there's a mess brewing and growing beneath him, no one is going to tap him on the shoulder and say, by the way, Mr. President, we have a problem here. You know, no one's going to buck him on this. So I think that's the issue.
- [04:00]
John Podhoretz
He showed himself. I'm sorry, I was just going to.
- [04:03]
Christine Rosen
Add that I'm struck in conversations I have with a range of people, how many people still want to give more time to this administration to do what it claims it wants to do. And they are. And these are not MAGA people necessarily. But the idea being, you know, it's such Biden left such a mess. We have to give them more time than those of us who follow this stuff in granular detail might, and we're just going to hope for the best. And it surprises me because these aren't people who would be that forgiving, I think, of what Obama was doing in his first 100 days, for example. But there is, there does seem to be still a little bit of generosity in letting Trump kind of set things in order. Now, this morning, when I got opened up the Wall Street Journal, and on the COVID of the newspaper, it said, the Dow Jones is about to have the worst April since the Great Depression. That's where, again, the economic issues, I think, are going to start to be the point, the breaking point for those voters, for those people who would like to give him the benefit of the doubt.
- [05:09]
John Podhoretz
Trump was very unsentimental in his first term about everybody. So his line would be somebody that he had been like, had been, you know, like, held up to Chupa at his wedding or like, you know, said had an Alia at his bar mitzvah. He didn't know him. Once he had to fire him. He didn't know him. He didn't know he was. He'd heard of him, didn't really know, you know, let Bannon go, let Flynn go for, you know, people who were, who were very much in his orbit. Once, once he was done with them, he was done with them. So we can see that there is a easy and, and we know this from his prior professional career when, when on the Apprentice, Carolyn, his deputy sidekick, who was One of the three regulars on the show, there was Carolyn George and Mr. Trump. And Carolyn began to develop an independent celebrity. And he fired her off the show, got rid of her because he didn't like the fact that she was starting to get Speaking gigs and things like that, and maybe, you know, publish a book about her own business experiences. So this is a long standing thing with him. So the idea that he's going to stand resolutely behind Pete Hegseth forever, if he does, and he may, that would be a change in his comportment as.
- [06:36]
Abe Greenwald
Right. I mean, I think the Supreme Court fight that he took up, which was on behalf of Brett Kavanaugh, was over when he got the votes. And the Hegseth thing wasn't over when he got the votes, when Hegseth got confirmed. This stuff just continues. That's the difference. Kavanaugh hasn't been a problem for him. And not that he could fire a Supreme Court justice, but I just mean, you know, the way that he stands by people is usually he know if he's going to stand by them, it's. It's time limited. It's, it's not something that's going to drag on forever and ever. And in fact, we saw this a bit during the campaign with JD Vans. JD Vance went through a couple of really terrible news cycles. The cat lady comment set them off and the childless cat lady thing. And there were times when Trump looked like he was starting to get frustrated having to answer questions about his vice presidential nominee. And he, and he sounded like he can. He started to sound like he considered Vance replaceable. Not that he was going to replace him, but that, you know, all these guys who aren't me, Mr. Trump, are not me, Mr. Trump. Right.
- [07:48]
Seth Mandel
J.D.
- [07:48]
Abe Greenwald
Vance and anybody else would be fine, you know, on that slot and whatever. So, yeah, I mean, and that would be a huge thing to have changed in the middle of a campaign, the vice president. So I don't think that he really has any patience for this sort of thing. But I also think that one of the reasons Christine hears people willing to give it some more time is because you get the sense from MAGA people and people who support this, like, very specific kind of populism that Trump is the only shot at making this American settled policy, that there really isn't anybody else who could, you know, come on the scene, throw his weight around the way Trump does, control his base the way Trump does, and push people back in all the institutions that try pushing back against things like tariffs and trade wars and, and stuff like that. I think that there's this sense that it's like, well, this is our shot. If you're that kind of, you know, national populist or whatever you want to call yourself, this is your shot. And after this, you know, it goes back. I think they fear it goes back to being the consensus, you know, the sort of Washington consensus on policy stuff. And so I think they're willing to ride it out with Trump for a while just because they're swinging for the fences. And if they strike out, they strike out. But they need a home run here.
- [09:15]
John Podhoretz
Listen, I'd been, you know, having conversations with distressed people, not Trump fans, mild Trump, people who voted for him, happily, people voted for him grudgingly, people wouldn't vote for him at all. And the general aspect that I get here is, first of all, we have no choice. There is no choice but to sort of, like, give him time. Like, there's no. With the exception of House and Senate members in the Republican Party, it doesn't matter how any. Whether anybody else is going to give him time or not give him time. He is president until 2029, until January 20, 2029, and that's the way it is. And what will be now if there is an uprising against him within Republican ranks because things become so catastrophic that everybody, you know, not to interrupt, but.
- [10:08]
Abe Greenwald
That was a nice reminder that as of yesterday or whatever, we've. He's been in office for three months.
- [10:14]
John Podhoretz
Yeah, exactly. There's three months. We have, like, it's literally three years and eight months left of this presidency. So there's nowhere to go. There's nothing to be done about it. You might as well be patient, I guess. So the question is not how, again, unless the Senate and the House panic or justifiably understand that the lawlessness that he is demonstrating, the emoluments that he seems to be enjoying in the forms of bribes, effective bribes being paid to him by private companies in the entertainment business in order to get him off their backs, stuff like that, all of this develops a critical mass and there is actually a substantive revolt against him. As long as he starts to seem that he's weakening, doesn't matter. It only matters whether he wants to have a successful presidency and how he defines that. And as I define it, he's on his way to a train wreck. But that may not. But I'm not him. And I didn't ever think he would get elected president. So I don't. You know, I'm. You shouldn't listen to me. What do I know? I just think that, as Christine says, the external signs a doubt in collapse, a fight with a Fed chairman who cannot do what he is demanding that he do because it will trigger exactly the thing that got Trump elected in the first place, which is an inflationary spiral. If Jay Powell cuts interest rates at this moment, he will trigger inflation.
- [11:54]
Christine Rosen
But this is actually the Powell back and forth with Trump is worrisome for another reason, which is that he's completely. Trump is trying to politicize the Fed in a way that he's not. He's not allowed to fire Jerome Powell. They have set terms. He is not. But he's also setting him up, I think potentially to take the fall on the economy. He's going to point to that, saying, well, if I got rid of him and put my own guy in, this never would have happened. And maybe his voters are going to believe that it's nonsense.
- [12:22]
John Podhoretz
I put him in, by the way, but he put him in. But Powell is Fed Chairman because Trump appointed him Fed chairman.
- [12:29]
Christine Rosen
Right. But he can't fire him if he's.
- [12:31]
Seth Mandel
Setting him up to take the fall. It means Trump does have some sense that he's in trouble.
- [12:37]
John Podhoretz
Yeah, right.
- [12:38]
Christine Rosen
That's true.
- [12:40]
John Podhoretz
I mean, it is funny to say he's a loser. Well, you made him Fed chairman, buddy. Who's the loser now? Like this Biden. He's not Biden's Fed chairman. He was made fed chairman in 2018. So what he, I mean, what he wants from him, he doesn't want from him. I mean, I agree that this is a political strategy to find a tar baby, right, or to find somebody to whom he can stick the problems on, but he doesn't actually, unless I'm not totally insane, he doesn't want Powell to do what he says he wants Powell to do. He should not want Powell to cut interest rates. He shouldn't. That's very dangerous. Given. Given.
- [13:29]
Abe Greenwald
Unless he wants Powell to do that and then pretend he didn't tell him to do it and then say, look at this idiot who cut interest rates in the middle of.
- [13:38]
Christine Rosen
There's so many markers right now that are not looking great for our economy. I mean, setting us. There's the tariff stuff, but then there's the bond market still. The dollar is down. People are starting to run for gold. I mean, economists look at these different trends and say this looks like an emerging economy that's going to stalemate. Not like a, not like one of the most powerful and productive economies in the world, which is what we have been. So there's, I mean, there's a lot of stuff that could go terribly wrong, even if he fixes one part of that. And then I think, as we mentioned the other day, there's still all the question of the tax bill that has to get passed and whether there'll be any changes there. So just on the economy, he's. His messaging is not great. If it's just, oh, it's Jerome Powell's.
- [14:23]
John Podhoretz
Fault and he is pursuing strategies or the administration is pursuing strategies, that, again, if you. If you exist in a world in which the joy, the pleasure and the goal is to own the libs and make libs cry, then they're doing a fantastic job. The libs are crying. It's 1933. The. Their civil rights are being, you know, it's the McCarthy era. Due process is being denied to Americans. They're crying. They're under assault. They're under threat. They're crying. Great. Congratulations. They're crying. I certainly enjoy liberal tears. I enjoy seeing people hoist on their own petard. They've spent decades targeting conservative ideas and conservative ideologies and conservative thoughts and places on campus and media and stuff like that. So if they're on the run, I can't help myself but enjoy to see them, to see. To see them in distress. I don't think, however, that that is a strategy for governance or even to advance the causes, as I said yesterday, the causes that we all hold dear, that are. That seems to be at the root of the. Making liberals cry. Right. Sort of like ending dei. So let's talk about ending. Ending DI is an incredibly important thing that is going on here. Very important. It is a necessary adjunct to the idea that we need to reset American priorities to excellence in performance and not a kind of static, dead world in which everyone is assigned their place depending on what group they're in, and that once they are installed in that place, they never move and they never change and nothing ever changes and all of that. So that's great. But then this guy who resigned before he was fired, Mr. Elliot, pulls Jackie Robinson's, you know, honor painting at the Pentagon on the grounds that Jackie Robinson's painting, one of the great American Heroes of the 20th century was. It was a DEI game and DEI is dead at the Pentagon.
- [16:43]
Abe Greenwald
They were very. In baseball at the time. People, many people don't know this, but at the time of Jackie Robinson, they were very into DEI and diversity and equity inclusion.
- [16:53]
John Podhoretz
Extremely.
- [16:54]
Abe Greenwald
The only reason he got a shot that was.
- [16:56]
John Podhoretz
Yeah. So anyway, I'm just saying that, you know, so there is the fight against DI, and then there's the cartoon fight against DI that will have the net result over time of discrediting the fight against dei. Which one are they going to fight? Because the Fight to take the fight to destroy dei, to destroy this regime which not only controlled, you know, hiring and HR departments and all that, but has had this effect. Supreme Court ruled that, you know, affirmative action on even private institutions and Universities violates the 6. Violates Title 6 of the Civil Rights act, you know, one of the most important Supreme Court decisions of my lifetime. They could build on that, use that. But instead, what they want to do is, you know, have Kid Rock win the Kennedy center honor. You know, I mean, which, again, I don't care whether Kid Rock wins the Kennedy center honor or not, but are you gonna do this with serious purpose, or are you just. You know, there's a. There's a joke. There's a. Moses and Jesus are playing golf. You'll excuse me for. For my. But of course, last week was Moses and Jesus week, so we could. We could serve a. Moses. Jesus playing golf. Moses tees off. He. He, you know, he hits it, goes down. He hits the fairway, goes. He gets in the hole, makes a bogey, you know, has a good. Has a good hole. You know, Jesus comes up. He, you know, swings. Ball is going off into the rough, and then the eagle catches it in its mouth and drops it. And it drops. It looks like it's going to drop into the water. It's a water hazard. But an alligator. The ball lands on the alligator's back. The alligator comes up to shore and drops the thing off its back. And then a giant wind blow, you know, comes out of nowhere and blows the ball into the hole for a hole in one. And Jesus very happily comes down the course to the. To the stick. And Moses is staying there, leaning on his golf club, and he says to him, listen, kid, do you want to play golf or do you want to f around? So my question is, do they want to play golf or do they want to f around? Because I understand effing. It's fun, right? And if you. You know, if you have the power to f around, which you do, if you have all three branches of government, you have the House, the Senate, and the Presidency in your. In your pocket and all of that, then you can f around. But you know what? You're not playing golf. And in the end, you know, you're not. You're not. You're not going to, like, be proud of the game that you've played. Here's the thing. Yeah.
- [19:51]
Seth Mandel
The. The. The Trump core, John. The. The nuclear, as you've called it. The Nucleolus, right? The. The. The hardcore.
- [20:00]
John Podhoretz
I don't think I called it the nucleolus because I don't think I've used the word nucleolus since my. When I got a C in biology in high school. You did? I did. Oh my God. Really did.
- [20:10]
Seth Mandel
Well, it's a good. Because you're saying.
- [20:12]
John Podhoretz
I know but like I barely remember what a nucleolus is, but thank you.
- [20:16]
Seth Mandel
The nucleus of the nucleus, essentially.
- [20:18]
John Podhoretz
Right.
- [20:19]
Seth Mandel
His hardcore MAGA fans.
- [20:21]
John Podhoretz
Yeah.
- [20:21]
Seth Mandel
Out there. I'm not talking about in the administration. They see effing around as playing the game that for they there's no difference for them. And the question is to what extent does Trump accept their reason for celebrating him as his reason for being? He. He has on occasion parted ways with them. Doesn't seem to have been doing that much lately though, right. He's kind of, he's kind of right there with the MAGA horde these days.
- [20:57]
John Podhoretz
Hey everybody.
- [20:58]
Unknown
Vacation season is upon us. Spring has hit New York. Got some warm weather, got some rain, but it's just making me think about the summer and the fun that I.
- [21:09]
John Podhoretz
Can have, fun my wife and I can have.
- [21:11]
Unknown
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- [24:25]
John Podhoretz
Paradox because of course he could do anything he wanted like that. You know, he is maga. There is no other object in maga. It's not like he can betray maga. He is maga. So that should give him a complete running room. And it does in some sense. I mean you have the entire Republican party now in some weird place where it has to nominally say that tariffs are okay or at least, well, you know, a 10% tariffs are okay. A party 40 years had two had a sustaining opposition to tariff. Not 40 years. I mean tariffs have been an object of this part of the American coalition being anti tariff and free market is like dates back to the cotton gin, you know. So it's not like, it's not like there's anything new here about that. And then so you have tariffs and you have taxes. He's talking about raising taxes on, you know, and, and all of that. He can do that. I mean he that no one's gonna stop him. In that sense, he can f around or he can be serious and they'll provide him the same backing. I don't, you know, it's like he, so, yeah, I think it goes to his psychology, maybe that's the whole point about him, is that he's not serious and that he's running this in this weird, unserious way. And the problem is that he's playing now very high stakes, is playing high stakes stuff with the, with the American economy, with the global geopolitical situation with Iran and Russia and China and, and he is, you know, like handing off the portfolio to some real estate guy who's never.
- [26:12]
Abe Greenwald
Well, that's the thing. And on domestic policy, too, right, which is that other people have to carry out these policies. This is not, by the way, a defense of Trump or passing the buck. But you have an assortment of people, some of whom are serious and some of whom are effing around. And those are the people in whose hands you put this in.
- [26:31]
John Podhoretz
Well, I just mean me a Syria, because I don't know who's serious. I'm actually kind of, I mean, I.
- [26:38]
Abe Greenwald
Mean, I think that, I mean, I think Marco Rubio still wants to, you know, do good in the world and still wants to project, you know, some sense of American strength. I think there are people who are, you know, compromised by their position, but are, but have, but they have not given themselves over totally to the, you know, the sort of maga chaos as the extreme virtue. But I think, you know, didn't we see this last week with the Harvard thing where they apparently someone in the administration that they were, you know, in the, in the attorney's office was telling Harvard that the letter that got sent to them with the list of demands was a mistake. And then when they didn't like that answer, they said, well, it was a mistake that it went out when it did. It was still going to go out, but it shouldn't have gone out on Friday. Right. So I think that's, this is an example of these sorts of things whose running point on whether or not we're pulling $2.2 billion from whatever Harvard Fund, Right. The people involved can't seem to agree whether the letter was a mistake. The letterhead had the stamps was official, you know, executive branch or whatever communications it was. You know, it was not like it's not, they're not saying we got hacked. They're not Joy Reed here. They're just saying, I don't know, maybe wasn't supposed to what? And you can't really get answers. So I think that's the thing is, is that, you know, you. There's a. There are different levels of seriousness, and the people carry. Trump really does want to punish Harvard, and he put it in the hands of somebody who maybe sent a wrong letter or didn't send it or, you know, once.
- [28:16]
Christine Rosen
Once the mistake is made. And this has happened time and time again in just these first three months, instead of either quietly fixing it and moving on, which they could have done immediately with Harvard, they double down, and they publicly double down. And as a result, Harvard is now suing the federal government. Today, they just filed a lawsuit against the government, claiming that they are being singled out in a way that is illegal. So what he is. He creates problems for himself by not acknowledging error. And we've obviously seen this with. With Hegseth, but I think Seth's right to think about how they play out or game out these things. There have been many people who were put into certain agencies right away by the Trump administration who went about methodically trying to think about, we can cut this program. This is dei. We got to get rid of this. And they came up with their own plans based on their knowledge of the programs that they were in charge of. And then Doge would come in and just cut half their staff, including the people they needed to keep in order to get rid of these bureaucratic problems. So again, and then if you challenge Elon, who's buddies with Trump, that's not. You're not going to win, even if you're all on the same team. So I think there's just a lot of. There are serious people in MAGA world who want to see this reform happen and stick, but we don't hear from them publicly, and they constantly get undermined by an administration that seems slightly chaotic in its. In its efforts to pursue these policies.
- [29:41]
John Podhoretz
The nightmare of this situation with Harvard is, by the way, Harvard has filed suit against the government. Harvard will not prevail in this suit. And Harvard's purpose is not to prevail in the suit. Harvard's purpose is to bollocks up any efforts that the administration may make, freeze things in place, create, you know, years of litigation, and get some kind of a Trojan out of a court that says you can't be suspending these dollars until we hear fully whether or not you are, you know, you are misapplying your power or something like that. They cannot prevail in this case because the case that the administration has against Harvard is kind of airtight. By which I mean, if it hadn't added the. You need to have this commission, you need to have this. That. All of which was in the letter, which was an effort to forestall or prevent the punishment. Right? They were negotiating over having Trump administration not freeze this money or take it away from Harvard. And so they're like, they had a wish list, right? They said, don't do this, don't do. And you know what? We'd also like this. We want you to have a viewpoint diversity committee, and we want you to staff it with outsiders and all of that. And that's something over which there can be a negotiation. And the letter went out as though there couldn't be a negotiation. When I say Harvard can't prevail, I mean that the. The root case for withholding money is, have they violated. Have they violated Title 6 of the Civil Rights Act? And they have. And there are two places in which they have, one of which is that they did not protect Jewish students and treated them separately and under. Under separate conditions. And the letter that they. And they have even acknowledged. Alan Garber, the interim president, has said, we needed to do more, we should have been doing more. We need to do. But he won't spell out, and they won't release their internal report on what happened with anti Semitism on campus. And they're going to lose that eventually, in my view, if this goes all the way. And I don't think it's just my view, I think the idea that they have violated Title 6 in relation to Jewish students is very hard to disprove. It will be very hard for them to disprove. And secondarily, there is evidence that they are not living up to, or they are still behaving unconstitutionally in relation to their admissions practices. The Students for Fair admission case, the 2023 case that ended affirmative action, was specifically, as is the case with litigation before the Supreme Court, directed at Harvard. These are cases they're not. It's not just we. There's no affirmative action in America. Harvard was sued. Harvard lost the suit. The Supreme Court said Harvard was behaving unconstitutionally in how it did its admissions practices. And from what little we can tell thus far, because they still withhold the information, they are not living up to the deal. So they could lose on two fronts. Behaving unconstitutionally, which is a Title 6 violation, on affirmative action, and behaving unconstitutionally or against the Civil Rights Act. So if they just had done this properly, they had Harvard in a corner, they had Harvard cornered and without anywhere to go, and they didn't do it. Right. And now who knows what's going to happen? It's going to be years of chaos.
- [33:22]
Christine Rosen
I do want to add, because I had this, I've had this argument a couple of times. The letter itself and the demands and the outrage on the part of people on the left who are like, this is, this is unbelievable. This is dictate. This is authoritarianism. How dare a government try to dictate to a private university what it can and can't teach. I mean, all the, all the rending of, of cloth is hilarious. Have these people never seen a dear colleague letter sent out by the Office for Civil Rights at the Department of Education under Obama? I have. I've read a lot of them and they, and talk about demands, the stuff they are, they threaten private institutions. The government does all the time if they feel them to be in violation of student civil rights or of any number of things. And those let, those kind of letters were used all the time in Democratic administrations to avoid having to go through the process of actually allowing people to comment on regulations and whatnot. And it led to real harm for students, particularly young men falsely accused of sexual assault on college campuses. So the idea that the government can't send a firm letter to any of these places, I just want to emphasize that's been happening for a long time. We shouldn't forget that.
- [34:27]
John Podhoretz
Right.
- [34:27]
Abe Greenwald
I also think that there's, you know, the basic thing here is that when you sign up to get public money, there are regulations that you have to file. I mean, you essentially make an agreement, right? Non discrimination law is much wider than just what's happening with anti Semitism. So there's a question here of, you know, is Harvard's pushback is understandable from the institution's perspective, but also like, are we, are they arguing against non discrimination law? Because they're saying, well, you know, you can't, we have a First Amendment right to this, that and the other. But the, the, if you're going to contract with the federal government, there are all sorts of restrictions on what you can do and who you can hire and fire and things like that. And they're getting into this idea that you can't put strings on federal money based on discrimination. That, that's a, that's a thought crime situation. And you can't take away money for what, For a thought crime. But the entire non discrimination law, you know, structure is built around that. It's like hate crimes. It's like, you can't, you can't prosecute a hate crime without trying to get at what's in the head and, and what's the intention behind it, Things like that. Right. We've created this whole superstructure of non discrimination regulations and law and Harvard is basically saying none of this is really constitutional. And that's also an interesting angle to this, which is, you know, Trump maybe wants that fight too, and a lot of people in his administration, maybe even, you know, want this, that, this, this whole, like, they may see it as part of the DEI thing, like, fine, let it burn.
- [36:16]
Seth Mandel
But you know, I just want to say something to Christine's point about the dear colleague letters and the things that Biden also leaned on universities to do. When there's a Democratic administration in the White House, the schools are happy to do what they want to do because they're aligned. It's like, oh, you want us to have star chambers where accused men don't have the right to know who their accuser is or what the evidence? Sure. We have 20 people who've been pushing.
- [36:47]
John Podhoretz
For that here anyway.
- [36:48]
Seth Mandel
You know, like, so it's a, it's a, it, it only becomes a. How dare you.
- [36:53]
John Podhoretz
Yeah.
- [36:53]
Seth Mandel
When it's an idea that, that's, that they don't share.
- [36:57]
John Podhoretz
This is an important point because it gets to the making, you know, the libs cry versus the seriousness because the seriousness stuff makes libs cry also, like, it doesn't have to be stupid stuff like whether or not you light up the Kennedy center with red, white and blue lights. Which is fine, you know, silly. Right. But it's whatever, it's fine. Going at Harvard for violating Title 6 of the Civil Rights act, which is a piece of legislation that is to American liberalism what the Ten Commandments are to Judaism, makes them cry. They are being hoist on their own petard. They are being held to the standard that they have insisted everybody else in the world be held to while they do whatever it is that they want to do. There's plenty of liberal tears to be enjoyed here. But yeah, if you, if your liberal tears are Sean Davis of the Federalists Twitter feed, as opposed to, you know, I don't know, Ed Whalen's Twitter feed, then you know, that's, that's really too bad because, you know, there, there was no greater libs cry moment aside, maybe from Dobbs, the Dobbs decision, than the Harvard affirmative action case and now applying its precepts to actions that were taken after that case that didn't even involve it, which is this question of the selective enforcement of university Regulations against people who were making life uniquely difficult or dangerous or threatening to Jewish students.
- [38:51]
Christine Rosen
Well, and this is where, particularly on the anti Semitism on campus issue, Harvard dragged its feet, denied. Dragged its feet, couldn't rush to the aid of these Jewish students very quickly. The minute their endowment or their money is threatened, boom. Lawsuits, anger, public recrimination. So it's notable, I think, that we acknowledge where Harvard's. What Harvard thinks is important. Now, if these were African American students, if these were transgender students, if these were any other favored group on the left, I think we would have seen a very different reaction. And that's part of why these cases are really bad for these institutions, because they were very clearly do not consider the harassment of Jewish students to be a serious enough issue for them to really have to cope with. They just wanted it to go away.
- [39:43]
Abe Greenwald
That's exactly right. And the things they could have done are easy, right? I mean, there are some things they could have done that were easy. And they just, you know, they were like being toddlers. I mean, the moment this all shifted against Harvard permanently was when it was revealed that Harvard told the Jewish students on campus, I think it was a chabad menorah, that they had to disassemble their menorah, their outdoor menorah, every night of Hanukkah. Right. Eight nights of disassembly, because they couldn't guarantee that it would be free from vandalism and destruction. And they thought that would look bad. Right. What they were worried about was not the destruction of the menorah. They were worried that once the menorah is. Is destroyed by vandals, boy, will that look bad for Harvard. And they didn't want the trouble. Now, how easy is it for an institution with Harvard's means to protect one manure? Extraordinarily easy. So easy that you had to take the lesson from this, that Claudine Gay, who was president at the time while this was going on, genuinely didn't want to help them an inch. The only way you could possibly say to kids, you have to take the menorah down. We can't protect it, is if you're basically saying, we won't protect it, we won't. We could station three security guards around a menorah. It's just a candelabra. And so, you know, that was the moment to me where it was like. And that was never changed. They never came back. And they were like, you know, we regret that exchange we had with you at that menorah lighting that one time where we said, you know, we couldn't, we couldn't protect. We really, I think we really can. Let's, as a gesture, let's leave it up all night and we'll, you know, they never revisited that one moment that that's, that's where they're, that's what they're sticking to. And that to me, like, with what Christine is saying, it's like there are so many things you could have done in the moment that normal brains would have done immediately. I mean, normalcy would have basic decency would have told you, you do this, write an op ed in the student newspaper as the president of Harvard, you know, saying, we stand with our Jewish students and we're going to protect them and whatever. I mean, you, Claudine Gay wouldn't have had to lift the finger because she has a media and PR apparatus that would have done all this for her. She didn't even have to know about it. Harvard has the means to immediately set in motion ways to fix so many of the problems that were symbolic, easy to fix and symbolic of the larger problem, and that made them the very worst ones not to address.
- [42:23]
John Podhoretz
I think that the fight that Trump is engaging in with the academic and media elites is a good fight in the sense that I do think that he not only has the better of the arguments in some of these, or we do whatever only have the better of the arguments and will prevail over time, but that in populist terms, it's just an incredible winner. Like it. Somebody's like, What? Harvard gets $9 billion from the federal government. What? Okay, granted, a lot of it goes for research. Research is wonderful, such great research. I don't, yeah, I'm sure there's a lot of good research. I'm sure there's a lot of crap research. I'm sure that Harvard is taking a 50% cut of all of that money for overhead so that it can continue to pump its endowment further. Right. I mean, that's what we, one of the things that we're learning here is that, is that like, like, like Hollywood financing. The amount of money that goes to administrative costs associated with money that comes from the federal government to the universities is astoundingly high. And that they are basically, they're basically stealing money from the American taxpayer. If they really want to have that fight with Elise Stefanik, who is really good at this, in the house, conducting it. Zygos into them. Great. See how, see where, see where people are three or four years from now on, federal funding for universities and how significant a populist political issue that might be that will unnerve Democrats representing districts in Ohio and Illinois and Pennsylvania and places like that. Do they want to really say, my God, you can't take all this money away from Penn or Johns Hopkins. Are you insane? I mean, so I think it's a good fight. So just don't be stupid, don't be sloppy. Like, don't get in your own way. Don't lay landmines that you're gonna step on. Like, that's just instrumentally. It's very frustrating to watch and, and does have the. There is always the possibility that they will so bungle it. I mean, it's a little like this question of the, of the Abrego Garcia case, which is. This is a net winner for the administration politically. Democrats are now visiting, you know, illegal aliens in jail in El Salvador and having margaritas with them and crying with them. And now we have Peter Welch, center from Vermont, visiting with this foul, filthy, anti Semite who is about to be deported on the grounds that it's not fair to deport this person because of their viewpoints and all that. Like, stay away from these people. Are you nuts? Like, make the general argument that the legal proceedings are bad. Don't lionize. These are villains. Like, I know you don't think they're villains because you're all, you're a bunch of communist, anti Semitic filth. But everybody else thinks they're bad, that.
- [45:58]
Abe Greenwald
They'Re turning it into a pilgrimage, by the way, because others follow Van Hollen. Right. To Elsa. So it's a pilgrimage now. It's like.
- [46:06]
John Podhoretz
Yeah, so I'm just saying, like, they, this is a winning. This is a winning issue for them, but it won't be a winning issue for them if the Supreme Court, if the ruling is this administration is violating the due process rights of people. And that's really dangerous. I'm sorry, it's not helpful. It's not. And you know, this symposium of seven people on the, you know, pretty much mostly on the right in the free press, legal and constitutional scholars, all of whom say that the administration is acting illegally in the case of the deportees, that's not.
- [46:43]
Christine Rosen
And from a range of political views. Yeah, these were, these were very conservative scholars all the way over to. Very.
- [46:49]
John Podhoretz
Over to Lawrence Lessig. Right. But there's. You didn't have to do it this way. Like, they chose to do it this way again because they want to make the libs cry. But you make the libs cry by doing it Anyway, so you might as well do it while you cross the, while you, you know, while you cross the T's and dot the eyes like there's no reason to be. Just because Trump misspells things in his truth social posts doesn't mean that you can be a fourth rate chief of staff at HHS sending out letters you don't have the right to send out. He's allowed to be sloppy. He's the president. He can do whatever he wants. You are a bum if you do your job incompetently as some GS15 moron who's there because you went on, you know, you went on one America one night and said that, you know, said that you love Trump.
- [47:45]
Christine Rosen
But this is where actually I'm going to sound like an, like an HR rep here. But this is where cultures develop in workplaces and the culture that is endorsed time and time again in Trump world is that if you play the victim of the media or the left, it doesn't matter what your incompetent mistake was. And that's Hegseth is running that playbook right now. But Trump likes that. Trump likes the people if they mess up to say I'm all the mistake was made because they're out to get me just like they're out to get you. They don't want your agenda done. It's a deep state. I mean you can listen all the different excuse making and that's allowed there. I mean look who he hasn't fired. Look who he doesn't hold to account. Look whose stories he then repeats on his truth social posts because it fits that narrative. And you know, our old colleague Noah Rothman was a very early student of this sort of victimization playbook among the populist. Right. And I think that has set the tone among those lower tier administrators if they make an error.
- [48:44]
Abe Greenwald
That puts a very funny image in my head by the way, Christine, the idea of because I, you know, I, I've done as I'm sure we all at some point, the training videos, the HR training videos. I'm sorry, I'm trying to picture what an hr, the HR training video, if you make Trump looks like.
- [49:01]
John Podhoretz
Yeah.
- [49:01]
Abe Greenwald
What you, the quizzes you have to.
- [49:04]
John Podhoretz
Some people may not know about this. So if you work in a big corporation as Seth and I have and at times that I or, or anywhere you are, you are at times obliged to get your pay to sit down at a computer and run through a 45 minute program where you have to click answers yes or no or whatever. It's a form of exquisite torture. Yeah. And once you start, you can't stop. And it knows if you're not finishing it and you're not allowed not to answer a question. So it is an indoctrination session of a kind.
- [49:39]
Unknown
Yeah.
- [49:39]
John Podhoretz
It's always like a woman comes into your. It's you. It's the morning and you're in the elevator and a woman comes into the elevator and she is wearing a dress and you say, my, what a pretty dress you have on. Is that legal or illegal? You know, that kind of thing.
- [49:57]
Christine Rosen
You sound like the wolf in Little Red Riding.
- [49:59]
John Podhoretz
Do I? Right. Yeah, but. But I mean. Or, you know, a, you know, a woman comes in and says she's feeling nauseous this morning and then you say, oh, are you pregnant? Is that legal or illegal? That. No. And you click legal. That's like, no, that is illegal. You are not allowed to ask a woman if she is pregnant. And that will do. Like that. So this is the world that, you know, tens of millions of people have lived in and lived through. If you, if you haven't, if you've been fortunate enough not to have to go. Go through this experience. Yeah, the MAGA one. That's a good. I think maybe I'll tell Rob Long he needs to write up the MAGA training.
- [50:39]
Christine Rosen
MAGA HR training video.
- [50:40]
John Podhoretz
Yeah. I would like to see for his column in National Review. Okay, so one last thing. We were talking about the Supreme Court here and there. And I'm going to shout out a family member on our panel. Seth's wife, Bethany Mandel has a very good piece this morning in the Free Press about a case that the Supreme Court is hearing, probably as you are will have heard by the time you hear this, arguments in the case of Mahmoud vs. Taylor, an extraordinarily important cultural case before the Supreme Court about whether or not school districts have the right to insist that students in. In public school districts read the curriculum that is put before them if parents say that that curriculum violates their religious beliefs. Because Montgomery County, Maryland, where Seth lives, though he does not, in fact, I believe, sent his kids to the public schools, has literally starting in 2023, put various. A book about transgenderism and a book about. About gay. About gay lifestyles in the elementary school curriculum and informed at least two plaintiffs, one, I believe, Mormon and one Muslim, that they, they, they, the kids had to read these books. They had no choice. They would not be removed. They would know no accommodation would be made.
- [52:17]
Abe Greenwald
Right. The key is that there's no. They were Getting rid of the opt out. So just so people know they were not, these parents are not suing to have these books removed from the school or prevent other kids from, they're not even taking them out of the curriculum. All they're saying is, I don't want my very young child sitting in on this, you know, rainbow, the unicorns, you know, story time or whatever.
- [52:42]
John Podhoretz
Right. So this, this case is going to be heard. I guess it will be, it will be ruling will be made before the beginning of, of July. And this is just a reminder of the fact that life goes on and that it's not just the administration doing executive orders. Throughout the courts and throughout the country, efforts are being made to deal with the revolution in consciousness that was advanced, beginning with the Obama administration and then through George Floyd and all of that, to impose leftist orthodoxy through schooling indoctrination, but also corporate indoctrination. And that this, this still goes on and that it won't only be the Trump administration that will be contesting these matters. The Supreme Court will be hearing this case. And I imagine based on what I read and think about, know the majority in the Supreme Court and all of that, that Montgomery county will lose this case, likely to lose this case. And that the principle that schools do not have a right to impose their orthodoxies above parental orthodoxies, we could maybe put it that way. And so that's something very much to be watched for.
- [54:09]
Abe Greenwald
Yeah. And not at all a right wing group, a group of, you know, Muslim, Muslim parents. And you know, there's a, there are a lot of Ethiopian Christian families who go to these schools too. And that's who you see at the rallies in Montgomery county for the most part. So the Democrats had angered people who they just took for granted as part of their coalition. But this is not, this is not like, you know, right wing, this is not Ron DeSantis suing the administration. This is Montgomery County, Maryland.
- [54:42]
John Podhoretz
And it goes to the public school parents and it goes to the heart of what public schooling is in the United States, which of course is public schooling only really began in the United states in the 1870s. And you know, the idea of universal public schooling that the, that the state paid for and that you were obliged to send your kids to originally only through fourth grade and then over time kind of aging through the grades till you're were older to be an educated person and that the compact, the essential compact with the citizenry was we are going to oblige you to send your kids to school. For the most part, we are going to oblige you and that we are therefore obliged under the community standards theories of communitarianism in the United States to educate people as they would want them educated based on where they live and the communities that they live in. And Montgomery county decided that it was going to impose its orthodoxy on parents and say to them, I believe, if I read this correctly, that when Mahmoud objected was like, well, fine, so send your kids to a. A private school. Well, you're not allowed to say that. I mean, you can say whatever you want, but I mean, you can't. You run a public school system that there is a law, I mean, that obliges everyone to educate their children according to some form of credited educational system. Now, Seth, you homeschool, so you have your own ways you have to fulfill this mandate, I guess through testing or something, annual testing or something like that.
- [56:23]
Abe Greenwald
There are still people who oversee what you do when you homeschool.
- [56:27]
John Podhoretz
Yeah, right, okay. But we oblige there to be universal education. And the idea that send somebody to be universally to be educated because the law demands it and that, that, that your child is taught something that is completely contradictory to what your faith teaches is a violation of the American self governance compact that this country was founded on.
- [56:57]
Abe Greenwald
And they also used pretty outrageous the. The opt out, at least at some of these schools, for sure existed. And then they got rid of it. Right. So the fight started when the school stopped letting. Some of the schools stopped letting parents opt out. So they had this ongoing relationship with the institution where they recognized that this was a violation of, you know, past a certain point, crossed a certain line with these, you know, with the way these parents were bringing their children up and they were not putting up a, you know, so, all right, so don't send your kid so that your kid can sit out of that class. You know, it was. It's an easy thing to do. The fact that they had, some of these schools at least had removed the opt out is what made this something that I would imagine very hard for Montgomery county to win. Because it's very hard to say, you know. Well, we used to acknowledge it and we used to have this opt out. We took away the op. We changed the policy to stop them from opting out. Clearly, the opt out, when it existed, was not destroying public, public education in America.
- [58:04]
Christine Rosen
Well, and parents already fought the earlier opt out battle over sex education in the schools. This was, you know, in the previous century, basically the. The 1980s and 1990s in particular. And that was a faith based argument, not dissimilar to what some of the parents are arguing now if they're from faith communication communities, but saying, you know what? We're not. Again, we're not going to stop you from doing this, but we don't. Our child is going to learn about sex education at home. And so that was. I mean, there was a whole debate about that and the left took the most extreme position on that and lost. And so that the fact that now we have to do that with books and curricula and whatnot just shows that the advance, the victories the parents win are often hard won and have to be refought with each new generation. I think this is an example of that.
- [58:51]
John Podhoretz
Well put. All right, I'm gonna make a recommendation, but it's a controversial recommendation. Actually two, but it's kind of controversial. One. So this second season of the HBO zombie show the Last of Us is now running first two episodes. And I don't really like it. I'm not. But I mean, because I don't like zombie shows. I don't know why I'm watching it. But then I heard that the second episode was something kind of amazing. And so I watched the first in preparation for the second. And I have to acknowledge that the second episode of the Last of Us, though, is extraordinarily violent and very grizzly, is one of the best hours of television I've ever. I've ever seen. And very upsetting. Very, very. But epic in scope and. And amazing to look at and directed. And it's going to win every Emmy. And so it is a genuine, pulpy artistic accomplishment. So that is recommendation number one. Recommendation number two is the movie Sinners came out this weekend, directed by Ryan Coogler, who made the Creed to the first two Creed movies and the Black Panther movies. And it is an unclassifiable. It turns into a vampire story, but it's actually about Robert Johnson, the blues musician who famously, in 1932, according to legend, sold his soul to the devil to learn to become the greatest guitarist who ever lived. It's set in the town that Johnson is from, Clarksdale, Mississippi. And it's about these two, two brothers who come back to town after having been gangsters in Chicago, African American brothers to set up a juke joint, a.
- [60:54]
Seth Mandel
Bar.
- [60:56]
John Podhoretz
So that they can. We don't even know why they're. Why they want to do this. But it's about music. It's about cultural clashes. It's. It's entrancing and kind of amazing. And it is a vampire movie. So if you don't like vampire movies? Don't see it. But it's actually not scary. Unlike the Last of Us, which is actually genuinely scary. But it's beautifully shot. It looks like one of those great 1970s movies. And the level and the scope of the detail of the recreation of this depression era town, I really do highly, highly recommend it. So with that, we'll be back tomorrow. So for Christine, Seth and Abe, I'm John Pot Horowitz. Keep the candle burning.