Do Trump's Vendettas Harm Trump's Agenda?

Summary

The Commentary Magazine Podcast

Episode: Do Trump's Vendettas Harm Trump's Agenda?
Date: September 29, 2025
Hosts: John Podhoretz, Abe Greenwald, Matthew Continetti

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Overview

In this episode, the Commentary team dives deep into the impact of Donald Trump’s pursuit of personal vendettas—especially his eagerness to pursue legal action against political adversaries like James Comey—on his broader administration agenda. The hosts wrestle with the concept of “lawfare” as political payback, the ongoing government shutdown standoff, and the evolution of ideological echo chambers on the left and right. The episode also touches on generational dynamics within the Democratic Party, urban decline, and ends with a lighter discussion of legendary sports broadcasters.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Trump's Pursuit of Political Opponents: Is Lawfare the New Norm?

Timestamps: 04:28–13:00

• The hosts debate the merits and dangers of the Trump administration's legal action against James Comey, questioning whether these acts are justice or pure payback.
• Abe Greenwald notes that the process itself is a penalty for targets like Comey, echoing Andy McCarthy’s point:

  "With lawfare, the process is the penalty. The weakness of the case is really ancillary... now Comey is going to have to deal with the legal ramifications of the case." (10:41, Abe Greenwald)

• John Podhoretz warns that when a sitting president uses prosecutorial power for retribution, it's a recipe for abuse, regardless of precedent:

  "He is the president of the United States. He has the power of the presidency behind him. This is not ... hidden, deep state actions. We are hearing that he is the one who was directing this." (11:37, John Podhoretz)

2. The Dangers and Consequences of Political Lawfare

Timestamps: 13:00–18:19

• Reference past instances of lawfare from both parties, including Iran-Contra and the Scooter Libby indictment, to highlight a cycle of escalation.
• Personal stories underscore the suffering caused by prolonged legal battles, as when John recounts his brother-in-law Elliot Abrams’ ordeal:

  "The process was the penalty. Walsh had. No, there was nothing in it for Walsh not to go ahead and punish Eliot for a political difference that he had with him." (16:16, John Podhoretz)

3. The Trump Administration's Agenda: Political Payback vs. Policy Focus

Timestamps: 23:38–29:27

• Matthew Continetti challenges whether the goal is to mirror liberal lawfare or achieve genuine progress:

  "Is the purpose to be the mirror image of the liberal establishment's persecution, or is it to bring the country to a better place?" (23:38, Matthew Continetti)

• The group worries that Trump’s obsession with personal battles is a distraction from larger conservative goals and dilutes energy for effective governance.
• Abe emphasizes that revenge actions risk overshadowing substantive policy achievements, especially with midterms approaching:

  "Any move by this administration that is focused more on Trump's personal agenda and payback is time that could otherwise be spent highlighting either the administration's achievements or addressing the sources of inflation..." (28:11, Abe Greenwald)

4. Effect on Republican and MAGA Coalition

Timestamps: 31:59–34:59

• Abe Greenwald observes that the Trump base relishes these confrontations, and even actions perceived as petty are celebrated by loyalists:

  "Some of these moves ... are welcomed excitedly by the Trump base. The Trump voters, MAGA, they want payback just as much as Trump does." (32:12, Abe Greenwald)

5. Limits of Political Revenge and Overloading the System

Timestamps: 34:59–37:52

• Caution against hyperactivation and "breaking the circuit" of public tolerance—too many vendetta campaigns at once risk undermining overall effectiveness and public patience.
• Matthew notes backlash potential, e.g., making political opponents "heroes":

  "What happened with Jimmy Kimmel? He's back... They made him into, excuse me, a hero that he need not have been otherwise." (36:03, Matthew Continetti)

6. The Government Shutdown: Standoff Dynamics and Partisan Incentives

Timestamps: 37:52–45:39

• The team explains the mechanics of the shutdown threat and negotiation scenarios, including Senate vote math and Chuck Schumer’s political calculus.
• John questions the enduring relevance of the "Democrats win shutdowns" narrative, noting political realities have changed since the 1990s:

  "But that was 30 years ago... And now they're saying we're going to shut the government down unless you give us stuff on Obamacare. And I don't think so." (39:20, John Podhoretz)

• Abe outlines policy sticking points, especially around Obamacare subsidies, Medicaid, and USAID funding.

7. The Left’s Social Media Echo Chamber & the Limits of Digital Discourse

Timestamps: 49:27–55:09

• John reflects on how “Blue Sky,” a new leftist Twitter, demonstrates the disciplinary power of online shaming, and likens it to prior right-wing purges.
• Abe highlights the extremes to which the Democratic base has moved, as shown by public vilification of moderate voices like Ezra Klein:

  "That to me shows the degree to which the Democratic base has just spiraled off into a loony left land." (54:39, Abe Greenwald)

8. Generational Change and the Coming Democratic Party Shake-Up

Timestamps: 59:17–62:18

• Discussion about how the Democratic rank-and-file are pushing for younger, more radical leaders, possibly spelling the end for long-serving politicians like Chuck Schumer.
• Andrew Cuomo’s bid to revive his political fortunes is seen as futile—a sign that the party wants new blood, even if it means embracing candidates further to the left.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On political retribution:
  "He is in a place where, on policy after policy... the Republicans are far more in touch with... the American people. And what concerns them than the Democrats are... But he pulls it back to himself in a way that is injurious..." (29:39, John Podhoretz)

• On lawfare’s double-edged sword:
  "The danger, of course, as you say, is that this lawfare will turn out the same way as the Democratic lawfare, and we're going to have to be facing the consequences the next time Democrats have control..." (22:30, Abe Greenwald)

• On social media echo chambers:
  "The Democrats now have this very efficient little world in which they are functioning almost exclusively in their own ecosystem and the purpose of which is to establish the line that you are not supposed to cross. And if you cross it, oh boy, are you going to get it." (49:27, John Podhoretz)

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• Trump’s Lawfare Tactics vs. Agenda: 04:28–13:00
• Lawfare in American History—Personal Stories: 13:00–18:19
• Base Motivation vs. National Interest: 23:38–29:27
• Shutdown Mechanics and Politics: 37:52–45:39
• Social Media and Partisan Disciplinary Effects: 49:27–54:39
• Democratic Party Generational Dynamics: 59:17–62:18

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Tone and Style

The episode features sharp, intellectual, and sometimes sardonic commentary characteristic of Commentary’s right-leaning, but not MAGA-aligned style. Hosts blend policy analysis, political theory, personal anecdotes, and cultural references—often with a rueful sense of humor about the current trajectory of American politics and media.

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Closing/Recommendations

Abe Greenwald recommends Rich Podolsky's book Madden and Summerall: How They Revolutionized NFL Broadcasting, highlighting the rarity and cultural resonance of iconic broadcasting duos.

Final Thought:
John Podhoretz concludes with a reflection on American resilience—the capacity for second (and third, and fourth) acts—and a reminder that, for all the chaos, the future in politics and culture is open to sudden change.

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For listeners looking to understand the complexities and contradictions of the Trump era, this episode offers a nuanced, critical, and historically informed perspective—with plenty of memorable lines and lively debate.

Transcript

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[John Podhoretz]

Hope for the best, expect the worst.

[Abe Greenwald]

Some preacher pain Some die of thirst.

[John Podhoretz]

No way of knowing which way it's going Hope for the best Expect the worst Hope for the best. Welcome to the Commentary magazine daily podcast. Today is Monday, September 29, 2025. I am Jon Podhoritz, the editor of Commentary Magaz. With me as always, executive editor Abe Greenwald. Hi, Abe.

[Matthew Continetti]

Hi, John.

[John Podhoretz]

And Washington Commentary columnist Matthew Continetti. Hi, Matt.

[Abe Greenwald]

Hi, John.

[John Podhoretz]

Matt, you have a column today in the Free Press about the looming government shutdown and the Democratic responses to it. We'll talk about that a little later. I find myself after, you know, decades of panic over government shutdowns from 1999-20 to 2013-2020 to 2017 or 2018, whatever that was. Now it's just like another thing that happens in Washington, whereas it had never really happened before. And so I find myself unable to get excited about it. And, and, but we'll discuss whether we should be excited about it. So much going on. Meeting at the White House today between Benjamin Netanyahu and Trump, a 21 point peace plan drawn up by Steve Witkoff that I think we will see the following. Trump will say he wants it, Bibi will agree to it, Hamas will say no. And then we're back in the game where Trump will say, okay, go, finish them off. And we're nowhere moved anywhere further. The only optimism in this is Trump saying, I think we have a deal. I think we have a deal. I think we have a deal. There's no indication that Hamas is anywhere near that deal. So that's issue number one or issue number two. Issue number three.

[Matthew Continetti]

Wait, can I just interject something? Yeah, you skipped the step. Trump will say he wants it, Bibi will say yes, Hamas will say no, the media will say Israel killed the deal.

[John Podhoretz]

Right. Fair enough. Obviously, horrendous, monstrous fire and shooting at a Mormon church in Michigan, a shooting at a kind of vacation community In Indiana, just hours later, continuing feelings that America is kind of like centripetally spinning out of control. And a moment of apology, which is that when talking about the indictment of James Comey last week, I misunderstood the terms of the indictment, which is my fault, because it was very unclear how they were writing about it. But these are the hazards of doing this. Daily podcasting on matters that are done sloppily and unclearly. Even what the administration said the indictment was about turns out not to have been what the indictment was about. And the indictment is very thin. And I thought it was more substantive. And I don't know whether you feel this way, you guys, but I do think there are these moments when, you know, we are obliged by the nature of what we do here to sort of offer insta. Opinions of things that under other circumstances that in other times we would. We would hold fire on.

[Abe Greenwald]

Well, John, I think you were basing your views on the reporting about the indictment of James Comey. And what makes this indictment interesting and unusual is that the reporting of the indictment has much more detail than the actual indictment of James Comey.

[John Podhoretz]

Right.

[Abe Greenwald]

And so where we're commenting on reports about an indictment that contains very little information. And so we're basing it off that you were talking about the charge that Comey lied to Congress. That's true. What he was lying about, still somewhat unclear. We believe it has to do with whether he was lying about the. Whether or not he had authorized leaks of classified information. And that is a charge. It's very nebulous, as I was saying last week, and we'll have to see if we go to trial and if the government is able to prove it or not. But I don't know who came after you, John, but I thought no one.

[John Podhoretz]

Came after me, except when I read the analyses of the indictment itself by Andy McCarthy and others. I had made inferences, again, based on the accounts that you were discussing, Matt, that were simply not, not true, that he was being indicted. I didn't, you know, that the whole thing spun on whether or not Andrew McCabe had told Congress that he had been authorized to leak something and that the word authorized is very vague and that in fact, he never said that he spoke to Comey personally. And what I thought that he had been, I thought this was then connected to a different leak, which was the notes that Comey had taken of his meeting with Trump that he gave to Columbia law professor named Richmond. And I thought it was involved with that, and it's not. And do we know that for sure. Well, the indictment is out and it is bad. And the prosecutor, the hastily appointed prosecutor.

[Abe Greenwald]

Yes.

[John Podhoretz]

The former Miss Colorado and real estate attorney, Lindsey Halligan. I think it's Halligan, in a colloquy with the magistrate judge that she brought the indictment to, did herself, did not know what was in the indictment because she's like, I really haven't time to study this. And it's her indictment, so she's never.

[Abe Greenwald]

Tried a criminal case.

[John Podhoretz]

Yeah. So basically, people that I trust who are certainly not averse to wanting Jim Comey to go to the hooscow, almost to the. Almost to a person, say this is one of the most incompetent or ridiculous things they've ever seen. So I was taking it seriously from the broader fact that it seemed pretty clear that Comey did lie before Congress, but that's not what he was indicted on. Now, you can, by the way, do a superseding indictment. They needed to throw an indictment out there to get him to get a grand jury to indict him so that they could meet the statute of limitations. So maybe there could be a superseding indictment. Maybe they can find another way to phrase it. But I, again, that's technical procedure that I don't really understand.

[Abe Greenwald]

Yeah. I'll make two points also, just based on the reporting. The first is that the indictment seems to have happened because some key members of the Trump administration reminded President Trump that this charge was out there and were trying to get President Trump excited and agitated over the fact that Comey had not been indicted and the statute of limitations was approaching. And I thought it was interesting that one of these key members. There are two. One is Ed Martin, who a longtime conservative activist who's now, he was, if you recall, he was appointed interim district attorney, U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia. Rather, Thom Tillis, the senator, outgoing from North Carolina, blocked his appointment, giving us the best U.S. attorney in the history of this nation, Judge Jeanine Pirro as the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia. But nonetheless, Ed Martin was then moved to the doj, where he has a kind of vague title, but he's clearly tasked or feels that it's his responsibility to push some of these cases against Trump foes. The people who had attacked Trump, indicted him, litigated against him in the past. But the other person who apparently was behind this rush to indict was Bill Pulte, who is the federal housing official who has made the cases against Lisa Cook and Tish James and Adam Schiff.

[John Podhoretz]

For grounds of mortgage for the Dual mortgages, right? Yeah. Tax lying on lines and so on.

[Abe Greenwald]

Bill Pulte, this was kind of under the radar, but it was reported a couple weeks ago in D.C. bill Pulte has a lot of enemies within the Trump administration, including one of my favorite Trump cabinet members, Scott Besant. And apparently Besant challenged Bolte to a fight outside a social club in Georgetown not too long ago. So that gives you a sense of what's kind of going on in the Game of Thrones type Trump court dynamics. Leading to what I said last week, and I still feel is this case is a pretty, pretty weak case against Comey. But that leads me to my second point, which is I think that Trump understands an insight that I first learned from our friend Andy McCarthy, which is with lawfare, the process is the penalty. The weakness of the case is really ancillary to the fact that the case has been brought, because what it means is now Comey is going to have to deal with the legal ramifications of the case. He's going to be arraigned on October 9th. I believe they're going to have to do pretrial arguments. It's costing Comey. And I think for Trump, that's enough. Even if the case falls apart eventually, he still got his lick or two in against Comey, who has caused him such political and legal pain over the years.

[John Podhoretz]

So this is the problem that we face in discussing this, because that's a very sober assessment, or sort of, let's say, power politics assessment of what Trump is up to. And clearly, I hate to put it this way, but he should not be doing that, and the Republicans should not be doing that, and the White House should not be doing that. And if people have done it intermittently in the past, and certainly it was the case that Trump found himself in the process being the punishment phase of his life in different stages from 2017 to 2024, some from Congress, some from, you know, in terms of the impeachment, at least the first impeachment, some from the Mueller report, which is also, you know, and then the January 6 committee, the various trials. And so he thinks turnabout is fair play. And the simple fact of the matter is he's too powerful for turnabout is fair play to be a fair way to proceed. He is the president of the United States. He has the power of the presidency behind him. This is not, these are not like secret, hidden, deep state actions. We are hearing that he is the one who was directing this. People quitting jobs because they can't fulfill his mandate. They don't in all conscience feel that they can fulfill his mandate both on and by the way, we're talking about people who are very conservative, like the person who quit the Eastern District of New York or the Eastern District of Virginia. U.S. attorney's job is a conservative Republican Danielle Sassoon who refused to sign off on who was the sort of acting U.S. attorney in the Eastern District of New York, I think or was in that position. Very conservative Republican Federalist Society like true believer type said I can't sign off on this Eric Adams pardon. It doesn't make sense to me and I can't in good conscience do it. So it's not that, you know, liberals are all blocking his desires like people who have standards can't live by them. And I understand that we live in a world in which the woke right and others are like do whatever you have to do because this is war and you have to do it to them when they do it to us. And I still don't think we live that's not the country that I live in yet. Yet. And I find that, you know, this is appalling and we sort of have to I think analyzing it is good because we understand that Trump is since he reads the stage directions and he doesn't ever allow anybody to hide behind the hypocrisy of saying well we just need to see how this plays out. Obviously there's cases to be made for and against. Courtroom is really a very good place to adjudicate this. And he's like no, no, I want to punish him. So let's just we'll indict, you know, as and then the process being the punishment which is very real and very personal to me. So just give me 30, 90 seconds to tell my brother in law. Elliot Abrams was got hung up in the Iran Contra affair when he was Assistant Secretary of State for Latin America. And Lawrence Walsh was appointed special prosecutor under different rules where the special prosecutor was a wildly independent figure with almost no oversight and six weeks before the statute of limitations was going to run out on on his on Elliot's something that happened with Elliot. He is informed that he is a target of the Walsh investigation and basically chooses after agonizing weeks of sleeplessness and all that to cop a plea to a charge he did not believe was just to spare his family and me and others the millions of dollars in legal fees it would have cost for him to contest this in court in the case that, you know, he might or might not have lost a circumstance something that he writes about brilliantly in a book called Undue Process that I commend to everybody's attention. My sister, his wife, my sister Rachel, of blessed memory. If you look at Undue Process, there is a part of Undue Process where Elliot republishes a letter that Rachel wrote to her friend Jenny about what it is like to live in this set of circumstances. And she describes how because somebody or other one, either Walsh or someone in the Walsh team was a fan of a specific sports team that was either in the World Series or in the Super Bowl, I can't remember which, she was reduced to rooting with all of her might, passion and heart against the team so that at least there their enemy would suffer the loss that this is what she had been reduced to and the pain, the suffering that she went through, particularly believing that what had happened to her husband was unjust and that he was put in an impossible situation. The process was the penalty. Walsh had. No, there was nothing in it for Walsh not to go ahead and punish Eliot for a political difference that he had with him.

[Abe Greenwald]

I think that's a relevant case, I mean, on a variety of levels. And it's a great book and.

[John Podhoretz]

It'S.

[Abe Greenwald]

A wonderful anecdote about your sister, Rachel. As painful as it is, I think many people on the conservative side of the aisle, people who have served in Republican administrations, feel as though lawfare has been directed against them asymmetrically for two generations now. And whether it's the Iran Contra scandal, which not only swept up Elliot Abrams, but, but others as well, investigations into members of the Bush family. Let's not forget the Scooter Libby indictment, which Comey's partner, so to speak, Patrick Fitzgerald, did gratuitously, leading to a lot of suffering on the part of Libby and his family.

[John Podhoretz]

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[John Podhoretz]

We should stop there just for a second to explain that the Scooter Libby case, which involved the question of whether an undercover CIA agent was outed to the press and that Scooter had done it. Scooter didn't do. In other words, Scooter. It was Richard Armitage, who was Colin Powell's deputy at the State Department who outed Valerie Plame to, I guess, Robert Novak in 2005. And Fitzgerald got him on a different saying that he had not had a meeting that he had had or he'd forgotten something on a Thursday that he hadn't done on a Tuesday. But just as in this case, people think that the indictment was or that Scooter's conviction was for having named an undercover CIA agent and he wasn't the one who did it. Just as Comey does not seem to have been indicted for the thing that looked to me like the crime which was perjuring himself before Congress or at least wasn't charged properly.

[Abe Greenwald]

Well, yeah, one of the charges is obstruction of a. I think isn't one of the charges.

[John Podhoretz]

There were three charges and the charge relating to the perjury before Congress was not. They did not get the indictment.

[Abe Greenwald]

Right. The second, I think is obstruction of a congressional proceeding, which. Right. Which is kind of adjacent to that. Yeah, but look, I mean, this is, this has especially been acute during the Trump years when you look about the, the Russia collusion scandal, the lives that were kind of just tossed aside by that, you know, he had this gentleman, Carter Page, being surveyed by his own government on suspicion of being a spy for Russia. There's no proof of any of that. He was caught up in that. Other, other folks as well, sidetracked the Trump administration for two years in the first term. You've had recent Justice Department investigations of, you know, radical Catholics, Catholic traditionalists, surveying, surveying churches because of their social views, pro life activists. And so I think the feeling for many Republicans is that this is turnabout. And after all of the investigations, all of the damage, all, all of the lawfare that was directed at Trump with the ultimate goal of preventing him from winning the presidency ever again. Well, look how it turned out. The danger, of course, as you say, is that this lawfare will turn out the same way as the Democratic lawfare, and we're going to have to be facing the consequences the next time Democrats have control of the Federal Justice Department.

[Matthew Continetti]

Yeah, I mean, this is the, this raises this larger question about the Trump administration, which is, is the purpose to be the mirror image of the liberal establishment's persecution, or is it to bring the country to a better place? Here comes from him. If he decides the latter, if he says, my administration is not about being the mirror image of the liberal lawfare and whatever, the base will go along with him, he is clinging to this very dearly. And this all, you know, also, because don't forget, Comey's so deeply involved in the Russiagate stuff that he can't let go of and that he has assigned people to.

[John Podhoretz]

But the weird thing about Comey is that he fired Comey. Like, he actually removed Comey from public life. The Wall Street Journal has a funny thing where it says, oh, if only Trump had listened to us and fired him on January 12, 2017, before he came into office, he could have just, you know, he could have like, said, you know, I want your resignation, then none of this would have happened. He didn't listen. And, but I think the reason that it's there, there is one case to be made for doing this, even though I don't think that you should. You harness the powers of the federal government to prosecute and persecute people in order to do payback. Like, I think that's, that's the federal government is too powerful and the intensive structure is all off because the person who is charged has to hire lawyers and pay millions and have his life disrupted. And the charger, meaning the federal government, or Whoever, that's their job. They don't pay anything. There are no consequences except losing cases. Nothing. So, but that's one thing. But there is the case that because Bill Clinton in the 90s got wrapped up in a special prosecutor quagmire for four years in Whitewater after 12 years of the misuse of the special prosecutor counsel, to go after Ray Donovan. And I mean, there, I can't even remember Anne Gorsuch, the mother of Neil Gorsuch and a couple of other people, because special prosecutors could not be told not what to do based on how this law had been written. Clinton gets in it, Clinton gets mired in it. There are several prosecutions. The governorship of Arkansas, the governor of Arkansas was convicted in the Whitewater matter. So it's not like they didn't get scouted scalps, but they finally didn't get Clinton. And I'm bringing this up because the net result was there was a truth. There was a mutual assured destruction truce between Democrats and Republicans where they ended the special prosecutor law because it was like, okay, we got hit. You got hit. We can see this is too powerful a tool to be giving people the right to do whatever they wanted with no political supervision and no question as to the cost. And so the special prosecutor law was ended and new rules were written about how to do these, have these sort of special prosecutors who are actually under Justice Department aegis, so that you could and successfully make the case if they went too far, that this was a politically motivated prosecution, which in fact happened to help Trump during his second, his third election. So maybe if Trump does this, awful as it is, maybe this is the one path we can get to for the parties to say, we understand that power ship, power changes hands. We better do something to defang this process of lawfare, because everyone's going to get caught in it forever. But I sort of think that can't happen. But it's. It did happen once.

[Abe Greenwald]

It did happen once. It's unlikely to happen as long as Trump is in office.

[John Podhoretz]

Right.

[Abe Greenwald]

I think one of the dangers of the lawfare strategy is that it's adding responsibility to the federal government and the administration at a time when the administration really ought to be focusing on the economy and trying to hedge against a Democratic victory in next year's midterm elections, because we know that if the Democrats do win the House of Representatives next year, well, they're going to. They're going to impeach Trump. Trump knows that. That's why they've pursued the Texas gerrymander That's why Missouri just passed another gerrymander, to add a House seat that would be safe. Republican Trump understands that. But I think that any move by this administration that is focused more on Trump's personal agenda and payback is time that could otherwise be spent highlighting either the administration's achievements or addressing the sources of inflation so that inflation goes down further than it already has.

[John Podhoretz]

I want to give you credit for two things. Number one, saying Missouri, very exciting. You're not, you're.

[Abe Greenwald]

Well, you know, I'm in touch with John. I, I spent many years.

[John Podhoretz]

It's thrilling to hear it pronounced that way here on. And also, I think you make an important point, which is that Trump personalizes everything, but he is in a place where, on policy after policy, if you go look at not just polling, but sort of lists of things when it is not about him, the Republicans are far more in touch with, seem to be far more in touch with the American people. And what concerns them than the Democrats are crime, having a plan for the economy. Even though Trump's numbers on the economy are not good. If you ask people which party has a better plan for the economy, the Republican score, he pulls it back to himself in a way that is injurious to what we see in the polls, which is that his instincts, including this fight that people in Oregon are picking with him over sending, you know, law enforcement into. Into Portland, it's like, fine, go ahead. You know, Ron Wyden, the senator, and Tina Kotak, the government, are all that say, we don't need you in Portland. And then let's look at the pictures of how half of Portland is boarded up with plywood and how there's literally no commercial renting going on in downtown Portland because no business would be crazy enough to take space in downtown Portland and see what the images say and what the Democratic counter response is, and then see where that goes. But when Trump decides that what he likes is I like Brendan Carr trying to suppress this speech of people I don't. Who are mean to me. And I like it that we're indicting people who are mean to me, I don't think that does him. Aside from everything else, I don't think it does him any good. I mean, it may do him psychic good, because it's like, now they're getting it, you see, they're getting it, but he is not advancing his own case. In a way, I think that is.

[Abe Greenwald]

There's one, there's one aspect where this type of lawfare or Brendan Carr's Comments leading to, you know, the national crisis of Jimmy Kimmel's three day suspension. I don't know how America is going to recover from that. But that is the advantage, is it does help the Trump voter coalition. You know, we're so polarized and Trump is doing not well among independent voters, that sustaining his political strength is really just a function of his overwhelming support among Republicans. And some of these moves, as controversial as they are inside Washington and in the mainstream media, are welcomed excitedly by the Trump base. The Trump voters, maga, they want payback just as much as Trump does. When it comes to the Russia collusion scandal, when it comes to the lawfare against Trump during the Biden years, no one really likes James Comey. Plenty of Democrats like Comey either, because Comey's handling of the Hillary Clinton investigations in 2016 arguably handed Trump helped Trump win the presidency that year. So whether it's fighting with Disney over reactions to Charlie Kirk's assassination or pressing for indictments against Comey, Tish, James Cook and others, and not that many people could even identify Lisa Cook, that does kind of help Trump's position within the Republican Party. And he needs those voters because if he loses them, then he, then he would be in substantial political trouble.

[John Podhoretz]

I just don't know where they go and maybe he needs their intensity. But, you know, a little of it goes a long way. I understand the idea is, you know, fight on all fronts, keep it moving, like just, you know, overwhelm them. But, you know, so much has been done in that respect, including like the war on the leftist universities, which is just necessary, follows the law, is prudent, is wise and is helpful. And you, then you maybe dilute the effectiveness of that by throwing, you know, by throwing a crappy indictment of James Comey on top of it, which then seems, I mean, again, not with the Trump base, but it seems to sort of make the case that he's just going after his enemies. And so the campuses are his enemies, just like Jimmy Kimmel is his enemy. And so it's all personal.

[Abe Greenwald]

Well, with Trump, we're always testing how much load these circuits can bear. And I think it gets to how you open the show, which is we're often in a position as commentators where we're, we're responding to stories that break every few minutes. You have to kind of read up on them very quickly. You don't always have the full picture because Trump is so hyperactive and because the Trump administration, this Trump administration in particular, is pressing forward on all fronts and they're Doing so this time with a wealth of experience and knowledge about how the federal government works, which means that they're much more effective in pursuing these wide ranging policies to push against kind of the liberal monoculture. But you always carry the risk that you break the circuit that eventually people are just not going to be able to take all of the news. Right.

[Matthew Continetti]

Can I also say, though, but there is this question about effectiveness. I'm not sure they're always so effective. What happened with Jimmy Kimmel? He's back. I know some affiliates are not running them. Some are, I think part of why he's back and why he might endure longer than he would have given just the sort of public and corporate problems with him has to do with the administration strong arming, threatening. They made him into, excuse me, a hero that he need not have been otherwise. Similarly, maybe According to Andy McCarthy, this case is so bad it may be worth fighting for Comey because he may be able to sort of win, clear his name hands down, as opposed to getting it dismissed. So is that effective? I don't know. It's effective in getting on under people's skin.

[Abe Greenwald]

That's what I mean about putting too much into the system. When I say effectiveness, I'm talking about the border. I'm talking about getting the deals with the universities, talking about the recessions, the spending, all the budget stuff. That's been extraordinarily effective. Even getting the Fed to cut interest rates. Right. I mean, it's an ugly process, but he moved the central bank in the direction he wanted.

[John Podhoretz]

Right.

[Abe Greenwald]

But exactly. As you say, when you get start getting into peripheral issues, then your energy dissipates.

[John Podhoretz]

Right. I mean, look, so maybe we can move on to the boring subject of the possible government shutdown on Wednesday and the fact there's going to be some kind of meeting in the Oval Office today between the Democrat and Republican leaderships. I am a little confused, frankly about what's going on here. Because in theory, if you. Because it's a budget bill. If you can get the House, you know, to hold together there. He doesn't need the Democrats. No, he does. Why?

[Abe Greenwald]

No, this is not a reconciliation bill. This is a spending bill which requires the 60 vote threshold in the Senate.

[John Podhoretz]

Okay, so you. And so they very important that you speak because I said something stupid.

[Abe Greenwald]

Yeah. They tested this with the clean bill of spending, passed the House, as you say, without Democratic support, and Then only had 54 votes in the Senate last week. The 53 Republicans, plus my favorite senator, Joan Federen.

[John Podhoretz]

Right.

[Abe Greenwald]

So they need Six more Democrats. And the question is, will they reach some agreement this afternoon in the Oval Office that will allow six more Democrats to come over the aisle and keep the government open?

[John Podhoretz]

And as you yourself say in your piece in the Free Press, the dynamic inside the Democratic Party militates against any such deal. I think so, right? I mean, the calculations are this. Republicans don't care if the government shuts down and Democrats do, because the people who aren't going to get paid are Democratic or, you know, like overwhelmingly Democratic workers and their federal government employees. And the sob story stuff about the closing of the national parks and that sort of thing just doesn't have the oomph that it used to. I think people don't like government shutdowns because they don't like the idea that basically the government doesn't function. It's like, why I have to go to work. You know, like you, you guys are all sitting there in Washington being jerks to each other and things are, you know, this is what we hire you for. So it's not good for, for anybody. But Republicans don't care about the good working order of the federal government. Democrats do. And Democrats are laboring under a delusion that if they're the ones who say, I'm not going to sign on to Trump's deal, that the country will, as it did literally 30 years ago with the first major government shutdown of our time, will blame the Republicans. That's their fantasy. Their fantasy. Oh, my God, that was the greatest moment. 1995, Newt Gingrich shut the government down. And Republicans, you know, never recovered from the national outrage or whatever it was at Republicans doing this to Bill Clinton. It saved Bill Clinton's bacon, though. It was just one step on the road back from Bill Clinton's irrelevancy. But that was 30 years ago. And now they're saying we're going to shut the government down unless you give us stuff on Obamacare. And I don't think so. And they wanted, they want to shut the government down because they want to show that they can fight, but then they're the ones whose constituents get hurt.

[Abe Greenwald]

So, yeah, it's not a very good situation for the Democrats to be in. And I think the real difference here is Chuck Schumer, the Democratic leader in the Senate in March when we had another spending cliff. This is just how we fund the government. We do so intermittently. Schumer decided, I think correctly, that it would be a self own, so to speak, to shut down the government. And so he voted to keep the government open. The other Democrats, including Democrats from swing states who don't want the government to shut down, went along with him. And the government was open. Schumer became a hate object on the socialist left and he was trashed as appeasing Trump. We started getting these polls showing him losing to Alexandria Ocasio Cortez in a New York Democratic senate primary in 2028, which is when Schumer is up for reelection. And he got burned by that experience, there's no question about it. So Schumer is a very crafty fellow, or likes to think of himself as crafty. And so he recognized that this time around he needed to put up more of a fight. And so that's why he's made these demands. Among the demands are renewing Obamacare subsidies that will phase out at the end of the year. These subsidies to Obamacare were authorized by Democrats when they controlled the Congress during the Biden administration. They are, in my view, absurdly generous. Funding subsidizing health care insurance premiums on the Obamacare exchange for people making $60,000 a year and higher, which is not the goal, it seems to me, of a welfare state where you want to actually help the people who need it most. But the Democrats want that type of subsidy to continue. But they've also demanded that the Republicans reverse their reforms to Medicaid that were included in the one big beautiful bill, or as we're calling it now, the working Families tax cut. And in addition, Democrats want the Republicans to restore funding cut to USAID and all of its woke programming. So USAID aid is not getting its funding back. The Medicaid changes are going to remain the same. The question is, do Republicans give a little on these Obamacare subsidies, which of course affect people in red states just as much as blue states. And it seems to me that there is a path here. Schumer can have a big fight and he can say at the very last minute sometime later tonight, the Republicans have agreed to have a standalone process over these Obamacare subsidies by the end of the year. This is a huge win. We're not going to let middle class Americans suffer. And in response, I'll allow the government to remain open. That's there. There are some Democrats, like Gene Shaheen of New Hampshire, who's retiring, who have said this is the way to approach the issue. It will be a real test of Schumer's, I think, fear of the socialist left to see if that's enough for him. And if, if it's not, if he feels he has to go even further, as you say, then we'll have a shutdown, which will be terrible for the Democrats because not only are they not going to get what they want on the spending side, the administration has already drawn up plans to reduce the federal workforce even further in the event of a shutdown, meaning the Democrats aren't going to only lose on policy, they're going to lose on personnel. Because most of these bureaucrats, not all most, are Democratic voters and supporters.

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[John Podhoretz]

Wrong, but the other point about this is that the one thing that is arguable here in terms of a certain level of fairness. Not that I still oppose the existence of Obamacare and you're saying the subsidies are too generous, but if I understand this correctly, this is a way of handling the problem of people who do not get employer mandated health insurance, right? So those of us who get employer health insurance get a 7% subsidy basically from our employer. We pay 7%, the employer pays 7%, 14% goes to goes to Medicare. And so if you don't have an employer, if you're self employed, you don't get that 7%. And this is to sort of make that to level the playing field between the self employed and the employed by somebody else world. And that's an arguable. That's an arguable proposition. Like that's something that Trump could come up with a defense of the Medicaid stuff, which was just simply A handout is a, is a way of just providing money to people because, you know, it started out as a Covid era subsidy and now they just want to, you know, do they want it restored forever as a, as a kind of another new form of welfare? Not really arguable, except if you're, you know, that's when people's Democrats are saying things like, we've lifted 60 million people out of poverty with these Medicaid subsidies. And it's like, that's not how you lift people out of poverty by handing them taxpayer money. That's, that's, you know. Yeah, I understand if you, if that's how you think the world works. But, but I just think that the deal that you're talking about is one that, oddly enough, Republicans can kind of defend. Also because of Red State. Also because they have constituents.

[Abe Greenwald]

Yeah, I mean, they would probably renew them at a lower level, but they would still renew them. They know that health care is an issue in a midterm election. It seems to me there's a reasonable course to follow. But Schumer and the Democrats are in the grips of the left wing demand to fight Trump no matter the cost.

[John Podhoretz]

Can we talk about this a little bit in a. Interested in your perspective on this? I'm not on Blue sky, which is the leftist Twitter or the leftist alternative to Twitter. I'm not a member. I don't see it. Can't really see it unless you're a member. You can only become a member if you're invited. Anyway, I'm not on it, but I gather that what's interesting about it is that it is a look at the Democratic id, the way the Twitter is a look at the American id. And yesterday apparently there was a huge controversy because Ezra Klein, who has somehow now become some, in their eyes, in the eyes of the Democratic socialist left, some kind of apostate neocon monster, which I, trust me, he isn't for the second time in a couple of months, apparently had a conversation with Ta Nehisi Coates, the most ridiculous major intellectual figure of our time, and they had some disagreement about how, how the Democrats should proceed if they want to win elections. And it was apparently very polite and very civil. And Blue sky basically decided that it, Ezra Klein should be sent to the Gulag. I mean, apparently it was just like a 12 hour hate on Ezra Klein. And what I'm struck by this because this kind of happened to Republicans during the first Obama years on Twitter and on social media where they whipped each other into a frenzy, particularly about the first debt ceiling crisis and one of the government and a couple of the government shutdowns in which your failure to go along with the idea that, you know, they should fight and they, you should let, you should go over the debt cliff and because otherwise you're just giving in to Obama and all of that. If you didn't say that, as I didn't, you were just abused. Like you would just get just heaped with abuse. And you're a cuck and you're a rhino and you're everything, you're terrible and you're a monster and it has a, there's a disciplinary effect without question. Like people aren't used to being attacked like that, particularly if they're, you know, got 300 followers or something. And then, you know, and so you kind of like get in line. And the Democrats now have this very efficient little world in which they are functioning almost exclusively in their own ecosystem and the purpose of which is to establish the line that you are not supposed to cross. And if you cross it, oh boy, are you going to get it. And you know, I know that Trump won in 2016, got through three states and all that, but that wasn't that helpful to him when some of that came after anti Trump people. I don't think that's what got him elected or anything. Comey got him elected, really. But do you think like, I mean, Democrats unable to get out of their own increasingly crazy ecosystem. Yeah, I don't know. I agree with you about the mirror.

[Matthew Continetti]

Version of it not being particularly effective for Trump. But I think what it is effective in doing on both sides is pushing the political culture of both the left and the right to maximalist positions. That, and this relates to the first half of our discussion about testing the system and pushing a revenge agenda that has gotten both sides to stop considering what happens next, what happens after you push your maximalist cause. And I think that is, you know, this, this, this has created this vicious cycle obviously on, on both sides. I know. I think Ezra Klein wants to sort of bring it back in to the 40 yard lines. I don't, I think he's, I think he's right, obviously. Right in the sense that what the way Democrats are moving forward is ineffective. I don't think his abundance agenda is going to be any more effective. I think that's a separate issue and a mistake.

[John Podhoretz]

But yeah.

[Matthew Continetti]

Isn'T Twitter kind of like that on the right now still? I mean, I get dumped on day and night.

[John Podhoretz]

Everybody jumps on everybody. Yeah. On Twitter and on social media.

[Abe Greenwald]

I do think it's funny that, you know, Ezra Klein is being demonized and tarred and feathered by the left for standing for such, you know, awful positions as abundance and, you know, not celebrating the assassination in public of a 31 year old. I mean, that, that to me shows the degree to which the Democratic base has just spiraled off into a loony left land.

[John Podhoretz]

I, I am, I'm, I'm, I'm. You know, the problem is we, we only get judgments every two years. We're, we're speculating about things here, and a lot of this, you know, maybe special elections resolve it a little bit in the, in the interim between the major national elections, but we're speculating on the effectiveness or ineffectiveness of X, Y and Z. And we really only know when the voters get a chance to speak. So atmospherically, you have these two worlds in which Democrats think that the country is becoming Nazi Germany. And they really do believe it. And they really, genuinely. And they're not like, oh, get off it. Like, they really believe it. They've been advancing this case. Doesn't help that there are people working in the administration who talk about things and in ways that do not sound Democrat, not sound like the voices of people in a coexisting republic with differing views and that sort of thing. But they really believe this. It has no. So there is no limiting effect on their arguments because in the effort to stop the coming of Nazism, all means need to be at least explored to do that. And it's just interesting to me that you have these moments where suddenly Democratic or American politics reassert themselves, like, oh, the government's going to shut down on October 1st. So what you need to do is do some horse trading and figure out, you know, who's going to get what and who's not going to get what. And you're not going to get the Genghis Khan victory of, you know, hearing the lamentations, you know, seeing their bodies before you and hearing the lamentations of their women. That is, that's not how it happens. You don't get full defeats in a country in which the House is controlled by one party by three or four seats out of a, out of 435 seats. You might get that when you control the Senate, as Lyndon Johnson did by 70, with 79 or 69 seats or something in 1965, but you can't get it now. And everybody is like, nobody is. There are these moments when they're going to have to make a deal at some Point, there'll be a deal. Even if they shut it down, they'll have to be a deal. I mean, at some point there has to be a deal. So the general proposition has been make the deal before the crisis happens because you don't know what you know as a prophylactic. You don't know what the crisis is going to do to you. So you know what it's like, too risky not to make the deal. Take whatever lumps when people say you suck and then go on.

[Abe Greenwald]

My general attitude is shutdowns don't really matter all that much politically. However, the side that wants the government to remain open wins the messaging war over the shutdown. And in this case, the Republicans want the government to remain open. They're the ones arguing for just give us the votes, we'll keep the government open and then we'll argue about this other stuff later. Democrats who, because they're in the grip of the anti Trump frenzy and because Chuck Schumer wants to keep his options open to run for reelection in 2028, may say shut it down.

[John Podhoretz]

You know, it's a weirdness about, about, about Schumer and 2028, if that's, if that's really what the issue is. Because I think that there is a generational age revolt inside the Democratic Party that Schumer, I don't think these 80 year old Democrats are going to survive over the next four or five years. All of the motion and passion in the party is relatively youthful and relatively revolutionary and will organize and move in primaries. And one of the things that is implicit is everybody's too old. They're all old. They're all too old. And if I were Schumer, I would think, I would think I'm gonna retire and I should like, I should like Gene Shaheen. That should give me a little freedom of motion. Now maybe he thinks he needs to cater to these people because they are the future of the party and he does. And you have to cater.

[Abe Greenwald]

Schumer was elected to the house in 1980.

[John Podhoretz]

Right.

[Abe Greenwald]

This is all he knows. It's all he's ever going to want to do.

[John Podhoretz]

Yeah, well, okay, but that's, you know, people, he's 74 now, so he'll be 77 then. And yeah, okay, so Chuck Grassley is 91. And you know, I mean, you can do this. It's just that it's now become explicit on the Democratic side. So one of the messages about Zoram Dami is that he's half the age of Andrew Cuomo. We haven't even talked about that. Let me just say quickly, Eric Adams, of course, announced he wasn't, you know, he was withdrawing from the election. Don't nobody get excited. Adams is getting 5 to 6% of the vote. Mamdani is 20 points ahead of Cuomo. Cuomo is the worst retail politician, one of the worst retail politicians in our lifetimes. A guy who won elections in spite of his unbelievable ham handedness as a candidate for office and who twice lost races that he should have won because of his boneheaded mistakes. So he's got like five weeks to make up 20 points. And maybe a Bill Clinton could do it, but I don't think an Andrew Cuomo can do it in any way, shape or form. But it is the implicit message. It's like you're all old men, all tired, you're all out of touch. You didn't stop Trump. You're all a bunch of losers, you know, and let's, you know, bring in the guy who hates Jews and like, wants to make buses free, because why the hell not? And that's, I think, a nation that's not just New York City. Like, that's a, seems to be a nationwide feeling. It's at least as I, as far as I can tell.

[Matthew Continetti]

Yeah, I mean, I got all these texts like, of people were suddenly enthused, like, oh, here it is. See, it's starting to. Something's gonna happen. And you know, of course I'm with you. I mean, Cuomo belongs to another time. It wasn't that long ago, but it is another time nonetheless.

[John Podhoretz]

He belongs to a time when you can lie about sending people into nursing homes and them dying and then you're getting praised because you were an anti Trump and people came to hate him in New York. That's why he ended up resigning his governorship and then having this money left over that he could run for office with. And then he blew that in the primary, ran a ban primary and now he's so. Yeah. So have no hope. Yeah, it's the commentary message. Have no hope. Mahdani is coming. And you should just know as I say this, that it's Abe and I who are going to be. Matt is sitting there happy in Virginia. Abe and I are literally living in the heart of, you know, we're going to be living in the belly of the beast. And so, and I'm just being realistic about. Yeah. So for the options here we have.

[Matthew Continetti]

The last, this is the last few months where things are just bad.

[John Podhoretz]

Yes, yes. Well, and I mean, and they're going to be bad in very weird ways. Yes, I mean, that's, that's the, that's the.

[Abe Greenwald]

I have a recommendation if you want.

[John Podhoretz]

Great.

[Abe Greenwald]

I'd like to recommend, for viewers of a certain age, a book called Madden and Summer All How They Revolutionized NFL Broadcasting by the sports writer Rich Podolsky. It's a entertaining little book. You can get through it pretty quickly describing the relationship between John Madden, Raiders coach, color commentator, and Pat Summerall, the play by play broadcaster, and how they came together in the 1980s, how they sustained the partnership on the air for about 20 years. In my view, the best sportscasting team ever to have talked into the microphones. And you get some very interesting trivia about the two of them, including the fact that before he was teamed up with Madden, Summerall was thinking of leaving broadcasting and running for the US Senate from Florida as a Republican, which of course, those of us who are aware that Pat Summerall, daughter, yes, is Susie Wiles, President Trump's chief of staff. This makes a lot of sense. So some are all very complicated man, Amazing, amazing broadcaster, but he was definitely a conservative Republican like his daughter Susie. You also learn that despite having an incredible rapport on camera, Madden and Summerall were not actually that close off camera. So they were friendly. It wasn't as though they were enemies or anything, but they really kind of had their own social circles. And then finally, one reason to enjoy the book is that you get a lot of great John Madden anecdotes. Just Madden, such a larger than life figure driving across the country. And the big bus that he used to cover NFL games because he hated to fly. But when he would make these long trips, he lived in California, Northern California, but often had to go to New York for, you know, Giants games or NFL headquarters. They would stop at, you know, random places, weird museums you see on Route 66, or, you know, the world's largest bull somewhere in Nebraska. And of course people knew who he was because the NFL really is one of the last unifying forces in American culture. And you also get a great, you know, taste. Madden retires in 04. He announced his retirement and it was a shock to me, among other people, or maybe it was 06 around that time because he was doing fine. He really spent almost. He spent the last 15 years of his life kind of just out of sight until right before he died in the 2021, the NFL put together a documentary called All Madden, which is a great film on its own and which includes Madden's reactions to watching People talk about him and his impact on the sport of professional football. And then he died then in December of 2021, right after that. So if you're a fan of John Madden beyond the video game series that have carries his name and if you were a fan of Madden and Summerall, I recommend this new book by Rich Podolski.

[John Podhoretz]

I've been watching a lot of football. My son got interested in football again. I've been watching a lot of football and I'm just struck as I have been for the last 20 years as I've intermittently watched football at how comparatively speaking, inept and uninteresting, both the play by play guys, Summerall being the play by play guy and the color people, that being Madden, you know, like by comparison. It's weird because I'm not sentimental. I don't think Vin Scully was that great. I hate sentimentality about broadcasters. But in the course of my life there have been like three and from what I can tell, three genuinely great broadcasters in this regard or four. So Madden and Summer all as a team. Tim McCarver, when he was doing, when he revolutionized the analysis of baseball on baseball and then after a while he got annoying, but he would just, you know, he was like, he was going to say he's going to throw an 83 mile an hour slider here and see if it can just miss the plate a little bit. And that's exactly what would happen. And Terry Bradshaw, who was also a color guy, I guess he's still there.

[Abe Greenwald]

He does the ins, he does the studio show. Right.

[John Podhoretz]

Okay. Madden didn't have retired in part because he literally made hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars, if not billions of dollars off the video game that was named for him. I mean he, and in fact there is a movie being made with the weirdest casting in American history. Nicolas Cage is playing John Madden in a movie directed by David O. Russell with Christian Bale playing Al Davis, who was the, who was the owner.

[Abe Greenwald]

Owner.

[John Podhoretz]

Oakland Raiders. The crazy owner of the Oakland Raiders. This is a very bizarre piece of casting. Of course. John Madden was like a bear, a mountain and a bear of a man. And there's Nicolas Cage who was kind of, you know, like that's not how he comes across. Anyway, he is a good actor, so it'll be very interesting to see what happens. But it is fascinating that Madden, I think Madden and Michael Jordan are the two most financially successful figures in American sports from, and, and, and Madden. People don't really quite fathom how much money that game, which still exists.

[Abe Greenwald]

Well, you know, that's a good point because they're different. You know, Jordan, you want to be like Mike, but with Madden, you just like John Madden. The key to his appeal, maybe great football player, he was a great coach. But the key to his appeal, once he started getting into commercials, I think he started doing beer commercials. That was the first in his way into TV was just he was this person that everyone seemed to be able to relate to and enjoy. And there are very few people who are able to communicate those attributes through the medium of television. And yes, it made him insanely wealthy.

[John Podhoretz]

And he, you know, the other thing about him that I thought was relatable was this thing where, you know, he was this great NFL coach and he quit very young because he was like, this is gonna kill me. This is too hard. Like, my heart can't take this. The intensity level here is just so awful. And then just like he quits this thing that he is one of the two or three best people at in the country, and then he goes and does something at which he is unreservedly the best person ever to do it. That's a pretty amazing feat also, you know, to be, to have your second career be. Make you, you know, sort of like almost out outshine your earlier career. That gave you all the wisdom that you could then impart in the second career. I'm looking forward to.

[Matthew Continetti]

That kind of happens a lot in the US these days though, especially because in media certainly you could be a rock star and then be a bigger reality star.

[John Podhoretz]

Well, it's like the famous truth, which is the single, the pithiest line in American cultural history is also the least true ever, which is that Francis France F. Scott Fitzgerald said there are no second acts in American lives. And the truth is that there are only second and third and fourth and fifth acts in American lives. Like, it was, you know, he was a drunk and he died young and he like was disappointed in the second half of his own life. You know, if he'd gotten off booze, you know, he could have ended up writing great memoirs or becoming a. Whatever writing, you know, it's like America is the only place in the world in which people.

[Abe Greenwald]

Look, look, look at our president.

[John Podhoretz]

Our president. Our president is the ultimate example, right?

[Abe Greenwald]

Three acts. Yeah, yeah.

[John Podhoretz]

But I mean, you know, it's like, it's, it's, it's crazy anyway, America gives everybody chances. That's all you can ask of a country. Even though we no longer think that that means much of anything. And we should. But we don't see you tomorrow, by the way, of course, we will be off just to. Just a programming note. We will, of course, be off on Thursday for Yom Kippur. But we will be doing the rest of the week. And for Matt and Abe, I'm John Pod Horitz. Keep the camera burning.

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