DOGE Soldiers

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Commentary Magazine Podcast - "DOGE Soldiers"

Release Date: February 18, 2025

Hosts:

• John Podhoretz – Editor of Commentary Magazine
• Christine Rosen – Social Commentary Columnist and AEI Senior Fellow
• Abe Greenwald – Executive Editor
• Seth Mandel – Senior Editor

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1. Introduction and Lead Stories

John Podhoretz opens the episode by highlighting the March issue of Commentary Magazine, mentioning his lead story titled "Trump 2: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly." He introduces the panel, including Executive Editor Abe Greenwald, Senior Editor Seth Mandel, and Christine Rosen.

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2. Critique of the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP)

Christine Rosen delves into her long-standing critique of the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP). She recounts her initial positive impression as a new parent influenced by the AAP's stringent guidelines, such as prohibiting screen time for young children. Over two decades, Rosen observes a shift, arguing that the AAP has transformed into a "liberal, leftist social organization" prioritizing a politicized agenda over unbiased medical advice.

• Rosen's Key Points:

  • The AAP's recommendations often precede solid research, leading to misguided parenting advice.
  • Transition from genuine caution to ideologically driven directives, especially evident during the COVID-19 pandemic and in discussions around transgender medicine.
  • Example: AAP's stance on masking during COVID-19 initially supportive but later influenced by political alliances, undermining their credibility.

• Notable Quote:

  • "The American Academy of Pediatrics is essentially a liberal, leftist social organization, the purpose of which is to use their standing with neurotic parents to advance an extraordinarily politicized agenda." [04:14]

John Podhoretz echoes Rosen's skepticism towards professional nonprofits, suggesting that many have been ideologically captured, shifting from their primary missions to activism or lobbying.

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3. Impact of COVID-19 on Education and Public Health Guidance

The discussion transitions to the AAP's handling of COVID-19, particularly their recommendations on school closures and mask mandates.

• Christine Rosen criticizes the AAP for abandoning consistent principles during the pandemic. Initially advocating for school safety, they later pivoted, aligning with teachers' unions and opposing President Trump's push to reopen schools. This inconsistency, she argues, has eroded public trust in medical institutions.

  • Notable Quote:
    • "They have this, this. It's trust but verify with these sort of medical organizations. These medical institutions, many of them have been infected by ideology." [07:05]

• Seth Mandel adds that the prolonged school closures have had lasting negative effects on children's education, further exacerbated by the AAP's policy shifts.

• Abe Greenwald reminisces about the pandemic's early days, recalling the AAP's contradictions regarding mask efficacy and their dismissal of emerging evidence contrary to their stance.

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4. Ideological Influence of Tech Leaders in Government

Christine Rosen brings attention to the influence of tech entrepreneurs like Elon Musk entering government roles. She argues that success in the private sector does not necessarily translate to effective governance, citing Musk's missteps on Twitter as evidence of his lack of suitability for public office.

• Rosen's Key Points:

  • Tech leaders may overestimate their ability to effect change within the complex machinery of government.
  • The difference between private sector success and public sector competency.

• Notable Quote:

  • "Elon Musk in particular has had massive success in the private sector. But assuming those skills transfer, I think we're learning some tough lessons about that right now." [09:21]

John Podhoretz further criticizes Musk's handling of government-related issues, highlighting his inaccurate claims about the Social Security Administration as an example of his reckless approach.

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5. Government Mismanagement and the Firing of Federal Employees

The panel discusses recent actions by the Trump administration, particularly the mass firing of probationary federal employees.

• John Podhoretz explains that the administration issued a directive to either terminate probationary employees or provide reasons for their retention. This blanket approach targeted approximately 200,000 federal workers, raising concerns about legality and efficiency.

• Seth Mandel points out the collateral damage of such actions, including the loss of experienced professionals and the potential for widespread distrust in federal institutions.

• John Podhoretz emphasizes the stark contrast between the private sector's approach to probationary periods and the public sector's handling, questioning the long-term implications for government functionality.

---

6. Controversy Surrounding NYC Mayor Eric Adams and Governor Kathy Hochul

A significant portion of the discussion centers on the political turmoil involving New York City's Mayor Eric Adams and Governor Kathy Hochul.

• John Podhoretz condemns Mayor Adams, questioning his competence and criticizing his affiliations with Trump, which he believes undermine his leadership and the Democratic Party's integrity.

• Christine Rosen underscores the chaotic dynamics within the Democratic Party, highlighting how internal conflicts have led to attempts to remove elected officials like Adams for aligning with Trump.

  • Notable Quote:
    • "The language about democracy that I've seen emerge post Trump's victory is astonishing to me... They are using technocratic power elite power to fix their own mistakes without acknowledging that they were mistakes in the first place." [62:30]

• Seth Mandel and Abe Greenwald discuss the broader implications of such political maneuvers, suggesting that they signal a shift towards authoritarian-like practices within established political institutions.

• John Podhoretz warns against the precedent this sets, arguing that it undermines democratic principles by allowing the removal of elected officials without legitimate cause.

---

7. Reflections on Political Resilience and Accountability

The panel reflects on the American political landscape's resilience, noting the tendency for politicians to rebound from scandals and the public's often forgiving nature.

• John Podhoretz contrasts American political behavior with other democracies, suggesting that the U.S. uniquely allows disgraced politicians to return to public life.

• Christine Rosen remarks on the Democratic Party's approach to governance, critiquing their reliance on top-down administration and the erosion of trust in traditional democratic processes.

• Seth Mandel emphasizes the challenges of holding politicians accountable in a polarized environment, where nuanced criticism is often drowned out by partisan conflicts.

---

8. Closing Remarks

John Podhoretz wraps up the discussion by reiterating concerns about the direction of governmental institutions and the influence of ideological agendas over practical governance.

---

Overall Themes:

• Ideological Capture of Professional Organizations: Critique of entities like the AAP shifting from objective guidance to politicized agendas.
• Impact of COVID-19 on Public Trust: How inconsistent policies during the pandemic have eroded trust in medical and governmental institutions.
• Influence of Tech Leaders in Governance: Skepticism towards the capacity of private sector figures like Elon Musk to effectively manage public sector roles.
• Government Mismanagement: Concerns over mass firings in the federal workforce and the long-term implications for institutional integrity.
• Political Turmoil and Democratic Integrity: Examination of internal conflicts within the Democratic Party and the potential erosion of democratic principles through the removal of elected officials without legitimate cause.

Notable Quotes:

• "The American Academy of Pediatrics is essentially a liberal, leftist social organization..." – Christine Rosen [04:14]
• "Elon Musk in particular has had massive success in the private sector. But assuming those skills transfer..." – Christine Rosen [09:21]
• "They have this, this. It's trust but verify with these sort of medical organizations..." – Christine Rosen [07:05]
• "The language about democracy that I've seen emerge post Trump's victory is astonishing to me..." – Christine Rosen [62:30]

---

This episode of The Commentary Magazine Podcast offers a critical examination of the intersection between ideology and professional governance, highlighting concerns about institutional integrity, public trust, and the influence of non-traditional figures in shaping policy and leadership.

Transcript

[Christine Rosen]

I can say to my new Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra, hey, find a keto.

[John Podhoretz]

Friendly restaurant nearby and text it to Beth and Steve. And it does without me lifting a.

[Christine Rosen]

Finger so I can get in more squats anywhere I can. 1, 2, 3.

[John Podhoretz]

Will that be cash or credit?

[Abe Greenwald]

Credit. 4 Galaxy S25 Ultra. The AI companion that does the heavy lifting.

[John Podhoretz]

So you can do.

[Abe Greenwald]

You get [e-mail] compatible with select apps. Requires Google Gemini account. Results may vary based on input. Check responses for accuracy.

[Seth Mandel]

Hope for the best, Expect the worst.

[John Podhoretz]

Some preach and pay Some die of thirst the way of knowing which way.

[Christine Rosen]

It'S going Hope for the best Expect.

[Seth Mandel]

The worst Hope for the best.

[John Podhoretz]

Welcome to the Commentary Magazine daily Podcast. Today is Tuesday, February 18, 2025. I'm John Pothoric, the editor of Commentary magazine, letting you know that the entire contents of our March issue are [e-mail] Lead story, I gotta say, is by me. It's called Trump 2 the Good, the Bad and the Ugly. You can figure out what I mean by those phrases. And maybe after I introduce everybody, we'll talk a little about Christine Rosen's piece in the issue. Before I introduce Christine Rosen, I will introduce, of course, Executive editor Abe Greenwald. Hi, Abe.

[Seth Mandel]

Hi, John.

[John Podhoretz]

Senior editor Seth Mandel. Hi, Seth.

[Unnamed Speaker]

Hi, John.

[John Podhoretz]

And the aforementioned Christine Rosen, the Social Commentary columnist and AEI senior Fellow. Hi, Christine.

[Christine Rosen]

Hi, John.

[John Podhoretz]

Now, Christine, you have in your Social Commentary column a piece that has been in my reckoning since I basically had my first child almost 21 years ago, has been in the works for 21 years. It's about the American Academy of Pediatrics, which sounds like a very official, wonderful organization, and bringing together all pediatricians to do pediatrician things and say pediatrician things and give you advice and provide you with, provide you with the guidance that you want when you're, you know, particularly if you're a first time parent. Seth now has three kids. Christine has two kids, I have three. Seth has six kids, excuse me, Christine has two, I have three. And when you're your first kid and you don't know what the hell you're doing and you look things up and it says, well, the American Academy of Pediatrics says this and the American Academy of Pediatrics says that. And so at the time when I had my first kid in 2004, the American Academy of Pediatric said, no screens for two years. Do not let your kid look at a screen. Watch tv. This is before the iPad, you know, don't give them your phone. There weren't even iPhones yet no screens, no TVs. Very bad. Bad for brain development. Terrible. This had the net effect of sort of making you. Anytime you put on the TV and your kid was looking at, you felt guilty. If you felt guilty, you're doing something bad to your kid's brain. Over time, as you get, as your kids age, or you are like, living in the world and you see what other people do, or you're just not like, fanatical about things, you let that slide and you understand that maybe you need a break for 20 minutes so you put on some, you know, little show for kids. You still feel guilty. Like it's essentially designed in the classic way that these things are designed to say, don't do anything. So that. So that maybe you'll do half of it and then you'll like, be better than just being totally laissez faire. So that was my first experience at the American Academy of Pediatrics. And things have gotten worse from there over the last 20 years as it's become clear that the American Academy of Pediatrics is essentially a liberal, leftist social organization, the purpose of which is to use their standing with neurotic parents to advance an extraordinarily politicized agenda.

[Christine Rosen]

Yes, I mean, it's, it's. I mean, their motto really should be often in error, never in doubt. I think the example of the screen time was something they did for a while, which is get out ahead of themselves, ahead of the research, and make rather dramatic statements. And then they'd have to roll those back a few years later when the evidence was coming in. I mean, they. That was the one recommendation I was kind of on board with because I hate screens for little kids. But they were wrong on the evidence. So that, that. The whole point is that parents go to that organization to see what the. They assume, what the general opinion of most pediatricians is. And that's where as parents, we should no longer do that. I love my kids pediatrician. She's fantastic. Most parents do love their kids pediatricians. But this organization has become a social justice organization. We saw it first with transgender medicine, where they completely went full on, on board in absolute direct opposition to the evidence of the harms caused to children. Embrace that. We've seen it during COVID where they, after initially being thoughtful and making recommendations about kids coming back to school, when then first term president Donald Trump said, oh yes, this is a good idea, let's get kids back in the classroom, they pivoted, they changed their recommendations, suggesting that perhaps it wasn't as scientific as we think because they didn't want to be allied with President Trump and they worked instead with the teachers unions who kept schools closed in this country for far too long. Same thing with masking. So they have this, this. It's not caution. It's caution with this very heavy overlay of left leaning ideology. It's finally come to fruition in their treatment of. And you might be surprised to learn that pediatricians organization has strong views on the Middle east, but they've come out in support of Hamas, literally someone who is a general in Hamas who also happened to be a pediatrician, calling for his release and never mentioning, for example, all the children held hostage by Hamas or the fact that it was a terrorist organization. So that was sort of the final straw for me seeing them dabble in foreign policy and doing it so badly. I think what it shows is that a lot of these professional institutions have over time relied on the credibility of their many times excellent members, you know, pediatricians who do the work day to day of helping America's children. But they've, they should no longer be trusted. It's trust but verify with these sort of medical organizations. These medical institutions, many of them have been infected by ideology. So I think what's useful for parents is, is to make sure that they're hearing directly from their pediatrician what the medical advice is and not looking to these recommendations which get picked up in the media and written about a lot without double checking with their pediatricians. Because the organization, the AAP has unfortunately become an ideological group.

[John Podhoretz]

And of course this is true basically of most nonprofits that represent professions that people go to work for them permanently. It's not their, you know, they're not working as pediatricians, they're working as activists or as lobbyists or some version of a combination of the two. And from pediatrics to nuclear. The thing when I was a kid was the, was the nuclear scientists putting out the bulletin of the atomic scientists who were basically wanted to enshrine the numerical superiority of Soviet nuclear warheads by every time the U.S. or NATO made moves to really defensive moves to strengthen the nuclear arsenal of the west, they would move the clock hand closer to midnight because we were of course making things more dangerous, not the Soviets.

[Christine Rosen]

So that level midnight as office fans would call it.

[John Podhoretz]

Yeah, so that, that was like a foundational example of the ideological capture of something where it's like we are nuclear scientists, we can do things you don't even understand. And then what those people had to say about this is sort of an issue in the movie Oppenheimer, what they actually had to say about geopolitics. What do they know about geopolitics? They know how to split an atom, and that's pretty impressive. But what they know about deterrence or international treaty organizations or anything like that is no more and no less, and probably far less than a lot of other people.

[Christine Rosen]

But this is actually a good, good example of something we're in the midst of now in Washington with Elon Musk and other tech bros coming in and trading on the credibility of their tech companies or space companies or whatever they run, to assume that they have the ability to change federal government, which is itself a very different beast. So I see trading on the credibility of one's, either one's membership in the case of medical organizations, or trading on the credibility of one's successes in the private sector. And I would certainly say Elon Musk in particular has had massive success in the private sector. But assuming those skills transfer, I think we're learning some tough lessons about that right now.

[Unnamed Speaker]

My favorite thing from the aap, the American Academy of Pediatrics, was during COVID you know, all this was when they really sort of lost their minds. And I remember, you know, I remember very clearly. And I pulled it up just to, just to make sure I wasn't misremembering that they were very, they very, very clearly said that if you wear a mask, cover your face, it does not harm children's ability to pick up language cues from you, from adults, from parents, and that there is no evidence that it does. And that was the moment I think a lot of people were like, okay, two plus two equals four. No matter what the AAP says the sky is blue or looks blue. That's actually probably something that, you know, I don't want Neil DeGrasse Tyson to jump in here and say, actually, but, you know, the obvious things that we see in front of us. Right. Of course it makes a difference to a child's, a young child's ability to learn language, to not see your face, like, it's almost ridiculous to even ask the question. And the AAP sort of marshaled this non. You know, they ignored like all this other evidence and said like nothing we reviewed. It's like, well, you didn't review, you know, everything. And that, that was a, that was.

[Christine Rosen]

A sort of union.

[Unnamed Speaker]

Yeah, right, exactly. That was the sort of moment where it's like, are these people serious?

[John Podhoretz]

Well, let's put, let's put the two together. Because of course the screens are the ultimate example of the incredible Hypocrisy and political double dealing of the American Academy of Pediatrics, which had made a fetish of this idea that screens are bad for children. Of course, there is now a lot of evidence, and not just of, you know, like small children, but of teenagers, right, that, that the engagement with the phone and the screen has had a net negative effect on depression, on social abilities and all of that. So in a weird way, television, which is a, which is not an interactive medium, right. Is a. Is a passive medium, it turns out, maybe not so bad compared to screens, right? Compared to interactive screens, which are engaging the dopamine. You know, the, the sort of, the. The dopamine rush they can create and all of that. And then the withdrawal, the dopamine and this world of total exposure at all times. Then Covid comes along and the idea is that you can. Are we gonna close schools and teach kids on screens? And suddenly screens are just fine. Screens are great. Screens are, you know, screens are that. What's wrong with screens? After 20 years of, like, making everybody in the country feel bad if they, like park their kid in front of a, you know, an episode of Teletubbies or Bluey or something like that because they needed a break, suddenly that's not okay for two decades. And then suddenly it's okay for a kid to be on screen for eight hours rather than being in school. That's where I think everything broke down. It was like the pediatrics version of the. You can't go outside unless there's a demonstration against George Floyd, then you could go outside. That's not going to spread Covid. Everything else would spread Covid, but not if you need to do a social justice demonstration. That I think, is where the gaslighting of the social justice warriors actually where things really did bifurcate in June 2020. And with the school, school stuff, like if people understood there was a crisis in March of 2020 when everything shut down and that something was going to have to be done. We didn't know what was safe. We didn't know if Covid was on surfaces or was airborne. We didn't know anything. And so if you needed to shut schools down and figure out some jury rigged solution until the end of the school year, maybe that was understandable. It was the question of what happened when we got through the. When we got through the summer, and we knew that kids weren't dying from COVID or getting Covid. We knew that the death toll was already in the hundreds of thousands and that there were 400 people between the ages of 0 and 18 who were D. Who had died in the United States, that Covid was not dangerous to kids. And then it turned out that wasn't even the claim. The claim wasn't that the kids were going to get it. It was the teachers were going to get it or that the administrators were going to get it. And then suddenly the purpose of education in the United States was no longer the education of kids, but the employment of adults. And that was. That became just sort of like a total, you know, seamless transition to the idea that who needed to be protected from COVID was. Was adults in schools.

[Christine Rosen]

Well, and in real time, we had these examples of private school coming back into the classroom and ways to do that safely, both for the students and for the teachers and administrators, because they. Their commitment was to the kids. And we saw that in states like Florida and other states that opened up. And so the fact that the AAP and of course, the teachers unions were. And by administration were sticking to their guns on these draconian measures suggests that the ideological need to control a population to suit the. The. The organizations and groups most allied with the Democratic party, which are the teachers unions. And the fact that the AP went on board with that, they chose their allies unwisely. And I. I think it's another example of something we talked about when we were in the midst of. Of the COVID nightmare, which was where will the long tail effects be seen? And I think mistrust in medical and public health institutions. That's going to continue for a long time. I am unconvinced RFK can restore our trust as well, but there it is.

[John Podhoretz]

RFK would not have been. Would not be the Health and Human Services secretary in the. In the world before COVID I mean, it would just wouldn't have happened. The. The fact that you could have this incredibly unconventional representative of things we would generally think of as quackery, tort, you know, sort of tort. Promoting health nonsense. And all of that can take over the health apparatus of the United States. That's only made possible by the misbehavior of the health apparatus of the United States, which has no. Which had no moral suasion to argue that he could not be put in charge because they had mishandled everything so much.

[Seth Mandel]

Yeah, I was gonna say another long tail is this state of the education of kids. Now, that's not recovered by a long shot. And the other thing is that because so many different sectors and parties got on board with this, they can just. Each one can say well, it wasn't me. It was, it was the aap. Well, it wasn't me. It was the teacher. It wasn't me. It was the government. It was, you know, I was just following this and what, you know, and, and there then you have the no accountability, right?

[John Podhoretz]

But it's only. You have no accountability. Then it's like, well, then everybody is the villain, right? Then you're telling me that this was a giant mindset that spread its, you know, blanket across the country. Okay, I gotta talk to you once again about quints. So quints, as you may know, is the go to for luxury essentials at affordable prices. When Quint started to advertise on our podcast, they let me get one item for free. I got a sweater that was so glorious that I have in the months since purchased seven more several shirts and I just purchased a down puffer jacket from them. So as I talk to you about Quince, just you should know that I have become a rabid Quince fan and a enthusiastic Quince customer. Because who doesn't love the good things in life? I mean, I like a little luxury, but I have three kids in private schools in college, and it doesn't mean that I can always afford luxury. And that's one of the many reasons that I love Quince, which offers a range of high quality items at prices within reach, like 100% Mongolian cashmere sweaters from 50 bucks, washable silk tops and dresses, organic cotton sweaters and 14 karat gold jewelry. The best part, all Quince Items are priced 50 to 80% less than similar brands. By partnering directly with top factories, Quince cuts out the cost of the middleman and passes the savings on to us. And Quince only works with factories that use safe, ethical and responsible manufacturing practices and premium fabrics and finishes. So give yourself the luxury you deserve with quince. Go to quince.com commentary for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. That's Q U I N C E.com, commentary to get free shipping and 365 day returns. Quints.com commentary.

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[Unnamed Speaker]

And they try to make that argument. They try to. They say, like, they say, you know, we. We. They use the universal we when they talk about when we say keeping kids out of school is bad. You know, people said that from the beginning, but now it's obviously the case. They'll say, well, we didn't know a lot about the virus at first. We didn't know a lot about how it spread. We didn't have a lot of experience treating the virus or taking preventative actions. We hadn't, you know, had a war here, which is usually when kids are out of school for long periods of time, right? And you can study the effects. Like in Europe, you know, you have these pockets where, you know, they know what the effects that losing education have because they had a war. You know, we haven't had the conditions that keep kids out of school for long periods.

[John Podhoretz]

We.

[Unnamed Speaker]

And it was, it bypassed the idea that you can know information, right? Like, school is good for kids and therefore. No, school is not good for kids. It seems like an obvious, logical, you know, lead. I don't think I'm making a huge leap by saying, we know education is good and therefore taking Education away from our children is bad, or the social environments and things like that. But it was like that's how they. That's how they do this. That's how they make sure that nobody, no individual gets, you know, their. Their gets caught on being the one who ordered X, Y and Z. We didn't know.

[John Podhoretz]

Yeah, but you know, Seth, I think you're actually being too kind because I don't see much in the way of revision. Revisionist thought among those people where they say, look, you have to understand the position we were in, the country was in crisis. We really didn't know. And so we did things out of the famous abundance of caution. Obviously, we did a lot of things wrong, and we're really, really sorry. I don't hear that. We did a lot of things wrong, and we're really sorry. One of the reasons that the sort of the counter revolution is so harsh is precisely because the things that I think people like us said, you know, we were sort of supportive of measures to restrict the spread of COVID Things seemed a little nonsensical, like closing beaches down seemed kind of crazy since they said you were allowed to take a walk, you could take a walk, but you couldn't go on a beach that didn't. That was a kind of population control thing. But it's not.

[Unnamed Speaker]

There's a very popular park thing near us where we live in Montgomery county, where the tree. The tree at the beginning of the path was wearing a giant mask. So that is. That is what I always say is that's the best representation of that.

[John Podhoretz]

But I think, centrally speaking, it's not as though there was a moment in 2022 or 2023 when people said, you know, we went too far. A lot of things went too far. Biden couldn't. Could have come out and said we went too far. Or, you know, things were. Got over, you know, kind of got out over our skis. We were just so worried about everybody's health. And now that now it's over, now we can go back, look back and take the lessons that we need to take. And they just battened down the hatches and acted like everything they had done was legitimate and again, like, seeded the field to. And so now not only is RFK going to be in charge of, you know, is in charge of the. Of the hss, hhs, but Jay Bhattachary is going to be head of the National Institutes of Health, one of the five prominent doctors who were. Who said, these measures that you're taking are crazy. And you know, he was an eccentric. He seemed like an eccentric outlier, commonsensical, but an outlier for these people who signed this famous Great Barrington declaration.

[Christine Rosen]

But can I interrupt? Because actually that contrast is, is an important. I think you can scale it up to a lot of the, the challenges we have right now as a country, because Batterjee at least had, he has skin in the game. He knows what he's talking about. He was appealing to science, he was appealing to the evidence and the research. And he wasn't at all overselling what we knew versus what we didn't know. Then you have rfk, who is, who traffics in conspiracy. Both of those are very powerful tools. But I think just as if you got Covid more than once, as most of us did, there are long term consequences for immune system that we still don't fully understand. But you know, it weakens the system in some ways the way the government in particular in some of these professional organizations behaved. And, and as you say, John, their lack of accountability now, their lack of responsibility for their mistakes now weakened our immune system when it comes to trusting those in charge. So we have this choice. Do we still find people who work consistent and principled and have their heads on straight and who know their stuff like a doctor put him in charge, or do we go for full conspiracy theory? And I think a lot of the American people, I understand the impulse for why they go for rfk. I don't agree with it, but. Because I think there could be new damage caused by that approach. But it's completely understandable. We have a weakened immune system when it comes to.

[Seth Mandel]

And you know what the other side of that is, at least this is personal for me. I feel this because of what the establishment science and all these bodies pulled on us during COVID I sometimes start to feel a little silly even challenging rfk, even though I, even though I do and I don't believe him. It's like I almost don't want to my, to add my voice to the challenge because then I'm automatically put in the other camp now. Then I'm automatically lumped in with teachers unions and Fauci and whomever else. Like it's, it's become so bifurcated that, you know, you, you, you. There's no room for, for actual nuanced criticism.

[John Podhoretz]

Well, so let's shift to where Christine was because she brought up the tech bros. And whether or not they are coming into government using their undeniable expertise and brilliance at understanding the innards of coding and how computer Systems work and what to do to kind of come in and move fast and break things in the government. Two things that came up yesterday because there's all this sort of screaming and yelling. There are, there are wildly illegitimate accusations being levied against Elon Musk and the Tech Bros. And all of that typified by Thomas Edsel's column in the New York Times today, which is that he is the most powerful unelected official who has ever existed. And, and you know, this is a violation of the appointment.

[Unnamed Speaker]

Sorry.

[Christine Rosen]

That was Jill Biden. That was Jill Biden.

[John Podhoretz]

Well, let's, let's go. There are tens of thousands of unelected officials in the history of the United States.

[Unnamed Speaker]

That's Dr. Joe.

[John Podhoretz]

As much, if not more power. Yes. Than, than, than, than Elon Musk, including every single White House chief of staff who is not an elected official and is not somebody who is, Is brought in under the appointments clause. And then Fauci. Fauci. Although Fauci is. Was, was Fauci. Was he a confirmed. I think he was a confirmed official, though. I'm saying no. But what they're saying is he's not confirmed by anybody. He just comes in and he's the most powerful, blah, blah, blah. And he. No one, you know, he wasn't advised, there was no advising consent of the Senate, yada da da da, da, da. Right. Okay. So this is a ridiculous, transparently ridiculous charge. He has been tasked by the President of the United States as an outside consultant to look into what is going on in government. And he has, he has been deputized to do certain things and that in no way, shape or form that the executive branch can do or. We're now going to hear arguments before the Supreme Court about whether this is something the executive branch can do without, without sort of congressional pre approval or something like that. But so they are sort of thing, you know, pinning this on Musk. However, Musk doesn't know what he's doing half the time. And this was revealed yesterday when he went out on Twitter and said, you see, look at how crazy everything is. If you look at the Social Security Administration, you'll see that a million people, they're sending out checks to a million people whose ages are listed as between 150 and 159. And there are all these checks going out to people who are well over 100 years old. 10 million checks going out to people who are well over 100 million years old, 100 years old. And this cannot happen, by God. You see, this is the Kind of fraud in the government. And he didn't know what he was talking about because those numbers were the numbers of people who have ever had Social Security numbers in the United States and that you had a Social Security number and you died. And then your file went into that, you know, into the now infamous mine in Pennsylvania where all the paperwork of the federal government goes like a geniza. Genizas are places in Jewish communities where documents featuring the holy name of God must be placed because they cannot be destroyed because they have God's name in them. And so the geniza is a kind of attic of Judaism. And some of the most important discoveries, historical discoveries in the history of Judaism come from ancient genizas that have been reopened and studied. The Cairo Gina and all that. So that's what this. That's what this mine is in Pennsylvania. So it didn't occur to Musk. He just. Someone handed him a chart. He said, oh, my God, they're. They're spent. The millions of dollars are going out to. So obviously it's fraud. It's disappearing. It's not. That's not what happened. So he got out over his skis. He's. He's not careful. He's incautious. He thinks he can say anything and do anything, and that's really, really stupid. And it's gonna. It's gonna discredit him. And it's going to discredit him even because Trump doesn't want to, like, say the Social Security system is corrupt. That's the most popular federal program that exists, like screwing around with Social Security.

[Christine Rosen]

He also doesn't want any interruptions to the checks that go to people who rely on Social Security for their income.

[John Podhoretz]

And then, Seth, you brought up this story in the Washington Post.

[Unnamed Speaker]

Yeah, there's this. Essentially what happened is that the Office of Personnel Management sent out this notice that, you know, you were. You were to. If you were not going to fire your probationary employees. Probationary means recently hired, usually in the federal government. Anyway, either fire them or write us a note with that specific employee, why you're going to keep them. Right. So this was. And then this was. Get it to us by, you know, Monday at 8 or something like that. Monday happened to be a federal holiday, by the way. And, you know, they were getting this, like, on Friday. It was impossible to do. And so basically they fired everybody on the, you know, with probationary status. And because it happened so quickly, the government gave them a sort of form letter to, you know, to help them along. Here's what. Here's the kind of thing you can send to the employees to give them notice. And the form letter was about their poor performance because the connection was made between probationary status and poor performance because it was assumed that a lot of the people on probation are on probation because they have poor performance reviews from their department heads. But in fact, probationary, the probationary period for hires in the federal government is really what, what was most of these people fell into, which is that when you are hired by the federal government, you have a one year or two year probationary period where you have fewer few recourses if you are, you know, fired or whatever or something like that. I mean, it's probation, but I think everybody understands that. But it's not for.

[John Podhoretz]

So like when you're hired usually in the private sector and you're brought on someplace, you were told that basically your first three months, let's say in most private firms you are in a probationary period, meaning that you can be dismissed for any reason. There is no such thing as cause. You are hired to. You have to prove yourself over those three months or you can be, or we can say goodbye to you. And that is a necessary adjunct before all legal protections for workers are extended to people in the private sector. The private sector has to make sure that they haven't hired somebody who is going to steal from them or who is crazy or who is impossible.

[Unnamed Speaker]

And, and even more so in the public sector it's needed because now that they're unionized, the protections are so deep that if you don't have a probationary period, when you hire somebody to a federal job, you know, it's like, it's like a Supreme Court justice. So, so you have to be able to do this. The problem is that it's, it's a new hire thing more than it's a performance thing. And so when they went through it, they found that when Washington Post talked to people, that Washington Post Talked to almost 300 people by the way, who got these notices. And they got the notices and looked at the letters and all this stuff and it turned out that they were being told it was for their performance. And so that note is probably going to open the door to legal challenges because you can't mass fire probationary employees for all for the same reason, because it's clear you didn't actually assess each individual employee.

[John Podhoretz]

I'm not sure that you can't see that.

[Unnamed Speaker]

Well, I don't know that you can't. But this is the best legal challenge they seem to have, according to the.

[John Podhoretz]

Washington post, there are 200,000 probationary workers at any given time in the federal government. According to the story, the Trump administration refused to provide a number of people who got this letter. But if 200,000 people got this letter, that's where you're starting to get to scale on whether or not a whole lot of people in the country are going to say, what the hell is the federal government doing? And what the hell is Trump doing? What if it's only about USAID or senior or, you know, political officials or people, bureaucrats who are, like, sitting there gathering moss and doing nothing? That's one thing. If you know somebody who got fired for no good reason. Right. You're gonna have a lot more people who know people or related to people who this happened to. If you're talking about numbers in the hundreds of thousands. And that really, politically could boomerang terribly.

[Unnamed Speaker]

Yeah. And just to. I just want to really quickly just add one more thing about the probationary period. It also kicks in if you switch departments, right? Okay. So you have people who were like career officials who got a promotion and went to a new department, and the probationary period kicks in. They're not actually new hire. They have 25 years of service under their belt. That's the other thing about this, is that the. The experience that you are losing itself, too, is that you're not ne. You're not actually firing bad people or stupid people or even new people.

[Christine Rosen]

But this is where, look, Trump won because he promised change and he promised competence compared to what came before. This is a different form of incompetence if they indeed are making these errors at scale. The interesting thing, and this is a debate just on the right right now, there's a lot of infighting going on on our side of the aisle among moderates versus revolutionaries. And this is the argument, did the American people vote to trust the radical revolutionaries, the musks, the Trump people who say, let's go and burn it all down and trust us to put something better in its place. Let's root out the corruption. Because even his cabinet reflects some tension. He also has some more traditional. We'll make change, as conservatives tend to want change in there, too. I'm thinking, like, of Marco Rubio and others. So that is a huge tension on the right right now. That fight will continue throughout his term. I think it's actually very healthy thing for the right to be having this sort of ferment, but there are going to be some casualties along the way. And he definitely, like I said, Born and raised in Florida, he does not want to anger the people who live off their Social Security payments by making some massive error that even for two weeks, that would be devastating to people who live that way. And if he doesn't understand that this kind of slash and burn might have that effect, he will be punished politically for it.

[Seth Mandel]

The problem for me here is that not only, you know, is Doge reckless and sloppy in doing this, Musk likes being reckless about this. He really enjoys it. He brags about it. And he has. There is a contingent of MAGA that likes the recklessness more than the good conservative idea of cutting waste, fraud and abuse. So there are these sort of conflicting incentives now for the, for the Doge teams like, do we, do we show ourselves to be destroying things or to be fixing things?

[John Podhoretz]

Ali Wiseman has a very good piece this morning in the Free Press called the Everything is Broken Administration. And what he adduces is an overarching theme to the early weeks of Trumpism. And that evokes Alana Newhouse's breakthrough essay and tablet three years ago called Everything is Broken, or 2021, something like that, where she said Covid revealed the way in which we no longer try. We've been talking about this, we talked about this for years before, before Alana's article came out, you know, reducing our evidence. The jokey evidence we used to talk about was the Oscar, was the, was the opening of the envelope with the wrong, you know, when, when, when Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway announced that La La Land had won the Oscar, when Moonlight had won the Oscar. It's like that, that's. Something like that had never happened before. This is America. Things are just aren't working the way they, they are supposed to. Right? So she basically using other much more serious matters, said, look, things, Americans don't think things work anymore. Everything is broken. Medical system is broken. Dealing with the medical system is adversarial. Everything is broken. And that this then turns into a, an idea called broken ism, which is, okay, if everything is broken, what do you do to fix it? And as she said, you know, change is often bad, but change is the only way to fix what's broken. Everything bad comes from change, but so does everything good. So that, that would be. So the idea is the system is broken and so radical change is required, but you can break it further. You know, you get, if you have like three or four piece broken pieces, you could also drop the pieces as you're carrying them over to the table to glue them back together. You can break them and make them shatter worse. And that's where the competence question comes in. I think with senior officials at senior positions, this is what's interesting. On the one hand, we look at people like that and we think, well, they're experts in their field. They're leading figures. They're harder to replace. I would say no. Like, for every job running NIH, there are probably 500 people who could fill that job in the United States. The idea that's a hard job to fill is.

[Christine Rosen]

But just to push back a little on that, it is a hard job to fill if the person you put in charge of the institution has values or an approach to reforming the institution that is radical versus incremental, particularly in science. I think that's where you see. I mean, if you just get rid of all the senior people and say this was waste and we'll just put one or two guys in there who wants that job. I mean, when you're dealing with, with revolutionaries, you never know if you're going to be the next one, you know, sent off in the tumble.

[John Podhoretz]

To what. I mean, I was referring in a more general terms, not to the specific moment that, that, you know, there are heads of medical centers. There's this, there's. There are people who have run $100 million grant program and all of that. Right. So that, so that in fact, in senior positions running cabinet departments, there are, you know, there are politicians in all 50 states or people who've done transportation, all 50 states. If you want someone from the Department of Transportation or whatever, if you want to. It is, it is people who, like, are doing these jobs because it's what they do for a living, who might have value because they understand how the federal government works from the inside. All these cases in political appointeeship, particularly, or in senior leadership positions that you have people who might be bureaucratic masters in one way, but are in fact fungible. And I suppose all people are fungible in forms of employment in some ways, but they are going in. If you want to fix brokenness. Yeah, you basically say everybody who is not with the program of radical reform is like, bad and we have to get rid of them. And maybe the way to do it is to be use a sledgehammer, you know, smash the executive floor up and then rebuild it with other people or something like that. But I don't think that that works when you just say we're going to empty the federal government out by 15% and we're going to do it the way companies do it which is last. Last left for last, in, first out, or you're on, which is what probationary firing is. Right. It's like, okay, you were hired in the last three months. Goodbye. We don't. We don't need you. And, like, 25,000 of those people could be in very critical jobs. That was the issue with the nuclear, with the people running the nuclear.

[Unnamed Speaker]

Yeah. And they had the Washington Post story.

[John Podhoretz]

Has others be rehired because. Because you can't leave those unmolested because they're, you know, they're. They're dealing with things that are very highly technical and all of that. And that is a problem with moving fast and breaking things, which you can do. If you. If you buy Twitter, you can fire 85% of the staff, and then it's all on you. If it doesn't, you know, you're Elon Musk. You own Twitter. If Twitter stops working, then you're the one who's going to suffer. You're going to lose your $44 billion investment, and it's your risk to take, and you take it. Elon Musk doesn't own Trump, doesn't own the federal government, nor does Musk. Federal government is a service organization, and they're not allowed to break it. They can fix it, but they're really not allowed to break it. It's not theirs to break. Hey, everybody. I want to talk to you today about Lumen. It's the world's first handheld metabolic coach. It's a device that measures your metabolism through your breath. And on the app, it lets you know if you're burning fat or carbs and gives you tailored guidance to improve your nutrition, workout, sleep, and even stress management. All you have to do is breathe into your Lumen first thing in the morning, and you'll know what's going on with your metabolism, whether you're burning mostly fat or carbs. Then Lumen gives you a personalized nutrition plan for that day based on your measurements. You can also breathe into it before and after workouts and meals so you know exactly what's going on in your body in real time. And Lumen will give you tips to keep you on top of your health game. Look, your metabolism is your body's engine. It's how your body turns the food you eat into fuel that keeps you going. Lumen gives you recommendations to improve your metabolic health. It can also track your cycle, as well as the onset of menopause. Sadly, that's not really an issue for me, or certainly if it were, given my age, that ship would have sailed. And you can adjust your recommendations to keep your metabolism healthy through hormonal shifts so you can keep up your energy and stave off cravings. Take the next step to improving your health. Go to Lumen Me commentary to get 20% off your lumen that is l u m e n me commentary for 20% off your purchase. Thank you, Lumen, for sponsoring this episode.

[Seth Mandel]

The longer look, it's obviously very early in Trump's term, but the longer we go without prices coming down, the more this starts to look like a distraction, you know, like, oh great, he's doing these. He's, you know, he's saving our tax dollars. But my groceries are still going up. I don't care about this anymore. I don't want to see Musk in the Oval Office. I don't want to see the prancing around. I don't want to, I don't want to hear the stories.

[John Podhoretz]

You know, that look, that, that is the ultimate truth about this is they want to move fast and do things and look like. And they do have Democrats on the back foot and all of that, but they have to show results and results aren't. Look what I did. I found that 150 people age 150 are getting Social Security checks. A, it's not true and B, it's like, so what they need, it's good. But how does that, how is that going to. Inflation went up last month. What are you doing to bring it down?

[Christine Rosen]

They need, they need a Mitch Daniels to contrast with an Elon Musk. Right. Someone who comes in, says, acts more like an accountant, says, my goal is to slash waste and to get us, you know, on a more even financial footing and then methodically do it. Because that's actually a way. It's revolutionary in the sense that it tackles the underlying argument for federal government, which is it on the left. It should always be bigger and more intrusive in everyone's lives and solve every problem. But that's where the trust is built. Like I would literally, I would let Mitch Daniels babysit my children when they were infants. I trust that guy so much. I mean he just, and some of it's temperament, but he actually had results. Every institution that that guy has been in charge of, he's shown some appreciable results. But he didn't over promise. He under promises and over delivers. I think with Musk you get, and Trump really, you get a lot of swagger at the beginning, which his voters love. And again, understandably so after the last four years. But where, what are even the benchmarks for results besides we fired this many people? What are they actually hoping to show a year from now? What are the goals?

[John Podhoretz]

Right.

[Unnamed Speaker]

I mean, it's basically trying to say, look, if there's 200,000 people on probation, what are we do. Why do we have 200,000 people collecting checks if they're all on probation? And it's just like this assumption, oh, they're on probation because I guess they're not really. And if you're, if you don't have good ratings in the federal workforce, boy, you must be expendable. And it was just a mistake. It was a misunderstanding of the term probationary and what it meant literally. And, you know, 200,000 or whoever got, you know, pink slips. And then the other thing is that, you know, what Christine brings up, as I also think about John, you mentioned Jay Battacaria before, who has been, you know, Trump's pick to run the National Institutes of Health. This is a really good example of the fact that you can find people who are quite serious experts in their field who haven't gone along with terrible conventional wisdom and not necessarily need RFK junior Types in order to do it.

[Seth Mandel]

Right.

[Unnamed Speaker]

I mean, in other words, by the.

[John Podhoretz]

Way, is a very good example of this in the private sector. What did Mitch Daniels do after he was governor of Indiana and after he was the RB director?

[Unnamed Speaker]

Right.

[John Podhoretz]

He went to Purdue University and said, we're going to charge $10,000 a year and we are going to reform this institution so that it doesn't cost fam most, mostly families in Indiana, more than $10,000 a year to go to this school. That's very radical. That was an, and by the way, he was not, you know, having done this, that was not followed up on. It's not like the, the, the world of the academy is so high bound that of course, wasn't going to follow his lead or his path here. But that is an example of somebody who looks like a very solid, you know, solid citizen, accountant type who can, Scott Walker, also, as governor of Wisconsin, very dull guy. Instituting radical reforms that are imposed carefully, deliberately, but have real results. And so results that are so real in real time that just to remind you, they occupied the Capitol building. I don't want to say that occupying the Capitol building isn't a terrible thing to do. And it was, and the January 6th thing was terrible. But as I recall, 10 years earlier, 300 people occupied the Madison, the Capitol building in Madison and wouldn't leave for weeks.

[Unnamed Speaker]

And state legislators fled the state at one point, so they didn't have to vote on.

[John Podhoretz]

I hid in a motel in, in, in Minnesota in order not to cast a vote. So. And by the way, this is a good segue possibility here since we're talking about local policy. Oh, go ahead.

[Seth Mandel]

I just want to make one point though about this, which is that the demands of MAGA are such that you can only have so many non combustible figures who claim to be making change. There's a, there's a sort of aesthetic consideration and there's a MAGA sensibility that has to be taken into account. They need figures who are reckless in their conduct, a certain number in order.

[Abe Greenwald]

To get the message across.

[Seth Mandel]

And that's, that's the, that's part of the good, bad and ugly John that you.

[John Podhoretz]

That's what they want. Absolutely. Okay, so let's go, let's go to, let's go to interesting local official controversies. The most interesting in many, many years is the one involving Eric Adams, the mayor of New York City. Today, the governor of New York, Kathy Hochul. Yesterday, Kathy Hochul sent a letter or issued a statement saying, now I have the power under the New York State Constitution to remove Eric Adams from office. And it's never been done before and it's not something that I do lightly. But what's going on here must be addressed. And I am coming to New York City to have meetings to discuss it. So what's the story here? We know the Trump administration said it wanted the Justice Department to drop the charges against Eric Adams, which were he was indicted on basically influence selling or, you know, taking illicit bribes from the government of Turkey and then doing things to help Turkey. Okay, so, and, and in statements and foolish statements by MAGA idiots like Tom Holman, the head of ice, who is obviously, he's like a caricature of a really bad political actor who is having terrible. Who's loudmouth3 is having negative consequences on the goals that he wants to have. If he wanted to have a, have a sort of Damocles hang over Eric Adams head. So Eric Adams would do what Tom Holman wanted on border stuff. He would keep his mouth shut about it. He wouldn't go on Fox and Friends and joke with Adams about how he had him over a barrel. Like, that's not the way you do things if you have someone over a barrel, you idiot. You know, you look, he looks like a cartoon character. Tom Holman, I don't know, maybe he's good. Maybe he's Maybe he's good at his job. Who the hell knows? But as a public servant trying to advance a public cause, he did damage to his Machiavellian cause, and here's the evidence of it, because it's now become clear that what the Trump administration wants is to use Adams as a puppet in its war on, you know, on illegal immigration, which I'm not opposed to. He has now created a crisis inside the Democratic Party and his and the Adams administration, with almost its entire senior leadership resigning this weekend. Now, why did they resign? Why is Kathy Hochul coming down to maybe remove Eric Adams for office? It isn't because he was indicted. He was indicted six months ago or whatever. And you can't remove someone from office because he was indicted for something. You can. He might in all good conscience resign to contest the charges, but he is innocent until proven guilty under our system, and he didn't resign. She's coming because, as officials in New York City have been saying since last night, it's not that they don't like that he was indicted for crimes. It's they don't like that he went to Donald Trump, played footsie with Donald Trump, and is now saying he will do things that Donald Trump likes. That would be the reason that he was removed from office by Kathy Hochul, who is a crummy, accidental governor who was got into office in the first place because Andrew Cuomo had to resign and barely won reelection, barely won sort of her own term against Lee Zeldin in a wildly Democratic state, because everybody understands that she is not up to the job, and she is likely to lose in 2026 in her reelection campaign. And so she may want to leverage getting Adams out as a sign that she's tough and resolute and all of that. The governor of New York State may be about to remove the duly elected mayor of New York City in the year of a reelection on the grounds that some of his deputies have resigned rather than stick around him because obviously, it's bad for their political futures because he's compromised by his connections to the President of the United States. Now, I loathe Adams. I think I've said this before. I met him in 1997. He was the single and remains the single dumbest person I have ever met in politics. And I mean that literally. I mean, he is the single. He came in for an editorial board meeting at the New York Post when I was the editorial page editor, and it was a staggering. He was running a fraternal organization inside the co. Inside the police Department. And it was a staggering meeting. I mean, he is. He is a. He is a. He is a joke, and he shouldn't be mayor. And he. I mean, he was the only person who could be mayor in 2021 because everybody else was politically psychotic during a crime wave and wanted to continue defunding the police and, like, letting people out of jail when New York City was falling apart in criminal terms. And he's done a terrible job. And he is at 9% approval. He is not gonna win. He's not gonna win the primary, and he's not gonna win reelection. So the voters picked him. The voters are gonna reject him. He's not. He hasn't been. He hasn't been convicted of any crime. He is playing footsie with Donald Trump to try to get a pardon. Trump thought here cleverly, I'm not gonna pardon him. I'll drop the charges and then have the possibility of recharging him hanging over his head so that he'll do what I want. Is that bad? Yes. Is it worth turning the state of New York into a banana republic in which people reverse the results of elections? They don't like that. The vote, the choice, the mandate of the voter. Like, what country are we living in? Is this all Democrats are going to do now? Every time they don't like something, they're going to drop the person who won the nomination and make him quit and then give us Kamala Harris without any Democrat ever saying they wanted Kamala Harris to be the nominee. Remember, being the nominee of the Democratic Party isn't like being vice president. It's not like you get it automatically when. When the president dies like that. They just made it happen. And everyone's talking about how Trump is an authoritarian who's seizing power in unjust and illegitimate ways.

[Seth Mandel]

Well, but I gotta say, his involvement here did. I mean, this is the reaction to it. Like, if he. If he didn't, you know, make this. If Trump didn't make this totally politicized move to get Adams off.

[John Podhoretz]

Yeah.

[Seth Mandel]

Then this wouldn't be happening.

[John Podhoretz]

Yeah.

[Christine Rosen]

So, I mean, so.

[John Podhoretz]

So it's.

[Seth Mandel]

It's an arms race. It's sort of weaponizing.

[John Podhoretz]

But Trump. Trump isn't. Trump isn't seeking to depose Adams. No, he wants to use Adams. I mean, trying to play.

[Christine Rosen]

Is going to announce in March. So this is all perfect for him. The chaos and disorder, the, you know, the Hochul versus Adams versus Trump. I mean, all this is great. He's going to announce his. Going to win. So that'll be your Mayor but there is something here, though, where the pressure that Trump brings to bear and the technique and the style has, has revealed something about the Democrats that I think, you know, look, we've been pretty critical of, of the right side of the aisle during this podcast. Let me take a moment to say the language about democracy that I've seen emerge post Trump's victory is astonishing to me. The, you know, the recent news media reports praising how the Germans monitor speech as an example of how democracy should work, rather than it's a precise opposite. And the dangers of authoritarian overreach by federal governments was is astonishing. And yet I do think again, you'll see this in the, in the Democrats efforts to use technocratic power elite power to fix their own mistakes without acknowledging that they were mistakes in the first place. That's what Hochul is trying to do with Adams. And is it I don't even know that it's constitutional under the under whatever the New York State Constitution Constitution says is allowable. If she does it, he certainly has a case to make.

[John Podhoretz]

Well, I mean like she maybe it would be good for him. So here's what happens. It would be good for him, but I mean, he's removed from office. He then runs as a Republican. He's not going to win as a Republican. A real lunatic named Jumani Williams becomes the mayor in interim mayor. They're either there may be a special election before the primary. This is why she shouldn't do it like it's but she, as I say, she has bizarre naked political interests at play here, which is that she can play to the resistance by saying any, you know, Adams played footsie with Trump and therefore he must be removed. And what he was doing with Trump was illegitimate and so illegitimate that he should be removed from office. But remember, all of these things are precedents and the precedent that was essentially adduced by Biden and Harris and the Democratic Party to pull the switcheroo had and was I think, a gigantic mistake that the Democratic Party would have been better served doing something to legitimize have a race in some fashion or other to get a candidate in from September till November to run against Trump. Even if it were Harris that wouldn't have raised all these unseemly things was New Jersey. It happened twice in New Jersey over the preceding 15 years that at the tail end of a race somebody had to drop out and they just install somebody else and that person runs and wins. And that looked like that, that was like a way to go. And it's not that's not the way we do things in the United States. I mean, maybe it will be now. She is opening the floodgates to people, you know, pulling, I mean, but it's.

[Christine Rosen]

A reflection of the values of the Democratic Party. Actually. I think it's a highly educated, wealthy group of people who believe in top down administration to make everything better for all those other people. The unwashed masses who defect have defected from the Democrats and gone more populous, more to the, more to Trump, but they are not loyal to, to that version. So I mean we talked about this before the last election, which was chaos to the right of me, chaos to the left of me, like which is the lesser of two evil evils here. But I do think that she's thinking long term because you know what she's going to do even if she loses. She solidified her post gubernatorial employment as a, as a proud member of a resistance that will be funded by some nonprofit that, you know, installs her on its board. I mean there is an entire pipeline now for people like Hochul and it has nothing to do with whether they governed well or won reelection.

[Unnamed Speaker]

Yeah. By the way, John, you mentioned the New Jersey cases and it just a funny coincidence was the fact that, you know, the most famous of those cases was Bob Torricelli and Josh Shapiro when he, he was, it looked like Josh Shapiro, the governor of Pennsylvania was going to be the vice president, vice presidential nominee of a, the kind of late stage substitution that you mentioned. Josh Shapiro was a senior aide to Torricelli back at the time. So there was like this cycle thing of where Democrats sort of just sort of take the idea that we could just get rid of anybody at any moment. You know, this, this sort of thing goes on. But also I, I think that the, I think that Hochul's gonna have to deal with Democratic opposition within the political structure to getting rid of Adams, which is the other wrinkle, because there's all sorts of complicated rules now about if Adams is removed within a certain amount of time before the Democratic primary and he's replaced by a sort of interim mayor. Whatever their person, there are rules about whether that person can run in the following years, can run in the special election to replace him, and rules about who runs in the special election that can then run in the following real election after the term limited. You know, but the Democrat Democrats are, there's a lot of Democrats who want to be elected, in other words, who are going to say to her, don't remove him because it's actually better for all of us and for the party. If you don't throw that kind of a wrench in whatever and stuff like that.

[John Podhoretz]

I don't think there is any Democrat in New York City right now who is going to. Is telling Kathy Hochul not to remove him. And that's part of the horrible corruption that is going on here. It's a free shot at Adams. He's got. He's got a 9% approval rating. Okay. The only reason to oppose this is that is destructive of our. Of our polity. The only reason to oppose this, no one supports him. Everybody dislikes him. He then did this thing with Trump, and that's bad for the sanctuary cities and all of that. I heard the Brooklyn borough president on the local news channel this morning say Adams thinks he can just go anywhere and say anything. And now he's gonna read. Now he's in it. It's like, yeah, he can go anywhere and say anything. He's an American citizen. He's a citizen of the United States.

[Christine Rosen]

As well as Germany or the U.K. right.

[John Podhoretz]

Okay. He's not in the U.K. and he's not in Germany. Right. So, but he. He is allowed to go. It's like, that is an impeachable. That is. That's an offense that he could be removed from office by the governor of the state, that he goes anywhere and says anything. But that's how they're feeling and how. That's how they're thinking. And it is strictly a matter of principle that she shouldn't do this. She shouldn't do this because it's a Pandora's box that's being opened in the United States to remove someone without real cause, because, as I say, they're not even really citing the indictments as a reason to remove him. And that would be fun. So let's figure out a way to indict Kathy Hochul and then see whether she resigns. And there's no one to remove her from office except impeachment. But, I mean, this shouldn't happen. I don't know how many times. I mean, this really shouldn't happen. If they can drive him to resign, that would be fine. If he could be driven to resign, Andrew Cuomo was driven to resign. That can be fine. There's an impeachment process. He could be impeached. There's an impeachment process for governor. That's one of the reasons that Cuomo resigned, is he was worried that he would be impeached or that he was keeping his powder dry to be returned to office. In 2025, which looks like it's going to happen in New York City.

[Unnamed Speaker]

Right. I mean, we saw that election that featured Elliot Spitzer running for controller. Right. And. And who else was Anthony Weiner. That was for mayor. That was one election where two guys who had been forced out of office for like, you know, perverse stuff were running in the same election again just a couple of years later.

[John Podhoretz]

Wiener's coming back. He's going to run for city council. So that, that should be fun because no one ever goes away in the United States. No one ever goes away. Like, who is the guy who was at the center of the Profumo scandal? I can't remember his name in Britain. And he ended up basically the disgraced profumo and it was named was Perfumer. Right. So he was disgraced. He, you know, he had these. These affairs and everything.

[Christine Rosen]

They're disgraced guys in the House of Lords and no one pays attention.

[John Podhoretz]

No, no.

[Unnamed Speaker]

But he went off.

[John Podhoretz]

He resigned in disgrace and he went off and sort of did good works. He worked at a hospital, he worked at a nursing home. Like he. He felt, you know, he wanted to sort of like get good with God before he died. That is not something that anybody in America ever seems to do. Weirdly.

[Seth Mandel]

I think it's part of like, it's a reflection of, you know, classical American optimism. We just. We forgive and forget no matter how vicious we are. When something happens, give it enough time.

[John Podhoretz]

We'Re happy to see everyone thing. The single most wrong thing ever said quip ever delivered about United that the United States was F. Scott Fitzgerald saying there are no second acts in American lives. And he was right because there are eight acts in American lives or nine acts in American lives. Nobody ever goes away.

[Christine Rosen]

The only question is podcast comeback tour happens. Ladies, you ready?

[Unnamed Speaker]

The only question we'll find out is whether is what kind of offenses matter to people.

[John Podhoretz]

Right?

[Unnamed Speaker]

I mean the through line and all the ones that we met mentioned were like sexual, you know, misbehavior or whatever. And we know that, you know, yes, Bill Clinton came back from that and Elliot Spitzer tried to come back from that and all this. I wonder if maybe corruption has a stronger for negative force on a politician's ability to come back in America. Then you know, personal scandal that might.

[John Podhoretz]

There could be. And of course, Cuomo was not ousted for corruption and he was not ousted. He was ousted for his handling of COVID But that was the. The. That was the incidental. That was. That was not the nominal reason that he had to quit. He quit because of a. Because of pretty shaky charges of sexual harassment and manhandling women that are, you know, the more you look at them or you consider them, the less, you know, again, if Bill Clinton stays as president after what he did with an intern. You know, Aaron Cuomo calling somebody sweetheart is not exactly the, you know, reason for a person to lose. And, but that, as I say, that was kind of the way that they got him because everybody wasn't ready to say that he had mishandled Covid in New York State, so they were just happy to get him for some other reason as, as, as he soured. And he is a crazy person. And, and like, you know, he's a very effective politician and a very crazy politician. The question is, can he. Can he subdue the crazy to get himself elected and can he subdue the crazy to be a good governor? And, you know, I don't know. Do people change? Probably not, but he probably is going to be mayor.

[Unnamed Speaker]

Profumo.

[John Podhoretz]

Change.

[Seth Mandel]

Changed.

[Unnamed Speaker]

He was a new man.

[John Podhoretz]

He was people. I mean, people do. People. People do change, but not much. So we'll be back tomorrow. For Christine, Seth and A.B. i'm John Potter. It's Keep the candle bur.