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- [00:04]
John Podhoretz
Hope for the best, expect the worst.
- [00:11]
Abe Greenwald
Some preach and pain Some die at first the way of knowing which way it's going.
- [00:19]
Eliana Johnson
Hope for the best, Expect the worst.
- [00:22]
John Podhoretz
Hope for the best.
- [00:25]
Abe Greenwald
Welcome to the Commentary Magazine daily podcast. I am Jon Podhoric, the editor of Commentary magazine, and we are brought to you today by the Hamilton School at the University of Florida. Because at a time when American higher education has lost its way, the Hamilton School at the University of Florida is setting a new standard, offering an elite education that's anything but elitist. Led by world class scholars, Hamilton is reviving the classical liberal arts tradition grounded in the great works of Western civilization and the founding principles of the American Republic. In small discussion based classes, students study history, philosophy, economics, literature and America's founding texts, developing the discipline, eloquence and moral confidence to lead with purpose in their careers, their communities and their lives. Learn more at Hamilton ufl. Edu Commentary. That's Hamilton ufl, the Hamilton School at the University of Florida leading a revolution in higher education. Joining me today, as always, Executive editor Abe Greenwald. Hi, Abe.
- [01:39]
Seth Mandel
Hi, John.
- [01:40]
Abe Greenwald
Senior editor Seth Mandel. Hi, Seth.
- [01:43]
Eliana Johnson
Hi, John.
- [01:43]
Abe Greenwald
And Washington Free Beacon editor Eliana Johnson. Hi, Eliana.
- [01:47]
John Podhoretz
Hi, John.
- [01:48]
Abe Greenwald
So just as we were about to start this podcast bulletin from the New York Times, Epstein alleged in emails that Trump knew of his conduct. In a message obtained by Congress, the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein wrote that Donald J. Trump spent hours at his house with one of Epstein's victims. Interestingly enough, the subhead refers to Epstein as Mr. Epstein. I believe that the style book that I was taught under says you don't use Mr. For a convicted felon. But I guess maybe the New York Times has gone another way in this regard. And of course, Epstein also, it defaults to a lot. Defaults to Dr. Okay, I wanted to lead with the podcast, not because I think that the this piece has any kind of smoking gun. You know, in this sense, we knew that Trump and Epstein had a relationship. We knew that that relationship ended at some point. But these emails that the Times cite, which were gotten by Democrats in Congress and leaked to them, are from 2011, 2015 and 2019. The ones in 2015 and 2019 appear to be between Epstein and Michael Wolf, the sleazebag, pseudobiographer and general New York slime bucket who seems to be advising Epstein while trashing Trump or then praising Trump and, you know, not. It's like, you know, getting into it. It's like getting into a bath of feces when you start mentioning Michael Wolf. Nonetheless, he is One of the people on the other side of these emails, and secondarily an email between Ghislaine Maxwell, his procurer, obviously now in a federal prison, a nicer federal prison than she was in a couple months ago. Talking about how Trump was the dog in the attacks on him in 2011. Epstein tells Ghislaine Trump was the dog that didn't bark and that at least one of his victims spent hours with Trump at Epstein's house. Thoughts? Don't everybody jump in at once.
- [04:14]
John Podhoretz
All right, I'll jump in, provided that I literally just finished reading the story. I don't see how this changes anything. It doesn't appear to me to contradict anything Trump has said previously. He said he knew Epstein. He said they had a falling out around 2004. He's given, to this point, somewhat different explanations of why that falling out happened. He basically said he thinks Epstein was a sleazebag and that he hired women away from Mar A Lago. He kicked Epstein out of Mar A Lago, said he knew him the way everyone in Palm beach knew him, which may mean, and probably did mean that everybody in Palm beach thought the guy was a scumbag. I mean, his conduct seems to have been fairly widely known. And then I think the key passage in the New York Times story is the following. In an email from January 2019, Mr. Epstein wrote to Mr. Wolf of Mr. Trump. Of course he knew about the girls. As he asked G. Lane to stop. That seems to actually put Cass Trump in a positive light.
- [05:26]
Abe Greenwald
Well, we don't know what. We don't know what the. What.
- [05:28]
John Podhoretz
We don't know what it means. But that's how it. That's how it lands with me. I'm just sort of responding this way.
- [05:34]
Abe Greenwald
About the girls because he asked Jalaine to stop soliciting the girls to him. That would be the positive one, right? He's like, ghislaine, leave me alone with these underage girls. You're sickening me. Or it could be.
- [05:49]
John Podhoretz
I mean, certainly didn't write. He didn't ask Jillian to keep sending them. He asked Jillian to, you know, send them younger and prettier.
- [05:57]
Abe Greenwald
Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Why now? Why is this out now? What is going on?
- [06:05]
Seth Mandel
Well, the.
- [06:05]
Eliana Johnson
I mean, the main thing is that it coincides with the discharge petition. Right? I mean, that's. That's kind of the.
- [06:14]
Abe Greenwald
The.
- [06:15]
Eliana Johnson
Now that Democrats are going to have.
- [06:17]
Abe Greenwald
I'm just an unfrozen caveman lawyer. Please explain to me now that now.
- [06:21]
Eliana Johnson
The Democrats are going. Now the Democrats are Going to have there a congresswoman who was not sworn in during the shutdown but who was elected to office is she's going to be sworn in because of the number of Republicans who support a petition to release the Epstein files to force Trump to release all the Epstein files, whatever that means. She becomes the 218th vote vote. The House now has a majority because there's a number of Republicans who also want, you know, these, them to release the Epstein files. Tom Massie has been part of this group that, you know, Trump is, is supporting a primary against him and you know, so, so there's enough Republicans now discharge petition. The discharge petition just sort of triggers other votes, other procedural votes. It's a, you know, a multi step procedural process. But the point is that they now have to. The Trump White House now has to fight procedurally a petition from the House to release the Epstein files. And so this seems time, I mean, I don't know, I just read the story, you know, a few minutes ago. I don't, I don't, I didn't process it. But the timing itself as the question seems to be to enable the push forward of this now that starting today there will be some sort of legal political process that the President is going to have to beat in order to keep these files.
- [07:57]
Abe Greenwald
The House has come back into session in order to pass the opening of the government and Mike Johnson has agreed after eight weeks to swear in this congresswoman from Arizona. And so the House is now back and that procedure can move forward. So if you are a conspiracy theorist of the right or the left or just an ordinary person who finds everything relating to Epstein to stink to high heaven and the whole thing makes you uncomfortable, which I put myself in that camp. Weird things have been going on all year. Pam Bondi, the Attorney General and Kash Patel, the FBI director, both in the course of their political lives over the last year or two years, said they would, they would release all the Epstein files. And then when they assumed office said we've looked through them, there's nothing there. We're not releasing them in order to protect the identities and the privacy of the victims who do not deserve to have their names and whatever they were out in the open. They participated in 2008 in testimony and other things against Epstein and it's nobody's business who they are. And we're just telling you, we having looked at them, that there's nothing there. Now, of course, imagine that they, that Biden was the president or you know, Harris was the president and announced that these Files would never be released out of office. Cash Patel and Pam Bondi would be having a cow saying, oh, they're covering up for everybody who took a plane trip to sex slave island. All of their people, Bill Clinton and Alan Dershowitz. I'm not saying that they went, by the way. So I just want to, like, I want to, I want to immunize ourselves from, from prosecution or, you know, being sued. I'm saying this is what they would say, that they're protecting the Democratic elite from getting into trouble. Now they're in power and they're the ones who have said they were not going to do what they had promised to do, which is release all of this material, thus giving rise to a new kind of leftist conspiracy theorizing relating to Epstein, which is that they're covering for Trump, that there is stuff in the files about Trump and Republicans that they are now in a position to suppress. And that is why leftists and left wing congressmen are joining with conspiracy minded right wing congressmen in the desire to release this material that otherwise we would never see because it's under seal. And part of legal proceedings that were resolved and in part of the resolution of those proceedings, the records were under seal. And they do involve, under, they do involve people who were underage at the time that this material was collected. So here's what's interesting to me. I'm now going to do the, my wife thing. There's a whole thing where people in journalism say, my wife heard. And you know, that's like, okay. So my wife said to me last week, you know, I have been following this really closely, but I was out with somebody who said, well, you know, the reason that the Republicans want the government to stay shut down is because they're trying to hide the Epstein, the release of the Epstein files. And that is why the Republicans want the shutdown. And she said to me, well, I don't understand this. And I said, well, you're right not to understand because the Republicans don't actually want the government to be shut down. They want the government to be open. But this is a line that was being proffered on crooked media and MSNBC shows and all of that. There is a, an esoteric motive for the shutdown, which is to hide the Epstein material that once it comes out, will destroy everybody. So that's part of this story that is of interest to me that in the bubbling reaches of the left wing conspiracist world, they think there's a smoking gun in these papers. And if even if there isn't a smoking gun. And what the New York Times story, which you guys can read the minute you're. You can read it while we're talking, if you're near a computer or whatever, doesn't have a smoking gun. It does say Trump, Epstein, Trump, Epstein, Epstein. Says Trump, Trump. Is there. Trump, Trump, Epstein. And that may be all that is needed.
- [13:07]
Seth Mandel
When you talk about timing, I mean, to my mind, if you are a Trump detractor on the right or the left or you're an Epstein scandal enthusiast, there's never a bad time for a story like this to break. I mean, it's. You know, you can. You're happy to drip out any piece from any file, any time to make any sort of insinuation, and then everyone goes off and, you know, analyzes, tries to read the tea leaves, and no one gets to anything. I mean, it will not be the last time. It won't be the last time this year that we will get some new piece of information like this.
- [13:54]
John Podhoretz
I guess my question, I don't mean to be glib about this. You know, Epstein was creep and a criminal. But I'm reading the Time story carefully now, and the first paragraph says that the messages, these email messages suggested that the convicted sex offender believed Mr. Trump knew more about his abuse than he has acknowledged. I mean, if that is the upshot here, who cares? So Trump knew more than he's publicly acknowledged. I mean, that's supposed to be a breaking news. I guess I would assume Trump knows a bit more than he's acknowledged. Like, who cares? Who cares?
- [14:43]
Eliana Johnson
I care.
- [14:45]
John Podhoretz
I don't really care.
- [14:46]
Abe Greenwald
I care a little. Let me. I mean, when I said that, I'm in this weird third camp of extreme.
- [14:53]
John Podhoretz
Yeah. I mean, I just don't think it's gonna be some big scandal like Trump himself has been put on trial for sexual misconduct. Like, this is going to be a pale, you know.
- [15:07]
Abe Greenwald
Okay. The Epstein story is the story that it is and will remain a story for as long as we are alive and will be revived every couple of years by another book and another investigation and that sort of thing because of the circumstances surrounding his prosecution, his plea, his second prosecution, and then his death, all of which have mysteries and weirdnesses surrounding them that are inexplicable and impossible to sort through. Right. Why did the government agree to a plea deal in 2008 when they had him dead to rights? Why did. You know, why did Leon Black of Apollo pay him $158 million for tax advice, which is roughly $140 million more for tax advice than anybody has ever been paid for tax advice. Why did Leslie Wexner of the Limited give him a $70 million house in Manhattan? Why did Melinda Gates say that one of the primary reasons she divorced Bill Gates was his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein. What were these flights to the island that he had parties on? And of course, once he was convicted a second time and was in the Brooklyn Correctional Institution, how was it that the cameras were off and the guys were asleep and all of that and he was on suicide watch and then he managed to commit suicide anyway? People I genuinely and deeply respect, like Bill Barr, who was then Attorney General, said he looked into it and that the suicide was legit. In other words, that he did commit suicide and nobody did it to him. But at the tail end of this entire 11 year saga of Jeffrey Epstein's behavior and wandering around in the world of the American elites in some very strange fashion with an investment company that almost no one worked for and dying with an Estate with $560 million in cash. In cash, not in stocks and bonds. And this and that in cash. And then Ghislaine Maxwell's conviction as a part of the sex offenses. Nothing adds up. That doesn't mean the Trumps involved or not involved, but you cannot. This story is the, is, is a, is the story of our time. It is going to be the unsolved crime of our time. And every time has some famously unsolved crime or unsolved mystery that never goes away. You know, Judge Crater's disappearance, Amy Semple McPherson's disappearance. Who was Jack the Ripper? You know, did Lizzie Borden kill her parents? I mean, there are these legendary crimes that we never get to the bottom of. And this is the legendary crime of our time. And so this story can never end, in my view, unless some, unless the dam breaks and somebody like in a Perry Mason episode said, yes, I did it, I did it, I procured the. And with, you know, Galain Maxwell steps out and then like lays it out, like at the, you know, at the end of a horrible, you know, TV show or something where they just.
- [19:05]
Eliana Johnson
I want to see Galain Maxwell pull a Wolf Blitzer in Mission Impossible. Pull off the mask. Yeah, let's see who's underneath that. No, I mean, I. It's also the story of our time because our time just gets more conspiracist, right? I mean, there's no, there's not necessarily evidence that society has become more given to conspiracy theories over the past however many years. But public life, I think it's impossible to deny that public life has, that the public discourse has. The public political discourse has become more conspiracist, right? Aside from whether we're saying people believe more than they used to or whatever. And the Internet spreads that discourse. And so Trump is really at the center of it. I mean, we've spent. Trump was on the, on the subject of conspiracy theories, you know, he really was the band leader for the rights, you know, march of the Conspiracists a decade and a half ago when Obama was still in office, because he managed, you know, in, in one of the most dispiriting scenes I can remember in my adult life, he managed to provoke the sitting President of the United States into producing a birth certificate and giving, you know, a statement on camera about it. And it was like, well, that's how far this thing has gone, right? So Trump is really good at riling people up and making sure that these things stick and you never hear the end of it, whatever. But from there, we did get into a whole era where the right was particularly concerned about human trafficking. I mean, we, maybe we're still in that era, but the point is that post Obama birth certificate, everything, these, this conspiracist community took on an immediate, took on, immediately took on the fight over human trafficking, the trafficking of minors, you know, for the sexual gratification of people in power. And that's really where we are. And Trump did nothing to discourage that, obviously. But if anything, you know, he always sort of like being this, you know, this, this, this, you know, this, this, this, this whip spoon, you know, and stirring things up, this pot stirrer. And I think that this is, you know, in a lot of ways, this is chickens coming home to roost on him because he has made the atmosphere of conspiracy thinking so legitimate and legitimized that he can't wave it away. And also this fits the kind of stuff that he was, you know, egging on.
- [21:54]
Abe Greenwald
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Support our show and let them know we sent you after checkout. BrooklynBetting.com promo code COMMENTARY hey everybody. Cold mornings are coming, holiday plans are being made. This is when I just want my wardrobe to be simple. Stuff that looks sharp, feels good and features things I'll actually wear. For me, as you know, that's Quince. And the bonus quince pieces make great gifts too. This season's lineup is simple but smart and easy with quintessential quints. $50 Mongolian cashmere sweaters that feel like an everyday luxury and wool coats that are equal parts stylish and durable. Their denim nails the fit and everyday comfort at all at a fraction of what you'd expect to pay. By partnering directly with ethical factories and top artisans, Quince cuts out the middlemen to deliver premium quality at half the cost of other high end brands. So you can give luxury quality pieces without the luxury price tag. You know me, I'm loaded with quints. I got a Quint's winter coat. I'm wearing a Quint sweater while I'm talking to you. These are wonderful things for me. Wonderful things as gifts, wonderful things for your kids, wonderful things for your parents. Give and get timeless holiday staples that last this season with quince. Go to quints.com commentary for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns now available in Canada too. That's Q U I n c e.com Commentary Free shipping and 365 day returns. Quints.com Commentary this is a very, very important point that yeah, Trump brought a certain type of, I mean, look, we've been living in a time in which the idea is that there is a story behind the story since the Kennedy assassination. I mean, you guys, I was two when Kennedy was assassinated. You guys weren't born yet. But I mean, since 1963, an enormous number of American people believe that they have been fed lies about unbelievably important things. And then there were little bits of pieces along the way to support this as a general proposition. Right? The Pentagon paper suggesting that the military knew that it was losing in Vietnam and was not being square and straight with the American people about the condition of the battle as it was being, or the battles as they were being fought, you know, on and on, the sort of the story behind the story. And then something 9, 11. Then people start believing conspiracies that are clearly untrue. You know, a missile hit Flight 800 in 1996. 911 was an inside job. You know, steel can't melt fire, can't melt steel or whatever. You know, that, that we deliberately went to war in Iraq for false purposes, which, by the way, no one has ever been able to convincingly explain to me what the purpose of going to war in Iraq was for false purposes. You know, what was it? What, what, what, what were Bush. What were they all getting out of it by doing this? Right? And then the fact that the 2008 financial meltdown featured people like Chuck Prince of Citibank and others saying things like, well, we knew it was all going to collapse, but it was all a question of how long we were going to keep dancing until the last amendment when we could profit from it, sell off to some moron and then watch the world burn while we made money off it. Then you go to Trump, the birth certificate and the child trafficking, and we have a world in which everybody's got at least one conspiracy that they believe in, right? And everybody. As I say, my conspiracy that I believe in is that Epstein did not kill himself. I have no evidence. I don't know anything. There's something about it. I just. So that's my one. Everybody gets one. There were people who were buying this idea that in the basement of Comet Pizza, they were harvesting children's adrenochrome to keep Hillary Clinton alive. And a guy came to Washington with guns to break into Comet Pizza on Connecticut Avenue to save the children from the adrenochrome factory. And then upon learning that, you know, he had been sold a bill of goods, like in this courtroom, he was like, I don't know what happened. I went insane. I believed things that were being told to me that were clearly and patently untrue. And something went wrong in my brain. So this is a three generation problem here. And yeah, Trump benefited from it. Trump created the counter narrative approach to becoming a leading candidate for president. And maybe, as Seth, you suggest, this is the price that he is paying for it.
- [28:12]
Seth Mandel
I mean, there were also conspiracies that I think we could say were real. The conspiracy to delegitimize Hunter Biden's laptop as an actual piece of evidence.
- [28:29]
Abe Greenwald
Yeah. The February 2nd meeting of the COVID people who decided to suppress information suggesting that the United States government was in fact supporting gain of function research when it was not. When it was not allowed to under congressional statute. And then to destroy everybody who said otherwise. That February 4th. I can't remember some date in February when this weird mind meld that said that it was a naturally occurring and not lab engineered virus. Right. We still, by the way, don't know whether it was naturally occurring or whether it was lab engineered. I mean, we're still not there yet. But the idea that anybody who said that it was lab engineered and that it escaped should have their reputations destroyed. Yeah, that was a real conspiracy. And the Hunter Biden laptop. The 51. The 51 national security officials who said that it was a. That it was disinformation. I love that, by the way, that an object is disinformation. No one ever quite parsed that either. Right. An object of disinformation anyway. Right. So, yeah, there are conspiracies. There always have been conspiracies, but I.
- [29:54]
Seth Mandel
Mean, we're just scratching the surface. You know, the Epstein case is a mainstream conspiracy. The rest of the world or the right, they're heading like Candace Owens word, you know, like they're out. They're all sort of drifting into much stranger, crazier, deeper, all explaining conspiracies. So.
- [30:21]
Abe Greenwald
Yeah, right, right.
- [30:23]
Eliana Johnson
I mean, at one point, I think I mentioned this in the piece I wrote on the. On the influencers on the. Right. But Candace. Candace Owens at one point mentioned the Israelis in part of her rant about her theory that the first lady of France was born a man and that. And that there were some, you know, she suggested some sort of Israeli blackmail thing. So, yeah, I mean, they, they are looking for the one. This, you know, the one. This is the one weird trick community. This is. They're looking for the one thing, the singularity that, you know, answers it all. And it's kind of frightening to watch it because it, you know, as conspiracy theories do they move in one direction.
- [31:11]
Abe Greenwald
So I'm reminded, I've mentioned this before, you know, that other societies have functioned in this fashion to some degree. Right. In which there are. I mean, you could basically say that there is a taste for this idea that elites need private spaces to meet, to get together, to do things together, out of sight, to sort of help manage the world better than the world would manage itself. This is kind of the idea behind the late 19th century passion for things that still exist until the 21st, like the secret societies at Yale or the eating clubs at Princeton or places like that. Young elite people need to develop social relationships out of the view of general society so that they can manage the world together as a kind of natural aristocracy. That is not. That's what clubbing is about. That's what, you know, this is not, this is not a, that's not even a conspiracy theory. That's like a real thing that was actually sort of preached as a doctrine, you know, by social Darwinists at the end of the 19th century. And this there is the great, you know, one of the three or four greatest novelists, Honore de Balzac. His 37 novel cycle, the Human Comedy, posits that there is a conspiracy in French society of thirteen people who run everything. That is the sort of the key fact of the world of Paris and French society that, that, that he is portraying in this interlocking series of novels. And it's. They're novels, so you can say he made it up out of whole cloth, but, you know, these are the wisest, smartest, most sophisticated books practically ever written about the workings of society. And it's probably fair to assume that he was onto something, right? These non. In the, in this non democratic, non entirely monarchical, weird society that was made up of all kinds of different elements. So it's not like conspiracies don't exist, the conspiracy theories don't happen. You know, all of that. It's a, it's a, it's a lifelong thing. And so. But in, in the annals of America, Trump is the first politician to build his foundation on a conspiracy theory. The foundation of his political career was the birth certificate, right? Which was. Obama was cooked in a lab to become president, United States, 47 years later by having been born in Kenya, by somehow having been transshipped from Kenya to Hawaii in two days in 1961, which wouldn't have been possible, having this birth certificate somehow filed in there, then lost, blah, all of that, because somehow in 1961, people knew that it would be great to have the name Barack Hussein Obama to run for president in 2008. It never made any sense, but it was the core of his political emergence, you know, and so, yeah, here we are 14, 15 years later, and it's. Or 13 years later, and he's now on the receiving end of the kinds of things that he believes.
- [34:54]
Eliana Johnson
His, his lame duck status, although, is not the main driver of this, but the idea that his, his time is passing as leader of the movement, right? And, and there's the sort of game of thrones for, you know, for, for who's going to be his heir on the right. You see, these guys are not moved by appeals to leave Trump alone. Right? I mean, we've seen this week, you know, Nick Fuentes and those guys, like, they'll go right at the administration that part of this new attitude is to be authentic. You will go at anyone. You're not part of, you know, maga. You're not part of this or that. You just, you just are. And you're a, you're a, you're a missile, and you're going to hit whatever you're fired at. And, and so that also really works against Trump in this way, too, with the Epstein stuff, because nobody feels, people don't feel a sense of, I'll leave the guy alone. What if we don't win an election? There's the mentality of the conspiracist, right. Especially has moved beyond, you know, any sort of electoral considerations or party considerations or anything like that. And so there's nothing really to, to protect him.
- [36:10]
Abe Greenwald
It's also fun, like, to say, I'm sorry to say, because it's demonic and barbaric and evil, but is there a more sheerly fun story in American politics than what was going on with Jeffrey Epstein? I mean, it is. Everybody gets to play.
- [36:30]
John Podhoretz
I was just thinking back to the Trump Obama birth certificate thing, and it's really interesting. It does capture Trump's genius. This is before Trump was a political figure, he was just a business guy. And so it was in 2011, and he was able to play on this sense among conservatives that it wasn't that Obama was cooked in a lab, it was that he didn't really like America. Why is this guy taking shots at our country all the time? And then, like, the matter of his name, like, the guy has a funny name and he has. Was. His father was born in Kenya.
- [37:18]
Abe Greenwald
His father was Kenya.
- [37:19]
Eliana Johnson
His father was.
- [37:21]
John Podhoretz
Father was Kenyan. And, and so Trump's like, was doing the, you know, just asking questions thing, like, what's so hard about. Just, you weren't here, show us your birth certificate. And I was the producer for Sean Hannity at the time. And Trump leveraged his relationships the way he does now with the media to make this a headline story on Fox News. And I remember, you know, doing the show every day like, this was the top block of a primetime show on Fox News, because the thing rated and Trump would call in. I mean, he was the guest. And it was something people wanted to watch, but it was world class trolling.
- [38:05]
Abe Greenwald
Right?
- [38:06]
John Podhoretz
And the Epstein thing has a lot of the same characteristics where John, I mean, when you talked about it, it was like something just doesn't sit right about this with people. Like there's something funny going on here.
- [38:18]
Abe Greenwald
It rates and Epstein rates, right? And you know, these stories rate and Tucker, look, Tucker Carlson's entire career as a podcaster as a result of being fired by Fox is created on a platform. And the platform is everything that they have been telling you about the 20th and 21st centuries is a lie. World War II was fought on the basis of a lie. The idea that Christians should support, have a theological, many Christians have a theological reason that they would support and support. And the existence of the state of Israel and the flourishing of Israel is a lie. This is a lie. I'm bringing on this guy to say, no, Maduro is fine. The Russian subway system is better than the American subway system. There's no crime in Russia. There's no, you know, this, that the other thing, the whole thing is based on. Come to me for a counter history of the world that we're living in and I will supply you with endless amounts of information that say that everything that you were ever told is untrue. And that's Fuentes also, and Candace Owens, who seems to be doing it with startling rapidity in which she will change what the story that wasn't true was today from the story that wasn't true yesterday. And clearly, you know, it's a nation of 330 million people. If, if Nick Fuentes can get a million people to listen to him, that's 1, 1, 330th of the country. But I'll tell you what, that's more people than watch CNN right now. I mean, that's part of the story. Also, is that the official story or the way in which news is reported in America has completely lost the confidence of everybody else also. So it's not as though, oh, we can ignore this because while a million people are listening to Nick Fuentes or you know, believing some Kennedy conspiracy theory about the assassination, 40 million people every night are watching Walter Cronkite and they're, that's the, the, you know, the sort of, the more responsible way that news is being that news is gathered and reported is the overwhelming way in which people get information. But that's not true anymore. As many people listen to Tucker Carlson as watch, I don't know, you know, the BBC NewsHour on PBS or watch PBS NewsHour or something like that. So there is no establishment news. So the counter history starts, at least numerically being just as valid as the, as, as the, as the official story.
- [41:16]
Seth Mandel
And that's before we get into the generational question because then, you know, it's. There are people who grew up watching Walter Cronkite who now are on the Tucker Fuentes train. What about the people who grew up knowing nothing other than a world of counter history, than podcasts, you know, Gen Alpha. This is as far as they're concerned. This is the news. That's the news.
- [41:52]
Abe Greenwald
Well, you know, you know, we're talking Walter Cronkite, but remember that a key moment in the destruction of the reputation of the News business came 21 years ago when Walter Cronkite's successor, Dan Rather, bought into a fabricated conspiracy theory about how George W. Bush got out of military service and broadcast it on the Tiffany Network, cbs using a fabricated letter that it took a single blogger typing it into his computer to realize had been composed in a typeface that did not exist in the year the letter was supposedly written. So Dan Rather was the anchor of the CBS Evening News and he was gone in 10 days. And to this day, Rather has not disavowed that story.
- [42:55]
John Podhoretz
It took a little longer than, took a little longer than 10 days, but it wasn't longer. Yeah, it took a long time to get Rather out, but, but eventually his producers and Mary Mapes was the producer and Rather. Rather was pushed into early retirement. And it's true, he has never disavowed that story.
- [43:19]
Abe Greenwald
He's 94 years old.
- [43:20]
John Podhoretz
Even if the documents themselves were fraudulent, the story was true. And he's now back in good odor being cited by mainstream journalists to decry Barry Weiss's ascension to CBS News because he says she's going to dishonor the organization.
- [43:40]
Eliana Johnson
My favorite Dan Rather appearances were when he would go on Reliable Sources and he would be sitting there, there would be a big sign that said Reliable Sources behind Dan Rather.
- [43:52]
Abe Greenwald
So, you know, because he was part of the destruction, this, this thing I'm about to pose is by definition nonsensical. Well, I think Rather did this today. I don't think he would have to resign.
- [44:05]
John Podhoretz
You know, it's interesting, cuz wrather happened in 2004 and it was essentially on the eve of the 2004 election.
- [44:14]
Eliana Johnson
Yeah, it was.
- [44:15]
John Podhoretz
Bush and Cheney were running for reelection against Kerry and Edwards and ooh, Edwards.
- [44:23]
Abe Greenwald
Good poll. Look at you. I bet you there aren't there isn't 90% of this audience could not pull John Edwards name out when asked who ran with John Kerry.
- [44:35]
John Podhoretz
Unforgettable.
- [44:36]
Abe Greenwald
Unforgettable.
- [44:37]
John Podhoretz
Unforgettable. But rather revealed, I think, for so many of us who had. I mean, I was a junior in college, sophomore, junior in college. For so many of us who had seen media bias, felt media bias, that the top journalists in their fields were. Journalism was the practice of politics, and it was politics by other means. And rather was using 60 minutes.
- [45:11]
Abe Greenwald
To.
- [45:12]
John Podhoretz
Try to defeat George W. Bush in the reelection campaign and using nefarious means to do it. And now it's just Trump's ascension. And Trump's naked attacks on the press allowed the press to say, well, he's attacking the First Amendment in the Constitution, so it's okay for us to drop the veil and attack him back. And now this is happening much more out in the Open. But 2004 was a turning point in all of that.
- [45:41]
Abe Greenwald
I mean, John, you said, John, you.
- [45:44]
Seth Mandel
Said if Dan Rather had done this today, he would be able to keep his job. I'm thinking of. I mean, this is the direction that conversation is going in about this media falsehoods and whatnot. There was a point over the summer where every single major media organization ran fake photos of sick kids and said they were being starved by Israel. Forget that it's an anti Semitic story. Forget that it's a political story. Forget that it's Israel's story about the Jews. It is a story. It was the announcement of the total eradication of media standards. That was it. I mean, that was, to me, you're right. And that's why no reason to believe anything after that.
- [46:37]
John Podhoretz
Doesn't it go back? I mean, I'm sure we could find a million examples. But we mentioned earlier in the show the letter from the 51 intelligence officials saying that the Hunter Biden laptop is Russian disinformation. And we now know that to have been organized by Tony Blinken.
- [46:57]
Seth Mandel
Right.
- [46:58]
John Podhoretz
Working for the Biden campaign. And there's no note if you go back on that article, which was published by Politico. And in fact, it's. It's not. Not only that the authors of such reports are not penalized or don't have to say, I'm sorry, I made a mistake. It's that they've been promoted, they've ascended to new heights in the profession. So. So I think you're right to say, John, that nothing would happen today.
- [47:27]
Eliana Johnson
Well, that's actually a really interesting point too, to make, though, because Eliana what you're beyond whether there's punishment and consequences. What you're pointing out is if someone were doing research on Russia related matters, they would find all these stories. There wouldn't be, these stories haven't been removed, they haven't had corrections and I mean, some, I'm sure have been correct. But there aren't notes on every, you know, Russiagate story or whatever about this. If someone were going out through history to write this era and they went out on the Internet and they found they would find all these mainstream outlets, they could do their research on CNN and New York Times and, you know, all these other like mainstream outlets and they, they might reconstruct the exact same Russiagate story that turned out to be highly deficient to say the least. But if you told somebody, tell me what happened in this period between Trump and Russia, they might scour the archives of all our major institutions and come back with, oh, he was blackmailed. There was a tape, there was a. This, you know, and that's, that's the thing is that they've sort of left all this. It's not even residue.
- [48:43]
Abe Greenwald
It's okay not to be perfect with finances.
- [48:46]
Eliana Johnson
Experian is your big financial friend and here to help. Did you know you can get matched with credit cards on the app?
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Abe Greenwald
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- [49:02]
Eliana Johnson
Applying for no ding decline cards won't.
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Abe Greenwald
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Eliana Johnson
Inquiry which may impact your credit scores. Experian.
- [49:13]
Abe Greenwald
The holidays mean more travel, more shopping, more time online, and more personal info in more places that could expose you more to identity theft. But LifeLock monitors millions of data points per second. If your identity is stolen, our US based restoration specialists will fix it, guaranteed, or your money back. Don't face drained accounts, fraudulent loans or financial losses alone. Get more holiday fun and less holiday worry with LifeLock. Save up to 40% your first year. Visit LifeLock.com podcast terms apply. We can go back in time on that. There was an issue 20 years ago. People who were knowledgeable about Soviet history and the coverage of the Soviet Union in the United States were very concerned. Got very concerned after the fall of the Soviet Union and all that that. The New York Times correspondent in Moscow, during the purges, during the, you know, during the five Year Plan, all this was a, an agent of Soviet influence named Walter Tarante who won a Pulitzer Prize for his coverage of Moscow and Stalin. And everybody now knows. Everybody who knows knows that Durante was writing lies about what was going on in the Soviet Union. And there was this idea that the New York Times should return the Pulitzer Prize and should remove Duranty's stories from their archives or at least isolate them, do something or other. And the Times has refused both requests. Now, imagine it's 100 years from now, and we're living in however we're living, and the New York Times, because it's the only really genuinely successful journalistic institution that has survived and thrived over the last decade. So let's assume that it continues to thrive for another 75 years, and it's the year 2100, and somebody wants to write the history of the 1920s and 1930s, and one of the extant ancient archives is the archive of the New York Times. And you want to go, and no one's left alive and books have vanished and all of this. And you want to go tell the story of what happened, what Stalin did and all of that. And one of the major sources of historical information is going to be this fabricated pro Soviet propaganda published in the New York Times. How. And you're now saying with Trump 25 years ago, 30 years from now, somebody goes to write a doctoral dissertation on Trump, and they were just born in 2024. Right. How are they going to know which. That the Hunter laptop wasn't disinformation. How are they going to know that Trump. I mean, they will. But, you know, in other words, the overwhelming evidence, the record, the public record.
- [52:27]
Eliana Johnson
Tainted in, you know, extremely tainted by this as well, because of the fact that there was some suppression on other newspapers like the New York Post actually running the story. You couldn't tweet the story out, you couldn't Facebook the story, whatever. And so there really was a kind of gatekeeping. It wasn't even like, well, the New York Post of this year says this, and the New York Times says this. They've made everything else disappear and leave only one side of the ledger that turned out to be wrong.
- [52:54]
Abe Greenwald
Well, this is the crisis in that. I think we all understand that we are living at a time in which the lack of gatekeeping has created terrible problems for the continuance of our democracy and our civil discourse, that the parties no longer gatekeep so Zoram Hamdani can end up becoming mayor of New York City and stuff like that. But it's not as though gate. There's a reason that gatekeeping has become, you know, inefficient or bad or doesn't work. It's because the gatekeepers got corrupted and weren't. And were keeping the gate, weren't keeping the gates. They were like, you know, brigands who took over the tolling of the, of the, you know, ferries and in, you know, before there were bridges and made some people pay 15 times as much for the ferry as they made for other people. And therefore, you know, it's not fair. And so you can't. So they should be thrown into the ocean show thrown into the river and drowned and everybody else gets to use the ferry for free. That's, that's why gatekeeping, they killed the gatekeepers, discredited gatekeeping, but without gatekeeping, we got nothing. We're just in, you know, we're like living in anarchy. And that's why the great. You mentioned Game of Thrones. So what is it that Nick Fuentes and Tucker and Candace and all these people prove? Right?
- [54:25]
Eliana Johnson
Chaos is allowed.
- [54:26]
Abe Greenwald
Little fingers, right? It's exactly that. Little fingers. Great line to Sansa Stark, which is chaos is a ladder. You, you can emerge, if you were a certain type of person, you can emerge from. You can use chaos to your advantage. People who need order to prevail are destroyed. But people who need chaos to create the rubble on which they can climb up can really profit. But I wanted to mention then, Seth, the piece that you published that is now at the top of our website about the response of the BBC, the fired people at the BBC. That was why I was so startled this week when the BBC's director general and the head of its news division resigned in the wake of reporting on what Abe was talking about, which was the falsification of horror stories about Israel's conduct in Gaza as 0.1, 0.2, about trans point 3, about the editing of this Trump interview, and that I was astonished that they took the fall because like I say in America, I don't think Dan Rather would be defenestrated for the Mary Mapes National Guard, Texas National Guard story. Now, it would take too long and the defense would be too much. And the idea would be, oh, it's like, Jimmy, you know, there'll be a revolt by the staff and then people will. And everybody else will circle the wagons and all that. But that's not what happened in, in London. And yet there is a sort of Dan Rather like figure at the BBC defending himself. You know, do you want to just explain that?
- [56:07]
Eliana Johnson
Yeah. I mean, you know, Tim Davy and Deborah Furness were the two executives who resigned over the past several days from the BBC, because what had happened was the BBC had spliced together. The main thing that got them in trouble this time, let's just put it that way, is that in 2020, on January 6, 2021, the day of the Capitol riot, Trump gave all these different speeches in. On the eve of the 2024 presidential election, the BBC came out with this Panorama special that was about the Capitol riot and Donald Trump. And they spliced together videos, not just audio, right. Of three different speeches he gave that showed him you could. It was like watching a deep fake. You were watching Donald Trump say things he didn't say or say things, you know, he said six hours later combined with what he said 12 hours earlier and whatever, to make him stand up there and say, we're gonna. We're gonna march to the Capitol, we're gonna fight, or you're not gonna have a country. Okay? That was at the center of this. That was so egregious that it triggered a whistleblower complaint. Whistleblower complaint, triggered a sort of ombudsman, like, investigation from somebody who used to be an external adviser to the BBC. And that investigation, that report that he came up with, Prescott, was leaked to the Telegraph. And the report started with all the Trump stuff. This was a very, very big deal. But it also included the fact that they had used. They had done all sorts of manipulation on, you know, on the Israel Gaza war. And they had. They had hidden sources. They had, you know, misled the public and their readers on whose sources were. They said someone was a journalist when really he was very obviously a Hamas fixer or something like that. And the report, the Prescott investigation, turned out to show that they knew these things were going on essentially. Okay, that was the basis of this, was they. They understood in the midst of their coverage that they were acting unethically. That is the main accusation.
- [58:30]
Abe Greenwald
And they. And they resigned.
- [58:32]
Eliana Johnson
And they resigned. And they resigned.
- [58:35]
Abe Greenwald
But this is why I wanted to highlight your. Your blog post from last night. So Tim Davy resigned. So you would think that's like, yeah, they got me. I gotta quit, because, ooh, that's bad. It's bad what happened. And I gotta save the BBC for me. But that's not what he said yesterday on his way out the door. No, right.
- [59:00]
Eliana Johnson
He said. He said, we. This is. We are the best version of what we could be. And journalism, our journalism is under attack and we're going to have to fight, fight for it. And he gave. You know, it was kind of like the wolf of Wall street where he was supposed to resign and instead he gave that, that like rousing speech, you know, like I'm not going anywhere, you know, sort of thing that was. Except he did resign. But his, his message to them was I'm going to take the fall so that Donald Trump stops yelling at the BBC and we stop becoming the story. I'm going to take the fall in an attempt to, to make this go away. Not because I feel I've done something wrong and my coconspirators in this feel they have done something wrong. Not because we need to reform our news, news gathering processes, but I'm hoping this will just go away and allow you guys to continue doing exactly what we've been doing.
- [60:00]
Abe Greenwald
Yeah, here's the quote, here's the quote. We are in a unique and precious organization. I see the free press under pressure. I see the weaponization. I think we've got to fight for our journalism. I'm really proud of our work. This report was an internal report. This wasn't Accuracy in media. This wasn't camera. This was an internal report triggered by a whistleblower of a quasi governmental organization which the BBC is for which everybody in England pays a small tax to fund. And the internal report said that the BBC had been deliberately misleading on the Trump speech, on transgenderism and on Gaza. And the, and the response of the person who was held responsible and who resigned is we're great, we're, they're coming after us with their weaponization. I didn't write the report. You didn't write the report. You know, as a Hill Neuer didn't write the report. Andrea Levin didn't write the report. The BBC wrote the report that caused the head of the BBC to have to resign.
- [61:21]
Eliana Johnson
Who are no attacks on the legitimacy by the way of Prescott or what he undertook. There's nobody here, there's something wrong with the methodology of the report. Nobody is even saying that. You know, in the US we have like you have a special prosecutor or somebody and then they come out and they give a report and they go, oh this guy's corrupt. He's obviously in the pocket of the right wing, blah, blah, blah. They didn't do that. They didn't try to discredit the report or the guy. They are just attacking the people who are bringing it up anyway.
- [61:51]
Abe Greenwald
It's amazing because then it's self denying like. And so once again, why should anybody believe a gatekeeper? This guy was the gatekeeper. He was caught at court.
- [62:07]
John Podhoretz
This is exactly what all these dinosaurs at 60 minutes say when they step down, you know, Bill Owens left 60 Minutes and he's saying it's a storied institution and it's a beautiful program and there's nothing wrong with it. And these people are trying to politicize it. And his predecessor, I forget the guy's name now, was just on a podcast. I was listening to Jeff Fager. You know, somebody asked him, you know, Barry Weiss had the audacity to ask the team at 60 Minutes, why, why does the American public think you're biased? And do you think any changes need to be made? Don't touch it, don't touch it. I mean, it's the same response here. Like, these are. These people all think that anybody who believes that network news needs to change or that the New York Times needs to change are, you know, they're the crazy people.
- [63:04]
Abe Greenwald
Can I give a shout out to somebody I did not expect to be giving a shout out to ever again in life, Dinesh d'. Souza. Dinesh d', Souza, who has emerged from, I mean, you know, after having made these sort of, you know, Trump documentaries and various other things, the Tucker Carlson, Nick Fuentes, anti Semitism has sort of like was the last straw for. He's sort of like come out very hot. And he now has a must read Twitter feed. And he did this thing. This is about something entirely not Tucker and Candace related, but this 60 Minute story on Sunday which was about how the Trump, you know, efforts to suppress, you know, to deal with anti Semitism on college campuses has had terrible effects on health research. And the soar. And the main person sourced in this story is a doctor at Harvard named Joan Brugi, co director of the Ludwig center at the Harvard Medical School. And according to her, her potentially life saving research into breast cancer prevention was impacted by the funding freeze that Trump put on. She nearly like, she said something like, it was like a gut punch. She got an email that her multimillion dollar grant from NIH was terminated. It was a gut punch. People are gonna die. It's so terrible. She was, you know, her chin was trembling and, and all of that. And I think we can all agree that if there's anything that we like in federal funding, it's research into cancer prevention and all of that. What we don't like is Harvard violating Title 6 of the Civil Rights act in relation to Jewish students. Dinesh tweets out, if this research is so necessary, Harvard has $51 billion in the bank. Send Joan Brugi a check so that the work can Continue. What is that endowment for? Is the federal government the only. This is now me extrapolating off of Dinesh's tweet, but he crystallized something for me here, which is she's going on TV crying about how the federal government stopped, you know, like, stopped a check for her, you know, grant support. So you know what happens? Like, if you are somewhere and your friend runs out of, calls you and says, oh, my God, they canceled my credit card and I'm here at a gas station. I can't pay for my gas, or something like that. You like venmo them $20 or you drive to the gas station to get them out of trouble or something like that. Harvard's sitting there with $50 billion, and Joan Bruge is blaming the Trump administration for freezing Harvard's funding because Harvard violated the Civil Rights Act. She can go to hell. Harvard can go to hell. Write the check, support yourself. You're a hedge fund that looks like a college. What are you building that money for? What is it there for if it's not there to support Joan Bruge's cancer research? Or. Or is it just that you need to get 80% of that grant so you can keep the lights, the light bulbs on? Like, I was very. That's. I wanted to point this out because that was the 60 minute story that I saw on Sunday when I was trying very hard to be a balanced, reasonable person and to see whether or not I thought that 60 Minutes had something of value to add. And it did, but entirely negatively here, which is that, as I say, she can go to hell. Harvard can go to hell in 60 minutes. Can go to hell, too, because it also could have said, hey, Harvard's got sick $51 billion. Maybe they could go to the head of the Harvard, whatever that's called, the Harvard Corporation, whatever it's called, that runs the endowment, and say, why aren't you giving Joan Brugi the money? Where's the money for her lab? She's on the verge of a breakthrough. I heard no such thing.
- [67:31]
Eliana Johnson
Harvard Corporation, by the way, the Harvard refers to itself as the oldest corporation in the Western Hemisphere.
- [67:40]
Abe Greenwald
Well, you know, turn me into Bernie Sanders all of a sudden, break the corporations. Okay. No one has a recommendation, John.
- [67:52]
John Podhoretz
I just want to say, yes, that I was attending momentarily to Beacon work while you were ranting about that. And so I very much look forward to listening to that rant, because I can tell how much just from your affect, that I'm going to enjoy it when I tune in.
- [68:09]
Abe Greenwald
Now, that is multitasking Eliana is editing the Beacon while she's sitting here on this podcast. That is. I don't know. That's a. That's a very. So. But thank you. Yes. So, Eliana, this is actually a hologram.
- [68:26]
John Podhoretz
But I can't wait to listen to that later.
- [68:27]
Abe Greenwald
There we go.
- [68:28]
Eliana Johnson
This is actually a hologram of Eliana. If you're watching on YouTube, it's actually.
- [68:33]
Abe Greenwald
That loop in the Epstein video where it looks like he's alive in his cell while they go in and kill him.
- [68:42]
John Podhoretz
I should take on the Matt role and remind everybody to go sign up to our YouTube, please.
- [68:50]
Abe Greenwald
Yes, that's right.
- [68:51]
John Podhoretz
You don't even have to watch us there, as Matt would say.
- [68:53]
Abe Greenwald
Yes, just subscribe.
- [68:54]
John Podhoretz
Subscribe. Help us in the algorithm. Check out our books in the background.
- [69:00]
Abe Greenwald
Yes.
- [69:01]
John Podhoretz
In my case, they're all my husband's.
- [69:03]
Abe Greenwald
I was just gonna tell you that over your left shoulder as I've been staring at you the whole time, you have a shelf that is starting to warp.
- [69:12]
John Podhoretz
What does that mean?
- [69:13]
Abe Greenwald
See that? Okay, you're left on your. Over your left shoulder, there is a shelf of books. The first shelf. And it's bendy. A little. It's bendy. Do you guys see this? There's a little curve in Eliana's shelf.
- [69:27]
Eliana Johnson
Two shelves up from the bottom shelf that has the figurines.
- [69:31]
Abe Greenwald
No, there's a shelf with the figurines, and then right above it is the shelf. And that shelf is, like, warping a little bit. This can be what happens when I stare at you for an hour.
- [69:41]
John Podhoretz
Okay.
- [69:41]
Abe Greenwald
Could be an optical illusion. Okay. Well, it could be because the. The.
- [69:45]
Eliana Johnson
The books are organized from the. The largest books are on the outside, and they get smaller as you go in. So maybe it is. Maybe it is. As apes.
- [69:54]
Abe Greenwald
I want to show you guys one thing before we go then, because this. I'm very proud of this. I was in Israel last week, as you may know, and you may notice. Oh, over here, I have these old album covers. I've got Eddie Fisher. I've got Elvis's Roustabout soundtrack. I've got the best of Al Jolson. And then I found in Yafo, near Tel Aviv. This. This is Shalom. I think maybe it's backwards. Shalom. The Barry Sisters. The Barry Sisters were a Yiddish singing group duo who sang in Yiddish and recorded albums for the Jewish market. But in this case, they flew to Israel in the early 60s. Here they are on the plane. You can see them coming off the Israel Airlines plane. And then they sang Israeli songs and I'm very proud of this on the roulette label. The Shalom, the Barry Sisters album. This is my junk pile here that I love so much. And then everybody should so some people are looking. And then somebody once said to me, why are you dog whistling racism by having an Al Jolson album? Because of course he did blackface and therefore I'm implicitly endorsing blackface. I was told in an email about the the first real worldwide superstar Al Jolson, star of stage, screen, television and music or stage, stage, screen and music. The biggest star in America and the the 1920s. But having his album is a is a mark of support of blackface. Anyway, Recommendation History of the Thirteen by Balzac we'll be back tomorrow for Eliana Seth and Abam John Ponhoretz Keep the Candle Burning.