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- [00:04]
A
Hope for the best, expect the worst Some reach and pain, some die at first no way of knowing which way it's going Hope for the best, expect the worst, hope for the best. Welcome to the Commentary magazine daily podcast. Today is Monday, May 4, 2026, which of course means may the 4th be with you. I'm John Pudhoritz, the editor of Commentary, and if anybody is the Obi Wan Kenobi of this show, it's me. So if you strike me down, Abe will become even more powerful than you could possibly imagine. That, of course, being Abe Greenwald, our executive editor. Hi, Abe.
- [00:51]
B
Hi, John
- [00:54]
C
Grogu.
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A
Seth Mandel, our senior editor. Hi, Seth.
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D
Hi, John.
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A
And I'm stopping here, so.
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C
Sure. Eliana and I will battle it out over who gets to be Leia, who
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A
gets to be Rey, you know? Yeah, yeah, yeah, sort of. The also ran Women of the Star wars universe.
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C
Hey, Leia was on my Star wars bed sheets as a child. She was right there next to Han.
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A
Okay, well, it's good because she had two challahs right on either side of your head then. Social Commentary columnist Christine Rosen. Hi, Christine.
- [01:29]
C
Hi, John.
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A
And Washington Free Beacon editor Eliana Johnson. Hi, Eliana.
- [01:33]
E
Hi, John.
- [01:34]
A
Yes, I will be taking my kids, who insisted on it, to a May 4 screening of Star Wars. And I do want to report that in 1977, the day that Star wars opened at the Los Astor Plaza in Times Square, I did bike down from my high school to attend a 4:30 showing of Star Wars. And I remember vividly the moment when they jump into hyperspace and the entire audience, which is like 1,500 people, started screaming. I'd never seen such a thing in a movie theater. And I sort of knew even then at the age of 16 that something about life and culture in the world had forever changed. Kind of like what may have happened last night with the announcement that Donald Trump was ordering the opening of the Straits of Hormuz through American military action. Now, we've been having a conversation about what that actually means, because it seems to be more like a vibe opening of the Straits of Hormuz than it is a America is literally escorting American military craft are literally escorting ships out or through the Strait of Hormuz one by one by one by one. That doesn't seem to be quite what's happening. So we don't quite know what it means that we have announced that we are opening and keeping open the Straits of Hormuz. But of course, it does represent a new. It does start the clock. Anew in terms of this war with Iran, which is now a naval war,
- [03:17]
B
we're like the guy who comes over when you're trying to get out of your parking space and goes, nope. Great. Cut it to the left little bit. Now stop there. You got room. You got room.
- [03:29]
A
Sometimes that guy is great. And then sometimes, of course, he traps you further in to the space you're trying to get out of. Yeah, it's like in this case, though, that often has a who asked you Element. Right. It's sort of like, was I looking for advice on how to get out of the space I'm in? And then sometimes it's like, oh, my God, thank you so much. And obviously the ships that are trapped inside the Strait of Hormuz are desperately eager for some help to get out. We were just joking. I want Seth to maybe repeat his one liner before we started, that this is now a war being fought for, as Bulworth would have it, for insurance companies, because the entire world economy is now being held hostage by whether or not an insurance company will insure your ship if it's going through a round near approximate to way away from or whatever, the Strait of Hormuz. So, Seth, what do you make of a war to protect the integrity of the financial position of insurance companies?
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D
I bet I'm gonna check my coverage and make sure that I'm in network. That's the first thing I'm gonna do. But I. Look, I.
- [04:42]
A
So is this Obamacare? It's like Obamacare for shipping? Like, is that what we're promising here is 100% coverage for all the world's boats?
- [04:53]
D
Yes. So there would be a public option if that French and British and German plan would come off the barricades.
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A
Fair enough.
- [05:03]
E
I think there are a couple things that are noteworthy about what the administration is saying, said it wants to do. The first is that the goal of the effort is to get out of the strait vessels that are trapped. It is not to restore full freedom of navigation through the strait. So that's a limited operation to remove these trapped vessels. And the second is that this is not a full naval escort through the strait. It appears to be a provision of some kind of air cover to guide the vessels through the strait. And the vessels and their insurance companies are saying it's not sufficient for them to feel comfortable moving out of the strait. So I'm not sure what it's actually going to accomplish. That being said, it does appear to me on the part of the administration to be directionally correct. A move towards the use of the American military to reopen the strait, but directionally correct, but insufficient, I would say.
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C
Well, and it's probably best to see it in the context of a couple of other things that happened over the weekend, including the Trump administration saying very clearly that the most recent offer that Iran made for some sort of deal or some sort of peace agreement was just nowhere near where it should be. So if we think about this, as Eliana said, as a sort of, well, let's see what we can do without full on naval escort or full on resuming military conflict. It's a possibility that after trying this for a few days and it not being successful and the administration not having success getting any allies to join us in this effort, that would at least be a reasonable claim to make in terms of resuming any sort of more intense activity, military activity.
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A
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C
And he doesn't add that they're also running out the clock, as Scott Besant noted, trying to at a certain point they'll have to shut down oil production because they'll have no place to store their oil. And so there's a sense in which they have a clock that they're running and trying to keep that time going while claiming to look at the proposal they send.
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A
Right.
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C
Yeah.
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D
I mean, the truth is that absent public the effect that public opinion has on this stuff the perception of gas prices, whether more Republicans fold with the upcoming midterms. Coming up on, trying to rein in the President's power to run this war, et cetera. Outside of those things, time is very clearly on our side more than it is on Iran's side. They are nearing $5 billion in lost revenue in three weeks. I mean, they're getting their clock clean. This is not. They can't afford that. There's, you know, they're losing. I mean, the lower estimates are like $200 million a day. The true number could be double that. It's hard always to know because we have to, you know, prices go up as the conflict goes on, and that sort of resets the, you know, our estimates and stuff like that. But, I mean, hundreds of millions of dollars a day. And the U.S. as we talked about last week, has pursued some of these shadow fleet vessels, you know, that, that are outside of the embargo area. I mean, there is a point at which there's just no money in the bank for them. I mean, they've, they've got, you know, maybe a rainy day fund, but you can't run a country on a rainy day fund. This is like when I was a local reporter and they used to say, you know, they used to, they used to force these tiny municipalities to keep 3% of their budget in the bank. And in case of a rainy day, like in a school district, and then they'd have to use that 3% because, you know, one new kid transferred into the school district or something, and some podunk town had to empty its bank. That's what the IRGC is up to. They're up to, you know, like, it's time to spend that 3% sort of thing. And so, you know, in general, on time is on our side. But I would say that Trump still has to make this case to the American people. I don't know why he's not, in large part because history shows that when presidents say, here's why we're doing this, here's what we're trying to accomplish with this war, approval numbers go up.
- [10:41]
A
I mean, it's almost, I can explain it. I really can't explain it. He does not believe in the power of persuasion. He believes that the results will either speak for themselves or that nobody who dislikes him will ever give him credit. And that if you're on the negative side of the ledger, you are not movable. And therefore he is operating from that basis, that he is that the people that he might need to speak to are beyond his reach. And he is banking on the people that he already has to form his platform and to create the floor below which he cannot go. And so he's not going to waste his time doing the explaining, because first of all, every time he explains, he says, we've already won the war. He says the Strait of Hormuz is open. He says whatever it is, he says that is either not true is true theoretically, but not practically. As I say, it's not like there is a giant gate across the 21 miles of the Strait of Hormuz that is down. That means your ship cannot go through it. It is therefore open in that sense. There's no blockade, like, with 21 miles of boats standing in your way. But it's not really open. And we didn't win at the first day. But what you're right about, and where things get complicated, is we're in the catbird seat. They're suffering. Their oil is about to. They're about to start having a real crisis with their oil because it's no joke to have to cap an oil well or to stop production on a functioning oil facility. It can take weeks to stop it and months to turn it back on because it's a. Obviously. I mean, I'm not a oil geologist, but what little I know from such sources as Daniel Jurgen and the show Landman inform me that this is no easy task. So we're in the catbird seat as long as we're willing to endure. And that's where we get into the question of whether or not the Trump administration and the United States is negotiating and arguing with itself over whether this war is a value. And Trump clearly is resisting the idea that people in his administration siren song are saying that he can kind of somehow declare victory and get out. He doesn't seem to think that he can. He needs to be able to say at the end of this process that we have done what is necessary to make sure that Iran will never have a nuclear weapon. If that means we have to get our hands on the fissile material, that's what that means. If it means that we can declare with credibility that we have destroyed every possible way for Iran to restart its nuclear program and that whatever is there is buried forever and that they'll never be able to build another centrifuge or whatever, maybe that'll be it. But until he gets there, he is not done. Aura frames and Mother's Day. So, look, I got three kids. My kids are older now, but life is chaos when you have three kids in a small apartment as we did and the photographs that we've taken with my kids and my wife. These are captured moments of wondrous chaos that they freeze in time and we can look at in my living room on the beautiful aura frame that we have to enjoy. Remember vacations that got out of hand, Holiday mishaps. Whatever might have happened that is funny wasn't funny at the time, but maybe funny now. That's why these beautiful frames with free unlimited storage Preloading photos Before they ship, you get a gift box. You can share your photos and videos effortlessly using the free Aura app or texting photos straight to your frame named Number one by Wirecutter. You can see save on the gifts Mom's love by visiting Oraframes.com for a limited time. Listeners can get 25 off their best selling Carver Mat frame with Code Commentary that's a U R A frames.com promo code commentary Support the show by mentioning us at checkout. Terms and conditions apply. You know, I just hit a milestone birthday. I'm 65 years old. Why am I telling you this? Because sleep is more important to me than ever as it becomes more and more difficult to get a good night's sleep. And that's why I really love the Bowlin brand sheets that I have now been putting on my bed. Designed for exactly the kind of rest I need. Signature organic cotton sheets, plush pillows, breathable blankets, temperature regulating comforters. Everything is made to create a bed that truly supports good sleep. Incredibly soft, breathable, built to get better over time. This is the kind of sleep I can't compromise on anymore. And a lot of customers start with sheets but once they feel them, they upgrade the whole bed like I did. So upgrade your sleep with bowl and branch. Get 15% off your first order plus free shipping at bowlandbranch.com commentary with code COMMENTARY that's bowl and branch. B O L L A N D B R A N C Code commentary to unlock 15 off exclusions apply.
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C
I think Seth, Seth's point, if we think about it broadly, is disturbing in this sense. He can never get there because he doesn't. He hasn't been direct and truthful with the American people from the beginning. Whether you want to say that's because as you say John, he just doesn't. He doesn't think he can persuade and there's some truth to that in terms of the people who will always be against what he's doing or that he actually believes what he says in the moment he says it. But then changes his mind later. Fair enough. But there is no consistent message for the people. And the problem is he does also run up against, first of all, the fact that he hasn't been talking that much about the nuclear material in the last few weeks, the last two weeks in particular. But that concerns me. The other thing is that gas has gone up 30 cents a gallon in one week and over a dollar, almost a dollar and a half in the last couple months. So that that's average gas prices. Some people are feeling a lot more if they live in higher tax states. That's a fact that people know every week when they fill up their tank that he can't really talk himself out of. And I think that's where six months out from the midterm election, I will be curious to see if he does what you say, John, and just at some point says, well, we've declared victory on our terms, here are our terms. This is where it goes. I mean, he's a lame duck president, he can do that. And then the fallout comes for Republicans in the midterms, and then later in
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A
2028, look, the fallout is coming anyway. So now the question is this picture has been muddied a little bit for Republicans in a way that might complicate Trump's life, because there was a kind of sense of desperate loss that Republicans were already starting pre morning, that Republicans were already starting to hit on the House and then maybe the Senate. And then two things happened last week that, you know, in my favorite line in a movie that no one's ever heard of, the movie clockwise, where John Cleese is a guy, a very precise English guy who has to get from one place to another by 5pm and the whole movie is him getting stopped along the way and prevented from going somewhere. Written by the brilliant playwright Michael Frayne. And it's 4 o' clock and he's 30 miles from where he needs to be and he's sitting on the side of the road and he says, it's not the despair, it's the hope I can't stand. So Republicans suddenly get these two little lifelines. One is the Supreme Court racial gerrymander decision, which means that Louisiana and Tennessee, and I think it's Louisiana and Tennessee, but maybe other states are revisiting several other Southern states, right, Are revisiting their maps to see if they can redraw them in a way that will be obviously more helpful to Republicans or something or other. That's number one. So that gives the idea, oh, I don't know, maybe the midterms won't be as bad as we think. And in fact, if you look at the Real Clear Politics average, the Democratic advantage across the RCP average of averages is 5.7% at this point in previous elections where there were waves, that number for the party that won the wave at this moment in May was generally in double digits or at the lowest, like 9%, moving on to like, 15 or 16%. That people say, I would rather vote for the Republican than the Democrat in, say, 2010, or I'd rather vote for the Democrat than the Republican in 2018. That number is not as high as I would expect it to be. In other words, 5.7% is a low. That means Democrats aren't going to win that many seats. Of course, they don't need to win that many seats. If they win six seats, they probably take the majority. But there is that weird lifeline of hope. And then the second lifeline of hope is the departure of Janet Mills from the senatorial race in Maine and the elevation of Graham Platner to the senatorial candidate in Maine. And this is, I think, clearly a potentially nationwide disaster for Democrats on the order, with a couple of other things happening, maybe like Abdul EL Sayed winning the primary in Michigan, but where you can make a national case against the Democratic Party senatorial candidates, just as Democrats made a national case against the Republican senatorial candidates in 2010. Usually thought of as something. You can't do that. These are statewide elections, so go state by state. But if you can say they're electing a Nazi left winger in Maine and they're electing an Islamist left winger, they're not putting up an Islamist left winger in Michigan. You cannot trust Democrats generically. They've gone insane. And that, I think, provides a measure of hope to Republicans. Not that Republicans really thought they were going to hold onto the Senate, but then the last eight weeks got people a little nervous. And so now they do have a pressure point against Trump to say, look, we may have a chance of prevailing here. Your war is going to ruin this for us. And so he's gonna have to stand firm against them if he thinks time is on our side. But it's gonna take time.
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B
I'm not sure who would say that to him, though.
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A
Huh?
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B
I'm not sure who would say that to him.
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A
Thune and Johnson.
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B
Oh, okay. Well, I don't think he would consider that sufficient pressure on.
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D
Well, I mean, a few days ago, Susan Collins did vote against the GOP's position on the war powers. I Think that's. I mean, that's out of, you know, Graham Platner, in one fell swoop, knocked Mills out of the race, but also, you know, very clearly spooked Susan Collins into this vote. So I suppose that there's the possibility of Democrats rallying a vote that could actually have some effect. I'm not really sure that's the Susan Collins vote switch.
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A
I don't think it's a vote thing. I think. I think the whole question is, who does he hear from? And if he hears from people who are saying, look, you know, you can. What if we turn the tide here and not have, you know, and not have a democratic triumph in 2026 that's gonna look so good for you, Mr. President, sir, you are the greatest man ever.
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C
The Republican message can't simply be, that guy's a Nazi. That's not gonna be enough to win for Republicans. They have to have a good economic.
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A
It was enough. It was enough for Democrats to win in 2010. It was way more.
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C
But that's. It's a different abortion. I'm not a issue. There's also this issue of the youthfulness of some of these candidates. It's not. I mean, look there. A lot of them are DSA nutbags on the economy. I completely agree with that. But the Republican response has to engage the fact that a lot of voters are energized by seeing younger, newer faces. That was the Mamdani effect. And so they'll overlook a lot of crazy if they think there's some sort of economic benefit to them as a voter and they see it as tossing out the old guys. I'm not saying they're correct in that assessment at all, but I have yet not heard from the Republican Party generally a response that directly engages that curiosity from voters.
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A
I'm not disagreeing with you. I'm just saying we do have a recent moment in a midterm election where the party that was in power, but facing enormous headwinds and was slammed and destroyed in the House, preserved its majority in the Senate by saying the. This one's crazy. This one's crazy. This one's crazy. That was Murdoch, Angle, o', Donnell, o' Donnell and odonnell.
- [24:16]
E
John, I. I agree with you in part and disagree with you in part. I actually am going to differentiate here between Platner and El Sayed. I think the question facing Republicans and Democrats in the midterms actually is Democrats are. Obviously the party is in the process of being captured by radicals, and we'll get to maybe we should talk about the Democratic National Security organization that plans to play in the midterms that's being led by Ben Rhodes and Jake Sullivan. These are very establishment midterm establishment players. And they have put as its new leader a former what's the Palestinian group on campus,
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A
SJP Students for Justice in Palestine.
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E
Former head of Students for Justice in Palestine who's been pictured dancing in front of anti Israel banners. Maher Bitar. It will lead that group. So I think the question is for the midterms is are voters dissatisfied enough with the Trump administration that they are willing to embrace the Democratic equivalent of Todd Aiken? Legitimate rape. Christine o' Donnell I am not a witch. And blanking on the third one now. Yeah. The Sharon angle out, out in Nevada who was running against Harry Reid, you know, 15 years ago or yeah, 16 years ago voters were not this year. Will independent voters who are really the ones up for grab be willing to pull the lever for Abdul El Sayed in Michigan and Graham Platner in Maine and unwilling to vote for, you know, Mike Rogers who's basically a normal Republican or Susan Collins who's basically a normal Republican because these guys are too crazy. I, I don't know the answer to that. But that is the question in this election. And I don't think Platner and Abdul El Sayed in Michigan. He's not the nominee yet. We'll see what happens. That's a late primary are the same. I think that these Islamist left wing candidates strike voters a little bit differently than the Platners. Do you look the Nazi tattoo did not appear to scare voters away. I think voters are more Democratic primary voters. Democratic primary voters.
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A
The largest number of independent voters in Maine is not a Democratic state. Maine is an independent state.
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E
We'll see. But I think it is the Muslim and the Islamist stuff I don't think will fly. It is an open question to me. And I also think Platner, I'm afraid of him. I think Mills was the weaker candidate in that race. She never could get off the ground. I think Schumer miscalculated and I think Platner actually is quite talented. I am afraid of him. I don't know how voters will calculate. Look, I wouldn't underestimate Collins. She's an incredible political athlete. But I would not write Platner off. I think in the same way that you, that you are.
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A
John, can I just answer this before Abe, before you speak, I am not writing Platner off. I am actually saying that Platner is A gift to the national Republican Party. What happens in Maine itself may be a different issue because Maine is weird and maybe he'll tweak to Maine issues and stuff like that. And he's young and it's the people who aren't even in a position to vote for him for whom he can become a crystallizing figure. That's what happens in these Senate races that get nationalized is that is this question whether or not across the party they start seeming like they're fruit loops to people elsewhere and thus become cash cow fundraising machines in places where no one's even going to vote for them. And I'm just saying, getting back. Okay, A.B. i'm sorry. Please.
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E
Well, what, what scares me is that Platner I don't think reads like a fruit loop when he talks. And I think the. His biggest weakness is going to be as follows. And this is Maine specific. Maine is the oldest state in the union and Maine is a very poor state. And while Platner is trying to portray himself as a working class Mainer, he is in fact a child of tremendous privilege who, who attended a very expensive boarding school, whose daddy loaned him the money to buy his house. And I think puncturing that image that he is trying to portray will be essential to that race. He's a phony. He's a hypocritical phony. And I think getting at that will be quite important. But I just, I don't think he comes off like an extremist in the way Abdul El Sayed, you know, that guy sounds insane. He looks insane and he sounds insane.
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A
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- [31:29]
B
I think part of the answer, a big part of the answer to the question Eliana poses about independent voters, how they're going to respond here, has to do with the fact that, that when there are Republican radicals or Republican crazies, the news, the stories that independents hear about them is, oh, my God, did you hear about this crazy guy talking about legitimate rape? Did you hear about this woman denying her ties to witchdom Wicca? When the Democrats run a radical or a crazy person, the entire framework is different. And this is the news that gets to independents because they're not necessarily in our online right media sphere. The news that gets to them about radical Democrats is everyone's making a fuss over this guy. And he's great. He's like, he's a normal guy that has something in his past. He's gonna get rid of it.
- [32:38]
E
That's so true. It's so true, Abe.
- [32:41]
B
And by the way, I think this may even apply when it comes to El Said, because to me, the media treatment, the organized campaign around Zoram Mamdani was so instructive. The way everyone came around to embrace him and tell a story about him to, let's say, independence that was false about who he is, what he cares about and what he can do. I think we cannot underestimate the effect of that, Abe.
- [33:19]
E
Can I just mention an example to illustrate your point? The Beacon has a story this morning about the leading fundraiser in a Congress in a blue district. The primary is the election in New Jersey. Where the leading fundraiser in that race is a candidate, Adam Hammawi, who testified for the defense in the trial of the Blind Sheikh. He's an associate of the Blind Sheikh. This has not been covered in any media outlet. You know, total blackout.
- [33:56]
A
Just for people who need historical refresher. The blind shake was the, was the inspiration for and the organizing principle around the first bombing of the World trade Center in 1993. Convicted in a courtroom in.
- [34:12]
E
My friend Andy McCarthy was shout out
- [34:15]
C
to Andy McCarthy who led the prosecution.
- [34:18]
A
Yeah. And judge and then future Attorney General Michael Mukasey was presiding over that. Over that case.
- [34:25]
E
If this was a Republican, every mainstream outlet would be writing about the type of candidates that, that are running. You know, there is truly a takeover happening of the Democratic Party. We are watching it right now.
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A
And we are watching the apologists ooze themselves in line this morning. Frank Bruni in the New York Times, who positions himself as a moderate centrist, explaining that while Graham Platner's not the kind of person that he would ordinarily want, the need to defeat Trump is so central that he's willing to say that he wants him to be the nominee. So welcome. You know, people are constantly making parallels to 1932 and 1933. Welcome to Weimar. Where, look, the Nazi, you know, these National Socialists, they're vulgar and they're crude and they're. And they're that. But, you know, we can work with them, we can contain them, we can control them. I don't like these parallels particularly, but I'm not the inventor of these parallels. And the effort to mainstream radical, anti American, antisemitic voices and say that they can be cleansed by, by the healing power of centrist milquetoast bullshit is exactly what leads extremists to win over liberals. This is liberalism's great weakness, real liberalism. It's like the 60s and the 70s. We also have a liberal professor on campus. They start coming at you and you know what you do? You're like, let me wave my little flag. Leave me alone. You know, leave me alone. I'm not, I'm not. I'm with you. Hey, let's let Viet Cong really great. I, you know, generally speaking, I'm a Democrat. I believe in the democratic institutions. But look, America's done a lot of bad things. Just don't, don't come after me and my family, whatever. I mean, this is that kind of liberal cowardice. Not that there's, there are all kinds of different kinds of right wing cowardice that we could go Into. I'm not doing that right now, but watching, reading Frank Bruni in the New York Times this morning and the stuff that all these hack Jon Favreau, the Pod Save America guys, all those guys are like, saying it's okay that Graham Platner has a Totenkov tattoo on his body, that he is a Hamas, that he praised Hamas tactics, that he has done all this stuff in the course of his life before becoming a politician. You go ahead, like, go ahead, really, you know, I mean, you know, I mean, curse your souls evermore. It's fine.
- [37:21]
D
Example of, of this also of, of, of the. You don't even have to go back to Weimar and, and, and use their, you know, example. This is what Corbinization is. This is in the uk When Corbin, When Corbin, who is just like an unrepentant Stalinist. I mean, he's just, it's, it's like he's somebody from out of the PA does. It doesn' to not be that, that type of guy. When he, when, when he started making his insurgent play for Labour Party voters, the mainstream and the centrists and the establishment said, why don't we bring these guys into the tent because it'll shut them up. Why don't we give the Corbinites, you know, this. Bring them in. Instead of shouting outside the tent, they'll be inside the tent. They'll be part of the coalition. They'll feel part of the coalition. That's all they really want. And it will moderate everything. And instead the Corbynites overthrew the establishment in 12 minutes. I mean, it was, it was, it was like an overnight thing. And, and that's exactly what Democrats are doing now. Well, we should, you know, we have to expand the tent. We can't have these purity tests, although they obviously, they can have purity tests as long as it's, you know, no Zionists allowed or whatever. But we can't have these purity tests. We can't. We'll bring them in, we'll expand the tent. But what happened in Britain, and there's no reason to think it's not happening before our eyes here, was that the extremists just simply waltzed in and sat in the big chair and there was no resistance. You know, Eliana brought up Maher Bitar and the role that he's playing in foreign policy development for the Democrats. Now that group, that organization is Jake Sullivan's organization. Jake Sullivan was the model moderate for years in, in the Washington circles, we all knew Jake as the guy who would hear you out and you know, and had, you know, a head on his shoulders and had some common sense and all this other stuff. The. My herbitar is now the taking over the moderate group. Moderate group said to Maher, okay, you run us now. So that's it. There's no Jake Sullivan's. There's no. They're literally offering the big chairs to these guys. And there's no reason it wouldn't happen in the Senate. There's no reason that AOC's ability to. To get Nancy Pelosi to agree to step out of leadership before she stepped out of Congress. There's no reason to believe that wasn't the beginning of a, of a bolder rolling downhill.
- [39:57]
C
This. There is an interesting question though, that I think looms for the Democrats in the same way that it will soon for the Republicans. I mean, the Democrats have a very homegrown model for this and that's the maga populist takeover of traditional Republican Party. That happened, you know, a little more gradually. And I think the message there was much more about economic change and sort of, you know, tearing down the useless institutions, all that stuff. And they. That has been a very successful political movement. It has left traditional conservatives, of which I consider myself one, in retreat. There is doubt about that. However, it had an extraordinary charismatic political leader in Donald Trump. When he exits the stage, will that same coalition be able to coalesce around a new candidate? Will it be able to continue in its current form? Policy wise, we're already seeing a lot of fracturing on some of the policy issues, which I think is actually healthy in the way our democracy works. The Democrats don't have a chosen leader yet. And I think a lot of what we're seeing is the trial runs to see just what the public will tolerate. AOC obviously very ambitious, but there are lots of ambitious politicians in the Democratic side now, not all of them DSA friendly. So I think they don't. They have very little time, just a few years to cultivate that kind of leader. And waiting in the wings, as we all know, is Kamala Harris thinking she's gonna make her extraordinary comeback. So they don't have a Donald Trump on their side to lead this new radicalization movement.
- [41:22]
A
I mean, there may not have to be a Donald Trump.
- [41:25]
C
Well, that's a question.
- [41:26]
A
And Seth's description of Corbinization is interesting because that was literally a move by the Labor Party changed its own internal nominating rules to create a system whereby you could become a delegate essentially at the labor nominating convention by either paying five or ten pounds, and then you could go and be part of the nominators. And so this was an effort to sort of create, you know, what would appear to be a populist movement against, you know, against the Tories. And what happened was the Corbynites bought the nomination, bought the premiership for Corbyn. They bought it by paying five pounds to go to the dominating convention in Blackpool or wherever it was, and then take the party over and then win. And then there was Jeremy Corbyn, the Democrats. The story here is, again, this kind of. You have Liberals in the Democratic Party getting swamped by radicals. And just as happened with Trump, without a Trump, the Conservatives did not resist. Mostly the Conservatives that did resist. Trump took a cleave or two. Right. Bob Corker, Jeff Flake, anyone in the party, Peter Mayer, Adam Kinzinger, anybody in the party who was. Spoke out against him or what he represented, he basically took a meat cleaver to them, thus as a warning to other people. But in the case of the Democrat Party, all it took was, oh, my God, I'm losing to this guy. I'm 79 years old. I'm Janet Mills, I'm the governor of the state. I'm not gonna finish my political career getting humiliated. I'm gonna step out before anything bad happens. He's suddenly now the Democratic nominee, and it takes two hours for Chuck Schumer, the Democrat, everybody in the Democratic Party to fall in line behind this guy. So it's not like there are strata, as the Meyer Baatar story indicates.
- [43:55]
E
No, the question.
- [43:57]
A
Liberalism has given up in the Democratic Party. It has ceded the notion of that it has no future in the Democratic Party, that all the energy is with the radicals.
- [44:08]
E
The questions were posed to Platner, like, are you going to take Schumer's money? Will you take the establishment's money? Will you sully yourself by associating with them? It wasn't the opposite direction.
- [44:24]
A
Yeah.
- [44:25]
D
By the way, that's a very. That's a very important part of this story. Eliana is the disaster for Schumer. He's their floor leader. He's the guy who will be majority leader if the Graham Platners of the party succeed in the general right.
- [44:40]
B
He.
- [44:41]
D
This is the disaster for Schumer's establishment.
- [44:45]
A
Maybe not.
- [44:45]
C
I was going to say he will
- [44:46]
E
face a leadership who have pledged not to support him.
- [44:50]
A
Yeah. I mean, he still needs.
- [44:53]
D
I mean, that's just right. Yeah, yeah, he's. But. But this is the point. This has. This is an election that the Democrats are going to almost certainly to win. And Schumer, maybe not in the Senate, but they're going. Overall, this is going to be seen as that election night is on track to be a better night for Democrats than Republicans. Schumer's not going to lose his spot with a wipeout. He's going to lose, you know, if he loses his spot, it's because they're just sick and tired of him and
- [45:23]
C
they don't need him.
- [45:23]
D
They, they're, they're just, they don't need him. They have the numbers. This is like, you know, when you have the numbers for a leadership challenge or something, they're going to have the numbers if they want, as Eliana says. And that is, you know, watching this happen toward, as we get closer to November is going to be very interesting to see what Schumer tries to do to stem that tide, to save his own rear end.
- [45:48]
A
Yeah, he's not going to do anything. His game is going to be to throw in all of his cards with every. He's gonna do whatever he can to get whoever he can elected. And you know, it could be that a guy is both a member of the Klan and a Nazi and fought for the North Vietnamese and you know, and was a terrorist and blew up a mall and he'll still support them as well.
- [46:12]
C
He now farms oysters, John, so it's fine.
- [46:14]
A
He farms oysters. Exactly.
- [46:16]
D
So progressive. You're describing the progressive Voltron.
- [46:20]
A
So I literally caused this conversation to go off the track into this Democratic, our version of soul searching for the Democratic Party. Cuz I said Trump was gonna start feeling pressure that he really didn't feel three weeks ago from Republicans on the Hill who might be entertaining the possibility that they can draw to an inside straight and save themselves from that wipeout. And with the card they're gonna play with Trump is get the war over with. Look, it's like 2/3 unpopular. You're dragging us down. If you could just get out of it so that we can run against how crazy the Democrats are. They won't be able to run against us on how crazy you are in Iran. They will of course run on how crazy he is, period. But I don't think that'll work. And I do think that Trump is as committed as he has been to any issue in his entire life, aside from immigration, to the idea that he is not leaving office if he can help it with the Iranians not being denuclearized, that he has made that the precondition of this term. Anything less, he fails. On his own terms, he fails. So my question to you guys is, how far, if again, make a bad pop culture, reference Sean Connery in the Untouchables, and David Mamet's line, like, what are you prepared to do? Right? What is he prepared to do to win this war? Because he's already getting the. Yeah, the Iranians have humiliated you, says the German chancellor, and you suck. And the entire foreign policy. This is Tucker Carlson. Not that I want to quote. Tucker says, this is the biggest mistake any president has. The worst thing any president has ever done. Not the Trail of Tears, not the Japanese internment.
- [48:23]
B
I'm happy that Tucker went on that rant, because I think in some small way, that will contribute to Trump's obstinacy here.
- [48:34]
A
I agree with you. We could talk about it at some point if we really want to, but I'm just saying he has to decide how resolute he is going to be and what that means. And that means, like hearing from Admiral Cooper and from General Keane on what possible plans there are to bring the Iranians to their knees.
- [48:59]
B
The bigger pressure, I think, will come on him, will come at him. If he decides to wait out, to play a waiting game regarding blockade. That's because that's when every voice is going to come at him, including all sorts of industrial and commercial interests, and say, we can't do this. But the really frustrating thing about that is that if the US Plays the waiting game, there is certain victory for us at the end of that line and certain defeat for Iran at the end of that. They can't, as Seth said earlier, they literally can't wait this one out. They can't play this till the end. We can. And again, it's not something he's going to announce and telegraph that we are doing this until they're broken.
- [49:58]
C
But.
- [49:58]
B
But that is the truth.
- [50:00]
C
Well, look, in 10 days, he's meeting. His rescheduled meeting with XI happens. And so I do wonder in the next 10 days whether there's some thought being, I assume there is some thought being put into China's role here. They've been kind of, you know, they've stayed back, they've been doing a little helping the Iranians here and there. And, you know, that is, I assume, one of the overarching issues with the sense of urgency in the administration to kind of figure out a strategy. But, John, to answer your question, he just has to decide what victory looks like, declare it, pursue it, achieve it, and then declare the war over. And that's actually been where he's been all over the place. Right. Is it the nuclear material is the blockade is the Strait of Hormuz. We're ping ponging around these couple of things. I think to Seth's point at the very beginning of the show, a consistent message about what victory is would be helpful. It doesn't have to be perfect, but it does have to say these are our goals and we're at this stage of achieving them. That would also send a very strong message to the Chinese about how we prosecute these sorts of conflicts.
- [50:59]
A
I am pretty sure that I know what the end goal of the war is as stated from the beginning to now. And it's not a lot of things we thought it might be. It isn't. Right. It's not regime change. Regime change might be the glorious after effect of a successful resolution to the war. As we see is getting hold of the nuclear material. He has all but said that is the one through line from the first moment he started talking about this through the moment after the assassination attempt at the White House Correspondents Dinner to now if he says what he's doing, he says Iran can never get a nuclear weapon. Iran can never have a nuclear weapon. It can never. It can never. It can never. If he declares that he has achieved that aim, which he maybe prematurely did after Desert Hammer last year, but from his perspective, he wants that nuclear material. That deal, of course, is a complicated deal because it means the Iranians will have to agree to let us go in and dig a tunnel, go into the sites and get the material. We'll have to do it. It's been done very carefully, under supervision. It means Iran accedes to an American presence on Iranian soil to do this thing, get it out and leave. And that is how we will win the war. How we get there could be we wait it out because they can't abide it or we start inflicting the kind of pain that will actually hurt them. We thought we were doing it by decapitating them. Turns out that that didn't do it. So decapitation, we can continue to decapitate, but you know, and they get might get weaker and weaker. Their military, their abilities may degrade over time since they lose all of their institutional knowledge and the people who are the best leaders and all of that. But again, that's also a waiting game. Decapitation as it turns out. So it's not decapitation, it's not destroying things. They don't care about the condition of their people. They don't care about the penury, starvation and misery of their people. Maybe that's even helpful to them. So that's where we are. And so he has to figure out what it means to be able to get to that point. Because right now, honestly, anything less than being able to say that he went in, he made sure that one of the world's most dangerous and worst countries will never get a nuclear weapon. And here's why. Because we took all the stuff away from them is the best answer, is obviously the clearest version of it. Right. We've confiscated their contraband, taken it. They'll never have it again. We're destroying it. But I think anything less than that and he loses. And he loses in his own. He loses in his own scenario. But how we get from there to here, there could be 15 different ways. I do think, and I think we should talk. Iranians claim this morning that it fired on an American ship. We deny it. I'm pretty sure it's probably. So the Iranians are also gonna play this shadow puppet game where they're gonna claim that they're winning the war, that they're hitting us and killing us and doing terrible things to us. And these stories about how our bases, all our bases have been, like, grievously damaged in the Middle east, but we're lying about it and all that stuff. So that's all part of a propaganda campaign. Not that some damage hasn't been done to US Bases. That's true. But it's not obviously catastrophic. And almost nobody died or was injured in any of those attacks.
- [55:01]
D
Attacks.
- [55:02]
A
But they're going to clear.
- [55:04]
C
There were a lot more injuries than were initially reported by this administration at the very start of the conflict when the first soldiers died. Those drone strikes did injure a lot of soldiers, and that was not really emphasized by the administration.
- [55:19]
A
Okay. But when we think about what the Iranians are having, great. Are having surprising success in their propaganda war. I mean, I say surprising cuz, like, I didn't know anybody liked Iran. I don't think anybody really likes Iran. It's just that the hatred of Trump is so deep and all consuming that people are willing to believe anything as long as it redounds negatively. Trump's efforts here.
- [55:47]
B
It's not just that. It's not just that. It's that the mission and purpose of Iran's proxies has been so thoroughly laundered that it's safer to get on board. If it was safe. Excuse me, if it was made safe to walk around with Hamas and Hezbollah Flags. You could now walk around with an Iranian republic flag too, right?
- [56:15]
A
Also over the weekend, big story at the University of Michigan. Professor gives a commencement address and goes off script to praise the protesters on campus for being so resolute and serious and showing what it can mean to really be a gray, a person of integrity and quality. Causing a very big issue inside the University of Michigan system. The president now distancing himself from Professor Peterson, who made this speech, saying that he did what he did in an unauthorized fashion. You have two regents, you know, you have two people. It's going to become a political issue in the Michigan Senate and governor's race that this happened. And I just think stuff is starting to happen again, even though college is basically over for the summer. But the activation, there's been an activation of the encampment people. Again, there was a sort of scene on the steps of Low Library at Columbia University. If you looked at the crowd, everybody in it was about 92 years old. So I don't think they were students. They all looked like retired New York City school teachers to me in Keffiyeh's. But stuff is happening again.
- [57:41]
E
Well, a couple of other things, John, to add to that. The University of Michigan elects regents, that is board members in an interesting way, where they're elected statewide and they run as members of political parties. And there is a contested election for a regent. And at the convention, a Democratic regent, Jordan Acker, who is currently a regent, was knocked off in a primary by another one of these Islamist candidates, Amir Makled. So he is now the Democratic nominee for a seat on, on the University of Michigan Board of Regents, the governing board. He has praised Hezbollah and represented in litigation both the protesters who were activated and who were praised in this commencement address, as well as a man who tried and failed to shoot up a police station. And he filed a wrongful death suit on behalf of that, that man who was shot dead as he was attempting to shoot police. So that will be quite an interesting race and have an impact on the governance of the University of Michigan. And, and then at Cornell University, where Norman Finkelstein was speaking, not exactly an A, you know, an enemy of the protesting class. These pro Palestinian protesters followed the president of Cornell out to his vehicle and surrounded the vehicle. And as he backed up, he like brushed one of these kids. And they have now succeeded in turning this into a national story about the terrible assault on their free speech rights as they were surrounding his car and chasing him and screaming at him as he attempted to exit the Norman Finkelstein event.
- [59:49]
A
Norman Finkelstein, just for people to know, is a radical anti Zionist academic whose entire, I mean pseudo academic must be
- [59:58]
E
125 years old at least.
- [60:00]
A
But I mean he literally his entire career, he's like the original Jewish anti Zionist conspiracist. Having Norman Finkelstein speak is the sort of thing you would expect an Islamist group to do. The fact that the president of Cornell even attended the speech by Norman Finkelstein should be grounds for dismissal. It's like, you know, attending as far as I'm concerned, but you know, I'm not. It's a private institution. Zygos into everybody who's paying.
- [60:29]
E
He should have run over the protesters faster.
- [60:33]
A
You know, Parter, you know, I don't know. Yeah, we keep hearing that. You know, that's not really, you know, so people have, you know, all sorts of grounds to do things when they're, when they're really, really upset. I don't know if you know that like, you know, when you're upset you sort of get, get a pass. And you know, also he was, he
- [60:54]
D
was going through a difficult time.
- [60:57]
A
So I'm just saying we may be in for a. There's a wave. This is gonna sound like a crazy thing to say. Cause it's like never stop. But there's going to be a wave of antisemitism is about to hit this summer. I mean, it's weird cause like as I say, I didn't know that there wasn't a wave. But it's like there's gonna be an even bigger wave or there's gonna be a rolling cascading series of waves. We're getting all this noise about this. You know, it's not just. Or it's signal, it's noise that's I think, a signal that it's all, that it's all about to start anew. It's going to be a long hot summer and it's going to be centering on these cases like Abdul Al Sayed's candidacy or Alawi's candidacy in New Jersey or.
- [61:49]
C
I was going to add that all of these, all of these people running for office, both at the state level and the congressional level, will be out hitting the roads, having town halls, having meetings. And we have seen this is a really, really bad side effect of our hyper polarized society. Whether you're a Republican or a Democrat, it's often unsafe for people to campaign in person in some areas. I mean, there have been a lot of threats against people running for office and people have to Cancel events. And that's, this is a truly nonpartisan problem. It really is. The threats against people who are elected to office who are trying to do their responsible thing as a candidate and stand before the people and have an argument, have a discussion, share their views. That is a baseline, small d democratic process that we are seeing erode because of extremist threats, because of people surrounding vehicles or claiming, you know, calling in bomb threats. And I think this summer we'll unfortunately see an uptick in that. And that's really bad for how our politics works. We've already got a pretty dysfunctional process going on, and that's not going to help.
- [62:50]
B
Seth, you had a post last week about a report on global anti Semitism.
- [62:57]
A
Who was the report from again?
- [62:59]
D
That was Tel Aviv University.
- [63:01]
B
Tel Aviv University. And you pointed out that unlike previous waves of anti Semitic violence and incidents, this one hasn't really abated at all, if you look at it in its totality.
- [63:22]
D
Yeah, the Tel Aviv universe, they do an annual report on global anti Semitism. And so they rely on monitors in each country. And so we don't have, like, there's no, according to Russia, there were no anti Semitic assaults or whatever you know, last year. So like, it's, it's, but in the, but it's really useful for the west, which has fairly reliable reporting procedures, a free media, free society, you know, so the, the Western states were the ones that really jumped out because they're the ones that look the worst. They, what usually happens is that the, these, these, these waves will crest and, you know, and fall away. And eventually, I suppose that will happen, but it's not happening now, as you say. In fact, in several Western countries, it was much more common for the numbers of antisemitic assaults to go up. This happened in countries where overall antisemitic incidents went up, but it also happened in some countries where overall antisemitic incidents went down. The violent anti Semitic incidents still went up. And what that tells you is that it's, it's just, it's morphing. But like a less violent anti Semitic wave became a more violent anti Semitic wave. People stopped, you know, tagging, you know, Jewish shops with a red triangle and started, you know, throwing a homemade firebomb at a, at a cafe or a synagogue or a hatzala truck or something like that. And so, yes, even, even in places where the overall numbers, where they're trying to brag and say, well, you know, at least it dropped, it's going in the right direction. Even in the States where the numbers would suggest it might be going in the right direction. It is not going in the right direction because even in those places it got more violent. And this was, you know, and you ask people like, what are you. Well, there's, there's, there's less graffiti, but more people are being stabbed in Golder's Green. Which are they going to be more concerned about, which is going to shape their society more, which is going to, you know, have more of an effect on their decisions, on the security decisions where they live, you know, all that stuff. And so, yeah, things are rolling along still in a way that you don't get the sense of from the global media, because in some places the numbers are of total incidents are going down slightly and in. Sometimes there's just an exhaustion and the media is tired of talking about it and doesn't want to and whatever. But yes, there is this sense that things have at least, you know, evened out. They haven't yet since October 7, 2023.
- [66:02]
C
And there's been a really disturbing tendency on the part of certain media figures, certain public officials, to not so subtly blame the victims by saying, well, if you didn't support the state of Israel, then this probably wouldn't happen. If you didn't wear a keeper in public, maybe you wouldn't put a target on your back. I've seen an uptick just anecdotally. I mean, Mehdi Hassan being the worst and most terrible case, but he's always been terrible. But we do see this sense of freedom for people to blame the victims of anti Semitic violence in this way. And then that, of course has the effect. And you've seen a lot of this discussion among Jews in Britain right now. What do we do? How do we go about our daily life? Anecdotes about people saying, telling their children, like, don't tell. If someone asks you don't admit you're a Jew. That is the kind of very corrosive, pernicious cultural pressure that's being brought to bear on people that is quite different from even just five, 10 years ago.
- [66:57]
A
The perfect statement. We can close on this just to be crushingly morose. The perfect statement of this came from Sir Tony Brenton, who was Britain's ambassador to Russia, published in a British newspaper on May 2. Sir, your excellent statistical article, what the figures say about rising antisemitism makes one point clear. The great leap in antisemitism, quote unquote, took place in late 2023 and thus was not or mostly not antisemitism. At all but widespread popular rage at the Israeli overreaction to the Hamas atrocities of October that year. This of course, does not excuse the anti Jewish outrages that have taken place since, but does suggest that the UK Jewish community could help to damp down the likelihood of such outrages and by making it clear that it is as appalled by the brutality of Israeli policy as almost everyone else is. Signed, Sir Tony Brenton, Former British Ambassador to Russia so this is the sort of rhetoric we thought would have been retired forever by the Holocaust. And here it is back right there. You know, look, you're not going to say that your Jews are terrible if you're a Jew. If you're not going to acknowledge that you should be as outraged at the monstrosity of other Jews as everybody else is. You deserve what you get, you kike bastards. Sincerely, Sir Tony Brinton British Ambassador Sir Tony Brenton Once again, maybe King Charles should think about revoking his knighthood, but I doubt that that will that will happen. We'll be back tomorrow for Christine, Eliana, Seth and Abe on John Pothorot's Keep the Candle bur.
- [69:28]
D
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A
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D
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