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- [00:00]
John Podhoretz
Today's episode is brought to you by sapir, the quarterly journal edited by Bret Stephens, devoted to ideas for a thriving Jewish future, SAPIR is proud to announce the SAPIR Debates, a public debate series on the most consequential issues facing Jewish communities in the U.S. israel and around the world. Presented in partnership with the 92nd Street Y, the SAPIR debates will be hosted and moderated by Bret Stephens and future world class thinkers. The topic of the inaugural Sapir debate, to be held on the evening of May 15th at the 92nd Street Y, will focus on the only slightly controversial question, is Donald Trump good for the Jews? Joining the debate, Jason Greenblatt, special envoy to the Middle east and Trump's first term as president, and Rahm Emanuel, former Mayor of Chicago and Chief of staff to President Barack Obama. To purchase tickets for the inaugural Sapir debate at the 92nd Street Y on May 15, go to sapirjournal.orgdebates that's s a P I R journal.org debates Hope for the best, expect the worst Some.
- [01:15]
Abe Greenwald
Preach and pain Some die of thirst.
- [01:18]
John Podhoretz
No way of knowing which way it's going Hope for the best, expect the.
- [01:25]
Abe Greenwald
Wor.
- [01:28]
John Podhoretz
And welcome to the Commentary Magazine Daily Podcast. Today is Friday, April 18, 2025. I am John Podhorts, the editor of Commentary Magazine. With me, as always, Executive Editor Abe Greenwald. Hi Abe.
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Christine Rosen
Hi John.
- [01:41]
John Podhoretz
Senior Editor Seth Mandel. Hi Seth.
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Seth Mandel
Hi John.
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John Podhoretz
Social Commentary columnist Christine Rosalind. Hi Christine.
- [01:47]
Eli Lake
Hi John.
- [01:48]
John Podhoretz
And joining us today, our contributing editor and host of the and I just explained that I'm very sleep deprived today, so it's blank. What is the first Breaking History Breaking History Podcast, the essential podcast that tells the story of the 20th century and in fact, in the current podcast dating back to the 19th century and before Breaking History, Eli Lake, our contributing editor.
- [02:15]
Abe Greenwald
Thank you so much for having me, John. It's great to be back.
- [02:18]
John Podhoretz
You bet. So if you want to know how trade wars become real wars, you should listen to Eli's latest podcast, which is about the opium wars that broke out between Britain and China in the 19th century and were indeed very brutal and have many fascinating parallels to the current situation between the United States and China and what it is that we should be aware of and frightened of if we go continue down this path. But I I was thinking maybe we would start with Christine and Seth and their articles in our May issue of Commentary, now available for your approusal enjoyment, excitement, depression and enlightenmentary.org for all subscribers. And if you're not a subscriber, shame on you subscribe. What's the matter with you? You coming here for free like a, like a, like a bum. You're a bum. Stop being a bum. Go subscribe@comMENTARY.org Very simple shame based advertising.
- [03:25]
Eli Lake
I love it. This is great.
- [03:26]
John Podhoretz
What can I do? What can I do? Okay, so Christine, your column this month deals with an interesting issue in light of maybe the most disturbing story of the week to me or, you know, certainly the most disturbing sort of social celebrity story of the week to me, which is the Elon Musk baby machine that the Wall Street Journal delved into, I think on Monday, explaining that, you know, he has had at least 13 children and others think that he has had many more. He is, this is a eugenic, almost self consciously, a eugenics experiment in spreading the genius of his seed to as many people as possible to create a new generation of cognitive leaders with many different women. And he appears to be building a compound which they can all live together. It really does sound Bond. It's like come kind of some kind of joke Bond villain story. It's kind of the story of Moonraker, in fact, the 1979 Bond movie where Hugo Drax is going to blow up the Earth and he's got all these women on the spaceship that he's going to fly to wherever he's going to fly to and like create, create a new universe. Christine, your, your piece is about these companies, Silicon Valley companies that are promising a form of prenatal testing, the purpose of which is to, without them saying so, eliminate the, the imperfect, shall we say?
- [05:16]
Eli Lake
Yes, it's speaking of history repeating itself. It is the company that a lot of people might have heard of at this point is called Orchid Health. There was a big story in the New York Times last Sunday about them. They advertise as being about health and wellness very much in the vibe of the current cultural milieu. But what they're doing is consumer eugenics. And they promise a whole bunch of screening of genes that are in many cases not linked. There are certain genes, single genes, things for Tay Sachs and other horrible diseases that you can screen. You can do pre implantation genetic diagnosis of an embryo that has been created through ivf. And you can make sure that you do not have a child who has these always fatal conditions. So we've had that around for a long time. This is new. They are screening for a wider range of things and promising potential parents something they can't deliver on, which is your kid will never be obese or autistic or intellectually compromised. They have all kinds of interesting euphemisms they use. Basically they're, they're promising you super children and they also encourage sex selection so you can choose the sex of your child. All of these things are allowable under the law, but as a matter of ethics are highly questionable. But what I was so fascinated by is the way they're marketing this to people. They're acting as if. And the woman who started Orchid Health writes frequently on social media, as if she's a sort of crusader for health, like she's Jonah Salk or something. But no, she's actually just selling a very dubious product, very eugenic product to very wealthy people who want to create perfect children. She talks about how her mother had a degenerative genetic eye condition and that she started the company so that no one else would have to suffer like that. Seeming to miss the irony that if we embrace this model of childbearing, then people like her mother would never be allowed to be born because they would be just that those embryos would be destroyed. So the repro tech movement, of which Elon Musk is kind of on the periphery as a pronatalist creating his legion, that is. It's an interesting cultural theme in Silicon Valley. These are the people who want to cheat death, but they also want to control the quality of their children from the very earliest moments of conception. And she really would. And many people in Silicon Valley embrace this idea that sex is for fun. Having children though, is science and you've got to make sure that you're breeding the best children. And all of this for people who've studied history, know has lots of echoes of a very dark time when the control of reproduction and the elimination of the so called unfit was prominent in our culture now, but then it was the state doing that. So their argument is it's fine as long as people choose it. And that's what I'm pushing back on is, is it really fine if people are choosing this?
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John Podhoretz
We should say that this was, this is actually the topic of your doctoral dissertation.
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Eli Lake
Yeah, I wrote about the, I did write about the history of the eugenics movement. And so I mean this, there, there are big differences between now and then, obviously, and, and the state isn't involved. In fact, this is a wild west and the US has the most unregulated fertility industry on Earth. That's why we get a lot of tourists from countries like the UK where there are more restrictions. So but for me it was really that this entirely new generation of young people who are about to enter the age where they're going to have kids. Their attitude is very much shaped by the world they grew up in. And they do want kind of on demand everything and they want to be able to choose whatever they want. They want everything highly tailored and personalized and they're going about childbearing if they have the wealth and the inclination to do so. They are doing that with childbearing now. And that should concern us because it's a very commodified understanding of what it means to be a parent. And it's a very worrisome trend when you see that it butts up against again in Silicon Valley some really questionable race theories and very eugenic minded discussions of who should have children and who should not.
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John Podhoretz
You know, how does it work?
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Abe Greenwald
Like how do you guarantee certain genes don't get into your kid?
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John Podhoretz
By aborting babies.
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Eli Lake
Just to make this clear, it's reproduction only through ivf. You have to use ivf. They do a whole bunch of screening now what they. And then they give you a printout that gives you risk assessment. So they can say look this, if it's a clear single gene trait like Tay Sachs or Downs, they'll tell you that. But then they have a whole slew of other things they look for that aren't single, that are multi genetic impact that they can't promise but they give you a risk assessment. So then the parents look at all the embryos they've created and the one with the best risk score is the one they're supposed to implant and the rest are destroyed.
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Abe Greenwald
And if I can have a follow up the. I think I'm with you and I haven't read your piece yet, but I'm going to read it on this. This sounds ghoulish but how do we. You're not making the argument like some people would say we shouldn't cure blindness or deafness because that's like a naturally occurring thing in human beings. And it's. Whereas I kind of find that to be like a ridiculous argument. So like how is it distinguished from that?
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John Podhoretz
Well, eliminating just if I could because I want to tie this to RFK Jr yesterday talking about autism. So you're, you're eliminating blindness, you're eliminating deafness, you are not curing it, you are removing it from the human genome. That in theory taken to its logical conclusion. Everybody gets rid of a blind baby. Now blindness isn't actually sort of testable I think in this case because there.
- [10:54]
Eli Lake
Are a few conditions that are genetic, but not all.
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John Podhoretz
So what is Missing from the euphemistic language of organ health. And all that is throw away the imperfect nascent life that you have generated if it is going to cause you trouble upon birth.
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Christine Rosen
Well, can I just add one thing that Christine mentions in her piece, but you're not even ridding it, the gene pool of it, because the only people who can abort their imperfect embryos have to be able to afford it.
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Eli Lake
Exactly, exactly. And the underlying, the part of the message that worries me the most long term is that they're framing this. In fact, the founder of Orchid Health says at some point, pretty soon not screening your embryos will be like the people who ride around not putting seatbelts on. It's a safety issue. And that is exactly the language of the eugenics movement of the previous century which said it is actually unsafe to bring people into this world. It's wrong. And we see, we have seen this, we know this to be the case because if you look at what happened with children with down syndrome because they have nearly been, they've been totally eliminated from some countries and here in the us any woman who refuses that testing because she's, she's happy to welcome a child with whatever condition the child emerges with, they are the enormous amount of pressure and the feeling of your being irresponsible as a parent, if you bring a child into the world knowing it has this condition and this is all occurring at the same time, that the lifespan for people with downs has doubled. I mean it's now an average of 50 years old, which it wasn't not very long ago. So that's. John's distinction is important. These people crusade as wanting to cure the world of disease, but actually what they're curing the world of are people who have conditions that don't make them so called perfect by the standards of their own measure.
- [12:51]
John Podhoretz
That's why it's important to add in the controversy that erupted yesterday, the day before yesterday, with a speech by our Health and Human Services secretary and of course anti vaccine lunatic Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Who wants us to, wants to create or is creating a program to examine six markers for autism and where they come from. Obviously as part of his crusade against vaccines, which I want to remind people, the argument that vaccines cause autism was on the verge of being accepted in a great many places in the late 90s and early 2000s, until it was discovered that the study on which all of this was based by a British doctor named Andrew Wakefield, had, was invented, was, was a fraud and that there was no such data. There were no such data. And he went to prison for committing, for committing this fraud. All we know is that the diagnosis of the number of people who are, who are called autistic or are on the spectrum has skyrocketed in the last 50 years. That's what we know. Or 60 years. And that that is congruent with the adoption of a universal vaccination regime with babies or small children. And so this correlation then has become causation to many people. The reason that the RFK comments were so controversial and that in a different time, in a different place, he would no longer be serving as Health and Human Service secretary After what he said, because of the outrage and because a normal administration would say, you can't talk like that. Like this is. You've just been incredibly divisive and you're going to make us look all like monsters. Is that he said he wanted to do this. This is really important because basically autism is nothing but a tragedy. These people, they will never know love, they will never have a job, they will never be able to date, they will never be able to write.
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Abe Greenwald
That's totally false. Like, there are all kinds of people with autism that, like, I don't know, they have super, like, powers and they.
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John Podhoretz
Yeah, like Elon Musk.
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Abe Greenwald
Yeah, like Mark Zuckerberg or something. Right, right.
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John Podhoretz
No, but I mean, that is what he said. And now there is a phalanx of MAGA apologists who, who are saying, no, no, he didn't say that. He was only referring to the very severely autistic. Now, the reason that this is so horrifying to me is I know, as I think a bunch of us probably do, I know parents with kids who are on the spectrum that range from very mild, you know, very socially awkward, you know, uncomfortable having, you know, all that, to almost nonverbal or whatever. And these are parents who are devoted to their children, who love their children, who do not look at their children as though they are nothing but a burden and have made their lives a living hell. But they have made their peace. However, it is reconciled themselves to the fact that they are living a different kind of life from the life that they expected to be living as the parent of somebody with very special needs. And there is a moral and social magnificence to people like that that RFK's and Orchid Health's assertion that you should be spared this source. Nobody wants this. Now, of course, as you say, Eli, and it's very important, we shouldn't then say it's great to have autism, just like There is this weird moral framing in which the profoundly deaf advocate for the idea that deafness is its own separate culture and that if you can. And that if you can somehow be cured of deafness and learn how to hear, that you are betraying a separate culture. That seems to me to be immoral in the sense that you were then denying somebody the full range of human abilities in order to keep them contained within a, within, within a community. That is there of necessity, but not, is, is not there to, you know, it's better, you know, to have good eyesight and good hearing than not to. Right. I mean, so, so in that sense that's, that's where the core kernel of common sense comes in, that Orchid health is exploiting or that this, all this consumer eugenics, as Christine calls it.
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Seth Mandel
And the, the, the thing that RFK, RFK's comments miss also is the, the fact that you, it's very hard to describe people as severely autistic or highly autistic or whatever because even within, even at those ends of the spectrum, there's a range within those ends, right? So I had a college housemate who was what I would say, highly autistic and he, but he was living in a college house, right, with the guys and he was doing fine grade wise and, but whenever somebody called the landline of the house, whenever, the, whenever long distance carriers called the landline of the house and this person picked up and they said are you happy with your long distance service? He would be talked into changing it. And so you would look at the phone records and see we changed long distance carriers three times in the past two weeks because he would, and then we would get to a point where we actually had house meetings where we would practice this person not answering the phone and he couldn't do it even in practice, meaning we would make a, and he would be in the other room and he would say hello. When the whole point of the skit was to practice not just not doing anything. So he was obviously both clearly autistic and also function highly functioning enough to be living on his own, you know, with these kids in college. And so that's, that's the other thing is that there's the RFK common sort of presented as well. The more autistic you are or the more noticeable it is, the more violent you are likely to be or the, the, the, the less likely it is that you'll be able to go to the bathroom on your own, things like that. But it's complicated at all ends of the spectrum and that's what makes this so, you know, what, so, so, so difficult to talk about with people who view it as, you know, the same thing as like say blindness, right? Which is like, it's bet, you know, you don't want to, you want to have good sight and things like that. But that's something that everybody can agree, right? Is just. But an autistic person has like these, they fit into these weird categories where it's not really clear how to separate all the various aspects of their condition and their personality. And it's really tied together much more than just this person is fine, but has this condition.
- [20:48]
John Podhoretz
Well, you know, biodiversity is a very big issue in the world of bioengineering, right? So we have these weird examples of what happens when Mendelian genetics go, go too far. When you take plants or you do and you. And you bioengineer them to strengthen them or do whatever this or that. And then as a result of the efforts that you make, you just, you, you destroy the plant or you create, you know, a harvest crisis. I mean, the single most redolent example in history is, though it was before Mendel spelled out Mendelian genetics was the Irish potato famine. When Ireland ended up with one, one kind of potato. And a disease ripped through the potato crop and destroyed the single most important foodstuff in Ireland. And millions of people died of starvation in the 1840s because there was no biodiversity in the potato crop in Ireland. Similarly, the Red Delicious apple, which people have were playing around with to make it redder and crunchier. As they were doing so, they made it redder and crunchier, but the flavor of the apple disappeared. And because of the way, the aggressive way that plant genetics functions, the new, hardier, genetically modified Red Delicious apple not only emerged as an inedible, mostly inedible thing, but overtook the rest of the Red Delicious apple crop. And that apple doesn't exist anymore because its genetic structure was totally altered planet wide. So we now have other apples like honey crisps and others that barely existed that came to take their place. And humankind is no different. You know, you start selecting out. This is the whole thing with CRISPR and genetic modification, all this. We don't know what we're going to be turning on and off if we start turning on and off genes or if we eliminate again, imagine eliminating, you know, again, autism, right. In that sense. And you don't get an Elon musk. Now maybe write down people. Go ahead.
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Christine Rosen
Yeah. No, I mean, part of this is that there are a good number of cases of people with autism who have extraordinary abilities. I'm not talking about the, the sci fi stuff.
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John Podhoretz
The, the, you know, the Rain man, the counting, the. Yeah, win and win in casinos. Because.
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Christine Rosen
Yeah, no, but like, you know, there's an Israeli intelligence unit, 90, I think it's 9900, which is about. That focuses on visual intelligence. And they recruit a lot of Israelis with autism because there's a prevalence of being able to perceive visual patterns in a way that others cannot. So you'd be talking about losing some actual amazing people.
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Eli Lake
We run this experiment with pharmaceuticals and mental illness. I mean, Van Gogh would have probably been heavily medicated in the 21st century, and that means perhaps he wouldn't have created what he created. Maybe he would have. Again, this, this argument of when, how do we end suffering and alleviate suffering without altering what it means to be human? And, and the expectations for future human beings. And that's really where. And I think this is another thing about our culture right now. We are very hesitant to make the moral argument against this stuff. I mean, we're not. We're doing it right now in this podcast. But I think culturally it's very difficult to say, you know, actually that's morally wrong to want to choose the sex of your child because you're robbing that child of its open future. Because your expectations for what a boy will do or what a girl will do is already set them on a path. That means your parenting style will be informed by your ability to make that decision. And I think that, I mean, that is a moral choice. They're framing it as a health choice or as a, you know, a way to have a more flourishing life for your children. But that's not entirely what it is. So it's. Yeah, it's very important to think about what we lose when we meddle in this way, as well as what they're promising we gain.
- [25:16]
Seth Mandel
Christine, can I ask a question about that, a follow up on that? Because I'm wondering, in all your research, if you came across a discussion of what can happen to a person who has been gene selected in that individual way. Right. And I'm not, and I mean this seriously, but I. There was, you know, a few years ago, the guy who created, was it Labradoodles or Goldendoodles, said that it was his great regret of his life. And he spoke as if he were Dr. Frankenstein. He had said he had created this. And, you know, they have sometimes mixed breeds. They may have shorter lives, they may have congenital hips problems, whatever it is. But he said that he, he did this for one friend who had a specific, who had allergies, you know, and needed a dog. And he's like, well, here's a clever way to do that. And then everybody wanted these things. And I'm just wondering if you, Is there something about, like, are people worried about what this sort of selection might do? Like, physically to the people who have been selected for specific traits?
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Eli Lake
They are. I mean, there have been. This was actually why the woman who discovered the CRISPR process has been a very fiercely ethical advocate for how we use crispr.
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John Podhoretz
CRISPR is gene editing. So.
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Eli Lake
Right. So you don't pass it down, but you can edit the genes of. So even, even just keeping it within one person's body. She's talked about what that means. There's only been one documented case of someone actually altering permanently a genome. And this was a Chinese scientist who tried to, who through ivf, tried to select against a gene that might make someone more susceptible to getting hiv. He was imprisoned by the Chinese government when he published this work. It was against, it was against the law even in China. And he became a pariah. But a woman did give birth to twins with that altered genome. So we do have two human beings on this earth who've been genetically modified. We don't know where they are, what's going on with that situation. But that's, but that's actually where, yes, we have to be super cautious. We don't even know the long term health implications for all the kids who've had, you know, all the embryos that have had selections made. But for orchid health, what they're promising is a risk score. And that makes it even more ethically dubious because they're saying the risk that your kid might be obese, the risk that your kid might have depression or be short or be the wrong, you know, well, they can choose for sexual. All of these cases. Then again, you're speaking to the expectation for what a person wants their child to be rather than the gift of having a child, which is that you've been given a gift if you have a child. And your job is not to shape them into this perfect human being, it's to give them a future, open future. So we don't really know because we don't allow it. We don't allow that kind of modification yet. But we certainly, to John's point about the sort of whole genetic pool that we're all in, it can't not have implications down the line for the, for the human genome. It just will, because we're, we're already selecting against a number of things right now.
- [28:36]
John Podhoretz
Hey everybody, Vacation season is upon us. Spring has hit New York. Got some warm weather, got some rain, but it's just making me think about the summer and the fun that I can have, fun my wife and I can have. We got a trip planned for Wisconsin in July. Other stuff we're going to do with our family later in August. And this year I'm going to treat myself to the looks upgrades I deserve with Quint's high quality travel essentials at fair prices. And the premium luggage options and stylish tote bags they offer are perfect ways to carry all of my Quint's goods. My sweaters, my polo shirts that I just got from Quince and those like everything else you get there, priced 50 to 80% less than similar brands. How? By partnering directly with top factories, Quince cuts out the cost to the middleman and passes the savings on to us. And Quince only works with factories that use safe, ethical and responsible manufacturing practices and premium fabrics and finishes. So for your next trip, treat yourself to the looks upgrades you deserve from quince. Go to quince.com commentary for 365 day returns plus free shipping on your order. That's Q U I n c e.com commentary to get free shipping and 365 day returns. Quince.com commentary hi everyone, it's Abe.
- [30:11]
Christine Rosen
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- [31:59]
John Podhoretz
So let's move on to Seth's piece in the the issue, which we're going to move on here from the from the medical to the psychological and political pieces called the anti Semites in the conservative manosphere and delves deeply into the latest series of controversies involving, largely involving the the hottest people in politics. You know, the soccer moms of 2024, the, you know, the hockey moms of 2024, the male podcaster contingent that proved to be the influencers that really shaped our election and changed things and how much that world, particularly around MAGA and to the right of maga, if such a thing is possible, where they are going in relation to questions involving Jews, American Jews, Judaism and Israel.
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Seth Mandel
And weirdly enough, the one thing they have in common, by the way, with what we were just discussing is that because they are the modern version of what used to be called pickup artists in like the VH1 era, you know, a decade, a decade and a half ago, maybe two decades ago, whatever it was. They are also kind of in the market of self selecting for desirable traits. Right. Not just among the, I mean, not just among people they seek to date. I mean, among themselves. They are part of this movement that's like, you know, this is where you get the don't eat seed oils also from the crunchy, the crunchy cons, you know, and yoga moms come together in this sort of movement also because there is a kind of like, you want to be this type of person and we want the gene pool to have only these type of people. And you know, because there's anti Semitism involved, they talk about the gene pool, you know, quite a bit. It's a weird sort of, you know, reflection of that.
- [34:11]
John Podhoretz
Right. Okay. So, so, you know, you're there talking obviously about Andrew Tate, you know, the mixed martial extreme artist person who then started, started out in the 10 years ago, telling young men to look women straight in the eye, shake their hands, you know, be a man, work out, be healthy, and be, you know, sort of courteous and, and, and treat women right. Right. And then this then morphed over time into some very weird stuff, and he and his brother are accused of sex trafficking. And I, I don't know what. But I mean, so it starts out nice, right? Including. And then intellectually, in this world of people, it starts out with the, and this is, by the way, Eli should jump in here a little bit too, because it's kind of a version of the theme of his podcast taken to its most nauseating extreme, which is the stories that you are being told about the world, largely by woke people, about how the world has been built and made are lies. And there's a lot of lies, and they're handing you a load of garbage. And for us, we would say, like the 1619 Project is the ur example of this, the revision of American history to tell a different story. And you have to go back and tell the story anew. But so what they're doing is saying the things that you think you know or that you're told are conventional wisdom. You have to start questioning them. You have to start questioning them. And then the funny part about it is somehow when you start questioning the conventional wisdom, you end up with, Hitler's not such a bad guy. Winston Churchill was the great villain of the 20th century, and it's just not true that 6 million Jews died in the Holocaust. Somebody is handing you a bill of goods. Why it ends up there is part and parcel of the experiment to tell the true story that's been hidden by the, by the fake story. Right.
- [36:28]
Abe Greenwald
Well, if I, in my own defense here, I would just say I'm different than this guy Darryl Cooper. Well, of course you are different because of I. We both read books. He reads David Irving about.
- [36:42]
Seth Mandel
It's not, it's not, it's not totally clear that he also reads books.
- [36:47]
John Podhoretz
No, no, it's not clear that he reads books.
- [36:48]
Abe Greenwald
He's just asking Pat Buchanan and, and, and David Irving and he says, I've discovered a forbidden history and I'm gonna tell the forbidden history. And this is what they won't tell you.
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John Podhoretz
Right.
- [37:01]
Abe Greenwald
My conceit is not necessarily that I'm. Every show I'm trying to, you know, correct the woke left my conceit is I love reading history and I wanna, and I, you know, I, One of my, one of the, one of my inspirations for the podcast is Dan Carlin, who does a different kind of podcast for very long. But what Dan Carlin says, and I try to, I kind of consider this my ethos as well is I'm not an historian. I have too much respect for what historians do to say I'm a journalist, but I only read the best historians. Meaning like I'm, I'm working on a couple things right now, but like I go back and I try to read like Will Durant or I, you know, I don't know, Andrew Roberts is another example. Whereas his books that he reads are the Cranks and he's recycling the crankery of like non historians or bad.
- [37:51]
John Podhoretz
Okay, so we need to introduce, because you brought this in at a secondary level. So one of the figures in this manosphere or one of the interviewees that has now become popular in this round robin manosphere of podcasters that you talk about is Daryl Cooper, who is known on social media as Martyr Maid. And it is Martyr Maid. And so as you, as Seth describes, Martyr Maid appears on Dave. I mean, I don't know what the sequence is. He appears on Dave Smith's podcast and Dave Smith hears, you know, and then, and then, you know, Joseph Goebbels hears him on Dave Smith's podcast and has him on the Joseph Goebbels podcast. And then of course, because he loves no one more than Joseph Goebbels, Tucker Carlson has Martyr made on his podcast which then explodes him into the, you know, sort of like into the empyrean. And this guy who was arguing that the Holocaust didn't really happen. The Nazis only just had trouble feeding all the people they had taken prisoner because they didn't have enough food. And Winston Churchill was the great villain of World War II is suddenly tens of millions of people are listening to this who have never heard a word because they're 17 years old about World War II before at all.
- [39:14]
Seth Mandel
The way the, the big coming together here was that did involve Tucker Carlson, which is that Daryl Cooper was on Tucker Carlson show in the fall and it went poorly. He was poorly received, you know, by anybody with a brain online watching this. And he even seemed to sense that it kind of went poorly. But of course everybody on his side, you know, of the question defended him. But then he got so much criticism that Joe Rogan decided because of all.
- [39:48]
John Podhoretz
The number one who has the most listened to podcast in the United States.
- [39:52]
Seth Mandel
Joe Rogan is the king. He's the. He's the podcast king. And he is what made the industry what it is now. He's the one who showed that you can be an actual podcasting superstar. There is such a thing. And so he's sort of at the top of the chain, but also because he's not explicitly political. He's just, you know, a guy. He's cultural. And his interviews sometimes go on for three hours, right, where they just sit and talk. He has become the epicenter of all. So Joe Rogan, who has an incredible reach far beyond politics, picks up where Tucker Carlson, who is a sort of explicitly political project, almost left off. And that's how these things got passed from the things that weird right wing types wanted people to start talking about into a kind of mainstream. Because Joe Rogan is, you know, at this point, we're talking about millions and millions of listeners and subscribers.
- [40:57]
John Podhoretz
We're talking about is bigger than the mainstream, like that he is his own stream. We don't really have a mainstream anymore because the mainstream used to be numbers. Mainstream used to be three networks, you know, dividing up 90% of the audience. Joe Rogan has 20 million listeners a week or something like that. That makes him bigger than Colbert, Fallon, Kimmel and the nightly news put together.
- [41:22]
Seth Mandel
So he is his and with an audience that is younger. And therefore, you know, his influence carries generationally in a way that is confounding people in politics because, you know, young man, young, young men are trending more to the right. Not that young men are conservative, but the numbers are. They are moving to the right from where they've been. And Joe Rogan is kind of at the center of that without himself being a conservative, an ideological conservative. And the same goes for somebody else I talk about in the piece, which is Theo Vaughn. Now, Theo Vaughn, I remember Theo Vaughn from Real World Road Rules, an MTV show from when I was, I guess, a teenager or whatever. And, you know, MTV sort of pioneered the reality TV sphere with Real World. Theo Vaughan was a guy on Real World Road Rules, which was one of the later versions of it. And he, you know, he's just kind of like this philosopher bro type who, you know, says things and why. Just I'm wondering, and I want to know this, and I'm wondering and I'm wondering. And, you know, over a decade later, he turned into a massive, massively popular podcaster.
- [42:37]
John Podhoretz
People may remember Theo Vaughn because it was on Theo Vaughn's show that Donald Trump appeared in September or October and had this shockingly Heartfelt conversation about addiction and about his brother's addiction and about what it's like to take drugs and why you take drugs and all of that. That really kind of blew a lot of people away. That was, that was Theo Vaughn's moment where he was kind of launched. He's nowhere near Rogan, he's not even near Tucker, but he was launched. But the thing about all these guys, and of course, the big moment you don't really deal with, but is our friend Douglas Murray appeared on Joe Rogan with Dave Smith. With Dave Smith. Dave Smith is a comic, as you call it, Comic Dave Smith, which means allegedly he played at a Chuckles in Wichita once. Joe Rogan, by the way, was a comic, was a stand up comic who was on a set, was on my friend Paul Sims sitcom news radio and then was the host of Fear Factor. And then like bulked up, steroided himself up and then it became a mixed marshal.
- [43:45]
Seth Mandel
He was always very into martial arts and fighting and, and actually he, he tells, according to Rogan, the story is that early in his career he, he, he hit, he knocked somebody out so hard that it turned him off from competitive fighting because he thought it was just so brutal. But he's maintained the interest enough to be a commentator on ufc, which is.
- [44:09]
John Podhoretz
But it is very important to note that Rogan was a comic. Dave Smith was a failed comic. Rogan was a successful comic. Just like Jon Stewart somehow moved from the world of being a comic into the world of being a commentator. And so did Jimmy Kimmel, who was on, you know who. Mr. Woke himself, who was on a pretty repulsive show called the man show on Comedy Central, which was a kind of nascent version of the manosphere in its focus on, you know, on TNA and stuff like that. They all come out of stand up, so they have this intimate relationship with the microphone that they're talking to as though they're talking to a small group.
- [44:54]
Seth Mandel
Adam Carolla was his co host on the Mansion.
- [44:57]
John Podhoretz
Also. Also. But a much more responsible person than the manosphere. Right.
- [45:02]
Seth Mandel
And when. And he sort of went right and Kimmel sort of went left. But they both came.
- [45:07]
John Podhoretz
Yeah, Kimball totally went left. Okay, so. But my point here is that as Douglas Murray said, when he was on with Dave Smith or maybe after, he's like. And Jon Stewart famously did this in ending the first phase of Tucker Carlson's TV career when Tucker, he was on Crossfire with Tucker Carlson and was like, I don't know, being preachy. And Tucker said, you're a comedian, be funny. And Stewart, because you don't heckle a comedian because this is what they do for a living, Sewer was like, hey, I'm a comedian. You know, you're, like, supposed to be a serious person talking about politics. Why don't you do that instead of telling me what I should be doing? Like, you be you. Be you on this show, not me. And it was a humiliating moment for Tucker, and it took him 10 years to recover from it. But Stewart played that hand, and then, of course, then did become exactly what Tucker accused him of being. And Dave Smith, in debating somebody like Douglas Murray, who, by the way, was like, the head of the Oxford Union Debating Society, is the greatest debater I have ever seen. And you don't debate Douglas Murray like you're stupid. Like, just don't do it. Douglas Murray said, the game you play is every time I actually bring up something substantive, you say, well, I'm just a comedian. So if you're just a comedian, don't be talking about the Holocaust.
- [46:36]
Christine Rosen
He didn't. That's not really.
- [46:38]
John Podhoretz
I just want to say something, please. I'm sorry.
- [46:40]
Christine Rosen
That's what he gets accused of saying.
- [46:42]
John Podhoretz
Okay, fair enough.
- [46:43]
Christine Rosen
He didn't say, if you're a comedian, don't talk about it. He said, why don't you? Why do people like you, Joe, talking to Rogan, only have comedians who don't know anything talking about.
- [46:58]
Seth Mandel
Because.
- [46:58]
John Podhoretz
What? Fair enough. I'm sorry. Yes, that's okay.
- [47:00]
Christine Rosen
No, no, because. Because when he would criticize. What's his name, Dave Smith. These are people I only heard of, like, in, like, two weeks ago for the first time. So he criticizes Dave Smith, and then Dave Smith will say, oh, so no one's supposed to talk except experts? And then Murray says, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. I'm saying, you only have this one. After this whole episode, the Manosphere defenders were attacking Douglas by saying, he's just appealing to authority. That's just the argument from authority, which is the exact opposite. Or expertise. He's just appealing to expertise, which is the exact opposite. It is the clowns and comics who are using expertise and credentialism to evade criticism of what they do. So after, they'll say something irresponsible, and then they say. And then they get criticized, and they go, well, I'm not an expert.
- [48:02]
Abe Greenwald
They're the one that's worse than that.
- [48:05]
Christine Rosen
You know, you've got it. You got to look to the experts.
- [48:07]
Abe Greenwald
It's worse than that. I finally get to say it. It's worse than that Abe. Because they actually also appeal to expertise. If you follow their arguments selectively. Yeah, they, they will say, wait a second, John Mearsheimer wrote a whole book about the Israel lobby. Or they'll say, Jeffrey Sachs, you know, has explained the real reasons why Russia was provoked into invading Ukraine. I mean, I've actually debated some of these people and they always come back to the experts that they like. And so they're not even, they're not even saying. You're just appealing to authority. That's their debate killer. But there is something else, and I just want to say, because I, for my sins, watched the entire Douglas Murray, Joe Rogan, Dave Smith experience, which was three hours of my life I'll never get back. But I will say this, at the end of it, Dave Smith is no longer just talking about. It's mainly about Israel, Palestine. It's really mainly about the Gaza war. But then he gets into something, it's like a blast from the past. He talks about the Clean Break memo and the neocons. And I'm like, wait a second, this New right is cribbing their talking points from the, you know, 2003 left. And that, you know, I live through that. And I, you know, and I know that stuff pretty well. And I'm like, oh my God, this is the sort of stuff you would see on the daily coasts messaging board that it's come back, except now it's on the right.
- [49:42]
John Podhoretz
So the world of saying there's a story behind the story that you are not being told. And in fact, the story that you are being told exists to create, to wall off the truth, to create a counter story that isn't true is not only a hallmark of 2003, it is a hallmark of 60s thinking that in literature came to its apotheosis in two writers. One is Philip K. Dick and the other is Thomas Pynchon. There's a world behind the world that you are not being seen, that you are not being shown, and that. And that then suddenly there are these moments when you can get a real glimpse of what the world is really like. And it turns out you're being manipulated by forces from above that don't want you to know what the true story is. That impulse, that the paranoid literature impulse, then moves inexorably into serious thinking in the form of Brown Professor Harold Zinn's People's History of the United States, which is the what if everything that you've been told about American history is a lie? It's been told from the perspective of the Monsters who use cheating, trickery and genocide to get their way. And then they're creating a story. And that's not the true story of the United States. True story. The United States is a font of evil. And as your own podcast prior to this one on Edward Said in Orientalism, his book, his landmark book, suggests this idea, which is, let me tell you the truth about the history that you're being taught. You've been handed a bill of goods. This originates on the left. It's an effort to break down what you might call a kind of mushy liberal consensus about the story of the growth of freedom or whatever, and the over the over, you know, from the Enlightenment onward. And now it's just boomeranging back to Seth's manosphere in the form of, again, like, as Abe would say, appeals to authority. There are appeals to authority. Just that the authorities are. The guy who lost the libel trial in England because he tells. He tells disgusting defamatory tales about the Holocaust and then sues people who. And then made the mistake of suing Deborah Lipstadt. This is David Irving, who called him on what he did. Or this weird world of people who are consumed with the idea of saying there's no way on Earth that 6 million Jews could have died in the Holocaust, because look at the math.
- [52:29]
Eli Lake
But this is also, in some ways, it's actually the long. The left's long march through the institutions and particularly higher education and K through 12 education with regard to history succeeded, and that Howard Zinn narrative became the mainstream. And so the young men right now who find all of this nasty anti Semitic nonsense appealing, they were raised in an educational system where that is the only story they ever heard. And so I think that makes them. There's no hero's journey here. There's no. There's no sort of pride in one's country. I mean, I looked at some of the textbooks my sons in public school had to read and then would give them alternatives all the time. So that. I think that's actually why the extremism is so appealing to them, because they've heard this negative story and now they're being told not that their country is actually great because they don't hear that message enough. What they hear is. And fortunately, they also hear this from the MAGA types too, which is, everything's going to hell in a handbasket. And the reason it is is because you're being lied to. And that's very appealing to young men ages, you know, 15 to 25.
- [53:33]
Christine Rosen
I just want to bring up there's something else that happens in this ecosystem of cranks, especially when these debates happen, when you argue with or debate a conspiracy theorist or a revisionist. Well, they're not historians, but a revisionist, it's very difficult in the sense that you have to be a scholar of their nonsense. So they come at you with a story that. About something that never happened. So you've never heard of it. You don't. And they're like, well, what about that?
- [54:16]
Eli Lake
What do you mean you haven't heard of it, Abe? That's right.
- [54:18]
John Podhoretz
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [54:19]
Christine Rosen
You know, and it's like, well, I don't know. It happens. Did it happen on Venus? I don't know what to tell you about that because I can't debunk it. It's not real. It's not in the record. It's not. It's not. There's nothing there. You know, this is the first I'm hearing about it.
- [54:35]
Seth Mandel
And also they, you know, they have this thing where they. I think this goes back to a point that Abe has been making on the podcast, which is the everything is broken theme, which is you can supercharge a conversation like this post Covid in a really easy way, because you could. It just keeps coming back to this. We've been lied to about all these really big important things. You can't trust the people.
- [55:02]
Christine Rosen
And.
- [55:02]
Seth Mandel
And what are the people saying that Covid is real and the Holocaust happened? Well, if one of them. If you figured out that one of them, you know, and somebody involved in this discussion said exactly that. Myron Gaines was one of these bro, you know, manosphere type, pickup artist type podcasters who turned suddenly to anti Semitism post October 7th. He actually said, you know, something like this on Twitter to Ben Shapiro. He said, you know, while the JFK files, they have Israel all over them, the new really released JFK files have Israel all over them. So you were lied to about Israel being involved. And if you were lied to about that, how do we know that the 6 million is Israel? I mean, they literally make this jump from you have been lied to two, you've been lied to about everything throughout history, in every country and in every scene.
- [55:58]
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- [56:30]
John Podhoretz
This episode is brought to you by Amazon Business. How can you free up your team from time consuming office tasks? Amazon Business empowers leaders to not only streamline purchasing, but better support their team so they can focus on strategy and growth. Free up your teams and focus on your future. Learn more about the technology, insights and Support available@AmazonBusiness.com so there's also the literal reverse was said about the JFK files, which was very peculiar, how little mention there is of Israel. So obviously somebody went in and cook the books to take Israel out because we all know that Israel did it, whatever that means.
- [57:12]
Abe Greenwald
The JK files, though, there's something very hilarious. There's something hilarious that's going on which.
- [57:16]
John Podhoretz
Is that the JFK files and you. You've done. This is another, another breaking history.
- [57:21]
Abe Greenwald
Yeah.
- [57:23]
John Podhoretz
Podcast that you did, which is. This is really. I, I said Thomas Pinch. The JFK assassination is the ur text of the. There is a. There is a story that is being buried about the most important thing that's happened in our history. And that much, much of the conspiratorial thinking, legitimized conspiratorial thinking comes out of the world of people who were unsatisfied by the Warren Commission.
- [57:53]
Abe Greenwald
And by the way, there was good reason to be unsatisfied by the Warren Commission, even though Lee Harvey Oswald did it. But the point is that in JFK conspiracy land, and this is the part I kind of find hilarious, there's already a very well developed conspiracy world of people who think it was either Angleton and the CIA or it was the mob. And those people already have constructed their own elaborate theories and everything else. So when, you know, these neophytes come in with it's the Jews, there is a natural sort of thing. It's like, well, wait a second, you haven't been paying attention. We've been on this for 50 years. Like, what are you talking about? You know, we never, it was like there was never the, the AIPAC theory and I was interested in it. Like, what is this? It has to do with the fact that Israel's nuclear program kind of did develop under Kennedy, but that's it. Like, that's it. And then like there's, there's.
- [58:56]
Seth Mandel
Well now the new, the new thing is that the Israel assassinated Kennedy because he wanted a pack to or APAC's predecessor organization to register as a foreign agent.
- [59:07]
Abe Greenwald
That's another.
- [59:07]
John Podhoretz
Okay, yeah.
- [59:08]
Abe Greenwald
I mean, but now we need to.
- [59:09]
John Podhoretz
Go now to the first principles and why this article is so important. Which is? Which is the fact that antisemitism is now being interwoven into this. I wouldn't call it an intellectual vanguard. I maybe call it a cultural vanguard of the right and of the very MAGA adjacent, though I remember this is, and it's very important to say this because there are a lot of liberals who are saying the opposite and it's defamatory and wrong. This is the most pro Israel administration that we've ever seen. First one, this one extraordinarily, you know, making huge moves socially and politically in the United States to combat anti Semitism, has Israel's back. I will not, you know, this whole line that, you know, in fact, Trump is an anti Semite and is doing it and shouldn't be. We should all be worried and all of that is just disgusting. So I'm put. But there is this world of people again adjacent to him who are being given some credit for him winning in 2024, and they are moving into open and out and out anti Semitic, classical anti Semitism, according to which this small cabal of a tiny people on this planet who should have no power, have in fact, extraordinary reach, secret, extraordinary reach into banking and the media and foreign policy and Jews are the marionetteers who are running the world. And this is, as one can see, is inescapably, unbelievably dangerous. And it's fascinating that's risen on the right in the wake of October 7th. Because, of course, the dynamic, the classic dynamic of the left and the right being at odds with each other should be leading them to say, well, if Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar think this about Jews in Israel, we should be thinking the opposite. They're bad. We're good. They're communists. We're, you know, not communists. We like Trump, they hate Trump. Whatever, you know, Trump, Trump is friendly to Israel and Jews. We should be friendly. Except they're not going there. They're going somewhere else and they're getting marketing support. And part of this, I think, Seth, maybe we can talk about is clearly it's working because the. These podcasts are very audience sensitive. They're watching the data and their metadata and seeing who's watching, how long they're listening, all of that. And if this stuff were dying, if this stuff weren't selling to their people, they would drop it like a hot potato, you know, and talk about other stuff.
- [62:05]
Seth Mandel
Right. Joe Rogan would not have someone on his podcast to talk for hours about that person's appearance on someone else's show, meaning Tucker Carlson show, which is what started that round, if it were not going to get Joe Rogan ratings. And Joe Rogan is so high in the ratings that obviously this is growth. This is a growth industry for podcasters. But he said, now I want something. I said in the article. He, I quoted in the article. He said something very interesting.
- [62:40]
John Podhoretz
He.
- [62:40]
Seth Mandel
And so there's this other revisionist, Ian Carroll, who's gotten popular on Tick Tock. And Ian Carroll comes on Joe Rogan's show every so often. He does the rounds and he's thinks and talks exactly like the other. He sounds like Candace Owens, just to give you an idea. So Joe, at the end of the show where Ian Carroll's on Joe Rogan's show, Ian Carroll goes on this whole ridiculous rant about how, you know, Israel was sort of born in original sin, not because of Nakba stuff, but because it was founded by gangsters and, you know, and, and, and, you know, crime syndicates. And therefore the people who run Israel are outgrowths of these crime syndicates. And then Rogan says, and again, you had to stick, stick it out for three hours to hear this. Then Rogan says, quote, and what's interesting is you can talk about this now post October 7th. And there were a couple of other quotes like that in the article from people saying explicitly that their interest. You know, we can, we can talk about this post October 7th. That October 7th really did have this effect of supercharging, the horseshoe effect, which is where left and right move so far away from the center that they meet at the far end. And, and that October 7th really was a catalyst for this coming on the right in this way. And that is a very dangerous thing because the part of the reason for that is that they saw it as a moment of Jewish vulnerability. October 7th was a moment when they felt like you could climb up on your soapbox and say anything and maybe kick the Jews while they were down. And when you see people who are opportunists, which you have to be, you know, in their situation, when you see people who are opportunists saying, oh, there's a real opening here, you know, it's not because they've had some intellectual transformation. It is because they see this growth industry and this opportunity and a weakness, and the weakness brought out this antisemitism and weird anti Zionism in people who never expressed it, not for a second, not a word of it before October 7th. And so it makes you start to think what else is, is under the surface here? Who else, right, is thinking about jumping into this particular game and who else thinks this way but is just waiting for a moment to come out and.
- [65:21]
Eli Lake
Say, well, and when Israel then defended itself after October 7, they, there was a whole new phalanx of people largely on the left. And these are the, these are the Rashida Talib types who then attacked Israel for doing that. So it's not just that I think you're right that you have this horseshoe effect, but I think on the left there was a lot of bolstering of the arguments against Israel and the anti Semitism, a lot of wink, wink about, you know, but they, they put it in the context of Israel's war against Hamas. And so that actually adds to the number of people who are always going to hold Israel and the Jews to a different standard internationally and on the right. That's actually where John's point about Trump is so interesting because a lot of his supporters don't like the Jews, but a lot of his supporters also love Israel. These are not the same groups, but there's at least more tension and discussion on the right about that and about anti Semitism than I've really seen at all on the left since October 7th.
- [66:18]
Abe Greenwald
You know who's really interesting in this space to watch is Charlie Kirk of Turning Point usa. Because Charlie Kirk is a very pious Christian who loves Israel for kind of the evangelical reasons that Irving Kristol wrote about, I don't know, 50 years ago, 40 years ago, I think in Commentary. And there's a now viral clip that's gone around where he does these things, where he goes to college campuses and various people get to ask him all kinds of questions. And a full blown like neo Nazi type comes up and basically starts saying the Jews are a cancer they control. They've been kicked out of 109 countries. There's a reason they take over all this stuff. And Charlie Kirk very calmly kind of puts him in his place. And at various points in this exchange, which is almost 20 minutes, he says, you know, anti Semitism is a, is a, is a mind virus and it has taken you over and you need, it's melted your brain. And you know, some of the things that Charlie Kirk says I don't agree with. And there's like, you know, we can criticize it on other things, but I think you're absolutely Right. Christine. That there is a real tension on the right and that you can't just look at the manosphere. Tucker Carlson, you know, Daryl Cooper, you know, I don't know. Joe Rogan has had lots of people on. He had on Douglas Mary. But the point is that you have that, but that's not necessarily the future. And I think that there is an interesting fight on the right, which, you know, there are certainly pro Israel Democrats, but it's not that you can see that the anti.
- [67:54]
John Podhoretz
Is firebombed. They get firebombed.
- [67:56]
Abe Greenwald
They get firebombed when they're having a seder, and that there's really not that much energy on the pushback on the left side.
- [68:04]
Seth Mandel
And part of that is the Christian politics, how that factors in. The Charlie Kirk scene that you mentioned was a guy coming up to a microphone and saying, the Talmud says that that goyim are lower than dogs. So how can you support. And they got into a sort of theological. Now, Charlie Kirk got a lot of things right weirdly in his response, a few things wrong, but that can be expected. You know, like you didn't even expect Charlie Kirk to sound like he was. He was able to get into this, but he actually wasn't intimidated by the Talmud argument. Why? Because that, the, the Talmud argument is very popular in this discourse. There is a, a very religious aspect to this. And so this guy stood up and said, I'm a Christian, you know, the Jews killed our savior, whatever, blah, blah, blah. And the Talmud says we're, we're lower than dogs. You're a Christian. You go around the country, Charlie Kirk, talking about Christian values. How can you support this? And Kirk then, you know, goes into, again, as John said, what was, what was what has long been a standard evangelical defense of Israel, but people really willing to get into the reed weeds on it. And you see some, some others of the. But, but you see the, you know, the, the, the, some of the podcast hosts that I talk about, they will say things like, you know, they'll say something crazy about the Jews and then they'll say in Jesus name, you know, or something like that. There's a signaling and the sort of internal color war on the right has a very strong Christian political edge, which makes it difficult to wade into at times because it's a debate over scripture, Christ is king.
- [69:59]
Eli Lake
Candace Owen.
- [70:01]
Seth Mandel
It's part of that. That's right. That's exactly right.
- [70:02]
John Podhoretz
As part of it. We need to end on this because this is very important and Charlie Kirk's journey is very Important. So Charlie Kirk, who is essentially the new Jerry Falwell or the new Pat Robertson in the sense that he is an external. He is not part of the, officially part of the Trump team, but he is the leading fundraiser on the right for other causes. He's young, he's unbelievably successful and he was tag teaming for several years with Candace Owens. Candace Owens being a black, you know, sort of a somebody who was on the left as a kid and then moved to the right and she went to work for the Daily Wire for Ben Shapiro and had a podcast. Very successful. And she and Charlie Kirk did a dog and pony show where they would go around the country, you know, going to campuses and stuff like that. And Candace Owens, for whatever reason, and we don't. Not interested in talking about her necessarily, but she started, she is one of the, was one of the first people to go out and out, not only flirt, but go out and out anti Semite. And Charlie Kirk was like her, her co star. Like it was like, you know, they were, you know, they, they were on tour together like you know, like Billy Joel and Elton John or something like that. And so there were real questions about what was going to happen with Charlie Kirk because who was he going to be more associated with? And I, my assumption was that he would take, he would go the Candace Owens route and he has gone the other way. And so I have, I said some nasty things about him a couple years ago on, on, on Twitter that I now, I, I don't, I, I don't think they were, they were unfair at the time. But I regret. I welcome him into the. And thank him, Charlie, thank him for his service. That stuff is very important. It's unbelievably important for the people, the young.
- [72:16]
Abe Greenwald
I would say as much as I love Douglas, it was more important. That viral video is probably more important in terms of the debate on the right right now than Douglas Murray's three hour.
- [72:27]
John Podhoretz
Way more important also because Douglas is now identified as a sort of righteous gentile defender of Israel. And that is not Charlie Kirk's. That is not a definition of Charlie Kirk, who is the young, who is the, who is the ambassador for MAGA to the youth. That is his place. And it was a remarkable clip. It was remarkable in its literacy, I thought, as I think Seth indicates. And again the fact that we've seen this for 10 years with my friend Ben Shapiro going to college campuses and very calmly taking apart people who go at him, mostly in this case leftists going at him. But Ben is an orthodox Jew. Not saying that means that he can't have an honest debating conversation. But obviously he is a person whose interests are, you know, directly, personally involved in making the arguments that he's making. And Charlie Kerr could have, could go or could have gone or could go another way and he has instead gone the other way. And of course we have him. We have Mike Huckabee now confirmed as ambassador to Israel, you know, presidential candidate. He was the presidential candidate of essentially of the evangelical part of the Republican Party. You know, in 2012 he was governor of Arkansas. FOX HOST and there he is basically saying, yeah, let's add a student Samaria, that kind of thing. I mean so it is, it is. This is a very important fight on the right. And I think as, as Christine indicates, the very fact that this fight exists on the right, whereas the fight on the left has all, all of the energy in defending Israel against its these depredations has gone out of the Democratic Party. They are afraid. They're afraid of this issue. They are afraid of, they're afraid of their own.
- [74:31]
Seth Mandel
The fact is that you can name two people who make the argument in favor of Israel on the Democratic side and you're done with the convers.
- [74:38]
John Podhoretz
One is a congressman from Queens and the other is a senator from Pennsylvania.
- [74:43]
Abe Greenwald
Clinton has done a very good job on this too. Who credit Bill Clinton. Not the biggest fan, but Bill Clinton.
- [74:50]
John Podhoretz
Yeah.
- [74:51]
Abe Greenwald
In the run up to the election.
- [74:53]
John Podhoretz
Yeah.
- [74:54]
Abe Greenwald
Went to Michigan and True.
- [74:55]
Seth Mandel
Yes.
- [74:56]
Abe Greenwald
And made sitting sitting in our fat had every opportunity. He should have taken the deal.
- [75:01]
John Podhoretz
That is absolutely true. But I'm just saying in the war world of the people who need to who are trying to garner support over the course of the next 25 years for their political ambitions, S says there are two people that you can, that you can point to, Richie Torres and John Federman. And that's about it. And you know, and of course off visiting and having margaritas in El Salvador with wife beating probable, probable gang member. The guy whose name I continue to refuse to store in my Van Holland.
- [75:39]
Seth Mandel
Oh, you're talking about the Garcia. Garcia.
- [75:42]
John Podhoretz
Yes, Garcia having margaritas there. Senator from Maryland and also from the and also from Gaza, Chris Van Hollen, the most anti Israel person in the Senate and as somebody said, siding with this guy, there is more evidence to suggest that he is a gang member and certainly more evidence to suggest that he is a vicious wife beater than there is that he's an innocent Maryland man who needs to return to the loving bosom of his wife and child. And there is Chris Van Hollen, who is visiting with him in El Salvador, by the way, proving implicitly, oddly enough, that he doesn't look like he's been abused in jail. Mr. Garcia looks fine. Didn't look like he was, you know, beaten up or starved.
- [76:38]
Eli Lake
Thing had a Potemkin quality on both sides. Like, clearly, they, they gussied him up for the cameras. But also, Van Holland has his own interest in, you know, having this appear to be this dramatic moment where he goes to rescue someone. It's still. Both of which are distractions from the actual issue of whether or not the Trump administration has done the right thing here, regardless of this guy's status, whether administratively, this is how, you know, we should be processing these cases. But, yeah, the whole thing just seemed like, yeah, it seemed really like state tv.
- [77:06]
John Podhoretz
So it's like court orders.
- [77:09]
Abe Greenwald
You got to get them back. You can't say maybe or no. You got to just. That's how I agree with you.
- [77:15]
John Podhoretz
But. So the version of this is Skokie. The Nazis march in Skokie and, or want to march in Skokie. And nobody wants the Nazis to march in Skokie, but they get a permit and there's a free speech question. And you support the Nazi. The Nazis and the right to march in Skokie in 1979? Or is that one thing? Or are you Senator Paul Simon from Illinois sitting down and having a margarita with George, you know, George Llewellyn Rockwell, the head of the American Nazi Party? That, that is, that's, that's the image. And that will, that will stick. Like that was unbelievably stupid of Van Hollen. And there are moments where you look at this and you say, God, Trump is really going like this. Things are not going well for him. His numbers are down 10%. He's now underwater in the economy and stuff like that. But he is always going to be. He is going to be blessed and benefited by the idiocy of his blinded Trump derangement syndrome rivals.
- [78:21]
Seth Mandel
And I just want to say that.
- [78:22]
John Podhoretz
I am disgusted by this guy, and I don't like what I'm hearing about what he, what he may have done. And I certainly don't like the story about his wife and her seeking a restraining order because he beat her up. But what Trump has done here is terrible. Jason Willock has a very good column about this in the Washington Post today. The issue here is the larger question of the Trump administration's behavior in, in, in. In sending people out without due process. That is Where Democrats should focus. Don't start. Marilyn Manning, this guy who is probably very bad news.
- [79:02]
Seth Mandel
Yeah. I just want to say, by the way, Chris Van Hollen has been approached by Jewish leaders in Maryland. I am also a Maryland man now, Maryland father Seth Mandel, if you want, has, you know, would like some, some of Chris Van Hollen's attention. But the Jewish leaders in Maryland have approached Chris Van Hollen and said, you know, at least talk to us about all this crazy anti Israel stuff you're going through. And he won't, he, he, he literally, he won't sit down with them, he won't show up. And he doesn't have to go nearly as far as El Salvador to meet with a few of his other constituents who have some concerns.
- [79:40]
Abe Greenwald
Can I just add one more thing I just think is kind of wraps all this up, which is to always remember, and I think George Will is the one who put this like that. Conservatism as like kind of a sentiment. Comes down to three words to a point. And that really ties all of this together because I agree with Joe Rogan in the manosphere that the culture in the country went crazy in 2020 when Jimmy Kimmel had on Robin D'Angelo to talk about George Floyd. And I agree the 1619 project was fake history that was being sort of told to us as the new official, you know, history. And I agree about Howard Zinn and I agree that there are, you know, and that I also think that, you know, obviously I am a journalist who likes to do a history podcast. To a point, people, that's all I'm saying, to a point. Have a limiting principle. It doesn't. Just because the experts were wrong about COVID in classrooms doesn't mean all vaccines are going to give you autism and poison you. You know, just because the 1619 project was shoved down our throats doesn't mean that Churchill is the villain of World War II. To a point. That's all.
- [80:54]
John Podhoretz
Well, their limiting principles do not exist anymore. No, that's true. As Orchid Health itself to return to create, you know, the. Why. Why shouldn't Orchid Health be doing what it's doing? Everybody knows why it shouldn't. It's not the point that you can do something. The, the logic of the Silicon Valley world is that you can do something means that you should do something. And then everybody can default Thomas Kuhn and say, once you're able to do it, someone's going to do it, so you might as well be the one to do it first. And there are things that should not be done. And one of them is eugenics. And I don't know why we're having to go through all of this again. When eugenics was discarded in the most violent fashion possible by the fact that two different eugenics regimes, one in Berlin and one in Moscow, attempted to refine the populations of the planet Earth to the likings of two psychopathic monsters, the worst people who have ever lived. And their, their principles here were, we thought, discarded forever. But you know what? It's just too tempting. You know, it's just too tempting and to a point, provides a limiting principle. And people don't like limiting principles when they are. When what they want is to get their way. And that's the crisis that besets us on both sides, I think. Anyway, here we are. We've gone very long. Eli Lake, as ever, thank you very much. Breaking history. Go listen to his podcast this week about when a trade war becomes a, becomes a shooting war. You can go back and hear his podcast about the jfk, the role of the JFK movie in perpetuating the JFK assassination, reviving the conspiracy, reviving it and then advancing it, and various other fascinating moments in recent American history. And for Abe, Christine and Seth, I'm John Budgwerts. Keep the candle burning.