Ex-Wray

Summary

The Commentary Magazine Podcast: “Ex-Wray”
Release Date: December 12, 2024
Host: John Podhoretz
Guests: Abe Greenwald, Christine Rosen, Seth Mandel, Matthew Continetti

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Introduction

The Commentary Magazine Podcast kicks off with an energetic musical intro before transitioning to the main discussion. Host John Podhoretz introduces the panel, which includes senior editor Seth Mandel, media commentary columnist Christine Rosen, Washington commentator Matthew Continetti, and executive editor Abe Greenwald.

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Christopher Wray's Resignation and FBI Leadership Transition

Timestamp: 01:23 - 03:38

John Podhoretz announces the resignation of Christopher Wray, the FBI Director, effective upon Donald Trump's inauguration. The conversation delves into the implications of Wray stepping down, potentially paving the way for Cash Patel to assume the directorship. Abe Greenwald suggests that Wray's departure might be strategic, allowing for a smoother transition aligned with Trump's agenda.

Notable Quote:

"Christopher Wray may have pulled a little Machiavelli in play to Trump's capacity to get things done quickly." — John Podhoretz [02:50]

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Comparisons to Sally Yates and Potential Political Maneuvering

Timestamp: 03:52 - 05:08

The panel draws parallels between Wray's resignation and Sally Yates' brief tenure as Attorney General in 2017 under the Obama administration. Yates opposed Trump's migrant ban, leading to her swift dismissal. Abraham Greenwald anticipates a similar outcome with Wray, emphasizing the historical pattern of incoming administrations reshuffling key positions to align with their policies.

Notable Quote:

"Yates was only there for 10 days. But if you remember, she gummed up, you know, she essentially came out against the migrant ban." — John Podhoretz [03:52]

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The Future of Resistance Heroes in Political Climate

Timestamp: 05:38 - 07:46

Matthew Continetti raises concerns about the diminishing presence of "resistance heroes" like Sally Yates who oppose administration policies from within governmental structures. The discussion touches on the evolving nature of political resistance, questioning whether current sociopolitical dynamics will support such figures. Seth Mandel and John Podhoretz further explore the shift from institutional pushbacks to broader cultural dialogues initiated by public figures.

Notable Quote:

"The resistance heroes are going to be Luigi Mangione or people like Luigi Mangione, cultural figures who take action that is not directly aimed at Trump or at policies, but maybe have larger knock-on cultural effects." — John Podhoretz [05:40]

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Pete Hegseth’s Nomination as Secretary of Defense and Media Scrutiny

Timestamp: 08:18 - 21:49

The conversation shifts to Pete Hegseth’s nomination for Secretary of Defense. John Podhoretz critiques ProPublica's investigative reporting on Hegseth, alleging bias and questionable sourcing behind claims that Hegseth falsely stated his acceptance to West Point. The panel discusses the challenges Hegseth faces, including past personal controversies and the ongoing media scrutiny that could impact his confirmation.

Abe Greenwald highlights the resilience of Hegseth’s nomination process, noting Trump's support and strategic PR campaigns that bolster Hegseth’s standing despite opposition from figures like Senator Joni Ernst.

Notable Quotes:

"This nomination is going to be very hard to be the fourth senator who opposes these picks, because in the incoming Senate, there are 53 Republicans." — Abe Greenwald [07:46]

"They cannot dig into a person's private family problems that have literally nothing whatsoever to do with the positions that he might take." — John Podhoretz [27:53]

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Hostage Deal Between Israel and Hamas

Timestamp: 39:51 - 48:37

John Podhoretz introduces a complex hostage situation involving Israel and Hamas, detailing a proposed ceasefire wherein 30 hostages, including five Americans, would be released over 42 days. The panel analyzes the strategic and humanitarian implications of the deal, questioning the motivations and long-term effects on the geopolitical landscape.

The discussion touches upon Israel’s military strategies, the role of other regional actors like Hezbollah and the Houthis, and the broader context of Middle Eastern politics post-conflict. Abe Greenwald and Seth Mandel debate the effectiveness and potential consequences of the ceasefire, emphasizing the precarious balance of power and the possibility of renewed conflicts.

Notable Quote:

"All of this. Why is this happening if it happens? Because Hezbollah is dead. Because Iran no longer has air defenses. Because all the leaders of Hamas are dead." — John Podhoretz [42:31]

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Elizabeth Warren’s Controversial Remarks on Violence and Healthcare

Timestamp: 51:09 - 58:45

The panel pivots to domestic issues, focusing on Senator Elizabeth Warren's comments following the murder of Brian Thompson, a victim allegedly connected to frustrations with the U.S. healthcare system. Christine Rosen criticizes Warren for seemingly justifying violence as a symptom of systemic healthcare failures.

John Podhoretz and Seth Mandel argue that Warren’s statements dangerously blur the lines between policy critique and an endorsement of violent actions, undermining the moral framework necessary for civil discourse. The conversation underscores the potential ramifications of political rhetoric that inadvertently legitimizes extremist actions.

Notable Quote:

"This is someone well to do who needed to transform his pathology and his rage via a manifesto, into justification for killing. That's what this was." — Seth Mandel [57:15]

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Recommendations and Closing Remarks

Timestamp: 58:50 - 60:57

Abe Greenwald introduces a recommendation for listeners interested in chess: Gotham Chess on YouTube, hosted by Levy Rosman. He praises the channel for making chess accessible and engaging through concise and entertaining match analyses.

John Podhoretz wraps up the episode by thanking the guests and encouraging listeners to stay engaged with The Commentary Magazine Podcast.

Notable Quote:

"If you're interested in chess, as I am, but as a total, you know, kind of hobbyist and amateur who's too afraid to play online with other people, you know, I just stick with the computers." — Abe Greenwald [58:50]

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Conclusion

The episode of The Commentary Magazine Podcast offers a comprehensive analysis of significant political developments, including leadership transitions within the FBI, the contentious nomination of Pete Hegseth as Secretary of Defense, and critical geopolitical maneuvers in the Middle East. Additionally, it addresses the intersection of political rhetoric and societal violence, providing listeners with in-depth discussions and diverse perspectives.

The panelists employ a blend of historical context, strategic analysis, and critical commentary to navigate complex topics, ensuring listeners gain a nuanced understanding of the current political landscape.

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Note: The timestamps correspond to key segments in the provided transcript and serve to locate notable discussions and quotes within the episode.

Transcript

[Abe Greenwald]

Hope for the best expect the worst Some preach and pain Some die of.

[John Podhoretz]

Birds the way of knowing which way it's going Hope for the best Expect.

[Seth Mandel]

The worst Hope for the best welcome.

[John Podhoretz]

To the Commentary Magazine daily Podcast Today. Today is Thursday, December 12, 2024. I am John Bot Hordes, the editor of Commentary. Very quickly go to commentary.org donate to contribute to our year end pledge drive here for our 501 organization that puts out this podcast, our website and our magazine. We rely on you, our subscribers, our listeners, our readers to keep the lights on and to keep going. And your generosity, as always, is staggering and I am shamelessly asking for more of it. So commentary.org donate so that you can continue hearing, among other people, Executive editor Abe Greenwald.

[Christine Rosen]

Hi, Abe.

[Seth Mandel]

Hi John.

[John Podhoretz]

Senior editor Seth Mandel. Hi, Seth.

[Matthew Continetti]

Hi, John.

[John Podhoretz]

Media Commentary columnist Christine Rosen. Hi, Christine.

[Unknown Speaker]

Hi, John.

[John Podhoretz]

And Washington Commentary columnist Matthew Continetti. Hi, Matt.

[Abe Greenwald]

Hi, John.

[John Podhoretz]

Christopher Wray, the FBI director, announced his resignation yesterday afternoon, which apparently will go into effect upon the inauguration of Donald Trump. Clearing the decks maybe for the for Cash Patel to become the next director of the FBI. There seem to be possible hijinks going on here because Trump, because he is leaving, he will be leaving an open hole that needs to be filled. Trump will have almost no choice but to move in a FBI regular under the complicated terms of the Vacancies act to take the at least temporary place of Chris Wray before Cache Patel's confirmation hearing is completed and let's presume he is confirmed and then becomes the FBI director. This has called to mind what happened in 2017, if people will remember, something relatively similar happened at the Department of Justice and the job of attorney general was filled by an Obama official named Paula Yates, who proceeded to essentially wage war against the incoming administration's policies to the extent that she could before Jeff Sessions could be confirmed. So this is not a nothing moment. If there are policies that Trump wants to enact really quickly in some fashion using the FBI, I don't know what those are, so I'm not even speculating. Right. So Ray may have pulled a little Machiavelli in play to Trump's capacity to get things done quickly.

[Abe Greenwald]

So the alternative would be that he would just remain in place and then have Trump fire him. I think in this case he's going to be stepping down and then I assume the deputy director of man named Paul Abadi.

[John Podhoretz]

Right.

[Abe Greenwald]

Will step in. But I also expect that Patel will be confirmed pretty quickly now with this announcement. And so I You're right, there's a possibility of hijinks, but I don't think it'll be very long.

[John Podhoretz]

Yates was only there for, for 10 days. But if you remember, she gummed up, you know, she, she essentially, I believe, came out against the migrant ban.

[Abe Greenwald]

Oh, yeah. Trump had to fire her and he.

[John Podhoretz]

Had to fire her. Right.

[Abe Greenwald]

So it was insane.

[John Podhoretz]

Okay, Okay.

[Abe Greenwald]

I think that has gonna happen again. I mean, I, I don't know.

[John Podhoretz]

That's can, sure. He could fire anybody that's gonna fire everybody.

[Matthew Continetti]

Yeah, I, I, you know, I wonder though, because the, I'm interested to see whether they, there is still the appetite for resistance heroes the way there was, you know, Sally Yates was part of the.

[John Podhoretz]

Sally Eights. I'm sorry. Thank you, Sally.

[Matthew Continetti]

AIDS was part of the, you know, Anonymous, you know, and whatever, all the officials who became heroes. I mean, anonymous is not anonymous anymore. But, you know, that was the one that had people wondering who it was. But you know, the internal, you know, the, I don't want to call it the deep state because that just sort of plays into. But it is what he's describing when he says not very deep, it's not.

[John Podhoretz]

Very pretty, shallow state. It was like right there, one level below the surface.

[Christine Rosen]

Why?

[Matthew Continetti]

You never expect a deep state to jump so quickly at the opportunity for book contracts.

[John Podhoretz]

Yes.

[Matthew Continetti]

But anyway, but this was, I'm wondering if there's the same, there isn't the same appetite for protests in the street. There isn't the same appetite for the morning shows. We saw what happened with Morning Joe and some of these others. There isn't the same appetite in a lot of these places. Mark Zuckerberg is donating to Trump's inaugural ball and stuff like that. And we had the, the Jeff Bezos stuff. I'm not sure if there's the appetite also for the resistance heroes the way that they, that there were in the first go round.

[John Podhoretz]

Let me, let me, let me propose.

[Matthew Continetti]

Something for a Sally.

[John Podhoretz]

So let me propose something. So the resistance heroes are not going to be, you know, whoever Paul Abade or somebody who, you know, refuses to take an order from the Trump administration. And this is what's frightening and what we talked about yesterday, the resistance heroes are going to be Luigi Mangione or people like Luigi Mangione, cultural figures who take action that is not directly aimed at Trump or at policies, but maybe have larger knock on cultural effects to open conversations that of course, the very fact that you open the conversation about the injustices or inequities of the healthcare system because somebody shoots a guy in the back is a gigantic invitation to horrible action. Because the idea is, I'm beginning, this is how to begin a conversation now in 2017. It was, he's not a legitimate president. He wants to do terrible things. We're going to stop him using all the levers of power at our disposal in the system. And now it's like, well, the system is corrupted and dead, so we're just gonna start shooting people in the streets.

[Unknown Speaker]

But the Mangione case could potentially be more of a broader culture war. There are a huge number of class implications in that, in the scenario and the language he's using and his elite status versus whom he claims to be championing. And I wonder if that doesn't land in quite the same way as the direct, we must undermine this fascist dictator who's just been democratically elected by the American people. So I do. I, I feel like Matt has inadvertently created the meme of the next four years for this podcast, which is him calmly saying, this is insane, because in a weird way, there's going to be. Everybody's a little calmer, but there's still going to be some chaos coming out of the Trump administration. But these broader issues, particularly the class issues, are fascinating in part because Trump's coalition now includes a lot of working class people and it is the Democratic Party who's elite.

[Abe Greenwald]

Yeah, I just want to stay on Ray for a second. I mean, I think this is very good news for Donald Trump. He doesn't have to fire Ray, which he was threatening to do. So Wray stepping down, which again opens the pathway for Trump's nominee, Cash Patel, to slide right into that position pretty early on in the administration. Patel has not met much resistance from the senators. In fact, most, almost all the senators are pretty glowing when they meet with him.

[John Podhoretz]

Except for Susan Collins, I believe, is the one.

[Abe Greenwald]

Yeah, she. I think she said something about she's.

[John Podhoretz]

You know, she's not ready to support him or she's not supporting him yet, or she's not gonna. She's.

[Abe Greenwald]

I think she's looking for the FBI background check or something like that. She's looking. I don't think. I don't know how negative it was, but it was not a yes right away. So this was a good moment for Trump. It's part of a lot of good moments for Trump. I have an article in the current issue of Commentary, which just went up on our website yesterday called the Trump Moon. It goes into Trump's rising popularity, how he's experiencing a presidential honeymoon, which he never received. After the 2016 election. Trump is aware of this. He mentioned it in his interview over the weekend with Meet the Press, that he won the popular vote and that he's more popular than he's ever been. Trump has just been named the Person of the Year by Time magazine. He's inching up toward the current record holder of Time magazine cover covers, and that is, as I learned last week, Richard Nixon. But Trump is getting close, and he will be at the New York Stock Exchange this morning as we're recording this podcast to Ring the Bell, which he's never done before. Which he's never done before.

[Matthew Continetti]

Surprised?

[Abe Greenwald]

Yeah, it surprised me, too. But it was a big deal for him because he gets to ring the bell. And I think his presence there is representative of a general optimism in the business and economic climate in the United States that has accompanied his reelection. So things are pretty good for Trump right now.

[John Podhoretz]

We should mention something else in terms of these questions relating to his Cabinet picks, which is that once again, Trump, Trumpians, people on the right are proved to be bizarrely fortunate, not in their choice of enemy, but in the way their enemy decides to engage with them, to try to destroy them. And that was this bizarre event that happened yesterday. Non event that happened yesterday when Pete Hegseth, the nominee for the Secretary of defense, announced that ProPublica, which is a nonprofit news organization with more money than God, I believe they have something like $100 million in the bank, known best for rooting through the garbage of Harlan Crow and Clarence Thomas to find receipts showing that Harlan Crow bought him a McRib somewhere when they were taking a vacation together. That ProPublica had approached Hegseth with the news, that they were told that he had claimed that he had been accepted to West Point and had denied and had decided not to go to West Point in 2003, I think. And that West Point told ProPublica that Hegseth had not been. They had no record or evidence that Hegseth had been admitted to West Point. Well, what did Pete Hegseth have to say about this? And Hegseth did what you now do, what social media now allows you to do, which is get ahead of the story. He went on social media, he said, there is a hit job going on against me, claiming that I lied about getting into West Point. Here is a picture of my acceptance to West Point. And there is this document, this thing that he got from West Point, saying, you've been admitted to the west point Class of 2003 or whatever it was, whereupon Jesse Eisinger the editor of ProPublica puts out this 10 tweet self congratulatory stream about how what they actually did was journalism at its finest. They got a tip, they followed the tip down. They went to Hegseth and you know who really kind of behaved a little badly was Hegseth, because he attacked them than they weren't going to publish the story and instead he turned it into a story. They did the journalism and he made it into propaganda. Now the reason that this is great for Heath and thrillingly bad for ProPublica, a really repugnant organization, is that ProPublica is not saying who at West Point told them that Pete Hegseth had not been admitted to West Point. This was a hit job inside the United States Military Academy at West Point against the incoming, potentially incoming Secretary of Defense. When you are misled in investigative journalism by a source, one of the disciplines that is supposed to exist in the world of the HIC job is that you expose the person who fed you the false information because the leak and you know, exposure system requires a certain level of honesty on the part of the leaker. If you are going to protect the identity of the leaker who leaked something false, then you are complicit in the crime that is the leak that Hegseth exposed. Anyway. My view is because of this.

[Unknown Speaker]

I mean, I would just say. I would be just. It could be just as likely that the PR person at West Point was incompetent and couldn't. Didn't find. Couldn't find the file. I mean, I do think we should get. They should.

[John Podhoretz]

Certainly somebody said to ProPublica Pete Hegseth was not admitted to West Point.

[Unknown Speaker]

Well, they asked and the response was no, we have no evidence of. We don't have any evidence. They did.

[John Podhoretz]

Why did they ask?

[Unknown Speaker]

Malicious, but it.

[John Podhoretz]

Why did they ask. That's the question you're not asking is why did they ask?

[Unknown Speaker]

It's a question for ProPublica, but I would say we should hold our fire a little bit on the West Point side until we find out whether it was. It's more likely just incompetence and bureaucracy gone wrong than.

[John Podhoretz]

I don't agree. Somebody at West Point told ProPublica that Pete Hegseth was lying. It was a stolen valor thing, that he was lying about having been admitted to West Point and that's why they pursued the story.

[Unknown Speaker]

Well, imagine a world where.

[John Podhoretz]

And we're going to find out because Tom Cotton is on the case. So we're going to find out.

[Unknown Speaker]

Imagine a world though. Where Hegseth didn't keep his letter.

[John Podhoretz]

Right.

[Unknown Speaker]

That's actually more likely the case when it comes to how the media targets nominees on the right versus the left or Kavanaugh.

[John Podhoretz]

How did Brett Kavanaugh save himself?

[Abe Greenwald]

Right. His calendars.

[John Podhoretz]

Because he had calendar. He saved his calendars from when he was 15 years old. I would be dead if I were Brett Kavanaugh. I mean, I didn't keep a calendar when I was 15. And if I had, my mother would have thrown it away the minute I went off to college.

[Matthew Continetti]

That was a big moment for OCD Americans.

[Abe Greenwald]

The ProPublica episode that you describe as part of a larger story about how Hagseth has turned his candidacy for Secretary of Defense around at this point. Last week, while I was writing my column for the Free Beacon, it looked very dire for Hegseth. Ron DeSantis's name had been floated. Joni Ernst, the senator from Iowa, who was not convinced that Hegseth was the right candidate. We had had those stories in the New York Times about the email that Hegseth's mom had sent to him talking about his treatment of women. So it didn't look good. But then, conveniently, as soon as my column was published talking about the Trump transition math, things began to turn around. And Hegseth leaned into the fight by arranging a public relations campaign with his fellow soldiers, with people who had worked with him at Concerned Veterans for America, who go on the record in support of his leadership and management. And that got Trump's attention and Trump's support. So by the time Trump gave the interview on Meet the Press last Sunday, he was vocal in his support for Heth. And now a senator like Joni Ernst seems much more open to supporting Heth down the line when they have the hearing. And this ProPublica story is just another kind of victory that Heth has won on his way to confirmation as Secretary of Defense. Doesn't mean he's out of the woods, right?

[John Podhoretz]

Because, well, no one is ever out of the woods because something could come up that is actually substantively.

[Abe Greenwald]

Well, he does have two ex wives, right. Who, you know, I'm not sure. I don't know what the state of their relations are. Right. And that could be a problem.

[Unknown Speaker]

He has. He's been lucky in his media enemies, I will say, because they've yet to get anyone on the record with any of the allegations. Everything's been off the record. The publishing the mom's email, I think worked against them and for him because he became sympathetic, because who publishes someone's mother's email. It's ridiculous.

[John Podhoretz]

Well, and then she went on the.

[Abe Greenwald]

Air to defend him. Exactly.

[Unknown Speaker]

And it's a lack, but it's the lack of anyone on the record. Now if they can find a woman who will come forward and go on the record and accuse him of things, that's going to changed the game certainly for senators like Ernst and others who are still wavering.

[Matthew Continetti]

Yeah, I actually think the on the record thing is important because of what happened with Fox, which was, you know, they were saying that, oh, people at Fox are, you know, were unhappy with his, I don't know, some said, did he drank beers in the morning, you know, on the show or whatever. And all of that was off the record or anonymous sources. And then us C of a wave of Fox talkers, not just employees, but people that the public knows. People especially that the public that Republican senators, their constituents watch every day, recognizable faces came out one by one and just said, no. I mean, this has not been my experience. And that I think made a big difference because you can get 10 off the record in 10 or 10 anonymous and then 10 faces that these are the people you see with Hegseth every day. And they're all saying, this is crazy, you know, whatever. So I think that part of it has really been, you know, normally the character witness isn't as strong as people hope it would be because, you know, when somebody has certain types of accusations of misbehavior, especially during the MeToo era, you sometimes got these letters like, here's a an open letter from all the women that so and so has never assaulted. Right. And it's like that that only gets you so far because it only takes one that you actually did. But this is sort of different because it's about his. His mean it's about his the way he carries himself. That is something that you can't kill with. Anonymous sourcing, I think I also think.

[Seth Mandel]

Hegseth has benefited from the sheer speed, the rapid fire aspect of Trump's picks here. The flurry of personalities that he's thrown up for people to try to tear down has caused the media and Trump's enemies and detractors to sort of say, oh, who are we focusing on? Do we focus on the hex? Wait, there's Cash Patel just popped up. Are we dealing with that? Are we dealing with that? And it sort of has them one step off.

[Abe Greenwald]

Well, the way the Trump world thinks about it is that Hegseth is acting as a heat shield right now. Who's actually protecting Gabbard RFK and Cash Patel from deep scrutiny because people are very interested in the Hegseth story. The media has continued to dig. The senators are meeting with him and he's meeting with, I think, Murkowski today. So you're right. On one hand, all of the names kind of flood the zone and make it difficult for the opposition to concentrate their fire. On the other hand, however, Heth being kind of the most famous, I wouldn't say even the most controversial. Controversial in a lot of ways, but he's definitely the most prominent, you know, and he's, he's become public facing in a way that a lot of the others have not. Today it's fighting for his name and for his nomination that has also helped people like Patel.

[Matthew Continetti]

And Gabard absolutely needs it because she's, she's been meeting with senators and the senators have been saying, I didn't really like her. Right. I mean, she's getting some bad headlines and no good line headlines lately. So that I think probably supports the thesis because we're not actually seeing that turn into oh boy, Tulsi's in trouble stories. Whereas if she were the only nominee right now that, you know, we're sort of out there on the table, you definitely would have those stories. If senators are saying, eh, look, she's.

[John Podhoretz]

Going to have a very interesting hearing simply by dint of the fact that her, the main controversy involving her nomination involves her, shall we say, unconventional views on Syria as expressed, you know, at the end of the last decade. And now, of course, Syria is undergoing this revolution and she is going to have to answer questions in public at a confirmation hearing about where she stands on all of that. That could actually be more important than the private meetings that she is having. Like this is a hearing where you could actually see somebody either find the right words to say about a fast changing situation that would indicate that she would be a responsible steward of the position she holds, or she could blow herself up. And we don't really. She's very intelligent. She is a very good representative of herself in public, as we know from the 2019 debates and the Democratic presidential contest. But that's sort of an interesting place. I do think that it's worth spending two more seconds on Hegseth and the email his mother, the release of the email of his mother. That was a turning point because I had questions about Hegseth myself. You know, was he really whatever when the New York Times did that, My feeling was I want him confirmed because they cannot be allowed to get away with this. They cannot dig into a person's private family problems that have literally nothing whatsoever to do with the positions that he might take as the steward of the Pentagon and take them and throw them in his face solely and exclusively to derail his career chances. The precedent that, that would, the successful precedent of that kind of hit would be so potentially ruinous for the future as now we know nobody's private information is protectable, right? I mean, anyway, no one, nobody can protect anything anymore. There are going to have to be guardrails put up by institutions not to do stuff like this based on their own just simply innate moral standards. Like, would you want your mother's email to be put on the front page of the New York Times? They did it anyway, and they had to be stopped. And so I think there was a weird effect all over Washington where people went, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, the way people did 30 years ago when Connie Chung sat down with Newt Gingrich's mother and said, what did Newt say to you about Hillary Clinton? And Newt Gingrich's mother was like, well, I can't tell you that. That's just between me and Newt. And then Connie Chung said, with cameras running, it's just between us. Just, just you, you, you and me. Just tell, just tell. What did he say? And then, and then Newt Gingrich's mother said, he said she was a B. And Connie Chung ran the story and gave Newt Gingrich two years of life because, hey, you don't go and gull somebody's rural Georgia mother on national television to get a news story out of it.

[Unknown Speaker]

But the New York Times, so the New York Times. And I wrote about this is a, this drove me crazy, too, is the source of, I wrote about it in my column this month for the magazine. But their argument was, and they're, this shows that they're actually, they haven't had a reckoning about Trump winning again yet because their, their logic was this. We have to write about how Hegs treats women because he said he doesn't want women in combat. Sexual assault of women in the military is a big deal. He's not, he's downplaying that. So we have to go after his character, particularly with regard to women. And he's had this messy personal life. So let's get into that. The, the problem is that the reporter they put on this beat is one of the same ones who won a Pulitzer for basically spinning the Russia hoax at the New York Times. And obviously very anti Trump in her writing, as you can See, I went back and read a lot of her work. She's, she's very clearly biased against Trump in particular and Republicans in general. But how she got this piece of evidence that was the linchpin for her story is questionable. She was asked by commenters in the New York Times, many of whom I will say, were appalled to see someone's mom's private email correspondence in the New York Times. And she said, well, we didn't break any privacy laws, which is very different than what we're discussing, which is a norm violation, by obviously violating the privacy of both Hegseth and his mother in publishing this correspondence. So they got it from someone related to the family, clearly a violation of privacy. But there are. It was not backed up with any other on the record sources. So it's just this, this way of trying to embarrass him. She immediately, the mom immediately said, look, there was a follow up email. I support my son. It was a difficult time. Something most readers understood.

[John Podhoretz]

No, she said, I sent him an email apologizing, right.

[Abe Greenwald]

Immediately for the tone of my email.

[Unknown Speaker]

Like I was angry.

[John Podhoretz]

And again, like, that's why you don't dig into people's families. Like people rant and Raven, they call, I'm so sorry. No, you know, like, I mean, that's, that's human interaction. And it was like that moment, again, not to sort of constantly go back into the past, but, you know, during the Robert Bork confirmation, one of the most hilarious moments again in the terms of this notion that I think liberals have spread for the last 40 years, much worse than conservatives have, that, you know, all bets are off when you are trying to make sure that somebody doesn't get a lifetime appointment or whatever, that somebody went to a video store in Spring Valley, D.C. where Bob Bork lived, and got the clerk to show him Bork's history of rentals, of video rentals, which were totally fine, by the way. You know, it's like the dirtiest one was Body Heat.

[Unknown Speaker]

We need to tell our younger. We need to remind our younger viewers that this was before the Internet. And so what they were looking for was evidence that he had rented pornography.

[John Podhoretz]

Pornography from a store. Right. So, but this was one of the great moments. The reason I'm bringing this up is this notion that, you know, you start here and it'll never end. Within 24 hours, the D.C. city Council, not exactly fans of Robert Borks or anything, passed a law making it illegal for video store clerks to release the contents of rental history.

[Unknown Speaker]

It was consistent with the D.C. city Council.

[John Podhoretz]

It was totally. But I'm just saying, like, when you go down this route, that's when people start saying, wait a minute, I don't know. This happens. A lot happened with Christine Blasey Ford and Brett Kavanaugh also, where it's like, really? She doesn't remember where he lives. She didn't remember where this incident took place. What's going on? Like, of course I know people who've lied about people doing crap to them in high school. I lied about it. You lied about it. Somebody lied about you. Like, you cannot take everybody at their word. That's why we have evidentiary hearings and you're supposed to have more witnesses than what? Whatever. All of that stuff ends up redounding to the benefit of the person who comes under attack if the attack is unmerited. And the response of Kavanaugh and the response of, I would say Hegseth in some ways, particularly in relation to West Point, is obviously that this attack is unmerited and you attack me unfairly and you might be making a huge mistake. You're just going to get my nomination through. Thank you very much.

[Abe Greenwald]

So I think that's a factor. I also think one reason it's going to be very hard to be the fourth senator who opposes these picks, because in the incoming Senate, there are 53 Republicans. If you lose three Republicans, J.D. vance, the vice President elect, is available to break the tie. So you need to lose four to sink a nomination. It's going to be very hard to be that fourth Republican because of historic precedent. And Tom Cotton, I think, put out a very important tweet yesterday where he said, and I quote, of the 72 cabinet secretary nominees since the Clinton transition, only two nominees have ever received no votes from the President elect's party. No one should be surprised that the Republican Senate will confirm President Trump's nominees. So in the post Cold War era, Cotton is saying it is extremely rare for a polarized political party to oppose their president. And that, I think, is going to push a lot of these nominees over the finish line, especially considering Trump's power within the Republican Party. One reason that we haven't mentioned, Joni Ernst has become more accepting, I think, of the prospect of Hague's nomination is that Iowa Republicans who belong to the MAGA movement are raising the specter of a primary challenge if she were to vote no against him. So when you also consider some of Biden's nominees and the fact that Biden's nominees received bipartisan support, I think there is an argument from Trump land to the Republican senators saying, give us a little space here. When you have people voting overwhelmingly in the Senate to confirm Lloyd Austin, whose record as Secretary of Defense I don't think has been a positive. That's just my viewpoint. Or many other nominees to different positions. Well, give the Trump nominees a little bit of room here in order because they're the president's picks and you're of president's party.

[John Podhoretz]

So to be fair, also that specific.

[Matthew Continetti]

Targeting of Ernst was, is something that works well.

[John Podhoretz]

There are two Ernst and Tillis, Ernst and Tillis.

[Matthew Continetti]

But Ernst has been getting it, especially if you look on social media much more because she's been out there saying sort of we'll see, we'll see. And everybody wants her to say just, you know, whatever it is she said she's been in the spotlight and because her name was floated, you know, tell us wasn't floated as a replacement for the one he might not vote for. And Ernst got herself sort of in that pickle. But I also think that by the way, as a side point, that is the brilliant 12 dimensional chess of putting Carrie Lake at Voice of America because there was, there were rumblings that people were saying, well, if we're going to primary Joni Ernst, let's bring in Kari Lake to do so. And I think Trump understood that Carrie Lake is only capable of losing elections. So if there's any chance Republicans are going to run her anywhere, put her in some other federal position, Trump exports.

[Unknown Speaker]

All the difficult women in Trump world, he's just exporting them all to Greece to Voice of America, just get them off.

[John Podhoretz]

Well, so let's. I was just going to say that the interesting thing about Cottons tweet is that that actually explains why the period before the confirmation hearings is actually relatively important for the president's party because there are essentially two stages to confirmation. There's the pre confirmation. The classic thing is that the nominee visits with all 100 senators. That's why it can take a while, comes, sits down, meets them, you know, answers questions, leaves the party. The president usually says it's wonderful to meet you and everything's great. They take a picture, goes on. Meetings with part president of the other party can be a little more combative. And then in this period, things marinate, there's a background check, things bubble up. Turns out there was a someone didn't pay Social Security taxes to a nanny or whatever. And then that nomination does not make it to the hearing room. So that once it makes it to the hearing room, as Tom said, 2 out of 72 don't get votes from the President's party because there is a period of time in which there is a kind of clarification of place and people do drop off. Like a lot of nominees get nominated and then disappear. Linda Chavez disappeared. Zoe Baird disappeared. Kimba Wood disappeared. I mean John Bolton at one point. I mean there are people who get nominated who don't make it to the confirmation table. And that's what the effort really here is, is to see if you can get them to quit like Matt Gaetz. And then no harm, no foul, because nobody remembers it ever happened, right? I mean literally, I think in modern history it's only John Tower who by the way was not his party, was not in power in the Senate. That was Bush's first elder, Bush's first nominee to be Secretary of Defense he assumed would sail through because of senatorial privilege, power being a senator from Texas and no one ever having voted against another senator I think practically in American history for a cabinet post. And the Democrats decided that it was very important to take to give Bush a little whack in the face. Also they all hated Tower for understandable reasons. He was an extraordinarily unpleasant person. But that's like just doesn't happen, just never happens. We saw Oscar winning movie last year, showed again the case of Louis Strauss who was denied confirmation as Secretary of Commerce. That's in Oppenheimer. You know the sort of the through line of the movie Oppenheimer is Strauss confirmation hearing. And the movie tries to make it look as though he's denied because people understood that he had been unfair to Robert Oppenheimer and that's why he was not confirmed as Secretary of Commerce in 1959. That's NAR. That's nonsense. That's not why it happened. It happened because again, a newly resurgent Democratic Senate wanted to slap Eisenhower in the face and hand him a defeat because they had been so quiescent in the years before. But it's so unusual that Christopher Nolan could make an Oscar winning movie out of a confirmation hearing where somebody loses confirmation because it is so unusual for a confirmation to go down.

[Christine Rosen]

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[John Podhoretz]

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[Christine Rosen]

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[John Podhoretz]

Hostage deal so two things very big going on here. So there apparently is a hostage deal in the works. If you read about it, it's enough to make you enraged beyond belief. Because the hostage deal is right now, as we read about it, there are 100 hostages, of whom the Israelis believe 60 are alive, so that there are obviously 40 dead bodies that would have to be returned. Apparently in the first phase of the deal, with a ceasefire lasting 42 days, 30 hostages will be released. Among them the five Americans still in captivity, women, elderly. Note when you read about this in the Wall Street Journal that it does not say babies or small children. Which leads me to two possible conclusions. One of which is that those dead bodies include the be best children or that those babies are so valuable that we are allowing Hamas to Participate in the notion that they should hold on to the most valuable hostages through the end of the process to make sure that Israel doesn't do anything untoward, which is just enough to make you like it, just sickens your body to even contemplate the fact that they're not the first ones out. But two things about the hostage deal, one of which is that apparently Hamas is now made up of a consortium of Palestinians somehow including some people on the west bank, which is interesting, by the way, because if they're on the west bank, that means the Israelis know who they are and could kill them tomorrow because Israel has complete opened intelligence on the West Bank. But we have to say two things, one of which is, remember all the ceasefires and the ceasefires. And we're going to have ceasefires in order to have hostage deal. And all of this. Why is this happening if it happens? Because Hezbollah is dead. Because Iran no longer has air defenses. Because all the leaders of Hamas are dead. Because Syria is now falling in some fashion. And the new leaders of Syria, whoever they are, are making desperate signals to the Israelis that they do not want to be in Brigas with Israel. They have got the message like, we are not fighting you. You go right ahead and destroy all of the chemical weapons sites and all of the airfields. We're not fighting you. You are scary. We just watched you destroy everybody in the Middle East. We're going to go and try to consolidate our power a little bit.

[Abe Greenwald]

There's one group left, and that's the Houthis who just fired another drone into Israel. Right. And they might be on the list.

[John Podhoretz]

Yeah, right. But I'm just saying that what we have here is the total and complete destruction of the entire Biden diplomatic posture in this war from November onward, which is that the ceasefire precedes the release of the hostages. Israel restraining Israel, having Israel withhold its military might in order to make a space for this to happen, with exactly the opposite backward thing. The only way to get the hostages out was going to be for Israel to destroy its enemies. So that Hamas took the little white flag out of the little bunny hole and waved it to say, we've had enough. So much so that they're saying, yeah, you can stay in Gaza. Yeah, you can stay in the Philadelphia corridor, whatever. Just give us 42 days to try to not die. And then at the end of this Wall Street Journal story that I just read, it says, this is one of the more comic things I've ever read. Experts believe that at the end of a ceasefire period, Israel will find it hard to restart the war in Gaza. Should, should the cease. Should it not go the way they want? Oh, yeah, no, these restraints no longer exist on Israel.

[Abe Greenwald]

Evidence was there for that. That's.

[John Podhoretz]

There is no evidence for it except that the Israeli people, unless the Israeli people are like, we've had enough. We really don't want to go back in. There's going to be a Trump administration that will not care if Israel goes back into Gaza. Israel will only go back into Gaza if every single hostage point of the.

[Abe Greenwald]

Deal is that they're not leaving and Israel's not leaving.

[John Podhoretz]

That's what makes it a good deal.

[Matthew Continetti]

It's mutually exclusive for people, for Hamas to say, fine, the IDF can stay, and then somebody else to say, well, I don't know if the IDF will have the stomach to resume the whole.

[John Podhoretz]

Point, to remain there.

[Matthew Continetti]

Standing there in Gaza, where they're controlling.

[Abe Greenwald]

The crossing and the corridor, and be able to.

[Matthew Continetti]

By the way, they have. They have. They have expanded the, the corridor in the center of Gaza, the one that they had been using to enable the bakeries up north to get restocked and, and the, the beaches in the south to be filled with Palestinians on hot days and stuff like that. They have expanded that. And there's really no pushback on the ground because there's nothing on the ground to push back. So they have an expanded corridor that literally bisects Gaza all the way to the sea. And the. And now they're going to. You know, we know that you can't make them budge from the corridor down south. So this idea that, like, you know, we're in a different stage of the war than we ever were before, and people have to get that through their heads. This was a problem with Kamala throughout the election, throughout the campaign, where she kept talking about the situation as if it was eight months ago. We are in a completely different time period.

[John Podhoretz]

Yeah. And Israel's won the war. So guess who gets to dictate the terms of what happens the day after the war? The victor dictates the terms. Now, you can have an armistice. You can have Appomattox. You can have terms that are agreed to by both parties at a piece of paper, you know, excuse me, you get, you know, dictated to it on a piece of paper. But it's Israel's victory. So Israel says, we're going to have a road here. We're going to stay here in the Philadelphia corridor. The only thing that Hamas has in its quiver, the only chips it has in its pile, are the hostages. And if one hair of one head is not returned to Israel dead or alive by the end of that ceasefire period, the rubble will bounce and Trump will say that is just fine with him. And that is the story of 2024.

[Seth Mandel]

Well, he already has. I mean, he's the one that said if the hostages aren't returned. Yeah, you know, hell, like in the proud history of the United States military, you have never seen or, you know, whatever his was. Yeah.

[John Podhoretz]

So I just think that's a, it's a, it's a, it's an interesting turn of events. And I say it's the final twist in the tale of the mishandling of this issue by the Biden administration that I will go to my grave arguing, had they done it differently, had things proceeded differently, had, had the United States backed Israel percent despite riots on campus and things like that, and had the war in Rafah been won in April as opposed to in September or whatever, Biden or Harris might have won the presidency instead of losing it.

[Seth Mandel]

But also, we'd be here sooner. There'd be more hostages to talk about. There'd be fewer dead Gazans.

[John Podhoretz]

Yeah.

[Seth Mandel]

I mean.

[John Podhoretz]

Yeah, so.

[Matthew Continetti]

And fewer, by the way, and fewer dead Iranian terror proxy leaders around the world.

[John Podhoretz]

Right.

[Matthew Continetti]

This has caught the, on the, the stretching on of this war has cost Hamas and Hezbollah beyond anything they expected. The charts of their top, you know, the, the top command with the X's over their faces. They all have X's over their faces. There would be Hamas leaders and Hezbollah leaders alive also.

[Abe Greenwald]

Well, now you're kind of making the case for the administration, Seth, so just. No, but I mean, for a second.

[John Podhoretz]

All we ever said, just the way.

[Matthew Continetti]

They drew it up, Matt, beginning in.

[John Podhoretz]

Late October, the line was Israel lost its deterrence. Israel needs to be able to reestablish its deterrence. Meaning Israel needs to be in a position where it can go about its daily business as a functioning country, everybody living where they live, businesses continuing, people not having to hundreds of thousands not having to be in the reserve so that they can continue to support their families and not worry every day that they're going to have to run into a shelter because of attacks from the air. That needs to reestablish their deterrence. Well, I don't think anybody thought that the reestablishment of the deterrence was going to be this revolutionary by the end of 2024, that the reestablishment of deterrence would. We might think that that would have been wise in some ultimate geopolitical. If you're playing, you know, Stratego Sense, which is you gotta take out the Iranians in order to reestablish deterrence, which, you know, very serious people did say, like, there's no true reestablishment of Israeli security without Iran being taken off the map as a direct threat to Israel at every given moment. But the fact that we would be here with Hezbollah all but destroyed and Iran losing its passage to Hezbollah through Syria by the collapse of the Syrian government after the destruction of Iran's entire defensive capability and a lot of its offensive capability, as well as the removal of Hamas as any kind of a force, now, there are other things that could happen. The west bank could re. Erupt. There could be some kind of weird Houthi west bank alliance. It's not like anybody's out of the woods here. But there was a relatively simple idea, which is America needs to help Israel reestablish its deterrence. And it was America's inconstancy in refusing to participate in the nature of how Israel needed to reestablish its deterrence, which was by escalating, to de. Escalate by forcing Hamas to kill off Hamas to get everybody back so that then everything could go back to normal. That's what we refuse to accept, why history will be the judge.

[Seth Mandel]

But something bigger than that even happened. It's not only did Israel reestablish its deterrence, it crippled the fighting capability of a host of its enemies. That was the sort of. That was the real revolutionary thing. I mean, you know, establishing deterrence was the sort of. That was the language we were all talking. I wasn't even thinking in terms. I mean, I was hoping, but I wasn't really thinking in terms of they're going to cripple Hezbollah, they're going to leave Iran completely exposed, and so on. And they've done all that.

[John Podhoretz]

But as I say, like our friend John Shanzer, our friends at the foundation for Defense of Democracies, people who are really seriously engaged in this issue, said as long as Iran is still directing this Shiite sort of like, corridor ring of fire, Israel would never truly be able to reestablish its deterrence. It just seemed like a bridge too far, given what Israel was facing directly, which was the challenge in Gaza, which was so difficult because in part of our behavior in America and the threat in Lebanon, which we did not know they knew they had in their pocket the ability to cripple Hezbollah beyond all measure, almost instantaneously, we didn't know they had that in them. So Our expectations in the deterrence game were relatively modest. It was just go back to October 6th, not reshuffle the entire geopolitical structure of the Shiite existential war against the Jewish state. But that was what had proved to be necessary in this case. And now we'll see what happens.

[Seth Mandel]

Yeah, I mean, I know you guys got into this with Shanzer when I wasn't here, but I mean, I do think if we look back, if the time comes a few years from now, we look back on this possible window that Israel had to take out Iran's nuclear program and didn't do it, I think it'll. It'll. And with preferably the US involved, we will look back at it as a huge wasted opportunity.

[John Podhoretz]

Nonetheless, I want to mention one more thing. And then, and then Matt has a recommends I just, I think it's necessary for me to quote from Ach. I thought I had it here and then I got blocked to quote from Elizabeth Warren and what Elizabeth Warren said in an interview with the Huffington Post on Tuesday about Luigi Mangione and the murder of Brian Thompson. We keep not mentioning Brian Thompson's name. Somehow we just keep saying the healthcare. We should probably be mentioning his name every possible time because he's the person who should be remembered. Not Luigi Mangione, but Elizabeth Warren, Senator of Massachusetts. Right. Head of the consumer agency that she created, all of that stuff. The visceral response from people across the country who feel cheated, ripped off and threatened by the vile practices of their insurance companies should be a warning to everyone in the healthcare system. Violence is never the answer, but people can only be pushed so far. Yesterday, she then amended her remarks and said, violence is never the answer, period. I should have been much clearer that there is never a justification for murder. Yeah, she should have been much clearer because she just provided a justification for murder. Like she just said, there's never a justification from her. Except the one that I just issued about how everyone in the healthcare system should be warned.

[Seth Mandel]

John, you know how you said that once the New York Times pulled their shtick with Pete Hex Mother's email, you wanted him confirmed. The shooting of Brian. I'm sorry, Thompson. Sorry, Brian Thompson makes me. Now, I don't want any conversations about the problems of health care in the U.S. this is, this is, this is. This is not what. You don't reward murders with opening up conversations about policy.

[Abe Greenwald]

Absolutely.

[Seth Mandel]

Yeah.

[Abe Greenwald]

Especially because it wasn't even an issue in this election when you think about it.

[Christine Rosen]

Right.

[Abe Greenwald]

Health care was not a dominant issue. It was not on the front burner until this awful murder occurred. So you're absolutely right, Abe. I mean, for that very reason alone, we should just not talk about it.

[Seth Mandel]

That's it.

[Abe Greenwald]

For a while. For a while. Right.

[John Podhoretz]

I just, I. The thing is that they can't help themselves.

[Abe Greenwald]

No, because they cannot. Morality is inverted. I mean, because, you know, Elizabeth Warren has plenty of good things to say about the protesters, you know, harassing Jewish students across our campuses. And yet she looks at this father of two gunned down in the back and says, oh, it's time to have a conversation about the rage people feel at the healthcare industry. What a person.

[Matthew Continetti]

Isn't this an echo of the protesters Have a point.

[John Podhoretz]

It's totally.

[Abe Greenwald]

We were talking about yesterday.

[Matthew Continetti]

Yeah, we're having the same conversation, just about different violent actors.

[John Podhoretz]

And that's. That's of course, the through line. And this is a longer conversation to be had over the course of the next year or so, which is this question of whether or not people on the left in this country are getting back to a place in which the violence is the point when they see violent acts being taken as expressions of political rage. That what is important is that the violence throws a spotlight on the political rage, not, oh my God, we've gone too far. We are giving sucker and comfort and excuses to people who are doing things that are destroying the fabric of our society. We gotta pull back and pull far back because things are happening that shouldn't be happening.

[Seth Mandel]

That is one more point about the logic of Warren's statement taking the morality out of the picture. Of course, there's no justification for lawless violence. This guy Mangione was not a poor person whose life was ruined by the insurance companies. So this is not the spilled over rage of a screwed little person by the big corporations. This is someone well to do who needed to transform his pathology and his rage via a manifesto, into justification for killing. That's what this was. This is not someone who was left, you know, on the sidelines because the insurance companies had screwed them.

[John Podhoretz]

Right. Matt, you have a recommendation?

[Abe Greenwald]

I do, John. Thank you. I was kind of taken by surprise by the interest I've had in the 2024 World Chess Championship between the defending champion, Ding Liren and the challenger Gukesh Damaraju. And yet I have been fascinated, transfixed by the match which just ended. Actually, I won't give any spoilers while we were recording this podcast. And the reason I have been so interested and fascinated is I have been a subscriber for some time to Gotham Chess. Gotham Chess is the YouTube channel of a man named Levy Rosman, a chess player who produces videos, chess lessons, analyses of past matches, and has been doing essentially a play by play play of each of the 14 matches in this year's World Championship. And he has, he kind of condenses the matches into about 25 minutes each because they can go on for quite a long time as the two masters try to parse out the different possibilities. But he does so in such a captivating way that I've, I've been paying attention, I've been at the edge of my seat, try to figure out who's going to win this. So if you're interested in chess, as I am, but as a total, you know, kind of hobbyist and amateur who's too afraid to play online with other people, you know, I just stick with the computers. But if you're at all interested, or even if you want to see this little interesting corner of the world and learn more about chess, I would recommend that you go to Gotham Chess on YouTube and start following Levy Rosman. He's also written a book which I have not read. I'm sure it's good, but he, he makes chess a lot of fun. And so that's my recommendation for today.

[John Podhoretz]

What a great recommendation. We will back. We will be back tomorrow. So for Seth, Christine, Matt and Abe, I'm John Pott Hortz. Keep the candle burning.