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- [00:01]
John Podhoretz
This episode is brought to you by Lifelock.
- [00:03]
Abe Greenwald
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Abe Greenwald
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Christine Rosen
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Abe Greenwald
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- [00:25]
John Podhoretz
Visit LifeLock.com podcast Terms apply.
- [00:37]
Abe Greenwald
Expect the wor some pre champagne, some die of thirst no way of knowing which way it's going Hope for the best, Expect the worst Hope for the best welcome to the Commentary Magazine daily podcast. Today is Thursday, January 9, 2025. I am John Podwortz, the editor of Commentary magazine. With me, as always, Executive editor Abe Greenwald. Hi Abe.
- [01:06]
John Podhoretz
Hi John.
- [01:07]
Abe Greenwald
Media Commentary columnist Christine Rosen. Hi, Christine.
- [01:10]
Matthew Continetti
Hi John.
- [01:11]
Abe Greenwald
And Washington Commentary columnist Matthew Continetti.
- [01:14]
Christine Rosen
Hi John.
- [01:16]
Abe Greenwald
Obviously, the story of the day, the week, the month are the wildfires that are consuming parts of Los Angeles. This story is getting worse, not better. Every couple of hours, a new fire breaks out in a different location, either carried by embers that are the Santa Ana winds are blowing miles in other directions and starting fires far to the east of where they originally started. Or unconfirmed reports that there are people starting fires in some places, including the Hollywood Hills, just to see what might might happen, which is so horrifying that I can hardly even take it in. I think it's almost immediately a giant political story, and there are two reasons for that. One is that the candidate for mayor in 2022, the two candidates for mayor in 2022, Rick Caruso and Karen Bass, are now playing central roles again. Karen Bass as the mayor who was in Ghana at a conference when the fires broke out, and Rick Caruso as a developer and an owner of a mall in the Pacific Palisades that he managed to save. But he was the first voice in the story saying that the fire hydrants in Los Angeles were apparently empty. And so we have a kind of return to the fight between Karen Bass, between Karen Bass and, and, and Caruso. Karen Bass, a standard issue progressive Democrat, and Caruso, a kind of Bloombergian, non ideological get things done guy who almost made it into the mayoralty but but was prevented at the in the 11th hour by a real rally by public sector workers who turned out at the polls in colossal numbers. That's number one. Number two is that throughout the Trump administration, Donald Trump, oddly, it always seemed to me like, and purposelessly almost was kind of obsessed with the question of California's fire management and talked about it a lot. I mean, in ways that often as he does seem kind of like off the topic, or he had some friend who was, as my grandmother would say, hawking him a chinik about it. And yet here we are in the beginning of his new administration, and some of the things that he talks about which aren't really germane necessarily to this fire because a lot of it had to do with forest management and how California was leaving, was leaving things on the ground instead of burning them up or whatever. But, but nonetheless, he spoke about the different.
- [04:18]
John Podhoretz
He also, he also talked about access to water, actually, Right. In California quite extensively, and how it was.
- [04:25]
Abe Greenwald
And that water was being run into the ocean in order to divert it from places for ecological reasons or for conservationist reasons or for reasons having to do with supposedly endangered species. So whether or not it was all that germane, it's kind of eerie that this, this topic that seemed to consume him and not all that many other people has now come to the forefront of American politics just as he is taking office. And so the promise that Trump is and will be a new kind of politician with new kinds of solutions to new kinds of problems is now right in front of us. We're not talking now about Iran, we're talking about California. We're talking about, you know, a situation in which tens, if not hundreds of billions of dollars of damage are going to be registered in, in one of the bluest areas in the country.
- [05:18]
Christine Rosen
Right. And, you know, Trump also made it political by issuing a statement criticizing Governor Newsom for the actions that you mentioned, specifically this, this water bill. And it's hard to talk about politics at a time when people are still trying to save their homes and the firefighters are combating the inferno. I think at the time of recording today that some five people have lost their lives. And of course, just the incredible property damage, too, is just hard to comprehend. But it's going to be a political issue. Natural disasters are almost always political. When you look at how, say, Democrats and liberals critique hurricane management when it occurs under either Republican governors or Republican presidents, as was the case with Katrina, you see that what Trump is doing in his inimitable way is sadly par for the course when it, when it comes to these types of events. At the same time, I do think that there are legitimate questions to be asked. You know, you mentioned that Karen Bass is kind of a standard issue Democrat, and she's actually pretty far left. She's kind of run away from her far left background. In the heat of a surprisingly kind of contested race with Caruso a couple years ago. But she is a far left Democrat, there's no question about it. Newsom is a progressive left winger. And when you think about similar blazes that occurred in Canada, just what was it, one year ago, two years ago now that were darkening the skies of Manhattan, this central question of forest management, how you deal with the brush, do you actually engage in controlled burns in order to deprive these fires of fuel? Or do you say, well, because we're all good greens here, we're not going to do anything to disturb the natural forest, we're just going to let the forest grow naturally and not touch it. That has real life consequences as we saw in Canada and now as we're seeing play out in Southern California.
- [07:44]
Matthew Continetti
Can I say there's also beyond just the tragedy of the five deaths that we know of and unfortunately there probably will be more discovered and the property loss and there's just the general fear and anxiety that the people who live in Los Angeles right now are experiencing. Not knowing this also strikes me as an example. It's political for a reason. And that's because there was a complete breakdown of communication between local emergency organizations, whether that was the fire department or the LA police department or the Mayor's office and the people who were desperate to know, you know, they would get evacuation orders, they would leave, they would evacuate to another place, then that place was evacuated. So they're, they're in the entire time, they're wondering, will I return to an ash heap or a home that's still standing? They were getting no information for about 12 hours that first night. There were no updates on the fire department's page about anything going on. And it as images of buildings and entire shopping areas were, were shown burning to the ground. It listed zero structures destroyed. So that is unconscionable. An era where we're supposedly able to have instantaneous news, you know, lots of feedback. All of these platforms that you know, are, are praised for their information sharing purposes broke down. But they broke down because the government agencies at the local level were not providing information. So that communication breakdown then leads people to ask what's going on? Why isn't the government doing what it should do? And then you see, you know, the politicization happens because the functional, the, the one functional thing a local and state government's supposed to do is protect and citizens. And it immediately broke down in the wake of an emergency. And it's the one time where citizens are expected to Be able to rely on water being in the hydrants, information being shared with them, and it didn't happen here.
- [09:27]
John Podhoretz
And to the functional question, Karen Bass went to Ghana despite having received increased warnings about high winds and potential for fire. And when she came back, she was faced with questions. Should you have gone to Ghana? Do you want to apologize to the people of Los Angeles? And she stood there stone faced and looked at the ground. She didn't answer.
- [09:53]
Abe Greenwald
So for two minutes? Yeah, for two minutes. I mean, the video is quite startling. Her literal refusal to engage. And you know, look, we understand this, these are highly complex issues. Part of the issue with California is that glorious though it is, and it is topographically, you know, environmentally, all of that, the most beautiful state you could possibly imagine, there are real issues with it being a place where 38 million people live. It's pretty wild, even though it's all developed. And you know, of course we know.
- [10:32]
Matthew Continetti
The four seasons are mudslide, earthquake, fire and drought. Those are the four seasons in California.
- [10:37]
Abe Greenwald
Right, right. And so, and so obviously California goes through these times far more than a lot of other states, except for like the shoreline states like Florida and others, because, you know, God did not entirely mean it to be the most populous place in the United States. And so that requires a greater degree of care and concern about managing the physical environment of the state. And this is clearly a matter of almost no interest to the politicians who have taken charge and have been running California for the last 20 years. That is to say, they're much more interested in talking about global climate change than they are in trying to prevent the next ecological disaster. They, they, they want to go to climate change.
- [11:36]
Christine Rosen
Yeah, their, their interest in the environment is anti human. So take the water for example. Right. Some of the water issues derive from the Endangered Species act and the efforts to protect, you know, smelts and small fish that have real life consequences in the ability of the state to distribute water. And this is, I think, what Trump was partly referring to when he talked about these issues on the campaign trail and also in his interview with Joe Rogan. Think about how the anti developmental mentality not only affects the housing supply in California, making housing ridiculously expensive, but it also creates issues in terms of, say, evacuating from Malibu, where you have one way in and one way out. And Malibu is essentially this rural preserve of the ultra rich that is nevertheless exposed to the elements. So I think John's right in saying that California does have these kind of environmental characteristics that make it possibly hazardous to human habitation. But that only means that public policy should be oriented toward, well, how do we preserve the humans, how do we allow humans to grow safely here rather than oh, let's not touch the environment. Because humans are somehow a spoil, a spoliation of the environment. And that will only lead I think as it has to, bad consequences.
- [13:26]
Abe Greenwald
I mean that is a very, look, that is a very deep point. Let's talk about California's political history over the last two decades has been, has been weirdly instructive because as Christine says, there are these four natural disaster seasons and then there are mismanagement problems. Gray Davis, the governor of California in the late beginning of the 21st century was driven from office because the electrical grid failed and people were living with these controlled, what were they called, gray outs. They had to rolling blackouts. Rolling blackouts. All this because they had mismanaged the electrical grid in California, had not taken sufficient care of it. And that brought Arnold Schwarzenegger to the governor's mansion where he served for eight years. And then whatever ideological non conformity he showed was quickly sort of put in a rear view mirror by a return to just straight on Democratic progressive Democratic Party rule in the form of Gavin Newsom. And then of course the, the, the state legislature and the people who got elected there. And you know, so you have electrical problems, you have environmental problems, you have forestry problems, you have as Matt says, this kind of weird thing where you have 40 million people crammed into a state that is less concerned with making it livable than it is with some of these more abstract ideas about how to.
- [15:18]
Matthew Continetti
Well, and we should add the policy choices regarding homeowners insurance that the state of California caps on homeowners insurance value. Things that are now that were happening before the fires that were a response to insurance industry issues that California was quite draconian about and that now the residents who've lost their homes and fires are unfortunately going to be literally, you.
- [15:37]
Abe Greenwald
Know, that is a, that is a, a key point because so there we, you know, we're talk talk about Trump and populism and there's a lot of conversation about populism and all of that. And there is a form of left wing populism that the Biden administration cues to and that obviously Gavin Newsome and the California legislature cue to which is people are getting screwed by giant companies. And so the giant companies need to be constrained by top down legislation that does things like cap prices of drugs and you know, controls prices of pharmaceuticals and in this case says caps the cost of insurance policies. So what happens in such circumstances, insurers decide that it is not worth the risk to insure in California. And people had great trouble once they capped insurance rates getting appropriate fire insurance. And this is why this story. We're only at the very beginning of what could be a political apocalypse in the United States because of policy choices made by elected politicians who are going to have to answer for the consequences that seem now to be relatively direct. Like, you have a $5 million house, so you're a wealthy person, granted, okay. But you have $5 million house and you were unable to get proper levels of fire insurance for it. It burns to the ground. You're going to get a million dollars back in value on a $5 million house, and you are thrown into penury as a result.
- [17:17]
John Podhoretz
All of it speaks to a larger blue crisis, I think, which is that the great irony here is that you have California, which is a state that arguably, because of the natural disasters, because it is so topic, topologically diverse and populated, requires more than any other state, the most basic concrete functioning of governments, right? Like to keep people safe, to keep things running in spite of conditions and so on. And at the same time, you have a governing ideology for a long time that is focused on abstractions, right, Having to do with modern liberalism. The gap between doing the basic job of governance, especially in a state like California, and the things that they're up to, you know, in terms of social programs and whatever else. You know, all the, all the, all the ideas that the eye.
- [18:30]
Abe Greenwald
Right. I mean, we have. We have the Fire Department. The LA Fire Department was what. The rules of how to become an LA firefighter were changed in order to de. Emphasize white male physical strength in favor of a more diverse firefighting workforce. Now, we have no reason yet to question that the firefighters themselves have done anything but heroic work in this regard.
- [18:57]
Matthew Continetti
No money spent on those policy choices matters because that's money not spent on training and recruiting and keeping at their peak performance the equipment and the firefighters themselves.
- [19:08]
Christine Rosen
Look, catastrophe exposes one human weakness. We are powerless ultimately against nature. Two, it also tests leadership, the mettle of leadership. And so what we're seeing right now in California, tragically, is political leadership that really doesn't know what to do because it's so consumed by virtue, signaling and placating the various public private interests, special interests that govern the state. So, yeah, I mean, California's problem is ultimately liberalism. And that's why people are driving away from California, have been doing so for a decade now, and I think are likely to actually accelerate that Move to other places, primarily red states, in the aftermath of the inferno. But you have to contrast that with, on the one hand, say, Governor DeSantis. Right. So there the power of nature is on display with hurricanes. DeSantis, I think, exhibited great leadership command, but also an ability to reconstruct and rebuild very quickly. I'd also point to Governor Shapiro of Pennsylvania. Look, he's a liberal Democrat, he's a partisan, but when that piece of 95 collapsed, he said, look, we're going to build it right away. And they did. They got up a solution up very quickly. I don't know if Newsom and I seriously doubt Karen Bass capacity to do something similar. And just one other maybe point of comparison is Los Angeles, though we don't think of it this way. Could end up being something like New Orleans after Katrina, where the disaster happened. Of course, Bush received the blame for Katrina, even though much of the decisions on the ground that led it to be such an incredible human tragedy were made by the Democratic political leadership in Baton Rouge and in New Orleans. Remember Mayor Nagin, for example? Well, even though at the time everyone was going about Bush beneath the surface in the politics of New Orleans, huge things were happening. One, a lot of the city left, it went to Houston. And two, the political kind of fault lines were exposed to such a degree that you had a period of revolt against the leadership in New Orleans, but also statewide. And now we have a transition where Louisiana is essentially a red state and you got, you know.
- [21:57]
Abe Greenwald
It had a Democratic governor in 2000, right now it's purely red.
- [22:01]
Christine Rosen
Look, I'm not saying the same thing's going to happen in California in two years, but we have, we did see in the previous election that California is drifting, right? And I would say that the way that this crisis was magnified by public policy choices, you can't control the Santa Ana winds, right? But you can make public policy choices that make it easier to combat them when fire breaks out. That, I think, will become a political issue and it will be an issue that does not benefit the liberal left wing leadership of California and Los Angeles.
- [22:41]
Abe Greenwald
One of the deepest, earliest examples of what we might call neoconservative thinking came from Nathan Blaser, who was one of the original assistant editors on Commentary when Commentary was founded in 1945. And then, of course, was the co editor of the Public Interest, the foundational neoconservative social science and Government Policy Quarterly. That was, that came into being in the 1960s. And Nat said that the crisis in urban governance, because that was his subject was urban policy came about when city leaders or city governments stopped doing what they knew how to do, which was collect the garbage, control crime on the streets. Those are really the two major examples. Shovel the snow and try to start doing things that nobody knew how to do, like eliminate poverty, alleviate joblessness. These were not jobs that a mayor or a city council could handle, but concrete, discrete act of government action for which government exists. Public safety, public order, and the management of the infrastructure of a city or state or something like that. That's what government is there for at root. And if you have Gavin Newsom, who was on with Anderson Cooper last night on cnn, standing in the midst of a fire and Aston Cooper said, donald Trump attacked you. What do you have to say to Donald Trump and his attacks? And Gavin Newsom whined. He was like, I don't know why we're having this kind of thing when people are suffering and dying. And, you know, I. Today was with a man who knows how to be a leader for all the people. And that was Joe Biden, because Joe Biden was in LA because his granddaughter was having a baby. And what did he do? He showed. He went to the hospital. He saw his granddaughter's baby. Okay, go ahead. I'm sorry, no. Okay.
- [25:07]
Matthew Continetti
But this, but this is a perfect example because this is what has happened. And there's a version of it on the right, but you see it very much so on in the Democratic Party, which used to be full of public servants, Right? Public and service were the two words you'd hear when someone ran for office. Now it's performative publicity. When they come out and talk. It's not. There's no service aspect to it either. The reason he talks about how he feels is that he's rewarded for that by his voters. He's rewarded by being, you know, a celebrity kind of politician. He's incredibly vain. And what, what did Joe Biden's visit mean? Meant that the residents who had evacuated their homes were still under a news blackout because the news helicopters and other. Other media stuff were all grounded while Biden was in the area. It actually made things more difficult from a strategic and logistical standpoint. But that that inability to understand one's role as public, as a public servant, and to absolutely turn their back on the service aspect of that, because they've become a kind of celebrity and they're rewarded for that. They do it because it works. I mean, that's. And maybe, but this didn't work.
- [26:08]
Christine Rosen
I have a question. I have a question. Did we Find out whether the great grandchild is a boy or girl.
- [26:15]
Abe Greenwald
Hey.
- [26:16]
Christine Rosen
Because it wasn't clear on that to the child.
- [26:20]
Abe Greenwald
So what Biden said just to just, if you, if you didn't hear it was. He said, it's a terrible tragedy here in Los Angeles. On the plus side, I have a great grandchild now, which is really good. Talk about great. Communing with the suffering of a city that is, you know, that is burning down. I'm sure we're all very happy that Naomi Biden, Neal, had a baby and congratulations to her and that it's wonderful that he has a great grandchild. That was an unnecessary little addendum for the American people to have to listen to. And yes, he said she had a baby boy, baby girl. And I actually don't know what it.
- [27:01]
John Podhoretz
Was, but he was already pardoned.
- [27:06]
Abe Greenwald
Okay, but my point here is.
- [27:08]
Matthew Continetti
Oh, wait, I'm sorry. I just got that.
- [27:10]
Abe Greenwald
That is good. Yeah, that is good. That is good. And, you know, who knows what's going to happen next? But I think it's striking. You're saying that Newsom is rewarded for his performative. That was.
- [27:24]
Matthew Continetti
Maybe that will change.
- [27:25]
Abe Greenwald
I hope it will change. I'm saying the sight of him last night was the sight of somebody whose life ambition has, and I hate to use this because it sounds, but has gone up in smoke. The expression on his face was somebody whose deepest desire, which is that he will be the President come 2029, will not happen now. I mean, granted, maybe I'm over reading. It's only 48 hours.
- [27:53]
Christine Rosen
Is he going to. After, after the winds abate and the fire is contained, which is not. Not today, as we're recording this. But is he going to lift all the environmental protections and lift all the restrictions in order that Los Angeles and these communities can rebuild? That will be the test. Is he going to say, look, we experienced as a community this incredible catastrophe, but it's up to us to do everything to bring back Los Angeles better and ever better than ever. In particular, in light of the fact that the Olympics are coming to Los Angeles in 2028. Is he going to do that? That will be the test. And if he can't do that because he's imprisoned by his ideology, which is what I suspect, then I think you're right. It's going to be a huge political liability. And that's, you know, that's part of the collateral damage of, by the way.
- [28:53]
Abe Greenwald
The other thing is the stone faceness and the muteness of Karen Bass as she stood in the Airport being asked this question again, very striking contrast to good examples of crisis management by politicians in the face of disaster. And I want to keep, like being, you know, like a DeSantis PR person. But no, because he's very. He is. So, I'm sorry, what does he do?
- [29:23]
Matthew Continetti
Yes, when he appears after I was in Florida after both of the most recent hurricanes, like, in one case, not that. Like less than a week after everything. And already you could see at both the county level, the state level, at every level, he was communicating. It was, it was a very organized effort. And yes, there were things that come up here and there, but they have a team in place that is ready to go when the minute a tropical storm starts to form. And that's the point is.
- [29:49]
Abe Greenwald
Right. That's one thing. The other thing is that he goes, he stands in front of microphone, he says, okay, here's what we're going to do, or here is what is happening and here is what we're going to do. Step one, step two, step three, step four. And Gavin Newsom is like, Donald Trump is being mean to me. That's a very.
- [30:12]
Matthew Continetti
He's setting his camera angle and then he's saying, donald Trump is mean to me.
- [30:16]
Abe Greenwald
Nobody cares about Gavin Newsom right now. Nobody in or in California cares about Gavin Newsom's emotional state. What they would like is a sense of somebody saying, yeah, here's what we're going to do. Planes are going to try to. We're doing what we can to get the planes with the water, to drop the water on the fires. Now we have. We cannot expect the L. A Fire Department to put out a fire of this magnitude. We're going to have to do this and that. We are setting out the National Guard to help with the evacuations. I mean, I don't know what the steps are because I'm not the governor of California for however long he's been governor of California, and I haven't lived in a state that has faced numerous statewide infrastructure crises for more than two, three decades. You would think, because that's the case in Florida, that beginning with Hurricane Andrew in 1992, the entire way that Florida dealt with natural disasters was flipped on its head. And everybody said, we can't go through what we went through in 1992. We need to change building codes, we need to do this. We need to have an emergency management thing in place that meets every week. Ba da da da da da. You would think that the same thing would have happened in California after earthquakes, bridge collapse.
- [31:47]
Christine Rosen
They can't they can't count ballots within a month. It takes them six weeks to determine who won. Congressional races in California actually is, this.
- [31:56]
Matthew Continetti
Is actually an example where the idea, the ideology of climate change stuff in particular plays comes into play. Building codes were completely rehabbed in California because of earthquakes after the big earthquake in the 1980s, particularly Northern California. If you know anyone who's an architect or a developer, the way they do the retrofitting that was required, I mean, it did involve a lot of regulation, what whatnot, but they, they have made California not earthquake proof, but much, much safer. And that was done, I think, in part because you can't blame earthquakes on climate change. Every other disaster that strikes California you can make, you can point to this existential risk and say, well, it's out of our hands unless you stop flying on airplanes and eat less meat. And that is a problem.
- [32:36]
Abe Greenwald
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- [34:57]
Christine Rosen
But you can blame earthquakes being hyperbolic, you can blame earthquakes on fracking, which is why California limits its energy production when it could be so much more beneficial to world energy markets that the environmental mentality there applies as well. I mean, there is a tendency on. I will just say there's a tendency on the right to blame illegal immigration for most of California's problems. And I seriously disagree with this. The root of California's problems is Hollywood San Francisco liberalism, which has been regnant there since the 1980s and over two generations has wrecked the most beautiful state in the country. And it's very sad to see this play out in real time. And you have to think that there are going to be downstream consequences of this.
- [35:45]
Abe Greenwald
I think again, getting back to sort of the fact that this is happening just as Donald Trump is coming into office, it provides him maybe it's heartless to talk this way and I apologize for doing so if it seems like I am not paying sufficient attention to the tragedy. But it provides him with a contrast inside the United States. It's not just Biden who is the failure that he was elected to somehow supplant and reverse policies of. It is the model of what Walter Russel Mead has called blue state governance. Right. Which. Which is implicated in the treatment in the border crisis. Well.
- [36:31]
Matthew Continetti
And what's his opponent's whole identity? Kamala Harris is a California politician. She's a California Democrat through and through.
- [36:37]
Abe Greenwald
Right. And so I think that he can say the way these people have gone about professing their ideology and putting their ideology into practice in terms of state legislation and regulation and things like that we can now say have acted are, are actively harmful not only to the economy in the form of, as Matt would say, like the fact that we the fracking is limited, that our economic, the engine of our economic power in energy is we have to fight to get the stuff out of the ground that has these massive.
- [37:19]
Christine Rosen
Energy and defense were the two pillars of red California.
- [37:24]
Abe Greenwald
Right. They were liberals. Right.
- [37:26]
Christine Rosen
And the liberals destroyed both of them.
- [37:28]
Abe Greenwald
Yes.
- [37:29]
John Podhoretz
Right.
- [37:29]
Christine Rosen
And now it's blue California. So we want red California back. We gotta go. We have to return to the economic basis of that.
- [37:38]
Abe Greenwald
Yeah. I mean people may not really know this because it was 30 years ago. And if you're a Younger person, you may not know this, but California was a Republican state.
- [37:48]
Christine Rosen
Two great Republican presidents, Reagan and Nixon.
- [37:54]
Abe Greenwald
It was a Republican state. And as Matt said, that part was driven by the creation of the modern defense industry, much of which was centered in California. Shipbuilding, nuclear, aeronautics, and energy. Oil, energy, oil. And so you have this change in politics with the end of the Cold War and the creation of the peace dividend, which was the massive reduction in defense spending. You had the defense industry in Southern California not ended, but I mean, essentially kind of no longer being this dominating force in the California economy. And then. Yeah, and then.
- [38:44]
Christine Rosen
And then were replaced by Silicon Valley. Right, right. And the thing about Silicon Valley is that it has waxed and waned from right to left. Silicon valley in the 90s was more libertarian, more associated with the right, but then because of a reaction to Bush, it swung far left. And that too, influenced the political character of the state. You have trillions in market capitalization based in Northern California. And it also. Money can make consequences softer for a lot of people. But what we've seen in the past year is that Silicon Valley, important parts of it, are moving back to the right. And that could have, again, a significant effect in the politics of the state.
- [39:38]
Abe Greenwald
Well, because it'd be good if Elon.
- [39:40]
Christine Rosen
Musk would maybe focus his attention on California politics for a little bit rather than getting the AfD in power in Germany.
- [39:50]
Abe Greenwald
Well, he said that's a very. Just to take a sort of side note. So Elon Musk, a Californian, had this idea for a project which was using this new technology that he had helped create, the Boring Company, to create new pathways in Los Angeles to the airport through tunneling, private sector tunneling, which has almost never been done, at least as an infrastructure matter. And of course, this became wildly controversial. The idea was he was going to upset the Senate Swallow. I don't know. I mean, there's all kinds of stuff in relation to it. And I think part of his move to the right over time had to do with coming face to face with and dealing with the consequences of being an active person trying to innovate in a state that you can innovate in Silicon Valley as long as what you're doing is on an infinitesimal scale with a tiny little silicon chip.
- [40:58]
Christine Rosen
And the liberals ran him out of California.
- [41:00]
Abe Greenwald
They ran him out of California. He went to Texas and to Las Vegas, where we learned this week the Boring company is digging tunnels around Las Vegas, which is also a much less regulated place. And I think Matt's. I think your Largest point, which I think is very telling, is in the wake of disasters. So Shapiro being a very good example of this, you have to relax ordinary policies to clear away red tape and clear the brush. Sorry, again, maybe not an appropriate term to use here.
- [41:38]
Christine Rosen
Your metaphors today are very timely, are.
- [41:40]
Abe Greenwald
Very, very timely, unfortunately, tastelessly timely. But in order to make it possible to bring things back as fast as possible and to restore normalcy and to allow people to rebuild homes, because it starts getting, you know, when you have thousands of homes destroyed in California, the cost of lumber and bricks and things like that, to rebuild those houses just like in New York after, like, it's going to be staggering. After, like, after Hurricane Sandy, reconstruction costs on the, on the east coast became insanely unaffordable because people out of their.
- [42:28]
John Podhoretz
Homes for months and months, sometimes years at a time.
- [42:32]
Abe Greenwald
Listen, listen. Pali High, one of the major high schools in Los Angeles, burned to the ground yesterday. We have friends who have kids who go to Pali High. They have no idea where their kids are going to go to school. It's January. Five schools probably hosting or housing, 25,000 kids have burned to the ground. What happens now? You're not even talking about housing now. We're talking about people who did, whose houses haven't burned down, who have children, who have nowhere to go to school. Now, granted, liberals don't care about school anymore. They're happy to let kids stay at home and go crazy and have nervous breakdowns on Zoom. So good. Congratulations. We're going to now go back into this for California students who already have suffered learning loss and psychological torment from being isolated in their homes. On a screen. Well, I guess we're going back to that.
- [43:32]
Christine Rosen
I think we should spend a little bit more time on Trump, having talked about problems with liberalism. You know, Trump will be president in 11 days and so he is going to inherit this disaster and the recovery.
- [43:50]
Abe Greenwald
And he complained about it, by the way, on Truth Socially.
- [43:53]
Christine Rosen
Sure he did.
- [43:53]
Abe Greenwald
Thanks a lot, Gavin Newsom.
- [43:55]
Christine Rosen
Right, right.
- [43:58]
Abe Greenwald
Meaning this to me, or by what.
- [44:00]
Christine Rosen
This 24 hours have reminded me, is that the whirlwind is coming. The Trump whirlwind is coming back to Washington. And what you get out of the whirlwind is often some commonsensical points. You often get a demand for action that in my view is often in the right direction, public policy wise. But you also get a mess. And you also get a lot of personal attacks, ad hominem attacks, loyalty tests. You get a lot of confusion and ambivalence. Right. And all of this is kind of swirls together. And so, you know, Trump is making, I think, correct arguments about California's mismanagement. He does it in his way that connects with a lot of people, but also sparks his opponents to say, why are you calling him Governor Newscomb? What are you. And at the same time, he is in D.C. right now, actually. But he arrived yesterday to pay his respects to Jimmy Carter's casket in the Capitol, but also to address the Senate Republican Conference. And what we're learning from, from, for the reporting around that is he, he didn't reach any conclusion about what he thinks the Senate should do in terms of one reconciliation bill covering everything or two. And so we're kind of left now with kind of standing, standing, standing back and standing by because, you know, they're going to, they're already, the Republicans are already in power in the Congress. They could get to work on this right away. And I think to some degree they are, but they still don't have any clear direction of the form it will take or the time line that they should be following.
- [46:00]
Abe Greenwald
Okay.
- [46:00]
Christine Rosen
And I think that will be typical for the next four years.
- [46:03]
Abe Greenwald
But I want to defend him on this, what he did last night, because he said, I don't one bill or two, I don't care. What he wants is the policies to be enacted, Right? And so he wants policies to be enacted. So he is going to leave it to the people who have to pass the bills to figure out the strategy to pass the bills because he, and that is an improvement over Trump 2016, 2017. Remember, Paul Ryan brought him two different innovative ways to get done what he thought he wanted to get done, particularly in relation to Obamacare. And foolishly and needlessly and stupidly, he said, I don't want to do it that way. So as a result, what he wanted to get done was never done, which was there was this idea about passing, killing Obamacare with legislation with a two year period in which it's proposed, in which it would stay in place until a bill could be written to deal with the consequences of replacing Obamacare. And he said, I don't want to do that. I want the replacement instantaneously along with the removal. And then of course, John McCain and other basically killed the Obamacare.
- [47:25]
Matthew Continetti
I got to defend Matt's point here, because what he's pointing to is it doesn't whether it's one bill or two, no one in Congress knows what Trump's reaction will be if either is a success or a failure, completely unpredictable and the unpredictability is kind of what people want to stop. Like, we're sick of having these dramas. Like, people just want things to work again.
- [47:46]
Abe Greenwald
I think, okay, fair enough. But. But he is giving Thune and Johnson running room by. By not. By not closing off corridors.
- [47:55]
Christine Rosen
Sure, but I'm not sure. I don't think they know where to run. And I think that in the House case, Trump's instinct, after being talked, after having conversations with Johnson, with Jason Crow and with Stephen Miller, said, oh, you know, one bill makes more sense because we have a very narrow margin in the Senate, rather, we have a narrow margin in the House. And so in order to get everybody in line, it will be easier for me to pressure Freedom Caucus types, even liberal, moderate types, by saying, look, this one vote, you're really going to vote against stuff on energy in the border because you didn't like what you got on taxes. Come on. To me, that has a lot of logic behind it. But then he talked to Thune, the Senate leader, and Thune was like, well, don't you want to have some legislative wins up early and then taxes will take longer? And he's like, okay, well, I just want it done. But I think, I think in terms of moving legislation, you do have to have one position and then push it over the finish line. You know, I will just say too, on the two bill approach, look, I can understand the argument, as I think Trump does. Yeah. Okay. It'd be nice to have the Congress pass a big bill early in the first, you know, first months of the Trump presidency, maybe before the June recess. Right. However, that bill would contain everything that the Republicans agree on. And what happened with Obamacare in 2017. The truth is, Republicans could agree that they wanted to repeal it, but they could not agree on what to replace it with. And that's why you got to the Graham proposal. Well, we'll just kill it and then we'll have two years to make up the legislation. John McCain put an end to that. So then you were left in 2017 with the tax bill, which took a long time to write. They finally passed it in the winter, or right before the beginning of winter, I think in December, and it was very unpopular and they didn't message it right. So I think, again, do you really want to repeat that? If you get everything that you agree on taken care of, and now all of a sudden you have this huge tax bill, you're going to have to keep the tax cuts. They're the central part of the Republican DNA. But there are a lot of art how are you going to include no tax on tips, no tax on Social Security, no tax on overtime? I just think that this ambivalence could have negative consequences in a few months.
- [50:34]
Abe Greenwald
Take look. You may be right. But all of these questions go to a level of sophistication on the technical aspects of governance that were so absent during the first couple of years of Trump's term because of the amateurishness of the Trump administration and the White House's approach on these issues that there were all these self inflicted wounds. And it doesn't really feel, I take your point, that he is not giving particularly House Republicans the kind of governance that they will need for him to prevail with this one vote majority. If every single Democrat decides to vote against the One Beautiful bill, and that may not happen, by the way, like there are no in fact Democrats, I.
- [51:30]
Christine Rosen
Think it makes it more likely that you get some Democrats if you have one beautiful bill.
- [51:34]
Abe Greenwald
Right. Because they are not going to want to vote against the tax. They're not a show, especially if it's against.
- [51:39]
Matthew Continetti
Sounds like a boy band name.
- [51:41]
Abe Greenwald
I mean, yeah, the One Beautiful Bill.
- [51:43]
Christine Rosen
I liked it when it was the mega, mega manga. Now we've shifted to One beautiful Bill.
- [51:48]
Abe Greenwald
Right, right. Anyway, he just again yesterday in his talk at the microphone in the, in the Capitol building after the appearance of the Senate, there's just the music, the Trump music is the way he stands, the way he talks is just, it's different. Yeah. When he goes on truth Social, he's the Trump of social media. Right. Gavin Newscomb, that stuff, weird capitalization of letters, like he's Laurence Stern, the 18th century novelist, you know, that, that, that sort of thing. When he talks, he has a kind of authority that he hasn't felt to me like he has possessed before. Easy command, understands the issues. And I think, by the way, we'll be empowered by this. I told you that California, you were headed for disaster on your fire policy. And I was President of the United States and I warned Gavin Newsom and I talked, I tried to make a public case for this and you didn't listen. And the country is now seeing the consequences of not having listened to me. And this gets back to the Nathan Glaser point, which I think very interesting for the second half of this decade, which is here in New York, in California, in Chicago, in these places where there is blue state governance, the incompetence, the inability to allow people to live ordinary day to day quotidian lives with a sense of safety and security is going to Tell very seriously. And if the, if Washington ends up functioning better with, in a, in a better way, that will have knock on consequences in the blue states. Because the idea will be, well, I don't know, these guys seem to know what they're doing and Aaron Bass and Eric Adams and Brandon Johnson and I don't know who else, you know, have no clue. And we can't.
- [54:03]
Matthew Continetti
I mean, it would be nice if Trump populism became the gateway drug to a return to sort of more traditional conservative small government.
- [54:09]
Abe Greenwald
But I mean, I'm not even talking about small government. I'm talking about effective. Right. That, that was like, I want to sound like Michael Dukakis, like competent government, like minimally competent government. Like, you know, there's a, if there are criminals on subway platforms, you put cops on the platforms and you arrest people before they do things and then you deal with the consequences later. Anyway, go ahead.
- [54:31]
John Podhoretz
What's interesting to me to look for in regard to Trump and the wildfire specifically is that traditionally when Democrats make a political point in the wake of a natural disaster, the media bolsters their point. When Republicans make valid political points in the wake of a natural disaster, the media pile on the Republican for politicizing the natural disaster. Now what I think is that that's not going to be effective anymore. It'll be done if Trump makes the kinds of points you're talking about. John here saying, I have been, I am on record as having been talking about this for a long time. I think the media will come down on him, but I don't think anyone's listening.
- [55:26]
Abe Greenwald
I want to talk about the media in the last 48 hours because there's something very telling happened. So I wasn't paying attention to Fox, but I was paying attention to MSNBC and CNN both Tuesday night when the fires really broke out. And then last night, Wednesday night, as the story became the major story in the country, without question, Tuesday night I wanted to know what was going on with the fires. So I did what I have done for 40 years, which is I went to CNN first because Fox sometimes has trouble deploying resources quickly or, you know, they really are committed to their primetime lineup because they get such high ratings, whatever. And CNN always was the network of, you know, when there's breaking news, you go to CNN first to see what's going on. And I go to CNN and there is the Abby Phillip show having fights about Trump talking about Greenland for an hour. And then I go to msnbc, which at least has the resources of NBC News behind It. And there's Lawrence O'Donnell talking about Greenland last night. Anderson Cooper had redeployed to Pacific Palisade. So he was there and all of that and had this conversation with Gavin Newsom and whatever. And then at 10 o'clock, Abby Phillips show comes on and they have the fire in the lower right hand corner. And Stacy Plaskett, the delegate from the Virgin Islands, starts complaining to Scott Jennings, who was talking about how DEI may have affected the LA Fire department, saying, hey, black people built the White House. So I don't know what your problem is. Do you have problems with the White House? Bring this up. Only to say that meanwhile you go on Twitter and there are citizens who are filming everything that is going on in the streets. You see fires, you see people driving down the street. You see anything that you needed to know, you got from X and you could not get from the mainstream media. This is a big moment. This is a big transitional moment. The mainstream media have failed. This is this biggest story in the country. They had. No, they were not covering it.
- [57:57]
Christine Rosen
No. I had a similar experience Wednesday morning. I woke up early to appear on the Hugh Hewitt show. And Hugh is in California right now. And so we talked about the fires and he was giving his audience updates. And after the bit, I turned on the television because I had some, you know, wanted to do research for this podcast. And I went to, I went to CNN like you, and it was a politics show. It was Kayce Hunt, they were talking about politics and Trump. Then I went to MSNBC for the beginning of Morning Joe and it was a segment on how Biden is handing Trump just a beautiful American economy with charts from Steven Ratner. And so the only network actually that was talking about the fires was Fox News.
- [58:44]
Abe Greenwald
Right. I mean, Fox News.
- [58:46]
Christine Rosen
And then the new media, of course, X had everything. But it was fine.
- [58:53]
Abe Greenwald
This is my point. Fox is fine. Fox now has all top 20 new shows in the race. Fox, it was just knows what. It's already incredible delivered. Yeah.
- [59:02]
Christine Rosen
I mean, now then, then, then you had. By the end of the day, I don't know if you guys saw this amazing meme that was circulating. David Moore of ABC and also of the presidential debate had gone out to Los Angeles and he was, you know, he's very buff. And so he was wearing his emergency jacket and it really accentuated his biceps. And then apparently he turned and you could see the clothespins that his staff had attached to the jacket.
- [59:33]
Abe Greenwald
Oh, my God. Yeah, yeah.
- [59:35]
Christine Rosen
Accentuate his physique.
- [59:36]
Matthew Continetti
The slimming effect is reflected during covering his face.
- [59:39]
Christine Rosen
And in its own way, in this comical, comic, tragic way, you kind of see the vanity and superciliousness of the mainstream media that we're talking about.
- [59:52]
Abe Greenwald
Well, that just reminds me of the greatest single moment in the history of cable news, which was. Or maybe. Maybe it wasn't even cable. I don't know. It was Michelle Kaczynski of NBC and msnbc. Yeah. After hurricane. During Hurricane Sandy. And she is like, she is in a canoe in New Jersey and she's saying, I mean, the disaster is unparalleled. And then behind her, two guys are walking in like three inches of water. Three inches of water. And yet, David. David Muir and the clothes pins is, I think, a very telling indicator that little has changed in the last 12 years since Hurricane Sandy.
- [60:32]
Matthew Continetti
As our YouTube viewers know, we don't indulge in such vanity. We would never.
- [60:35]
Christine Rosen
We now plain. This is how we are.
- [60:38]
Abe Greenwald
That's right. We're very, very plain. Now I want to make a recommendation which is not plain at all. I went to see the new version of Nosferatu at the movie theater last night made by the director Robert Eggers. It's interesting because it was 102 years ago or 103 years ago, that the German film Nosferatu, which was basically a ripoff, is a total ripoff of Dracula, which was then under copyright because Bram Stoker had written the novel Dracula 30 years earlier. And it's the. And the. The film was actually withdrawn from distribution and was supposed to be destroyed because a court found that it was a. The original Nosferatu, because I found that it was a copyright violation, that it was a work thievery. But, like three or four people saved the film. You can see it. It's an expressionist masterpiece, one of the great works of German expressionism. Incredibly influential. F.W. murnau, the director, sort of helping create modern film language in this. In this movie. And this new movie is sensationally good. Now, I'm going to tell you, A, it's very scary and B, it's very dirty. So if. If you. If you don't like or find it hard to deal with sexuality on screen, I do not recommend it. But it manages to pass kind of expressionistic spell from its first moment to its last. It's very serious, it's very grave. It is set in 1838 in Germany and in Transylvania. And it is a. It is a movie that pits the idea of modern science against the world of medieval enchantment. And it proposes that Dracula or Count Orlok, as he's called here, is a. Is an undead creature possessed by. He was an enchanter possessed by a demon. And that this is what gives him this power to stay undead and to have this metaphysical control over people at vast distances, including this young woman with whom he has this psychic connection, played by Lily Rose Depp, Johnny Depp's daughter, who looks exactly like her mother, the singer Vanessa. Parody it is beautiful, it is terrifying and it is very serious in taking seriously the idea that there are forces beyond our comprehension. It manages to get you into the mind space in which the supernatural is as real as the natural. That is a very difficult thing to pull off. Most, A lot of horror movies that have supernatural elements try to do it and they, they, they, they can't really pull it off because people don't actually believe in the supernatural. It's not clear to me that Robert Eggers doesn't believe in the existence of the supernatural. And the movie is in it, is infected by it and haunted by it. It is some kind of a masterpiece and I really, really strongly recommend it. Again with the understanding that if you don't like horror, it, it's very scary. And if you. And again if you. Because it is the entire expression of the demonic takeover of the world by Dracula here comes through sex, comes through sexuality. It, it is very, it's quite explicit at certain moments. So that is my, that is my recommendation.
- [64:41]
Christine Rosen
I might skip that one. Not a fan of horror, but I am a fan of Eggers's the Northman, which is the greatest John Milius movie John Milius did not make. And so as a, as a million, I do like the Northman and I might watch that again.
- [64:58]
Abe Greenwald
Yeah, well, the Northman, he's made four movies, this is his fourth. He's made the Witch, the Lighthouse, the Northman and now Nosferatu. And what they all have in common, aside from being set in the past, is that they are efforts to portray the pre modern world not without judgment. But Northman is a movie about what it would have been like to be a Viking in the 9th century and shows them just being by meaning. They pillage, they rape, they kill each other, they're cannibals, they believe magic, magic exists. And, and anyway, the Northman is an amazing movie. The Lighthouse is a. Is a pretty amazing movie. The witch is too scary for me. But there's nobody quite like him. No one ever been quite like him because he is trying to make, trying to make you live in the 19th century or in the 9th century. And sort of feel as though like a great piece of historical fiction. Pan like you have somehow journeyed back in time. That's, as I say, uniquely difficult thing to do. And he really does pull it off. So that's Nosferatu from me. We'll be back tomorrow for Matt. Christina Neva, John Paporitz. Keep the candle bur.