Gallant: Not a Goofus

Summary

Summary of "Gallant: Not a Goofus" Episode on The Commentary Magazine Podcast

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Introduction

In the February 17, 2025 episode titled "Gallant: Not a Goofus" of The Commentary Magazine Podcast, hosts Noah Rothman and John Podhoretz engage in an in-depth discussion about a groundbreaking interview conducted by Dan Senor with former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant. The conversation delves into Gallant's strategic perspectives on the Israel-Hamas conflict post-October 7th, his clashes with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and the broader implications for Israeli military and political dynamics.

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Main Discussion Points

1. Overview of Yoav Gallant's Interview

   • Context: Gallant, recently dismissed from his position, shares his candid insights on the Israel-Hamas war and the overlooked threat from Hezbollah.
   • Key Proposal: Gallant advocated for a simultaneous offensive against Hezbollah in the north and Hamas in Gaza, leveraging advanced intelligence and existing military capabilities to swiftly neutralize threats.

2. Clashes Within the Israeli Leadership

   • Gallant vs. Netanyahu: The discussion highlights the tension between Gallant's aggressive military strategy and Netanyahu's cautious political approach.
   • Unity Government Dynamics: Even within a unity government, differing priorities between military and political leaders created friction, impacting decision-making processes.

3. Missed Opportunities and Strategic Failures

   • Intelligence Utilization: Gallant criticized the Israeli government's handling of intelligence, particularly concerning Hezbollah's capabilities and movements.
   • Operational Delays: The failure to act swiftly on actionable intelligence led to prolonged conflict, mass evacuations, and increased casualties.

4. Impact on US-Israel Relations

   • Perceptions of the US Administration: Gallant expressed frustration with the perceived ambivalence and inconsistent support from the US, citing interactions with Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin.
   • Strategic Alignment: While Netanyahu and Gallant found common ground in their skepticism towards US actions, Gallant felt more constrained as a military leader compared to Netanyahu's diplomatic experience.

5. Internal Israeli Critiques and Support for Gallant

   • Military Confidence: Gallant's strategies, if implemented, could have prevented significant hardships for Israeli civilians and military personnel.
   • Government Critique: The episode underscores a narrative within certain Israeli circles that Gallant's dismissal hindered a more effective military response.

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Key Insights

• Real-Time Decision Making: Gallant emphasized the unpredictability and urgency of wartime decision-making, contrasting with the often slow and bureaucratic nature of government processes.

  "It's like we have these go-time moments. Either you're gonna go, you're not gonna go." — Noah Rothman [04:51]

• Importance of Strategic Surprise: Utilizing technologies like walkie-talkies with embedded explosives could have provided a tactical advantage by surprising Hezbollah forces.

  "With these walkie-talkies, we'd instantly kill 15,000 terrorists." — Yoav Gallant (as discussed by Noah Rothman) [21:37]

• Psychological and Civilian Impact: The decision-making process significantly affected civilian morale and perceptions of security within Israel.

  "Pulling out the 60,000 Israelis from northern Israel... gave this sense that Israel was losing and this already tiny country was shrinking." — John Podhoretz [16:50]

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Notable Quotes

• Noah Rothman on Gallant's Alignment with Bibi Netanyahu:

  "But he was just a military man. So he doesn't have to deal with the geopolitics and managing bilateral relationships and the diplomacy." [12:32]

• John Podhoretz on the Pagers and Walkie-Talkies Strategy:

  "He had these vests basically... with walkie talkies over the heart. So A, you get bigger explosives and B, you kill them." [21:43]

• Dan Senor on the Potential Consequences of Gallant’s Plan:

  "It's like, if you could have done it and it had worked, but if it hadn't, who knows?" [34:14]

• John Podhoretz Reflecting on Gallant's Vindication:

  "He thinks that we can just go use our military capabilities and fix the situation." [35:30]

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Conclusions

The episode "Gallant: Not a Goofus" presents a critical examination of internal Israeli military and political strategies during a pivotal conflict period. Through the analysis of Yoav Gallant's interview, the hosts highlight the complexities and challenges of wartime leadership, the interplay between military objectives and political constraints, and the ramifications of strategic decisions on both national security and civilian lives.

The discussion also sheds light on the fragile nature of US-Israel relations in times of conflict, emphasizing how military leaders like Gallant navigate pressures from both their governments and international allies. Ultimately, the episode serves as a poignant exploration of leadership, strategy, and the difficult choices that shape the course of nations during crises.

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Recommendation

For listeners interested in understanding the nuanced perspectives of Israeli military leadership and the strategic decisions that influence regional stability, this episode offers valuable insights. Additionally, exploring the full interview between Dan Senor and Yoav Gallant on the Call Me Back podcast is highly recommended for a comprehensive understanding of the issues discussed.

Transcript

[John Podhoretz]

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[Noah Rothman]

Hope for the best.

[John Podhoretz]

Some preach and.

[Noah Rothman]

Pain Some die of thirst no way of knowing which way it's going Hope.

[John Podhoretz]

For the best, expect the worst.

[Noah Rothman]

Welcome to the Commentary Magazine daily podcast. Today is Monday, February 17, 2025. It is President's Day, my least favorite holiday. Not because I dislike in any way, shape or form the celebration of the births of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, but because of course, we don't celebrate on the days of their birthday. And I find that very annoying. And we did when I was a kid. And I think that was noble because that was a way of celebrating them properly instead of simply, you know, creating a federally mandated holiday for, you know, out of nowhere. But okay, fine, it's happy President's Day to all who do celebrate. With me as always, executive editor Abe Greenwald. Hi, Abe.

[Matthew Continetti]

Hi, John.

[Noah Rothman]

Washington Commentary columnist Matthew Continetti. Hi, Matt.

[Dan Senor]

Hi, John.

[Noah Rothman]

And joining us today, Commentary Inc. Board member, author, co author of Startup Nation and the Genius of Israel. And most importantly for our purposes today, the host of the Call Me Back podcast, Dan Senor. Hi Dan.

[John Podhoretz]

Hey, John. Good to be with you.

[Noah Rothman]

So as I promoted on Friday, Dan has this path breaking, groundbreaking interview on the Call Me Back podcast, which I think actually for the first time, I'm going to say this is probably better sampled as a YouTube video than as the podcast because there is a heart rending moment where Dan cuts into a like a piece of documentary footage of an event that happened right after October 7th that is, you know, very important and heart rending and part of the discussion. So if you search Call me back on YouTube, you can watch this conversation that Dan has with former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, which is so full of news, or at least news from Gallant's perspective that it has to count as one of the more a point of possible redirection of our understanding of this war because one of the, you know, leading men at the table in the decision making apparatus has led us, you know, you know, behind the curtain, has led us behind the curtain, at least from his perspective. And if this war is of meaning or moment to you, or if indeed you are interested in any way, shape or form in how governments make decisions in the very real time under intolerable pressure. This is an object lesson in that. And it's an object. So not just in what happened right after October 7th, but also getting to the summer of 2024 and the decisions that were made that Israel made to hit Hezbollah and to hit Iran, and how the United States government reacted to the decisions that were being made and the conditions under which those decisions were being made, which, under Galant's telling, were much more haphazard than you might think. Because we all think that, you know, there are private, secret talks going on where everyone is sitting around figuring out the possible parameters. And that's really not the way things work. Things work in real time. The way you make a decision about whether what route you're going to take on the highway to avoid traffic or not, there's a sort of, like, there are these go time moments. Either you're gonna go, you're not gonna go. And in cat, we can go now or two hours, and then we have to clear all the decks and see if someone's gonna help us or not help us. So it's incredibly revelatory, even if you aren't, you know, a sort of granular follower of the October 7th and afterward story. Dan, when you sat down with Yoav Gallant, this is his first interview in English. He was fired in three months ago. Three months ago he was fired. He had actually originally been fired from the government.

[John Podhoretz]

No, no, he's. It's interesting. He's been fired twice. He's just managed to be.

[Noah Rothman]

He was fired for not saying the right. The thing. He was fired for supporting essentially, the idea that the judicial reforms before October 7th should be postponed. And this was. This ran counter to the interests of the government, and Bibi fired him. But never.

[John Podhoretz]

It's important. It is well before October 7th. That was in the spring of 2023.

[Noah Rothman]

Right, right. So Bibi fired him, but didn't send him a letter firing him. And then kind of like just. He was like, George Costanza leaving the Yankees. He just came in on the next Monday. And every.

[John Podhoretz]

Well, what happened is under. Under Israeli law, when a prime minister, you know, asks, you know, fires a minister within 48 hours of the firing, he has to formally submit a letter.

[Noah Rothman]

Right.

[John Podhoretz]

You know, memorializing the firing. And. And so Netanyahu announced the firing. Then there were these massive protests against Netanyahu's decision to fire Gallant, and they went for, like, a couple days. So Netanyahu seeing the blowback and seeing how disruptive this was just never issued the letter. And Gallant just kept going to the office of the Ministry of Defense.

[Noah Rothman]

Yeah. Because no one knows. Right, right. Okay. So that, that was George Costanza quitting and then unquitting without, without Steinberg ever knowing that he had quit. Right. In the, in the, in the Seinfeld plot.

[John Podhoretz]

And the second firing, which was a formal firing Netanyahu went through with it was, I mean, I think there were, there were already, let's just say, simmering tensions between Netanyahu and Gallant for some time. But that, but the break, the break point was Gallant was not willing to go ahead with the government's plan on the A log providing a draft exemption for Haredim for the ultra orthodox Israelis not to serve in the idf.

[Noah Rothman]

So it's important, I preface this to say that Gallant is not a disinterested party here. He has his own agenda. He has every reason to be hostile to and wish to kind of put in his place the political antagonist who was his boss and was his boss before the war and then with whom he clashed as, as we'll hear in the early days of the war about how to proceed and then clashed again in the summer about some of the procedures that were going to take place to take out Hezbollah and to combat Iran. But it wasn't just. But when it came to dealing with the United States, Gallant, Netanyahu, everybody seem to be all on the same page. And the story that he tells is not a favorable one about Jake Sullivan and Anthony Blinkett and particularly Lloyd Austin, the defense secretary. So at the very least, I think that with that, they are sort of in agreement that they had this second front in their war against the seven nation axis of resistance. And that was not really a war, but kind of a having to manage this relationship with this incredibly inconstant US Administration that was talking out of both sides of its mouth in the same hour. You know, so Dan, let's. So the main thing that Galantel confirms, which is something that we had heard, is that he was convinced that in the wake of October 7th and then on the day after October 7th, on October 8th, Hezbollah starts entering the war from the north, firing from Mount Hermon and then sort of rocket fire and various other things going on. And basically what he confirms is that they had in place these measures and methods to destroy Hezbollah instantaneously. Not just the pagers that they eventually blew up, but walkie talkies that were on the bodies of every Hezbollah soldier. So according to him, as he says, the walkie he had walkie Talkies that had they been, had they been triggered with Hezbollah in the field, would have instantly killed 15,000 terrorists. And that, that's what he presented to Bibi. He said we should go at Hezbollah first. We have the means, we have the opportunity. We have the ability to cut them off at the pass. If we hit them with the walkie talkies and then we bomb the missile sites and the missiles are all out in the open, we can finish off Hezbollah instantaneous. They won't. They're not expecting it. They don't think we're going to do it. And he is convinced that this was an enormously missed opportunity. As a result of it, 60,000 Israelis had to be evacuated from their homes and moved to hotels and the north was depopulated. And so he tells this story and it, but it wasn't just Bibi, right, who opposed him. There were two other members of the so called war cabinet when the, when the decision was made to create a unity government, Benny Gantz and Gotti Eisenkot, they also said no. They also said we can't go at Hezbollah first. We have to focus this war on Hamas. Hamas is who attacked us. Okay, so what did you think as you were hearing him tell you the story?

[John Podhoretz]

So, a few things. One, John, just listening to how you preface this, that there's this sense that Gallant and Bibi are at odds and that you pointed out rightly that when it came to the US Israel relationship, they were totally aligned and equally frustrated with the administration. I would argue that Gallant was even more frustrated. We're going to do a second conversation, he and I, and we haven't decided exactly what topics we're going to hit. But one of the topics, because I've talked to him about it and I think would be worthwhile is just focusing on the management of the US As a relationship. Because he has some pretty incredible stories about how bad things got between the Israeli and US governments pretty early, much earlier in the war than we realized at the time. And I guess Netanyahu, who has a lot of experience working with US Administrations, was not as surprised because he's dealt with a lot of difficult administrations. But Gallant is a military man. He's like your classic military man. So he doesn't have to deal with the geopolitics and managing bilateral relationships and the diplomacy. So his reaction was almost more harsh than Bibi's in terms of how problematic the Biden administration had become. And the only reason I mention all of this is because I think there's these caricatures we get out of, typically out of the Israeli press, which they had in the American press, echoes that. So, like the caricature would be that it's, it's Bibi against Gallant and Benny Gantz and Gotti Eisencott and they were the responsible ones and Bibi was the irresponsible one because he was quote, unquote, controlled by the hard right in his government. And you know, this is like this, this, this like very silly kind of one dimensional frame. And even that just exchange you described where Gallant and I'll get into it. Gallant is pushing for a very aggressive posture against Hezbollah four days into the war. And Netanyahu is basically uncomfortable with it. And those who are allied with Netanyahu in opposing Gallant's plan are guys and Eisenhower and Gods and the Biden administration, I might add. So Gallant is not just trying to persuade Bibi, he's trying to persuade Gantz and Eisenhower. So just this sense that I think we just, it's not so simple.

[Noah Rothman]

Like, you know, Gantz is also a political rival of Netanyahu. Right.

[John Podhoretz]

But here he was allied with Bibi.

[Noah Rothman]

Prime minister before Bibi, and, and he is the head of a rival party and he agreed to go into a unity government in order to have a singular fight to the idea that all Israelis are in support of military action after October 7. But Gantz is like, okay, you know what he says? Read clause of its, clause of it says you attack. This is all one, one war. It's a war of Iranian proxies. Hezbollah is actually stronger than Hamas. Yeah, we have the means to take Hezbollah out. We should do the hard that we should take on the tougher enemy first and then take them out and then you can focus all your attention. Yeah, well, down south, that's what he says.

[John Podhoretz]

Okay, well, let me, let me, let me just. I think it's important. Let me walk through his case and then we can get into, you know, whether, I guess, whether we agree or poke holes in it or. I mean, I could talk about, you know, at least my reaction was as he was describing it. So first of all, I think we are watching the war play out in the days after October 7th. We were all singularly focused on Hamas. And yeah, we knew, if you think back at that time, we thought, yeah, Hezbollah is firing rockets and they're causing problems in the north. But that just seemed like a sideshow at the time. Obviously, we now know it got much worse. But in the days after October 7th, we were all focused on Israel's southern border. We were focused on the hostages taken into Gaza. You know, at that point, Israel didn't even have a firm number on how many hostages were taken into Gaza. I mean, it was all. It was at the Nova Festival. It was, how did the intelligence break down? The south. It was all about the south. The south, the south. When I listened to Gantz, I realized they were much more focused on the north, I think, than we appreciate at the time for two reasons. One, Hezbollah, even though it didn't get as much attention at the time, Hezbollah was capitalizing on the moment. On October 8th, they were starting to fire into. Into Israel, into northern Israel. And secondly, they had gathered intel, which we now know much more about, that there was some kind of communication that ultimately wasn't. It fell apart, but there was some communication about Hezbollah joining the fight, quote, unquote, joining the fight. And even, you know, the plan was for Hamas to travel up from the south and Hezbollah to move in and travel from the north and literally meet in the center of Israel. Like that was. That was the plan. They were. They were going to squeeze.

[Noah Rothman]

This is a very Israel point. This is a very important point because I think people have lost in the fog of war. They lost. That has Hamas sent in thousands. Thousands of people crossed the border into Israel from Gaza. And there was a battle in the first three days in the south, in the Gaza envelope between is the Israeli army and Hamas. Thousands of Hamas fighters were killed on Israeli territory. Had they not successfully engaged them, they would have kept moving north. This was an invasion. It wasn't like 9, 11. It wasn't like we now have plan.

[John Podhoretz]

I mean, according to the Israelis, there are now plans that they've discovered that Hamas thought they were going to take over the western Negev and start negotiating with Israel with occupying territory inside Israel. And the fear of Hezbollah coming from the north and Israel coming from the south was that they would meet in Tel Aviv.

[Noah Rothman]

Yeah, but I mean, that was the Hamas plan. And in fact, had the Israeli military not proved to be. Not as discombobulated as they seemed in the first couple of hours, but rallied, got, got themselves into place and managed to this, let's somewhat ragtag, but nonetheless pretty popular.

[John Podhoretz]

No, no, no, no, don't call them ragtag. They were. This was a very organized, I mean, operated like a, like a light infantry army of a sovereign state.

[Noah Rothman]

Okay, right.

[John Podhoretz]

They knew they were well trained, they're well organized.

[Noah Rothman]

Okay, but so Israel, really. But Israel. There were three days when, when the area 30 miles around the kibbutzi and the border were not fully controlled by Israel inside Israel. So this was a genuine on the ground war invasion.

[John Podhoretz]

Right.

[Noah Rothman]

And so then there was this. Well, if they succeed, Hezbollah's got sort of like a great, what a perfect moment for Hezbollah to cross the border again in a conventional way, like with on the ground fighters, not just sending rockets and stuff, but like an actual ground invasion of Israel the likes of which Israel had not seen since, you know, 19. I mean, since 1973.

[John Podhoretz]

1973. So, so, so from Gantz's standpoint, so everything you just said is a reality. And Gantz, I'm sorry, not Gant, sorry, Galant. From Galant's standpoint, everything you just said is a reality. And he's just very focused on this being one enemy. Hamas, Iran, Hezbollah. I mean, he just sees this all as kind of one war from, from day one. He sees it that way. And so he basically says we're fighting Iran, which means we're fighting Hezbollah because Hezbollah is basically the, the ground force of Iran on Israel's northern border. They're already starting to fire. We know pretty quickly after October 7th that there was this plan. Again, it ham handed in terms of its execution and coordination, but there was this plan for Hezbollah to come in to Israel. And Hamas just executed something that was horrific. But at the end of the day, according to Gallant, they still believed that Hamas was a pretty weak enemy. They would be able to deal with Hamas once they focused on Hamas. Hezbollah was not a weak enemy. Hezbollah had these some 200,000 rockets and missiles pointed at Israel from southern Lebanon. Hezbollah had much more experience fighting. They, they'd gotten out, you know, the boot camp for, for the Hezbollah fighters was fighting for years in Syria to prop up Assad's regime. They were just better trained, they had more capabilities. And so we're going to fight them one way or the other at some point. And let's deal with them now. Remove that threat, which is basically putting Iran on its back foot in the early days after October 7th, we can catch them by surprise. And I'll get to that in a moment, he argues, which will be easier to deal with Hezbollah at this point, the days after October 7th, because they'll be so caught off guard we will get rid of that threat and therefore not have to move the 66 0, 60,000 Israelis from northern Israel down, down to, to, you know, they had to pull all these people out and relocate them, as you said. And by the way, that was problematic for a variety of reasons. You know, pulling out the 60,000 Israelis from, from These towns in northern Israel, it also, it gave the sense for Israel for over a year. John, you and I often talk offline about how just Israelis are often like they're just going crazy, understandably, given this, like, 16 months of what they've been through. And I do think the sense that their borders were shrinking was contributing to that, the fact that you had Israelis pulled out of their homes, having to relocate into parts of the country they've never lived in before. And like. So it did give this sense that, like, Israel was, Was losing and, and this already tiny country was shrinking, and there was no sense of when these Israelis would be able to go back to their homes in the north. And so, you know, with Gantz's, with Gant's proposal, you, you, you avoid all of that. Israel, you know, Israelis stay in the north, you catch Hezbollah guard, and then. And you could dispense with them quickly according to his plan, and then you can take all your resources and move them on Gaza. He says part of the problem with the war in Gaza is they were always splitting, you know, dividing resources, some for the south, some for the north. And this way you could take everything and just concentrate them on the south. Now, why did he think it would be easier to take out Hezbollah in the days after October 7th rather than later? Not only do you catch them by surprise, Gallant argues, but what we now know about the walkie talkies and pagers, which, you know, he obviously knew about then, the prime minister knew about them then. This is a capability Israel has had for some time, for a number of years, obviously never tested. But. And he said that we all over here in the west were fixated on the pagers because that was the first operation we saw executed. He said the pagers were always just an add on the real. The real centerpiece of this, of this capability were the walkie talkies, because there were 15,000 walkie talkies that had explosives in them that they had sold to Hezbollah, like, like the pagers. They only had 4,000 of the pagers. And the walkie talkies were larger than the pagers, which means they could contain more explosives. Which means rather than just taking a guy off the battlefield with, With a. With a bad wound, this would kill the. Whoever was holding the walkie talkie.

[Noah Rothman]

I mean, literally walkie talkies in their uniforms.

[John Podhoretz]

Well, yeah, they had these vests basically.

[Noah Rothman]

Above on their heart, right? They're sort of right.

[John Podhoretz]

They had these. They had these combat vests. Hezbollah had these combat vests. And when they would go, they'd Been monitoring their training and when they would go train to fight, including in Syria, they put on these vests and the walkie talkie goes into the vest over the heart. Like there's a pocket over the heart. So A, you get bigger explosives and B, you.

[Noah Rothman]

Yeah, yeah.

[John Podhoretz]

And you kill them. Right. So he said, he said. So that's the first. So that, that.

[Matthew Continetti]

And he said the intelligence was better then on that, right?

[John Podhoretz]

Oh, yeah, totally.

[Matthew Continetti]

Better opportunity.

[John Podhoretz]

Well, yes. And. And also over the course of the year after October 7, Hezbollah started moving their rockets and their missiles and their launchers into position to fire at Israel. In the early days after October 7th, they hadn't moved. So Israel had. Turns out, we now know also Israel had very good intelligence about where all these rockets and missiles and rocket launchers were. And most of them were like hidden in these locations. They weren't activated to start being used. They were over the subsequent year. So they knew where a lot of these, these capabilities were hidden. So they knew where the cap, the rocket and missile arsenal and the launchers were hidden. They knew they had this walkie talkie capability. And then they got intelligence that the leadership of Hezbollah, including Nasrallah, were having this meeting. And I think it was on, actually on October 11, so four days after October 7. So he said glance argument was, let's go take out this meeting that's happening. We'll wipe out the leadership of Hezbollah. That will. Right now Hezbollah is shooting rockets, whatnot. But once we take out the leadership, it's, look, it's on. War is now escalated. They will then come in and, and launch a ground invasion and they will then go run, put on their vests, put on their walkie talkies, and they'll launch the ground invasion and we will kill them all in with one button pressed, and then we will go take out all of their, most of their rocket and missile capabilities that, that Israel was so worried about and, you know, catch them by surprise, do this quickly, be done with it. 60,000 Israelis don't move from the north, and then Israel, the IDF goes and focuses on the south. That was his, that was his case, John, for, for what they should do, you know, and by the way, he feels, I mean, we can get into, you know, the other side of the, the other side of this scenario. But he, he, he believes he's been vindicated by what happened in the fall of, of 2024 because Israel basically did all these things. He said, what people don't realize is we could have done all these things on October 11th, right?

[Noah Rothman]

Okay, so we don't have to get into the, you know, like, argument. They said why they were right to say to turn him down on this offer. I think, like, we don't have to get into arguing the case. The point was that he, he proposed this, like, glorious sounding, you know, perfectly structured mission. And the other Israeli leaders essentially said, we can't do that. We were attacked here. We have to solve the problem here. And maybe the argument would be that the world, you know, world would look askance. But that's not his concern as Defense minister. His concern was, I asked him that point blank.

[John Podhoretz]

I said, don't you think people would have looked at the Israel and say, what are you doing? You're opening a new front. And that's exactly what he said. He said, my job is to win the war.

[Noah Rothman]

My job is to win the war. The war is against Iran. And he says, I believe, misunderstanding Clausewitz, that Clausewitz says you hit the toughest target first and take them out, because if you do, if you hit the secondary target, you'll get exhausted. It's not really what Clausewitz says, but you can sort of see the logic of, we've been planning for this war. It was what Jonathan Schanzer, many times in the course of commentary publications since 2021 has called, as has the Israelis, the war between the wars. There was going to be a war with Hezbollah. It was inevitable. And so what was going on in Israel was the war between the wars, the Cold War were sort of like simmering war. And that they were prepared for that war. They were hyper prepared. They had the pagers, they had the walkie talkies. They had all this intelligence. They had hyper focused on it. And he's like, let's take it off the shelf and use it. Use it or lose it. This is an unbelievable opportunity. And they're like, no, we have an existential crisis facing us because we were, we were attacked and we have to go after the attacker. So you can see it from both.

[John Podhoretz]

And I, I think, I don't blame them for thinking this because I think many of us thought it too. But I think that Netanyahu and Gantz and Eisencot also believed in those initial days that the world, quote unquote, loosely defined, would more or less be behind Israel in its response to Hamas. There was this sense, a naive, now I realize by all of us, but there was this sense that like, okay, now Hamas has really shown its true colors. Israel is going to respond. People are going to understand. Yes, there may be criticisms of some of the ways Israel responds. But this is you, you're not going to get as clarifying a series of events as you did on and around October 7th. And so Israel, the world's going to be behind Israel and you compromise that by suddenly say, yeah, we'll get to that, but we're opening a new front. And so, you know, that's, you know, and he just like, he's just a military man. I mean, you just listen to him talk, the way he talks. He's like, I got to win the war. I'm not focused on who's with us, who's not with us. You know, he's just as focused on winning the war.

[Noah Rothman]

Okay, so let's, let's, let's now move forward in time again. You can hear all this on the podcast. So it's like a monthly story.

[John Podhoretz]

There's just one thing I would say, John, that, that's not on the podcast. He, he also believed, which I didn't fully appreciate and I've heard this a little bit over the past year from others too. The Israeli intelligence on Hezbollah and Iran was of much higher quality than their intelligence on Hamas. So they did believe they had a real understanding of what Hezbollah was up to. They said that Hamas, as we now know their Israel's intelligence was non existent because Hamas basically did everything analog. I mean, they were. Sinwar was very disciplined and fed and.

[Noah Rothman]

Fed disinformation that.

[John Podhoretz]

Whereas Hezbollah, because Lebanon and Iran are more advanced societies than Hamas, they are much more reliant on cellular technology and mobile phones and the Internet. So they telegram. I mean, they communicate through all these channels and platforms as more advanced societies do. And consequently Israel's intelligence about the thinking we now know actually, because this has been borne out based on what we saw in the fall of 2024. You know, Israel's intelligence about Hezbollah and Iran was of much higher quality, which, which Gantz was also, you know, like, he's like, we understand what they're up to.

[Noah Rothman]

Galant.

[John Podhoretz]

Yeah, I'm sorry. Galant, we understand. I keep saying that we understand what they're up to and, and we can deal with this. Now I will tell you in defense of the Netanyahu Gantz Eisencot position, when I recorded this conversation with Galant, which was a week ago this past Friday. That evening I coincidentally head over for Shabbat dinner. A relative of mine who is, is living in New York right now, he's studying, but he was an Air Force intelligence official in Israel. Israeli grew up in Israel and, and he was in the Kiria. He was in the, you know, war command headquarters in Israel for. Basically was called up for reserves for like, 10 months after the war. And so I told. He hadn't seen the interview yet. And I told. Obviously, we just recorded. And I came home and we're having Shabbat dinner. And I told him about what Gallant had laid out. And he said, on the one hand, it makes sense, and Galant has been vindicated by events. I mean, because it turns out Israel did have all these capabilities and they all worked. And so Galan can now say, see, now we should just used them, you know, 16 months or whatever. It would have been 13 months, 12 months earlier. What this gentleman said is he said in the intelligence community, which this guy who I was having Shabbat dinner with is effectively a member of because he was in Air Force Intelligence. He says what Gallant is not reflecting is there was such a breakdown in confidence in the intelligence community in those days. After October 7th, we lost confidence in our own capabilities. We were so shocked by what happened October 7th. There was all this questioning, like, how did we miss this? How did it. You know, there's a lot of finger pointing at the intelligence community, within the intelligence community, and there was a lot of questioning from the government of the intelligence community. I mean, it was. It was a. Israelis felt like they were on shaky ground. The mystique of Israel as this military and intelligence juggernaut had been punctured, obviously it's been restored. But in Those days after October 7th, it was like a 1973 moment where, like, Israel was humiliated. And the idea that Gallant, in that moment, given the mindset we had, it says, no, no, I've got a plan to open up this other front with this complex operation that was highly dependent on intelligence. And when Netanyahu and Gantz and Eisenkop were, like, questioning him, are you sure? And he was basically saying, trust me, we've got this figured out. We can do this. And Netanyahu is raising concerns about how Hezbollah may respond and that they're not ready for the response if they escalate like this. And Gallant is saying, you know, is pointing to their intelligence as to why it could work. This relative of mine just made the point. You can understand why there'd be even heightened skepticism in those days after October 7th, because, trust me, we know we have. The intelligence was not that persuasive on October 11, may have been in June and July of 2024, but in the early days of October of 2023, he just, by the way this person who's saying this to me is no, is no. He's no fan of Netanyahu at all. I mean, he's very critical of Netanyahu, but he actually said that he was pretty sympathetic to Netanyahu's thinking in those early days, which was to be cautious.

[Noah Rothman]

So I think basically the problem with the Gallant thing is that taken individually, you do a counter history and you say that this had happened and it had all gone the way you wanted it to go, then maybe it would have. We don't know what the follow on consequences would have been. Yeah, suddenly Israel would have seemed either incredibly masterly and so the world would have been very impressed, or it would have seemed reckless and crazy, in which case world opinion, American opinion, America would have had to distance itself much more quickly. In the end, America stationed two carrier, two carriers off the coast of Lebanon to make it clear to Hezbollah that whatever territorial ambitions it might have, America was ready to do, was ready potentially to enter the war to defend Israel's northern border from an invasion, which was again, not, not enough not to depopulate the area because of rockets, but was something, and obviously something like that would never have happened had Israel done this operation. And it all depends on it being perfectly executed which a country in the kind of crisis that might have taken place. I mean, you can say it sounds mechanically perfect, but you know, what if it hadn't worked? We know the pagers worked and we know, I guess we know the walkie talkies work because they use them a little later, but you don't know, who knows whether a signal would have been disrupted or, you know, like you can't.

[John Podhoretz]

And we also now know that they, and I've heard, and I've heard this from a number of officials, they really had phenomenal intelligence and they had for some time on where Nasrallah was, where the leadership of the Hezbollah, they were tracking the movements of these guys for years. So we know that too. You know, I know that Gallant is.

[Dan Senor]

A military man and is only focused on the war. But Dan, did you get into the hostages in your conversation with him? Because it seems to me that would be another pressure on the Israeli government to focus foremost on Hamas, considering that that's where the captives were. And of course we've seen over the past 500 days the lobby for the hostages within Israel.

[John Podhoretz]

So he basically, we talked a little bit about the hostage situation. We're going to get into it more deeply in a subsequent conversation. But he basically said he believed that the only way to get hostages back. This was his early position. Now, his position changed on this during the course of the war. But in those early months, he believed the only way you have a shot, Israel has a shot at getting the hostages back is if Hamas is under enormous military pressure, which he was. On that front, he was also vindicated because that's. He believes that's how they got the deal in November, that just. By pounding the hell out of 2023. In November of 23. Right.

[Noah Rothman]

First hostage deal, the way hostages came out.

[John Podhoretz]

Yeah, more than that. Yeah. Yeah, about that. Right. And so the only way to get. Get Hamas to give hostages back was for them to negotiate for breathing room. And if you just pound the hell out of them, then they'll want breathing room. And the only way you give them breathing room is they give hostages back. And that is what he basically argues was the deal of November of November 2023. So he does not. He does not believe his position is inconsistent with achieving that. In fact, he thinks they would have been more effective pounding Hamas because they would have taken care of the north pretty quickly, and then they could, you know, then they could unleash all their military capabilities. Part of the problem they had in the early days after October 7th was just getting organized. Remember, there are all these shortages, supply shortages, and how to get these different, you know, and so he. He thinks it would have alleviated a lot of that because they wouldn't have been distracted with two fronts and they could just put everything on the south and just go heavy. Now, again, to your point, Matt, he's a military man. He's just thinking about, like, how to wage this war militarily. But there are families, you're right. Inside Israel have been saying, what are you doing? Our loved ones are in Hamas in Gaza.

[Noah Rothman]

What.

[John Podhoretz]

What are you doing going up north? So, again, but his view is, it's not my job to think about that. I mean, you know, that you could say that it's an asset or a liability for someone who's in the role he's in, but that his job is to just, you know, move the chains, you know, advance.

[Noah Rothman]

Right. Although. Although it's a very easy position to take to say that that's your only interest. When you also say, well, you know, we could have had the hostages better. What. I think there's, it's an. It's a great interview. It is very. It's very much a. The expression of the view inside the camp that if only they listened to me, everything would have gone better. And that's a classic thing that people do when they leave. And it's fine. I mean, I think it's. It's a way you take.

[Dan Senor]

That's my philosophy all the time.

[Noah Rothman]

Right. If only they'd listen to you.

[Dan Senor]

Yeah, right.

[Noah Rothman]

But it's a way. If you want to assemble a mosaic of what happened, you need to hear those views as well as the views of the sitting government and the, and, and, and what history shows has. Has. Has happened. And I just think. I think when he gets to the summer and fall of 2024 and talks about the. In your interview, and then he talks about the operations in Lebanon and in Iran, what struck me. And then I think you gotta go. But we should quickly say what struck me was they still had phenomenal intelligence. They were still. They still had Hezbollah totally penetrated. They knew, for example, and then they were making these decisions very quickly. And not. It's not like it was all systematic. It's sort of like, oh, they got word that basically that same kind of meeting that he talked about for October 11th was taking place in Dahesh in Beirut in September. I think it was September 2024. And they're like, you know what? They're all in one place. Can we go bomb them now? And then Bibi said, yes, you can go bomb them now. But I mean, it's not like they knew in three weeks they're going to be meeting in the Dahesh. We need to figure out a battle plan. It was like, all right, lift off. Blow up Dahesh. You know.

[John Podhoretz]

But you know what else, John, that blows me very. About this. When you listen to him talk about these events, you know, when they, when they actually did execute them. And this is the haphazard nature of government generally, but especially including government in wartime, which I think people just don't. They just think it's much more organized and systematic. Two things struck me. One, what really gave all of this momentum, including killing Nasrallah, was the pager attack. And the only reason they activated the pager attack was because it was about to be discovered. They had intelligence that Hezbollah had figured out the, The. That something was funky with these pagers. And they were starting. There was one guy, senior guy in Hezbollah, who was starting to question, maybe we should do a test of these pagers. And so they killed that guy. They took him out, and they thought they. They, like, dodged being exposed. And then, like, two days later, they picked up other intel of two other officials and has started to organize. Maybe we need to test these pagers. Something's not right about them. And basically the Israeli government was presented with use it or lose it. Like, we're going to be exposed. We've been working on this capability for some 10 years and it's going to be gone. And so we got it. And that is why they did the pagers again. As he said, the walkie talkies were always. The pagers were supposed to be the secondary operation, but they just had to use the pagers because the pagers were about to be outed. But the other thing that I find interesting is the momentum of success. So when you start thinking, like, talk about Israel getting its confidence back, I mean, it was. The pager attack occurred because they were about to be outed, but then it turned out to be successful. 11 very senior, former senior official pointed out to me, with everything Israel did in the fall of 24, the pager attack, the walkie talkie attack, taking out Nasrallah, systematically taking out the rockets and the missile arsenal, all of that, these were capabilities Israel had had for years, but they were unlike most capabilities. You only know if they work when you use it. It's not like you can test it and try it out and see, oh, we made some success there. Let's do more of it. Like Iron Dome. Iron Dome. You try it, it works. You're like, wow, we need more Iron Dome. These capabilities. You get one shot and if it doesn't work, it's probably a disaster and you never try it again. And if you are successful, it's like, oh my gosh. And what happened is every one of these things, the pager and walkie talkie tack, the taking out the rockets and taking out Nasser El and his leadership, they hit everyone. And you do one of these things and you gain confidence about doing the next. There was this momentum and we also forget, like the mood late summer, fall of 24, as friends of Israel, we're all watching this in awe, like, because it just seemed like this. They were just on a roll. And it's just a reminder in these situations that, like, the value of a successful operation is not just the strategic gain you get or tactical gain you get from that operation. It's also just the mindset of like, you know, they were, they were more confident about doing, taking out Nasrallah because of the success of the pager attack.

[Noah Rothman]

So I'm going to leave it here and say people should listen to the, to the, or watch the conversation with, with Gallant to get a full flavor of how the American government behaved so cravenly, particularly in the In September of, of, of 2024. And particularly Lloyd Austin, the Secretary of Defense, his opposite number, and the conversations that they had in which you can hardly believe that the Secretary of Defense of the United States would say, why would you want to, why would you want to attack Iran? I don't understand.

[John Podhoretz]

Or why, why, why are you taking out Nasrallah? Why are you taking out Haniya?

[Noah Rothman]

Why. Why would you do that? And he's like, well, he has killed tens of thousands of people, including thousands of Americans. You know, like, you know that. Right?

[John Podhoretz]

And by the way, they're having this, this conversation as the Air Force jets are in the air like, 15 minutes before the operation. And Austin saying, well, why would you.

[Noah Rothman]

Why would you do that? Yeah. So the other funny part is that they're one of these missions they had to. They had to fly during daylight because it would be too dangerous.

[John Podhoretz]

That's the Nasrallah.

[Noah Rothman]

When they took out Nasrallah, the Nasral attack. And then Bibi says, I don't want to. You know, do we have to do this now? Because I'm going to be speaking at the United Nations. And he says, Mr. Prime Minister, we have to go now. And Bibi says, so they negotiate. They were going to do it at 6:00, but.

[John Podhoretz]

Yeah, 6:00, 11.

[Noah Rothman]

On time, on stage, delivering his speech at the UN Security in front of the General Assembly. So they negotiated it down to 6:15.

[Dan Senor]

Yeah.

[Noah Rothman]

So that Bibi would not be on stage. As, as this giant attack was, was. Was again, history being contingent. It had to be in daylight. Daylight was waning because it was already, you know, coming to be falling anyway. It's a fantastic thing. Call me back again on. If you're not subscribed to the podcast, you obviously should be, there's another fascinating conversation that has followed. It dropped this morning with Nadav Eal, the Israeli journalist, about, about the hostage, what phase two of the Hamas deal might look like or not look like. But I do think it's probably worth watching the Gallant interview to get the full flavor of it. So, Dan, senor.

[John Podhoretz]

Thank you, gentlemen.

[Noah Rothman]

Thank you so much. And we will be watching. We wanted to. We wanted to excuse Dan, though. He is still on screen, so I think you want to hear.

[John Podhoretz]

Oh, sorry, I'm gonna, I'm gonna drop. Thank you, guys.

[Noah Rothman]

Okay, there you go. We wanted to. We wanted to excuse him from our raw politics conversation that we need to now have. Matt, a lot of tumult this weekend. Not that tumult isn't the ordinary order of Business now in Washington with the Trump administration.

[Dan Senor]

Yeah.

[Noah Rothman]

Fallout from the resignation of Danielle Sassoon, the interim U.S. attorney in New York. Seven leading figures at the Justice Department of Public Integrity Section resigning so that they would not have to carry out the order.

[Dan Senor]

Right.

[Noah Rothman]

To dismiss the charges against Eric Adams, the mayor of New York. Others resigning from the U.S. from the U.S. attorney's office in New York. It's incredible story about seven people put in a room by Emil Beauvais. I've been pronouncing it Bove on Friday, but apparently his name is Beauvais. Basically saying, you know, either your brains or someone is going to sign this letter, you know, dismissing Eric Adams. You know, the 7 you7 of you in this room in an hour, someone is going to be the person who signs the letter dismissing Eric Adams. And then apparently a relatively disgraced former official who was involved in the horrible and monstrous prosecution of the late Senator Ted Stevens. One of the great actual sort of crimes of the justice department in 20. In the 21st century. Right. Basically said, well, my. I'm already. He was the one guy on the team who was actually not taken to court for his misbehavior in the Ted Stevens case. Said, well, look, my reputation is already ruined, so I'll sign. I'll sign the letter because my name was already mud. So I'll do it and spare all you guys. I mean, this is like a. Out of. I don't know. I don't even know what it's out of. It's. I wouldn't even say it's out of a novel.

[Dan Senor]

And, you know, that's not even the most important story of the weekend. I mean, I think that the, I think this thing with the Justice Department, Eric Adams, it's disturbing. And I think Sassoon and some of the other lawyers did what they thought was right, and they're completely within rights to do that. I don't think it's Watergate by any measure. And I think people need to kind of calm down a little bit here because even the analogy doesn't.

[Noah Rothman]

The analogy doesn't hold.

[Dan Senor]

It doesn't hold. That was this. That was literally the Attorney General and then the acting Attorney General of the United States resigning over the order to fire the special prosecutor. This is a prosecutor who disagrees with the order based on the fact that, in particular, the Justice Department retains the right to reinstate the case. And I think that's the most disturbing.

[Noah Rothman]

Part of the order.

[Dan Senor]

If you just want to get rid of the case, get rid of the case. If Trump just wants to pardon Eric Adams. Pardon Eric Adams.

[Noah Rothman]

Well, that's what she said in the letter.

[Dan Senor]

Exactly. So she has this point. Yeah, exactly. So. But it's not Watergate. We're not, we're not there yet. No. The most important story of the weekend was Vance's speech to Munich and I think the crisis in transatlantic relations that the speech initiated.

[Noah Rothman]

Before we get to that, can we just, just put a bow on the justice, the Justice Department and the questions of Trump and, you know, the constitutional issues of the crisis that he has enacted. So Trump supposedly, you know, going to dictator, going to, you know, do dictatey things, has gone to the Supreme Court and asked them to rule on this question of whether or not he has the right to dismiss the head of something called the Office of Special Counsel, which isn't, isn't a special counsel, it's not a special prosecutor. It's a quasi independent, one of these quasi independent agencies that oversees the treatment of whistleblowers in the administration. And he fired the head of this office, whose name is Dellinger. I don't know if he's related to the famous radical lawyer David Dellinger or not, but his name is Hogan Dellinger or whatever radical lawyer who became the major American justice official on his own.

[Dan Senor]

There's also Walter Dellinger.

[Noah Rothman]

That's Walter Dellinger. Right. And then this is some, some, somebody named Hogan Dellinger.

[Dan Senor]

Not John Dillinger.

[Noah Rothman]

Not John Dillinger. Right. Anyway, so this guy was dismissed and then he sued, saying that according to the congressional statute, he can't be fired this way. There's a process. He has to have two weeks. There's two week notice and there's a whole procedure. And Trump was undercutting that procedure. And, and, and the Trump argument is, yeah, but Congress acted unconstitutionally in writing that statute, so I'm ignoring it. This is exactly what a controversy of this sort is supposed to happen. It came before judges. Judge Amy Berman Jackson said he should be allowed the two weeks to make as a litigant to have a fair hearing on this claim that he's raising. Trump then said she's wrong and took it to an appeals court. And the Appeals court ruled 2 to 1 that yes, this two week period should take place where he is allowed to, you know, may make his argument. And now the Trump team has taken it to the Supreme Court to rule on this question. Doesn't sound very dictatorial to me. And in fact, in the course of the weekend in, I think in the filing with the Supreme Court, Trump said, we want to follow the proper procedures relating to Article 3, meaning the review by the Supreme Court of controversies between the executive and the and between the executive and the legislative branch. So rather than talking about meaning, Congress wrote a statute saying that the President could be handcuffed a little bit in the at will firing of political appointees and Trump. The Trump administration's argument is the President is in charge of the executive branch. I can fire any employee of the executive branch. And Congress does not have the right to write employment law of this sort. It has no control over the executive branch in that way. It has control over purse strings. Right. It can, it can, it can apply or take cut money or add money or anything like that, but it cannot dig into the innards of the executive branch. And this is a very important argument. This has been the subject of litigation in the last four or five years. An important case in 2020 which has a weird name that I now of course can't remember because I'm getting old. Like the Eisenhower Protocol versus somebody or other. I mean it's got a name like.

[Dan Senor]

That and sounds like a Robert Ludlum novel.

[Noah Rothman]

Yeah. And then it was actually taken up in the Trump versus United States case. That was, that was where they ruled that the President couldn't be prosecuted for, you know, for the actions, official actions taken while in office. And apparently this question is, appears as part of the conversation in the Trump versus United States case. So it's good that this has happened. In other words, Trump has tested this question early. Nobody should be screaming. That's a good thing. That controversy needs to be resolved. It's now taken up two different administrations and we should finally have an answer for the Supreme Court about it.

[Dan Senor]

Yeah, I mean, executive branch firings have always been a gray era area, back to George Washington, because the Constitution says the President can appoint certain officers with the advice and consent of the Senate, but it doesn't say anything about removing them. So for the entire 200 some years of the constitutional order, Presidents have been fighting with the courts and with the Congress in order to assert their prerogative to remove officials. Of course, Biden did the same thing. Several non political boards, including Sean Spicer, who he kicked off one board and Spicer took that case to the courts as well. So we'll see. I mean, the Supreme Court's going to hear, hear it. And Trump last week in one of his Oval Office pressers said that, you know, we're going to follow the law.

[Noah Rothman]

So I always listen to the courts.

[Dan Senor]

That's what he said.

[Noah Rothman]

He said so the constitutional crisis is not, there is no constitutional crisis.

[Matthew Continetti]

Media is going to run out of constitutional crises to cite here. I mean, there's, you know, everything he does that is that there's pushback on becomes the next constitutional crisis.

[Noah Rothman]

It's just fascinating to me because it's three weeks in he's asserted his right to dismiss people in the federal government at will. The unions and that's also include civil service and stuff like that. The unions are contesting it and some of the political appointees are contesting it. And let's get an answer. And there's only a constitutional crisis if the answer goes in a way that Trump doesn't like and that then he says I'm not going to listen because the Supreme Court is a co equal branch, it's not my boss and I don't really have to listen. And that's when we get into a constitutional crisis. But raising the question, it's like saying you're in a constitutional crisis when you're Biden and you put forward the student loan debacle idea through executive order, you do it and it's bad because you know you shouldn't. I mean, that's the part of this that's different is whether knowing you knowingly do something, having said beforehand that I can't do it because it's unconstitutional.

[Dan Senor]

And then that's what Obama and Biden did.

[Noah Rothman]

That's what Obama and Biden did. They both acknowledged on daca, DACA and and on the student loans that they couldn't do it because it was unconstitutional.

[Dan Senor]

They did it anyway.

[Noah Rothman]

Right. Trump doesn't think it's unconstitutional for him to do any of this and he's doing it anyway. And there is Bush pushback and then the court is going to adjudicate the matter. And I don't see how that is anything but a, but a kind of.

[Dan Senor]

The crisis is in the piercing of the bubble.

[Noah Rothman]

Right.

[Dan Senor]

The Washington bubble has been pierced by Trump's restoration and by Doge in particular. It's famously said of the Washington D.C. area where I've lived my entire life, except for my jaunt at Columbia for college, that we are recession proof. Why are we recession proof? Because government grows and grows and grows whether we're the economy's in a recession or not. Well, with Elon Musk's arrival in the West Wing, that axiom is no longer so certain that now we actually facing a case where government might shrink, not the main drivers of our government spending and our debt, which are entitlements. But the actual structure of government, the federal workforce. And over this past three weeks, it just becomes clearer and clear to me that what Doge is really doing is basically treating the federal workforce as a new Elon Musk acquisition. And when Elon Musk takes over a company, like he did with Twitter now X, his first thing is to radically reduce the workforce there and then figure out who's necessary. And the example of this was the firing of the people who are in charge of some nuclear sites that took place in the past couple weeks. And now the administration realizes, well, you need these people if you want to have safe nukes. And so they're trying to fight them back. But that's exactly what happened here.

[John Podhoretz]

So that's.

[Dan Senor]

The crisis is that the. The Washington sensibility, the mentality of this area era has been completely pierced. And I do want to draw the analogy to what happened in Munich last Friday, because that's exactly what happened with J.D. vance's speech. The people who go to the Munich Security Conference, for all the decades, I imagine, that's been going on, I don't even know when it began, are used to a certain procedure that is a litany of speakers who talk about the importance of the transatlantic alliance, the importance of strong U.S. euro relations, American global leadership. And since the war between Russia and Ukraine entered its worst phase In February of 2022, there have been, you know, speaker after speaker demonstrating the importance of Western resolve to confront Russian aggression. What happened? Well, J.D. vance got onto the dais on Friday, and He delivered a J.D. vance speech. He talked about what democracy means. Democracy is not progressivism. Democracy is the people ruling, the people in charge. And he said that in far too many cases in Europe today, like America under Biden, people don't have a say, and the unelected officials rule everything and, in fact, use censorship in order to repress dissent. Whether that's on the subjects of. He used the life issue, human life, and he also talked about immigration. Now, I watched the whole speech. The audience was silent. You could tell they were extremely angry at JD Vance for saying these things. And there was very tepid applause when he went on stage. But the people there have to recognize that the views he expressed are not marginal. In fact, they're not marginal in Europe. What he's. What he's saying is precisely the reason that these national populist parties are making such strain. And yet we've entered this period now where everyone's covering the speech as initiating this crisis in transatlantic relations. But I think the people saying that need Kind of take a look in the mirror here.

[Noah Rothman]

I just wanted to just add one quote to this. Just in response, before I forget, was the response of the German defense Minister whose name is Boris Pistorius, which is like a, like a name out of a, again, out of a James Bond novel. Somebody who was living in a, you know, on an island with an under, you know, it's going to blow up the. Blow up the world from his island. But if he said here, if I understood him correctly, he is comparing conditions in parts of Europe with those in authoritarian regimes, said Pistorius, that is unacceptable. And it is not the Europe and not the democracy in which I live. And I'm currently campaigning. In our democracy, every opinion has a voice and it makes possible for parties that are party extremists and they can campaign just as any other party. This is democracy. So the point is, Vance issues this thing saying you guys are trying to suppress speech and talk this way about, about these parties. You don't understand how your populations are feeling about immigration. You try to suppress all of that. And this guy in response says, your opinion is unacceptable.

[Dan Senor]

Right?

[Noah Rothman]

I mean, saying the opinion of the vice president, United States is unacceptable by a unelected minor official in. I know he's the defense minister of Germany, it's a minor official, but he's like, you know, three feet tall and Vance is six feet tall. It's like he's yelling up to Vance like, you're unacceptable. Like that is a very, you know, that is not the way to engage the United States in a conversation. If you want us to listen to.

[Dan Senor]

You, they've never had these conversations before, so they don't have them with their own electorates.

[Matthew Continetti]

I had a slightly different response to it all. I mean, I agree with everything that said. But to me, when he's going on and on about countries nullifying election results, hanging in the backdrop for me the entire time is the fact that he serves an administration whose president still says the 2020 election was faked. And I think that automatically undercuts the whole spiel, and I think it does in the mind of the audience too.

[Noah Rothman]

Look, I'm somewhere between, Matt, between the two of you.

[Matthew Continetti]

Well, I'm somewhere between the two of us because, I mean, I agree in substance.

[Noah Rothman]

If Vance published an article of this sort before he was VI in Foreign affairs about Europe's the malignities or the dead end road that Europe is on, I think, and he had co authored it with Marco Rubio, who of course, I mean, different views are being expressed toward Europe over the last couple of weeks.

[Dan Senor]

That's right. I mean, and that's why I think that the speech is, the reaction of the speech is so interesting because what he said there did not necessarily undercut any of the other messages that say, Marco Rubio or Kellogg are saying at the conference. It was just against the script. And what's horrifying progressives right now around the world, primarily in our country and in Europe, is that things are not going according to the script. And you know what the script is? The script is is that anyone who disagrees with them is an extremist and needs to be, and needs to be unacceptable. And that was what Biden was doing during his four years. And that's what Harris would have done had she been elected. Right. And that's what's been already taking some place in Europe. But the same thing that happened here with Trump's restoration and comeback is going to happen there. It might happen in Germany in two.

[Noah Rothman]

Weeks, which is what they're so afraid of. And that's where we get into the weirdness of how America should be reacting to the AfD, which is the, which is the right wing anti immigration party that is currently essentially the second most powerful party in Germany. And there is an entire set of opinions about the AfD. And I am not really competent to, to get into the innards of, you know, all of that. But they are saying that the character of Germany is being horribly compromised by this regime, this sort of immigration regime, and that there's less safety, there's leftist, there's. That this is not the country, that no one asked us whether this was the country we wanted to live in. And we are going to end up voting essentially at a plebiscite. This election is now turned into a plebiscite on that because there is no other way for them to express themselves politically, in part because of these laws that exist to suppress hate speech or what they deem to be hate speech. And then we had this bizarre moment on Saturday morning, Sunday morning with Marco Rubio and Margaret Brennan on Face the Nation, where Margaret Brennan said, JD Vance said this in a country where the Nazis weaponized free speech to create the Holocaust. In other words, Germany's right to suppress free. If they don't suppress speech in Germany, we'll get a Holocaust. Now, first of all, it's 80 years since the Holocaust. I'm sort of with Elon Musk in this one sense, which is that I don't think, I think Germany should be very conscious of its Guilt forever. But four generations later, the Germans, who are four generations removed from the five generations, removed from the people who sort of voted in the Nazis in 1933, this is not, you know, they don't have like a historical epigenetic stain on their, you know, in their DNA. And they should not have their speech suppressed.

[Dan Senor]

And the Nazis were not big supporters of free speech.

[Noah Rothman]

No. Well, the problem is the statement, Margaret, the Nazis used free speech. What did they first do? They, they suppressed Jewish speech when they came into power. Now, if you could claim that the weakness of the central government in Germany in the 1920s and 1930s, which sort of let it be a kind of wild, free, crazy market, Weimar Republic, let, you know, Hitler organize instead of suppressing him, or let him publish newspapers and publish Mein Kampf and all of that. And I suppose there's a. Some weird argument to be made that that's an acceptable.

[Matthew Continetti]

There's actually an argument that's the opposite, that because there were speech suppression laws in the run up, Hitler's rise as.

[Noah Rothman]

Well, and Hitler went to jail for, for his.

[Dan Senor]

Yeah.

[Noah Rothman]

Anyway, more importantly, was that Rubio, again, not following the script, didn't immediately say, we all, you know, we nobody. Of course, the Holocaust was a terrible trap. He's like, that's not what the Holocaust. The Holocaust happened because the Germans suppressed the Jews. That's how that's what began. The Holocaust was the speech suppression of the Jews and the right. Suppression.

[Dan Senor]

I have a theory.

[Noah Rothman]

Not free speech.

[Dan Senor]

I think Margaret Brennan is actually the favorite Sunday show host of the Trump administration because they know she's going to ask ridiculously stupid questions like the one that she asked Marco Rubio. And so it's almost like a softball coming down the plate. Because if you recall, some people on the right were upset when J.D. vance's first interview as vice president was with Margaret Brennan and not with a Fox anchor or some conservative media host. But he does it because he knows that he's going to be able to show his intelligence and his fluidity, his fluency when she comes up with just kind of baffling ideas like this. But it was a signal moment and it shows how, just I remember when Mark Halperin, our friend, predicted on the Tucker Carlson podcast that Trump's election, this is before November 5th, but Trump's election would lead to one of the greatest mental health episodes of our time. And the truth is, I didn't really see that in the lame duck period. But since Trump was elected, the way people are reacting or just have a little bit of detachment here. Also, this idea that somehow America and Europe were in this wonderful relationship since World War II. We just got along so well and we were always together and presented a unified front is completely ahistorical. I mean, the last great crisis in transatlantic relations was 20 years ago. I was there and it was over Iraq. Funnily enough, that was a war the United States wanted to start and Europe wanted to stop. And this crisis is over, a war that, I mean, that the United States is trying to stop. And Europe is saying we can't do that. We have to continue down the road we're on. So it's not. If you have a little bit of perspective, you can see that these fights are par for the course. They involve real issues. I don't want to diminish any of it, but. But I do think just lowering the temperature would be helpful for everybody involved.

[Noah Rothman]

I do want to make one final point though, since you mentioned the war in Ukraine. So the war in Ukraine, again, kind of a consensus issue inside the Munich Security Conference, foreign policy establishment world. And the consensus in this case, in my view was morally right, which is that Russia, I mean, it's the just the fact pattern Russia invaded a non aggressive country with the intention of taking it over that is, you know, illegitimate and it destabilizes the continent. And there was every reason to resist and support Ukraine. Trump and the Trump administration want to resolve the war in Ukraine in some fashion or other, which is itself interesting because again, the cost to the United States in the war in Ukraine has been very low. I mean, people can cite whatever billion dollar number they want to cite in terms of how much our weaponry is costing.

[Dan Senor]

I think the official number, $65 billion in aid.

[Noah Rothman]

Okay, so $65 billion. I'm not saying it's not a lot of money, but we do have a 4 trillion dollar government. Our government is 4 trillion dollars. 65 billion is like point, I don't even know point, what percent? Less than 1% of the.

[Dan Senor]

A lot of that money is spent in the United States.

[Noah Rothman]

Right.

[Dan Senor]

To build weapons platforms to replace the ones that we've sent to Ukraine.

[Noah Rothman]

Okay, but there's something else that is spectacularly weird about what is going on this week with the Trump administration that I think is worth noting. Trump is. They're going to meet somewhere in the Middle East.

[Dan Senor]

Saudi.

[Noah Rothman]

Saudi. In Saudi Arabia, Rubio and Lavrov. Lavrov, the foreign minister of Russia, to start discussing this matter. Who's. And over the last week, Zelensky, the president of Ukraine, has said I'm not nothing. No deal can be made without me. And I know that MAGA people are going a little nuts about this here and there, but in 1972, we began the Paris, secret Paris negotiations with the North Vietnamese. Without the South Vietnamese. Right. They weren't there. So we began this negotiation and then we visited the results on the South Vietnamese. That, I think, was a moral betrayal. It was wrong. However, we were in that war. We had, you know, we had already lost. 50,000 people had died. Americans had died in that war. We had skin in that game like nobody's business. We're now going to negotiate the end of the Ukraine war without Ukraine. We're not even a combatant in the war. We're just a supporter who's been sending them weaponry. That's. That's outrageous. That's morally outrageous.

[Dan Senor]

I think the. I think I want to say two quotes, but here, and I agree with you, but the first quote is from Pistorius, who said that the Trump administration is operating. And he used this term reconnaissance by fire, which is you. You're shooting, and as your shells are hitting the different targets, then you're figuring out how to adjust. I think that actually captures what the Trump administration is doing in its peace offensive here in Ukraine. I don't think that there is a plan. And I think, you know, you say, oh, Ukraine's not going to be at the table when Rubio meets with Lavrov. That's right. But my understanding is Zelensky is going to come to Saudi on Wednesday. So they're saying, well, he'll be consulted. It's just that he won't necessarily be face to face with this terrible person, Sergei Lavrov. The other quote was from Doug Luty, who is. Hold a bunch of positions and is a military man. And he said, you know, guys, there is no, there is no strategy here. Trump has a goal. He wants to end the war in Ukraine, and that's it. Everything else is kind of up for negotiation. So you had hag says comments that we talked about that. Then Hegseth kind of walked back. Then you have JD Vance's interview with the Wall Street Journal ahead of his speech, where then JD Attacked the Wal Journal for misrepresenting what he told them in the interview. Then he gives the speech, which has nothing to do with Ukraine, is about these deeper issues affecting Europe and the democracies. Then you have Rubio making, I think, just, we should say it just in closing a wonderful visit to Israel and speaking very clearly about the threat from Iran. To not only Israel, but to the region and to the United States and our interests as well. So it's all over the place. We're going to figure this out, it seems, as they go along. The danger, of course, is that Russia somehow uses this to its advantage and the world doesn't become safer. But again, just like with the other issues I was mentioning, it's still far too early to say that we've reached any definitive conclusion about the harms being inflicted here. There's still, I think, a lot more to unravel or unspool before we can make that claim.

[Noah Rothman]

I think that's a very, that's a meliorous case for what the administration is doing. And maybe you're right to make a meliorous case. Maybe it's too early to say, you know, take them at their word, but their word is this war must stop. And they've already started negotiating in public on the terms unfavorable to Ukraine. Like, well, they can't go back to their old borders. I mean, that's obvious. They can't do this. You said last week that that was something where Peg says was speaking an uncomfortable truth, and that may or may not be the case, and I understand why it seems to be the case. But if, but if the Trump negotiate, if Trump is such a great negotiator, you don't, you don't take off the table.

[Matthew Continetti]

Yeah, yeah.

[Dan Senor]

I haven't said that Trump's a great negotiator. No, I'm saying what I think is happening, which is just, let's just try to do this and we'll see. We'll see what sticks. Yeah, yeah.

[Noah Rothman]

But I do think that Vance's response to the Wall Street Journal was demented. Vance said in an interview, we have all kinds of means and methods we can use to make sure the Russians don't, you know, do bad things or something like that. So the Wall Street Journal quotes him, and then he says, you're warmongers. You supported Iraq. You, you're so irresponsible, you're a warmonger. Like, really.

[Matthew Continetti]

I mean, on the one hand, Vance said milit tools.

[Noah Rothman]

I mean, military and economic tools. He said it. The Wall Street Journal was quoting him. And then he has this like, totally demagogic, lunatic response that's just intended to light up.

[Dan Senor]

It's the get out of trouble free card.

[Noah Rothman]

Yeah.

[Dan Senor]

Is the Iraq war blame, Blame the warmongers and neocons. If you're in trouble, just use that card and you're okay.

[Noah Rothman]

We can't get into this now, but he's now doing it to defend the nomination of El Paso to be the head of policy planning at the Defense Department. He's like, the only people who don't like Elbridge Colby are the warmongers who got us into Iraq. It's like, you know, honestly, fine. You know, you give a really good speech, and then you. I mean, it's like this kind of.

[Dan Senor]

There was a lot of explaining from Vance over the weekend. And I'll just say that, you know, William Bennett famously said that when you're explaining in Washington, you're in trouble. So he was not explaining at that speech at Munich. I actually think that speech was very important and interest, but he spent a lot of time around it, explaining either the interview to the Journal or defending his comments afterwards. But I think about what Lindsey Graham was also saying at Munich, and I think it's important to recognize, too, he said, look, when this gets to Trump, what does Trump want? Trump wants to be strong. So if Putin acts like we all know Putin will act and try to cheat Trump, I just have to see it before I'm gonna say he's gonna be completely gullible and rollover. Because Graham is right. Trump wants to be strong. He wants to be a winner. And what's Trump doing as he's sending his foreign policy team around the world to negotiate with the Russians? He's doing laps in the Daytona 500, and Jonathan Karl of ABC News is saying to Hakeem Jeffries, well, Donald Trump is the most popular he's ever been, and the Democrats don't really have an answer. So I think, in a way, Trump is kind of enjoying this. It's like, okay, fine, let Hegseth and Vance and Rubio try to solve these problems. I'm going to be the president. I'm going to be the big man. I'm going to be the guy who is getting ready to annex Greenland.

[Noah Rothman]

Okay, well, we'll leave it there. Oh, hey. You have a recommendation?

[Matthew Continetti]

I do have a recommendation on Hulu. A new documentary called Sly Lives, AKA the Burden of Black Genius. It's about Sly Stone. Sly of the Family Stone, band leader, musician, songwriter, producer. He's also a dj. The documentary was made by Questlove, who. I'm not a fan. And what is interesting about the documentary at I am a fan of Sly Stone and Sly and Family Stone. What's interesting about the documentary is that the whole subtitle part, AKA the Burden of Black Genius, sort of fizzles and it ends up Being a really great documentary about a totally unique talent, a very talent, unbelievable songwriter whose band famously was like, funk and rock and psychedelic and everything. And a guy who blew himself up basically because he was a drug addict and particularly addicted to angel dust, which you will, which is guaranteed to destroy your life, has nothing to do with the burden of black genius. So every time. So it was a great chronicling of Sly Stone's career. And he would speak with various. Questlove would speak with various producers and musicians about his career, and whenever this question of black genius would come up, they would all kind of scratch their heads, actually. So it was Questlove's having a real.

[Dan Senor]

Moment because he also has the SNL music documentary that's available on Peacock.

[Noah Rothman]

Peacock. And it's fantastic.

[Dan Senor]

It's really good. Yeah, it's really good.

[Noah Rothman]

And then include a whole section on Kanye on sort of like the travails of Kanye on. On snl, which is interesting.

[Dan Senor]

And he was. He was the house band at the SNL 50th anniversary concert on Friday, which is also a lot of fun to watch. So it's his. He's kind of. Again, I need a new name. Got Charlemagne, the God. You got Questlove.

[Noah Rothman]

Yeah.

[Dan Senor]

And I'm just Matt.

[Noah Rothman]

Yeah. How about. Yeah, no, you don't need a new name. I need something revolutionary. Is when somebody named, you know, Roger Stevens is the next great rapper. That's what we need. I was listening with my kid on Spotify or something to some playlist, and then this song comes up on my screen on the radio, and it's like, Dr. Dog. So I'm like, okay, this is going to be some rap dump, right? Because Dr. Dog. So it turns out it's some emo white kid who's calling himself Doc. I'm like, I'm sorry, you're not allowed to do that. Like, I look at something where anyone is called Dr. And they got to be a rapper. And the word dog obviously is associated with rap. And now, you know. So I think it's time for all names to start switching John Smith rappers to have names like John Smith and, like, for, you know, Jack Miller. Yeah, yeah. Jack Mix, Fred Baker. That's what we need. And yes, we've kept you too long. We've kept ourselves too long. And now we're spinning off. So we'll be back tomorrow. For thanks to Dan Seynor and for Matt Navum, John Pothort's Keep the Candle Burning.