Seth (2:25)

Hi John.

Abe Greenwald (2:26)

And joining us after a jaunt to India and back again with an article on our website called Trump's Passage to India, our own Matthew Continetti. Hi Matt.

Matthew Continetti (2:42)

Hi John. You know the India trip was perhaps cover for some other trips I made. You know, can't disclose but you may have heard some of the results in the news the past couple weeks. This is some good news while I was away. And you know, I'm not one to toot my own horn or anything. Yeah, perhaps, perhaps these were related. My voyage abroad and the wonderful victory of bringing the hostages home and implementing the ceasefire.

Abe Greenwald (3:14)

I knew it was you. I knew it had to be you.

Matthew Continetti (3:16)

Again, I don't want to take any credit or anything. I'm just saying.

Seth (3:19)

Well, in fact Matt didn't come back until every last living hostage was.

Matthew Continetti (3:24)

Well, I may have to leave Again.

Abe Greenwald (3:27)

Today, everybody in America is in the Middle east, right? Just so you know, we not only have Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner in Israel, but J.D. vance is, is going, my friend Schmulek is on an all flight right now getting off my sister, of course, like there's millions of Americans in Israel trying to ensure that the ceasefire, which is not a ceasefire, is holding steady. Somehow the term ceasefire has come to be used as the sobriquet for what happened here with this deal which involved no ceasing fire. I have to say there are terms in which Hamas is not supposed to be firing on the Israelis and the Israelis aren't supposed to be firing on Hamas, which sounds like a cease fire. But in fact the deal was return the hostages. Israel is going to pull back, you know, 42% people shouldn't fire guns and then we'll move on to the next phases. That's not a ceasefire as I understand it. And in fact Israel of course after repeated violations of the ceasefire went in hot and heavy yesterday morning, Monday morning, Sunday night, basically to, as Khan would say in the wrath of Khan, explain it to them that they were not supposed to be doing what it is that they are doing and but now Vance is interesting advances there because of course one does not think of J.D. vance as being a, either a very particularly pacific person, number one, or a person who seems perfectly aligned with the administration's attitudes here on Israel as expressed by the President in his appearance at the Knesset. Though he's a very malleable person. He's also very young. You know, he's a young Republican according to as we now know what it takes to be considered a Young Republican. In the group chats of young Republicans, apparently you just have to be. Just as long as you're not quite collecting social. So I'm a Young Republican. I'm about six months away from being able to collect Social Security. I guess I would constitute a Young Republican. So we have to leave them alone, the Young Republic, because they're, they're kids, they're just kids. They're 40 year old racist, Hitler praising scummy kids and therefore they should be left alone because of their being 40.

Seth (6:08)

I'm, I like, I like how during the Obama era was Republicans were very, very outraged that you could stay on your parents insurance now till you were 26. 26 is not a kid. But if you are a Young Republican you can go another decade.

Matthew Continetti (6:23)

I think, you know, just to talk about Vance's trip for a second, there is I think some type of personal interest in getting involved on Vance's part. The hostage release of course was kind of orchestrated by Wyckoff and Jared Kushner, who were on 60 Minutes on Sunday in a much ballyhooed interview. It was presided over and the strategy laid out by President Trump who went to address the Knesset. And throughout all these discussions, Vance was absent. And so here is, I think Vance's opportunity to remind the world that he is a member of this administration. He has ambitions. Of course. He just celebrated the Marines birthday with pomp and circumstance last over the weekend. Now he's flying to Israel and meeting with Netanyahu and talking about the administration policy. So I think it's something of a profile raiser on Vance's part because remember, Vance is kind of, you want to call him rival, they're friends and collaborators, but, well, let's call him the counterpart. Marco Rubio was there in the Knesset when Trump spoke. And Trump said that Marco Rubio would go down as the best Secretary of State ever. And you know, which would, which would be a nice thing on your calling card if you wanted to run for president, say in 2028 or beyond. So I can see some internal administration politics here. My bigger issue with the way that this is being covered is why are the administration officials speaking to Israel? It's not Israel that is in non compliance with the terms of this agreement. It's Hamas. It's Hamas that hasn't released the bodies of the dead hostages as was outlined in the agreement. It's Hamas that hasn't disarmed. It's Hamas that's killing all of the dissidents or people who allied with the anti Hamas militias. Hamas is the issue here. And I think that both the administration, other than Trump, who was very good on this yesterday when he said that, look, if Hamas doesn't agree, we're going to have to go in and destroy them. But there's voices within the administration who again want to focus on Israel. And then of course there's the global media where it's the headline today before we recorded this podcast was in the New York Times fears that Netanyahu might break the cease fire agreement.

Abe Greenwald (9:15)

Yeah, well, this is always the way. This is one way in which this is continuous with prior multiparty negotiations in the Middle east, which is to say if America says were coming to town, Israel's like, great, come stay at the Camp David. They have a great breakfast. We'll all get together and have a meeting. And then there's a meeting and some administration official says why don't you give up half your, your country so that we can make a big announcement and win a Nobel Prize? And Israel's like, nah, we can't really do that, but we love you. And then there are leaks about how irresponsible and impossible Israel is. Because Israel is in fact, though, this is not its reputation, always willing to negotiate as long as the United States wants it to negotiate it it is, it takes the partnership or the alliance with the United States with such seriousness that, you know, anyone can show up and will be treated with the kind of gravitas that is necessary. And there's no one to negotiate with on the other side. You're saying, who are they talking to? Well, apparently Witkoff and Jared met with some Hamas people just before the deal was struck to assure them of something or other. So it was the first actual face to face meeting that we know of between American officials and representatives of a Middle Eastern terror group. And many, many, many years. So I guess they have some kind of an interlocutor they could go to. But you always go to Israel. You always go to Israel and say you give up something first and Israel is then put in the position having to say no. We've done that like three times and once it worked out okay, maybe Camp David kind of worked out okay. But you know, when we gave up, we basically took the risk for peace with Oslo. That wasn't, didn't work out so well for us. So, you know, stop, stop making this, ask that we have to make the confidence building measures to kick off a peace deal. So the deal is already struck here. But the fact that they are going to Israel because, you know, like the hotels are better and you don't have to walk through rubble and there's a, who knows if the guy that you're meeting with didn't just flay the feet of some, you know, poor Palestinian protester and shoot his mother and cut off the head of his son because they're trying to reestablish the total control of the Strip and maybe don't really want to be associated with that guy. So I don't know who they're negotiating with to get Hamas to play along. The only negotiating tactic is what Trump used, which is, I got these Israelis here and they have a lot of bullets and they have a lot of planes and they have total air superiority and they now know where all the tunnels are and they don't have any living people left and they can just go hog wild on you if you don't make sense that the only teeth that the agreement has is the activation of Israel's military power. Because, as we also read, the multilateral force that is going to come in to basically interpose itself between Israel and Hamas or is going to monitor the peace between Israel and Hamas is, like many announcements of software innovations coming out of Silicon Valley, more a product of, of a, of a desire for that to be a real thing than a real thing.

Seth (13:18)

Nobody seems, I updated my iPhone and I updated my iPhone and the ceasefire doesn't work anymore.

John Pod Horowitz (13:26)

So it strikes me there are essentially like two narratives coming out of this.

Abe Greenwald (13:30)

Yeah.

John Pod Horowitz (13:31)

One is coming straight from Trump's mouth virtually every day, saying, Hamas has to put down its guns. If they don't put down its guns, we, whatever that has meant, will go in there and kill them, or they don't disarm, they will be disarmed, and so on. And then there is this sort of anonymous media take that the administration is increasingly worried that Israel is going to break the, quote, ceasefire. They're contradictory narratives. I simply don't believe the second one. I don't believe that whatever is happening regarding the administration and officials in Israel has anything. Is anything along the lines of, look, you guys don't do anything, don't fire, you gotta calm down, don't. I just. I don't. I think that is a sort of media concoction.

Matthew Continetti (14:34)

And also people in the administration, you know, who want again, to focus on Israel for various political or personal reasons. And I think what you're speaking about, Abe, is really important. It's maddening to try to analyze Trump foreign policy because all of the explanations or rationales are refracted through the prism of the media, usually by anonymous leaks to certain reporters. Like in Israel's case, it's to Barak Ravid, who has an agenda all his own. Axios. But I saw something similar happening after Putin Trump's meeting with Zelensky on Friday, where you got these anonymous leaks about how awful the meeting was between Zelensky and Trump, about how there was yelling about how Trump was pushing maps off the table, this real low bar. And yet I heard from other people who were with Zelensky that day, and he was fine and chipper. And the actual policy response coming out of the meeting doesn't seem to be that anything has really changed, except Trump has decided not to, at this point, supply Ukraine with the Tomahawk missiles that Ukraine has requested. And yet, for people who want to show on the one hand that Trump is anti Ukraine or that Trump is pro Putin, Right. So the anti Ukraine folks are typically the MAGA hardliners who hate Ukraine. So they want to show that Trump is mean to Ukraine. And then the people who want to show that Trump is pro Putin are the liberals and the no kings crowd. They're all casting this through different leaks and shadings and portrayals as some kind of huge juncture in the Ukraine US Relationship. My bottom line is now I've just decided not to read anything anymore.

Abe Greenwald (16:44)

Right. Well, I said yesterday on the now probably vanished podcast that the line that Israel strikes in response to the refusal to turn over the, the bodies of the, of the remaining hostages and, and efforts to ambush Israeli soldiers, soldiers in, in Gaza were met with a pretty harsh response and that then, then Israel backed off. And the line that was being proffered by the same people you're talking about was administration had to call those hot headed Sabras and tell them to stand down because who, you know, they're so crazy and they needed to stand down. And I don't believe that's the story. I think the story is there was a violation. They attacked Israeli soldiers, they went in and killed some people and they responded to the failure of Hamas to keep up its end of the deal with force. And then they stopped because they did the response to the violations that they, that they had to do. They don't want to engage in full on kinetic activity in Gaza. The entire nation of Israel is thrilled to be out of what they believe to be that phase or not the entire nation. There are people who really do ideologically and strategically think that Israel should have taken over Gaza for its own, you know, long term strategic interests. But they lost that argument. They lost that they're very much a minority in the government and in Israeli public opinion. So we can presume that Israel's actions on, on Sunday night, Monday morning were measured. They were. Okay, you did this, we're doing this now. We'll see how you respond once we have shown you what we're willing to, to do. If we don't do that, if we don't strike back, when you violate these kinds of terms, then you're just gonna start, you know, playing games every single day. And if you do that, we'll, we'll be right there to respond. And that actually is, again, that's the teeth of the deal. Right?

Seth (19:10)

I mean, that's, this is what I don't, I don't, I almost don't understand the, the discussion because it's called an enforcement mechanism.

Abe Greenwald (19:18)

Yeah.

Seth (19:18)

Every, every treaty, every ceasefire Every deal has an enforcement mechanism or it's not going to be followed. And it's like, well, if one saw, if Hamas, you know, breaks the deal, what do you, what would, you know, isolate that moment for a second. Let's say Hamas fires RPGs at Israelis inside the Strip. Okay, what is the correct response here from somebody who doesn't want the war to be renewed? There's no answer to that.

Abe Greenwald (19:47)

What.

Seth (19:47)

What is it, you know, wag your finger at Hamas. We just went through a two. Hamas just dragged out the war for two years that was never winning. You know, on the ground, pieces wise, you know, wagging your finger at them is not going to make them back down. So everything has to have an enforcement mechanism and it has to have teeth. And this is what happened. So they violated the ceasefire, so they got punished.

Abe Greenwald (20:10)

I.

Seth (20:11)

You know, it's almost like this, you know, the, the great moment in the office where they're waiting online at the annual meeting to talk, and the guy gets out of his spot online to go get something, and Dwight steps up into that guy's spot, and the guy comes back and he goes, oh, I was standing there. That was my spot. I just had to go get something. And Dwight turns to him and says, oh, I'm sorry, were you raised in a home without consequences? It's like, yeah, this, that, that. This is what happens when you violate a ceasefire and you kill people.

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Abe Greenwald (21:46)

So the enforcement mechanism, or some form of, like, permanent enforcement mechanism, is supposed to be this multinational force to go into God, right?

Seth (21:58)

It's just not there. Yet there has to be something before that's in place.

Abe Greenwald (22:03)

And it may never be. There is the point. Because it's one thing to say I will contribute 3,000 men to the multinational and then they doesn't happen. Like somehow the 3,000 men don't show up. You got the credit when you needed it for saying you were going to do it and then it doesn't happen. I mean it reminds me, there's, there's a, there's a family, a little noticed family in the Godfather, not in the novel the Godfather, not really mentioned in the movie the Bocchios. And they exist, the Bochichios to be taken hostage. So if the, if there are two families, right, and they need to have, they need to settle their disputes without going to full on war, the Bocchios, they make their living being taken hostage. Each Bocchio is taken hostage by, by, you know, Tatalia and then by Barzini. And then if something happens to the Bochichio hostage on one side or the other, the Bocchios just go and murder everybody. That's how it works. Like you're not allowed to kill the Bocchio so therefore you can't go to war. But if the Bocchio dies, they are, they are basically let loose to slaughter everybody. So that is what this multinational force, one of the reasons that a country would be maybe a little meshuggah to join the multinational force, it's like, oh, you really want to be standing there? If Hamas decides it needs to reassert its authority by killing some folks, Maybe they won't be Israelis, maybe they'll be you, you know, nice, you know, member of the, you know, in your nice uniform from India, Matt's recent place. You know, like you have your nice, you're a hussar and you have epaulettes and you look really good in your fancy uniform. And then they'll just mow you down. And then that multinational, then Trump will basically be the enforcer of the Bochuccio doctrine. I mean, I think, I think the.

Matthew Continetti (24:16)

Enforcer is going to be a national force called the idf.

Abe Greenwald (24:21)

Right, But I think that's always, that's what I'm saying. But, but that, that is the only, you know, it's sort of like what this, this force, this, this, the UN has always had these forces, right? When there's a, when there's a civil war conflict, it's like send in the UN and its peacekeepers and they're there to stand there and not get shot. Because if they get shot, woe Beta. And then of course, in those situations, in places where they're UN peacekeepers, I don't think they, they don't seem to get shot usually because they're probably buying people off or getting bought off themselves. And they don't do any enforcing, by.

Matthew Continetti (25:08)

The way, or they join the bad guys.

Abe Greenwald (25:09)

Like they're getting bought off or they join the. Or then they're not doing any enforcing. They're just staying there. And someone. I'm just going to go and, you know, kidnap 500 kids from, you know, from, from, from the hot. The other tribe and make them our slaves. You, you don't mind, do you? No, no, please go, go right ahead. We're, you know, we're not really allowed to use our guns anyway. So this is the world in which we have now entered the post war phase, which is playing games in which we say that the world is somehow going to police and make sure that this ceasefire holds. But any rational person knows, the only country, the only people who have a really vested interest in making sure the ceasefire holds or whatever holds or the lack of hostilities hold are Israel and the United States.

Matthew Continetti (25:57)

And that's why this yellow line that Israel is constructing in the Strip is so important. Because even as you have this shuttle diplomacy and the high level visit with JD Vance and Wyckoff and Kushner in the region and talking to Leslie Stahl on the ground, again, it's Israel demonstrating consequences when Hamas isn't returning the bodies, is killing two IDF soldiers and it's Israel constructing this yellow line, which when you look at the photos, you can. It's pretty obvious.

Abe Greenwald (26:29)

Yeah.

Matthew Continetti (26:30)

Past which Hamas cannot cross. And that, that will be kind of the, the status quo ahead and what's important.

Seth (26:40)

And they need to sort of put the line in the sand. Right. Because of these reports. Right. Because anytime Hamas can launch in a deadly RPG attack and kill two Israelis and the New York Times will say Israel renews attacks on Gaza, accusing Hamas of breaking the ceasefire. So Israel's like, here's a perm in Sharpie. Okay.

Matthew Continetti (26:59)

This line of this is the stories that came out over the weekend as Hamas has reasserted control over its kind of enclave in the Strip, where the Western reporters are like, it's amazing that Hamas is really focusing its efforts on these hospitals and schools. You know, why is Hamas really going back into these hospitals and killing all. You know, what we've been trying to tell you for two years is that.

Abe Greenwald (27:24)

They'Re not really hospitals and it's some quality infrastructure. They know those Places inside and out.

Matthew Continetti (27:33)

These people that they're not really hospitals.

Abe Greenwald (27:38)

You know, it is interesting about the line in the sand because however you slice it, Israel is in so much stronger a position emotionally than it was 10 days ago or two weeks ago. Because what's now happening is what is supposed to happen in a conventional situation, which is that the Israel's army as it is constituted is now being doing army things in Gaza. And you don't have to mobilize the country's civilians who were all in, who themselves are military veterans who are in the reserves, the miluim. And you know, the last two years have seen the army augmented, you know, double its size by the regular presence of reservists who are, you know, have lives, they've moved on with their lives, they have jobs, they have families, they have this. And they went to serve their country just as they always have. And so in Israel's terms, it's not the same thing. If this current iteration of the conflict flares up, that's like peace time in, in Israel, you know, like there, that's the Israeli army at its proper size with the people who are, you know, currently serving their, you know, their mandatory service, doing what they need to do. And Israel's simply not going to like put them at risk. Meaning if there are Hamas actions that seem to be kind of like staged terrorist assaults on individual, you know, platoons or whatever, Israel has and will exercise its over, you know, it's utter dominance of the skies and what appears to be a very significant understanding of every square inch of Gaza that it gained over the last two years. And with an intelligence and who knows what stuff they left behind to keep an eye on things on the ground and stuff like that, to protect their people. And so they're in a better mood, they're in a better place. And they also, and then the west and the Western media have this deranged idea that what they really all want to do is just keep fighting and committing the non genocide genocide and continue to starve the people who never starved. And of course we got that thing last week where the 26,000 kids graduated from high school. Gia. Where would they go? I thought the entire strip was leveled. Apparently people were going to high school and they got a nice diploma and stuff, nice laptops. Yeah, whatever. Anyway, it's kind of so that, that in and of itself puts Israel at an inestimable emotional advantage compared to where it was a couple weeks ago. It is just in better shape and better able to handle this change in the dynamic means that it doesn't feel to them like some pause in Vietnam, which went on for 11 years. It feels like the war as it was constituted was one, and that this is the kind of thing that you need to, you're going to need to do. And that Israel has had to do with irredentist Palestinian forces in Gaza, on the west bank and in Lebanon for 60 years. After the beepers, after the beeper, after, after they took out the Hamas, the Hezbollah leadership in Beirut, did the beepers, all of that stuff, they have still been fighting to keep Hezbollah quiet. And in its, you know, like hidey holes, since that astounding victory over Hezbollah, I mean, they know Hezbollah is not dead. Like, they're not all dead. And, and when they pop their heads up, you know, they go in and they strafe something, and then it's like, okay, I guess we're gonna go back, go back in. And that's what Gaza is probably going to be like. But to Israel, it's not going to feel like they're involved in a major engagement. And so that's, that's a, that's a change in the dynamic. And yet, J.D. vance going there, if he wants a piece of this, as Matt, you were suggesting, you know, success has many fathers. Failure as an orphan. If he now believes that this is a success and he wants to be one of its fathers, clearly you go with the winning side. And so maybe his politics are going to evolve. Remember, we got those poll numbers yesterday. 80% of Republicans side with Israel over Hamas. Now, that number was trending horribly in the other direction. And I don't know, there's 93% support among Republicans for Trump's conduct in the Middle East. Well, if I'm Vance or I'm that wing of the Republican Party, I may be revisiting the priors that I have been trying to play with or, you know, trying to reset the ideological map against Israel and not implicit, not so implicitly the Jews, because it's not working. And Trump wants to claim this. And ordinary Republicans seem to be very interested in giving him credit for having secured a victory.

Matthew Continetti (33:59)

Yeah, I mean, just on the surface, if you want to be the successor to what most, the overwhelming majority of Republicans consider to be the best Republican president ever, I mean, I think he's about to displace Reagan in the estimates of Republican voters. And partly that's a consequence of Reagan, you know, fading in history as well as Trump's success. But if you want to replace Trump, succeed him. Well, wouldn't you take a page from his Knesset address where he not only said, I love you, Israel. You're a miracle. I'll always be with you, but also subtly kind of suggested that the anti Semitic fringe that we see on the Internet has no place in Trump's Republican Party. He's defined in that speech, he defined that out of the party. You know, I mean, so I think it'd be in Vance's interest to say, yeah, if I want to succeed Donald Trump, I'm going to follow him.

Abe Greenwald (35:05)

You know, that's. You make it important. Our friend Eli Lake has a remarkable piece in the Free Press he published last night about Nick Fuentes. And Nick Fuentes, who is now essentially defining the outer limits, the most extreme limits of what might be considered the right. Openly racist, openly anti Semitic. And part of his play, as he gets millions of listeners and people watching the podcast that he's on and all this, is that he attacks Trump, he attacks Vance, he attacks Rubio. He's like, they're all wimps because they're not going where I'm going. Well, that's an interesting play because that means if there is some idea in somebody's head, Vance's head, or Vance's people's head, that he can bring those people in to be part of the kind of base coalition that's going to help him get elected in or get the nomination in 2028, they're now defining themselves away from Trump. So if the party remains positively directed toward Trump and this goes on for a while, you know that Trump is not going to take it lying down. He's not going to like these podcasters trashing him and his signal achievements.

Seth (36:43)

Kooky Tucker Carlson. Yeah, Kooky Tucker.

Abe Greenwald (36:46)

Kooky Tucker. He's not going to like being called a wuss by some 28 year old punk, you know, with a microphone. And he'll, you know, he'll do to them what he did to John Thune and Bob Corker and the regular Republicans who opposed him in his first term. Like, he'll, he'll basically at some point say, it's them or me, you can't have both. And you know, what's more, Pam Bondi over there may be looking at, you know, have the IRS look at Nick Fuentes tax records, because if he's gonna use power in that way, he's also got to frighten his friends as well as enemies.

John Pod Horowitz (37:30)

If he'll sue.

Seth (37:30)

If he'll sue. If he'll sue every national major network.

Abe Greenwald (37:34)

Yeah.

Seth (37:35)

Over an interview with Kamala maybe, you know, why wouldn't he sue somebody like Fuentes? Oblivion.

Matthew Continetti (37:41)

The worst mistake a politician can make is thinking that the infosphere resembles the electorate. The Democrats made this mistake continually thinking that morning Mika and MSNBC and the Nicole Wallace marathon somehow resembles the American electorate. And Republicans can make a similar mistake if they think that, that these podcasters are representative of where politics actually is. And just to take an example, in the news right now, you mentioned John Thune. Trump of course, is an ally of John Thune. And John Thune is the.

Abe Greenwald (38:30)

Oh, not John Thune. I'm sorry, I meant Jeff.

Matthew Continetti (38:33)

John McCain.

Abe Greenwald (38:34)

I apologize. I got three hours of sleep last night. I meant Jeff Lake and Bob Flake and Bob Courtney.

Matthew Continetti (38:39)

Right.

Abe Greenwald (38:39)

Anyway, senators he drove out of the Senate.

Matthew Continetti (38:42)

Yeah, I know. Thank you for correcting Leader Thune. Doesn't get angry at us. Send us a snippy email. Yeah, you know, we love Leader Thune and he's. Anyway, he told the administration yesterday that the administration has to withdraw this nominee for the office of Special Counsel, Paul and Gracia, because of these texts that Politico unveiled where he, he said in Gracia, said that he's got, you know, a little, what is he, a little Hitler in him or a little Nazi in him?

Seth (39:15)

You know, yeah, he got a little Nazi.

Abe Greenwald (39:17)

And then he also said that Martin Luther King was the George Floyd, the.

Matthew Continetti (39:21)

1960S and went off and look. So these are Republican. It's not just Thune, it's Rick Scott, you know, pretty conservative guy. It's other Republican senators saying there's no support for this nomination.

Abe Greenwald (39:35)

By the way. The other thing is Ed Cox, the chairman of the New York State Republican Party who has spent eight years trying to figure out how to make peace with and work with the radical Republican Trumpy wing of the party. A difficulty for him. He is actually Richard Nixon's son in law. Ed Cox, actually a really lovely guy, kicked out the young Republicans in the group chat from the New York State Republican Party and said basically, you have no idea what it's been like to have these people in our tent. Like they're impossible. So now the world now, basically, it's like they gave me the rope to hang them with. And yeah, a certain amount of political hygiene constantly requires you to clean up the messes that your people are making in order.

Matthew Continetti (40:37)

Look outside the cave for a second and think how is it actually working in the real world where Donald Trump is an extremely successful president who happens to be the most pro Israel president we've Seen.

Abe Greenwald (40:51)

Yeah.

John Pod Horowitz (40:53)

Regarding the possibility of Trump sort of going to war on the, on the anti Israel faction on the right. Don't forget, that's also the same faction that wants to keep dragging his administration down into the Epstein world.

Abe Greenwald (41:11)

And that's all right. That's right.

John Pod Horowitz (41:12)

He's had enough of them on that score already. He said they're losers. This is a Democratic. This is the Democrat plot hoax and so on. So he really doesn't have any need for them.

Matthew Continetti (41:24)

But there too, you know, in conversations with Republican officials after the summer break, they said, look, people wanted to talk about Iran, people want to talk about inflation. No one brought up Jeffrey Epstein. No one. No one. No one's going to vote on Jeffrey Epstein and what the Justice Department has or has not said. I mean, there might be libs who put that at the forefront of the, you know, gazillion reasons why they hate Trump and are going to vote for him, but no Republican is going to make the decision like that, so that it's having to always check what you're reading and listening to against what is actually happening.

Abe Greenwald (42:07)

Well, you're talking about scale. And this is the thing that social media obliterates if you're not careful, which is scale, by which I mean 150 million people voted in the presidential election, right? 155 million people voted in 2020. Epstein is driving traffic to Vanity Fair's website, to Tara Palmeri's podcast and stuff like that. And because social media levels everything, if you're sort of in that world of following media through Twitter or whatever, you might think that everybody is obsessed with Jeffrey Epstein. But in fact, 2 million people are obsessed with Jeffrey Epstein, and 328 million people in America aren't obsessed with Jeffrey Epstein. But it is very hard to keep that scale in mind. And we all have it. Everybody has it. And having scale in mind has been a crisis for liberals and Democrats since the 1960s because of their domination of the mainstream media when there was no social media. They could just emphasize certain types of stories, de. Emphasize others, and therefore not see the rise of Ronald Reagan, not understand that Reagan was going to beat Jimmy Carter in a gigantic landslide. All these things that were continually surprising to them because they had no way to measure scale. And they thought that the COVID of Time magazine was the most important thing in the world. And that was actually what was most important thing in the world was inflation and interest rates and not what Narskite they were peddling. I wanted to bring this up because there was this fantastic quote in the New York Times about Bari Weiss's takeover of CBS the other day. Wanted to read to you guys just to give you a sense, not only it's not what she's up against, because I don't think she's up against much because I think her people, the people who hired her and the Ellisons and everything like that, have her back and want her to do her worst. But so Michael Greenbaum and Benjamin Mullen wrote the following Barry Weiss, the new editor in chief of CBS News, surprised senior staff at the venerable news program 60 Minutes during a meeting on Tuesday last week when she asked a provocative question, why does the country think you're biased? The inquiry was met with stunned awkwardness. According to the people, three people who were counting details, the staff of 60 Minutes, the nation's most watched news program, view their coverage as firmly nonpartisan and reject criticism from President Trump and his allies who argue that it has a liberal slant. Well, I will grant you that I am on Israel and everything like an ally of President Trump. I do not think that the Trump administration would view me as a reliable ally. But I, in 1982, started work on a book about the Liberal slant of 60 Minutes that I did not finish when I got out of college 43 years ago about the liberal slant. But that's 60 Minutes.

Matthew Continetti (45:46)

You didn't finish it because you're like Casaubon and it's the book of all mythologies. You could never finish.

Abe Greenwald (45:50)

It could never be finished because the amount of liberal bias and it's infinitely variegated qualities over the course of 60 years of 60 minutes, they're sitting there in stunned awkwardness that somebody says to them, why do people think you're biased? First of all, is that disingenuous? I couldn't figure out whether the stunned awkwardness and their firm rejection of the idea that they are, you know, that they're not nonpartisan. Are they crazy? Do they actually think this?

Matthew Continetti (46:26)

I think so.

Abe Greenwald (46:27)

Okay. If they do, then Barry just is now completely. That is like, let her loose. They can't even recognize the need for reform in their ranks. Like, they don't even know that they have a problem and that they're only the most watched news program in America because they follow football. That's why they're the most watched news program, is that they follow football on Sunday. And nobody else established a better, you know, has established a beachhead against them, you know, after the, you know, after, you know, Dak Prescott, you know, throws five touchdown passes and then you move right into 60 minutes. Okay, so like the world of the media that have been reporting on Gaza and this. And then it remains this astoundingly impermeable bubble. I don't think it'd be so hard for 60 Minutes to say, yeah, you know, we're a liberal program. We're a liberal program. We're the highest rated news program, you know, on broadcast television, and we're liberal, so suck it. Like you could do that too. It's like, seems to be working, you know, like, come at me and say we're biased. Well, maybe that bias has an audience. So do a program on Thursday night called 90 minutes and make it a conservative show.

Matthew Continetti (48:04)

Well, remember, there was, remember 60 Minutes 2. I think it's on Wednesday night. Ed had it. Amazingly, without that NFL lead in.

Abe Greenwald (48:15)

Right. It wasn't long for this.

Seth (48:18)

There's another problem here for, you know, in how they see the world, which is that the world of media criticism or Ombudsman Ombudsmania is firmly in the camp of don't talk to conservatives who even flirt with supporting Trump on any one issue. And this is fascism. And the media cannot be unbiased. Right. If you, if you say, I'm CBS and you know, maybe I should have somebody who can speak to the MAGA world view on a panel sometime. Margaret Sullivan will stand outside your house banging on an old tin garbage can like the one that, that, you know, on Sesame Street. This is you. You won't. You have Jeff Jarvis and all these others, you know, these journalism professors and these, you know, and, and all the, the ombudsman are, they are all there to gatekeep the. Against balance, against the idea of balance, against the idea of objectivity. I mean, this has been a recurring topic on this podcast. We've talked about this a lot. The war on objectivity, the belief that you can't be fair, you can't be, you know, this and that. But it's the people who guard the supposed ethics of journalism themselves who have made themselves the enforcers against journalistic ethics. They're the ones that come at you. And so if you are a liberal news person and you are producing a show, the Margaret Sullivan's of the world carry weight to you because they are supposedly the sort of one, the one sitting in judgment of the very idea of, you know, where journalism should be geared to and how even handed should be and all that other. They're, they're the, they're the critics. That's like putting out a TV show and saying, well, I'm Going to ignore, you know, the Times TV critic or something? Well, you can, but like, it's going to have reach in your world, what he says. And they, and they want to hear it. They want to hear from Margaret Sullivan and the rest that you shouldn't talk to fascists, that everybody who disagrees with you is a fascist and you shouldn't talk to him. That gives them a great excuse.

Mark Alperin (50:38)

I'm Mark Alper and I want to let you know that two Way Tonight, the destination for the best political news and analysis anywhere, is now available as an audio podcast. Each weekday, I'll be joined by special guests from the worlds of news, politics and the media, along with members of the two Way community for conversations like no other. It's the best way to stay informed at the end of your day or first thing in the morning every weekday. It's a show like no other because we involve the community. We hear from people from around the country, around the world. They're part of a conversation. There is no other platform like this, and I hope you will find it to be not only different than everything else, but more meaningful as you become part of a special community around the program. So listen and follow two Way tonight with Mark Alperin on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or any other major streaming platform.

Abe Greenwald (51:26)

This is it.

Seth (51:27)

The world as you know it is over.

Abe Greenwald (51:29)

Completely done.

Seth (51:30)

It's not about to be over. It's over.

John Passantino (51:34)

Some of the scientists who helped build AI are now sounding the alarm.

Seth (51:39)

I was selling AI as a great thing for decades and I was wrong. I was wrong. There's a longer term existential threat that.

John Pod Horowitz (51:49)

Will arise when we create digital beings that are more intelligent than ourselves.

Seth (51:54)

We have no idea whether we can stay in control.

John Passantino (51:57)

While others say that AI will usher in unfathomable abundance, I've always believed that.

Seth (52:02)

It'S going to be the most important invention that humanity will ever make.

Matthew Continetti (52:06)

This really will be a world of abundance.

John Passantino (52:09)

And among these fears and these fantasies, we seek the story of our future. Listen to the last invention on Apple, Spotify, Amazon Music, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Abe Greenwald (52:25)

Right. So what happens when the fascists are your boss? So you got two choices. They think free press is, you know, too friendly to Trump and it's fascist. And, you know, it was good that Barry Weiss was run out of the New York Times, so now she's your boss. So you got two. You got two choices. You walk out on principle, kind of like Barry Weiss walked out of the New York Times on principle, or you stay there and Try to run some bizarre rear guard terrorist action to maintain your place. Or you make a real argument for yourself to Barry Weiss, which is, We've been here 60 years. We know what we're doing. Don't kill the goose that lays the golden egg. You want to screw around with ideology, Go screw around with ideology elsewhere at cbs where the morning show doesn't work and the evening news doesn't work and you don't have a streaming service and it's a shadow, you know, the Tiffany network is a shadow of its former self. Leave us alone. Give some, you know, give Matt Continetti a show and you know, and Eli Lake can be Andy Rooney and you do that somewhere else and leave us alone. But they didn't do that. They did not do that because they want to continue to hide behind the mantle that they are fair and nonpartisan and objective. And no sane person believes that. And that's why I don't know that they believe it because they believe it. But then I know somebody who was a producer at 60 Minutes for many years. I think she's retired. And you know, she said there wasn't, you know, she was a sort of a samas dot Conservative at 60 Minutes. And she was like, there isn't a single person here who has ever voted for a Republican, ever, John. And there are 200 people on staff.

John Pod Horowitz (54:22)

I think, I think there are sane people who believe that 60 Minutes is non biased. And I wouldn't have said that had I not anecdotal met a lot of them over the past few years. But it's a generational cohort. These are older TV viewers who still believe in this nice reassuring idea that eminent journalistic institutions are just by definition fair. They would, there is a standard that something so great and monolithic would just, would never fall short of. And it's just a given, but I mean, the reality is that they're dying out.

Abe Greenwald (55:20)

But I have no problem. This is why I'm bringing this up. I have no problem with 60 Minutes being biased. I don't believe in objectivity.

Matthew Continetti (55:29)

Right.

Abe Greenwald (55:30)

We are not an unbiased institution here. Now, granted, we don't have a broadcast license and you know, we're not, you know, we're not supposed to be served. We're not here serving in the public interest according to the Federal Communications act of 1934, like the CBS on and operated stations which form the bedrock of the CBS network and therefore do have to kind of pretend toward objectivity, maybe because they would therefore be against the legal writ that granted Them, these broadcast licenses. But I don't believe in it. And I think the case to be made for 60 minutes is it's a successful liberal program. So if Barry Weiss comes in and says, why do people think you're biased? They could say it doesn't matter whether they think we're biased or not. We have an audience of 7 million people a week. You go find that somewhere else. Like, we, we know what we're doing, and we're speaking to an audience that comes back to us and comes back to us every week. So you want to call it biased, you call it bias. You want to say that we're there, we're that, whatever, okay, but we're fine. They didn't do that at the meeting. They got all harumphy or awkward or whatever and didn't. And, and, and were dishonest about, about who they are. And that is act of bad faith, which, again, is fine. When, again, I think it's fine that there's a 60. A liberal program called 60 Minutes. The question is why there isn't a conservative program called 70 minutes. I mean, or 62 minutes or 59 minutes. I mean, that's, that's always been the question. The reason is because you might want to play in that sandbox given half. Given the nature of the ideological divide in the United States. It doesn't exist because people at CBS don't want to produce that program. They never wanted to produce any such program because, as Seth would say, they think that we shouldn't be hearing from people like that because they're bad and they want to do bad things to the country and they are doing good things to the country by making up stuff about alarm and how red dye number two is going to kill you and, you know, stuff from way back in the past.

Matthew Continetti (57:40)

We'll know Bari Weiss is having an impact when we see the pro asbestos segment on 60 Minutes. And that happens. Well, no.

Abe Greenwald (57:50)

Yes.

Matthew Continetti (57:50)

Finally, we've turned the wheel.

Abe Greenwald (57:53)

Asbestos has prevented more deaths from fire than, you know, new studies show. Yes.

Matthew Continetti (58:02)

Ddt.

Abe Greenwald (58:03)

Yeah.

Matthew Continetti (58:03)

Reconsideration. I'm Leslie Stahl.

Abe Greenwald (58:08)

That will be victory for us. I just think it's, I just, I'm just, I'm constant having, having worked for many years in close proximity to people at news magazines and at MSNBC and other places, you know, who are in this mindset. And, and I like, you know, they're, they're, they're human beings. So I like some of them and I dislike some of them and all that. And they were always found it very refreshing how honest I was about what I believed, because they couldn't believe that anybody believed any such thing that I believed and was still someone you could have a conversation with. Yeah, in the green room. You know, that's the other part of this. That's the impermeable bubble part. But, but I just think, you know, we are, we're living in a world in which it's not like it doesn't have an effect. I mean, obviously the, the way the war in Gaza was covered had a bad effect on American public opinion relating to Israel. You know, there was that Harry and that the poll that Harry analyzed that said that the shift in opinion toward the Palestinian sympathy for the Palestinians was 50 points over the course of two years after October 7th. That's real. And it was guided by the way in which the war was covered. Although you could probably say a lot of that wasn't really mainstream coverage per se. It was Chinese algorithmic. TikTok using its, you know, evil magic to poison the minds of the impressionable young played a large role there. But so it's not nothing. And I don't mean to make light of the importance of media bias. It's a very serious practical matter. But you got to admit, like, this is one fun. We're, we're in one fun stage. Like this is going to be a fun year seeing what happens to the people at cbs.

Seth (60:21)

Well, and the Zionism thing played, you know, what you could argue is an outsized role in the whining about Barry there, which is that Gaza had become a litmus test on the left. It had become, you know, your ticket to ride. You know, you had to check Zionism at the door. It doesn't matter what you, Greta Thunberg says, if you care about climate and the, the sun swallowing the earth in a great ball of fire, you have to at least be wearing a keffiyeh. Right? So that's, that's the other part of this is the litmus test aspect of it, which is like they, they, the, the, the thing they hate most about her is this thing that is, has become so big on the left. And the left, leftist activists have been able to implant it as a kind of gatekeeping, not just an issue that's important, but it's sort of, you know, it's replaced abortion and some of these other issues, at least for the time being, as the test to whether you belong and, you know, some Barry having that position at CBS threatens that. And, you know, I once explained this when, when, when Barry was at the Times and, and you know, faced the, the criticism from the left that she faced. The reason that it mattered so much that she was at the Times at her position is that because people said, oh, it's ridiculous to say that they're just going after Barry because she's a conservative or she's non liberal or something like that. Look, they have, you know, Ross Douthed and they have, you know, conservative columnists and stuff like that happen. And I explained that Barry wasn't a columnist. Barry was an editor, somebody who works within the machinery inside, works with the gears and helps shape coverage. And what, what people who hated Barry and people on the left really were scared of is the inclusion of a non progressive worldview in how things get developed and how stories might get edited in how assignments might be made, all this other stuff. It wasn't that they feared that she would write an opinion piece. They didn't believe that people who believe, who believed what Barry believed belonged in the mainstream world, that they, that it was dangerous to have somebody like that behind the scenes involved in it. And that's part of what the CBS thing is also.

Abe Greenwald (62:42)

Right. That's exactly right. By the way, I should read before Matt gets to his recommendation. Just out as we're recording is a truth from President Donald J. Trump. I'm just going to read it. Numerous of our now great allies, all capital letters in the Middle east and areas surrounding the Middle east, have explicitly and strongly, with great enthusiasm, informed me that they would welcome the opportunity, at my request, to go into Gaza with a heavy force and quote, straighten out, unquote, Hamas if Hamas continues to act badly in violation of their agreement with us. The love and spirit for the Middle east has not been seen like this in a thousand years. It is a beautiful thing to behold. I told those countries in Israel not yet there is still hope that Hamas will do what is right. If they do not, an end to Hamas will be all caps, fast furious and brutal. I would like to thank all those countries for their call to help. Also I would like to thank the great and powerful country of Indonesia and its wonderful leader for all of the help they have shown and given to the Middle east and to the usa, to everyone. Thank you for your attention to this matter. President Donald J. Trump why is the mention of Indonesia aside from the we're going to destroy Hamas if they don't stop? Indonesia is the world's most populous Muslim country. It is also the world's most moderate Muslim country politically and the leader of Indonesia has made very serious hints or overture whatever to the idea that he wants to normalize relations with Israel and be some part of some version of the Abraham Accords. And Trump is shining a spotlight on him to say, this is the kind of person that I want to be dealing with, the one who wants to, who wants to be friendly with Israel. And everybody who is willing to go destroy Hamas is my kind of person. So once again, it's Christmas on every day here at the Commentary Podcast. Jonah Goldberg at our roast the other day said, you know, for the, he was speaking at a roast and he said for the first time, I feel like I've been invited to a MAGA event. I don't really feel like I fit in, we fit in that category. But, well, it's a roast. It was a roast. It was a funny line and I'm quoting it. But you know, I mean, you know, I can't, I remain bewildered by the extent to which every word that comes out of Trump's mouth about Israel in this war is something that I, you know, have dreamed of hearing an American president say openly for most of my adult lifetime. Anyway, Matt, you have a recommendation?

Matthew Continetti (65:38)

Thanks, John. I do have a recommendation. A lot of travel time lately. So this past weekend I was able to watch the new documentary Mr. Scorsese on Apple TV. Plus, it's a five hour long portrait, a self described portrait of Martin Scorsese, the filmmaker by the director Rebecca Miller. If you have an Apple TV subscription and if you are a fan of Martin Scorsese's work, I do recommend it. You learn a lot about him, his, his youth. You learn about his, his current circumstances. His wife suffers from Parkinson's, which is very affecting watching him with his wife. And you learn about the films, the great films, Mean Streets, Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, goodfellas, Casino, the Departed. One thing I learned is that while I have watched all of Martin Scorsese's films and been affected by all of them, there's not really one that I like re watching. And I'm a veteran or inveterate rewatcher of movies that I like. But it occurred to me that the Scorsese films are so expressive, so emotional and so visceral that really once is enough, you know. Like, you know, there's a famous scene in Raging Bull where Robert De Niro as the boxer and kind of hoodlum Jake LaMotta starts banging his head on a jail cell wall. And sometimes that's how you feel watching a Martin Scorsese picture. I think that the two exceptions I would make are Goodfellas, which I have watched many times and which is a very rewatchable film. And then the Departed, which is incidentally the only film Scorsese ever won best director for. Yeah, yeah. And it came very late in his career. But it's also just an amazing movie. But anyway, if you're interested in Scorsese and in film, Mr. Scorsese is, is worth watch.

Abe Greenwald (67:53)

I watched the first part last night and it's really. I commend it because I have it. It's really. Half of it is not about him as a moviemaker. Half of it is a portrait of being part of an Italian American immigrant family in mid century in and around New York and very brilliantly made with a lot of. Oh yeah, footage of the sort of Little Italy in New York and suburban Long and Queens and various other places that I've actually never seen before. And it really gives you a flavor of these streets in a different way. Rebecca Miller, who is a very interesting character on her own, who is the wife of Daniel Day Lewis, she got to know Scorsese because he was the star of Gangs of New York, a very unsuccessful Scorsese movie, is herself a writer and director and made a movie 10 years ago, excuse me, called sorry, called Maggie's Plan with Greta Gerwig and Julianne Moore that is one of the best comedies of manners made in the last 25 years. It sort of came and went very invisibly. It's about. It's about an affair and an ex wife and how Greta Gerwig wants to see if she can figure out some way to get her husband or her lover's wife paired off with somebody else so that she can be finally be freed of this shadow hanging over her own relationship. And it's really a wonderful, funny, lively, extraordinarily well directed movie and I will say the one Martin Scorsese movie that has always been underrated. And I guess this movie, this thing, I haven't seen it yet, makes a real case for and I think is rewatchable and is a masterpiece and is one of the greatest literary adaptations in the history of cinema is the Age of Innocence with Daniel Day Lewis and Michelle Pfeiffer, based on the Edith Wharton novel, which was, for reasons that eluded me at the time and elude me now, condemned when it came out for having too much narration, the narration being taken directly from Edith Wharton's peerless description of New York City society in the 1870s. Gorgeously read by Joanne Woodward. And then this portrait of a society in which People are too suppressed to express their real feelings in the most beautiful surroundings. It's a masterpiece and it's always been undervalued.

Matthew Continetti (70:45)

They do spend some, they do spend some time on it. I should also mention that, as always, the unheralded star, along with Martin Scorsese is Martin Scorsese's mother, Catherine Scorsese.

Abe Greenwald (71:00)

Catherine, who was a.

Matthew Continetti (71:01)

Who appears throughout the film, you know, in, in these. Either in the movies in which she features or in some of the home documentaries. The one documentary, Italian American is also quoted from Extended America, which I think.

Abe Greenwald (71:15)

You can watch Italian American on YouTube. And it is, it is a great American documentary. It's about 25 minutes long and it's the sort of just him interviewing his parents.

Matthew Continetti (71:24)

You learn that there was one film where Catherine Scorsese was cut from the film by her son. And you would ask why, why would that be? It would be. It was Taxi Driver where apparently she was going to be Robert De Niro's Travis Bickles first passenger in the film. And they filmed it when she's had all these shopping bags. You see some images and still images. But for whatever reason, Martin Scorsese decided, you know, I, this is the, this movie I don't really want my mom in. And you know what? He was right.

Abe Greenwald (71:59)

He is, he himself is great in Taxi Driver as a psychotic passenger.

John Pod Horowitz (72:06)

I mean, actually, I think I've rewatched probably, I don't know, maybe I might have rewatched Scorsese movies more than like anywhere anyone other movies. But that was probably where I was at in the 80s and 90s. But to my mind, Taxi Driver and King of Comedy have a uniquely sort of prophetic quality about our age and about youngish male nobodies and how they see the world.

Matthew Continetti (72:41)

Well, the screenwriter of both makes the point in the film that, you know, the underground man, which was the focus of a lot of early Scorsese, is now on the Internet and can find the other underground men in a way that he couldn't do in the 1970s and early 1980s. And that does make it a very kind of prophetic, I mean, body.

Abe Greenwald (73:08)

The oddity of Scorsese's career mirrors an oddity in the other great New York City filmmaker now disgraced career, Woody Allen's. Which is to say that Woody Allen never made the most successful Woody Allen movie. The most successful Woody Allen movie is When Harry Met Sally, which took the kind of tropes of Woody Allen movies and found the heart and the kind of, you know, the, you know, took out the nihilism and gave them. Gave it sort of like a universal quality of forgiveness and love and humor and stuff like that. And the most successful movie of 2019 is a literal ripoff merger of Raging Bull and King of Comedy. It's both movies shoved together with Robert De Niro in a subsidiary part, and.

John Pod Horowitz (74:05)

That'S Joker, Taxi Driver and King of Comedy.

Abe Greenwald (74:08)

Taxi. Taxi Driver. I'm sorry. Taxi Driver and King of Comedy. Joker is basically a remake of Taxi Driver in which Travis Bickle of Taxi Driver turns into Rupert Pupkin of King of Comedy and is an incel. And is also the Joker from DC Movies. And that movie made a billion and a half dollars worldwide. And no Scorsese movie has made more than, like, 300 million. So he. He kind of, like, invented these tropes, but it took a more populist filmmaker to figure out how to mash them together to make, like, a box office sensation that would, you know, that sort of. It's an interesting little piece of data. And if you have not seen King of Comedy, which is a very unpleasant movie, I mean, it's not. It's not like a great hang. It is so brilliant. It's worth watching as a portrait of the rise of celebrity culture. The problem of feeling like you're invisible and unknown and the lengths to which people will go to explode out of that if they can. There's never been a movie like it. It's, you know, the best movie about America, about the. About the sort of American failure. You know, the sort of portrait of an American failure and what happens when he just can't take it anymore, living his life as a failure and the fantasies that he has of being a success. Anyway, so you're. That's Mr. Scorsese. I'm also recommending Maggie's Plan and the Age of Innocence and King of Comedy, I guess. But Mr. Scorsese is five hours long, so if you watched it.

Matthew Continetti (75:59)

I watched it in a weekend. There you go.

Abe Greenwald (76:02)

Okay. We'll be back tomorrow. For Matt and Seth and Aba, I'm John Pod Horowitz. Keep the candle bur.