Unknown Male Commentator (2:14)

Hi, John.

John Podhoretz (2:17)

So there's all this polling out about Trump this morning, sort of the monthly polling tip and Gallup and all of that. The numbers aren't great for Republicans or for Trump. If you take them, you know, if you just take them flat, you have Democrats up by 8 in the so called generic ballot. That is, you ask people, if an election were held today, would you vote for the Democrat or the Republican? Democrats are now up by 8. Now at this point, in worse cycles for the incumbent party, those numbers are sometimes as high as 15 or 16. So it's not like the Republicans are in, you know, scream and run for cover and everything is terrible. But they're not great. Trump's approval rating is around 40 or 41%. Most interestingly, in the TIP poll, Trump's favorability among Republicans is 77%. Now that may be an outlier in which you have, so you have 15% who do not approve and then some weird number of like 8% that say they're not sure. And I have to put myself a little close to the not sure camp, even though I am wildly supportive of how Trump has handled Israel and how, and I supported Maduro, the taking out of Maduro and thrilled with the Iranian nuclear program strike. And I am excited by the indications that we are supporting the Iranian effort for to free, to free themselves from the yoke of the mullahs more than we have ever really, I think in the course of the 47 year history of the Islamic Republic. And on the other hand, there's the story last night about how Jeanine Pirro, the acting U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, is in hot pursuit of a criminal indictment, either of the Federal Reserve Board or of, or the, or of Jay Powell, the head of the Federal Reserve, on grounds of lying to Congress about the renovation of the building of the Fed building, which is 100 years old and apparently in need of renovation.

Unknown Male Commentator (4:25)

Although according to what I, I will, I'll do the little Def. Having. It's two buildings, two huge buildings that were built in the 1930s and they are full of asbestos and lead. They haven't had an H Vac, you know, they haven't had an H Vac upgrade since the 30s. There are all kinds of structural issues with regard to access for, you know, to bring it up to code that really has, it really was a bit of a shambles. If you know anyone who's worked in that building, they will tell you horror stories. So the price tag to me isn't that shocking given what they have to do. They had to go through the National Capital Planning Commission for, I mean they, they did this whole process years ago and it. Knowing how government contracting work and how much they are often over budget and never near their deadline. That doesn't sound like that much money for these. They're two massive buildings. I mean, they actually are here.

Christine Rosen (5:19)

Okay.

Unknown Male Commentator (5:20)

Seems like a pretext to go after Powell. Not only to, I believe it is a pretext. Yeah, but, but to perhaps get him to resign entirely. Because remember, even if he steps down his chair, he's got a couple more years left as a Fed governor.

John Podhoretz (5:32)

I think It's a pretext, $2.5 billion to renovate even two massive buildings is a lot of money and you're not supposed to abate asbestos. I mean, there's a whole line of thinking that says if there's asbestos in the walls, you leave it there. You don't abate it because it actually makes it worse to try to get it out of the walls. This is a now somewhat discredited process that happened because of tort law efforts in the 80s and 90s. Nonetheless, I'm not going to argue over this question. Obviously, nobody is going to arrest no rational world in which there isn't a deep political motive is going to arrest the chairman of the Federal Reserve for the way he handled the renovation budget of the Federal Reserve building. This is the by Common Ascent, one of the two or three most powerful people in the world in terms of economics. And therefore, you know, it has been, has been confirmed by the, you know, by Congress and has a 10 year term for literal reasons having to do with the ability to shield that person from the political machinations of elected officials who want to toy around with interest rates. So when I say I'm in the weird position of the 8% who don't know quite what to say about Trump, positively or negatively, I have huge positive things to say about Trump. And then I see that, I see this horrific image coming out of the Department of Labor that says, remember what you remember that you're an American, like out of nowhere kind of meme and shows George Washington, you know, which, which as Jonah Goldberg said to me sounded better in the original German, you know, Kristi Noem giving these interviews in the wake of the, of the shooting in Minneapolis, which we've defended or like, at least given, but like calling, you know, using the term domestic terrorist to talk about somebody who parked her car in an inconvenient place and talking about, you know, talking in a way that is really incendiary, unhelpful, makes things worse, all of that with crazy eyes, talking to George Stephanopoulos, all sorts of things. Stephen Miller's behavior last week, talking about immigration and what America was like before all these terrible people like his grandparents came into this country to save themselves from terrible fates. So thanks a lot, Stephen Miller, for your betrayal of your own family's experience and coming to a great country and making yourself an important person and pulling up the ladder behind you. So these are very discomforting things to me about the Trump people and the Trump administration. And so I'm not surprised really that there is a contingent on the right that is feeling very vague about how they feel about Trump. But my worry, of course, is that it's not me, you know, I'm not representative, that, that the 20% or so that don't like Trump are. Tucker, people are. Candace, People don't like him cuz he's not racist enough, he's not anti semitic enough, he's not fascist enough or whatever. And so that I don't know the answer to that question. Yeah.

Seth Mandel (8:56)

But I just want to say, you know, before we get to that question, generally speaking, John, what you're describing is he's still the total chaos agent. He's gotten a lot done and there's a lot that he's done that we approve of and in some sense that amazingly has to some degree overshadowed the chaos he creates, at least for us at times. But there's no question that you remember exactly what it was that you got sick of the first time around.

John Podhoretz (9:31)

Oh, I didn't even mention the other stuff last week that was so bad. Announcing that he wants credit card companies to hold their interest rates at 10%, which is unbelievably bad policy, is preposterous. Because the reason the credit card rates are, you know, 25 to 30% is not because people are being gouged. It's because people like us who pay our bills are covering for the tens of millions of people who default on their credit cards and don't pay them. And so interest rates are higher in order to, to cover costs for scoff laws as credit is being extended. Maybe they should extend credit. Not, not, not so much. But, and of course, all interest rates are the result of your holding on, you know, buying things beyond your mean ability to pay them and then not paying them off, only paying the interest if you, you know, if you have enough wherewithal to buy a furniture set and then you can pay it off in a month, you're not paying any interest on it at all. You're just using the card in lieu of a check. And so that's another way to live, is to live within your means and not go beyond with credit. That's a choice that people make that involves a prudent calculation about whether or not they're willing to shoulder the, the interest. And you know, I, I don't know other stuff where he gets mad at, got mad at Exxon or somebody for saying they didn't know if they were going to go into Venezuela to help with oil because they had had their, twice in the last 50 years they've had things that they've done. They're nationalized and it's not a safe environment in which to play in a sandbox. And then Trump gets mad at them and yells at them for not, you know, doing him a solid.

Unknown Male Commentator (11:14)

Well, it's more than that. He yells at them, he says, he, look, he's engaged in a vast experiment of state capitalism which is first of all entirely against conservative free market principles. And we've talked about it many times before, demanding that companies give him a stake, that give the government a stake in their profits and vote, you know, any sort of oversight. He did this with a lot of tech companies. He's in bed with a lot of big tech companies to the extent that he's overlooked legislation that should decouple them from China. We've, we've talked about this endlessly, but this is another example. And he did it in the housing market too. He talked about putting limits on investors ability to buy houses, all of, all of which is an effort to focus on affordability. But this is the same president who told people to buy fewer dolls when his tariffs were going to impact buying power and affect inflation. So it's a lot of mixed messaging. But the state driven capitalism should worry anyone who cares about the free market and that should include old school liberals as well as, you know, conservative free marketers.

Eliana Johnson (12:15)

John, I just wanted to go back to the comment quickly. You made about the polling data and you said your concern Trump, is that part of the reason Trump is losing ground, if I think, if I understood you correctly, that he's losing ground among the far right people like Tucker Carlson and the anti Semitic right. My, my concern looking at this data is that he has lost ground. The last poll conducted by this, this outfit was done in March of 2025. He has lost major ground among independents and moderates. And I think that is a more important group than the far right MAGA fringe. And the miscalculation that I think many Republicans are making is catering to that far right which is in fact alienating the independents and the moderates they're going to need to win elections.

John Podhoretz (13:18)

I mean, I think that's a really good point. And we also have, my point here is that we're still talking 20 to 25%, right? And we did have the polling that Matt Continent, he highlighted in his column last week for free Expression, the new Wall Street Journal vertical from the Vandenberg Coalition about how resolute Republicans are in vast majorities about the state of Israel, about their views of Jews, about foreign policy and the belief in the projection of American power, meaning 70, 75%, 80% are where I would want them to be for my own comfort as a Jew and as an American who believes that the United States is a force for good in the world. But there is still that 20% now. 20%, you can get 20% of anybody to believe anything, right? That's the classic joke. They'll believe that, you know, you're, you're a mart, you know, their neighbor is a Martian. They'll believe that, you know, the world is flat. I don't even know where the polling is on the world being flat. It's always higher than you. If you ask the question, it's always higher than you think it is, than you think it's going to be. So, I mean, that just may be just an artifact of the fact that people just say no to other stuff and then it's not important. But the, but the right. But the knock on effects of Trump seeming to be associated and not dissociating himself harshly and heart diff and strongly enough from those opinions may have practical electoral consequences for Republicans down the line in what is looking to be a difficult year for Republicans. A, it's a midterm and they're the party in power, so that's always bad. And baby, some of these other numbers that look, you know, well, and this.

Eliana Johnson (15:07)

Is why we're seeing his numbers declined. His numbers among independents declined 9 points between March and this January poll, which is a larger decline than he saw among Democrats or Republicans. So it was a big drop. I would attribute that to people's perception of their economic situation, not to Trump's failure to distance himself from fringe views, which I can't. Oh, it was with, I think it was in his interview with the New York Times. He actually did draw a starker line than some of his allies have drawn on this. But the numbers, if I were Republicans or in this administration or certainly were I planning to run for office, were I running for office in 2026 or looking at a 2028 run. Those are numbers I would be carefully.

John Podhoretz (16:08)

The other weird thing about the Powell, I mean, just to bounce around because we're talking about some of these numbers and the question of whether Americans. What we're having here is you have another classic example of what was really extreme in the Biden case, which is that Trump wants people to think that the economy is good because the heath that helps him so he talks up the economy. And that doesn't work because people know in their marrow and in their bones and in their daily lives how the economy, what the economy is like for them. And no amount of words from the top are going to affect their sense of whether or not they're better off than they were three months ago, whether they're spending more or less money on the goods that they need on a weekly basis to feed their families. And all of that, like, there's no propaganda is not going to help that. And so you look at this and you say, okay, the inflation rate in December was 2.7%, which is historically insanely low. It's not quite as low as it was, you know, during the period of totally free money, you know, in the 2010s, but it's very, very, it's, it's relatively low. But of course, that's in one, it may not be, it's not low in housing, for example. Like, it's, you know, housing, which is the single largest expense that people have if they want to move houses or try to find a house or go into the housing market. Housing is inflated. I mean, you know, so there's, there's that kind of stuff. And the other weirdness to me is he's pushing Powell and they're Powell's now back at the center of this conversation. And the Fed has been cutting interest rates. I mean, it's not like, it's not like Powell's raising interest rates. The Fed has been, has cut interest rates, I don't know, four or five times in the last six months now. It's little bits, right. But he's not basis points.

Unknown Male Commentator (18:05)

He's not attacking on the specifics of interest rate cuts or not. He's attacking the independence of the Fed. And I think that's pretty clear. And I think it's heartening to hear like Thom Tillis and other senators push back a bit and say, look, that's fine, you're going to investigate Powell. We're not going to, you want to nominate he, he resigns or whatnot. We're not going to consider a new nominee until all this is settled or, you know, the Republicans in Congress and the senators did this as well with the War Powers Resolution that recently happened with regard to Venezuela. They're starting to push back on that and we should. That's commendable. That's exactly how our system is supposed to work. That is a deeply frustrating proposition for someone like Donald Trump who doesn't think those norms should apply to him. We know this, that's how he, his first term was like this and his second term is like this as well. But the economic point that Eliana makes is really important because what he's doing is similar. It reminds me a bit of some of the economic gimmicks and rhetoric that we saw from the Biden administration where they would tell you, you know, your Thanksgiving turkey is a dollar cheaper this year. The job growth is slow and in only in certain sectors inflation is better than it was, as you note. But there is still a general malaise about how the economy is moving forward and a lot of anxiety about future jobs and future job prospects. So I think he hasn't really spoken to those, instead throwing out these credit card and home ideas. That's not going to fly for most.

John Podhoretz (19:28)

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John Podhoretz (22:33)

I mean it's just very unbalanced when we talk about the economy. Like the stock market is on this historic run. It's going to hit 50,000.

Unknown Male Commentator (22:42)

Half of this country doesn't own stock though.

John Podhoretz (22:45)

A half the country doesn't own stock and B the entire market growth is being driven by a single industry. And that is very, very, very dangerous. Like almost, you know, like a wildly disproportionate part is related to AI growth.

Unknown Male Commentator (23:04)

And you know what lost jobs in this last quarter? Manufacturing and construction. Those are Trump voter job, right?

John Podhoretz (23:10)

Although there is again in this unbalanced way, there is serious construction work going on in the world of AI. That is these construction and the employment in these data centers, these massive energy gobbling facilities that have to power the use of the AI generators that just eat up an astounding amount of of energy if you happen to be in the right place at the right time where they're building one. Even though this is yet this is the new Walmart, right? Like everybody in kind of liberal economics land thinks the data centers are evil because you know, they're big and they employ a lot of people. So obviously they're just terrible.

Unknown Male Commentator (23:53)

But they do drive up energy prices for average people in the area. My energy prices have skyrocketed because of Northern Virginia's new data center. So it does.

John Podhoretz (24:02)

It leads to a significant why he wants the Oil. He wants to take the oil at Pennsylvania. Venezuela, obviously, he's got some connection there with the, you know, Ms. Rodriguez, the new acting president of Venezuela, is really great, he said the other day, because she's giving us the oil that we want, which I don't think is exactly the answer many of us were craving on the virtues of the Maduro extraction, necessarily. But he is addressing it. He's addressing it in a weird way. So we have this unbalanced economy that is growing. And of course, it also creates that weird inability that Washington policymakers and people in the upper middle class get, where they lose a tactile sense of what's going on with the American people themselves because they're totally shielded from the effects of inflation and of daily, and sort of the daily problems that Christine is talking about. And what they're looking at is a. Is a portfolio, even if it's a small portfolio that is like blowing up. Was the stock market was at 42 or 43 a year ago, it's at 49 now. Like, this is, you know, what do you want from life? This is the greatest thing ever. But, yeah, if you're one of the 170 million people whose families are not in the market, you're not getting much out of it.

Unknown Male Commentator (25:26)

Well, the data point that I read the other day that really shocked me and should be the thing that Republicans and the Trump administration focus on is that almost, I think it was almost 60% of Americans right now would not be able to deal with an emergency that costs more than about $400 or $500 because of the tightness of their household budgets without having to borrow. And when you think of, you know, rising costs of medical expenses, your car breaks down and you have an appliance that breaks, like, these are all things that are just basic realities for people. And the people are running on fumes, and they feel like they're running on fumes so. Because their wages have not really kept up with inflation over the past five years in particular. So that feeling. He needs to talk, he should address that feeling if he wants to talk about affordability, which is. I think he's giving a speech this week again about affordability. So.

John Podhoretz (26:15)

Right. But, but his, but his methods of dealing with affordability are to go. Elizabeth Warren. That's what's so weird, is that he just defaults to plucking ideas that would fit well at the Democratic Socialists of America convention, you know, capping.

Abe Greenwald (26:32)

And then Republicans pick up on them. You know, I mean, that's the other problem. Here is that it's not, not everything he says is parroted by Republicans, but a lot of them. And, and the, the ones that aren't parroted are sort of excused. You know, unless you're, unless you're Thom Tillis, you're not really going out there saying, what the, what the heck is a Republican doing talking like this. Right.

John Podhoretz (26:52)

Yeah. And Tom Tillis is not running for reelection, so.

Abe Greenwald (26:55)

That's right. Ex. You get these, get these, you know, and that's been the pattern, too. You know, obviously, the, you know, this, the, the senator declines to run for reelection, frees himself of the burden and then, you know, unloads the burden of being a Republican like in the Trump era. But it isn't dealt with this while people are in office. So the people who still have a career have to feel they have to be careful and whatever. And so these ideas sort of get, you know, they get picked up. It's like in, you know, so it's like dust mites or something that you almost can't see that we don't know what that will mean for the future. But these all, there's all these little particles of nonsense that get, you know, sort of picked up by the, by the Republican Party and, and therefore the wider conservative movement. And it's, it's, you know, it's, it's, it's embedding things in it that are hostile to its own immune system. And I don't know what that's going to mean for policy, but it could mean nothing. Or, you know, in the future, could mean that the immune system kicks in and just gets rid of all the, you know, as you say, the DSA stuff that Trump put in. But it also could mean that the fear of the MAGA grassroots and the backlash means that people feel they have to pay tribute to, you know, 10% credit card interest caps and, you know, no tax on tips and whatever. What this collection of things becomes a collection of GOP policy ideas and never goes away.

John Podhoretz (28:23)

Very plausible. Why don't we move on to the interesting question of the use of cars as a, as a weapon of violence? Because we have, obviously what happened with, with Renee Good in Minneapolis last week and then these repeated stories that are surfacing that we, I think, didn't know about enough about how much this has been a game in the anti ICE protests, like driving cars into people or trying to ram an ICE agent. And then yesterday, in an amazing, bizarre display in Los Angeles, a pro Iranian freedom demonstration, a guy rents a U Haul truck, puts on a Sign on the side of the U Haul truck that says no. 1953s referring to when the United States backed a, or did not support the democratically elected government of Mosaddegh in Iran and effectively backed a coup, though it did not explicitly back the coup. And so this guy takes this U Haul, puts an anti. Sort of like, let's change the regime in Iran sign on his van, and then drives the van into the protest. And obviously we've had other. We had the Waukesha, you know, with the, the. The. Was it a Labor Day parade or a Christmas morning? There have been these things in Christmas markets in Europe that this idea of, you know, and, and it's happened in Manhattan. Yeah, yeah, right. New York, the. The west side Highway. JI who like drove a mile in a. Basically in a bike lane and smashed into people.

Christine Rosen (30:16)

8.

John Podhoretz (30:16)

Killed 8 people or something like that. So, I mean, there have been bits of it in the last five years, but obviously when an incident like Renee Good have suddenly you focus your attention, you hear more about it and then people start copycatting it. I don't have anything particularly profound to say about it except like more signs of Americans either more signs of American social dissolution or the nightmare that has the fact that all crimes and all behavior in the United States is now nationalized. So that something happens in Minneapolis and three hours later it affects people in Los Angeles. It would have taken them a week even to find out about it in, you know, previous generations. Well, I think what's the crazy thing.

Seth Mandel (30:58)

To me is that there are so many causes that some American somewhere is willing to kill for. Like, like, you know, who knew some someone was that worked up over Mossadegh, you know.

John Podhoretz (31:14)

Well, I don't know. It's funny, a guy must be my age because that was a very big issue when I was, you know, when I was in my teens and twenties, most a day in Arbenz and Guatemala and, you know, oh, we backed these terrible dictators over wonderful populist democratic radical figures. But yeah, it's been like 40 years since one has even heard these words. Although do remember that Barack Obama apologized to Iran for our evil behavior in 1953, which wasn't evil actually, but I don't want to get into that.

Eliana Johnson (31:49)

John. One thing that I think is important to note is that many of the protests that we're seeing, they're taking place in Minneapolis right now. These are well funded, well organized by groups, by left wing groups that train activists and part of the tactics that they train these activists to use are the use of their vehicles to impede ice. So it's not random that this happened. This is a tactic that left wing groups funded by left wing donors are teaching and encouraging activists to use. And it is putting civilians at great harm. Not just civilians, civilians and law enforcement officers because the tactics are directed at them. So this is not an, it's not an accident. It wasn't a random event. It was purposeful. It was a purposeful and intentional tactic aimed to at ICE taught by these left wing groups.

Abe Greenwald (32:56)

And it's also, who else does it put in danger? Everybody on the road, right. If this becomes a tactic that people pick up, you're driving normally, when you're driving on the road and you drive past, say, let's say a police officer pulls somebody over, you know, in your neighborhood, you don't think that you shouldn't drive past that traffic stop because who knows if there's going to be, you know, a vehicle trying to ram the cop in a crossfire, whatever. But the ICE stuff makes it seem like the more this stuff happens and the more it becomes regular, the more dangerous everything on these roads gets whenever there's law enforcement involved. Not blaming the law enforcement, just saying that the tactic being used against them, if this happened, if somebody, you know, she, she seemed to drive into him, he, he fired his gun at her. The, on the, the, the sort of. The invisible man in all this, right? The third man in all this is, you know, I don't know, the mother who's dropping her kid off to school and drives through this neighborhood that now contain, that contains someone in a very large SUV blocking traffic and getting into it with armed law enforcement, right? So this, this is one of those things about the use of cars that, you know, it's not the same with like even guns or anything else that we have, you know, that we think of as traditional weapons because this is like the weapon of the suburbs. And suddenly, you know, if this catches on, think of how much more dangerous, you know, these, these, you know, neighborhoods and suburban neighborhoods and suburban roads get, because that's where this is happening. It's not even happening like it's from high crime areas and moving into, you know, the suburbs or something like that. It's like this is, this is like a suburban, you know, sort of thing. That's, that's, that's, you know, starting here and you know, and there's a lot of places it could catch on.

Unknown Male Commentator (34:56)

The ICE watch is also meant to preemptively warn people who are about to be detained. That's why they wear the whistles. They start blowing the whistles to warn people that ICE is on its way and then to connect them to some means of escape, which then, of course, raises the greater likelihood of some sort of pursuit by law enforcement of someone who is fleeing. So a lot of these arrests that might otherwise go smoothly. And by the way, people should look, it was circulating in news reports over the weekend here and there. They should look at some of the people who ICE has detained in the Minneapolis area, and for what crimes? Child rape, assault, murder, all kinds of pretty terrible things. So it's not. Again, I know the imagery and the. And the tactics are something that I think people should debate in a democracy as to whether or not we want ICE on the streets of suburbs enforcing the law in this way. But that idea that these organized activists are not just trying to prevent ICE when it arrives, but to warn people, some of whom are actually dangerous criminals, of impending arrest or detainment, that also creates a heightened environment where things are likely to spin into some sort of tragedy. Like we saw last week.

John Podhoretz (36:08)

I mean, we saw a judge in Milwaukee convicted of attempting to help somebody evade arrest in a courthouse. And to escape from the courthouse where she was supposed to be overseeing the hearing about his detainment, Hannah Dugan, convicted of a federal crime, had to resign her judgeship and, you know, in preparation for her being sentenced to jail. I mean, that's an official. She's a judge. You know, that gives you a sense of how apocalyptic people on the left think this. These newly aggressive efforts are, and how noble they are in cosplaying the salvation of the people who are being, you know, sort of looked at by this new dragnet. And they are operating on a different set of understandings about what it means to be a good citizen, a good person, you know, kind of like noble in their pursuit of justice and all of that. And that's the other part of this with the cars and stuff. And I just wonder. I don't want to be, like, overly, you know, take. Take pop culture overly seriously in some ways, but so much of what we're seeing here has to do with people who seem to have ideas about what happens when you're confronting law enforcement or what happens when you're in a car, what cars do and how they work and what that are, that are, like, out of movies that make it appear as though people survive being hit by cars, like. Like it's nothing. Or, you know, cars fly in the air and land 60ft later. And then they drive off. You know, the sort of these magical. That cars are, magic human beings are, because the plot of the movie that they're watching requires that they show somebody in danger. That person gets hit by a car, but then he gets up. So you know what? Maybe. Who knows what. Who. Who knows what split second idea there is in Renee Goode's head about how. Well, it's not gonna matter if I hit him with my car, because he'll just get. He'll bounce up like. Like a. Like a bozo, you know, punching bag. Because that's what I've seen 100,000 times on my TV screen. I mean, the set of the bizarre 10 seconds of the tragedy of Errors of Renee Goode and the ICE officer. You can see everybody acting as though they're almost not. The s. Didn't get real until suddenly it got realer than anything has ever been real.

Abe Greenwald (39:09)

Right? So, I mean, that's the thing about the cosplaying. Right after this happened with Renee Goode, I got a text from a friend who's in the idf, and he said what. What hit me about this was the cosplaying, like, without putting. Without putting, you know, blame on any one specific person. What he was saying was, you know, he sees Americans kind of cosplaying the situations that he's been put in in a military situation, right? So, you know, he said there was this one case, or he, you know, he knew people. There were Israeli soldiers. There was a guy that they were sent to. To, you know, stop and either arrest or question, whatever. A. He's in a car, an suv, and an Israeli soldier approaches from the. They tell him to stop. He slows down. Israeli soldier approaches from the back. The guy then doesn't stop and goes back and. And runs over the Israeli soldier's foot, right? So in a military situation, what happens? They fired the gun at the guy who drove over, that there was no question that he hit the soldier. Right? And whatever. And it was. And they. And. And he said, like, this was considered tragic for everybody because the soldiers who were there didn't want to shoot anybody. They don't know. They don't know for a fact that this guy was a terrorist or whatever. They just know that somebody, you know, drove over the foot of an IDF soldier in a military situation, and that is how things happen and escalate in the training and whatever. And he was just like, I'm seeing. Seeing this on the streets of Minneapolis is bizarre, because you shouldn't want to be aping this, you should, you aren't supposed to want your suburbs to look like, you know, a protracted military conflict. You know, that, that people get drafted into and trained for these situations.

John Podhoretz (41:09)

See, that to me is the weirdness of ice that people on the right need to take into account who are defending, you know, who are, who are saying that the, that the shooting was, you know, justified or at least, you know, legally, you know, that he shouldn't be, you know, convicted of murder or accused of murder or something like that. Why are they dressed in paramilitary garb? I understand they're doing raids on things and stuff like that and they might want protective gear, but NYPD officers who are not in SWAT or most police officers in America who are not in SWAT are not wearing, you are not wearing, you know, like combat uniforms. They're not masked. They're wearing the uniform that says, I'm a uniformed officer of, of, of, of, of the government, either local, state or federal. So you are to recognize who I am and you are to understand my authority and you are to implicitly understand that I have the authority based on the theory of the monopoly on violence that we grant our authorities that if you really go untoward and you come at me that I am allowed to shoot you with the gun that I received from my commission. But I don't know why they're all dressed like they're about to go into Fallujah.

Unknown Male Commentator (42:40)

Well, and this, this is what is so frustrating about the discussion ever since the shooting is that something can be legally permissible but morally and socially not desirable. And I think both sides on this argument have a problem acknowledging that. And that is where the narrative splits and you get into tribalists and insistence that, yeah, it's a, it doesn't matter if they look like paramilitary, you know, people parachuting into your suburb, suburb, that's fine because they're enforcing the law. These are the kinds of debates that we used to be able to have that are not tolerable now to, to a great many people on either side of these discussions. I agree with you there. I mean, there was a, there's a long standing debate about the militarization of, of local police forces in this country that's been going on for a long time. There's fascinating research and on either side about whether it's effective or not. Should we.

John Podhoretz (43:31)

But, you know, that's an interesting. I'm glad you brought that up because of course this is not really that, because this is a federal law enforcement agency that is. But the militarization of suburban police departments was actually partially the result of the military buildup that happened in the wake of 9 11, which is that we produced an immense amount of equipment for the use of fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan that at some point went offline. And then the military, the federal government, sold the things that they built to local law enforcement. So suddenly there's a suburban police department in Arizona that has something very close to a tank.

Unknown Male Commentator (44:19)

Well, they also had created terrorism task forces out of necessity post 9 11. And so those were some of that went there.

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Seth Mandel (46:44)

Like so many other wrong turns in our national life. This now is the military garb of ice has sort of become a kind of self fulfilling prophecy in that now they kind of need it because they're getting rat.

John Podhoretz (47:00)

Now they're under attack, but now they are under attack.

Christine Rosen (47:02)

Right?

Eliana Johnson (47:02)

I don't, I don't think I agree with you guys that like the military garb of ice is what is causing this, is the cause of this hostility. I don't think I have a view on whether they should wear it or shouldn't wear it. But I mean we just saw, you know, five years, I can't even keep track of time. But like, yeah, a few years back like the left was attacking the police and hated the police. And they're wearing regular burning down police precincts. In Minneapolis they're wearing regular police uniforms. When we were fighting the Iraq war, it was general betray us and we hate the military. And okay, they're wearing military uniforms as they're supposed to. I just don't believe that the hostility and hatred and violence directed their way is because of their uniforms. Maybe they should or shouldn't wear something, but I don't believe that that is like a causal mechanism here.

John Podhoretz (47:59)

You make a very good point. And I do think that the, you know, the, the hatred of the uniform is a enduring fact of both leftist American anti American politics and far right weird combination of libertarianism and John Bircher ism. You know that they, one of those horseshoes that they've always, they always hate uniforms whether they're, whether they're military police, whatever. I'm talking about something slightly different, which is that there's a science fictional aspect to a foo foo poet leftist lesbian in her car with her girlfriend, parking at perpendicular, coming face to face with a guy who looks like, as I say, looks like he could launch himself into Fallujah. And it adds to the unreality quality. I don't know, this is like a cultural analysis that has literally no evidence behind it. So I'm just spewing it out as a kind of thought experiment. But if what we need is for people to grasp that the government has changed is newly aggressive toward dealing with undocumented workers, illegal aliens, you know, however you want to call them, and that this better be taken seriously because they mean business and don't get in their way because you are impeding a legally merited and justified law enforcement effort. And if you get in the way, bad things might happen to you. But if it looks like you're playing the game Fallout or Call of Duty and not like you're what actually happens in the real world. Your ability to discern fantasy from reality is impeded in that moment. Again, maybe I'm just, this is just nonsense and I'm willing to entertain that it's nonsense. But when you watch that over and over again, the bizarreness of the absolutely anodyne nature of the vehicle that Renee Goode was driving and the two masked cops, you know, screaming at her and then taking out the gun and all this, it's doesn't feel real in some weird way. And it's like they didn't feel it was real either. Or Renee Goode and her wife certainly did not seem to feel like what was happening was real enough for her to be like, oh man, this is serious. I better get out of this car. I better stop this car and get.

Unknown Female Advertiser (50:59)

Out of the car.

John Podhoretz (51:01)

This guy is not kidding around. She was like, he's kidding around. Whatever, I'll just drive off. What's he gonna do to me? Again, not necessarily a defense of him or her or anything like that. It's just like, how do you analyze this situation that happens in this 5, 6, 7 second window?

Unknown Male Commentator (51:21)

But this is, this is Eliana's earlier point about the years long effort to demonize law enforcement. Not just ice, but all law enforcement is important here. Because during post George Floyd, there were a lot of people who taunted and, you know, tried to instigate some force, use of force on the part of the cops constantly. I mean, I saw it on the streets of Washington D.C. all the time. Most people in cities, you saw it in New York, they were constantly antagonizing law enforcement and trying to draw a reaction. And almost every time those cops tried not to do that and when there were arrests made because there was some sort of law breaking or some mob like scene started to happen, then there was this intense overreaction to law enforcement doing the very basics of crowd control and public safety techniques. So that I think if you're someone who's even mildly on the left, that's the cultural attitude you've had about law enforcement. And the reason she might have shrugged and thought, oh, what's he going to do to me? Is that she didn't think he would do anything to her because they're, especially if they're very online and very much part of this culture stuff didn't happen to most of those people. Cops were attacked a lot in the post George Floyd era and no one was prosecuted for those crimes. So I think maybe there is a sense of permissibility among Them, that is, now they're shocked. They really are surprised. And if she knew anything or thought anything, what she should have known is that if she got out of that car, she was going to be placed under arrest.

Eliana Johnson (52:49)

That that is the failure of the Minnesota Minneapolis elected officials, I think, to drive home that this is dangerous. If you're going to get up in these people's faces and you're going, you know that impeding law enforcement is dangerous, don't do this. There's a way to peacefully protest, but this is not it. You're putting your life at risk.

Seth Mandel (53:17)

But I mean, to Christine's point, it wasn't dangerous for years. In all sorts of context.

Eliana Johnson (53:23)

They should know, okay, they're in charge of the Minneapolis Police Department and local police officials, but they should know when they're waging war on the feds, that federal officials are likely to behave differently and that when they're encouraging their local residents to protest them, they are putting them at risk.

Christine Rosen (53:48)

Oh, I agree.

Seth Mandel (53:49)

And by the way, cops should behave different. I mean, there needs to be a correction of this, of this. This sort of the impediment to law enforcement of all types. After George Floyd, it's like all cops of all sorts pulled back because they didn't want to get, you know, caught up in another incident that that's gonna, you know, send people out into the streets. That needs to change or that that is changing or something.

John Podhoretz (54:17)

Except it's not changing. I mean, it's going in the other direction. In the largest city in the country, the head of Zora Mamdani's public safety transition team was Tamika Mallory. Tamika Mallory, head of the Women's March, who was a Farrakhanite and an open anti Semite and a hater of cops, leader of the George Floyd protest is. It's literally putting a lunatic in charge of the asylum. To have Tameka Mallory as the person that you're looking to help you fill jobs in the realm of public safety. And that's in the largest city in the country. We have the DA of Philadelphia coming out and saying that he'll be happy to indict and throw into jail ICE agents.

Unknown Male Commentator (55:02)

You have the police chief in Philadelphia.

Eliana Johnson (55:04)

The police chief in Philadelphia.

John Podhoretz (55:07)

So that's the fifth largest city in the country. Like, this is not going in the right direction. If Abe, you say we need to go in the right direction. And so obviously there's going to be more. You subsidize something, you get more of it. If you subsidize, you know, as Sort of a, kind of a war on cops. You're going to get more of a war on cops than we've had so far. Which then creates the countermeasure. Like we're sitting here saying, this is terrible. We need countermeasures. But the countermeasure is Kristi Noem saying we're gonna put 20 billion more ice agents with guns in your face. That's how we're gonna handle this. Like, that's a way of decon. That's a way of, as we say, deconflicting. Like, the thing to do in the immediate wake of something like what happened to, you know, in the Minneapolis shooting is to bring the temperature down. And federal officials have an obligation in terms of the, like the society, of our society to turn the temperature down. And of course, the Trump people just turn the temperature up.

Unknown Male Commentator (56:10)

Well, and she, she in particular has an obligation because she did two, I think she did two things that have made this situation much worse. First is to call it an act of domestic terrorism in the immediate aftermath of it. That was wrong. The second thing is what you say is the justification for sending more ICE agents isn't actually to quell the, you know, any rioting or protest or danger to the general public. They're claiming it's because they want to arrest more because it's the Somali fraud stuff. And the point there is that most of the people arrested in that and who are being prosecuted for Somali fraud are either American citizens or naturalized citizens. They're not actually under ICE's purview to arrest. So even the justifications for the increase in the ICE presence are wrong headed. It's just, it doesn't make sense. I mean, she's, she's not doing the one thing that is actually in her control to do right now, which is to assure the public that ICE is there to enforce federal immigration law and not to create a kind of culture of fear or anxiety. I think they like the culture of fear. I think they think that's a mark of their power. And that's where they're wrong. And that's where I think the American public, we see it in some early public opinion surveys, they're starting to turn on that idea because that's not what they wanted. They wanted a closed border and they wanted bad guys who'd gotten across that border to be sent back to where they came from. That's what they voted for.

John Podhoretz (57:32)

And the ability to hold two thoughts in your head is something that the Trump administration clearly does not believe in. You yourself said earlier in this podcast. Look at the thing, look at the, the information that is coming out on who has been arrested in Minneapolis. It justifies a pretty serious and significant effort to, you know, apprehend criminals who are not facing justice because they melt into the civilian population. And ICE has gone after them and arrested them. And yet, on the other hand, ICE is not there as a show of federal power to show everybody that we're, you know, we mean business.

Abe Greenwald (58:18)

That's something they are now, right?

John Podhoretz (58:20)

Yeah, they are now.

Abe Greenwald (58:21)

That's the problem. This is how Trump thinks. And he likes that response, but he also likes the idea that there is a. The flip side of the stuff that he's doing in Venezuela and Iran is that he thinks that way on the domestic front, too, right? A show of force, something that shows that he means business. You know, don't. Don't mess with, you know, he says on the plane yesterday, the, the reporter asking him, what's your message, you know, to the Iranians? And he says, oh, you'll find out soon. You know, that's. That also tends to be his message to Americans. Right. Not to laugh about it, but it's like he speaks one way, which is, oh, mess with me and, you know, mess with the bull and you'll get the horns. And, you know, there needs to be a kind of differentiating. On the other other hand, there is one aspect of this that, that I feel like is a bigger part of it or a bigger deal than it gets treated as, which is the idea that these sort of citizen, you know, troops are following and tracking law enforcement vehicles around cities with a signal chat and saying, you know, there's one been spotted here, so and so is here. A federal law enforcement official is now not just thinking, you know, is this woman crazy or is she going to run me over? But I've seen this woman three times today. She was following me back on Baker street, and then, you know, out on the highway, she was two cars behind me. And he's not making it up, right? There is this idea that you surveil the surveillance, and that, to me seems like just something that is a bigger part of this than it's being made out to be. Because what are law. Law enforcement? No, they know they're being followed and they're not making it up. Now, sometimes they, you know, are imagining it. And that's not the woman who was following you, but it's like, you know, I don't know, there was a, you know, which, which Ford Expedition was following me, you know, two hours ago @ it was it thou. And they're thinking in terms of like, am I. Who am I being followed by? There's a signal chat that means people are organizing to impede law enforcement efforts, right? So they go into a town and they now know that there's a distinct possibility that there's a group of these citizens who know who they are and where they are. And that when they go in, instead of, you know, having the element of surprise on somebody that they need to arrest and try to deport because, you know, they raped or killed someone, they're going in with the idea that there might be a blockade to get through. There might be people running interference in the way, and there very well might be people warning that guy who is dangerous because he committed a crime before, maybe he's armed, and now he's being warned and told the cops are on their way. It seems to me that this idea of the citizen brigade is escalating things in. In the minds of. Of ICE officers in very understandable way. If you were in that law enforcement position, it's hard to not think about the organized way that, you know, this is happening and fold that into. It's kind of like, well, if you behave like, you know, I don't want to say these. These people are behaving like a criminal syndicate, but it's like that's what the bad guys do to cops. And so the ICE guys are like, you know, they're behaving like the guys normally. People who track us, right, and follow us and run interference for the bad guys are literal bad guys. And now we have to figure out whether it's, you know, suburban mom or the literal bad.

John Podhoretz (62:09)

Guys. You know, I. This just brings to mind something. Make a cultural reference. So last night, the Golden Globe Awards were on. It's the first major event of the awards, you know, like nationally televised, big event of the awards season, and one battle after another won all the top prizes on what seems to be its inexorable path to winning Best Picture. And I bring this up because this is a movie I think is really quite dazzling. And I am used to being able to separate out my politics and the films or aesthetics experiences that I have. So it is a leftist screed in many ways, and so I don't like that. But it is an incredibly vivid and powerful and funny and clever and unexpected piece of filmmaking. And it's like one of those movies that reminds you what movies can do at their best. And so I am full of praise for it. But I Do want to talk about the ending? Paul Thomas Anderson is the writer, director, always has a problem ending his movies. His movies often have disastrous endings. Like There Will Be Blood had a disastrous ending. Licorice Pizza has, which is another. His last one, which I think is also wonderful, has a disaster. Phantom Thread has it. He doesn't know how to finish his movie. So in this movie, this is about an ex, basically weatherman or revolutionary. And it's 16 years later and basically he's living in an America in which ice is now sort of dominating force. It's kind of the president President, but it's like a slightly alternate present and, and it's a burlesque. It's about their ridiculous. He and his former radical cronies are kind of all like druggy, has been ludicrous. They still have a network, but the network is now been taken over by kind of AOC types who get offended when he calls them up and doesn't know what the password is. And then they, he yells at them and they say, you're triggering me with your language. And he's like, I need to, I need an extraction or they're going to kill my daughter. And they're like, well, you don't know the password and you're. You're tree. You're not allowed to talk to me this way. We're going to have to go to mediation with our superiors and stuff. Like the hilarious scene. Anyway, the whole thing sort of ends up with. It's kind of a nihilistic burlesque until the final three minutes where the daughter that he is trying to protect, who is basically his daughter with assata Shakur, Leonardo DiCaprio's daughter with a character based on Assata Shakur. He has now come through everything and she is living in their cabin and she gets a message that there's a protest in Oakland and she's got to get there. She's got to get there and help. And she jumps in the car and he's like, make sure you wear your seatbelt. And you know, she goes off to be a good modern day version of him, except she's not a stoner and she's not crazy. She's resolute and brave and serious and he gets back onto his couch and lights up his bong and like gets all stoned while she goes off to be a wonderful modern day activist with none of the character flaws or ludicrousnesses that you know, that sort of 70s and 80s and 90s activists had. And I bring this up only to say that, you know, like, what a great message for everybody to get now in 2026. Like, this is Hollywood at its best, at its worst in that sense, which is like, this is the last thing that a 20 year old needs to hear. Not that any 20 year old ever will go see One Battle after another, which is, you know, basically a movie for older people like me, since it stars Leonardo DiCaprio and Sean Penn and Benicio del Toro and, you know, they want to watch, I don't know, heated rivalry or something like that. But it is. But it shows you how sentimentalized this idea of protest is. Leftist protest is. It's a complete. You do not cross it. It's wonderful. Everybody does. It is wonderful. And they're, they're so idealistic. It's the idealism of youth. Isn't it just beautiful? And it totally undercuts the satirical quality of the rest of the movie. But maybe that's one of the things that makes it palatable. Whereas Eddington, the other movie about radical cultural conflict in the United states in the 2000s, is really dark and really goes to the very darkest place and therefore, you know, did not do.

Seth Mandel (66:51)

Well. The message that you're talking about isn't. Isn't aimed at the youth. It's aimed at the generation that wants confirmation of their romanticization of the 60s and.

Christine Rosen (67:06)

Stuff.

John Podhoretz (67:06)

Right. You know, well, like Paul Thomas Anderson, who himself is 55 years old. So he's like, I'm too old to do anything, but it is. But you guys go out and fight.

Unknown Male Commentator (67:16)

Ice. But that's the thing. It is dangerous if it actually sends the message. And these are the messages of these movies. Their violence has meaning and purpose and is important. And violence against their ideas is always fascism. I mean, that's obviously. It's.

John Podhoretz (67:31)

Hyperbole. No, no, I think there is.

Unknown Male Commentator (67:33)

A perfect summary, but both the old and the young on the left love that message. Like violence has a use. We. And we know this to be political violence, in particular, to be something that an increasing number of young people think is sometimes.

John Podhoretz (67:44)

Justified. Absolutely. Okay, we'll leave it there until tomorrow. For Seth Eliana, Christine and Abe, I'm John Pothorowitz. Keep the candle.