He Said, Xi Said

Summary

The Commentary Magazine Podcast - “He Said, Xi Said”
Date: May 14, 2026
Host: Jon Podhoretz
Panelists: Abe Greenwald, Seth Mandel
Guest: Matthew Continetti (Wall Street Journal, AEI)

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Episode Overview

This episode covers the recent Trump-Xi summit in Beijing—a meeting set against the explosive U.S.-Iran conflict and shifting global power dynamics. The panel dissects the summit’s outcomes, the state of U.S.-China relations, the wars in the Middle East and Ukraine, tech rivalries in AI and green energy, and the domestic political implications for the upcoming U.S. elections. Digressions include meme-driven political culture, media narratives of American decline, and the role of military spending and public sentiment in shaping strategy.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. The Trump-Xi Summit: Substance or Spectacle?

• Events Recap: Trump’s state dinner in China, ceremonial welcomes, a 17-second hug with Xi, and Xi’s public insistence to "keep your hands off Taiwan."
• Panel’s Take: Continetti predicts little substantive change from the summit, calling it “a big, loud raspberry, and nothing actually substantive will emerge.”
  [02:55 — D]
• Differing Priorities: Xi focused publicly on Taiwan, while Trump focused on Iran and the Strait of Hormuz. Written U.S. statements emphasized Iranian issues; Chinese statements focused on Taiwan.
• Outlook: Both leaders appear to reinforce their respective priorities, perpetuating the status quo rather than breaking new ground.
  [06:06 — D]
  “We’ve reached some type of equilibrium here… I’m fine with the status quo coming out of this summit.”

2. Iran War: The Only Issue That Matters

• Strategic Pause: The summit is seen as a “holiday from history,” a brief pause before renewed U.S. action against Iran due to continued violations and missile development.
  [05:39 — B, D]
• Impact on Trump’s Presidency: The fate of Trump’s presidency now hinges on the outcome in Iran.
  [06:06 — D]
• China’s Position: While Xi’s public focus is Taiwan, panelists suspect Iran was discussed behind closed doors due to China’s reliance on Iranian energy and recent U.S. blockades.

3. Areas of U.S.-China Competition

a) Technology and Energy

• Electric Vehicles (EVs):
  • China is “superior in EV tech and cost,” which could threaten the U.S. auto industry.
    [10:57 — D]
    “The tech is good, the tech is very good.”
  • Both parties have imposed heavy tariffs to keep Chinese EVs out, amid security concerns about “mobile surveillance units.”
    [11:09 — D]
• Green Energy:
  • China leads in green tech—solar, batteries, rare earths—while the U.S. maintains an edge in fossil fuels and has gained leverage by crippling Iranian oil flows and aligning with Venezuela.
• Artificial Intelligence:
  • U.S. currently holds and is extending leadership in AI due to chip controls and foundational model advantages.
    [13:31 — D]
    “The smarter the AI gets, the better trained it becomes… they’re not catching up.”
  • Skepticism about Chinese proposals for “AI safety” cooperation, seeing it as a potential ploy to close the gap.
    [16:16 — D]
• Robotics:
  • Chinese advances impressive in demos, “but industrial applications are what matter” and China has yet to close the gap.
    [17:39 — D]

b) Economic Might & Perceptions

• China’s Rise vs. American Dominance:
  • Panel counters media claims of Chinese global primacy, noting U.S. GDP is nearly double China’s and that American per capita income and global industry leadership (tech, media, healthcare) remain unmatched.
    [23:22 — B]
    “It has a GDP of $18 trillion. The United States … has a GDP of $33 trillion.”
• Media & Intellectual Narratives:
  • Persistent elite narratives (e.g., Rothkopf in Daily Beast) overstate China’s strength and downplay U.S. power, viewed as a “stupid idea” only “an intellectual could believe.”
    [36:34 — B]

4. American Power Projection and Iran War

• Demonstration of Force:
  • Trump’s decisive action in Iran, despite lack of overwhelming public support, sends a “real message” to China and others about America’s willingness and ability to use force. [28:09 — D]
  • Despite Western fears of running low on munitions, panel argues Iran and Russia are the ones truly on the back foot militarily and economically.
• Freedom as Competitive Edge:
  • Continetti laments that Trump “has always neglected that competitive edge to his detriment”—namely, America’s model of freedom and constitutionality that drives innovation and economic strength.
    [31:01 — D]

5. Military Spending and the Neo-Con Argument

• Defense Budgets:
  • Trump’s trillion-plus dollar proposed defense budgets are framed as essential for replenishing munitions, upgrading procurement, and revitalizing the industrial base. Calls for critics to “put up or shut up” and support the funding.
    [40:04 — B; 41:20 — D]
• Historical Precedents:
  • Reference to the 1960 election, when Democrats ran to Nixon’s right on defense, showing how accusations of weakness drag debate toward more hawkish policies.
    [42:27–44:05 — B, D]

6. 2028 US Political Horse Race

• Vance vs. Rubio:
  • J.D. Vance, Trump’s vice president, is in an awkward political position—less tied to the Iran war but not able to oppose it; polls show waning grassroots support compared to meme-driven Marco Rubio boomlet.
  • Rubio’s “memeability” and broad appeal are credited with his rising star status.
    [50:09 — C; 50:19 — A; 50:28 — B; 50:31 — D]
• Trump and Succession:
  • Trump is unlikely to endorse a successor; he wants unity but recognizes a “Tucker wing” anti-war primary challenge is likely inevitable.
  • Only one vice president has ascended to the presidency via election since 1836, making Vance’s prospects structurally weak.
• Democratic Primary Speculation:
  • Panel expects Democratic infighting (“who hates Jews more?” as satire), predicting Republicans will appear more rational if the Iran war is “won.”

7. America’s Social Cohesion – A Cultural Aside

• Draft and Social Integration:
  • Movie recommendation springboards a discussion on the WWII draft as a tool of nation-building and lost social cohesion. [67:54 — B]
    “Tens of millions of Americans were forced to know people out of their ambit, something that had never happened in any society before.”
• Cultural Fragmentation:
  • Further distance from community life and mass culture (as represented by sharing movies like Abbott & Costello) is lamented.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the Summit’s Substance:
  “The results will be a big, loud raspberry and nothing actually substantive will emerge.” — Matthew Continetti [02:55]
• On Dual Focus at the Summit:
  “Xi Jinping is focused on Taiwan and Trump is focused on Iran, which means… you’re going to just kind of have a perpetuation of the status quo.” — Matthew Continetti [08:08]
• On China’s EV Advantage:
  “Senator Alyssa Slotkin… called these Chinese EVs mobile surveillance units, and that’s what they are.” — Matthew Continetti [11:09]
• On AI Supremacy:
  “The smarter the AI gets, the better trained it becomes… they’re not catching up.” — Matthew Continetti [13:31]
• On Media Perceptions:
  “Some ideas are so stupid only an intellectual could believe them… you can look at the array of America in 2026 and say, it’s not a unipolar world… but we’re pretty close to being the only power in the world.” — Jon Podhoretz [36:34]
• On Meme Politics:
  “The Rubio meme is funny… as you say, it’s flattering to him because he is both the National Security Advisor and the Secretary of State and the Head of aid… It’s a grassroots campaign.” — Matthew Continetti [50:31]
• On Succession Math:
  “One vice president since 1836 has won the presidency from the vice presidency, and that was George H.W. Bush. How do you like them apples?” — Jon Podhoretz [61:09]
• On Historical Social Cohesion:
  “Tens of millions of Americans were forced to know people out of their ambit… It had enormous virtues for the kind of social cohesion.” — Jon Podhoretz [67:54]

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• [00:53] — Opening summary and initial summit analysis
• [03:16] — Discussion of Iran as central global crisis
• [06:06] — Breakdown of U.S.-China public statements
• [10:50 – 16:16] — Deep dive: Electric vehicles, AI, and tech advantage
• [23:22] — GDP comparison and U.S. economic strength
• [28:09] — China’s “axis of aggression” and Western response
• [40:04 – 44:04] — Military spending, “missile gap” history, strategists’ arguments
• [47:33] — Vance vs. Rubio polling, meme culture influence
• [50:09] — The rise of the “Rubio meme”
• [61:09] — Statistical odds of vice president succession
• [67:54] — Reflection on the WWII draft, social solidarity, and movie recommendations

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Conclusion

The episode deftly balances deep geopolitical analysis with contemporary American political intrigue—and a dose of pop culture—highlighting the layered competition between the U.S. and China as well as the internal battles that will shape America’s strategic direction. The tone is incisive, wry, and combative, with plenty of historical context and meta-commentary about elite narratives.

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Panel Recommendations

• Movie: Biloxi Blues (1987), with reflections on Neil Simon’s mature storytelling and the social mixing of WWII.
• Also Mentioned: The Sunshine Boys—praised for its humor and generational perspective.

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For listeners unable to tune in, this summary provides both narrative arc and granular insights into the Commentary team’s frank, often iconoclastic, perspective on today’s defining political, technological, and military debates.

Transcript

[A]

Foreign.

[B]

Expect the worst. Some drinks and pain Some die of thirst no way of knowing which way it's going. Hope for the best, Expect the worst, Hope for the best. Welcome to the Commentary Magazine daily podcast. Today is Thursday, May 14, 2026. I am Jon Pod Horiz, the editor of Commentary. With me, as always, executive editor Abe Greenwald. Hi, Abe.

[C]

Hi, Jon.

[B]

Senior editor Seth Mandel. Hi, Seth.

[A]

Hi, John.

[B]

And joining us, former Commentary Daily panelist, current columnist for the Free Expression vertical at the Wall Street Journal, and Big Poobah at the American Enterprise Institute, Matthew Continetti. Hi, Matt.

[D]

Hi, John.

[B]

Matt, Trump's in China. They had prime rib and duck at dinner. He was taken to see the Great hall of the People. They had a 17 second hug. Xi said, keep your hands off Taiwan. The White House says they agreed the Straits of Hormuz should be open, though that's only been said on paper. What do we think is going on here?

[D]

I think that's a pretty good summary of the summit so far. You left out all of the cheering children that greeted Trump as he was making his entrance, and he was clearly moved by them. I've had low expectations for this summit. You know, I believe that the US China rivalry will define the 21st century. And there are many different domains of competition, from trade to military to tech to all the pieces of tech, from AI to power generation, electric vehicles. There's the Taiwan Strait, the status of Taiwan, there's the Hormuz Strait, and Chinese reliance on Iranian energy supplies, which have been strangled thanks to the blockade President Trump has in place. So there's a wide variety of issues to talk about, including human rights, including the fate of Jimmy Lai, the Hong Kong media mogul who has been imprisoned unjustly and is in poor health and aged. There's also Christianity in China. Pastor Ezra Jin has been imprisoned for several months. Now. All of these things could come up. Maybe they will come up during the discussions President Trump has had with Xi Jinping and will have on day two of the summit. But my sense right now is that the results will be a big, loud raspberry and nothing actually substantive will emerge from this meeting, the first of four expected meetings between Trump and Xi Jinping over the course of 2026.

[B]

So he's been invited to the White House in September, which is an interesting period of time. I mean, granted, world leaders don't meet with incredible frequency, but it's an interesting period of time because it gives Trump three months to actually fight and win the war in Iran, which is really the only thing that matters on Earth. And if he's going off to China to have this postponed summit, you have to assume that while there's all these topics on the table, the issue of the summit is going to be Iran. And what that means, we don't really know. We don't know what they're going to talk about, what kinds of complaints Trump is going to issue about Iran's potential interference or China's potential interference in the war effort or efforts to help Iran. And this question of the flow of oil from Iran to China, which now apparently has some kind of an overland route possibility, although how they can get enough oil that way to China for China to fulfill its energy needs is very mysterious. That is like. That's like sending, you know, a drop of what you could send through the ocean.

[D]

Therefore, the Silk Road is long and arduous, as opposed to an arduous.

[B]

Yes, yes. And very bumpy. And. Yeah, you know, so the Silk Road

[A]

is long, but it bends toward justice,

[B]

it bends toward injustice. If you're going that. If you're going the China direction, what

[D]

direction you're going in.

[B]

I do believe that we're sitting here in this very peculiar interregnum, literally an interregnum. Because of this summit, the conditions have been met for the United States to reengage Iran militarily on all fronts. The violations of the ceasefire, the refusal, the rejection of the American peace document, all of that. And then everything just sort of, like, ground to a halt. And so he'll leave Beijing whenever he

[D]

leaves Beijing, tomorrow night, Friday night, his time.

[B]

Okay, so there is this kind of, like, momentary breath, and then we're just back into the question of if they're reconstituting their missile program and if they have missile stuff like the way we talked about the other day on the podcast that the New York Times reported. He is going to have to act. So this is like a holiday from history in a weird way.

[D]

Well, I think you're right to say that Iran is really the only thing that matters now around the world. And for President Trump, I mean, the fate of his presidency kind of hinges on what happens in the Strait of Hormuz. And you're right to say that this meeting is kind of awkward because they had delayed the meeting, which was initially supposed to happen in March, I believe, because of Operation Epic Fury. And the expectation was, well, maybe things would be resolved by May, when they have the current summit. Of course, that's not the case. But you can't just delay it again, because then you're backing into the rest of the schedule. So they kind of had to go. I think it was interesting that China, in the person of Xi Jinping, the dictator of China, the penultimate leader there, the ultimate leader, rather, didn't talk about Iran publicly. He talked about Taiwan. Taiwan is what matters to him. And he gave a very provocative statement in many ways. He said, look, if America doesn't play this right, there will be conflict between China, the People's Republic of China, and the United States over Taiwan. And that is strange to me, because the party that wishes to change the relationship isn't America, it's the People's Republic of China. They're the ones that are trying to force unification between the mainland and Taiwan, which has existed as an independent entity since 1949 and as a democracy for about the last 40 years, not the United States in the Taiwan Strait. The United States is a status quo power, and we have this view that we oppose any unilateral action to take to change the condition of Taiwan, whereas Xi Jinping wants the United States to adopt a explicit rejection of Taiwanese independence. That's what concerns him. And then you look at the American statement and what is it about? It's about Iran. And it says that according to the statement, the written statement issued by the White House, it says that Xi Jinping agreed with President Trump that the Strait of Hormuz should not be militarized. There shouldn't be the toll booths, there shouldn't be the Iranian checkpoints that you have to go through, and that Iran should never have a nuclear weapon. So Xi Jinping is focused on Taiwan and Trump is focused on Iran, which means, again, you're going to just kind of have a perpetuation of the status quo out of the summit. And in my view, that's not a bad thing because we've reached the point in the relationship with China right now where after all of the rollercoaster of 2025, where at two points in the year, in the spring and then in fall, we essentially were embargoing China and they were embargoing us. We have reached some type of equilibrium here where we still have very high tariffs on China, and they have tariffed us, but they're also, they have delayed the controls over their rare earths, minerals, which could be very crippling to the American economy and the world. So I'm fine with the status quo coming out of this summit.

[B]

There are issues that desperately need to be addressed between the US And China that are entirely outside of the purely geopolitical right. You mentioned the rare earth miracles, but minerals, not miracles, but the rare earth, which are central to our military efforts and other things. But AI and electric cars. If you put those two issues on the table, what we are hearing from people who know about automobiles and know about what's going on in the development of the next generation of automobiles, China has achieved superiority in the development of the electric car and the electric car battery in a way that could be extraordinarily revolutionary inside the United States. I don't know what it is, whether it's the second or third largest industry in the United States, which remains the automobile and truck industry. If China really has experienced a breakthrough that we are not near, well, part

[C]

of the breakthrough is that they can offer them for so much less money than.

[B]

But it's two things, right?

[D]

The tech is good, the tech is very good.

[B]

But the tech is apparently what makes. Jessica Stern, who writes about tech for the Wall Street Journal, said if she could, she would now own a Chinese electric vehicle.

[D]

But she can't and she shouldn't. Because Senator Alyssa Slotkin, who, as of many in the audience. No, I'm not usually a fan of. I think she actually stated it very well the other day. Of course, she represents Michigan or the Otto State, but she called these Chinese EVs mobile surveillance units, and that's what they are. And there's no question that China would like to introduce their evolution electric vehicles into the US Market. But it's been a bipartisan stance. Both President Trump and President Biden have imposed crippling tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles in order to keep them out. Earlier this year, in advance of the summit, there was some. There were some rumors from people connected to the EV industry that allowing some production of Chinese EVs in the United States could be part of a deal between the US And China. Those rumors seem to have been quashed over the past days in advance. So I don't expect that to happen. I think you're absolutely right to point this out about the advances in the Chinese electric vehicles. And that's what I mean when I say you have to look at each of the domains of competition and you have to see where does America have leverage and where does China have leverage? Right now, China has the most leverage over green energy related industries, from solar panels to electric vehicles to the lithium batteries to some of these energy generators. I think Donald Trump's response to that is very commonsensical. Which is, well, if China is in advance and owns green energy, America just won't have green energy because what we have the advantages in is the domain of fossil fuels. We are the energy fossil fuel superpower. And now we've added to our power Venezuela, which had been traditionally aligned with China, and we have militarily hampered, devastated and economically crippled Iran, which is China's main source of fossil fuels. So that's where we have leverage, not the green energy stuff, we have leverage in the fossil fuels. And in AI in particular, which you also mentioned, we have the advantage. And the experts I talk to tell me that the advantage is growing because of certain controls we've put in place on the transfer of high tech chips to China. And the initial advantages we had in the models, the fact that we created, you know, OpenAI and the ChatGPT and then there's anthropic and cloud and all this. Those initial advantages actually build over time because as kind of makes sense, the smarter the AI gets, the better trained it becomes. And so even though the Chinese model, the deep SEQ model and some of the others were impressed, a lot of people at the start, they're kind of beginning from a different position on the racetrack and so they're not catching up.

[B]

And it's worth remembering that there was this moment, I guess six months ago when there was a kind of panic in certain circles because the United States had agreed to allow Nvidia to export chips to China. And then it appeared that this might have been, Interestingly enough, a 4D, a four dimensional chess move because we are allowing the importation of a slower chip than we now use in the United States.

[D]

That's right.

[B]

And China has therefore the development of. And you can't really take that chip and make it better, the Nvidia chip, you can't retrofit it, or maybe you can, but in any case, the idea is if these are self training machines, the chip power is absolutely crucial. And so if you have the model and the model is good to begin with, and you're running it on a more powerful chip, then China can run its model. You have a double advantage. And so we might be. This is like a kind of. If this is a version of the Cold War missile showdown, we are a generation, that generation can be a year by the way, but we are a generation ahead of them in this. Now I know we're all terrified of AI. We don't know what's happening with AI. It's fright, you know, it's revolutionary in ways we don't understand, we don't have control of it and all of that, but nonetheless we certainly don't want them to be in the lead on it. We cannot.

[D]

That's why Trump has to be very cautious when Xi Jinping talks to him about, quote, unquote, AI safety and proposes, hey, to make sure that this doesn't get out of hand, this technology, why don't you spend more time cooperating with us and sharing what you know? That, of course, is an alley to nowhere and an alley to Chinese dominance, which we don't want in that sector. And I don't think Trump will fall for it. The other sector, I think that we get a lot of publicity in the United States and it may seem as though China has the leverage is robotics, but the robotics is fascinating because I'm sure everyone has seen these images of the Chinese robots that can run really fast and they're doing jumping jacks and they're doing cartwheels and they put on a little song and dance and you can have the Cantina band from Star wars with these Chinese droids. One expert I talked to said, pointed out that those are great for show, but they're not actually the highest use of robots. What people really want is what you need is the robots for industrial applications. And the Chinese haven't quite figured that out yet.

[A]

But I mean, I also think it's likely that the Chinese maybe share more than we do about where we are. Like, I have a feeling we might be farther ahead even than we think, because we don't have the. The US doesn't seem to have the need to project power to say, no, no, no, you don't forget about us. We're really getting far in this. We're sort of perceived as the leader and China has to chip away at, you know, that brain.

[D]

And the US Also has Elon Musk. And my understanding is that Tesla has made a hard shift to trying to figure out how to not only turn Teslas into basically robots, but to make their own robots. This Optimus actually industrially useful. And if that happens, then we would have the edge just as we have an AI so those, I think, are the two areas that we need to talk up in addition to our fossil fuels advantage, whereas. You're absolutely right, Seth. Most of the time when you look at the media, all you hear about is where China has the advantage, which is the solar panels and the batteries and the rare earths. It's true they have advantages there, but we also need to think more about where we have the advantages and then press them hard. Foreign.

[B]

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[D]

It's made it stronger. Iran is stronger than before.

[B]

Stronger, yes. And it now controls the Strait of Hormuz and it didn't control it before. And all of that. If you just look at numbers, just the simple numbers, the growth. The growth. The rise of China is like nothing that has ever happened on the planet Earth. It went from a third world or fourth world economy to a first world economy in a generation and a half. It is a country that has the, I guess either the second or the third largest gdp. Japan, I don't know where Japan is quite on the chart.

[D]

Yeah, it depends on how you also calculate GDP. But yeah, it's basically number two.

[B]

It's basically number two. Okay, so it has a GDP of $18 trillion. The United States, which has a fifth of the population of China, has a GDP of $33 trillion. And it is like a billionaire's bank account, which is to say that our GDP seems to grow naturally. Right. We have 2% growth a year or something like that. So that 33 trillion by the end of 2030, by the end of this decade will be 40 trillion. We don't know if China's is gonna be at 20 trillion by then. We don't know. And they have five times the number of people. We have a per capita income that dwarfs theirs, even though we are. Which I guess makes sense with the population numbers. We dominate in industries, in healthcare, in media, which is not a joke. It sounds funny to say media, but communications of information and the transmission of information, including with, on the web and all of that. China is a threat. China is a threat to us. It's the great competition of the 21st century because they don't want to play by our rules and they want to set their own. Whereas Japan and Europe and everybody like that. We were sort of singing out of the same hymnal. And the question was where we were growing versus where they were growing. But we can't lose sight of the fact that when Trump goes to a summit with China, he is not dealing with a country that is our equal. And a lot of people in this country want us to think that that is not the case, that we are somehow economically where we were with the Soviets in nuclear terms in the 60s and 70s, and that we have to come to accommodations and accords and find a way to live together and all of that. When again, in these industries that are potentially very threatening, like I say, if they somehow totally take over the world car industry with their better electric cars, we're in trouble. But we are in the catbird seat. And that's why I think the conversation about Taiwan was so interesting, because I. I think this is already a sign of the success of the war in Iran. We're saying we can project power where we need to and devastate what we need to and use weaponry in a way that no one has ever used weaponry before. So who's that message for? I don't think we're going to go to war for Taiwan. I mean, which is a problem because I do think in the end, if China really wanted to take Taiwan, we would not do what we did in Iran to stop them. But Xi is trying to make very clear to Trump that he should not interfere, he should not involve himself or he should, like, be nice about Taiwan because he's nervous about America's power.

[A]

Well, and he should be, because, you know, America not just demonstrated that power, but also demonstrated the fact that nobody stopped Trump from doing it. Trump. Trump said, we're going to stop them from having nukes. And so he went and did that. And the polls have never been. I mean, a year ago, sure, the polling on the strikes on Natanz and, and Fordow and, And the nuclear sites were surely higher than the Iran war. Now, the polling, but the polling was never like, it wasn't ever like he was riding around with a 90% foreign policy approval rating. He has, he has said, this is what I want to do. And he has stuck with it year after year without any sort of real groundswell of public support. There is no, like, American, you know, beating the drums of war, you know, feeling here. He, he has just been undeterred. And I think China sees that and says, you know, he said, I'm going to go into Iran and China and Russia and these other, you know, these other powers, they like to do things like activate propaganda networks, and they know that they can mess with public opinion and they know that they can mess with, especially the discourse online and things like that. Nothing was actually able to stop him from going into Iran and doing what he needed to do, and nothing so far has been able to scare him off of that. And I think that sent a real

[D]

message and broaden it. Right. I mean, China is the central node of this axis of aggression. It finances Russia's invasion of Ukraine. It buys the energy from Iran, gives technology to Iran. It kind of has North Korea. Is that rabid pit bull on the chain leash. Right. China's at the center, but the axis of aggression not doing too well. Another the Western Hemisphere component had change in government. And the leader of Venezuela is now working with the Trump administration. So that part of the axis is totally removed. Russia is in a deadlock in Ukraine. Not just a deadlock, unable to advance, but has actually lost territory in recent months, according to the Institute of the Study of War. Iran, as we've said, militarily hampered, hindered the nuclear program, set back years. According to David Albright at the good isis, the economy in free fall. So Trump comes in with a lot of leverage here. And I think he understands that it's important that he just go in, he have the meeting, he makes his case. And I would really hope the way for me that this would be a success is if he is able to come home with one of these dissidents, one of these political prisoners. Either Jimmy Lai, who he has said, he has mentioned several times, he's aware of Jimmy Lai. He is promised to bring it before Xi Jinping or as Pastor Jin or some of the other religious prisoners in China. Now, I'm skeptical that will happen just because we know that Trump, in my view, over the course of his presidency, has ignored America's major competitive edge, which is not technology, but it's freedom. It's 1776. It's the Constitution. That's why our GDP is still outpacing China's. That's why we have the tech industry that we're able to wow the Chinese on what we're doing with AI and potentially robotics. Our financial markets are another place where we have the leverage. They, you know, and that's why they.

[C]

That's why they have to steal

[D]

what we produce.

[A]

Right.

[C]

Yeah. What we produce.

[D]

Trump has always neglected that competitive edge to his detriment, I believe.

[C]

Right. I agree. You know, in this point about our Trump went to Iran. No one stopped him. Our having the edge here. The people who are trying to counter that message, sadly the most is a certain contingent of Americans day after day. First we hear what was the initial story about our supposedly not getting the truth on what happened on what we've done in Iran is that we are so dangerously low on munitions. Now, this is what is printed now publicly with that we are so dangerously low on munitions that were China to make A move on Taiwan. We couldn't do anything. This is America broadcasting this day after day. The headlines during this summit is why Xi has the upper hand, why China has the upper hand. And John talks about the Rothkoff article. So this incredible anti American force just working against us or trying to. At every turn,

[E]

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[F]

I started with one shop. No college degree, no big investors. It was just a willingness to work. Over time that one shop turned into a multi billion dollar business called Co Crash Champions. All the lessons I learned along the way came from the grind. And that's what my show Pod Crash is all about. We have real conversations with people who've built things the hard way. We talk to founders, athletes and blue collar leaders who kept going when things got tough. You'll hear stories of grit, leadership and growth, plus real world lessons you can take back to your team and your life tomorrow.

[B]

When you get momentum, you step on the gas.

[A]

That's how you get separation from everybody else.

[B]

I was at Harvard Law School. I was, blah, blah, blah. I looked up, let me tell you something, there's kids in my neighborhood putting in sheetrock that are smarter than you. AI is going to disrupt a lot of stuff. It is never going to disrupt physical blue collar trade skill. And the guy just looked at me and he said, it's bloody impossible. So I asked him this question. I said, it's impossible.

[F]

Unless that's Podcrash with me. Matt Ebert. Watch on YouTube and listen wherever you get your podcasts.

[B]

And that is where Trump's interesting armor. The armor that says that everything the media says about him is unfair, so he doesn't need to take account of it. That's number one. So he's got this armor that few presidents have had before him. In fact, you could say it's the opposite. It's like if they say it, then he's going to have to double time disprove it. But there is also the simple fact of reality. The famous story about how Bishop Barclay, the 18th century philosopher, said something like, everything is subjective. We only know what our senses tell us, us. And we do not Know that reality outside ourselves exists. And Thomas Boswell said to Samuel Johnson, how do you refute Bishop Barkley? And he said, I refute it thus. And he took his foot and he kicked a rock because there was a rock sitting there and he kicked the rock and the rock, you know, made contact with his foot and he. That means the rock is real and his foot is real. We can have these conversations about how Bob Kagan and others about how Trump has ruined America's strategic position with this war, or Iran has the upper hand because it will now always have control of the Strait of Hormuz or everything like that. And I'm sorry, you can talk about it until you're blue in the face and until the cows come home and you can give each other Pulitzer Prizes and you can give each other hugs at Davos, and it doesn't matter because again, our economy, we have a $33 trillion economy versus an $18 trillion economy. And we just basically took out the Navy and most of the military assets of a 90 million person country that would have been considered one of the five, six or seven most powerful military forces on earth until February 28, 2026. And we have AI and we have Silicon Valley and we have private space exploration. And you know, and, and, and, and I know we're in terrible.

[A]

China knows that.

[B]

Even if whoever doesn't, China knows. And what's more, everybody knows it. That's what I'm saying. You ha. It's that George Orwell line, right? Some ideas are so stupid only an intellectual could believe them that you can look at the array of America in 2026 and say, it's not a unipolar world, we're not the only power in the world, but we're pretty close to being the only power in the world. I mean, China is a real power. But if you were, there was a time 50 years ago when you could have said there were 15 militaries on the planet Earth that could work their will against other countries, and that number has shrunk. Russia was one of them. Russia has now been revealed as a hollow tiger unable to win a war against a country that it is four times larger than and with whom it has this gigantically long border with all of the material assets that it has in order to basically crush it in a second. And they are gonna lose that war.

[C]

Yeah, it's like, reminds me of the peace process industry in the sense that after the, at the end of the Cold War, there emerged, emerged a huge intellectual media industry about get ready for the rise of the rest. Get ready for the rise of China, get ready for multipolarity. They have been invested in this argument for a few decades now.

[A]

BRICS was the future.

[C]

What's that?

[B]

Yeah, brics, right.

[D]

Obama carrying a copy of Fareed Zakaria's post American World on the campaign trail in 2008. And then of course that infrastructure you mentioned, Abe, became the Iran echo chamber to promote the jcpoa. And it's all the same people who were pro Obama, pro jcpoa, who are now saying Iran is stronger than ever before after the US and Israel destroyed the nuclear program and took out 19,000 combined targets. My question for the people who are raising the munitions issue though is are you gonna vote for the Trump defense budget? Right, because you're absolutely right. Our army, our defenses are not where they should be. Obama degraded them, the sequester devastated the American military. That was 2013. Trump gave a one time kind of plus up in his first term which then Biden allowed to atrophy because of inflation, the inflation Biden created over his term. So now Trump had the trillion dollar budget last year and now he's proposing one and a half trillion for next year. This is a major, major commitment. It would transform defense because it would emphasize munitions number one and two. It would change procurement procedures that could make us diversify the supply chain, revitalize the defense industrial base, really help some of these cool startup companies. Not just the software, the palantirs of the world, but the anderals of the world, the hardware. That's what Mark Kelly needs to be asked. He can go on Sunday shows and say well here's what I heard in the classified briefing about all the munitions we're losing. But where's the plus? Okay, well what are you gonna do about it?

[B]

Well you know this is very important cuz it's not just this. It goes to the New York Times story this week about how maybe we weren't as successful in our military action against Iran as the President is claiming, about which I am dubious frankly cuz I still don't understand the sourcing and I am very dubious because their missiles fell silent. That would suggest that they can't use them or that they don't want to use them because they are the ones who are incredibly, incredibly, incredibly drained of their munitions and not us. But the logic of both of these, oh we did this foolish war and we've used up all of our munitions or oh we've fought this war and we didn't really do everything we needed to do to win the war. The logic is now we need to win the war and now we need to build up our munitions. Like they're arguing. Welcome to the neoconservatives. Welcome to the American Enterprise Institute. Come on in, have a seat. We'll show you how the trillion 5 budget works. We'll show you how the targeting works.

[D]

Yeah, well, I'll say our tagline, it's even worse than that because at the end of every, I don't know how long the Kagan essay was, I didn't read it, but I assume it was typically 12,000 word long essay.

[B]

It was not. It was not. It was more emotional than that.

[D]

Oh, okay. So in any case, at the end of that essay and every other essay, because I did read the end, is the following sentence. America should just walk away. Let's just call it a day and walk away. What good does that do? It's as though Iran doesn't exist. You're just going to walk away and let Iran say, okay, we now control the Strait of Hormuz and every ship that comes in and out we're going to control and has to pay us in cryptocurrency. I mean, it makes no sense whatsoever. You're right. The logic of their critiques to the extent that they are accurate is actually no. We need to replenish our munitions with the Trump defense budget and we need to finish the job in Iran. But they're not willing to. They don't even see it.

[B]

Let's go back to. Let's go back to way back. Go back to the election of 1960. Want to go way back. Let's go way back. America run for two. America's president, two terms. The hero who won the Second World War, a general, a military man. He starts going soft, makes a farewell speech about the defense industrial complex. Clearly doesn't like confrontation in the Cold War and all of that. So he gets attacked by the by his rivals, which is normal partisan rivals. They're looking for means of attacking the most popular person in America and they are forced by logic to go to the right to say he is not doing enough. He's not doing enough for freedom. He let the Hungarians get swallowed up by the Soviets in 1956. And we are facing a missile gap. We are facing a missile gap with the Soviet Union. John F. Kennedy wins the election against Nixon by running at Nixon from the right on foreign and military policy. A little forgotten but very important matter how we were mishandling the islands of Chemoy and Matsu and don't even ask me what the issues were about the islands of Kamoi and matsu.

[D]

But in 1960, they're related to Taiwan.

[B]

They are related to Taiwan. And in 1960, in October 1960, everybody in America knew what Chemoy and Matsu were.

[D]

Okay?

[B]

So I'm bringing this up to say that the logic of attacking somebody for being militarily incompetent or draining your coffers is you have to be more militaristic and more pronounced about what it is that you're going to do with the American military. The Kagan, this line, which is Trump is so terrible and everything that he does is so awful that what we need to do is like go dig a hole and jump in it and then pull the earth back over our heads. Makes no rational sense. If you wanna say he's done it wrong, then you gotta say how to do it right. And they don't wanna say how to do it right because they talk themselves into you. That's the problem.

[A]

They talk themselves into a box on this. Right. Because. And we've discussed this before, but the Democrats went through a period of time where they looked specifically for members of the military to run for Congress. That was the strategy. Or in the members of the intel community and others. They wanted national security gravitas. And those guys can't talk. They have nowhere to go. Because that issue, the issue of we're going to take back the flag, right? And way we're going to take back the American flag, we're going to take back patriotism, Democrats reclaim patriotism, all that stuff, where did that go?

[D]

There's no. They found a veteran in Maine.

[A]

This is, this is the.

[D]

That's where it goes. That's where they're headed.

[B]

Right. So let's talk about Maine because JD Vance is heading to Maine today. This is a politically interesting moment for him to be making an appearance in a. First of all, primaries haven't even happened yet. There's a congressional. There's the famous Maine second congressional seat. That is the most independent district in the United States of America. Like has. The number of independent voters is double what either party has. And so the Democrat who represents the district is retiring former governor, independent weirdo, strange political figure. Paul LePage is a great one. Come on. Okay.

[D]

He is, he's lots of fun. He's like a proto Trump in a lot of ways.

[B]

Yeah, he's enormously fun, but he's weird. Okay, so Vance is for some reason getting involved in this race. He's going to talk about the fraud commission that he's running. They seem to be uncovering some amazing things in this fraud commission, mostly not related to Maine, although apparently there's some in Maine, but these hospices in Los Angeles, billions and billions of dollars of hospice businesses that don't exist, that are just taking money from the federal government for old age healthcare. But why is he going to Maine? Why is J.D. vance going to Maine? And my view is that a poll came out four days ago out of nowhere that said that among Republican voters, 45% of them preferred Marco Rubio as the presidential nominee in 2028 versus 28% for Vance. And as of six months ago, Vance's number was well over 50, I believe,

[D]

if not higher and maybe around 50% for a while. He still leads in the Real Clear Politics average. The poll you mentioned is something of an outlier, showing Rubio with that significant a lead. It also showed AOC leading the Democratic field, which is another outlier. She's in fourth place according to the RCP average. But yes, it got a lot of people's attention, that poll coming off what has been a Rubio boom. And Vance is in such an odd position here because as you said at the outset, John, Iran is really the only story that matters anymore. And Vance doesn't agree with his boss's Iran policy, made that known through leaks, doesn't want to really be associated with it. And so what does he do? Well, he has this fraud, this anti fraud task force that he's been in charge with. And so he's using that to, I think, remain in the news cycle and visible. When you mentioned why is he going to Maine, I thought it was you were going to say to see his friend Tucker Carlson. I wouldn't be surprised if there's some bit of news that comes out about a meeting or something like that because Vance, of course, is still tied up in that whole storyline as well. But as long as he doesn't endorse Grand Platner during his visit today, I'll be a happy man.

[B]

I think this is a very interesting political moment because it's very early, but clearly something interesting has happened. Rubio is the first, maybe Nikki Haley in the first term. Rubio is the first cabinet member in these two Trump terms to develop what I would consider an independent presence in the culture. And you know, it may be just because of the meme or 75% of it may just be because of the meme of how he is given every job in the world. So he's Sitting there in that photograph of him sitting, looking very glum in the White House meeting with Zelenskyy, sitting on the couch by himself. And then you just photoshop him in whatever outfit of whatever job on earth there is. And this is amazing. He's not responsible for it. This is literally a viral phenomenon.

[C]

Well, he's responsible for it to the extent that the meme exists because he was given many jobs. Because he's so competent. I mean.

[B]

Right, right. Because it was.

[A]

There is something. There is something unusually organic about a meme campaign on behalf of so high profile a politician.

[B]

Right. Who is not involved in the meme.

[D]

It's a grassroots campaign. That's the thing. Yeah. And I think it's interesting because the Rubio meme, and it was a young person who pointed this out to me that was very sharp that said that Rubio's advantage is he's memeable. He is a meme. And the Rubio meme is funny. And it's kind of, in a way, as you say, it's flattering to him because he is both the National Security Advisor and the Secretary of State and

[B]

the Head of aid.

[D]

Yeah. And the head of the National Archives. He may have given that up, but it's kind of flattering.

[A]

And he did the.

[D]

He's doing everything people. Because not only is he competent, but people like Marco Rubio, I mean, they trust him. Right. Whereas the main Vance meme is him with those AI generated cheeks where he looks. That's not a very flattering meme. Vance has appropriated it to kind of a joking way, but it's not quite the same. So they're not. So we talk about domains of competition in the meme space. Marco's winning, which is ironic considering how do many people know J.D. vance? It's through his Twitter account. It's through his social media personality, which is very aggressive, very abrasive. And it's interesting. He gave up Twitter for Lent, and since Lent, he hasn't, at least as far as I can tell, JD hasn't really been as trollish online. Maybe that's another acknowledgment that he has to make an adjustment to keep his front runner status.

[B]

He is in. If you were to game out the next two years, and Rubio said he wasn't gonna run against him, but obviously such promises don't mean anything. You game out the next two years. There are two pathways here. One we are seeing to have won the war in Iran, and the other is we seem to have not won the war In Iran, there is no path on which Trump losing the war in Iran is helpful, either to Rubio or to Vance. Vance is Trump's vice president. He can't now say, I told him so, because then he'll look weak, he'll look dishonest. He'll look like he was, you know, he was being inconstant person or whatever. Trump will be mad at him. There'll be a war inside the party.

[A]

That's the key, is that he cannot afford to have Trump against him.

[B]

Obviously, also, he is the vice President of the United States, and this is a military action taken by the United States. Once taken, you must support its eventual successful conclusion. How on earth are you gonna run for president and say, here's how I'm gonna keep America safe and prosperous and a leader of the world? If you are a. From the administration that failed to do so based on common consent or that you knew that it was a bad idea, but you couldn't stop it, like, congratulations, you're impotent. That's a really great way to go. Run for president. Rubio similarly cannot survive if we lose in Iran. He's the Secretary of State. He is the face of foreign policy outside of Trump. He's done so. Both of them have an incredible vested interest politically in us prevailing in Iran, as everybody in America does, whether you're even Bob Kagan being Bob Kagan, should know that America should win the war in Iran if we're gonna start a war in Iran, though, he has gone so meshuggah that he doesn't think that anymore.

[D]

But

[B]

in that race, if we're there, it's kind of like they're pretty much dead even at the starting line now, because vance is not 100% connected to the war and because Rubio has become a cultural figure in an unexpected way that no Cabinet official has since. I don't know, maybe Rumsfeld. I said Nikki Haley kind of made her independent reputation in 2017 at the UN but that was among a certain population of people and not nationally. Could anybody in America name a Cabinet member? An Obama Cabinet member? Could anybody name a Biden Cabinet member?

[D]

Well, would anybody name a first name. Secretary Moniz had the great hair. I think he was.

[B]

Well, you can. You can. I mean, if we. We're having a, you know, college poll about who.

[D]

Catherine Kathleen Sibelius.

[B]

Yeah, right.

[D]

Though her. Her future wasn't, you know, very, very bright in politics afterwards. I have a.

[B]

So Rumsfeld became a. Became a major cultural figure in the United States. I Could maybe Fauci

[D]

Rubio was already known. I mean, not really he was known, but he was known because he had run for president in 2016. He had been known since he won in 2010. And remember the disastrous response to the State of the Union where he took the water, the secret sip of water that was broadcast to the entire country. I mean, he's always kind of had this ability to get into people.

[A]

That's part of this. No, his ability to roll with that water.

[B]

Faux pas.

[D]

There's something. He's familiar, even in a way that Vance isn't.

[B]

Right. Vance is famous.

[D]

There's no question Vance is famous and people know him. But there's a certain, I don't know, there's just a certain kind of comfort level I think, that a lot of people have with Rubio that Vance is still trying to.

[B]

But that's also because of who Rubio is. He's likable, he's fluid. He's fluid. He's young looking, but he's not young. But he's authoritative. This is what he's good at. Like, this was one of the reasons that a lot of us were so excited about his candidacy in 2015 and into early 2016. Cuz he seemed to have political skill, unusual political skills.

[C]

Abe.

[B]

I'm sorry.

[C]

Well, here's the thing about everything that we're saying here about Rubio. Trump loves all this. Trump loves to have him there, being as appealing, as competent, as sort of infectious, as a personality as he is. And my prediction, what's more of a suspicion, excuse me, Is that by the end of his term, Trump's term, he and Vance will be on the outs. I don't think Trump needs the headache of being opposed on.

[A]

Trump advance will be on the outside.

[B]

Trump advance.

[C]

Oh, yeah. What did I say?

[A]

Yeah, you said he and Vance. I just, I just want to. I meant Trump.

[C]

Trump doesn't need the headache of. Of being opposed. He doesn't need. Certainly doesn't need the headache of Vance's friendship with Tucker and company who have been attacking him. And he will come to feel more like dead weight by the end of it. Just a suspicion.

[B]

And look, it's very light.

[C]

Doesn't keep that stuff in entirely.

[B]

Yeah, but he could also get mad at Rubio. He could also get mad at Rubio if Rubio gets too fake. He also doesn't like his underlings to get too famous or have too independent a reputation.

[D]

Well, so this is why my prediction has been now for the past few months. I'm not sure. Trump endorses anyone. And in fact, that means he might even say at some point next year, you know what, maybe there should be a primary. Yeah, let's see.

[B]

See, I mean, that would be, Trump

[A]

wants, that would be so normal administration to run as a unit. He, what he want, and he said this a couple times, what he wants is for there to be no fight between Vance and Rubio. He wants a ticket to emerge before the election season. He wants them to go into the

[B]

election season and understand. That's what he says.

[A]

That's what he says. And I think, I think that he, I think that that's genuine because I think he'd rather not have the fight for succession between these two high profile people within his administration. He'd rather not have the dirty laundry and all that stuff. I think he would like to have, you know, the Trump team be nominated for, you know, that's how he sees it.

[B]

I'm sorry, but you know, he has this idea, he may have this idea somebody is going to run in the Republican primaries as an anti war candidate, as a candidate of the, of the Tucker wing, whether Trump likes it or not. You know, these are 50 state rules. You know, the RNC has much control over some things, but not over state primary structures and things like that. There will be grassroots candidates, maybe soon

[D]

to be former Congressman Thomasi.

[B]

Right. Or I mean, that's one obvious one. Tucker is another potentially obvious one himself.

[A]

We've talked about Kent. We've talked about Kent in that Joe Kent.

[B]

I mean, I'm just saying there will be a candidate of that sort. And then if that starts happening, there'll be six or seven candidates, because remember, for some people who might want to be president, they only really get one shot. There's only one time in their lives that they could do it. And as David Axelrod says, you have to be a little psychotic to run for president. You have to believe that you need to be. You can't live your life without running for president once, and they're gonna do it. And so this effort to forestall it, I think is a fool's errand. And the obvious best argument that Rubio has against Vance, aside from ideologically, is one vice president since 1836 has won the presidency from the vice presidency, and that was George H.W. bush. How do you like them apples? Is that what you want now? It's not a good place to run for president if you want the party to survive and win. That's structurally tagged very good. It'll be almost 200 years in which there is one person, in whatever it is, 38 elections that actually made it from the vice presidency to the presidency. And that is also an argument for there being a primary while the Democrats are having their primary. And the Democratic primary is going to be a lunatic asylum. People don't even realize the goods that are gonna be handed to the Republicans, who, despite all of this authoritarian talk and all of this, and the Republicans are crazy, are not going to sound as crazy as the Democrats are next year in September when they're fighting over who hates Jews more in order to get left wing grassroots money. If you think Americans want that for their presidential campaign, they may not love Jews anymore. They may love Jews. It doesn't matter. Like, that is not the conversation that Americans are going to have, and that is the conversation that Democrats are almost certainly going to have, at least in part, because there is where the money is being generated through those grassroots organizations. And that's gonna be the go to. And then they're gonna have Republicans saying, well, you know, I don't think Jews control everything. What are they talking about? And then you can actually have the Democratic Party playing a role in the Republican primary as a way of figuring out who should face the lunatics best.

[A]

And it's also a matter of the national security thing, which is that Trump and Republicans can make the argument that we're in a war and Israel is fighting alongside us and obviously providing value as a military ally. Democrats don't want to talk about winning the war. And so they don't have a. They don't even have a use for Israel as an excuse to not talk about Israel as a bad thing. And the Republicans do.

[B]

Right? All of this depends on us winning the war. Republicans will not win in 2028. The risen Christ could be the nominee of the Republican Party in 2028. And if we are seen to have lost this war, the risen Christ will lose to aoc. That is how serious a matter this is. If Trump is actually when he decided to roll the dice and go for this war, that's where he placed our political future. So, you know, well, he'll lose not

[A]

to aoc, but to the American Pope.

[B]

Oh, well, you know, that's my. That was my call. I'm the one who said the Pope Leo should run for president anyway. Matt Carnetti, you have. You have a recommendation, I believe?

[D]

I do have a recommendation, John. I've been, as I often do, watching some older movies. I watched two movies that start with a B in recent weeks. I'm going to recommend one of them. But I do have to mention the one I'm not recommending. I'm a huge Roy Scheider fan, so I thought that I would get a kick out of his 1982 film Blue Thunder, where he plays a LA helicopter LAPD helicopter pilot who gets embroiled in a. I'm not actually sure what he gets embroiled in. It's like some grand conspiracy involving the councilwoman who's murdered and this high tech corporation. And anyway, it's an absurd movie, but that's not the one I want to recommend because after I finished Blue Thunder, I turned to another movie that begins with a B. Biloxi Blues from 1987. And that's my recommendation today. Biloxi Blues is the second chapter, so to speak, in Neil Simon's theatrical and cinematic autobiography. The Neil Simon character is played by Matthew Broderick in Biloxi Blues, and it accounts for his time in the service during World War II. His characters named Eugene Jerome. He goes on a train ride down to camp where his unit's drill instructor is played by Christopher Walken. And just an incredible performance. And it's about the different characters he met while in the service and the girl he met, the Catholic girl who lived in Mississippi and had a brief love affair with. And I'm always struck by a few things. One about Neil Simon and the other about World War II. The first about Neil Simon is I've been going through slowly, the Neil Simon, I guess, cinematic catalog, really, the adaptation. And I'm just struck by how mature his works are. They're a type of play or screenplay films that you just don't really see much anymore because they're adults. Not in the blue sense of that word, but it's just adult. They're serious, but they're funny and they're about people and situations. And they don't have, you know, blaring music and AI generated orc armies. Every. It's just a. They're just adult. And you get a good time out of it. And that you definitely do from Biloxi Blues, which is also directed by Mike Nichols, a great, great director. And the thing about World War II that this film reinforced for me always is I think that Obviously World War II was America's great war. We defeated fascism, we defeated Japanese imperialism. But I also think it was very important for the country socially, because what you see in Biloxi Blues is the nature of the draft threw together all of these American boys who just were coming from completely different worlds. The city and the country, the north and the South, Jew and Gentile, Italian and Irish, or Italian and Slav, Greeks, they're all kind of forced together. And you see that in Biloxi Blues. And the thing about that is, yeah, there are some fights, there's some conflicts, but they also kind of realize they're all part of the same thing. They're part of the same project. They were creating this American identity. It's something actually that your father John points out in making it as well, talking about his time in the Army. So those are two observations about a great play and a great movie, Biloxi Blues, starring Matthew Broderick.

[B]

The draft, of course, as we know, continued through 1970, basically, or 71 from 1945. And it was this great leveler. Yes, you're right. My dad writes about it. But I mean, this is sociologically this fact that Americans got to know. Tens of millions of Americans were forced to know people out of their ambit, out of their immediate ambit, Something that had never happened in any society before in this way, this universal draft of young men in a large country, bringing them together under a national banner. And it had enormous virtues for the kind of social cohesion that our friend Yuval Levin talks about about America before the 1960s, that there was this moment of great social solidarity where Americans did believe themselves all to be on the same page. And when people talk about why we should have a draft now, which we shouldn't, we don't need one, it doesn't make sense. It's a very serious, severe use of state power. But the emotional reason for this, if you could just send everybody to summer camp for two years when they're 18, so that they get to meet people from other walks of life and have to live together in a barracks or something, you can sort of understand what was lost, what had been gained. Not for the purpose of it. That wasn't why there was a draft, was to make everybody feel like they were on the same page. It was because we were fighting the Nazis, and then we were fighting the Soviets, we were fighting in Korea, we were fighting in Vietnam. So that wasn't what it was for, but it had this ancillary effect, and it was apparently really, really amazing. And if you're going to recommend Biloxi Blues as a new.

[C]

Can I just. Can I just have a. I just want to interrupt with. And it's worse than that, because it's. It's. Not only was. Is did we lose the. The kind of cohesive, cohesive effect that you're talking about with the draft. We've also lost the sort of regular community effect of socializing with people on your own block, let alone to that point.

[D]

There's a great scene where on their day off, all the enlistees, they go to the movie theater and they watch Abbott and Costello in a Buck Privates movie. And so they get. So you're all. They're all in that space, they're all laughing at the same thing and they kind of find common ground there. And so that sense of a. This is a Christine Rosen point. I'm sorry, she's not here today. But that sense of kind of a shared cultural framework that we clearly lack in America today. Yeah.

[B]

Anyway, if you're going to praise Neil Simon, I have to mention one of the five funniest movies ever made from my point of view, which is the Sunshine Boys. Yes. Which is this movie about two elderly vaudevillians who hate each other, who were a vaudeville team for many decades, coming back together to. To film their great sketch for a TV show. Walter Matthau and George Burns. This was the moment at which George Burns became a late in life mega star. Walter Matthau delivering one of the great comic performances ever. It is a movie that could never be made today because it makes fun of old people and cognitive decline very seriously. But it is, from its first moment to its last, as screamingly funny a movie as I have ever seen. I mean, like, you know, like you could laugh at this movie the way you laugh at Airplane or something like that. It is so crazily funny. So Biloxi Blues is a much more serious. I mean, it's not even really a comedy. Actually.

[D]

There's some comic moments.

[B]

Coming of age. It's a coming of age story.

[D]

Yes, it is. It's bittersweet and stuff, but. But I've really enjoyed it.

[B]

Yeah, it's absolutely wonderful and I'm glad you mentioned it because it came out of nowhere. So thanks for that Bloxy Blues and the Sunshine Boys. We'll be back tomorrow for Seth and Abe and of course Matt Cottonanny on Thursday. I'm Jon Pod Horowitz. Keep the candle.

[D]

Bur

[B]

it.