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- [00:00]
Abe Greenwald
Foreign.
- [00:09]
John Podhoritz
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 Monday, July 13, 2026. I am Jon Pudhoritz, the editor of Commentary magazine. With me, as always, executive Editor Abe Greenwald. Hi, Abe.
- [00:36]
Seth Mandel
Hi, John.
- [00:37]
John Podhoritz
Senior editor Seth Mandel. Hi, Seth. Hi, John Washington. Free Beacon editor Eliana Johnson. Hi, Eliana.
- [00:44]
Eliana Johnson
Hi, John.
- [00:45]
John Podhoritz
And I was looking. We do this in a, you know, if you don't watch us on YouTube, we do this in a kind of checkerboard formation. And I almost, there are four of us today. And I almost introduced myself. I was like, and then I was like, that's me. So I'm.
- [01:02]
Abe Greenwald
And center square.
- [01:04]
John Podhoritz
Yeah. I want to make an announcement here at the top of the podcast. Very sad for us. Christine Rosen, who has been off for the past month, is moving on from the Commentary podcast. Her commitments, her time commitments, her professional commitments preclude her continuing as a regular. She has been one of the mainstays of the podcast for, I think, nine years now, and obviously very, very popular with us and with everybody out there, and it's a real loss. I expect we will have her on, as we have had Noah Rothman on, on occasion, and she will continue to write her monthly social commentary column for the magazine. So you will be able to sample her commentary wares on a monthly basis as a subscriber. But anyway, I would say Godspeed, but she's not leaving anywhere, and I'll be working with her every month. But you, unfortunately, will not be, you will not be enjoying her daily wisdom in the way that you have for almost a decade. And that is a sad thing for us. But we will soldier on with this fact, which is that the United States over the weekend hit hundreds and hundreds of sites in Iran. Hundreds of sites, like 140 sites on July 11, 90 sites on July 12, or a couple hundred last night. That's July 12 and then last night. But in response to Iran now getting violent with commercial tankers and really trying to close the Strait, or announcing that the Strait of Hormuz is closed. And it just begs this ultimate question, which is that we need to keep, we need to open the Strait. According to the Institute for the Study of War, as they read it, as they listen to the Iranians, Iran's entire goal in this war has now narrowed to being able to claim that they have control of the Strait of Hormuz and that nothing, no Negotiation will succeed in getting them to move off that position because it's the only card they have left to play and it's the only arrow in their quiver. They fired missiles, five Arab countries over the weekend with not much effect. They're hitting our bases in the Middle east, but those bases have mostly been abandoned or left empty, so they don't have much to go on. And so what they have is the Strait. And we still have this illusion maybe that we can get them to the table to agree to leave the strait alone. And that raises the question, which is, what are we gonna do about this? We cannot succeed in getting them to stop what they're doing from the air. I don't see. We're hitting them, we're hitting them, we're hitting them, we're hitting them. We're hitting them pretty far north in the country. And they have no incentive whatsoever to stop doing what they're doing unless we can somehow systematically destroy every single piece of offensive weaponry that they have so that then they can't fire on a civilian ship. But obviously that's beyond our reach. So the military strategy of just using our bombs to hit them is, I just think it's not a fool's errand. I'm sure we're doing a lot to degrade their capacities, but, you know, one missile gets through and successfully blows up one ship. One of the ships that they did hit was abandoned, like the, you know, they did the abandoned ship thing and everybody on the ship got off. It wasn't sunken, wasn't sunk, but it was so.
- [05:18]
Abe Greenwald
Well, it's similar to the market in that you can scare it easily and it'll take years to recover. That's the one advantage they have, right? Which is the, you know, similar to the fact that they're using cheap, you know, mechanical drones and things like that is the advantage they have is that you cannot convince shipping to resume as it was. And even if you have a deal that verifiably clears the strait, let's say the EU takes their mine clearing flotilla, whatever they were discussing doing, and clears the straight and declares it open. Even then it takes time for these things to bounce back. Markets work by finding alternatives when certain avenues are shut to them. And so the, it's, it's a big ship turning and not, you know, a speedboat. And so even from the day you clear it, it would take some time to bring it back. So the Iranians know that essentially all they have to do is, you know, fire, extend a firecracker every once in A while. And it has long term effects.
- [06:30]
John Podhoritz
So, Abe, if we find ourselves in this kind of weird position in which we are now doing the same thing over and over and over and over again. Wars have to adapt. Military strategies have to adapt to changing circumstances. And that seems to be a problem for us here, to put it mildly.
- [06:53]
Seth Mandel
Yeah, I'm just not clear on if the idea is that we are trying to get the them to con,
- [07:02]
John Podhoritz
are
- [07:02]
Seth Mandel
we fighting to convince them to change their behavior or to deny them completely the ability to keep doing what they're doing, and if it's to change their behavior, to what degree, as you kind of hinted toward, John, is it to get them to talk? To what degree? Is that still the administration's goal here? And if it is fully to get them to change their behavior and to get them to talk yet again in good faith for once, supposedly, then this is a fool's errand, I have to say.
- [07:45]
John Podhoritz
My fear is that Trump knows that the game has changed, right? He basically all week has said, the ceasefire's done, we're done, the ceasefire's over. The ceasefire's over. Meanwhile, as I sent you guys on our group chat, the New York Times and like the general world body of public opinion is the ceasefire is hanging by a thread. New threats to the ceasefire, like, there is no ceasefire. We are back in a shooting war with Iran. And it's a weird kind of shooting war. Cause they're not really shooting at our planes and we're shooting at their military facilities and then they're shooting at civilian targets in and around the Gulf. But it's a war. The war's back on somehow. It's not just the administration. I mean, we're sort of blaming the administration here. But there is this kind of weird body of conventional opinion that seems to want to manifest that the position is that we are in a ceasefire and that no advance can be made by the United States in this war that had started on February 28th because that would harm the ceasefire.
- [09:00]
Eliana Johnson
Yeah, I think that's just the wrong, obviously just the wrong way to look at it. There. There was no ceasefire. There never has been a ceasefire since April. Whether it was April, whether it was, the Memorandum of understanding is defunct. If there was one thing that that memorandum was supposed to do, it was supposed to open the Strait of Hormuz for free navigation in exchange for Iran being able to. In exchange for us removing the blockade and Iran being able to sell oil. And all of that is gone now. But Iran never abided by it in the first place. To my eye, the fundamentals of this haven't really changed. You know, US Goals in the region are no different. The President appears to remain committed to Iran not having a nuclear weapon. And Iran's goals in the region appear no different. They are the survival of the regime and becoming a nuclear power. So if the war was being carried out at a 10 before, I think because of the midterm elections, it is now being carried out at a five. But nothing else in this has, has really changed and it may very well go back to being carried out at a 10 after November. The president may decide he, he can do that because he has succeeded in bringing down oil prices somewhat. The war is not on the front pages of the newspaper as much as it was before. And in fact, Democrats are being beset by scandals with their candidates. This is the sort of thing the President wants to see approaching a midterm. And so I just don't think, you know, since second week of the war all that much in the fundamentals of this had changed. We very well could be back to it after the midterms.
- [10:59]
John Podhoritz
So here's Trump this morning. We're taping this at 8:30 Eastern Time in the morning. He's already been on Fox this morning and he said of Iran, it was a done deal and then they broke it. They always break it. We've had 10 deals with these people and so we're just gonna hit them very hard. They're a bad group of people. They've been this way for a long time. The thing is we are gonna hit them very hard. We'll hit them very hard. We'll hit them and hit them and hit them and hit them. That's not what's, that's not, that's not where the, that's not where the fight is any longer.
- [11:37]
Eliana Johnson
Yeah, I think my point was the President obviously wasn't willing to go beyond an air war before the midterms. I think it's an open question whether he's willing to do something riskier once we know the outcome of the midterm elections and you know, he's got a more clear eyed view of the political reality after. He may still not be, but I think we'll know more then. There's no way that's going to happen between now and November. We're likely. And while they're ostensibly going tit for tat over the MoU, we're really going tit for tat over the same issues. You know, we've been going back and forth about with them for 47 years.
- [12:22]
John Podhoritz
I mean, it seems to me there are two possible strategies to follow, therefore, right? One is ground troops may not be the right way to put it. Special forces combined with Israeli special forces, you know, sort of like something risky, Right? Something risky. Pinpoint operations or really serious economic infrastructure damage. Right. That's one. The other is to continue with the decapitation strategy, which we literally decided we were going to suspend, because from what we hear, every now and then we get a leak. Israel knows where so and so is, or Israel knows where, you know, Gal is or, you know, something like that. Or they know they have eyes on. On where Moqtaba Khamenei is. And they could continue, or we could continue a decapitation strategy. The third strategy of hitting military sites is just a kind of Groundhog Day somehow. I mean, not again. They have an effect. I'm not saying that by the time this is over, if we keep doing this for three months and they literally have a pop gun and 200 missiles left, that. That won't mean that we. That will mean that we have succeeded in eliminating them as a regional power to some extent. But as Seth says, they may only need that pop gun to affect international shipping for years.
- [14:02]
Seth Mandel
But I just don't think that we're there in terms of Trump's willingness to move on to the next big step. Because I guess what's frustrating to me about all of this, even the resumption of these operations, is that the operations themselves are like a kind of conversation that we're continuing to have with Iran. Iran will target some ships and then will answer with a bunch of strikes, and then Iran will hit a bunch of our allies, and then we will answer with a bunch of strikes. And if, John, we have the targets and the capabilities of going after these strikes in this conversational, in this call and response way for three months. And if that would leave them with a pop gun, why don't we just do that now? Like, I don't understand. You know, we're sort of on their. We're letting them dictate this drawn out timeline. And I don't understand that.
- [15:13]
John Podhoritz
I think Eliana's got it right that there are 10,000 different incentives to delay. Now we look at it and say, who delays a war? I mean, you're in it. You can't delay it. Like, it's either happening or it's not happening. But here we are. Like, the idea that, okay, we're just gonna. We'll pause for a bit and then there'll Be a, you know, then the, Then the midterms will happen. Well, I mean, first of all, if the Democrats do well in the midterms, there will be an open revolt inside the country involving whether or not the war can continue. I mean, Democrats won't be sworn in until January. But I mean, the idea that Trump will have simply have, again, like a free hand with absolutely no congressional input six or seven or eight months after the war started, I don't think anybody would imagine that that was like a. Like a proper way to conduct a long military engagement with another country. There needs to be national buy in whether that's not a formal declaration of war. We haven't had a formal declaration of war in a long time, but something. And obviously Democrats will not give him that. So he would be better served, in my view, to do it before the midterms, before he has a real opposition, like the opposition he has is Republicans saying, we don't wanna run with a big war going on. Like, that's hard for us, so make it easier on us. But he hasn't thought through what it would mean with the midterms. Probably where they're going. But let's talk quickly about where the midterms are going and acknowledge the passing of Lindsey Graham in Senator from South Carolina. There have been many, many, many wonderful tributes. I commend you to Barry Manis in the Dispatch this morning. Very interesting story about how he was an AIPAC volunteer who worked as, sort of worked with Lindsey Graham for decades. And it's a very holistic portrait of what Lindsey Graham was like and why it's like a day of mourning in Israel that Lindsey Graham is gone. He was, I believe everybody says, Ron Dermer says, everybody says he was the best friend to Israel that there ever has been in the Senate in some odd way, more than, you know, more than Joe Lieberman, whom you would think otherwise. Because, of course, Joe Lieberman had a kind of calling to support, you know, was part of his faith to support Israel. And Lindsey Graham was a much different character. He believed in supporting Israel because he believed in democratization, he believed in internationalization. He believed in the use of force to deal with terrorism and to deal with bad actors and to defend Western countries against unwestern adversaries. And that's why he was so resolute about Israel, why he's so resolute about Ukraine, despite the fact that all we've ever heard about him in the last 10 years is that he's some kind of, like, Trump bootlicker. In fact, he has spent the last four years very, very determinedly trying to make sure that the administration does not go too far in its anti Ukraine posture. And he is one of the voices, was one of the voices in Trump's ear saying, this really is important. Don't listen to the siren song of the restrainers and your vice president. This is a big deal. Russia's doing wrong. And geopolitically, this is really good for us. If Ukraine holds Russia off or even wins. So there's now gonna be a race for that Senate seat. I think it's pretty assured that a Republican will take that seat in Rock Ribbed, South Carolina. But what kind of Republican? Right? That's the big question. I know that starting a new business is daunting. I've started a couple myself and a lot of people quit before they even start. And I wish when I was doing this that I had Shopify to help me. Because you know what Shopify does? It helps you with design. It helps you with launch, it helps you with checkout. 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- [22:40]
Eliana Johnson
Yeah, a couple things. The governor of South Carolina, Henry McMaster, will name a temporary replacement for Graham. And that could either be somebody with an interest in actually running in for his seat or it could be, you know, Graham's sister who Graham himself raised since she was 13 years old after both their parents passed away. Graham was 21 at the time. Darlene Graham, she her name has been floated as a potential temporary replacement. But then there will be a race and a few things I think about Graham. You know, he really had a front row seat to so many of the turning points in Republican politics over the last 30 years. He was elected to the House during the Republican Revolution in 1994 and then really became not a household name. But you know, famous to those of us who follow politics. When he was one of the House managers for Clinton's impeachment and then was elected to the Senate in 2002, he passed away Saturday while serving in his fourth term.
- [24:03]
Abe Greenwald
And
- [24:06]
Eliana Johnson
you know, watching him, to me and you alluded to this, John Graham understood not only was he incredibly funny, which I think is an under analyzed power in politics, just an incredibly funny guy. During the 2015 Republican undercard debates, he was asked what would you do if you were president? And he said first of all, we would drink more. And he joked about the debate was held at the Reagan Presidential library. I was actually there. And he joked about it being the longest time he'd ever spent in a library. And he understood how to use power. Which means, you know, you mentioned Graham is criticized for being a Trump lackey. Graham actually understood, you know, he ran against Trump in 2016 but then became a champion of Trump and a friend of Trump who golfed with him frequently. He understood that how to persuade Trump and move him toward his own views. And so he ended up being frankly much more effective than Trump opponents like Liz Cheney and others who were powerless to do anything really about the man they oppose so ardently. And he did the same, I think, with George W. Bush in advocating for a surge and traveling to war zones with John McCain and Joe Lieberman, of course, during the war in Iraq. And he was somebody who went out and saw things and came back and used that to persuade presidents. You know, just returned from Ukraine. You know, he was a relentless traveler and you know, he went and saw,
- [26:03]
John Podhoritz
if you look at his career, he is an old fashioned senator. He is in the tradition of the senators who understand how to use the Senate, who use their personal charm and their glad handing and their ability to make friends across the aisle or at least to have civil relations with politicians in the other party. And he was astoundingly effective. Think about it this way. He, as Eliana alludes to, was one of the foremost proponents of the surge, which is exactly the change in strategy that we're sort of talking about here in relation to Iran. Like there was a point, and that was after three years of fighting or three and a half years of fighting in Iraq that Jack Kaine and others came up with the idea of the surge and sold it to Bush and changed strategy and turned the war around there. So he did that and then he became chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee. And in one of the most dramatic events of our lifetime, I think, just remember, recall this day, the day that Christine Blasey Ford, the accuser of Brett Kavanaugh, came to testify during Kavanaugh's confirmation hearing. And she testified in the morning, she testified in the morning. And she was very powerful. She was very controlled, contained. She told this story about being a teenager in this house and these boys in this room and all of that. And I think everybody thought, I mean, I remember talking to Abe about this in our office in 2017. It's like, well, he's cooked like that's it. And then came back from lunch and Graham basically started the hearing by saying, effectively, I don't believe a word she said. I mean, he didn't say it that way, but he said, you know, we are going to hear from Brett Kavanaugh. He's going to come back. He is going to show you that there is more than one side to this story. And then Kavanaugh shows up and says, my life has been destroyed. I'm ruined. I can't even like, I'm not even going to be like, able to be the coach of my kid's baseball team after this. And so I'm just here to kind of do what I can to spare my reputation, because I already understand that my life is ruined, he said. And then he showed that diary that showed that he had literally had notes about what had happened the day she said that all this had happened. And Graham ran that hearing. By 7 o' clock that night, everything had shifted. And Kavanaugh seemed to have the better of the argument. And then, of course, another player in 2026 and the drama of 2026, it was Susan Collins, who a day or two later came out and said, I support Brett Kavanaugh's candidacy, and gave a sort of 45 minute speech explaining her how she had come to this decision that led him onto the court. That's the Judiciary Committee and hundreds of judges that he shepherded through during Trump 1. And then last year, as chairman of the Budget Committee, he got the one big, beautiful bill, or he not. He, you know, like every Republican voted for it, but it was his job to get the one big, beautiful bill.
- [29:50]
Abe Greenwald
I mean, he made it happen.
- [29:52]
John Podhoritz
Yeah, to not blow up where it could very easily have blown up. So he did. War, Supreme Court, and American taxation and budget policy in those 24 years, as Eliana mentions in the Senate. That's an amazing record of accomplishment, achievement, and how to be a powerful American politician.
- [30:20]
Eliana Johnson
Couple of things quickly. He also shepherded through Amy Coney Barrett's confirmation and the point he made during the Kavanaugh hearings. He was furious. He was almost as furious as Kavanaugh. And the point he made, which I think many of us still think about today, in many ways, he pulled out from Kavanaugh the fury, asking him, has this been a job interview or has this been hell? And he looked at the Democrats and he noted that they had sat on the Blasey Ford information until days before the hearing. They had had the information. They could have sent it to the FBI if what they had been interested in was a thorough vetting. That is what they could have done. They didn't do it. And the point he made was, no decent person will want to put themselves and their family through this if this is the way our politics had done are done. He noted that he voted for Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan. And he said, tell them hello for me when you see them, because I voted for them and this is not the way that things should work. No good person would put their family through this after seeing what you had been through. And I think we see that because now we get Graham Platner and Abdul El Sayed running for the Senate. You know, we see that all over our politics where decent people are dissuaded from joining and jumping into the political process. And that was important. And I think if you asked anybody who follows politics, what did Lindsey Graham stand for, they would be able to tell you in a single sentence. And there's not many senators for whom you could say that.
- [32:02]
Seth Mandel
And it stayed that way, you know, it wasn't over time, you know, so
- [32:06]
Eliana Johnson
for all the people who say, oh, he threw out what he believed, he was Trump laggy, Lindsey Graham stood for the same things throughout his career.
- [32:15]
Abe Greenwald
Time is actually what's what, what's most impressive about him to me. And the example of Ukraine is perfect right now. Lindsey Graham. We often think about military, you know, people who were right ahead of time about military related matters as being, you know, strategy geniuses or something like that. But Graham's, Graham's thing was patience. Wars, our attention spans today may be much shorter, but wars aren't necessarily. Wars take time. They develop, they change. And you have to give your, your friends and allies the ability and the time to adjust because you'd be surprised at what they're able to accomplish. That was Lindsay, he was like a pep talker. It was like, you know, it was like Ed Koch walking around New York City, except Lindsey Graham walking around Kiev or Jerusalem. He, he had this like, you're gonna, you're gonna be fine. Just, you know, straighten your back and, and have some patience. And Lindsey Graham wanted to buy time, time and again, before Americans lost their patience and their attention spans for helping allies. And you see what happens when you come out the other side of that. The war in Ukraine right now is almost unbelievable from where it was. I mean, Abe was there a couple years ago and he can, and you know, and he wrote about this and he could tell you from, you know, first person experience. But the, the reporting today is Zelenskyy is reshuffling his cabinet because he's, he's rooted out some of the corruption and now he's got generals in the, in better places and he's got diplomats doing diplomat things. Right. We've talked long on the show about how weak he was diplomatically because he wasn't paying attention to it. Then we see that Russia is losing numbers that are mind blowing in terms of casualties. And we see that the whole drone thing, you know, not to go into it, but he's. The drones have been revolutionized today. There's a story in the New York Times about ground robots doing the same thing that are ferrying injured Ukrainian soldiers from the pits that they're hiding from Russian and Iranian drones in, you know, back to medical center, whatever. And now they're starting to mount them with weapons and cameras and things like that. This, this is, this was supposed to be a seven day march to Kyiv by, you know, by Russia, right?
- [34:59]
John Podhoritz
February 24, 2022. The war the Russians believe would be over by March 10, 2022.
- [35:07]
Abe Greenwald
And Lindsey Graham didn't come up with some kind of massive, like in fact, unlike the surge or anything in Iraq, it wasn't our war on the ground that we were fighting. And so there wasn't actually anything for people like, you know, Graham and McCain and those types to even do in terms of policy. Graham just, he was so good at playing for time and creating, you know, openings and space. And you see the other side of the faith that he had in the Ukrainians has, I mean, certainly been vindicated. But more than that, I think the point is that, you know, it's quite aside from did you have a great idea that won the war? Lindsey Graham showed something else which was you have to be able to have a certain amount of patience and give your allies support while they figure this out and they'll figure it out. And in doing so, he made the case stronger that democracies are stronger, democracies are better, democracies are more fleet footed. Democracies can be trusted to fight for what they believe in and fight hard for it and figure out ways to beat the bad guys. That was the lesson of Lindsey to me. And I think Ukraine is showing that every day. Not just Ukraine, but just, just, you know, reading the headlines this morning, that's, that's the, that's the kind of thing that jumps out at you.
- [36:39]
Matt Ebert
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 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.
- [37:13]
John Podhoritz
When you get more momentum, you step on the gas.
- [37:16]
Abe Greenwald
That's how you get separation from everybody else.
- [37:18]
John Podhoritz
I was at Harvard Law School. I was, blah, blah, blah.
- [37:20]
Abe Greenwald
I looked up, let me tell you
- [37:21]
John Podhoritz
something, there's kids in my neighborhood putting
- [37:22]
Abe Greenwald
in sheetrock that is smarter than you AI is going to disrupt a lot of stuff. It is never going to disrupt physical
- [37:29]
John Podhoritz
blue collar trade skill.
- [37:30]
Abe Greenwald
And the guy just looked at me
- [37:32]
Matt Ebert
and he said it's bloody impossible.
- [37:34]
John Podhoritz
So I asked him this question.
- [37:35]
Matt Ebert
I said, it's impossible unless that's pod crash with me. Matt ebert watch on YouTube and listen. Wherever you get your podcasts,
- [37:47]
Eric Gertler
from the State House to the courthouse, in the emergency room and in the classroom, Americans are losing trust in their leaders. In a 2025 U.S. news and World Report survey, 85% of Americans said government leaders care more about their own power than the people they serve. 73% are disappointed in healthcare leaders, 70, 72% in business, and 68% in education. But there are still leaders worth believing in. I'm Eric Gertler, CEO and executive chairman of U.S. news World Report. This is the Best Leaders podcast sponsored by the Noble Reach Foundation. On this show, we'll go deeper into the stories, challenges and lessons of extraordinary leaders across public service, business, healthcare and education. You can find the Best Leaders podcast from U.S. news World Report on YouTube, Apple, Spotify, Amazon Music, or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [38:51]
John Podhoritz
I mean, according to Trump, Graham came back from Ukraine, or according to Graham, apparently together Trump, sorry, my dog is barking. Trump said that Graham had come back with a new idea about how to bring Russia and Ukraine to the table, which is interesting because that's not really, that wasn't really part of his game. But this may be part of how he deals with Trump.
- [39:27]
Abe Greenwald
Yeah, I mean, he's a, he, the, the thing that people often don't realize about working with Trump. And, you know, and Mike Pompeo was the great example of this in the first Trump term, right. As secretary of State and a close advisor, something similar to what Rubio has played even at times here, which is a Trump sort of translator, a Trump whisperer. And so, you know, the initially people saying nobody, nobody good with a reputation should work for Trump, you know, was, this was obviously wrong, but it was, it was, what you actually needed were guys who were willing to get close and, you know, and be able to translate, you know, what he thought and what he said to various people, you know, effectively. And Lindsey Graham was, I mean, honestly, with the bill that he got through last year, that was probably even the better example than anything with foreign policy. But yes, you need a Trump whisperer. And Pompeo in the past, and Graham more recently have made an obvious difference in playing that kind of role you
- [40:34]
Seth Mandel
know, I gotta say, one of the more heartening things that I learned after he died was that over all this time, he didn't seem to particularly enrich himself, which was almost like, you know, a pleasant surprise. You know, these days when you see these lawmakers whose wealth goes through the roof over their period in office, he ended up in the bottom half of the earners among his colleagues.
- [41:12]
John Podhoritz
And, you know, he was a very dignified person. He was the subject of very, you know, Rumors and, you know, rumors about his private life and all of that. And one thing you can say about Lindsey Graham and what he was, was he was very much a public servant. And he. His life. That's one of the reasons that he didn't enrich himself or do whatever, is that he was too busy, like, going on these trips, you know, 20 weeks out of the year to glad hand and get himself some kind of side investments. He clearly did not care about that or about money or about what he wanted was to enact policies that he believed were good. And that's one of the reasons he said that he had decided to make friends with Trump the minute that Trump won. Having been a really severe critic of Trump's in 2015 and 2016, which is, you can't do what I need to do without being in a position to have an influence over the administration. And the way to do that in the Trump administration is through Trump. If I make friends with Rex Tillerson, the Secretary of State, or with why am I blocking on the name of the first secretary? If I make friends with the Secretary of Defense or whatever, it's not gonna help.
- [42:43]
Eliana Johnson
Jim Mattis.
- [42:44]
John Podhoritz
Jim Mattis, right. It's not gonna help because Trump's gonna be mad at me. And when they say, well, Lindsey Graham says X, Trump's gonna say, I hate Lindsey Graham. He's bad. He's mean to me and Lindsey Graham to have the influence that he wanted to have, particularly, as we can see, in, again, I think, pulling Trump back from his worst impulses on Russia and Ukraine in particular, where obviously, in my view, he has a devil on his shoulder trying to get him to cut Ukraine off, and then he keeps not doing it, that this was the way to do it, and he was representing the people of South Carolina. And if he had become essentially like a never Trumper you mentioned, like a Liz Cheney type, his effectiveness as a senator would have been at an end. And like his job, in essence, therefore, was to make nice with Trump in order to serve the interests of the people who had sent him to Washington. Maybe that's an unpleasant reality. And people think, you know, well, in an Athenian sense or a cincinnatus sense, he should have opposed him. Like Anne Applebaum, he should have opposed him regardless, because morality requires that the most important thing be Trump not being allowed to burn the Reichstag and then overthrow our democracy and turn us all into Nazi Germany. Well, so Lindsey Graham didn't accept that deranged interpretation that has taken over the brains of several formerly sensible people and decided to work within the system to do what it was that he was brought to Washington to do. And we want people, all we do is complain about how nobody in Washington knows how to do their jobs or is doing their jobs as congressmen and senators. They're only using it as platforms to become famous or whatever. And he was the opposite. Like, he was an inside player. And part of his gifts as an inside player was his gregariousness, his humor, and his ability to, at the end of the day, walk through the Senate office building and see, like, you know, I don't know, somebody whose politics he hated and who hated him. And they would both go, hey, how are you? Because, like, it's a small group of people, and now it's turning into the House and they all hate each other and they can't even, you know, they can't even look at each other. And does that help? I mean, it helps if your voters really want you to be that way. But clearly the voters of South Carolina wanted Lindsey Graham to be Lindsey Graham, because despite huge efforts in 2020 by the Democrats within one of their delusional frenzies, to think that he was beatable right by. Was it Jamie Harrison, was that who ran against him in 2020? He won by 30 points. So they liked him and they liked how he did it. And so again, I guess the really interesting question is, is there anybody to fill his shoes in the Republican Party going forward as a sort of leader on foreign policy in particular? I don't. There are people who could. Dave McCormick of Pennsylvania could. There are others in the. There are others in the ambit who could. But of course, he was also. He was in Air Force six years, I believe, active duty in the Air Force. So he had his own military. He had his own veterans record. And then he was in the Air National Guard, I think, for 20 years in the Reserves. And so he spoke with authority as a person in the military, which would also be true of Dave McCormick. But. So I don't know, but we are in an interesting spot there Eliana, do you have any sense or your people getting any sense of. I mean, it's been 24 hours of what might be happening in South Carolina. Nancy Mace says she may run, but she came in fifth in the governor's race. So I don't think that's a particularly good base from which to be going statewide. Again,
- [47:18]
Eliana Johnson
I don't have a great sense. I think the question really is whether McMaster, the governor of South Carolina, will appoint a caretaker between now and the special election. And the special election may be a replay of the Republican gubernatorial fight to succeed McMaster. And it looks like a handful of the gubernatorial candidates, including the Republican congressman from South Carolina, Ralph Norman, Nancy Mace, and the lieutenant governor, Pamela Yvette, may all jump into this special election. Other names that have been circulated are two other congressmen, Russell Frye from South Carolina and Tom Rice from South Carolina. And so it looks like it will be a crowded special election race.
- [48:18]
John Podhoritz
And of course, we have a crowded special election race in Maine. So now we're gonna have two specials, two parties having to deal with this late breaking crisis in there with a. With an election coming up in November. And that's pretty interesting. I wanted to ask you guys whether you thought that the Graham Platner withdrawal, which finally happened on Friday, there was all that rumoring that maybe he wouldn't do it or he would do it at 6pm today, one minute before the deadline was up, or whatever. So he did it. He formally withdrew from the race. Whether there is some kind of weird boomeranging effect on Michigan, by which I mean Abdul EL Sayed now head to head with Haley Stevens in the Michigan senatorial primary, which is on August 4th, I believe, was running as the. There were these two DSA senatorial candidates, right? Platner and El Sayed. And the DSA had that great day in New York and then a week later in Colorado and the week earlier in New Jersey. So they won these internal primary races. And I'm wondering whether Platner's the sort of screeching halt to Platner's campaign and the week of attacks, the week of people running away from Platner who had embraced him, and all of that does something atmospherically to harm EL Sayed's candidacy in Michigan. Because the idea of Marxian inevitability, that the DSA is the vanguard of the Democratic Party, it is the future. You might as well get on this bandwagon because they're gonna win everywhere. And Platner is sort of derailed by his own Personal misbehaviors. And El Sayed's views are of course, extraordinarily extreme and he's running against somebody who does not have any such issues. And maybe it's like, if it's not that they win everywhere every time, maybe that gives Michigan voters some room to say, I don't need to jump on this bandwagon.
- [50:46]
Seth Mandel
Yeah. I think what the Platner blow up also did was put an end to the total dominance of the idea that the attacks on these candidates are just desperate attacks and they're not real and we're right to stand by these candidates no matter what and don't believe the Republicans will lie to you about anything and they'll say, you cannot stick with that. I mean, you can try, but it showed the problem with that. Now and then, right on the heels of that, you have El Sayed seeming to sort of show a greater degree of vulnerability than he had before and things about his personal story and even some members of liberal or very sympathetic media, like Mehdi Hasan last week following up with El Sayed about his biography and his claim of being a practicing physician, for example.
- [51:55]
Abe Greenwald
And his, his cool demeanor, his facade is breaking. Right. He was at the, he debated Haley Stevens last week and he was, he was out of character if you're used to seeing him at just these rallies and in inner softball interviews where he just kind of laughs everything off and whatever. And he, you know, somebody brought up a poll that showed him losing ground and he said, well, that was, I'm sure that was funded by apac. And they actually looked into it. And then, you know, even, even msnbc, M M Snow, Mississippi, now Mississippi, then Mississippi forever. Had did a segment on it where Simone Sanders, who was, you know, Bernie Sanders aide, said, yeah, we tracked it down and there's no AIPAC money anywhere near this polling organization. And you know, like definitively not. Like this is, this is a polling organization. It's not a super pac. It's not a thing where you can hide your donors. It's, it's a, it's a piece of information you can find the answer to. So he, he, he stands up there and says, ah, the APAC poll, when it's a, this is a verifiably false thing rather than a G, I wonder who's behind this. And he's been called out by the left, you know, called out, you know, again, Simone Sanders, Matt Iglesias and others. I mean people are starting to get slightly annoyed at his. Well, that's just illegitimate. Obviously paid by 8 for by AIPAC response to everything. And he did it again yet over the weekend when he was asked about, you know, why is he not. What, what is holding up his, his financial disclosures. Why, why isn't he doing as complete financial disclosures as Haley Stevens is doing? What, what could he even, you know, what could, what reason could there be for this guy to even have trial? And he says, well, it's, it's complicated. His wife has some overseas, you know, properties, this and that. What he's trying to do, obviously, is he wants the voters like Graham Platner and every other candidate running in these Democratic primaries to think that he's poorer than he is, to think that he's less privileged than he is, to think that he's less comfortably set in his life than he is. And that facade is cracking along with the temperament facade. And the combination is, you know, is again, the primary hasn't happened yet, let alone the general election. So he, he's starting to crack. Now, any, any Democrat who pretends they're not worried about this is pretending. I mean, you have to be at least somewhat concerned when you see him snapping at reporters on basic questions weeks before even the primary.
- [54:42]
Seth Mandel
You know, and the thing is, Platner humiliated his defenders, whether they are in the media or Democratic Party leaders. So now they are extra weary of, you know, rushing to the side of, of someone with some fishy defenses and fishy stories and fishy alibis. Here. They don't. They look. They're aware. They look bad enough.
- [55:11]
Eliana Johnson
A couple of things on El Sayed. I want to distinguish the professional Democratic political class from the actual voters in Michigan. Among the professional Democratic political class, I think the operatives who found and backed Platner and help him become a political superstar have taken a real hit. Meaning Morris Katz, the force behind Mamdani and the. This guy Daniel Moraf and Leanne fan who videos.
- [55:46]
John Podhoritz
Did you see that? Morath. Morath is the grandson of the founder of Toys R Us.
- [55:51]
Eliana Johnson
That was printed in the Washington Free Beacon.
- [55:54]
John Podhoritz
Of course you did see it. Yes. So there's another one of these, you know, like limousine are the Nepo baby. Yeah.
- [56:01]
Eliana Johnson
You know, just like Platner. And just like Morris Katz, the, the Nepo baby, downwardly mobile class. And so I do think there's going to be less fear of them among the Democratic political elites. I do wonder how much of that is filtering down to voters in Michigan, you know, how much are voters following. He didn't release his financial returns. How rich actually is he? And I do Think candidate quality matters. And this mattered in Maine. Like Platner blew Janet Mills out of the water. And El Sayed is definitively the more talented political candidate than Haley Stevens. She, I think our friend Mark Halperin said she should not be doing a job that requires speaking in public. She's just not that good. And that is what voters are seeing day to day. That being said, there's a difference between El Sayed and Platner, which is that he has run. He, he has held public office before. He's withstood some mild level of scrutiny. He's been somewhat in the limelight. Nothing like running for statewide office. But he's not. He isn't just a random guy plucked out of nowhere, which is what Platner was. There's another difference between them that cuts the other way. He is an Islamist extremist. Platner held those views, but he publicly presents like a guy who was just chopping wood in his backyard. El Sayed does not publicly present that way. And I do think it may not be true in a Democratic primary. Okay, clearly it's not. Darieliza Avila Chevalier won. And these lunatics may win in Democratic primaries, but in a general electorate, voters are not down with that. They just aren't. They are scared of that and rightfully so. So long story short, I do think, and by the way, this might be, you know, having an impact on Democratic elites. We still aren't hearing Democratic leadership say loud and proud, hey, did we learn our lesson with these lunatics? With Platner, let's take it to Michigan. We cannot run Abdul El Sayed. So I think quietly, they may be talking about it, but I just don't know how much of an impact it will have and whether it will filter down to voters. I'm a little bit skeptical cuz he's
- [58:43]
Abe Greenwald
talented and they have no, even the party leadership that they have no credibility with the voters. Also in Maine, they're like Chuck Schumer, get away from us. Instead of, instead of, hey, the, the candidate that you thought should run is not a Nazi tattooed mercenary freak. So maybe do you have any other ideas? It's. This is your fault because you couldn't put up somebody who was as charismatic as my Nazi tattooed mercenary. So you know, my, my fake oyster farmer, you know, kid who never grew up. So you, you should stay out of it. They're having the opposite reaction that you would normally expect would be rational. I'm not saying you shouldn't normally expect that that rationality would take place this is politics. But they are not having the rational response in Maine, at least they're angry. They're lashing out at all the people who initially said, I don't know about this Graham Platner guy, but look, they're
- [59:50]
John Podhoritz
right, because the Democratic establishment has discredited itself in this way, which is that it foisted Hillary Clinton on the country and she lost to the most defeatable candidate in American Political History, 2016, Donald Trump. Nobody had any business losing to Trump, but voters were not, I mean, to extent that voters got a choice, they took a long, hard look at Bernie Sanders. You know, it was no joke that voters took a long, hard look. Then the establishment lines up for Biden. Voters take a long, hard look at Biden and he loses the first four or five states, you know, or does really badly in the opening states. And then the establishment, then Jim Clyburn of, you know, of South Carolina, then they phalanx him, get others to drop out, and then Biden steamrolls the nomination. And he does win, right? He wins. And then of course, they don't tell anybody that he can't run for office in 2024, thereby giving rank and file Democrats a chance or a choice to, to pick a new candidate in 2024. That is their choice. Instead, Biden's running and then he goes, and then they're given Harris and she loses. This is not a record. And then that is listening to its grassroots in any way, shape or form. And Chuck. Why should they listen to Chuck Schumer? He picked Janet Mills. I know she was the governor, but she couldn't withstand this guy or dig any of this up to take him out.
- [61:47]
Eliana Johnson
And then, John, once Platner won, they did the same thing with him hiding and excusing. And the operatives, Platner's operatives didn't dig this stuff up. The establishment, even if it wasn't Schumer, people who opposed Platner, they. If Janet Mills couldn't dig it up, Schumer should have been digging this stuff up. If he was so opposed to Platner, then once Platner got it, they circled the wagons and made every excuse for him in the book, including the New York Times and the whole media. And they held out as long as they could. So they did it again there.
- [62:26]
John Podhoritz
Exactly. So.
- [62:27]
Abe Greenwald
So they're not doing the one thing that you would think, also the other thing you'd think, which is, you know, you guys can investigate your own candidates. It's like, you know, we. We can't trust so and so to pick a candidate, because who knows what will come out when that is a problem to which there is a solution that exists. You can vet people if you have the time and energy to do so. And they're constantly. It's like, well, what is. You know, we. I'm nervous about this guy because what is the Free Beacon gonna. Gonna dig up about him in October? It's like, well, maybe you should get to work two months before October.
- [63:12]
Eliana Johnson
They then colluded and decided to take Platner out of the race when they decided it was time that Politico ran a story, okay, Lindsey Fifield in the New York Times saying Platner twisted her arm behind her back and shoved her in a room and closed the door and wouldn't let her out until he decided she was calm enough to. That wasn't good enough. But when Politico had a story from a Democratic woman, Schumer said, well, I'm not giving you money. So, you know, it's interesting to watch. You know, this is relevant to the EL Sayed question. The candidates in Maine who are now vying to replace Platner are trying to say, hey, I have all his views, but I also had nothing to do with him.
- [63:51]
John Podhoritz
Yeah.
- [63:52]
Eliana Johnson
And that's why I think that the race in Maine, like that Democrats are worse off without Platner because the candidates are having to do this impossible straddle. And one of the candidates, the former Maine Senate president, Troy. Whatever his name is.
- [64:07]
John Podhoritz
Jackson.
- [64:08]
Eliana Johnson
Yeah, Troy Jackson. He was like Platner's biggest champion there. And this is now going to be like a load of bricks on his back. And none of them have his actual political talent.
- [64:19]
John Podhoritz
So I think in the end, the real issue here with EL Sayed, given his political talent, given the fact that Haley Stevens is an unimpressive presents as an unimpressive candidate, and all of that is how much of what happened with EL Sayed is momentum and whether his momentum has stalled because there was a week of DSA stall because of Platner and three weeks left to go momentum. Candidacies are real. They're a real thing. Everybody knows they are. And there is sometimes a fear in these cases that people peak too soon and that they need to peak closer to election Day so that the negative story that might come out two days before the election can't withstand the momentum. So I just think that's a real thing to watch out for in some way or other. But the Democratic Party, fascinatingly has, as everybody is detailing here, has very little interest in its rank and file voters, it substitutes instead its organizational sort of ancillaries for rank and file voters. Union, the unions and the money they bring and the voting and the sort of organizational strength that they bring. And they're not listening. And that's one of the things that so freaked them out. I think about the victor DSA victories, including, you know, Mamdani coming out of nowhere last year, which is they're not getting the message. It, it took Republicans, it did not take Republicans long to get the Tea Party message. I mean, it really did only take 2010 for Republicans to say, oh, you know, we better fall in line, we should cut the budget by 10%. Da, da. You know, whatever. Because we're hearing. We can hear you and they can't hear them. And so, you know, whatever Schumer might foist on the people of Maine, you can see how a Maine voter who is a rock rib Democratic voter would go, I don't like these guys in Washington and I don't like them when they're Democrats either. Just like Tea Party Republicans were like, we don't like Washington Republicans either. So, Seth, you have a recommendation?
- [66:41]
Abe Greenwald
I believe I do. So the, the book is called the Listeners. It's a novel and it's by the novelist Maggie Stiefvater. S T I E F V A T E R she. Yeah, sorry, she, she was actually a young adult, a YA author, and this is her first book for, I guess you could say for grownups, published last year. The plot is, it is about a luxury hotel, the highest of the high, the richest of the rich in West Virginia in coal country that's sort of an island of luxury in the 1940s. And when the war comes along in 1942, they are told they have to evict their regular rich guests because the, the State Department and the FBI are going to bring in to their hotel the. A certain number of Axis powers, diplomats who can't be let to walk around on their own during the war now. But also they don't want rotting in prison because they're afraid that that will mean the American diplomats in Japan and Germany are going to rot in prison. And so in the interest of reciprocity or hope, they put them, and this is a thing that did happen. They put them up in luxury hotels and catered to their needs and hoped it would reflect well for the Americans abroad because they were buying time to do, you know, some sort of prisoner swap type thing with diplomats and their families. But the book is really the, the thing about it Is that. Is the. The hotel itself, which is called the Avalon in the book, is a character in the book. And the writing is so lyrical yet evocative that you. You are. You feel like what she's done is a kind of like fantasy world building, except it's just a hotel. And the other main character is the Sweetwater that runs underneath the mountains in coal country in West Virginia. And it's sort of treated as its own. Sort of. It has its own temperament and whatever. But really it's in the novel. Its purpose is to reflect the vibe, really is what we would say now. But this was 1942. And so, you know, there's intrigue, there's all sorts of interesting stuff. You know, they're trying to catch spies, they're trying to fix problems and all that stuff. But the characters are well drawn. The hotel's manager is instead of one of these rich family people. She is a coal country orphan with a strong coal country accent and everything named June Hudson. And so it is. It is she who interacts first with the richest of the rich and the high class and then the. These mo. The most high profile of ambassadors and people like that. And it's the interaction between the place and the people that really keeps the book moving. And again, the writing is just so good that it's. You just really feel, you know, the place. You feel like you can smell the hotel. You feel like you can. You can see, you know, what, through a window. When someone's sitting at a window in a certain room in the hotel by that time in the novel, you feel like you can see what's on, what's outside that, as if you've been staying there yourself. So it's, it's. It's that it really puts you in place and keeps you there for. For the novel. So the listeners. Maggie Stiveder. And the point of the listeners is, you know, obviously, because the FBI has come along with the State Department and is listening to, you know, calls and whatever to see if there is anything they. Any. Anybody they should find for their boss at the FBI that will get them information.
- [70:49]
John Podhoritz
Yeah, I'm gonna piggyback on this. Cause as it happens, I am reading a novel set in a hotel, but very different in spirit. It's called what Comes at Night. It's by Peter Cameron. And it is about this couple that arrives in an unnamed, very northern European country in the middle of winter to pick up a baby at an orphanage. And they check into this empty grand hotel. And it's very eerie and it's very odd and everybody in it is very odd. The woman and the couple is dying of cancer and they've decided to adopt this baby so that the husband will have someone to love after she is gone. And they start interacting with people and there's a local healer whom the wife gets involved in. And it's very paranoid, odd, unsettling, neurotic, brilliantly written, so it's almost the opposite. It's not like a page turning espionage novel. It's a very interior book. But it is funny that you bring it up because it's about this novel that is this hotel that is kind of ghostly and slightly demonic as opposed to, as opposed to the Listeners, which sounds much more sprightly. But that is what comes at Night by Peter Cameron as well as the Listeners by Maggie Stiefvater. So we will be back tomorrow. For Abe, Seth and Eliana, I'm John Pod Horitz. Keep the candle burning.