Eric Erickson (4:40)

Hi, John.

John Podhoretz (4:40)

The aforementioned senior editor and author of article in the issue, Seth Mandel. Hi, Seth.

Eliana Johnson (4:47)

Hi, John.

John Podhoretz (4:48)

And not a participant in the issue, but a participant in the intellectual life of the nation and the neoconservative tradition that he has followed. Washington Free Beacon editor Eliana Johnson. Hi, Eliana.

Ben Shapiro (5:02)

Hi, John.

John Podhoretz (5:03)

So to move from this lofty subject to naked, raw partisan politics, there are, I think, three polls out this morning that are not good news for Donald Trump or the Republicans. Trump in these polls is around 39 to 40% overall general approval, but it is topic by topic where he really does not look good and the Republicans don't look good. From the economy to immigration to foreign policy, two specific elements in foreign policy, he is underwater by double digits and on Greenland, just for to take our favorite, you know, sort of like semi funny but dead deadly serious side issue, he is underwater from anywhere between 40 and 60 points. So not, not, not great numbers. It is early, even in the midterm cycle. It's January 16th. The election isn't for 10 months in the midterms, and the proof of the pudding is in the eating. If a lot of the lines that he's thrown into the water are policies that he has attempted or is attempting to affect, bear fruit, things look good. You know, six months from now, where these polls say he is right now won't matter very much if they are, however, harbingers of the general attitude of the American people. That does not seem to change over time. And particularly among independents where his numbers are calamitously bad. Obviously with Democrats, they're horrible. It's like 90, 10, 98, 97. You know, unfavorable to favorable. So he can forget about ever getting crossover votes from Democrats. But the independent number, which is I think he's 25% underwater on average in these polls, are of course, extremely bad for him and very worrying for Republicans who need those independent voters to help push them over the top, and particularly in close House races. But maybe in Senate races that might appear closer. The polling, for example, in Texas, where Democrats always look stronger in the early polling than they end up and then the voting booth ends up showing them being. But nonetheless, if you look at the polling in the, in the Texas Senate race, you have a couple of lunatic you have particularly a lunatic in Jasmine Crockett, who is polling in the mid-40s. I mean, she is a crazy person. And if she's not a crazy person, she's an idiot. And if she's not an idiot, she's a clown. And if she's not a clown, she's ideologically completely out of step with her state and nonetheless is somewhere in the mid-40s against some reasonably crazy Republicans themselves. Not the sitting senator, John Cornyn, who is not a crazy, but Ken Paxton, who is. And so this is where we are mid January in, in the polls. And the most interesting aspect to me involves immigration, where, Seth, you noted something about his immigration polling and his overall approval rating at at least one of these polls.

Eliana Johnson (8:18)

Yeah, he's, he's lower on immigration than overall in one of them. And that is, that's the sort of thing that, that, you know, should be a red flag for him because he's, that's his it's not just an important issue, but it's his brand. He's the immigration guy. I mean, it's, you know, he came into office saying, you know, that we're going to build the wall and Mexico's going to pay for it. And that was one issue where people just kind of always gave him a bit of breathing room to say things they knew he didn't mean because they knew he was serious about immigration. And the ICE stuff that's been happening lately is him being very serious about immigration. And the public doesn't seem to like it. And that is, that's that's a change, but also a warning to him and Republicans that there is even there is something Donald Trump can, Donald Trump can go too far on immigration. There's a line that he can cross and that, you know, that's the sort of thing that's going to affect Republicans down ballot all around the country because it used to be a better issue for them. And he needs it out of the spotlight. I mean, it's the immigration is in the spotlight, and his numbers are low right now. You know, his numbers on foreign policy have been falling also, and that's in the spotlight. The stuff that's in the spotlight are the stuff that are getting low numbers. And so, you know, he's got to find a way to change that or the conversation just gets, you know, worse from here. And as you said, you know, there's the Jasmine Crocketts of the, of the world who may, you know, who are trying to get into office, trying to slip into office on the backs of, you know, a wave. And that wave only builds if, you know, these numbers stay where they are.

Eric Erickson (10:00)

It seems to me immigration is one area. But you can, you can actually just look across the policy spectrum with Trump. He turns all these issues and policies, the ones that he is even, you know, in good standing on. He turns everything into a taunt. He dares you to keep approving of what he's up to. And so there's something very inevitable about people turn. He invites this turning away by he sort of, he almost deliberately pushes the American public away from his agenda.

John Podhoretz (10:45)

If we go to the subject of what seems to have turned the tide negatively for him on immigration, which is the ICE raids and the in one beat, John?

Ben Shapiro (10:58)

Yes, I think I have a lot to say about the ICE raids and where it centers on Minneapolis. But I think more important than all the other subjects is his polling on the economy. And if he were able to address that effectively, I actually think it would be like the tide that lifts all boats. But in the CNN poll in particular, 55% say that Trump's policies have worsened economic conditions in the country, and 64% say he hasn't gone far enough in trying to reduce the price of everyday goods. That's 42% of Republicans and Republican leaders who agree with that sentiment. Sentiment. And I think it's worth noting a couple things. Trump himself, when he's asked, how would you grade yourself on the economy? He says, a plus. Plus plus. You know, I'm doing fantastic. At the same time, we see him saying, I want to cap credit card interest rates at 10%. Like, he's obviously aware he has a problem, but the things he's trying to do aren't going to solve the problem. Elizabeth Warren did an interview this week where she was laughing about saying, hey, I think it's a great idea, this credit card interest rate thing. I've been about backing this for A long time. And I was in the car the other day and the President called me and we're going to get together on this thing. And she was laughing that Trump's on her side with this. He also called for a ban on the institutional purchases of single family homes. And he wants Fetty and Franny to subsidize home loans. All the direction in which Trump is moving to try to address this economic anxiety is in a left wing direction. That is not going to solve his problem. And that is concerning. I just wanted to say that before we get to the ICE and immigration stuff.

John Podhoretz (12:57)

Yeah, well, I mean, I'm glad you did. And I feel bad that I, you know, sort of went too fast in the other direction because it's not just that these policies are left wing. It is that conservatives don't believe in them. Not out of some ideological fundamentalism.

Ben Shapiro (13:19)

No. It's that they don't work.

John Podhoretz (13:20)

They don't work.

Ben Shapiro (13:21)

Credit card thing, for example, that will lead to less lending. If credit cards, okay, credit card interest rates are the way they are. They're higher than other interest rates because they are not secured by property.

John Podhoretz (13:33)

Right.

Ben Shapiro (13:34)

They're not secured by your house, they're.

John Podhoretz (13:35)

Not secured by your credit cards.

Ben Shapiro (13:36)

Only lend at a 10% rate. There will be less lending.

John Podhoretz (13:42)

Yeah. There will be, there will be less credit cards. Yeah. And their credit cards will be taken away. There's, that's one thing, the idea of entering the housing market the most, the largest market in the United States. Housing is the largest single element of the American consumer economy. And fiddling around in it at the federal level to play games with who gets to own what is a recipe not only for disaster, because the federal government is a blunt instrument and not a finely honed tool that can, you know, like just tweak something a little bit and sort of make it a little better. It's a, you know, it's a jackhammer or, you know, or a deep digger or something like that. So a, that's, that's a really bad way to go about it. And of course, the housing market is a lot of different things. And there are 3,300 counties in the United States. Each of them has a different system, has a different issue in relation to housing. And some of them, the housing, there's not enough. And in others there's too much. And no one can move any property. And you, you can't. There is no one size fits all policy to save these things. And the final thing to say is that his big economic play is the Tariffs and a. We're going to find out at some point in the next couple of weeks whether, I believe, whether the tariffs are going to stand or fall. Based on the Supreme Court's ruling on whether or not he had the stand, he has the legal standing to impose the tariffs that he imposed. But tariffs are attacks on consumers because they involve raising the prices of goods that are then passed on to consumers. So if Republicans and Democrats alike are saying he's not doing enough to lower the cost of everyday goods, that's because he's not doing anything to lower the cost of everyday goods. His major economic policy is to raise the cost of everyday goods. He, in fact, in moments of honesty, has acknowledged this fact.

Eric Erickson (15:58)

If something, he's still walking around saying tariffs are the most. Is the most beautiful word in the English language. That's what I mean. That's what I mean by the taunt, you know?

John Podhoretz (16:06)

Right. And I'm just saying, like, he admits, he says, well, if, you know, if you're. If dolls are too expensive, then you buy your kids fewer dolls. Like, be patriotic. This is going to help America in the long run. And that is not an answer. And people have gotten the message very clearly. It's a funny thing about tariffs, because you think people. It's too complicated. What the hell is a tariff? It's hard to explain. But, you know, people work. You know, 90% of the employable or more than 90% of the employable people in the United States work, and they work at businesses and companies, and those businesses and companies make products or provide services or stuff that are related to products, and those products often come from abroad. And every conversation at the workplace from Monday to Friday may involve, oh, my God, you know, it's where we're having to pay 10% more for this component of whatever it is we're doing or, my God, on our service line center, people are complaining because the goods are more expensive or whatever. Everybody who works knows that tariffs have a direct role in what it is that they do and how successful their businesses are. And this is not good for him. Like, it's one of the reasons that people have. When politicians have imposed tariffs over the course of, you know, or played games with tariffs over the past 50 years, they often do it very quietly or very specifically in relation to one state, you know, Pennsylvania and steel and a tariff that, you know, that George H. That George W. Bush put on Steel in 2003 to help with Pennsylvania's electoral needs and that kind of thing. That's one state out of 50 and you don't walk around saying, I'm imposing tariffs. You know why? Because it's bad politics. Trump's tried to change the politics around this, and the problem is that the only way those politics are going to change is if the tariffs have positive consequences. And they're not going to have positive consequences because of the iron laws of economics. But, I mean, maybe, maybe they'll better things in some areas and worse things in other areas. But he is coming up against the reality that people are experiencing his economic decisions. It's now a year into the administration. He doesn't have much he can blame Biden for anymore, or that much he can blame Biden for anymore. So he goes to war with the Fed, goes to war with Jay Powell. Maybe he's even ginned up Jeanine Perro to look into indicting Jay Powell. What has Jay Powell done in the last year? He's lowered interest rates five times. What is Trump's problem with Jay Powell? He's not lowering them fast enough in order to boost inflation, which will eat into people's paychecks, which will make goods more expensive because their money won't go as far like he is. He is cornering himself economically, as far as I can tell. Far from giving himself running room, he is cornering himself. And, and you know, the thing, the best thing for him might be for the Supreme Court to find that the tariffs are unconstitutional, because then he can slink away from the tariff policy. I don't think that's true. I think it would be a political calamity for him. And obviously also the question of what happens to the money that has been collected if the tariffs are found unconstitutional? How is it returned to the people who were unconstitutionally, on whom these tariffs were unconstitutionally levied is a gigantic headache for the country. But so we are. So he's getting what he deserves. You know, politicians always get what they deserve. Like, you know, whenever anybody says, oh, it's unfair, the polling is unfair. That's like saying it stinks, that it's raining. Like, this is in aggregate the way people are feeling about things. And complaining that they're feeling wrong about things is what losers do, you know?

Eliana Johnson (20:24)

Yeah, well, to a point. I mean, I. In general, I agree, sure. But there is a way to phrase polling questions that does sometimes, you know, that are, you know, leading questions. And so there are times where you look at it and go, is this actually the question that explains how people are feeling, or is this like a sort of leading them to a certain, you know, you, for example, you wonder about questions about, you know, should America be doing more or less, you know, in intervention abroad. You know, it always depends on the situation. So the polls say, the polls right now that came out yesterday say Americans want Trump to cool it. But the wording is like, you know, should America be doing more? So people can hear that, as should America be doing even more? But also, as, you know, specific to the interventions, you know, they're, they're. There will be times when American, you know, Americans have, for example, the support for, for aiding Ukraine has been remarkably stable or, you know, remarkably above water for years, much more than I expected, because Trump had this initial hostility to it and because he only sort of grudgingly came around to it. And even when he gave the Ukrainians what they asked for, at times he sort of did it with this, like, like he was, you know, letting his screwball kid borrow the car or something, and he was wondering if it was going to come back in one piece. And yet, you know, and then he had the whole thing with Vance in the Oval Office and Zelensky, and yet the polling stayed, you know, showed that Americans supported Ukraine. So I think, I think that there's a, there's a way to complain about this that isn't necessarily sore loserdom, but that on the economy, it's harder to do those. On questions in the economy, I agree 100%, because when people get asked any question about the economy, they instinctively answer according to what they feel about the broader economy and they don't pay as much attention to specifics. And therefore, the economic questions are often real temperature taking.

John Podhoretz (22:38)

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Eliana Johnson (26:02)

And also when the questions are direct.

John Podhoretz (26:04)

Like what he did in Venezuela? Or do you not like what he did in Venezuela? Right?

Eliana Johnson (26:09)

The public absolutely hates his Greenland stuff Right.

John Podhoretz (26:13)

It hates.

Eliana Johnson (26:14)

The polling is remarkable.

John Podhoretz (26:15)

It's astounding. And why do they hate it so much? See, that's what's of interest to me. And I think the answer is, and I think this involves other things with him, which is like, it's basically, what the hell is this? I mean, it's that it's like, you know, this is America. Like, we're not. We're the most important country in the world, all of that. Like, what are we futzing around with this block of ice in the middle of the North Atlantic? Like, I got my own problems. Stop making trouble, you know, with Denmark. You know, ordinarily I would say. People would say, well, the president knows what he's talking about. We should take Greenland. It's whatever. And they're more like, you know, like, my life is come but snowing and it's really cold, and I. And I just stop. Like, enough. You did doge to me, and then you did this to me. And now there's troops in the streets of Minneapolis and you took out Maduro in Venezuela and we're about to hit Iran. And now you're also coming at me with Greenland and Ukraine is still going on like, can I just get five minutes apiece?

Eliana Johnson (27:30)

So that's a good question about Trump fatigue, then.

John Podhoretz (27:33)

Yeah.

Eliana Johnson (27:34)

Is that a big part of what we're seeing? We've seen it before. We're seeing Trump fatigue.

John Podhoretz (27:39)

I mean, I think a lot of that is. I think numbers this bad across three polls suggests people are tuning him out. And to the extent that they think about him, if they're not Republicans, he's fine with Republicans for the most part, Their Democrats hate him. And independents have real Trump fatigue. I think is. Is. Is pretty clear. And the one thing you can say about his foreign policy moves is that people don't vote on foreign. We know people don't vote on foreign policy. They do vote on whether or not they feel like the, you know, feel like everything is spinning out of control. And if you're moving on five fronts and you don't understand what the hell the country is doing, then this is one of, by the way, one of the problems now stop monologizing. But one of the problems with abandoning the freedom agenda or the democracy agenda, even if you don't believe it, if you're Trump and you don't like it and you know that there's all this opinion says, oh, this was so terrible. We didn't. We said that we were doing this in Iraq to free them, and then look what happened and it wasn't good. And all of that is when people say, oh, we're going into Iran, why? And then you say we're going into Iran because they're shooting demonstrators. And then Americans go, I'm sure it's terrible that they're shooting demons. Why are we going in again? And you don't have an overarching theory that says, we did this for Israel, we did this in Venezuela, we did this in Iran. They're all part of the same vision. So if you felt okay about what we did in Israel, that should slop over onto what we're doing in Venezuela. And if you felt okay about what we didn't, that can slop over until we did Iran, because it's all part of the same idea. And he doesn't, he resists that, wants to say Venezuela is about oil, doesn't want to say we're going into Iran to free them and to make them democratic. And so if you're a low information voter who doesn't really even know where Venezuela or Iran are, is right. Where physically you at least can get a little taste of, oh, we're doing it for freedom. I like freedom. I have freedom. That's good. And he, so he doesn't even, he can't even throw them a bone without.

Eric Erickson (30:08)

That, without that, what voters, what happens is they get suspicious and distrustful. They go, he's up to something. Yeah, that, that he's not telling us.

John Podhoretz (30:22)

I get suspicious. Right.

Eric Erickson (30:23)

This has to do with let alone.

John Podhoretz (30:24)

And low information independent voter. Like, I'm like, how much of this is about putting that Venezuelan oil money in a Qatari bank account. Like, I don't understand why the Venezuelan oil money is in a bank and gutter. What's it doing in a bank and gutter? Aren't our banks good enough to hold that money? I don't understand what the hell is going on. Okay, so that's where we are now, Eliana, as our resident Twin city and Minneapolitan. You are from Minneapolis, right? You're not from St. Paul. Okay, that's my, that's of course my heart, St. Paul. My mother also from St. Paul. So as a St. Paulite watching, you know, this is, was always, you're watching Minneapolis, you're going, you see, this is the problem with Minneapolis. They, if they, stuff like this doesn't happen in St. Paul. But you're not. That's what my.

Ben Shapiro (31:16)

I actually got a reader email that was very upset that I referred to the chaos in the Twin Cities and the and the, the listener, sorry, the listener email said, how dare you lump St. Paul in with all the chaos and the horror unfolding in Minneapolis. So, my apologies.

John Podhoretz (31:31)

My grandfather, my grandfather was like this. My grandfather lived in St. Paul. He had a business in downtown St. Paul. They, you know, he was very suspicious of Minneapolis. He was not a, he was, he was weirdly not a fan of me.

Ben Shapiro (31:48)

I got him very angry. It was the first listener email that I had gotten. I was like, oh, what a welcome to listener emails.

John Podhoretz (31:56)

Anyway, so you can bring an outsider's perspective from St. Paul, the chaos in Minneapolis.

Ben Shapiro (32:04)

But I do think this really, this relates directly to the rest of the polling problems. To be clear, I think that Trump and the administration have the better of both the rhetorical and the policy argument about what's happening in Minneapolis. I actually don't think that they're making the argument. I think they've let the narrative get away from them here, both through images. And we have Minnesota Governor Tim Walls and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Fry giving speeches all the time. I believe that Walls strategy, and Fry's strategy is to intentionally create enough chaos to distract voters from their abject failures to handle the fraud scandals. Recall, Walls has announced, and I don't believe willingly, that he will not run for a third term because of the massive fraud scandals that have unfolded on his watch. And instead, and to distract from that, I believe they are fomenting chaos. They've made it clear that they refuse to enforce federal immigration law and they want to prevent the federal government from doing so. They are seeking the complete removal of federal immigration enforcement from their jurisdictions. Walls gave prime time remarks 7:00pm in Minnesota on Wednesday evening and lied to the citizens of Minnesota. He said that ICE is, quote, just plain grabbing Minnesotans and shoving them into unmarked vans, kidnapping innocent people with no warning and no due process. He went on to say, let's be very clear this long ago, stop being a matter of immigration enforcement. It is a campaign of organized brutality against the people of Minnesota by our own federal government. In a primetime address. He then encouraged people to go and take their cell phones and record for posterity ICE agents. And so they are encouraging Minnesota citizens, they're portraying law enforcement officers as an invading force and encouraging Minnesota citizens to interfere with their activity. What I don't think that the Trump administration is doing effectively, I think they should get, they should give a primetime address talking about what they're doing in Minnesota and why Trump, after all, was elected, did on this and talk about the people they are seeking to arrest. We want this guy, and this is what he did. We want that guy, and this is what he did. Because Walls is characterizing them as innocent Minnesota citizens and referring to them as our friends and neighbors here in Minnesota. And I think the narrative is has gotten away from them here.

John Podhoretz (35:13)

Well, there is the case of the second shooting in Minneapolis. Right. This ICE is attempting to detain a Venezuelan here illegally, who attacks an ICE officer with a shovel and is shot in the leg. And the story is ICE shoots guy in the leg and didn't even mention.

Ben Shapiro (35:34)

Yeah, the headline was, you know, another ICE shooting in Minnesota.

John Podhoretz (35:37)

Yeah.

Ben Shapiro (35:38)

And the guy attacked the ICE agent with a shovel, and two other people came out of their home and were hitting the guy over the head with a shovel and with a broom. You know, Kirsty Noem characterized it as an attempted murder. But I think we have Noem talking about this, and we have Caroline Levitt addressing it in a press briefing. But I do think, given the tenor of the situation and the way it is constantly dominating the headlines, it deserves the President to speak to it in some kind of address with visuals. I mean, because visuals of the other side that are dominating the news right now.

Eric Erickson (36:18)

I think that's a good idea. At the same time, when the President or Homeland or ICE or anyone gets specific about who they're hunting, who, whenever individual surfaces as the target of an ICE operation, the other side, which includes the overwhelming majority of the media, turn it into a sympathetic personal story anyway, regardless of the fact that we're trying to deport a criminal or someone with terrorist ties or whomever.

Ben Shapiro (37:03)

But if the argument is made, the administration will win that argument.

John Podhoretz (37:08)

Yeah, I'm not sure that.

Ben Shapiro (37:10)

I mean, Trump was elected on this. Like, the American people rejected the Biden administration's immigration policies, and I believe they will reject the Tim Walls border policies. I also think it is worth the administration reminding people why Tim Walls and Jacob Fry are doing what they are doing, which is to distract and deflect.

John Podhoretz (37:36)

I'm not sure that I agree with you that they will win if Trump makes a public case about what is going on in the cities. I think that unprecedented images are often very unnerving to people. And if you claim, for example, that what's going on here is a standard law enforcement approach and we are literally just enforcing federal immigration law after an administration that enforced no federal immigration law and allowed things to run rampant. It's pretty easy for people to go, yeah, but this is not what I meant. Like, I didn't mean that I wanted to see images on My TV screen of fights in the middle of streets in cities between federal agents and other people. Even if those fights are justified, even if we agree, for example, that the characterization of the Renee Goode killing and the New York Times is doing again, by the way, has another front page lead of the section thing where. Where once again they go through video microsecond by microsecond to prove that the officer in question was not hit by.

Eric Erickson (39:04)

The car, that he put himself in a dangerous position.

John Podhoretz (39:08)

Yeah, he put himself in a dangerous position.

Eric Erickson (39:11)

His job is dangerous.

John Podhoretz (39:12)

Yeah. After, after he had already request, told her to get out of the car and then told her to get out of the effing car. And she wasn't getting out of the effing car. I still think the way to characterize this is as an unmitigated tragedy. He didn't want to shoot her, she didn't want to get shot. She wasn't looking to martyr herself. It was a six second tragedy.

Eliana Johnson (39:35)

She wasn't looking to run over an ICE officer either.

John Podhoretz (39:38)

Yeah, it's a six second tragedy of errors. This often happens, and I say often. It's not often, it's very rarely, but when there are these kinds of controversies involving officers and their use of firearms in very weird situations. The activists who hate the cops and hate police say, ah, this is just a part of an overwhelming pattern of police brutality. Whereas in fact, the story is that every four or five years there's some moment at which a confrontation goes sideways because somebody's nuts, somebody's got a gun, somebody's high, the cop is in a state of terror. This, you know, the street is dark, he thinks he hears or sees something. You know, he's in fear for his life. He's not, it turns out he's not really. He's not really in danger, but he doesn't know that and all of that. And then everybody makes a big scene out of it. And this effort to create the narrative that this is all part of this is an inevitability. If you use law enforcement to interview, you know, to do something about illegal immigration in a place like Minneapolis, that's bad and evil. And I think that's, you know, it's demagogic and awful and unfair. But at the same time, I don't think if you asked people when they were voting for stopping the Biden calamity policy on immigration, that they would have gone as far as to say yes, I really want ICE agents on the streets in LA, in Minneapolis, in, in D.C. and elsewhere that that's what I want, is to see masked guys in the street arresting people off the street.

Eric Erickson (41:29)

John, you're. You're so right. I think about this the way that images, not arguments, have swayed public opinion on the biggest issues now for. For so long. First of all, we know this just from the Israel Hamas war. I mean, it didn't matter what you said. If they could flood your feed with pictures of kids or, you know, or, you know, food in, you know, in bags with hands out for it, you know, then that. That was it. That was sort of case closed. What allow. What fed the border crisis for you, kids in cages. That was it. We can't. We can't. What are we doing? We have kids in cages. AOC goes there and takes a picture weeping. The video footage of Derek Chauvin and George Floyd turned the whole public against the police for years, despite the data showing that the cops are not a racist execution force. I mean, so you're. So it is almost impossible to come up against these visual arguments.

John Podhoretz (43:00)

And when I also wonder at Trump's. I mean, this is where, Eliana, you're saying Trump should go on the offensive, make a speed show images, make the case. I wonder if he has the emotional or moral standing to do that, even though he's President of the United States. By which I mean, do you think that Trump making a speech inflames matters or settles matters or brings people over to his side? Because I'm not sure that he has the emotional capacity to do what it is you think that he should do, which is say, we are acting within the law, we are doing what we should do. The demonstrators are provoking law enforcement officers seeking to interpose themselves between law enforcement and the just administration of our laws as passed by Congress and signed by presidents and all of that, he'll just go off bonkers and say lunatic stuff and undermine his own argument like that. That would be my concern, is that. Is that, you know, he would turn into Stephen Miller on a talk show and start, you know, yelling and screaming as opposed to doing what you're saying he could do.

Ben Shapiro (44:27)

It's possible, but the status quo, I think, is not working for them. So either I think the options are the administration should make a public case that leverages visuals, photos and videos and disseminates them to people, or they should think about how exactly to change the policy. And it does appear that they're considering changing the tactics here because of the visuals that are getting out.

John Podhoretz (45:02)

I mean, let's be fair.

Ben Shapiro (45:05)

Having been having Tim Walls And Jacob Fry get the best of you because they are riling up protesters and wanting to change the subject from a ballooning Somali welfare fraud in the Twin Cities, which is a winning issue for this administration and which the administration is taking on, is not acceptable.

Eliana Johnson (45:29)

I also, he, you know, he, like, I think the example that comes to mind is during the election, I think it was Arizona, but now I really don't remember. But he know Trump gave us, gave a, made an appearance at the border during the campaign, and he had victims, relatives, victims of, you know, violence by illegal immigrants, whatever set up around him. He had this whole great setup where he had these, you know, victims there. And he was going to give a speech about it, and he was at the border and he spent a full, full minute talking about how it was so unfair what they did to Biden by not letting him run again and pushing him out the door and how disrespectful it was because he had started out by saying, you know, this, the point of this was, look, Biden was, Biden was president when this happened. Kamala Harris was vice president, and he made her. The borders are when this happened, and she's now running for president. And instead of saying that in three seconds, he said, I remember what they did that was so bad. And then this. And then she. And, you know, she has no experience. And I don't know what they're doing with this. And just this old guy and so disrespectful. And it's clearly blah, blah, blah, literally a full minute. And I just don't, I think that he doesn't have, I think that we've seen that that's the example of what happens when he, you give him a setup, you give him a stage, you give him a background. Literally everything is in place. I think he just assumes, in general, aside from not being able to stay on topic, he just generally assumes that people will agree with him on immigration because he finds the amount of illegal immigration ridiculous.

John Podhoretz (47:21)

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James Patterson (48:42)

Commentary I'm James Patterson. I write way too many books. Welcome to Hungry Dogs. The title comes from my maternal grandmother, Isabel Zelvis. Morris. Nan used to always say, hungry dogs run faster, James. And I've been running fast ever since. Here's what will be coming your way soon. And this is a really terrific list. I think you'll hear from some incredible people like Stacey Abrams. Yay. BJ Novak.

Ben Shapiro (49:09)

Yay.

James Patterson (49:10)

Kathy Bates. Dolly Parton, Josh Gad. And Pope Leo. Okay, maybe not Pope Leo, but who knows? Maybe he'll show up. Hungry dogs run faster. Thank you, Grandma, for turning me into a hopeless, obsessive, compulsive. Listen to Hungry Dogs with James Patterson. That'd be me on Apple, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

Ben Shapiro (49:41)

But he. Okay, he may have done that during the campaign. Nonetheless. Okay, so. So he gave a speech in which he made a digression. Nonetheless, immigration was an enormously powerful issue for him on the campaign trail, as was the. The transgender stuff. Those were probably. And the protests on the campuses. Those were the most powerful issues for him, even if he at times, you know, made imperfect addresses about it. So I don't think I'm.

Eliana Johnson (50:10)

Well, I mean, the question is what, where or where a speech like that would go. Right. Which, I mean, I agree. But, you know, the digression then was, you know, oh, it's so unfair to Biden. But a digression now might be something about Renee.

James Patterson (50:25)

Good.

Eliana Johnson (50:26)

And whether she brought it on herself and had it coming or whatever.

John Podhoretz (50:32)

The.

Eliana Johnson (50:32)

Fundamental things involved here. He's. He's underwater on. Whereas he wasn't in the border.

John Podhoretz (50:38)

I mean, the way for him to win on immigration isn't to say, we're going to keep sending ice. We're going to flood zones in cities that didn't vote for me and, you know, pull people off the streets. The way for him to win on immigration and to turn these numbers around is to say, nobody is coming into the United States anymore. We have closed, we have effectively closed off the border to illegal immigration. The number of crossings in 2025 is down 275,000%. I came into office to stop this flow and I have done so. Instead, he has turned the argument in this direction that, that I think the polling and various shows is not what people are upset about immigration over. I mean, when you ask people, I believe, and I just, I believe if you ask people, is the problem the people who are already here or is the problem the people who are flooding the border and, and, and who in a generation left unchecked, there would be another 50 million of them? And I.

Ben Shapiro (51:53)

Okay, one small thing, okay. He could say, nobody's coming into the country. I also think he needs to say, nonetheless, there are many dangerous people who came in while Joe Biden was president and we are focused on removing those people. Here are a few examples. Okay, There are still many, many extremely dangerous people who are in the country. Okay. He doesn't need to focus on the law abiding people and the administration is overreaching on, but he should make a point that dangerous criminals came in during the previous administration and the administration is focused on removing those people from this country.

John Podhoretz (52:35)

He should, and maybe he should. The strategies that he is pursuing are not pinpoint enough. He's like, we'll go into Minneapolis and see who we, who we arrest. We'll go into LA and see whom we arrest. That's not, let's find dangerous. Let's know who these people are and then go after them. It's a different strategy that he is pursuing that is much more redolent of the. What we are trying to do is establish the precondition that nowhere is safe for anyone in America who is illegal. And that may be something that Stephen Miller wants and that deep immigration restrictionists want. It does not appear to be something that the American people want and has never appeared to be something that the American people want. And he himself is very vague on this because he'll in unguarded moments start talking about past the citizenship or, you know, or doing something and increasing H1B, H1B visas or whatever. He does not talk the way they talk, but they rile him up. They push his buttons and then things happen like Tim Walls and the Somali fraud and then he's like, I hate that guy Tim Walls, and look at the crap he said about me. And we're gonna send another thousand ICE agents in Christie, just like you suggest we should. And then it turns into something else that is very easily exploitable by his enemies, let's say, or the people who want to discredit his policies because he's not focused on them properly. That's. Anyway, I think that the issue in Minneapolis, though, which we should get back to, is there is extreme lawlessness on the streets of Minneapolis on the part of many people who are attempting to obstruct law enforcement efforts. And yeah, who's making, who's going to make that argument? I'm just not sure that Trump should make it. Now can I move on? Because I think this connects Eliana, you sent us in our group chat this morning, this very interesting op ed by David Plouffe about what Democrats need to do. Because even if they think are optimistic about the future, they shouldn't be optimistic about the future. There are fewer pathways for Democrats to win the presidency will be in 2028 than there were in 2020. He said as somebody worked on Kamala Harris's campaign, there were fewer paths to her presidency in 2024 than Biden had in 2020. Redistrict various other trends. The Supreme Court is going to end up could end if Democrats don't get their acts together, Supreme Court could end up 8 to 1 conservative and you know, everything will be terrible. And here are the seven things that we need to do to change things around. And I think it's very interesting in policy because what he wants to do is, is give people, is deal with the affordability crisis and the fact that people think that the economy isn't working for them by the government giving them things. Right. Just classic democratic politics. Government should give people things. We should build a lot of housing. We should subsidize groceries. We should make we should somehow the federal government should somehow make people into mechanics. That that's my favorite part of it is we need a lot more mechanics. The reason that used cars are so expensive is because it's hard to fix them. We don't have enough mechanics who can repair used cars, which is sort of an interesting seems to be a little meshuggah. But nonetheless, even if that were the case, I don't know that the federal government can really do that much to make sure that people become auto mechanics.

Eric Erickson (56:25)

Well, Obama had some idea about expanding trade schools as well.

John Podhoretz (56:31)

Well, so by the way, so did Marco Rubio the idea that we are spending or misspending or misallocating resources on education because we are not providing enough resources in the, at the federal level to teaching people practical skills that they can go out and then use and work, use as working people as opposed to gender studies majors. That's a sort of, yeah, I'm for it.

Eric Erickson (56:55)

Yeah.

John Podhoretz (56:56)

Right across the board. But what I was struck by is how Democrats still don't understand. And the Pluff piece is very interesting because it seems very sensible with sensible advice. But what he says is we need to lower costs for people. That's what we need to do. We need to lower costs for people, and we're going to do that effectively by having the federal government give them things, which increases taxes. So the one thing that everybody pays in the United States is taxes. Granted, 47% of the people don't make enough money or something like that are exempted from federal tax or something, but they pay Social Security tax, they pay Medicare. They pay. They pay all kinds of tax money. So Democrats want. Are still basically in the we're going to raise your taxes camp. We're going to give you things.

Eric Erickson (58:05)

But.

John Podhoretz (58:05)

We'Re not going to say that we have to raise taxes, which is the only way to do it, given the $35 trillion debt. Is this a winning message? Trump seems to think it is because he also wants to give people things. I think that it's giving Republicans and conservatives a gigantic lane to drive a Mack truck through and smash them to smithereens. Because, as I say, the one thing that everybody does pay is taxes. That's all households have to file an income tax return. And they pay state taxes, they pay local taxes, they pay federal taxes. Am I nuts, or is this like yada, yada, yada, ing taxes just a way of the Democrats, like, whistling past their own graveyards?

Ben Shapiro (59:02)

I think that Eric Erickson makes this point in his newsletter this morning, so I want to credit him, but. And I think I saw this piece linked in his newsletter. But so Plouff writes a sole article, and then our friend Ben Shapiro is on Gavin Newsom's podcast, and Shapiro says to Newsom, so can a boy become a girl? Can a girl become a boy? And Newsom can't answer the question. And we talked earlier this week about how ACLU lawyer at the Supreme Court can't say, can you define male and female for the purposes of, you know, 14th Amendment discrimination under the 14th Amendment. And then we had a doctor testifying before Congress who couldn't tell Senator Josh Hawley can men get pregnant? And so it does seem Plough lays out, here's the seven things Democrats have to do. Trump's most powerful ad in the 2024 election was, I'm for you. She's for they, them. Maybe Democrats should address this issue before they get to David plus, you know, seven, list of seven. And it appears they haven't gotten around to it.

John Podhoretz (60:36)

So even if you're right, that is one element of where the Democratic idea that what we need to do is be more effective stewards of public funds to get them to more people who will then vote for us to continue the flow of that money. Right. Which gets to questions of affordability, the economy, what the economy is for, and all of that.

Ben Shapiro (61:03)

Projecting normalcy a pretty big thing. And that is what Trump did effectively. Okay, normal people don't want illegal immigrants flooding the border and they don't want a politician who projects a sense of total indifference towards that. If not, I'm on the side of the illegal. Normal people think there's a difference between boys and girls and they want people who can say, a boy has these chromosomes, a girl has those chromosomes. No, a man can't get pregnant. And so long as Democrats alienate normal people with their inability to answer questions in a basic common sense way, they are going to have electoral difficulty. Look, Republicans are not beyond screwing it up. Of course they can screw it up. They can snatch defeat from the jaws of victory on all of these things, particularly when they control all three.

John Podhoretz (62:00)

Houses.

Ben Shapiro (62:01)

The White House, the Senate and the House. They're blamed for everything and they're likely to have a tough midterm election. But Plouff's article is about the long term. It's about the next 10 or 20 years. And I think Democrats are going to face difficulties in the long term so long as they have difficulty projecting normalcy.

Eric Erickson (62:20)

John, to your, to your question about the government giving people things and on the one hand and taxes on the.

John Podhoretz (62:29)

Other.

Eric Erickson (62:32)

You would think logically that, yes, there's a huge opening there for Republicans to make this argument about taxes. I don't think people look taxes logically, once you're starting to talk about giving them things, it's like running up credit, you know, or staying up late without worrying about what the consequences for tomorrow morning. And I just think it's the game now, both sides. You said both sides. Do you know, you can give them student loan forgiveness or whatever it is. The game is we're going to give you more things. And by the way, when it comes to taxes, well, there are a bunch of billionaires who can actually.

John Podhoretz (63:22)

Yeah, yeah, right. But then look at, look at California, right? So California, which is on the verge of imposing a billionaires tax, right. That is, that is the game in the state is gonna. Is all its billionaires are going to move out of California. So not only. So the net result will be of course to impoverish Sacramento, not enrich it. And I guess they can fiddle around and come up with things that they can pay for. But you know, reducing the tax base of the state is not a recipe for status spending. I don't know, I'm just thinking I'm old. Politics to me still remain what they were in the 1980s. And I keep trying to figure out, I see that according to Harry Anton, 59% of Democrats now officially identify as liberal. That is double the number of Democrats who identified as liberal 15 years ago. Democrats now, not Americans. Liberal was a dirty word in American politics from about 1980 until about 10 years ago. And then the question is, what does liberal mean? Because I would ordinarily say what liberal means is government is more important than the private sector and high taxes and lots of spending. But now I'm wondering if what liberal means is what Eliana is talking about here. When Democrats say they're liberal, are they talking about economic liberalism or are they talking about social liberalism or social radicalism? No.

Eric Erickson (65:10)

Or are there or. Or are they distinguishing themselves from the radicals? Are they saying liberal with some portion are saying I'm liberal, not woke?

John Podhoretz (65:20)

Maybe. I don't think that that's a theory. I don't think it's. I'm not sure that that's clear from what the polling said. I think what they mean is I'm not in any way conservative. In other words, they used to say it used to be a bias towards saying I'm conservative, meaning things should be basically what they are now, only they can be better. But like, I don't want radical change. But what does radical change mean now? And I think radical change means more like redefining what gender is than it is a lot more government spending. And if that's the case, then Democrats who are in theory probably in the best position they've been in, even though Biden did get to be president in 2020, they're in a very strong position if Trump is. Trump's numbers are going down. Republican disapproval, as is true of Democratic disapproval, is very high. And all of that. Democrats have a lot that they can start cultivating, which is sort of what Plouff's point is. But if.

Eliana Johnson (66:27)

I think they should go ahead.

John Podhoretz (66:29)

Sorry.

Eliana Johnson (66:29)

I think that they should. I mean, one of the, one of the interesting things about this discussion, though, is that there has been backlash against the sort of, you know, I guess we can call it trans ideology. I don't know. You know what. But, but the, but the basic, the, the orthodoxy with which the left was treating the trans issue, there was something of a break in the clouds, right? And then there seemed like it seemed like there was. And then now what we're seeing with Gavin Newsome is that maybe there really wasn't. We had, you know, it was sort of a false dawn situation.

John Podhoretz (67:07)

What. The break in the crowds was illusory.

Eliana Johnson (67:11)

That's the lesson after 2024.

Ben Shapiro (67:14)

Remember when Seth Moulton went on some podcast and he was like, I don't want Boys and My girls sports. Then he decided to run for Senate primary Ed Markey, and now he's like, oh, they all dropped. Dropped it after three days.

John Podhoretz (67:29)

Let me talk the real, the real.

Eliana Johnson (67:30)

Thing for David Plouffe then is, is they're. They're not looking forward. They're not actually moderating on those issues, even when they appear to be, you know, he's, he, you want to ride a wave in a certain direction, but the wave is still moving in the opposite direction because there is no audience.

John Podhoretz (67:52)

Right. The fact that he's too scared to bring this up in a piece about how Democrats can save themselves is proof that it's too dangerous for him as a figure in the Democratic Party to say, hold off on all this lunacy. Like, let's get back to basics. We're Democrats. We give people things. He says, we're Democrats, we should give people things. But he doesn't say, one of the ways we need to correct ourselves is by stopping the lunacy because he's too scared of getting excommunicated for his apostasy on these very important cultural radical issues. Can I give you guys one final thing and then we'll go because it speaks to this. So the show Landman on Paramount plus Taylor Sheridan show with Billy Bob Thorne as. And it's, you know, there's never been anything quite like it. It's the most literate show about business I've ever seen, and it's about the oil business. And it's melodramatic and all this, but there was a scene in the most recent episode that Sheridan, who can do anything and has no editorial, no one, is giving him notes. And his politics are very complicated. He's kind of A Jeffersonian small government, hates liberalism, but also, you know, hates American conservatism. It's very. He's very. It's very hard to pin him down. But there's a scene where a young girl goes to her dorm to sign into her dorm at Texas Christian University for the first time and has a roommate. She's a cheerleader. She's like dressed like a. Like a Dallas Cowboy cheerleader from the 1970s. And her roommate is named Pagan and is from Minnesota, interestingly enough, and is a they them. And the whole scene, which goes on for five minutes, is our heroine, Ainsley, trying to be polite and nice and supportive and that they them in. Pagan in the room says, I don't like music, so you're not allowed to play any music. And I'm vegan, so you can't bring any meat products. And I don't like that you even have a leather belt because that's cruelty to animals. And this room is my safe space and I need to feel safe in my room. And you can't bring anybody into the room because that'll make me feel unsafe. And Ainsley is trying very hard to be nice and all of this. And then she kind of like leaves the room, closes the door and bursts into tears because Pagan was being so mean to her and she was trying to be nice and Pagan was trying to be mean. Okay? So it's kind of like an amazing scene in the culture wars that this has even been depicted on television. So I turn on a podcast I listen to called the Watch, which is about television on the Ringer network. Two guys, Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald, who are talk about TV twice a week, and they go into a 15 minute rant about the evil. Okay, that's it. Trying to give Taylor Sheridan the benefit of the day. He's very popular and I enjoy these shows, but this scene was evil and this is evil. And how dare he and this fascist monstrosity that he dared put in the middle of this show. It has nothing to do with nothing with the plot of the show. Nothing. And he's just evoking his anti trans propaganda and his anti whatever and non binary propaganda. And I'm just so enraged and outraged. And I found it fascinating because I think it speaks to what Elliot, where Seth is wrong, that it looked like the fever had broken, because in cultural terms, the fever hasn't broken at all. And you can tell that by the way, in media terms, by the continuing sort of like psychotic abuse to which Barry Weiss, that is appended to Barry Weiss's name anytime she appears in any context in any mainstream publication. But the idea that landman, which is one show out of 511 shows on television, dares to have a scene mocking or making satire out of a humorless they them on a college campus is worthy of 15 minutes of denunciation on a popular podcast about television that helps set the cultural tone for what TV creators themselves, like Andy Greenwald, who is one of the two people on the show and is himself a TV writer, like what they will allow, what they will, you know, think is acceptable.

Eliana Johnson (72:47)

So this battle, I would add to that, by the way, the fact that Ron Wyden is, you know, introducing an anti Israel Bill and Mallory McQueen Morrow is called what Israel did in the war a genocide three months after the war is over. And Scott Weiner, who is running for Nancy Pelosi's seat, if you want to, if you want to replace Nancy Pelosi in the House as, as the Democratic nominee anyway, you have to call what Israel did a genocide. And Weiner, you know, backed out and backed down from trying to massage it. And so you're seeing as we watch the primaries now play out, this is where the rubber meets the road, right? This is where, this is where the actual test takes place, which is, do you have to stay in this extreme territory on various, you know, key issues to the left? And the answer is yes, you have to be the most extreme version of the candidate on several key issues or you have no chance of winning the primary. And that speaks louder than, you know, whatever David Plouffe is saying or, you know, even what we might see on tv. You just, if you listen to the Democratic candidates themselves, I'm surprised at how they're not trying to, you know, some of them, you would think Scott Weiner, for example, would not fold on the genocide stuff three months after the war ended and he went through a two year war refusing to call it genocide. Mallory McMorrow, the same thing, but they're actually getting more extreme. They're still moving to the left as, you know, as the world turns and sort of passes them by.

John Podhoretz (74:31)

And that's what they know that David Plouffe doesn't. David Plough is a consultant. So he tries to help get Democrats elected. But when you get the people who have to get elected this year, you have Marilyn Moore, who is running in Michigan, a state that Trump won and in which, by the way, the Republican candidate, I believe for Senate is running ahead of the Democratic, including Mallory McMorrow in the polling, is running ahead of them and Wieners in California trying to get a congressional seat and all that. They know what they need to say. They're saying it because somebody's saying to them, we're having real trouble raising money. And if you don't say X, this money isn't going to come through or they're going to organize against you. In money terms, whoever is running against you, using your failure to say that Israel committed a genocide in Gaza as a fundraising tool against you or a way to organize against you, they know what they have to do to get where they're going. If it were okay for, for Scott Wiener to not say that Israel committed a genocide, he would have happily not said it. He didn't change his opinion. This is like a hostage video that he released because he wants something and this is how he has to get it. So, yeah, the whole effort to say, here are the fun things, abundance and making people mechanics and all that. Let's talk about that. And they're like, you know, nothing would make me happier than to talk about that. But I'm sorry, I gotta say that a girl is a boy and that this country that did not commit a genocide, the Jewish state, committed a genocide. So I can get elected. So thanks very much for your advice, Zeitgeistund. We'll see. You know, I'll talk to you in December and you can see whether you can seduce some IDIOT Democrat in 28 into following your. Your guidelines. Because if 2020, 2028 looks anything like 2026, the. The primary debates in 2027 are going to make the primary debates in 2019 look like a John Birch Society meeting. So we'll see. We'll see how that goes. Anyway, watch Landman. That's my recommendation. Watch episode 9, season 2, episode 9 of Landman for the scene between Ainsley and Pagan. And you can skip forward to it if necessary. All right, we'll be back on Monday. For Seth Abelliana, I'm John Pot Horitz. Keep the candle burn.