Is Iran Still Strong?

Summary

The Commentary Magazine Podcast – "Is Iran Still Strong?"

Date: May 13, 2026
Host: John Podhoretz
Guests: Abe Greenwald, Seth Mandel, Eliana Johnson
Episode Theme: Assessing Iran's post-war military capacity and the credibility of U.S. intelligence estimates; reflections on political partisanship, rising antisemitism, and American Jewish history.

---

Main Theme Overview

This episode delves into the veracity and political implications of recent intelligence assessments suggesting that Iran's ballistic missile and nuclear capabilities survived recent military campaigns with less damage than officially stated. The panel discusses the politicization of intelligence reports, challenges the narrative presented by major media outlets, and explores how these dynamics impact American politics, particularly surrounding antisemitism and party realignment. The latter part of the episode addresses current U.S. congressional primaries, antisemitism in the political sphere, and closes with a tribute to Abraham Foxman, a prominent American Jewish leader.

---

Episode Highlights & Key Discussion Points

1. Debating the Credibility of Intelligence Estimates on Iran (00:44–13:54)

• Initial Challenge: John Podhoretz opens with skepticism regarding recent "breaking news" from The New York Times, which claims that damage to Iran's military infrastructure is far less than President Trump and Secretary Hegseth assert ([00:44]).
  • “The intelligence and intelligence assessment says that the damage done to Iran’s ballistic missile and nuclear program was much less serious than President Trump and Secretary Hegseth have led us to believe...” (John, 00:44)
• Assessing Sourcing: The panel unpacks the vague language used in intelligence leaks and media reports, emphasizing the difficulty in knowing the source, scope, and intent of these assessments ([01:50]).
• Historical Context & Bias: Abe Greenwald brings up the history of politicized intelligence, referencing the 2007 Iraq WMD controversy and similar doubts on Iran ([05:06]).
  • “They are notoriously politicized. Going back to 2007…” (Abe, 05:06)
• Headline Framing: Discusses how small footnotes become headlines, shaping public perception more than full reports ([06:53]).
• Iran's Capabilities: The recent strike against Iran—is the damage being downplayed by selective reporting? Abe asserts that even the gloomier estimates require significant Iranian effort to recover capacity ([09:12]).
• Ballistic Missiles: Importance for Israel and Ukraine, and the destruction of Iranian capabilities for immediate missile production ([11:30]).

Notable Quote:
“So it doesn’t mean that Iran is sitting, nobody is arguing that Iran is sitting with 70% of its missiles ready to fly... They may find who knows what.”
— Abe Greenwald ([09:12])

2. Media Narratives and the Intelligence Community’s Reputation (13:54–18:43)

• Panel Skepticism: Eliana Johnson and Seth Mandel critique the media’s deference to intelligence as “infallible” in Republican administrations, but politicized under Democrats ([15:20], [17:48]).
  • “There’s no context provided in the story noting just how many times actually the intel community... has been wrong, has intentionally and deceptively, you know, misleading for political reasons.” (Eliana, 15:20)
• Media Double Standards: Comparison with how different administrations (Bush, Obama, Trump) are treated by unnamed intelligence sources and the press ([17:48]).

3. Meta-Narratives and the Logic of Military Effectiveness (18:43–30:10)

• Critiquing the "Trump Lied" Storyline: John Podhoretz argues that current reporting, even if taken at face value, logically leads not to “Trump lied,” but rather to a need for further military action ([23:20]).
• U.S. & Israeli Targeting Accuracy: Podhoretz highlights modern military precision, challenging the notion of large numbers of missed or ineffective strikes ([25:20]).
• Political Use of Intelligence: How Democrats use intelligence leaks to bolster narratives of failure and defeat ([30:10]).

Memorable Moment:
“It would mean that we were just dropping bombs and they were falling in the Indian Ocean and we lied about that. It doesn’t follow that we didn’t do massive damage...”
— John Podhoretz ([25:20])

4. Political Fallout and Party Narratives (30:10–46:12)

• Congressional Primaries & Scandals: Focus shifts to a Kentucky primary, where Rep. Thomas Massie is embroiled in scandal. Trump is working to unseat Massie due to his anti-Semitism ([34:50]).
  • “Anti-Semites are not just bad people for being anti-Semites – it usually bleeds into other aspects of their life.” (Eliana, 36:52)
• Republican Response to Antisemitism: The episode notes differences in how Republican and Democratic parties handle members accused of antisemitism ([41:02], [43:50]).
• Electoral Realignment: Prediction that the Democratic party risks becoming defined by anti-Israel/antisemitic sentiment if it does not course-correct ([50:10]).

Notable Quote:
“Will a major American political party... partially define itself on the basis of its opposition to a small American ethnic group?”
— John Podhoretz ([50:10])

5. The Political Outlook for Democrats and Republicans (54:43–55:44)

• 2026 Election Dynamics: Despite unfavorable conditions for the incumbent Republicans, Democrats are underperforming in generic polls, possibly due to self-inflicted wounds, including candidate controversies ([54:43]).
• Senate Control Stakes: Turning to specific Senate races as pivotal for control and what that reveals about voters' direct response to antisemitism and party direction ([55:23]).

---

Notable Quotes & Timestamps

• "[On Iran’s missile program:] They cannot build a missile, a ballistic missile tomorrow, and fire it at someone. So it’s important to look at the full picture here..."
  – Abe Greenwald ([11:30])

• "There’s no context provided in the story noting just how many times actually the intel community... has been wrong..."
  – Eliana Johnson ([15:20])

• "[Talking about anti-Semitism in politics:] I just want to say, like, the GOP has been taking care, when it has the opportunity to, of its antisemitism problems. And the Democratic Party, not only isn't it taking care of its antisemitism problems, it is now ... leaning into its antisemitism problems."
  – John Podhoretz ([43:53])

• "Will a major American political party, I would say for the first time since the late 19th century, partially define itself on the basis of its opposition to a small American ethnic group?"
  – John Podhoretz ([50:10])

---

Memorable Moments & Tone

• Humor as critique: Panelists use wit and dry sarcasm, especially when lampooning Rep. Massie and referencing anti-Semitic tropes in modern U.S. politics ([36:52], [42:26]).
• Personal Tributes: Closing with a moving reading from Abraham Foxman’s high school essay, highlighting the continuity and gravity of Jewish memory and identity ([55:44–end]).

---

Closing Segment: Tribute to Abraham Foxman (55:44–End)

• Foxman's Legacy: John reads Foxman’s poignant words from 1958, underscoring the enduring challenges and responsibilities facing the Jewish community ([56:00–End]).
  • “There are two contemporary events we must remember and mourn while we rejoice...” (Abe Foxman, 1958, read by John Podhoretz)

---

Useful Timestamps

• Iran and Intelligence Media Coverage: 00:44–18:43
• Military Effectiveness & Narratives: 18:43–30:10
• Political Scandal: Thomas Massie: 34:50–46:12
• Party Realignment & 2026 Outlook: 50:10–55:44
• Tribute to Abraham Foxman: 55:44–End

---

Summary Takeaways

• The panel is skeptical about leaked intelligence press narratives, noting politicization and selective use of classified data.
• Both mainstream media and intelligence agencies are criticized for partisanship and shaping public perceptions.
• Precision bombing campaigns against Iran have been effective, contrary to leaks suggesting otherwise.
• The Republican party is currently more proactive in addressing antisemitism in its ranks than the Democrats.
• The unresolved tension between left-wing progressivism and antisemitism may have major electoral consequences.
• John Podhoretz pays tribute to Abe Foxman’s lifelong dedication to American and Jewish civic life.

Listeners leave with a clear sense that the real question is not just about Iran’s remaining capacity, but about the credibility of those shaping the narrative and the broader implications for American political alignments and Jewish communal security.

Transcript

[John Podhoritz]

Foreign. Expect the worst Some drinks and pain

[Matt Ebert]

Some die of thirst no way of

[John Podhoritz]

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 Wednesday, May 13, 2026. I am Jon Podhoritz, the editor of Commentary magazine. With me, as always, Executive Editor Abe Greenwald. Hi, Abe.

[Seth Mandel]

Hi, John.

[John Podhoritz]

Senior editor Seth Mandel. Hi, Seth.

[Abe Greenwald]

Hi, John.

[John Podhoritz]

And Washington Free Beacon editor Eliana Johnson. Hi, Eliana.

[Eliana Johnson]

Hi, John.

[John Podhoritz]

New York Times breaking news moved across my email yesterday around 6, highlighting a story that was not breaking news because we've seen versions of it over the last week in other places, so therefore not really breaking news. The intelligence and intelligence assessment says that the the damage done to Iran's ballistic missile and nuclear program was much less serious than President Trump and Secretary Hegseth have led us to believe that 30 of 33 ballistic missile sites are not fully destroyed so they could threaten the Strait of Hormuz, and the access to the nuclear materials has not been completely cut off forever. So this story is framed as Trump and Hegseth have been lying to us. The damage is much less severe than we expect. I want to then pose how we go from here as a series of questions. First, this is phrased as intelligence estimates. We have a series of different intelligence agencies within the United States government. There's the CIA, obviously, there's the Defense Intelligence Agency. There is the National Security Agency. There is even the Federal Bureau of Investigation, though it is only supposed to do domestic work. And there may be a couple of others that I don't know, including the Men in Black and, you know, and the imf, you know, that Tom Cruise works for. I mean, whatever. There's a lots of letters that involve thousands, if not tens of thousands of people involved in intelligence. This phrasing in this story, as in others, is very vague. So we don't know where it's coming from. We don't know how widespread the opinion is that is expressed in it, whether it is a consensus view of people inside an agency or whether it is one guy on a desk who is talking to people, whether it's a senior official who is hiding his identity and therefore is, you know, significantly credible to the reporters who are hearing them hearing him. But the Washington Post published stuff like this, Reuters published stuff like this over the last week or so, so that it is an intelligence estimate of some sort. How if you're like saying baseline credible, the president says we've won the military victory and Hegsa says that. And then this intelligence estimate says, wait a minute, how do we evaluate the. I think we're supposed to evaluate the intelligence estimate on the basis of the fact that the reporters who reported it are very confident in the phrasing of the wording that they use about how and use very specific numbers. 30 of 33 missile sites and this and that. So we're supposed to take the credibility of the New York Times and the Washington Post as a stand in for how credible we should take this report because they don't express much skepticism or question the validity of the report, which in previous eras you would have said, okay, that means they've got it dead to rights, or the CIA director told them himself but is hiding who he is or whatever. I think given where the contempt with which some of us now view the New York Times, we have reason to start from a position of skepticism. But Seth, where has the New York

[Abe Greenwald]

Times done something to hurt its credibility? John? I guess I had missed that story.

[John Podhoritz]

Yeah. Okay, well, we talked about it yesterday, so you can go back and listen to yesterday.

[Abe Greenwald]

Yeah, no, I, I think that, you know, first of all, I'm skeptical in general when I see reports of intel assessments on Iran's nuclear program because they are, first of all, they're notoriously politicized. Going back to 2007, which was the most famous example of it, 2007, when George Bush was president, there were people inside the intel community. The intelligence community is notoriously opposed to, I mean, you don't say notoriously, you can say famously if you agree with it, whatever, but have well known that they have been opposed to military action against the Iranian nuclear program. Okay, so in 2007, when there were concerns that Bush might do something, take some action, they released an intelligence estimate that said that Iran had stopped, it had frozen its nuclear weapons, weapons production. It's, it's a, it's drive toward actually building a bomb. The first thing to note was that this was kind of a footnote really in the full report. And the way that national intelligence assessments make their mark in the media is by choosing what to put in the headline. So you could take a footnote and put that footnote in the headline. And the headline is, you know, there were no WMDs found or whatever. Right. That's what you read. Nobody else knows what's in, like the Iraq report, because the headline was they found no WMDs. Similarly, if you put in the headline of the Iran one there, there they stopped building a bomb. You know, three quarters of readers stop reading there. And that becomes the narrative. But what it really said was that they had paused, at least temporarily, figuring out how to deliver the bomb while still building their nuclear program. They had not stopped enriching. And the National Intelligence Assessment didn't even claim that. And then other, by the way, the National Intelligence Assessment is several agencies who were, you know, part of the process and some of them disagreed that this was, you know, what happened. So moving forward last year, the Trump administration authorizes the bombing of Fordow and other Iranian nuclear sites. And there is a leak of some, someone who saw an intelligence estimate summary who then went to, I think it was the Washington Post and CNN and said that really it was all sort of surface damage. Surface facilities were damaged by the bombings. The stuff underneath is not. And they use that to try to imply that the bombings of the nuclear sites didn't really accomplish very much. But in fact they did because they cut off electricity and oxygen to anything that was underground and they also destroyed some of the, some of the sites. And crucially, they, nobody disputed that they were destroyed, that the US had gone far in destroying the means to build up the parts of a program that's key. They can't just enrich uranium now tomorrow if they wanted to. And likewise, the New York Times report that you're referring to says that the, the, they have retained.

[John Podhoritz]

Can I pause for a second just so I, just so we can sort this out. You're, you, you're, you were first talking about a report about what happened in Operation Midnight Hammer.

[Abe Greenwald]

Yes.

[John Podhoritz]

Last year. And now you're shifting to talk about.

[Abe Greenwald]

And now I'm going to shift to the. Okay. Yes, that's right. And so this new report that we're

[John Podhoritz]

talking about damage, and now there's this report that says what.

[Abe Greenwald]

Right. And so the surface damage I was saying was, you know, was a misleading way of describing what the hits that they had taken. This new report is a similarly misleading way to describe it because in part it says things like Iran has retained 70% of its pre war missiles, let's say, but it acknowledges that they're buried underground. And at some point it says that if they were to dig and find all the missile, the missiles that they have and the components that they have underground, they could restore up to 70%. So it doesn't mean that Iran is sitting, nobody is arguing that Iran is sitting with 70% of its missiles ready to fly. That's first of all, even the intelligence leak is not saying that. What it is, what the Intelligence League is saying is that the Israeli estimates who Put the number at closer to 50% are correct. It's just that if we let them dig for a while, they may find who knows what. Okay, that's first. The second thing is that we have, for now, destroyed their ability to develop ballistic missiles. They, if we let that, if, if we let them live on here, maybe they can build that back up. But the intelligence assessment is about missiles already created. It's not about the ballistic missile program. That was the number one. Outside of the nuclear program, the ballistic missile program was the number one threat. Why? Because this was considered an existential threat to Israel. Because the ballistic missile program was thought to be able to overwhelm Israel's Iron Dome defenses if, you know, used, if fired enough. The ballistic missiles were also being given to Russia to fire on Ukraine. So Iran was a ballistic missile development hub for the two major wars that are going on in the world that the US Is concerned with. And that hub basically no longer exists. They cannot build a missile, a ballistic missile tomorrow, and fire it at someone. So it's important to look at the full picture here, which is that if they want more missiles, China has to give them the components and. And they have to put them together, or China has to give them the actual missiles and that takes away from whatever else they want to use their time for. But also that if they want to recover the existing missiles that may or may not still be fireable, they have to go digging and find. They have to find the Afikoman. Okay, so I just want to put it in perspective that the intelligence assessment itself is not saying what a lot of people think.

[John Podhoritz]

It's a great summary. Okay.

[Seth Mandel]

Yeah, I want to. I think it's a great summary, too. And I want to respond to both what Seth, you said and John, you said. I think when your average news consumer reads a story that says intelligence assessment says, they don't quite grasp the vastness of, as John, you were saying, the breadth of these agencies. It's called the intelligence community for a reason. It's enormous, and there are always conflicting opinions within it. I want to note there are still intelligence agencies that maintain Covid came from a wet market. Does that mean that we think Covid came from a wet market? Is that the consensus intelligence opinion? No, no, no, no, no, no, it's not. And the thing is, you will always find takers for your particular politicized argument or framing of an assessment. You will always find some taker out there in the media. And I think that's what we're looking at here. So you have to be able to read through the lines, as Seth just did, to really get any sense of what, if anything, this means.

[John Podhoritz]

We spend a lot of time on this show talking about the long arc of American institutions. How they rise, how they decline, and occasionally how they come back. One of the industries that more or less disappeared over the last half century was watchmaking. Like a lot of manufacturing, it moved overseas. But today's sponsor is trying to reverse that trend. Vaer, that's V A E R, is a Los Angeles watch company whose goal is pretty straightforward. Bring American watchmaking back. They now assemble watches across California, Arizona, Rhode island and Alabama with leather straps made in Illinois and Florida. And these aren't fashion accessories. They're proper tool watches, sapphire crystals, premium materials, and full waterproof warranties, meaning you can actually swim or dive with them on. I've been wearing one recently, and what stands out is how solid and understated it feels. The kind of watch that seems designed to last for decades. Ver has already earned over 10,000 five star reviews, and it's become one of the largest independent watch assemblers in the United States. If you like the idea of owning something rugged, timeless, and thoughtfully made, take a look. Go to their watches dot com. That's V A E R watches dot com.

[Eliana Johnson]

I also think that for essentially ideological and partisan reasons, the views of the intelligence community or various intelligence agencies when a Republican, a hawkish Republican president is in power are treated like infallible, impartial expert views. When they're not, they're in fact partial, half, you know, partially blind and totally fallible opinions. And I think it's a huge miss that. And I think Gabe is right that the average reader seeing this thinks, oh, well, the President's saying one thing, but here come the experts, they, the infallible experts saying he's wrong and it's simply not the case. And there's no context provided in the story noting just how many times actually the intel community, quote, unquote, has been wrong, has intentionally and deceptively, you know, misleading for political reasons. And I'm not sure there's any reason we should believe unnamed sources in the intelligence community as opposed to the President or Senator Tom Cotton, a member of the Intelligence committee in Congress or anybody else. These are also partizan actors who told us that, you know, that 51 of them came out and told us Biden's laptop was Russian disinformation or that Iran was not building a nuclear weapon during the Bush administration or that Saddam had nuclear weapons. They're some of the most consistently wrong people. And I think they're particularly motivated because President Trump, he doesn't take the daily brief all the time from the intel experts. He set himself against the experts in the expert class. And many of these people have an ax to grind against him beyond simply the fact that they're ideologically opposed to him. He also just doesn't take their counsel as much as past presidents.

[Seth Mandel]

I just want to. Can I just add one more thing? I just remembered this through this discussion. Does Anyone remember in 2014, 2015, a bunch of intelligence officials came out to oppose, to push back on Barack Obama's saying that ISIS was contained and that and disputed the president saying that he wasn't properly warned. But they were contained. Never.

[Eliana Johnson]

They were the jv.

[Seth Mandel]

Right, right, right. And unless I'm crazy, the same media outlets that take this intelligence as gospel, this assessment as gospel, saw in that the pushback on Obama, a politicized campaign.

[John Podhoritz]

Okay, so that's, I think, the ultimate Rorschach to us question here. You mentioned Obama and ISIS and the jv. And then of course there is the big gun, which or the big failure which was Benghazi. We did not have intelligence that would have indicated that there was strength, power, motive, opportunity enough for there to be a terrorist attack that killed our ambassador and three others in Benghazi in 2012. After, of course, the whole Obama running his campaign on the grounds, on the line that General Motors is alive and Osama bin Laden is dead, meaning the war on terror is over and I've saved the US Economy, that Benghazi was a huge intelligence failure that we know is an intelligence failure because the results were public for everybody to see. Clearly they did not have eyes on the forces inside Libya that were looking to target and take revenge against the United States. I bring that up only to say that at any given moment, the intelligence group, which is very vast, has all kinds of conflicting actors. I'm sure there are people in the intelligence community, I think, as your anecdotes might suggest, who are much more ideologically congruent with us, much more hawkish or even MAGA or whatever, because they're made up of people, human beings who live in the world and have the political views that they have, who would be leaking in other ways, in other directions, including, by the way, the intelligence, those intelligence estimates. One other source I didn't mention is there are House and Senate intelligence committees. Those committees have staffers. Those staffers have, you know, co level, signal level intelligence clearance could have come from them, could have come from senators on those committees. That's what we don't know. We don't know who it is. And often in previous eras of reporting. This is going to get a little weird. If you could read stories in a Straussian fashion, which is to say you could read them more Talmudically where there are surface details, but if you have enough experience and enough knowledge, you can peer through the surface details to see the architecture underneath. And that little bits of words and cues and things like that would direct you to understand what the ultimate source was. Meaning it's from the CIA. It's from the director of the CIA, who is talking on the deepest of backgrounds, or the head of the Senate Intelligence Committee, who is talking on the deepest of backgrounds. These stories are written in this very vague way that give you absolutely no assurance that the material that you're getting has been collected, collated, and that a thorough argument has been made that these sites are accessible to the Iranians if they dig them out, or something like that. So this is another element of this is this is an effort to create a definitive plotline. The definitive plot line is Trump and Hegseth have told you that they won the war militarily, and they haven't, and so they're lying to you and you can't trust a word that they say. That's the. That's the meta meaning of these stories. And let's just, by the way, accept that argument and move on from there. They have been Panglossian about how wonderful their successes have been and overestimated them and have overstated them and have celebrated themselves wrongly and falsely. If all of this is true, it is time for us to restart the war and destroy everything that has yet to be destroyed. This is like a kind of targeting story. If we have assessed that there are 31 of 33 possible ballistic missile sites, that would presumably mean, given the specificity of the count, that we know where they are and we have air supremacy so we can fly our and the Israelis can fly their planes over it and bomb those sites again and use heavier bombs and more destructive bombs to take the sites out so that they won't be able to dig them out. If in fact it is true. Right. That's number one. Number two, if they're in a position to potentially dig out the WMD and the fissionable material that they have made, then either we're right that what we need to do is arrange things at the end of the war so that we dig it out and go in and get it, but certainly if we know where it is and we know that it's still there, we can keep our eye on it forever. And anytime they send a bulldozer near the Fordow site or Isfahan or whatever, we then drop a bomb on the bulldozer. I don't see how any of this mitigates the need to go to continue fighting the war. They're not helping if their purpose is to get Trump to say, you're right, I screwed up. This was terrible. I'm just trying to cut a deal and run. Well, it has the opposite effect.

[Seth Mandel]

But they publicize this intelligence estimate alongside reports that US Is so low on its own munitions, you see. So the full picture, according to places like the Times, is that Iran's got its full stocks and we're depleted. I mean, that's. So it's a total mess is the broad picture that they're trying to paint. So we couldn't.

[Abe Greenwald]

Which is what makes it.

[John Podhoritz]

So we couldn't go back if we

[Seth Mandel]

wanted to because we're running dangerously low.

[Abe Greenwald]

Right. Which is what makes the production part of it so key. We can produce more if we want to. They can't produce more if they want to.

[John Podhoritz]

Again, the logic of the story flies in the face of our own eyeballs. I mean, let's say that unlike all military targeting in the 21st century, which we know has achieved a level of accuracy that other wars using air power since 1914 have, the success rate on bombing in World War II was something like 25 to 50%. That is to say that we, the Allies and the Japanese and the Germans, wanted to bomb places. And we missed more often than we hit them because we didn't have telemetry. We knew how to make a parabola. So we knew if you dropped a. If you were going 300 miles an hour in a plane and you dropped. You unloaded your bomb here, it would go on an arc and it would somehow try to hit over there. All estimates that we know are that our targeting, particularly American targeting, and I think Israeli targeting, have achieved a level of almost supernatural accuracy. We know where they're going. We know where they're going to hit. We know this. So we know this from Libya. We know it from everywhere. We know it from Israel's strikes. Israel as a kind of. What would you call it, like, testing ground for modern advanced weaponry of this sort. And we know it from the Ukrainians, by the way. So the idea that our bombing runs were ineffectual, ineffective, didn't hit the targets in the right place in the right way and whatever. Over six weeks. Does not compute. This argument does not compute. We have gone from, oh, Iran had a hole card, which is that it could close the Straits of Hormuz simply by saying, we're gonna close the Straits of Hormuz. Cause we have the capability to strike your ships and therefore caused a crisis in international shipping. Right. Which I think everybody sort of acknowledged the minute they did. Oh, that's a pretty clever play, actually. Right. They're going to a sort of low tech, we can blow up your ship with a speedboat or whatever, so you better not come in here. Two, they have everything they had before the war and now they're in a stronger position. Like, that's insane. That doesn't make any sense whatsoever. It would mean that we were just dropping bombs and they were falling in the Indian Ocean and we lied about that. It doesn't follow that we didn't do massive damage. And it also doesn't follow about the ballistic missile program, because suddenly their missiles went silent. They fired several hundred missiles at Israel, they fired hundreds of missiles at the Gulf. And then, with the exception of a

[Abe Greenwald]

couple, even at a European base or two in.

[John Podhoritz]

Right.

[Abe Greenwald]

Cyprus.

[John Podhoritz]

And were, with the exception of a couple of moments in the last three weeks or four, they have gone silent. So either they're husbanding the missiles that they have, which means that they have really been wildly depleted, or they don't have any left, or they're under rubble and they could dig them out. Then they would also have to fix them. Then they would have to fix the mobile launchers to make sure that they can launch them. So none of this makes logical sense, even if you hate the war and you're a pacifist or you don't like the war, or you're Bob Kagan and you want Trump to lose. I don't know. It doesn't make sense. In fact, the story, read, as I said it before, suggests that we have a lot more work to do. If you accept the premises of this story, we got a lot of targets to hit again, and we need to go back to the air to hit the targets in order for Trump to succeed in his aim of winning the war against Iran and reopening the Strait of Hormuz. Not. Aha. See, Trump lied to you, which is bad. If Trump lied to us. I wish he didn't. And we've all, I think, been skeptical of the triumphalist tone of something the day after the war started, him saying, we won the war. Well, if that's the case, then we wouldn't still be at war. But nonetheless, here we are. So, Eliana, politically, where do you think this goes? Who's going to use, how will it be used politically on the Hill or on Emma now or whatever?

[Eliana Johnson]

Well, those are two very different things. I'm not sure this will really, this will really change the political calculus. I mean, this is what the Democrats in the left have been saying. It adds a quiver to their arsenal. But this has been the defeat caucus from day one. They've been saying quagmire from day one. I'm not sure this really changes very much. And I think the only thing that's going to change the narrative is the president finding a way to remove the nuclear material, to offer a definitive answer, which is removing the nuclear material from Iran and resuming Project Freedom to reopen the Strait. A New York Times story saying, you know and show and demonstrating definitively that this story, you know, what's printed here is not the case.

[John Podhoritz]

I'm happy to come talk to you again about quints. It's spring, and for me that means it's time to take out my Quince linen clothing pants shirts, buy some new ones. The linen breathes. It is the most comfortable for the spring and summer months. It's handsome, it is attractive. And we're talking about stuff that costs 50 to 80% less than you'd find from similar brands because quince works directly with ethical factories, cuts out the middleman. You're getting premium materials without the markup. So refresh your everyday with luxury you'll actually use. Head to Quince.com commentary for free shipping on your order. Order and 365 day returns now available in Canada too. That's Q-U-Y-N-C-E.com commentary for free shipping and 365 day returns. Quince.com commentary. I have a dog named Georgie Lover. But, you know, hard to understand dogs. They do weird things. They don't speak. Speak. So if your dog is acting weirdly at 2 o' clock in the morning, you're googling like, is this normal? Do I have to call the vet? You're not alone. These moments of panic come with pet ownership. And they're exactly why I'm here to talk to you about ASPCA Pet Health insurance. It helps take the financial question out of the equation so when something feels off, you can focus on getting your pet the care they need instead of stressing over the cost. When you enroll in an ASPCA pet health insurance program, you could get a $25Amazon gift card. It's a little treat for you while you're doing something great for your pet. It's been around for almost 20 years, has covered nearly 1 million pets in that time. To explore coverage, visit aspcapetinsurance.com commentary that's aspcapet insurance.com commentary eligibility restrictions apply. Visit and listen to this carefully. Aspca pet insurance insurance.com Amazonterms for more info. This is a paid advertisement. Insurance is underwritten by either Independence American Insurance Company or United States Fire Insurance Company and produced by PTZ Insurance Agency Ltd. The ASPCA is not an insurer and is not engaged in the business of insurance. Let's move to something fun. And by fun I mean disgusting and weird and crazy, but fun anyway, because we're moving into something a little less serious, as Matt Caudenay would say. His least favorite congressman Thomas Massie is up for the primary in Kentucky involving Thomas Massie. The anti Semitic and anti American Republican congressman is next week and Trump has targeted Massie for defeat and Massie has said that he's a robot of Netanyahu and the Jews control the weather and I don't know, whatever else he said that's been disgusting for his entire career. But Trump made it clear that he wants Massie gone. And so there is a primary. And Eliana has been enjoying watching the primary story develop.

[Eliana Johnson]

You want me to summarize this latest?

[John Podhoritz]

Please.

[Eliana Johnson]

Delicious drama?

[John Podhoritz]

Please.

[Eliana Johnson]

So the primary between Massey and his opponent, the former Navy SEAL Ed Gallrein, is on Tuesday and in the closing days of this race, a woman by the name of Cynthia west comes forward and says that she began a romantic relationship with Massie two months after his wife of 30 years passed away. That Massie got helped get her a job in the in Washington, D.C. she was not living there at the time and she moved to D.C. to date Massie. He got her an office, a job in the office of Representative Victoria Sparts, a Republican congresswoman. And that when the woman broke things off with Massie, just, you know, six weeks later or so, Massie offered her $5,000 to drop a wrongful termination complaint because she was terminated in short order from her job with Sparts, which was secured for her allegedly by Massie, so that the two could carry on. And the woman, Cynthia west, declined Massie's offer of this $5,000. She declined to sign an agreement with the House of representatives for $60,000 which included a non disclosure agreement. So she's coming forward now with all of this. And she's saying that Axios has now reviewed the agreement. The Free Beacon wrote about this yesterday, but we hadn't actually seen the agreement. She was holding it up in a video interview she did. So she told Axios that she broke her silence about this because she thought it was hypocritical of Massie, who led the charge with Ro Khanna for transparency around the Epstein files. And listeners may know how much I disliked that initiative and how wrong I thought it was. And so she thought that was so hypocritical. She's bringing transparency to Thomas Massie's personal life and bringing forward these documents and talking about her relationship with him. And so I was joking with these guys before the podcast that it goes to my theory that anti Semites are not just, you know, they're, the fact that they're anti Semites means they're not just bad people for being anti Semites. It usually bleeds into other aspects of their life. How they're usually garbage people. You find, you find evidence that they're garbage people in other aspects of their life.

[John Podhoritz]

Well, you know, at least here we

[Eliana Johnson]

have it on display with Thomas Massie.

[John Podhoritz]

Well, at least Thomas Massie isn't like, you know, hunting 17 year olds like other, like former congressmen and one time near attorney general appointees.

[Eliana Johnson]

Well, he's another proof point of my theory, too.

[John Podhoritz]

That's why I'm bringing it up. So Massie, if in the annals of how you rank people whose personal behavior, at least in this case is maybe in the, like in the number two position below Matt Gaetz, but you know, we have many others, of course, low

[Eliana Johnson]

bar, John, very low bar. I mean, low bar. Grant you, the bar is like in the basement.

[John Podhoritz]

Yes.

[Abe Greenwald]

Well, the key, and the key also, you know, the key with Massey, I guess, is that Trump hates him. And so at least you have the, you know, the head of the party turning against the anti Semite. Right, That's a, that's a really important aspect of this is whether or not Trump can stand the person. They, they may, they may be a bad person. Some bad people Trump can stand keeps them in the fold. Some terrible people. He really can't stand. He couldn't stand Marjorie Taylor Greene. He can't stand Tom Massie. So that at least helps in the, you know, in the overall, in the overall analysis of where the Republican Party is, is, is headed and maybe says that Massie is, has no real support base.

[Eliana Johnson]

Yeah.

[Abe Greenwald]

General, who is, who is the, who is the Massey wing of the party? I guess is, is the question. And it doesn't exist.

[Eliana Johnson]

We'll find out Tuesday. I mean, the Iran war has gone to show that, you know, given the poll numbers, that this is a phantom wing of the party. The people are really with Trump. But Trump, you know, so like quick and perceptive about and, and who loves lurid details about people's personal lives. You know, he heard that Massie, who dated this woman two months after he got, after his first wife died, and then he got married to another woman less than a year after his wife of 30 years died. TRUMP says in November, did Thomas Massie, sometimes referred to as Rand Paul Jr because of the fact that he always votes against the Republican Party, get married already. Boy, that was quick. And then the, another funny aspect of this is that the Massie campaign, when folks were asking about going to the Massie campaign for comment about this woman's allegation, were referring people to an attorney friend of Massey's. And his response was that Massie's so rich that if this happened, he definitely would have offered people more than $5,000 to pay them off.

[John Podhoritz]

I just want to explain why we're, why we're speaking in such lighthearted tones when I say that Massie is the most anti Semitic member certainly of the Republican caucus and conceivably in the entire Congress. I'm talking about somebody who then rivals Rashida Tlaib, you know, Ilhan Omar and others for that title. He is a conspiracist. He is a person who talks about financial perfidies and, you know, evil Jewish money and stuff like that. He is a old time, old line, down the line anti Semite. He hates us. And we are therefore not only understandably loathing of him, but almost as a matter of conscience. And what is most important to us, we wish to see him eliminated from public life. Not from life, but from public life. This has been a long standing hope and conviction. And that Trump, that he finally got to a place where Trump couldn't bear it either is an interesting point. And I also want to point out, though I'm now quite.

[Eliana Johnson]

Can I just give, like be specific about this?

[John Podhoritz]

Yeah.

[Eliana Johnson]

I mean, there have been multiple House resolutions condemning anti Semitism and Massie is the single vote against these House resolutions. He's not exactly subtle about it.

[John Podhoritz]

Right. Well, it's not just that, by the way. I mean, I just also want to point out about the Republican Party when we talk about Ilhan Omar and everybody and remember this failed effort to censure Rashida Tlaib in 2019 when she started saying that Jews were all about the Benjamins. And then the Democratic caucus revolted and would not allow there to be a condemnation of her. I'm now blanking on the guy's name because of my advancing age. But who was the congressman seven or eight years ago? That's a Republican Party. There was another anti Semitic Republican congressman.

[Eliana Johnson]

Steve. The Iowa guy.

[John Podhoritz]

The Iowa. Yeah, right. I'm Gary. Steve King.

[Eliana Johnson]

Steve King.

[John Podhoritz]

Steve King. The entire party, including the House leadership, targeted him for loss because they were disgusted, humiliated by him and hated him and wanted him gone.

[Abe Greenwald]

And again, they stripped him of his committee assignments, which were.

[John Podhoritz]

Yeah, right, exactly. So I am, you know, I just want to say, like, the GOP has been taking care, when it has the opportunity to, of its antisemitism problems. And the Democratic Party, not only isn't it taking care of its antisemitism problems, it is now, as Sheryl Sandberg might say, leaning into its antisemitism problems. Sure, Graham Platner's fine. No, he's not a Nazi for having a Totenkov tattoo. Sure. This candidate wherever is, you know, saying horrible things about Israel and then lighting it to Jews.

[Eliana Johnson]

Hasan Piker.

[John Podhoritz]

That's fine with us. Like how many cases are there now, seven, eight, nine people running for office this year who have made arguably openly anti Semitic Jew hating remarks that no one in the Democratic Party is looking to cleanse or deal with or sideline or ruin for this. It is not. It is. They are worried, properly, understandably, that their base, this is where their base is going and they do not want to be put in a position where they are crosswise of their base. And for the Republican Party, for all of its many sins, and they are many, and we have been vocal about them forever, this has been a very stalwart in the realm of the official party here. I'm not talking about the podcast pros and stuff like that. Matt Gaetz was an enemy of the House leadership in part because of this, although he, he moved much further in that direction. Massie, others. I mean, this is a real thing that the Republicans are taking care of business on and the Democrats are now moving essentially to become apologists for. People sort of have to keep, you know, take note of that, I think. I mean, you can or you can't, but I mean, if it matters to you, it matters to you. Speaking of which.

[Abe Greenwald]

Right. It also matters. One of the reasons the leadership matters is because when we saw the primary fights among Democrats a couple years ago over this stuff The Israel issue would get folded into. This person doesn't care about their district, right? They're, you know, Bowman, Jamal Bowman is obsessed with a conflict 6,000 miles away. He's not taking care of you. And a Democrat can run against him in the primary and say that. But the other, the other argument it got folded into took place in the St. Louis district where Wesley Bell had ousted. Corey Bush, who was a member of the, of the squad who's running again, wants to take back her seat. Wesley Bell is an unapologetic progressive. You know, he's not some. He actually came to. He and Cory Bush both really. The Ferguson, you know, riots or whatever you want to call them, had uplifted both of their profiles. Wesley Bell as a prosecutor who came in, as somebody who said, obviously, you can't accuse me of not caring about crime, but there's a better way to do this. And Cori Bush is someone who said, let's take to the streets and burn everything down. Wesley Bell won that primary in part by saying, Corey, it's not about being pro Israel. Cori Bush is anti Biden. Joe Biden is our president and he's the leader of our party and he's in office trying to get things done. And Cori Bush is part of a group, a faction within the party that is undermining our own president at a time when that will lead to us losing seats and the president maybe losing reelection, which he did. Sort of, kind of, you know, sort of, kind of whatever. But, but Bell's argument that was they're going against the party leader. I'm a Biden Democrat. You can say that when that person is president. Republicans now have cover to say, this guy, this lunatic is going against maga. He's going against Trump. He's trying to destroy Trump. Trump's the leader of our party. It's not about being Israel first or Israel last. I'm a Republican. This guy's trying to take apart the Republican Party while it's in power. And so you have that ability to do that now. And Democrats will not have that argument next time. They will not be in a position where they have a president like Biden who is hesitant to jump on the, the anti Israel bandwagon of his party. And that will remove an excuse to moderate the party without having to be branded, so to speak, as pro Israel.

[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 five 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.

[John Podhoritz]

When you get momentum, you step on the gas.

[Abe Greenwald]

That's how you get separation from everybody else.

[John Podhoritz]

I was at Harvard Law School as blah blah, blah.

[Abe Greenwald]

I looked up, let me tell you something.

[John Podhoritz]

There's kids in my neighborhood putting in sheetrock that are smarter than you.

[Abe Greenwald]

AI is going to disrupt a lot of stuff. It is never going to disrupt physical

[John Podhoritz]

blue collar trade skill.

[Abe Greenwald]

And the guy just looked at me

[John Podhoritz]

and he said, it's bloody impossible. So I asked him this question.

[Matt Ebert]

I said, it's impossible unless that's Podcrash with me. Matt Ebert. Watch on YouTube and listen wherever you get your podcasts.

[John Podhoritz]

This is why next year is going to be so important in the history of American Jewry, because this is the hinge moment based in part on results that will come in 2026. But will a major American political party, I would say for the first time since the late 19th century, partially define itself on the basis of its opposition to a small American ethnic group? I mean, the Democratic Party could be a no nothingism party with Israel and Jews as their focus, effectively going into the 2028 elections. I mean, this was, you know, hostility toward certain ethnic groups or religions face was a. Was a feature of American politics in the 19th century and it ceased being so. I mean, you could say that racism, you know, was a. But remember, the racist party in the United States, which was the Democratic Party, was also the progressive party in the United States. So northern black people voted for the Democratic Party and southern white people voted for the Democratic Party and they somehow were in some bizarre alliance together. But I mean, like anti Chinese, anti Catholic, anti, you know, Italian, this was a whole thing in American politics. It has not been. And we do have a party effectively because it will define itself as being progressive, for which this will be one of the two or three major issues that is discussed in their own precincts as they head toward trying to figure out who is going to represent them nationally in 2028, if the results of the 2026 midterms are unfavorable to that tendency. And that proves to be a losing proposition in the Michigan Senate race, in the main Senate race, in some of these House races, then maybe the party's descent into this monstrous ideological swamp will. There will be practical reasons to resist it and to push back against it and by other, by politicians who want the party to win so that they can succeed. I would also add that, you know, we sit with this very weird fact. As the election is coming up in 2026, all of the signs should be there for a Democratic wipeout wave. Inflation is now running close to 4%. The war is unpopular. Trump's popularity numbers are at around 40 or maybe even a little lower. Country People believe the country is on the wrong track. Da da da da da, da, da. And it's a midterm election and it's the president in power and the Congress is the president, and the, and the Congress are both in the hands of one party. These are favorable portents for Democrats. But they are running in the generic poll where you ask, would you vote for a Democrat or Republican as your representative? They are currently running around 5% ahead of the Republicans. In previous elections that were wave elections. That number was in double digits by this point in the election cycle in 2020 10, which was, you know, the 63 seat shift in the House, that number was like 14% in favor of Republicans. After the massive Obama electoral triumph of 2008, they're at 5%. In the CNN poll, they're at 3%. That number should be a lot bigger. And you have to wonder whether Democrats aren't making the sale that they're the same party. I don't think Republicans are making the sale that they're the same party either. But I think it's like a kind of pox on both your Houses situation. And I hope, I don't know, but I hope that it's the Totenkopf tattoo and the Muslim Brotherhood candidate in Michigan and others that are creating the emanations in the public at large that say, you know what? I don't want them either. Maybe that's a wishful.

[Abe Greenwald]

Maybe you can, you know, you can.

[Seth Mandel]

Yeah.

[Abe Greenwald]

We should also be clear that because those are Senate races, that's the, that could be the difference between Trump's next two years just being impeachment and Democrats, you know, controlling everything or not. I mean, in other words, the Democrats may even, even if they're shooting themselves in the foot, they can still win the House. But, but this, the Senate has these high profile races that they need in order to win the Senate from Republicans. The wave has to include people. The wave has to include them winning Michigan.

[John Podhoritz]

Right.

[Abe Greenwald]

That sort of thing. It's not a wave if they don't win Michigan right in this. So that is, that is part of it, which is that they could still claim victory in the House, but functionally, these candidates could be the difference between them holding this, taking the Senate, and therefore make a huge difference in the politics of the next couple years.

[John Podhoritz]

Well, yeah, I just think the results are what matter here. And like you would think that Democrats should win 40 seats in the House based on the atmosphere. Now, maybe that's not structurally possible. We haven't even talked about the redistricting fiascos of the last couple of weeks and last couple of months. But and maybe there just aren't that many seats that they can win based on how the composition of the national map is. But that's what should be in the air, and it just isn't. And the autopsy of the 2026 election, if it stays in this place, is going to be very interesting because we will have understood, as was true in 2022, particularly with the Senate, that there was a reason why this didn't happen, you know, that, that Trump helped appoint, get, get nominations for people who are so wildly inappropriate for the Senate that they had to be rejected. For example, I want to end here on a surprising note, if I could. I attended the funeral of Abraham Foxman, the former head of the Anti Defamation League, yesterday. He died at the age of 86. He is the father of a dear friend of mine, along with somebody I've known for many years, as every Jew in America has sort of known, Abe Foxman. He was the last of his kind, the last sort of American Jewish communal leader who had a kind of independent standing and people knew and had a kind of public profile that was important. And he wasn't just a sort of functionary, but he led this sort of amazing life story. He was a baby. His parents hid him. He was a hidden child in, in Poland with his nanny who had him baptized and then saved his life. His parents miraculously survived, and when they came back to get him, the nanny didn't want to give him up. And there was a sort of five year custody battle. Finally, he ended up in the care of his parents and in the United States at the age of 10 and then moved to Brooklyn. And then by the time he was 17, he was graduating from Yeshiva of Flatbush, which was what we would now call a modern Orthodox Jewish day school. And remember, so as Michel said at his funeral, English was not neither his first, second, third nor fourth language. It was the fifth language that he had learned at the age of 10. Starting at the age of 10. But in his yearbook, the year that he graduated, the year that he graduated, Abe Foxman wrote a closing page editorial that just disappeared from my screen, so give me a second to pull it up again. This is how his yearbook ended, with this essay that he wrote that I am now going to read. It's a little long. It's called lest we forget. 18 years old. Not his original language, 1958. Somebody who then would go off to law school and then dedicate his life to the promotion, salvation and the good working order of the Jewish people. Lest We Forget by Abe Foxman we have been fortunate and privileged to witness the 10th anniversary of the State of Israel. Ours is the pleasant duty to rejoice and be gay on the 10th year of the foundation of an independent Jewish state. At the same time, however, it is our solemn duty to mourn. Our Jewish heritage teaches us that it is not enough to set aside a day of remembrance and mourning for a catastrophe that has befallen our people. We must recall these infamous events at the very moment that we rejoice. During our most festive holidays. We set aside a few solemn minutes for Yizkor, during which we recall the departed. That is a moment, a prayer service inside a prayer service in which you basically mention the names of your loved ones and then say the mourner's prayer for them. Our prayers during the holidays are filled with the memory of the destruction of the two temples and as well as references to the plight of the Jews living in the Diaspora. There are two contemporary events we must remember and mourn while we rejoice. The first is the slaughter of 6 million of our brethren in the concentration camps and ghettos in Europe. The second is the great sacrifice made by the best of our youth in Israel for the independence of this state. We must bear in mind that in this world nothing comes easily, that nothing worthwhile can be achieved without first rendering a great sacrifice. The establishment of our present state may have been the costliest in our history. It is a bitter irony of our history that the great holocaust in Europe made the establishment of a Jewish homeland imperative. This had to be done as quickly as possible, for the fleeing refugees had nowhere to go. Had the catastrophe not come, who knows how long we would have had to wait to see this contemporary miracle occur. The survivors of the disastrous slaughter in Europe have not desisted from their efforts to reach Eretz Yisrael in the face of great obstacles and perils. The Israeli Ministry of Health has released the following data, it has been established. Remember this is 1958, that one out of every four Jewish inhabitants of Israel is a former inmate of a ghetto or concentration camp or a former partisan. Those who managed to reach the homeland before the Holocaust have been and will be acutely mindful of their kith and kin who perished in it. It is no exaggeration to attribute a large measure of the matchless heroism the Yishuv, that's the Jewish population in Israel before the creation of the state, displayed in the war of liberation, to the resolution with which the memory of the martyrs and heroes in Europe inspired them. In a sense, these martyrs and heroes fought shoulder to shoulder with them against the British obstructionists and then later against the Arab invaders. Secondly, while we rejoice, we must pay tribute to the heroes of Israel who fell on land, on the sea, in the air, in defense of their country. All of them, devoted and loyal, made the supreme sacrifice in giving their lives. The fighters of liberation, either in the Haganah, Irgun, Palmach or Lehi, all fought and fell for one the liberation of the Jewish homeland. May their acts of heroism inspire generations yet to come. May the glory of their courage live on forever. Written by Abe Foxman at the age of 18 in 1958. May his memory be for a blessing. Till tomorrow. For Abe, Eliana and Seth, I'm John Podhoritz. Keep the candle burning. Sam.