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- [00:01]
John Podhoretz
This episode is brought to you by Lifelock. The holidays mean more travel, more shopping, more time online, and more personal info in places that could expose you to identity theft. That's why LifeLock monitors millions of data points every second. If your identity is stolen, their US based restoration specialist will fix it, guaranteed or your money back. Get more holiday fun and less holiday worry with LifeLock. Save up to 40% your first year. Visit LifeLock.com podcast terms apply.
- [00:45]
No way of knowing which way it's going. Hope for the best.
- [00:50]
Christine Rosen
Expect the worst Hope for the best.
- [00:55]
John Podhoretz
Welcome to the Commentary Magazine daily podcast. Today is Tuesday, November 19, 2024. I am John Podhoretz, the editor of Commentary magazine, still reeling in the glow from Sunday night's roast of Natan Sharansky. The room was electric. We all had a wonderful time with everybody who came. Those of you who did not, who stayed sleeping in your bed shall think themselves a curse that they were not with us on that day and hour. And you will have a chance to do that next year when we give you information about the roast, which is our leading fundraiser of the year. And you're going to hear from me later after Thanksgiving about ways in which you can help contribute to keep the podcast going and commentaries and institution healthy and thriving. We are a nonprofit, 501C3 and we depend on the LM Monsonary generosity of our readers, our listeners and people who believe in the mission that we are pursuing to keep the lights on, to keep publishing and to keep podcasting. But that will come later today. We're just gonna do what we do every day. And by we, I mean executive Editor Abe Greenwald. Hi, Abe.
- [02:03]
Abe Greenwald
Hi, John.
- [02:04]
John Podhoretz
Media commentary columnist at American Enterprise Institute, Senior Fellow Christine Rosen. Hi, Christine.
- [02:10]
Matthew Continetti
Hi, John.
- [02:11]
John Podhoretz
Christine's colleague at aei, our Washington Commentary columnist, Matthew Continetti. Hi, Matt.
- [02:16]
Seth Mandel
Hi, John.
- [02:16]
John Podhoretz
And our senior editor, Seth Mandel. Hi, Seth.
- [02:19]
Christine Rosen
Hi, John.
- [02:21]
John Podhoretz
There is a lead story in the New York Times this morning that says that by Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan, who are both extraordinarily well sourced. And by well sourced, I mean that when you see a Maggie Haberman byline on something, chances are that Trump himself might personally be involved, which you know, because he then always says things like, I don't know her, I never met her, I, I don't know who she is. I don't know where she gets these things. Which probably means that he is the direct source. But according to this story, he has acknowledged that there is a less than even chance that Matt Gaetz is going to be confirmed as Attorney General. But he figures he's going ahead with it. He's making phone calls. Because even if he doesn't get Gates through, the fact that people will have to reject Gates will make it easier. It opens the Overton window, as we say, and will make it easier for other controversial nominees to get through, since the Senate Republicans presumably will not want to just simply hand him defeat after defeat. This was a theory that was promulgated in the immediate aftermath of the day of crazy appointments. The Gabbard. The Gabbard, Gates RFK Day or whatever it was. 36 hours that he was flooding the zone and sort of.
- [03:41]
Christine Rosen
Are we calling this Gatesgate, by the way? That reminds me.
- [03:43]
John Podhoretz
It's just not. It's not good. It's not. It's too. It's. It doesn't rhyme. I don't know. It's not. It's. Gatesgate is not good because there's no gate. It's basically he picked a child molester to be his Attorney General and that's probably not going to happen. Or not. A child molester in a FEMA file. Let's say we now have. We now have multiple witnesses who have come forth to say that not only did they see him having sexual relations with under underage girls, but that we have senators saying that he bragged about taking Viagra, mixing it with.
- [04:17]
Matthew Continetti
Remember, they're claiming he also paid them for the.
- [04:20]
John Podhoretz
No, that's right. That's the other right. That's the new right. That's. That, that's the new wrinkle is that there is. Yeah. Charges of essentially prostitution with underage girls. It's not good. And to be the lead chief law enforcement officer.
- [04:34]
Seth Mandel
Well, there are no charges. There's no accusations.
- [04:38]
John Podhoretz
There's accusations. I'm sorry, I should only say that.
- [04:40]
Seth Mandel
There are accusations just to get the chronology straight. This was, of course, part of an investigation into a former friend and ally of his in Florida. That former friend and ally then made charges against Gates about this type of behavior, including sex trafficking, essentially of a girl who was underage. And the FBI looked into it and did not pursue any charges against Gates. That's Merit Garland's Justice Department that did not file any charges. So what? The sword of Damocles that is hanging over the Gates nomination is this House ethics report that the House Ethics Committee will be meeting over tomorrow, November 20th, and we're not sure whether they'll release it. However, the sentiment in Washington is even if the House Ethics Committee decides not to release the report because Matt Gaetz resigned from Congress on the day Trump nominated him to be the Attorney General. The report will leak. And so these details and these accusations are very damaging. No one wants them, no one wants to be tarred with this stuff. In addition, Gates has a problem, which is that no one really likes him. You know, I mean, this is the big problem with some of these MAGA nominees is they have their, they are anti system figures. They take blowtorches to the institutions. But when you do that, you make a lot of enemies.
- [06:19]
Abe Greenwald
Right.
- [06:21]
Seth Mandel
People just don't like you very much. And so when you have to rely on them for votes, you're going to have to present a new face. And so just to finish, this is why I think what Gates is up to is very interesting because he's a guy who's famous for playing the outside game. He's always in the media, he's always on MAGA media. He's front and center. But since he's been nominated, he actually haven't heard much about him. He's now trying to play an inside game. And I think that's where they're trying to gauge the support and whether he has any chance of making it to January. And it's not looking good. I mean, from what we can tell.
- [07:01]
John Podhoretz
Right now, the story today is women.
- [07:03]
Matthew Continetti
Have also retained counsel and their lawyer is going to go make the media rounds as well. So even if the report doesn't leak, a lot of the allegations will be out there in the public among the chattering classes, as it were. And he is, his inside game, as Matt says, is not great. I mean, this is the thing. He's going around and making calls and doing all the things that he's supposed to do. But I don't think it, from what we know the reports from the Senate are, while some of the senators are worried that if they do have to have a hearing for this guy, he'll turn it into a spectacle that redounds to his effect while making them vulnerable to the sort of more MAGA elements in their constituencies. But I'm not buying that that's actually an effective strategy for him.
- [07:44]
John Podhoretz
I got it. I got to sort of disagree with the two of you a little bit, which is to say that the story today is the stake in the heart of the Gates nomination. Trump has let it be known to the New York Times that he thinks Gates is not going to be, I mean, here's hoping. Yeah, so he's not going to be conferred. That means that Trump is saying, you know, one, you know, one more One more thing. And Matt, I'm going to ask you to say to step down now. By the way, there is an even more interesting wrinkle that people haven't quite taken the measure of. He has resigned from this Congress. Right. Each Congress is its own specific. I don't know which is the 118th or the 119th Congress, something like that.
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Seth Mandel
I think may actually be the 120th.
- [08:27]
John Podhoretz
Is it the 120th? He was elected to serve in the 121st Congress on November 5th. He has resigned from Congress. He has resigned from this Congress. If between now and the swearing in of the new members of Congress, which I guess happens January 3rd or January 4th, something like that, he says, I'm not going to go up for nomination, go right back into the House.
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Seth Mandel
I'm sorry, it's the 118th. This is the.
- [08:57]
John Podhoretz
So the coming Congress is the 119th.
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Seth Mandel
Right.
- [09:00]
John Podhoretz
He is an elected. He is Congressman elect for his district in the 119th Congress. So he can just slide right back in. He just quit for the last two months. So this is an even more interesting thing where it's like, oh, you know, you think you got rid of me. You didn't get rid of me at all.
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Christine Rosen
Which is also, which is also what guarantees that the report will come out. Like the threat, the Gates threat, that he's not actually going anywhere, get absolutely guaranteed because they're not going to let him resign for a few days to get out of the ethics report and then come back and, you know, say, well, you picked the right week to do it. So the battles, the battles will go on also.
- [09:45]
John Podhoretz
But what Mike Johnson is doing, by the way, is what Mike Johnson. Now, this is where I agree with about you. We're talking about allegations he was never charged. Of course, there can be many reasons why someone is not charged like that. The witnesses that would be called, whoever was investigating Gates at the FBI says they're bad witnesses or they're unroll or, you know, they'll be, they'll be eaten up on the stand and prosecutorial or.
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Seth Mandel
The subject is an elderly man with a poor memory.
- [10:13]
John Podhoretz
Right. Thank you. Yes. There are many reasons why you don't actually bring charges, and a lot of them can have to do with whether or not the witnesses that you need on the stand will come across as credible to a jury. If you determine that that is not the case, then you might not want to proceed at all.
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Seth Mandel
But remember, the guy behind all of this is in jail right now. So clearly, I think we're a Bad witness.
- [10:41]
John Podhoretz
Right. That's the worst kind of witness, is maybe he's getting. Cutting a deal to get favorable treatment in prison. Whatever. My point is that there can be many reasons why what Mike Johnson is doing by saying, we are not going to release this report. I do not want. I don't want to give it to the Senate is. It's a Pandora's box. Once you start releasing the reports of an Ethics Committee on an investigation in which someone is not going to be charged or is left at whatever, those investigations are now forever going to be subject to release. And we want there to be some kind of House Ethics Committee process. It's a bad process. It often is there to exonerate people. It's like the bad internal affairs investigations at corrupt police departments. Like, they have no interest in going at each other. This entire investigation of the House Ethics Committee appears to be part of this feud that Gates was involved with, with Kevin McCarthy. And this is the Revenge of Kevin McCarthy, all of that. And Mike Johnson's like, no, no, no, we don't. We're not going to release this report. He's not a member of Congress anymore. Don't put pressure on us to start opening up a process of internal investigation, or we're never going to have an internal investigation ever again. Like, I can never in good conscience open investigations into ethics violations because I have no idea whether or not the person who is the subject of the investigation won't have dirty dimes dropped on him when he didn't do anything wrong.
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Matthew Continetti
Gates is subjected as a nominee for this position to an FBI background check, which even that basic vetting measure he might not pass because of his past. The accusation that's drug use and whatnot.
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Seth Mandel
Excuse me, that's unclear. Excuse me. Because the Trump transition may not actually use the FBI for some of its background checks. The mistrust is so deep.
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Matthew Continetti
Right.
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Christine Rosen
Well, first you'll make Cash Patel the FBI director. Then you'll put Gates through the background check.
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John Podhoretz
He's not even the worst background check. Tulsi Gabbard is the worst background check and the hardest background check. I mean, let's make, because there are all these other nominations. Of course, you have a background check on RFK Jr also. But, you know, a lot of his peccadilloes are entirely public. You know, it's like. It's not. It's not. I don't know what they'll come up with that isn't already.
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Seth Mandel
FBI is going to contact Olivia Nizzi. You know, I mean, that's all out of the open already.
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John Podhoretz
A wholesome is a wholesome entry in the RFK ledger of misbehavior dating back years.
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Seth Mandel
I think this is why it's important to can it take a step back from any of the individual nominations, such as the Gates nomination, and just look at the transition as a whole. Because it is a pretty remarkable thing to behold. I mean, the first characteristic of it is the speed. These names just kind of come out of nowhere via an announcement by President Elect Trump. And I was trying to think. It's almost like one of those dystopian game shows like, you know, or the Hunger Games or Squid Game. Everyone looks up in the sky and a name appears, you know, and it's oh, okay. And the vast majority of these names are very impressive. I mean, you think about this team that he's. Trump is assembling for Energy with Doug Burgum and Chris Wright of Liberty Energy. That's great. That's going to sail through Rubio Stefanik. It's going to sail through even, you know, the Duffy nomination for Transportation, again kind of fits Trump's criteria. Loyalist, telegenic, good communicator. I don't see any major.
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John Podhoretz
This is Sean Duffy, who was a congressman for eight years from now.
- [14:35]
Seth Mandel
A Fox host.
- [14:36]
John Podhoretz
District attorney, a Fox host. His wife Rachel, also a Fox host. They have nine kids. He resigned from the House because their youngest daughter, who was born when Rachel campo Stuffy was 48, has down syndrome. And he went to Paul Ryan. Paul Ryan told me this himself and said, I gotta go make money because we're gonna need to make sure. And that they don't, you know, we're gonna need to make sure that our youngest is cared for and, you know, can be. Can get the kind of treatment and support that she needs. So he left the Congress for that reason. And in the intervening five years, Rachel has kind of exploded as a star on Fox. And I assume they therefore now have the financial independence that will allow him to be the Secretary of Trade. He's very well liked. He is a very likable person. He has a. He has an absolutely standard, perfect resume, right?
- [15:31]
Seth Mandel
So he's not going to have any problem to get transportation. Right? It's really the four horsemen of the MAGA apocalypse, right, that everyone's concentrating on Hagseth Gabbard Gates and RFK Jr. And the question is, will they all go down or will one of them or two of them take the brunt of the criticism, thus allowing the other two or three to get in? And so it's not just we're talking about Matt Gaetz, and he's the most, you know, famous, I think, and the biggest lightning rod of the four, especially in Washington. Right. But there's Hagseth is facing now his own set of allegations about sexual behavior, sexual crime. And this is a big problem, too, that no one seems to be really talking about, because we're all talking about Matt Gaetz. Meanwhile, you just said Gabbard. You know, Gabbard's positions on foreign policy are at odds with many Trump policies, as the Wall Street Journal points out in a very good editorial this morning. And then, of course, you have RFK Jr. Who's hanging out there and ready, you know, ready to go after the Fritos. But you know that image that appeared over the weekend of Trump and Elon Musk and Don Jr. And RFK on Trump Force One, and they're forcing RFK Jr. To hold the Big Mac. We don't know whether he ate the Big Mac, but it just shows you that people are changed by Trump. People are changed by Trump. You don't change Trump, he changes you.
- [17:15]
Christine Rosen
Trump says they made him take a couple bites.
- [17:18]
Seth Mandel
There you go. Right. So maybe, maybe he'll be very different in office RFK Jr. Than what we've, what we've heard from him over the past 30 some years of his public advocacy and conspiracy theorizing.
- [17:30]
Abe Greenwald
You know, I think it's worth noting, as I hear Matt recall the various problems with, well, three of the four horsemen, Gates, RFK and Hegseth. They are linked by this sort of cloud of sleaze which gives which a sort of taint to the entire process and the entire news cycle here. In all these cases, we're talking about extramarital things. We're talking about prostitution, we're talking about underage girls, we're talking about drugs. This is some, this is some image collectively here that is being asserted. That is not good.
- [18:25]
John Podhoretz
Well, what's funny is that you can immediately say, okay, Trump was subjected to charges about his personal behavior. He was found liable for sexual assault in a New York courtroom involving the case with Eugene Carroll. He clearly thinks that such things are not disqualifying or that they may be unjust or you're being pursued illegitimately by the deep state or something like that. But that was actually submitted to the voters of the United States who had a choice to make in November about whether or not the totality of things that we know about Trump and the obvious things that did happen, right, the Stormy Daniels relationship and the payoff that really did happen.
- [19:13]
Seth Mandel
We locker room talk, the locker room.
- [19:15]
John Podhoretz
Talk, all of that. And he and RFK was side by.
- [19:19]
Christine Rosen
Side with him through the last part of the election, too. So when you were seeing Trump, you were often seeing RFK part of the package.
- [19:26]
John Podhoretz
But I'm saying the voters said, we've heard it. We're electing him anyway. But none of these guys are elected. They're just selected by Trump. And it is the Senate, in a weird way, that elects them. Like the advise and consent process is the check on the president's ability to simply put whoever he wants in the cabinet departments. And what may be true for Trump, and maybe he's experimenting with this, with these choices, they're true for Trump because they've been subjected or they have gone through a public plebiscite where the idea was he is not disqualified from the presidency for his personal behavior because the voters decided that he was not disqualified for his behavior. And he may say this behavior should not be disqualifying for other people, but nobody else has to say that they don't have this fact of 77, 78 million votes, whatever it is that he's gonna end up with in the end. And that's why I think this story is so significant, the Swan Haberman story, which is that Trump is saying, yeah, you can have Gaetz. Well, I don't think he's gonna be confirmed. It's probably not gonna be confirmed. So go ahead, eat it, and we'll see where this goes. Yeah, go ahead.
- [20:45]
Matthew Continetti
I mean, this is the thing. I think Gates and Gabbard are the most vulnerable, honestly. But not just because of the personal history, because the intense dislike and the fact that Gabbard, let's recall, has only been a Trump supporter. And I don't even know if she's changed her party registration. She's a Democrat up until 2022.
- [21:01]
Seth Mandel
She did leave the Democratic Party this year.
- [21:03]
John Podhoretz
Right.
- [21:04]
Matthew Continetti
So she's so. But that was just, you know, pretty recently. The main thing is, I think any senator who's worried about, you know, primary challengers, MAGA challengers, and if they're up for in the next election cycle, can say, oh, no, we want to clean up the deep state. We want to clean up all these various rotting institutions. But these people are a distraction. Their personal behavior causes a distraction. They will not be able to do that job. They are. It's a qualification issue, I think, with Matt Gaetz and with Gabbard, just simply her foreign adventurism means that she's not necessarily going to be trusted by the five eyes with whom we're all supposed to be sharing information. So it strikes me that those two going down will not cause much harm to the senators who might have to have any sort of public flagellation of them during hearings.
- [21:50]
John Podhoretz
This episode is brought to you by LifeLock. The holidays mean more travel, more shopping, more time online, and more personal info in places that could expose you to identity theft. That's why LifeLock monitors millions of data points every second. If your identity is stolen, their US based restoration specialist will fix it, guaranteed, or your money back. Get more holiday fun and less holiday worry with LifeLock. Save up to 40% your first year. Visit LifeLock.com podcast terms apply.
- [22:19]
Christine Rosen
One big difference with Gates, though, is that there's a self preservation angle to it. You know, they asked the congressman the other day, you think Gates is qualified? And he said, oh, hell no. Oh, and now you're going to quote me on that, and now I'm going to be investigated.
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John Podhoretz
Yeah.
- [22:33]
Christine Rosen
That I thought was actually kind of the point that the thought that's going through a lot of people's heads, which is the senators don't want to give Matt Gaetz the ability to investigate everybody. Because when you say we're going to drain the swamp, that means Republicans too, and as Trump sees it, Right, the establishment. Why would you. Alfie Solomon says in Peaky Blinders, you never give power to the big man. You never take the guy who's going to have the control and knowingly give him more power over you. You never give power to the big. So I think for Gates, it's not even the scandalous stuff. I think it's just pure self preservation. I think you'd have to be crazy if you were in Congress and part of the established Republican Party or Democratic Party to give this man that power. And that in the end, I think is the thing that makes him unconfirmable because you'd have to be crazy to confirm him. You won't get rewarded for it, you'll get investigated for it.
- [23:38]
John Podhoretz
I just think that Trump is signaling that he is not going to expend political capital on Gates and that could extend.
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Seth Mandel
Okay, well, I just, I mean, you're right. The takeaway from that story in the New York Times is he's saying, yeah, I don't know if I can get 50 senators to support him. And there's other reporting elsewhere testing the kind of the sense of the conference, the Republican conference, where the Wall Street Journal says they don't think there's more than 30 votes for Gates right now. At the same time in that New York Times story, we know that Trump is calling senators and saying, hey, this is my guy, you know, and we also know that Vance, who is helping Gates make some contact with senators and trying to introduce him. Two things about that. First, it's Vance's role in the transition is fascinating to me because he is not as public facing as the president elect and also the first buddy, Elon Musk. Right. I mean, the way that Musk has asserted himself in this transition is just one more aspect of the completely new reality we live in where Elon Musk is the second most powerful person in the world, essentially. And so what? Where's Vance? I think that's fast. I think he's do he's, he's working behind the scenes and I'd love to read some reporting about what he's up to. The second thing is I do believe that of all the picks so far and of the four Horsemen, the one that's most important to MAGA right now is Gates. Because MAGA is dead set on tearing the Department of Justice apart. Right. And they see Matt Gaetz as a Trump like blunt force instrument to do that job. So while I agree that the nomination is in jeopardy, I still don't think it's completely done as you're suggesting.
- [25:37]
John Podhoretz
But you know, there are people who are not MAGA who believe essentially in some version of what Gates wants to do. I mean, I do not believe that I would not want to lose him as a contributor. But, you know, our Eli Lake has written.
- [25:53]
Seth Mandel
Eli would be fantastic as the AG.
- [25:56]
John Podhoretz
Eli Lake who is not a he would get confirmed is, you know, the idea that the Justice Department and the FBI require fundamental reforms based on their conduct over the last 10 or 15 years is something that has appeared in the pages of the anti maga publication commentary since 2017. I don't think this is a, this is an outre opinion that requires you to appoint a potential ephe bifile person who crumbles up his Viagra into his energy drink in order to achieve this aim. Mike Lee, as I mentioned yesterday, could achieve this aim. The senator from Utah.
- [26:37]
Seth Mandel
Well, it's interesting that based Mike Lee has not been brought up and it's not clear whether he interviewed for the position. And I think that maybe some of the senators are probably telling Trump, hey, you know, there are other people we could that we would have no problem.
- [26:54]
John Podhoretz
That's why he's making the calls. And on the calls, we don't know that he's calling him and saying, you better do this or I'm going to make sure you're primary. You'd be like, what do you think of Gates? They're like, I don't like it. He's like, that's interesting.
- [27:05]
Seth Mandel
That's usually how these calls work. Yeah, yeah.
- [27:07]
Christine Rosen
Or he's saying, I think he might be saying, who can you give. Who would you give me that would allow me to save face as a, you know, as a reformer to some extent of this Justice Department? Because it's really important to my base that I do this. If we pull Gates, you know, who can you be? Somebody who's 75% the way.
- [27:29]
Matthew Continetti
They're 50% of the way there.
- [27:30]
Christine Rosen
What do we have here?
- [27:31]
Matthew Continetti
There are also power struggles within Trump world right now, not just with Elon and Vance and. But Don Jr. Whose judgment seems really not great on a lot of potential nominees. And, I mean, he's a Gates supporter. So they're there and we're hearing these stories about who's leaking to whom and did Elon pick a fight with someone over here? And so there's clearly, as with every transition in power, and then there's the Susie Wiles types. They're the professionals who kind of want to get things moving. That all has to settle as well. And because Trump is so mercurial, I can well imagine him sort of sitting back and playing them all off each other in a way that probably is quite entertaining for him, but rather disastrous for the process. If he's going to change his mind at the last minute, as it sounds like he might have done, even with the Gates pick, like somebody put Gates in front of him the day before he's about to announce someone else. He's like, okay, let's go with this guy.
- [28:22]
John Podhoretz
Abe. Let's just take two minutes to talk about Elon Musk for a minute, because, you know, he is the most interesting person on the planet Earth, as far as I'm concerned. I mean, he was somebody. And on Mars, I think people are going to. And on Mars, I think he's something that people are going to be writing about the way they wrote about, you know, some combination of Thomas Edison and, and Henry Ford and William Randolph Hearst. I don't know who. Like, there's never been a figure quite like this. I don't think Trump can have him around the way he has him around much longer. First of all, I think Trump is like, either thrilled, but he does have starting to get the quality of the dinner Guest who is staying too long and that the host is now starting to take off the tie and take off the jacket and they're starting to get. Take the glasses into the kitchen. This to talk about how he's trying to involve himself in the choice of the Treasury Secretary and, you know, pushing Howard Lutnick as the Treasury Secretary, whom Trump clearly does not want to be the treasury secretary. I just get this feeling that, like Musk's heady intoxication about his closeness to the, you know, to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue is going to start having repellent effects on Trump.
- [29:39]
Abe Greenwald
Well, I think, look, the good qualities about Musk, I think are important to Trump and are helpful to Trump and are helpful to his vision and, you know, meaning his interest in cutting waste and fraud and upping efficiency and his passion for American ingenuity and industry. All that. The problem is, I think you're right, John. The problem is here is that there cannot be another larger than life reckless figure side by side with Trump. He's that guy. He needs the straight men or the straight women or some version of.
- [30:32]
Seth Mandel
Although, Steve, that's why he has Mike Johnson, right?
- [30:35]
Abe Greenwald
That's right.
- [30:38]
John Podhoretz
John Thune will play that role.
- [30:41]
Seth Mandel
Speaker Johnson has become a meme. Steve Bannon. Wonderful.
- [30:45]
Abe Greenwald
Steve Bannon was a very different figure from Elon Musk, but he was going around talking about how he's a Leninist and how this is great and there's going to be a revolution. And how long was it before Trump was calling him Sloppy Steve?
- [31:02]
John Podhoretz
Six months.
- [31:02]
Abe Greenwald
Yeah. So I think there's something to that. Bannon's back, by the way, and Crazy Elon.
- [31:10]
Seth Mandel
Yeah. You know, I don't know. I think there's something different happening here with this relationship. And I, part of me wonders whether Elon Musk will be living in the White House more often than Melania Trump, and.
- [31:26]
John Podhoretz
Well, that's easy because you'll be living in the White House more than Melania.
- [31:30]
Seth Mandel
Yeah, I never set foot in it. So the.
- [31:34]
Matthew Continetti
Melania, she's done with.
- [31:35]
Seth Mandel
No, no, she's back. She's got the book. She's going to be there more often, I'm sure. In any case, I don't see any signs that the Trump Musk bromance is ending anytime soon. In fact, today, as we speak, November 19th, Trump will be traveling to Texas with Musk to watch a SpaceX launch. So that's.
- [32:00]
John Podhoretz
This is my concern about the future of humanity. If I can just get, like, wild.
- [32:04]
Seth Mandel
Let's go. Cut to the chase.
- [32:05]
John Podhoretz
Yeah, we don't need another White House aide pushing his favorite treasury secretary. We need Elon Musk supervising this company that figures out how to grab a rocket and bring it back to the gantry and then shoot it up again. That's why.
- [32:21]
Seth Mandel
And this is why.
- [32:22]
Abe Greenwald
I think it's less eating frozen food up there.
- [32:25]
John Podhoretz
No, it's less.
- [32:26]
Seth Mandel
I think that it's less that Trump becoming disillusioned with Elon, and it may end up being Elon becoming slightly bored with Washington, D.C. right. And that might be the way in which he kind of removes himself, but the, you know, he is now at the intersection of so many conduits of power, whether it is the technological power, whether it's the financial power, whether it's the media power, because of the role that X is now playing in the national discourse, and in addition, political power. It's just incredible to behold. And like I say, I'm not seeing Trump becoming disillusioned by it at this point. It's a different. It's a different situation than Bannon. I mean, remember, too, Bannon in the White House, very different situation in 2017 than in 2025, when there were a lot of people in that White House, which has been described as the, you know, team of vipers who were out to get Bannon, and eventually they succeeded halfway through the first year. I don't. I don't think there you have the same ability to push Elon Musk out because of Elon Musk's larger than life and stature.
- [33:44]
John Podhoretz
Well, Bannon was a star.
- [33:45]
Christine Rosen
Bannon was more. He had. He had greater ambitions than Elon Musk does to control what, what goes on. Musk definitely has, you know, the treasury secretary he wants and this and that, but Musk bounces from idea to idea and from project to project. And he's not a guy who came to. He's not coming to the White House now. Elon Musk with a full, lifelong ideological focus on how to blow everything up and who to put where. And all this. Biden really wanted to be a kind of puppet master, and that really graded on Trump to the extent that Bannon started taking credit for things.
- [34:26]
John Podhoretz
Right. But it wasn't just that. Bannon. Bannon is not the real deal. Bannon was a fake deal. He was not a big cheese in Hollywood. He's somebody who had a sliver of the syndication rights to Seinfeld. He was not a big cheese at Goldman Sachs. He was not a big cheese anywhere. He took over Breitbart. He conned a bunch of rich people like Rebecca Mercer into thinking that he was a towering genius. He's a fraud, he's a scam, he's a shyster. Now he's where he should be, which is that he is making a daily podcast that speaks to the people who think that his three shirts are an amazing innovation in fashion. And Trump, I think it's not just that Trump was like, oh yeah, you're gonna be, say you're President Bannon on the COVID of Newsweek. You're out. Trump may have after a while said, who is this guy? What is this a joke? Like, he knows who's real and who's not real. And he didn't know enough about Washington or about the whole world of politics to know at that point that Bannon wasn't real. Bannon was a shadow, Plato's cave shadow. And Elon Musk is as real as it gets. He is the most important industrialist of our time, bar none. And as I say, even Trump may think I really, you know what would be really great? If you could go fix Boeing. You know, go. Go figure out how to make planes again, because we're. Or, you know, go to help the Pentagon figure out how to make a really good cheap fighter pilot. Fighter jet. I'm not kidding. Like, there's so much more he can do for America than give advice on who the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Energy should be. But it's a misuse of his talents.
- [36:12]
Abe Greenwald
So too is his functioning as a second mouthpiece for Trump. That. That's the other problem here. You know, he's. He's on X day and night, making pronouncements quasi on behalf of the incoming administration. And you know that you have to speak with one voice, right?
- [36:33]
John Podhoretz
Let me. Speaking of one voice and speaking with one voice, let me talk about a singular voice that is a very important one and surprising one. The author of Israel Alone, Bernard Henri Levy, a book that I commend. I think Matt made it. One of his commentary recommends. It is a powerful first person polemic about Levi, one of the original French New Philosophes, as they were called, who changed the nature of the European intellectual approach to Marxism and the Soviet Union and Stalinism when he was converted to a liberal humanistic position after having been a 1960s radical by reading the Gulag Archipelago in the early 1970s and has since then been a voice against barbarism and for liberty and for the responsibility and obligation of the west to ensure that genociders and monsters are called out, that they are opposed, that they are fought. And he takes these talents and these polemical strengths to make the case for Israel after October 7th. It is an immensely powerful book. He's often a very flowery writer with that French intellectual propensity for grandiose rhetoric, let's say. But very little of that is present in this remarkable book in which he deconstructs the arguments for those calling for ceasefire now happening now, by the way, in Lebanon right now, our ridiculous envoy, Amos Hochstein, is either going back or coming to or going back to negotiate a ceasefire with Lebanon when there is no one to negotiate with and calling for that without the release of the hostages. And, of course, those who continue to demand that we view October 7th in terms of a larger context. His meditation on the soul of Zionism and Israel shows why this war is existential, not only for Israel, but for the global West. And yet, despite the urgency and critical nature of this war against Hezbollah, against Hamas, against Iran, against the Houthi, Israel is going it alone. That is the subject of the book. That is the title of the book. Why is this so? Why Israel's solitude is greater than ever, and why, even though it is in solitude, it will continue to fight the good fight. That is what you find in the pages of this brief, brilliant book. That's Bernard Henri Levy's Israel Alone, available on Amazon or wherever you get your fine books. Speaking of Israel, a lot of weird stuff is going on, and some of it I think we can attribute to the change in administration, meaning Iran has yet to strike back against Israel. It's sort of like one of those things. It's like, oh, it's coming. The punch is coming. It's coming, it's coming. And it doesn't seem to be coming. It appears that the Ayatollah Khamenei may be in a coma, the head of the melocracy. So they may be having a leadership crisis that has either stalled this or is creating the conditions under which they don't know what to do or where to go. Hezbollah is firing rockets with impunity, just actually a rocket that was intercepted over the neighborhood of Ramakan. The debris smashed down, killed five people yesterday in Ramadan. And we now learn that in one of the great Jewish traditions, that is Talmudic logic that allows you to see your way through arguments to a deeper argument, that in the strike that Israel launched against Iran. When was that? Now? Three weeks ago, when we were told that Israel had been instructed by Biden not to hit the oil or nuclear sites, that they did not hit the known oil or nuclear sites. But guess what? Turns out there's a nuclear site that nobody knew about that is not Natanz or Fordo, the two sites that we have been talking about now for 20 years. But there was a third undeclared nuclear site, and Israel wiped it out, and it therefore did not come under the category of the Biden. You can't hit the nuclear sites because who. How do we know it's a nuclear site? They didn't. They, you know, the IEA doesn't know it as a nuclear site, and we don't know it as a nuclear site. So damage has already been done. Israel has already not only taken out.
- [41:45]
Christine Rosen
Tosvo says it's not a nuclear site. Rashi says it's not a nuclear.
- [41:49]
John Podhoretz
Exactly. Or it's a nuclear. What is nuclear? And how can we say that that which is nuclear is nuclear based on the term site? So it turns out that they have done damage to the Iranian nuclear program. They have taken out the entirety of Iran's air defenses. And Bibi Netanyahu last night said he expects that there will be a release of many hostages in the very near future. So things are bubbling and happening. And there's also political crises involving Netanyahu and his chief of staff. And. Can I just talk about that for two seconds now that I'm in this weird monologue thing? There's a big story that came out in the summer, and the story was that documents from Hamas revealed that Hamas never had any intention of negotiating over the fate of the hostages, that they were going to use the hospital, that this was their whip hand, saying that they would negotiate, would unnerve Israel, would put Israel on its back foot. But they wouldn't do it. All of that. And these documents were leaked to first? They were. Apparently an attempt was made to leak them to Israeli. The Israeli press. But the Israeli press functions under military censorship. And the editors at these places said, we can't publish them because the military censors will not allow us to publish leaked information like this. So they were taken to bild, which is a German publication, and to the Jewish Chronicle of London. Jewish Chronicle of London published them. And then there was some kind of bizarre outcry about who wrote it and who wrote the article, where did he get the information and what were these documents? And they retracted them. They apologized for publishing them. And now in Israel, somebody is in solitary confinement and somebody else in the prime minister's office is under investigation for leaking these documents, meaning suicide watch, by the way.
- [43:53]
Abe Greenwald
Not just.
- [43:53]
John Podhoretz
Yeah, yeah, one of the. Yeah. Is on suicide watch, meaning they're true, they're not fake. And the argument that is being made is that they've been released where they were released as a PR measure to strengthen Bibi's hand in the argument inside Israel that he needed to stand firm against Hamas and not fall for propaganda about releasing the hostages that Hamas would never live up to. So let's just follow the logic here. Bibi Netanyahu is accused of being part, either either the unwitting subject or the, you know, somehow the machiavellian mind behind releasing documents that say Hamas will never negotiate properly over the terror, over the. Over the hostages. And this is bad because it meant that he would have the upper hand in an argument inside Israel about whether or not they should make concessions to Hamas to get the hostages out. What am I missing? Where the crazy pills have been taken? So Bibi is right. Hamas said we'll never negotiate over the hostages. He let. He had to go abroad or whoever, his people had to go abroad to get the story out because it could not be retailed in Israel because of military censorship. And he is being attacked in Israel and by some in the judiciary in Israel for having played no fair by releasing these documents and thereby winning the argument that he's won because the argument is irrefutable. Hamas says it's not going to go negotiate. Now the Israeli people know documents say Hamas is not going to negotiate. And it's like, no fair. We people, we kaplan protesters. We people who are out in judiciary out, you know, yelling and screaming about bb, you know, we want to keep yelling and screaming about how BB is at fault. And now he's made our argument harder. Well, that's my rant. Do we have any. Anybody want to set as a comment?
- [46:10]
Christine Rosen
Part of this is. Part of this is you could make from the, you know, as you said, the Kaplan protester side. You can make the argument that we made about the report on Gates, which is there's a process. And if the process was violated at the behest of the prime minister, then, you know, that is a scandal in itself. That's one thing you could say. But the larger problem is that they've been trying to connect this to BB in ways that aren't working. So, for example, one of the arguments that the New York Times made, somebody made. One of the reporters made was Bibi. They released this. They leaked this to Build. Build said somebody either there at the Jewish Chronicle had suggested that this was found on Yaya Sinwar's computer. But it wasn't actually from Yahya Sinwar, and it wasn't immediately recent. Now, I wrote about this when it happened for commentary on the blog, and I mentioned the entire point of my piece was it doesn't really matter if this document is what people said it was, because the document itself described the reality as we all knew it. The document said Hamas was going to keep pulling the ball, football away, like Lucy on the negotiations, that Sinwar was going to play psychologically with the hostages families and with the Israeli public, that he was going to try to make trouble in Israel, pit people against each other, but ultimately he wasn't actually going to agree to a hostage deal. All these things. And I said, this is what we're seeing with our own eyes. So the larger point here is that these documents described reality. So what, that they were from June instead of August when they were reported? The point was we all knew this is what had been going on from the beginning. So on some level, it's very hard to battle against Bibi here because he's on the side of reality as it has been proved to be. And it's very hard to argue against what we know we're seeing with our own eyes. You have to try to get him on like a. Well, did they break a rule on the leak? It has to be a sort of get him on tax avoidance sort of thing, because the larger argument is over.
- [48:38]
Abe Greenwald
There's. There's a. It's part of a larger pattern of the way BB is always attacked. And I think it's a very unsuccessful strategy on the part of his detractors. When he does something, they say he's failing, he's doing a terrible job. This is awful. He should have done X, but he did Y. And now Israelis are very angry at them, at him, and his hold is tenuous. Then when he does something that's clearly a win, they say, oh, he succeeded, but this is only to stay in power and avoid jail time.
- [49:15]
Seth Mandel
Can I follow up on that? Because I think it's an excellent point, Abe, and I've just been thinking for the past few days about how similar Trump and Netanyahu are in the sense that the same institutions and figures who are constantly attacking Netanyahu have American equivalents who are constantly attacking Trump. And it just. I had this moment of, I would say, not revelation, but just kind of recognition of epistemological limits when I realized that the voices that I hear talking about Israeli politics are the equivalent of the Peter Bakers and Susan Glassers in the United States. And so I don't believe half the things that Peter Baker and Susan Glasser say. So you have to approach Israeli politics, I think, and the media in Israel and the institutions in Israel which are aligned against Netanyahu and his coalition with the same amount of skepticism and incredulity.
- [50:23]
John Podhoretz
Well, that's the interesting thing, is that the Israeli state is not deep. And so the deep state is the deep state, as we've come to learn, the idea in the United States, which a lot of us have problems with because the United States government is so large and is so complex and there are so many levels and there are so many states and localities. And, you know, the idea that there's some kind of, you know, invisible guiding hand of a conspiracy that is, you know, doing this, it's. It's real in Israel. It's right there on the surface. You have the judiciary.
- [51:01]
Christine Rosen
The deep state is your. Is your equivalent of defense secretary.
- [51:06]
Seth Mandel
Yeah.
- [51:07]
John Podhoretz
Or no. But like, the attorney general in Israel has the power to tell the president to tell the prime minister he can hire this guy, but not hire that guy without any real legislation that gives him that authority, but based on rulings by the Supreme Court that itself appoints itself. So that's what this judicial.
- [51:30]
Christine Rosen
And overturns reforms to its rules.
- [51:34]
John Podhoretz
Right.
- [51:35]
Christine Rosen
And the thing is a reform and the Supreme Court knocks down the reform to the Supreme Court's power to knock down reforms.
- [51:42]
John Podhoretz
Yeah. And by the way, so I don't want to, like, now we're sort of devolving into a conversation about the judicial reform process. But Israel doesn't have a written constitution, therefore it doesn't have checks and balances. And all. All democracies, all representative or what, need checks and balances. And so checks and balances are sort of created ad hoc. And that's not a good way to create checks and balances because personalities then get involved as opposed to institutions. But I want to point out that the deep state, when Bibi fired Yoav Gallant, his defense minister, he said, you know, Gallant said, there are three reasons that I was fired, one of which is I disagree. We have a disagreement on how much to stress the release of the hostages. Well, okay. I mean, so the argument seems to be that deep state wants to make, or the people who hate BB want to make, is that he likes the hostages being hostages, because the longer they're there, the longer he stays in power. This is a repulsive and repugnant and evil thing to say about the, you know, I mean, it's just imagine saying that about Anybody that he wants, you know, a three year old baby, a two year old baby to be, you know, like, living in the tunnels to keep himself into power. BB may be a, you know, a hard person to like, but, you know, you're accusing him of a deep crime for which, you know, he will. He will live in Gehenna for, you know, eternity. But I wanted to point out Noga Tarnopolsky, who was a longtime Israeli journalist, put out a tweet the other day saying very unusually, Shin Bet, which is the intelligence agency, released an image of Shin Bet head Ronan Bar, IDF Chief of Staff Herzi Halevy, Mossad Director David Barnea, and Major General Nitsan alone, quote, meeting to promote efforts to bring back the hostages, unquote. Guess who's missing, she says, meaning Bibi's not there. Right? That's who's missing, is Bibi. So therefore, obviously he doesn't want to bring back the hostages because he's not at this meeting or they're having a meeting behind his back, Whatever, it doesn't matter. Then here is her explanation of the picture. Backstory to picture seems to be security chief's message to Netanyahu that Hamas, what's left of it, with nothing left to lose, will not compromise on a formal end to the war in Gaza and full military withdrawal. No flexibility on Israel's side equals death for the 51 plus or minus surviving hostages. Okay, so define flexibility. What do you mean they need to show flexibility? Hamas is near death. Hamas, from what we can tell, has somehow decentralized the hostages in part to make sure that they're not so easily found. What is it that Noga Tarnopolsky or these five guys sitting around a room discussing how to deal with the hostages, what is it exactly that they think? To whom should he be showing flexibility? Who's in charge of Hamas? Who's negotiating on behalf of Hamas? No one. I've noticed this in a lot of hostage reputation.
- [55:12]
Seth Mandel
Yeah, I've noticed this in a lot of hostage discourse in the recent days. Hamas is just. It's just assumed that Hamas will agree to whatever proposal Israel puts forward when history suggests no. And two, who. Who would agree at this? I mean, who is there literally to agree? We know that Hamas is still raiding the humanitarian convoys and stealing the aid and taking it underground. But the Qatar, you know, I mean, we don't know whether. Whether the Hamas leadership in Qatar, where they're going, Are they going to Turkey now? Are they still in Qatar? The situation is much more complex than I think that the anti Netanyahu faction in Israel is suggesting no.
- [55:55]
Christine Rosen
And they turned out a deal, too. They did get together with the Egyptians a few weeks ago and try to work out a brief pause for four hostages or something like that, as a sign that Hamas. That there's someone in Hamas who can agree to a deal.
- [56:15]
John Podhoretz
Right.
- [56:15]
Christine Rosen
Prove to us that we should be negotiating with you, whoever you are, number 17 on the list, because we don't know who you are. And Hamas walked away from that table.
- [56:26]
Seth Mandel
May I make my recommendation so Christine can catch her flight?
- [56:30]
John Podhoretz
I just want to say one thing and then you quickly, which is this is just character assassination. Now, Bibi's been in power too long. You could make the case. This is what happens when you're a prime minister over what, four decades or something? You know, like, it's not great to be a dominating figure like this. Everybody says, get out of my way. You're in my way. You're making it possible for me to do anything. This is a way for the popular culture in Israel, led by this not so deep state, to say Bibi is responsible for the condition of the hostages. And you can hate Bibi, you can loathe. I don't care how you feel about Bibi. The hell with you. That is disgusting. It is a disgusting thing to do. He has been doing nothing for the last year or so but trying to save it. They figured out how to fight the war. He pushed the button on fighting Hezbollah. He's led the country into the raids on Iran. Everything that Israel likes that has turned around has happened under his leadership. They can't get the hostages out or they're having incredible trouble. And you're going to blame a Jew for the hostage taking of the world's worst monstrous antisemitic force. And you're blaming the elect, the duly elected, legitimately elected prime minister of your country, for that? Shame on you. Okay, go ahead, Matt. Okay.
- [57:57]
Seth Mandel
I'll be very brief. To respect Christine's time, I just want to briefly recommend a book that I have picked up. It turns out I had thought that it was a new release, but it's actually a few years old. The book is called Alien Archives 18 stories of extraterrestrial Encounters by the science fiction author Robert Silverberg. Robert Silverberg is a science fiction legend. He's one of my favorite authors, period. And he wrote one of, I think, maybe among the top five best novels I've ever read. It's a very short novel called the Book of Skulls, which is not really science fiction. It's Kind of like a horror novel, but it is incredible. So I recommend that book of skulls if you ever come across it. But Alien Archives is a collection of stories he's written about extraterrestrials and alien life over his many decades of science fiction writing. And I recommend it because I'm enjoying it very much. And, you know, we have a little sidebar here of science fiction recommendations and discussions. And so if you haven't read Robert Silverberg, he's the best.
- [59:03]
John Podhoretz
I thought you were gonna. I thought you were about to mention a nonfiction book that dovetails with the current obsession.
- [59:10]
Seth Mandel
No, that's all B.S. i don't believe any of that stuff.
- [59:13]
John Podhoretz
Releasing the evidence.
- [59:14]
Seth Mandel
No, that's all B.S. i don't believe any of it.
- [59:18]
John Podhoretz
They're in the O now. They're in the. They're in the ocean.
- [59:20]
Seth Mandel
It's the same guy. The same guy testifies before Congress five times a year. Lombardo Elizondo, I think, anyway.
- [59:28]
John Podhoretz
But it's like. But it's like now we can't find them because they went into the ocean.
- [59:33]
Seth Mandel
So don't believe that.
- [59:34]
John Podhoretz
Mostly ocean.
- [59:35]
Seth Mandel
Read Robert Silverberg. And it's great imaginative literature. And he's an excellent pro stylist, which someone so prolific is just incredible to behold.
- [59:46]
John Podhoretz
And we got there. We got there. We're going to say goodbye, and it's going to be right on time for Christine to make her plane. So for the traveling Christine and Matt and Seth and Abom John Pod Horitz, Keep the candle burning.