Israel on the Brain

Summary

Podcast Summary: "Israel on the Brain"

The Commentary Magazine Podcast
Host: Jon Podhoretz, with Abe Greenwald, Seth Mandel, and Eli Lake
Date: July 16, 2026

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Episode Overview

This episode of The Commentary Magazine Podcast examines the rapidly shifting American political landscape surrounding Israel, anti-Semitism, and the internal dynamics within both major U.S. political parties. The discussion focuses on the fallout from a congressional vote—where 104 Democrats and one Republican favored suspending military aid to Israel—a high-profile Joe Rogan episode with Vice President JD Vance, and the escalation of anti-Israel, and in some instances openly anti-Semitic, rhetoric in political and media circles. The hosts analyze how critiques of Israel, conspiracy theories regarding Jewish influence, and shifts in party ideology pose threats to the U.S.–Israel relationship and American Jewish life.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Congressional Vote to Suspend Military Aid to Israel

Timestamp: 00:45–04:30

• Vote Breakdown: 104 Democrats (nearly half) and one Republican (Thomas Massie) supported the resolution, a marked increase from a similar 2023 vote.
• Trend: Voting against military aid to Israel has become more mainstream in the Democratic Party.
• Symbolic v. Practical Impact: Jon Podhoretz notes that while the vote was symbolically significant, it was largely a "gimme" with no practical effect since passage was impossible (35:07).
• Electoral Realities: In toss-up districts, most Democrats voted against the resolution, indicating vulnerability to general election backlash (36:59).

Jon Podhoretz [00:45]:
"We got Democrats, we got the Vice President of the United States...now on the record, as I would say, being hostile to Israel..."

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2. The JD Vance–Joe Rogan Controversy

Timestamp: 05:49–22:42

• Antisemitic Tropes: Vance is accused of indulging in classic anti-Jewish conspiracy theories—suggesting outsized Jewish/Israeli influence, hidden cabals, and foreign interference.
• Cynicism and Deflection: The hosts dissect how Vance, despite being Vice President, positions himself as a "bridge" between conspiracist audiences and mainstream politics, but falls back on blaming a supposed "Israeli PR cabal" for his political setbacks.
• Defending Failed Policy: Vance's defense of the failed Memorandum of Understanding with Iran is described as delusional, with Podhoretz comparing him to "Chip Diller in Animal House," denying chaos as it engulfs him (11:05–11:54).
• Irresponsible Musings: Vance floats speculative and evidence-free claims (e.g., Epstein’s links to Mossad/CIA) despite his position and access to classified intelligence (21:59–22:47).

Seth Mandel [19:59]:
"There was something very Bidenesque about JD Vance's approach… calmly and sounding reasonable, completely distorting the arguments of his opponents."

Jon Podhoretz [11:05]:
"JD Vance had an opportunity to put what he's saying here into practice and prove it. He failed to do so."

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3. Comparing Vance & the Democratic Left

Timestamp: 23:07–34:41

• Vance’s Position: Still frames Israel as a U.S. ally (like France/UK), but couches criticism in terms of “foreign influence,” lumps Israel with Russia and Qatar, and portrays Israel as trying to manipulate American public opinion (24:48–28:24).
• Democratic Party: The new left flank—DSA, Squad, and activists—goes much further, often labeling Israel a “genocidal, apartheid state” and seeking to sever the alliance altogether.
• Pandering and Red Flags: The group agrees that Vance’s rhetorical strategy is cynical and worrisome but distinguish it from the Democratic left’s fully anti-Israel/anti-American stance.

Jon Podhoretz [24:48]:
"The countries he specifically compares them to are Russia and Qatar."
Abe Greenwald: "I hear him planting the seeds of 'Israel is not a friendly country.'"

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4. Influence of PR, Social Media & Conspiracies

Timestamp: 28:34–31:15

• Brad Parscale's Role: Vance and some in MAGA world stoke suspicion because Parscale (a Trump digital strategist) runs a social media PR campaign for Israel. The hosts stress this is standard practice, not evidence of nefarious influence.
• Weaponization of “Foreign Influence”: Criticism of Israel, Iron Dome, and U.S.-Israel alliance is now often tarred as foreign propaganda by both left and right, undermining rational debate.

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5. The Democratic Party's Internal Crisis

Timestamp: 34:41–49:32

• Intimidation & Purges: Moderates like Adam Smith (WA) have caved to pressure campaigns, even after decrying anti-Zionism as a cover for antisemitism (36:59–42:35).
• No “Feeding the Crocodile”: Attempts to appease radicals with incremental positions (as seen with Ro Khanna, Scott Wiener, etc.) only embolden hard-liners. Liberals who compromise still get purged unless fully in line (46:08–49:25).
• Democrats in Historical Context: Parallels drawn to 1960s liberal failures to confront radical youth, and the potential electoral consequences of ideological capture.

Eli Lake [46:08]:
"The contempt that the hard revolutionaries have for the liberals who are trying to court them and take on some of their energy and bask in the excitement of it all... it's not dissimilar to what we saw... you are not their cup of tea."

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6. Broader Cultural & Political Stakes

Timestamp: 49:29–56:49

• The Left v. Liberals: The far left despises liberals more than the right, as shown by their treatment of moderate or mainstream Democratic figures.
• Unappeasable Demands: Arguments for Israel (and America) are rejected unless accompanied by total capitulation; support for terrorists (Hamas, etc.) is rationalized as anti-colonial “resistance.”
• Danger to U.S. Security Doctrine: If this logic is accepted, it not only endangers Israel but jeopardizes fundamental American security practices and alliances.

Seth Mandel [53:30]:
"There is this new kind of political coalition inside the Democratic Party... there is no feeding that crocodile. You're never going to appease them."

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7. The Future of U.S.–Israel Politics & Leadership

Timestamp: 56:49–72:56

• Democratic Reckoning: The rise of the Squad and the party’s radical turn, described as “open haters of the United States” by Podhoretz (56:49–61:58), could lead to a McGovern-style electoral debacle—or worse.
• Obama’s Role: Prolonged debate over Barack Obama’s legacy—whether he opened the door to this ideological turn, and his deafening silence as the left radicalizes.
  • Obama’s record: Tactical anti-Israel actions at end of presidency, but stopped short of the current leftist rhetoric (64:02–67:36).
  • Podhoretz's position: Obama was never a true friend to Israel, and his silence signals tacit support for the new left.
• What Democrats Need: The hosts call for a “national figure” to define a new, principled line, but doubt it will come from Obama or current leaders.
• Potential for Hope: Where “the rubber meets the road”—swing districts—there may still be centrist pushback, as seen in primary dynamics and the anticipated Stevens–El Sayed race in Michigan.
• Vance’s Place: The difference between Vance (as a cold realist) and the Democratic left (as open antagonists) is delineated as the lesser of two evils.
• Final Note on Foreign Policy: Vance’s track record criticized, especially his stances on Ukraine and now Israel.

Jon Podhoretz [72:56]:
"He said the people in Israel can go to hell who are doing this to him and he can go to hell."

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Abe Greenwald [04:45]:
  "I just want to say that I believe J.D. Vance has the right to exist as a Jewish state."
• Jon Podhoretz [11:05]:
  "J.D. Vance had an opportunity to put what he's saying here into practice and prove it. He failed to do so."
• Seth Mandel [19:59]:
  "There was something very Bidenesque about J.D. Vance’s approach... calmly and sounding reasonable, completely distorting the arguments of his opponents."
• Eli Lake [46:08]:
  “The contempt that the hard revolutionaries have for the liberals... you are not their cup of tea and they're going to let you know.”
• Jon Podhoretz [56:49]:
  “They are open, open haters of the United States serving in the United States government. They swear an oath…to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution…they basically violate [it] every second of every day.”

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Timestamps for Critical Segments

| Segment | Timestamp | |-----------------------------------------------------|----------------| | Opening: Congressional Israel aid vote | 00:45–04:30 | | JD Vance on Rogan & antisemitic conspiracy talk | 05:49–22:42 | | Parsing Vance vs. Democratic Left | 23:07–34:41 | | Brad Parscale, PR, and social media narratives | 28:34–31:15 | | Democratic moderates under pressure (Adam Smith) | 36:59–42:35 | | Ro Khanna, appeasing the far left | 46:08–49:25 | | Broader political/cultural stakes | 49:29–56:49 | | Obama’s legacy and Democratic leadership vacuum | 61:58–69:42 | | Closing: Vance, Ukraine, Israel, and the future | 72:56–73:12 |

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Takeaways

• The previously bipartisan consensus on Israel is fracturing dramatically.
• Both left and right are now trafficking—sometimes knowingly, sometimes cynically—in anti-Jewish and anti-Israel tropes, though the specifics and motivations differ.
• The left's radicalization makes moderate accommodation impossible—hard-liners will always demand more, as seen in Ro Khanna’s and Scott Wiener’s examples.
• The Democratic Party is approaching a McGovern-era crisis, with the Squad and allied activists risking an electoral backlash and deep ideological schism.
• The future of the U.S.–Israel relationship will likely be determined by realpolitik choices in competitive districts and by whether national leaders can successfully define principled boundaries.
• Without forceful leadership (from Obama or others), the party risks aligning with forces openly hostile to both Israel and America itself.
• JD Vance, for all his cynicism and pandering, remains distinct from the left’s total rejection—though all hosts agree he’s hardly an ideal figure.
• The trajectory and fate of liberalism, American Jewry, and the nation’s foreign policy are all in flux as these trends intensify.

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The episode closes with the familiar wry tone, acknowledging the grim landscape but urging continued vigilance and intellectual engagement ("keep the candle burning").

Transcript

[Abe Greenwald]

Foreign.

[Seth Mandel]

Expect the worst Some drinks and pain Some die of thirst no way of knowing which way it's going Hope for

[Jon Podhoretz]

the best Expect the worst Hope for the best. Welcome to the Commentary Magazine daily podcast. Today is Thursday, July 16, 2026. I am Jon Pod Horiz, the editor of Commentary magazine. With me as always, executive editor Abe Greenwald. Hi, Abe.

[Eli Lake]

Hi Jon.

[Jon Podhoretz]

Senior editor Seth Mandel. Hi Seth.

[Abe Greenwald]

Hi John.

[Jon Podhoretz]

And joining us, the contributing editor, host of the Breaking History podcast, Eli Lake. Hi, Eli.

[Seth Mandel]

Hi, John.

[Jon Podhoretz]

So they're coming at us on all fronts. We got Democrats, we got the Vice President of the United States, we got Democrats voting in the house, 104 Democrats voting to immediately suspend military aid to Israel. One Republican vote. That's the sponsor of the bill or whatever you want to call this thing, Thomas Massie. 104 Democrats voting for it. That's almost half the Democratic caucus in the House of Representatives. And it is 68 more than voted for a similar resolution two and a half years ago. At the time that the House was getting ready to vote on this, Joe Rogan released his podcast with Vice President JD Vance and JD Vance among JD Vance had basically spent about an hour indulging in anti Semitic tropes, conspiracy theories, straw men. And so we got the number two person in the Republican Party and the almost half the Democratic caucus now on the record, as I would say, being hostile to Israel, a nation of 9 million people, as Vance points out, that is just, it's resting inside the brains of the most politically, what would you call it, politically engaged people in America playing a role so outsized that look, it makes sense that Israel's outsized to me, right? And to some of us, Commentary is a Jewish magazine with a Zionist mission. I have a sister, three nieces and nephews, and four grand nieces and grand nephews who live in Israel. All of us probably have relatives in Israel. This is what we do. And so of course it's Israel's state condition, security, condition of Zionism. All of that is a matter of extreme interest to me. But I am a mighty minority of a minority of a minority. And this is not true of the 104 Democrats who voted to suspend military aid to Israel yesterday or of the Vice President of the United States. They have many other things to worry about. The vice president, for example, is promoting a book about being Catholic. So maybe he should talk about being Catholic. But no, he wants to go at the Jews. This is a terrible moment. A friend of mine this morning texted me and said this is the Worst moment for the Diaspora, the Jewish Diaspora since World War II. I say you can't look at it that way, because American Jewry is actually in extraordinary shape. We're very successful people. We are very able. This place has been apparent. Israel is stronger than it has ever been militarily, economically. So I don't know. I mean, that's not the diaspora, but this idea that what's happening in the Diaspora is that it's becoming increasingly acceptable and mainstream to be openly hostile to the state of Israel in a way

[James Patterson]

that

[Jon Podhoretz]

people are hostile to no other

[Seth Mandel]

nation,

[Jon Podhoretz]

hostile to its existence, which is something. You wouldn't say that I am hostile to the existence of Uruguay, for example.

[Eli Lake]

But it's also.

[Abe Greenwald]

I just want to say that I believe J.D. vance has the right to exist as a Jewish state.

[Jon Podhoretz]

That's very. It's beautifully said, Abe.

[Eli Lake]

Yeah, but it's not even that so much. I mean, to me, it's. I mean, on the left, it's Israel's right to exist. You know, like, that's in question. What gets me, which is more something more or just what's across the political spectrum is that the hostility toward Israel and toward Jews is based entirely on paranoid lies. I mean, that's the thing. Like, you can hate Israel, you can criticize Israel, you can do it. But, you know that it's constantly this story about influence and hidden influence and, you know, aipac money and psyops and, you know, and that's the. That's the part that feels very slimy. You know, I actually thought, compared to Joe Rogan,

[James Patterson]

J.D.

[Eli Lake]

vance, you know, was like. Was like. Was like one of us, you know, because Rogan kept sort of goading him, like, but, you know, upon Israel, saying, oh, but come on. But the influence goes beyond that, right? I mean, people are talking about all sorts of things. You know, Vance knows that that's this vast audience. And I saw his whole appearance as sort of trying to bridge the gap between the disaffected screen addicts in their basements and the real world. He's a bridge between them. You know, he's sort of. And he's. He can hear. He's hearing where they come from. It's an interesting change from, like, Charlie Kirk, who sort of, you know, he approached him with, like, tough love. Like, you're not doing yourself any favors. You're sitting in your basement blaming Jews, blaming other people. Get right with God. Get right with the world. Go out and do something. Stop blaming other people. You'll be a lot better for it. And Vance is, you know, I hear you. I hear that. I understand that. I'm trying to fix this. I'm trying to fix that. You know,

[Jon Podhoretz]

that's generous. I think that's oddly. I think that that is a generous reading of what Vance was up to, because we need to connect what Vance was saying about Jews to what he was saying about the war in Iran, because it rose out of the way. He was talking about Iran and his role in the memorandum of understanding, the negotiation there. And so therefore, I think the point was that he's doing great things and great work, and there is this phalanx of conspiratorial Jews who are trying to take his work down, take him down, and are being paid to do so by the Israeli government. And I'm just gonna quote you. I did a pretty bad transcript of what he said on the war in Iran and his role in it, which I think is fascinating, because this is what he says. He claims he has been misrepresented more than almost anything he's worked on in public life. His role in the MOU and what the mou, the memorandum said.

[Seth Mandel]

Okay?

[Jon Podhoretz]

So he says, I have a lot of friends who say this is terrible, meaning the war in Iran. And my comment to them is, I'm not a public commentator. Meaning he's not going to express his personal views in public, because he gives those to the president. But if you say my comment is, I'm not a public commentator, your purpose in doing that, of course, is to make it clear that you agree with them, but you can't say so in public. And so, because he is the president's representative, he says, quote, I want to make it as successful as possible, which is why I've poured my heart and soul into these negotiations that goal no nuclear weapons now or in the long term. That's the way I try to approach it. And there are two elements within the Iranian system. Look, you hear some Americans say, they're all crazy people. They all want to bring about the 12th Imam. And there are crazy people who believe that, and then there are the pragmatists. When we struck the MoU, it says, Iran is going to open the Strait of Hormuz, the violence is going to stop, and then we're going to negotiate to save. If we can get to a broader deal, fundamentally, we're on the right trajectory. This thing was taped this week. He says we're on the right trajectory. Trump just threw the Memorandum of Understanding into the garbage can. So he is defending the Memorandum of Understanding, and then he Starts talking about the people who oppose the memorandum of understanding, which Trump himself now does, that is to say, said it didn't work, and saying that they did this to hurt him and to hurt Trump and to be part of some cabal that has Israel's interests above the United States interest.

[Abe Greenwald]

Well, that's the table setting for this, which is that the reason this is happening is because JD Vance was given a task by the president and he failed in that task. That's the basic story here. JD Vans said we can talk to the Iranians because someone in the Gulf told me that they feel bad about the way that they've interacted with the international community in the last 40 years, and they're ready for a change. And the guy I spoke to seemed pretty convinced. So let me talk to them. And he talks to them and they, they turn him like a, like a shirt out of the laundry, inside out. And Trump says, okay, we're not doing that again. That was pretty rough. And now here we are. So that, that's what I just think, you know, as it's sort of table setting, is that J.D. vance had an opportunity to put what he's saying here into practice and prove it. He failed to do so. And so here we are.

[Jon Podhoretz]

Eli, let me give you the Chip Diller analogy, right? Chip Diller is Kevin Bacon in Nashl Lampoon's Animal House. And he is standing in the town as the Animal House fraternity is setting the town on fire, right? Interrupts the parade. This is the climax of Animal House. And Chip Diller is standing there screaming in the middle of the street as everything is going on. Keep calm. All is well. He's saying we're on the right trajectory. Yeah, his trajectory is gone. There is no his trajectory. He's saying everything is still working. Everything is still working. We just flew 300 bombing missions.

[Seth Mandel]

Can I throw a four days? Caveats. Okay, so first of all, yes, Trump said at one point it seemed like he was throwing the MOU in the garbage. The next thing he says, there might be some more talks. And if there are talks, I'm assuming JD Vance will probably be involved. He clearly signed up for that job. And so if you wanted to be charitable, I'm not trying to defend J.D. vance here, but if you wanted to be charitable, you gotta think maybe he's thinking there's probably going to be some negotiations at some point. There almost always is, especially with the Iranians. And I'm going to preserve my options to be the interlocutor. The thing I wanted to say is that I think you have to distinguish between what JD Vance is doing, which is cynical, and he is blaming this faction. We should put a little bit more meat on those bones. He's referring to something that Alex Brucewich, who is an advisor to MAGA and advisor to Trump, and J.D. vance, definitely J.D. vance guy went on Tucker two weeks ago and talked about how Brad Parscale has a contract, literally with the Israeli government. I think that does some PR and Salem, and he's also in charge of Salem Media Network. And that somehow, and we have friends at Salem Media like Hugh Hewitt and Larry o' Connor and many others, and the argument is sort of that Salem Media Network was somehow against the MOU because Brad Parscale had this contract with the government of Israel. And what this leaves out is that there are lots of people in the Trump administration who have dealings with other states in the Middle east that might have a very different view when it comes to Qatar. You know what I mean? You can argue that there's all kinds of people who might be sabotaging it. And then finally it leaves out the fact that the Iranians sabotaged the. I mean, so if you want to blame a party for sabotaging your negotiations, it's not because a bunch of people criticized a supine and weak mou. It's that the Iranians, even under these conditions, decided to start firing on ships and violating the one thing we wanted to get out of them, which is to have some calm in the Strait of Hormuz.

[Jon Podhoretz]

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[Seth Mandel]

No, no, but what I'm also saying is that. No, no, no, I'm faulting J.D. vance.

[Jon Podhoretz]

No, I know.

[Seth Mandel]

But not recognizing the main reason why so far the negotiations have failed, which is that his negotiating partner are a bunch of lying terrorists.

[Jon Podhoretz]

He went on the number one podcast in the United States yesterday and said that the MOU was working. Yeah, he said, all right, that's right. Look, here's what the MOU says. It says Iran is going to open the Strait of Hormuz, the violence is going to stop, and then we're gonna negotiate to see if we can get to a broader deal. That's a direct quote. Fundamentally, we're on the right trajectory. He says that's a direct quote. Cuz the first week we got 20 million barrels out of the Strait of Hormuz.

[James Patterson]

And.

[Jon Podhoretz]

And then the Iranians freaked out a little bit. They were like, and now I am directly quoting, oh shit, did we just give away our leverage? The price of oil went down, so they shot up a couple of ships and we responded and I think that's entirely appropriate. Then the Iranians are like, you're right, you're right. And then they come back to the table and there were a few more days and then the phase they're in right now is the hardliners have really reacted strongly and, and to the oil coming out of the Strait of Hormuz. And they say we're going to try to shut this down cuz we're afraid of losing our leverage. The pragmatists say, no, let's keep talking. So what we're doing is a delicate diplomatic dance. Yes, they're shooting right now. Last night they shut up our ships. But with all that said, is their nuclear program destroyed?

[Abe Greenwald]

Yes.

[Jon Podhoretz]

Are the straits back to pre war traffic? But are we getting the necessary

[Eli Lake]

oil

[Jon Podhoretz]

out to prevent an oil crisis? Yes. He is saying that the MOU worked. That's insane. Or you're saying that he's cynical, he is defending his ludicrous failed negotiation. If you wanna say, look, we are negotiating and we are working on long term negotiations to end the war with Iran on terms favorable to us and the MOU was salvo won and, and we're gonna go back to the table for salvo too. It's very, negotiations can take a long time and we tried this and that's not gonna work. And we tried the other thing. I would have no problem with that. He is creating an alternate reality in which his negotiation was successful. But the characterization of the negotiation was a misrepresentation and the characterization of its failure is a misrepresentation. In which case his boss, President of the United States is a fool and a clown because he's believing the misrepresentation instead of the wonderful truth that J.D. vance is showing him, which is, you know what, the Iranians fire on a couple of ships and then we fire back and it's all part of the game. Okay, that's not what Trump was saying.

[Seth Mandel]

Okay, first of all, I'm largely, obviously in agreement with you on this and I didn't like the mou. And okay, there are two other things that struck out to me. There was something very Bidenesque about JD Vance approach to things, which is that Biden was a master of calmly and sounding reasonable, completely distorting the arguments of his opponents. He would say, well Republicans, they have a view that they don't think that black people should vote and elections so they want id. And that's why I think it's like Jim Crow on steroids and blah, blah, blah, and but he would say it in a way, a lot of times that would make it sound like, oh, well, you know, okay, that's. And J.D. vance was doing that. He was saying, oh, well, you know, the Hawks, if you really press them, they just think that we should keep bombing them forever. I'm like, that's not what our position is. Our position is that, you know, you should explore whatever the original plans were for unseating the current regime. And if you don't think that that's gonna work, then you should pressure them until you do. Freedom of navigation issues. I mean, it's a much more sophisticated position than just bombing them. Because we wanna bomb them, which is sort of what he said. And of course, Joe Rogan is not in a position to disagree and wouldn't anyway, so that's the other thing. So he would present the positions of his opponents in completely distorted ways. A lot of politicians do that. But it struck me as very Biden esque. The other thing, though, that is related to this in a way. When he was asked about the Epstein files, this is the Vice President of the United States. For him to just casually say, yeah, he had a lot of connections with Mossad and the CIA. What can I tell you, my man? You're in the government, you get code word sensitive classified briefings. You would know the answer to that. And unless you provide the evidence for that, then that is like, almost like. That's terrible.

[Jon Podhoretz]

It's even worse. It's even worse. In the Maggie Haberman, Jonathan Swan book, Regime Change, yes, explicitly says that Vance proposed that he go on Joe Rogan to debunk.

[Seth Mandel]

Right.

[Jon Podhoretz]

The Epstein files. Last year he said, I want to go on and debunk. And the White House Chief of Staff, whose name is now Pat Summerall, Susie Potter, Susie Weil said, no, no, no, we don't want to give it oxygen. So last year he was willing to go on Joe Rogan, and now he

[Seth Mandel]

just gives it oxygen.

[Jon Podhoretz]

Now he is promoting.

[Abe Greenwald]

Well, Susie Wiles also says in that

[Jon Podhoretz]

interview, he says, so if that evidence was there before, it's not there in 2026. So now there could have been evidence at any time that he's a Mossad agent and he's a CIA asset and that he's doing everything for everybody, but it's been conveniently destroyed.

[Seth Mandel]

By the way, I'm open if there's another shoe to drop or if there's something else. And you know, it's a complicated story. We're not going to have to get into Epstein, but to Just leave it there is. It's just the height of irresponsibility. And I don't understand. First of all, I think it also, there's a little bit of contempt here for his audience, which is he's assuming that the people listening to Joe Rogan are not smart enough to say, well, wait a second, you're the vice president. Tell us more. You know what I mean? So for him to just kind of give this answer, like, oh, yeah, I think I read that story too. As if he's just like another one of these comedians who goes on Rogan's podcast and they're just commenting on the news and that's gonna happen. It's fine. But he's the vice president, so that to me is like, was a huge problem. But all of that said, John, I think we need to really draw a clear distinction between what the Democrats are doing and where J.D. vance is. Because the other thing we should give, we should say is that when J.D. vance is asked about the US Israel relationship, he does not say, I think Israel is a moral stain, a genocide, apartheid state. That we should do everything we can to pressure them so that the Palestinians can live in freedom. Which is, that's, that's, that's what Democrats want. J.D. vance is basically still of the view that Israel is an ally like France or the UK and sometimes we agree and sometimes we don't agree. What he's really.

[Abe Greenwald]

Well, the countries he, the countries he specifically compares them to are Russia and Qatar.

[Seth Mandel]

Yeah, he knows on that answer he said France and UK about is an ally. And my point here is that I can live with that. I mean, I think that if that means that the old arguments about the shared values and two countries, whatever, if it's really just about, well, the national interest for the United States, then that's, I think, the future of the US Israel relationship, that that's the best case scenario. And we have to think about this. Cause there's a very good chance it's gonna be like Vance versus AOC. We're not gonna get even a Vance versus Rahm Emanuel. And Rahm Emanuel, you could argue, is 80% of the way there where his party is. So in some ways it's like, if his point is like, hey, listen, Israel and the United States are sometimes not going to agree on things, and that's okay. I think everybody here is basically at the point where I'm fine if it's not a military subsidy anymore, but we remain allies. That vision and what he is saying, if he really means that to me is a world of difference than what we saw on the other Big Story, which was nearly half the Democrats, you know, voting against.

[Abe Greenwald]

But here's. But here's what, here's why I don't think he really means it, though. Here's his answer. Here's his answer to the question, right, about Israeli opinion, public opinion manipulation, whatever you want to call it. But there are some people within their system we know beyond a shadow of a doubt who are manipulating and trying to change American public opinion to keep the war going on indefinitely. Again, not towards any objective, but just indefinitely. So, like, does it happen? Yes. But I guess I would say to the Americans who sort of see this and are frustrated by it, my attitude would be you should be frustrated at American leaders who are, you know, persuaded by this, affected by these countries are going to do what countries do. I really don't. It doesn't bother me that Qatar tries to influence United States of America and they do. I like a lot of the Qataris, just like I like a lot of the Israelis. It doesn't bother me that Israel tries to do this. It frankly doesn't even bother me that Russia or some of these other countries do it. It's just the nature of being a political leader in 2026. What does bother me is when those operations actually affect American political judgment. So, you know, I don't trust him that he actually means, let's just look to take a cold, hard, rational look at what we get from Israel, what we give to Israel and how to make this alliance work. I hear him planting the seeds of Israel is not a friendly country. And they have bad intentions, and I respect that they have bad intentions towards America because so do these other countries, like Vladimir Putin's Russia. But American politicians just can't be influenced by it or listen to them. And I think that that discloses the possibility that he's really looking at this from a rational thing. Because anytime somebody says, hey, here's, here's a, here's a good thing about the Iron Dome, whatever he's got, he has already signaled that that is foreign influence peddling. So every argument for the U.S. israel,

[Seth Mandel]

what he's saying in this context, what he's saying in this context, again, there's a story that's largely on the right about Brad Parscale and his contract and his simultaneous role.

[Jon Podhoretz]

By the way, we should tell people. We should tell people. Brad Parscale was a computer consultant to one of the Trump kids who ended up becoming the media guy in 2016, who pioneered and championed the essentially go straight to social media strategy for the Trump campaign and has now run a fantastically successful social media consulting business since Brad Parscale, hired by Israel, registered as a foreign agent of Israel to conduct a public relations campaign on social media on Israel's behalf after it was discovered that on TikTok and on Instagram and other places, the amount of anti Israel content versus pro Israel content was something like 5,000 to 1. And so somebody in the Israeli government hired Brad Parscale and somebody like Alex Bruzewitz, who I think is in some weird MAGA competition with Brad Parscale for

[Seth Mandel]

business, tried to, by the way, contracts with other foreign governments tried to drop

[Jon Podhoretz]

dirty Dahmer and Brad Parscale. This is a PR campaign. You can see it happening. And it's the same kind of PR campaign that everybody does on social media, which is that they set up accounts and people and they promote certain people who do certain things and say certain things and they boost them and they pay Twitter to boost them and they pay TikTok to boost them to just get the story out. There is nothing pernicious about this, and nor would Vance have thought so until the Mao. The MoU was signed and a lot of pro Israel accounts reared in horror. We're not paid by Brad Parscale. I just want to make this clear. We reared in horror. Everybody, you know, like people, nobody, no rational person except J.D. vance, thought that the MOU was good. I mean, I literally don't know of a person left, you know, like far left to far right, who thinks that the MoU was anything but a calamity. And he's trying to say that the only reason anybody thinks it was a calamity is because of an Israeli government plot right through Brad Parscale and the deep state, the same deep state that Jeffrey Epstein was a part of to blacken Vance's reputation. And he. And the hell with them, as he said.

[Seth Mandel]

Right?

[Jon Podhoretz]

So it's way worse than you're saying, Eli, in my opinion.

[Seth Mandel]

Fine.

[Jon Podhoretz]

We should get to the.

[Seth Mandel]

Okay, listen, my only point here is that what Vance. I mean, I think I agree with you that, you know, it's kind of nuts to say that the MOU failed because, you know, pro Israel Americans and pro Israel PR said they didn't like the MoU. Lots of people didn't like the MoU, and that's all totally correct. And it's kind of a ridiculous thing to say. And it's also like loser mentality because it's like, oh, it's not my fault for being a sucker and believing these jihadist lunatics. It's these other people. I mean, that itself is kind of weird. And it doesn't grapple with the fact that the President himself is like, screw this, these people are crazy and they violated their word. So all of that, I sort of take it. I just think that you have to look at Vance. I think he's, I mean, again, it's cynical, he is pandering and it's bad. But it's not in any close to the problem of what's happening on the left and the Democrats because on the Democratic side, what basically now we've seen is that unless you say that the defensive war in Gaza is a genocide, then if you are in a solidly blue district, then you will get a challenge from the socialist populace. And that is the new reality, which is that it's no longer just a matter of why can't I have a voice in Congress to express solidarity with Palestinians? And they love to tell this narrative of how they were silenced by AIPAC or whatever. No, now they will silence you unless you take pretty much the pro Hamas line. And I'm just saying that you, you cannot equate those two things. And for now I agree, maybe we shouldn't believe Vance and there's a lot of red flags and everything like that. But if you just listen to what Vance says about what he thinks about the alliance, and he has said it consistently now for a few years, frankly, I can live with that because the US Israel alliance is very much in America's interest for a number of reasons that we all understand. So in that respect, it's like if you have, if Vance vision prevails, then there is a future US Israel relationship under the Democrats. There will be none. There will be no. I mean. And America will no longer veto UN Security Council resolutions against Israel. They will support ICC tribunals for Israeli leaders. They will join in with the jackals that America will be leading the jackals. And that is just for me, it's like night and day. And we should be very clear in terms of a very cold, calculated interest. I don't like what Vance is doing. I think it's bad. We have to call it out. We are not in the, you know, we're not senators, we are journalists and writers. And so we call it as we see it. But there is a difference. And I just think we need to understand.

[Jon Podhoretz]

Let's get to the difference, by the way. So I'm not here not to say there is a Five alarm fire. And I'm not like saying it's not a five alarm fire, but there are a couple of extenuating circumstances in this

[James Patterson]

bill

[Jon Podhoretz]

for which 104 Democrats voted. Here are the two extenuating circumstances, one of which is that the bill was never going to pass.

[Seth Mandel]

Right.

[Jon Podhoretz]

So as a result, it's kind of a gimme vote. That is to say you can vote your own conscience because since every Republican was going to vote against it and you only needed three or four Democrats to vote for it, people were free to do whatever they wanted to do on a vote that didn't matter. It has no effect. It will not go in force. It's not going to have any effect on what actually is going on between America and Israel in terms of policy or funding or anything like that. It's symbolically horrible. But in a weird way, the people who did it are being rhetorically irresponsible with it because there are no practical consequences from this right now. The second thing is that as a Jewish insider points out this morning, as Mark Rod points out, in the 18 districts that are genuinely toss ups between Republicans and Democrats across the United states, in the 435 districts that make up the House, there are 18 for all the marbles races. Sixteen of the 18 voted against. So where it counts to people who actually have to face the electorate with some, you know, where everything that they do is going to make a difference in whether or not they get into the House In November, only two of those 18 voted to suspend aid to Israel. Now I'm not saying it's not a five alarm fire again, but that's very

[Abe Greenwald]

interesting that, yeah, there's, there's, I mean we can, and we can place them in further context which is, you know, one of those, by the way, was Haley Stevens, right? We've been talking about Haley Stevens and Abdul El Sayed. So Haley Stevens voted against this. That, that's one of the races that were, that one of the close races that we're talking about. But another interesting one is in Missouri, Wesley Bell versus Cori Bush. Wesley Bell voted against it also. That's, that's significant because Cori Bush's challenge, her rematch challenge to Wesley bell in the St. Louis area is 100% on Israel. From Cori Bush's perspective, Wes, Wesley Bell wants to talk about governing. He wants to talk about other things that aren't 6,000 miles away. But Cori Bush doesn't, she doesn't want to talk about anything about to her that's important to her would be constituents. She wants to talk about the Jews. And so Wesley Bell stood in, in, you know, he took, he took a shot for, for that last night. So, and that's, that's important. Also important is Hakeem Jeffries because he's the leader and because he's also got a target on his back by some of these guys by, by the dse. So some of these votes, for some of these votes against the bill had a path, maybe an excuse, you might even call it, to vote for. Now, I wouldn't have excused it. I wouldn't have said, oh, why, that's okay. Hakeem Jeffries for doing. But from his perspective, there was a path to justifying either way and he went with the better choice, Wesley Bell for sure. George Latimer is another one. George Latimer is the New York Democrat who ousted Jamaal Bowman in the primary. He's not running against Jamal Bowman again. But you can bet that Latimer has something of a target on his back, not to the same degree as someone like Wesley Bell running against Cori Bush, because Latimer knows his district and that's why he won. But Latimer ousted Bowman and voted for this. And so you can see it in these particular races. The other thing is that you can also see the one, one of the ones, there's two really bad ones to go to the other side, though, Right. One of them is that not all of leadership voted against the bill. So you do have an emerging problem here with, you know, possibly with leadership. The other thing is that Adam Smith voted for the amendment. Now, this one takes a bit more just background for people. Adam Smith is the ranking member on the Armed Services Committee, Right? Armed services, yeah. And so he has he. About a month and a half ago, when this particular, when the, the part of the defense bill that this Massie amendment targets came up, Adam Smith defended the close Israel, US Israel relationship and the new form of that the aid was going to take, which is rather than, you know, financial aid given to Israel to spend on American defense contractors, it is going to be a much more integrated system and cooperation on projects. Adam Smith defended that. And he said the people who are mischaracterizing this as America giving away its sovereignty to Israel, people like Ro Khanna said that the word sovereignty has been thrown around are wrong. A month later, after he got a pressure campaign and saw which way the winds were blowing, he changed his mind. And he said, I'm now going to oppose that. And now he, he opposes any aid to Israel as at least per this amendment. Okay. The other thing with Adam Smith is that he gave an interview to. Was it. Kevin Deutsch, an independent journalist, did a story the other day where he talked about Adam Smith's complaints about anti Zionism within the Democratic Party. And Adam Smith was complaining that they turned Israel into a litmus test, that it's become a way to cover for antisemitism, that the pressure campaigns go too far. Adam Smith has had, you know, his home vandalized, painted, whatever. So Adam Smith says two things. The people who are against this bill are lying. The people who are against this new form of cooperation, us, Israel, cooperation, they're lying. And they're not just lying. They're coming to my house where my family lives, to intimidate us about it. And a month later, he has fully gone along with whatever it is they wanted him to do. So to me to pick out the bad ones. We know the DSA types, we know the squad types and all that. And there are a few good ones, as I mentioned, which is important for this discussion. Having someone in leadership and then having the Adam Smith from Washington flip the way he did after explaining to the public what is going on behind the scenes and how difficult this has been because of anti Zionist within the Democratic Party, that was a very bad result. So those are the two. Those are the two trends that we're looking at.

[James Patterson]

I'm James Patterson. I write way too many books. Welcome to Hungry Dogs. The title comes from my maternal grandmother, Isabel Zelvis Morris. Nan used to always say, hungry dogs run fast, and I've been running fast ever since. Here's what'll be coming your way soon. And this is a really terrific list. I think you'll hear from some incredible people like Stacey Abrams. Yay. BJ Novak. Yay. Kathy Bates, Dolly Parton, Joss Gad, and Pope Leo. Okay, maybe not Pope Leo, but who knows? Maybe he'll show up. Hungry dogs run faster. Thank you, Grandma, for turning me into a hopeless, obsessive, compulsive. Listen to Hungry Dogs with James Patterson. That'd be me on Apple, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

[Eric Gertler]

From the State House to the courthouse, in the emergency room, and in the classroom, Americans are losing trust in their leaders. In a 2025 U.S. news and World Report survey, 85% of Americans said government care more about their own power than the people they serve. 73% are disappointed in health care leaders, 72% in business, and 68% in education. But there are still leaders worth believing in. I'm Eric Gertler, CEO and executive chairman of U.S. news World Report. This is the Best Leaders podcast sponsored by the Noble Reach Foundation. On this show, we'll go deeper into the story, stories, challenges and lessons of extraordinary leaders across public service, business, healthcare and education. You can find the Best Leaders podcast from U.S. news World Report on YouTube, Apple, Spotify, Amazon Music, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Jon Podhoretz]

Abe and Abe and Eli. And take this to Abe Another interesting moment happened to help explain why Adam Smith did what he did comes not in the case of somebody who has said anything good about Israel or talked properly about the dangers of antisemitism lately, but somebody who's gone the other way. And that's Ro Khanna, the congressman from California who seems to have seen some ambitions in 2028, either presidential or he wants to be a major cabinet figure or a vice presidential, whatever. And of course now famously or infamously, he calls it a genocide. And then he went to Israel and staged this event where he tried to make it look as though he were being abused by settlers or military police on the West Bank. And as it happens, both Abe and Eli yesterday wrote about a podcast, different podcast on which Ro Khanna appeared. Abe, do you want to talk about this? Because it helps explain how Adam Smith is right to be worried because you can say everything that you're supposed to say in order to stay good with the worst people on this issue who are the most despicable in our view. And it's still not going to be enough.

[Eli Lake]

Yeah, they always want more. So Ro Khanna went on the drop site podcast where Jeremy Scahill, who's

[Seth Mandel]

way

[Eli Lake]

out there on the left, really tried to like, force Ro Khanna into saying that Hamas has a right to kill Israeli soldiers and had a right on October 7 to kill Israeli soldiers over and over again. And the thing about what struck me about this was Scahill's logic, such as it was, is that if Ro Khanna believes, as he continues to say, that Israel does have a right to some military response, some deadly military response to October 7th on Gaza, why is there no situation in which the Palestinians have a right to the deadly use of force, considering that Ro Khanna goes around saying that they are victims of genocide and apartheid and all the rest of it. And the thing about this is if you really buy into this leftist radical narrative about Israel and Palestinians and genocide and apartheid, Scahill has the Scahill's argument makes more sense than Ro Khanna's I mean, the problem is Rokhanna is pretending to buy in to Scahill's premise and then he comes up against where that would logically lead and then he ends up sort of falling back on. I believe in nonviolent resistance and whatever else. But the point is the contempt that the hard revolutionaries have for the liberals who are trying to court them and take on some of their energy and bask in the excitement of it all. It's not dissimilar to what we saw

[Jon Podhoretz]

with

[Eli Lake]

California State Senator Scott Wiener a few weeks ago, who also made the obligatory turn against Israel and then was drummed out of the San Francisco Trans March for not being Hamasnik. And they're going to come for everyone. Every Democrat who tries to play this game is going to have to come up against this reality that as much as you want to court and flatter the Jew hating revolutionaries, at the end of the day you are not their cup of tea and they're going to

[Seth Mandel]

let you know that's right.

[Eli Lake]

So

[Jon Podhoretz]

this is a very important moment for Democrats, and it's very comparable to a moment in the 1960s for the Democratic Party, but also for liberal, for American liberalism. Test that American liberalism failed in the response to radicalizing opinion often most powerfully expressed by youth on college campuses. So remember, a lot of this, the encampment stuff, all started on college campuses, moving into the general authority and sort of the general public opinion on the left, liberal to left. And the whole point was that if you were a good liberal in good standing on a college campus and you were the president of a university who was rock ribbed straight on, you did everything, you supported liberal causes, you believed in everything that was supposedly good and true and beautiful. They came at you first. If you were the president of Columbia, they came at you first. You got no pass. You weren't. Ed Levy, who was the president of the University of Chicago in 1970, had been a Republican, was a Republican. So they came at Ed Levy, at least he was a Republican who sort of sided essentially with Nixon. But that was not true of the presidents of Yale and Cornell and Columbia, all of whose administration buildings were taken over by revolutionaries and all of that. And the point is that as everybody seems now to now be remembering,

[James Patterson]

the

[Jon Podhoretz]

left hates the liberals more than they hate the right. I mean, or the right is damned and through and monstrous. But at least the right is sort of like, is beyond their reach or beyond their ken or something like that. But not so the liberals. And the liberal impulse is to try to Suck up, be nice, be friendly, say we're all on the same side. After all, you think things should go faster than I do because I think the public isn't ready for it, as

[Eli Lake]

Ro Khanna said, to try to sort of paste it all back together. As he said to Scahill, look, you're at a 10, I may be at a 7 or 8 or a 9, you know, but, you know, but we're, in other words, like I'm right there with you. I'm just not, you know, I'm right behind you.

[Jon Podhoretz]

Because it's a matter of strategy and tactics, not what we genuinely believe in, what we believe we have in common.

[Seth Mandel]

Well, I think this also gets at something that's related, which is Rahm Emanuel. Rahm Emanuel, in my view, by the way, I don't agree with Rahm Emanuel on any number of things, but I think he is a good faith critic of where Israel is at right now. I don't really cast him out. I don't consider him in the same camp as somebody like Ro Khanna who has made these cynical accommodations to the hard left. But I think it exposes this problem with the Rahm Emanuel argument. Because what Rahm Emanuel is saying is, listen, let me help you, Israel, you need to have a serious two state plan so we can win back all these people who are, who hate you and you won't be as isolated. And I want to do something about that because that's not good for you. You have a great military, you got great tech, as he would say. But the rest of the world really is turning on you, becoming a pariah state. So you need to do something to address your pariah state status.

[James Patterson]

And

[Seth Mandel]

you want to believe that. But the problem is that for Jeremy Scahill, he's on the side of Hamas. He thinks that Hamas is legitimate armed resistance. And that's what the left thinks. And unless you confront the left, unless you say, I can't be in a coalition with these people, then they will eventually take over and that will become the position. So Israel could do any number of things. And by the way, there are independent reasons in my view, like when you're talking about Ben Gvir's role as the national security minister and what I think are going to be scandals coming out of Israel's prison systems, that for just the health of the nation, for independent reasons, that Israel should address certain things. Sure. But for Israel to then think that it's going to do these things and that is going to be the path to its normalization and it's going to address its pariah status. That's wrong. The problem is that there is this new kind of political coalition inside the Democratic Party. And as long as the DSA and Jeremy Scahill and Darieliza Chevalier, et cetera, and and Zoran Mamdani are in the tent of the Democratic Party, there is no feeding that crocodile. You're never going to appease them. So you should recognize that. And that if you really are, as I think, and I believe, by the way, I want to say, I think Rahm Emanuel loves Israel. I don't think he wants Israel to no longer exist. But if you care about the US Israel relationship, if you care about those sorts of things, you have to recognize that you cannot be in a coalition with these people. That's the first point. And the second point that this needs to be made, which is that Jeremy Scahill's arguments would apply as well to, like, Al Qaeda, which he's incredibly soft on, would apply to other American adversaries, particularly its jihadist adversaries. So by taking this view that like, well, listen, on Israel, we largely agree, but, ugh, God, October 7th seems a little too far. I think that was terrorism. Ugh, yikes. Don't give an inch. Because, Jeremy. Because the same logic applies to anti American terrorists as well. And if you want to live in a world where you can never fight an enemy, all our sort of jihadist terrorist enemies need to do in wartime is embed themselves with civilians, not wear uniforms, take hostages, and anything you do will be seen as a monstrosity of war crime and genocide and so forth. Then that's bad for America, that's bad for the West. That means that we won't be able to defend ourselves, if that's the standard that you are now adopting. So know your enemy, Democrats. Know your enemy. That's the key thing.

[Jon Podhoretz]

I think what you're getting at is the looming, rapidly advancing crisis in the Democratic Party that goes beyond Israel to a general question about the United States. This movement inside the party, the Squad movement, the kinds of statements that are made by members of the Squad, explicitly Taliban. Omar Most basically, they are haters of the United States. They are open, open haters of the United States serving in the United States government. They swear an oath upon taking office to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States of America. And an oath that they basically violate every second of, of every day. The Democratic Party, like the Democratic Party in the late 60s, early 70s, is going to face a reckoning with voters because if it goes down this path, it doesn't just stop with Israel. Israel's a convenient opening salvo and the Jews are a convenient opening target in the war on capitalism and things like that. But it doesn't stop there. What we don't know, we knew in 1977, 172 Richard Nixon won the largest landslide in American history by 25 points because the Democratic Party gave itself over to its radical wing in the form of the George McGovern Knights, who were as far left as you could get if you were going to get the nomination for the presidency. Nixon won 48 states and 62% of the vote because the Democrats had gone like, you know, to La la land. But that was an America in which hundreds of thousands of Americans had just come back from serving in Vietnam and had families who they and were, were not ashamed of their service. That was an America in which several million Americans had served in Korea only 20 years earlier. And of course, 16 million Americans had been involved in the war effort in World War II. That was a different country than the America today. And what I don't think we know yet is whether that kind of anti Americanism that we're talking about that was so ruinous to the Democratic Party's national standing and that basically ensured that they won one presidential election out of seven from 1968 till 1992, one presidential or one out of six or something like that, and only held the House as they did during that whole period because of redistricting and entropy. We don't know if that's the. We're in the same country anymore. And we don't know how Americans react to these ideas that were so noxious, instantly noxious to the vast majority of Americans saying that we stink, that we go abroad and we do terrible things, we're the villain. We persecute poor criminals at home and we're mean to poor North Vietnamese in North Vietnam. And this is, you know, we are guilty. We are at fault. We are the world's war criminals. I'm worried that that's a message that's going to be more acceptable than it was 54, 52 years ago or however long ago it was, which is terrifying to me. But I think we are going to have these test cases. And so I take a little heart in this detail that Mark Rod surfaced, that 16 of the 18 Democrats who actually have fear their electorates because they're trying to win voted against this bill because that's where the rubber meets the road. If you actually want to be in office in America. Maybe that's. And you're not just living in a blue state where it's, you know, where you have a 90% chance of being, of winning a race statewide, whatever, simply by being on the Democratic line. Maybe there's hope. That's why the El Sayed race is so important. Because it's gonna tell us whether there's still life in the Democratic Party to resist this siren song in a larger electorate in a swing state with a state of 11 million people. Whether those voters having to choose between Haley Stevens, who is not an anti American, anti Semitic monster, and an anti American, anti Semitic, pro Hamas monster, vote against the anti American, anti Semitic, pro Hamas monster. And that's two and a half weeks from now, by the way.

[Seth Mandel]

You know who would make a difference in all this is Barack Obama and his silence and his neutrality, as you know, in the fight for the soul of the Democratic Party is telling. Now there's a theory, and it might be true that this is where his heart really always was with the kind of anti colonialist left, that this is that the real Barack Obama is the guy who's really close with Rashid Khalidi and everything like that. But that is not what Barack Obama's presidency was like. I mean, I had my disagreements, as we all did, but Barack Obama was not the caricature of the 2008 candidate who palled around with Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dorn. When he got a start in Uchicago politics, he clearly had migrated much more to the center. And again, progressive. We have our disagreements, but not this.

[Abe Greenwald]

And

[Seth Mandel]

it's telling in my view, that we haven't heard anything from him on this point, that it should be a no brainer, like Barack Obama should come out and support Haley Stevens because Al said is, is, is an alien to, at least as we understand it, you know, a mainstream, serious Democratic Party tradition. And for him, yeah, Obama's doing, you

[Eli Lake]

know, smiling photo ops with Mamdani in kids.

[Seth Mandel]

I know. Well, this is the thing. I mean, and again, maybe what we're learning is that this is the real Barack Obama. But my point is, is that you can't not. You have to remember that he was also the guy who killed Bin Laden and enhanced our drone war.

[Jon Podhoretz]

Okay, I'm not saying that your description of Obama in sort of domestic American politics is incorrect. I mean, I'm more negatively inclined toward him than you are. But I mean, he certainly was the harbinger of this move in his party, going explicitly anti Israel. I mean, Michael Oren in his memoir of being ambassador.

[Seth Mandel]

Yeah, no, I agree.

[Jon Podhoretz]

The Israeli ambassador of the United States said that there was no love in Obama's heart for the Jewish state. When he said tough love, there was only tough and no love. That this was an ugly relationship, that he was innately hostile, that he felt it at every moment in his ambassadorship. And we know that the stories about him having Hillary Clinton call up and yell at Bibi Netanyahu, having Bibi wait two hours in the anteroom before their meeting, and then ultimately, because Bibi, of course, came out publicly against the JCPOA and caused this gigantic firestorm in his, pretty much his last act as president, altered US Policy at the UN toward Israel and had and allowed a vote to pass condemning Israel as an illegal settler colonial nation.

[James Patterson]

Agreed.

[Seth Mandel]

Okay, but you know what, I'm just saying

[Jon Podhoretz]

on this issue, he bad. He is bad.

[Seth Mandel]

He's bad, but it's not the same as. I mean, he supported a two state solution, but more importantly, he's not playing around with maybe the idea that October 7th was, you know, natural armed resistance. What do you expect? He was not somebody who made excuses for terrorists and invented. He kind of made excuses, a notion that there's a right to resist occupation and things like that.

[Jon Podhoretz]

Remember? He pooh poohed terrorism. He pooh poohed terrorism. He did not take revenge against the killing of our. He did not act against the killing of our ambassador in, in Libya. He called the, he called ISIS the JV team. He did not do any. He, he refused to characterize. The Charlie Hebdo killing

[Seth Mandel]

authorized the special operators to go into Pakistan without the government of Pakistan to kill bin Laden.

[Jon Podhoretz]

Okay, but killing bin Laden's. I'm sorry, that's an excess one off. Bin Laden directly bombed the United States. He did not. He wanted Americans to think that there was no threat or the threat, there was no threat to us from Islamic terrorism. He really did. His Entire campaign in 2012 was predicated on the idea that bin Laden, you know, that General Motors was alive and bin Laden was dead, that he had done it, it was over. And anything that smacked of terrorism that would have required him to engage with the idea that Islamism was alive and well and a threat to the United States, he refused to acknowledge. And that went through 2015 and 2016. He did not accept the idea that the Pulse bombing in Orlando at the gay disco was an Islamist operation. And as I say, his Secretary of State refused to call the Charlie Hebto bombing an act of anti Semitic terrorism. So he plays his. What would you call that? His absence from that fight has a lot to do with.

[Seth Mandel]

Yeah, but John, the FBI under Obama continued its very aggressive monitoring of American Muslim communities and what civil libertarians would have called entrapment. I think it was. There were national security reasons to be on a war footing. All those kinds of policies under Bush continued, you're right that he was in some ways opening the door and rhetorically trying to argue that. And there was. And if you remember, there was a kind of interesting distinction, which is that when Hillary runs for president, she brings back the term jihadist. And no one in the Obama administration would ever say that. So those are important distinctions. But what I'm saying is that now that we are beginning to see the full effect, and I think this Rohana conversation is very revealing in that regard of exactly what the new left plank of the party once. That is not where Obama was. And there was an element of Obama, at least I think, because he kept those policies going, that believed at a certain baseline level that we did have to fight this, that it was a war, and that we couldn't just pretend that we were the guilty party and that what do you expect? They have a right to do it and everything's our fault. Now, again, maybe I'm wrong and that the real Barack and that he didn't do that because he only could get away with so much and he understood the limitations. He was a pragmatic guy, but if he had his druthers, it could be King of America. He would have, you know, been. He would have governed like, you know, Mamdani or Jeremy Scahill. But in my view, there was this distinction and, you know, I'm familiar enough that the left on these points, you know, kind of concluded that he really substantively continued a lot of these programs that they thought were all these terrible things. So that's all I'm pointing out.

[Jon Podhoretz]

I just want to point out that on October 23, 2023, on the pod Save America podcast, Obama said, we have to admit that nobody's hands are clean, that all of us are complicit to some degree as a form of excusing Hamas's. He said it's terrible terrorism, all this. Our hands are dirty, too, said Barack obama of the October 7th massacre two weeks after the October 7th massacre. So I'm not giving him a pass. I'm sorry, where has he been in the last two and a half years?

[Seth Mandel]

I'm not giving him a pass either, by the way. I'm not. I opposed A lot of this too. I lost by his White House all the time for stuff I wrote. I agree with you.

[Jon Podhoretz]

No, but you're saying, oh, Barack Obama could help. He doesn't want to help.

[Seth Mandel]

Fair enough.

[Jon Podhoretz]

He doesn't wanna help. You're wrong. You're wrong that he wants to help.

[Seth Mandel]

Well, I'm just saying what would happen?

[Jon Podhoretz]

How do you know?

[Seth Mandel]

Let me recalibrate. I'm glad we had this conversation about Obama, but let me just recalibrate it. What the Democratic Party needs is like a kind of national figure who is not running for office, like an ex president, to sort of say, listen, this is who we are and these people are not part of it. And that you need to get some courage and strength. I'm saying that's what the party is

[Abe Greenwald]

and it can have that once again, if it listens to Joe Biden.

[Jon Podhoretz]

Well, when his book comes out Promise Me America, we will know what Joe Biden really thinks. Because of course, he wrote every word himself. I'm making a pre recommendation. I think we should all read Joe Biden's Promise Me America when it comes out in November. Please pre order. Because, you know, he worked really hard on it and you know, in between licks of ice cream. And if the COVID of the book,

[Abe Greenwald]

if the COVID of the book is not that birthday Instagram picture from the White House where he had the candles, all. All 80 candles or whatever lit, and it looked like the room was going up in flames and he had this like crazed smile. That's got to be the COVID of the book.

[Jon Podhoretz]

Yeah, well, I mean, that's the question is where is the Democratic Party going to go after this? It looked at Biden and his loss and said, I guess we got to go anti Semitic. Not really logical. I'm sorry, but, you know, that's where this is headed. So in the end, Eli, you're right. Vance is still somewhere on the spectrum of he can be pulled back from the depths. Depths of Hades and pulled up and walk behind Orpheus out. As long as he doesn't turn around and look backwards.

[Seth Mandel]

Well, no, I'm just saying the Vance way and then we'll get out of here. But the Vance way is basically like, I want Israel and the United States to have a kind of normal relationship. A lot of Zionists have been saying this now for 15, 20 years. And that I'm not worried about that because of how valuable an ally Israel really is. So that to me is like, all right, well, there'll be a future relationship and they'll be a valuable ally.

[Jon Podhoretz]

You know who else has turned out to be a valuable ally in teaching us all sorts of things about yeah, Ukraine. Remember Ukraine?

[Seth Mandel]

Yeah, I do. And advance was all wrong about Ukraine

[Jon Podhoretz]

are yelling at Zelensky and now he's trashing Israel.

[Seth Mandel]

Well, I trashed him for that. I agree.

[Jon Podhoretz]

Zeigazon to JD Vance on foreign policy because he really has a golden touch. Ukraine has turned it around on Russia. Israel has showed itself as the, you know, as the most advanced small military the world has ever seen fighting alongside us, integrated in the war in Iran that he opposed and that the president supported. And now he's saying, oh, they're coming at me because I'm so they're so terrible with their cabal and their Epstein and everything like that. So, you know, he said the people in Israel can go to hell who are doing this to him and he can go to hell. And thanks for being on Eli and for Abe and Seth, I'm John Podhoretz. Keep the candle burning.