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- [00:00]
A
The holidays mean more travel, more shopping, more time online and more personal info in more places that could expose you more to identity theft. But LifeLock monitors millions of data points per second. If your identity is stolen, our US based restoration specialists will fix it, guaranteed your money back. Don't face drained accounts, fraudulent loans or financial losses alone. Get more holiday fun and less holiday worry with LifeLock. Save up to 40% your first year. Visit LifeLock.com podcast terms apply.
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B
Hope for the best, Expect the worst.
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A
Some drink champagne, Some die of thirst.
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B
No way of knowing which way it's going Hope for the best Expect the worst for the best welcome to the Commentary Magazine Daily Podcast. Today is Friday, December 5, 2025. I am Jon Pothoritz, the editor of Commentary Magazine, importuning you to go to commentary.org donate and give generously to our end of year campaign for our 501c3 nonprofit here. Commentary Inc. Publishes Commentary Magazine monthly, publishes our website daily and produces this podcast daily. We rely upon the generosity of our listeners, our readers, to keep the lights on, to keep the home fires burning, to continue to provide you with the best information that we can about the war on the Jewish people, the rise of antisemitism, the threats to America both within and without, and the need to defend Western civilization from all comers. That is our mission, that is our mandate, that is our purpose. We are 80 years old and we want to continue to be around.
- [02:06]
For our hundredth anniversary of publication and beyond. We are one of the now. We're one of the oldest monthly surviving print monthlies in the world and are very proud of that, certainly in the English language. I think our record, or his record of Commentary's place in American intellectual history is unimpeachable from publishing the great writers of the from Isaac Bischev, a singer, to Saul Bellow to Philip Roth to.
- [02:45]
Aleph Betty Hoshua to Sy Agnon, to every major writer of fiction whose work has stood the test of time from mid century onward, or many. And true of our essayists, true of our.
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Reviewers, true of our political analysts, you will be part of a great tradition of supporting the advance of the best that has been thought and said, as Matthew Arnold put it. Please go to commentary.org donate please give generously. That is a tax deductible contribution, so you can make note of that with when you do your taxes or tell your accountant what it is that you need to take off on your taxes. And we would be very grateful for your support. And by we, I mean Executive Editor Abe Greenwald Hi, Abe.
- [03:42]
C
Hi, John.
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B
Washington Free Beacon editor Eliana Johnson. Hi, Eliana.
- [03:48]
D
Hi, John.
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B
And social commentary columnist and American Enterprise Institute senior fellow Christine Rosen. Hi, Christine.
- [03:54]
E
Hi, John.
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B
I don't know if you can hear the cop cars outside. They're coming for me. So we better get get, get, get this over with before, before they bust bust through the door.
- [04:07]
So.
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A couple of big things. Number one, after a weird ruling in an appeals court against the Texas.
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The drawing of the lines that the Texas legislature did to sort of help the Republicans.
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Gain seats in 2026 to stave off the Democratic wave.
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Texas court ruled that race had been taken too much into account in the drawing of the district liberal justices on this appeals court using jujitsuing Republican concerns about racial gerrymandering and saying that too much attention had been paid to the race of people in the districts and therefore that the map that had been drawn was illegitimate. It and the dissenting opinion in that case is one of the most astounding document supporting the, supporting the redistrict, one of the most astounding documents ever written by any judge ever. I heartily commend it to you because it's like a hundred pages of ranting, raving, absolute rage.
- [05:30]
And, and the Supreme Court basically found that he was correct. And the, and the, the justices that had decided that the district was a racial was it was a, was a, was a unconstitutional racial gerrymander was silly because it's a constitutional political gerrymander, not a racial gerrymander and was explicitly said to be and the court had ruled that political gerrymandering is legitimate. So that that goes on. That's a big relief for Republicans in Washington because it at least with the California redistricting that was done by referendum basically ensuring a kind of five the Democrats were going to get at least five extra seats.
- [06:13]
In the 2026 elections. This at least brings them maybe close to par. You may not like.
- [06:21]
Mid decade gerrymann redistricting and you may think it's politically gross and there's a lot to be said for that. But.
- [06:32]
That'S the first real political victory that the Republicans have had in the last month. I would say.
- [06:39]
Relatively speaking. So because we've been talking about how wheels seem to be coming off in a lot of ways, it's worth noting that in this, in this respect, the 2026 battlefield has been clarified a little bit. And, and, and the possible coming blue wave has a little there's a little back backwash to it here. As a result of the Supreme Court decision Anybody have anything to say about this? Except for the fact that all gerrymandering, of course, has been making people sick since El Gary actually invented it. Whenever that was 1809 or something like that.
- [07:22]
C
I don't know. For me, every gerrymandering story is sort of become like white noise because on it goes, and it's completely bipartisan, and the way it plays out is so predictable in terms of the dynamics of the party that's attempting it and the party that is opposing it. That, to me, it's just become another fact of political life.
- [07:47]
B
I mean, it's the ultimate tartuffery in the sense that these are nakedly raw political plays for control of the House of Representatives. Like raw. Without question, people are using political power in unseemly ways to maintain a larger political advantage. But they always cast them, no matter which direction they're going in, they always cast them with this pompous assertion that what's being done here is the defense of democracy against the forces of darkness who would ruin them and destroy them. And we have to go this way. 60 years since the Voting Rights act and the Civil Rights act, there is still this assertion that it is necessary for race to be taken, until the Supreme Court found otherwise, race to be taken as a factor in these districts in the south, when these districts in the south are now 70 to 80% minority with full voting rights and all of that. And the whole war against political gerrymandering in the 2010s by Democrats who were complaining about political gerrymandering, which. Which is what gerrymandering is, simply because state legislatures had somehow then come in majority terms into Republican hands, and they were going to make sure that they got the best juice out of. Out of redistricting and drew them to their satisfaction as opposed to Democratic satisfaction. And you would have thought, particularly in Wisconsin, that literally the stormtroopers had come to the door to seize power from the good people of Wisconsin and hand it to the 19th century. Women should be barefoot and pregnant and not have abortions, and everybody should be, you know, cast into slavery. That's the thing that I can't stand about it is just the hypocritical pomposity and absolute falsity of the, you know, of the moral claims that are simply just a matter of one party gaining power and trying to take advantage of it as long as they have it, and the other party saying, whoa, we have to do whatever we can to stop it. And one of the ways that they try to stop it is by by rallying their own people to their side with the idea that their rights are being seized and taken away by, by monsters. And they, they can all drop dead as far as I'm concerned. So you're right to hear it as white noise, but it's, it's worse than white noise because it is like listening to people, you know, getting all high and mighty and, you know, pomp. It's like when somebody gets all outraged because a call doesn't go their way for their team. And, you know, it's like, well, if the call went the way that you wanted, it was unjust for your team, you wouldn't say, well, you know what? They should bring the, they should, they should bring the ball back to the, to the, you know, line of scrimmage, because that wasn't a good call. You're always happy to be outraged at calls against your team, and you're always happy when the call goes for your team, even if you know that the call was lousy. So.
- [10:58]
E
Well, it's similar to the rhetoric we hear around demands to show identification to vote. These are the other ones that drive me crazy. They act as if, you know, someone's, you know, civil rights and human rights are being completely throttled because they have to show their driver's license to prove they're who they are. Meanwhile, you know, you're now going to get fined at the airport if you don't have a real ID and you show up for your flight and it's not. You haven't done the rather bureaucratic transformation of your local driver's license into a real id. So I. Those are the similar sorts of things. These, they also don't comport with most people's reality, which is that we all understand that at times we have to prove who we are by showing identification. Like when you check into a hotel, they ask for your id and nobody sees this as a civil rights violation. So I think it's a similar kind of political posturing.
- [11:45]
B
Very important, very important to note. Okay, so there we have, we have the Republicans winning one. Then we have Democrats winning one. Letitia James not being indicted for the lawfare that Trump is pursuing against his enemies. Hitting a snag, hitting several snags, actually, since, of course, we don't know what's going to happen with the Comey Re indictment. But.
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Tish James is not going to get indicted.
- [12:14]
But then the big thing was testimony before Congress yesterday about the Venezuelan boat strike on September.
- [12:22]
2Nd. And Senator Tom Cotton, former Commentary magazine Roasty and friend of ours So I note that just to say that we are inclined to think well of Senator Cotton, not only because of who he is and what he's done and the stands that he takes, but also he is a. He is a friend of this institution. Came out very resolutely and said that the strike was righteous and just. And that, in fact.
- [12:54]
Could have been four strikes and it would still have been the case that this was a. This is a kinetic military action, and it has its own. Once that action is undertaken, it has its own logic. And. And. And he has no questions about it. And it does appear that almost everybody who is involved in. In these matters looks at Admiral Bradley, who was the one who was conducting, who was overseeing the strike, and says he is a person of unimpeachable integrity and would, you know, and a patriot and a hero and all of that. And.
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It'S still the case that Pete Hegseth, the Secretary of Defense, is acting weird. Like, he's like, I. Everything was righteous, but, you know, I left the room after. After the first strike. It's like, really? You left the room? Why? Would you understand why you. It's like, okay, the strike's over. I'm gonna go get a soda out of the. Out of the vending machine.
- [13:52]
Like, he's in a skiff. They're overseeing a military action. Really, he left.
- [13:57]
E
Well, he sent a very clear message to the people who are like Admiral Bradley, which is that he's going to. You're going to be the person defending yourself before a congressional oversight committee, not Pete Hegseth. I mean, that. He was his call. He should have been the one sitting in that hearing answering questions and. Or sitting beside the admiral, answering those questions. I think his. His weirdness is also the fact that his. The Signalgate report didn't go his way, even though he claimed he was completely exonerated. He was not. And in fact, the IG's report, I think, made a very important recommendation, which was to say, the Pentagon needs a system of secure communication in real time so that people can have conversations on platforms other than things like Signal, because those are really not secure for the kind of communication that was going on. I think he's. You know, he's still in a position of being rather embattled, but I don't think he acquitted himself. Well, even if Senator Cotton is right about this, what changed? One of the things that emerged from the discussion yesterday before Congress is that the survivors of the first strike were in communication with another potential drug boat. So that signals to me no pun intended, that they were, in fact, even if they were, had survived the initial attack, they were going to be back on board another one of these boats. And we can. And continue, we should continue to have the discussion of whether the American people support this larger action. But for this particular case, it does seem like they were intent on fulfilling whatever their mission was.
- [15:22]
D
The administration's argument here is that the survivors of the first attack remained a threat and as a result were legitimate targets of a second attack. But, you know, those of us on this call are following the twists and turns of the initial Washington Post story said X, and then there was a follow up New York Times story that said Y and that Hegses said this, but Bradley said that. And I just don't think average people are following this. I think average, you know, the average person, I mean, I'm barely keeping up with all the twists and turns. And what Bradley said before Congress and what the Democratic senator told CNN and what Tom Cotton said, it is complicated and quite hard to follow the details of this. I think normal people are seeing essentially that the administration is dropping bombs, missiles on drug traffickers in the ocean. And they're like, that's a good thing. You know, I like that. But I'm also probably more favorably disposed to that than, than some of the others on, on this podcast. Like, I, I support that. And also, like I, I'm just, I'm just less.
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B
Where am I gonna get my fentanyl?
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Where am I gonna get my fentanyl? If they can.
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D
Yeah.
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B
Dropping bombs on these boats, the price is gonna go up. You know, I have kids I'm sending through college.
- [16:44]
E
Well, they're in.
- [16:45]
D
I'm not as. I'm not worked up about this. I support the administration killing these people. I think that's about the level at which normal people are following this. And then I have to say, on the signal thing. Yeah. You know, the IG Report said Pete Hegseth shouldn't have used signal to communicate the battle plans. I have to say that was pretty much my takeaway when this first came out. I'm not sure we learned anything new from the IG Report. Like, I read through all of it and was like, yep, I thought it was bad judgment when we got the first revelation. You know, I'm sure they didn't have much to investigate because the Pentagon didn't cooperate with the investigation. And it literally said they relied on the Atlantic article to do their investigation. Well, we all read the Atlantic article when it came out, so I pretty much learned nothing. New from the IG investigation. Like shouldn't have used signal. They probably stopped. And you know, I'm not, I'm not scandalized by that because there was no new revelation in it.
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B
You know, a lot of the presents.
- [17:46]
F
We get at the holidays are ways we upgrade. We upgrade for ourselves, we upgrade for our family. We get a new a better television, we get a better appliance, we get better luggage, that kind of thing.
- [17:59]
B
You know what will really be a.
- [18:01]
F
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C
Hi everyone, it's Abe.
- [19:02]
G
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- [20:02]
C
I'm a busy guy and I want.
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G
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- [20:40]
B
Just to give the higher level reason to be concerned about the signal chat, the lack of security and all of that. The issue here and it's been an issue over the last 20 years in part because of revelations about Bill Clinton's national security adviser Sandy Berger stealing documents from the from the national Archive that you know on 911 that made that made might have made Clinton look bad stuffing them in his socks and leaving and all that is this question of the two tiered, potentially two tiered system of justice for government officials when it comes to national security and classification and top secret information, which is that what are the ways you have to ensure that this is something that the people who get access to this information do not disseminate it, do not hand it around, don't give it to reporters or don't do things that would potentially compromise sources and methods. Meaning the individuals who are cooperating with the United States outside the country and are risking their lives in some ways to give us information that we need in order to formulate our foreign policy, military plans and things like that is you have to have a credible threat that if they, if they misuse that information they're going to go to jail. They need to be the rules have to be very clear as a form of deterrence. And if we establish a system where the higher up the food chain you go, the less likely it is that you are going to get punished for your misbehavior with classified information. When in fact the people with the highest at the top of the food chain have the most access to the most damaging or the most sensitive information and weasel out of trouble. John Deutsch, the CIA secretary CIA leader who was caught doing stuff others and so you know Hegseth get away with it because he's like he was sloppy send stuff to his wife. It's bad. It's also like what John Bolton has been accused of, right? John Bolton as Trump, you know, Trump lawfare John Bolton with the idea that he sent some stuff over email to his wife who was obviously doesn't have classified access and maybe to his daughter. But you can't prosecute John Bolton for doing that and then say it's okay, that's that Pete Hegseth sent classified information over signal to his wife.
- [23:17]
E
Well, and it's important to note that Hegseth has made each of these incidences worse with his own doubling down defensive behavior, his kind of insistence on treating each thing as if he's still a pundit rather than actually the leader of the Pentagon. And assuming as so far, I guess he's been correct to assume that Trump would continue to back him, he makes these situations worse for himself. I mean, setting aside what it does along the chain of command of the Pentagon and what it's doing to our confidence in his ability to lead the Department of War. It, it just, it's not, it's not the work of a, of a leader who has his head on. Right. I just think that, look, I never was a supporter of Hegseth. I understand that there are aspects of what he's doing with military recruitment and elsewhere that a lot of the enlisted men and women in our country's military like. And I very glad he got rid of a lot of the DEI stuff. But he is going to have to be very careful and he's going to have to learn a new strategy for responding to completely fair attacks about what he's doing. Because it's not just with Trump prosecuting Bolton while letting Hegseth off. He's doing the same. Like you can't bomb the so called narco terrorists and then give a pardon to one of the ones your own government successfully prosecuted. I mean, there are some contradictions here.
- [24:31]
C
Look, I, I think it's clear that Pete Hegseth is incapable of conducting himself publicly with the seriousness that his position demands. And that's an ongoing problem. Not just publicly, also functionally no and over signal. Right, that's what I mean. But I don't we should dwell a little bit on what seems now to be the fact that this story about the supposed war crime was kicked off with a lie, with a quote, a slander. Yeah, yeah, A quote that absolutely no one can verify that Hegseth said.
- [25:17]
B
No one can verify. Two sources told the Washington Post that he had said some version of Kill them All. Right. And five people told the New York Times that he didn't say it. So that's seven people. It's five to two that he didn't say it. Now that's not, you know, proof that he didn't say it. But it's not like the New York Times wouldn't have wanted to confirm the Washington Post story. You know, Charlie Savage of the New York Times wanted more than anything to confirm the Washington Post story because Then you would get Hegseth and Trump in a war crime. And that's the joy. That would be the joy of Charlie Savage's life. That's part of what he's been as a reporter is pursuing the idea that the US Military and the government does unlawful things. And he got the opposite story. So this, the New York Times, not defense, but the New York Times clarification of the Washington Post story was an act against interest and therefore is more credible than the original Washington Post story simply for that reason alone.
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C
Yeah, I mean, I'm not the first person to have pointed this out, but you know, if you look at the old.
- [26:27]
Old drone footage of like the Obama drone wars, there were double strikes.
- [26:37]
That, you know, they drop a drone on a convoy and then you'd see people scrambling and then there'd be another strike. And.
- [26:48]
Without the kill em all.
- [26:51]
To add this emotional dimension to it, I don't think we would have a story here.
- [26:58]
B
Right. I think you're absolutely right. And to get back to sort of Cotton and the senators just for a minute, like, who are you gonna trust here? Are you gonna trust Tom Cotton?
- [27:12]
Three tours in Iraq and Afghanistan. Are you gonna trust vegan Adam Schiff who spent three years lying about the intelligence that he had about Russiagate on MSNBC and then got himself elected to the Senate because of it? I mean, I wouldn't, I wouldn't, I would, I would not take an umbrella if Adam Schiff told me it was raining, let alone when Adam Schiff says, this is the most disturbing footage I've ever seen yet, you know, it's disturbing to watch military forces conduct lethal action against somebody. It's supposed to be disturbing. Like this is a very serious business. And that's where the, that's where.
- [27:56]
E
Sorry to interrupt, but that's where the Hegseth Abe is correct. The Hegseth Juvenile. Juvenile that he puts out on social media and the way he behaves, that is what is really disconcerting to a lot of people. And I would much rather have Tom Cotton telling the American people what's going on as he did. And obviously we trust him. His judgment on this, and this is not a partisan judgment. It's also the way he talks about things and the way lots of our elected officials are capable of talking about very serious matters. Taking another human life, even if it is an enemy, is a serious matter. And the way that the press ignored or glossed over a lot of the droning that Obama did, particularly he droned American citizens. It wasn't just Our foreign enemies. I mean, he killed a few Americans over there, too. So that there's obviously a contradiction there in terms of principle. But the way that Hegseth talks about these important things and the way, quite frankly, the Trump administration does as well in other regards, is not acceptable to a lot of Americans. It shouldn't be acceptable. It's.
- [28:53]
C
Can I just say one thing? First of all, I support the Obama drone wars as well. But.
- [29:00]
Had Obama said kill them all, that would have been marshaled in defense of him against Republicans who criticize him as being soft on terrorism.
- [29:09]
B
Right.
- [29:10]
E
This is a good point.
- [29:11]
B
Yeah. No, but I mean, again, I think Eliana. Eliana's the larger point that Eliana made, which is that, Christine, you're saying this is disturbing to a lot of people, and it is. But my guess is that it is way less disturbing to a lot more people.
- [29:26]
E
No, no, it's not. The strikes are not what's disturbing. It's the comportment of the people who are ordering them and then kind of acting like teenagers when they're done.
- [29:35]
B
Tragically, tragically, as Abe's brilliant newsletter yesterday, going off our conversation yesterday demonstrates, I don't think the American people are in a high, serious frame of mind.
- [29:48]
D
John, I was just about to say, look, I'm driven crazy by a lot of this stuff. And look, we live in unserious times. The administration is trying to do things that its lack of seriousness that are undermined by its lack of seriousness. I wish that were not the case. I wish the prosecution of Comey and James wasn't tossed out. I wish that, you know, Lindsey Halligan's appointment as U.S. attorney in Virginia wasn't ruled, you know, unconstitutional. I wish that weren't the case. I sometimes, I wish the president wasn't tapping beauty queens and, you know, people who look like they should be on Fox News for jobs as opposed to the most competent person. Not saying these aren't smart. You know, it's some. Sometimes I don't know. But the truth is, like, we have a president who came from a reality TV show who likes people who look the part that's not actually stupid. People care how, you know, other people look for better or for worse. And like we are in a sort of unserious era where Trump's. Part of Trump's genius is to have turned politics into entertainment. And that's what Hegset, the sort of channeling with this juvenile of, you know, Franklin the Turtle and this, you know, this, this stuff. And half the time it drives me crazy. Half the time it's, like, brilliant and funny and, and it is some of what we do at the Beacon, where, you know, one of our newsletters is Stop Taking Politics so Seriously or Andrew Stiles newsletter. But it is, it's all symptomatic of the time in which we live and the president that we elected.
- [31:36]
E
The Beacon is doing also serious journalism and seriously awesome satire. I love Andrew Stiles, but that's a different role than perhaps our entertainer in chief should be performing. And I will say, I think, look at his disapproval ratings, which continue to climb. Look at the approval ratings about the economy in particular, and the way he was so dismissive and contemptuous of this question about affordability and did exactly the Biden nonsense about, like, oh, you're just, you. You're being told a story that isn't true. While people feel these pressures. I think he's. This is a show that's running out of steam. I really feel like we're getting into the third season here, and they're just, the story is not picking up or going in the direction a lot of people hoped.
- [32:15]
B
I mean, I want to add to that that if you think about the 2020 election, the, the unbelievable missed opportunity in political terms of the Biden administration. Right. Biden runs for office.
- [32:30]
Basically with the message that I'm going to stop the crazy. There's a lot of craziness in Covid. We were living in Covid craziness. And I'm stopping the craziness. I'm going to be a normal president. I'm not going to be in your face all the time. I'm not going to be, you know, tweeting out memes five times a day. I'm not going to do that. I'm going to try to help rebalance American life so that the president isn't the most important person in your field of vision. And we're going to, like, have a normal government and then. They didn't have a normal government. I don't mean that they did. They did that. They tweeted out Franklin the Turtle memes. I mean that they spent $6 trillion in a year that the country didn't have and started and endorsed the shutting down of this and the closing down of that and rent and, you know, and the CDC controlling rental payments in the United States and all of that. Imagine if Biden had actually run the government and, and, and been a president like he promised, where it was like, no, that's too much. This is too much. We're trying to reestablish normalcy here. He didn't, in his case, it was radical policy abnormality, not personal abnormality, although then we got into some of the personal abnormality with his cognitive decline stuff. So, you know, I think, Eliana, you're both right. We are living in an unserious time. Trump wins. He's building a 250 million square foot ballroom. He's renaming the department of, you know, the Institute of Peace after himself. He's silly. He does silly stuff, all this. But had, had Biden genuinely been a kind of sober, responsible president, I don't know that we would be back here now. In many ways, I'm happy we're back here. I'm happy we're back here because the Middle east, the revolution in the Middle east represented by Israel's victory in Gaza and the collapse and the, you know, the fall of the government in Syria, various things. A lot of that is very much of a piece with what Trump can do unconventionally. And so I'm not going to complain about it. I'm just saying, do I think the American people might want again to be given the message that the presidency after Trump will be a presidency that tries to stabilize and calm American politics down? Yeah. So maybe we should talk about J.D. vance a little.
- [35:06]
E
I just want to add one thing before we.
- [35:08]
D
Oh, sorry. Go ahead.
- [35:09]
C
Just quickly, part of the norm breaking that.
- [35:14]
Was done during the Biden years has to do with the runaway lawfare against Trump, which strengthened Trump's hand, which brought him back. So.
- [35:26]
B
And which was unprecedented.
- [35:28]
F
Right.
- [35:29]
B
So, yeah, that's exactly okay.
- [35:31]
D
I mean, what I said about living in unserious times, that's partly true. But there's also a lot of serious stuff the administration has done. And I will be interested to see how big a role it plays in Republicans midterm campaigns. Because to circle back to where we started, the gerrymander, the gerrymandering right now seems to be the bulk of the strategy. And they're going to have an uphill climb. But there have been real, the administration has done a lot on the trans insanity, on ending di in the military, on taking on the insanity in higher education, and.
- [36:19]
On, you know, putting someone who's not senile in the presidency.
- [36:24]
B
Another one we haven't talked about this week that's worth talking about, which is, which is the essential refocusing of the American environmental standards to reassert the primacy of the use of fossil fuels in Americans daily transport, instead of this weird tilting toward the use of, you know, electric cars in part by the way, which has enormous consequences because we are demanding these mandates for. We're demanding these mandates for electric vehicles and all kinds of stuff that had massive foreign policy implications in terms of our ability to procure the rare earth materials necessary to refocus our economy to create millions of vehicles a year that run in this fashion. And we don't actually have enough of it. And we would therefore be beholden to China for a lot of it. And China would have a whip hand on our, literally on our industrial plant with this, you know, idea that is all based on a theory about climate change that a lot of us don't accept, even though we've been, you know, propagandized for it for decades. So.
- [37:40]
D
Right.
- [37:40]
B
That happened this week kind of quietly and is an enormous. Has enormous implications.
- [37:47]
D
Everyday, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum and Energy Secretary Chris Wright are doing away with various regulations going back to the Obama era that have inhibited.
- [38:00]
What either the reshoring of minerals or, you know, whatever it is that have. That have inhibited energy growth or fossil fuels. So I think all of these things are potent campaign issues for Republicans who, you know, should be able to say, two years wasn't that long ago. Everybody remembers it and it'll go back in a snap.
- [38:24]
B
I, you know, if they can. I mean, obviously part of the problem here is that the communication skills of politicians in general, but certainly Republican politicians have atrophied in the sense that they know how to. They know how to have ad hominem, you know, ugly ad hominem fights, you know, like in a schoolyard. But are they gonna be able to say, because of what we've done.
- [38:50]
Your car, you're gonna be able to afford a car for your kids because you're not gonna have to pay a $10,000 premium. We're not gonna force you to pay a $10,000 premium to buy a car with an electric battery in it, but.
- [39:05]
E
That'S a future purchase. I would say the Republicans have got to have an answer, and Trump has not given them one, about why their energy bills are so high, why their housing costs are so high, why their grocery bills are still painfully too high. Not on everything. Some prices have come down. But he. The affordability thing matters. I think if they're taking their cues from the Trump administration and you're building a massive ballroom funded by big tech companies and, you know, doing all these huge projects that look rather lavish at a time when people feel like they are pressed for money and where layoffs are higher than they've been since I think 2020, that is not. You do need an economic message. I know I'm always beating this dead horse, but it is, that's not something that the Republicans are up for reelection in next year have either. They need that message. They need a coherent message about the economy.
- [39:51]
D
The cost of living is the, is the weak link here. And Trump's responses have been unhelpful, which is to say his response is the Biden response.
- [40:01]
B
Yeah, right. And as, as I say, like, this is where the shift into.
- [40:08]
This kind of schoolyard taunting as the vulgate of, in both senses of the term of American politics is unhelpful. When you actually need to be able to go to people and say, here's what I've done for you. It's not just the other guy is a jerk. Because by the way, if you say the other guy is a jerk, you also raise the possibility that people think that you're a jerk and therefore you kind of negate the success of your jerk attack because you are starting it as opposed to, I mean, not getting elevated. I'm not talking about, nor is the cost of living thing. That's not an elevated argument where you need to like convince, you need to show people how, you know, the dollar works and the this and the that. You're like, we want you to know that we are spending 12 hours a day trying to figure out what it is the federal government, what regulations the federal government can get rid of and what things the federal government can do to get out of the way of the American economy so that prices aren't unacceptably high.
- [41:14]
E
But so Doge was supposed to like bring all that, you know, save the American taxpayer all this money. That was basically a flop. I mean, their projections versus what they actually achieved were dramatically different. And I'm not sure that he. Why not just return to the message that has long worked for conservatives and Republicans, which is lower taxes, lower energy prices. Because we're have deregulate. Yeah, deregulation. I mean, these are patriotism. I mean, these are tested, time tested messages that Trump actually doesn't use enough. I mean, he's capable.
- [41:46]
B
That's why I want to go and talk a little about J.D. vance, because J.D. vance, the first sort of like is who is, you know, the, you know, the Robin to Trump's Batman. And Batman didn't retire. And then Robin becomes Batman. Unless there's a run of a DC comic book that shows that happening. But there is, there is Vance Angling to be the post Trump, Trump and, and he too doesn't seem to know how to talk about these things, is talking more radically about things than Trump is on all kinds of areas and gave an interview to NBC News yesterday in which he denied that there was an anti Semitism problem on the right. Which is insane.
- [42:33]
I mean, aside from everything else, like it's not true that there isn't an anti Semitism problem on the right. You can't even spin that there isn't an anti Semitism problem on the right. You know, you know, three or four massive broadcasting voices are peddling anti Semitic tropes on a daily basis who are getting enormous attention in the culture. And, and he himself is doing things like having a Hanukkah party at the Vice President's mansion.
- [43:10]
E
It's the Golden Noel and he calls the Golden Noel.
- [43:15]
B
The Golden Noel presents a Hanukkah party. So Christmas is presenting the Hanukkah party at the Vice President's house. You know what you do if you want to promote the Golden Noel? This is, by the way, Golden Noel is 50 years of Christmases at the Vice President's house. A little known fact, the Vice President's house is a new and not an old institution in Washington. The Vice President did not have an official residence until the mid-1970s when it was placed at the Naval Observatory in Washington. And therefore there have been Christmas celebrations for the last 50 years. And they decided to, or 1975, whatever. They decided to.
- [43:54]
Enshrine this. As you know, the jubilee, it's the Golden Noel. So it says on the Vice President's invitation to the Hanukkah party of his house. The Golden Noel presents Hanukkah.
- [44:07]
So it's like Santa on the shaver, on the Norelco shaver is like gonna slide into and then light the menorah and then go back up the chimney or something like that. It is, shall we say.
- [44:20]
Culturally insensitive.
- [44:24]
Don't have a Hanukkah party. No one there is a White House Hanukkah party. That's fine. You want to have a Hanukkah party, just say vice President Vance invites you to his Hanukkah party. Why did he do it? Why are the colors on the card the Christmas colors of red and green? Because he's sending a mixed message deliberately. This is a very intelligent person who has a Machiavellian streak and he's winking and waving at the people by saying, you know what? I'm not really having a Hanukkah party. But just to clarify, for our non Jewish Listeners, Hanukkah is not a major Jewish holiday. You only think it is because we needed some way to give our kids gifts at Christmas that wouldn't involve a Christmas tree. It is a post biblical nationalist holiday.
- [45:13]
With very complicated political and ideological provenance. It's a very interesting story. But until, until, until Jews needed a celebration to war with Christmas so that they could also. So they wouldn't be accused of not giving their kids a nice holiday season, it was not a major event on the Jewish annual calendar. So you can actually make a case. You don't have to have a Hanukkah, Marty, because, you know, basically classic thing that a Hanukkah party is to eat something that's oily and then light. Light a. Can, you know, light a candle every day for eight days.
- [45:49]
G
Part of.
- [45:50]
B
Not a big deal.
- [45:51]
C
Part of what's frustrating about this is that I think Vance is not only winking and sending a mixed message. Excuse me. He's trolling a little bit here. And so I'm hesitant to even respond. I mean, look, this is, this is kind of like the dilemma of our times with, with this faction.
- [46:15]
B
It's.
- [46:15]
C
It's like when to respond, when to ignore them. Because in responding and saying, oh, look, he sent out a, A Christmas invite to a Hanukkah party.
- [46:30]
The attack on us will be.
- [46:34]
They're even upset when they, when, when he, when he celebrates Hanukkah. They're even upset when he invites Jews to things. You know, like.
- [46:43]
E
But the anti, but the anti Semitism remark, though, that, oh, it's been overblown. That is absolutely strategic and is an absolute window into where he's headed with this. I mean, he doubled down on any claims that anyone on his staff might be anti Semitic. He's, you know, he's obviously been friends with Tucker and, like, defended all that. He is making a choice. And the choice he is making, I think is morally atrocious. But if he wants to go down that path, and I think it's also electorally stupid because I don't think most Americans are on the. The griper contingent does not represent very much beyond the trolls online. I could be wrong. Maybe it's most of the young, you know, Republican voters he hopes to win over and when he wants to become the next Trump. But I think it's a, it's not just a miscalculation in terms of what it says about him and his understanding of the problem of anti Semitism on the right, but it's just electorally stupid. I really don't think it's long term the coalition he's going to want to build, despite what we've seen in terms of younger new voters to the GOP in this last election and their views of the Holocaust, for example, or of. Or of anti Semitism in general, which are worrisome.
- [47:52]
B
You know, a lot of the presents.
- [47:53]
F
We get at the holidays are ways we upgrade. We upgrade for ourselves, we upgrade for our family. We get a new a better television, we get a better appliance, we get better luggage, that kind of thing.
- [48:07]
B
You know what will really be a.
- [48:08]
F
Wonderful thing is to upgrade your sleep experience with the highest quality bedding from Boland Branch. Bolen Branch's best sale of the year is happening now with 25% off site wide. You start with bowl and Branch's best selling signature sheets. Made with the perfect balance of softness and breathability for your best sleep. They get softer with every wash. Made with the highest quality 100% organic cotton and they come with that 30 night guarantee. So you can shop worry free. Give yourself and your loved ones the most extraordinary feeling. Sleep with 25% off sitewide plus free shipping and extended returns during Boland Branch's best sale of the year. Shop now at B O L L A n D B R A n c h.com/complyment with code commentary that's bowl and Branch B O L L A N D branch.com commentary code commentary for 25% off. Exclusions apply.
- [49:09]
B
Hey John here. Okay, no gift cards this year.
- [49:12]
F
I'll tell you why don't give a.
- [49:13]
B
Gift card as a present.
- [49:14]
F
Because you can give an aura frame. An aura frame. I got one sitting right in front of me.
- [49:19]
B
They're amazing.
- [49:20]
F
It's like having a high definition screen showing your life in photographs so easily.
- [49:26]
B
Downloaded from your photo app into the.
- [49:30]
F
Aura app showing you videos.
- [49:33]
B
Photos organized however you want to organize.
- [49:37]
F
Them from the moment that you have a digital photo. Go back 30, 40 years. If you have them scanned up to.
- [49:44]
B
The present, you can figure out how.
- [49:46]
F
Much time each photo spends on the screen before it moves on to the next one. Unlimited numbers. You can actually preload the photos before it ships by downloading the app and they'll put it on there so that when you send it to your relative or to your loved one, the photos are there just when they plug it in. And you can personalize your gift by adding a message before it arrives. You can't wrap togetherness, but you can frame it and for a limited time save on the perfect gift by visiting auraframes.com that's a U R A frames.com to get $35 off Aura's best selling Carver mat frames named number one by Wirecutter by using promo code commentary at checkout. That's a U R A frames.com promo code commentary. This deal is exclusive to listeners and frame sell out fast. So order yours now to get it in time for the holidays. Support the show by mentioning us at checkout. Terms and conditions apply.
- [50:51]
D
Just to zoom out on this, beyond the particular NBC News interview, if you go back to 20, I'm going to say 2016. Whenever Vance's book came out and then he ran for Senate, Vance was a regular guest on Tucker Carlson's Fox News show. And I think Carlson played a big role in his rise as an important political figure in the country. So I do think Vance, J.D. feels indebted to Carlson and the two are obviously friends. Vance son appeared on his show. Carlson's son works in the Vance office. That's a real relationship there. So that's part one. And I think Vance feels indebted to Carlson for being elected senator. The exposure on that Fox News show was really important to Vance in terms of his name recognition, et cetera in Ohio. Part two is, you know, fast forward to the vice. Oh, and then I should add part two is Tucker Carlson then lobbied the president for J.D. vance to become vice president. And so I think he was important at another step along the way. And this is all before Tucker has veered off into the insane gutter in the past two and a half years. Let's say part three is that JD Vance appeared maybe a month ago at a Turning Point USA event.
- [52:21]
Where a student at, I think it was Ole Miss, asked him a question that was loaded with, you know, anti Semitic tropes. And it included a line where the student said to him, you know, what do you think? Why are we so supportive of Israel when their religion doesn't agree with ours? And I would say Vance, well, I.
- [52:43]
C
Just want to just to set up this answer. The student also said, you know, why is Israel controlling.
- [52:53]
Our foreign policy?
- [52:54]
D
Yeah, right. And for, you know, people like us watching Vance's response, we were sort of disappointed that he didn't take on the student more forcefully and sort of defend. He didn't offer a more robust defense.
- [53:09]
C
No, he let he lend support to the larger theme by saying, well, Israel.
- [53:14]
D
Does control other presidents. Yeah, right. And so since then, I think Vance has had a number of opportunities to sort of signal to the pro Israel community and to Jews That I understand your concerns, I hear you, and, you know, I'll be supportive and be with you. And he's decided not to do that. And this is the latest example of that. So I don't really think it should be looked at in isolation. And then what jumped out at me in terms of just a choice not to offer a signal was he said to Henry Gomez of NBC News, I think it's kind of slanderous to say that the Republican Party, the conservative movement, is extremely anti Semitic, which was just offering a response to a question that wasn't asked.
- [54:04]
Yes, anti Semitism was rising in the party. He didn't say. He wasn't accusing the party or the movement of being extremely anti Semitic. And so I'm just reading this as Vance choosing not to take this on right now, not to offer any sort of reassurance to the pro Israel community or to the Jewish community at this point. And the other thing that sort of occurred to me watching this is we see, you know, Vance, he's a very online guy. My understanding is he writes a lot of his own tweets. And it has. I have sort of wondered like, is he at risk of making the same mistake that Ron DeSantis made of mistaking noise for signal of, you know, these voice, these voices, anti Israel voices of young men, whatever. They're very online. And this is separate from, you know, Carlson. Tucker Carlson is one of these loud voices who's very online, but the other young people in the party who also work in advance his office, like they're representative of the people he's closest to, but they aren't representative of necessarily of where the party is. And there does seem to be a parallel. And of course, some of these people also work for DeSantis. And I don't at all believe that this is where DeSantis is hard is. DeSantis is actually quite good on these issues.
- [55:22]
E
He did the other data point about that we should add to the. I think what will unfortunately be a growing list for Vance was when he was completely dismissive of what grown men and women were doing on that Young Republican feed, where a lot of what they were saying was not just racist and misogynistic, but also quite anti Semitic. And him saying, oh, kids are being kids. Calm down. It's not a big deal like downplaying these. These episodes. It'd be one thing if it was just one instance, but that every time one of these things happens on the right, he's. He takes a particular attack.
- [55:53]
B
Yeah, they were kids or kids or in their 30s.
- [55:56]
E
Those aren't if we're not children.
- [55:58]
B
Yeah.
- [56:00]
Okay, so let's do a little at Christine's request. And to satisfy you, it's a Friday. We're gonna, we're gonna open up the commentary podcast Mailbag for a couple of questions from our wonderful listeners.
- [56:19]
So.
- [56:22]
I'm gonna get defensive in one case, but I'm gonna start with one where Christine doesn't have to be defensive. But.
- [56:29]
One of our listeners in Fayetteville, New York, Lynn Koss writes. Christine, I can't believe I disagree with you about anything, but I beg to differ about an age ceiling for presidents. It should be about competence. Cognitive impairments can occur at young ages. Biden was showing signs way earlier on. Old people can be remarkably cognitively intact. Age limitations won't screen out cognitive decline in younger candidates and will rob us of potentially excellent older ones. Presidential physicians should be held accountable for disclosure. There is no way that President Biden passed cognitive testing without looking at his watch. And a different question than who is the president of the US should be asked of sitting presidents? In fact, more rigorous cognitive testing should be a requirement, not artificial age limits.
- [57:15]
E
Okay, fair enough. I mean, I agree with her on the, on the cognitive testing. I would be in support of that. I think that would be a very difficult thing to make constitutional, but you could try it. But we do have arbitrary limits. The, the only, the arbitrary age floor for president is 35. That was put in place at a time, by the way, when, when lifespan was, was much shorter than it is now. So I don't, I don't think that given the age of our last couple of presidents, that people would be averse to having just an arbitrary. Maybe you make it 80. Like, when you finish your term, you cannot be more than 80 years old because I think actuarially we can make some recommendations about people's ability to do this very difficult job. And obviously, Joe Biden's presidency showed us that in horrific relief. I would say one other thing, though, which is that there's a, there's kind of a broader historical argument to make about wanting younger generations to be represented at the, in the Oval Office. And that's because they have a different vision of the future. And I think we definitely see this with Trump and we saw it with Biden. Younger, more energetic presidents are thinking ahead to 30, 40, 50 years. And you could make a general argument that, that a ceiling on age would give us, Would force the country to choose people who were in earlier generations closer to where the majority of people in the country are. But I'm. Look, there are very few requirements for the presidency. You have to be a natural born citizen. You have to have lived in the country for, I think, 14 years. You have to be 35 years old. We could add this one other thing, that the country is aging. It would force the parties to really develop talent at a younger stage. So I agree with her that people who are young can have cognitive challenges, but from an actuarial standpoint, they tend to happen more with age. And we do have a wonderful extended lifespan compared to earlier eras. And that's all for the good. But I still would be a fan of putting this in front of the American people and asking them, is, you know, after 80 or maybe 75, who knows? We would it be reasonable? So I respectfully disagree.
- [59:15]
B
Okay. Michael Garrett writes, maybe Afton Baines outperforming Kamala Harris. This is the special election. This was the radical Democrat running in the special election for the house in Tennessee 7th district this week, who lost but did twice as well as Kamala Harris did in the district. Maybe this is further evidence on top of last month's, that Harris was an even more terrible candidate than anyone had the ability or courage to measure. Eliana.
- [59:52]
Does this resound with you?
- [59:57]
D
I gotta think about it.
- [60:00]
So the argument is that Harris was more terrible because Bane outperformed her.
- [60:06]
B
Because Bain is. Bain is terrible, but she did twice as well as Harris. So imagine the degree of terribleness that Harris represented, I believe is the argument if, if, if after Bane can outperform Kamala Harris, what the hell was going on with Kamala Harris?
- [60:27]
D
I don't know. I'm rejecting this because, because with Bain is terrible. But Democrats were very motivated in this special election and they, they came out to vote. Whereas I think Democrats were pretty demoralized in 2024. They ran a senile guy first and then had him yanked off the ticket and then had her put on the ticket. And I think Bain, like, she's actually speaks to what Democrats like. I mean, Kamala was a bunch of nothing. Like, who was the Kamala contingent? Bain, like, people in Nashville love her. She's a total lunatic. And it's like running aoc, you know, like a bunch of people will love her and be enthused about her. Kamala, like, she had no core constituency. She wouldn't even say, like, hey, that guy was senile. And like, here I am, non senile person, like, come out and vote for me. She was nothing. And then she tapped Tim Walls as her vice president.
- [61:28]
E
She was brat, Eliana. We have to give her that. She was brat.
- [61:31]
D
So I do think, like, yeah, Bain was a bad candidate, but I do think Democrats are highly motivated because it's the middle of the Trump presidency and we know for a fact that Democrats who came out and voted for Biden in 2020 did not come out and vote for Harrison in 2024.
- [61:48]
C
And also I'd add, Kamala was facing Trump.
- [61:53]
F
Right.
- [61:54]
B
Okay. So here David Orenstein. So here I'm going to read out David Orenstein and then I'm going to get defensive just for a minute. Okay, Very nice. A couple of quick comments from a roast attendee near Daily listener admirer. He loved the ABE Interviews John episode that we did the day after Thanksgiving. Courage. He encourages us to use this format more often, perhaps as a round robin, dropping one of these in whatever schedules and news cycle provide the opportunity. And we are going to do some more of that. But a couple of items from Monday that I feel compelled to observe, albeit with love and respect. 1. Repatriation. Pretty sure this term was consistently misused throughout the episode, I. E. Bringing Afghans to the US is not repatriation.
- [62:37]
C
2.
- [62:38]
B
A polite plea for more care for accuracy on matters of military roles and rank. These may not be material to the arguments involved, but the errors land badly on the ears of those of us who spend time in uniform. The examples that have graded on me are Mikey Sherrill was a helicopter pilot, not a fighter pilot. This one came up all summer and fall. And Mark Kelly was a naval officer. We don't have colonels in the Navy. You said that on Monday's episode. Thanks, as always, for adding value to my day. Now I will tell you that I know from my first job in journalism was as a researcher at Time magazine. And Time had 4 million subscribers at the time. And if you made a factual error relating to the military, to weaponry, to anything involving arms or the armed forces or anything, we would get 25,000 letters correcting it. This is not an exaggeration. Time to get 25,000 letters correcting that. You said that was a B2 and it was a B1A. You know, that kind of thing. You, you and, and that. So and, or you, you know, you misranked someone or something like that. So I am sensitive to this fact. I'm sorry if I called Mark Kelly a colonel and I'm sorry that I misidentified Mikey.
- [64:04]
E
I corrected you on Mikey Sheryl's.
- [64:06]
B
You did?
- [64:07]
E
On the air.
- [64:08]
B
Yes, you did. And I understand this. And I appreciate it. I just want to say for people who send us corrections and things like, that, we are talking five and a half hours a week and.
- [64:26]
We'Re ranging very far afield in all kinds of categories. And I'm not sitting here with.
- [64:35]
Papers in front of me that I'm consulting as I am mentioning things because we're trying to have an open conversation. No fact of that sort that I cite here should be taken as what we used to call a red check at Time magazine, which is something that has been hard confirmed with three definitive sources. And therefore you can take it to the bank.
- [65:02]
Do your own research. Don't take my, don't take my word for things like what was Mark Kelly's rank? You know, that's not what's in my head when I'm talking about Mark Kelly. And I understand that it can grade, and I apologize for the grading, but it's kind of a necessary, slightly necessary evil. If this is the way we're going to be doing these podcasts where we're not writing scripts, we don't have a lot of podcasts have scripted introductions. And this is everything that I do here. I ad lib and we're ad libbing and we're not, you know, consulting things as, as we go. So that's my defense of the errors that we make. And I could always, you know, say something in the beginning of the show like, please don't take our, you know, yada as gospel. You know, we're just having a conversation here.
- [65:58]
Or I'm just being too defensive.
- [66:00]
E
I think our listeners who, with the best of intentions, and I fully support them doing this, they tend to, they either write us polite letters like the one you just read aloud, or they post something online saying they got this wrong. And I think when we've made egregious errors, errors, we have tried to correct them. I think each of us in various points during the next day's podcast will say, oh, I made this mistake. I want to correct it. And I do think that's. It is very different for those, those of us who've been on other podcasts that are heavily scripted, that are, that have like an army of research assistants preparing facts that they literally will hand to you, hand to the host during interviews and stuff. That's not what we do. So, yes, mistakes will be made, I guess should be our motto. But we, we do, I do think we generally will. Our text chain suggests that when someone makes an error, we do tend to try to gently correct each other. And if it's egregious the next day. We shouldn't.
- [66:50]
C
Can I, can I say something? Because I don't think you were particularly defensive at all. I think you were just sort of explaining. I will be a little defensive here about that. I'm fine with the corrections. If you are thinking about writing to us to say I can't take your Trump derangement syndrome or I can't believe you guys support Trump.
- [67:14]
Please.
- [67:16]
Don'T send that email yet. Listen to more shows. We could, we, we, we talk about, we criticize him when he does, when the administration does bad things. We praise him to the skies when he, when they do good things. That is what we do. We are not. There's no Trump derangement syndrome and there's no Trump adoration syndrome here. So, like, you know, give us a break on that front because it's annoying.
- [67:47]
B
That is fair enough. I adore few people outside of the, you know, people in my family that I love. You know, the only person I will not hear a word against is the late Walter Matthau. That's about it. Don't ever say anything bad about Walter Mathow in my presence. You will be very. You, you'll, you'll, you will, you will not like, as Bill Bixby said on the Incredible, you will not like to see me angry in, in, in that, in that respect. So I, I, that this just gives me an occasion, an opportunity to therefore recommend, of course, that you go watch the Sunshine Boys with Walter Mathau. Give delivering what is one of the two or three funniest performances ever recorded on, on film. The other, by the way, just to. So we'll end on a ridiculous note that came out of nowhere. The funniest performance ever recorded on film is Dame Edith Evans playing Lady BRACKNELL.
- [68:43]
F
In the 1952 version of the Importance.
- [68:45]
B
Of Being Earnest with Michael Redgrave and Margaret Rutherford and Joan Greenwood. And that is the funniest performance ever recorded on film. Edith Evans and the Importance of Being.
- [68:59]
F
Earnest, followed by closely by Walter Mathau.
- [69:03]
B
In the Sunshine Boys. I hope everybody has a wonderful weekend. Watch football or don't have a great time. We'll be back on Monday. For Christine, Eliana and Abe, I'm John Pothor. Keep the candle burning.