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- [00:04]
Judge Roy Altman
Hope for the best, expect the worst Some drinks and pain Some die of thirst no way of knowing which way it's going Hope for the best, Expect the worst, hope for the best.
- [00:23]
John Podhoretz
Welcome to the Commentary Magazine daily podcast. Today is Wednesday, April 29, 2026. I am Jon Pothorts, the editor of Commentary magazine. As always, executive editor Abe Greenwald. Hi, Abe.
- [00:36]
Seth Mandel
Hi, John.
- [00:36]
John Podhoretz
Senior editor Seth Mandel. Hi, Seth.
- [00:39]
Abe Greenwald
Hi, John.
- [00:40]
John Podhoretz
Social Commentary columnist Christine Rosen. Hi, Christine.
- [00:43]
Christine Rosen
Hi, John.
- [00:44]
John Podhoretz
And Washington Free Beacon editor Eliana Johnson. Hi, Eliana.
- [00:48]
Eliana Johnson
Hi, John.
- [00:49]
John Podhoretz
And joining us today, we have the honor of the presence of Judge Roy Altman. ROY K. Altman, United States District Judge for the Southern District of Florida, and more important for our purposes, the author. If you're on YouTube, you will now see this, his new book, israel on Trial, examining the history, the evidence and the law, just out. Thanks for joining us, Roy.
- [01:17]
Judge Roy Altman
Thanks for having me, guys.
- [01:18]
John Podhoretz
So, Judge Altman, what you have done here is a very interesting project. In the annals of the polemic and discussion of the state of Israel and the efforts to discredit and delegitimize it. You have essentially written what might be described as a six part legal brief on behalf of the state of Israel against the charges that have been levied against it in the world of public opinion. Would you describe that, would you say that was an accurate description of your project here in Israel on trial?
- [02:00]
Judge Roy Altman
It's somewhat accurate. I would say that the project resulted from hundreds of speeches I've given around the country since October 7th at churches and synagogues and high schools, and most importantly, for purpose of this project, over 65 college and law school campuses in almost all 50 states, thousands of conversations with people all over this country, many of whom see the world very differently than probably you and I do. And in that, in the course of those many conversations, I think I came to realize that the entire debate about Israel, especially on our college campuses, but also in what we would consider some of our elite Western institutions, was driven by six main claims about Israel. And actually, when you peel back all the vitriol and the diatribe and the emotion, each of those claims is actually a legal claim at its core. And so I thought, why not just apply the same legal methodology that judges, lawyers and juries apply every single day in courtrooms and law offices across this country? It's a time tested methodology that we've been using for hundreds of years, developed over hundreds of years by judges and lawyers. And it's a methodology that we know we trust because we use it where truth telling matters the most in the courtroom where someone's life is at stake and apply it to each of these six claims and see what happens. And so that's what the book does. It puts Israel on trial, not as an advocate for one side or the other, but addressing fairly and completely, in my view, all of the arguments that are made on behalf of the anti Israel side six chapters, six claims. Each chapter gets a claim and we apply the relevant methodology to each claim. The claims of course, are genocide, violation of the laws of war, apartheid, does Israel discriminate against its minority Arab citizens, colonialism, does it take land that doesn't belong to it, etc. Etc. We produce the relevant fact and at the end we issue a verdict one way or the other, based on reason and logic and the law, not emotion or vitriol. And most importantly for your listeners, first of all, I'm not going to tell you what the verdict was because I want everybody to read it, obviously. But second of all, Seth Mandel, your own Seth Mandel, is blockquoted in chapter six.
- [04:21]
John Podhoretz
So that is of course itself a reason to go to Amazon or wherever your fine books are sold and purchase Israel on Trial. Examining the history, the evidence and the law just to see Seth's name and his block quote. We spend a lot of time on this show talking about the long arc of American institutions. How they rise, how they decline, and occasionally how they come back. One of the industries that more or less disappeared over the last half century was watchmaking. Like a lot of manufacturing, it moved overseas. But today's sponsor is trying to reverse that trend. Var that's Vaer, is a Los Angeles watch company whose goal is pretty straightforward. Bring American watchmaking back. They now assemble watches across California, Arizona, Rhode island, and Alabama with leather straps made in Illinois and Florida. And these aren't fashion accessories. They're proper tool watches, sapphire crystals, premium materials, and full waterproof warranties, meaning you can actually swim or dive with them on. I've been wearing one recently, and what stands out is how solid and understated it feels. The kind of watch that seems designed to last for decades. Ver has already earned over 10,000 five star reviews and and it's become one of the largest independent watch assemblers in the United States. If you like the idea of owning something rugged, timeless, and thoughtfully made, take a look. Go to their watches.com that's vaerwatches.com
- [06:04]
Christine Rosen
to
- [06:05]
John Podhoretz
go to the point you make in your introduction. And maybe I mischaracterized it. You say that you're always stunned as a jurist in the court of law at the ability of 12 strangers made up, who make up a jury, who may be ignorant, who are mostly entirely ignorant of the facts of a case as it is brought before them, who don't know relevant law, who don't understand foundational principles but are asked to listen to a set of facts, listen to a disputation over the facts of a case, and then receive jury instructions from you in the case of your courtroom or other places, and then go into a room in the back and then properly adjudicate and remarkably in your understanding, come to what you believe to be the correct conclusion based on what has been brought before them in the court of law and through the jury instruction. So this book is on the one hand, as I say, a kind of brief argument by argument, but it's also a kind of jury instruction. Right? What you're saying is here are the facts as we understand them that we haven't ruled out of order, that we haven't said are unfair or in dispute, and that there are some facts and some fact patterns where the fact that a claim is made does not make it fact, and that in some cases, when a claim of fact is made that is clearly false or can be shown to have been false and knowingly false, the fact that that claim was made in a knowingly false manner can be used to adduce the possible guilt of the person who advance that fact claim. So in your six cases here, you not only try to lay out the facts of, say, is Israel a colonial state, is it an apartheid state? And so on, but also you try to deal with the fact that a lot of the facts adduced by the anti Israel side are untrue, are demonstrably and sort of factually. It's easy to prove that they are untrue as a matter of fact and that their use in argument discredits the argument and makes it clear and adds to the possibility of the guilt of the accuser. So there are sort of two sides to this. You lay out, for example, in your colonial chapter, your chapter on whether Israel is a colonial estate, all of the historical evidence dating back almost 4,000 years in the case of one Egyptian stone through the centuries to show that Israel, that the Jews are the indigenous people of the land between the Jordan river and the Mediterranean Sea, and then you take the fact that those facts are ignored or lied about, and you say, well, so the people who say that it's a colonial state who know better, you have to ask why they're Saying that and what that means in terms of the case they make that Israel is a colonialist state. So since we've gone to there, why don't we take one? Why don't we take the genocide case? Cuz I think it's the freshest of the freshest and the most important of the cases since Wendy Sherman, the Undersecretary of State or the Deputy for Middle Eastern affairs through the Obama and the Biden administrations, said this week that Israel was essentially guilty of a genocide in Gaza. Leading American official dealing with issues relating to Israel and the Middle east on a European broadcast or in an interview. I'm sorry,
- [10:28]
Eliana Johnson
it's in an interview with Bloomberg.
- [10:30]
John Podhoretz
Bloomberg. I'm sorry, right. But
- [10:33]
Eliana Johnson
by a former BBC presenter who's now disgracefully with Bloomberg.
- [10:38]
John Podhoretz
Right, okay. So anyway, let's talk about the layout for us, how you talk about genocide and the argument that Israel has committed a genocide in Gaza.
- [10:49]
Judge Roy Altman
Yeah. So I want to just take one of the points that you made in the lead in, because I think it's important. One of the things that we don't do when we review information that's being provided to us on our phones or over the Internet is apply the same rules based on reason and common sense that we would instruct our jurors to apply in a courtroom. Right. And that's what you were talking about, John. So two very simple rules that make sense to us and that we tell the jurors they have to apply are these. First, if a party lied to you before about something important, you can use the fact that the party lied to you before as evidence of whether it is lying to you now. Right. I mean, that's just very simple stuff. So in the book I lay out many, many, many different examples of situations where Hamas, which runs the Gaza health Ministry, black and white, lied. Right. So for example, there was the time when Israel struck Muhammad Dave in the the commander in chief of Hamas's military forces in central Gaza near Khan Yunus. And for days Israel said that he was dead and for days Hamas said that he was alive and well and that he was happy. And what? There was one quote, I think it's in the book where Hamas says he's watching you claim that he's dead on TV and smiling. Something like that. Okay, this is a very important claim. Right. It doesn't seem important in the news. Nobody remembers it now, but. But in a courtroom, this would be what the whole trial would become about. Right. Because here is an easy to verify situation where you're pitting the credibility of the one party directly against the credibility of the other party in a totally black and white way. He's either dead or he's alive. Right? We don't have Schrodinger's Mohammed Dave here, right? So. So in the end, we now know that, and even Hamas agrees that Mohammed Dave was very much dead. That Hamas was lying the whole time for a variety of political and strategic reasons, who cares? And that Israel was telling the truth. One more example. There's so many in the book. One more example. Danielle Gilboa, a hostage, right? She was held in dungeons in deep, dark, dank holes for hundreds of days under the ground by real life monsters, without food, without sunlight, without medicine. And Hamas orchestrated, or at first sent out a film showing her buried, covered in blood, buried under rubble, and claimed that she had been killed in an Israeli airstrike, right? It was terrible. It was sad. The whole world, well, half the world, let's say, was. Was distraught. And. And then we now know, thankfully, that it was all an act, that Daniela Gilboa is thankfully very much alive. She's back with her family. She's been returned again. Here we have the credibility of the organization pitted directly against the other party. In an easy to verify way. Hamas was lying for its geostrategic political purposes, whatever the reason was, and Israel was telling the truth when it told the family, no, we do not have credible information that she is dead. So that brings us to the second rule. And the second rule is, not only can you use the fact that a party lied to you before as evidence that it is lying to you now. And the point there being, if it lies for its geostrategic purposes with Daniela Gilboa and Mohammed Deif and dozens of other black and white examples that are in the book, then why would we not assume that it is also lying for the most important geostrategic purpose of all, which is to drum up Palestinian civilian casualties in order to get the west to force Israel to stop the war so that it can survive to fight another war where it will kill more Jews, et cetera, right? But the second rule is when a party lies, we don't just treat it as an innocent mistake, right? We can tell the jurors that if a defendant, for example, is brought into the interview room and he's asked, where were you on the night of February 28th? And he says, I was at this restaurant with my wife, right? And you go and you see the restaurant and he was nowhere there. You look at all the surveillance camera, it turns out he was 100% not at the restaurant. Right. The jurors are told you don't just treat that as a mistake about where he was that night. You can use the lie as substantive evidence of his guilt. In other words, you can draw the inference that he lied not because he was just mistaken about where he was, but because he was actually guilty of the murder that took place on that particular night. Okay, and so that brings us to the. The genocide question. And we'll start with the warning system and the definition. It's important to talk about the definition because the word genocide was created by a Jewish lawyer, Raphael Lemkin, in the aftermath of a real genocide, the Holocaust against the Jews, in order to ensure that the ultimate crime of crimes, not one murder, not 100 murders, but the attempt to eradicate an entire people from the face of the earth is properly documented and punished in the future. And so that's what the definition requires. The specific intent by one government to eradicate the entire people in whole or in part of another population based on religion or ethnicity or race. As such. Okay, the. As such is very important, as is the specific intent. It's not enough to say you bombed Mohammed Dave, for example, to use the example that we just gave and a few civilians who were around him were killed. That's not genocide. Genocide means that you've orchestrated a plan to eliminate the entire populace from the face of the earth. We know what genocide looks like. When my mother's half brothers and sisters were pushed into the gas chambers at Auschwitz. Okay, everyone. The entire architecture of Auschwitz and the German regime was created in order to induce these people to believe that they should go to Auschwitz. It was a nice work camp. It was going to be a shower. They get a bar of soap, etc. Etc. Right? Israel is doing precisely the opposite. Israel could have destroyed Gaza in two seconds. It has nuclear weapons, complete air superiority. The Gazans don't have an air force, and they have the most sophisticated, other than maybe the United States Air Force the world has ever known. Every single person in Gaza could have been dead within the first day after October 7th. But that's not what Israel does. Israel has the most sophisticated warning system, civilian warning system the world has ever known. And don't just take my word for it. The hlmg, the High Level Military Group, a collection of high level officers and generals in almost every Western army in the world, have written a brief to the icc, the International Criminal Court, saying not only is the warning system that Israel uses the most sophisticated and pervasive the world has ever known to protect innocent civilian life among the Palestinians. It includes sending text messages, making phone calls, dropping flyers and leaflets, and social media posts that when we, the judges, go on our trips to Israel, which I lead every year, we get to see these in real time. These are easy to read even if you don't read Arabic because they're color coded. Green means you can be there tomorrow. Yellow means it's on the periphery. It's a little dangerous, maybe you should avoid. Red areas are going to be hot kinetic zones that you should abandon with your family. But the HLMG says not only is it the most sophisticated civilian warning system ever used in the world, and not only is a civilian warning system completely incompatible with any claim of genocide. Again, the Nazis weren't trying to warn my mother's half brothers and sisters not to go into the gas chambers, though. The whole question of that just answers itself. Obviously the Nazis were trying to push the children into the gas chambers. But they say, and this is the most important point, our western armies, America's army, Canada's Army, Australia's army, could never implement such a warning system because our own domestic populations would never stomach it. We would never allow it. Why? I was a football player. And in football, as in war, the most important thing is offensive surprise. Every single day in Gaza, Israel relinquishes the benefits of offensive surprise by warning not just the civilian population, but Hamas, who spends the entire next day or the two days after before the Israeli soldiers come in booby trapping and laying an ambush every building in the red zone. And it endangers the lives of Israeli sons and daughters who then have to walk into those ambushes and booby traps and go house to house in places Hamas has already prepared for their death and destruction because they were warned. And so the HLMG says not only is it completely incompatible with any claim of genocide, it's something no other western army in the world would ever do. And by the way, one of my interns in my chambers, his first cousin was killed stepping on one of these booby traps that Hamas had laid because Israel had warned inside of an elementary school in Gaza. Okay, Sometimes I go to college campuses and the kids say, oh, Hamas is an army. It's fighting like a regular army. I say, listen, we the judges, when we go to Israel, we have seen hundreds of videos and photographs. They don't make it onto your TikTok feed of Hamas firing and setting ambushes and laying booby traps in little girls bedrooms covered in pink wallpaper. Elementary Schools, kindergartens, mosques, and of course, almost every hospital in Gaza, including, we now know and it's now been conceded, the Al Shifa Hospital. After so much dispute and debate about whether there was or wasn't a Hamas command center there, it's now clear beyond per adventure that there was. And here's the last point I'll make. The proof is in the pudding. There's two points I want to make here. The first is look at real genocides in history, like the Holocaust. You start with 18 million Jews. Six or seven years later, there's 12 million Jews. I went to law school, so I wouldn't have to do any math, but my law clerks tell me there's a Delta there of 6 million missing Jews in six or seven years. That's what genocides look like now. The Palestinians and their supporters, including, by the way, at the Yale Daily News and the Columbia Spectator, my alma maters. If you look at these articles, they're detailed in the book, they have claimed that Israel has perpetrated not just one genocide, but five separate genocides since Israel. Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005. By the way, each supposed genocide was precipitated by a Hamas invasion of southern Israel, or Hamas rocket fire and a war that Hamas started that Israel didn't start, didn't want, and fought only to defend its citizens. But the more important point is they claim that there have been five separate genocides, and yet in that same time period, the population of Gaza went from 1 million at the time of the withdrawal in 2005 to 2.2 million today, which is a more than 100% increase in in the Gazan population, despite having five separate genocides perpetrated against them. If that's genocide, Israel, which is otherwise proven to be one of the most capable armies the world has ever known, is conducting the most inept genocide the world has ever known. And then the last point is this. John Spencer, Richard Kemp, these are experts in the field of urban warfare. And I detail their findings specifically, along with Andrew Fox and others from Western armies, the American army, the British Army. These are not Jews, they're not Israeli. They have no skin in the game. The kinds of things that we care about in a courtroom when we assess truth from fiction. And they have shown that Israel's conduct in the war in Gaza, in desperately difficult circumstances against an enemy that embeds itself within and underneath civilian infrastructure precisely in order to increase rather than decrease the number of civilian casualties, has been the most precise urban warfare campaign the world has ever known. Remember, the Average militant to civilian casualty ratio in the context of urban warfare is about one to nine. One militant for every nine civilians. That's not because every war that's ever been fought is a genocide. It's because war is horrible, and urban warfare in particular is horrible. That's why Israel would much prefer to fight Hamas out in the open. It's Hamas who chooses to fight in Gaza underneath its civilian population. In America, in the American war in Iraq and Afghanistan, we and our allies set the gold standard. We had a militant to civilian kill ratio of about one to four and a half, maybe one to five. And many experts believed no army would ever be able to meet that standard again. Well, here's the thing. In much more difficult and complicated circumstances, Israel, even if you believe Hamas's bogus numbers, which you should not believe for all the reasons I lay out in the book, but even if you took Hamas at completely face value and you believed all of their numbers, Israel has a militant to civilian kill ratio of about one to one or one to one and a half in Gaza, slashing by almost or more than 75%, the gold standard we, the United States, set in our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. If we have. If Israel has committed genocide in Gaza, then the Americans committed genocide in Iraq and Afghanistan, then the Americans and the Allies committed genocide in Germany, in Japan, then literally every war that has ever been fought in human history has been a genocide. That's not what genocide means. We should reserve the label for the crime of all crimes, because otherwise the consequences will be dire. In the future, Western armies will say, hey, if even Israel, which did more to protect innocent Palestinian civilian life than anyone else, was still hailed before the ICJ on false and preposterous claims of genocide, then why are we going to go through the trouble of risking the lives of our own sons and daughters on the battlefield when we can just level the battlefield from the air? We're going to create more law of war violations rather than fewer by falsely claiming that armies that protect civilian life are engaged in intentional misconduct.
- [26:00]
John Podhoretz
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You mentioned the population, the increase in population from a million to 2.2 million at the end of 2025. Two different sources, one Palestinian and one the CIA, have their variant estimates of the population in Gaza after the war was over. The 2023 post October 7th war. The CIA estimates a growth in population in Gaza of 145,000 in those two and a half years. The Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, which is on the west bank, is not part of the Gaza Health Ministry, but it is a Palestinian organization, estimates a decline in population of 80,000 again against a base of 2.2 million. So somewhere between a loss of 80,000 and a gain of 145,000. So if we split the difference and say that the population remained entirely level between October 7th and the end of 2025, that is also the purest refutation. Simply as you say, the Holocaust saw a decline in the Jewish population on the planet Earth of 6 million in seven years. And we have this number that is almost unassailable, as I say, because we have one interested party finding a tiny decline in the course of an urban two and a half year urban war. And then the CIA finding also, I would not say famously friendly to Israel necessarily. It's bureaus that collect, collate these kind of facts, a gain of 145,000. So that is the genocide charge, which is the most potent, I think, in terms of the college campuses that you have visited, the churches that have taken on the Palestinian cause in recent memory, and as I say, Wendy Sherman and others, and of course our political conversations in Michigan and in Maine and elsewhere this year, where candidates are trying to get themselves attention, respect votes and win elections by advancing the genocide claim. So that is one very important element of the fact based argument you make. One last thing before you go. You believe, as this book shows in the power of sweet reason to convince people of the truth. That is the project here, is to say we're going to go through this. You're like a juror, I'm laying out a case before you. And then you go in the jury room and try to figure out whether or not these arguments against Israel are true or false or whether or not you find Israel guilty or not guilty. I guess our fear is that the entire basis on which you have a serious argument about these matters is Israel illegitimate from its base, from its founding, from its ideology, from its behavior, from its treatment of Arab citizens, from its treatment of Arabs under its military occupation or oversight or something like that. That the people who are arguing otherwise are arguing in bad faith. And that reason is not going to work here because what we're engaged in here is an ideological battle against the very idea of Jewish particularity and Jewish nationhood. And that's a nihilistic response to a very serious project that you're involved in because you are saying we're all west, let us assume good faith in a courtroom. What happens in a case of jury nullification or something like that when you see that a jury might be acting in bad faith or a juror might be acting in bad faith or something escapes voir dire, gets into the jury box and then attempts to work his ideological will in bad faith?
- [32:33]
Judge Roy Altman
Well, the answer to that question is, you know, we bring the juror in, we question the juror if the, you know, and then we determine whether the juror in fact is trying to violate the jury instructions and their oath. And if they are, then they're removed. That that happens, I would say somewhat infrequently, but it does occur. But I think your broader, more practical point is a good one. And I actually get this question a lot, which is some variant of, you know, you're hoping that Americans will care about reason and. And common sense and logic and what they're getting on. TikTok is anything but. My view of that is like, well, we could all just give up, right? I mean that. But that's. That's never been my style. And I don't think it's the American ethos. And I actually think one of the inspiring things about traveling around the country over the last three years is, is that I think the vast majority of Americans are open to reason, and they have open hearts and open minds. And, you know, for the. For the vast majority of them, I think they're not super concerned with this thing that's happening thousands of miles away. And, by the way, why should we be, right? It's a tiny little country, smaller than New Jersey. It's got the population of, like, south Florida. And I think most of them believe in their hearts the kinds of things that Lincoln said, right, when he said that we're an almost chosen people, that our value system hearkens back to the ancient Jewish tradition, that societies that are good to the Jews are societies that are flourishing themselves, and that societies that persecute the Jews are societies that are sick and dying. Right? And I think that most Americans understand, you know, I was in Texas all last week, and I would have all these army officers and naval officers come to me and say, judge, you have no idea. We would give Israel a piece of equipment or technology that they would buy from us. By the way, nothing's given for free. Israel buys this stuff from American industry, and then they would use it for a year. They would assess it and battle test it in real time, in the real world, in the wars that are coming in the 21st century, they would rejigger it, and then they would give it back to us a year or two later, and it would be totally different than when we gave it to them, and it would be totally better than it was when we produced it, because it was adapted to the battlefield as it exists in the 21st century and not as it was when it was procured at the end of the 20th century. And so I think of most Americans, I would say that they agree that reason and common sense should win the day. I think they understand that Israel has shown itself to be America's most important geostrategic ally in the world. And I think we just have to talk to them the way we would to jurors and about scrutinizing the incentive structures of the people who are providing them with information. So for example, when you get something on your phone through TikTok and it's bad about Israel, we should ask why and who it's coming from. Right, so if I'm on my side of the 50 yard line, I'm China and Russia and the Axis of resistance as they call it, who's on my team? Right. We got China a huge army, but its economy is shrinking every year vis a vis the United States. Its army and technology have never been battle tested. It's got a demographic problem because of the one child policy. Will mothers really be willing to sacrifice their only son for an island that's far, far away? Who knows? They don't know. We don't know. Look at Russia, bogged down against a much supposedly smaller and weaker foe, Iran, on the verge of financial collapse. Its S400 defense systems rendered completely obsolete by a tiny little nation thousands of miles away. Who's on the other side of the 50 yard line? They might say, well, the United States. That's a big bad enemy. Maybe the strongest army and economy the world has ever known. But who's with them? Not the British. I don't think they're very afraid of the Belgians. I don't think anyone on that side of the 50 yard line is overly concerned about the Dutch or the Icelanders or I'm sorry to say, the Irish. They look at the other side of the 50 yard line and they see only two allies that have spent the last few years not only fighting, but winning the wars of the 21st century against enemies that were much bigger and much stronger than they were before the wars begin, and that's Israel and Ukraine. So is it any surprise we should ask ourselves that the vast, vast majority of the negative information we get in our phones about two foreign powers are, guess who those two allies that America will need in order to be prepared to win the wars that are coming in the 21st century. And I think Americans for the most part are open to hearing that reality.
- [37:20]
John Podhoretz
Roy Altman, Judge Roy Altman, thank you so much for being with us.
- [37:24]
Judge Roy Altman
Again.
- [37:24]
John Podhoretz
If you're on YouTube, here is his book, Israel on Trial. Examine.
- [37:29]
Christine Rosen
Can I add, if you're in the D.C. metro area, I have the pleasure of interviewing Judge Altman this afternoon at the American Enterprise Institute. So come and hear more of the conversation if you're in the area, because we'll be talking.
- [37:40]
John Podhoretz
That's Wednesday, April 29th. So if you're hearing this later, than that you will be too late. You'll be too late to join, but google aei.org or go to AI.org for more information. Israel on Trial Important book. Thank you for joining us and Yashir Koach and good luck to you, to Israel, to America, to Ukraine, and to all of us.
- [38:07]
Judge Roy Altman
Thank you all for having me.
- [38:08]
John Podhoretz
You bet. You know, I just hit a milestone birthday. I'm 65 years old. Why am I telling you this? Because sleep is more important to me than ever as it becomes more and more difficult to get a good night's sleep. And that's why I really love the Bowlin Branch sheets that I have now been putting on my bed. Designed for exactly the kind of rest I need. Signature organic cotton sheets, plush pillows, breathable blankets, temperature regulating comforters. Everything is made to create a bed that truly supports good sleep. Incredibly soft, breathable, built to get better over time. This is the kind of sleep I can't compromise on anymore. And a lot of customers start with sheets but once they feel them, they upgrade the whole bed like I did. So upgrade your sleep with bowl and branch. Get 15% off your first order plus free shipping@bolandbranch.com commentary with code COMMENTARY that's bowl and branch. B O L L A N D B R-A N C-H.com Commentary Code Commentary to unlock 15 off exclusions apply Aura Frames and Mother's Day so look, I got three kids. My kids are older now, but life is chaos when you have three kids in a small apartment as we did. And the photographs that we've taken with my kids and my wife. These are captured moments of wondrous chaos that they freeze in time. And we can look at in my living room on the beautiful aura frame that we have to enjoy. Remember vacations that got out of hand? Holiday mishaps? Whatever might have happened that is funny wasn't funny at the time, but maybe funny now. That's why these beautiful frames with free unlimited storage preloading photos before they ship you get a gift box. You can share your photos and videos effortlessly using the free Aura app or texting photos straight to your frame named number one by Wirecutter. You can save on the gifts mom's love by visiting auraframes.com for a limited time. Listeners can get $25 off their best selling Carver Mat Frame with Code Commentary that's a U R A frames.com promo code commentary Support the show by mentioning us at checkout. Terms and conditions apply. We needed to say goodbye to Judge Albin because we need to talk about some legal matters that as he is a sitting federal judge, he cannot properly discuss in our presence. Two major indictments yesterday. And I would just put it this way, one is righteous and one is horrible. And I don't know how else to look at it. The righteous indictment appears to be the indictment of Anthony Fauci's most important deputy on charges that he destroyed evidence in response to Freedom of Information act requests surrounding the question of the natural or weaponizing origins of COVID and whether or not he received an illegal gratuity from a very controversial figure inside the COVID world or the world of gain of function, everything. Peter Daszak, head of the Eco Health alliance, with whom he had an email exchange and who then sent him, I think, expensive wine as a thank you. Which the indictment calls an illegal gratuity. I'm sorry that I don't have his name right to hand here. Maybe someone can look it up. But this indictment is very serious. It involves the willful destruction of. Of federal property and evidence in an effort to suppress information and brag the emails that were adduced to help indict him. A brag about the act of doing this. How this guy said that he had spoken to somebody at HHS or at NIH who explained to him how to get rid of the offending emails between the filing of the Freedom of Information act request and when they actually had to be cataloged and sent along. I don't know what mitigating evidence there is gonna be that will be adduced in the course of this case. But I've read a lot of stuff about these kinds of cases and this is pretty damning. Cause it is also very, very, very, very specific.
- [42:57]
Christine Rosen
Can I also jump in and remind those of our excellent listeners who were with us through Covid and listened to us when we did go daily with this podcast. There were stories were confirmed, but then sort of, you know, dropped off everyone's radar about officials in these agencies actively using pseudonyms and other words that would effectively if a FOIA request, for example, or a government oversight, a congressional oversight request or investigation came up, would deliberately miss things that were going on. So they were. They were already strategizing for how to avoid the transparency that the law requires. And so that I hope that some of those discussions re emerge in the process of this case. There was a lot of deliberate evasiveness and efforts to cover up some of the things that were going on in these agencies, which led, unfortunately, to the erosion of the public's trust. In our public health agencies. So I hope that stuff reemerges as a point of discussion here, too.
- [43:59]
John Podhoretz
Can I just also tell you that I am on the New York Times webpage and I get, again, not to obsess over the New York Times. It is the most important news organization in the world that has 14 million subscribers, therefore making it at least as a. As a print, as a newspaper. Right. Even though not that many people take it in print anymore. The most important in the world. And I'm scrolling down the page and I'm scrolling. And I'm scrolling.
- [44:25]
Eliana Johnson
And I'm not saying exactly the same thing.
- [44:28]
John Podhoretz
Okay, please go ahead.
- [44:29]
Eliana Johnson
No, no, no, continue. Yeah, you can't find the story there.
- [44:34]
John Podhoretz
Literally, you cannot find the story about the Justice Department indicting a leading official at NIH for. And by the way, this is a press story also, because it involves not acceding to or abiding by trying to actively block a Freedom of Information act inquiry into the federal government, which is something that news organizations in particular ought to be particularly concerned about because we use FOI requests to hold government to account. And not only that, but as I'm going down this page, you know, the New York Times has many sections, and then it has sort of. It has its lead stories and then it has its substories. And then two thirds of the way down, they try to sort of summarize little bits of headlines in these various areas. There isn't Even in the U.S. news or U.S. politics sections at the bottom, which each have three stories, do not feature the story of the COVID NIH indictment. So, Eliana, what do you make of that?
- [45:49]
Eliana Johnson
This is like adding insult to injury because Covid was covered so tendentiously and so poorly by these organizations. And now the indictment showing that our government officials intentionally misled us, which we already knew, but now that they're being held to account for it. And by the way, the Fauci deputy's name is Dr. David Morance. I found this by searching. I found this by searching Fauci on the New York Times thing. But don't worry. Above the fold on the Times, we do learn that Lizzo is taking a loss on the sale of her Beverly Hills mansion. And that Epstein, we have that Epstein obtained some objects from Islam's holiest site for his private mosque. Other, you know, really important news. But we can't find anywhere that Fauci's deputy colluded to maintain funding for this lab. Eco Health alliance for the EcoHealth alliance,
- [46:57]
John Podhoretz
which is what gave money To Wuhan.
- [47:00]
Eliana Johnson
Yes, to the Wuhan Lab for gain
- [47:03]
John Podhoretz
of function research that the United States had decided should. That the Congress had decided should no longer be funded on the grounds that growing dangerous things in labs had a possibility of escape.
- [47:19]
Eliana Johnson
Experimenting with this kind of thing.
- [47:21]
John Podhoretz
Right.
- [47:22]
Eliana Johnson
Yes, in exchange for expensive wine. Truth be told, I don't think they even needed to be compensated for this. But in exchange for expensive wine and promises of a meal at a Michelin starred restaurant. So yeah, they appear to have him dead to rights on this.
- [47:39]
Abe Greenwald
I just want to say I went, I went on the New York Times homepage immediately this morning to, to read about Fauci. And so I, I had the same experience you did, except searching desperately on their homepage for it. I got sucked into 30 best songwriters of all time feature.
- [47:57]
John Podhoretz
Oh, don't get me started. Don't get Abe started on that.
- [48:00]
Abe Greenwald
And I, and I sat there and I, after about 15 minutes, I realized I started this looking for Fauci, but I'm just incredibly hung up on whether Lana Del Rey belongs on the same list as Willie Nelson and Valerie Simpson and Bob Dylan. And then I realized that maybe that's the purpose of the list. You go looking for Fauci and you can barely remember what you went looking for in the first place.
- [48:26]
Christine Rosen
We should add with the. This was also, this should revive, I hope, one of my personal hobby horses, the discussion about the presidential pardon power. A lot of these people were blanket pardoned by Biden on his way out, which at the time many of us said, well, that's odd. They haven't been accused of anything yet. And so this particular gentleman was not, I think, part of that pardon process. But there will be, I hope, again, a reinvestigation of some of those blanket pardons of the officials who were involved in this Covid decision making.
- [48:53]
John Podhoretz
Okay, I just want to take a break to say that. Abe, I want you just to respond to Seth's point about 30 songwriters.
- [49:01]
Seth Mandel
Yeah, it's not of all time. It's the New York Times list of the 30 greatest living American songwriters, which. But it's worse in that sense because it narrows it down. It leaves out some extraordinarily obvious choices, such as Billy Joel not on the list.
- [49:22]
John Podhoretz
Yeah, Lana Del Rey on the list. Billy Joel. Billy Joel, who wrote 133 songs, of which I think it's fair to say 25 count as all time American classics. So not only is the New York Times distortive and evil in its political coverage, its cultural coverage is arguably even worse. But to Move off of the New York Times.
- [49:44]
Seth Mandel
But I just want to add one point about the Times. They will put up a story about Fauci's deputies. There's no good headline. They can, they can. There's no headline soft enough right now. When Fauci's deputy responds, then they'll have a headline. Cuz then they could say from his point of view.
- [50:03]
Christine Rosen
And then Republicans will pounce on his response.
- [50:05]
Seth Mandel
Precisely.
- [50:06]
Christine Rosen
That's the best headline.
- [50:08]
John Podhoretz
Yes. But I think it's also important to note that yesterday the Justice Department indicted former FBI Director James Comey in one of the most preposterous indictments I think I have ever seen. Which you might call the seashell threat indictment, in which Fauci posted a photograph.
- [50:35]
Christine Rosen
Comey, Comey, Comey, Comey.
- [50:37]
John Podhoretz
I'm sorry, Comey. James Comey posted an image of seashells on a beach forming four numbers or two numbers, 86 and 47, thus creating the phrase 86, 47, 47 being in theory here, Donald Trump, the 47th president of the United States, or at least in this iteration. And 86 being a vague phrase meaning to get somebody out of somewhere. And this was held to be an assassination threat against the President of the United States. And if I were a voting member of the Senate, I would. And Todd Blanche, the Acting Attorney General, was actually named Attorney General, was nominated to be Attorney General of the United States. I would vote against his nomination on the grounds that he allowed this indictment to proceed.
- [51:40]
Christine Rosen
And we could add two pieces of context about this. Instagram posts. Comey took it down. He was also voluntarily agreed to be investigated by the Secret Service as a potential threat to the President, which this is part of the Secret Service's due diligence. So he. They had that interview. They're like, yeah, this guy's not a threat to the President. And so the using this as the pretext is obviously, again, it's political retribution by the Department of Justice.
- [52:10]
John Podhoretz
I also want to point out that as I say this about James Comey, I in 2016, called for Comey's firing on July 5, 2016, when he gave the press conference about why he was not indicting Hillary Clinton on the charges that he could have indicted her for, but didn't. Thus, I thought outrageously. Or seeking an indictment as the special in the special prosecutor investigation of Hillary Clinton and her emails and the deletion of her emails. And that I thought that his behavior was gravely irresponsible that he had. If he was not going to indict her, it was not anybody's business that there was giving a press conference to explain why you don't indict someone was a. Was an act of egregious prosecutorial malevolence or inappropriate behavior. Hillary Clinton is a citizen of the United States and deserved better than to have someone come out and explain that he could have indicted her but didn't. And then, of course, Comey then reopens the investigation 10 days before the election because of this question of whether or not her laptop had been compromised, arguably then changing the results of the 2016 election, which I also criticized him for. And then in 2017, of course, playing this game of footsie with Trump to try to get Trump to, I don't know, perjure himself or indict himself when he told Trump before the election that there was an investigation into him, which is the Russiagate investigation, then Trump, of course, firing him in March, I think, of 2017. So I think Comey is a bad public servant. He is a bad figure. He is a irresponsible and disgraceful person. But this indictment is outrageous and unseemly, and it is an offense against our legal system and a misuse of executive authority.
- [54:18]
Seth Mandel
I want to say something else about it. Donald Trump has survived the three assassination attempts. There is a genuine culture of normalizing death threats out there and promoting death threats and embracing the idea of political assassination at an institutional level. We've been discussing it for a week. Trump seems never to really address that quite seriously, considering that he's evaded three attempts on his life, yet he goes after this non death threat for entirely personal, vengeful reasons. So it's not only an injustice that he's trying to attempt here. Such a wasted opportunity to make of a very serious problem personally for him, but nationally for the country, wasting an opportunity to address that actual problem and instead focus on his world of petty revenge.
- [55:41]
John Podhoretz
Similarly, by the way, I have to apologize for what I said on yesterday's podcast, or out of naivete, ignorance or willful blindness or hope, because I defended the idea of Trump saying that Jimmy Kimmel should be fired on the grounds that he had free speech rights himself and that Jimmy Kimmel's statement was disgraceful. And as a husband, he had every right to express outrage at the idea that his wife should be looking forward to his death and stuff like that. And then yesterday came the word that in fact the FCC was going to try to make a political case out of Jimmy Kimmel's joke about Melania. And look at Disney and ABC's broadcast licenses with an eye toward revoking them early as they come up for renewal in 2028 to punish Disney for having Jimmy Kimmel on staff. And that is clearly a violation of the principled free speech and a kind of semi totalitarian act should it actually go any further. So, having given him the benefit of the doubt, I now withdraw. I now feel bad that I even gave him the benefit.
- [57:03]
Eliana Johnson
I don't see why you have to apologize for anything. You said yesterday that, I mean, we both did that Trump can say that. And you don't think the FCC should take any action, right?
- [57:17]
John Podhoretz
I don't. But, I mean, here's the thing about what's going on inside the Trump administration,
- [57:22]
Eliana Johnson
and the FCC is taking, I mean, basically protectual, you know, what you would argue is protectual action, asking Disney to apply for early renewal for station licenses and saying that it's over. Dei, it's not about this. It's for a different issue. And Brendan Carr was raising issues about this beforehand, but the timing is suspicious with this. But I don't see why you have to apologize. I mean, Trump can say that.
- [57:57]
John Podhoretz
Okay? He can say it. He can.
- [58:00]
Christine Rosen
I think one of the challenges, obviously ongoing with Trump, and I completely sympathize with the experience people have of gratitude to him when he fights back, especially in the culture wars. I share a lot of that gratitude because there are some of these battles that I'm completely on his side of. I do think, though, in these contexts, people tend to praise him for fighting, but you're like. And winning. It's like, well, before Trump, we never won. You just would put up with this, and you conservatives got nothing done. Okay, but if you're, if you win a race to the bottom, what have you really won? And that's, this is one of those examples where there, there are actually battles to be won in these broader culture wars, particularly with dei. This is not what that's about, I think. And being able to distinguish that if you're on, broadly on the right, whether you're populist or just traditional conservative, that's really going to become more important in the next few years as we assess what Trump's real legacy in terms of policymaking and cultural change will be.
- [58:55]
Abe Greenwald
Look, we know the problem of, of the, of the personality, you know, cult of politics, which is that, you know, around Trump, people take action when he says things like people want to impress him. They want to, they, they work very hard to be, having to, to be seen on the record as having done and said things that defend his honor and his ego and him personally. This. It's to an unusual degree. You know, even obviously there was a personality cult around Obama, too, but we didn't watch live cabinet meetings, you know, where they all went around saying, you know, thank you, sir, for letting me be in your presence. Like, there is something different.
- [59:35]
Christine Rosen
Wasn't on my National Parks annual pass either, which Trump is.
- [59:39]
Abe Greenwald
So there is, you know, and this thing with like the, the state, the, you know, the, the State Department, the visas, the, the passports and stuff. Like, so there is, there is this problem of when Trump says something, we can more expect someone in the government to take official action than we would otherwise in the same scenario, all else being equal.
- [60:00]
Eliana Johnson
My, I think my thing I'm, I grapple with, and my question for you guys, because I think I'm probably more sympathetic to the president on these things than, than the rest of you are, is in a world where the left is, is going to do lawfare. We've seen it. They are going to do it. And where the left is going to use the levers of government to punish the opposition in ways that we find morally objectionable, what is the proper way for conservatives to proceed?
- [60:38]
John Podhoretz
Okay, I will tell you what the proper way is. From my view, proper way is the pursuit of the university administrators and universities for their violations of Title VI of the Civil Rights act of 1964. Fully constitutional, totally backed by law, almost inarguable in terms of the fact pattern that has been adduced to permit the administration not only to pursue these matters in a court of law, but, but to use the power of the executive branch to say, do the right thing here or settle in the way that we want you to, or we are going ahead with this and we are going to do what we can to use the levers of legal power to punish you. So let's come to a settlement before we get there that's legit. Having a kind of a guy who wants to be Attorney General indict James Comey because he's waving at you, because he wants you to nominate him so that he can be the nation's 77th Attorney General or something, and therefore it'll be in his obit when he dies that he was Attorney General and issuing a garbage indictment, which is one of the most grievous, I think one of the most grievous political offenses that you can do, which is, that's lawfare, but it's individually targeted at a president's enemy. And let's not forget, by the way, in the case of Comey, he has already punished Comey. I mean, it's like he's not satisfied. First of all, he fired him from the job that Comey did. He was fired. So, you know, for a lot of people, that would suffice. Comey was FBI Director. Trump said, get the hell outta here. And he was gone on that plane. Like, you know, he could barely even get on the plane to come home because Trump fired him on the tarmac or whatever. So usually that would be enough to satisfy somebody's, you know, I don't like this guy. I fired him. He's never had that job again. The hell with him. But this is the second Comey indictment in a year.
- [62:58]
Eliana Johnson
It is kind of amazing that they got a grand jury. I mean, if you. The indictment is still three pages long, it's like real thin.
- [63:04]
John Podhoretz
Yeah. And it's going to be dismissed.
- [63:07]
Eliana Johnson
Grand jury to.
- [63:08]
John Podhoretz
Yeah, well, apparently you can famously indict a ham sandwich. Right? That's what the guy said. You can get a grand jury to indict a ham sandwich. And 86 does not mean kill. I mean, so literally, it's going to be dismissed the minute that it gets in front of a courtroom. Because there is no even. Even if you go on Google the phrase 80, you know, Google the term 86 as a term, as a slang term. It doesn't mean kill. It could mean kill, but it could also mean fire. It could also mean get him out of there. It could mean all kind. It just means, you know, you're gone. That is not a threat. It was not. It was childish of Comey. It was embarrassing that Comey did that. And he was promoting a book at the time.
- [63:53]
Eliana Johnson
I agree with you on this. I just don't accept a world. I mean, I read the indictment. It's very thin. Yeah, I agree with you on this. I just, pulling back, don't accept a world in which the left pursues vicious, legal. Vicious, thin, equally thin legal cases against their political enemies. And we stand back and go like, you know, we disarm because it's not right.
- [64:21]
Christine Rosen
You don't disarm, but you pursue genuine cases.
- [64:24]
Eliana Johnson
I have trouble with that.
- [64:25]
Christine Rosen
These are. I think this is where the Trump. To Seth's earlier point about the sort of personality cult around Trump, I think a lot of times we on the right wishcast that Trump is actually pursuing an ideological mission when in fact he's just pursuing a personal grievance or he's. He loves tariffs. As a conservative, I think they're bad. He's going to pursue tariffs. He doesn't actually care what any ideological position.
- [64:48]
Eliana Johnson
I'm.
- [64:48]
Christine Rosen
I'm a superpower. It's a superpower, but I don't think the right has completely disarmed. We have, you know, we have the. The Supreme Court is more right leaning than left leaning. We have, I think, a lot of institutions that we have maintained sort of some ideological advantage in. And I. But what I really object to the idea that the only way to fix the things that are wrong. And Eliana, you're absolutely right in your diagnosis is to blow it all up or to continue or to play the same game. Ultimately, that is how small our republics disappear. Because if it's not through some dictator or Trump pretending he's a king or any of the nonsense that we hear from the left, it's by the very gradual corrosion of the law, of the rule of law, of respect for the institutions, and this becomes boring. And everybody says, oh, you just don't care. I'm glad Trump's winning. I don't think a lot of the things that are now considered Trump victories by Trump supporters will, in 10 years be seen as victories. And I think a lot of the things he's doing will be instantly erased the minute there's a Democrat in the White House. Because much of it's been done by executive order.
- [65:50]
Eliana Johnson
Yeah, no, I totally agree with that.
- [65:52]
Abe Greenwald
No, no, getting rid of the ballroom, though, that can't be arranged by executive order.
- [65:58]
John Podhoretz
I mean, you know, the joke about the ballroom is it's not gonna be done before he ends the presidency. So he will have left it for AOC to enjoy all of the pleasures and joys of the ballroom. The way. The way things are going. I'm just disappointed, to be honest. Abe says that he has stepped on the possibility of having a serious conversation about the assassination culture and the rise of political violence. But, you know, we're also in the middle of this. We're in a ceasefire at the moment or whatever that constituency is. We're in the middle of a war with Iran. This is the most serious thing on earth. And this kind of childish, petulant game that goes on with the passports. Again, a lot of this is all things that happen simply because they were started. And entropy has led us to this moment, like whether or not his face should be on. You can choose to have his face on your passport for the 250th anniversary of America or not. Or the Arch or something like all these things that have been going on and that his own ADHD doesn't allow him to sort of prevent him from focusing in the right way. But we're engaged in the most serious thing that is gonna happen in this presidency right now. And he is. And I wish that it were otherwise, that he would laser beam this and make it clear that this is as serious as a heart attack and that what's going on is the most serious thing on earth. And he gives his enemies and the people who sort of don't want us to win in Iran or actually would prefer that we lose because then that will be a stain on his legacy. Like I don't want him giving them ammunition to say that he's an unserious person or he's a tyrant or something like that and make this just like blacken this effort that is, I believe, righteous and incredibly important. And so that's the other opportunity that's being lost as you would characterize it, I guess.
- [68:10]
Seth Mandel
I mean, look, I don't like when he does silly things at all, obviously, but he does, I think have the capacity, the hunger, the need to do 50 things at once, from the most deadly serious to the most absurd. And regarding what's happening in Iran, I think he's hit a level of confidence about the blockade here that I think he thinks that Iran won't be able to take a drawn out blockade of the Strait.
- [68:48]
John Podhoretz
I mean, it's unfortunate. We're hitting like we're beyond an hour here and we don't really have time to engage that question. I think we will try to engage it much more seriously tomorrow on where
- [69:01]
Christine Rosen
the deadline on more powers act is, I think Friday.
- [69:05]
Judge Roy Altman
Right.
- [69:05]
Christine Rosen
Isn't that we're reaching other deadlines as well.
- [69:07]
John Podhoretz
Exactly. Okay, so we will get into that. So obviously our commentary recommends today is the book that we discussed in the first half of the show, Israel on Trial by Roy K. Altman. Please read it, Kindle it, read it online, read it on your phone, read the hardcover, do whatever. It's an important book with a block quote from Seth Mandel and so and a blurb from me and of course Christine interviewing him later this today, this Wednesday in Washington. So if you can make it and you're in the habit of my voice and you hear it in the right order, you can go see him in person. We'll be back tomorrow. For Abe, Christine, Eliana and Seth, I'm
- [69:55]
Judge Roy Altman
John Podhort's Keep the Candle Burning Sam.