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- [00:04]
John Podhoretz
Hope for the best, expect the worst Some preach and pain Some die of thirst the way of knowing which way.
- [00:18]
Seth Mandel
It'S going Hope for the best Expect.
- [00:21]
Abe Greenwald
The worst, hope for the best.
- [00:25]
John Podhoretz
Welcome to the Commentary magazine daily podcast Today. Today is Friday, September 26, 2025. I am John Pot? Horiz, the editor of Commentary magazine. With me, as always, executive editor Abe Greenwald. Hi, Abe.
- [00:37]
Abe Greenwald
Hi, John.
- [00:38]
John Podhoretz
And senior editor Seth Mandel. Hi, Seth.
- [00:40]
Seth Mandel
Hi, John.
- [00:43]
John Podhoretz
So there are two opinions in the world. There's actually seems to only be one opinion in the world and then a kind of attitude. And the opinion in the world is that the indictment of of former FBI Director James Comey ranges from being absurd to being the beginning of the end of our republic. And then the attitude is the hell with Comey. And the idea that the Justice Department is only just now being weaponized to punish the enemies of the sitting president is so preposterous that giving that any credence once again shows a desire to hold Donald Trump, a man who does not hold anybody to any particular standards, to a standard that they hold nobody else to, is ongoing. And I am very confused, I will admit, because people that I really respect, Andy McCarthy of National Review in particular, say that the if the indictment is what he thinks it is, it's absurd that senior people at the in the prosecutorial wing of the Justice Department have refused to take this up, have said it's a bad case and that it does not hold water. And therefore this could be a slippery slope. We can discuss that in a minute. And then I come at it with I listened to Comey on under oath talking to Lindsey Graham in 2020 on before the Senate, saying he had no knowledge of any FBI effort to investigate the Trump campaign through Crossfire Hurricane. And we know now, because of release of papers by Tulsi Gabbard, that that is at a very minimum, untrue. And we know that James Baker, his loyal assistant, said under oath that he was very he was under the impression that the order that was given him to do this investigating came not didn't come from Comey, it came from Comey's deputy or like, I don't know, amanuensis, but that he understood that it had come from Comey. Now, he didn't have a piece of paper from Comey. It's my right hand doesn't know what my left hand is doing for 30 years, as Hunsacker says, and the sweet smell of success. But that certainly seems like he did it and that he then lied about it. But if Andy McCarthy says it's a lousy case, then maybe it's a lousy case, I don't know. So it actually matters whether it's a lousy case or not. Some people said he wouldn't be indicted at all because the grand jury in Northern Virginia, which is very liberal, would not indict him if the case was so flimsy. But, but of course, in a grand jury indictment, the defense doesn't get to put on a defense. The grand jury only hears the evidence that the prosecutor presents to them, and then they make a determination based on that. So, you know, we haven't had the actual back and forth. Okay, that's how I'm going to begin. So go to it.
- [04:04]
Abe Greenwald
Yeah, well, John, I mean, I'm in a similar position to you. I, at face value, I didn't, it didn't bother me at all. And I don't, I'm not in the habit of outsourcing my opinion to people, but when it comes to legal matters and Andy McCarthy, I am very, very much in that habit, in part because when he sort of opens up discussion of something, it mostly reveals how little I understood about it beforehand. And so I'm sort of still waiting to figure out what is so lousy about the case. Part of this problem here is that because of who it's coming from, because it's Trump and it's the Trump administration, and it's this administration that is looking for vengeance at every turn, I am less than disinclined to think that it could be a lousy case. But I don't know. I'm definitely somewhere very short of being outraged.
- [05:13]
Seth Mandel
It reminds me a lot of, honestly, the FCC thing in that whether there's a good case for it sort of gets lost in the process, because in order to get this indictment, you fired or pressured to, you know, resign the attorney in place in that district and then replaced the prosecutor with a career non prosecutor who was Trump's personal lawyer at some point. And she scrambled to, you know, secure the indictment and got, I guess she got two of the three, right? She presented three counts, got indictments on two. And so it looks, you know, this looks like the sort of thing that, you know, came about in the wrong, in the wrong way a lot. Like, you know, when Brendan Carr said, I don't know what they're going to do about Jimmy Kimmel, but they better do something because, you know, this stuff can't go on or we'll find a way to do something about it. You know, it's like they might have made the same decision to dispense to suspend Jimmy Kimmel afterwards, but we don't know. This is. This. This looks bad leading up to it, and it just looks like a lot of pressure. And so, like, you could even isolate. I think you could isolate what led up to it from the case. Except that this is such a. You know, this is. This gets passion so roiling, you know, the James Comey stuff and the weather. Fascism, the dark night of fascism is descending upon America that it's going to be impossible for people to separate the. But I do think it's a Brendan Carr type of situation where you look and say, I don't really love how this all came about.
- [06:53]
John Podhoretz
Well, I don't love how it all came about either. And the weird thing is that Comey isn't exactly the target that you might think he would be in this respect. Trump already fired Comey. Trump fired Comey in 2017. Trump fired when he figured out properly, because then came these weird leaks to the front page of the New York Times about Comey, when Comey came to him and said, you need to know that there's evidence that people are coming after. Like you're being the Russians are subordinate, trying to, you know, survey you, or whatever it was he said when he went to see him at the beginning of January before the inauguration in 2017. And then Trump realized that Comey had been trying to set a perjury trap for him in that conversation, he was like, I can't trust you. You're out of here. You're fired. He already kind of materially wounded Comey's career. Now, if they succeed in getting an indictment of John Bolton, whom he's mad at for mishandling classified information, and that is really not true. If it's not true, that would. That. That would be where you would say, okay, he's like, he's mad at Bolton for writing the book and this, that and the other thing. And Bolton attacked someone, Fox, and he can't stand that, so Bolton's gotta go. And then whoever he would do it just. Comey's an interesting example here, because why Democrats just. I'm now wandering around, but why Democrats haven't sent him out on an ice floe? This guy got Trump elected. We need to understand. He did two things before Trump was elected that were astonishing and outrageous in my view. I mean, and I said so. I said so in. At the time, in on the commentary website. So I'm. I'm totally defended by my history, which is when he Came out in July of 2016 and said, you know, I could indict Hillary, I could based on all the evidence, but I'm not gonna. As opposed to saying we're closing the investigation into the Democratic nominee for president, we have decided to close the investigation. Which is what you would normally do with somebody you're not indicting. It's nobody's business why you didn't indict. If you don't have the case against someone, you don't come out and say, well, I have a case against her, but I'm not pursuing it. That is actually, I'm sorry to say, unfair to Hillary Clinton. She doesn't need that shadow hanging over her head. Indict her. Don't indict her. You don't get to say, I would have, but I didn't because I want her to be president. Whatever the hell it was he was doing, that was a breach of, at a minimum government professional responsibility of a sort that we had barely ever seen.
- [10:05]
Abe Greenwald
He said, he said he didn't want the bureau to get to involve itself.
- [10:09]
John Podhoretz
In the, in politics. So he basically gave the Trump campaign a gigantic boost by saying, I, I'm not indicting her. Obviously it would be better for Trump if he had indicted her, but saying I could have. She's pretty guilty really. But I'm not indicting her because I don't want. Because the bureau needs to be pure, right? Like, are you effing kidding me? It was, you know, Obama should have fired him at that minute for doing that. And they obviously didn't because like they were, they, he was part of their team. Okay. So then he makes a promise to Congress that if anything happens he'll reopen the investigation. And then comes word that there's stuff on Anthony Wieners laptop because he's married to Hillary's associate, whom I bet in. And then he reopens the investigation 10 days before the election and then closes it five days before the election. But basically the election. Trump goes silent, lets this story percolate all over the place, and then wins the election by 88,000 votes across three states. Comey got Trump elected. He writes an incredibly self serving book. He fiddle bitches around with the FBI in January and February and March, which apparently Democrats enjoyed. So they were feeling good about him. He's terrible. Like they should drop him, you know, they should take him on a helicopter to the Aleutian Islands with a backpack and leave him there to build his own, you know, like hut. And survive in exile for the Rest of his days instead now he's gonna get to be a martyr.
- [12:05]
Abe Greenwald
Oh, but the very opposite happened. I mean, cuz after he wrote his book and then, you know, you talk about the talk shows, he was feted on the talk show circuit, you know, talking about how he wanted to do the right thing by the country and by the bureau. And he was an absolutely adored figure even though he had done all this. Like he was the most incredible primary.
- [12:30]
John Podhoretz
And the book which I to my great misfortune read instead of a third rate Hollywood, see Starlet's autobiography which I would have enjoyed as I enjoy most of them if I find them on Kindle. Diane McBain's autobiography. Like I would have enjoyed that more than James Comey's. The book is so pompous and self aggrandizing and full of his own like professed virtue. And how he, like I don't know him, I've never met him, I don't really know anybody who's. I knew some people work with him, but I've never really had a conversation about him. But he, I'm saying a, he must be an intolerable person because the person who writes that book and talks about himself the way he talks about himself in that book must be personally intolerable. And now we're going to get another year of Comey. And let's say the judge completely dismisses the case when it comes before them when he's arraigned. I guess maybe they won't have when he's arraigned but I assume his lawyers will call for, you know, will call for the cases being thrown out of court. And that could well happen. I mean he is indicted on a very flimsy on this count that we could all be indicted on. And in fact several people that I'm very close to have been indicted on, which is the count that if you, the form that you sign at the bottom of your tap, any thing that you send to the federal government, you sign at the bottom of the form. To the best of my knowledge, this, what I'm saying is true. It's called, I think it's called 1018 and you sign it, you are therefore liable criminally if you lie on that form. And so it is the cheapest form of indictment to indict someone on that charge. Because it's also like what happens if you lie in your income tax form or if you lie on your, I don't know, you're accused of lying on any form you have to send to the federal government. So it's like, base. We can indict you for anything. Here's what we're indicting you on. So therefore, Andy McCarthy might be right, given the nature of the indictment, that it's pretty flimsy. But. So let's talk about this.
- [14:47]
Seth Mandel
I try to remember. I might have been Jonah Serra, but years ago, when all the Comey stuff was going around, he wrote a column for Bloomberg that was basically like, I don't love the fact that everybody's getting arrested for lying to the FBI when Comey lies to us, to the public and whatever. And it feels like he was saying it's not that Comey was legally liable at the time, but he was saying there's just this feeling that these people can lie to us constantly, and if we, like, get a date wrong in an interview, we go to jail or we get bankrupted by, you know, attorney's fees or something like that. That. That, you know, people like, thing. His point was really that people like Comey have turned lying into a kind of, like, elite, you know, activity. Like something that way that people like to lord power over others. Specifically the lying.
- [15:50]
John Passantino
Not.
- [15:51]
Seth Mandel
Not the power play, more generally. Specifically, I can lie to you, and it's noble. You lie to me, and you're going to prison no matter who you are. And I feel like that atmosphere has hung over this case really from the beginning. This idea that, you know, everything was. Every attempt to get people was like Al Capone on taxes, but it was get them on lies. Like, well, maybe he, you know, he didn't really do X, but he, you know, he lied to investigators or something like that. And there was this sense that Comey had a real hand in making lying to the feds this big thing that was going to nab everybody who could be nabbed.
- [16:34]
Oliver Darcy
I'm Oliver Darcy.
- [16:35]
John Passantino
And I'm John Passantino.
- [16:37]
Oliver Darcy
We have spent years covering the inner workings of the news media, tech, politics, Hollywood, and power. Now, through our nightly newsletter, status.
- [16:45]
John Passantino
And we're bringing that same reporting and sharp analysis to a new podcast, Power Lines.
- [16:51]
Oliver Darcy
Every Friday, we're breaking down the biggest stories shaping the industry, explaining why they matter and saying the things most people are thinking but too timid to say out loud.
- [17:00]
John Passantino
No spin, no fluff, just sharp analysis that isn't afraid to call it like it is. We also pull back the curtain via our exclusive reporting to take you behind the scenes.
- [17:09]
Oliver Darcy
My understanding, having reported this is that the Pentagon protested to CNN and tried to effectively exile the CNN producer. And when the moment calls for it We've got some hot takes. I just think Brad Pitt, honestly, he kind of seems a little washed up.
- [17:26]
John Passantino
Oh, my God. That's Power Lines, presented by Status. Follow Power Lines and listen on Apple, Spotify, Amazon Music, or your favorite podcast app.
- [17:39]
Mark Halperin
I'm Mark Alper, and I want to let you know that two Way Tonight, the destination for the best political news and analysis anywhere, is now available as an audio podcast. Each weekday, I'll be joined by special guests from the worlds of news, politics, and the media, along with members of the two Way community for conversations like no other. It's the best way to stay informed at the end of your day or first thing in the morning every weekday. It's a show like no other because we involve the community. We hear from people from around the country, around the world. They're part of a conversation. There is no other platform like this, and I hope you will find it to be not only different than everything else, but more meaningful as you become part of a special community around the program. So listen and follow two Way tonight with Mark Alperin on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or any other major streaming platform.
- [18:27]
John Podhoretz
You're making an important point, which is that everybody knows that if you or people learned over the last 20, 25 years that there was a transactional quality to the fact that you were being interviewed by the FBI on a criminal matter, which is they, they want to get you on something so that they have something to trade. So they ask you whether it was sunny on August 16th and you say yes, and it turned out that it was raining and they indict you for lying, and you say that's how. Or they, they threaten to indict you for lying and then you say, that's insane. I didn't know what I get. I guessed it was sunny. They're like, you were under oath and let's just walk this down the road. You're going to have to hire a lawyer. We're going to take you to court. We don't have any court costs. You have court costs. By the time you're done and this gets dismissed, you're going to spend $150,000 on a lawyer. Or you can tell us what your boss was doing. I mean, this is literally what they did to people in the Trump administration. Maybe it wasn't the FBI in this case, but, you know, the, the. Not the trumpet, the Trump's businesses, how they got the information from Trump's accountant or whoever it was. It's like the. We have the power to use criminal or Tor tortious and whatever behavior to ruin your life. So tell us what we want to know. And you know, when you're, when you're talking about the Mafia, you're talking about people who are engaged in criminal activity on a daily basis and are part of a criminal conspiracy. Sure. Like, okay, you know, I mean, this is the only way to break the whole of the Mafia. And you go ahead, it's not just the FBI could be a US Attorney deposing you, whatever. This is something else. This is, we're building political cases against our political enemies or people we think are bad. And we're using the same techniques like Andrew Weissman, the now a big talking head, who was the guy who was Robert Mueller's essentially prosecutor, was famous for his absolute. During his time before he became Robert Mueller's number two staffer on the investigation into Trump, was famous for his extraordinary aggressiveness at using this tactic to, to get information out of low, lower level people to secure indictments against higher level people. And this happened, of course, with Rudy Giuliani when He was the U.S. attorney in New York when he indicted people for insider trading and stuff like that. Famously, Mike Milken went to jail. Again, different circumstance. Mike Milken agreed to testify, to plead guilty, because in his case, which is a crappy, was a crappy case, they said, fine, you're not gonna, you're not gonna plead. You're gonna try to take this and see, we're gonna indict your brother and we're gonna send your brother to prison because maybe you can tough it out, but he won't be able to tough it out. And there's a famous moment where he and his wife are in a room somewhere and I think his brother, something like that, when he is faced with this threat not to, not to plead guilty. And everybody hears from outside the room that they're in, wailing, sobbing, gnashing of teeth as they realize that Milken, who did not believe who he was guilty and did not want to plead guilty, did it anyway to save his family. This is like hardball, hardball, hardball tactics. And yet Comey weaponized them. The Obama's weaponized them. Comey, you know, it's bad. So, yeah, there's an irony here that he would, he would get. Now they don't seem to be doing it in order to get information on his superiors, because he didn't.
- [23:00]
Abe Greenwald
There's also the, aside from trying to get info, there's the thing that we always bring up in such cases where the process is the punishment Right. I mean, just.
- [23:09]
John Podhoretz
That's where we get to Trump.
- [23:10]
Abe Greenwald
Yeah.
- [23:11]
John Podhoretz
So the process is the punishment. So the process is the money. Processes the money. It's also, like, out. You know, it's like, it. Focus. Trust me, having had a family member go through it, an irresponsible and disgusting political persecution, like, it's the focus of your life. You can't think about anything else. Your family can't think about anything else. There is nothing else. You can't get anything done. And then even when you make your deal or you make your peace with it or something, it haunts your life for years. It is the process is the punishment. And that's where we get to why this could be really bad that Trump is doing this. And it's not just because he's doing it to Comey, because maybe Comey deserves it or. I certainly don't care. I don't care whether Comey suffers. He's done it to 100 other people. So there's rough justice in him getting it himself, including his interference in the 2016 election, which, as I say, was more against Hillary than against Trump. But nonetheless, you know, again, why Hillary should be coming out and saying, I'm thrilled that he was indicted. I hope that he is, you know, shot off in a rocket to Venus because of what he did to our country. Trump is weaponizing the process against his enemies because he experienced the weaponizing of the process against himself. And, boy, did he ever. No one ever saw a process weaponized like he did. Right. Seven cases enforced it. Right. Two federal cases, Washington and Florida, two or three. Two cases in New York, one civil, one criminal, and, of course, the case in Georgia, and they all collapsed. I mean, I guess that the Tish James Fine thing hasn't collapsed exactly, but, I mean, basically, you know, a person without Trump's rage and, I don't know, whatever, just, like, determination not to lose to anybody ever, and to, like, power through this meant that, you know, it not only he didn't. Didn't kill him, it gave him sort of like the accelerant that helped him win in 2024. Ironically, based on the public reaction to the one good case against him, I mean, the one, arguably toughest case against him, which was the mishandling of classified information, which then involved, again, sort of where we come here, he's indicted for the mishandling of classified information. We all go, this is not good. You know, oh, my God. They, you know, it's not good. Like, he did that. And, you know, then the right wingers and people who like him are like, they couldn't. They raided Mar a lot. They raided his homies. An ex president. How could they? That just shows they're monsters and it's terrible. And that really helped him. And then, of course, God came in to make us all laugh because then it turned out that Biden had done exactly the same thing. And guess who didn't get indicted for it? Biden didn't get indicted for it. So Trump is indicted for it, Biden isn't indicted for it. And then guess who is having the law weaponized against him.
- [26:26]
Abe Greenwald
And by the way, there's also a. There's a kind of weird parallel in Comey's. I could have. Could have indicted Hillary but didn't with the Biden thing. Biden, what, didn't get in trouble because he was a forgetful old man.
- [26:42]
John Podhoretz
Right, Robert? Her did say. Exactly, yeah, said I could have indicted him, but I didn't.
- [26:50]
Abe Greenwald
So there is.
- [26:51]
John Podhoretz
Why don't I hold her? Why. Why didn't I hold her to the standard that I'm holding Comey to which, of course, Democrats did. Remember, people said, her is a monster. How dare he? How dare he do this? It's so terrible that it happened. But her was obliged by the law by. By the terms of his hiring as a special prosecutor to issue a report. Comey wasn't. Comey was engaged in a criminal. The FBA was engaged in a potential criminal prosecution of Hillary Clinton. That it, that it closed. Comey was under no obligation to issue a report. Hur, by law, had to issue a report. So her said, I'm not indicting because I can't. Couldn't get a conviction because a court will look at this guy and say he was senile. Now, what should Democrats have done in that case? Ditched Biden from the 2024 ticket? They should have said, oh, let's not wait until the one debate when he shames himself, and then Kamala Harris has 107 days to be an idiot and lose the presidency. They could have said, well, you know what? We got pretty unassailable evidence that he's cognitively impaired. We better find ourselves a better candidate for president. But as I say, that's the big difference there is that Herb was obliged under the terms of his special prosecutor status to issue a report.
- [28:29]
Abe Greenwald
But still, taken together, it does create this impression that when they do it, there is this, they were wrong, but, you know, kind of protective force field that somehow kicks in.
- [28:48]
Seth Mandel
That's why I think that they don't have the same ability to do that with Comey, though, because James Comey is a weird guy, right? That, like that, that's part of this story. You know, as silly as it sounds to say, Jim Comey's weirdness is a key part of this story. You know, he posts a picture of seashells that he designed to say, you know, 86 the president or whatever, and then he gets investigated for it. When they first left, you know, after the first time, he re emerged in the woods looking at trees and tweeted a picture of himself looking at trees in the woods with some sort of, you know, haiku type, you know, message. Comey, the story about him hiding behind the curtains when Trump came into office to try to avoid talking to Trump, like an 8 foot 9, you know, know, like Harry and the Henderson sized person hiding behind.
- [30:00]
John Podhoretz
He's very tall is what Seth is alluding to. Yeah.
- [30:04]
Seth Mandel
And so he's like, you know, so here we get the guy who hides behind curtains, the guy who posts seashells, the guy who goes wandering in the forest, whatever. There's no he. There's something about him that makes him also hard to defend, hard to take seriously, hard to like. In addition to all the stupid things that he said and done, you know, over time, he's, he kind of feels like a pinata in that, you know, Trump, he's like, he seems like the type of guy that Trump would just take extra whacks at, even though he doesn't. Trump is in office. The prosecutions didn't stop him. You know, he won the election. Living well is the best revenge, all that stuff. But at the same time, can you hold back if you have one more swing at the Comey pinata? I, I think a lot of people.
- [30:51]
Abe Greenwald
It'S not just Comey, it's what Russiagate still means and will like forever mean to Trump. I mean, there's a lot of, you know, going back and taking care of Russiagate business, I think in his psychology.
- [31:06]
John Podhoretz
So that the anti Trump, the neverturn, the anti Trumpers, because I'm on Twitter, I see people that I used to respect, former friends or people I still would consider friends, who probably wouldn't consider me a friend. I mean, I'll mention one who's not a friend, but like somebody who said, Gary Kasparov, they talk about Trump as though Russiagate was proved as opposed to debunked. It doesn't matter that Russiagate was disproved. It doesn't matter. That Monday he said, I hope Ukraine wins this war because nine years, 10 years into their hatred of Trump and their assumption that he was a Russian agent, no fact can penetrate the absolute iron conviction that they know truthfully that everything that was in the Steele dossier and everything everybody ever said about him in relation to Russia is true. When it's not. It's like a, you know, it's like, I don't know, the Heaven's Gate cult. You know, the day comes when the world doesn't end and they still believe that the world ended on whatever that gate was in 2012, when the Heaven's Gate cult waited on top of that mountain in, in Arizona, waiting for the end of the world. It's, it's. So they're still there, and he's still basically making it clear that he will. He said at the Charlie Kirk funeral, I hate my enemies. I'm sorry. I hate my enemies. Look, I don't like Trump. I mean, I'm very appreciative of the way Trump is. I don't like him. His example, I think, is not great for the presidency in many ways and all of that, but, I mean, if anybody on this planet earth has the right to hate his enemies, Trump has the right to hate his enemies. He's got. He's got a prosecutor. He's got a. He's got a prosecutor in New York making up crap to create 34 indictments on a completely, on a, on a transaction with somebody that was a completely legal and be consensual. He's got a prosecutor in Georgia making up crap, getting 120 and whatever. The insane 90. I can't even remember the number of indictments that she came up with. He's got an attorney general in New York who is going after his organization for paying back its loans on time, as per the legal agreement with the bank that gave him the loans. And he's got the entire liberal elite deciding that he is a Russian agent when he's not a Russian agent. Now, I have very little sympathy for him as a person. I don't like the way he treats women. I don't like the way he treats people. I don't like his aggressive. I don't like his, you know, pardoning and all of that, but if anybody hates his enemies with reason, Trump hates his enemies with reason. And I am not a Christian, so I do not necessarily believe that hatred is an unacceptable emotion. I hate anti Semites and I'm not going to apologize for it. I hate people who hate my people, and I'm not going to apologize for it. So, you know, I understand the emotion that said, this is very bad in another way. And you have. We all have to acknowledge it, which is. It's the Overton window question. President of the United States says, I'm going after my enemies. I'm using the powers of my office to go after my enemies openly, as opposed to in. The hypocrisy is the tribute that vice pays to virtue quietly, the way other people did for decades, in which they got you a IRS audit or they did whatever they could to screw around with you in previous eras. Because he's not the only one who's going to use this power. And that's a point that Mark Halpern makes in his newsletter this morning. A governor is going to do this. A mayor is going to do this. And what's more, some of his underlings that he has hired for their loyalty, who are meshuggah, are gonna do meshuggah things with the idea that this is how the administration is supposed to work. Now, remember, if he picks the targets, he's picking the target. He shouldn't do that. He's the president. He should be above it. He shouldn't be directing departments to go after individual people. But they can certainly say, well, that guy over there know a Grinwald, said something nasty on his podcast about, you know, Trump. Maybe he should. Maybe we should do a nice audit on him or. And then they'll announce that they did it. And then, of course, I become a martyr. Another election. What, and then I become a martyr? Yeah, you become a mortar.
- [36:38]
Abe Greenwald
Let.
- [36:38]
John Podhoretz
Let's see. Let's see what? Let's see how you enjoy an audit. Audit worse than Martin. You know, martyrdom. Okay, I'm joking. I know. Of course. 2029, new president, new presidency. Maybe not a Republican presidency. And it will be. Well, he. He started it. And, you know, they're all evil. And let's see what we can get on J.D. vance. And let's see what we can get on Marco Rubio. And let's see what we can get on Stephen Miller. And let's see what we can get on the guy who. Lindsey Hartigan, the lawyer that he imported into the Eastern District in Virginia to do this, to secure this indictment. Did she ever pick her feet in Poughkeepsie? Let's find out.
- [37:27]
Abe Greenwald
But, you know, this. It's kind of a complicated concept, but what you're talking about applies even when there are. When the cases are good, in some sense. It's like, this is not a road we want to go down sometimes, especially now, it's another thread that we unravel from the fabric of the good working order of things, you know, so. Because, look, I trust Andy McCarthy, of course, but even if the case were airtight, there would be 99.9% of the same people out there screaming, this is a horror and an outrage.
- [38:11]
John Podhoretz
Anyway, Seth, that's where the horror fatigue, yeah. Really does have a terrible effect on, on. On Democrats and the liberals ability to harness what might be genuine conservative outrage about things. I mean, it's been 10 years of them screaming about what a monster he was and, and how he hates them. He hates everything. And he, of course, provides ammunition by saying things like I hate my enemies and all of that, but you can't, you know, chicken Little. Like, if everything that he's ever done is a threat to democracy, and then finally he does something that's exactly a threat to democracy, but it's a threat to civil relations between political opponents that. That undergirds the possibility of conducting yourselves fairly in a republic. Why is any conservative going to care? It's like what happened with Brendan. A lot of people on the right said what went on with Brendan Carr was bad. Like most people, I would say most people who care about the First Amendment or care about government interfering in private industry and all of that, but like, they've come back to the well once they just, you know, the well is dry.
- [39:40]
Seth Mandel
Well, I think what also bothers people on the right about this stuff is that there's like this pressure to speak out if you're on the right, specifically about each thing that they feel is not put on, you know, on Democrats. So like, you know, Obama, like Biden's people, leaning on social media companies. Right. Is maybe not the same as something that Brendan Carr did, but if you went through that experience as a conservative, there was no, like, all good liberals must really speak out about this attempt to censor and this attempt to pressure, because we don't know what kind of slippery slope this is going to put us on, you know, to have a president declare an emergency since it's during COVID and say misinformation is a national security risk. And therefore we're going to lean on all these people and we're going to hire a director of censorship and, you know, all that other stuff. You didn't have people on the left saying, you have a. We have a responsibility to speak up on our own side now because. Because this is going to be used on the other side. And then when it happens with Trump again, even if it's an escalation, there's a, it's not just horror fatigue, but a lecture fatigue. There's a fatigue in, you know, feeling like everything Trump does. You know, while it's really good to see conservatives speaking up about Brendan Carr and this and that and you know, it sort of gets tokenized and whatever that's. I think what people really get tired of is, is this sense that conservatives have a responsibility every day to check in and see what they should denounce from their own side, check it off the list and then they can go about their day doing their regular day job or whatever. And that liberals don't have this pressure to do that.
- [41:41]
John Podhoretz
Trip planner by Expedia. You were made to outdo your holiday. You're hammocking and your pooling. We were made to help organize the competition. Expedia made to travel. Right? Well, I used to, I called it a couple of years ago, Jane Costenization. There's a staffer at the New York Times named Jane Coston. She was a conservative, she became a liberal and one of her self appointed jobs, Connor Friedersdorf, another person used to do this. He does it a lot less on the work for the Atlantic for 20 years. And it was the. Why aren't you saying, Seth Mandel, that the behavior of thus and so I expect better. I expect better of you, Seth Mandel. You seem like a very reasonable person. Shouldn't you of all people be saying that Brendan Carr's FCC has overstepped its bounds? Don't you want to make sure that you are intellectually consistent and that the your side is da da da da da. And then it's like, hey lady, Ilhan Omar, case closed. Every three hours you should be tweeting about Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib. And if you're not, shut your trap is all I can say. Because like I say, I hate my enemies and I hate anti Semites. And if you're not every third minute calling out anti Semites on your side, I'm not interested in getting a lecture from you because it was only 80 years ago that half my people were murdered because people like you didn't open up a mouth. And I'm not holding you responsible, but don't you hold me responsible for Brendan Carr. I didn't elect Brendan Carr. I didn't pick Brendan Carr for the fcc. And I've done more to criticize my own side than you ever have. So shut your trap. You know, I mean it gets to that point, that kind of More in sorrow than in anger. Why aren't you, you know, and I have, I have, we have, we all have. We have, We've done it. But, you know, honesty impels me to say, I don't care if James Comey is in trouble. I'm sorry. He has done great damage to this country. And again, if I were a Democrat, I would think he'd done greater damage to this country than I think as a conservative myself, because he got Trump elected. And I'm less concerned about that than you are, you know, So I don't know. Is that hysterical?
- [44:38]
Seth Mandel
Yeah, I mean, I think that's, that's the. No, it's, it's the, it's the hectoring and that's what feels like, you know, it's like the people who would criticize Brendan Carr do so anyway. You know, people, lots of people criticize Brendan Carr not because they were told to do so by, you know, the self imposed moderators of, you know, virtue Online, but because they said, hey, you know, like Ted Cruz didn't call out Brendan Carr because he felt like there was real pressure to be a conservative who cleans up your own house first.
- [45:12]
John Podhoretz
Yeah, right.
- [45:13]
Seth Mandel
I mean, Ted Cruz said what he said, that sounded like a mafia boss, you know, so there's to some extent there's like this, you know, turning who's denouncing it into. The story becomes one of these like, meta games where the media just kind of makes itself, the story turns on itself and then it's like all we're talking about is like the people that we mutually follow on Twitter and what they're talking about and you know, that, that sort of brain scrambling, you know, sort of inside baseball stuff from the, the industry that's supposed to be covering this and explaining it to the outside world, to the people who don't spend all day online, you know, becomes a very sort of personality, personalized thing. And it's tiresome.
- [45:56]
Abe Greenwald
And I have to just say this, and I'm not just saying this because it's my side, but the truth is that the right, whatever that is now, is such a more multifaceted thing, creature than the left is that every time something comes up on one's own side that there is reason to call into question, to denounce, to oppose. You can always find far more sincere principled objections on the right to their own sides doing things wrong than you can on the left. That is, that is just always the case because in part, it's, it's, it has to do with a lot of confusion on the right because the right now means nine different things to nine different factions.
- [46:53]
John Podhoretz
Right.
- [46:54]
Abe Greenwald
The, the, the left is, you know, is like they're on the same page. They're just not all. They didn't all get to the same point yet, but they're all pushing in that same direction.
- [47:05]
John Podhoretz
I've mentioned this before, and I'm going to mention it again. In 1990 or 1991, 1990, David Duke, the head of the KKK, was the Republican nominee for the governorship of Louisiana. And the Republican president of the United States called for everyone to vote for the Democrat. Zoran Mandani, an anti Semitic, anti American socialist, supporter of terrorism, is the mayoral candidate for New York City. And where is Barack Obama or whatever person could be considered the leader? Oh, Kamala Harris said, I support the Democratic nominee for the mayor of New York. So once again, go blow like there.
- [47:57]
Seth Mandel
We're actually asking.
- [47:58]
John Podhoretz
There is a real world example of what a Republican, a responsible Republican president whom people like, you know, Trump think is a loser or whatever, saying, I. It would be a stain on this country and on my party that this guy ends up. The head of the kkk, ends up as governor of Louisiana. Zoram Mamdani is morally no different from being the head of the kkk, as far as I am concerned. And while some people are not endorsing him and the, you know, the. That's a real thing. It's not like there's a. There's a movement on the part of Democrats to deny him.
- [48:45]
Abe Greenwald
Exactly.
- [48:45]
Seth Mandel
No, never.
- [48:46]
John Podhoretz
Zora. Yeah, right.
- [48:47]
Seth Mandel
There's no, like, you know, I'm Chuck Schumer and I'm gonna protect my party from this stuff. There's like, yeah, and, and we sort of, you know, it's like, we're not even asking that much. Like, I, I would love to see. See more denunciation of Zoran Mamdani, but, like, at this point, I will settle for not endorsing him.
- [49:05]
John Podhoretz
Yeah.
- [49:05]
Seth Mandel
But, you know, now I've got Kathy Hochul endorsing him and all these people endorsing him. And you're going to see more, by the way.
- [49:11]
John Podhoretz
Like, right.
- [49:12]
Seth Mandel
Is. Does any, like, the question around Hakeem Jeffries. Right. How close it gets to the election before he does so. And, you know, this and that, like, it's all about endorsing. But if, if this were on the right, it would have been, where are these guys denouncing him daily? Like, forget about Will Hakeem Jeffries endorse him? Why isn't Hakeem Jeffries giving speeches about how this, this is in, you know, I don't want this in my party and we can't, you know, coexist in, you know, my party's a big tent, but it can't be this big A10, et cetera, et cetera. That sort of.
- [49:43]
John Podhoretz
Okay, another sort of. Got another example for you. And I'm not doing this because I'm like defending Republicans. Like, I'm sick of Republicans. There's a lot of Republicans. I can't stand all that. But I'm trying to remember who his name. Now I'm having a brain fart. The Republican congressman who was like a crazy anti Semite.
- [50:03]
Seth Mandel
Steve King.
- [50:04]
John Podhoretz
Steve King. The entire Republican leadership in the House and the Iowa Republican Party and everybody teamed up to get Steve King out of office.
- [50:21]
Seth Mandel
Where he was tripped. The party stripped him of his committee assignments.
- [50:27]
John Podhoretz
Right.
- [50:27]
Seth Mandel
So he couldn't bring home the bacon to his constituents. And the Republican Jewish Coalition got involved against an incumbent.
- [50:34]
John Podhoretz
Right.
- [50:35]
Seth Mandel
And all that, though these were factors that were quite rare.
- [50:38]
John Podhoretz
The point that I'm making here is not again to praise Republicans, but to say that this argument that who's lost their souls is the GOP because they're not policing their own and they're not mad enough about Trump and all that there is a little merit to the idea that Trump's hold on the party is interfering with the proper working order of American Democratic oversight, let's say, by which I mean RFK Jr should be impeached and removed from office as head of the HHS for this Tylenol thing. It is outrageous. It is anti scientific. He is playing some weird game as part of his bought. He is suborning science, forcing people under him to say things that they probably know are not true, all of that. And because of the nature of American politics, the Republicans in the Senate are not going along and looking into him and removing him from office, as is there, as they, as they could do. So I'm not, you know, not happy. But, but, and I'm not. What about it is my point. Like what about though Alejandro Mayorkas perjured himself before Congress. Did the, did the Obama administration do anything about that? Eric Holder found three times in contempt of Congress for actually lying about or refusing to provide materials about the killing of Border Patrol agents. Did they do anything about that? No. Was there any kind of media drumbeat about it? No. What, what my orcas was Biden, you know, so however, now going back the other way, this could be really terrible. Like this could be a kind of watershed moment in which, okay, you know, like, it's Calvin Ball. We're now in Calvin Ball with, with political power in the United States. You get it. You nail people for being your enemies. Everyone gets scared. You know, and by the way, under those circumstances, the criminal violence around, centering around politics just naturally will increase because people will, you know, people will start thinking, well, you know, there's no way to prevent this stuff from happening. The only way to do it is to take somebody out. And it wouldn't necessarily be the president. It could be, you know, Cabinet Secretary, could be Stephen Miller. It could be anybody. I'm not.
- [53:27]
Seth Mandel
It could be an ice facility, somebody shooting an ice facility like that. That's, you know, that's what we're. We're seeing. In other words, we're seeing representations of. But also, the one thing I would say that Trump does worse here, that bothers me, that, that that makes the situation worse is that he exaggerates. Not saying there's no corruption and there's no directing prosecutions against your enemies when Democrats are in power or anything. Trump presents the country as being one in which this is what you do, right? He's like, he says it out loud. He doesn't use euphemism. And he also, every time it happens, he says, this is what they do. This is, look, this Republican got investigated here, this Republican got investigated here, this and that. And Trump sort of paints this picture of this is all the Democrats ever do, which is exaggeration. You know, the Democrats are not actually. They're not a Mafia organization. You know, they're like a government. When they're in government, they do stupid things. They do. Sometimes they do corrupt things. But Trump sort of presents as normal what his opponents are criticizing him of, rather than trying to deny what he's being accused of, right? He'll say, like, yeah, I ordered the Code Red, and so did you. And so did you, everybody order the Code Red. What do you think happens? You know, and that sort of thing. And so that kind of bothers me. That bothers me a lot because I think that people, it's giving people on the right this idea that for decades it's only been one side, you know, ordering the Code Red. And now it's really time for the right to get into office and put everybody in jail and make up for lost time and whatever. And I think that really does also, no long term, just ruin faith in. You know, I think people just sort of give up on these institutions after a while if they really begin to believe that that's all that happens. Well, it's almost like your responsibility to go after your, you know, this is just what you do in office. I think he exaggerates that picture.
- [55:34]
John Podhoretz
Well, he does. And it's also, I think, the ultimate point that you're making is that for many people in this country, that's already happened. It's like, it's not ruined. They're like, it's already ruined. So, you know, it's unilateral disarmament, not to do it, because they did it to us. So we're going to do it to them. And then we understand when they come into office, they'll do it to us, and so then we'll come into office and do it to them, and that's the horror that we're facing in the future. But, of course, it's not clear to me that if Trump had Forborne, you know, said, I'm a different person now, I'm coming in, I want, just want to do things, I'm not going to, like, harness the power of the federal government to punish my enemies, that when he left office, the Democrats wouldn't just go around and say he did everything terrible and all that. The weird thing, of course, is that he started this administration not by going after people, but by springing them. I mean, the thing, you know, I was thinking about the lawyers who have quit this administration, right? You've had these lawyers, this lawyer quit, who had just been appointed in the Eastern District rather than indict Comey. And then, of course, you have the case of Danielle Sassoon in the Southern District of New York who quit because she could not in good conscience agree to the pardon of Eric Adams. So, you know, Trump has done a lot of different things in a lot of different ways to make it clear that he does not respect the good working order of the criminal justice system or the way we do things. And on the other hand, not to excuse him, but to explain him, if there's anybody who would have reason to say this system stinks, it's him, based on what happened to him. Now, there's the political prosecutions, right, which were, which were the Mueller report and the, and the, at least the first impeachment, I think the second impeachment was a convictable offense, but that was the political persecution of him. And then, of course, we had the legal persecutions of him at the state and federal level in, in, in from 2021 to 2024. And so he thinks the system stinks anyway, so what the hell Quick recommendation and then we'll go. Excuse me. And by the way, can you people stop writing and saying, stop clearing your throat if you don't like listening, stop listening. We have to clear our throats. If we use AI to not clear our throats, it sounds worse. We're human beings. You're listening to this for free. Leave us alone, okay? I don't want any more emails from you about how we sometimes clear our throat. Abe did it once. I just did it. You're a human being. You don't like it, go listen to pod, Save America and enjoy yourself, okay?
- [58:34]
Seth Mandel
And thank you to the people. We also do occasionally get letters that say, people should stop telling you to clear your throat. So we appreciate those. Those are fine. Those can keep coming.
- [58:45]
John Podhoretz
Yes. And by the way, now that we're on video, it's not like I can, like, be sucking on a lozenge, you know, because then people would be like, what are you doing sucking on a lozenge while you're doing a podcast? So, Anyway, recommendation. Apple TV Season 5 of Slow Horses has started, goes week by week. Slow Horses is the British spy show about the Ne' Er Do Wells who have been kicked out of MI5 and are in this rubber room place called Slough House, where they sit under the tutelage of the repulsive but brilliant, disgraced agent Jackson Lamb, played in a performance by the Ages by Gary Oldman. Each season corresponds to a novel by Mick Herron, who wrote the series Slow Horses and created all the characters. And this one after a kind of misfired last season, which involved a, you know, sort of like a super criminal and creating super soldiers. And turns out that one of the Slough House people is the secret son of the secret super criminal. And that was not great. But this is. We're back to there's a terrorist incident in London. It involves a mayoral campaign between a Nigel Farage type and a Sadiq Khan type. And the psychopathic genius computer guy at Slough House seems to be being hunted down, seems to be being set up for assassination, and we don't know why. And it seems to be connected to this. And we only have this first episode, and this show is like, it's just a balm. It's a tonic, it's fun, it's. It's amazingly well acted. The situation is just fantastic. And just watching Gary Oldman, who is really only on the show, like 10 or 15 minutes an episode, even though he's the star of it, he just kind of like pops in, says something, does something and then pops out but is obviously like the greatest spy in British history. He's just like an unsupportable person as a human being anyway. Slow horses, Apple tv. You don't need to watch the previous seasons to start now. You really don't. I mean you will be falling into the middle but it's a self contained story and you can pick up, it's almost like picking up a story in the middle but you, you figure you know whoever, you'll figure out who everybody is after about five minutes. So if you have a war watch it. You could just start here. As I told my 15 year old son who's like I can't, I have to watch everything from the beginning. But I'm telling you I told him he could watch it and you can too. So have a wonderful weekend everybody. For Seth and Abe, I'm John Pot Horitz. Keep the candle burning.