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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]
Oliver Darcy
It'S going Hope for the best Expect.
- [00:21]
Christine Rosen
The worst, hope for the best.
- [00:25]
John Podhoretz
Welcome to the Commentary Magazine daily podcast. Today is Friday, September 19, 2025. I am John Pot Horace, the editor of Commentary magazine. With me, as always, executive editor Abe Greenwald. Hi, Abe.
- [00:37]
Christine Rosen
Hi, John.
- [00:38]
John Podhoretz
Senior editor Seth Mandel. Hi, Seth.
- [00:41]
Oliver Darcy
Hi, John.
- [00:41]
John Podhoretz
And Social Commentary columnist Christine Rosen. Hi, Christine.
- [00:45]
Abe Greenwald
Hi, John.
- [00:49]
John Podhoretz
I. I find that being compelled to talk now and for days to come about the question of the employment status of Jimmy Kimmel seems to be an enervating prospect. And we're not really talking about Jimmy Kimmel, of course. We're talking about the question of the application of government power and free speech and the relation between corporations and the federal government and Donald Trump's view of his rights and powers and authorities as president. So I guess those are very big topics. But I do want to say, point out one thing before we go on, which is that according to what I've seen in the last day or so, Jimmy Kimmel was averaging in the advertiser demographic. That is 18 to 49, which is how television stations sell ads, is largely to this cohort, even though broadcast television is now increasingly something that mostly older and very much older people watch. But that is the coveted demographic, because according to advertisers, this is the time in life when people will switch brands. And advertising is about getting people to not to reinforce that you want to buy the brand you already have, but to switch to some, to a new brand or try a new brand or something like that, that's really the purpose of it. And that he has, in the coveted 18 to 49 demographic, 110,000 viewers a night on average. So that's about twice our daily audience, just to give you a sense. And so in the world of podcasting, we, of course, don't have a gigantic audience. Obviously, there are podcasters who aren't necessarily five days a week, although some are who have audiences in the multiples of 10, if not 20 or 30 of him. So let me ask you this question. Why is Jimmy Kimmel still on the air when ABC could go to Joe Rogan and pay Joe Rogan $50 million a year to bring his 190 million downloads a month audience, from Spotify to ABC? So I'll tell you why. Because Joe Rogan is too controversial. He's too controversial, generate a lot of negative publicity. Stockholders might not like it, might have some complaints that go to the FCC that lead to fines like Howard Stern used to earn as a broadcaster before he went to to streaming or whatever you want to call Spotify app, apping.
- [03:57]
Christine Rosen
But I don't see it making sense for Rogan either or a Rogan.
- [04:01]
John Podhoretz
I just want to use this as a thought experiment because doesn't that, wouldn't that seem to suggest to you that in the world in which Jimmy Kimmel travels, in the world of being an ABC host that makes he makes 15 or 20 million dollars a year. That obligation number one in the Hippocratic oath of being Jimmy Kimmel, a broadcaster on a network with more than 200 affiliates, is to not be wildly offensive. Like in other words, like obviously ABC could generate a great, a much larger audience with a more provocative host. But I and they don't and they haven't for decades they have steered away from, you know, they never gave Howard Stern a late night show. You know, they never, no one ever gave Howard Stern a show. He was the most popular broadcaster in America because of other considerations.
- [04:58]
Abe Greenwald
But see, I think of Kimmel as more akin to one of those figures in an economic infrastructure who's a holdout of an older time while everyone else is moving along. So he's like the travel agent after the Internet has allowed us to book our tickets directly. So he's become kind of a boutique figure. But he is actually being non controversial for his boutique audience. So the rest of the world's booking their tickets online and booking adventure travel, that's Joe Rogan Extreme Travel. And they're just going to go directly to the source themselves. And then you have this little bubble of people who want to be kind of shepherded along by a nice host who's going to reinforce their prior convictions and maybe they'll get a few laughs and they'll see a few celebrities. And that's the old way of doing things. So it's interesting to see who's rushing to his defense on free speech grounds and who's rushing to his defense on he's a great comedian grounds. Because I think that distinction might matter in terms of the people who understand where entertainment is headed.
- [05:55]
John Podhoretz
I think that's a fantastic analogy. Sort of the know the last, the last buggy whip salesman or whatever. The problem is that is that with that is that when I said he has an obligation to be uncontroversial, that's not to his boutique audience. That is if he wants to generate a larger audience that would be larger than 100,000 people. Maybe the thing to do is not to Make a program that is inaccessible emotionally in terms of its humor and everything to half the country. Like, how about not doing that? How about making something that non liberals will watch as well as liberals. Now maybe right now liberals can't possibly watch anything that non liberals would watch. When Jimmy Fallon tried to make that show in 2016 and 2017, he spent a year getting attacked and treated as though he were a buffoon for not going after Trump. And then he shifted and Colbert became more popular than he was and he shifted ground and became more critical of Trump in order. But that was a different time or a different moment or a very focused and concentrated moment. If you're abc, why are you going to keep him on the air after this point? Like just, I'm saying commercially, so I'm saying his obligation as a broadcaster, not to ABC, but sort of like to the, to the act of doing this job well is to create something that is of greatest appeal to the greatest number of people. It's broadcasting.
- [07:32]
Abe Greenwald
But this is where, but this is where Trump has. Once again and again I will state for the record that I think what Brendan Carr and the FCC did was completely wrong, just wrong. That, that kind of jawboning and any. I'm a conservative, so I think it's wrong. I thought it was wrong when Biden did it too. And any, anyone who calls themselves a conservative, who's trying to defend that is not truly a conservative because a Democratic president with that power and using it in that way would, would also be called out by us. So I'm consistent on that. But this is why I think they should have let, let him have his response, put him back, put him on air. And because all of the reports we have is that he was going to double down on the anti Maga stuff, the attacking Trump stuff. And that's where I think the audience just general kicked him out. I mean he, he does owe the broadcasting because it's the affiliate pressure. If Trump had stayed out of it, the FCC had stayed out of it, that pressure was starting to build and those affiliates were not going to run his show anymore because their audience didn't like him. And so if he was going to double down on his bubble and because actually the world he operates in gives him nothing but kudos, now he's become a free speech martyr. It's going to make it more difficult for abc, which is only, I think temporarily suspended or indefinitely suspended him to kill his show.
- [08:48]
John Podhoretz
So whole thing is difficult in what, in what respect? What, what, what is the cost to ABC at This point.
- [08:55]
Abe Greenwald
Well, they look like they've been cowtowing to. They look like they look weak and they look well. And the thing is, like, they could have fired him, just as you say, because his ratings were terrible. They could have just done that. And the affiliates don't like him. He made an obnoxious remark about Charlie Kirk's assassin. That's all. Enough to just, you know, have him fill, fill out his contract and off he goes.
- [09:14]
John Podhoretz
Right.
- [09:14]
Oliver Darcy
Well, liking him is. Yeah.
- [09:18]
Christine Rosen
Yesterday I wrote in the newsletter, I feel deprived of the opportunity of having seen that play out.
- [09:27]
John Podhoretz
That's right.
- [09:27]
Christine Rosen
I mean, that would have been a great thing. But also, I just want to. John's question. I just want to, you know, why wouldn't the show or any of these shows try to appeal to a broader audience? I'm serious when I say it would take someone involved in the creation of that show to understand what that would mean, what a broader audience would want to see to understand that if you're not liberal or leftist, it doesn't necessarily mean you're crazy and evil. I don't think there is a sort of critical mass, to say the least, of people involved in the creation of television who would begin to wrap their heads around a sensibility that could appeal to non liberals.
- [10:18]
Oliver Darcy
And there's another problem, which is the incentive structure. Right of comedy today has left very few people who would fit the bill that they would be looking for explicitly, which is not a Joe Rogan, but still somebody who could appeal across demographics. Like you are. You're sort of trained in this business now to pick a side. In a weird way, this is what happened with Dave Chappelle when he was, you know, when he was shunted over to the right because he criticized trans people.
- [10:57]
John Podhoretz
Right.
- [10:58]
Oliver Darcy
And then from that day forward, Dave Chappelle was referred to as a right wing comedian, even though anybody who knows his politics knows that he's not a right winger. But it was. You were a right winger if you made certain types of jokes. And so you were like brought up in this world to choose whether you're going to be a Stephen Colbert or a.
- [11:19]
John Podhoretz
Well, let's make it clear. Let's make this clear. Kimmel is not a comedian. Kimmel is a talk show host. These are different jobs. He may go do stand up sometimes. He wasn't. He's not a comedian anymore. And Stephen Colbert was never a comedian. Stephen Colbert was a sketch comedy actor who was then a fake news correspondent and a performer who then got played a, played a character, a fictional character. With his own name on a fake on a talk show in which he was playing Bill O'Reilly and then got his own show. Kimmel.
- [11:57]
Abe Greenwald
They're not writers. They are not. They did not start out as writers. The ones who start out as writers are so much better at this job.
- [12:02]
John Podhoretz
But he is not a comedian. And though these are not comedy shows, they're variety shows. They're late night shows where somebody does a monologue, then there's, then they have on Matt Damon if they're lucky or they have on, you know, somebody from a. They have some, you know, young actress who was on a streaming show and then they have a musical guest and then they're done. That's. It's a variety show. The reason I bring up Rogan is to say if Kimmel gets to be contra. If ABC has to defend a controvert, if Jimmy Kimmel becomes a controversial figure that ABC has to defend against affiliates and make a stand for free speech, maybe they could have had somebody 10 times more popular in the role of controversial late night host than he.
- [12:53]
Oliver Darcy
Of course, especially because they took Jimmy Kimmel on how they housebroke him. Yeah, he was controversial. They took a figure that what would have been controversial in our day and age and, and, and made him housebroken into this.
- [13:10]
John Podhoretz
Right. But so the point that I'm trying to make is ABC is in a fascinating spot because I think as they think this through and why would they want to spend intellectual and political capital defending a relatively not unpopular, but so like an underperforming show. His contract was up in December or something like that. From what I hear they, they thought until a couple of days ago he was largely a corporate asset. He would go to board meetings and people liked him. He hosted who Wants to be a Millionaire. He could were a liable host of the Oscars though now Conan o' Brien ate his lunch and is going to host it for the second time. But he hosted like three years in a row. And so he was a corporate asset in larger terms. So they would probably keep him on. So now he's not a corporate asset. The show doesn't do well and for this they have to go to war with the right, not just Trump or the fcc, but for this they have to go to war. Now they don't have to go to war. Kimmel is making them go. Kimmel, by behaving the way he has behaved sort of like was, was this what I'm saying? Like as a. He should have been knowingly inoffensive in the middle of an extraordinarily heated moment in American history. And he went the other way.
- [14:48]
Abe Greenwald
And so that's a point.
- [14:50]
John Podhoretz
Horrible what Brendan Carr did, but I think in the world of karma, what he did was, you know, what, a guy just got assassinated in front of everybody. We all saw him die in a tweet, in a gunshot. We saw his head snap back and get. And be murdered in front of our eyes. And three days later, he's making jokes and we're like, it's not even a joke. I don't even know what it was. This kind of like, you know, like, snarky remark about how MAGA is trying to exploit this or something like that. How about at a moment of, like, delicacy, keeping your mouth shut because he doesn't.
- [15:27]
Abe Greenwald
This, this is Abe's point. I think it's not just that the people who create shows like his have never really encountered nor understand where the rest of us were when that happened to Charlie Kirk. It's that he himself is constantly rewarded in the environment he is in by saying exactly what he did say about MAGA and Charlie Kirk. And there's no way around that. In that. That's where I think things are shifting really rapidly, because suddenly. And we had versions of this in Trump's first term, we had versions of this during the Biden administration, but this is happening quickly. And I think the folks who have been very comfortable in the positions they've been in, saying what they're saying, even mild snark about any half of the country's political views aren't comfortable anymore. And I don't think they should be uncomfortable because the federal government is threatening them. That's the most important thing about this whole story. But I do think that they should attend to what people are pushing back on in terms of what they're saying about people like Charlie Kirk that they need to listen to, because that's half the country.
- [16:28]
Oliver Darcy
Can I ask a question? Because I honestly don't know the answer. I was. I watched Conan in college and so, like, my introduction to late night TV was, you know, Triumph the Insult Comic Dog, and there was a masturbating bear. And, you know, everybody remembers all the Conan characters. What is, what is the job? What, what is. What is the role here that Kimmel is supposed to play, and what is the role that they're looking for now going forward? I don't have the frame of reference going all the way back to Late nights history. What is the job right now?
- [17:08]
John Podhoretz
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- [17:37]
Oliver Darcy
I'm Oliver Darcy. And I'm John Passantino. We have spent years covering the inner workings of the news media, tech, politics, Hollywood. And now through our nightly newsletter, status.
- [17:48]
John Podhoretz
And we're bringing that same reporting and sharp analysis to a new podcast, Power Lines.
- [17:54]
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. No spin, no fluff, just sharp analysis.
- [18:05]
Abe Greenwald
That isn't afraid to call it like it is.
- [18:07]
John Podhoretz
We also pull back the curtain via.
- [18:08]
Oliver Darcy
Our exclusive reporting to take you behind the scenes. 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.
- [18:28]
John Podhoretz
Oh my God. That's Power Lines presented by Status. Follow Powerlines and listen on Apple, Spotify, Amazon Music or your favorite podcast app. Nobody knows because it's a. As Sherry Redstone said yesterday, she was the owner of, you know, Paramount and CBS until, you know, until last week or is making the deal to. She said late night is not a viable business in broadcasting anymore. So, you know, 50 years ago, Johnny Carson had 30 million viewers. Let's think about that for a minute. Kimmel has a million viewers. Thirty years ago, Johnny Carson, who was the most popular television broadcaster in history, had 30 million people watching him a night. So Kimmel has a 30th of the audience that at the high water mark of broadcast late night television. And that was, by the way, there was only Carson. Like Carson was so big that every now and then CBS or NBC, CBS or ABC would throw up somebody against him to see if they could get a little like eat a little bit of his audience away. Dick Cavett did it for years and other people and it didn't work until Carson retired and then, you know, and then it was sort of like Leno versus Letterman and this versus that and blah, blah, books and all this. And then as that was happening, audience atomized. And now if it's 11:30 at night, you can watch Jimmy Kimmel or you can watch, you know, the. The new Netflix show with Jason Bateman and Jude Law. You can watch anything. So the question is, why would you watch Jimmy Kimmel? So Sherry Redstone, who ran a network, said, this is no longer a viable business. That's why. That's why Colbert was fired. In this sense, you fire Colbert or you. You let them go because it's not a viable business. And b, and this is like, you don't need the source of Trump being mad at you. Now that we look at it and go, this is not America. We're not supposed to worry that the President is mad at you. But I mentioned this the other day in 2009, when the partial nationalization of the automobile industry took place at Barack Obama's behest. And the debtors that these companies going into default had, you know, some of them had lent them money late. And there's a thing called mezzanine funding. And you have, like, the order of debtors. And this is common law. This is, like, literally why common law came into existence. And there were people who, if the companies went into profit, were going to get money back from, you know, as. As the companies got into better shape. And Barack Obama said, no, we're going to pay the unions off first. And the debtor said, wait a minute, what are you talking about? Like, we have contracts. Like, we were last in, first out. We get the first money. And Obama said, well, yeah, that's what your contract says, but do you really want to piss me off? You want me to go out there and go in nationwide space and say, we saved the automobile industry and now evil hedge funds are insisting on getting their taste? Is that what you want? You want to have that fight? I'll have that fight with you. And he had just gotten, you know, whatever. He got 380 electoral votes and 54% of the vote and 60 senators. You know, like, all of that stuff where he was, like, uniquely powerful and he did not hesitate to say he was going to use this power to, you know, to sort of, like, work. Work his will. So this is a bipartisan. Presidents have the power to go around and push private industry around. They'll use it like, it's not that often that they have it. Trump has it right now, not only because he's willing to say and do things that other people have not been willing to say or do, but because he has the Senate. So the Senate. If the Senate were in Democratic hands, Brendan Carr could be, like, literally today, subpoenaed put, put, put it in front of the Senate Oversight Committee and had his lunch eaten or been okay.
- [22:47]
Abe Greenwald
But because he has the, because he has the Congress and the White House, he also has the ability to do what a lot of conservatives have been arguing for a long time, which is get the FCC out of this business of monitoring content entirely, which is what a lot of us have wanted. It would just remove this problem for this administration and future administrations. No one has to do it.
- [23:05]
John Podhoretz
Obviously, he thinks it's an opportunity. I mean, that's the problem is what do you do when you have a president who actually doesn't care about free speech or doesn't care about constitutional niceties and all that? And that is a problem. And I'm not here to say that it's not a problem. But I'm also not going to stand here and be told by people who are going crazy about this that ABC has some kind of moral obligation to defend Jimmy Kimmel, an underperforming performer who got them into trouble. He got ABC into. ABC was just standing there minding its own business. And Jimmy Kimmel opens up his mouth and creates a crisis for abc. I mean, I'm just, you know, it's like they need to do it in order to defend free speech, because they're a free speech. You know, they're, they, they produce content and all of that, and we should all defend free speech, okay? But the emotional logic here is, if you're Bob Iger, it's like, I'm going to go to the mattresses for this. Is this what I, is this what I want to spend my intellectual capital on? On Jimmy Kimmel's 110,000 viewers in the demographic? He's a jerk. He did something jerky. I, you know, like, I wouldn't have done it. And now the affiliates are mad at me and the President's mad at me and the FCC is mad at me. I don't need this trouble. And, and, but if he doesn't do that, as you say, he's going to look weak. He's going to look like he kowtowed to the President. Well, maybe we're at a moment at which, as in 2009 with Obama or as in 2021 with Democrats and Biden and Covid, where they didn't mind kowtowing to the President. I mean, they were, they, they people kowtowed to the President. And so Trump wants, wants kowtowing. And Iger is not a, clearly, it's not above kowtowing if he has To. I'm just describing real world.
- [25:00]
Oliver Darcy
Well, they also, they also, he's, you know, they've been fighting.
- [25:03]
Abe Greenwald
They.
- [25:03]
Oliver Darcy
They spent a few years fighting with DeSantis and the broader conservative activist world not that long ago. And so it's possible that they're just tired, tired of fighting. And B and B, remember they. Disney went through a CEO change and they had realized that they had missed, you know, they were doing something wr. Even. Even if they believed that morally they were right in whatever it was they were doing ideologically with the movies. They. They went through a management change because they realized that they. They were not handling the way they were fighting government well. And they are now changing the way they are approaching a fight with government, which is not that surprising.
- [25:49]
John Podhoretz
I mean, here's the thing. Mark Halpert makes this point really well in his next Update podcast, which you can hear today, which is this is a watershed moment because conservatives are asserting a cultural power that they have never asserted before. What we've largely done over the last three as we. As. There's been complete parity really, in the United States between left and right. So there's political parody except in the. At the high, you know, at the high towers of culture in which you have overwhelming liberal control at news organizations, at universities, in Hollywood and all of that. And so alternate forms of communication have been sort of like incepted in a weird way. Podcasting is one of them. You know, Fox News was one of them. These little Fox knockoffs were very, you know, various other things, websites, all like they've created. There's a conservative ecosystem apart from the liberal ecosystem. And every now and then it pops up and like, says the liberal ecosystem, hi, we're here. You should pay attention to us. Like, when Sound of Freedom canceled, by the way, by. By Disney, not released by Disney and sold off to this little thing makes $200 million at the box office. So it's like, you know, you could make more movies like Sound of Freedom and make a lot of money. $15 million turns you back $200 million. You don't do it. And we're in this ecosystem. And now it's like, you know what? I don't want this ecosystem. David Ellison is going to buy Paramount and, and turn CBS News and maybe CNN if he buys Warner Brothers. Right wing put Barry, or, you know, not liberal, put Barry Weiss in charge there. And ABC is clearly, I think in the end going to. Going to silence or, you know, end Kimmel's show. And Kimmel can go off and start a substack and start a, start a podcast and have something on YouTube and all those people who watch him now, can we watch him there? And he'll be fine. And the question is, you know, if Trump and the administration tastes this blood in the water, are they going to try to muscle other people in? Illegitimate and unjust.
- [28:06]
Abe Greenwald
And that's, I would just draw one distinction with, with the picture, the accurate picture you just portrayed and noting the irony that it'd be funny if someone like Kimmel ends up doing the thing that the upstart conservative people started doing in order to get more of the cultural capital, it's that there is also within, among our side, a lot of other fractious debates. There's populism and conservatism. So the conservative culture war has changed dramatically in Trump's second term. There is a war about populism and maga, maga, populism and conservatism. And those two are not the same thing. And I know I keep hammering this point on the podcast. I hope our listeners will indulge me. But there is a cultural component to each of those, too. And we talked about it in terms of, you know, how Tucker Carlson is now behaving. He came out of the conservative world and is now a fringe populist, I guess. I'm not sure exactly what to call him. And that that battle will also have a really. Who wins that battle will have an impact on, on what that conservative cultural ecosystem is going to look like in the years to come.
- [29:11]
John Podhoretz
So I think, Abe. So we don't like Kimmel. I really didn't like Colbert, not, by the way. Not just politics. I don't like. I think those shows are good. They're not, they're not good shows. Fallon is actually a better show. It's sillier. So in some ways it's better. I don't really watch any of them. So the fight then is not aesthetic. I mean, it could be aesthetic like, like Bob. I could say I don't, I don't like Kimmel's show. I've never liked Kimmel show. We've had him because they keep telling me that he's good, but I'd really rather get rid of him. Iger has no, like, he's got, he's got nowhere to hide. He's. He's got to make a decision one way or another about whether the suspension ends. Sinclair and Next are the two big affiliates have said if he doesn't apologize, we're not putting him back on the air, which I think is effectively means that he will be canceled because that's like a third of ABC's affiliate. So his audience of 1 million people, the demographic will go down to, excuse me, 110,000 people in demographic will go down to 40, will go down to a lower level than our audience while he is on this show making $20 million a year, being broadcast four nights a week.
- [30:40]
Christine Rosen
I mean, the problem is that this whole constellation of liberal late night comic pundits have turned this spot, this hour at this, this, this job into a trap. You know what? If you fill it again with yet another one of them, you're going to have the same problem, you know, with some new slightly, you know, different version of someone who is there to provide therapy for liberals. You're going to end up with, with some, some sort, some version of the same problem. But on the other hand, you know, this kind of gets to Seth's earlier point. I don't even, you know, before I said that there's no one who's involved in making these shows who understands what would appeal to a broader audience. I'm not sure I do either, to be honest. Has a lot to do with how the country has changed. Carson was, could, could preside over this massive, massive audience because there was more, and I'm not saying this in a kumbaya way, there just was more common ground culturally, experientially. Everything we are, we are so much more fragmented now that I don't know how you get, how you appeal to more than 1, 2 adjacent lanes out there.
- [32:26]
John Podhoretz
Yeah, but that's the weird part of this, is that everybody, people in this world have made their peace in some sense or other with the shrinking audience. Right? In other words, like Kimmel puts up numbers like that in, you know, anytime in 20 years ago or earlier and he's off the air Tuesday. Like, it's like, what, there's 110,000 people in the demographic go on the unemployment line for the rest of your life. Now that's a kind of mildly defensible number. Look, nobody watches late night. The combined late night audience of the three shows on the networks is 5 million people or something like that. Like, so, you know, this is how it goes. And advertisers are still willing to pay for ads on it. And so, you know, at least it kind of supports itself in some fashion. Even though we heard that Colbert was losing what, $40 million a year. Haven't heard that Kimmel loses money, but it seems likely that the show loses money if that's the size of the demographic. But as I say, he was thought of as a corporate asset, which obviously he will never be thought of again. So I don't think the demand for what to do with that slot is like, I need 5 million people to watch every night or, you know, there's going to be hell to pay. They've already made their peace with this, with the. With the smaller audience. But that double time, weirdly enough, obliges Kimmel or Colbert, whatever, at a deeply sensitive moment where the. Where things are. We're not talking about an ordinary week. For the first. First time, people under 40 in the United States saw somebody assassinated and saw it in real time and live and saw it again and again if they wanted to watch it. That is an unprecedented experience in our time. Nothing like this has ever happened before. And you know what you do when nothing like something ever happens before? You take a bre. Breath. You don't open a mouth in five seconds because you don't understand the sensitivities yet. And particularly if it happens in the realm of your ideological opponents, you better take a breath because you really don't understand them and just do no harm until you can get your sea legs. And that's where I think Kimmel, they want to make him a free speech martyr. Congratulations and good luck to them. But if you're like a serious person looking at, you know, like, the obligations of a public figure, Kimmel failed by creating this controversy that he did not have to create. Yes, free speech. But, you know, I could sit, I could right now say, you know, something. I will now say something. No, I'm not going to say it, but I could say something that was, like, totally outrageous. I'm not. The FCC has no, like, control over us. We're not broadcast. But I could say something that would outrage even, you know, our donors and our sponsors and all that, and all that, that I might believe in my darkest moments about stuff relating to Gaza or whatever, but I know not to do it. Like, I know that I'm not. I'm not going to let my ID out because I have responsibilities as I speak. Can I. Yeah.
- [36:04]
Abe Greenwald
I just want to add something because you said something really important. And I think our listeners should also realize that under the Biden administration, when Democrats controlled Congress, they actually did want to expand the FCC's reach to be able to police content on things like podcasts and on social media and all these other larger platforms and cable news, which was the big one for them, and that was not successful. However, this is. This is actually why one of the concerns about how, how Trump's FCC is behaving should concern anyone who's worried about speech on the right as much as on the left and free speech in general is that if, that, if the FCC's reach does expand into these other fields, then we will be, will be much more cautious about the kind of conversations we have on this podcast or anyone has on cable news or anywhere on a, on an Internet platform. That is actually, for me, the real long term danger of a lot of these efforts. Trump is scoring these as victories, and it suits his vanity to be able to talk about all the terrible people who say terrible things about him. But there is a principle at stake here in terms of how we have conversations. And that worries me a great deal going forward because that used to be something that I had a lot of confidence that conservatives would never allow to happen if they had power. And I no longer have that confidence.
- [37:16]
Oliver Darcy
And a good example of that is yesterday, Republican Senator Cynthia Loomis, who is from Wyoming, said, here's her quote. Under normal times, in normal circumstances, I tend to think that the First Amendment should always be sort of the ultimate right and that there should be almost no checks and balances on it. I don't feel that way anymore. So that's the point, right, that there you have republic, a Republican senator saying, you know, I, these are not normal times. And now we're back in the, you know, are we always going to be governed by emergency powers now? You know, we had it, it's emergency because so we need the, you know, the tariffs because it's an emergency. We need this because it's an emergency. We need. Now do we need, you know, are we going to get a fight over the First Amendment because it's an emergency? All these things going from emergency to emergency, but it's bipartisan. You don't, whatever party is in power, when this stuff happens to someone on their side, this is their response.
- [38:20]
Abe Greenwald
Well, and we've had, look with this country's history, we've had, you know, during war time, During World War II, we had a kind of government censorship board. You know, there were, there were. The government actually did use its power to censor things that it thought might aid the enemy. But as soon as the conflict ended, the people in charge of that effort immediately disbanded it because they knew that if you left even a tiny one or two people buried in a federal bureaucratic office doing that work, it would lead to trouble. And it's why when Biden tried to create that Disinformation board. The American public was like, no, we don't want anything like that. And it wasn't the problem of just their branding of it and the hubris that suggested about what they thought of their power. It's that Americans don't want or like that. And for exactly. The reason Seth said is that this is a problem where you give that kind of power to a federal bureaucrat or a government agency, they will use it. And it is very difficult, once it's created, to remove it. That's why we always dismantle those efforts in times of real emergency, which this is not. This is not a time of emergency.
- [39:23]
John Podhoretz
My concern here, you're describing, you know, the conservative view of, you know, philosophically conservative view, free speech and government power. Donald Trump is not a conservative exactly. Does not hold these views. And the post conservative right is sowing a feeling its oats. And it is, it is, it is seeing how far it can go and what it can do. And this is a very raw power construction. They had the power. They used it to oppress us. They used it to oppress us, particularly in the last four years, you know, deplatforming people, throwing them off social media, silencing J. Bhattacharya and Scott Atlas and people like that, whose unorthodox views of COVID turned out to be truer to the actual data than Fauci and everybody else in the public health bureaucracies. They wouldn't let us go to church, they wouldn't let us go to the beach. They wouldn't let our kids go to school. And now the shoe is on the other foot, and this has been 50 years. They mock us, they. They make sitcoms about how we're terrible. They make programs. They, you know, they do all this, and now we have the power, and we are going to exercise the power. It is not how we feel these things should go. Why can I support what Trump has done with the universities and the efforts he's taken against the universities, which we're told is a threat to free speech, because the universities broke the law. They broke the law in the Civil Rights act of 1964. It's Title 6, which obliged universities to protect the rights of defined minority groups, among whom are Jews. And they broke the law, and they deserve to have the book thrown at them and to be punished for breaking the law and to have sanctions issued, including fines, and including the withholding of federal grants, because the law was broken. But if Trump had just gone after the university, much as I would have loved it if he'd gone, you know, given speeches about how evil the universities are in this way or that way and the other way. If that had not been the case, it would have been indefensible because universities are private institutions and they're private actors and they have enormous power and it's terrible and I hate them and all of that. But they are private institutions and he doesn't have the right to, to harass and torment them. He does have the right and the obligation under his oath to enforce the law.
- [42:19]
Christine Rosen
Obama did it though, by the way. I mean, yes, you know, they, they were happy to comply, but you know, he, he, he harassed in this, in a sense with the dear colleague letters on the star chambers. He harassed universities that did not break the law.
- [42:40]
John Podhoretz
No, but this is like saying here I'm gonna harass you. I'm gonna give you a big giant mallet with which you can harass students on your campus that you don't like. Right. And they're not like, no, I don't want that mallet. Those, you know, sort of like that's what Trump did, wanted Obama to do that. Sure.
- [43:02]
Oliver Darcy
And that's in a sense that's what Columbia was, why Columbia was itching for a deal because they knew in order to get their, their campus under control, somebody had to force them to, you know, to institute some of these changes. It's just that the facult faculty hated it until the faculty rebelled and with the Dear college letters under Obama, the faculty loved it. Everybody loved it.
- [43:26]
John Podhoretz
Faculty loved it, the administration loved it. No, the only people who didn't love it were the people who were, who had their, the 19 year old kids who had their lives ruined by false accusations of sexual misconduct. And then it had to flip where they had to use, you know, lawsuits to protect themselves because the federal government was not, had literally joined the jackals.
- [43:52]
Abe Greenwald
And the first, the first term, first term Trump made the regulations because Dear Colleague letter was just a suggestion, a bullying suggestion. But he changed the regulations so that, that couldn't happen anymore in his first term, which was a very, a long, a longer term process but, but with longer term effects. Can I. You know something you just said, John, really struck me because of all the coverage. I've been reading about the Kimmel stuff over the last few days. I've noticed that in the New York Times and a couple other places when they're analyzing the broader threat to free speech, you know, which is how they're framing all of this now, they keep bringing up something that is about law and that's the declaration of Antifa as a terrorist organization. And I know you got the conversation with Andy the other day was excellent. Really helped me clarify how those distinctions are made. But I would say to a lot of people to watch very closely how that is going to be subsumed in the, in the left wing narrative about what's going on here in order to downplay what might in fact be organized violent activity on the left and to try to sanitize that as a free speech issue. Because that, the fact that that popped up and it really struck me because I thought I'm with Abe, like, yeah, if they're terrorist organization, call them a terrorist organization, go after how they are organized, how they are funded, all of that, that they're certainly violent and dangerous. And Joe Biden's attempt to constantly talk about it as an idea, not a thing, was ridiculous. But I would just say, I would just caution people to be very skeptical if they see that in brought into this orbit of free speech discussion because that is not peaceful assembly when, when Antifa gets together, they're not super peaceful.
- [45:27]
John Podhoretz
So I'm Mark Halpern. 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. I mean, the thing about Antifa, they get together and they violate the law and then you can prosecute them for breaking the law. The problem that happened on college campuses for two years was that people were breaking laws on an hourly basis on campus. They were, they were interfering with people's right of free movement. They were, you know, in some cases. There was a weird thing happened the other day also where somebody had a whole fit. Somebody spit on a. There was a Charlie Kirk memorial. Someone came up to somebody who was painting the rock or something and then yelled at them and called them, you know, evil and then spit on them and. And the person got arrested. And there was a whole thing about how you should. Are. You're not allowed to say that Charlie Kirk was a, you know, that you can't criticize Charlie Kirk. It's like you are not allowed to spit on another person. That is, you know, in. I think in almost, almost every body of common law that is a misdemeanor. It's not assault, but you are not. It is illegal to spit on someone else knowingly and should be a felony. Maybe it is a felony. I don't know what state we're in, but it's close. Yeah, it's disgusting. And you could. You could transmit disease, whatever. But my point is, like, so disgusting, people are always calling things speech that aren't speech and thereby trying to get out of the consequences of it. Like, Mahmoud Khalil has now been. A judge in Louisiana, has said he is to be deported either to Algeria or Syria, the two places it's not quite clear where what he is a native of or what passport he holds.
- [48:11]
Oliver Darcy
Or whose citizenship has Algerian citizenship but was born in Syria.
- [48:16]
John Podhoretz
Right. Okay. But. But he. Anyway, so these are the two under, under our blood, you either deport someone to their country of origin or to where they, you know, where they have legal status. Okay. And the finding is that he lied on his immigration documents because he did ask whether he had political associations, which.
- [48:37]
Abe Greenwald
We speculated about at the time. Remember, that was our theory. That was our theory of the case.
- [48:41]
John Podhoretz
That he did not say that he had worked for UNWRAP and that he had worked for. And that he was organizing or involved in this organization Qad. And it's not that working for UNRWA is illegal, and it's not that starting Qad is illegal, but he was asked a question and he did not answer it and you weren't. And that is because he did not want the government to know that he had worked for UNWRA or started this thing Qad, because he didn't want there to be any friction in his document. And so he lied on when he signed the. The bottom of the document, and that is a deportable offense after a judge in New Jersey said, you can't deport him because he's a threat to American foreign policy. So there was a reason that I mentioned this and now I can't remember where.
- [49:38]
Oliver Darcy
I think it's that he can't claim speech because some speech is lying on a federal form.
- [49:44]
John Podhoretz
Yeah, that's not.
- [49:45]
Oliver Darcy
And that's illegal.
- [49:46]
John Podhoretz
Yeah, you're not. When you sign a.
- [49:49]
Oliver Darcy
That something said, but that's not speech.
- [49:52]
John Podhoretz
Right. When you sign the bottom. Now, can you lie? I mean, this is sort of an interesting question. It's like Jimmy Kimmel lied about it. Now, there's a whole thing. You can parse his sentence if you want to study it Talmudically and say he didn't actually say that MAGA knew that Tyler Robinson was maga, and then they're lying about it. But he basically said that. Right. So. But do you make a free speech martyr out of somebody who tells a lie? Sort of an interesting moral question.
- [50:24]
Abe Greenwald
Well, we make free. I mean, look, Skokie, Illinois, the KKK marching down the street was a free, again, peaceful assembly. So often free speech avatars are terrible people. They just are. But that the principle remains even. In fact, it's the most important to protect in those cases.
- [50:43]
John Podhoretz
But that's not the so in. And so there was six months of defending Mahmoud Khalil. He lied on his immigration form. His defenders are now saying this is a pretext. They were just, you know, they're hunting for a reason to deport him. Since this court found that, you know, he couldn't be deported as a threat to American foreign policy, which was the. Which was the doctrine that Marco Rubio had activated in announcing his deportation. That, by the way, is not a final finding. And Khalil's lawyers have now asked that judge, whose name is slightly similar to mine, So I can't. It's like podniaz or something like that. Parbia, I can't remember. Anyway, they're like importuning him to do something to intervene here because there is apparently no right of appeal like this. This is it. Like, he's going. Unless somehow this judge takes some extraordinary measure. It's not clear what right he would have to interfere with the finding that Khalil had misled the government on his. On his immigration application. You know, and that if, if he did, he did, and there's no question about it. And you can't just say, I don't want him to be deported because I'm a judge, though that's pretty close to what people do. But like, okay, is that the martyr you want? Like, in the end, it's like you are. They're constantly defending criminal action as long as the criminal action people on the left defend criminal action as long as the criminal action is in their favor. The right does this too. But it, but it's been much more prevalent on the left in the last two years, way more prevalent. And so I, you know, in some sense, it's a defense, weirdly, of the. All right, we're just going to seize cultural power. Now that we have political power, we're going to try to use it to seize some cultural power. Because they'll do anything on the other side. They'll do or they'll say anything, which is what, of course, they say about us or they say about the right. The right was we just follow the rules. And it's so terrible because the right will do anything, so we better not follow the rules. Right. That's sort of Chris Murphy. Right? When Chris Murphy said the week before Charlie Kirk was killed, this is a war. We need to. What did he say? And it said, use some really, you know, we need to use all means, by any means necessary. We need to stop this fascist takeover the United States.
- [53:27]
Abe Greenwald
This has been a real challenge for the Democrats for. Remember when Michelle Obama did her. When they go low, we go high. And like a year later, Eric Holder's like, when they go low, we kick them. I mean, it was not like they've been struggling to find their, you know, the deeply good soul there. And the same struggle happens on the right. I mean, I'm sorry, this is. This tension has really lit up both sides of the aisle recently in a way that is harrowing when we think about the people who actually, again, all of the normies who just want to figure out. Get the system working again in a way that actually moves stuff forward.
- [54:02]
Oliver Darcy
And this is, by the way, that's. That's also. This is a point that no Bloom keeps making on. On. On Twitter. He makes a lot, which is the. This is what a. The definition of a slippery slope is.
- [54:15]
John Podhoretz
Yeah, Right.
- [54:16]
Oliver Darcy
We keep having these arguments.
- [54:18]
John Podhoretz
I mentioned this yesterday and I, you know, I'm. I don't want. I don't want to spend. Like, there's a limit to how much. No, I'm bloo content. Right.
- [54:28]
Abe Greenwald
What Christine is saying.
- [54:30]
Oliver Darcy
You, you. The. One of the arguments that people make on both sides is this is worse than the last thing. And it's like, okay, and the next thing is going to be worse than this thing, and it's going to come from your side, and then after that, it's going to come from the other side and it's going to be worse than that. The worse than that is not enough of an objection, because worse than that does not mean it's. It's a new thing that we've never.
- [54:57]
John Podhoretz
Seen okay, So I don't. I don't want to. I'm only doing this because it's an example ready to hand. I'm going to read a tweet that I wrote this morning and then a response by Josh Gerstein, the legal affairs editor of Politico. And I wouldn't ordinarily read my own tweet on the air or something, but you'll see why. So here's what I wrote, and it echoes what I've been saying today. Here's the thing. Jimmy Kimmel can go out right now and make a video on Twitter mocking, criticizing, investigating our leaders. He can write a piece. He can stand on a soapbox in MacArthur Park. Nothing is stopping him. I did that in response to a quote by Jake Tapper who said, if we do not have the ability to criticize, mock, investigate our leaders, then we are no longer the United States of America. Okay? So I said, we have the right. Jimmy Kimmel can go out right now and do whatever. Implicitly, what I was saying was, he doesn't have the right to be on ABC doing it, but he has the right to do it. It. And Josh Gerstein, the legal affairs editor of Politico, responded to me as follows. What you are describing is Russia with, for now, a few less poisonings, arrests, and falling from high windows. So I said, jimmy Kimmel has free, free speech rights. You can go criticize your leaders. We. I just criticized Trump and Christine criticized Trump right here. We could criticize Trump from morning till night. Tens of millions of people criticize Trump on Twitter every day.
- [56:24]
Christine Rosen
You can't do that in Russia.
- [56:27]
John Podhoretz
Yeah. First of all, not only for now, but, I mean, like, I am describing Russia because I'm saying, Jimmy Kimmel can go and mock our leaders. Yeah. No one in Russia, I mean, I guess legally, this is the gift. Can mock.
- [56:44]
Abe Greenwald
This is.
- [56:44]
John Podhoretz
Yeah.
- [56:45]
Abe Greenwald
This is the gift that Trump just gave the left, which was wallowing in sanctimony. And there was no reason to give them that gift, but he did it. And so now we have to be told, but do you think that's gonna happen?
- [56:59]
Oliver Darcy
That's the classic joke of the Cold War, is it not? The classic joke of the Cold War is, you know, the. The American and the Russian and the. The American saying, you know, what I love about my country is that I can go out there every day and. And call Ronald Reagan a buffoon and say, america is this, and America is that I can say whatever I want about them. And the Russian says, I can do that, too. I can call Ronald Reagan a buffoon every day of my life and twice on Sunday.
- [57:23]
John Podhoretz
Yeah, but this is my question. You're saying that this is a gift of Trump. Is that a gift for Trump or does Josh Gerstein sound deranged? Why not? Josh Gerstein sounds deranged. Now, maybe people, in other words, you have to bring to the rodeo the idea that Trump is going to is creating an authoritarian system or is like right before our eyes and this is just more proof of it. Or I read Josh Gerstein, whom I don't think of as a particularly utre or like wild person in the media, and I'm like, you have taken leave of your senses. Like, we're not Russia. It's not Russia to say that Jimmy Kimmel's it is not Russia when we, when the Wall Street Journal is attacking Trump and, and Carr for their unconstitute, what they deem to be his unconstitutional behavior. If this were Russia, it's just like.
- [58:29]
Oliver Darcy
Russia where Putin was, it's just like Russia where Putin was put on trial his entire campaign. Right. And charged with 39 federal offenses. That's what happened to Putin. Right. And all his cronies went to jail and turned on him and, you know, whatever. But it's also like, you know, there's a, there, there is, it's funny to describe that difference because that's the Josh Gerstein's difference is a key difference. Right? You're saying it's, this is Russia, but without people being pushed out of windows and poisoned. And it's like, yeah, that is what I'm saying. You can, you can criticize your government and you won't get pushed out of a window or poisoned. Yeah, that's what I'm saying.
- [59:11]
John Podhoretz
I don't think, let me put this way. I don't think that Trump is not a threat. How's that doing the double net? I don't think that Trump, I don't think that you can look at the we can do this the easy way or the hard way quote by Brendan Carr and say that is not a very dangerous thing that has happened that needs to be cited at the same time. And I, this is not what about ism. I do not think that ABC has a moral or legal obligation to continue to employ Jimmy Kimmel. I mean, it doesn't have a, certainly doesn't have a legal unless, unless the contract requires it somehow. And nor do I think they have a moral because he said something that when Roseanne Barr made a racist tweet about Valerie Jarrett and Barack Obama and Michelle Obama called Bob Iger to say that, that Roseanne Barr should be fired. He wasn't president. Then they fired Roseanne Barr. I don't remember. I, you know, I don't remember anybody on complaining that the, that Roseanne Barr's free speech was being suppressed. On. Among the people who are now saying that this is a terrible threat because it's a private corporation, can do what it wants if it's only doing it to satisfy Brennan Carr. That's one thing. Maybe that is the case. It's possible that nexstar and Sinclair are the pressure points and that nexstar has a merger and worried about the merger and all of that. Okay. But I'm willing to entertain this as a. Yeah, go ahead. Sorry.
- [61:05]
Christine Rosen
I'm not sure that it's, the problem is that if they're only doing it to satisfy car. I think the problem is the CAR made the threat. Whether or not they responded. I mean that, you know, in some sense that, that would have made the administration look worse had he, had they made the threat and then they, and then the network kept Kimmel on the.
- [61:34]
John Podhoretz
Air.
- [61:36]
Christine Rosen
Would have been sort of worse because now there is this ambiguity like, you know, why they didn't, they didn't need him anyway and you know, so who knows why. What played into the decision to pull him to what extent?
- [61:50]
John Podhoretz
Well, that's why, as you said, like the thing to do, which is actually what happened to Bill Maher in 2001, is Bill Maher said this thing about how we're the cowards after 9 11. And it, it was six months later that they either did not renew his contract or did whatever and then brought this kid named Jimmy Kimmel out from Comedy Central to do this late night show instead of Politically Incorrect with, with Bill Maher. But it did take, it did take six months. The other thing about Trump is that he gives none of us anywhere to hide. And he doesn't get, he gives his enemies. All this is ammunition because he's like, this is great. And now you should fire Seth Meyers.
- [62:33]
Abe Greenwald
Yes, that, that too. Like, I'm sorry for all the people defending him. Oh, that's just him blowing off steam on Truth Social. If Barack Obama or Joe Biden had put out that tweet against any right wing cultural figure, we would also be very upset about that. That is not how a president should be using his platform, his megaphone, his power. It's wrong.
- [62:56]
John Podhoretz
Well, I mean Bill, Bill Clinton did, did accuse Rush Limbaugh of causing The Oklahoma City bombing.
- [63:02]
Abe Greenwald
And that was also wrong. Like, this is why. This is, this is a, this is a misuse. It's, it's an, it's a hyperbole. It's fan service for each side's, you know, base. It's, it, it does not elevate the discourse in any way, shape or form. But, you know, I'm an old fogey saying these things.
- [63:19]
Christine Rosen
I have, I have to say, like, before this happened, before the Kimmel issue, if Trump were to say in an interview, you know, what he said, I think yesterday, all they do is criticize me day and night. I mean, maybe their licenses should be pulled for this. Maybe they should. Why should they be on the air if all they do is criticize Trump? Trump, if he had said that before Brandon Carr's threat, I would have laughed and said, oh, that's just the way he is. This puts me, you know, this, this, this changes actually my sort of perception of that.
- [64:04]
John Podhoretz
Right.
- [64:05]
Christine Rosen
Obviously for the worse.
- [64:08]
John Podhoretz
Right.
- [64:09]
Oliver Darcy
And it's possible that Brendan Carr may have. Possible that this is, Was a huge misstep in a, in a practical sense, too, for them, which is that there was evidence that the affiliates were tired of Kimmel on their own with. No, they didn't need a push, and they might. This literally might have happened exactly the same way without Cars Coming Commons, we'll never know. But now, in the wake of Cars Commons and this happening right after Cars Commons, everything is going to be viewed through that lens, when in fact he. So he may have sort of impeded a sort of normal marketplace action that was going to sweep away some of the detritus culture.
- [65:04]
John Podhoretz
Hamlet's father says to Hamlet, right? When he says, murder most foul, you know, you need to go kill Claudius, who killed me. And then, you know, Hamlet says, well, my. What about my mother? And Hamlet, Hamlet's father's ghost says, leave her to heaven. In other words, like, you don't have to do. You don't have to intervene everywhere. She'll get hers when she dies for her adultery. And her, she didn't kill me, but she was a criminal. But, yeah, Trump leaves nothing to heaven.
- [65:37]
Christine Rosen
But, but the thing is, had it happened the same way or, you know, soon enough without Carr having intervened, that would have been a much larger victory, cultural victory for the right, for Trump, for every, you know, so they robbed themselves of this potential, real, meaningful victory.
- [66:04]
John Podhoretz
I just don't know that there's that much indication of what you're saying, Seth. I mean, I do think it's possible that after this and whatever else he would have said had there been no intervention over the course of the next couple of weeks, with his contract renewal coming up in December, that that might not have happened. But we, what we do know and honesty obliges one to say, is that it was after Benny Johnson and it was after Brendan Carr went on Benny Johnson's podcast and said, we can do this the easy way or the hard way, that Disney convened an emergency meeting to say, what on earth are we going to do about this? And then apparently Sinclair and nexstar said, what the hell are you going to do about this? And somebody contacted the Jimmy Kimmel camp and said he was going to go on the air tonight and double down on how MAGA was trying to suppress his speech. Rather than saying, I'll go and apologize. I probably should have done that last night. He was like, they're all evil. They're trying to get me. And it's like, okay, well, you're being a really good soldier here. Thanks a lot. Two of our affiliate groups are rebelling and the President and the President's people are coming after us. Don't you have some guy like, we've been nice to you. You've been on our air for 23 years. We paid you a lot of money. Thanks for your help, Jimmy. You're suspended. So there's a dynamic. But it did start with cars. The thing that happened on Wednesday started with car appearing according to every. It wasn't that on Tuesday, nextar had called Bob Iger and said, what are you going to do about Jimmy Kimmel?
- [67:38]
Oliver Darcy
So absolutely, it was, it was the understanding that Kimmel was going to double down. That was going to be right.
- [67:51]
John Podhoretz
We can't allow him to go on the air because he's going to make. I mean, that's one thing about the suspension. Like, they didn't fire him. It was like, he's about to like, create a nuclear. He's going nuclear. He's not going to do it. We're in the middle of a corporate crisis. Like, he's just going to have to sit on, stay on the bench because until we sort this out. But of course, everything moves now at 50,000 times speed. So there's no, like, okay, he's not going to go on tonight. We're going to have some meeting. We'll see what we can get him to do. But. But like, as this, as these things, you know, like, move in real time, Sinclair's like, we're only going to let him on the air if he makes A multi million dollar donation to Turning Point usa. That's where we're going. Like, like that could have take, you know, that's not, I'm not sure that that's where they would have been five years ago or 10 years ago without the accelerant of social media. In the same way, you know, there would have been more of a kind of like a slow roll of the scandal, but the scandal is now.
- [68:54]
Oliver Darcy
He could have done what Jimmy Fallon just did and bring Greg Gutfeld on as a guest.
- [68:59]
John Podhoretz
Yeah, well, that would, that might have.
- [69:01]
Oliver Darcy
Been what they were. Something more along the lines of what they were expecting. Well, this is Russia.
- [69:09]
John Podhoretz
You bring on, you ran Greg Gutfeld. That's like bringing on, you know, Goebbels. I mean it's like how, you know, we're now, we're in Nazi Germany and Russia. I mean that is the mindset of the people. When we started, Christine said ABC is going to look bad. And yeah, it's going to look really bad to certain people and it is. And, but I don't know that it's going to look bad to the people that right now matter. And that's what is the thing that Mark Halpern says on his podcast is the revolution that is all ABC would have had to care about before was how it was going to look in the, in the creative community and what they were going to do and what Hollywood was going to, how they were going to look and what was going to happen there. And now they have a whole different set of calculations with the aggressiveness of this administration and the, and the accelerant that is the assassination of Charlie Kirk in the idea that liberals want to kill conservatives and we have to fight back. Christine, I think you have a recommendation.
- [70:15]
Abe Greenwald
I do and it's another nonfiction recommendation. But because I was chastised by a friend the other day via text that I have not recommended any weird fiction lately, I will, I'll be a little bit if you'll indulge me. I did have a train ride the other day and I grabbed a book off the shelf on my way to the train station and reread Raymond Carver's collection of short stories, what we Talk about when we Talk About Love, which Remains, it's just as whiskey soaked and bleak and awesome as when I first read them a long time ago. So if you're looking for a little not fiction, reread Raymond Carver. Read him for the first time. He's amazing. Don't read him if you're worried that your spouse might be cheating on you because this is not going to be a reassuring set of short stories. But the nonfiction book I want to recommend is called Breakneck China's Quest to Engineer the Future by Dan Wang. As our listeners know, I am not a foreign policy expert, and so I'm always looking for books that will help teach me more about what I know, I don't know. And when it comes to China, this book really taught me a great deal. Almost done with it. Dan Wang is a Canadian, but he spent a lot of time in China and a lot of time in the United States. And what this book does brilliantly is kind of give up. A thoughtful, witty comparison of our two societies. And one of the things I took away most from it was this idea that Americans need to start thinking again about process knowledge, how we learn to do things and why that's important in the making of tangible objects, whether that's factory made goods or other goods, and how our attitude he makes a contrast between an engineer's mindset in China and the lawyer's mindset and, you know, states. And there's just a whole lot of stuff there. And the great thing about this book is that it's beautifully written. It's just a really well written story. So I would highly recommend for anyone who's interested in the future of the relationship between the United States and China to read Breakneck by Dan Wang.
- [72:09]
John Podhoretz
Fantastic. Just a quick programming note. Next week begins the high holy days on the Jewish calendar. Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New year, begins Monday night. So we will not be podcasting next week, next Tuesday or Wednesday. And then we will not be podcasting. This is now, wait, 13 days from now. We will not be podcasting, you know, two weeks from yesterday, which is, which is Yom Kippur. But we, yes, we will have to find alternate means of morosity on, on, on Tuesday and Wednesday as some of us attempt to bring in what we, I hope will be a sweeter new Year. So for Christine, Abe and Seth, I'm John Podborgs. Keep the candle burning.