Seth Mandel (5:45)

There are two other things, too. It's a reminder that Trump has been a Democrat for most of his life and very enamored of Hollywood for most of his life. You know, he's gotten. Any time he could shove his mug in a cameo of a TV or a film, he was there doing it. But there's another side to this, too, which is that nowadays a lot of the movies that, however they're cobbled together in terms of production that are created by American companies, do most of their business outside of the U.S. the international market is what keeps a lot of these films afloat, I think inside out, too. Most of its money was made overseas. So there's also this question of will there be reciprocal punishment if he actually gets any of this on board and enacted? So it's not just this issue of protecting the film industry in California and giving a handout to Gavin Newsom. It's the fact that then it might make it more expensive or less likely for movies to be made at all if we lose that international audience or if we're punished in some way by the international audience.

John Podhoretz (6:40)

I mean, look, that's already happened. And if Trump really wanted to make a serious play and run or fight with China, one of the fights with China should not only be about high tech, but China decides, picks, and chooses ideologically what films and what sorts of things it will allow to be shown in China, which is, of course, now the world's largest film market since it has 1.6 or 1.7 billion people in it. So much so that the highest grossing movie of 2025, which has made $2 billion, is something you have never heard of. It's called Neja 2. It's a cartoon, some kind of animated adventure film. And it's made $2 billion worldwide, most of it in China, and you've never heard of it. It was released here a couple weeks ago. I'm sure it'll be on streaming. You can watch it. I'm sure it's unwatchable. Congratulations to China. But they will not allow. And they use their political leverage. They've used their for 15 years to blackball Richard Gere, who can't get jobs in movies because he's a supporter of the Dalai Lama and the cause to free Tibet plots have been rewritten to brown nose China, like in the Martian, which came out in 2015, in which China saves the day. China comes in and saves it helps save an American astronaut stranded on Mars and. And all kinds of stuff.

Seth Mandel (8:05)

The Token Chinese actor or actress and lots of like in the mag. So you have like one of the scientists has to be a Chinese, Chinese woman or something.

John Podhoretz (8:14)

Exactly, yeah.

Unknown Speaker (8:14)

The best, the best was Barbie. Barbie's. The trailer for Barbie had what looked like the nine dash line between separating in the sea between China and Vietnam, which is supposed to designate territorial ownership, and Vietnam and China contest, this line. And the Barbie movie had like a crayon drawing of the world in the trailer and the trailer, map, crayon map, had like nine dashes in the Pacific. And Vietnam banned the movie.

John Podhoretz (8:55)

They had to like Vietnam. So Vietnam is now doing it too. Anyway, my point is there, there are.

Unknown Speaker (9:00)

Things they saw it as a stop to China is what I'm saying. Like Barbie had to take her crayon and give China territory, you know?

John Podhoretz (9:08)

Yeah, fair enough.

Abe Greenwald (9:09)

Hollywood always caves, by the way. That's. That's a different.

John Podhoretz (9:13)

Well, Hollywood caved in the 30s to the Nazis. Like, it's a. It's a. Look, they're low lives, they're low life, they're unprincipled. And by the way, you can tell how low life and unprincipled they are by how they deploy liberal politics as an effort to protect themselves. Sort of the Harvey Weinstein feminist system. Right. It's like you go out and rape women for 20 years, give a lot of money to feminist causes, and then maybe people will leave you alone. So. So Hollywood is craven and politically repulsive in every possible way. And so this is something that they do. And if Trump wanted to say, look, China, we're not. No Chinese movie can come in the United States the way you don't let American movies come into the United States. Drop all this and we'll drop that. But that's not. Who knows what this is? It's his. It's his. You know, Narskite about tariffs. Anyway, you can't tariff an individual piece of intellectual property because it's not owned by one person. It's not a thing. It's not like a. Anyway, go ahead.

Abe Greenwald (10:12)

No, he just thinks there's a tariff for everything. I mean, it's like, you know, that's his approach, that's his plan. And maybe some, maybe some will work. Maybe some will bring people to negotiate. Maybe he'll just let off some. Maybe he'll just threaten some. But that's like, that's his tool of choice. That's it.

John Podhoretz (10:30)

But again, he is serving. Now, this is the funny part. So the entire film industry has been screaming now for two years about the Crisis in California over film employment, not just because of the writer strikes of a year, year and a half ago, which, like, suspended all production, but because of this issue that it's increasingly impossible for film production to be done in California in any way that is cost effective. Why he's coming in and saying, you know what? It's the fault of these foreigners. We'll do something to tariff it. Rather than saying, gavin Newsom and the Democrats are driving this state into the ocean. They stink. Get them out, and maybe they'll do the right thing by your industry. Hollywood, instead of coming after me, go after them. They're the ones who are ruining you. Who let the Pacific Palisades catch on fire because they don't fill reservoirs, who are letting homeless people go around and, you know, basically defecate in the streets of Los Angeles and San Francisco. Why he's decided to use this as part of his battering ram, you know, in favor of tariffs with people who don't appreciate him, who are screaming in horror at the idea of tariffs on. On. On movies because, you know, it could mean that, you know, Emilio Perez doesn't get a full distribution in the United States or something. I don't know. It's politically very odd. It shows, as I think Christine says, not only that he was a Democrat his whole life, but that he is motivated by factors and things that do not conform even with his own sense of what political policy should be. He wants to yell and scream about how liberals are all terrible, but it's always about how they're terrible in relation to something that he has a personal financial stake in or his sons have a personal financial stake in or something like that. Not about something real that is a political issue in the largest state in the country, which, if it could be moved closer to the right or moved off the left and sort of toward the middle, the political consequences for the United States could be enormous. Imagine a California in which the Senate is potentially in play between Democrats and Republicans, or political districts are actually in play between Democrats and Republicans, though they have this weird jungle primary election system where, you know, you can sort of win. Not as a Democrat. Nonetheless, he's weirdly changing the subject where he could be creating fomenting a movement about the risks of having liberals with their liberal tax policies destroying industries within individual states, which is an issue in blue states everywhere. Right. It is over regulation, over taxation of businesses that cause them to flee and go to places where they're more welcome, being welcomed, being shown by, let's just say, general lower Tax rates, not necessarily specific to an industry, but like, it's half as costly for your workforce to work in Arizona as it is in New York State or something like that. So he's done it again. Mazel tov to Donald Trump for muddying his own waters and confusing his own matters. And of course, we haven't even gotten to the point where the tariffs are like, at play and functioning. And you still have this weirdness of people, all kinds of weird people, trying to get to his good side to talk him out of doing things by talking up the positivity of the tariffs. Yesterday at the Milken Institute in California, Mark Rowan, who was one of the heads of Apollo, one of the world's largest hedge funds, said he supported the tariffs but wanted them to be, you know, this is like I, I'm playing seven dimensional chess with Donald Trump. I'm going to say that I'm for the tariffs as long as they're managed more efficiently. Mark Rowan isn't for the tariffs. Like, literally nobody is for the tariffs except for, you know, 12 Mishigawasan crazy people who write for the Claremont Institute. And so congratulations to all of them on destroying the world economy in favor of your idiot ideas. Nobody else in the country is for this. I mean, for the general tariff policy. As far as I can tell, there is not a single politician in the United States who does not work directly for Donald Trump who is going around the country going, tariffs, yay, tariffs. This is going to be so great for my state. Well, it's so good for my district to have these tariffs. Everyone's terrified, everyone's scared. Every business leader knows it's bad. Everybody knows it's bad.

Seth Mandel (15:01)

Well, the Milliken meeting was interesting because obviously Besant out there and Richard Grinnel organized this group of, you know, sort of bigwigs to, to be reassured, to be, to be soothe, as it, as it were. And one of the things that kept coming up among the business leaders and the hedge fund managers is, well, maybe tariffs are fine, but it's the uncertainty. We'd like some certainty here. What is the plan? Who is going to negotiate? What are the deals you're making? When will we hear about these deals? And that uncertainty remains. There hasn't been a lot of, you know, we heard these hints of a big trade deal coming this week. Maybe there will be one. It's certainly not going to be today when the new Prime Minister of Canada comes and visits the White House. But it's the uncertainty that makes the economic indicators so crazy. And it's what makes investors and businessmen crazy for good reason. And he's not. I don't I so far have not found even the long term strategy outlined by the sent and others who are trying to be thoughtful about this. I haven't found it persuasive.

John Podhoretz (16:00)

They're not trying to be thought Mark.

Unknown Speaker (16:02)

Carney knows what I don't want to.

John Podhoretz (16:03)

Give them credit for. I'm sorry, I do not want to give them credit for being thoughtful.

Seth Mandel (16:06)

They're trying to.

John Podhoretz (16:07)

They're trying to make it strategy thrown their cards in. Besson knows this is a disaster, so he's trying to mitigate the damage. But if you want to talk about uncertainty, once the plans are revealed and the tariff numbers are set and they go into place, the uncertainty will not drop because the idea will be, well, how can we negotiate out of this? You know, we're doing this in order to force. So then you got a year of negotiations. You think that will establish any form of of certainty. No one knows if the tariffs will stick. Nobody knows if China will come to the table bowing its head and doing something or other to get them lifted, in which case the uncertainty will persist as long as the tariffs persist. And you could have countries with a longer timeline in their head going, well, this is only going to last through 2028 and then it's a whole new ballgame. So we're just going to have to suffer through this the way we suffered through Covid. I didn't really need two of these in the same decade, but nonetheless, here it is and there is nobody who is honestly supportive, nobody who I mean, this strikes me as being fascinating because we haven't really talked about this for weeks, but find me a person on this planet who thinks that what is going on here is a good idea. Hey, it's John here. I'm happy today to talk to you about our new advertiser Shopify, because we.

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Seth Mandel (20:48)

Not about if you're talking about just the tariffs, I think you're correct. But if you look at what and I'm not in agreement with this, I do not because I think too many things have to fall perfectly into place for this to work. But the the outline of what a broader economic shift in manufacturing and production shift get changing. You know, the chains of supply chains getting getting us away from China and reliance on foreign imports. All this stuff is is at Least according to people like Bessant and others, part of a big grand reset economically, internationally. And with regard to trade, that takes us away from the sort of globalist, you know, post liberal idea that reigned supreme for, you know, a century into something new now. I don't think it's going to work. I think doesn't understand the complexity of the international economy. There are a lot of points at which I think personal, mercurial decision making by the Trump administration will, will yield poor results, as we've already seen. But I do think it's part of a broader strategy. That's the argument they're making. Bringing manufacturing back, changing our trade deficits, all this stuff. Smart economists are still, I think, correctly skeptical. But I do think it's not just the tariffs, at least that's what they're arguing even.

Unknown Speaker (22:03)

But also it's, it's not just, it's not just that they don't have people. It's not just that business leaders don't support them. It's that nobody working for the President supports them except for Peter Navarro. And you can change policy when Peter Navarro is not in the room. I mean, if Mark Carney, who comes to the White House today in Canada, if he knows what's good for him, he'll just insist on a one on one without Navarro there, and we Americans may get a completely different economic plan. But that's the thing, is that these, the people who work for him are scheming about how to avoid Navarro being in the room so that they can change the policies. He doesn't have anybody besides one guy who works for him who thinks they're good either. And so we're playing this, you know, it's like Alice in Wonderland game again.

John Podhoretz (22:50)

Forget the Trump administration because they work for. He's the President, he has the policy, has. It's their job to, you know, work out his policies as best they can. If he's like determined on them. There are 280 odd elected Republican politicians in Washington. There are another thousand across the country in local and state jobs, elected politicians. So let's just throw the number at about 1300 elected Republican officials across the country. Where is the tariff? Where are the rallies being staged?

Seth Mandel (23:26)

No, exactly. No, it's not free market economics. Of course they're not gonna support it. It's not actually what the GOP has long stood for. It's very much state control. It's a very heavy hand on the economy. And that is not traditionally a conservative or even a Republican position.

John Podhoretz (23:39)

I'm saying that Even if you could make the argument that it important in the 21st century that America revitalized, it's manufacturing, you know, it's a heavy manufacturing and take it away from China and India and bring it back here and have this, do that and do the other thing. Nobody believes in this. I mean, people believe in it in a kind of fantasy, nostalgic, weird ideological way that, you know, we used to make things with our hands and now we don't make things with our hands anymore. And that's what we need is a lot of, you know, it's like Mr. Potter and it's a Wonderful Life. We need a thrifty working class that work that makes its own things and does it, you know, we're not just going to let $30 and 20 pencils, you don't get to have that.

Seth Mandel (24:27)

But they, but they believe, but they believe very powerfully that the old way of doing things no longer works for them. And I think that's more motivated. I mean, that's why they're giving Trump a lot of room here. And I agree with everything you're saying.

John Podhoretz (24:39)

Trump a lot of room because they're scared shitless of him, that's why. Because they don't want him to say you should be primaried. Let's look, let's just as we say, I'm using a lot of issues. Let's talk tacless here. Politicians in the Republican Party and on the right don't want to attack Trump because they're worried that he will say you should have a primary challenger and Charlie Kirk will say you have a primary challenger. And Tucker Carlson will have on somebody who says the Jews did the Holocaust and you should have a primary challenger. And Joe Rogan will say I'm only asking questions about whether we should have a democracy and all of that.

Unknown Speaker (25:14)

That's 100% tariff on the Jews.

John Podhoretz (25:16)

100% tariff on the Jews. Very, very, very soon coming.

Abe Greenwald (25:21)

I'll say this about tariffs. Obviously I'm not, not Trump.

John Podhoretz (25:24)

Trump does not want 100% tariff on the Jews. Tucker would like 100% tariff on the Jews, particularly Jews named Crystal. Would be his 200% tariff on Jews named Crystal and a firing squad. But that's that he's only asking questions.

Abe Greenwald (25:40)

The, the thing about the tariffs now though, obviously I'm, I'm very against tariffs. But we have a problem with China. We have a new problem with China which is that if we back down on the tariffs now on the, on the Chinese tariffs, we will have lost a face off of our own making. And that is, that is now that's a whole new problem that I don't want to have.

John Podhoretz (26:07)

So you're saying that Trump is barred in blaze. I mean, not somebody is someone. Trump has put a gun to his own head and said, stop or I'll shoot. So if he puts the gun down, then he loses to China.

Abe Greenwald (26:27)

And it keeps coming up. Like in interviews, they'll say, well, the Chinese have said that they will not negotiate until you lower tariffs. Is this gonna happen? And then Trump just talks gobble cook. Because he's, he's, he's put himself in a bad position here.

John Podhoretz (26:42)

Right? But because we're having the wrong art, we're having the wrong conversation about China when we talk about tariffs and industrial production, that's actually the wrong conversation to be having about China. Even if you accept the restrainers view from Elbridge Colby and others that we need to focus on China as a threat. The threat we need to focus on China is the geopolitical threat, not the threat to our supply, not, not how involved China is in our supply chain, which is a secondary issue because that's also like the gun to the temple. If China says for some reason we are no longer going to produce the iPhone for you just for the hell of it, right, to see what harm we can do you. China is itself unbelievably dependent on the American supply chain. Like they, they can't bankrupt themselves by pulling out of the world economic system. They bet their entire hundred years of their next future on that very fact. Since they don't have all that much of a consumer economy once they crack down on all of the freedoms that they were allowing people inside China and they don't really have the revolution of rising wages and everything that they had 10 or 15 years ago, we should be focusing on China as a geopolitical, military, logistical threat and saying, you know, we're going to do, we are going to put sanctions on you for trading with North Korea, we're going to put sanctions on you for backing Iran, we're going to put sanctions on you for helping Russia and we are for help.

Abe Greenwald (28:14)

Doing, for helping the Houthis target. Helping American chip.

John Podhoretz (28:18)

Yeah, exactly. Okay, so we are all in favor of getting tough with China. Trump has chosen the worst possible way to get tough with China, as you yourself lay out, because it costs us too much to do it the way Trump wants to do it. Aside from the fact that it's inefficient and stupid and it's a stupid way to do it and we don't care where we get our pencils. That's not really the issue. And just to get back to Besent and Christine's words about dissent, I mean, I know people have been saying this, so. But when billionaires start talking about what working class people should be able to buy their children at Christmas time and how expensive it should be, that's the sort of thing that causes socialism on the planet Earth. Billionaires Learned this like 100 and 10020 years ago when they really were sort of dominating the American economy and the earliest part of the 20th century and backed way off when the pitchfork started to come to them and they all started hiring PR people who said, you know, our kids aren't going to inherit any money and we only give them a dime's allowance and I wear old clothes and I drive a 10 year old car because, you know, I'm not in this for the. Then it was all, it was all lies, but it was a way of trying to get themselves out of a world in which people are going to start saying, you know what sounds really good? 100% inheritance tax. That sounds really good. You stink. And everything about you stinks. When, when Besson and Lutnick and Trump and everybody start talking about the appropriate level of Christmas giving, they are walking themselves down into a ravine from which they will never be able to climb out. Except, of course, if the Democrats pull.

Seth Mandel (30:18)

I agree with that. I mean, this is actually, and this has been a through line throughout the first hundred days of the administration, are very wealthy and powerful people telling the average American, and for now his base still seems to be tolerating that. But you do have on the left a sort of anti oligarch uprising, which is hilarious because of course the Democratic Party is itself the party of oligarchs as well. So that. But their messaging is better. Their messaging is better about some of this stuff and their representatives aren't making those mistakes. So I agree with you on that. I do not want to hear from anyone who has the wealth that these guys do telling anyone that they should. It's fine to skip a Social Security check if we mess something up. It's okay if your kids only have one doll. Yeah, that. That's obnoxious.

John Podhoretz (31:03)

I mean, it's more than obnoxious. It does indicate a genuine lack of even elementary understanding of what it would be like to live at the income.

Unknown Speaker (31:15)

Yeah, yeah.

Seth Mandel (31:17)

Know anyone who lives paycheck to paycheck?

John Podhoretz (31:19)

No.

Seth Mandel (31:19)

No.

John Podhoretz (31:19)

Right. Yeah, they do, but they don't talk to Them, like, they know their secretary, they sign that guy who comes into their office, you know, when they have a problem, you know, with their outlook. And a tech guy comes into their office to kind of fix the computer. He probably makes 70, 72 median income a year. They could talk to him, but it is very, very hard.

Unknown Speaker (31:41)

Irony is that the one time a year when they do speak to them is Christmas, when they hand out their Christmas bonuses and Christmas gifts to the people who work for them.

John Podhoretz (31:52)

You're assuming that they're gonna ruin Christmas.

Unknown Speaker (31:54)

By saying, you can't buy dolls with this.

John Podhoretz (31:56)

Yeah. You think, you think Howard Lutnick hands out the Christmas bonuses himself for Scott Besson? You've got another thing.

Seth Mandel (32:02)

No, they all have those people, those house managers who refer to them not by their names, but call them.

Unknown Speaker (32:07)

How much does the. Does the Christmas bonus hander outer make? That's what I want to know.

John Podhoretz (32:12)

There you go. Look, I just think that we are. We find ourselves in a weird place where Trump is so enamored of tariffs as this idea of anybody who, you know, we, who, Whose stuff we buy, you know, we buy his sandwich is, you know, screwing us because he gets the $5 and we get the sandwich. Why don't we get the sandwich and keep the $5? Which seems to be his idea about how, how these financial transactions should work, which is suitable to him since he doesn't. He hires lawyers and doesn't pay them. So he actually has an ex. He has experience with doing a thing where you hire somebody and you don't pay them. And maybe he thinks that's how the economy ought to work. And maybe it. It can. If you can keep yourself out of, you know, debtor's prison, as he managed to do in the 90s. But, you know, so maybe he thinks he can apply that globally. But I am struck by the fact that it has been six weeks or something since Liberation Day, and there is not any kind of a grassroots movement in support of Liberation Day. Think about other. Other moments like this in, in the past where you have, I don't know, obviously the Tea Party, right? The Tea Party was in opposition to the presidency. But you can have. You can have grassroots movements spring up in support of anything. Have the Women's March. But don't forget, you could have. You can have. By the way, Nixon, of course, said, there's a silent majority that supports my policies. In 1969 gave a speech said, there's a silent majority. You're out there, everybody hears the noisy people. But there's a silent majority that supports what I stand for. And the White House got 14 million letters in a week saying, we support you.

Abe Greenwald (34:11)

But don't forget, Trump blinked first.

Unknown Speaker (34:17)

The.

Abe Greenwald (34:17)

Two days or whatever it was after Liberation Day when the actual tariffs went to effect. He shut all the rest of them down, all the non China tariffs. So who's getting behind? He was the first one hours into the new regime that said, oh, well.

John Podhoretz (34:32)

You'Re saying that true tariffs have never been tried. Is that what you do?

Seth Mandel (34:37)

Can we also add that the people most likely to be impacted by, you know, the ones who are living paycheck to paycheck, are on a very limited budget, are the ones actually working multiple jobs right now who don't have time to come out and protest, who don't actually have the luxury of being able to put on a pussy hat and march around Washington for a weekend. The people who control the cultural and the cultural message on both sides are not people who are financially in dire straits. They tend not to. This was the whole argument when everyone was complaining about inflation and the news media's response to the Biden inflation era was to say, oh, it's just not that bad. You're just, you're just overreacting. There's a version of that on the right as well, among the wealthy, you know, sort of Trump elite. And that's also, it's bad.

Unknown Speaker (35:17)

But they also, I mean, Trump had his version of the silent majority in 2016, and his version of the silent majority are people who can't afford tariffs. That's the silent majority.

John Podhoretz (35:29)

Right. So I'm just saying, you. I am struck by the fact that there is no political movement that has been built even like a sub political movement or offshoot of maga, outside again of websites run by people whose names are like Stone Age batshit crazy guy or you know, Industrial age pedophile or whatever, who are writing in favor of these policies. It's great to do it pseudonymously and to hide in a cabin in Livingston, Montana while you're doing it. That's great. Congratulations. There is no political support for any of this. And as Abe says, he did it to himself, he's doing it to himself. And now he's doing it in a way that, though I don't think it's going to work, because Gavin Newsom can't say he supports anything that Trump stands for, but he is doing it to finish up where we started, in a way that lets California off the hook for destroying its own entertainment industry with its own regulatory and economic policies. Where that could be a political opportunity for Republicans to make inroads in a state that they once had a very, very important stake in and from which the most successful Republican president last hundred years emerged as the most conservative governor in the country. That was 60 years ago. I know 60 years ago is a long time and I'm not saying that, you know, you can recreate the California of Ronald Reagan's gubernatorial terms, but it wasn't 200 years ago, it wasn't 500 years ago. So there's that. Okay, let's, let's move on to. Apparently word is that the Israelis may have just destroyed, we'll see this later. May have completely destroyed the airport in Yemen in the capital of Sana'a. Like, you know, in response to the errant Houthi missile. I say errant. I mean it was errant by 75 meters. Had the, had the missile hit 75 meters closer, thousands of people would be dead in Ben Gurion Airport in Israel. So the Israelis have now taken their, taken their shot. And it's interesting for 10,000 different reasons, which raises these questions. Like we have been, the United States has been in a shooting war with the Houthis now for close to a year and has been bombing them very relentlessly for two months. And it does not seem to be having any kind of effect except to enhance their power and authority and allow them to figure out how to shoot a missile that evaded Israeli defenses and nearly destroyed the Israel's major airport. So do we stink? Like, are we bad at this? How is it that we can be doing this against this two bit terrorist group in this four bit country? And, and we haven't destroyed them yet? Like what the hell is going on? Why, why are we so bad at this? How can we now look at this and not say that our, our efforts to hit the Houthis have been, have been an exercise in extreme incompetence?

Abe Greenwald (38:51)

Yeah, no, I, look, I agree. I brought this up yesterday and it's, and it's not like we don't get any sort of like facts on the ground updates really about what's going on there either. You know, it's not like other areas of conf. Where you sort of know the lay of the land and who's. Because the Houthis aren't the government. They're not that. And so no one knows what you'll hear a facility took heavy fire or a port or that. But there's no, we have no real. Understand, we just know things keep blowing up and the Houthis keep coming back. So it's, I have no grasp of what's going on, and I'm not sure that they do either.

Unknown Speaker (39:38)

Yeah, yeah, because, sorry, the Houthis basically, like, because, so they took the capital. And so the capital has a large airport, as capitals do, but it's held by this band of, you know, Iranian supported putsches. Basically. They're, you know, they just like waltzed in and took over the capital. And so the reporting is like, Israel or the US Smashes the major port in Yemen. The smashes the major airport in Yemen. This is how people come and go. And it's like, who specifically is coming and going out of the airport controlled by the Houthis? Please explain to me what. You know, that's. And so that's why we get these updates where it's like the Houthis are this sort of like gaseous thing floating through the air in Sana'a, when in fact it's like, no, they hit the Houthis airport because the Houthis control the airport. That's, that's what it is. It's like when Hezbollah controlled the Beirut airport in the past, you know, you were, you were hitting Hezbollah's airport. And it was. And it's much more so the case with Sanaa, because I don't know how many people who are not the Houthis are going in and out of there and there. We know that they're also, the point of the ports is that, you know, they have this pirate, this piracy ring where they are extorting companies to pay them to travel through the Red Sea and the normal shipping lane so they don't have to go 10,000 miles out of their way and all this other stuff. So it's like this is, this is essentially a Houthis economic military base that was hit. And the reporting says it was a humanitarian catastrophe because the biggest airport in Yemen has been hit.

John Podhoretz (41:32)

Right. And as you say, it's not really theirs because it's not like they've relocated all of their facilities and everything is out of there. And so you hit it. It's like the Death Star and you destroy them by getting into that one little hole and blowing the whole thing up. It's opportunistically, they now have control. But Israel had to do something. Israel did this. This was Israel's strike, not America's strike. And so it's very weird. Like, the point here is, let's talk about what we're doing. So we're trying to hit the Houthis they're firing $2,000, you know, drones at Israel and we have a boat and it has to take a sharp left turn and an F16 falls off the side of the ship at a loss of $70 million. That's, that's, that's the calculator. The United States is battling a force that spends a couple thousand dollars per missile and has now, you know, spent hundreds of millions of dollars ineffectively trying to stop them from doing what it is that they have been doing. This long range terrorist strike capacity that they have developed 900 miles away from Israel. Right. It's not Beirut, it's not the Sana Valley. It's not, you know, it's not Lebanon, it's not Gaza. They're like way far away. They're way, they're many, many hundreds of miles away. And they, as, as Hamas becomes increasingly ineffectual and Hezbollah becomes increasingly effectual. They like, they almost took out Ben Gurion Airport. They came very close to taking out Ben Gurion Airport after a concerted American campaign to degrade them. Right. And what else is happening? Steve Witkoff is desperately trying to have meetings with the Iranians. The Houthis are the Iranians. What are we meeting with them for except to say cut this out or we're going to blow up Tehran. Not we're going to, you know, let the Israelis blow up this airport that they took two weeks ago that the Houthis probably don't really care about one way or the other since, as you say, their economy, the Houthi economy, is based on, on sea piracy and not on, you know, controlling, you know, the global entry into, into.

Seth Mandel (43:55)

This is actually where, this is where again, the messaging from the Trump administration, the reason we haven't taken out the Houthis is that that's never been stated by a recent leader of this country as a goal. Biden declared them no longer a terrorist organization. So for four years they were allowed to operate with more freedom than they'd had before Trump reinstated that, which is good, but because I think of the Iran negotiations they don't want to take, I mean, we could, we could eliminate the Houthis tomorrow. We have the capability to do that. Why we aren't doing it is, as you say, the important question. And, but all the Iranians have to do is play the long game here. You know, this is the problem of having a one term president baked into the system. He's, they just have to wait them out and they just have to negotiate with someone like Woodcock back and forth and back and forth. It doesn't matter. I mean, the the other thing we should mention is now the signaling that there will be additional countries added to the Abraham Accords, which I thought was the timing of that was also quite interesting. So I do think again, the uncertainty of Trump's messaging with regard to foreign policy and the internal dynamics at play in that administration with the people who are very isolationist and the ones who are less so, it all plays into this question of why the Houthis are still doing what they do.

John Podhoretz (45:06)

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Christine Rosen (45:08)

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Unknown Speaker (49:12)

That's why Carney's in the White House, by the way, to Canada is going to be added to the Abraham Accords. Very exciting. No, but the Houthi. Seriously though, the Houthis. The Houthis actually have proved a, a major, the major folly of non interventionism. Right? Which is like, remember when Obama took heat for saying ISIS is the JV team and then it turned out that if you just ignore a JV team, they grow, right? If you just say like, well, we're not going to put our efforts into quashing them because they're not in our league. They're, you know, they're, they're, you know, some like, it's like a minor league baseball team. It's like we're the Yankees. We're not, we're not going to, we're not going to, you know, play the Crabtown Cougars or whatever. And then what happened with the Houthis? The port situation is such that they can actually subsist, most likely without Iranian help. If the Iranians actually pulled their financial help, they've created like a billion dollar business. Okay, so that's one. And because it's such a strategic port and it's so important, it doesn't matter that there's, you know, who was it Michael Moore used to make fun of, of, of, you know, after 9, 11, he was like, what are we going after them? Didn't Michael Moore say something like 12 guys on monkey bars or something like that? And were the US army something?

Abe Greenwald (50:36)

Right.

Unknown Speaker (50:36)

That's how we treat every one of these groups except the guys who are controlling the port are still, who are controlling this seaway, are still controlling the sewage. So that's first of all, second of all, they have learned how to avoid air defense systems. They are learning how to strike Western countries with top military gear and who are always on alert and have missile defense. They're learning how to snake their way through that. Now maybe the strike that hit the other day was a mistake that snuck through, but we know that this is what armies do. I mean, Jonathan Foreman even mentioned it in his piece on Hamas and Gaza that they were shooting rockets in a lot of cases to test what happens when we shoot rockets, who goes where? They're learning on behalf of Iran really how to get better at striking the west because we're simply leaving them there to stew.

Seth Mandel (51:36)

Right. They're a farm team.

Unknown Speaker (51:38)

They're not the JV team like the scouts in Stratego.

John Podhoretz (51:42)

Yeah.

Unknown Speaker (51:42)

And we're just letting the scouts go because, you know, it only takes a number eight to displace the scout or whatever the rules of the game are. Whatever.

John Podhoretz (51:50)

But what.

Unknown Speaker (51:51)

Basically my point is we're treating them as jv, but they are getting better. And the information they are learning is going to powerful enemies of America and Israel who sponsor them, like Iran, which is part of the Russia, China axis.

John Podhoretz (52:07)

Right, let's talk about the next two weeks because the next two weeks people have got to batten like you gotta batten down the hatches because things are going to get crazy in the next two weeks. Israel has called up the reserves for a final push into Gaza. It is not clear whether this final push into Gaza, which will, if it is executed, be successful because Israel does have military superior, has now established extraordinary military superiority there. And if it decides to take the moves that it will take, it will succeed in its aims. And the question is, will they be occupying Gaza completely and moving the populations in various places and keeping them in other parts of Gaza or sending or getting others to take them outside of Gaza? Will they stay there permanently? Will there be some form of annexation, depending on how right wing a politician in Israel you are, the larger the claims for the world historical nature of what would happen with this final Israeli push will be. It is not what Netanyahu is saying. Netanyahu is saying we are going to defeat Hamas and get the hostages home, and this will require us to occupy parts of Gaza for a time. That's what he's saying. Other members of his coalition are going further, but he has said we are going to do nothing until Trump leaves the region. Trump is going to the region for a Gulf States cooperation meeting next week, and I think he leaves on the 16th or 17th. He'll be there for three days. This is where the talk is that there will be some form of Abraham Accord action, maybe on the part of the Saudis or others. I think that that is a pipe dream. Saudi Arabia is not going to sign the Abraham Accords until Hamas is dead. It's very clear they need Israel to finish, to conclude what is going on in order for them to take the final step that they want to take in order to achieve normalization with Israel. In the meantime, at the same time, Steve Witkoff is supposedly negotiating over Iran. And what he's negotiating is incredibly unclear because he's saying he'll have a deal. And Marco Rubio, who is now the Secretary of State, the National Security Advisor, the head of usaid, the national archivist, and you know, as, I think as somebody said, you know, he is now doing all the jobs that Americans won't do, right? Or he is, you know, you know, leave it. You know, as somebody tweeted, like, leave it to Trump to get the one Hispanic guy in the, in the cabin to do five jobs. You know, it's like Heyman, the, the, the Jamaican sitcom on In Living Color where, you know, every, they all have 12 jobs. So Rubio now has the 12 jobs. Rubio is saying no enrichment, nothing. Rubio is saying the entire Iranian program has to be destroyed. And you know what they'll do if they want to have a civilian nuclear? They'll do what everybody else does, including the United States, by the way, which is buy the uranium from abroad under, under, under harsh cost. If they really want a civilian nuclear program, they'll do it the way everybody else does it. Nobody else has a, has a, creates their own uranium, unless they're creating it for wartime purposes. And we will stand for no less. Witkoff seems to be going there with some separate agenda to make whatever deal that he can make, which is weird that that's. And Trump said both on Meet the Press, right. On the one hand, he sort of sounded like, and you guys talked about this yesterday, he wants a deal. And on the other end, he said, we don't know of any civilian nuclear program like this that doesn't mean war and we don't want war, so we're not going to let it happen. Which then dovetails with the question of what is Israel going to do about Iran? Maybe the Wyckoff thing is a final, final, final push to say, look, make a deal, just kill your program, buy the uranium, we'll drop the sanctions and you can have a civilian program and we'll monitor it. But if not, kaboom. There, you know, you know what happened two weeks ago at your port and stuff like that, you ain't seen nothing yet. You know, these, we know the Israelis did it. You know the Israelis did it. And we're now, we're just, we're going to either give them what they need to do it themselves or we'll be part of it or whatever. We're giving you one last shot. Maybe that's happening, maybe it's not. It's all very confusing. And finally, supporters of Israel have got to toughen up, get cool and keep cool. Because if you think that the talk about genocide and starvation and all of that that has been going on for the last year and a half has been very hard to battle, when you have to have conversations with your friends who are like, how why are they doing this to the poor, suffering Gazans? Again, you ain't seen nothing yet. The rhetoric that has already started, this giant New York Times story about children starving and the Pulitzer is now giving various Pulitzers to people talking about the monstrousness of the Israeli behavior in Gaza. Remember the Gazan population, even at the same time as over the last six weeks we have learned that 25,000 fewer Gazans have died in the war, according to the Gaza Health Ministry or whoever than they claimed a year ago, and that 70 to 80% of them are military or would be considered, you know, combatants military.

Seth Mandel (57:55)

The Times actually now does state, I read it over the weekend, I could not believe my eyes. They said according to the Gaza, you know, health officials, which don't distinguish between civilian and military casualties. I was shocked to see that phrase, that's tiny bit of progress in reporting.

Unknown Speaker (58:10)

But they, but they say in those same breath, I mean, I don't know if I didn't read this story, maybe this story avoids that. But there have been countless stories over the past year and a half that have said, you know, 50,000 Gazans have been killed, 90% of them women and children. Women and children, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, which doesn't distinguish between civilians and combatants, like in the same sentence.

John Podhoretz (58:34)

Yes, women and children, deadly combatants. Right. Anyway, but the point is that it's gonna, it's gonna get really, really bad. And the campus activism is going to kick in around Friday. If you think, you know, if you think just as school is ending, that, that happened last year. Right. We're getting into finals week. So people love to, for some reason not, you know, would love to have their finals canceled anyway, there's going to be demonstrations, rallies, marches, propagandistic articles the likes of which we haven't seen. And I'm hearing it from people who are supporters of Israel who have been losing hard. It's been 18 very long months and there does not seem to be a result or resolution. And they're losing hard. And it's going to be very bad because there is going to be this break of 11 or 12 days in which Israel has basically made a public promise not to move until Trump leaves the region. And that gives them, that gives the protest movement a 10 day free shot at roiling up world opinion and trying to sort of destroy the consensus even among supporters of Israel, that the final push into Gaza, which might be accompanied by some form of hostage release or hostage rescue anyway, it's so things are really nuts. Trump, the fact that Trump is going there in the middle of this is nuts. It's nuts for him to be going while there's a shooting forward. The Houthis, while the Houthis are, are, you know, are hitting Israel's airport. Israel is now basically going to be in an air war with it in with Yemen or with the Houthis in Yemen and they're blowing stuff up in Iran and in Lebanon and just wait.

Abe Greenwald (60:34)

Until Israel really does reoccupy Gaza.

John Podhoretz (60:39)

But I think, see, this is, this is the where I think it's worse before they do it.

Abe Greenwald (60:47)

I'm sure you're right.

John Podhoretz (60:48)

Once they do it, it's a fact on the ground that will then have to be dealt with. And a. And Seth wrote this fantastic blog post yesterday. I commend to everybody@comMENTARY.org about how Israel has announced that it will, is creating a new modality to distribute humanitarian aid to people in Gaza designed to keep the aid out of the hands of Hamas so that it can't feed itself with international aid supplies. And all of the NGOs are boycotting the Israeli efforts, since, of course, they are, in fact, open supporters of Hamas. And it no longer. There is no reason any longer to pretend that they're doing what they're doing simply to help the suffering people of Gaza. Their idea of helping the suffering people of Gaza is to help Hamas win or prevail over the Israelis and to use the food aid as a part of the weapon in that. In that effort.

Seth Mandel (61:46)

Well, they have the help of the Pope Mobile now, because, of course, the former Pope has now donated his Pope Mobile to be a mobile clinic for Gaza.

John Podhoretz (61:55)

Yeah. Which means that.

Unknown Speaker (62:00)

I was sure he's going to give it to Cars for.

John Podhoretz (62:01)

Kids, but that he wouldn't give it to Cars for Kids. You know, actually, he should, because Cars for Kids, I believe, is owned by the Sodmers, and the Sodmers are anti Zionist. So maybe that would. That would. That would fit together. But I do think the weird part of the giving of the Popemobile to the Gazans is now the Vatican is just going to have to build another popemobile. Right. I mean, because the. The Pope needs a bulletproof. If he's going to do what he's doing, then probably there are five Popemobiles anyway. So the whole thing is just a fake gesture. There's probably dummy popemobiles and fake popemobiles and all of that. And there's like somebody rides in the popemobile with a pope mask when the Pope can't, you know, like in Mission Impossible. Anyway, that's another thing is we'll probably. Well, the. The conclave begins today, I think.

Unknown Speaker (62:55)

Yeah. They've officially set up the smoke chimney.

John Podhoretz (63:00)

Yeah. There could be a new Pope. He could say something that is politically incendiary that will keep things going anyway. So this is going to be a crazy month of May. Don't be under any. Any illusions that things aren't gonna get.

Unknown Speaker (63:20)

Crazier just because you had Jewish American History Month.

John Podhoretz (63:25)

Oh, is it? This is Jewish American History Month.

Unknown Speaker (63:28)

Jewish American History Month. Yeah. Or Heritage Month. Is it Heritage Month? Heritage.

Abe Greenwald (63:32)

Heritage, yeah.

Unknown Speaker (63:33)

Heritage.

John Podhoretz (63:33)

Heritage. Okay.

Unknown Speaker (63:34)

Happy Jewish American Heritage Month.

Abe Greenwald (63:36)

The only way one learns these things is from their streaming service because it divides movies up.

Seth Mandel (63:44)

That's right.

John Podhoretz (63:48)

Yeah.

Unknown Speaker (63:49)

Aapi Month. And so you see, like, celebrate. On your streaming service.

John Podhoretz (63:53)

Celebrate Moana 2. Moana.

Unknown Speaker (63:58)

Right. And then you see, like, Celebration Heritage Month, and it's like, crazy rich agents.

John Podhoretz (64:06)

Yeah, yeah. I was on. I was on. I was on a plane yesterday. And, yeah. The Asian American. The Asian. The API. Things were like, there's some movie about a ghost that comes about out of an Umbrella from China and Moana and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, which is like. But by the way, which I watched half of and which is as great as I remembered. But that's a great movie. That's a really movie. But it is 20. It is 25 years old. You'd think they could come up with Neja. They could have shown Neja 1. There must be a Neja 1, since there's a Deja 2 making $2 billion. I assume Neja 1 made a billion dollars, but it wasn't on there. So I'm sorry to report.

Unknown Speaker (64:48)

Can I, Can I, Can I just. Can I just put this. This is. This is Max, formerly hbo, Jewish American Heritage Month. This is. Without skipping any. This is the lineup that you see. Stand up, Alex Edelman just for us.

John Podhoretz (65:02)

Yes.

Unknown Speaker (65:03)

HBO's the Rehearsal. Curb your enthusiasm. Survivor, which is about a boxer in the camps, that was Survivor.

John Podhoretz (65:13)

Like, you know, like Survivor with the Island. Okay.

Unknown Speaker (65:20)

Which is Nathan Fielder again. Then it's the OC and we have Hannah Einbinder. Stand up. So this is Happy Jewish American Heritage Month. Stand up. And the Holocaust.

John Podhoretz (65:30)

So they have Hannah Einbinder, who of course is an anti Zionist piece of dung. So that's great that they have her on Jewish American Heritage Month. Hannah Einbiter, who was Alex Edelman's ex girlfriend, by the way. So I'm sure they have an interesting political dynamic there because Alex Edelman's brother Julian. Not Julian. Julian Edelman is the football player that. Alex Edelman's brother is the guy who was the Israeli bobsledder. He's an American from Massachusetts, and he's been a very vocal Zionist tweeter and was one of the people who discovered last week that one of the people shrieking at him for supporting Israel in the week after October 7th was none other than our good friend was either Mahmoud Khalil or Mohsen Hitler, whatever his last name is, that I can't remember.

Unknown Speaker (66:30)

By the way, Julian Edelman is also a huge Zionist and pro Israel.

John Podhoretz (66:34)

But what is his brother's name?

Christine Rosen (66:36)

What is his brother?

John Podhoretz (66:37)

Aj. AJ Edelman. Right. AJ Edelman, the Israeli volleyballer. Okay, American Israeli volleyballer. So we got the. We got. We got a big breakup conflict on the MAX streaming service between playing Jewish geography on hbo, Hannah Einbinder and her ex boyfriend, Alex Edelman, who's. Whose brother, I'm sure, is not happy with his. His brother's ex girlfriend, as I am not. And I don't like hacks anyway. I know Christine likes hacks. I don't like hacks. I do like the fact that she is all about. She's a very unattractive character on it.

Seth Mandel (67:17)

The Hannah Einbinder character is not fun. But I'm, I'm in it for Gene Smart, that's.

John Podhoretz (67:22)

And I think Gene Smart is horribly miscast, so. But I'm the only person in America who thinks that. So. Okay, I'm gonna make a quick recommendation and we can go. My quick recommendation again. A plane movie, but it is, it is streaming everywhere. Is a very small, extraordinarily sharply observed little movie called Millers and Marriage by the writer, director Edward Burns, whom you remember 30 years ago made the brothers McMullen one of the original sort of indie sensation movies. And you know, kind of a movie star like had made a lot of big movies as an actor, but throughout his entire career has been making these tiny little independent films for a couple hundred thousand about New Yorkers, long Islanders. People live sort of slices of life very modest. And this is a movie about three siblings and in their 50s, each of whom has a long running marriage that is foundering or is on the rocks in different ways. Juliana Margulies plays a successful writer who's more successful husband. Writer has writer's block. Burns is in is a painter who has a crazy ex wife and a new girlfriend who sees he can't get away from his ex wife. And Gretchen Mall is the wife as a singer who gave up her career for her superstar rock star manager of band's husband who's played by Patrick Wilson. And all these marriages are going sour and it's very, very good. Sad. It's sad. It's incredibly truthful and serious and I recommend it. Miller's in marriage. It's like your friends and neighbors on Apple tv but way better, just put it that way.

Unknown Speaker (69:28)

Ed Burns also, he's now a novelist by the way. He wrote, he wrote a novel based on his life growing up in I guess. What, an Irish American.

John Podhoretz (69:38)

Yeah, in Brooklyn, I think. Brooklyn or Queens. Yeah. His dad was the press spokesman for the nypd, I think, or something like that. Anyway, anyway, it's a very, it's a very good, very interesting, very small movie. Miller's in marriage. So we'll be back tomorrow. Sorry to be of such good cheer today.

Christine Rosen (69:57)

I know you, you all missed me.

John Podhoretz (69:59)

Because you guys were. You guys were pretty sprightly and cheerful yesterday and I've come back to just drop a bomb on everybody's head. So things are bad in Israel, things are bad here with tariffs, things are bad. And you know the marriages of the Millers and Millers in marriage, that's what I'm here for. It's just bring a ray of thunderstorm into your otherwise sunny lives.

Unknown Speaker (70:23)

So for set, get your affairs in order.

John Podhoretz (70:25)

Everybody batting down the hatches is what I'm saying. May is going to be bad for a Seth and Christina, I'm John Pod.

Christine Rosen (70:34)

Hor Keep the candle burning.