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- [00:01]
John Podhoretz
Game day energy is real, whether it's celebrating with friends at a bar or cheering at a watch party. Most Yakima county young adults already know the winning play. Scoring a sober ride home. 94% of Yakima county young adults don't drive impaired. Celebrating the big game is better when everyone gets home safely. Catch a ride, not a dui.
- [00:26]
Most drive sober.
- [00:27]
A message from safe Yakima Valley.
- [00:34]
Christine Rosen
Hope for the best, expect the worst.
- [00:41]
John Podhoretz
Some preacher pain, some diapers. No way of knowing which way it's going. Hope for the best, expect the worst. Welcome to the Commentary magazine daily podcast. Today is Thursday, January 22, 2026. I'm John Pothor. It's the editor of Commentary magazine. With me as always, executive editor Abe Greenwald. Hi, Abe.
- [01:08]
Abe Greenwald
Hi, John.
- [01:09]
John Podhoretz
Social Commentary columnist Christine Rosen. Hi, Christine.
- [01:13]
Eliana Johnson
Hi, John.
- [01:14]
John Podhoretz
Senior editor Seth Mandel. Hi, Seth.
- [01:16]
Hi, John.
- [01:17]
And Washington Free Beacon editor Eliana Johnson. Hi, Eliana.
- [01:20]
Christine Rosen
Hi, John.
- [01:23]
John Podhoretz
So a lot's not happened. The war over Greenland is over before it began. And apparently we're getting everything we wanted, which we could have had before any of this happened. And so congratulations to everybody on the great victory of not winning anything that wasn't already in our pocket. That was a fun week. Thanks so much for that. A lot of instability and craziness and chaos and like pulling everybody's focus away from the things that matter, like what's going on in Iran and what happens next in Venezuela. So that was really, really terrific. And we have a board of peace.
- [02:14]
Which the Nobel, the Greenland thing tied up in the Nobel, not getting the Nobel Peace Prize. I'm just wonder how he's going to react upon not being nominated for an Academy Award this morning.
- [02:27]
You know that.
- [02:28]
What are the demands going to be to make up for that one?
- [02:31]
You know, that is a, that is a very, very good point. I was in fact, just before we broke up watching the Oscar nominations and yeah, I was listening, I was listening for, for his name. And, and of course, next year, the documentary about Melania being made by disgraced director Brett Ratner, which opens this weekend, will be eligible for a documentary Oscar. And I'm sure it's a shoo in absolute shoe in. The big stories are that apparently it's sold fewer tickets on Fandango than anything since the Oogie loves. Because anyway, all right, to get off the Narishkite and move on to serious things like the Board of Peace, which is in diplomatic and international terms, some version of the island of Misfit Toys from Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer. We can talk about an interesting thing as opposed to just a Trump thing, though. It involves Trump. Rahm Emanuel, who I don't think has a prayer of actually being the Democratic presidential nominee in 2028, has decided, and he may not think he has a prayer either, has decided that he is going to run an issue campaign in which he is going to touch third rails and talk about things other people and talk about and see if he can surface for public discussion controversial topics that everybody else is going to stay away from. And yesterday at the center for American Progress, he made a very interesting speech in which he proposed that there be a constitutional amendment with a mandated retirement age of 75 years for federal officials up to including the president and all federal judges. And I think we should watch this question and see whether it starts to sink populist roots over the next two years because there are bipartisan reasons to support this. Right? I mean, we have Biden's decrepitude. We have questions being raised about Trump. We have several senators in their 90s who are still like running for office. We have federal judges. We have right now in New York in a major case, Judge Alvin Hellerstein, who is 93 years old, presiding over, I can't even remember what the case is, but like he's presiding over a major case. He's 93.
- [05:26]
Isn't it Maduro?
- [05:28]
It's maduro. Thank you very much. Yeah, 93 years old. Go home, man. Don't, don't be a presiding judge in a major American case at the age of 93. Thank you very much. So, and we have I think two Supreme Court justices right now in their 80s. We're approaching 80 anyway. So I think that just as Roosevelt got four terms, but the minute that he was gone, everybody on all sides said, no, no, no, no, we're going back to the two term starry decisis. This is how things have always been in America and we're going to enshrine it in the Constitution. We're going to do it really fast and it's not going to be controversial. I just wonder whether this is something that could really sink roots in to the national conversation.
- [06:32]
Eliana Johnson
I mean.
- [06:32]
John Podhoretz
Yeah, I think.
- [06:33]
Eliana Johnson
Yeah, go ahead, Abe.
- [06:37]
Abe Greenwald
It's important because what we've seen is that, and we've seen this not just in Biden's case, but we've seen it among lawmakers. We've seen when someone is clearly too old to do the job, they don't get out of the way. And no one makes them get out of the way. I mean, if there had been this recent tradition of people saying, it's time, I'm going, you know, this wouldn't even be a conversation. But there's clearly this mad resistance to doing the right thing.
- [07:15]
Eliana Johnson
Well, and we have, I mean, this has long been a hobby horse of mine, as our long suffering, impatient listeners know. And there's no reason, I would only take issue with whether it, how broadly based it should be. I think we do need a constitutional amendment to put a ceiling, just like we have a floor for the age of the presidency and vice presidency. But lots of industries accept aging out of one's profession. Commercial pilots being the most obvious example. If you're 65, you're done, you can, you can fly private for a little while longer. But the idea is at that point you might have some sort of physical or cognitive decline that places people's lives at risk. If you are running the most powerful nation on earth, that should also be the case that there might be significant physical or cognitive challenges, even if you're operating as a peak 75 year old, for example. So I think that's something that, and it wouldn't have to be populist. I think it would just be a popular idea and it could, could be bipartisan because each side has weaponized age and dementia against the other candidate. So now we're all on the same playing field. I would highly support it for the presidency. I would perhaps think it through with regard to the judiciary, where the duties and responsibilities of, for example, Supreme Court justice, they do have periods of time in the summer where they have time off and the pace of that job is a little different. But sure, I mean, if we're going to start going down that path, we should think about whether there should be age limits because we do actuarially know and people are living longer. We know that there are declines that happen, not for everyone, but that there could be some sort of minimal standard.
- [08:49]
John Podhoretz
The Supreme Court case is made by two examples. I believe one of them is very vague. And I'm not, you know, I'm not even going to mention the Justice's name, but there is a justice who died in the last couple of years who voluntarily stepped down from the court and was said very quietly and politely. Now, it would not be quiet and polite because of, because of the way social media is, but that he recognized that he was no longer intellectually capable of serving as a justice. That's one case. And the other is the actual fact that William O. Douglas was demented in the last five years of his service and was not, could not be excised from his office. And he was one of nine. Just at a highly contentious moment in American history in which the court was very much up for grabs. And this. He was already a terrible justice, but this completely demented person was obviously sitting there, which meant that his clerks were the ones who were making these decisions. And there were couple of really crazy decisions that he was a major part of. Like the decision that basically said that the death penalty, the only punishment mentioned in the Constitution of the United States, the only specific punishment mentioned in the Constitution, was unconstitutional, which lasted I think three years, and then was properly consigned to the place that deserved. So there is a tradition of justices going demented and staying in their place. And so I. I don't know that it's. That an age limit is not acceptable. I mean, the question that we have to. You know, one of the reasons that we would say you don't do it is because let the people have their choice. If Chuck Grassley wants to run for Senate again in his 90s, let the people of Iowa decide whether they want to be represented by him or not. But of course, there are advantages.
- [11:08]
That's the same as term limits, too. You could make the same argument in.
- [11:11]
Term limits, but in the case of term limits and in the case of an age limit. Right. These are constitutional. These would require constitutional amendments. And the constitutional amendment process is a very interesting one because even if you fail, if you decide you want to go down the route of trying to pursue a constitutional amendment, meaning you need 38 states or something like that to state legislatures to approve of the measure before it goes. Isn't that right? It's 38 states and then the Senate in House. I can't remember what the specific. But. And these things have no term limits on them either. Because of course, the last constitutional amendment is something that was first proposed in like 1804. The weird pay raise one. Or there's some. Some. Someone that is actually was bounce bouncing around for like 200 years and then finally got a 38th state legislature to vote for it. So it became a constitutional amendment.
- [12:14]
Eliana Johnson
But you need 2/3 of the states to rat.
- [12:16]
John Podhoretz
You need 2/3 of the states. So that's 67. Was that.
- [12:20]
Eliana Johnson
Don't ask me to do math.
- [12:21]
John Podhoretz
Okay.
- [12:22]
Eliana Johnson
Anyway, that is not. That's way above my pay grade, I think.
- [12:24]
John Podhoretz
Okay. So. So centrally though, what you can do with an issue like this is take it state by state and bring it up state by state. And when I say populist What I mean by that is it, it will have a following and it is something that can be discussed nationally, that doesn't have to be organized, focused and directed entirely on the distance between 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and, and the Capitol Building.
- [12:54]
Eliana Johnson
Can I just add 2/3 to propose, 3/4 to ratify?
- [12:57]
John Podhoretz
Right, okay. Thank you. So, okay. It's so, I mean. All right. So I think this is the thing, kind of thing where you could have like a serious policy discussion about this that goes outside of the normal Fox News, you know, MSNBC channels. It's like it's almost non part. I mean it is close to being nonpartisan. It's not like there aren't 80 year old Democratic politicians all over the country and 80 year old Republican politicians and judges who are too old everywhere.
- [13:37]
We just had Dianne Feinstein be told by a reporter that she had announced her retirement and she contradicted the reporter saying that she had heard no such thing and in fact she had announced, her office had announced. So yeah, both sides have reason to want in.
- [13:54]
Abe Greenwald
Unless there is a populist hero on one side or the other who's 75 or so.
- [14:03]
John Podhoretz
Well, if you can name Bernie, think about it. Right now, I don't know that you can name a single person. Well, there's Bernie. That would be the case. Bernie.
- [14:13]
Christine Rosen
His name is Bernie. Yes.
- [14:14]
John Podhoretz
Yeah, I, I, okay, but I, you think that he's of sufficient importance. Not, not now, parody of the national Democratic Party that saying, well then we'd lose Bernie Sanders would be enough to make people not want to have the conversation.
- [14:32]
Abe Greenwald
Not right at this moment. I think. Yeah.
- [14:36]
John Podhoretz
You do think that.
- [14:37]
Abe Greenwald
Are you. No, no, no, no, no. I think no, not at this moment.
- [14:40]
John Podhoretz
Okay. I was trying to go back and think through what politicians who do not succeed in getting their party's nominations or you know, either at whatever level, nonetheless managed to inject issues into the mainstream that have a revolutionary effect.
- [15:01]
Eliana Johnson
The flat tax. Remember what's his name?
- [15:03]
John Podhoretz
Yeah, it's Steve Forbes and the flat tax. But of course that didn't work. But you could say, yeah, Ross Perot runs on the deficit in 92 and there is a balanced budget kinda in 1997 because both the Republicans and the Democrats were mindful of how potent this issue was and how it almost, you know, almost transformed American politics.
- [15:29]
Eliana Johnson
And you're saying that basically that there's a gadfly, there's a usefulness to the gadfly candidate and that might be what Rahm Emanuel is turning himself into now. But I feel like there's less space in our political culture now for the gadfly. Whether that's because the third party can never quite break through or that the candidates who are the, who become the nominees are themselves so extreme in one way or the other that the gadfly role is sort of incorporated into their platforms in some ways. Yeah.
- [15:58]
John Podhoretz
And here's why I don't think it, it. The argument against it getting a lot of traction is because he would be running as a Democrat and the Democrats are shaping up to be having their version of the year 2016.
- [16:14]
Eliana Johnson
Right.
- [16:15]
John Podhoretz
Republicans were slowly, the grassroots, conservative grassroots were getting tired of Republican next in line ism. And when Romney ran in 12, he was obviously going to win the nomination. It was not going to be Rick Santorum or Newt Gingrich, right, Or Herman Cain. But everybody sort of took their turn getting a boost as the. Not Romney. But it was understood that Romney was going to win the nomination and he was a per. And he was a fine nominee. But, but that was it. You could tell that was it by the anger bubbling up. And then Trump came out afterwards and it was the Trump era. Democrats had Hillary Clinton seal off the grounds around her nomination in 2016 with Bernie and Bernie was a protest candidate. And, and in fact that led people to overestimate Bernie's support in 2020 when he was running against a bunch of other Democrats. Suddenly he wasn't a 50% guy, he was a 26% GU by. And then you had them all combine to give Biden the push over the line, you know, carry him across the finish line to the nomination in 20. That worked for them in that sense, in the sense that they won the election. But again, it felt, quote, unquote, rigged to a lot of, you know, the progressives who felt like, hey, Bernie was winning and he was on pace to win the nomination. So the establishment got together, threw all their votes to BIDEN and the 900 year old guy, you know, one. And then of course in 2024 it's going to be Biden's vice president if it's not going to be Biden. But 2024 was already shaped by the fact that Biden was like expiring in office. So 2028 is the opening. That's the year that there's this pent up rage and aggression that's been bubbling up. And it's had 12 more years than Republican Republicans produced Trump 12 years ago. Democrats have had 12 extra years to produce their anger. But I just think that in the Democratic primaries they're not there's not going to be space for niche issues and they're not going to get traction in terms of discussion precisely because I think they're going to be arguing over the future of the party and you know how extreme it's going to go. And I just think it's going to. It's there's just nobody's going to get the oxygen for an interesting side argument. They've been waiting for 12 years to scream about democratic socialism at the top of their lungs, and I think that's all we're going to hear.
- [18:51]
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- [23:50]
Eliana Johnson
Negative polarization has made it impossible for Democrats to acknowledge that Joe Biden abused the pardon power. I have had this literal debate discussion with very partisan Democratic friends, wonderful people who nevertheless shake their head and say, well, I mean, of course he had to pardon his son and he had to do those preemptive pardons because look at how crazy Trump is. And if you bring up the massive number of criminal pardons he did towards the end to flood the zone before, you know, to distract everyone from the Hunter Biden pardon, they say, I don't, I don't remember that being so extreme. It, it, I think it would be a really heavy lift in the same way that it is if you have an entrenched MAGA partisan and you talk about the January six pardons as being well beyond the scope of what most Americans would want to see the president pardoning in terms of behavior. Again, a mass pardon, they have a difficulty doing that, too. So I think that polarization might make it difficult for Democrats to make the argument that I think is completely reasonable. It would have to be done by moderates and independ. And where do their voices get heard these days in our political culture?
- [24:52]
Abe Greenwald
Well, the other, this brings up another point which I think is interesting. I wonder what limiting the pardon power would do to the bipartisan law, Lawfare, brinksmanship. Because now it's like everyone can get their buddies out and get them out in advance. You can get. So would that mean you're going to say, well, we got to lower the heat here. We got to stop going after everyone because when they get our side, when they throw us in jail, it's going to be bad. No one will be able to get you out. Or are they going to say, oh, this is good, because now when we go after who, whomever, they're going to stay in jail.
- [25:44]
John Podhoretz
Okay, just to, just to close the circle on this, I'm proposing this not as a major party initiative on either party's part. I'm saying that there is a way in which, for the benefit of either party, a national grassroots movement to do one or the other of these things. An age limit for politicians or a limiting of the pardon power has the possibility of seizing the public consciousness because Washington still appears to be horribly dysfunctional. Both parties are incredibly unpopular. And in the new New York Times poll that is out this morning, I'm very struck by the fact that I think maybe for the first time, the number of independents, they break down the poll in the cross tabs between Democrats, Republicans and independents, the independent number is significantly larger than either the Democrat or the Republican number in a way that I don't think I've seen before. There are like 580 independents in the poll and there are fewer than 500 and maybe 400 and something among the Democrats and the Republicans each. And what that says to me is And Gallup showed this a couple weeks ago. And there are other things. The number of people who wish to dissociate themselves from connection to their party, that is their obvious ideological home is growing and is larger than it has ever been. And there are political things that should result from this because somebody is going to have to win those voters. And they are, they are increasingly dissatisfied with both party choices. And so I'm saying if you're somebody like Emanuel trying to break through or a Republican gadfly, I don't even know who that would be trying to break through, talking about something that isn't. Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump. But is our system broke down? Here's why. Our, our politicians are too old and they're out of touch and they are starting to use powers that they should not be using to futz around with the rest of us.
- [28:09]
Abe Greenwald
The independent thing is also very interesting because I think it's also a reflection of the fact that everyone's pretty unsure what it means to be a Democrat right now or a Republican right now. If you, the Democrats are bipolar in that they're, you know, either socialist or, you know, they want to, they want to sort of tone things down and get back to a saner, moderate party. And the Republican Party MAGA is completely kaleidoscopic. It's whatever Trump has done last, which, which could be socialist, could be, you know, conservative sometime, once in a while, could be Neo Konish, it could be anything. So I think there's an identity crisis on both sides.
- [29:09]
Eliana Johnson
I mean, too old, too corrupt is a pretty great slogan to capture the dissatisfaction on both sides. Both sides of the aisle right now. And younger voters are registering as independent more often too. So that whole generation is.
- [29:23]
Abe Greenwald
If I had my druthers, I would. The amendment I'd like to see is you should have to be 75 to vote.
- [29:34]
John Podhoretz
Okay, well, that brings us. That brings us full. That brings us.
- [29:39]
And to drive circle.
- [29:41]
Yeah, to drive well, well, with self driving cars coming in, that would be fine, I guess. Eliana the, the dissatisfaction of the American people is general. But then you get to specifics and politics remains driven by what the most passionate people on any given issue really want to think. And so if you're a politician, you're like, yeah, sure, everybody hates, you know, the Democrat. Everybody hates me, but you know where I am. If I talk about X, that's what they want to hear. And that's what I'm, that's what I'm going with. And Seth is proposing that 2028 will be the, you know, the kind of ideological pent up explosion that the party has been, the Democratic Party has been denied for. I don't know if you could say really since, yeah, since 2012 or something like that. All I can think of is that the harnessing of that is, you know, is aoc but are there others that we can think about or are we in a situation where we're being stupid because in 2006. Or I'm being stupid, Excuse me, you're not all being stupid. In 2006, nobody saw Obama coming. In 2014 nobody saw Trump coming. We're standing here saying, oh, Rahm Emanuel is this and AOC is that. And you know, Wes Moore could. Gavin Newsom is in Davos getting into picking fights with Trump. Da, da, da. And that the truth is that the likelihood based on the last couple of elections is somebody we've never heard of could end up being the Democratic nominee two and a half years from now.
- [31:28]
There's no question that that's true. But it's also no question that at least some of the ideologues are going to run and they're good and some of the non ideologues are going to run. So we're at least going to get the argument right.
- [31:39]
I mean, they ran. It's not like there weren't Republican ideologues running in 2015 that Trump mowed down systematically, whose issue set was completely in line with what Republicans said they believed. And remember, Trump only got 45% of the primary vote. It's not like Trump owned the party. He just managed to run an insurgent campaign that used the rules of the Republican Party against regulars, winner take all primary, you know, people and all that. So what do we see? What do we think is happening here? Because it could be that all of these Washington fights are just going to be. Someone's going to come in and say, I hate all of you, I hate you. And, and as a Trump type, who says I hate all of you Democrats too. I hate you, Chuck Schumer, I hate you. Bernie, you're Bernie Sanders. You're 83,000 years old. What do you have to say to me about anything? I hate you. I hate you. I hate this one. That's stupid. You talk about this, it's stupid. Nobody cares about that.
- [32:46]
Christine Rosen
You know, 2028 I think will be quite interesting on both sides. I think it's going to be a very crowded field. On the Republican side, I think Trump is going to hold out on an endorsement and I think a lot of people are going to run. I think you're like, of course I think you're likely to see Vance, but I think you're also likely to see a Ted Cruz, maybe a Tom Cotton. You know, there are a lot of people who I think there's going to be a crowded field on the Democratic side. Gavin Newsom, of course, Rahm Emanuel obviously out there. Kamala Harris looking seriously running again. PETE Buttigieg, Westmore AOC There's a lot of people. Of those people, I would note Gavin Newsom's interview with our friend Ben Shapiro. I listened both to that entire interview and then to Ben Shapiro's analysis of that interview. And Newsom's efforts to play down the radical way in which he governed the state of California were notable in terms of signaling the way in which he's likely to run. When he runs, and I think he is the front runner right now, doesn't say anything about who's likely to win or get the nomination, but he is obviously working to play down his radicalism. And Ben pointed that out that when he sounds good, it is when he's planning it down. I would liken that to the way Abigail Spanberger and Mikey Sherrill ran for the governorships in Virginia and New Jersey. And I would point out that out of the gate in Virginia, Spanberger was sworn in on Saturday. Virginia control or Democrats control both houses of the legislature in Virginia and they have come out with a litany of left wing policy proposals. They want to suspend mandatory abolish mandatory minimum sentences for rapists. They want to double the tax rates on top earners. They want to impose an investment tax on top of the tax rates. They want to tax deliveries on Doordash and Amazon and this, that and the other. They want woke training for nurses to train them about systemic racism. It is a flashback. It literally a flashback to 2020 and what drove them into an electoral ditch. And Spanberger as all of this. If you go on Twitter, there's like Twitter accounts devoted to chronicling every one of these proposals coming out of the legislature. And Spanberger is silent. And these are the problems I think that are going to hamstring the Democrats like Newsom who has governed like the Virginia legislature but now wants to tack away from it. And Spamberger who has nothing to say about these proposals and it will be quite interesting to watch whether she signs them into law and how she actually governs. But this, these are the problems that are going to be devil Democrats as.
- [35:55]
John Podhoretz
They look to 2028, but they will not Be devil. Somebody who comes in from the outside and says, I reject all of you.
- [36:04]
Christine Rosen
Sure. It could be like, maybe Mark Cuban is going to jump into the race. It's. It's possible, right?
- [36:09]
John Podhoretz
I mean, says.
- [36:12]
Christine Rosen
They get their own 25.
- [36:14]
John Podhoretz
It's been 20 years of this. Sure, we all love Barack Obama, but what did he do for us? Didn't do anything for us. And he didn't get us out of Afghanistan. He didn't whatever it is that they like or they don't like. Is there a Democratic version either, of Perot, who was basically running an anti Republican campaign that Trump then became the actual expostulator of as a Republican candidate in 2015? I just look at this and I say, you're mentioning Gavin Newsom. It's like everything that we did in 2014 and 2019 or 2015, 2019, where it's like, look at this field. It's amazing. Look at this Republican field. You've got senators from Texas and Florida, young, dynamic leaders from there. You've got the former governor of New Jersey. You've got the former governor of Florida from a political dynasty, was wildly popular. You've got Schwantian, this one and that one, the other one, Ben Carson. And then. And you're like, well, I mean, this is a harvest of riches. And then Trump comes in from the side and mows them all down. But here's my question.
- [37:36]
Christine Rosen
I don't think this is a strong Democratic field. I think it's a big Democratic field. I think many of these people are actually quite overrated. And Governor Westmore of Maryland is a good example of that. He's somebody who, from afar, you know, in the movie Clueless, they called it a Monet. The character Amber in Clueless says you're. She's a Monet. From far away, it looks okay, but up close it's a big old mess. And I think a lot of these candidates are Monet's.
- [38:08]
Abe Greenwald
But Jay, here's my question, John. When Trump came in, he didn't just say, I hate you, I hate you, I hate you. He said that. But he also had these issues. Immigration, foreign wars, entitlements. What's that?
- [38:24]
Christine Rosen
Entitlements.
- [38:25]
John Podhoretz
Entitlements.
- [38:26]
Abe Greenwald
And the forgotten man.
- [38:28]
John Podhoretz
Right? Yeah.
- [38:28]
Abe Greenwald
And so what would the Democratic version of these, under the radar or seemingly the sort of quiet, quiet Democratic majority issues. What would, what would the Democratic Trump surface to his advantage in that way?
- [38:45]
Christine Rosen
Trump, Trump said to Paul ryan and Mitch McConnell, essentially, you haven't understood your base, you people who are campaigning on Immigration reform and entitlement reform have gotten your voters all wrong. You thought they wanted immigration reform. You thought they wanted fiscal restraint. No, you don't understand them. That's not what they want. And I'm going to offer them what they want. I think Abe poses a really good question.
- [39:11]
John Podhoretz
So I think there's a substantive in.
- [39:12]
This, but there's, there's one other difference about Trump, which is that he was like the most famous guy on the planet before he ran. So I, it's very hard to discount. You know, as I always joke, like, once you've had your own Sesame Street Muppet, you're in, like, the stratosphere of fame that few people know. So he didn't sort of come out of nowhere in the same, in that way. He toyed with running for president in 2000. He, you know, he dipped his foot, toes in and out. He was super famous. So I don't think the Democrats have anybody like that. You know, like, look, who would that be? LeBron James? Right? I mean, I don't know who.
- [39:48]
We honestly, genuinely don't know. Yeah, it could be LeBron. I mean, that's what I'm saying. Could it be LeBron James? Could it be the Rock? Could it be Oprah again? I mean, I don't know. I have no clue. My point is that when we look, when you, by the way, there are procedural and actual, there's issues and procedures. Trump took very remarkable advantage of the fact that the Republican Party made an insurgency, an insurgent candidacy possible in a way that the Democratic Party resists because of the rule, the winner take all rules of the primary system. And the Democratic Party functions way differently and has a lot of delegates that come from interest groups, and they all have to be gender and race balanced. And there's a, the, the floor of those conventions is a very different place from the floor of a Republican convention in the winter take all year. So as it happens, it was a unique, it was a uniquely prescient thing for Trump to think, I can run and maybe I can win, even though I don't think he, it was sort of idiot sovereignty of some sort to let him think that he could win. In this case, you'd have a much different thing. But what you're asking me is, what do they say? They say you're all old and corrupt, all of you, and I don't care whether you're a Democrat and I don't care whether you're a Republican. You're 2,000 years old. You have no idea what it's like to be 30 years old, unstable employment, a future that is unclear, all these new things coming that nobody understands. AI this, that the other thing. And you're all taking money from these massive corporations and these massive, you know, data center builders and all of that, and you have no interest in figuring out how to make sure that my life equals or is better than my parents. Now, that's a young person's thing to run on, not an old person's thing. But we've already seen, and at least in New York, that if there was one thing that was clear in the Mamdani versus Cuomo race, it was that Cuomo, who wasn't. Isn't even that old. Like, it's 66 years old, looked like he was a billion years old. And mom, Donnie looked like he had just, you know, served you your. Your grande mochaccino. And. And that made a big difference.
- [42:32]
Eliana Johnson
Well, but Mamdani. Mamdani also is the perhaps almost final stage evolution of a citizenry that is entirely parasocial in its relationships with its politicians in a way that we've already seen with celebrities. That I really am concerned that that would be the only person, a very telegenic former rapper and barista who talks about affordability and is telegenic and can make excellent tick tock videos. That's not someone, as we've already seen a little bit with Mamdani and will await his next few years. They're not necessarily able to govern. And I think one of the things that's missing in the pitch of you're too old and too corrupt, which I think does have bipartisan appeal right now, is who's the enemy? Because this is an electric condition on knowing its enemies and really disliking them intensely and spending a lot of emotional and political energy on targeting one's enemies. So how could someone. I don't think you can just entirely ignore that that's what the last 10 to 15 years of our political cultures look like.
- [43:36]
John Podhoretz
Okay, can I just give you a quick answer on that? Which is saying you're all corrupt and stupid and I hate you, and, you know, I'm coming in from the outside is, look, you had two jobs. You had the job of defeating. Of stopping Trump while he was president the first time, and you failed. You impeached him, and you failed. And then, you know, he almost won, and then he won, then he lost, and then you screwed it up again, and he came back into office. And the one thing that you needed to do to save America from. From the worst thing on earth was be good at your jobs. Regular Democrats. And you stank. And you. And this is where coming out and saying. And yeah, you defended Biden, you protected Biden. He was. That was a dangerous thing to do. Maybe your friends don't like that. I'm saying, in a populist world where Trump said all these outrageous things that were so offensive to ordinary, well meaning, serious people on the right, like you can't say this horrible, slanderous stuff about John McCain, a war hero, you wished somebody better won the war. If you stood there and said, you, you didn't do anything about Trump, you actually helped Trump. Everything you did, you know, Merrick Garland, why were you, why did you raid that you got him reelected? Everything you did has every. It's your fault that Trump was president twice. We can't let you do anything anymore. And everybody on this Democratic stage is responsible for Trump being president. You say you hate him, but everything you did gave him ammunition and ballast.
- [45:24]
Well, there's two, there's two candidates who are not on the outside, but from the inside who could turn the conversation in that direction, right? AOC and JB Pritzker. Pritzker is in a unique position because he is so rich that he is the biggest socialist. He's ready to be the biggest socialist on the planet. There's a weird love affair, but it's real between the socialist left and Jay Pritzker because Pritzker doesn't care how much of his money you take, he'll still have enough. And Pritzker has become the sort of socialist sugar daddy of the left. And he was the break glass in case of emergency candidate or a break glass in case of emergency candidate last time around for Democrats, precisely because he could self fund. There was this idea that if, you know, Biden keeled over, you know, something happened and there had to be a primary rather than an anointment of his, you know, successor. That J.B. pritzker could come literally out of nowhere, write a check and build a presidential campaign overnight without any trouble. And therefore, you know, he was sort of like the backup plan. Now he's going to run not as the backup plan, he's going to run as the plan. And he's going to run very to the left. And he's going to say, all these rich people, they don't, they don't do what's in the people's interest. He's going to be the traitor to his class rich guy that people tend to like. In aoc, everything AOC says is going to end up pulling. I think at least if these two run, which I think they are, will end up pulling Gavin Newsom to the left during the primaries. I don't think he's going to get through the primaries, being the guy that he was in the conversation with, Ben Shapiro. I think if the simple fact of AOC being there on stage means everybody is going to gravitate to the left, and that combination is going to do that. So I think you can have, you know, the sort of traitor to his class who's like, I don't. All these. All these rich people are terrible. The way Trump said, you know, I know these people are corrupt because I corrupted them. I bought them off. I paid them to be at my wedding. Pritzker can. Can sort of play that role. And AOC is, you know, the one young enough that brings it to the left. And I think maybe they have that conversation without the need of anybody on the outside.
- [47:48]
That's an interesting. It's an interesting prospect. I. I just think that we are at an extremely unstable moment and that the political system and even Trump's behavior over the last year reveals how even a huge populist can be weirdly unresponsive to what his fingertip sense tells him. The people who he needs support from might want. By which I mean, he closed the border. And he could be, as Karl Rove says in a very interesting piece in the Wall Street Journal, he could be, like, taking victory laps over the revolution that he has created, created in immigration. And instead he went with, you know, troops in cities and made something that was an unalloyed triumph into something vastly more controversial. And he chose. He. He made this as a. As a. As a deliberate, conscious choice. So he's lost his fingertip feel. It's not clear to me that any Democrat has a real fingertip feel. And so the possibility of these kind of weird things coming out from the side becoming part of the national discussion that we can't even entirely envision. I gave you two examples, but there could be 15 others. I don't even know what those would be, but they'll emerge. Like, did we know we were going to be talking about Greenland again two weeks ago? Didn't we think we would still be talking about Venezuela? You know, are we talking about Venezuela? No. Apparently. We just spotted, you know, we just got $300 million from Venezuela in a bank account in gutter. What the hell is going on with that? What do we have a bank account in gutter for? We have the United States Treasury. If Venezuela's going to transfer money to the United States, it can transfer it to the goddamn United States Treasury. All of this is very weird. And is it exploitable by somebody? Oh, yeah, it is. Democrats seem to be uniquely ill suited to exploiting it for reasons I don't entirely understand. But if it's there to be exploited, it does not make sense that in the America of 2026 that there's people aren't going to rise up out of nowhere to become these populist explosive figures. I mean, like we've had, we had them throughout the trial. We had like Michael Avenatti pop up for five minutes or, you know, you know, it happens. You know, Marjorie Taylor Greene popped up and is now. I don't know where the hell she's going to end up going. So I just think we're having these conversations about American politics, as though American politics is not itself unbelievably unstable and that the parties themselves are not answering questions that the public wants answered or even posing questions that the republic that the people would want answered. Okay, so that's that. Anything we want to talk about before I give you two seconds on the Oscars? No, nothing. You know, I keep getting emails from people saying I talk too much, but then I did these Pinter like pauses. I stopped talking and then you guys don't say that.
- [51:28]
But the Oscar, because the Oscars is a good digression from the norm. It's, it's also, we're all interested to.
- [51:34]
Christine Rosen
Hear what other ideas for today we could do three minutes on the 20,000 word New Yorker expose on Barry Weiss. Yeah, which my 92nd hot take was I learned nothing new from a piece by Claire Malone in the New Yorker on Barry Weiss contained no new reporting, but did contain an anonymous smear characterizing Barry as conniving. And it reminded me of a piece a few months ago in the New Yorker about the new Washington Post publisher Will Lewis, which again contained no new information but anonymously smeared him as an alcoholic. And what struck me about these two things was there have been no New Yorker profiles of the, you know, new presidents of ABC News or NBC News when these people are establishment figures that smear them anonymously. Or Joe Kahn when he took over the New York Times. You know, we get no profile of him. And it does speak to you how absolutely invested the establishment media is and preserving an inadequate and failed status quo.
- [53:04]
John Podhoretz
You know, this is such a great point because the funny part is that it is the view inside CBS News of Barry. Right. Aside from the establishment media view of Barry in the, in this Claire Malone profile. And what do we know about CBS News? It's terrible. CBS News is a collapsed organization that could have three times the size of the audience that it has, but it doesn't. And why doesn't it? Because it stinks and nobody wants to watch it. And somebody came in and took over CBS and said, I'm going to think outside the box and hire somebody. Very outreach in this world. Not from the world because we've tried that before, but from entirely outside and yeah, ideologically divergent, whatever. But clearly what we're doing now isn't working. We have the lowest rated newscast. We have the lowest rated morning show. We have the lowest rated everything. We don't even have a cable channel. We have no presence in digital. We got nothing. Let's give this a shot. We'll give it a shot and we'll see what happens. And the, and the response of the New Yorker is, this is outrageous. This is all Trump. This is this, this is that as opposed to CBS, the number one news network for 50 years is, has, has become a complete, you know, apocalyptic post nuclear site that has no following. And even worse for the New Yorker's Claire Malone is the fact that she got nothing. And then yesterday or the day before yesterday, Dylan Byers in his newsletter has the story of the week about BARI Weiss and 60 Minutes. And the story that Bari Weiss outrageously, can you believe it? She's the head of CBS News. She watched the story on something that 60 Minutes did and said, I don't think this is cooked enough. Can you go back and, and do some more reporting? And that was like, my God, how dare you. Who, what the hell are you talking about?
- [55:18]
Christine Rosen
Journalistic standard. The vaunted journalistic standards of CBS that brought you Russiagate and Covid came from the wet market and the lab is a conspiracy theory. And the woman who built $150 million journalistic juggernaut from scratch doesn't understand anything about journalism. How dare she ask something of somebody who reports to her?
- [55:42]
John Podhoretz
Right. Well, so in this Dylan Byer story, which I, I'm now going to try to. So there is a conversation between Barry and. Where is it here?
- [55:58]
Christine Rosen
It's between Sharon, Sharon Alfonsi and Barry's deputy, Adam Rubens.
- [56:03]
John Podhoretz
And here, here is the conversation. So Sharon Alfonse is the one who did this story on the prison in El Salvador that Barry said, you need to report some more out and get some quotes from the Trump administration, which, fair is fair. They tried to Trump administration, which apparently would not give them any time of day. Right, okay, so this is, this is Dylan Barry. Over time, Barry and her team saw Sharon's refusal to entertain any changes as insubordination, even an attempt to sabotage Barry's leadership. They raised two pointed criticisms of the original report. I'm not even going to go through that. Okay, so some at 60 minutes, all Barry's two complaints were a bad excuse for justifying a politically motivated preemption. Barry just has eggs on her face right now, one source sympathetic to Sharon said. And she's trying to deflect from the fact that she had eggs on her face. So before the after the eggs thing, Barry was asking for updates on how the story was being re reported. Sharon Alfonsi refused to provide those. And then, until last week, most of these hostilities were relayed through intermediaries. Barry and Sharon met for the first time only on the Monday before the segment went to air. This was last Sunday. Upon walking into her office, I'm told Sharon's first words to Barry were, it's so nice to finally meet you. But Sharon seemed angry and annoyed throughout the meeting and resistance to any output, resistant to any output, according to multiple sources. At one point, Adam Rubenstein, a Free Press, a New York Times alum who now serves as Barry's deputy, began explaining the connotations of a specific detail in the story. Sharon yelled at him, you don't get to produce me. She then accused him of being, quote, a mouthpiece for the administration and asked.
- [57:58]
Christine Rosen
Him whether he had Trump administration, of.
- [58:01]
John Podhoretz
The Trump administration, and asked him whether he had ever produced a minute of television news before. He said he had and urged her not to take anything personally. At which point Sharon almost left the room. So here's what happens. They have a meeting. Sharon's boss, because Adam is one of her two bosses, says, so here's what's going on. And she says, you don't get to produce me. And the answer is goddamn right he gets to produce her. Who is she, the producing fairy? Does she own CBS? Does she own 60 Minutes? She is an employee of CBS News that Barry and Adam run. And she's screaming at him that he's a mouthpiece trying to have a civil conversation with her. That detail is not in the 22 billion page story that Claire Malone did because all she wanted to do was be the person who was throwing eggs in Barry's face.
- [58:59]
Christine Rosen
They do think they are superior to. I mean, the New Yorker piece is a reflection of the fact that, yes, 60 Minutes and Sharon Alfonsi. They do think they're superior to Barry. They do think they are smarter than Barry and Adam. They do think they, they are the bosses of Barry and Adam. And so does the New Yorker. So does the New Yorker.
- [59:23]
John Podhoretz
Right. Okay, here is, here is, here is the end of the Dylan Byers thing. Because it is so perfectly crystallizes what I'm talking about, which is that CBS News is in the dumpster. It's terrible. No one's watching it. And this whole medium of network television news is itself on some kind of a timeline to complete obsolescence. Right? So if you can, if you can buy it some time, that would mean that Sharon Alfonsi could make it to getting her 401k fully funded or whatever. But that's not what's going on here. The vast majority of CBS News insiders I've spoken to says Dylan Byers view Barry as a threat to the integrity and legacy of the network, either because of her politics or her managerial shortcomings. Barry, meanwhile, can barely contain her contempt for employees she regards as mediocre at best and treacherous at works. Not to state the obvious, that is not a viable dynamic for any workplace, nor does it provide fertile ground for a reversal of CBS News fortunes. Oh, yeah, maybe that's exactly. Got it backwards. CBS News stank before Barry took it over. Everybody there is saying, leave us alone and let us continue doing what, what we're doing as we stink up the joint, embarrass ourselves and make this network, you know, a total dumpster fire. And she's like, you know what? I'm not going to do that. Like, does she need to replace them all? Obviously, yes. They run a garbage show. They run a garbage network. CBS 60 Minutes is garbage at best. And the, and the evening news and everything is bad. It's bad and losing and it loses money and it stinks. And they're all saying, leave us alone. We're so great. Under what standard are you even any good at what you do? What's the standard that says you know what you're doing? Show me a standard. Is it ratings? No. Is it money? No. Is it integrity? No. Because of what?
- [61:28]
Christine Rosen
By the standard of the opinions of the New Yorker and the other people in their industry, I will bet you.
- [61:35]
John Podhoretz
That Claire Malone hasn't watched 20 minutes of CBS News in the last five years until she got that assignment. Has anyone watched 20 minutes of any CBS News program in the last five years? I mean, if I'm not watching it, who's watching it?
- [61:51]
Does a football game on CBS count?
- [61:53]
That's not the news. That's the only thing that is keeping the networks going anyway is football, of which, as you may have seen this stat, something like 89 of the top 100 television shows of the last year were football games. Football games and the show tracker. And that's it. Like, that's a hundred. The hundred top shows on television. Anyway, so I'm right.
- [62:20]
I just. I just want to say that because this, this happened to him at the New York Times also. And. And it just seems to be a habit.
- [62:27]
Christine Rosen
Can.
- [62:27]
John Podhoretz
Can people please just leave Adam alone? He's a nice guy.
- [62:32]
Adam. Adam is doing great. Adam's looks Sharon Alonsi in the eye and said, yeah, I have produced TV news. And then she wanted to storm out of the room. Like, you know, so storm. Go get another job. Zygos into you. Go find yourself a nice fellowship at the Knife foundation where you can go.
- [62:56]
Christine Rosen
From Columbia Journalism School is waiting uptown with open arms.
- [63:03]
John Podhoretz
Jelani Cobbs.
- [63:04]
Christine Rosen
Yes, exactly.
- [63:06]
Eliana Johnson
Yeah.
- [63:08]
John Podhoretz
Christine, you said you had a recommendation.
- [63:11]
Eliana Johnson
Yes, actually it's a sort of anniversary recommendation of sorts because I think it's the first television show I recommended when we began Commentary Recommends, which was Drops of God on Apple tv. And the second season, long awaited by some of us, has come out. I watched the first episode with a lot of trepidation because when you really love a show, that second season can just disappoint you. Break your heart in some cases. So far, I'm cautiously optimistic. It catches up with Camille and Issei, the two, the siblings, half siblings whose story we saw in the first season. And it's a few years after the contest that. That dominated the. The first season. And it looks really interesting now. Don't watch it if you have a terror of drowning because there's a whole subplot about free diving that begins and ends the first episode, but it. It looks to me like it's going to be promising. They are embarking on a search to discover the creator of a rare wine that was left to them by the dead father. Creating a new mystery and a new sort of competition between the two of them. Less formal than the. Than the first season, but, you know, once again it's in English and Japanese and French and beautifully shot. Wonderful production values on this and the acting is superb. The minor characters are also great so far. So I would cautiously recommend if you liked the first season diving back in, pun intended. When you see the very opening shot, you'll see why that's funny. Season Two of Drops of God, which is on Apple tv.
- [64:48]
John Podhoretz
You really should see season one. If, regardless, if you haven't seen that.
- [64:52]
Eliana Johnson
Yet, please go watch that first.
- [64:54]
John Podhoretz
I watched it wonderful. Because of you, and it is one of the craziest stories, like one of the craziest plots you'll ever see. Cause it's a French woman and a Japanese guy, and they are set up in competition to show how much they know about wine. And the winner gets $200 million in the world's greatest wine collection.
- [65:17]
Eliana Johnson
Yes.
- [65:17]
John Podhoretz
And it's winner take all. And it shows. And it turns out that they're weird. Crazy family dynamics and a lot of melodrama. And half of it set in Provence or something like that, and half of it set in Tokyo. And it is fantastic to look at. And as one of these, like, puzzle box shows that has, you know, each. Every week there's a new challenge. You have to show that you can sense what. What berry was in this wine 250 years earlier. And, you know, where it's, what, what, you know, three hectare square of France that Barry was grown in or something like that. It's just a pretty amazing show. So I'm excited for season two, and I want to disrecommend a Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, the new Game of Thrones show, because I watched the first episode on Sunday night, and I have rarely seen anything as boring as Night of the Seven Kingdoms, which is like, hey, how about if you take Game of Thrones and you take out the dragons and the political rivalries and the connivances, and you show a guy walking around in an empty field and he goes to the bathroom on camera. Literally, there is a shot of a guy going to the bathroom on camera that I did not need to see. And neither do you. So do not watch. Watch Night of the Seven Kingdoms on hbo. We'll be back tomorrow for Eliana, Seth, Christine, and Abum John Podwortz. Keep the camera.