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- [00:01]
John Podhoretz
Lifelock.
- [00:01]
Abe Greenwald
How can I help?
- [00:02]
John Podhoretz
The IRS said I filed my return, but I haven't.
- [00:05]
Seth Mandel
One in four tax paying Americans has paid the price of identity fraud.
- [00:08]
John Podhoretz
What do I do?
- [00:09]
Seth Mandel
My refund though. I'm freaking out.
- [00:11]
Abe Greenwald
Don't worry, I can fix this.
- [00:12]
Seth Mandel
Lifelock fixes identity theft guaranteed and gets your money back with up to $3 million in coverage.
- [00:18]
John Podhoretz
I'm so relieved.
- [00:19]
Christine Rosen
No problem.
- [00:19]
Abe Greenwald
I'll be with you every step of the way.
- [00:21]
Seth Mandel
One in four was a fraud paying American.
- [00:24]
Christine Rosen
Not anymore.
- [00:25]
Seth Mandel
Save up to 40% your first year. Visit lifelock.com podcast terms apply. Hope for the best Expect the wor. Some drink champagne, some diaphrag. The way of knowing which way it's going. Hope for the best Expectations welcome to the Commentary Magazine daily podcast. Today is Tuesday, February 17, 2026. I'm John Pot Horiz, the editor of Commentary magazine. With me, as always, executive editor Abe Greenwald. Hi, Abe.
- [01:07]
Christine Rosen
Hi.
- [01:08]
Seth Mandel
Senior editor Seth Mandel. Hi, Seth. And Social Commentary columnist Christine Rosen. Hi, Christine.
- [01:15]
John Podhoretz
Hi, John.
- [01:17]
Seth Mandel
So, very quickly, we wanted to pay tribute to the passing of. I guess you don't pay tribute to somebody's passing. We wanted to commemorate the passing of Robert Duvall at the age of 95. If you've read through any of the obituaries or tributes that have been paid to him over the last 18 or 20 hours, it is really mind boggling the degree to which Robert Duvall, maybe more than any other film staple from the 1960s onward, was in great movies, great movie after great movie after great movie, 10, 15, something like that, maybe even 20. He made 140 movies that you could watch today and think are, you know, either masterpieces or real portraits of America. You know, from the Godfathers to Kill a Mockingbird to Network to the Paper to his own Oscar winning Tender Mercies to the Lonesome Dove miniseries to, I mean, again, like, I can't even summon them all up. But mash in which of course, he played the villain Frank. Apocalypse Now, Apocalypse now, the apostle. I mean, it's kind of stunning because his peers and he roomed in the 1950s and 1960s with Gene Hackman and Dustin Hoffman, the three of them all penniless actors in New York doing off Broadway stage work. And they of course went on to having being probably more famous or being bigger stars than Duvall, but made fewer legendary movies or movies that will be in the canon of cinema for, for all time. A great Santini forgot to mention fascinating movie, by the way, which came out in 1979 and was. Was basically consigned to the, to the sort of lower part of double bills at drive ins because nobody who made it knew what on earth to do with it until somebody surfaced it and said this is one of the great all time performances and he should have won an Oscar for it. He didn't. I think he actually lost the Oscar to Dustin Hoffman that year. So that's a kind of irony. But anyway, it's a sort of extraordinary life, extraordinary career, Quiet conservative, son of a lifelong Navy man, did not hold with liberal Hollywood politics, did not live in Hollywood, lived in Virginia for like the last 35 years of his life. Was a committed anti communist, played Stalin twice in actually very brilliant performances as Stalin. You would not ordinarily think of him as the sort of person who could play Stalin, but played him in eerie, you know, eerily cold, monstrous fashion. Anyway, you know, you know, that's, it's.
- [04:37]
Christine Rosen
Interesting you say that, John, because the thing about his acting, Duval, to me is that he was actually quite shape shifting without showing it off. So I'm not surprised that, that he could play Stalin. He, you know, he, it's not like he didn't. You didn't slot him in because you needed Robert Duvall type. He played different types. He just didn't. It wasn't like this florid performance that everyone says, oh my God, he embodies so and so, you know.
- [05:15]
Seth Mandel
No, he could be unbelievably understated as he was as Tom Hagen in the Godfather movies or in Tender Mercies, the movie won the Oscar for, in which he plays a, A sort of broken down alcoholic former country singer. Or he could be wildly explosive like he was as Kilgore in Apocalypse now, or as the, or as this kind of vicious LA cop in True Confessions, a very good movie in which, interestingly enough, he plays Robert De Niro's brother. So it's he and De Niro. And of course you think of De Niro as Raging Bull or Taxi Driver as, you know, this person who could go off at any moment. And Duvall blows De Niro off the screen in, in True Confessions, Dinner is playing a priest and a very recessive personality. So it fits the, it fits the game, sort of, because Duval is the, you know, is the sort of gregarious brother and he's the, he's the sunken in himself brother. But nonetheless, he just, you know, eats his lunch and as he was capable of sort of eating, eating anybody's lunch. And so he did have this completely unfixed Persona so that, yeah, he could do it he could play lead parts, he could play supporting roles. He moved between them very easily. He was happy to do television when movie people didn't do television. And he did have maybe his greatest triumph in Lonesome dove, playing Gus McCrae. Lonesome dove, the best miniseries probably ever made from the Larry McMurtry novel in which he and Tommy Lee Jones play these guys doing a cattle drive from Texas to Montana. One of the all time best American novels of the 20th century, and as I say, maybe the best miniseries ever made. Anyway, he lived an exemplary quiet life out of the spotlight, didn't talk about politics very much, but didn't hold with Hollywood's nonsense and did one very brave thing. Then we can move on. In 1989, Godfather Part 3 was being made and, and he of course, was to come back as Tom Hagen in Godfather Part 3. And then he discovered that Al Pacino, and he had won an Oscar already, you know, he was Robert Duvall already. And he discovered that Al Pacino was going to be paid five times what he was paid. And he called Francis Ford Coppola and said, what the hell are you doing? I mean, I understand if he's Al Pacino, he can get twice what I'm being paid, but he can't get five times what I'm being paid. You pay me what you owe me. And Copolis said, I can do it without you. And he said, fine, do it without me. And so the person who played the part In Godfather Part 3, which is, I think unanimously understood to be a wild, grave disappointment of a film, is George Hamilton. George Hamilton plays the part that was written.
- [08:17]
John Podhoretz
Actually, his tan really took over the role.
- [08:21]
Seth Mandel
Just another sign of the unbelievably bad judgment with which Francis Ford Coppola conducted his entire life after making the four great movies that he made in the 1970s anyway, so. But, but you know, you're not gonna get me. I'm not gonna. Don't you don't. Don't play games with me. I'll sit this out. See how you do without me. And he did.
- [08:46]
Abe Greenwald
When I, when I was a kid, I loved Newsies. That was a movie that I grew up on and, and Duvall plays Joseph Pulitzer in the movie. And you almost forget it, but then when you look, I was looking back at it after he passed and like the, he just, I realized that he's been that since Newsies. For me, it was like, like that's like a 35 year old movie or something. But it's like that he can do, he can do A character that is far from. You know, there are other big actors in the movie and whatever, but. And he's certainly not the main. But he, he could do a character in the movie that will stick with you even if you don't really remember. Oh yeah, of course, that was Robert Duvall. But that he just has kind of like this way of talking when he plays like the older, arrogant wise guy that he could really deliver. You know, he has a line in the movie where he says when I created the world.
- [09:46]
Seth Mandel
You know. The next year after he made Newsies, he made the paper in which he has a. Also a secondary part as the grizzled, gnarled editor of the New York Post. Basically short, small performance, like not a small performance but. But a kind of remarkably contained performance that again is like so hyper realistic about what people of that generation who were in newspaper and was like that. It stands. Speaking as somebody who worked for many years at the Europe Post, even though there was no one like him, it was pretty remarkable. Also worth noting in passing the death of Frederick Wiseman at the age of 96. You may not not ever have heard of him. He was easily the greatest American documentary filmmaker of the last half century. Made these unbelievably realistic accounts of institutions and the experience of going to them, having to deal with them, working in them, being a patron of them high school welfare, which is about a welfare office. Made one about the Paris Ballet. Anyway, a remarkable figure of. Almost made movies for almost 60 years and also died yesterday. And then after that came the word that Jesse Jackson had passed away at the stunning age of 84. He's been such a figure in American life for so long that it seemed like that was extraordinarily young, given the fact that the moment that he really cast his largest shadow over American life was in the 80s, which is 40 years ago. So he was actually remarkably young to have become a major American political figure when he did. And very paradigmatic figure in many ways because he both presaged, announced and represented the way in which racial politics in America was going to. The path down which racial politics in America was going to go from the 1970s to the present. Because he had these two faces. On the one hand, he had a face that he. That he showed as a. As a preacher in the black community, sort of recommending, representing and encouraging self reliance pride. The idea that you should not let anybody tell you that you're nothing, you are somebody, you should do your best and make something of yourself. Even if you feel like the World is pushing you down. Which was a very important and empowering message. But it was wildly overshadowed by the extent to which he also represented the politics of grievance, hostility, the idea that everything in America was rigged against black people and that therefore special rules should be made and provisions should be made and bribe money should be paid to him and others like him. And of course, his naked and open anti Semitism maybe the first figure to have been in a kind of way excused for using anti Semitic rhetoric and tropes that other people had basically been written out of American life for in the 30 years that preceded him, notoriously telling Milton Coleman, who was the reporter who was following him on his presidential campaign in 1984 for the Washington Post, that, you know, they were flying into Jaime Town and going into a whole. Meaning New York City, going into a whole rant about Jews and Coleman himself, black, having to sort of wrestle with a long dark night of the soul before he revealed that this had been said to him in private by. By Jackson because he didn't want to. He didn't. He didn't want to be the kind of architect of anything that was going to bring Jesse Jackson down. Jackson then apologized. He gave a speech at the Democratic convention in 1984 in which he said he had done many things wrong and that God was not finished with him yet. But he had opened the door and he had opened the door to people by him opening the door. Al Sharpton came through the door and C. Vernon Mason came through the door and Louis Farrakhan, a figure very obscure until the Jackson campaign came through the door and became again a major figure in American life, in part because he provided the security for Jackson's presidential campaign before the Secret Service got involved. So it was members of the Fruit of Islam, that was the kind of paramilitary wing of the Nation of Islam, who were the guard, like, guarding Jackson during his public appearances and things like that. And then we started to discover who Louis Farrakhan was. And. And he was, you know, the. He was a kind of embodiment of a. Of a vile Jew hatred of a sort that almost had not been given voice in the United States even in the worst times of the 1930s. So Jackson was a malign figure in American life in many ways, certainly in the. In the fact that he made the black community safe ope for open anti Semitism. We saw just this week Spike Lee showing up at the NBA All Star Game where there is an Israeli citizen playing, was playing in the games wearing an outfit meant to evoke you know a Palestinian martyrdom. Spike Lee also kind of like a creation of the Jesse Jackson world and also a vocal early vocal or or represent person who culturally represented anti Semitism, particularly in some vile caricatures and movies like Mo Better Blues and and others, all of which Malcolm Spike.
- [16:34]
Abe Greenwald
Malcolm X was Spike Lee's also.
- [16:36]
Seth Mandel
But but I mean it's specifically the characters of of Joe and Josh Flatbush and Mo Better Blues which which represent the lowest point in American anti Semitic caricature on film. There's never been anything like it before or since. And again, all of this kind of made safe by Jackson moving the Overton window in that way let's talk about Aura Frames. Aura Frames. The solution to hundreds of photos that never make it past your camera roll. I can tell you this because right now in my living room, aura frames are rolling photo after photo after photo after photo from my iPhone. 25 years actually of photos, 6 of them before the iPhone, but downloaded into my photo app nonetheless. And you get them. You use the app that Aura Frame supplies to move them from your photo app into the Aura Frames app and then they appear right there in your home. Or if you want to give it as a gift in a friend's home, every memory, every joy, every moment that you have ever wanted to commemorate is there. Causing conversation, causing heartwarming moments, causing moments of laughter and embarrassment. All the things you get from photos. But they can be displayed right in front of you as part of your daily pleasure. And that's why I love it so much. I gave one to my associate, Stephanie. She has it rolling in her office right now. So you get free unlimited storage. You can add as many photos and videos as you want. You can keep adding it from anywhere, anytime, right with that app. If you want to send it as a gift. Every frame comes packaged in a premium gift box with no price tag. And you download the free Aura app. Or you can text photos straight to the frame. Actually, I haven't done that yet, but I hear it's amazing. Name number one by Wirecutter. You can save on the perfect gift by visiting auraframes.com for a limited time. Listeners can get 35 off their best selling Carver Mat frame with Code Commentary. That's a U R A frames.com promo code commentary. Support the show by mentioning us at checkout. Terms and conditions apply. Nobody would ever accuse me of being a fashion plate, but I do know because I am almost 65 years old, that a well built wardrobe is about pieces that work together and hold up over time and that I can tell you from personal experience is what Quince does best. Premium materials, thoughtful design and everyday staples that feel easy to wear and easy to rely on even as the weather shifts. During this cold snap, for example, I put on a nice thick Quince sweater. I put on my puffer jacket, which I can wear when it's 50 or I can wear when it's 0 degrees and feel the same level of comfort. Quince works directly with top factories, cuts out the middleman. So you're not paying for brand markup, just quality clothing. Everything is built to hold up to daily wear and still look good season after season. So look, refresh your wardrobe with quince. Go to quince.com/complyment for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. Now available in Canada too. That's Quincom Slash commentary. Free shipping and 365 day returns. Quince.com/ Commentary It's a particularly disgusting, excuse.
- [20:18]
Christine Rosen
Me thing that he did with his connection to the legacy of Martin Luther King too, because he liked to talk about himself as a King associate or protege and then to go on and be the trailblazer for a new era of black anti Semitism, anti Zionism is extraordinary and disgusting.
- [20:47]
John Podhoretz
And the the history of his rainbow PUSH Coalition is also tells a broader tale about the challenges of a lot of black civil rights organizations in the late 20th century as they move into the 21st century. Because that that organization started out trying to, you know, picketing businesses that wouldn't hire black workers and, and really trying to emphasize the need for, for job growth among the black community. I mean a very basic issue, very necessary issue. And where it ended up was him saying he was they were going to pay for, you know, the false rape accuser in the Duke lacrosse case and him grandstanding in television and saying Michael Brown's shooting was completely about racism, which even the Obama Justice Department eventually pointed out it was justifiable shooting by police officers. So that the trajectory of these groups and I think we saw a similar, we've seen a similar but more compressed path for Black Lives Matter. Just there was a fair amount of corruption and questionable financial dealings with the PUSH Coalition in its later years. And I just wonder if there's some sort of built in problem with Grift. Whenever you form an organization that's fighting for social justice, what kind of people are attracted to that, both as leadership and as infrastructure, that they often follow that path? And I think his movement was an example of some of that, unfortunately, because at the beginning it really did have a mission that I think was necessary and. And quite important to the black community at the time.
- [22:16]
Seth Mandel
The PUSH Coalition. And one of Jackson's major pushes was in fact, you could call it grift or you could call it a kind of cynical understanding that this is really the way the world worked and this was. Was going to have. Was going to be how it worked, which was threatening boycotts against companies, corporations and businesses if they did not place African Americans on their boards or give them franchises or do various kinds of things, most of which was then run through him so that he got a cut. And this is like Coca Cola bottling plants and positions on. On. On boards of corporations and things like that. You could look at that and say, well, it's only fair black people weren't getting enough of these high level corporate jobs and things like that. And again, he opened a door that seemed to have been closed. But so much of it seemed to be about the grant money. The right.
- [23:23]
John Podhoretz
But it started out as an outgrowth of Operation Breadbasket. It actually started out as mlk, you know, as an outgrowth of this actually useful, necessary effort to hire within the local black community to keep black people employed in businesses in their community. I mean it actually, I just want to emphasize that Operation Breadbasket with. Under King was a. Was a useful organization and it did at the beginning. I think the coalition tried to mimic that, but it didn't last. As you say, it started looking at corporate jobs.
- [23:51]
Seth Mandel
So in things that I think now would probably be found unconstitutional if they were brought to the Supreme Court. The civil rights. The revision of the Civil Rights act in 1991 enshrined the policy of the minority set aside. That was that you, you could have businesses were. Were given incentives or whatever to set aside money to be spent on minority, to train minority to do this, do that for minorities or federal contracting, state and local contracting, going to minority contractors and things like that. Which sounds noble and wonderful. Right? It sounds fair. Particularly after, you know, legacies of slavery and Jim Crow having only ended, you know, in many states 30 years earlier and sort of de facto segregation things and problems with public sector unions being unjust toward when it came to hiring black people and minorities for jobs. But, but the real thing about the minority set aside business is that you would get just basically like a business run by white people or the mob or something like that, and they would just, they would take a black person along and say he's the CEO. And therefore you would then that they would get the minority set aside Money, but it didn't employed nobody except the person who was the front guy. And that was a sort of. That happened ritualistically over and over and over and over again. And that was part of, you know, how Jackson functioned. Like it was, again, I think, a highly cynical understanding of how the world works, that he was right about in the sense that it worked for him and it worked for the people who were enriched by it. And it did absolutely nothing to empower the community that it was supposed to empower. So his legacy is incredibly mixed. And I guess we should probably not. We should mention, since you brought up Martin Luther King Jr. He was one of his young aids. He was at the Lorraine Hotel the morning that King was shot and killed in Memphis in 1968. And there has been a controversy ever since. Other aides of King's claim that Jackson aggrandized his role and place in. On that morning, even going so far as to say they think that he took blood off the pavement or the steps or wherever it was that King was shot and rubbed it on his shirt to claim that he had cradled King in his arms before King had died. Reverend Hosea Williams and others in the civil rights movement who never forgave him for what they thought was his effort to kind of exploit King's assassination for his own personal aggrandizement. And I would leave that to one side, given the fact that we're talking about somebody who has just died and, you know, one should not speak ill of the dead, but given the. Given. Given how pernicious he was and his legacy was toward. Toward my people, I feel no compunction about mentioning it in this. In this moment of, you know, of his. Of his passing. Does anybody want to, like, I mean, am I. Am I could. Should I wait a couple of days? Is it too soon to mention the shirt? I don't. I don't.
- [27:18]
Christine Rosen
Fine by me.
- [27:19]
Seth Mandel
Okay.
- [27:21]
Abe Greenwald
I. I always also thought it was interesting that he had the different ways that he. He and Al Sharpton related to Obama. And, you know, Obama as a figure of, you know, transition of sorts for, you know, I know they hate to say the black community, whatever you want to, you know, say, but Obama was like the sort of this. The.
- [27:43]
Christine Rosen
He.
- [27:43]
Abe Greenwald
He kind of superseded Sharpton in a way, replaced what Sharpton was trying to do, which was you had to sort of go through Sharpton and now, you know, you could do it on your own, right? You were black. You could become president on your own. You didn't need that. And yet the guy that really hated him was Jesse Jackson. And the guy that, and Sharpton and Obama managed to maintain civil relations. And even Obama even gestured at Sharpton's role and kept him going. I mean, I remember writing something years ago about this, but he, Obama actually elevated Sharpton back to his role at some point during the Obama administration. As if, like, they should still have that guy and it should still be Al Sharpt. But, but he and Jesse Jackson had a very, very different relationship. And it's an interesting comment on, you know, the, the, the way that Jackson felt the next generations were what they felt he, what they, what he felt they owed him and you know, whether, you know, they were taking things in a direction that, you know, he was comfortable with. But he, you know, he got caught on camera saying something very derogatory about Obama, you know, on a hot mic on, on, on Fox News that sort of opened this can of worms. But what he was saying was basically like, you know, he, he doesn't pay proper. You know, he doesn't, he doesn't, he doesn't appreciate. He doesn't, you know, salute the, the. Those whose shoulders he's standing on. That was how Jesse Jackson saw it and Sharpton saw it in a very different way and in a way that actually he could still, he could maximize his, you know, self interest in his position and he wouldn't be left behind. But Jackson really seemed like there was either a world in which Jesse Jackson towered over politics or there was a world in which Barack Obama could run for president and there couldn't be both. Well, he eclipsed him in a, in a way that he didn't Sharpton or.
- [29:46]
Seth Mandel
Right. Well, the other thing about Jackson and his. During the Obama years was that his son was a congressman from, from Chicago and was convicted of corruption and served three years in jail. That started in the first, the sort of. The, the case against Jesse Jackson Jr. Started in the first Obama term. And so the idea that Obama needed to maintain his distance from the Jackson family was not just, I think him not wanting to give Jackson any credit for things because for whatever, you know, personal dynamic existed between them. And Jackson's, you know, feeling again like, you know, he opened every door and Obama wasn't, you know, saluting him or calling him every day to say thank you or whatever, but there was also this need to keep his distance from the Jackson family dynasty because, because its legacy was st. Was being stained by, by Jesse Jackson Jr. S personal peccadillos. So there was that too, like a complicated thing. And, and Sharpton as it turned out, in some ways, was more easily bought off and of course himself shifted his game when he went into media. So he was. And also Sharpton understood that he couldn't play the incendiary guy with the match who would set you on fire with Obama, that Obama was more popular than he was in the black community and more. And he needed to tread carefully, not blame Obama for Michael Brown, not blame Obama when there was one of those cases where he becomes the family spokesman, even though he was also on MSNBC at the time. But he left Obama out of it. He did not say this is the President's fault or this is the Justice Department's fault also because Eric Holder was running the Justice Department. So Sharpton was much more. It was more Machiavellian in that sense as he moved on and knew where to go and where not to go. And Jackson was much more prideful in the sense that he wanted credit, he wanted honors, he wanted to be paid obeisance too. And part of the lasting legacy of his anti Semitic record was it would be interesting to see where this goes this week and how much stress there is put on that this week and what people say about him this week as we go forward but meant that he had to be held at a certain distance and reserve even though he was until. Until, you know, obviously by leagues, the most successful minority candidate in American history up to that point. I mean, he got tens of millions. I can't remember, you know, the a. The story of him in 84 was a story of a pretty successful insurgent candidacy at a time when the, when the party, when things were very much complicated and confused by this weird race in 84 between Mondale and Gary Hart and others. And it didn't make much sense what was going on there. And Jackson kind of was the. Was. Was the most exciting part of that in the Democratic Party. So. So one thing we have not gotten a chance to talk about is the Munich Security Conference. And the two major participants in the Munich Security Conference, as the news has it, one of them being Alexandria Ocasio Cortez in her sort of maiden performance on the world stage speaking about world affairs. And the other being Secretary of State Marco Rubio's speech, the Munich Security Conference. Very quickly about Ocasio Cortez. One of my favorite novels and the. I think the best political novel, novel about the rough and tumble of politics itself is Anthony Trollop's Phineas Finn, which is about a 25 year old who becomes a member of Parliament almost by accident, goes to London and what happens to him. And one of the great scenes in Phineas Finn and one of the great scenes in English literature is Phineas Finn rising to give his maiden speech on the floor of the House of Commons and completely bungling it, losing his way, not remembering what it was he was trying to talk about, getting confused and really embarrassing himself because he was, after all, 25, 26 years old and from Ireland and not, you know, not, not having been sort of through the, through the works. And it's, it's a great moment because ordinarily, even in literature of the 19th century, you would expect, if you're writing a novel about a, you know, that's called Phineas Finn and all of that, that like, he would get up and it would be like he would pitch a no hitter, you know, or he would like hit a home run his first time at bat. Because you're, you're, you're showing how somebody, you know, like it becomes a star. But that wasn't, that wasn't. Trollop was like, okay, this is actually what happens. Like somebody gets up and embarrasses himself in his first major performance. And that is what happened to Alexandria Ocasio Cortez at, At Munich. Anybody wanna.
- [35:37]
Christine Rosen
She was, she came very, very close to sort of Kamala esque verbiage at times. I mean, it was, if you watched it, it was her problem. Had less to do, in my mind, with the substance, such as it was, of what she said then with her ability to get it out. There were long, weird, empty pauses that wound up in nowhere land. Particularly, I think when she was asked if the US Would respond militarily, should China go after Taiwan? That threw her. She was not. She had never fielded a question like that one before.
- [36:34]
Seth Mandel
You know, we got a Covid dog. My family, like a lot of people, feeling lonely, kids feeling lonely. We got ourselves 13 pound Havanese. Wasn't 13 when we got it. Named Georgie. And we, of course, now love this dog. Dog comes with me to the office every day. I'll do anything for this dog. And that's why I want to talk to you about, as a pet owner, about the ASPCA Pet Health Insurance Program. Quick message from today's sponsor. These days, we insure just about everything. Cars that lose value the second we drive them. Phones we trade in every two years. Trips we haven't even taken yet. But our pets, who are truly irreplaceable, often go unprotected. With ASPCA pet health insurance, you can get help with unexpected vet bills and make sure your dog or cat gets the care they need, when they need it, and when you're looking out for them. There's a little extra something in it for you, too. When you enroll in an ASPCA pet health insurance plan, you could get a $25Amazon gift card. It's a little treat for you while you're doing something great for your pet. The program offers customizable accident and illness plans, making it easier to get your pet the care they may need. To Explore coverage, visit aspcapetinsurance.com Commentary that's aspcapetinsurance.Com Commentary Eligibility restrictions apply. Visit aspcapetinsurance.COM AmazonTerms for more info. This is a paid advertisement. Insurance is underwritten by either Independence American Insurance Company or United States Fire Insurance Company and produced by PTZ Insurance Agency Ltd. The ASPCA is not an insurer and is not engaged in the business of.
- [38:22]
John Podhoretz
Insurance well, it's funny because her her appeal, particularly to the younger generations of voters came comes across very well in her little short form video social media presence. You know, the Instagram reels of her cooking in her apartment and talking directly to the camera and following having the camera follow her around her day job. But the strategic ambiguity of the position that most American officials will happily mention briefly and then immediately change the subject when they're asked that exact question should have been in her wheelhouse. If she'd been properly prepped for this appearance, she should have expected that question. She could have said, you know what? I don't have much to say about that, as no U.S. official has much to say about that. That's generally our position. And moved on. Change the subject. Just brought up something else. That's what I think. Any other politician who had even a mildly prepared set of answers on foreign policy questions in a major venue like Munich would have done. But it struck me that she it was also her reaction to the coverage of her gaffe. She should have ignored it and just done something else to change the storyline. Instead, she called and whined to the New York Times, she's saying nobody understands me. I care about affordability. Why are they focusing on me? She does not like criticism. And again, that's another reflection of having been so widely praised in her social media bubble and thinking she is not that she's immune to that sort of criticism. That's a very, very mild taste of what she'll get if she wants to elevate herself to either Senate or a presidential campaign one day Well, I think.
- [39:54]
Christine Rosen
She was shocked that even the New York Times said she stumbled exactly that she didn't expect that they were supposed to be friendlier to. I mean, the thing is she shows up to this, you know, Munich national security conference with her domestic bag of tricks with her usual go to arrows in that same old democratic socialist quiver, completely unprepared to talk about international relations. I mean, the only ideas that she managed to get to were that the west has been mean to the global South. And when asked if Donald Trump's presidency, I'm paraphrasing, would have a lasting impact on, a negative impact on the rules based order, she questioned whether there ever was really a rules based order because we've been so unfair to other countries and to the global south.
- [41:05]
John Podhoretz
And she does not know where the equator is located.
- [41:07]
Abe Greenwald
We did learn that part of what I think that you, Christine and Abe saying, the New York Times saying that she stumbled and surprising and all that. She needs them to be harsher. In fact, I think that they are doing her a great disservice by not making clear how disastrous her answers to some of these questions were. She, you know, when, when Romney would go abroad, he would get the what about your gaffes coverage, you know, from the Washington Post and wherever, like there is a, there is a problem with pretending that it really wasn't that bad for her. She needs somebody to say you need thicker skin and you need to hear this, but you can't. You, you sounded like an idiot. And I think that one of the things that she didn't really understand was that in Europe, foreign policy is a much bigger part of being a good left winger of the type that she is than it is in America. Bernie Sanders can talk for great lengths of time without talking about foreign policy and just covering the domestic stuff. And AOC is in that model. But in Europe, in the Europe of, you know, the Jeremy Corbyn and the unreconstructed, you know, old Stalinists and whatever. The foreign policy is a huge part of, of this, the, the, the, you know, she says global south like it's some hot new term, you know, and it's like she, and she comes off as somebody who doesn't actually pay that much attention to that, who just has the buzzwords. And in Europe, you know, that, that, who you, who you side with in international conflicts or perspective. International conflicts, that is at the top of the list in many cases. And, and it's not, you know, a universal basic income first. It's, you know, who, what Where, Who. What side are you on in this sort of global political struggle? She really had nothing to say about that. And they are steeped in that, you know, from the moment they get into politics.
- [43:20]
Seth Mandel
Yeah, but I don't think that the European response to her is the story. I think the story is the. The dawning understanding among liberals in the United States that they have a problem because the standard bearers for the future of the Democratic Party are a bunch of illiterate idiots. And she. This was a moment at which she could have gone, had somebody write a coherent speech for her that represented leftist orthodoxy, but was literate and sort of thoroughgoing and all of that, and even Corbin Esque, but that was formidable in some fashion or other, if she was going to do this at all, which was a. Was elective. And instead she embarrassed herself by being amateurish, ignorant, sounding stupid, and, you know, and is a major potential candidate for 2028. And I think she scared the bejesus out of American Democrats who are desirous of seizing back the reins of power and having been through Kamala ism, are aware that they're going to have to make a better showing when they have to talk about important issues than the last Democratic nominee for president was able to do so. And then you have. What's more important is the contrast, excuse me, between her and Marco Rubio giving what is the most important foreign policy speech given by an American in several decades. That's in part because, I mean, certainly by a figure on the right in several decades. That's in part because people don't make speeches like the speech that he made in Munich. It used to be a thing that was conventional that the Secretary of State would go somewhere and make a major speech on his vision for American foreign policy. And not only because that didn't happen during Trump, when the Secretary of State was first Rex Tillerson and then it was Mike Pompeo, and that wasn't their game. But even Trump, I mean, Hillary was Secretary of State. When did she ever give a major speech? God only knows if she ever. And John Kerry, of course, you know, gave what he probably thought were major speeches that were major in his own mind. What we saw here in Rubio was a genuinely sophisticated attempt, finally in the Trump era to come up with something that is kind of like a Trump doctrine, not the Don Row Doctrine, but the. What the United States is about in the 21st century as it surveys the world and what it stands for and what it wishes Europe to do in concert with the United States, to Secure a better future in the 21st century.
- [46:58]
Christine Rosen
You know how we always, when we talk about Trump and when he gets into trouble, when he does something unnecessary and unnecessarily explosive and provocative, we always wind up saying, if he only. Just. If he could have just, if he, if he could have just formulated it this way, he still could have got across that message without blowing it up over there. This was the thing. This was we. This was the. The actual thing that we always want. In some sense, it's a wildly improved version of the speech that J.D. vance gave over in Europe earlier in Trump's second term, getting across the same points without creating a wound and then pouring salt in it.
- [47:53]
John Podhoretz
Well, okay, I want to say, because I get a lot of mean email from listeners who say, you're just tone policing. Just say something useful. You're tone policing. But I think this Abe is absolutely right. There are examples, particularly on the world stage with serious issues, when you're really trying to shift opinion, your way about the approach you're taking, where tone is almost all of it because he's not. And also, you know, not talking about annexing Greenland or Canada as the 51st state. That's also helpful that he didn't go down that path. I will be very curious to watch how many in, like, hardcore MAGA world their reaction to Rubio, because they kind of relish the. The display and the. And the machismo, and they loved J.D. vance's speech. So the fact that Rubio got a standing ovation in that room might actually work against him among certain people in that coalition. But long term, he. I liked that it harked back to a kind of statesmanship that you can still have with a more radical approach to foreign policy without the insult, without all the braggadocio.
- [48:56]
Christine Rosen
Can I just say one thing about that?
- [48:58]
Seth Mandel
Quickly?
- [48:59]
Christine Rosen
He got a standing ovation after telling the Europeans that they desperately need to shape up to stop apologizing and to get their act together and not be ashamed of who they are and our shared history.
- [49:14]
John Podhoretz
He's like a motivational speaker.
- [49:16]
Abe Greenwald
They thanked him. Routine. They, you know, the. I forget which German official was at the. Was. Was moderating it. But, you know, he, he, he trans. Like, he said to the crowd, this was a really great speech act like it.
- [49:33]
Seth Mandel
Yeah.
- [49:33]
Abe Greenwald
You know, like, he was like, wow, in the moment, not, like, upon further reflection, boy, wasn't it, you know, chatting?
- [49:41]
Seth Mandel
What he said was, what you heard in this room was relief. He said, you heard relief about this statement about the importance of Europe and our alliances. And our shared purpose. And that, that is why you got the ovation that you got. That was the immediate, literally when Trump, when Trump went, Rubio was done. I think that it is important to note that the reason that it's, I think, qualitatively different from Vance's speech is that it had this uniquely American and anti non Trumpian quality of positive ambition and an idea that America working to defend and push its interests and the west working to push their national and sovereign interests is itself an unalloyed good thing for the world. Because we are built on an architecture of the ideas that have made the world better. And that this dates back hundreds of years. It is implicitly, there is the Christian element to it, there is an Enlightenment element to it. But all together, we, Europe and America, built the framework that brought freedom, liberty and prosperity to the globe in a way that has not been the case before. And then he said over the past 20 years, essentially or 30 years, we lost the thread. Now, this is where you can start having disputes and disagreements about trade and stuff like that. But we lost the thread. He said we deindustrialized based on intending for something good to happen, but it was bad. Again, longer argument about whether or not that is a fair or a justifiable or true thing to say about what's happened over the last 30 years. But we lost the threat. And we lost the threat at the same time that we began pretending that there are no civilizational differences between the west and the non West. Essentially, we began pretending that we are no better, let's say, than Islamic civilization, that we are all the same and that other civilizations, and we all have our own, everyone is the same, and anyone can cross any border and bring their culture with them, and it's all going to be fine. And. And it's not fine. And we are better and the west is better and the world is better when the west is strong. And the west is better when the west is strong. And we have to be strong by looking to our sovereign interest. And you in Europe need to look to your sovereign interest and you need to stop apologizing for the fact that you're better, that we are better. I say that because what Trump does is. He says what? We stink and you stink. And I'm going to make it better. But, you know, so there was a point. But we all stink. And there's a way of making it better by being, you know, by, like, by getting what we want and getting what we deserve. And then, you know, people will be great and all of that. And Rubio, hearkening back to a classic American hortatory tradition and foreign policy, is saying, we are the representatives of that which has been good in civilization, and not only shouldn't we apologize for it, we should be evangelists for it. And then he mentioned this thing about his great, great, great, great grandparents coming from Spain. And imagine, imagine 250 years later, their son is the, you know, there's this nation, nation and there is their, there is their descendant who is speaking from this stage in Germany about the future of the West. That is the story of the West. It is a story that no other civilization tells. And I thought it was, as I said, there are problems with it. He, like, he, he, he alighted the Ukraine issue by saying, only America is seeking to, in Ukraine, which I don't want to, you know, and then some trade stuff. But in the largest broad sense, this was a real, the first really creative way that a American figure in the Trump era, working for Trump, has made a case for America, the West, NATO and Europe as a civilizational masterpiece that needs to be understood as such and that needs to feel free to work its will on the world consonant with its values. Because if we don't, the bad guys do.
- [55:12]
John Podhoretz
Well, that's the key, right? That, that view, that, that Western civilized civilization view has enemies. That's what one of the things I took away from Rubio's speech was, that that was starker because when Trump talks, I don't think he's just saying every, we're all terrible and we're just out for our own power and you guys do your thing, we'll do ours. I think he really believes in some version of American power that has an idealistic spirit. It doesn't speak in that way, but I think, but I think he feels like we've been had by protecting the security of all these other countries who don't care enough about their own values to protect themselves. And so when I hear him talk, I think it's more, well, we're going to get ours and you're going to have to deal. We're abandoning you. So Rubio builds a bridge. Again, Vance is a little separate and he's part of a long standing tradition in America, too, of isolationism and of, we actually don't care to build a bridge. We want to separate and have a moat and we'll do our thing and you do yours and, and that's always had a minority of support in this country. And I was reassured if I was thinking about a matchup between those two for a presidential election. Those are two very distinct visions of America's power in the world. One recognizes we have civilizational enemies that we must understand and protect ourselves against. The other one says we protect ourselves by withdrawing and isolating. And I think Rubio's vision is actually a more modern approach to the problems we face in the world.
- [56:31]
Christine Rosen
This, to Christine's point about Trump, this is what I mean by Rubio. Rubio speech was the sort of fulfillment of when we want Trump to articulate something more effectively. Trump goes over there and says, you are all taking the US For a ride. You are, you're free riding on us. It's unfair. You're not being fair to us. And we don't like that. Rubio says, we want you to be stronger because that makes us stronger. Same making the same ultimate actual point. You got to step up security wise, but not couching it isn't even right because it's true. I mean, tying it to a, a much more effective, larger message.
- [57:28]
Seth Mandel
And Rubio said this.
- [57:29]
Abe Greenwald
Well, he had a genuine appreciation for it. That's, that's the thing. It was genuine what you're saying, you know, he, he, he, he genuinely knows the history of, you know, the, the, the, the transatlantic alliance and he knows what came from, you know, and he sounded like he really appreciated it in detail. But also, I, I think that this is, you know, although we wish Trump would say certain things, certain ways, I actually, excuse me. I actually found that when I was watching Rubio's speech, it was easier to understand why Trump is popular and why his supporters like him, like him, even though it was Rubio giving the speech. And I think this also came together with, you know, Todd Lindbergh and Corbin Teague have this piece in, you know, in the, in the upcoming issue, in the March issue about, you know, basically about this issue about putting together a kind of, you know, an outlook for American foreign policy in the, in the new era and Trump's involvement in all that. And what you see is that Trump's voters, you know, Trump is still the guy they vote for. But as, as Lindbergh and Teague point out, Trump's voters don't want isolationism. Trump's voters don't want, you know, the withdrawal from the world. They don't want a lot of the things that, that Trump's more vocal supporters try to make his, his ideology into. They actually, his Trump's voters sound like Rubio. When you, when you, when you poll them, when you ask them what they want, they have concerns about trade and industrialization, but they are not Pat Buchanan on trade and industrialization. They're not, you know, they're not anti free market, they're not anti Europe or anti NATO. And as we've said in the past, you know, even the polling shows, you know, has showed very surprising Republican support for Ukraine, for helping Ukraine, despite, you know, Trump and Vance being in office and all this stuff and that. I think that was one way to really understand it, which is like, you know, Trump maybe doesn't. That's why Trump doesn't have to give those speeches. That's why Trump never had to, to survive and to, and to succeed in politics. He never had to sound like that because for the most part, the people who support him think like that.
- [59:56]
Seth Mandel
Again, I think the real difference is that Trump comes at this in a negative frame. I think, I mean, Abe ultimately said, you know, you're ripping us off. We're not going to be. You're not going to rip us off anymore. And the Chinese aren't going to rip, no one's going to rip us off anymore. We're done being ripped off. That's one way of looking at the world. The other way of looking at the world is we are blessed to have grown up as inheritors of this civilizational tradition. And when we talk it down and act like we're not blessed, we tarnish it. We lose sense of our own worth and our own civilizational self worth and our own personal worth. And it goes very hard on us. And we lose the, we, we even lose our self confidence in pushing forward the things that are in our own self interest, like sovereign borders and things like that. If we no longer think that we have a civilization to protect, importing millions of people from, you know, Islamic countries who do not share our understanding of the rights of the individual, the purpose of how society is supposed to work, and all of that. It's okay not to do that to, to keep yourself from being transformed in ways that, that will damage everything that you take for granted in terms of freedoms, liberties, a proper understanding of the purpose of society and all of that. So stop apologizing, start protecting and defending yourself and understand that that is noble because you are defending and protecting something that is great. And that's what, what's missing from Trump and Vance, to be honest, is that we are diseased. And the first thing we need to do is somehow like, cut out the diseases from our system. It's a, it's just a different way of looking at it, but it is More in keeping with being raised up rather than being smushed down into depression and anger, you know. And therefore it's part of a very respectable American tradition of hortatory enthusiasm for Western civilization and American culture and American politics and European culture and politics. And so in that sense, it was a very. On the one hand, it's very much in the tradition of American speeches of this sort, and it's a revolutionary speech for the Trump era. And Seth is right to commend Todd Lindbergh and Corbin Teague's piece, which is called the Age of A Sobering Return to Reality, which is about how. Which in large measurements reflects. Was written before, but reflects a lot of the themes in Rubio's speech and also has the theme that there was a kind of general utopianism that afflicted American ideas about the world after the Cold War that led us down some unfortunate paths. And that getting rid of the utopianism with a clear understanding of America's value and its need to defend itself against its enemies could be China, could be Iran, could be again, sort of Islamism, radical Islamism and anti Americanism in general altogether like you are permitted, in fact, you are required, you are required by circumstance to defend yourself. And you should not be apologizing for it or explain it or you should. You should embrace it as the mission and the cause that will keep the world safe for your children and your grandchildren. I want to make a recommendation before we go. Surprising the other night, my 15 year old son said as we were scanning around on some service, let's watch you've Got Mail. He had never seen you've Got Mail, the of course, Nora Efren 1998 remake of the Shop around the Corner story of two people who know each other and dislike each other in real life, who are nonetheless corresponding in the original by letter and in this by AOL chat room email in 1998. It's funny because I had to sort of explain to him what AOL was and how it worked.
- [65:04]
John Podhoretz
I am, I am.
- [65:06]
Seth Mandel
But it wasn't just I am. These. These were actually mail. You've got mail. This was AOL's mail, but before there was general email. Anyway, the reason I'm recommending it to you is that my. It's a movie I loved and it's sort of set in my neighborhood. So it's very amazing to watch it because you see what, you know, how it's changed in the last 30 years. But I say this genuinely. It's an almost perfect movie, structurally, conceptually, in terms of its performance, how it establishes its world and the characters in it and how complex it is, because it's a story about a big, rapacious capitalist conglomerate, you know, coming in, swooping in and destroying a little homemade small business, you know, in New York, essentially, Barnes and Noble coming in when there were Barnes and Nobles and crushing a small independent bookstore. And yet, despite all that, there's something a little too twee about the bookstore. There's something a little too cutesy about the. The little world that the bookstore proprietor Meg Ryan is in. And there's something kind of wonderful about the giant mega bookstore, which has coffee and, you know, and. And places for people to sit on the floor and read and do work and all. It's a wonderful place, as she discovers. So it crushed her, but it's also. And now we're all nostalgic for Barnes and Nobles, though I have one in my neighborhood. The one that this movie is based on is still here. But now you're like, if only we had a Barnes and Noble, because now there are no bookstores anywhere. And how it gives full balance, in a weird way, very surprisingly, to the complicated issues that it raises about these characters and their. And their emotional conflict over. Over. Over the. The genuine conflict that they have, and yet the fact that they are soulmates and that they've already learned without knowing who each other is, that they are soulmates. It's absolutely wonderful. It is wonderful. I commend it to you heartily. It's on. I think it's on Netflix, but, I mean, it's all over the place. You can watch it for free. And that's. You've got mail. And it's really worth a revisit. So we'll be back tomorrow. For Abe, Seth and Christina, I'm John Pot. Horace. Keep the candle Burn Sa.