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- [00:01]
John Podhoretz
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- [00:27]
Hope for the best.
- [00:33]
Mark Halperin
Some preach and pain Some die of.
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John Podhoretz
Thirst no way of knowing which way.
- [00:40]
Mark Halperin
It'S going Hope for the best, expect the worst.
- [00:47]
John Podhoretz
Welcome to the Commentary Magazine daily podcast. Today is Friday, February 7th, 2025. I'm John Bodhoritz, the editor of Commentary magazine. With me is always executive editor Abe Greenwald High.
- [00:58]
Seth Mandel
Abe hi John.
- [00:59]
John Podhoretz
Senior editor Seth Mandel. Hi Seth.
- [01:01]
Hi John.
- [01:02]
And joining us today, veteran, veteran journalists, the host of the Two Way Platform, which features a morning meeting show that is live on YouTube at 9am every morning with his co stars Dan Turrentheim and Sean Spicer. And then evening events at around 6 or so. You moved them around now 6, 7, 8. Author, daily columnist, author of the Wide World News Loseletter, Mark Halperin. Hi Mark, thanks for joining us again.
- [01:40]
Mark Halperin
Good to be with you. The evening show is pretty much on at 6pm except when it's not, but six pretty much.
- [01:46]
John Podhoretz
So. So two shows a day, newsletter in the morning. And you of course, a veteran of decades of Washington watching Washington reporting, the author of the two huge best selling books on political campaigns, Game Change and double down from 2008, 2012. And you have, I've said this before when you're on the podcast, you had a show on Bloomberg. I went on in like November, December of 2015. You said to me, how do you think Trump's doing? I said he's going to fade. You know, it's like this. And you said, I've never seen anything like this. I don't think he's going anywhere. I think he's going to win the nomination. And then I don't know what's going to happen. And I was like, you know, that's what happens when you go and you drink the Kool Aid in New Hampshire and all that. And you were the first person really that I, that I knew who actually said this was going to happen. I've kept that in my mind throughout the last eight years. And so when I read you in your Wide World of News newsletter, everyone, and hear you on, on your podcasts during the day, say that this term that began two weeks ago or two and a half weeks ago. Things are happening at a pace, a speed and with a sort of policy focus, say, even if it's not, you know, like detailed focus in a way that you have never seen before and that, and that he has everybody dizzied and on their, on their back heels, Democrats, Republicans, people on the Hill, everywhere that Trump is innovating or doing something completely drastically different from what anybody would have expected and where he is going. I take you not only at your word, but I think you have established that your understanding of the Trump movement and the Trump dynamic and all of that is very deep and old. So having said old in relative terms, since it's only 10 years, but then 10 years is a millennium in politics. So can you lay out for us what it is? Aside from the totally obvious that there's 10 policies a day being issued, what is it you're seeing that you've, that is that you haven't seen or that, that no one has actually attempted before?
- [04:18]
Mark Halperin
Thank you for your nice words and for having me back. I'm paid to not be baffled or speechless. That's been my job. I am baffled and somewhat speechless. I've been thinking in the last couple days, is there anything in my career as a journalist that I've covered that I'd compared to this? And the answer is no. I've covered presidential campaigns, governments, Oklahoma City bombing, O.J. simpson trial. I've covered lots of big complex stories. I find this to be extraordinary and singular. I think that we're covering and talking about a very small percentage of what's actually happening. And I think for the reasons I've discussed at length in my writing and on two ways, this is a unique presidency for so many reasons and we're seeing the manifestation of that now. It's in some ways like a first term presidency. He's coming in, starting this term with much more energy, momentum, newness and arrested staff. That's not like a second term president. Right. You think about the first weeks of the second term of Clinton, Bush and Obama is nothing like this for obvious reasons. But, but it's also, is a second term presidency in the sense that he's, he's experienced, he knows more about how to do the job and what he wants. And he also had four years off when he wasn't sitting in courtrooms or being shot at. He had a lot of time to think about how he wanted to do this job and, and how to enact a revolution and, and, and you know, the, the theater of it and the personality and the historical a narrative arc are all, of course, super compelling, but what matters is the real lives of real people and the impact this is going to have on not just American government and the world, but American history. And I think on that score, based on the early returns here after a couple weeks, this turns the Reagan revolution into a joke. It makes the notion that George W. Bush came to Washington to really shake things up. It, it's, there's no comparison what they're doing, and it's some combination of careful planning that was hidden from view for the most part and ad hockery that is being mostly successful because this is open field running. You know, I'm very reluctant to use sports metaphors, but I think it's the right one. This is, this is Travis Kelsey catching the ball on the, on his own 40 and looking around and seeing there's no one near him and he's just barreling downfield. The Democrats are nowhere on the field. The press is nowhere on the field. The liberal interest groups are nowhere on the field. And the reasons for their being so ill prepared, I think will be studied eventually. But the reality of it now is he is just never seen anything like, not just the activity, but the, but the inability of his opponents to forget stopping him. They're, they're barely, with a few exceptions, even slowing him down.
- [07:26]
John Podhoretz
So the, you say he came to town this time to enact a revolution. And I remember in 2016, the word was that he would get together with Paul Ryan, who was then the leader of the House, and he said, look, I just want to be president. You come with an agenda, agrees with my agenda, we'll do it. It turned out that was not true, that he did not follow Paul Ryan's lead, that he didn't listen to Paul Ryan. But in place of Paul Ryan's actually relatively careful set of ideas about how to enact some parts of the Trump revolution, he didn't have any idea about how to enact parts of the Trump revolution or what he wanted to enact. And now, as you say, after four years, after, what's surprising to me is how revolutionary he is in the sense that I understand wanting to do a lot of stuff and just throwing, just going absolutely hog wild as a strategy. You know, you want to dizzy your opponents, you want to keep them off kilter, you want to, you know, show your energy, particularly in comparison to, to the last guy. But this all does seem to be, at least in the first two weeks, all in one direction. And it is the direction of that part of the Republican or conservative movement over the last 25 years that has said things like, you know what we need to do, we need to shut down usaid, or we need to get rid of the Department of Education. We need to reduce the size of the federal workforce by half. And all of that as we sit around think tanks and in our small magazines like Commentary Notes and make these proposals, and nobody actually ever believes that they're going to be enacted because it's just too hard and the status quo is too present. And, you know, you, you unintended consequences may be too vast. And he's come in and he's doing all of it, or he's like, he's like rolling the boulder down the hill. And I don't think that's anything that anybody anticipated. I mean, it's what maga's fever dream was. But I don't think if you, like, sat down with people who know Susie Wiles and Chris La Civita and, you know, the people who do this sort of thing that, that, that you would have said, is he going to just sort of like, announce there are going to be 290 employees at the, at USAID 17 days into his administration? And they would say, of course not. What do you mean? Like, we're just getting our sea leg. We need to get everybody confirmed or whatever. So that, to me is the surprise is that he want, is that he wants to do it and that he's not. That he didn't start with, as he is now apparently going to start with, no taxes on tips or the things that he went, you know, the things that he innovated during the campaign, policies that were heterodox, like no taxes on tips, which is, and, you know, and no, no taxes on Social Security. And that sort of thing could have started there. That's what he ran on, really run on usaid. But that's not where he went. And so that, that's. That, to me, is the why or what, what, what, what animal cunning. Does he understand? Yeah, that made him understand that this was the agenda to go at.
- [10:59]
Mark Halperin
Right. So, first of all, there is a group of people who said this is what was going to happen. It was the people who said Project 2025 would be the bible of Trump's second term. You know, they were more right than not in some ways. So.
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John Podhoretz
But Trump yelled about that. Trump said he wanted to arrest the people who did Project 22.
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Mark Halperin
I know, I know, I know. It was politically, it was politically unattainable. I think the biggest mistake right now that a lot of people make about this agenda, which is the same mistake that the press has been making about Donald Trump since 2015, is most of what they're doing is quite popular. There are unpopular aspects of it and they're dangerous aspects regarding civil liberties, regarding continuation, continuity of government, regarding the health of people in the United States and around the world. There are a lot of dangers here. But the core things they're doing, cutting the size of government, shutting down the border, gender using gender, gender stuff, using America's leverage to make other countries bow to the whims of the United States and the desires of the United States, these are all very, very popular. They're not popular with the so called extreme MAGA base only. They're very popular with probably 70% of the country. And so it would be one thing if this revolution were for the extreme AGA base only. It's not very popular in Chevy Chase, Maryland. It's not very popular with the New York Times. And again, I say the press must be vigilant in scrutinizing this because there are real dangers here at home and abroad to what they're doing potentially. But, but it's a popular agenda for the most part, and not just populist. Why is he doing it? Because he wants to go down in history. It's super important to him. He knows his first term would not make him considered, certainly by liberal historians, but even by conservatives, as one of the greatest presidents of all time. And that's what he wants to be, one of the most consequential and I think you three understand, but the New York Times doesn't understand and blue America doesn't understand. He went through eight years, first as president and then out of office, being threatened, including his liberty, being threatened by what he and his supporters consider to be the deep state, the entrenched bureaucracy, the iron triangle of liberal institutions, democratic politicians and the media. And it's not just retribution against the iron triangle. It's an attempt to dismantle its ability to control America. And they have extraordinary momentum even before he took office because of the cause and effect of how he won the election, which the dizzying changes, parallel dizzying changes. The NFL for the first time in years, not having end races in the end zone of the super bowl, written in the end zones. That's one of a thousand examples I can give you of how universities, corporations, other groups who previously were part of the iron triangle are basically saying we surrender. And they're riding that wave.
- [14:30]
John Podhoretz
Can I ask you a question that I get asked and don't know the answer to. You might. Going back to something you said before about the campaign and what people expected. How much of what's happening, the details, is. Does Trump know about and. And specifically want and is directing and how much is he empowered people to do to. To complete the goals that he wants, which is, you know, cutting a lot of stuff and getting rid of Di and waste and stuff like that. And it's, you know, Doge sort of running wild. And the same question about Rubio, which is like, how much did Rubio expect himself, who was always in line for Secretary of State and was on a short list, on a VP shortlist, how much did he expect of this USAID stuff and all that? And how much is he controlling and presiding over it? Like, is this happening around him or is he, you know, that's, I think, what people want. How much are Trump, Rubio, these guys, how much are they directing this? How much did they expect? How much of this is planned and how much of this is sort of Doge has been let off a leash? And, you know, as long as they don't cross certain red lines, Trump is basically okay?
- [16:00]
Mark Halperin
Well, it's perfectly framed, Seth. I mean, those are the right questions. I don't have a great answer for you. I have a, I have a good answer, but not a great one. Directionally, Trump is all over it. Very. The broad direction and the, the, the implications of it. He's all over, and he's episodically involved in the details. When something's good, I mean, Trump sees it all through the prism, less of policy than of the media. Right. So something happening that's good. Like his press secretary is doing a very good job, objectively. She just is for, for the goals that they have. He's very aware of that. He's very aware of her reviews. He's very aware of. Of how the press hates Elon. And he's got mixed feelings about that, I believe. And when things go poorly, like the, the executive order on, on suspending all payments, he's aware of that. But is he aware of every little implementation detail or you know exactly what Elon's young men are doing? I doubt it. That's just not his way. He's doing a lot of meetings that we don't hear about. They're not on his public schedule. So he's really busy, and he's in this mood that close. Trump observers are noting is different. A product of winning, a product of the assassination attempt. So he's not sweating the Details. And I think that that will be the pattern. He'll be engaged when things are good or bad. Otherwise, he's a pretty good delegator as a manager he was when he ran the Trump Organization. The Rubio question is one I've been asking people about. There's a, there's a lot of uncertainty, not just for Rubio, but for the Cabinet. And there is, there is, there is a. Clearly, again, I can't quantify it for you, but I can tell you that even the big four Cabinet members are, have been frequently cut out of things that they're learning about. Things like, for instance, Rubio has been reported, learned about the president's Middle east proposal when, when he said it. So that's not normal. Normally you flew your Secretary of State into that and, you know, over weeks of interagency meetings. And I know that the Treasury Secretary has not been aware of everything that's happened that would be part of his, his brief. Some of that has been purposeful. I know some of that is just the chaos and the ad hockery that's gone on, but the Cabinet's actually been remarkably empowered. Every administration, as you know, there's a question of how much will be centralized in the White House, how much will be delegated to the Cabinet secretaries. The Obama administration was very tight towards the White House. This administration so far, even though the Cabinet secretaries aren't necessarily briefed on everything, they've been given a lot of authority. I mean, Marco Rubio is not wanting for things to do or a portfolio. And I don't know whether the, the practice of these couple weeks will be the practice for the duration of the administration or at least for the foreseeable future or not, because, again, there's just so much ad hockery involved here. I will say one of the underrated things about the administration is, or two things. One is these Cabinet secretaries, for the most part, are really great communicators. You know, no surprise because they, some of them have been television hosts and they generally is part of the job requirement. But Trump loves that. He loves the fact that they're all, they're on Fox. You know, one of them's on Fox almost every moment. And, and, and so they're contrary to the sort of conventional wisdom of Trump likes to be the only star. Trump likes the fact that there's a bunch of stars. The other thing is Rubio, the vice president, a huge story about his influence, the national security advisor. They're very, very empowered. They're doing a lot of stuff. They may not be on every everything that's in the news like the USAID aid details, but like musk, they got a lot to do and they're running in an open field as well.
- [20:21]
John Podhoretz
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- [24:34]
Seth Mandel
Hey Mark, you said something very early on that depending on one's level of paranoia could be ominous or benign. You said you think we're seeing only a fraction or a very small part of what's actually happening in the administration, in the White House. Could you expand a little on what you meant by that? Is this something to worry about or this is a sort of run of the mill concern?
- [25:03]
Mark Halperin
But. Well, I think, I think as a citizen who, who, you know, if you have eyes and ears, you can see that again, their regard for civil liberties, their regard for the, the feelings and, and, and livelihoods of millions of people who happen to be government employees. But the cavalier way in which they're being treated and kind of the disrespectful way. And again, the reality that, you know, you look at Twitter when Musk, you know, came in and made dramatic changes like a couple days, Twitter didn't really work. And that's fine if it's a social media platform, but less good if it's the federal government and, and the thing they did, reportedly sending around an unclassified system, the names of CIA agents. There's some, there's some very scary stuff Potentially from a reporter's point of view, you know, there are a lot of good stories out there. Like, everybody's on. You know, it's like the second graders in the soccer ball. Everybody's on the USAID story. You can read 15 stories a day in the New York Times about that. There's a lot of other stuff happening. As a busy person, I can tell you I'm sitting in my inbox, 7 Tips Right Now. I counted them this morning that I really should be looking into. About people who Trump has met with, about policies that are being pursued but not getting covered, about how things are going, particularly in the national security front. I just don't have time to do them, to look into them all. And some of those may be scary, some of them may be benign, some of them may be fantastically interesting stories and too soon to say what they mean. But that's what I base that on is just in my own incoming. Every time I talk to someone who's been in the West Wing, because there are a lot more visitors to the West Wing that have been reported. Every time I talk to someone, they say, oh, my God, you wouldn't believe who I saw coming out of the Oval Office or hanging out in the West Wing or talking to the National Security Advisor. And so that's what I base that on.
- [27:06]
John Podhoretz
You know, there was this moment in the Gaza press conference where he said, I've talked to all these people in the Middle east and they're all, they all love this idea. So there are two possibilities, one of which is he's lying. He didn't talk to anybody in the Middle east and he just said, talk to people in the Middle east or he talked to people in the Middle East. It's just not who you think he talked to.
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Mark Halperin
Right.
- [27:30]
John Podhoretz
Like, probably know he talked to a friend of Jared's who has a hotel in Dubai, or, you know, or he spoke to Ike Perlmutter, who is the former head of Marvel, you know, who, you know, who basically lives and lives right next to Mar A Lago, is a billionaire and said, in my experience.
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Mark Halperin
In my experience, he lives on the patio at Mar A Lago.
- [27:55]
John Podhoretz
Patio, Mar A lago. He's like 81 year old man. He's a, he's a very angry Israeli guy. And he, and he may have said, yeah, just raise the place. You know, it's not that he. So that when, when you say there's a lot more going on, he has his own. Yeah, you know, network. He has his own kitchen cabinet. What's Interesting is we don't really know who the kitchen cabinet is yet outside people whom he is conferring with. And, you know, I'm struck by this also. David Brooks, Katherine Rampel, a couple of other people have written things, and Dave is like one of my two or three oldest friends. But he wrote this piece last week about how Trump is stupid. He's stupid. Look how he's doing this. He's stupid. I'm struck by the fact that, well. Well, you say, you know, the devil's in the. He's not really. He's not all that detail or things are happening, you know, some of it, but he doesn't know all of it. You know, things are going down the hill. I'm struck by how much he knows, by which I mean, he has these executive order press conference, you know, where he's signing the executive orders and the press is there. And I don't know how he takes in information. I gather he doesn't read. People say you just have to show him pictures that tell, you know, all this stuff that makes him sound like an idiot. You know, we only show him a chart. You show him a photograph, or maybe it's just oral. Maybe he takes things in through his ears. But he, he has 10,000 factoids in his head that he can pull off the shelf if you ask him about even one, if you try to trip him up about one of these policies about usaid, about gender or about what's going on here or there. And he can. He is not unprepared.
- [29:46]
Mark Halperin
He is. He's is conversant.
- [29:49]
John Podhoretz
He is conversant. And, you know, he, that is this. I don't know what that, that thing of saying, boy, he's an idiot is part of his superpower.
- [30:02]
Mark Halperin
Yeah.
- [30:03]
John Podhoretz
Because they're saying he's an idiot and being contemptuous toward him. And then he is just as you say, they're standing there on the field while Travis Kelsey runs down the sideline saying what an idiot this guy is. I can't believe how stupid he is. He's going to reap the whirlwind. Okay.
- [30:22]
Mark Halperin
Yeah. I'm going to say something else positive about Donald Trump. I don't, I don't want people to take away from this that I'm his press secretary or I don't see negatives about him personally or about what's happened. Okay. So I want to make that clear. And I've mentioned some of the negatives I see. I could mention more, along with saying since 2015 that Trump's agenda is for the extreme MAGA base. Wrong. I've laughed for since 2011 when I started talking to Trump about politics. I laugh when people say he's stupid. He's got a human intelligence level akin to Bill Clinton's, which is high praise. The guy understands that. And he gets facts wrong all the time. But, John, I think you're right to highlight these rolling press conferences. He is conversant in the details of these things. People ask him stuff, he knows about it, he understands what they're asking about. He understands the nuance of it in most cases. And we all know there's different kinds of intelligence. Donald Trump is not stupid. He's not stupid. He's got a weird mind. Hillary Clinton said about her husband that when he dies, people should study his brain. I'd say the same thing about Donald Trump. Never met anybody like him. But on this question of doing the job and understanding the details and sitting there with the, with the White House press corps playing pepper with them, bring it on. Ask me anything you want. Give me more, more, more. It's because he. He's going to have answers for everything. And, and he's not. He's not an uninformed person. He's not a stupid person. And to the contrary, again, unique. I just can't say this enough. I've been. I've been writing it, you know, not daily, but all the time. Unique circumstance. President for four years, then four years off to think about, how could I do the job better because I'm going to get it back. How could I do it better and who could I hire and how can I avoid the mistakes I made the first time? And by the way, if I'm not in prison and I'm not under indictment or special counsel investigation, I could have a lot of bandwidth to do even more stuff. So I've said he's the second best presidential candidate I've ever covered after Clinton. And people who hate Trump. Tell me, oh, you're ridiculous. I say you think Trump's stupid and you think he only caters to the extremes. He must be a great candidate because he overcame those two things. He is a very skilled political person. He's a very skilled manager, he's very smart, and he is, again, he's in this unique position in our lifetime of having a second term with the benefits of four years off to think about how to do it better.
- [33:01]
John Podhoretz
He said two things he said in twin when his tax returns were leaked and released by the New York Times, and they went through them with a fine Tooth comb, looking for something that they could nail them on to criminally. And people went to him and said, look, look, you didn't pay taxes for 18 years based on a billion dollar loss. And he said, well, that just proves I'm a genius.
- [33:29]
Mark Halperin
Right.
- [33:30]
John Podhoretz
People were contemptuous of that.
- [33:34]
Mark Halperin
What.
- [33:35]
John Podhoretz
What part of that wasn't true? Yeah. How to take the worst thing that could happen to most people and make it the thing that funded his life for almost two decades. That's what makes me like that. Having, having contempt for him or condescending to him is the single greatest political mistake I think I've seen in my lifetime. Again, survive the indictments.
- [34:14]
Mark Halperin
I agree with you. But I would couple it with the other thing, which is underestimating the appeal of his agenda. Right, Those two things.
- [34:22]
John Podhoretz
Right. Because again, I've told the story also. But in 94, I was a little involved in, after 94, in sort of helping to promote the agenda of the Republican revolution, the Gingrich Contract with America. And the thing that people forget because it was so controversial. So this. It was. So that is that, as Gingrich would say, every single One of the 10 points of the Contract with America was a 70% issue. Now, he was going on Frank Luntz's polling. Frank Luntz often wrote questions to get answers that he would like, prefer, but according to, they did not put anything in the Contract with America that did not score at least 70% popularity. We saw that just the other day. He signs the order on gender in, in, in. In sports. Harry Anton goes. It's an 80% issue. People are screaming. People, you know, liberal elites have been brainwashed into the idea that this is the wave of the Future. It's an 80% issue. They set him up to have that photo of him standing there holding the executive order with 30 girls surrounding him like he, you know, like he was, I don't know, you know, St. Francis of Assisi. You know, it's. And they just handed that to him.
- [35:50]
Mark Halperin
Most incredible photo op I've ever seen.
- [35:53]
John Podhoretz
But they, they know it's an 80. They. How much money did the Biden administration or Biden, the Biden and Harris campaign spend on polling? $100m, $150m on focus groups and polling. They see the same data. They saw the same data.
- [36:10]
Mark Halperin
Well, and you could say the same thing about the border, both of which Peggy Noonan write about today, that just how inexplicable it is that the Democratic Party, which is now silent on these issues, if you listed the 20 top reasons why Harris lost and Trump won. You'd have to put that as, as one of the top 20. Not just in and of itself, but what it said about the image of the Democratic Party and their failure to say, you know what, we're on the wrong side of an 8020 issue, so maybe we need to figure that out. And while Joe Biden and Kamala Harris were fine with that, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama would never have done that. It just, you cannot be on the wrong side of an 8020 issue and do nothing. You don't necessarily need to do a 180, but you need to do something. And they did nothing. And again, people look at that photo op and that executive order and say, oh, MAGA extremism, no, 80 20.
- [37:05]
John Podhoretz
So Politico had this piece yesterday or the day before yesterday about social conservatives because of the prayer breakfast. Trump went to the National Prayer Breakfast, which has traditionally for conservatives and Republicans, been a time to pay obeisance to the importance of the pro life movement. And that's not what Trump did. Now, Trump may think he has in his pocket. I appointed three judges. They overturned Roe v. Wade. That's, you know, don't ask for any more from me. I did my, I did my service to this movement for 50 years. I'm going to talk about other stuff. And so he talked about girls and gender and transgender and sports. And it's like, oh, you see, he's, you know, he's not talking about abortion. He's, he's, he's bringing them into the MAGA fold and making them his warriors. And this again, gets to this incredible misunderstanding about the right and how he has consolidated on the right, which is the right doesn't see a difference between, if you'll put it this way, abortion and trans. These are, these are aspects or faces of the same, as we say, radical agenda to remake what it means to be human, that they, that people on the right have been standing against for, for half a century and that Trump knows this, they know it. Liberals can't get it into their heads. And, and, and so he is. So there are these two aspects, which is he's doing whatever he's doing, and then either he's not getting the right kind of blowback or their blowback is simply, you know, it's like an accelerant. It just adds to his fire because that, you know, if they're going to continue on this path against him, you know, he's got a free field, he's got more troops, he's just going to Win over more and more people. Now it is 17, 18 days, so I just want to go to the negatives here, okay? Like, all of this could go down in six months. We could have forgotten these two weeks because the economy won't improve and the tax bill will come a cropper and somehow Democrats will wrest control of the House because of a couple of car accidents and special elections or whatever, and suddenly he won't be able to get anything done. There'll be investigations into him. The economy won't improve, inflation will go up, and it'll all look like a disaster. And I think after the triumphalism of the first 30 minutes of this podcast, we should sort of delve into that. One of the reasons that people don't go this fast, this easily, this quickly is they've had a lifetime of training and a certain level of political prudence, like, you know, like, put your or gingerly in the water before you start, you know, rowing like crazy and that. He's gone this wildly other direction. But there's a reason that people are usually like that, right? There's a reason that prudence is the watchword when you're getting your policy, when you're getting your boat in the water and getting ready to, you know, row for four years is how cold is it? What are the currents like? Is there a storm coming? He's decided to ignore all that. And it's not like it can't happen.
- [40:39]
Mark Halperin
No, I think your list was excellent, but, you know, I think you left some stuff off just for the sake of time. You know, there could be foreign crises. There's all sorts of things that could happen. And, you know, you think about the. Probably the most recent analog to this 2009 in the Republican Party. It took them about six months to, you know, for the Tea Party to be. To come up and for. And for the counter offensive to be energized and of course, led to broadcast Obama being in his party, being very beaten badly in the midterm. So, yes, analyzing what's happened doesn't mean this run will continue forever by any means. And particularly, I mean, you mentioned it, you alluded to it, but particularly solving the question of how do you get the Republican Party to stay virtually unanimous in Congress to pass the reconciliation bill to deal with the border and taxes and. And other. And energy and other issues, and at the same time work with Democrats on raising the debt ceiling and avoiding a government shutdown? I mean, I don't know anybody who knows how you do either of those, let alone both of them virtually simultaneously. So he's got, he's got big challenges ahead. But you know, just talking about the three weeks, you know, it suggests a lot of action, a lot of momentum and again, a failure of those who want to stop him to have a clue about how to stop him.
- [42:10]
Seth Mandel
So far, you know, another thing about the, how the field is clear before him is also that, and it's only been, you know, three weeks, but he hasn't yet been tested in terms of foreign crisis. No one's invaded anyone. We don't know what Iranian response there's going to be to his Middle Eastern plans and so on. Some, you know, he's, it's not all going to be his designing our day to day life for four years. Extraneous things will happen that he will then have to respond to and fit himself into. And that's, that's going to change the face and the coloration of the administration at some point.100%.
- [42:58]
Mark Halperin
And, and it could happen soon. Right. But I always look for asymmetries. Right. Who has an asymmetrical advantage? And, and for years, one of the great Democratic asymmetrical advantages in government and politics was media control. Right. And we saw during the campaign, this has been much discussed, but I think still underappreciated and under under understood is the degree to which the liberal organs, not just the New York Times and CBS News, but Hollywood and social media, are now really diminished in their influence and the organs of the right are increased in their influence. And therefore we're in uncharted territory. Which is to say when they, when the government, when this government lies or missteps or has a crisis, they've got all these organs that are not going to say it's a crisis, they're going to say something else. They're either going to change the subject or say this is actually part of Trump's master plan. Whatever it is, we don't know what that looks like because it's never happened before in modern American history. And I think we have to keep that in mind as we game out. What if there's a foreign crisis? What about the challenges ahead in Congress? It's just not going to be covered the way it used to be covered in the lives of a lot of consumers. The other thing is Trump's not running for reelection. And while he does care about doing well in the midterms, for obvious reasons, there's just a different dynamic in terms of like, does he really care what his approval rating is? He cares personally, but it doesn't necessarily matter that much to the metrics of success that he has. Doesn't. It doesn't matter. Zero. But it doesn't matter nearly as much as if he were still going to run for reelection.
- [45:03]
John Podhoretz
One of the things that the Democrats seem to be struggling with, one of the sort of underplayed parts of this is that, you know, you talked about the fact that Donald Trump was, had this sort of four years off, which is like having a bye week, you know, in the NFL playoffs or whatever.
- [45:19]
Mark Halperin
Right.
- [45:20]
John Podhoretz
You get a week to watch everybody else play and see what they do and to plan your plan of attack. But the other thing that it did was it left Republicans with a leader in the opposition.
- [45:36]
Right.
- [45:36]
They, Republicans were out of power, but not leaderless because everybody knew Donald Trump was going to run again. And unless something, you know, maybe he was going to be in the primary, maybe not unless something happened. But at a certain point it just sort of became like watching the same train that we did in 2016. It was just rolling and nothing, you know, nothing was going to stop the train. And what that did was that made everybody try to stay in line with Trump.
- [46:06]
Mark Halperin
Right.
- [46:07]
John Podhoretz
I mean nobody wanted to cross Trump, not just because he was still popular, but because he, 50, 50 might be president again in a few years. How do, how does that affect, you know, what the Democrats are ex. Were expecting this to look like. Right. They don't have a leader right now really in the wilderness. They're sort of in the wilderness. In a lot of ways that's a more normal situation than what Republicans had. Right. Which is, you know, the possibility that somebody could be an off and on president with four years out of office in between.
- [46:45]
So the Democrats remember.
- [46:47]
Mark Halperin
Yeah.
- [46:48]
John Podhoretz
Remember that in 2009, the person who arose, interestingly enough, as the voice against Obama's radical, you know, all fronts agenda was oddly Dick Cheney. March, April, Dick Cheney gets up and starts making these speeches. He has no constituency, he's not going to run for president, Nothing. He just started saying this is, this is dangerous. I've never seen anything like this. You know, I don't know. He just, he was like, it was like Hyde park corner. He just got up on a soapbox and started to speak. And he was the first person because of course the legislative leaders were sort of trying to figure out what on earth they would. McConnell, whoever, what on earth they were supposed to do, how they were supposed to maneuver in this. You know, McConnell had 41, whatever, whatever he had. Republicans barely had anybody left in the, in the Senate to fight. And so something can happen organically. There's no structure to create a leader of the Democratic Party. And the Democrats also have this weird. They make a terrible mistake, I think, because what they're going to do, what they think they can default to in odd ways, is like Rachel Maddow. Oh, Rachel Maddow's back on TV five nights a week. She'll do it. That'll be great. But that's all part of the entertainment complex stuff. So I don't know. We'll see. I don't. They're not going to be defenseless forever. You know, I mean, that, that this is, they're, they're on their heels and dazed and like on the canvas a little bit. But, you know, they're not knocked out. They're not out of the game. Right.
- [48:35]
It's always not even one majority in.
- [48:37]
The House, you know.
- [48:39]
Mark Halperin
Yeah. Seth, I think what you said was just so brilliant in terms of how you framed it. And obviously he was helped stay relevant not just, but because of his hold over the movement and, and the power and the demonstration of the power of his endorsement in primaries, which was dispositive in almost every case, but because, because the Democrats made an historic error in pursuing him through law there and, and elevating him and rallying people around him. And he, and he was not ambivalent about it. And again, it's a small thing, but I think it's symbolically important. You'll see it again on display Friday night at Mar a Lago. You know, he has the Mar a Lago. He has the plane. He had continuing Secret Service protection. Like there's never been an ex president with the aspiration to be president again with all that, you know, you know, stuff that allows him to look like the president waiting, you know, he's, he's not living in like a condo in, in Florida. He's right. He's living in Mar a Lago. He's not flying commercial. He's, or, you know, on a tiny little charter. He's, he's on his branded plane Trump Force One. And you know, again, not nearly commented enough. And, and yeah, I may not write a book. I might, but if I do, this will be a big part of it. The contrast with Biden both during those four years and now the massive advantage for him stylistically in terms of ability to be in, you know, do photo, photo ops of energy and to, and to be on the right side of 70, 30 issues. Now he's on the wrong side of some 70, 30 issues. Like abortion, like Medicare and Social Security, depending on how you ask it. Although he's tried to stay on the good side of that, the Democrats are determined to put him elsewhere. But he, he, the, the, again, the, the what, what transpired during those four years has not been sufficiently understood or written about or reported on. And, and, you know, I hope I do it. If I don't do it, I hope somebody else does it. But, but it's an incredible story of, of failure on the part of the Democrats. And, and, and we're seeing the, the fruits of that now to some extent, because, you know, we say, what are the Democrats doing to fight back on usaid? They're scrambling and they're doing a pretty poor job of it. There are things, if they had, if they had anticipated this, there are things they could have been doing that I think would have been more effective, but they were just lulled into a sense of four years of, well, this guy's going to prison, not to the Oval Office.
- [51:28]
John Podhoretz
I mean, I think what's, what's important about this is the things that you would think were advantages for him might have been things that you would have thought were disadvantages turned out to be advantages. The one that I think of is, I think we all understand if you look back at the arc of the last five years, that it was the raid at Mar A Lago that consolidated the idea that the Republicans were going to, like, wander away from him and wander over pretty much to DeSantis, maybe to Haley, but really to DeSantis was stopped in its tracks by the raid at Mar? A Lago. Except that substantively, the raid at Mar? A Lago was the only part of the lawfare that seemed legitimate, even to people on the right who believe that Bragg and Fannie Willis and Jack Smith in Washington were doing bad. It was. He had classified documents. He didn't have the right to have them. He was running, moving them all over the House to hide them from people who had come in good faith to get them back, to bring them back to the National Archives. It's like he was caught dead to rights. That's what it looked like. And the fact that that moment, not the indictment in New York, not the loss of the Trump case with the Attorney General of New York, but the case that was the strongest against him, the fact that the FBI raided the home of a former president who had commanded the support, who was the leading candidate for the Republican nomination in 2024, was a blunder the likes of which we had never seen. It didn't look like a blunder at the time. Exactly.
- [53:22]
Mark Halperin
Donald Trump.
- [53:23]
John Podhoretz
Right. Well, he knew instantly, but also he went instantly, he said, they came to my house. Who am I? Basically, it's like, who am I, Elian Gonzalez? Like, they come to my house and stick a gun in my face. This is the way you treat the former president, United States. This is the way you treat the leader of your party. He said to Republicans and then, yeah, what the hell is this? And so I'm just saying, like, the interesting thing is his weakest point turned out to be his strongest point. And that's how far afield everything had gotten in our understanding of what it was where. Because we had never had a person in this position before, how gingerly the Democrats should have been treating him.
- [54:04]
Seth Mandel
And then his. That weak point turned into a strong point, got stronger when it was uncovered that Biden had his own classified documents. I understand it was under different circumstances, cooperative. I get all that. But still the appearance of symmetry there. Completely.
- [54:26]
John Podhoretz
Well, that symmetry. And neutralized Special prosecutor, the Biden case, saying, well, I could have indicted him. I had him dead to rights. I could have indicted him, but he's senile, so I wasn't going to get a conviction. So not only said that was the later hit, that was like six months later, the case that ended up knocking Biden out of the race.
- [54:45]
Mark Halperin
Yeah.
- [54:45]
John Podhoretz
Was made by, you know, it's like, yeah, Trump got indicted on this. I could indict him. I could indict Biden, too. But, you know, he's a vague old man who doesn't even remember the year his son died. Yeah, Gee, you know, it's like, so then he got two free. Got a twofer right out of, out of that.
- [55:04]
Mark Halperin
If, if I do the book, one of the things I'll write about, which again, it's barely been written about, kind of. It's on the nose, as I'm about to describe it, is the three prosecutors really would be in the top 10 of people who helped elect Trump. You'd say Susie Wiles, Chris Lacivita, and the three prosecutors in terms of their failure to read the room. I can make the case as. John, you and I agree on this. The Florida case was the strongest, and the others were anywhere from ridiculous to highly flawed in their substance, but in the timing. Right. And you put it of a piece with the efforts to keep him off the ballot, like, read the room. People. People don't think this is an appropriate way to treat a former president who's the front runner for the presidency. Not just for his party's nomination, you know, to bring all this stuff in the end, right before the election, and for Jack Smith to constantly say, well, this isn't about politics, but we really need to have this trial before the election because the voters are entitled to know how the trial comes out. And for the judges, you know, at least some of the judges, not all, but particularly the D.C. judge, to be in cahoots on it, it just, it just, you know, as you guys have said, it turned a strength, a weakness into a strength. But it didn't happen by accident. It was, it was Trump, like Bill Clinton did, taking advantage in a, in an aggressive, almost, almost like primal way of the mistakes of his opponents. And those three prosecutors who claim to be above politics and who, and who claim to just be, you know, going by the book, they were highly political, much more political than has been reported. I believe in every case. And they, they, they, like I said, top 10 helping Trump win.
- [56:52]
John Podhoretz
You know, we have interesting things that are going to happen over the course of the next year. People haven't sort of thought of, in terms of reminding Trump, using them to remind people of what they tried to do to him. Alvin Bragg, right, who secured the 34 convictions against Trump, is up for reelection in New York in November. For as da, we have a, we have our mayoral and local elections here in New York in November. He's been a bad da, Aside from everything relating to Trump, he's been a bad DA at this moment, where he prosecuted this, you know, Daniel Penny, who was saving people on the subway car from, from a, from a violent schizophrenic who, who, who unfortunately, tragically died in the six minutes that he was being held down, Penny charged and tried for, you know, manslaughter. And the city feels less safe, Manhattan feels less safe, all of that. And Trump Bragg's going to be running for re election. Trump doesn't have a big political base in Manhattan, but he has a big political base in 49 other states in the union. And if there's a, if there's a serious candidate to go against Bragg, that person, with Trump's help, or maybe not even needing Trump's help, could raise $100 million to run against Alvin Bragg. I mean, and that will remind people if his hold over the Republican Party loosens or weakens or stuff like that could remind Americans who thought it all went too far, bring it back. Bragg's gotta answer for what happened here. And there are bits and pieces of that elsewhere. And so this isn't over. The Lawfare. The use of lawfare for Trump as a political tool against his enemies is ongoing in my view. I mean, there will be moments at which it will flare up again, and he will make, as he did make brilliant use of it because he understood how useful it was in a way very few people did. I think. Yeah, I certainly, I agree with you.
- [59:17]
Mark Halperin
But I also believe that, again, Donald Trump and his operation are like Bill Clinton and the Clinton operation, which is blessed, in part blessed by his enemies and the incompetence and iconography of his enemies, but also by the ability to turn anyone who's present there into an enemy and to use the tools of the digital era, which Bill Clinton didn't have. Case in point, this week, Politico Pro, Right? Politico Pro is the Alvin Bragg of February of 2025. And I can't tell you, I mean, I find myself in the strange position of defending Politico Pro, for whom I previously carried no brief. But I just am so outraged and intellectually annoyed by all the disinformation about it. But, I mean, my Twitter feed is filled with people telling me that I'm, you know, corrupt in support of corruption because I'm defending Politico Pro. But I think just as a case study of what the Trump people have done this week with Politico Pro, as the political analyst Pink would say, effing brilliant. They're just cynically pretending that Politico Pro is as bad as Jack Smith. And it's worked for them.
- [60:32]
John Podhoretz
Look, every couple of years, there is a absolutely preposterous issue that pops up, particularly in populist circles that why that sort of sane has go, what? What the hell are you. Yeah, of course government agencies subscribe to expensive newsletters. They've been doing it forever. And it's. Maybe it's. Maybe it should stop. Maybe it's a good budgetary. You know, if Jimmy Carter were president, he also would have said, no one's subscribing to $1,000, $10,000 a year newsletter. I'm turning the thermostat down to 58 degrees in the White House, and no one's buying a newsletter. But I'm thinking of things like Dubai Ports World and the Ground Zero. Mosque issues pop up where they grab hold of people in ways that you don't expect and that you can say the mosque isn't anywhere near Ground Zero. Didn't matter, right? You could say it was five blocks from Ground Zero. Wasn't like, it's pretty close.
- [61:35]
Mark Halperin
It was pretty close.
- [61:36]
John Podhoretz
John okay, all right. But like, sure.
- [61:38]
Mark Halperin
I'm not sure the one block versus five block question was the display.
- [61:42]
John Podhoretz
Anyway, I'm perfectly happy that there was no mosque by grass and there never was going to be anyway because it was just a, was a, it was a real estate, was a fundraising scam anyway. But Dubai Ports World buying the port Elizabeth, New Jersey port and how could we allow that to happen? And it's sort of like, what are you talking about? Who cares who owns a port? You know? You know, but having that kind of rational response to an issue that flares up that people can, are full of outrage about. And the Politico Pro one is fantastic because it's the idea of they're just scratching each other's back. So Politico gives liberals coverage, good coverage because that they're spending $38 million on subscriptions. By the way, I'm happy to start a Commentary pro will charge $10,000 a year. I don't know what you get for, I've never seen Politico Pro. I don't know what you get especially from Politico Pro. I'm sure it's not worth the money that it costs, but still it's like you don't know when those issues are gonna, are gonna pop up and, and, and yeah, and like making use of them is part of the game of politics. Serious, sober minded people like you, Bart, can say this is not the way it works. It's ridiculous, preposterous. No one's subscribing to buy off Politico. But it doesn't matter. It's already, the damage is already done or whatever. It's already, it's, it's just been a kind of this week's rallying cry. Next week there'll be another one, presumably. And the Doge stuff, by the way, is I said this yesterday on, on our podcast. For 20, 25 years, this was a habit in Congress, particularly on the budget committee. Bill Fulbright and others go, you know, pouring through the, the, the federal budget to find horrible examples of control spending. Proxmire. Did I say Fulbright Proxmire.
- [63:35]
Mark Halperin
Right. He did, yeah.
- [63:38]
John Podhoretz
Horrible examples of government spending. But that was always Congress and it was like a press release that made you feel silly. Someone's doing a cowboy poetry, there's a grant for cowboy poetry, there's a museum for, you know, like hockey sticks in somebody's district. All of that. This is the first time, as far as I can tell, that such a thing has come out of the federal government. That's what's interesting about it is they're just, you know, it's like low hanging fruit. Oh, we're supposed to be examining government waste. Well, we just open up this one. Just open up this one ledger at usaid. Oh, a transgender comic book in Paraguay or Chile or wherever or Uruguay. I don't remember what country it is. $38,000 for a transgender comic book. It's like shooting fish in a barrel. And yeah. And Trump is there. Those, those people are there now. Very practiced at provide, feeding the, feeding the conservative media beast and keeping, and then making you, not you, but you know, making people say no, political pro. You're, you're getting it wrong. That's not Political pro is, I mean, what are you talking, you know, it's like once you're explaining, you're losing something.
- [64:51]
Mark Halperin
Yeah. Just to be just on for a.
- [64:53]
John Podhoretz
Thousand days in a row because they have a list of things every day.
- [64:56]
Mark Halperin
They get read code. Yes.
- [64:57]
John Podhoretz
Yeah.
- [64:58]
Mark Halperin
Just to be clear, I think Politico Pro and their sales team are not. Shouldn't be the issue, but I do think the issue of government spending. And also someone brought this up on two way the other day, Citizens. A woman came on and she said, you know, like, I have a small business. I don't get, I don't get, you know, I don't have $10,000 to buy some special data that the elites get to understand what's going to happen next. I think those two issues are totally legitimate and should be discussed and, and, and, and, you know, action maybe should be taken. But to turn this into a scandal about Politico, you know, receiving grants from the federal government, I mean, the whole thing is just ridic.
- [65:37]
John Podhoretz
But, but funny.
- [65:40]
Mark Halperin
But funny. It's funny.
- [65:41]
John Podhoretz
It's funny.
- [65:42]
Mark Halperin
Not for the people at Politico. They don't seem to think it's funny.
- [65:46]
John Podhoretz
Yeah, well, I mean, they don't want to, they don't want to be, they don't want to expose the fact that they're getting that even there. Maybe it's fine. But the fact that they are, that they've, that they've gotten a $38 million out of the federal government for subscriptions is a little cheesy.
- [66:03]
Mark Halperin
Well, and they're, and they're going to lose, they're going to lose the money and I wouldn't be surprised if they started to lose some of their corporate, you know, D.C. lobbyist business because people be like, well, you know, what's this line item you're charging us for Politico Pro like, you know, oh, it's amazing.
- [66:20]
John Podhoretz
So is this, is this like an existential threat to Politico?
- [66:24]
Mark Halperin
No, it's not.
- [66:26]
Seth Mandel
But, you know, I think the political pro issue has salience because sort of distills what Trump's argument about the symbiosis of all these institutions and insiders. And it's not even the money. It's, it's the, I mean, it is the money, but it's, it's not solely the money. It's, it's this, this the blurred lines between everything that he calls the establishment. It enables him to call everything the establishment, and it puts meat on the bones.
- [67:03]
John Podhoretz
Well, you know, Mark, you used the term iron triangle earlier, and I have to say that the phrase iron triangle comes, is the work of my friend and my former colleague at the White House, Clark Judge. He and I were speechwriters together at the end of the Reagan administration and he wrote a speech about the iron triangle of, you know, media, government. And I can't remember what the three, what the three parts are, but interest groups. Interest groups. And the idea is basically right, it's not that there's a conspiracy, it's that these are, they come from the same schools, they, they eat at the same restaurants, they hang out together at the same party.
- [67:48]
Mark Halperin
Their kids, their kids are at the same schools.
- [67:51]
John Podhoretz
Yeah. And their interests are congruent. And that therefore this was, you know, that this is not the military industrial complex in a way of. It's a, it's a culture in Washington and it's real. It's, I mean, it's, it's very, very, if you ever lived in it and I didn't, I lived adjacent to it and, you know, like dated people in it when I was not myself in it alone. That kind of thing. Like, it is a real thing. It's a, it's a, it's, it's the elite culture that is interested in governance and policy in the United States. There are other forms of elite culture like Hollywood and others that aren't that interested in this, but this is, in Washington is the epicenter. And it was for, yeah, sorry.
- [68:42]
Mark Halperin
And it was for decade, for decades, one of the asymmetrical advantages of the left.
- [68:47]
John Podhoretz
Right. So we've kept you too long. You got to Prepare for your 9am morning meeting as we are taping this. It's Now, I don't know, 8:45 or something like that.
- [68:58]
Mark Halperin
Yeah.
- [68:58]
John Podhoretz
So I don't want to, I don't want to keep you too much longer. I don't want to keep our listeners too much longer. So, yes, Mark's Morning Meeting, 9:00am on, on YouTube.
- [69:06]
Mark Halperin
YouTube and on Exit 2 Way TV.
- [69:10]
John Podhoretz
Right. And it's a really great way to get a sense of what's on the agenda that day. And then 6pm the summary of the day with a, with a, with a, with a rotating cast of characters. Not the.
- [69:27]
Mark Halperin
Yeah. And we have, we have guests. And yesterday we had two doctors on and talked about the mental health crisis on the left after Donald Trump's victory.
- [69:35]
John Podhoretz
Right.
- [69:35]
Mark Halperin
That was pretty compelling. What they, how they described their practices.
- [69:39]
John Podhoretz
So, so, and, and if you. Not that it's Politico Pro, but Mark does have a, have an elite newsletter. And if you're a, if you're a person of, if you're a person with some means, disposable income. Yeah, it is fantastic. It is, it is our, it is our favorite newsletter. And fortunately. So. But yes.
- [70:03]
Mark Halperin
Walking. Walkingduck.com Walkingduck.com Mark is where you can learn more about my concierge coverage newsletter.
- [70:10]
John Podhoretz
Okay. So thank you.
- [70:12]
Is there a Mark Pro?
- [70:15]
Mark Halperin
It is everything I do. Everything, Everything. Everything I do is, Is pro. It's not. I tell my friends who write for Politico that they write for Politico Amateur. But thank you, gentlemen, for hosting me again, and I apologize for the technical difficulties I had.
- [70:30]
John Podhoretz
I was fine. This is, this is life in the, life in the 21st century. So we'll be back on Monday. For Abe and Seth, I'm John Pothor. It's Keep the Candle Burning.