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- [00:04]
Seth Mandel
Hope for the best, expect the worst
- [00:11]
John Podhoretz
Some preach your pain Some die of thirst the way of knowing which way
- [00:18]
Seth Mandel
it's going Hope for the best Expect
- [00:21]
Christine Rosen
the worst, hope for the best.
- [00:25]
John Podhoretz
Welcome to the Commentary Magazine daily podcast. Today is Tuesday, March 31, 2026. I'm John Pot Horiz, the editor of Commentary magazine Programming Note. This is our last podcast this week. Some of us will be traveling tomorrow to be in preparation for the first night of the two Passover seders, which take place Wednesday and Thursday night. Passover therefore, takes place from Wednesday night through Friday night and so we will not be having any shows after today's and we will be returning next Monday. And by we, I mean Executive editor Abe Greenwald. Hi, Abe.
- [01:07]
Christine Rosen
Hi, John.
- [01:09]
John Podhoretz
Senior editor Seth Mandel. Hi, Seth.
- [01:11]
Abe Greenwald
Hi John.
- [01:13]
John Podhoretz
Washington Free Beacon editor Eliana Johnson. Hi, Eliana.
- [01:16]
Seth Mandel
Hi, John.
- [01:18]
John Podhoretz
And our social commentary columnist and AEI fellow, Christine Rosen. Hi, Christine.
- [01:24]
Eliana Johnson
Hi, John.
- [01:25]
John Podhoretz
Eliana. You guys at the Free Beacon have a very interesting story relating to a very interesting Senate race that has an interestingly international flavor. Perhaps you would like to inform us all of all of that.
- [01:45]
Seth Mandel
Well, it centers on the Democratic primary in the Michigan Senate race, which is a very tight three way race between the left wing candidate Abdul El Sayed and that's who our story is about, but also Mallory McMorrow and Haley Stevens, the other candidates in that race. And it's a competitive race to face Republican Mike Rogers in what is considered one of the key toss up races. And the Free Beacons Alana Goodman obtained an audio recording of El Sayed discussing with his campaign team where to position himself on the death of the Ayatollah just as the war in Iran was beginning, and telling his campaign team that he did not want to take a position on the matter because, quote, there are a lot of people in Dearborn who are sad. That's the first part. And then he goes on to say that if reporters did press him to take a position, he would simply change the subject to Donald Trump's relationship with Jeffrey Epstein. Quote, I'm just going to go straight to pedophilia, frankly. I'll just be like, pedophile president decides that he doesn't like the front page news, so he decides to take us into another war. And I think there are multiple layers to this story. The first, obviously, is the deep radicalism of the Democratic base where the person running on the left wing of the Democratic Party is essentially cheerleading for America's enemies. He doesn't want to take a position because he knows the left wing of the party is pro Iran, pro Ayatollah. Um, the Dearborn Muslim community is one of the largest Muslim community. It is the largest Muslim community per capita in the United States and it was the first majority Muslim community in the United States as of a few years ago. The second is how Democrats his open talk about how Democrats are using the Epstein scandal to deflect from the topics they don't want to talk about. And he's quite open about this on the call. And the third was his emergence yesterday around 5pm with a response to the Free Beacon story where he exhibits some of these strategies that he talks about on the call where he must have been huddling with his campaign team the entire day and he comes out and says nothing. Again, he doesn't comment on the death of the Ayatollah, but says the Free Beacon may have illegally and unethically obtained audio of this internal campaign meeting and says it's a deliberate distraction from Donald Trump, Mike Rogers and the entire MAGA base and the pain there. And they're forcing us all into, in this war, redirecting the conversation into the Iran war. So that's the story and I think it will turn out to be without question the most important story. Certainly in the Democratic primary. It if El Sayed wins the Democratic primary, it will be the most important story in the Michigan Senate race this cycle.
- [05:42]
Eliana Johnson
Can I add, the story is so great in part because it shows the trajectory of a Democratic Party that particularly in areas that have a large Muslim population from which the original squad emerged, the squad, you know, Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar and their ilk were a little savvier, I think, when they first emerged on the political scene about couching their anti Semitism and their pro radical Islamism in phrases that might give them some plausible deniability if asked questions by the press. And the press, of course, willingly went along because they were fun left wingers who they thought were the new face of the Democratic Party. Now, however, there's both more willingness to just say the terrible thing as he was doing in this conversation that was recorded, but also a lot more stupidity in the sense of when he's confronted, doing exactly the thing that he was reported on, having done behind the scenes in front of everyone. And it strikes me that that's an expectation on the part of these candidates, these radical candidates, A, not to be questioned by the mainstream media and B, not to really be able to respond when an organization like the Free Beacon has him dead to rights. So I think that's that's the really central importance of this story, because you could take this same approach and go along to all the radical primary candidates that the Democratic Party's been putting out there and do the same thing. And yet they are so unused to being questioned about their views and their expectations are so shaped by a media environment that hasn't really pressed them on it that it kind of reveals the weakness of them as candidates in that same way. So that's, I just thought the story was really important for showing that trajectory for these candidates.
- [07:28]
Seth Mandel
One other thing I should note is that Michigan has a very late Democratic primary. It's in early August. And so this story, I think this storyline will now animate this primary through August. And then it's quite a short general election race just August to November.
- [07:48]
Christine Rosen
You know, when Christine talks about the trajectory of the radical Democratic candidates in between, the squad in this case was Mamdani, who I think the blueprint is clear. I'm reminded of when Zoram Mamdani was asked what his position was on whether or not Hamas should disarm, and he said, I don't have a position on that. I'm running to be mayor of New York City. Why should I have a position on what Hamas does?
- [08:23]
John Podhoretz
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- [09:25]
Eliana Johnson
Hey Bob, can you work overtime tonight
- [09:27]
John Podhoretz
again with getting your college degree at UC, we see you. The University of Cincinnati offers over 100 online degrees and certificates that fit your lifestyle.
- [09:38]
Eliana Johnson
I did it.
- [09:39]
John Podhoretz
I passed my exam. Helping you balance the half to with a want to dos at uc, we see you succeeding. Visit WECU uc Edu to take the first step. Well, so I guess the real question is now the story's out. And now what will the two candidates who are facing Al Said, Mallory McMorrow and Haley Stevens. What are they going to do with this fact? And what will that tell us about what they think the Democratic Party, the Democratic primary, the character of the Democratic Party primary electorate is in Michigan? I think we're going to learn a lot from them.
- [10:25]
Abe Greenwald
And, well, and also that's, that's what the advantage of this story has done for people. And also previous stories about El Sayed saying that he was unsure what to say in the wake of the terrorist attack on the large Michigan Reform Synagogue because it was a risk. I think risk was the word that he used on a campaign call. And so he's taking us one step further by saying, here are what my voters think in a way that you can't even get by trying to follow. Mallory McMorrow is absolutely trying to follow the voters 100%. She's kind of like, in a way, she's a kind of left wing Gavin Newsom in this race in which she goes back and forth on Israel, depending on what she sees from the voters in her state. But El Sayed is just saying, look, I know my voters. My voters may not want me to condemn a terrorist attack on, you know, that was an attempted massacre of Jewish children at a day school. My voters may not like saying that was bad. My voters may not like saying anything on Ayatollah Khamenei because they kind of like him. So here's what El Sayed is saying. The base, the radical base, the grassroots in Michigan that they're trying to drum up, you know, significant support from an enthusiasm from the ones who were supposed to carry the enthusiasm. They like Khamenei and they don't think the Hezbollah terrorist in Michigan is so bad. And that puts the other campaigns in a very tight spot because they can't really pretend that, you know, well, our voters really don't think that and, you know, this and that we can move them a certain way. El Sayed just told us what the voters in this radical base think specifically out loud, and now everybody will react based on that fact.
- [12:37]
Seth Mandel
Well, I mean, we knew that. We know what the voters in Dearborn think. I don't believe that either McMorra or Stevens have responded to this incident. But. But it did come on the heels of El Sayed saying that he planned to campaign in April with Hassan Piker, the anti American, pro Hamas twitch streamer. The guy sits in front of his computer or television and streams all day. And he said America deserved 9, 11. And both McMorrow and Stevens and other Democratic poobahs condemned that. My read of their silence thus far is they are letting him absorb all of the controversy and they don't want to get in the way of that. It will be interesting to see what they say, but I assume they will condemn this given that they condemned his decision to campaign with Hasan Piker. What's interesting about Dearborn is that a plurality of Dearborn voters were so fed up with Kamala Harris because she was too pro Israel. Which is why I made the comment about kind of, we know where Dearborn, Dearborn stands. That a plurality of them voted for Trump because they were so furious at Kamala Harris because of her alleged, you know, pro Israel bona fides. And so, you know, that's where Dearborn is. Trump actually got 42%, I believe, of Dearborn voters out running Kamala there.
- [14:18]
Eliana Johnson
And Piker, by the way, it's only a few days ago the Democrats started speaking out against him. But for years he's been saying terrible things on his twitch stream. People have been pointing it out. He was, I think, photographed celebrating Mamdani's victory like he's part of the left wing cultural ecosphere. He got a lot of profiles written about him, puff pieces. You know, he's this darling of the left wing media and now suddenly Democratic political operatives are realizing he might become a liability. So it'll be. But the media hasn't shifted along that, that narrative line yet.
- [14:54]
Seth Mandel
I think the interesting question with this El Sayed thing is whether Democratic voters will perceive that he's going to be a liability in the general and vote because they want to win as opposed to vote their hearts. And that will be quite interesting because I think if El Sayed is the nominee, Republicans are going to win that race. He is not going to be palatable to general election voters who we talked about this before with respect to the far right and the woke right. General election voters, they like America. Independent voters, they like America. They want America to win wars and they are generally really not pro radical Islam. They're not where El Sayed is. That's a liability for the far left and the squad and it's a liability for the far right when they start saying that, you know, the Gulf countries are superior to the United States.
- [15:53]
John Podhoretz
The population of Michigan is about 11 million. The population of Muslims in Michigan is around 240,000. In 2024, the number of Republicans as counted by affiliation, though it's a little hard to count in a state like Michigan, there are more Republicans than Democrats. In 2024. And Trump, of course, won Michigan in 2024, though he lost it in 2020. I bring this up only to say that we will have a test run of what the people who are trying to secure Democratic support and then win the general election in an atmosphere that ought to be favorable to them, given that the atmosphere is generally favorable to Democrats or will be favorable to Democrats. Based on everything that we're reading and seeing what they make of the gift that has been presented to them by the Free Beacon, or whether they think it's a poison chalice that they need to stay away from, the raw numbers would suggest that if the concern is not offending Muslims who are sad that the Ayatollah Khamenei is dead, that that would be a foolish calculation given, you know, the raw numbers would suggest you have about 150,000 voters who might. A universe of voters who might feel that way, as opposed to a universe of about 7.3 million actual voters and in Michigan. But what we don't know is what other Democrats outside of Dearborn and what the main rank and file Democrats outside of Dearborn or. Or in pockets across the state, in cities in Ann Arbor and places like that. Are they sympathetic to the idea that this war is so terrible that, you know, it's okay not to say anything or to be silent when one of the most evil people on earth is killed because Donald Trump and the Israelis killed him? Do they feel that it would be helpful for the Democratic Party to line itself up and line itself with a Jewish community that has just been attacked by a Hezbollah? The FBI has now formally revealed the evidence that the guy who drove into the synagogue with a car bomb was a Hezbollah operative, that his phone revealed that it's not just that his brothers were members of Hezbollah, but that he himself was either officially or unofficially kind of working for Hezbollah, which means he was working for Iran at a remove. Is that something they're going to stay out of or that they're going to think, I can really get a leg up with moderate Democrats in the state of Michigan by saying, anybody who can't condemn this and thinks it's okay that a Hezbollah operative is functioning in our state and won't condemn it and won't condemn the war, the Iranian regime, that they can get a leg up, and they are. It is like neck and neck and neck between the three of them. All the polling suggests they're like, all around 25% or 26%. And I just don't know what the answer to that question is. And whether they're just going to sit there, as Eliana says, and hand Mike Rogers a giant. Slow. Not slow, but like a nice, sharp fastball right in the middle of the plate for him to smash out of, you know, Tiger Stadium. The minute that it's a head on, head to head race, even if they, even if El say doesn't win and McMorrow and Stevens wins, depending on where the war is, does he get to say, where were you when the Jews were attacked? Where were you when your rival in the party was, like, refusing to open a mouth because he was worried that supporters of the Iranian regime would be upset with him if he said anything.
- [20:22]
Christine Rosen
Well, I think that along with the trajectory of the radical candidates that Christine talked about, something has happened in tandem with liberal Democratic voters, which is that they feel safer, they feel more comfortable giving some kind of benefit of the doubt to these radicals because it's being normalized. So as, again, with Mamdani, there are liberal New Yorkers who were not radical. They were not on the same page as him in terms of Israel and Hamas and whatever else, but they felt comfortable being swept up in the Mamdani quote energy anyway. And that has become. That's the dangerous sort of normalizing dynamic, is that I think people are dangerously less compelled to say, whoa, stop, this is not normal. This is not where we're at. They're more like, yeah, I don't agree with him on everything, but, you know, Trump's terrible and new face and all that.
- [21:48]
Abe Greenwald
But there's a third way also, though, isn't there? Which is. I mean, I think what McMarrow is trying to do has been to be the person who can be thought of as holding similar enough beliefs to the radicals without getting in people's face about it. Right. I mean, the key McMorrow story until, you know, so far in the election was when she said, you know, she's giving an interview and she was asked about the genocide question. And she said, I think Israel did commit genocide. I think it does follow the definition. But can we please stop talking about this? Essentially, is what she said. She said it's, you know, it's kind of a distraction and it's turning. She said it's a. It's becoming a purity test is what she called it within the Democratic primary ranks. What she was really saying was, you know, like, she was like blinking Morse code at the party, which is like, okay, can we stop only talking about how evil Israel is once we've been all on the record that it was a genocide and move on. Because what she wants is to be thought of by the voters as agreeing that Israel is bad, but also, you know, being able to appeal to moderates. And she can't do that if she has to be honest repeatedly about Israel or if she has to respond to those questions repeatedly. So I think she's, you know, what she wants is to not sort of not be named here and have El Sayed be the guy who says terrible things about Israel in extreme ways. Haley Stevens says nice things about Israel because she's a normal human. And McMara will be the sort of machine learning bot in the middle who, you know, who threads that needle.
- [23:43]
Eliana Johnson
And it's interesting because that can be a successful path for winning an election as a so called moderate. See Abigail Spanberger. And then once you have power, starting to govern far more to the left than one ran one's campaign on. And voters actually feeling not exactly duped, but sort of surprised by that, and they shouldn't. That's, I think, the future for the people in the Democratic Party who really can't be called moderate. I mean, Spanberger's policies on immigration and on transgender stuff and on. There's a whole bunch of things on which she's actually far to the left of the average American, to say nothing of the average Virginia voter. And yet she, she's got power now. She ran as a moderate and won as a moderate. And so that is a path. I think we'll see a lot more of these candidates like you say, Seth, kind of the Morse code, the winking, the I hear what you're saying about genocide, but let's talk about the economy. Then when they get in office, they will govern like people who believe Israel's committing genocide.
- [24:38]
John Podhoretz
I wonder, because I think that the purity test stuff in the primaries is making that harder. That's normal politics. Normal politics is you. You, if you're on the right, you shift to the center. If you're on the left, you shift to the center. You want to run in the general election as close to what you believe the voter center is because in theory you hold onto your party's base because they have nowhere to go other than stay home or go far to the left of where they right of where they want to be. So you hold them and then you pull some people, among independents in particular from the middle and maybe some from the other party. That is conventional politics forever. Over the last 10 years, the primary purity test has kind of interfered with that process. You remember famously in 2012, Mitt Romney's campaign manager said, well, you know, it's now the primary's over, so we get to Etch a Sketch. We could just shake. We said he was so conservative, but now we'll just shake the Etch A Sketch and redraw him for a general election. And that was a very revealing moment, not only because it revealed a lot about the way cynical campaign professionals, of whom this guy was basically drummed out of politics for having said it, Eric Farnstrom, Fernstrom, something like that, the guy who said that. But from then onward, it was actually axiomatic that you could take on a figure in your own party by saying they're pretending to be conservative on the right, but they're not really. And Eric brat took down Mr. David Bratt, took down Eric Cantor, the second or third most important Republican in the House, using that stratagem. And we know from all kinds of races that the rightmost candidate saying that the candidate in the middle. It's happening now in Texas, right, Paxton vs. Cornyn, that they're not pure enough. And we need to make sure that the person who was running for this race is pure. And the classic political rule was you don't have to do the dog whistles that make the right or the left understand who you are, but try to stay as milquetoast as you can to make yourself as appealing to the largest number. But activists are making that harder and harder. Right. Obviously, if Janet Mills in Maine were to become the senator beat Susan Collins, she would run, she would govern, she would be vote far to the left of Collins. But she's got this guy Graham Platner off to her left who is saying, that's not good enough. She's not pure enough. Vote for me. I'm the really good one. And you know from the get go that I'm a radical. Vote for me. And so if the Stevens McMorrow said race follows the pattern that Christine, you, you laid out, it would kind of be the exception, not the rule, in the way a lot of these kind of races are going. We should also point out that we've been talking about Michigan now for almost half an hour. Why Democrats cannot conceivably take over the Senate, which is already a very heavy lift even in a really good atmosphere for Democrats, without taking this seat. If Republicans take this seat, there is almost no math according to which Democrats can get to 51 votes. So it's not just the local Michigan and the ideological fight. And what about Israel and AIPAC and Hezbollah and Khamenei it is actually a key national race, one of the three or four key national races in which what happens between 2027 and 2029 will be decided. And so that's another reason why we're not just talking about this, because we're obsessed with the topic. And that Eliana did a great. Published a great story about this. But it has national ramifications. To move on. On the national ramifications, I just want to point out that the apac, the demonization of aipac, the Israel lobby, which has now become a really potent force in the way conversations are being had in the United States and a kind of loyalty oath on the left to say you don't like AIPAC or AIPAC is illegitimate, or AIPAC is trying to control American politics. Something really interesting and comic happened yesterday, which is that a man named Tom Steyer, who was running for governor of California, tweeted this. AIPAC is a dark money organization that should have no place in our politics. First of all, the idea that a lobby should have no place in our politics when lobbying. Lobbying is. Even though, like people like James Madison hated lobbying, nonetheless, lobbying is the ultimate form of free speech in politics, is itself preposterous. It's a lobby, so it'll either succeed or not succeed in getting its views across. And I don't think that Tom Star would say this about the gun control lobby or about the gay rights lobby or any other lobby, just apparently the lobby that is a collective way for Americans who want the Congress to essentially vote for foreign aid so that Israel will get foreign aid. But why this is interesting. Does anybody want to jump in on why it's interesting that Tom Steyer, of all people who is running for governor of. Right. He's running for governor. I think he's not. I think he's like way down in rankings. Yes, he's like at 10% or something. But there are like eight people running for governor in this jungle primary. But why? It's interesting that Tom Steyer should have tweeted this out.
- [30:43]
Abe Greenwald
There's no way that AIPAC, in any race in the last, I don't know, decade has spent more than Tom Steyer has spent in those. In those.
- [30:54]
John Podhoretz
Right. Tom Steyer is the single largest donor in American politics. Individually. Individually. He has given in the last two cycles something akin to $800 million to Democratic candidates and in Democratic races. Just stop for a minute and think about this. $800 million, one person, $800 million. Is that dark money? No, because dark money is. You don't know where it comes from. And we know where it comes from. It comes from Tom Steyer's checkbook.
- [31:30]
Eliana Johnson
But there are, but, but the dark money narrative on the left is also ironic because they spend a lot more dark money than they do on the right for these elections. And I'm thinking of the, what is the 1630 fund? Is that where. 16, 1630 fund.
- [31:45]
Seth Mandel
So they spent Arabella Advisors and it's
- [31:48]
Eliana Johnson
this whole network of dark money on the left. And who funds most of it? A Swiss billionaire, A non American who funnels all this money into a fund that was. That spent 400 million in the 2020 election. A little less, but around a little over 300 million in 2024 election cycle. And it is funneled through all kinds of radical left wing organizations. It's classic dark money. The left has in the last several national elections spent much more in dark money than the right. And yet for some reason it remains. And again, I blame a far too credulous or, and or ideologically motivated media for doing this. AIPAC is not a foreign entity. It is American citizens spending their money on an issue they care about. So the irony of saying AIPAC is foreign influence, but all the dark money spent on the left, which indeed is funded by a foreign billionaire is not. Is absurd.
- [32:39]
Seth Mandel
Sorry, but AIPAC is not dark money. Am I missing something? AIPAC has a pac?
- [32:45]
Eliana Johnson
No, they had to disclose on Races Inc.
- [32:48]
Seth Mandel
It's public. Which is why you see all this coverage of an APAC back candidates and candidates saying I will take APAC money. I won't take APAC money. APAC playing in this race. APAC pain in that race. That's not dark money. That is participation in our political process.
- [33:09]
Christine Rosen
This is, they are. And this is happening on the left and right. There's an attempt to redefine dark money to mean money from Jews. That is what is happening here.
- [33:25]
John Podhoretz
Right.
- [33:25]
Abe Greenwald
And Republicans, they, they want, you know, when they don't want to be openly anti Semitic about complaining about aipac, they say, oh good, the money is really coming from maga. It's MAGA money that's being funneled into Democratic primaries. So those are their two big complaints that, you know, we don't know who. Well, the individual donors because they want to show up at the individual donor's house with doll baby dolls with, with red paint smeared on them and throw them through their, through their bay windows. Like that's, you know, they, they want to literally. It's not even, it's not even that they care. I guess what I'M saying is it's not that they care about the dark aspect of the dark money. They don't actually care about that. They, they want to go after people to their homes. They want to take the fight to people personally, as they've done with regents of major universities and situations like that.
- [34:21]
John Podhoretz
Right. So the purpose of the personal doxing attack is of course, deterrence. It is a message to people, not to those people, but to the people who will follow them not to take the positions that they take. Or someone's going to show up at your house. So maybe you should mind your p's and q's and keep yourself out of trouble and keep your mouth shut because you're going to get people staying in front of your house. Look, I have family members like my brother in law, my sister Rachel, married to Elliot Abrams, who was the Assistant Secretary of State for Latin American affairs in the Reagan administration. And Sandinista aligned groups, radical left wing groups, communist, often in coloration, protested outside her house in Chevy Chase, D.C. in 1986 and 1987. Like there were protests outside her house. My nieces and nephews were 3, 4, 5, 6 years old and people were screaming, Baby. This is 40 years ago, mind you. So this tactic died down, died off really with the end of the Cold War, in part because the inspiration from outside kind of petered out and then of course has now been revived since 2023. I bring this up only to say that it's unbelievably unpleasant. It's nightmarishly horrible. As horrible as you think it might be to have it happen in, in theory, I can just tell you from actual, the actual experience of having gone through it or having seen my sister and her kids go through it. It's, you know, among the worst things that can ever happen to you outside of somebody really injuring somebody in your family or you getting into an accident or somebody being mugged or killed. Like, it's just, it's a, it's a, it's an act of absolute exposure and, you know, embarrasses you in front of your neighbors. Your neighbors are mad that you're living on the block with them. Everything that you can imagine can happen. And this is now being used over and over again, oddly enough, of course, in the state of Michigan where the regent that you're talking about, regent whose home was doxed and painted and all of this is a regent of the University of Michigan who just happens to be Jewish. So I also wanted then to talk about the metaphorical quality of this associating. The term APAC with dark money, which, as Eliana says, is not dark money. Dark money is kabbalistic Protocols of the Elders of Zion language, period. That is dark, secret cabal, hidden conspiratorial gatherings of wealthy people who don't want you to know who they are, who are marionette like pulling the strings on American society. And if you say, if you called any other lobby that was a legitimate lobby and you mischaracterized it as dark money, you could say that there was not much malign intent there except that dark money sounds bad and the NRA is bad. And so you're against the NRA or you're against the gun lobby, or you're against the, the abortion rights lobby or whatever you want to put it. But when you use that kind of terminology about Jews, it has a very, very specific valence that is unlike any other valence. The metaphor extends to historical portraits of the Jewish people in anti Semitic countries that end inevitably in pogroms. So Tom Steyer, of all people, activating this kind of language about a Jewish organization when he himself is the largest single giver in American politics is pretty staggering. And we need to take account of it because it is happening here. Like, I'm not saying, you know, it's not. I'm reading this novel about, set in the early years of Nazi Germany, the Oppermans. I've talked about it before. It's one of the great works of literature of the 20th century, unknown to me until this year by Leon Furt Wangler. And, you know, it is the it can happen here story about a Jewish family in Berlin beginning in 1933. And we're nowhere near. I mean, we're like, we're. I mean, you can't even compare the two. But it describes the slow accretion of events that, you know, we're not. No one's, no one's handing, you know, Al Sayed the chancellorship of the United States so that he can activate his brown shirts to go do terrible things. No, that's not what's happening here. You could say Mamdani's election is something, but there are, you know, the Weimar Republic was very young and very green and didn't have much power and it was very easily knocked over. But it is happening here. A Hezbollah operative drove into a synagogue. A senatorial candidate in the Democratic Party in Michigan is refusing to talk, you know, is worried that people are sad among his constituents. Because a man who's sole goal in, you know, main goal in the world is the Elimination of the Jewish state and the murder of 9 million people who live in the Jewish state through nuclear, you know, war that they're sad about that like it is happening here. And the dark talk normalizes it.
- [40:18]
Eliana Johnson
Well, to invoke our old friend Noah Rothman, what it, what it does, and this is where it is incumbent on politicians on the right and the left to call this out and to say and to actually make a statement like, no, actually I'm against Hezbollah and I'm against that is because it allows a permission structure. And the permission structure as it expands, gives lone wolf attackers, gives everyday anti Semites, gives people who don't know much but fall down rabbit holes and start to hear this stuff. It gives them all a lot more freedom of movement. And I think it is linked in some ways to what you were saying about the kinds of protests that we're seeing now in the modern age. I was thinking of all the Supreme Court justices, conservative Supreme Court justices who need round the clock security outside their homes because their neighborhoods have been turned into protest zones. And obviously in the case of Kavanaugh, someone went with the intent to kill him. So this has become a weird new normal that we shouldn't accept. And in some ways it's on the left with regard to Israel and the Jews. The permission structure has, in a very short amount of time, expanded so rapidly that they don't even have the language in some ways to acknowledge what has happened. But I do think it's important. I mean, we call it out when we see it, but you're going to need leadership in their own parties to start doing that and to say, to point to candidates and say, no, that's not acceptable. That's not what we do. And that sort of self policing is probably gone for both parties. It's why our primary process, as you said earlier, John, is a disaster. And it's what is elevating extreme fringe candidates on both sides of the aisle to national elective office because the primary process has been compromised and bad for a very long time. Reforming that should be a goal of anyone who wants to see our system function in a healthier way.
- [42:13]
Abe Greenwald
Can I add one point about Tom Steyer, though, that I think is important. His father was an assistant prosecutor at the Nuremberg trials. So Steyer should know much better than to engage in, than to pile on the AIPAC stuff. You know, we talked what John said. You know, it's not happening here, but it's hap. You know, it's. Some of it's happening here. And you Know, it's the, you know, it's the sort of rumblings that, you know, bad things come after. So don't join the rumblings. Tom Steyer's father was in the Navy in World War II, and he ended up serving on, you know, on the American legal team at the Nuremberg trials after the war. So, you know, Steyer has used this. First of all, Steyer ran for president. You remember once when he, he ran for president at least once, but once he was, you know, kind of a, you know, a main stage guy, ran for president, and he uses this stuff and he says the Republicans are anti Semitic. The Republicans don't stop extremism in their own party. Tom Steyer has said all this stuff, and to buttress it, his case, he's said, you know, I knew I grew up with a Jewish. His father was Jewish, by the way. He didn't just serve on the Nuremberg. I shouldn't have said that, too. His father was Jewish. A Jewish father served in the Navy in World War II and then went on to serve on the, on the prosecuting team at Nuremberg trials. So he would go around and say, my father was Jewish. I was raised by a Jewish man who was a prosecutor at the Nuremberg trials. And he would use this against Republicans as an argument for them not countering their own extremism within the party. So to see him jump on the bandwagon on AIPAC is a very significant piece of hypocrisy from him. And, you know, and he should be called out for that too, John.
- [44:06]
John Podhoretz
Okay. By the way, that's an amazing. Go ahead. Sorry.
- [44:09]
Christine Rosen
What really struck me when, John, when you said it's happening here is that I was, I was thinking back to it can't happen here and the Sinclair Lewis novel about, about a fascist takeover of the US in that novel, antisemitism is there. It's atmospheric. It's not the mechanism through which it happens. And that's what we're actually talking about here. Philip Roth's imagining of it aside, most of the sort of thinking about how could it happen here doesn't actually take account of this idea that it happens through Jew hatred.
- [45:08]
John Podhoretz
Quite the opposite. I mean, so we had the no Kings rallies on Saturday, right? And I mean, I don't trust these numbers, but the claim is 8 million people were involved in the no Kings rallies. That seems preposterous to me because the number of. In the Women's March in 2017, the calculus was three and a half million. And you could feel the Women's March all over the United States like that was, even though it was also the inaugural weekend for Donald Trump in 2017. That was a very big thing that happened. And, and this did not feel like a big thing to me. And I'm in New York, so I am very suspicious that this was as momentous a moment. I think it's probably very helpful for Democrats. I'm sure they were registering voters at the no Kings rally, encouraging people to go out and make sure that they have it in their heads from April till November that they have a huge opportunity to hand Donald Trump a defeat in November. But the no Kings rally, is that right? That is. It's happening here. Authoritarianism is coming. He's minting money with his name. He's adding himself to this. He's doing that. He's building the ballroom. He's violating the Constitution. All of that talk. But I think Abe makes an almost unassailable, weirdly unassailable case about the problematic nature of the assumption that Trump is. Is bringing fascism to the United States, which is that he is a Philo Semite. We did not know that this was going to be what he was in 2015. One of the reasons that I was, you know, you know, against Trumper in the National Review issue and all of that was all of the marks and signs to me that he was activating anti Semitic thinking, that this world of anti Semitism on social media was coming after me, coming after Seth's wife Bethany, coming after Ben Shapiro, coming after people like that by the, you know, the millions of messages and things like that, and that it did not, and that he kept saying, I don't want to choose between the Israelis and the Palestinians. I want to make a real estate deal. It's going to be great. All these messages that I thought meant, oh, my God, we're. This is some really bad stuff could happen. And then something different happened. When he became president, the first time he saw, you know, he literally tilted American policy toward Israel officially and unambiguously for the first time in Israel's history in the first term. And then in this term, of course, hits the Iranian nuclear program and is now going to war with Iran in with Israel as a full partner in this war effort, as no nation has been a partner in the United States in a war effort since World War II. So I think that one of the problems with the Trump is an authoritarian, not that there are many things I'm unhappy with. I don't like him signing the currency. I don't like him, you know, executive ordering things. I don't like a lot of the stuff that has gone on.
- [48:18]
Eliana Johnson
He's staffed his administration with some pretty intolerable anti Semites too. That should be noted. Like he has tolerated the presence of anti Semites in his administration.
- [48:27]
John Podhoretz
Although, although, although a lot of them have been, have been booted. Yeah, I mean it's not like he, he's the head of White House personnel. He has empowered people who are doing that. And I'm not denying that either. But, but if you want to know how authoritarianism, right wing authoritarianism, takes root on the planet earth, or a left wing totalitarianism also, or Muslim authoritarianism, the Jews are always a major factor in the conversation and the only people who are making Jews a major factor in the conversation in the United States in terms of their evil. Aside from Tucker Carlson and Nick Fuentes, who apparently based on what we've seen at cpac, the most right wing gathering in America have very little following. If they don't have it there, they don't have it anywhere. I mean our Democrats, our Mamdani, our El Al said, our Graham Platner, our Tom Steyer now and all of that. I mean that's so it's an interesting aspect of this that the idea of a philo Semitic authoritarian flies in the face of everything that we have seen in the history of modern authoritarianism or totalitarianism or anti democratic action truly be novel beyond belief. Now Seth made an interesting segue. We then ended up back here. But I mean, 10 minutes ago we could have gone with the shortest podcast we've ever had because he started talking about Tom, started the Nuremberg trials. And as we go into Passover, Eliana has a commentary recommends that does speak to issues relating to Jewish survival in the aftermath of Jewish calamity and slavery and all of that. Eliana.
- [50:30]
Seth Mandel
Yes Seth, you teed me up perfectly with Tom Steyer's father who I was just looking up. That's amazing. I recently watched and wanted to recommend the Netflix movie Nuremberg, starring Russell Crowe as Herman Guring, Michael Shannon as Robert H. Jackson and Rami Malek as Dr. Douglas Kelly. And the movie is about Douglas Kelly, who is an army psych, a young early 30s army psychiatrist in real life, he was 33 years old at the time who was dispatched to Nuremberg to keep the 22 Nazi prisoners who were to stand trial sane and alive during their trials. And it focuses on the relationship that the young psychiatrist Kelly develops with Crow's character Goering, and the advice that Kelly, who's probing Goering's Mind tries to relay to Jackson the prosecutor whose counter examination of Guring was notoriously unsuccessful even though he was convicted. Throughout the movie and in real life, Kelly was trying to write a book about all the. All of this. And so his ambitions as a young psychiatrist are part of the plot as well. I don't want to talk too much about it and give it away, but I highly recommend it. It's fantastic.
- [52:23]
John Podhoretz
Christine, you've seen it. I haven't seen it.
- [52:25]
Eliana Johnson
Well, when Eliana said she was watching it, I immediately watched it too. And I think what's interesting is this sort of a sub theme in the larger movie. First, it's just fun to see Russell Crowe play this role because he's so in relishing it. You know, he's. And he's huge. He's like. He's just kind of really into it. But it's this, it's the, it's the distinction between what the law can pursue in terms of justice has limits. And what the psychologist wants to do is convince Jackson that he needs to actually understand the motivations of a Gurring, whereas Jackson's like, we're just going to make sure he gets prosecuted. This is. He was very by the book letter of the law guy. And I think that tension between what psychology offers as insight in the Pursuit of Justice is really interestingly done in this particular movie. Although I didn't like Remy Malek as much, but, but I think all the other actors in the, in the film were so great that, that he. I can set him aside a little bit. He's a little too. He's a little too in your face. And, and I think I would have preferred a slightly more subdued, professional performance by him. But the, the thing that tension between psychology and law in the Pursuit of Justice was interesting
- [53:38]
John Podhoretz
mystery to me.
- [53:40]
Eliana Johnson
Yeah.
- [53:40]
John Podhoretz
He won an Oscar playing Freddie Mercury, but I think he's a pretty bad actor.
- [53:45]
Eliana Johnson
I liked him as Freddie Mercury, actually. Maybe I couldn't unsee Freddie Mercury and
- [53:49]
John Podhoretz
I, I, or you know, so he was like Beatlemania ing Freddie Mercury so he won an Oscar. But like his. I really didn't like him as Freddie Mercury and I. And I mean, I just think he's lousy. So I'm. One of the reasons I haven't seen it is that I'm not a. Is that I'm not a Remy Malik fan. But I, but your, but your recommendations are. Are making me. Making me hungry.
- [54:11]
Seth Mandel
It's worth watching to watch Crow play Gehring.
- [54:15]
John Podhoretz
Yeah.
- [54:15]
Eliana Johnson
And I don't like the Movie either,
- [54:17]
Seth Mandel
but I don't know, it uses original film from the trials that it flashes back to from the movies and, you know, cinematic portrayals of the Nuremberg courtroom. And it's cool, it's cool.
- [54:33]
Abe Greenwald
Rami Malek also has a. You know, he's very good when he wants to be creepy. So it is hard sometimes to see him as the hero. He plays the hero, I think, too much. He just did it again. He was in, you know, a movie, you know, where he was, you know, a kind of spy figure hero. I forget what.
- [54:53]
John Podhoretz
I can't remember. It was so bad I can't remember what it was called.
- [54:55]
Abe Greenwald
Yeah, but he was, you know, but when you saw him in the Little Things with Denzel Washington a few years ago, you could see how it, you, you could see where he fits well in a series. What a dark movie, a dark atmosphere. And, you know, whether you're a hero or a movie where, whether you're a hero or a villain, you are understood to have a kind of dark side or, you know, skeletons in your closet or something like that. He does that very well. It's hard to go, but it is hard to be that. And you know, Freddie Mercury, that's why
- [55:31]
Christine Rosen
I like him as, as, as Freddie Mercury, because if you watch his performance, you'd think Freddie Mercury was like a vampire or something, like a haunted, you know what I mean? And Freddie Mercury was like this, you know, like, he was like this. You're. She was like this maniac, you know,
- [55:48]
John Podhoretz
so, yeah, interesting story. Then we can close about the Nuremberg trials and the film footage shown at the Nuremberg trials, which were shown at the trials as part of the.
- [56:01]
Seth Mandel
Depicted in the movie too.
- [56:02]
John Podhoretz
In the cases to provide documentary evidence of what happened in the camps, most if not all of that footage was shot by the director, George Stephens. Mark Harris tells this story in his book Five Came Back. George Stevens was Hollywood's like one of Hollywood's premier light comedy directors and made Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers movies, made Laurel and Hardy movies, made a really great comedy about wartime shortages in Washington called the More the Merrier with Joel McCrae and Gene Arthur. That if you can find it, is one of the most sprightly American movies ever made. So he was a very light fingered, light touch guy. He goes into the military in World War II to be one of these directors. And as it turns out, what he ends up doing is filming the liberation of the camps. And remember, nobody knew. I mean, people there were, there were rumors and there were stories about what had gone on Nobody knew what was. What this was. And much of what he filmed has yet to be brought into the public domain because the images are so graphically awful. And I don't just mean starving bodies. I mean the results of starving all kinds of things. That is still the case. We haven't seen all of it. And Stevens was, as you can imagine, unutterably altered by. By this experience. He came back. He never made a comedy again. He made Shane, he made A Place in the sun, he made Giant. He made a movie about the life of Christ called the Greatest Story Ever Told. But his days as a kind of boulevardier were over because he had seen something that no human being should ever have had to have seen. And he knew that the things that he had seen actually had had a direct effect on the history of the world because they were necessary elements of the prosecution at Nuremberg that led to Goering and Stryker and others actually finally seeing justice. Which is an interesting thing to reflect on as we go into the Passover holiday, I hope. I wish everyone who is. Who is going to Seder and all that, Azisin and a freilach epasach and everyone should both reflect on the history of the Jewish people and the fact that we're now thousands of years removed from the exodus from Egypt, but that we are still telling the story today in the miracle of miracles that remains the fact of Jewish history. A history that. That should not be here. We should not be here. There's no reason outside of supernatural or providential reasons for this tiny tribe to have survived over these millennia. And we learn why. In part, we will learn why again, as we do every year, in part, on Wednesday and Thursday night. So for Seth, Abe, Christine and Eliana, I'm John. Bob Horts keep the canopy.