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- [00:01]
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- [00:45]
Jon Bud Horitz
Will that be cash or credit? Credit.
- [00:48]
Christine Rosen
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Samsung Representative
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Jon Bud Horitz
So you can do you get yours@samsung.com.
- [00:56]
Abe Greenwald
Compatible with select apps.
- [00:57]
Jon Bud Horitz
Requires Google Gemini account.
- [00:58]
Abe Greenwald
Results may vary based on input.
- [00:59]
Christine Rosen
Check response for accuracy.
- [01:04]
Abe Greenwald
Hope for the best, Expect the worst.
- [01:11]
Jon Bud Horitz
Some preach and pain Some die of thirst no way of knowing which way it's going Hope for the best Expect the worst for the best welcome to the Commentary Magazine daily podcast. Today is Tuesday, February 25, 2025. I am Jon Bud Horitz, the editor of Commentary magazine. With me as always, Executive Editor Abe Greenwald. Hi, Abe.
- [01:37]
Abe Greenwald
Hi, John.
- [01:38]
Jon Bud Horitz
Social commentary columnist Christine Rosen. Hi, Christine.
- [01:41]
Seth Mandel
Hi, John.
- [01:42]
Jon Bud Horitz
And Senior editor Seth Mandel. Hi, Seth.
- [01:44]
Christine Rosen
Hi, John.
- [01:46]
Jon Bud Horitz
So I don't think that Donald Trump and Elon Musk had good days yesterday. Sorry to report that Trump, I think for the first time in ever, was corrected in the Oval Office. He was corrected by French President Emmanuel Macron. He said, look, Ukraine is getting all this money from Europe in the form of loans. And Macron said, no, no, it's not. We're paying. So it makes you then wonder if people are pouring nonsense into Trump's ear. Like, no, no, no, Europe's not giving them any money. They're just loaning the money. They're going to give it, they have to give it back. And it's like, okay. And then it turns out, of course, that whoever told him that whatever, you know, paleo con isolationist idiot told him that, you know, got it wrong. Maybe deliberately, maybe because somebody, because he heard it on now FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino's psychotic podcast. Dan Bongino's appointment as the deputy director of the FBI also being not a good day for Trump. I don't care whether people maga people are happy about it or not, the idea that this very critical agency is now being run by two people who literally have no experience at the FBI. And Bungino literally has no experience, was a cop and then a Secret Service agent and has no managerial experience. I don't want someone with no managerial experience running the FBI. That's where you get the FBI running amok and doing bad, unconstitutional things that restrict and restrain people's rights, which I thought MAGA and the right were all opposed to. And that, you know, we, among others, not that we're part of the MAGA right, but that we've been publishing articles by Eli Lake for years about how the FBI became a runaway agency, particularly during, you know, the sort of the Trump and Biden years run by people who were. Who were running rough shot over the constitutional rights of people. So that's not good. And then Musk basically lost or Doge or whatever, lost. Three either lost or were given very harsh warnings in court about the constitutionality of doge, about the constitutionality of Musk's position as the head of DOGE and other agencies in the federal government. Wisely, I think, for the simple purpose of bureaucratic clarity, informing the people in their agencies, that's Tulsi Gabbard, Marco Rubio, Pete Hegseth and others, that they are not obliged to respond to a memo from OPM which isn't their boss. And that's actually a reasonably important point. I want to read an email, which I should have ponied up here, which of course I didn't, quickly, from a federal employee, a listener to the podcast, who wrote the following to us yesterday afternoon. Longtime listener here. I'm also a federal employee. I wanted to say something about Matt Continent. His description of the Elon Musk quote. What did you do last week email as being typical or normal in the private sector? It might be typical except for the way that it bypassed the usual chain of command. Federal employees are never orders by the Office of Personnel Management. We receive orders from supervisors within our agency. If the President wants something to happen, he gives the instruction to the agency heads, who then distribute the message down the chain. The emails from Musk are highly irregular. It is irregular to receive an order from an authority outside of our agency. It is irregular that these orders are unsigned. They are not signed by Trump or even Musk. They are from hropm.com this is not a recognized or established authority. We only know that it is Elon Musk from Watching the news. People have characterized the freakout in response to this email as Employees freaking out about having to explain what they do. That is not it. We are already required to do that regularly. The freakout is in receiving a highly irregular and menacing email from a source that we know to be responsible for mass indiscriminate layoffs and pushing for more. I sure hope that agency heads continue to act as a buffer between Musk and employees. I think some will do so more than others. At my agency, we were instructed by our chain of command to respond to the email. So this is amateur hour behavior. It's threatening, it's this, it's that. The other thing, I don't think, again, as I said, and Matt said, the other, it doesn't. Sending someone email saying, explain what you do, what your job is, is not, you know, in and of itself bad. The way it's being done is bad. Then, you know, last night Musk sent out an email saying, you have to respond to this email. And again, who's. Who, what authority does he have to say that? Like, we assume that he has Trump's authority to say that, but he, he is not in a position to fire people in other agencies. There are workplace rule everybody in America, there are workplace rules at places where only more than five people work that guarantee you certain procedural rights, mostly in states and localities and in the federal government. So.
- [07:29]
Christine Rosen
Well, I think you also have to ask what he's doing with that information, which is to say he, he doesn't know what their job is. Right. So he's asking them to tell them. But what's he going to do there? Analyze and judge how they're doing their job that he doesn't know like that. That's the thing, is that your, your immediate manager, and this is, you know, a point I think, coming from the letter writer that you just read, the people who, to whom, the people who supervise you at work know what you should be doing. And I don't think Elon Musk knows what you should be doing and therefore knows enough to compare what you say you're doing. So I'm not really sure what the purpose of, you know, tell me what you did last week is. I'm not sure.
- [08:20]
Abe Greenwald
Okay, but look, the claim is that the purpose is to see if there's anyone there, that there are essentially like zombies who.
- [08:30]
Jon Bud Horitz
Well, that's new. That's what Trump said yesterday. Nobody said that last week. Nobody said, we just want people to respond to see if these are all no show jobs.
- [08:39]
Abe Greenwald
That was, I think Musk, I think Musk might have said that.
- [08:41]
Jon Bud Horitz
I think he did Say he did not say that.
- [08:43]
Seth Mandel
Well, he said people often don't even respond to their email. They don't feel like they even have to report back to anyone telling them to report.
- [08:50]
Jon Bud Horitz
Yeah, Trump said, we're doing this to see if these are no show jobs. But that was a, that's a post hoc justification for what happened.
- [08:59]
Christine Rosen
I mean, I say I will say that.
- [09:01]
Jon Bud Horitz
And he could have said it. He could have just said, you know what, everybody, send me an email, send an email in response, because I need to know, you know, whether or not all these emails that are, we have a list of, for federal employees are being responded to by the federal employees or whether they've basically given up on working because nobody comes into the office. He could have said that.
- [09:20]
Christine Rosen
Right. But also, if you've worked in a corporate environment and taken those tests to see whether you understand information security in your environment. Right. On that test, the Musk email from OPM would be marked as pretty suspicious. Like, in other words, somebody who never emails you, who claims to be, you know, whatever, like the, the, the, the instructions we would get.
- [09:52]
Jon Bud Horitz
Click.
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Christine Rosen
Hover your pointer over the email address that you see the full email address. Don't download anything, and don't click on any links in that email. And so it just, it doesn't seem to me to like how this stuff works.
- [10:08]
Jon Bud Horitz
It's what Tulsi Gabbard said. What, and by the way, what one of the judges said in one of these many lawsuits, which is that aside from security issues involving, say, national security or something like that, there is also, you know, privacy and, you know, things like personal records that could be accessed and that, and that people may, you know, Trump can invent this agency out of whole cloth or, you know, supersede a White House office that does this. But that doesn't mean that the 30 people who are working there are fully cleared to look at highly classified material, including personnel and payroll records.
- [10:51]
Seth Mandel
So this, this, this is actually one of the huge challenges. It was a challenge with MAGA the first term, and it's going to be a challenge this term, and that's that Trump actually likes the performative people, and he doesn't want to be seen as a reformer. He wants to be seen as someone who's a disruptor now. So performers can't reform very well because they're too busy performing. I think Musk is a, is a version of, of a performer and a disruptor. Bongino Patel, these guys are more performers than reformers. The problem is, if you're strategic, what he should have done is asked all the managers, the sub level people who actually oversee their staff, to report on what each of their staff members has to do. Because part of this problem isn't just the lowly federal worker. It's that they're perhaps not being managed and held accountable by the people whose job that is within the federal government. But MAGA likes the performative stuff. And I've heard over and over again the past few weeks from people who are very friendly to Trump and his message. This is what we wanted, the excitement it's generating. We're finally seeing people take on the bureaucracy. There have been thoughtful conservatives arguing about the administrative state, friends of ours who write for the magazine, like Adam White and others for more than a decade. There are ways to wrestle this beast to the ground. MAGA just likes the performance of it. So the results are really important here. And I do not yet see any evidence of results. I will not. This is 16% of discretionary spending. He hasn't talked about entitlements yet. That's where all the money is being spent in our federal government. That's where a lot of waste is, too. So I just, this is a performance of bureaucratic attack. And I think it's very satisfying emotionally to a lot of voters. But we have to see results.
- [12:32]
Abe Greenwald
And it's also, it's not just performance. It's that they like the intimidation aspect. It's the, yes, it's to announce we're breathing down their necks, we've got them. It's not about cutting. It's not about the saving money. It's about, we've got them in fear now. They have to respond to us. They have to. Or they get fired. You know, it is, it is this message that we are on top of the enemy.
- [12:59]
Jon Bud Horitz
Okay, So I remember 30 years ago, a moment during the Microsoft, the trial and whether or not Microsoft, there was an antitrust issue with Microsoft and the Internet because of Internet Explorer, the browser. And Microsoft was trying to explain to the judge in the case that they did not have a monopoly over the Internet because of their browser being built in to the system, because that's not how the Internet works. And he could not. People at the time did not understand what the Internet was. They were trying to explain that the, you know, the browser was like a handset on a telephone. It wasn't the telephone, it wasn't the, it wasn't the connection. And the judge just couldn't get it. And then at one point he said, they said Explorer is integrated into the Software that runs our. Whatever version of my Windows was going at the time. And we can't just remove it because it's integrated into other programs that connect to it. And the judge said, oh really? And then he took the low, you know, he took the little tile that represented Explorer and he dragged it into the trash and put it in the trash can on the computer and said, well, I just did it. And they were like, no, no, no. See, that doesn't remove Internet. That removes the tile from the desktop. That does not delete the program or the, or the other parts of the program that are integrated into Word or integrated into the mail system or whatever. That's not how it works. He still ruled against Microsoft. This is a version of that which is like, we're going to make you send an email. And we look, we just dragged federal jobs into the garbage can. And then it's like, no, see, that's not how the federal government actually works. The federal government is $6 trillion in spending that is administered in these ways. And you want to do this, understand how the federal government works. Like you can't, you can't fix the engine until you know how all the parts of the engine fit together well.
- [15:26]
Seth Mandel
And the low hang, not to interrupt, but the low hanging fruit like USAID and some of the crazy things that people have discovered about programs that were funded through some of these agencies. That's great. Like do that.
- [15:37]
Jon Bud Horitz
That's.
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Seth Mandel
That there has been a political. People are happy to see that happen. That's a very different thing because they attacked a specific agency which, which was spending money on things that the vast majority of Americans don't want money spent on either domestically or abroad. And they went after it. That's, that's a very focused way of doing this. They could do that agency by agency. That's not what these emails were.
- [15:58]
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- [16:28]
Jon Bud Horitz
So, but I want to go back to the FBI and Patel and Bongino. So Patel gets us out. Patel actually has experience he was a prosecutor. You know, he was a. He's a person with. With actual serious managerial experience in law enforcement. And Bongino was a cop and a Secret Service agent. So you could say it's like, you know, taking the guy who was, you know, like, on the factory floor and putting him in the C suite. It's cute, right? Although he never worked at the FBI. The FBI is an agency whose personnel have the right to use deadly force, to serve warrants, to break into houses, to do wiretapping, to trample with court authority. But to be the first line of depriving people of their rights or intruding on their rights to enforce criminal action, having a bunch of performance artists running the agency is very, very, very bad. It's really bad. There are plenty of people who want to reform the FBI who could be appointed in this way, but Trump wanted Bongino. He wants to get the rush of appointing Bongino. And I'm telling you right now, if they don't do this smart, if they do it dumb, and there are increasing signs that what they're doing, they're doing in a dumb way, thoughtless. They don't know what the second chess move is or the third or the fourth. There's no strategic plan. All of that, it could all just come crashing down on their heads. One badly served subpoena by an FBI agent in Idaho, and Patel is hauled before the Senate to explain himself. And he'll start screaming and yelling and talking about Trump and, like, things could go very wrong. This U.S. attorney in Washington putting out a statement, Ed Martin, saying, we are Trump's lawyers and we will do whatever we can to advance the MAGA agenda. That is. I don't know if he's been.
- [19:01]
Seth Mandel
Well, it's a lie. The US Attorneys work for the people, not for the president.
- [19:04]
Jon Bud Horitz
That is an impeachable. That thing that he put out is an impeachable offense. He literally said something that was not true. It is not true. There. The president does have. Can. There are ways in which you can say that parts of the Justice Department work for the president as a kind of executive branch law firm, right? As a. As the lawyer.
- [19:26]
Seth Mandel
Not as a personal lawyer, though.
- [19:28]
Jon Bud Horitz
Not as Trump's lawyer or maga's lawyer. That guy, I don't know who he is. He was the acting U.S. attorney in New York for a couple of weeks. He sounds like a crazy person to me. And again, this is not going to end well. That is. That is the sort of thing where once Republican senators get their Sea legs and are maybe less scared of maga, although maybe they'll never get less scared of maga, or Trump's numbers turn downward because he's not doing anything to help the economy. And they feel more like they have a way, a way into asserting their prerogatives as the check and balance on the executive branch. They're just getting like, it's gonna be a field day.
- [20:17]
Seth Mandel
Well, there's. There's also. There's this issue. He's gonna have his first Cabinet meeting, I think. What? Tomorrow, I believe he's gonna have a Cabinet meeting, and we'll see how the Cabinet behaves. As we know from Trump's first term, there were these weird, fawning Cabinet meetings where they all just went around the table and praised him. But the U.S. attorney statement really struck me because the public is actually behind a lot of the MAGA message that brought Trump back to the White House, which is, you know, law and order, secure the border, let's get the economy back on track. There's no reason for him to call himself Trump's lawyer. All he has to do is say, we're back to law and order. We're going to prosecute criminals, we're going to make sure the streets are safe. And in D.C. i would really like to see that. We need that right now. So it's bizarre that he's choosing. Well, maybe it's not bizarre. He's choosing people who feel they must play this game of glorifying the leader, and it's unnecessary because the people are already behind them. It's baffling to me that he's expending this political capital, and the people who he's appointing feel they have to do this. It's not healthy.
- [21:21]
Christine Rosen
It feels like they're. What happened a lot in the first Trump administration, which was people decided this was how to get Trump's attention, and this is how to talk to Trump. And so Ed Martin, I think, has decided that the way to make sure Trump doesn't doubt his loyalty to the MAGA agenda is he's got to tweet it. And the people really did try to reach Trump through social media that way.
- [21:47]
Jon Bud Horitz
J.D.
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Christine Rosen
Vance is still doing it. I don't know how much they talk in private, but JD Talks to or at or out Trump a lot on Twitter that this seems to be that sort of thing where they've got an audience of one.
- [22:01]
Abe Greenwald
Well, so much about the first. What Trump complains about the first presidency, his first presidency was that he had people restraining him because they didn't believe in his agenda. Right. And he didn't know anyone in D.C. so he had to just take people's word that this is a good guy, and then he'd try him out and they'll do for him. But what we're seeing now is evidence of the fact that during the first administration, it wasn't just people who didn't agree with his agenda necessarily. There were people there who said, Mr. President, you actually can't do that now. I don't mean I disagree with it. This can't be done. This will cause havoc. This flirts with unconstitutionality. We've got to do things this way. And the whole idea this time around was to not have those people there. And we're seeing the fruits of that everywhere.
- [22:58]
Jon Bud Horitz
Right, and what did he say about those people? McMaster, Bolton, Mattis, Kelly? He said, they're stupid. They don't know what they're doing. They were. You know, by the way, like, calling these people stupid is, you know, calling HR McMaster stupid or boring is sort of the act of, you know. I mean, whatever HR McMaster is, he is neither stupid nor boring. What he was was frustrating, right? And he was frustrating, and mostly he was right. You know, they were right about Syria. They were right about a lot of things. But, I mean, I understand that Trump doesn't like to be told no, so he doesn't like to be told no, and they told him no, and he got angry at them and fired them. And then he went down the list looking for people who would tell him yes. And then, you know, it wasn't so easy to get them either, because by 2018, he had lost the Senate. And then he couldn't get the. He couldn't get the attorney General he wanted. Who was that bald guy whose name I can't remember, the one who was the interim Attorney general. Because he wouldn't have been mapped. Somebody he could have, wouldn't have been confirmed because he had no standing to be the Attorney General of the United States. I look at Ed Martin in that memo yesterday, and I say he's thinking, well, maybe Pam Bondi will run for Senate in 2026 in Florida, there's going to be an Attorney general job open. I'm. I'm. This is my job application. I'll do whatever you want. Tell me what to do, and I'll do it. I'm G. Gordon Liddy. I'll take. Give me a lighter and I'll set my palm on fire. I'll blow up Brookings. Name it I'm as crazy as they come. You know, I mean, there is that sort of like, there is that weird precedent from the Nixon administration of this where people are like, Mr. President, you can't do. You know, and then it's like when he's drunk at 9:00 at night, he's like, let's blow up Brookings. Right? And Haldeman and Ehrlichman would not sort of like convey the message that they should blow up Brookings because they knew he was just blowing off steam. But like G. Gordon Liddy wouldn't have known that G. Gordon Liddy started planning a way that you could blow up the Brookings Institution.
- [25:13]
Seth Mandel
Well, we should also mention the other thing that happened yesterday that is a stain on our nation's standing, which is the UN resolution that the United States did not join, condemning Russian aggression against Ukraine and the last minute wheeling and dealing behind the scenes that the Trump administration did, which really annoyed our allies. And again, I know he wants to go it alone, he feels we don't need allies.
- [25:39]
Abe Greenwald
But.
- [25:40]
Seth Mandel
And these are symbolic things. I know, I'm not a fan of the un he doesn't like allies.
- [25:44]
Jon Bud Horitz
But he sure seemed to love having Macron in the Oval Office. Yes, he did. But they were hugging each other and laughing and slapping each other on the thigh. It's like they didn't like having an ally then.
- [25:54]
Seth Mandel
But at the same time, I mean, this is the idea that this country, which was single handedly stood up against the evil and authoritarianism of the Soviet Union for decades, can't now say and recognize that Russia was the aggressor. Aggressor in a war is appalling. I mean, it's appalling. I'm sorry. And there's no maga. I know the MAGA voters domestically are giving a lot of benefit of the doubt to the Doge and all this stuff and all the disruption in the agencies. I get that. And good for them. This is something else. This is about security. This is about being able to point at something and say, this is what it is. And the weird kind of gaslighting that's going on in MAGA where all this justification, all this rationalization for what is in fact a very clear fact, Russia invaded another sovereign country.
- [26:41]
Jon Bud Horitz
Oh, it's worse than that, if I could use Abe's formulation, because what did he say? Yes, what did he say last week about Zelensky? Right. He said Zelensky is a dictator. He doesn't let ALEC and doesn't allow elections. And then somebody in the Oval asked him whether he would call Putin a dictator. He says, I don't like to use that kind of language. He used that language last week about a democratically elected person who was not allowed under the Ukrainian constitution to hold an election during martial law, who is upholding Ukraine's constitutional order by not holding an election during martial law, that is. And Putin has been ruling with the exception of the puppet regime of Medvedev for four years or however long that was in the early 2000 and tens or whenever that was. Putin has been ruling Russia for 25 years now, or 24. It'll be 25 years this year, and is a dictator, and he won't call him a dictator now. Okay, so he's got other fish to fry. He doesn't want to do this, he doesn't want to do that. Whatever. I mean, the word disgrace is too subtle. You know, it's like it's unspeakable what's happened here. And the performative people on the right who don't like this war and would like it to be settled and don't like Ukraine or for whatever reason, that's all well and good, but you want to drain the presidency of its moral suasion. He wants moral. You can't just piddle that away. If you're not willing to call Putin a dictator, what are you gonna do when you need to call somebody a dictator? What do you do when you need the moral power, moral authority of the presidential seal to stand up for something that you do and is in the national interest? I understand he doesn't like moral framing.
- [28:41]
Christine Rosen
Well, he's getting, I mean, love, like.
- [28:43]
Jon Bud Horitz
To say, oh, this person's a terrible person and that person is a terrible person. All those are moral frames. They're just tend to be solipsistic one.
- [28:50]
Christine Rosen
But what, what if it's just as simple as what you mentioned before, which is he's getting bad information from people and he doesn't actually know what's happening. Right. The, the, the, the stuff about Macron and the Oval Office having to correct him in public in front of the press about whether the money that they gave to Ukraine was a loan or they paid for it is just like the Zelensky refusing to hold election, some of this stuff. And it's also like, you know, there's a general, there's a general characterization of Zelensky as a guy who pulled the wool over our eyes in MAGA world. And it seems like the revert that that is happening, but on the other side With Trump, like, there is an information problem. He is getting his information from people who are twisting what is happening there. And he doesn't. He's. He's convened this international conference on a really important issue, and I don't think he actually knows what's real and what's not real in this war.
- [30:01]
Abe Greenwald
I think, see, my take is that he doesn't care either. I don't know. I don't know that he really thinks Zelensky is a dictator. I think he wants the war to stop during his presidency. And so he's just picking up these pieces of MAGA info, misinfo, disinfo, to sprinkle them on top of as justifications for what he wants to do. He never in a billion years expected Macron to correct him. And for all we know, no one even told Trump that Europe was getting paid back. He was just winging it. That could also be the case.
- [30:42]
Jon Bud Horitz
Right? I mean, so where we are here, as Christine said, I mean, this is a moral stain on the United States, on the presidency, on everything. It is. Look, he won the presidency fair and square. He won a majority of the, you know, he won, beat Kamala by a point and a half. You know, his approval ratings are pretty good, all of that. When, as he speaks, he has a kind of legitimacy that even though I believe that the fact that he won the Electoral College means that he was a legitimate president, he didn't quite have in the first term. But just as people have to husband political capital, presidents have to husband moral capital. Even an amoralist like Trump, who is a literal amoralist, it's a useful tool to have the standing of the United States when you need to use it to say, I'm sorry, you're breaking the rules, and we can't have that.
- [31:40]
Seth Mandel
But see, he doesn't scold, he boasts. So the way he tries to husband his allies, opponents, whatever, however he sees them is by boasting about his own actions, not scolding them for theirs. And that's why the refusal to. And I think he does really admire strongmen. He just does. That's his temperament. And that's why Putin doesn't come in for criticism. It's why Xi was his buddy and why he can talk to anyone. The deal making aspect of him is twinned with this weird sycophancy he has when someone's quite strong, because there's no reason that he couldn't make the exact same argument about ending Ukraine, the Ukraine, Russian war, acknowledge Russia was the aggressor and Say, you know, we, we're behind country. We just want this to end. And I'm going to make a deal that helps that end. He didn't have to add that Russia wasn't the aggressor there. He chose to do that because there's some admiration he has for Putin. Do I think he's the Russian, you know, stooge? No, but there is a lot of evidence here that his, his misjudgment of other leaders will be to our advantage as Americans, because there's no way those guys aren't looking at his ego and his way of doing things and his way of talking to the American people about these conf. And saying, well, like, his cabinet, like this Ag and D.C. let's just flatter him. Maybe we'll get more of what we want. And that's not a powerful position either.
- [33:03]
Jon Bud Horitz
No, it isn't.
- [33:07]
Christine Rosen
He's also flirted with a lot of the moral equivalent stuff. So I don't even know that he. I don't even know that he wants to take that.
- [33:16]
Jon Bud Horitz
Well, he did that.
- [33:17]
Christine Rosen
America is so great. I mean, in the first, in 2017.
- [33:20]
Jon Bud Horitz
He said to Bill O'Reilly, oh, we're so great.
- [33:23]
Christine Rosen
Right, Exactly.
- [33:24]
Jon Bud Horitz
Answer to like, why are you, why are you treating Putin with kid gloves? He's like, oh, yeah, we're so great. Like, yes, actually, we are so great. In fact, compared to other nations in the history of the planet, we are incredibly great. And we were always great. And we've done bad things, but they've been outweighed by the good things. And you're the leader of this country and you should be its cheerleader, not its, you know, not, not, not Ben Affleck, not Howard Zinn. You know, like, we didn't elect Howard Zinn. And I don't like it that you're talking like, Howard Zinn. I was going to say Ben Affleck and Matt Damon, but that's because they made a documentary about the United States based on Howard Zinn, just in case you want to see whether or not you want to go watch.
- [34:11]
Seth Mandel
That's a dis recommend.
- [34:12]
Jon Bud Horitz
That's a disrecommend accountant, too. Coming to a theater near you with Ben Affleck. Don't watch it anyway, though. Matt Damon is apparently going to play Odysseus in Christopher Nolan, long standing problem with Matt Damon.
- [34:25]
Seth Mandel
So this really concerns me.
- [34:27]
Jon Bud Horitz
I don't know, anyway, that I'm very excited by this prop because it turns out it's not modern dress, it's not contemporary it's not a contemporary retelling of the Odyssey. You can't be the. Just read it this year. Actually, I reread it this year and you can't, you can't beat it. It's as great as it's as, it's as great a work as has ever been produced anyway, just to fly off into other directions. SETH so, you know, we have not talked about much about what happened over the weekend. The release of the six hostages, the return of Shiri Beavis's body. Apparently more bodies of dead hostages are going to be shipped to Egypt and then returned to, taken to Egypt and then returned to Israel maybe later this week. The exchange is horrible. That is to say it's like 300 terrorists in Israeli jails for one dead hostage body. There was a gigantic, there was a almost very significant terrorist attack in Israel over the weekend, or I think it was over the weekend that you look at the fact that hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of Hamas snakes have been released and probably have gotten their way back to the west bank even though we're told they weren't going to get that. I don't know where they're supposed to go. Actually, if they're not going, some of.
- [36:05]
Christine Rosen
Them, plenty of them can go back to the west bank and there's a certain level of pretty prisoner that can't.
- [36:11]
Jon Bud Horitz
Yeah, a certain level of prisoner that can. Although they could, they could be swapping identity, who the hell knows? Anyway, it's interesting that, you know, two weeks after they started emerging by the hundreds that there's a major complex terrorist attack on buses that was, was, was.
- [36:28]
Christine Rosen
Thwarted and a major operation in Jenin.
- [36:31]
Jon Bud Horitz
Well, there's a major, which we, which I'm sorry, a counter operation.
- [36:36]
Christine Rosen
I mean, yes, a major is, sorry, a major idea. Operation security operation in Jenin, which we've had this ongoing, but we haven't had tanks in Jenin I think in like 20 years we haven't seen that. And so there's some, there's something going on obviously when you return these prisoners. But you know, again, I always think about how these people go back to doing what they do. And for the Palestinians being released in these, that's terrorism and that's resistance and all this other stuff. And you know, when they asked that 80 year old farmer who was released by Hamas what he wanted to do, he said he wanted to teach Gazans how to farm. He wanted to teach his captor the people who took him captive. Essentially he wanted to teach them how to farm like he did in Israel. In the Gaza envelope. So people go back to doing what they're going to do. And this is really the dividing line, this is the difference between the sides in this war, is that you have, you know, when one side gets released, he says, I want to teach them to farm for themselves. And when the other side gets released, they're carried on shoulders through the west bank with, you know, an automatic gun and a keffiyeh and whooping and hollering and promising to go back to, you know, doing what they do. And I think that that's, you know, there, there's, they are automatically a security risk. And what that's doing in Israel is reminding people that these, these deals are not, these deals are, are not so great, you know, in that way. In other words, that, that you kind of have to, in order to, in order to release 300 men from, from Israeli prisons into the west bank, you also have to send tanks into Jenin. I guess that's my point. Like, the, what you pay for, for these deals is more than just the swap, because you then have to immediately go after them and you have to immediately take at least extra precautions because, you know, the second they're released, they're going to ask, okay, what can I do to take resistance against Israel? And so there's an ongoing price to be paid, which is now we have to be on high alert here, and we have to be on high alert here, and we have to manage the parades, the, the victory parades that these prisoners have in the west bank, and, and that can get out of control and all this stuff. And so it's the, the amount that is required of Israel just to go through this process is something that doesn't get recognized, and I understand it never will get recognized by the world, but it is ongoing because these guys go back to terror. Israel has to take steps immediately upon releasing them. And because of that, when Israelis are released from Hamas's dungeons, Israel has to ramp up security for them because Hamas is going to want to go do that again. So both sides of these prisoner releases cause Israel to incur more costs than just the ones we see from the deal.
- [39:58]
Jon Bud Horitz
I want to bring up, since we've been so critical of Trump and the Trump administration on this podcast, an important story that just came across the wire from the Times of Israel. Headlines. Trump rips up Biden memo aimed at Israel on Rights Abuses using US Arms. Here's the story by Jacob Maggot. The Trump administration has rescinded a Biden arrow order aimed at Israel that required the government to report potential violations of international law involving US Supplied weapons by allies. Signed by Biden last year, National Security Memorandum 20 required all countries that receive weapons from the US to commit in writing that they will not use them to target civilians or restrict humanitarian aid. Countries were already required to commit using the arms in line with international law. But the concept of a written commitment was new, as was the memo's directive for the State Department to report to Congress on the matter. Biden agreed to sign the memo amid pressure from progressive Democrats who specifically were looking to curb US Military assistance to Israel, arguing that it was being used to harm civilians in Gaza. So. And guess who complained? U.S. senator Chris Van Holland of Hamas. Excuse me, Maryland. Key proponent of congressional oversight of U.S. arms sales. Son of two foreign service officers raised largely in Arab countries as a young man and a disgrace to the. To the Capitol building. The decision was shameful. It's a disservice to our national security, to global human rights, and to our standing around the world. This move also undermines American taxpayers rights to ensure the use of their dollars aligns with our laws and our national interests. It's another clear example of Trump's blatant indifference to American values. This is not America first, it's America in retreat. So having criticized Trump for the first half hour of this podcast, I want to praise him for this, for removing this st. This stain on America's moral suasion. The fact that the previous administration had surrendered to the idea of this bizarre extra requirement that Israel, which spends its war fighting time trying to figure out ways, twisting itself into pretzels, not to attack civilians and to move civilians out of harm's way and to participate in the delivery of humanitarian aid, which I think is, by the way, going to stop now that it gets like, you know, basically shitposted by the, by the Biden administration.
- [42:52]
Abe Greenwald
I mean, you know, the thing is with Trump and Israel, you want to believe. I wanted to believe that he is. He supports Israel out of some moral understanding and moral calculus of who's right and wrong. I mean, I don't want to take away from what you just said. The practical reality of what he's done here is excellent. But the fact that he has turned America's position around on Russia and Ukraine demonstrates that it's not the result of deeper moral calculus. He just likes Israel.
- [43:33]
Jon Bud Horitz
Well, I think he likes Israel. And by the way, it's very important in this calculus and friends of Israel have to understand this, that he also likes Israel because he thinks Israel is a winner and he thinks Israel is tough, and he thinks Israel wasn't taking crap from Hamas. And if Israel starts looking like it's weak or it's bending, you know, it's sort of. It is. He has said, go do what you think you need to do. I'm here backing you. Like, that's fine. You figure it out. But if this should end in some indeterminate fashion, he's not going to like it very much, is my view, or he's going to feel, or it's not that. He's neither going to like it nor not like it. He'll say whatever it is that he wants to, whatever it is he wants to say, you know, about it. And, and since we're basically Israel's only friend practically on the entire planet, that will have. Have enormous consequences. So, you know, he also knows that.
- [44:31]
Christine Rosen
Israel is a pathway to other accomplishments as well. And this is what Biden knew, too, right? I used to joke that when Biden, when Biden needed an accomplishment, he went to Jared, like those commercials, you know, with the jeweler. He went, he went back to the Abraham Accords and said, oh, why don't we expand the Abraham Accords or why don't we do this? You know, Biden came in and said, the Saudis are the bad guys and we should, we should never have gotten out of the Iranian nuclear deal and all this stuff. And then when the midterms loomed and Democrats were saying, we need to be able to say we did something, you know, he immediately went to Saudi Arabia and was like, let's get it. Let's talk about a deal, a peace deal, you know, across the region and adding to the Abraham Accords and stuff like that. Trump knows that this was a, this was a major accomplishment for him in his first term. And he sees it as important that he's got the Saudis on board, that he's got these Gulf Sunni states on board. He sees it as important for him, important, personally important politically. And so what he's doing is returning to, you know, a kind of the fertile soil. And Ukraine doesn't give, he doesn't see Ukraine as giving him anything. He said he sees Ukraine as just giving him headaches. Right. He doesn't see it as a pathway. If we, if we have Ukraine's back against Russia, where do we end up? He doesn't see it as a stepping stone to anything further either. He doesn't see anything down the line. And so he doesn't really see a benefit to it unless you have the natural resources, unless you have the middle.
- [46:16]
Jon Bud Horitz
Right, right. That's a good example. He wants the natural resources and he wants to cut off military aid. Both. So why. What, what incentive Ukraine has to make this deal on natural resources as though they're somehow going to seduce him into. Into continuing military aid. I don't know. It's a very weird situation since Russia seems also to be offering him natural resources, whatever the hell that means. Or it's like, oh, you can get this from uk. We have it, too. Don't worry, we'll figure out a way to get it.
- [46:46]
Abe Greenwald
Yeah, but it's also. It's not.
- [46:47]
Jon Bud Horitz
What we really want to do is enrich Russia by buying natural resources from them. That's a really, really good idea.
- [46:54]
Abe Greenwald
Natural resources that Russia may be sucking up from Ukraine.
- [46:57]
Jon Bud Horitz
Right.
- [46:58]
Abe Greenwald
That's what we don't even know.
- [46:59]
Jon Bud Horitz
Yeah, they're drinking Ukraine's milkshake.
- [47:02]
Abe Greenwald
Right.
- [47:03]
Jon Bud Horitz
As. As there will be blood. Will. Would. Would have it.
- [47:07]
Christine Rosen
Right. What's Rex Tillerson up to these days?
- [47:11]
Jon Bud Horitz
Boy Scouts. He's at the jamboree. He's, you know, they're singing Kumbaya and whatever it is that. Do they sing at the Boy Scout jamboree. So I guess, you know, it's much shorter than we usually go, but we probably have. Probably have come to the. Come to the end of. Of today's podcast here.
- [47:35]
Seth Mandel
Do you have any predictions for the Oscars yet, John? I was curious.
- [47:40]
Jon Bud Horitz
No, I don't have any predictions because it's all weird. Like every Precursor Award has. It's gone in different directions. Any. Any different direction. I do not believe that Emilia Perez may be the worst movie ever nominated. No, it's not the worst movie. Dr. Dolittle was pretty bad. One of the worst movies ever nominated for the Oscar is not going to win anything. Except.
- [48:00]
Seth Mandel
How political do you suppose it'll be?
- [48:02]
Jon Bud Horitz
How political do I think the ceremony, the show itself. Yeah, Well, I mean, the interesting thing is that the SAG Awards, Screen Actors Guild Awards, decided. Made a very conscious decision to give a special prize to Jane Fonda, whom they, you know, dragged out, you know, from the Cryogenic Chamber.
- [48:22]
Seth Mandel
It's chaotic at this point.
- [48:23]
Jon Bud Horitz
Like, she does not look like Jane Fonda. I don't know what she looks like. She looks like basically like a Silly Putty was pressed on a human's face and then stretched. And then she sort of looks.
- [48:35]
Seth Mandel
Hollywood is not kind to the aging of women.
- [48:37]
Jon Bud Horitz
Let's.
- [48:38]
Seth Mandel
Let's have that as our caveat.
- [48:39]
Jon Bud Horitz
Yes, but. And then she, of course, came out and said, Woke is just A matter of, you know, helping people. Which is, which is, you know, that's why a million and a half Vietnamese got on leaky boats fleeing the regime that she supported and sat on a tank, sat on a machine gun battery aiming fire at American soldiers. She remains an American disgrace. And it is not a good sign for Hollywood that they have decided this year of all years to celebrate her. But I imagine the ceremony will be relatively apolitical. There is a big question about whether people are going to be wearing this pin, the palm pin, the red hand pin, which of course is the image of support for the resistance against Israel and is, as I'm sure many people know, an image taken from a photograph of a terrorist who had covered his hands in the blood of a Jew that he had killed. They, they can ban them. Like they can actually say, you're not allowed to wear this pin. If you're going to go into whatever the Kodak center is or whatever the theater is. I don't know what, what, what they're, what they're gonna do about, about that. The, the only real political issue is whether or not the documentary feature is going to go to the pro palest, pro Hamas, pro Palestinian, anti Israel documentary, which is called no Other Land, I believe, which actually does not have a distributor in the United States, but was nominated for an Oscar. Usually, you know, we're now moving because of the change in the constitution of the Oscar voter, now much more international people in the business who are outside the United States. Of course, the classic joke was all you need to do to get a nomination for documentary short subject or, or live action feature was make something about the Holocaust. And we may now may be moving into a period in which the only way you get it or the easiest way to get it is to do something about Gaza and the Palestinians. And that will be a very telling moment.
- [51:05]
Christine Rosen
Well, the last minute switch is that maybe conclave moves over into the documentary category and edges it out.
- [51:17]
Jon Bud Horitz
There we go. Okay, well, not gonna top that. So we'll be back tomorrow. For Seth, Christine and Aba, I'm John Podworth's Keep the Candle bur.