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A
Hey, it's John. I want to talk to you about Shopify. A lot of people talk to me about starting podcasts. This podcast is 10 years old. It's in a different place from a lot of podcasts because we're obviously part of a nonprofit institution and it's not a way that we are seeking to earn our livelihoods. But a lot of people look at this and say this is something I can really do to create a business and run the business and do it in a really comfortable, practical and serious way. Gotta wear a lot of different hats when you start your own business. Can be very intimidating. But one of the things that I know from a lot of people is that if your to do list is growing and growing and growing and that list starts to overrun your life, you need a tool that not only helps you out, but simplifies everything that can be a game changer for millions of businesses. That tool is Shopify, the commerce platform behind millions of businesses around the world and 10% of all e commerce in the US from household names to brands. Just getting started. You get started with your own design studio. With hundreds of ready to use templates, Shopify helps you build a beautiful online store to match your brand style. You can accelerate your content creation because it's packed with helpful AI tools that write product descriptions, page headlines, and even enhance your product photography. You get the word out like you have a marketing team behind you. Easily create email and social media campaigns wherever your customers are scrolling or strolling. And best yet, Shopify is your commerce expert with world class expertise in everything from managing inventory to international shipping to processing returns and beyond. If you're ready to sell, you're ready for Shopify. Turn your big business idea into Kaching. With Shopify on your side, sign up for your $1 per month trial and start selling today at shopify.com commentary go to shopify.com commentary that's shopify.com commentary hope for the.
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B
Expect the wor some preacher.
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C
Pain some die of thirst no way.
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A
Of knowing this way it's going Hope.
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B
For the best expect the worst.
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A
Welcome to the Commentary Magazine Daily Podcast. Today is Wednesday, October 22, 2025. I am John Pot Horitz, the editor of Commentary Magazine and and today's episode is brought to you by the Hamilton School at the University of Florida. At a time when American higher education has lost its way, the Hamilton School at the University of Florida is setting a new standard, offering an elite education that's anything but elitist. Led by world class scholars, Hamilton is reviving the classical liberal arts tradition grounded in the great works of Western civilization and the founding principles of the American Republic. And small discussion based classes. Students study history, philosophy, economics, literature and America's founding texts. Developing the discipline, eloquence and moral confidence to lead with purpose in their careers, their communities and their lives. Learn more at Hamilton ufl. Edu that's Hamilton UFL University of Florida. Edu the Hamilton School at the University of Florida the leading a revolution in higher education. And with me today to discuss all of the issues of Western civilization raised by the Hamilton School at the University of Florida are my co panelists, Executive editor Abe Greenwald. Hi Abe.
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D
Hi John.
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A
Senior editor Seth Mandel. Hi Seth.
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C
Hi John.
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A
And Washington Commentary columnist Matthew Continetti. Hi Matt.
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C
Hi John. And before we begin, I'd just like to disclose that I am tattoo free. There's no tattoos, Nazi or otherwise, that you'll be finding out about in the coming years.
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A
That you know this story.
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B
I, I know he didn't know was enough.
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C
Authority on me.
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A
This story of Graham Platner in Maine has this Avenatti arc. It would appear the person who comes out of nowhere becomes a sensation and is destroyed in the same like three month news cycle. Except in this case the news cycle is about six weeks and I'm enjoying the hell out of it. Because he is a perfect paradigm of this world, of the insta social media political celebrity who somehow engineers himself into a sensation with absolutely no reason behind the sensation except for some incredibly vague image that he projects. Right? So he's an oysterman with a beard from Maine and he's a man of the people, but he's very concerned about aipac. And then it turns out as time passes that he has a Nazi tattoo which has an interesting, you know, valence with the attacks on aipac and is a rich kid or some version of a rich kid. His grandfather was a prominent architect and stuff like that, so. And he's not an oysterman. He was living in D.C. a dozen years ago doing leftist D.C. stuff. So he's not what he appears to be. He got everybody excited that he was this new version of, you know, the squad. Plus John Fetterman before Democrats hated John Fetterman. And, and, and now, now he's ruined. His life is destroyed. He's going nowhere. He's humiliated before the, before the people.
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C
John, not in today's Democratic party. He's got Bernie Sanders and the Pod Save America bros defending him.
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A
Not take a step back.
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C
You know this guy?
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A
You think this is the Last. You think this is the Andrew Breitbart's. This is the Andrew Breitbart approach, which is. You think this is the last piece of oppo that's going to drop on him? This is the second worst thing that he's done. We don't know what the worst thing he's done is yet.
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C
There's more to come. You know, it's an interesting story from a political angle. Just for some background for people. Susan Collins, the main Republican, she's up for reelection in 2026. If Democrats are going to have any chance to take the Senate, which is an uphill fight for them, they'd have to claim the other main Senate seat, which Collins now holds. And there was a struggle and some ambiguity about who would be the Democrats champion, who would actually run for Senate. One of my favorite Democrats, I mean, there are only three or four of them. Jared golden, the congressman from Maine, he was thinking about it, decided not to do it, and he's now facing a competitive House race to keep his House seat in 2026. And Janet Mills, the governor of Maine, who famously got into that kind of argument with Trump at the White House early or this year, she was hedging. And that's when this guy, Graham Platner, kind of, you know, barreled his way in like a running back from the Bernie Sanders wing of the party, talking about aipac, talking about the working men, about, you know, we need to be as dirty as Republicans in order to win. It's very interesting to note the timing that as soon as Janet Mills, the governor, decides that she will run for the Senate and challenge Susan Collins next year, the oppo began to drop on Graham Platner. First text messages where he was rude and crude and lewd. And then the news, which I referenced at the top of the show, that he has a Nazi related symbol tattooed on his chest. And like I say, as, as amusing as I find the story, I'm also slightly disturbed by the efforts of people like Bernie Sanders and the Pod Save America Bros to say it's no big deal. It's no big deal. Who hasn't had a. You're muted.
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A
He's a young man like the young Republicans in the group chat. He and the young Republicans in the group chat should go on some kind of a listening tour together of America. They're Nazis. He's a Nazi. I don't know. You know, they have different audiences, but, you know, it's like, it's like having a country act and a punk rock, you know, and Sort of like a hard rock act going on tour together. But they can both sing the Horst Vessel song. I don't see anything wrong with that. I think, you know, this is America. We can come together in interesting new ways as we approach the second quarter of the 21st century. Who's to say no, you know, and by the way, fulfilling our own beliefs, which is, you know, if you're anti aipac, you're probably a Nazi. Thank you, Graham Platner, for making this very clear to the rest of America. You're the. You made the association. If I said it, people were like, oh, you're so disgusting. How dare you? People can express their. People can express their opinions about the Israeli government without being accused of being Nazis. Well, apparently not. So I'm thrilled is all I'm saying. By. By this. By this development. And there is this thing about the. About the. The person who flies too high, close to the sun in social media before anybody did any due diligence on whether or not you should retweet him. You know, that that is part of the joke here is this one thing has happened here to suggest that there's still some life in the old party yet, which is this dropping of the oppo, which is like, okay, so the Democratic Party isn't entirely dead if it needs to take someone out. So that the moderate candidate who might actually be able to win this race, that is the sitting governor of the state, the best candidate that you could recruit to take on Susan Collins in this tough race. She needs the field cleared. She needs to get this monster on, off her back. And this guy who is going to trash the Democratic Party's reputation in Maine, he's got to be swept away. And they are apparently. They have apparently successfully swept him away. Or I think will. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe he'll survive it. I don't know.
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C
But, you know, it is interesting that there are lines that are drawn, as you say, this candidate in Maine, the party, the establishment, is striking back. And then, of course, overnight, we got word that the Republican aide with a Nazi side, Paul and Gracia, has withdrawn from the committee hearing scheduled for his nomination to be the head of the Office of Special Counsel in the White House, saying that, in fact, the entire nomination is withdrawn. And that's after, as we mentioned yesterday, Senate Republicans saying, are you kidding us? We're not going to get vote for this guy.
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A
Okay, look, this is also very important because you know how we've been saying that there are no guardrails, there are no guardrails left in American politics. Whatever happens to the guardrails. So at least we have one guardrail, no Nazis, that we have one guardrail, no explicit Nazis. I don't know about other, you know. But here's the thing. We can have jihadis, we can have people who want to murder Jews, mass murder Jews. We can have people celebrating with the unindicted co conspirator involved in the destruct in the effort to destroy the World Trade center in 1993, leading to the conviction of the blind Sheikh. But no Nazis. So at least we can build off that. We are reconstructing the guardrails. So at least you got to start there.
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D
But the thing is that you. So yes, some filter seems to kick in at some point when there is like a sort of, you know, critical mass of undeniable evidence of this kind of thing. But there's also the reality that all sorts of fringe like Jerry Springer cast Jerry Springer guest level people are getting close enough to get caught in that filter. You know what I mean? Like politics is attracting this type now. Yeah, we're lucky when that filter works and kicks in. But that's something strange. The guardrails were activated way earlier before. That's the thing. They get close now.
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A
Right. The guardrails would have meant that Graham Platner would never have been anywhere near.
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D
Exactly.
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A
Or he would have emerged five weeks before an election. Like there's also, there's also that type where somebody kind of pops out of nowhere and laps everybody. Like Dave Brat. This is not a comparison of Dave Bratt to Nazis but like somebody is just percolating off on the side. Dave Bratt is the guy who took out Eric Cantor, the number three person in the Republican second number two or number three person in the Republican House leadership in a primary in 2014 and ended Eric Cantor's political career. And nobody even knew he was there except for Laura Ingraham. Like there was no sign that he even existed. That's the sneak, you know, sneak up on the. This is a, was a different model. This was the. Become a celebrity and then raise a ton of money from ordinary Democrats outside your state who will then give you the, you know, who will then give you the accelerant to win your. Win your state. And yeah, yeah.
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B
So the, that's, that's actually the most interesting part of this to me which is that some of the defenses have been along those lines, which is don't do you know, Emma Vigland and others saying things like do you want an authentic working Class, political class or not? Do you want an authentic working class candidate or not? And that's, and that's what this is. There is this like, you know, well, we talked a while ago about this idea that Democrats don't know what it's like to, like, what normal people are like. So they put out these candidates who are costumed to appeal to them. So they're like, we were losing young men who probably like football. So let's get the governor of Minnesota to run, you know, for prep, who was an assistant defensive coordinator in high school. So whatever it is, and it, and it blows up, right? He has no appeal to them. And they don't understand why. So then the Democrats do plan B, which is curse a lot. Every time they open their mouth. Plan B doesn't work. So now we're on to plan C, which is, you know, find somebody who, who looks dirty enough to be what we assume a working class person looks like. We don't know any working class people in our lives, you know, in, on 8th Avenue at the, at the New York Times office. But we presume they're dirty and probably smell like shellfish. So is there anyone like that? And so here comes Graham Platner. This is part of this whole, like, we're trying to appeal to people that we are told we're not appealing to without just going out and meeting those people. And so they get a caricature.
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D
But it's also something. Briefly, there's something else. It's also, if you look back at the type of people who have gotten into government in recent years, I'm thinking of, like, George Santos, Jamal Bowman, Matt.
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C
Marjorie Taylor Greene.
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D
Marjorie Taylor Greene. Like, you can, like, they got close and got in, you know, so there is really nothing so strange that barring a Nazi tattoo could prevent you?
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C
Well, I think that the, it may not be as strategic as identifying this guy as a, you know, kind of a caricature of what Democrats think of as working class and therefore backing him and more of an expression of just the Democratic slash progressive slash socialist ID that's raging right now. And so you have these social media stars who kind of express the anger that so many Democrats feel. There's a poll out this morning on direct Wrong track, Right track, and found that, you know, two thirds of the country still think that the country's on the wrong track, but this is essentially just a stand in for how you feel about Trump. Over 90% of Democrats say that the country is on the wrong track. Over 90% of Democrats, whereas only 24% of Republicans say that it's on the wrong track. This partisan divide is expressed in the no Kings protests. Right. Where you know, according to the organizers of the no Kings protests, over a gazillion Americans showed up on the squillion.
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A
I think the actual number is a squillion. A squilly.
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C
Sorry. Yeah.
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A
They've elevated it to count everyone all over.
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C
Yeah.
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B
Republicans should counter with the no furor protests.
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C
Yeah. But whatever you think about no Kings, it's clear that there are just a lot of people who hate Trump, who hate MAGA and they feel the urge to get out. Even if it's a group of five people standing on the side of a street to be to to show that they hate Republicans. Right. And so when you have this mentality take over half the country, strange things start to emerge. You this guy pops up who turns out he's completely ridiculous character. But you also have a government shutdown happened that's now entering its third week and on track to be the longest shutdown. I think it will surpass the one in 2019. Because the truth is Democrats don't any any opening of the govern government now for Democrats would be viewed by their base as a capitulation.
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D
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A
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D
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C
With Liberty Mutual. Fascinating.
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D
It's accompanied by his natural ally, Doug.
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B
Uh, Limu is that guy with the binoculars watching us?
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A
Cut the camera. They see us.
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D
Only pay for what you need@libertymutual.com Liberty, Liberty, Liberty. Liberty Savings. Very unwritten by Liberty Mutual Insurance Company Affiliates excludes Massachusetts.
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A
I remember Democrats being very concerned about the shutdown of the government three times before this and about the irresponsibility of it. And it was exactly the same rhetoric from the, from the Republican, the more passionate elements of the Republican base that made it impossible for Republican leadership to come to the table and make a deal. And now the shoe is on the other foot. It's eerie how comparable this is to 2013 and the Republican led government shutdown, which I wanted to get to. Because of course we now have this revaluation of what matters in American politics. And governance has absolutely no place in it whatsoever. The idea that the government is there, it has a lot of money. It has to spend the money to run the military and pay your Social Security and keep the national parks open and have the federal highway system and be there for fema, whatever, you know, and it should be run well, if it's run at all. And nobody in America cares about this anymore at all. This would have been 10 years ago, the biggest story in the news day after day after day after day after day. And it now struggles for a place in news because people want to talk about the fact that Trump is adding a ballroom to the White House. Let's just step back a minute. Like the government is shut down in some fashion. It's going to really start to bite federal employees. It's about to really start biting federal employees who are running out of whatever reserves of money they have because they're not getting paychecks. And what the liberals want to talk about is the East Wing of the White House, the part of the White House that houses the first lady's office and was constructed 85 years ago during the Franklin Roosevelt administration. It's not like 1814 when they rebuilt the White House after the War of 1812 and there was the historic East Wing. And don't you lay a finger on this hallowed building like it's an extension from the building. So Trump is rethinking the extension because to be honest, it is bizarre that we do not have a federal building, the White House, or the, the seat of our, you know, sort of our executive branch of the horn that can have a party for a visiting dignitary with more than 200 people inside in the winter and that they're right.
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B
I mean the people who, anybody who's been to the, to the White House for an event, right, you, you know that you, you start out going through a security line that goes through like a tent city and you like almost like those, those, you know, those construction sheds or where the sidewalk sheds in New York. And then you go into inside and then you go outside again, right? And you're, you're in tents again and they've got metal detectors and there is a feeling like there's three quarters of a mile of tent here. At what point do they realize that maybe they need some more walls?
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A
Right? This is very. Look, I worked in the White House for seven months and you know, the White House is for an office building and a house and a sort of, I don't know.
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C
Rep.
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A
The kind of the synecdoche of the United states, the way 10 Downing street is the Synecdoche of the British government. Um, it's very cramped. You guys have no, I mean, you know, the, the West Wing. It's ridiculous. Everybody wants to be in the, have an office in the West Wing. The office of the West Wing are terrible. They're really small. The hallways are really narrow. It's a hard place to work in a lot of ways. But you want to be there because you're close. Close to the Oval Office and the elsewhere in the White House is really not all that important. And my point here is, can you put in a ballroom in the White House? Because maybe you want to have a state, an official state dinner in February and have a big room that like every hotel in America has because the President wants to host, you know, the Prime Minister of Indonesia when he comes and, or the President when he comes after he signs the Abraham Accords. Why would anybody have a problem with this? It's complete and it's being paid for by private money.
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C
Don't you understand, John, of the images of the demolition how gruesome they are, how affecting they are to anyone who casts an eye on the steam shovels demolishing our Precious East Wing.
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A
Two year old boys built 1942 standard watch. Yeah.
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C
It is not clear to me that the reporters who are outraged at this and who are saying, isn't it a metaphor for Trump's presidency that he's knocking down the walls of the White House. It's not clear to me that they have actually ever seen a construction project in their lives.
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A
I was just saying Any two year old boy. Yeah, those pictures are fantastic. I, it's like I could, you know, could have taken my son just to stand there and look at the, and look at the, you know. Yeah, the, the big, you know, Mike Mulligan and his steam shovel taking out, you know, the office of the press secretary to the first lady, which is going to be replaced.
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C
Demolitions take place all the time.
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A
They do. I didn't know. Yeah, I mean, apparently Politico doesn't know about this. Stephen King tweeted, our men in fighting uniform have died to protect this country. And now they're putting a ballroom in the White House. I mean, to say, am I taking crazy pills? I don't even know. Crazy pills doesn't even begin to describe this. It really is like you people need electroconvulsive therapy. You are emotionally dysregulated. You have lost the thread. You want to talk about Trump and this idea that he wants to get restitution for the prosecutions against him from the federal government. That's a serious issue. Want to talk about this government shutdown? That's a serious issue. There is no issue with the President renovating the White House. Presidents take out swimming pools and put them back in. They take out bowling alleys and they put them back in. He paved the Rose Garden, so, so now it's not a rose garden. The Rose Garden was a project of first ladies from eras past. He wants a flat pavilion. It makes it easier when people come to hear him speak there so that their chairs don't sink into the, into the beds of the, you know, the.
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C
Roses themselves have not been touched.
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A
Right. So, but whatever. So you may not like his aesthetic and I don't. And I think the Oval Office looks hideous, but he can redesign the Oval Office. You know why? Because somebody else can come in in 2029 and take it all out and make it a nice clean, white walled space and do some, you know, do some skim coating, make it all put up different pictures, put up different things. This is all temporary. And every president after him will be thankful that the ballroom was constructed.
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C
And President, every president, Ocasio Cortez will use that ballroom for sure.
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A
Yeah. And what's more making honestly having written remarks for Rose Garden events, granted, almost 40 years ago, but I did for Ronald Reagan. Sitting in those chairs in the Rose Garden is very uncomfortable. So stop complaining. You're going to. You're the press. You're going to be there on the nice solid concrete floor there where your chairs, you can sit, you know, enjoy, like, and talk about something more substantial. He's a genius. Trump is a PR genius because his look, hey, squirrel talents of turning people to obsess over trivialities rather than take him on, on matters that are genuine controversies is like nothing I've ever seen. We're talking about this. It's fun to talk about. That's why we're talking. Funny.
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C
Look, as Politico informed me this morning, those images of the bulldozers on our precious East Wing lawn circulate in the middle of a government shutdown. That can't be a good look for this White House.
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A
Right.
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C
The optics are just terrible that this would be happening in the middle of a government shutdown. I'm just reporting here. I've been trying to figure out why that statement makes logical sense myself.
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A
Well, let's. And let's back it up into a conversation about the shutdown, then. I mean, I'm really sorry to say this, because I don't want to just sound like, you know, a Republican hack, which I'm not. But who's responsible for the government shutdown? All the Republicans want is a clean continuing resolution. It's the Democrats who want policy changes. In other words, if Republicans had their way, the government would be run on the same basis this month that the government was being run last month and through throughout the year 2025. And that when we reach the end of the year, there was going to be horse trading on how to deal with health care premium issues in particular. And that's what Mike Johnson, the Speaker of the House, said. Like, this was a December issue. We didn't want to talk about this now. We don't need to talk about this now. We'll push it till December. We really do have to have a budget in place, and we're all ready to talk. But if you're going to, like, try to blackmail us by shutting the government down to get this extension of Obamacare that you want, we can't countenance that. All we want to do is keep the government open and then have the debate when we can have the debate. That's true. Like, that's. It's not. He's not lying. The Democrats shut the government down so you get the desperate, interesting image of John Fetterman, who does not want the government to be shut down now, suggesting that Senate Republicans should destroy the filibuster entirely. Right. The filibuster no longer exists for judicial nominations, but it does in all other aspects, kill the filibuster, because that's the way you can get. My party is not being sane here. Destroy the filibuster so we can move on. And so that the people, you know, who work, who live in Pennsylvania, who are relying on the federal government can get what they, what they want and. But nobody cares. That's why the Democrats can do this. They've calculated that it's much more dangerous for them, which is what Matt was talking about, to view to look as though they are doing government business with Republicans than it is to keep the government shut down. Because of course, Republicans are Nazi like Graham Platner. It's, you know, Graham Platner and the Nazi party that's running the country. And so you can't. They want to run a Nazi in Maine and they also want to treat the majority party in the House, the Senate and the White House as though it is. You can't. We can't touch them. They're diseased and evil.
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C
I really don't think that there will be a resolution to the shutdown until after November 1st. That's when some of these premium hikes on the Obamacare exchange are going to go into effect and Democrats will point to it and say, look at how the Republicans are making lives worse for people who have Obamacare. But I think the Republican response will be, you know, people shouldn't be on Obamacare, that we need to change Obamacare. We need to have other options besides Obamacare. We need to improve employer based health insurance. And the truth is that the constituencies on Obamacare are primarily Democratic ones.
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A
But once that talk about this, just to dial back on this also because the Obamacare premium issue involves not even original Obamacare per se, quite. It involves the expansion of Obamacare to people who had incomes higher than the original target of Obamacare, which was to get the poor who are between, who are too well to do to get Medicaid to have health care coverage. But so in order to achieve that, you needed. And so they expanded Obamacare above its original writ. And that and that. And There was a 10 year drop.
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C
In less, even less. It was a two year. It was supposed to. What we're arguing about right now is an expansion of eligibility for subsidies on the Obamacare exchange and more generous subsidies. And these things were enacted on an emergency basis during Biden's first year of office when the Democrats controlled Congress. And then the Democrats in 2022, right before they lost the House of Representatives, they extended it to 2025. Okay, so those expansions, which were supposed to be temporary based on the pandemic, which News flash is over. Are set to expire at the end of the year. And what Schumer and the Democrats want is to extend them more because it's a very generous benefit plan here. It's led to more people joining Obamacare. It's led to a very nice situation for health insurance companies, and it's also led to a lot of fraud. But if you were to get rid of these subsidies, Obamacare would be less attractive. Right. So that's what they're trying to preserve. And they're using the federal government as leverage in order to get Republicans to agree to extend these supposedly temporary subsidies.
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A
Right.
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C
But my point is Republicans don't care. There are some Republicans from rural areas, some Republicans senators who were just by kind of nature more inclined to the quote, unquote, care industries, you know, that say, oh, well, we want to, we want to extend these subsidies.
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A
We don't want Marjorie Taylor Greene.
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C
Yeah, Marjorie Taylor Greene, again, she's, she's part of that populist MAGA wing, which again thinks that the way to improve working class livelihoods is to expand government, which 80 years of Conservative thought and principle has shown to be not the case, that there are other ways to improve working class lives, but nonetheless. So there are some Republicans who are arguing for an extension, but they're not the majority. And then there are the Democrats arguing for an extension. My point is I think we're going to have to get to the past this cliff before the Democrats can say, well, we fought our hardest, but now we have to open up the government. And then the only other forcing mechanism I see in the future is the off year elections. And this again was brought up by my bogeyman at Politico this morning who said, well, after the off year elections, Republicans will be forced to fold and just understand what Republicans folding means, that they would give in to expanding Obamacare, which the Republican Party has defined itself against for over a decade.
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A
So that makes no sense off your elections, by the way.
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B
But why after the off years if the off year election, one of them is Jack Cittarelli in New Jersey, who is easily running dead even.
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A
Yes.
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C
And Jason Miares in Virginia pulling away from Jay Jones because of Jay Jones violent ideation, which amazingly happens to be part of membership in the Democratic Party now.
- [40:07]
A
Right? Yeah, but what's important about this is again, not to be sound like we're, you know, the ruthless podcast or something, but this is the Democrats doing. And it maybe would have been a bigger. But there are two things. Maybe it would have been a Bigger story. Of course, if it really were the Republicans doing and the press and the media could figure out a way to tell the story in a way that is more credible even they can't quite get to the. The Republicans are responsible for the shutdown. Since the Republicans are like we just want to keep funding the government at the same level that it was being funded two weeks ago or three weeks ago. So that was our plan. Your plan is vast expansion of federal spending in the last quarter of 2025. We don't, you know, that's not our, our aim. So it's that. But it's also that people, they know that people, if they start talking about this on whatever shard of news program that they still have that has an audience under the age between the ages of 83 and 90, that if they start talking about it, everybody will start falling asleep and they're lazy boy and Barca loungers and nobody wants to talk about this. And this is the cost of having had this being the fourth government shutdown in the last 30 years. Right. The first one was an epochal event in 1995. It was a huge, never before seen event really that had enormous political ramifications, but somehow we have managed to survive through a bunch of other ones. And here is this one. And clearly government shutdowns are going to be a feature just like the debt ceiling or you know, things are like things that were once huge are now routine and you can't then make them huge. And the off that they are praying that the off year elections are going to be their salvation when right now the story in the off year elections is they're going to be lucky to survive the off year elections. By which I mean Mikey Sherrill, the New Jersey gubernatorial candidate for the Democratic Party is in trouble. Even Abigail Spamberger, who really shouldn't lose that race to win some Earl like she should not be losing that race, is not losing that race but because of this trouble down ticket her possibilities have called it. If she gets in and Cheryl gets in and whatever, they're going to say a prayer of thanks that they dodged the bullet. It's not like, okay, people really like Democrats now and Republicans better. Republicans better deal and give us what we want. That is not the dynamic of the 2025 off your elections anymore. The dynamic is can they survive?
- [43:17]
C
Right.
- [43:17]
B
You can argue, you know, Virginia flips back and forth is something of a swing state. But it's like right now, no matter what happens in New Jersey, the message is not a good one for Democrats. That's the point. Like, even if she, even if she went, oh, look, we, we pulled it out in New Jersey, that's going to be the message. That's not going to give them any leverage against Republican.
- [43:37]
A
There is no leverage to be had so that they're, that they're even, it appears, dreaming of that or like, or people in their camp, their camp, followers of Politico are dreaming of that. One really does have to wonder where, what kind of, you know, like, are they? No one gives iq. They should give IQ tests to Politico reporters to see, like, whether they match this irrelevant standard of simply being able to talk about any of this.
- [44:12]
C
The other unintended consequence of the shutdown is it's giving Trump more power. So Trump is ordering soldiers pay in order to make sure that the troops don't lack for resources. And he's doing it. He says it's under his presidential authority. And okay, there might be a legal fight about that, but really, will there be? At the end of the day, people want the soldiers to be paid. But now Trump is saying he's going to open up the Smithsonian again. And does he really have the authority to do that during a government shutdown? It's unclear. Of course, Trump has asserted authority all over the place. So at the end of the day, what you're going, what you probably have is Schumer losing the policy fight, having to open up the government again and giving Trump more power and not to fire people, necessarily, those threats haven't quite materialized during the shutdown, but more power to move money around during a shutdown in ways that Trump wants. The other, the other media comment I have is based on my other hate. Listen NPR up first, by the way. Having spent two weeks abroad, I feel myself less intelligent listening to the American media. Coming home, I felt smarter. Two weeks separate from the media. But now I'm back and I feel dumber. After one, one morning of listening to this, the NPR reporter said, you know, Republicans are confronting the shutdown and they're, they and Trump are saying that they want to attack Democratic programs, but NPR informs us there's no such thing as a Democratic program. These are government programs. And I just want to inform people that food stamps, urban renewal, environmental regulations, the super fund, they can be charitably described as government programs. In fact, other than the tax cuts, savings accounts and the military, pretty much everything the federal government does is a Democrat program, but apparently not to the newly non government. Npr.
- [46:47]
A
I'm Mark Halpern. I want to let you know that two Way Tonight, the destination for the best political news and analysis anywhere is now available as an audio podcast. Each weekday, I'll be joined by special guests from the worlds of news, politics and the media, along with members of the two Way community for conversations like no other. It's the best way to stay informed at the end of your day or first thing in the morning every weekday. It's a show like no other because we involve the community. We hear from people from around the country, around the world. They're part of a conversation. There is no other platform like this, and I hope you will find it to be not only different than everything else, but more meaningful as you become part of a special community around the program. So listen and follow two Way tonight with Mark Alperin on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or any other major streaming platform.
- [47:34]
B
I'm Oliver Darcy.
- [47:35]
A
And I'm John Passantino.
- [47:36]
C
We have spent years covering the inner.
- [47:38]
B
Workings of the news media, tech podcast, politics, Hollywood and power. Now through our nightly newsletter status. And we're bringing that same reporting and.
- [47:47]
A
Sharp analysis to a new podcast, Power Lines.
- [47:50]
B
Every Friday, we're breaking down the biggest stories shaping the industry, explaining why they matter and saying the things most people.
- [47:56]
C
Are thinking but too timid to say out loud.
- [47:59]
A
No spin, no fluff, just sharp analysis.
- [48:01]
C
That isn't afraid to call it like it is.
- [48:03]
A
We also pull back the curtain via.
- [48:05]
C
Our exclusive reporting to take you behind behind the scenes.
- [48:08]
B
My understanding having reported this is that the Pentagon protested to CNN and tried to effectively exile the CNN producer. And when the moment calls for it, we've got some hot takes. I just think Brad Pitt, honestly, he.
- [48:23]
A
Kind of seems a little washed up. Oh, my God. That's Power lines presented by Status. Follow power lines and listen on Apple, Spotify, Amazon Music, or your favorite podcast app. It's a beautiful thing. So stories that shouldn't be stories or stories that should be stories that aren't stories. So today's big story that should be a story but will not be a story is a sequel to the story that shouldn't have been a story that became a story. Perhaps you remember that in August, the UN declared and the international food bureaucracy declared that there was officially a famine in Gaza and that conditions had been met for the international food definite the Food Security Phase Classification scale. Okay, the Integrated Food Security Phase classification scale, or the IPC scale which defines famine based on extreme food shortages, acute malnutrition and and mortality, and that a famine had been officially declared for Gaza. Well, the numbers are in. Everybody Are you ready? So expected, based on that scale, expected total famine deaths from October 22, August 22 to October 9 under actual famine conditions in Gaza, given the population should have been 10,143 deaths from famine. Actual reported famine deaths per Hamas since August 22, 192. The expected daily number was 207. The actual daily number was 4. The difference between the expected number and the actual number, 98%. There was no famine in Gaza.
- [50:31]
B
They were, they were off by 10,000. They predicted 10,000 and they were. And they were off by 10,000.
- [50:41]
A
So remember the famine talk. You think this is going to be a big story today? I don't.
- [50:52]
D
Well, as you said, John, it should have been a big story at the time. Correct me if I'm wrong, Seth, but this is the same measure, isn't it, that changed the standards to define famine. It went to arm measurements.
- [51:08]
B
Was that they had. During the war. Yeah, they had. During the war. They had. When the, when NGOs were pressured to change the definition of genocide, the, you know, These food probe NGOs were pressure, felt the pressure to change the definition of famine and. Yes, and so they measured certain things differently.
- [51:29]
A
Yeah, yeah.
- [51:30]
B
So but again, this is, this is, this is, you know, Hamas is reporting deaths like you, you can't get any more pro, you know, leaning in the Hamas giving Hamas the benefit of the doubt direction than literally what Hamas says happened. Right. You can't be more, I mean the media is going to be more Hamas than Hamas because they're not going to report this. And Hamas is reporting this that they predicted 10,000 and they were off by 10,000 and the true number was somewhere very close to zero relative to 10,000. But you know, this is, this is Hamas literal thing. And you know, the researcher talks about this a lot, Sal Eisenberg, you know, who was doing this, you know, putting out the, who was highlighting this yesterday on social media, has been doing a good job of this. Also last week was talking about the overall deaths though during wartime and he took Hamas's chart and he of, and he took Hamas's number of total deaths fatalities during the war and he subtracted again the Gaza Strips number of natural deaths, let's say, you know, and that sort of thing. And what, what he came out with was using Hamas's numbers, there could be as many as 33,000 dead civilians during the war, which is, which is slightly more than half the total number of fatalities. Which means, you know, you're looking at this basically one to one ratio. But without even getting into the. All the stuff about the ratio. The point is that Hamas has numbers you can use, you can look at, and you can calculate based on their own calculations. And none of this is secret, and none of this is requiring a source inside Hamas who you have to trust. None of this is requiring a leaked document that has to be read in the right context. None of this requires a leap of faith. This is literally Hamas public numbers, and they are completely crushing the narrative that there was a famine. They're completely crushing the narrative that Israel was indiscriminately killing Palestinian civilians. Each one has a basic reality, and the basic reality is not close.
- [54:05]
A
This is so important, I don't even know how to describe it. Tonight, Zoran Mamdani, Andrew Cuomo, and Curtis Lewa will face off for the final debate of the debacle mayoral election in New York City. And, you know, last week or whenever it was that Mamdani was not, you know, Mamdani's journey to the. To the Gracie Mansion was not stalled by that debate. He used the word genocide three times. So we now have, like, irrefutable evidence that, A, there was no genocide, and B, there was no widespread famine, which of course means that there was no. The food aid wasn't halted and they were. They. Everybody was getting food that they needed and all of that. You think any of this will change the rhetoric that he uses? No. You think that Andrew Cuomo has the slightest ability to harness what I just talked about, to go throw it in Mamdani's face and say, you are, you know, you are smearing the name of a friendly nation that is of very, very unique importance to a very significant minority in New York City about whom. For whom this is a very passionate matter.
- [55:27]
C
No, can we just pause there for a second? Because, you know, I followed a lot of campaigns. I don't know if I've seen a worse performance than Andrew Cuomo in this campaign for the New York mayoralty before and after the primary. He. He doesn't do anything. He doesn't make any news. His criticisms of Mamdani are they come across as pro forma in some ways. Earlier this week, his whole case for his candidacy was that, you know, if Mamdani wins, he, Andrew Cuomo will move to Florida. Well, that's not.
- [56:16]
A
No.
- [56:17]
C
You don't threaten to move elsewhere if you lose.
- [56:20]
B
You know, it's Andrew Cuomo threatening to leave the state if he loses, by the way, is like, don't threaten me with good time.
- [56:26]
C
Right. That would encourage people to vote for mom dying. I've just never seen a worse performance. It's very, it's, it's really eye opening considering the stakes. And, and you know, also interestingly, the truth is he's doing better than you would think. I think it's more of the inertia against Mamdani. New Yorkers don't really want Mamdani to be mayor.
- [56:56]
A
But There is only one poll in New York that has Mamdani over 50. It's a Fox News poll. The numbers in the poll, when you get to the sub, the, the tabs aren't convincing. I'm not, I, you know, polls are polls. They call people, they, people answer the question, they tabulate the numbers. So I don't want to, like, I don't want to do. It's a whole truth. But there's only one poll that has him above 45, Mamdani. Classically, in the last three elections, the Democrat has won the race in November by over 70%. Just to give you an example of what it means for there to be a. So this is a three way race. So it's certainly wouldn't be over. But you know, he's around where he was in the Democratic at the end of the first post in the Democratic primary when there was ranked choice voting. So all things being equal, had there been a really good Republican candidate or a really good. Or, or, or you know, somebody who could really prosecute this case against Mamdani, thereby knocking out Curtis Lewa as a viable person for Republicans to vote for or as. Or, or to encourage people to vote for somebody else to get. Make sure Mamdani doesn't make it there. There was an, an opportunity. But as I've said on this podcast repeatedly, Andrew Cuomo is the worst retail politician who has ever lived. His existence as governor was the result of a series of happenstances. He had his chance in 2002 when he was the leading candidate for governor and he screwed the pooch by being his thuggish, unpleasant, loathsome self and knocked out of the race against George Pataki. And then it was only the misbehavior of Eliot Spitzer and the misbehavior of Elliot Spitzer's successor, David Patterson. That left him as the only man standing in New York state at the top of New York State, Democrat, Democratic, you know, greasy poll to become governor. But his skills as a person going out and doing politics are just horrible. And when you say he doesn't make news, do you know how easy it is to make news in New York City. Like, he could simply every single time somebody gets, you know, punched on a subway platform by a crazy person, he could take an entourage into that subway station, stand there and say, this will not happen on my mayoralty. Or you can go to a housing project and say, the elevator is out in this housing project. And you know what happens under a Mamdani administration? He'll be so busy, like putting an imam in charge of your. Of the city's education system, that no one is going to come into this NYCHA building and fix the elevator. You can make news seven times a day in New York.
- [60:02]
C
Forget about the anti Momdani stuff.
- [60:04]
A
Yeah.
- [60:05]
C
Because he is attacking Momdani on anti Semitism and he's attacking mom Donnie. And none of it's really landing, I mean, other than just to reinforce again, this kind of innate worry or resistance to Mamdani, I think among a lot of New Yorkers. What is he. What is Cuomo actually proposing? He's allowed Mamdani to completely define the campaign. We know about Mamdani, besides the fact that he's an anti Semite, that he wants to freeze rent, we know that he wants to free buses. We know that he wants to end gifted and talented education and put Jamaal Bowman in charge of the New York City school system, thus collapsing Western civilization. We know all that. What is Andrew Cuomo proposing? I have not. Now, admittedly, I've been out of the country, I haven't been following New York politics all that closely, but I have no idea what he's affirmatively telling New Yorkers that he would do if he were mayor. And when you consider the stakes of the election, it's malpractice. And just one final point about this. We talk a lot about candidate quality when we cover politics. We say, oh, the candidates talent. Candidate really matters in an election. And it's true that Mamdani is, you know, he's handsome and he's young and he's, you know, fluent and kind of always smiling. You know, it's a fake smile, by the way, but he's always smiling. He always has that hand on his chest and in this gesture of. I'm not even sure what it. Gratitude, I guess, or humility, which he does not possess. Whatever. He controls his imagery and his is public Persona very well. So there's talent there, I admit it. But, you know, more important than candidate quality is luck. Luck is the most important factor in politics. And he, Mamdani, is lucky because in this election, he drew the worst possible.
- [62:12]
A
Field, but he rather for him it.
- [62:14]
C
Was the best possible field of opponents. First, the Cuomo who's hated by everybody. Second, Eric Adams, who was a mess and unpopular. And third, Catman Sliwa, who is a kind of a RELIC of the 1980s. And despite, you know, there still being a chance that if Sliwa were to withdraw and say, look for the good of this city, we have to stop Mamdani and so please vote for Cuomo.
- [62:45]
A
He won't.
- [62:46]
C
He's not going to do it. And so that this is the luck of the draw for Zoran Mamdani and it's going to have real accidents, have profound consequences.
- [62:57]
D
Well, yeah, this is, I want to make two points because. But two different things you said, Matt. One is that it's alarming the extent to which New York politics is shaped by a series of accidents and happenstance, including Cuomo's rise, as John pointed out, and now the circumstances around this election. The other point is that when you talk about Cuomo letting Mamdani define the race and only running against him, it's sort of the, it's the, it's writ small. What Democrats are also failing with regarding Trump. Right. All they are doing is defi is all they are doing is reinforcing the sentiment among that portion of the country that already hates Trump and finds him a menace.
- [63:57]
A
I mean, the joke, the joke here is that Cuomo only got into the mayor mayoral race because he thought, I got $15 million in the bank that I've left over or some, some amount like that. Adams looks terrible. I, I can walk into this. There's no interest in New York City. He hasn't had an interest in New York City for 35 years. He was doing homeless stuff in New York City and then got to HUD under the Housing and Urban Development Department under Bill Clinton and never looked back. He's an Albany person, he's a state level person. He's not interested in New York City and has no feel for it, even though he grew up here. And so he thought, well, you know, this is situationally a very good bet for me. And I thought it was too. Back in January, February, Adams is going down. It was a field of pygmies. He's famous. Democrats don't hate him the way Republicans hate him. I had not counted on the level of sheer awfulness in terms of just the day to day running of a political campaign, which he did. He ran political campaigns for his father and those were sometimes hard fought. And also it should be remembered that his father lost a hard fought election in 1994, didn't win. So it's not like he's like, was a genius at running campaigns. Like he lost a campaign to a completely unknown Republican named George Pataky, that he was running for his father in 1994. But I thought it was a pretty safe bet that he could walk in. But this is where Mamdani is a good candidate in certain aspects and obviously a horrendous, horrific candidate in others. He is a socialist and he is an anti Semite and he does hate Israel. And you can combine parts of that to say he is not really even electable at the, you know, as, as the person who was going to come in first, pass the post in the, in the primary. But he did and he did and he shocked everybody. People thought that Cuomo was probably going to be number one in that primary and that eventually, eventually in the ranked choice voting system Mamdani might overcome him, but that, that wasn't where it was going to go. But Cuomo was just so bad at it. And as I say, like, this is a very target rich environment to make news as a political candidate. Every block you can make a news story. You can stand, I'm looking out my window, there's a scaffolding. That's a big thing in New York how you have building scaffolds all over the city because of a crazy local law, city law that basically was put in place to make sure there was constant work for the building trades which when the law was passed were all entirely controlled by the mob. And he could stand in front of a scaffolding and say, when I am mayor, I'm going to lead, you know, charge against local law 11. This is blighting the city and we're going to Destroy Local Law 11. You can do that at 11 o' clock in the morning, at 2 o' clock in the afternoon, you can ride on a bus and say, we're going to do X to fix the buses and we're going to do Y to do this and we're going to do Z to do. None of it even has to be real. But he's just standing there exhausted. He looks exhausted. He sounds exhausted. There's going to be a debate tonight. I'll watch it. You guys don't have to watch it. I'll report back tomorrow. You know, maybe a miracle, maybe there'll be a miracle or something like that. But to get back to Mandani, the point is, how many times is he going to use the word genocide. Tonight, he is slandering, he is committing blood libels against the Jewish people and against Israel. And he is waltzing into office as the new face of the Democratic Party. And I am both alarmed by that and weirdly, maybe good, let's have it out. Let's make Democrats walk down this road with elected politicians trying to figure out what they can say in favor or against the country that help make peace. That is the Trump piece that people in America seem to like. Let's see how, let's see what Democrats want to say in 2026 about these issues. Because the grassroots clearly wants to say APAC is evil and Israel is at fault for everything in the Middle East. That is what, that is where the Democratic Party is going. And I don't know that independents and Republicans are now 90% behind the Trump thing. Oh, Marco, Ruby, I predicted this yesterday. I'm obviously again, very little sleep, so I'm being a little garrulous here. But I said, remember Vance shows up in Israel yesterday, Rubio coming today. So my point was like, by Friday, you know, Joe from White House Plumbing is going to be showing up in Israel to help support the peace deal. Like, everybody wants a peace of the peace deal. Everybody wants to put their fingerprints on the peace deal in this administration and they're right to do so because, you know, the only people who seem to be against it are. Well, it doesn't matter who's against it. It's just interesting that the Democrats are entirely silent about it. The show Mayor Chuck Schumer, the guardian of the gates of Jerusalem, has nothing to say about this. Nobody has anything to say about this.
- [69:50]
B
Because or the other side of things, nor the, the other extreme in the Democratic Party, which are the people who claimed that all they were asking for was a ceasefire for two years.
- [70:00]
A
Right? Yeah. I mean, I'm just saying, like that's exactly the point. So basically, they bet on the wrong horse. They bet on the wrong horse and now they're going to try to memory hole the fact that they bet on the wrong horse. Like they are going to stop talking about Israel is what's going to happen. Because there's no real benefit to it for them to talk about Israel. And then there's going to be this hot politician who one of whose two major issues is that that Jews are genociding Arabs. Complete reversal of the truth.
- [70:38]
D
Yeah, this, excuse me, this is an aside, but it's relevant to this whole discussion of the genocide that wasn't and the famine that wasn't. I have noticed that my social media feed when I accidentally switched to for.
- [70:57]
A
You from never do that from stop reading the comments. Never go to for you.
- [71:02]
D
But but there's been a difference. Pre hostage return and ceasefire for you was an endless storm of Jew hatred. It is now something kind of the opposite. I mean it's not the topic is the same. I'm still being the algorithm is feeding me Israel topics. Israel related stories. But they're not all accusing Israel of genocide. They are celebratory about hostages coming back and so on. My point is I think the foreign influence aspect has already started to go quiet because there is no upside in continuing to promote false propaganda about a war that's over.
- [72:05]
B
And also it might we don't know but it has been suggested and we have to think about the possibility that part of the deal itself was Trump asking the Qataris right. To knock it off or to tone it down at may this perhaps this is a piece of evidence in favor of that.
- [72:25]
D
That was my thought too. Yeah.
- [72:28]
A
Okay. Well we will be back tomorrow with a post mortem on you know, America's favorite communist jihadi and his performance in, in tonight's debate. I will be calling him a communist jihadi for the entirety of his mayoralty if he becomes mayor. Because you're gonna have to basically do that in order to keep in the forefront of people's minds who he actually is and what he actually stands for as he attempts to probably to figure out some way to etch a sketch himself on a daily basis. But, but this is, this is, this is where things are at in, in, in my city. And maybe Matt will have a different result in, in Virginia certainly. I don't know what the Virginia AG how much that matters but that is a matters outstanding result Matters what it matters a lot because you know, Jay.
- [73:25]
C
Jones definitely a Soros progressive who you know would, would have a very left wing agenda if he were to become the state attorney general.
- [73:33]
A
There we go.
- [73:34]
C
So I'm, I'm talking to you from Washington D.C. which has been, you know, free of crime for over two months now.
- [73:47]
A
There never was any crime. You just made it up. They just made up how there was crime in D.C. it's beautiful. And in Portland. Portland, I don't know if you know this. It's a paradise. It's a crime free paradise. Except for the jackboots that have now invaded Portland. I mean this is, this is how one of the two political parties is talking about Americans in uniform being deployed to serve public safety in the United States and about cities gone mad. And they're describing something that doesn't exist, which we know from Donald Trump's political career, you know, isn't necessarily a bad thing. He loves to describe things that don't exist and sort of move the Overton window in his direction or, you know, or create a kind of, you know, what did they call that with Steve Jobs when he sort of forced people to think the way he was thinking? There was some reality distortion field that Trump is very good at. The Democrats have been trying to reality distortion field their crime problems in LA and Portland and New York and D.C. and New Orleans and Memphis. By saying that there are no crime.
- [75:08]
B
Problems, Trump should just say there's no construction in the East Wing. What are you talking about? Yeah, there's nothing. We're not doing anything. What do you mean? Building a ballroom? No one's building a ballroom.
- [75:23]
A
Yeah. By the way, one last point not to, not to really extend that, but, you know, Yesterday we recommended Mr. Scorsese, this remarkable five part documentary by Rebecca Miller on Apple TV. And I was watching a lot of the rest of it last night and I hadn't realized this fantastic observation that they make about Raging Bull, which is a very, you know, which is a Scorsese's like, great directorial achievement. Very hard movie to watch in a lot of ways that the Joe Pesci, Robert De Niro interactions in Raging Bull, which are, you know, which are sort of among the most remarkable bits of acting in modern cinema, are all based on Abbott and Costello. They're basically doing Abbott and Costello routines. And I've seen that movie four or five and it never occurred to me. And then Rebecca Miller does cut between Pesci and De Niro kind of improvising scenes and then like Abbott and Costello doing stuff. And, and, and what it, what it, what an interesting, bizarre fact it is that the most violent and unpleasant movie about, you know, violent, unpleasant people drew it, much of its inspiration from Abbott and Costello. Anyway, just wanted to get that out before I forgot it forever. And we'll be back tomorrow. And I apologize for blathering on like this. So for Matt, Seth and Abram, John Vaughn, Horace, keep the candle burn.