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- [00:04]
A
Hope for the best, expect the worst Some reach and pain Some die of thirst no way of knowing which way it's going Hope for the best, Expect the worst, Hope for the best. Welcome to Panic Day on the Commentary Magazine daily podcast. I'm John Pot Horace, the editor of commentary magazine. It's May 6, 2026, and I'm now gonna introduce my panel and then explain to you why it is that I'm panicking. Executive editor Abe Greenwald. Hi, Abe.
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B
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 Free Beacon editor Eliana Johnson. Hi, Eliana.
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D
Hi, John.
- [00:47]
A
Okay, it's not just that. News came out that there was essentially a chemical warfare attack on the campus of George Washington University last week, which somehow was kept out of the public eye for a week. There was a sort of Israel festival and somebody dropped some kind of chemical substance that literally sent a kid to a hospital. And the gw Whatever issues this, we have been made aware of a moment when some substance was used that sent one of our kids to the hospital. I don't want to do the constant, what if it was a black kid? But what if there was a rally, a Black Lives Matter rally, and. And a vial of some kind of chemical substance was dropped and a black kid went to the hospital? There would be 10,000 people standing outside the hospital screaming, and Al Sharpton would show up and the entire Congressional Black Caucus would show up, and it would be leading Jake Tapper, and it would be leading Aaron Burnett, and it would be leading whoever, whatever Meshiga lunatic is now on Ms. Now. And that would be the news story of the week. And a Jewish kid is poisoned in some fashion or other by a chemical substance in the middle of Washington, D.C. and nobody says boo. This news comes out on the same day that there is a riot on East 67th street because the synagogue park east once again was having a session where an organization that helps explain how to buy land in Israel was. Had rented a space and literal. 150 literal Hamasniks show up and are sort of barricaded away from the synagogue because of the new rules involving where you can stand and where you can't stand, apparently. And a riot broke out basically between pro Israel protesters and the Hamas next, in which there were cops in the middle and they're getting injured. So we have chemical warfare in Washington, we have street warfare in New York. And in the middle of all of this, on a day that began with Pete Hegseth talking about how magnificent our military efforts were in Iran and then continued with Marco Rubio talking about how magnificent our military efforts were in Iran by the middle of the night. And then this morning news comes that really sounds like Trump is about to bug out on a day in which we were told that we had just started opening the strait using our weird zone defense system of straight openage and escorting ships. Escorting some ships, not escorting others. Using technical means to escort ships, whatever. So aside from being terrified about American Jewry and the condition that seems to have now so normalized this that a chemical warfare attack on kids at an Israel event in the center of D.C. doesn't even make the news, and now we have Trump issuing or the Trump administration seeming ready to agree to some kind of a plan that seems uncomfortably similar in some of the details to the Obama deal. I was about to say Obamacare. So I am not happy today and I don't know where the good news is. And so you guys are going to have to cheer me up. And Abe can't be the one to start because he's not going to cheer me up. I know he's not. That's not his role. So I can cheer you up a little bit. How?
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B
Okay, I'm. I share your concern about the anti Semitic instances and attacks in the U.S.
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A
oh, wait, wait, I forgot. Paul Krasner, 69 year old killed in 2023 in Los Angeles. His killer admits to having killed a Muslim activist. Killed. Paul Krasner gets a deal from a judge in which he's gonna serve a year and then the rest is probation. Murdering a 69 year old Jewish protester in Los Angeles. That's detail number three. I totally forgot.
- [05:15]
B
Go ahead. Sorry on all those three. I'm right there with you. When it comes to Iran, I can't every twist and turn, I can't panic at every twist and turn of the unpredictable Trump game here. I feel like we've been here before and he stops and says we're on the verge of something and then we're no longer on the verge of it by the time the podcast is over. So I'm not locked into any sort of panic on that front. Did that help?
- [05:52]
A
Well, in other words, if what you're saying is I refuse to accept the evidence before my own eyes that Trump is saying if the Iranians accept it, this is over. And by the way, Rubio and Trump both saying that epic fury is over now, epic fury, you could say, is merely a stage in the Iran war. It was the first stage and that whatever happens that follows is not going to be epic fury. And therefore they're declaring the end of the Battle of Epic Fury, which was the air campaign and the destruction of the Navy, and that there'll be a phase two, which will be called something else. Or it's him saying, I don't want to go back to war and I'm doing whatever I can not to go back to war. So you're right that he's an untrustworthy narrator, but he's the only source of information that we have.
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D
It's true. I think I'm where Abe is. It's hard to understand, just based on the evidence before us, what's really happening here. And I'm inclined to take, to zoom out and take a little bit of a bigger picture view. Two days ago, we had President Trump spend half an hour with Hugh Hewitt and tell him unequivocally that the nuclear material had to come out of the country, that that was a red line, that the strait had to be opened. And taking all of his traditionally hardline positions over the course of a 30 minute interview yesterday, we had the Secretary of War in the morning talk about Project Freedom and the defensive operation to rescue these 1,600 vessels that are trapped in the strait. And then we had Marco Rubio in the afternoon, you know, 2 or 3pm I forget exactly what time it was again, give a dazzling performance explaining why it was so important to undertake this operation to rescue not just Americans, but people of, you know, dozens of nationalities who are trapped in the Strait of Hormuz. And, and that the US Is the only country that can do it. And then at 7 o' clock, the President says it's off because we're negotiating with Iran.
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A
The rescue, in other words, the get
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D
to rescue these people who are starving and running out of food and freedom
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A
or whatever the hell.
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D
Yeah, Project. It's Project Freedom. They're running out of potable water. These are ships that are trapped in the strait because of Iran, because Iran is holding the this waterway hostage. And then we have Trump come out at 7 o' clock and say he's suspended Project Freedom after he sent his two most senior administration officials out to defend it. He comes out at 7 o' clock with a truth that says he's suspended it because Iran has agreed to sit back down at the negotiating table. My optimism is that Iran is going to save the President from a bad deal. I just simply don't agree. I don't believe that Iran is going to agree to suspend enrichment for 12 years. I could be wrong. I'm open to that. The deal described in a report from Axios is that there would be sanctions lifted gradually over the course of either 10 or 12 years if Iran agrees to suspend enrichment unaddressed in what is, you know, one page memorandum of understanding is what happens to the nuclear material that's in Iran. We have no idea about that. But it is hard for me to believe that Iran would agree to a deal that is acceptable to the President based on what the President has said otherwise. You know, it's a complete and other utter and devastating cave that returns us to, to the pre war status quo with a weakened Iran, which is better than before we started.
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A
We spend a lot of time on this show talking about the long arc of American institutions, how they rise, how they decline, and occasionally how they come back. One of the industries that more or less disappeared over the last half century was watchmaking. Like a lot of manufacturing, it moved overseas. But today's sponsor is trying to reverse that trend there. That's Vaer is a Los Angeles watch company whose goal is pretty straightforward. Bring American watchmaking back. They now assemble watches across California, Arizona, Rhode island and Alabama with leather straps made in Illinois and Florida. And these aren't fashion accessories. They're proper tool watches, sapphire crystals, premium materials and full waterproof warranties, meaning you can actually swim or dive with them on. I've been wearing one recently and what stands out is how solid and understated it feels. The kind of watch that seems designed to last for decades. VAR has already earned over 10,000 five star reviews and it's become one of the largest independent watch assemblers in the United States. If you like the idea of owning something rugged, timeless and thoughtfully made, take a look, go to their watches.com that's V A E R watches.com. So this is why I wanted to talk about the Met Gala yesterday instead of about Iran. Because this story is impossible to deal with in this granular day to day fashion. Obviously a war you can deal with in regular day to day fashion because things happen. There are airstrikes, there are battles, there are whatever. There's news involving the actual implementation of military action and the response and the results. And we are in this weird period in which everything that's happening, except for the escorting of these ships and various other things, all of which are reported on. But everything that's happening is somewhat invisible and speculative.
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D
It's all okay.
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A
We are getting information. That's the problem. And the information is coming from the leader of the free world, a lot of it. So you can hear Rubio say at 3, this is the greatest thing we've ever done. And then at 7, he says, we're not doing it anymore because the Pakistanis asked me to stop. Which is a bizarre thing for a President of the United States to say. Who the hell cares what the Pakistanis are or are not asking him to do? Imagine if he said Germany asked me to stop. He would never say that. For some reason now he's willing to use the name of a foreign country as the check on his own ambitions. And that leads you to believe that they're not really checking his ambitions, they are fulfilling his ambitions so that he can use them to step back from something that he doesn't quite know how to implement. I just want to read because you mentioned. Yeah, let me just Hugh Hewitt, because Eliana mentioned Hugh Hewitt, who has been Trump's foremost cheerleader in this war, saying things like, this will be the greatest thing that any American president has ever done, like removing the Iranian nuclear threat. Hugh, in response to the Axios report says this would be a terrible deal. I hope the terms of any deal would be significantly stricter. No enrichment ever. The dust to us stat. No more proxies, turn on the Internet. President Trump never gives up leverage. Why would he start now with a rod on the ropes? He says. And then he goes on to say, just could be the appeasement caucus trial balloon special envoys Witkoff and Kushner walked away before. They don't want their names on this list deal proposal. It would draw another Senator Tom Cotton letter. The terms is laid out would be snatching defeat from jaws of victory. So even Hugh is like, oh, what the hell is going on here? And if he's losing some faith or confidence, that's like, I don't, you know.
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D
Well, no one could be forced like
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A
the super fans, you know, losing faith in Ditka. Like that's.
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D
Well, nobody could. Before this deal is laid out, the deal is laid out is the jcpoa. If you are against the JCPOA and you have any, you know, consistency, nobody could support the deal as described in Axios.
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A
Right.
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C
Well, the deal is a bad deal. But we should be clear on something here when we talk about the jcpoa. When the JCPOA was signed, Iran had the means to create nuclear bombs. The means to. They had centrifuges, they had an up and running program and now they have rubble. So I think first of all, it is a bad deal and I don't expect him to agree to it. As I've said, I've said from the beginning, there is no deal that is possible between these two unless somebody truly caves. So if they do sign a deal, it is likely that Trump caved on, on one or more issues. But I just want to be clear that the JCPOA was, We're hoping to slow down your nuclear emergence on your breakout until Obama is out of office and it's somebody else's problem to deal with the world we've set on fire. So they had the means to create their program and to enrich uranium and all that stuff they don't have. If they wanted to start tomorrow, they have to rebuild a nuclear program. We've bombed it into the dust. So I think that, and you know, obviously, yes, there's, there's, there's, you know, there's nuclear material that has to be dealt with. There's all sorts of things that have to be dealt with. This isn't the end, but we should just be clear about where we are in the process and the risks of each thing. The jcpoa, because it entrenched an illegal program in this, you know, treaty, non treaty, it basically legalized Iran's nuclear program while it was up and running.
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A
Right. So plus $150 billion.
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C
Plus 150 billion. He was, he was right. He was right that all these other things have to be addressed too. There is reason to worry, I should say, that Trump is losing focus on, on it, on a holistic deal, which is what he used to demand. No proxies, as you said. No proxies, no troublemaking, no nukes, all that other stuff. And if Trump really is willing to compartmentalize, then he's going to get played
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A
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That's a frames.com promo code commentary. Support the show by mentioning us at checkout. Terms and conditions apply. I'm going to talk to you about Brooklyn Betting. You've heard me talk about this before. I got a free mattress from Brooklyn Bedding to test it, and I loved it so much and my son loved it so much that I got two mattresses, paid for them myself for my daughters. I don't know how I can endorse anything better than that. We're talking about a company, A classic American story. The founder, John, didn't come from some big corporate background. He didn't have a degree. He studied mattresses, bootstrapped the business, built his own factory from the ground up in Arizona. That kind of determination and grit shows up in the quality of the mattresses that my children sleep on every night. So, look, go to BrooklynBedding.com and use my promo code commentary at checkout to get 30% off site wide. This offer is not available anywhere else. That's BrooklynBetting.com and promo code COMMENTARY for 30% off site wide. Support our show and let them know we sent you after checkout. BrooklynBetting.com promo code COMMENTARY. The JCPOA was the result of a negotiation becoming an end in itself. Took three years, and the Iranians said no and no and no and no. And the United States then found itself in the position, like the Paris Peace Accords that effectively ended the Vietnam War, of trying to figure out how to move the Iranians off their no by moving closer and closer and closer to the Iranians until the. The deal was so sweet that the Iranians had no choice but to take it. And it was clear that they didn't really want to take it for so long. And then it's like, how about we give you a car? How about we give you a summer house? How about we give you $10 million? How about we give you our firstborn child? How about we let you have a harem? How about, you know, whatever? And then finally the Iranians are like, oh, okay, just get those billions of dollars on that pallet on the ship and we'll nod and wink and say we're not doing anything until you leave office. And then we'll accelerate the program. And maybe we won't say we've gone nuclear until the agreement allows us to say we're nuclear in 2028. But, yeah, well, okay, fine, this is an entirely different set of circumstances. Right? We go into this, we bomb them in the summer of 2025, and then we have this moment where the Iranian people rise up, where the Israelis have developed such incredibly good intelligence that they knew that there was this gathering meeting of the Iranian leadership and motive, means, opportunity and ability all combined to start the February 28th strike. So if you end up with some kind of a JCPOA light at the end of this process, yes, you will have done immense damage to Iran, to its infrastructure, to its centrifuges, and you will not really have done that much to get them to. Yes, we won't be giving them much of anything, but. But Trump will be giving them his manhood. And it is the end of the Trump administration. Just to make this clear, if people don't understand this, and if Trump. And if there's anybody in the White House who is listening to this, if this happens, he is dead. With liberals who will be making fun of him until he dies, he is dead with the only people who are going to think that this is good, that he's done good, are the people that are being paid to say that it will be an unparalleled humiliation. It's a war he started, a war whose terms of victory he set, as Eliana said. He set them on Monday again as the. We win this war if we get the dust. That's what he told Hugh Hewitt flat. If we go and that doesn't happen, he's done like. He's at 37% in the ratings, in the approval ratings. He's about to be slammed all summer with this weird appropriation plan for a billion dollars from Congress to help defray the costs, apparently not of the ballroom, but. But of the military center that is being built below the ballroom that we shouldn't even know is gonna exist, but it will be. Trump stopped the war so he could get his Billion Dollar ballroom. Congratulations, President Trump. A, Republicans are gonna suffer immensely, and B, you're gonna look like a fool and like you committed 40, 50 billion dollars of American treasure to this bombing campaign that destroyed all this stuff and decapitated all these bad people, but didn't lead to any kind of a formal result that you can claim was victory because the strategic position of the United States will not be materially improved at the end of it if the deal, the term sheet of which is in Axios right now, takes place. And I would. This is something I wouldn't have said 16 hours ago. I'm not changing. He changed. He changed with that, we're suspending Project Freedom. And now. And now these reports that they're close to some kind of a deal. So, like, this is a very interesting moment here because I don't think that we represent an electoral bloc in any way, shape or form. Maybe we represent the intellectual right. Yeah, I mean, I'd love to be able to say, there goes Idaho, buddy. You're not getting those three. You're not getting those three electoral votes from Idaho. But, you know, there is a.
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C
As commentary goes, so go the oyster farmers.
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A
If only. Yeah, sure. I mean, he loses us, he got nobody left except the real maga, sort of like the guys who will shoot anyone on Fifth Avenue for him. And I'm not saying do this so that I won't be mad at you. I'm just saying, like, the rationale for the administration starts to evanesce because
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C
he
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A
pushed all the chips into the middle of the table with this.
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D
One of the reasons I'm skeptical this is gonna result in anything is. Can we just flashback to remember that the ceasefire was supposed to be. We ceased firing and they would reopen the Strait, and we ceased firing, and. And they didn't reopen the Strait, and now there's supposed to be a gradual reopening of the Strait as we lift the blockade. So I'm just skeptical that they're going to do anything they say they're going to do, because they didn't four weeks ago or however long ago the ceasefire was. Maybe now they're so desperate that they will, but their record is not good. And the other thing we haven't talked about, John, when you say, like, what the costs of this are, Iran has now broken the ceasefire again by firing on the UAE and Oman, our allies in the Gulf who have been engaged in this. And we've looked the other way, and that is incredibly damaging to our standing in the region and to this rejiggering of alliances that has taken place that would be hugely beneficial to the U.S. if the President were willing to see this through.
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B
Yeah, we should say Israel is giving the UAE assistance missile defense. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's crazy. Regarding losing us or not losing us, I have to say this. When Trump first initiated the first ceasefire, my attitude was, well, I think it's counterproductive and unfortunate, but he did destroy Iran's nuclear program, and that's remarkable. And he took out several tiers of the Iranian leadership, and that's remarkable. And I never expected to see. And he destroyed a ton of their missile stocks, and that's remarkable. And I never expected to see any of that happen. So I am not going to be ungrateful for that, and I am still not ungrateful for those things. What happened after that and after I had sort of reconciled myself in that way was Trump kept going on about how we're gonna get the dust. We're gonna get the dust. We're gonna get the dust. I wasn't saying, I was like, yeah, this is more than I expected. This is amazing. If the war were to end today, I never thought I'd see such a great thing. Thank you. And then he has been on a months long campaign of saying we're going to get the dust. So he has raised new expectations and hopes here, only to maybe dash them.
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A
Well, they haven't been dashed yet.
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C
I also want to say that the other hope that is on the rocks is the Strait of Hormuz. This has to. Obviously nobody will accept the idea of victory if we leave the status quo. And it looks like Iran just won a standoff with the Strait of Hormuz. But more importantly, it actually has to be structurally fixed. There needs to be a solution to the Strait of Hormuz threat, not just the Strait of Hormuz. The reality when they've now for a few weeks put that threat, you know, into play, there needs to be something to know. I mean, as I've said before, you know, there's, there's, you never know they could do it again at a time we don't have the resources to do something, something about it.
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A
So this is a very, very, very important point because you need to follow the logic of what you have just said. There needs to be an ultimate fix to the Strait of Hormuz global weakness that has been displayed by what Iran has done here. And I'm sorry to say to Donald Trump that the only way to ensure the perpetual opening of the Strait of Hormuz is, is regime change in Iran. Like you have now upped the ante. This regime will never surrender willingly this card that it now has or this arrow that it has in its quiver. Why would will never do it if the world needs it to be done, the regime has to change so that the regime that follows it understands that it cannot screw around with the Strait of Hormuz. So in an odd way, by not going for regime change, he has now up the need for regime change where it wasn't when the war started. And we were all saying. He never said it was about regime change. He doesn't want to do regime change. He wants them to change the regime themselves if they do it. But after the war, after the bombing, after this, after that, and then they played their hole card and now everyone in the world is saying, I don't know how shipping, world shipping is going to continue under these conditions. Well, if there's one player that is the threat to this global system of open sea shipping, that player has to be taken off the board. So, you know, I don't see how this, how ending the war prematurely is anything. That's the second part of the surrender problem is maybe they say on paper they're going to open the Strait of Hormuz, but then, you know, in July, you know, somebody says something they don't like and then they say, oh, we're going to close the strait for 48 hours just to, you know, you know what? No one gets to come in, no one gets to go out. Then what? I mean, why wouldn't you do that? Oh, we don't like that. Israel just built a new apartment, you know, in Shiloh, we're closing the Strait of Hormuz for 48 hours. Now what are you going to do about it? I mean, the number of ramifications or the scenarios you can come up with really do say, if this regime is impossible to deal with, then we have to stop dealing with it. Now, I don't have a plan. I'm not the military planner. I don't have a plan for regime change. They had a plan and it clearly didn't work. Their plan was they would decapitate the entire leadership of the regime and it would somehow collapse. And that that didn't happen. And we may also be seeing this weird thing going on in Pakistan and elsewhere where you have a genuine battle over who's controlling the country between the IRGC and the more political leadership or whatever which is trying to figure out some pathway. And the IRGC is like, you're a bunch of wimps. We're gonna bring the world to its knees. That's who we are. So we don't really know. But the only face saving scenario I can come up with for Trump right now, aside from a glitch and a hiccup and him being 80 years old and being in constant and all that, is if the Pentagon is telling him that they need another week or another 10 days or something because they have a secondary plan, but they need to pre position or they need to do this or they have to get planes or they have to reload the ammunition or something like that, I'm making that up though, you know, there's no news story that I can operate off of that says no, no, the Pentagon is asking for. He's playing for time. Nothing except my own wishful thinking is saying to me, he's really doing this to play for time. For time. I think he was playing for time from mid January to the end of February when the war began. I think he was intending for there to be a war when the war was going to start, was not clear, but there was all kinds of evidence of that. And there is no such evidence here now. No.
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C
But I will say that the only non military option to have a win over the Strait of Hormuz is to keep the chokehold up until Iran has to close an oil well, that, until it has to cap an oil well. That's the putting numbers on the board so everybody can see them move. And Trump, you know, I'm not giving him any sort of credit for playing 12 dimensional chess. As I've said repeatedly, I don't believe in that stuff. But I personally am unconvinced that, you know, as I said before, the time is on the Iranian side that actually you could continue with this strategy as long as Trump has the political capital to do so. And it will take a monster chunk out of Iran at some point. We all assume that there really isn't the political time and space for that to happen. And that may be right. But Trump maybe disagrees with that. Maybe Trump thinks, I don't really care whether about the political capital question. I just know that if I, if I can keep the public from freaking out, like if I say we're not going to, we're, you know, we're not going to do the Project Freedom, whatever, and the price of oil falls, which it did, he may think I'm a genius. Look at what I'm doing. I've got them faked out. I've got them faked out. And the truth is that although it's all kind of smoke and mirrors, the status quo is much harder on Iran than it is on us. And if it goes on for a period of time, longer, Iran will suffer a permanent bruise on this, a permanent deficit from all this. And I think that he's right in the thinking that he can get there if he manipulates the market enough. But I don't know that it's, I don't know that the political situation in which Republicans and independent Republicans like Lisa Murkowski are now, you know, pushing for a vote on war powers, I think that the, you know, the sort of they're closing in. He's losing space at home. I don't know exactly how much time it would take literally to get them to have to close an oil well. And so I couldn't tell you now whether it's like, well, if he just does this for six more weeks, the war is over. Nobody knows. Not a convincing argument because of that.
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A
But here's the oddity. We're at a war, but there's very little shooting. Like, basically, for the last three weeks, the war is more and more unpopular. The war he's losing Republicans on the war. Look at his poll numbers go down because of the. The war. With the exception of the fluctuation or the difficulty with oil prices, we are not at war. What are we doing at war? The one thing that we did, he stopped, which was the ship escorting, shot down a few drones. The Israelis are shooting down missiles being fired at the uae. Nothing is being fired at Israel except from, you know, the north. And Hezbollah, not that much is being fired there aren't that, you know, their sirens are not, you know, an every three hour occurrence in Israel anymore. So America, the war is getting increasingly unpopular as the war is not happening. He in fact, did suspend the war. So the odd part here is as Seth, you say that what we are doing is having an immense effect on Iran's economic and literal lifeblood. They're suffering. We're suffering because of an inflation in oil prices, but otherwise we're not. Nothing's happening at all. And it's getting more unpopular.
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C
So how is right, we don't have the AP counting up to like a death count of US Troops the way they did during Iraq.
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A
Yeah, yeah.
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D
I also think, I also think it's hugely important for the United States to demonstrate to Iran and to the rest of the world that we can actually not just rescue the ships that are trapped in there, but open the strait that not just strike a deal, that Iran says, okay, ships can now transit the strait, but that we can force the strait open. I mean, Rubio, Secretary of State Rubio referred to Iran's decision to close the strait as an economic nuclear weapon. And I think it's insufficient to strike an agreement with them, as you suggested, John, to just open the strait. I do think it's vitally important that we actually demonstrate that we can pry it open by force so that they know they can't just close it at a moment's notice again. And I do think ending the war without demonstrating that would be damaging.
- [39:10]
A
So we don't know what's happening. And we are, as I say, responding to what little news that we do have. And because I went to this and said his efficacy as a leader will be at an end if what we're being reported on this week were actually to be to take place. I mean that sincerely in the sense that he will have. No, he will be mocked, which he can't stand. He will be people moderates will say this is the dumbest thing anybody has ever done. Why did you do it? And he'll say it was the greatest military campaign in history and even the people who support it are not going to be able to come anywhere near saying that this is the greatest military. Because a military campaign that doesn't result in a political clause of it's political victory is a military campaign without meaning. Can we, you know, it's like Vieques. Do you guys the story of Vieques in Puerto Rico? Vieques was the most bombed place on earth because it's where we went to test our missiles and our bombing and all of that. And it was like it was Vieques. So Iran became our Vieques. It was like our training ground. We've been building all this weaponry for 30 years. We no longer have Vieques because the Puerto Rican. There was a referendum and Puerto Rico wanted Vieques back and now it's a lovely resort town with lots of hotels and it's not a bombing range anymore. So we used Iran and Isfahan and all that is like Vieques. That's not a military victory. Like you know, we degraded Iran. Great. That's good. I'm not saying it's not good. He's the one who called it epic fury. He's the one who's saying it's the greatest military victory in history, not me. You know, if you said we went into Iran to degrade their nuclear capacity, that's what we did. We went to end their nuclear degraded. It'll be a generation before they can even think of doing this again. And they suck and they treat their people horribly. And we killed a lot of their leaders who were monsters, that would be one thing. But that's not what he said. That's not what he promised. And where he will leave this will be indefensible. Almost as a matter of fact. Was the juice worth the squeeze? Was it worth us depleting our hardware and having to rebuild it? There's no good answer to that question under these.
- [42:04]
B
Yes, I think yes. I mean, look, I don't want this to proceed in this way. I don't want this deal with Iran. But I still think, yes. I mean, I would rather be sitting here today, May 6, knowing that the Iranian nuclear program is destroyed then. Not that's, I mean, like a broken record here, but that's, yeah, okay, so
- [42:30]
A
maybe, so maybe I'm banking the victory that I'm like everybody else. I've already banked that victory and I'm looking for more. And that's always unfair, but it's the nature of the way these things work. And it's also, you know, Christine's not here to say Trump needs to go before the American people explain what he's doing, but he does explain what he's doing. And his explanation of what he's doing has now completely divorced. You know, what he said for the last month is now completely divorced from what he has now said in the last 12 hours. So is the last 12 hours the hiccup or is it the transition to the new era in which he is washing his hands of Operation Epic Fury and whatever happens and kind of suing for peace over Hormuz? He's like, okay, you know what? That was. You guys, you're clever. I don't like you. But you know, hey, you got us. All right, let's wrap this up. I'll do some face saving stuff. You'll do some face saving stuff. I destroyed your nuclear program. You're going to be able to say that you showed the world that you could close the stray of Hormuz. We'll live to argue another day. I don't know. You know, I just hit a milestone birthday. I'm 65 years old. Why am I telling you this? Because sleep is more important to me than ever. As it becomes more and more difficult to get a good night's sleep. Sleep. And that's why I really love the Bowen brand sheets that I have now been putting on my bed. Designed for exactly the kind of rest I need. Signature organic cotton sheets, plush pillows, breathable blankets, temperature regulating comforters. Everything is made to create a bed that truly supports good sleep. Incredibly soft, breathable, built to get better over time. This is the kind of sleep I can't compromise on anymore. And a lot of customers start with sheets, but once they feel them, they upgrade the whole bed like I did. So upgrade your sleep with bowl and branch. Get 15 off your first order plus free shipping@bowlandbranch.com commentary with code. Commentary. That's bowl and branch. B O L L A N D B R-A-N-C-H.com Commentary. Code Commentary to unlock 15 off exclusions apply foreign if you listen to the podcast, you know that I love quints. You know that I do. I'm not going to tell you what specific clothing I'm wearing because half my clothing is quints. So just so you understand, Quint right now has all the staples for spring 100% European linen shorts, shirts from 34 clean 100% Pima cotton tees with a softness that has to be felt. Their pants also hit that same balance, relaxed and comfortable, but still polished enough to wear pretty much anywhere. And everything is priced 50 to 80% less than what you'd find at similar brands. So refresh your everyday with luxury. You'll actually use head to quint.com commentary for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns now available in Canada too. That's Q-U-I-N-C-E.com commentary for free shipping and 365 day returns. Quint.com commentary Eliana I want to shift gears radically to praise, as I often do, a really amazing story you have today in the Free Beacon by Aaron Sabarium that is very important because it indicates what it's like to be in combat with the academic left and the left of the United States, even after questions about their ideas, their behavior, and the constitutionality of the things that they try to do have already been answered. In this case, I'm talking about Students Against Affirmative Action versus Harvard, the decision that the Supreme Court made essentially effectively ending racial what would you call it? Sort of the racialization of admissions to schools and the use of race as a determination. Racial preference is the determination in terms of admissions. We have a case now at Penn State, and it's very important that it's at Penn State because Penn State is of course a public university and therefore does not have the certain level of private protections that a private institution has that a public institution does not, because it is subject to the First Amendment, to the it is subject as a public university to the dictates of the Constitution. Whereas private contract can, you know, limit your speech and stuff like that if you have a private contract with Harvard because you signed an admissions agreement. So what we have here is the university, Pennsylvania State University Law School. And what does Aaron report in this piece?
- [47:41]
D
Well, we obtained the Law school strategic plan 2025-2030, and it outlines five goals for Penn State Law School over the next five years. And one of the goals is anti racism. And the plan, which you can access, we put the plan online, essentially explains how this the entire institution, funded with taxpayer dollars, will be devoted to anti racism. It's teaching, it's research, it's hiring, its admissions. And when you read it, it is like an artifact from the height of the George Floyd hysteria in 2020. But we are six years later, and I think it does demonstrate that this stuff really has not receded in many places. And I was struck that this is happening in Pennsylvania where Josh Shapiro is the governor. He appoints nine of the members of Penn State's 36 member, you know, board members. And he did speak up and push back on some of the insanity post October 7th at the University of Pennsylvania, but appears either complicit in what's happening at Penn State or unaware of. But this stuff is very much still happening. And when you read it, it is absolute gobbledygook. Aside from making clear that they're going to, you know, on academic matters, proceed with illegal action, essentially prefer people of different races and hiring and admissions, the academic stuff is just utter nonsense. I'll take a representative snippet. Okay.
- [49:56]
A
There are so many good ones.
- [49:57]
D
There are so many good ones. Advancing a historical and contextual understanding of the power and promise of the US Constitution to restructure society along the lines of systemic equity, justice, equality and fairness for all is a goal. And.
- [50:26]
A
I got a good one.
- [50:27]
D
Leverage the Penn State Dickinson Law brand and its leadership on anti racism to attract students, faculty, staff and administrators committed to providing access to a legal education or access to employment opportunities to all qualified candidates who are dedicated to promoting the. That's not. That's actually not a good one. But yeah, John, you read one of
- [50:49]
A
the best ones here. Institutional anti Racism is the work of acknowledgment, knowledge acquisition and iterative historicity and constant action to promote systemic equity. Institutional anti Racism requires acknowledgement of the full history in which race and racism, oppression and subordination shape and are shaped by law and legal architecture. So I particularly like the phrase iterative historicity because I am a college graduate and I edit a magazine, and I've seen many phrases in my 40 years of editing that I have been able to disassemble and refashion in order to explain what the words are supposed to mean. And I do not know what iterative history. I know what iterative is, and I kind of know what historicity is. I don't really, because I'm not even sure historicity is an actual functioning word. But institutional anti racism is, in other words, according to this document, whatever we want it to mean. And what it means is that we will do whatever it is that we want to do to favor black teachers, black students and a black account of history. Even if the Supreme Court has made it very clear, not just in admissions, but in other ways, that doing so is illegal under the Civil Rights act of 1964. As my friend Ed Blum, the president of Students for Fair Admissions, points out in the piece, he said, every known definition of anti racism explains that race will be a factor in decision making. This is illegal. You are not allowed to use race as a factor in decision making in this way at a public university, according to the Supreme Court. And yet here we are and the chairman of the law school at a public university in Pennsylvania has just declared her intention or the school's intention to do exactly that. So I'm going to look forward to the lawsuit because they're going to lose.
- [53:16]
D
Yes, they also go into something about re envisioning the role of a land grant university to align it with anti racism, where they say the land grant mission is tied to a history of dispossession and therefore must be explored and restructured to create opportunities for all to benefit from equity and justice. The law school will play a pivotal role in producing scholarship, practicing, teaching and learning pedagogy and meaningful and justice infused service to re envision the role of land grant universities generally and Penn State University specifically.
- [53:57]
A
See, this is fantastic because this is about. But what this is about is the land grant universities which was the great creation, post Civil War creation of the institutions of higher learning, public institutions of higher learning that were chartered by the states that gave them the land. So they are now dovetailing this with land acknowledgement. The idea that all the land in the United States was stolen from Native Americans and therefore the land grant university, like any grant of land anywhere in America, is theoretically illegal. And using that which you might make a case, you could make a case that therefore this land should be given back to whatever Native American tribe had been living there at some point, maybe in 800 B.C. and give it to them. How this dovetails with modern ideas about racism and black people, I do not know. Because the idea behind the land grant is that Native American land was sovereign to Native Americans and stolen by Americans, among whom, since this was after the Civil War, were black people who were natives, who were Americans, who stole the land from the Native Americans. And therefore why should they get pre. What we should be doing is harmonizing this with the Iroquois Confederacy or with Choctaw ideas about collectivism, not anti racism which seeks to empower Kimberle Crenshaw and her friends in the intersectionality movement. It's just like, well, they're gonna compensate
- [55:48]
D
for this original sin by doing a lot of justice infused service. To re envision the role of the university, which isn't re envisioning its role at all because so many of them are talking in non English like this literal nonsense.
- [56:11]
A
I mean, it isn't nonsense because it is the voice of liberal leftist power in the United States. Excuse me, this way in which the language is repurposed and twisted and turned backwards in order to create a political result.
- [56:30]
D
If you told ChatGPT to churn out something, it would be this that talks in the argo of these people. It would be this.
- [56:39]
A
Yeah, anyway, I read it and I
- [56:42]
C
thought a strategic five year plan to boost the hiring of people who are underrepresented at the university. I thought that was really nice because it sounds like they're going to hire a bunch of conservatives. No, that's not the, that's, that's, that's not.
- [56:57]
A
Yeah, yeah. Well, you know, by definition, iterative historicity would deny your, you know, contumacious, unilluminated, factitious, anti disestablishmentarianism there, Seth.
- [57:17]
C
So we seek to restore Historicity, one
- [57:19]
A
of the greatest albums by the Corpus Callosum, to attain a new pathway to the understanding of the iterative historicity of the moment.
- [57:36]
B
I think they missed the opportunity to say iterative historicities, you see, because the key is to add, to make the indecipherable concept plural,
- [57:54]
A
Discriminatory, to refer to a single iterative historicity.
- [57:58]
B
Exactly.
- [57:59]
A
What about the unacknowledged or sort of forgotten historicities.
- [58:07]
B
Precisely.
- [58:08]
A
That are being challenged by the single iterative historicity? Where are their champions? I mean, I think this is a very good point you're making and that we.
- [58:20]
C
I think the whole thing is utterly clavicular.
- [58:26]
A
So news came as we were talking here that Ted Turner has just passed away at the age of 87. I only bring this up to say that now because he basically has been off the public stage for a decade because of, I think, senility, dementia related issues and other things. Ted Turner is one of the two or three most significant media figures of the second half of the 20th century. It's actually hard to think of a single person who did more to change the landscape of media, television and mass mass media than Ted Turner was. A very unlikely person to be this voice, a kind of child of privilege, polo playing, dilettante, but who figured out that There was this world to be exploited in cable television for creating national networks outside of the three big networks. Abc, CBS and NBC. With his superstation in Atlanta, tbs, which he basically presented to cable systems fundamentally for free, and then just started broadcasting sitcoms 24 hours a day and did fun, clever, interesting things like scheduling his shows at five minutes past the hour so that in TV guide, which sold 15 million copies a week and was the way Americans understood how to watch television, all of his shows got their own line in TV guide at 5:05 or 5:35 or 6:05 or something like that. And through this levered the cable systems into creating cnn, which again may be the most important media creation of the last. Not that it's, you know, I'm not talking about in terms of quality, but what CNN did in the, you know, late 1970s, early 1980s onward to break the stranglehold of the five voices that dominated all news gathering discourse structurally as a new voice, and then technically by giving a pathway to others to create other news channels and other ways of broadcasting and all of that. And Turner was a loathed figure in the world of media in the 1980s. He was considered a right wing lunatic because he was programming TBS as a family friendly station which had a lot of anodyne stuff that appealed to the largest possible audience. And in 1986, he attempted to buy or take over or somehow control cbs and made a junk bond bill to buy cbs. A bid through Michael Milken to buy cbs, which failed and which led to hilarious claims that Ted Turner was a unique monster who would destroy the greatest news organization that ever. Who was this, you know, Colonel Sanders hick out of nowhere, you know, slime bucket who was going to destroy our precious Tiffany network and all of that. And then they essentially then seeded cbs, found its champion in board member Larry Tisch, who then proceeded to basically kind of put, not destroy CBS News, but basically drain CBS News of many of the things that it said Ted Turner was going to drain it of. And then meanwhile, Ted Turner got the message it wasn't good as a public figure to be on the right. It wasn't helpful if you were going to try to be a major player in entertainment and media. So he just shifted left. He just became a left winger like that. He snapped his fingers. He was a left winger and he did left wing things and he married Jane Fonda and he created documentary series about how evil America was. And he was as crazy on the left as he had been on the right. But he just charted the Path for the atomization of the news business, the media business. The idea that these tiny autarkies that were forming to control everything could be broken up if you were clever enough, smart enough, and you had enough seichel to figure out that the future was not going to be limited to these people. So he was a monumental figure, a lunatic. I tell you one story and then we can go about Ted Turner. I was. When I was a TV critic for the New York Post, I went to LA for a big TV gathering. And it just so happened that that day TBS was having its presentation to the TV critics in a ballroom at the Sheraton Universal Hotel. And it just so happened, for some reason, because the New York Post was the 4th or 5th largest circulation newspaper in the United States, that I was seated at Ted Turner's table. And it just so happened that also at Ted Turner's table was Robbie Robertson, the band leader of the band, who I didn't know then was Jewish, which he is. But I would have. So I would have like, you know, I would have tried to, you know, make a mozzi with him. But he. I didn't know this about him at the time, and I'm not sure he did either. Anyway, why was Robbie Robertson there? Because he had made a documentary for TBS called the Native Americans. And a six part. Because he's also Native American. It was six part series about the history of evil, horrible behavior of America toward Native Americans. And so Turner sitting at the table, being very weird, and then he gets up and the event, the centerpiece of the event was a performance by a Navajo dance troupe that did a dance with drums. And if I imitated what they would sound like, you would call me a racist. But they sounded like Navajo songs and John Ford movies. But they had their headpieces and they did a dance and they were. They banged on drums and then it was all over. And then Ted Turner got up to introduce the little clip of the Native Americans. And, you know, this very PC event, right? This is like as PC as you can get. Tenter gets up and he says, well, you know, I want to really thank those dancers, the singer, the dancers and the players and all that. And I mean, I gotta thank them because if I don't, you know, they're gonna scalp me. He said, what year was this? 1993. And I saw Robbie Robertson. The color drain from Robbie Robertson's face. And he literally took his head and in the most Jewish gesture of his life, put his head in his hands and slunk his head to the table where his salad was sitting at this 10 top in the Sheraton Universal Ballroom.
- [66:47]
B
By the way, that's very Trumpy.
- [66:51]
A
Oh, he was very Trumpy, by the way. I mean, in a different era, if he hadn't and he had drug problems and stuff, like, I think he was a cocaine act, which Trump, of course, never really was, but I mean, in a different era, he would have been talked about for prep, but he was thought of as an evil force about to destroy everything. And then, of course, he created cnn, which is now like the last remaining. What would you call it? Like a kind of. It is the titan of news. It is the old. It's the most venerable news organization the world has ever seen. What is more establishment? What is more boring? What is more less upstart than cnn? Nothing. Nothing. But it was bad, it was evil, and it was taking market share and all of that. Like everything that you imagine today whenever anybody complains about somebody doing something new. Turner was one of those originating figures. Classic Schumpeter capitalism. He was a destroyer and a creator and a remarkable man, even though he was a nut job who basically ruined his own $10 million production by making a racist joke about Native American who are gonna scalp him for not praising their dance. We'll be back tomorrow for Seth Eliana and Abram John Pothoric's Keep the Candle Bur. Sa.