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- [00:04]
Jon Podhoretz
Hope for the best, expect the worst Some preach and pain Some die of thirst the way of knowing which way it's going Hope for the best Expect the worst, hope for the best. Welcome to the Commentary Magazine daily podcast. Today is Tuesday, April 29, 2025. I am Jon Pudhoritz, the editor of Commentary. With me, as always, executive editor Abe Greenwald. Hi, Abe.
- [00:37]
Abe Greenwald
Hi, John.
- [00:38]
Jon Podhoretz
Social commentary columnist Christine Rosen. Hi, Christine.
- [00:41]
Christine Rosen
Hi, John.
- [00:42]
Jon Podhoretz
And senior editor Seth Mandel. Hi, Seth.
- [00:44]
Seth Mandel
Hi, John.
- [00:45]
Jon Podhoretz
We're gonna have a special show this Friday, a Commentary mailbag show. We will answer your listener questions or your viewer questions if you are watching us on YouTube. So please email us your questions@podcastometary.org that's podcastometary.org and we'll see how many we can get through on this coming Friday. Probably one of those questions will involve the results of the Canadian election last night, if you recall, two, three months ago, when P, excuse me, Justin Trudeau stepped down as head of the Liberals in Canada, the Conservatives were up by 25 points in the polling in Canada, and not only did they lose, but Pierre Polievre, the leader of the Conservatives, lost his own seat in the election. And as far as I can tell, ain't nobody in the world assigning blame for this result to anyone but one Donald John Trump, President of the United States, and his astoundingly disrespectful private joke about how Canada shouldn't exist as a country and should be the 51st state. So talk about the larger geopolitical meaning of this, but can anybody discern what private amusement triggered Trump's enjoyment of this bit? I can't think of it as anything but a bit about how Canada should be the 51st state. I'm calling him Governor Trudeau, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah that he wouldn't drop. Kind of like a guy at a comedy club, he does this bit, it bombs. And I think he decides that he's just going to keep going with it until he can force his audience to find it funny. I don't understand the geopolitical meaning of it. I don't understand the purpose of it. And it has now had pretty significant real world consequences that interrupt the narrative that Trump is the leader of a new populist worldwide surge movement to oust Liberals from power and bring in nationalist, you know, anti liberal, anti woke forces. So apparently he did trigger some form of nationalism, but it was anti Trump, anti American nationalism. And that's not what we are wanting the world to be experiencing, I believe.
- [03:30]
Abe Greenwald
Well, there was a Lot of populist anger at Trudeau throughout the pandemic in the US too. I mean, because of the crazy lockdowns and the trucker movement and all that. So Trudeau had been a target of a sort of MAGA target before this presidency. It seems Donald Trump took that, ran with it, kept going like a lot of entertainers do, you know, took one joke and beat up on it too long and this is the result.
- [04:13]
Jon Podhoretz
You know, you're speaking about this and it's like when I'm listening to you talk ab, I'm thinking, what do we care? What do we care? It was interesting because yeah, there was this kind of like the Canadians took our excessive government led response to the pandemic and turned it up, as we say in Spinal tap language to 11. And so therefore, you know, you could understand a kind of cross border sympathy on the part of people who thought that the government was heavy handed and governments were being heavy handed for Canadians and what they had gone through. But thinking about this, thinking about the interest that MAGA pays in the AfD in Germany, in Viktor Orban in Hungary, in the populist, in what's going on in France. JD Vance going around Europe and lecturing them about how terrible they all are in handling this. I had this weird moment just now where I thought, MAGA seems to be trying to emulate the idea of international communism or a kind of right wing omni cause effect in the first half of the 20th century where, or even through until let's say the late 70s or something like that, in which leftists in general looking internationally at, felt some kind of commonality with leftist movements all over the world about which, with, with whom we had literally no common cause or particular connection. You know, they would celebrate Che Guevara, they would celebrate the North Vietnamese or, or, or, or indigenous movements in weird places like East Timor, stuff like that, that they really had no particular connection to except this idea that there was something giant happening in the world that they could, that would come back as a kind of tidal wave and wash over the United States or something like that. And I thought, gee, we don't want to emulate international communist conspiracies. But I guess I was wrong because I know Steve Bannon calls himself a Leninist. And so maybe that's what's really going on here. And now we have the world saying we don't want your Leninism.
- [06:46]
Christine Rosen
I don't think it's that sophisticated, honestly. I think it's just the relationship with Canada is similar to how Trump 2.0 has treated all of our easygoing Democratic allies, which is like crap. I mean, it's basically the international relations version of twerking up against your end, you know, against your allies, and then caving time and time again to your enemies, as he has done with China, most notably, and Russia as well. So I think he's, I don't know that there's a strategy. The Vance, the Vance types actually do love to hold up. Hungary in particular, which is great as a model unless you look at their economy, which is terrible, and a lot of the more authoritarian ways in which Orban has held on to power. But I don't see this as a movement because I don't actually think intellectually there's enough framework there for them to make that case. And I don't think the people in these other countries have any particularly particular loyalty to Trump. And for the Canadians, I mean, there's a perverse side of my nature that has been laughing since I saw the election results because he did this. Trump did this. I mean, this really was a kind of radical shift brought on entirely by his completely undisciplined rhetoric, like, like almost everything else.
- [07:56]
Seth Mandel
Right. We talked about his plummeting in the polls. We saw a poll the other day where he was, so far, he was 50 points, almost 50 points underwater with Hispanics through his first hundred days. And we've talked about how all of this is, you know, he, he, he puts the rake down and then he steps on it. And the candidate thing is, is, is really no different. These are all self inflicted. But I think there's something else going on in the international sphere which is I find MAGA to be leading, if leading, leading from behind, but really more following than leading. And I think that they tend to, they tend to want to emulate winners, right? They're like very strong horse associated. They look abroad and they see that social conservatives in Hungary have achieved something, right? They have more, more or less brought the universities to heel. They have more or less occupied the cultural space, the natural cultural space, all this, and they try to emulate it. There was a period of time where natcon national conservatives would talk a lot about Israel as a model. Why? Because they liked the idea of a, you know, a nation state for a people. And their nationalism, they thought was Israel was supposedly evident that their nationalism, you know, was not, was not a relic of the past. And of course they missed the key point that, you know, nationalism in Hungary is kind of the reason there needs to be a Jewish state. It's not actually, it's not actually like emulating each other. It's more like you want nationalism so badly that the Jews have to have this, this, this safe space. But, but I think that that's what's happened. So I think that. And I remember having this discussion with them on the Israel stuff, which is they didn't realize at the time, for example, that Israel's national policies on abortion were extremely permissive. Right. What they saw was the right had crushed the left. That's what happened in Macro. They loved it. They saw Orban crush the left. They, they loved it. And in Canada, I think they're waiting for some. I think they wait for somebody to do it on his own. And they don't, you know, they don't actually try to. In other words, they don't actually try to bring up a farm team of right wingers across the world. I think they latch on to people they think are already winning.
- [10:23]
Jon Podhoretz
I think that's an interesting analogy. I think, I think everybody, everybody here is right. But I do want to focus on this fact. I mean, you said Trump puts down the rake and steps on it. Maybe he's perfectly happy with the results last night in this sense. Right. He said to Jeffrey Goldberg and the Atlantic team in this interview that he did with them yesterday, you know, he had a tough time in his first term, but now he's running America and he's running the world. So. He's running the world. So the first big event to measure how he is seen in the world is an election in neighboring Canada in which he is basically punched in the face. The idea being open a mouth about us and we are going to do whatever we can to limit your influence on our country. Because if we elected a Tory, he would probably be somebody that you would be more in sympathy with or that you could deal with. And we want somebody who will stand up to you. We want Mark Carney, the newly, basically the new prime minister, to stand up to you and to be a leader of international resistance to. But maybe he doesn't mind that. Maybe one way of showing that he runs the world is that the world, you know, rears up in horror at him. And it just proves he can change the results of an election in Canada. You know, like, he becomes the issue in Canada, too. I mean, if you are as solipsistic as Trump might be, the idea that entire elections in other countries are going to hinge on you personally, that's just a reinforcement of the idea that you are the most important person on earth. You wouldn't think that the President of the United States would need that psychological reinforcement. As it is self evidently true that the most important person in the world is the President of the United States. And yet here we are with a man who seems to have a ceaseless need to be reminded of and to demonstrate his utter and complete centrality in the news cycle, in conversations, in culture, in whatever. And that is a maw that cannot be filled, it would appear. But I want to suggest that this momentary thought about the international communist movement and MAGA should be taken a little more seriously, even though it did just pop into my head. So you can say maybe it shouldn't, because it was just like one of those late night dorm room moments of insight that should probably be discarded.
- [13:06]
Christine Rosen
It's okay. We're not all stoned, so it's fine. You can have those in the morning.
- [13:09]
Jon Podhoretz
In the morning you're almost like stoned with exhaustion, but okay. My point is that when they look around the world and they see Bolsonaro in Brazil and they see Bukele in El Salvador, they see Orban, they saw Duterte in the Philippines and other places, and as you say, like these are all strong horses, they're all tough guys. They're using democratic elections to get Modi maybe a little bit in India they're using elections. And what they want to do is, is observed is power through nationalist policies. And that they think that there is, as Seth is saying, a sort of consistency in nationalism between Indian nationalism, American nationalism, Brazilian nationalism, El Salvadoran nationalism, Philippine nationalism, and Hungarian nationalism. And that is deranged. It is deranged because yes, it does seem to follow this model of this idea that, you know, the point about international communism was it did stem from the same root and it wasn't entirely ideological. It was to further and advance the interests and causes largely of this one country that was seeking to export its ideology in part to reshape the world to its own national interests. And that was the Soviet Union and then maybe a little bit China after the split between China and Russia, or the differing policy interests of the two largest communist countries in the world in the 1950s and 1960s. There was a unified interest because the Soviets were running point and seeding this mission around the world, seeding people, educating them, training them in Africa and places like that to sort of export this ideology to reshape the world. And nationalism is almost exactly the opposite of that. Right? It's the encouragement of internal ideas about blood and soil in the specific countries in which you lead and they're all gonna have completely inimical interests over time. Like there is no such thing as a nationalist alliance, national cross, international nationalism.
- [15:41]
Christine Rosen
Yeah, but Canadian national. He's just prompted the emergence of a left wing Canadian nationalism. So much of that acceptance speech last night was talking about Canada. I mean, you could just see the flag waving going on. I mean, so he might, rather than bring together an international MAGA collective, he might spark a sort of return to a more nationalistic tone and patriotic rhetoric among the left in democracies. I think that's actually, it's not going to happen in Orban's country, which, by the way, the country, the countries that he is most connected to in terms of the MAGA leadership pointing to them and saying these are ideals are very small, very. I mean, I think what. Hungary has fewer than 10 million people.
- [16:20]
Jon Podhoretz
These are 11.
- [16:21]
Christine Rosen
I think it's 11 million small, small countries, often with very homogenous populations who rely, by the way, on immigrant workers coming in to do a lot of the economic grunt work to keep their economy afloat. So it's not a great model if you start digging down even a little bit beneath the surface.
- [16:39]
Abe Greenwald
I think, John, your analogy is very interesting. If we play with it a little. I think maybe what MAGA sees as their version of the proletariat, let's say, is not the nationalist per se. Because you could argue very convincingly that Ukraine, for example, is soldiering on in this battle, this nationalist fight for its people, for its nation, and they hate Ukraine. It is those who MAGA perceive as traditionalists, Western traditionalists. That's what they think. That's who they think. They have this sort of, you know, invisible network of connections with.
- [17:33]
Seth Mandel
There's one more element of it which is that I think he's okay. And this is not 12 dimensional chess, but I think he's okay with what Christine just mentioned, the rise of left wing nationalism too. I think when you look at him talking about, well, Europe should take care of Ukraine and everybody should pay more into NATO and America should stop carrying the bag and all this stuff, he has, has. He has sparked a similar feeling. Obviously it's very, you know, we're not neighbors with France, but in France, you know, there's this, all right, we better get serious. Maybe we need a unified European Defense Organization or something like that. You know, in Germany there's some, you know, also some, you know, some nerves about that stuff that he has sparked a counter nationalism in more than one place. And I think that he likes the result. So Far, because what he's hearing is they're going to take more of the burden. They're not going to rely on America. He's okay with that. You know, and the American, the American right has, for a very long time, I mean, since the Cold War, felt that the international connection was about building an alliance of democracies and, you know, and America thriving better in a world where democracy is more readily available and all that stuff and free trade, things like that. And he sort of turned that all on his head where he's like, everybody should either hate me or love me, but no one should just follow us and be indifferent to us. You, everybody should emerge with their own, like, individual personality. And whether it's pro or con, Trump, he sort of gets what he wants.
- [19:14]
Christine Rosen
But he's also sending a lot of those countries running straight into the open arms of China. And that should worry us because China's saying, oh, America doesn't want these responsibilities. We're happy to do that. They've been doing that for decades in Africa, consolidating power, giving money away, building bridges and roads and all kinds of infrastructure that leaves very much smaller, unstable countries reliant on them and useful to China. So in that sense, the long term strategy is missing when it comes to dealing with this rising power in the East. And he, I know he said lots of things off and on about China, but that for me is the one gaping hole in this idea that America requiring Europe, for example, to put on its big boy pants and pay its own way is some sort of long term good strategy. I just, I don't see it with China in the, in the mix.
- [20:03]
Jon Podhoretz
You know, not only did I get this, you know, flash of dorm room inspiration about MAGA and the international communist movement, Seth, you just triggered another dorm room insight, which is so Trump's like, we don't want to lead, right? We don't want. We, you, Europe, you do it like you do it. We're going to restrain her. All we do is get in trouble. We go to war, we get in trouble and all of this. So he's just Obama. Trump is Obama. Follow, follow the logic here. What did Obama say? American exceptionalism? Well, we feel like we're exceptional. The Greeks feel like they're every other, every country thinks it's exceptional. So there is no such thing as American exceptionalism, which of course wasn't, isn't what American exceptionalism as a theory is about, but nonetheless, that is. And who led from behind? Where did the phrase leading from behind? It came from a Senior Obama official. We still don't know who it was unnamed who said that's what we're going to do in Libya by letting France be the lead actor in the effort to deal with Libya in 2011. We're going to leave from behind. So congratulations, Donald Trump and MAGA on the third term of the Obama foreign policy administration. But this is fascinating because accomplishment you have achieved here.
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Christine Rosen
But this, this is.
- [21:31]
Jon Podhoretz
And the JCPOA and returning to the negotiating table with Iran and sucking up to the Russians. But he's done more just. It's really mazel tov to you.
- [21:43]
Christine Rosen
This is. No, but listen, he's. If he's doing that, I like this idea. But they. But he's adding something to it which I think makes it interesting and useful to his base. It's moral relativism of the type that Obama practiced, but it's couched in a very moralizing language about what he's doing it for, what his motivation is for the make America great stuff. So I think that's why that point gets missed, even though the results are exactly the same. I think you're right about that moralizing.
- [22:13]
Jon Podhoretz
But he was moralizing from the left. Right. So the moralizing is the fundamental message of Obama's foreign policy. In my view, the, er, message was America over the last 30 years or something has not really been a good actor on the world stage. And things have gone wrong and we have made them worse. And one of the reasons we need to lead from behind is that the world understands that we are morally questionable in our application of our power because we did Abu Ghraib and we're tied down in Iraq and we went to war over false pretenses in Iraq and we're bad. There's something bad about us and all of that. Now maybe Trump. Trump is not saying that we're bad. So that is the new. He's saying everybody else in the world is screwing us. So. So screw them. And he said something interesting.
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Abe Greenwald
Yeah, he's saying we're stupid.
- [23:14]
Christine Rosen
Okay, so wait, can we take the dorm?
- [23:17]
Jon Podhoretz
Obama said we're bad and Trump says we're stupid.
- [23:19]
Christine Rosen
Okay, but can we take the dorm room metaphor? So Obama's the guy who shows up at the dorm room party wearing the this is what a male feminist looks like T shirt.
- [23:27]
Jon Podhoretz
Yeah.
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Christine Rosen
And Trump is. The guy who comes in is like, I'm going to blow it all up because this is terrible. And I'm. I'm being taken for a sucker. Like they eat. There's a type. But you're Right. That the end result leads to the these policies that look very similar in application.
- [23:40]
Jon Podhoretz
So I would say that the T shirt that, that, that the Trump people are wearing is one that if you walk through New York's T shirt world, either in Times Square where you buy shirt or on various places where they have cheap T shirt places where you can buy stuff. There is now there are shirts that hang in the window or on the street that you can buy that say what the effing F. But they don't say F and F. They complete both the, the gerund and the. And the right. What the effing F that is? That's maga. Maga's walking around in T shirts that say what the effing F and Obama's wearing. This is what a male feminist looks like. And that's, that's the world. This is the choice that has now devolved to us. Right.
- [24:37]
Christine Rosen
So end up caving to Iran, evidently. So that's what's so fascinating.
- [24:42]
Abe Greenwald
And conservatives generally wear the T shirt that says I'm with stupid.
- [24:50]
Jon Podhoretz
And. Right. Okay. So, you know, I was thinking yesterday as I was driving to an event I had to go to that, you know, though we did talk about the importance of the Trump administration moving on, disparate impact and various other things that, you know, been too hard on. It's too hard. And the hundred day. Today is the hundredth day. And we should really. Brit Hume said something interesting last night, which is we've never seen any administration in our lifetimes come out of the paddock as energetically and on so many fronts as this administration and that it's a new model and it was. Even if the results prove problematic, something very interesting and new has happened here. And I thought, well, you know, maybe this is really worth having a conversation about. And then came the results in Canada. And then came news that Trump is extending the deadline on the, on the peace talks with Iran for another three weeks. And then came I don't know what else, a couple of other things that happened. And I thought, no, I'm sorry, you know, I would really like to be able to issue a report card that said there's all this stuff on the positive side of the ledger and there's all this stuff. And you know what? We'll see, we'll see how it goes. I don't see how you can look at what happened yesterday in Canada and not say that Trump as an actor on the international stage is not either stepping on the rake, as Seth would put it, or he is he is intruding in a very bizarre way in the internal affairs of other countries. That I know that's a sort of thing that people talk about. But I mean, if you don't want entangling alliances, you want to be like George Washington in his farewell address and say we need to beware of entangling alliances, fine, that's great. So we don't want to have entangling alliances, but do we want to create conditions in neighboring countries and other places that are implacably opposed to us and that are going to build their politics around anti American ideas? Because Trump represents something that they find understandably threatening to their prevailing national consensus? Even if you say, ah, this is all nonsense and it's foolishness and there's nothing he's going to do to Canada, but if he hates Canada, he's already like talking about putting $200 billion percent tariffs on Canadian lumber and stuff like that. Like, he is a real. He could have a really disastrous effect on Canada. That is not in the American interest. In any understanding of the American interest is in, like making a neighbor into an enemy. That is, even if they, the neighbor can't, you know, invade us and, you know, hurt us that way. This is a calamity. This is a, this is a psychotic calamity. He is behaving like an irrational, psychotic person in office. This crap about Panama, this crap about Greenland, we want to laugh and joke and say it's funny. And I'm sorry, Matt's not on today because he has a more, I don't know what you would call it, more nuanced and flavored idea that Trump would like to end his term doing something in the form of territorial expansion of the United States in a way that no one has expanded the territory of the United States in 100 years. So this is his game. Maybe it is, maybe it isn't. There are real world effects now, and it's only 109. On the 99th day of Trump's term, he changed the politics of our closest ally on the planet Earth in an anti American direction.
- [28:44]
Seth Mandel
Well, and what you're describing is we go back to the first term, the early days of Trump, right? The, the universally accepted metaphor by the brilliant John Mulaney was that Trump is a horse in a hospital.
- [29:00]
Jon Podhoretz
Right?
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Seth Mandel
That's what, that's what Mulaney said in his standup special. There's a horse in the hospital and people, you know, were going, well, you know, some of us can ride horses, and I have an apple. Horses like and he's like, you don't understand. Like, there's a horse in a hospital. Yeah, that's what you're describing. Like, you have unleashed something that nobody actually knows how to contain.
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Jon Podhoretz
But he's not.
- [29:28]
Seth Mandel
Nobody actually knows where this is going to go, but it's going to obviously be destructive.
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Jon Podhoretz
But look, the horse in the hospital metaphor was so fantastic because, of course, the horse didn't know what the horse was doing either. Right? The horse is a horse. It just got through the doors. And then it's just being a horse, which is it weighs 2,000 pounds and it's kicking. You know, it's kicking in the ICU, and, you know, you try to give it an apple, but then it, you know, kicks you in the head. It's a horse. He knew what he was doing. This Canada thing is conscious, deliberate. And I don't think his purpose was to end up with the Liberals back in power. I don't think he had a particular purpose, except what he wanted to do was take some kind of a pin and just prick the back of the neck of every Canadian, 40 million Canadian, just like, stick it. Like. Just stick it in the back of the neck just like every. And. And. And intermittently. So you didn't know if it was coming or not. And he wouldn't drop it. And the polling is changing in Canada, and somebody might have said, you know what? You better drop it because, like, you're gonna get Carney elected. So let's just drop it. And he couldn't drop it because he didn't want to drop it, because he wanted to see what was going to happen with this game that he is playing. Similarly to what happened in Greenland when he sends Vance and his son and, you know, I don't know, you know, in the Cook and whatever. And nobody even wants to meet Usha Vance in the town of Nook, now that we all know that the name of the capital of Greenland is Nook. Nobody wanted to come out Greenland. Maybe Greenland would, under other circumstances, might want to become part of the United States. Like if we went there and said, here, we're going to give you a billion. We're going to buy you for $100 billion. And everybody in Greenland, like in the movie Local Hero, is going to get a $10 million payout to become part of the United. Maybe they would have liked it. You know what I mean? He didn't make it. Didn't make an offer. Make an offer to Denmark, you know, whatever. Give him $100 billion and then spread all this money around Nook and then we can buy Greenland. The thing though, Greenland's like, I don't wanna become part of America. Why not? You know, why not? Cause of him. Who would wanna be part of this country if he's the guy who's buying you? Because then he'll stiff you like he stiffs his lawyers.
- [32:02]
Abe Greenwald
The thing about Trump though, and I think it's important to remember this, at the 100 day mark, nothing lasts, absolutely nothing lasts. The first 10 days were great and like if you look at the first 10 days for him, that was 100 days he should have been like, you know, if he were assessed at the 10 day mark as the sort of usual marker of what's going to, you know, frame a presidency, it would have looked entirely different. I suspect the 200 day mark will look much different from the 100 day mark. Nothing less.
- [32:43]
Jon Podhoretz
But I'm gonna say it's gonna look worse. Here's what I'm gonna say. It may or may not, but let.
- [32:47]
Abe Greenwald
Me just say nothing less, including the tariffs, including the war on Canada, including the war on Greenland. He can go back and forth and change and divert at any time and I'm sure he will.
- [33:00]
Jon Podhoretz
Here's why I think it's going to be worse. Here's how he talks about the most catchphrase.
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Christine Rosen
John, you didn't deploy the catchphrase.
- [33:08]
Jon Podhoretz
It's worse than that.
- [33:11]
Christine Rosen
Thank you.
- [33:13]
Jon Podhoretz
Let's go to the things that really matter. Because okay, it's bad. I said by Canada is bad. But like, you know, the world is not going to hinge on how Canadian voters feel about the choice between Pierre Polievra and Mark Carney. You know, I don't, whatever. Ukraine, Iran, Russia, Houthis, Israel and Gaza. So here's the situation. Trump yesterday said Putin issued a statement, Russia issued a statement saying everything that you've asked us for the United States, we are not going to do. Here's how we get peace. Ukraine concedes every single inch of territory that we have taken and some besides, and then maybe we'll stop bombing them. But you know what Lavrov and Putin did to Trump and to Witkoff and all that, slowly raised their middle finger and stuck it in their face after weeks and months of this. And Trump, as somebody asked Trump again, I can't remember which of the hundred days interviews this was in, said, is this gonna, are you gonna feel more positively about Ukraine now that Russia has made it clear that it actually, all it wants is this territorial seizure? And he said, yeah, maybe Maybe I will, you know, maybe the Ukrainians. I'll feel better about the Ukrainians, maybe. But not Zelensky, though. Not Zelensky. Like, you know, I've had a hard time with Zelensky. Now here's where Abe's point is important. For five years before he got elected, Trump would not attack Zelensky. Right. Zelenskyy was on the other side of the perfect phone call. Zelenskyy was okay. He, he had thousands of opportunities to jump onto the MAGA bandwagon with this idea that Zelensky was mean to cat with Christians because he was suppressing the Russian Orthodox Church, which is of course a tool of Putin and a fifth column inside Ukraine. And it's no joke. And you can't in the middle of a war have an, or, a place where the enemy can organize under cover of, of religion if, if you're fighting for your very survival. So he's bad this way and he's bad that way. And he came here and he went on a trip with a Democratic congressman and he' Monster. And he's, he's a criminal. And he did deals with whatever and I don't know, he never jumped on that bandwagon. But he obviously, like he said, I'm going to solve in a day. And Ukraine said, we're not going to leave the battlefield unilaterally. And then he started getting annoyed and saying nasty things about him. And then of course came the Oval Office meeting where, you know, 40 year old J.D. vance with his, you know, with his pretty blue eyes and his beard, yells at Volodymyr Zelensky and says he's disrespectful to Donald Trump because they're actually having a conversation. And Trump said, and Zelinsky says, let me explain to you why I think you're wrong about this. And apparently you're not allowed to say that in a meeting with Trump because. Or because Vance will come in and slap you with a glove and dare you to a duel or something like that. What has Zelensky done that he's given Trump a hard time or. I've had a hard time with Zelensky. What did Zelensky do if he's going to change views on Ukraine? Zelensky is the elected leader of Ukraine. Zelenskyy has been proved right under his own terms. Russia has not negotiated in good faith on his peace deal. He should be mad at Russia, but he wants to have this enemy. And so whatever that is, it's not serious.
- [37:18]
Christine Rosen
Well, but this is the weakness of Trump's strategy. It was there in the first term, it's resurfaced again in the second about his personalization of power. He likes that, you know, he likes the strong man, he likes to seem strong himself. But the different. I was reading, I think it was in the Wall Street Journal gathering a lot of opinions about the 100 days, and someone pointed out the contrast between being an old school conservative like we, we are, and a populist. And that was between when it came comes to geopolitics. And that's the difference between Ronald Reagan saying Mr. Gorbachev, tear down that wall, tear down this wall, and Donald Trump on true social pleading. Vladimir, stop. One is a leader and the other is not. And I think one is person. Reagan understood the, the existential risk of communism spreading. And I don't think Trump understands the power dynamic in the same way. He sees everything through this lens of personal connection and obviously through a personal offense. And that really does color his judgment. It also leads to exactly what Abe was pointing out. He'll change his mind. If he's, if he's at the Pope's funeral and he has a nice chat with, with Zelensky, then maybe he feels a little more kindly towards him. But that has nothing to do with the larger existential questions of America's leadership role in the world.
- [38:32]
Jon Podhoretz
Okay, so that's Russia and Ukraine.
- [38:34]
Seth Mandel
Also the Vice president killed the Pope. We haven't even gotten.
- [38:39]
Jon Podhoretz
He broke the championship trophy, killed the Pope. I was trying to think of who, you know, I mean, maybe he could have a meeting with Peter Beinart and we could see what happens then. Anyway, let me just move on now to Iran. So Iran, they're having this nuclear negotiation with Iran and we keep hearing that. The terms of the nuclear negotiation, again, Obama three are about regressing the, you know, the refined nuclear materials to 3.67%, which was what the term was, that allowed us to provide Iran with $150 billion in cash pallets after the deal was struck. Now, we don't aren't going to be giving them money in that way, but here we are negotiating that. And Trump wants those negotiations to continue. Why? Let me ask you this question. Why do you want to negotiate with this country? Two things happened this weekend. One thing happened this weekend. There are two possibles, right? Two possible reasons, one of which is the port blew up and the Iranians did it because they stink and they left the flammable material next to the, you know, everything blew up because of Iranian incompetence. And malfeasance. And this is a country, as we were, we talked about yesterday, that if this is how it's handling things is in a state of degradation and we should be jumping on its degradation and, and, and, and playing games to see that it can, that its power continues to degrade. Right, or the Israelis did it, in which case the Israelis are signaling to the United States that they can act with impunity in Iran to degrade Iran's power. And they are working at it. They're doing it. They're this, they're that, the other thing. And so if we wanted to jump in and help destroy the nuclear facilities, it's very low cost to the United States because look at what this one little piss and country with 9 million people a thousand miles away from Tehran can do. It's got total operational power inside this country of 85 million people or however many people. I can't even remember how many people live in Iran, you know, with nuclear weapons and the first world economy and all, you know, not a first world economy, you know, like with this huge export market in oil and all that. And we're not taking any advantage of it. We're going to continue negotiating over some idiot peace deal with this regime whose leaders are 211 years old and that everyone in Iran hates and that Israel seems to have as a puppet on a string. So that's Iran. So then we got, we got Russia, we got Iran, I don't know what else we have. I mean, it's just, what the hell, it's 100 days and he's screwing everything up. And I'm sorry, I wish I didn't feel this way, cuz he's pretty good on Israel. But you know what I. 45% of Americans, according to Marist this morning, are giving the Trump administration an F. Eight years ago, at this point in 100 days, they gave the administration 32% of people gave Trump an F.
- [42:10]
Christine Rosen
And the number from that Marist poll that he, that should concern both Trump and Republicans is that the independents that he got a lot of in this reelection, more than half of them are now grading him a D or an F. So that's. Actually, those are the people who will decide the next few elections.
- [42:26]
Jon Podhoretz
Right.
- [42:26]
Seth Mandel
Well, speaking of what the effing F.
- [42:29]
Jon Podhoretz
Harris won independence by three. So that, so you know, it's not like he won the independence by 16 and now he's. No, but he needs, but he needs, he can't have them as antagonists and opponents. The numbers, some of the Numbers in these poll, in this polling are staggering and suggest once again that the American people have a weirdly more flavored opinion on complicated matters than we ever give them credit for being. Because we think they're all stupid. And watching TikTok and, you know, taking fentanyl and. And getting plastic surgery or whatever.
- [43:04]
Christine Rosen
Don't all think that. Who thinks that?
- [43:06]
Jon Podhoretz
You know what I'm saying? Well, you know what I'm saying.
- [43:09]
Christine Rosen
He's making the same mistake that Kamala Harris made in her election campaign, which is thinking she knows better what the American people need and want than they themselves standing in front of her going, we don't.
- [43:20]
Jon Podhoretz
They like closing the border. Right? The large majorities like closing the border. Shockingly small numbers like deportation, like, on some of these cases. There are specific things in the deportation model that I would have thought would have been more popular, like deporting anti American people who yell at America, yell at Israel in.
- [43:46]
Christine Rosen
They like deportation of criminals. They like the deportation of criminals.
- [43:50]
Jon Podhoretz
That's okay. But. But what I'm saying, right? So that's why I say it's flavored. Like, they like the deportation of criminals and they like the closing of the border. They don't like Abrego. They don't like the deportation of Abrego Garcia. They don't like deporting. I guess they don't really like deporting Mahmoud Khalil. Based on the. How the poll said, 17% favor the deportation of people who speak up against America at rallies.
- [44:17]
Abe Greenwald
You know, but, you know, but that's a misleading question. That's not the question.
- [44:21]
Jon Podhoretz
I know it's not the question, but the very fact that the question can be asked and the number is so small. That the number is so small means that he has not convinced the American people. What they want is the Mexican border to be closed. What we like. A lot of what we like, which is using this as a means of getting out people from this country who are, you know, making life on campus a living hell and exporting these ideas beyond our shores and all of that. Ask the American people. That's not. That's not their. Remember, 70% of Americans don't have a BA.
- [45:02]
Christine Rosen
Yeah. That the elite cares about the college campuses because it's where they came from and where their kids go. But the rest of America, it's not their most important.
- [45:09]
Jon Podhoretz
They're like, why don't even ask me this question? I don't. Whatever. People should be able to say whatever they want to say. That's the American. It's like, what do you mean they can't say what they want to say? I'm sorry. No.
- [45:18]
Abe Greenwald
But if they said, but my point, if they just said, do you support deporting foreign internationals who are aligned with and promote U.S. designated terrorist organizations?
- [45:31]
Christine Rosen
Maybe.
- [45:33]
Jon Podhoretz
But I'm just saying it's not, it's, these are less open and shut than we think. And we thought, and I think they thought, like the caravans in 2018 and other things, that highlighting individual cases of bad actors would redound to their benefit. And it seems actually to be activating the opposition and not particularly juicing their support.
- [45:58]
Abe Greenwald
Well, I think it all makes Trump look stumbled. It makes the deportation efforts look stumbling and bumbling because there are constant fights, there are constant stays, there are constant questions about, did he violate this judge's order? Did he not? Was this person, did they receive the process that they were supposed to receive? Did they not? It's like they're walking into all these hurdles. I think that it, so it makes the deportation effort look ineffective, at least.
- [46:32]
Jon Podhoretz
Right.
- [46:34]
Abe Greenwald
Which it's not like there's a lot of deportations happening, aside from the highlighted cases.
- [46:40]
Christine Rosen
And he has effectively closed the border. That he did fulfill that campaign promise. That's worked. That's worked.
- [46:45]
Seth Mandel
And the other thing he'll say is that, hey, how about those protests on campus? And you know, the other day Columbia said, no, you can't, you can't do it. And nobody showed up. I mean, he'll say, look, it's happening, the disruptions by foreign students, we canceled 150 visas or whatever, and they got the point. And they're still going to go through this fight with Mahmoud Khalil, probably win it, I would think. But either way, yeah, either way, they're going through this fight as a sort of like, it's like a post credits scene in a movie. They've already, he's already had the impact on the target audience that he wanted to have the impact on, and now this will play out one or another way. But Colombia has already said, you know, we'll call on the cops. And Harvard is negotiating with them, along with several other universities and whatever. You just see a difference. You, you see a difference and he'll say that and you'll see a difference with, you know, with deportations and with the, the border, too. I'm not saying that's the reason he did it or that it's all good. I'm just saying he, you have a list of things where he's going to say illegal immigration is going down the disruptions by foreign students at colleges are going down, the colleges are not letting the lunatics run the asylum, etc. He's going to point to all these things and say, and. And he's going to rely on results and not process. And that's usually, although I deplore the tossing of process out the window like everybody else on the podcast, that's usually a good overall bet with voters, and that's not happening yet. And he seems to be waiting for it to happen, but that's what he's bet on.
- [48:47]
Jon Podhoretz
Okay, I don't think he waits for anything to happen because that assumes that he lives in an understanding that there are future benefits to things. And I think he lives entirely in the present. But I will tell you about a conversation I had last night with somebody who is not, who is not in Trump 2, but was in Trump 1 and offered me this analysis that conforms with your description here. He said, look, when we were trying to build fight the Left in Trump 1, we were very careful. We were meticulous and careful. We made our cases, we dotted our I's, we crossed our T's. We took a year to file a case in some court and all of that, you know, to do all this in this way. And what happened was it went through all the processes that it had to go through. And in a lot of these cases, these things take years to adjudicate. It would take us 18 months to build, to bring this to fruition or to begin the process where we had everything lined up meticulously and we ran out of time. Like the, you know, the administration ended, we didn't get the second term. And so a lot of this stuff that we did, either Covid happened, which slowed everything down, or the administration ended and we didn't do it. And so I think part of the lesson of the second term for these, for everybody, was get everything out the door now immediately, because we have four years and we're done. So do it dirty. If you have to do it, just do it. Do it through the executive orders or do it whatever, because they're going to come and there's going to be lawsuits and all that. And at least we can get a jump on it. We don't have to start clean because that didn't work for us the first time, which I think is an interesting. First of all, I'm sure it's true, because the person I talk to really knows his stuff. And secondly, I think it's an interesting way of looking at the first hundred days in a more positive frame on some of these matters.
- [50:40]
Christine Rosen
Well, and some of that, some of that is good in the sense that the shock and awe strategy does allow certain things to get through without litigation in particular. But it's also creating a real stress test for the balance of power in our federal government and the overreach of the executive and the challenge to the role of Congress. And in some sense, that could end up long term, I think, having a very healthy response if Congress awakens from its slumber and starts legislating again and all of this, the branches balance out. But he, that overreach, I think, is part of what explains why the average American feels a little unsettled and actually doesn't care so much about the details of process so much as the executive overreach, because we do not like kings. And he has in many cases, and we've talked about on the podcast, behaved like a monarch. And that's actually part of that strategy. It's like order after order after order, and we'll see what sticks. Some of that, I, I think we all agree has done really good things, particularly on dei, particularly on transgender issues. These are areas where the left had reached so far into the institutions that it needed a shock treatment. But not all. And Americans are so pragmatic in the sense of how a single person gets to wield power in this country. And that's a healthy thing. That's a good thing.
- [51:52]
Jon Podhoretz
And we haven't even mentioned the tariffs, which, of course, are win, lose or draw. The point at which you can see the slide, right, is, is liberation day, is tariff day, where you see the American people go, why? What, what are you doing? You know, some weird statements issued by people who should like tariffs, Teamsters, longshoreman, other people saying, we don't like tariffs got, you know, now we have this whole idea that now automobiles are going to be exempt from tariffs, which sounds smart as a matter of macroeconomics, since, of course, that's, I don't know whether it's the largest single industry in the United, I mean, you know, in cash terms in the United States. But, like, if you're, again, like some guy who has a, who makes a part for something and you're suddenly paying 25% more for the components of the part that you make at your factory or wherever you, you know, in Nebraska, you're like, why is Ford getting this break? Like, what is this? Are we now back in the world in which big business gets everything it wants? And, and then I, a guy with 42 employees, I'm going to have to lay off 20 of them because I can't afford the materials that I need to do what I do. Like, that is bad politics. I thought Republicans had learned not to side with big business and decide with the little guy. And the tariff policy that he is now pursuing in line with the macroeconomic advice of his treasury secretary and others who are looking at the largest part sectors of the economy and saying, we are going to go into a massive recession if cars cost $8,000 more per unit because of your stupid tariffs. So we better, if you're not going to drop the tariffs, we better exempt auto companies from these things.
- [53:54]
Christine Rosen
And then the, and electronics companies and whoever has the money and power to lobby and capture.
- [53:59]
Jon Podhoretz
Yeah, yeah. And then the political effects of this are going to be that you're going to just hand the Democratic Party a thing where he's doing this for his big business buddies and for Apple and for, you know, and for these, you know, his tech bros. And Elon and car. Elon has a car company for car companies. And everybody else in America who relies on, on imports to make is, is going to be screwed. Like, good luck in 2018. Every single member of Congress or the Senate on the Republican side who isn't in a district that is Trump +20, good luck to you. Like, what are you going to say now? Maybe if you're lucky, your opponent will like, you know, be. Will be a transgender swimmer. So you can, so you can say, well, you know, you took a medal away from a deserving girl, but, you know, aside from that, it's just like a kind of layup. And as I say, he doesn't care. We've even talked about this. We're talking about everything else that's a mess. That wasn't the tariffs. And the tariffs are arguably the biggest thing.
- [55:10]
Seth Mandel
Right. And he doesn't really care. Right. Because he, if he's decided to go it alone as the unitary executive and just do all this without Congress, then the makeup of Congress doesn't really matter to him.
- [55:22]
Jon Podhoretz
No, but it does.
- [55:25]
Seth Mandel
It matters.
- [55:26]
Jon Podhoretz
He wants to spend the last two years of his presidency being indicted, being, being impeached seven times. Democrats win a 40.
- [55:38]
Christine Rosen
I gotta say. I mean, what does he have to lose?
- [55:40]
Seth Mandel
He loves that position.
- [55:41]
Abe Greenwald
He's very comfortable in.
- [55:42]
Christine Rosen
He loves victimology. Yeah.
- [55:43]
Abe Greenwald
Yep.
- [55:45]
Jon Podhoretz
Nah, I don't know. He doesn't have fun getting, getting impeached. Yeah. It's like, oh, back to this again.
- [55:54]
Abe Greenwald
Yeah.
- [55:55]
Jon Podhoretz
I don't know. Anyway, so maybe you're right. Fine. Okay, listen, everybody. Once again, we are going to have a mailbag episode on Friday. So please send questions, inquiries, thoughts, whatever. Keep them pithy because the pithier they are, the more likely it is that we're going to be able to talk about them and get as many in as we possibly, possibly can. That's Please send it to podcastometary.org Pithy questions on any matter that you might want to address. And we will be back tomorrow. So for Abe, Seth, and Christine, I'm John Pod Horowitz. Keep the candle burn.