Pardon My Silence

Summary

The Commentary Magazine Podcast: “Pardon My Silence”
Date: July 29, 2026
Host: Jon Podhoretz
Panelists: Abe Greenwald, Seth Mandel, Eli Lake (guest, columnist at The Free Press)

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Overview

This episode centers on two major stories:

1. The extraordinary congressional testimony of Anthony Fauci, who took the Fifth Amendment despite having a full presidential pardon for his COVID-era conduct.
2. Urgent and complex questions about the stalled U.S. campaign against Iran, the limits of American military power, and the confused public and political situation surrounding the conflict.

Additionally, the episode explores the ideological journey of conservative activist Laura Loomer, the right’s internal fights over Ukraine and Islam, and reflects on the interplay between populism, anti-establishment sentiment, and the future of American political coalitions.

The tone is sharp, exasperated, frequently humorous, and characterized by in-depth debate among the panelists.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

Fauci Takes the Fifth Amidst a Full Pardon (02:01 - 19:34)

• Fauci’s Congressional Testimony:
  Anthony Fauci appeared before Rand Paul’s Senate committee, expressed outrage at Paul’s “obsession” with prosecuting him, and invoked his Fifth Amendment right for all substantive questions—despite his full and unconditional pardon from President Biden for all COVID-related matters.

  • Quote (Fauci via Podhoretz, paraphrased):
    “‘Given Senator Paul’s obvious obsession with calling for my prosecution... under the advice of my attorneys, I will invoke my right under the Fifth Amendment.’” (02:40)
  • Paul pressed on controversies about gain-of-function research, noting U.S. tax money may have funded research at the Wuhan Lab via EcoHealth Alliance.

• Pardon Specifics (05:32):
  The Biden pardon for Fauci covers any acts between Jan 1, 2014, and the date it was signed, relating to his official government roles.

• Panel Skepticism and Legal Debate:

  • Seth Mandel points out that with blanket immunity, Fauci should have no legal jeopardy and thus no reason to plead the Fifth. “If you’re granted immunity by Congress, you can’t then go before Congress and take the Fifth.” (07:15)
  • Abe Greenwald: “You would think...if he’s safe from legal repercussions...he would just talk about it.” (08:18)
  • The group debates whether he’s leveraging his ‘resistance hero’ status to trigger support among political allies.

• Vanity, Noble Lies, and The Trump Administration (10:14 - 13:40)

  • Eli Lake emphasizes that Fauci's choices were partly motivated by vanity, not just so-called 'noble lies'.
    • Quote (Eli Lake):
      “What we now know is that he also shaded the truth for his own vanity. And that...put him in a totally different kind of category as somebody who has ultimately abused his enormous authority.” (10:48)
  • Lake also shifts some blame toward Trump for failing to rein Fauci in, saying it amounts to a failure of presidential leadership during COVID (12:57).

• The Perjury Trap and Immunity Tangle:

  • Panelists debate whether Fauci is fearful of being caught in a perjury trap despite immunity (15:36–19:34).
  • Seth: “For me, Congress is a perjury trap. I should take the Fifth...” (16:17)
  • Eli: “Fauci is in a position maybe unique in the annals of American history...called before Congress to account for actions for which he was preemptively pardoned.” (17:57)
  • General confusion about the scope and timing of Biden’s “most Biden thing ever” blanket pardons.

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The Iran War: Strategic Paralysis, Munitions Shortages, and Political Fallout (20:59 – 52:34)

• Recent Developments:

  • Zelensky and Netanyahu visit D.C. seeking support (20:59–21:34)
  • Trump promises severe punishment for a new missile attack against U.S. targets in Jordan, using strong profanity live on TV (23:08).
    • Quote (Trump, paraphrased via Podhoretz):
      “[Trump] said in extraordinarily profane language that they were going to be punished. He was going to ‘F the S out of them and punish them.’” (23:13)

• Possible U.S. Military Options:

  • Eli Lake lists options ranging from targeted strikes on Iranian infrastructure (bridges, power plants) to possible assassinations of IRGC leadership, arguing none are truly game-changing due to munitions shortages.
  • The U.S. is now critically low on missile interceptors, a well-known fact even publicly discussed in policy circles for months (28:14–31:25).

• Leaks, Transparency, and Democratic Fragility:

  • Abe worries leaks about shortages embolden Iran.
  • Eli counters that leaks are standard in open societies and while they aid adversaries, “that’s the price of doing business” in a democracy (30:07–32:06).

• The Blurry Endgame and Domestic Doubts:

  • Public doubts about the war and Trump’s direction are rising: “75% of the American people believe that Trump has no plan for ending the war, that they don’t know what his goals are in this war.” (35:56)
  • Eli recommends Trump deliver a speech explaining hard truths—that “the only way out is through,” admitting the campaign must grind on (36:18–38:05).
  • Jon Podhoretz challenges: “None of this gives people who believe that this war was justified and important any sense of where we are… Is he trapped? Are we trapped?” (45:14)

• Logistical and Diplomatic Stalls:

  • Discussion of alternative routes for oil, regional responses, and Saudi/Gulf State calculus.
  • Abe and Seth worry about the shaping of a ‘restraint’ doctrine in U.S. politics that could use current weakness as justification to further pull back in future crises (38:06–41:20).

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The Laura Loomer Conversion and The Fracturing Right (52:34 – 67:47)

• Laura Loomer’s Shift:

  • Loomer, once a pro-Trump, anti-Ukraine firebrand, traveled to Ukraine, returned transformed, and now supports Ukraine’s fight against Russia—potentially signaling a shift in the nationalist right (54:47–60:14).
  • Eli: Loomer, for all her excesses, was “a canary in the coal mine,” often seeing (or at least exploiting) issues before the mainstream right—social media censorship, radical Islam, etc. (56:10–59:37)

• Deeper Divide on the Right:

  • Loomer's change of heart puts her at odds with figures like Tucker Carlson and Nick Fuentes, now openly hostile to Trump and the GOP.
  • The rift exposes complexities in Trumpism: divisions over Ukraine, Islam, and the meaning of American nationalism (60:14–62:57).

• Islam, American Politics, and Institutional Naiveté:

  • The rise of Islamist-identified politicians in the U.S. and the odd convergence with left-wing political structures.
  • Abe: “America’s understanding post 9/11 of the threat from radical Islam to the U.S. was purely in terms of terrorism and war and violence...We got completely blindsided...they did it through politics.” (69:57–71:31)
  • Seth highlights how Islamists’ sophistication and ability to use American institutions constitutes the real threat, not just violence (71:31–72:41).
  • Jon: “We assumed...the forces inside the country that were of danger to us were the pulse shooter or somebody planting a dirty bomb...In fact, organizing at the local level...turned out [to be the threat].” (72:41–73:35)
  • Eli: U.S. naivete led federal agencies to treat groups like CAIR as partners despite wide knowledge of their radical ties (73:39).

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Memorable Quotes & Moments

• On Fauci and Pardons:
  “This is almost like a Talmudic debate...” — Jon Podhoretz (06:10)
  “He was granted, effectively granted immunity by the presidential pardon...Can he do that?” (07:15)

• On War and Public Trust:
  “We are in the middle of an act of war. You're talking about [future planning]...but here are the things that we can do. And meanwhile, let’s look at what we've accomplished...” — Eli Lake (47:51–47:59)

• On the Evolution of American Islamism:
  “We got completely blindsided...they did it through politics. They came through leftist American politics.” — Abe Greenwald (71:19)

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Notable Segments & Timestamps

• [02:01] Fauci testifies before the Senate, pleads the Fifth
• [05:32] Details of Fauci’s pardon uncovered
• [10:14–13:46] Fauci’s motives: noble lies, vanity, and Trump’s abdication
• [15:36–19:34] Legal implications of pardons and immunity
• [20:59–23:41] Zelensky, Netanyahu, Trump’s retaliation rhetoric on Iran
• [28:14–32:06] Munitions shortages, leaks, and the dangers of transparency
• [35:56–38:05] Public confusion and Trump’s missing war plan
• [46:55–52:34] Strategic stalemate and alternatives in Persian Gulf
• [52:34–60:14] Laura Loomer’s ideological journey
• [60:14–67:47] Tucker Carlson’s break from MAGA, Islamic political ascendance
• [69:57–73:39] Post-9/11 political Islam and American vulnerability
• [74:49] Commentary Recommends: Midnight Run

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Commentary Recommends

• Movie: Midnight Run (1988), recommended by Eli Lake — “one of the most wonderful movies...gets to some fundamental kind of lessons about humanity...brilliantly written.” (74:49)

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Summary Takeaways

• Fauci’s refusal to testify despite a full pardon is unprecedented, reflects both legal ambiguity and the breakdown of public trust in elites.
• The Iran conflict is mired in uncertainty, complicated by U.S. munitions shortages, unclear strategic goals, and profound public and political confusion.
• Right-wing populism is fracturing, with figures like Laura Loomer shifting in response to events, highlighting deeper intramural fights over Ukraine, Islam, and the meaning of American nationalism.
• A warning emerges about the long-term consequences of underestimating organized, politically savvy radical movements operating through American institutions, rather than as just security threats.

Panel’s Tone: Cynical, searching, historically aware, and often darkly humorous—reflecting both exhaustion and commitment to challenging prevailing orthodoxies.

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For listeners seeking clarity on the current state of American politics, law, and foreign policy, this episode is a useful (and uneasy) guide to the ambiguities and crises of mid-2026.

Transcript

[James Patterson]

Foreign.

[Eli Lake]

Champion pain Some die of thirst no way of knowing which way it's going Hope for the best Expect the worst

[Jon Podhorz]

Hope for the best. Welcome to the Commentary Magazine daily podcast. Today is Wednesday, July 29, 2026. I am Jon Podhorz, the editor of Commentary magazine. Before I go any further, we are going to have a special mailbag episode on Friday. So what I want you to do today is send us questions for the mailbag and a bunch of us will be here to answer them. We need them today because we're going to be taping the show tomorrow, Thursday, and we will air it on Friday. Let me just say this. Keep the questions short, we can get to more of them, and we will be able to be more comprehensive in answering your questions. People write wonderful emails to us, but they're often very, very, very long. I can compress them or abridge them. It's part of what I do as part of my day job. But if you really want us to do this right, write pithy questions and we will try to answer them on Friday. So that is podcastomentary.org send your questions to podcastometary.org and you know who's gonna be here to answer those questions? Executive editor Abe Greenwald. Hi, Abe.

[Abe Greenwald]

Hi, John.

[Jon Podhorz]

Senior editor Seth Mandel. Hi, Seth.

[Seth Mandel]

Hi, John.

[Jon Podhorz]

And not here to answer those questions, but to answer our questions today, our contributing editor, columnist at the Free Press, and host of the Breaking History podcast, Eli Lake. Hi, Eli.

[Eli Lake]

Hi, John. Thanks for having me.

[Jon Podhorz]

All right, so we have to just quickly take care of the jaw dropping events that happened in the last 15 minutes before we started taping the podcast. Anthony Fauci appearing before Rand Paul's committee, insulting and raging at Rand Paul, and then saying he was gonna take the Fifth about all the questions that anyone could direct to him about what happened during COVID Here is what Fauci said. I'm just gonna quickly quote it. And then he said, given Senator Paul's obvious obsession with calling for my prosecution, his repeated slanderous comments about me, and recently his publicly releasing my unredacted personal diary aimed at embarrassing and intimidating, the only conclusion I can reach is that the sole reason he is calling me before this committee is to get me to say something, anything, that could vindicate his repeated public pledges that I end up, in his words, behind bars, any reasonable person who has followed his unhinged obsession with me would readily come to the same conclusion. Therefore, although it pains me to do so because of the respect I have for the legislative branch of Government and my decades long record of cooperating with Congress, under the advice of my attorneys, I will invoke my right under the fifth amendment of the Constitution to refrain from answering your questions. And Indeed then for 15 minutes, Paul asked him very sober, judicious questions about gain of function research, which is the research that involves taking existing diseases and kicking them up to the next level in order to find out whether there are ways to kill them off. In other words, sort of like making them bigger so that they're easier to kill off with whatever cure you might have. And this gain of function research became wildly controversial in the mid teens. And in 2017, we were told that the federal government of the United States would no longer support gain of function research. And the big question that now faces us and Fauci and everybody else is whether or not it was known to Fauci and others that the Wuhan Lab was in fact doing gain of function research and that American tax dollars coming through grants to NGOs like EcoHealth alliance were in fact paying for this research that had already been ruled unacceptable by the federal government and I believe by Congress. And Fauci would not answer the question, simply said, under the advice of counsel, I refrain from answering under my rights under the fifth Amendment. Seth, you went and looked at the governing issue here, which is Fauci was given granted a full and unconditional pardon by Joe Biden on the last day, as well as the entire Biden family and the entire state of Louisiana and every marijuana smoker in the history of America pardoned by how many pardons? Was it some crazy number of pardons Anyway, not that Trump isn't pardoning people he shouldn't pardon, but we should call

[Seth Mandel]

them, we should really call them the auto pardon though.

[Eli Lake]

There you go.

[Jon Podhorz]

Right. So can you. So what you looked up is what the pardon pardons Fauci from.

[Eli Lake]

Right.

[Seth Mandel]

So it starts, the pardon starts on January 1, 2014, and goes through the day that Biden signed the pardon. And it is anything related to his service as director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, as a member of the White House Coronavirus Task Force or the White House COVID 19 Response Team, or as chief medical adviser to the President. So those are the parameters of, of what is protected against, you know, whatever his actions and statements are protected, if they have to do with those things.

[Jon Podhorz]

So when he was finished taking the fifth, after a series of questions that Rand Paul asked him in the first 15 minutes of this hearing, Rand Paul then said, what you are doing Here is illegitimate. You have a full pardon for your actions in the period that we are asking about. You are therefore in no jeopardy. You have been directed to answer these questions under subpoena, and there will be. You are doing something illegal. There will be repercussions. Now, Seth said this is almost like a Talmudic debate because the questions that Paul was asking about gain of function research, there's circumstantial evidence in the unredacted diary that suggests that he was much more aware of things going on in Wuhan and much more open to the idea that Covid originated in the lab and not in the wet market

[Eli Lake]

and

[Jon Podhorz]

then pretended that he never had such thoughts. And therefore, since he can't go to jail for whatever it is he says, because it covers the period that Seth's talking about, the 10 years from 2014 to the end of 2024, he should answer the questions because there's no legal repercussions for him. It's like being granted immunity. If you're granted immunity by Congress, you can't then go before Congress and take the Fifth. He was granted, effectively granted immunity by the presidential pardon. That's not the legislative branch. But he is taking the Fifth under conditions under which he is completely immune from prosecution. Can he do that? As Eli said, this is not advisory opinions. We are not a Supreme Court. We're not a legal podcast. But we have to. And you talk anyway.

[Abe Greenwald]

And you would think also, John, if he were safe, if he's safe from. Because of this pardon, he's safe from legal repercussions. And his case is that this is all blown up nonsense taken out of context. This is just madness, and he's got nothing to lose legally. You would think he would just talk about it and say what you are interpreting as this great offense against the American people and science and medicine is nothing but changing speculation over time or whatever. You know, I mean, he would try to deflate the whole thing if it were really nothing, because it's all out there now anyway.

[Jon Podhorz]

Okay, that's a very interesting point. I think that what he thinks is that he is still a hero of the resistance. And, Eli, go ahead.

[Eli Lake]

Oh, no, no, you go. You keep going.

[Jon Podhorz]

I was just gonna say, I think he still thinks he's a hero of the Resistance. We know about the biggest swelled head in history that he got based on what the diary showed him praising him while he was doing COVID death counts. In his diary, he was also saying, I just had a really great piece published about me on the front page of the Washington Post. And Barbra Streisand just called me and sang to me, and Julia Roberts had sex with me, and, I don't know whatever else it was that he said in this diary. And so we know that he's very vain, beyond vain. And so he might think that this is a. A way of triggering a kind of natural support from his former backers, everybody who thought that he was the saint and Trump was the evil guy.

[Eli Lake]

Well, I think I want to sort of emphasize what you said, because I agree with that. I think that we have to remember that if you look at the sort of timeline beginning in Covid, from the very beginning, there was a charitable explanation for. For the dishonesty, if you will, or Fauci shading the truth, which is that he was telling noble lies. And that we know because if you remember, when he was first asked about masking, he said it wasn't gonna be effective. And then he became, like everybody else in the public health bureaucracy, a mask evangelist. So, I mean, how could that be? So the charitable explanation was that Fauci, in the beginning, was telling a noble lie because there was a shortage of masks. And when there were enough masks, he changed his tune again. And that's the most charitable. What we now know is that he also shaded the truth for his own vanity. And that really does, from the cold light of history, really put him in a totally different kind of category as somebody who has ultimately abused his enormous authority. All of that said, and I have a lot of issues with Fauci, and I am with the critics, I think I don't always agree with Rand Paul, especially when it comes to foreign policy, but I think he has done yeoman's work. Let's credit Rand Paul for really digging to the bottom of this. All of that said, I'm sorry, but this is an indictment of President Trump. This is an indictment of Trump under Covid. He was the president. He was the one, through his effectively abdication on these issues, that allowed Fauci to become one of the most. I mean, maybe the most powerful bureaucrat in American history, a president that was in charge of the situation, which had the elect won an election, so had kind of the trust of the American people, having gone through that process. If he had a problem with Fauci's policies, which he would often voice on truths on Twitter and other things, then he had an obligation to fire him to get to the bottom of it. And even on these issues about hiding the ball on the Eco Health alliance and American funding for Gain of function research. Again, I have no sympathy for Fauci, but a competent White House, and John, you would know, you worked in a White House, would have gotten to the bottom of that question, which was absolutely essential. As soon as the COVID outbreak broke out, you would assign somebody quietly who would have carte blanche access. Find me everything there is to know about past American funding for the Wuhan lab and gain of function research. And I want to make sure that we have all of the information and we get ahead of it. To me, we can't lose sight of the fact that a part of the Fauci story is also a part of the failure of Trump's final year and his failure to take charge and be a president and set policy, even though it was a crisis.

[Jon Podhorz]

I think that is a totally fair point. But the evil that Fauci did stretched well beyond.

[Eli Lake]

No, I'm not. I'm not. I'm not getting. I want to make that really clear. Okay.

[Jon Podhorz]

I'm only bringing this up to say that Fauci said things like, as long as 80% of people. He picks a number out of the air. As long as 80% of the. Once 80% of the public is vaccinated, then we can, like, loosen all the restrictions. And they say maybe it should be 85%. I don't know, maybe 82%. I don't know. I mean, you know, and you realized he was just making this stuff up as it went along. And that was during the Biden administration, which was very happy to elevate and keep him elevated and the head of the CDC and all those people, because it was still using Covid as a battering ram to get some of its more questionable policies through, including, like, you know, rent freezes and eviction moratoria and stuff like that, all being done through the claims of power, emergency power granted to the Centers for Disease Control that allowed the Centers for Disease Control to ban and prevent evictions across the United States. This actually happened here. And that wasn't Fauci. Fauci was the head of the infectious diseases, but he was the face of the COVID response. Anyway. Very interesting. We have no idea where this is gonna go because of the Talmuda question, which is, if he has immunity, can he take the Fifth? He has immunity, effectively, because of the pardon. So he should not. Under congressional rules of congressional immunity, he would not be allowed to take the Fifth. He would, in fact, be put in jail. But he cannot be put in jail.

[Eli Lake]

No, but he could. If he perjures himself in this testimony,

[Jon Podhorz]

right? So he's afraid of being caught in a perjury trap, which is what hearings are intended to do. He says whatever Abe says that he said. And then he goes. And then somebody goes, aha, we have a memo that we've been withholding, we haven't released.

[Seth Mandel]

But see, that's Fauci. To me, it's like, yes, welcome to Congress, guy who's been dealing with Congress for 40 years on infectious disease stuff. And I just, like, I'm not saying, I'm not defending it. It's just everybody, it's like saying, oh, I don't know, you know, the cops want to interview you, it might be a perjury trap. If the FBI wants to interview you, it might be a perjury trap. That reasoning is only used, that is only considered acceptable when certain people use it. But like, if, you know, when, when Russiagate was going on and all of Trump's people were like, you know, they get, they would get them all just for perjury because the FBI would call them in and go, oh, that's not what you said seven years ago, you know, on your aol, you know, account or whatever. So there is, there is a, there is a wider critique here, which is fine, but it's also like, you know, if you want to apply that critique overall, I'm, I'm, I'm with you. But if it's just like, I, Dr. Anthony Fauci, am the guy that they're trying to get to perjure himself. So for me, Congress is a perjury trap. I should take the Fifth and not answer questions that I don't.

[Eli Lake]

Okay. But that also, you could argue, cuts both ways. If you look at it as a lot of the problems with what Fauci was doing would fall under the official duties of the executive branch and as the Supreme. I mean, so if the Trump administration is going to say, hey, you can't get me for stuff I was doing, making decisions as president, you know, which gets to the first impeachment and so forth, then that wouldn't. That. I mean, a lot. I mean, on many of the sins, although not all of them. I mean, if Fauci was personally profiting in some ways, or his friends or people around him were profiting because of Grant making decisions that he didn't want to acknowledge, that really does get to personal corruption, and it really shows that the Biden pardon was wicked.

[James Patterson]

Okay.

[Jon Podhorz]

But the Biden pardoning. This now goes to this specific question which you're both alluding to, which is that Fauci is in a position maybe unique in the annals of American history. As far as I know, in he has been called before Congress to account for actions for which he was preemptively pardoned. Okay, so that's a new thing. And how he. Then, how we proceed under these circumstances does not conform with any previous efforts at perjury, perjury traps, and things like that. Because he would be able very successfully, to make the case that whatever it was he said to Congress today about what he did as an official was covered under the pardon. Because he's only testifying about what he did as an official. If they then say you're lying, he would say, well, I'm sorry you're saying that I'm lying, but this is what I did under my official duties, and I am protected by the terms of the pardon. Anyway, we don't know how this is. We are.

[Seth Mandel]

Can I just say, by the way, that the. It is the most Biden thing ever to have a pardon, that nobody knows exactly when it applies. The. The debate we have to have is. But has he been pardoned for this? That's how in new territory we are.

[Jon Podhorz]

Right. Okay.

[Abe Greenwald]

So no one, including Biden.

[Jon Podhorz]

Exactly.

[Abe Greenwald]

Yeah.

[Jon Podhorz]

Pride in part. Yeah. Hunter is wandering around, you know, now becoming the world's leading podcast guest because he was. Because of his pardon. All right, Jim Meggs is going to come on tomorrow. We're going to talk about the whole Fauci thing for an hour, so we can move on. Now, Eli, you have a really great piece in the Free Press about the sort of ideological conversion of Laura Loomer, which is an interesting. Dovetails, interestingly, with what happened at the White House yesterday. Zelensky was at the White House and Netanyahu was at the White House. Zelensky asked for an emergency shipment of Patriot missiles to protect the cities of Ukraine. Because Russia now getting so desperate now has maybe its only remaining hope is to cripple Ukraine's literal survival by blowing up energy facilities and basically freezing and starving everybody to death in the coming winter. And then Bibi came, and we don't know what they talked about. We have no idea what Trump and Bibi talked about. They're not talking.

[Eli Lake]

Oh. Although they both said, great meeting.

[Jon Podhorz]

They said, great meeting. And Amit Sehgal, who is the best reporter on these matters, as far as I can tell, says Bibi knows perfectly. He wasn't going in to talk about what they should do. They were talking about what he wasn't trying to convince him not to negotiate with Iran. Bibi goes in with the idea that Iran will not. There will be no successful negotiation with Iran. Iran will. The negotiation. All he wanted to do was say to Trump, okay, let's talk about what happens when the negotiations are really fully and totally tanked, and what do we do then? So it's an action plan, not a please don't negotiate, please stop negotiating. Do me a solid. All of that. That wasn't it. It's more like, what can we do to help you win? The negotiations collapse, which is if Amit is right, and I'm guessing that that sounds pretty close to what he would have done. That's an interesting meeting. Also interesting because the election in Israel is on October 27th, which is, you know, less than three months from now. And, you know, Trump might not be ready to go do anything before the elections, particularly if the blockade. He thinks the blockade is working or whatever. And Bibi may be out of time. So I don't know. That's sort of interesting. What do you. Eli. So then Trump this morning. I'm sorry, I'm in all. But Trump this morning went on Fox and Friends. There was a ballistic missile attack on American targets in Jordan that was batted away, intercepted the incoming missiles, but Trump said in extraordinarily profane language that they were going to be punished. He was going to F the S out of them and punish them. So give me some. What can he do more than he's already done? What effing the S out of them can he do with air, with bombs?

[Eli Lake]

Well, I mean, there are a couple things that have been out there. I mean, one is Pickaxe Mountain, which I still would stress. We don't know if that is not like an. The equivalent of another underground facility like the ones that were destroyed in Midnight Hammer or the other kind of, you know, elements of, of the nuclear industrial program. And it still remains largely rubble. But there is, we think, maybe some amount of centrifuges or things, and it is another facility and maybe in the future. So we could hit that. Presumably, it's not discussed as much, but one of the things, one of the options I like is.

[Jon Podhorz]

But that's not a punitive strike. He's talking about a punitive strike, right?

[Eli Lake]

Well, I mean, yeah, I mean, I think if he wanted to escalate. If he wanted to escalate, although I guess it's risky, he could take on. He could take on. He could take out Ahmed Vahidi, the current head of the irgc. That is, I don't Think that's really an option. The other one is aversion of bridges and power plants. There have been bridges that have been hit that were important to supply their military positions around the Strait of Hormuz. So that's already kind of been done on the bridges side. But there are power plants, which I have been told are really more exclusively for IRGC military facilities, as opposed to, you know, providing electricity for the large cities. I would not hit those. I would hit others that are more kind of for military purposes. One of the great Twitter feeds is Eddie Lutvak has done a lot of research on this, and he has kind of made this point that there are certain kinds of power stations that he could hit that might be part of it, and then just sort of more of the same, which is. But, you know, it's limited. If you wanted to sort of do a more massive version of the tit for tats that we were doing until the weekend, which is. Which is that, you know, no one's going to. It looks like ground troops are a red line. So if you're not going to put, like, special operation guys on the ground or Marines on the coastline to really dig, you know, to go and sort of try to secure an area, admittedly a very risky proposition, then, you know, there's only. There's a limit of so much you could accomplish with more strikes. But there certainly may be more strikes to do. Or maybe it means, as I reported, what, you know, my source called Epic Fury 2 electric boogaloo, which is just another version of Epic Fury and hitting a lot of the things all at once. The problem is that we have. And I should make. I want to make this very clear to the audience because I think that there is some debate on the right right now. Just because this fact helps the arguments of restrainers like J.D. vance in the administration doesn't mean it's not a fact, and it isn't true. The US Has a deficit right now of interceptors for its missile defense, as made very clear by the emergency request from Zelensky for the Patriot systems for Ukraine, which is in our interest at this point. I mean, we don't want the Ukrainians to suffer now that they've made so many gains. So if we have a problem and we don't have enough of these interceptors, and if we needed to, and we started pulling them from other theaters, which might be provocative to other world powers, I kind of understand why, in some ways, Trump's hands are tied now. The argument against that is that if you did A kind of, again, another version of Epic Fury. And you just took out where you knew the remaining missile stocks were, and you really, really depleted them this time, and they just didn't have much left. Then maybe you could get to this point. You're kind of rolling the dice that you wouldn't need as many of the interceptors because you would just take them out again. Most of the professionals, as I understand it, have assessed that that's not realistic. Certainly not realistic that you think something like another Epic Fury would bring down the regime. The regime at this point looks sadly resilient, although that's not going to be forever. So my view is, you know, you could start going after leaders, you could hit some power plants, hopefully, that are not going to affect a lot of civilians, or you could sort of do more of the same, but harder.

[Abe Greenwald]

So, Eli, I want to pick up on your point about the. The fact that we are low on defensive munitions and that that's a fact, even if it helps the restrainers. The leak of it also helps Iran. This is what's alarming me here, is that the regime is getting more aggressive

[Eli Lake]

now, not less aggressive from the giddy up. Abe, I respect you so much, and I make a. I'll make a pitch right now. You know, your newsletter is must read every afternoon.

[Abe Greenwald]

Is this a wind up for insulting me? What's going to happen here?

[Eli Lake]

I'm not. No, no, it's not a wind up for insulting, but I just think there's an idea that there's a leak. But I had this story two months ago. Shanti was talking about it, everybody. It's well known that there was a problem with our supplies. That was part of things that were a year ago. People in the military, defense, intellectual world all sort of knew it. There have been hearings where people have talked about this problem. It is not that much of a secret. Now, wait, can I just have a number? They had a number, maybe that was classified, but, you know.

[Abe Greenwald]

Right, yeah. But by the way, Eli, I know you've said it on this show, Schanzer said it on this show. We've read it in, you know, major outlets for months. And I was alarmed by it then. I didn't think it should have been out. But secondly, the more recent leak was a story about sort of administration panics over this and affected Trump's decision making. And so I think that adds a sort of extra layer to the Iranian calculus about what their position is relative to the US at this point.

[Eli Lake]

I mean, I just have a difference of view on this. My concern here is that I don't trust this administration. I don't trust this Justice. I don't trust, frankly, the Justice Department or the Democrats either on this. So I just say, here's. This is like, welcome to Washington. This is one of the prices that we pay for living in a liberal democracy, which is that people talk, okay? And it's unfortunate. And there are. We could do five shows on Necessary secrets. I'm very much with Daniel Patrick Moynihan on this. This has been a problem that goes back to the Cold War, which is we probably have too many classified secrets, and that when everything has to be protected, nothing is protected and all that. But the bottom line is, is that that story that the Times had is just par for the course of the. There are different forces in the administration that are jockeying for advantage. It happens in every administration. And you have to price that in when we go to war. And it's one of the advantages that authoritarian and totalitarian adversaries have over us, which is that in their country, if you are taught there is no free press, and if you were to talk to the free press and you were to leak something like that, then frankly, you know, you'd be strung up.

[James Patterson]

So

[Eli Lake]

that's what it means to live in our republic. I'm sorry, what are you going to do? And I agree with you that it'd be better if there was a more patriotic sense. Like when we had journalists who served in World War II, and then they went to the newsrooms and they understood the difference between serious militaries. But even in World War II, even under that circumstance, the Chicago Tribune did print the. That we'd cracked the Enigma code. Thank God the Japanese hadn't seen it. But even then, even when everybody was behind the war and we lived in a different kind of culture. So it's just. This is the. Yeah, it's the price of doing business.

[Jon Podhorz]

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[James Patterson]

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[Abe Greenwald]

now

[Jon Podhorz]

that it's summer I took a bag. I took all my sweaters. I put my sweaters into a vacuum bag to put them away so that I could replace them with my summer clothing from Quince, which has been stored away for these warm months. And of course, just as the days are a little more relaxed, so is the clothing that I'm wearing. And that's Quince summer clothing. Well made essentials that naturally become those everyday staples that you want to live in all summer long. Quince's 100% European linen pants and shirts are breathable, easy to throw on and the of size summer upgrade your rotation needs and they started just 34 bucks. Tees soft enough to live all day. Lightweight cotton sweaters exactly what you want when the summer nights cool down. Everything at Quint is priced 50 to 80% less than similar brands. They work with ethical factories and cut out the middleman. So you're paying for exceptional quality, not brand markup. And I'm just telling you, people say to me, are you wearing quints? And I say yes because I am now so associated with Quint. So make your suburb wardrobe easier. Go 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.com commentary for free shipping and 365 day returns. Quint.com commentary. What you have now laid out gets back to this first principles question about this war and the polling that has come out in the last 24 hours that says 75% of the American people believe that Trump has no plan for ending the war, that they don't know what his goals are in this war. Maybe you could say that his polling is so bad that it doesn't matter one way or the other what he does because it can't get Much worse. I mean, it could get, I guess it could get worse, but I mean, it can't get much worse for him. And therefore he kind of has a free hand because it's not like he hasn't spent all his political capital. It's all spent. He's back to his base and only his base. And so he should try to win the war, or conversely or not. I mean, but according to you,

[Seth Mandel]

he

[Jon Podhorz]

probably can't win the war. I mean, if go aggressively offensive against Iran because we do not have sufficient defensive munitions to deal with the back blow and the response, then where are we here on July 29th?

[Eli Lake]

No, no, I think what he needs to do is give a speech where he lays out the fact from the beginning, like 14 months ago or 13 months ago, Iran was on the verge of breaking out, becoming a nuclear power. And this was a problem that every president before me since the Iranian revolution has had in some ways to deal with. And I'm the one who finally took this problem and put it off the table. And the sacrifices that we've been paying and what I have been doing since we made sure that Iran not only didn't have a nuclear program, but wouldn't be able to amass so many ballistic missiles that they could restart it with impunity. Because if you don't like what you're seeing now, imagine if we had allowed this to kind of fester for another year or two, is that I have been doing my best to make sure that the price of gasoline does not go absolutely crazy. And I've largely been successful. Unfortunately, this regime is hell bent on committing national suicide. And so our new strategy is to drive them into penary and support the Iranian people in a variety of ways that I'm sorry, I can't talk about. And I know that this doesn't satisfy the American people, and believe me, it doesn't satisfy me as a person President. But right now the only way out is through. And I don't know when that's going to be, but I will just tell you that we no longer have to fear these maniacs getting a hold of the apocalyptic arsenal. So you're damn right I ordered the Code Red DJT out. That's what I mean. That would be my version of what he should say.

[Jon Podhorz]

How does that win?

[Seth Mandel]

I have a question about, about what this means for like a future, let's say, Vance administration or something. Is, is the, is the, the leaks broadly, yes, they, they, they're good for Iran to know and all that stuff, but they're also good for the restrainers in the future. I'm concerned that this, that we're seeing, that we're seeing a justification for future restraint being laid out now that the case is being made now for restraint down the road to use the, this Iran war as maybe even, you know, maybe even saying that the war is the reason down the road. Maybe this is a new reason that's cropped up. Maybe now they can use the Iran war and say it depleted what we have or whatever. I mean, is that, is that a concern? Is that like, like in the hands of Trump everything is volatile and everything is mercurial and you never know which way it's going to go in the hands of somebody who doesn't want to intervene or use force, you know which way it's going to go. So is this handicapping future, you know, down there? Because we're, because we keep talking about how like, well, what if China does this? Is that, you know, is that affected by the debate itself?

[Eli Lake]

No, no, because first of all, because darpa, Israel, Ukraine, lots of really smart, capable countries right now are in a rush to develop cheaper missile defense systems that avoid what is currently this math problem, which by the way, we've known about for like more than 30 years. I mean, Andy Marshall was talking about this in like I think the late 90s, early 2000s. And that because we live in a free country, if there is a Vance administration and he has all these restrainers and they're doing all their spin and they will try something like that, well, somebody will leak to me, hopefully, and I'll write a piece about how Anduril has just come up with the X10 missile killer, which is 1/15 the cost of the old Patriot system. And the Israelis say they can field it in, you know, two weeks and they don't have to do this, that actually these options are not true. And what the president's and I know this because I covered Obama during the Iran deal and people who disagreed and there were hawks buried in the Obama administration who disagreed with what the White House was trying to do, made it very clear to reporters like me and Jay Solomon that wait a second, we just unloaded pallets of cash and we violated this long standing thing. We just gave the IRGC a ton of money that we can't trace. Oh, wait a second. You know, the National Intelligence Council just changed the way it does its I wrote this story and it was very big at the time about how, you know, before they had the deal, they were measuring the breakout in one Way to make it, you know what I'm saying, to say that we absolutely need it now that we're changing another thing. And they were screwing around with that. So there's all kinds of stories that leak as a result of our system. And you know, when you have the restrainers as a president in charge, then there's still going to be people in his administration. You can't purge everybody. Especially since institutionally, right now, the old institutions which used to be so cautious, like the military and I would even go so far as to say the State Department are not what they were 25 years ago. So there isn't an institutional voice from these agencies necessarily. You still have Congress, which does a lot of leaking. And you know, so I still think that he would still have to sort of deal with that as things progress. And I don't think it's a permanent problem precisely because I just believe that eventually that's our superpower, is that America is such a great innovative, has such great innovation as does Israel. If we can keep that alliance together, then they'll figure out a way around this problem. I mean, I don't know when I'm not an engineer, but it'll happen.

[Jon Podhorz]

Okay, but none of that. You guys are having a very interesting Talmudic, again Talmuda conversation about what if, the if then the future China and what how leaks and all of that. And I'm saying it's July 29th, it's six months since we started this war on February 28th and where are we? Because we can't go full bore cuz we don't have enough defensive munitions. You say you accept that and that's where you are. And the public doesn't know what we're doing there. And Trump is now saying he's gonna F the shit out of them.

[Eli Lake]

Wow,

[Jon Podhorz]

I said the S word. And he's gonna punish them. And they want. According to the theory that's now bubbling around, Iran wants to be at war with the United States. It doesn't want to negotiate an end to the war. It's trying to draw us into the war further, which I think is weird, if true, but where are we? Cuz I don't want to talk about that.

[Eli Lake]

Hold on. John, John, John, let me just back down. Yeah, the White House should say.

[Jon Podhorz]

I don't care what the White House should say.

[Eli Lake]

No, no, I'm saying if you want to understand, I know it, it's frustrating, but if you accept that we've really degraded their military and we've pretty much rubbleized their nuclear program. And if all we need to do now is to make sure we don't have a global recession, and I think you could argue that we come out ahead and in that period, we buy ourselves time to stock up so that we can do the kind of more devastating military strike in response to some of this stuff.

[Jon Podhorz]

What is that timeframe you're talking about?

[Eli Lake]

Well, you know, this is the thing. I don't know.

[Jon Podhorz]

I mean, is it three months, is it two years?

[Eli Lake]

I shouldn't know. I shouldn't know what the projections are for when we can fill back these munitions. But it's not forever. Okay? So if you can, you know, again, if Trump is, in a weird way, the only president, because he isn't tied down by anything, he says one day to the next that maybe he could tap dance his way out of it, and it's frustrating, but what I'm saying is that you're right. Right now it looks bleak, but, you know, maybe, who knows, in two months we might have some more. Enough that we could feel that we could actually. I mean, this was an attack, by the way, that happened. The Iranians launched another ballistic missile attack on that base in Jordan. This time we intercepted all of them. The last time one of them got through out of like, you know, two dozen or something. So, okay, you are,

[Jon Podhorz]

you are not. Cause you can't answer my question. And that is the political crisis that we are in, right? Is Trump tap dancing until November? Is he tap dancing until February 28, 2027? Is he tap dancing until September 1? What happens, you know, with a, with a, with a weird result in the Israeli election? What happens when, you know, Congress switches, you know, what happens if the House goes democratic? Like, none of this gives people who believe that this war was justified and important any sense of where we are. If you're right and we've done all this degrading, Where's Trump's exit? Like he could announce unilaterally, we have achieved our aims and we're going to go. But he hasn't achieved the aims because the Strait is still in a very conditional condition. So he can't walk away from that. No one's apparently going to help us. The Brits and the French and whoever else aren't going to help patrol the Strait of Hormuz, even though Europe needs that oil more than we do. He's trying to prevent a global recession, so he can't let the strait be in this. So is he trapped? Are we trapped? If we've achieved our military aim and Iran had its vote, it had its answer, which was to bring the Strait into the calculation. And we have no strategy for getting them.

[Eli Lake]

Our strategy is to continue to wreck their economy, hit back when we can take shots of opportunity, knowing that they have a dwindling supply of missiles and, you know, like. And we're gonna have to be in it for a while. And I would add to that, we should also really seriously explore, however painful and slow it is, finding the alternative routes, which is something, by the way, that we tried in the Strait at one point during the war. And we should really try to get back to that and trying to provide a kind of safe escort while we can, knowing that we're not going to open up the Strait in a serious way. And all the while, there are alternatives. There are new pipelines, there are other sources of energy, such as from our fracking and shale that can go to the Pacific. And there's all kinds of things that we can do to try to.

[Jon Podhorz]

Excuse me, we're in the middle of an act of war. You're talking about. We need to settle how to deal with this in the future. We need to deal with the munitions.

[Eli Lake]

No, no, no, no, no, no. But we already are doing it. I'm just saying you say all of those things to sort of mitigate. You say, listen, we've got this problem and we don't have. We can't deal with it. We can't give you like a three week plan and the Strait of Hormuz will be liberated. So that's not on the table. But here are the things that we can do. And meanwhile, let's look at what we've accomplished and know that Iran is ultimately playing a losing game, that over time they're not going to be able to replenish their stocks of missiles. And over time they're just going to be eventually, as they are like left offensive. We go in and as we stock up, it's taking longer. And yes, by the way, mistakes are made. You can criticize him for all of this stuff, but let's not give in to total despair because I think it's manageable as long as we do not have the oil shock that a lot of people were predicting. And that's what scares the hell out of Trump, as it should scare the hell out of him. And so the Iranians are trying to maybe cause that, but they haven't succeeded yet. So we have to sort of change the parameters a little bit. John, it's not ideal, I agree. But you know, what else are you going to do, pack up and leave, accept the Iranians control the Strait of Hormuz. But another idea, which by the way, I want a credit to Ken Pollack, the Middle East Institute, I don't know, but you're is to double down on doing our best and actually send advisors to Lebanon and help them with this agreement that they made with Israel so we can really disarm Hezbollah, which we might have a shot at doing now that you have the elected government of Lebanon and the Israelis and try to work something out there where we can try to make that happen over a period of time as well. Let's just, you know, like, would we.

[Seth Mandel]

Would we. I have another question. Would we, what would we do with Oman if they struck a deal with Iran over the Strait and the surrounding waterways? And some sort of, what Oman is, has been calling in the last few days a, a sort of optional fee structure, I believe is what they were calling it. You can, you can pay a fee to pass through. What that normally means is you can pay a fee to pass through or some Houthis will sink your ship. Probably is the, is the other half of that statement because I don't. There's no such thing as a optional. It either costs the password. How do we deal with a non Iran country helping Iran do the thing that is keeping this war going but not attacking us or doing something militarily?

[Eli Lake]

I think Oman is a, you know, Oman is a, is a very, you know, as far as the g. The Gulf states go, minor. But I mean, part of this is that the Iranians get in their own way. The Iranians were smart. They wouldn't be attacking Saudi Arabia right now, by the way, Saudi Arabia is attacking Iran. So there was a real threat six weeks ago that the Saudis would just do what I expected them to do, which is a cut a deal. And we would really be losing face. Especially after the MOU and what looked like we were abandoning Lebanon, we would see a domino effect. That hasn't happened in part because the Iranians themselves are a bunch of maniacs and they're still trying to attack. And so what does that leave, you know, Saudi doesn't really have much of a game in town. And you know, listen, maybe the Omanis would break off and try to, you know, cut their own deal. I certainly expect in some ways the Qataris to do it. But on the other hand, we have the Emiratis and we have the Saudis, which count for a lot more. And you know, there was a time at least when the Saudis exercised a lot of influence within the Gulf. They were the sort of first among equals. So in that respect, I think that this changes the calculations for the Saudis. The Saudis know more than anyone. Everybody kind of now understands who Iran is, what this regime is, and that really we have to get back to understanding that. The ultimate goal, of course, is regime change, but I don't want to tie us down like we're going to be there until a regime change, because that puts the pressure on us in a lot of ways. But we do have to be thinking about that, and there are things we should do on the high side in terms of intelligence in that as well. But again, it's messy, but I don't see any other option other than just bugging out and something like really following through on that mou, which I don't think is going to happen. And it doesn't look like Trump's going to do it either.

[Jon Podhorz]

Okay, so

[Eli Lake]

don't yell at me in the comments.

[Jon Podhorz]

We don't have comments. I mean, I guess we have comments on YouTube, but I, I, we do

[Eli Lake]

have comments on YouTube, and I read them sometimes.

[Seth Mandel]

YouTube commenters are surprisingly wholesome. Have you noticed that? It's not, I mean, not all the time.

[Jon Podhorz]

Not during the Stevens Elsa, not during the Haley Stevens I had to make.

[Seth Mandel]

They weren't also, that was in all caps comments.

[Jon Podhorz]

That was pretty bad. Anyway, okay, so I think we are in the second phase. And so you can't trust what Trump is saying and all of that. And you're right that Trump should do this and he should do that and we should be doing this and we should be doing that. And then he starts having a temper tantrum about the title basin and the reflecting pool, and he, you know, whatever, you know, he has ADD and he's 80 years old and he's falling asleep at funerals. And, you know, it's not confidence inspiring. I'm sorry. Like, you know, we had a remarkable beginning of this war, and then he ratcheted up the rhetoric and then he choked back. And we're now in this period from going to destroy their civilization to wondering whether or not we have the means to keep the Strait of Hormuz open, which seems to be a pretty big step down. All right, so we could probably leave it there. Let's just talk a little bit, Eli, about your piece about Laura Loomer. So Laura Loomer, of course, is this conservative influencer. She's a very peculiar, famous person of the era because she sort of came out of nowhere she's not really a writer. She's not really a politician. She's sort of an activist. She's a Jew who converted to Christianity.

[Eli Lake]

No, she's still a Jew.

[Jon Podhorz]

She is. What happened to the conversion to Christianity?

[Eli Lake]

Well, when I talked to her, she. She. She was. She told me, all right, so she's.

[Seth Mandel]

Listen, John, you know, when it comes

[Eli Lake]

to being Jewish woman, when it comes

[Seth Mandel]

to Jewish, you can check in, but you can't check out.

[Jon Podhorz]

Well, we know that. We know that as well. But. But what's interesting is that she was a classic Trump voice on, and, you know, considered the Zelensky a villain and all of that. And then she took this trip to Ukraine, and her entire worldview was apparently utterly altered.

[Eli Lake]

Okay, so a couple things. First of all, that worldview was changing in many ways for the reasons, because of what has happened to the Trump coalition in general since he won in 24, which is that I think that she. Her grandfather was a medical student in Austria in the 1930s and saw the rise of the Third Reich and came back. This is, according to Laura Loomer. It's also in her book, and warned everybody about the rise. And she says that this is something that kind of stayed with her. She is very much of an American nationalist, and she kind of comes on the scene in 2014, 2015, as a college student, when one of the animating ways that I would say is sort of. That really kind of motivates the based right of the Tea Party era was that they were willing to say things about Islam without qualifying it as jihadist Islam that were considered at the time to be the height of bigotry and prejudice. And sometimes it crossed over the line, obviously, sometimes it was sort of an evidence of how woke the culture was. But I would point out that her power. One of the reasons why Laura Loomer resonates is because she was a kind of canary in the coal mine, even though she says wildly inaccurate and wrong things a lot. But she was also a canary in the coal mine in identifying issues that the conservative establishment was slow to pick up on. And I want to identify them because I think it's important to understanding who she is and why she has this audience that she has. Sorry, you were gonna say something.

[Jon Podhorz]

I just wanna interrupt you for a second because I don't wanna, like, go into. I don't wanna sort of know why,

[Eli Lake]

but it's very important, I think, to understand who she is and what's going on at this moment. So her first brush with fame is with Project Veritas, where she is the president of College Republicans at Barry College in Florida. And they would not allow her to have some sort of 911 memorial, which they found offensive on campus. So she said she wanted to form a new club as a college student that was gonna raise money for isis. And she filmed it the way these Project Veritas things did. She got a viral video where this guy who was like an associate dean is giving her advice. Don't call it Friends of isis. Call it maybe something else. And she was expl. Explaining how they wanted to give them flashlights cause they can't see things at night. And all these. It's a funny and kind of gonzo crazy moment. But if you think about it, that's in 2015. And then like, what, eight years later, we have the Tentifada, where literally it looks like we've got ISIS on campus. Kind of another one. Social media censorship. She's famous for chaining herself to Twitter headquarters. What did we all realize by 2020, 2021 was that this. We started off with one set of things that were laudable and understandable in terms of content moderation. And it became an unbelievable sort of censors regime. And it was terrible. And that really changed. That became a mainstream view, especially on the right. But Laura Loomer was there before everybody else. And finally, I mean, she would. She's warning about creating an environment where it was okay to try to assassinate President Trump in 2017. She disrupts Shakespeare in the Park, Julius Caesar, and Caesar's Trump. Well, she looked like she was Jeremiah with that. She was correct that that is where the left was going. So even though she does get things wildly wrong, like the daughter of Qasem Soleimani is living in San Diego and things like that, and she can be quite reckless in how she approaches what she does. I'm acknowledging all of that. She also, like Trump, has a way of. For all of her hyperbole and bs, shining a light on an issue that the kind of elite consensus doesn't want to talk about.

[Jon Podhorz]

Okay, so does that mean. Okay, so does that mean that her transformation, you're saying it's not her, but whatever her. Her coming back from Ukraine and saying she now has seen the light and they're, you know, what they're doing is noble and what Russia is doing is evil. And she is now seen. You know, she's now has a more mature view, and she thinks other people should go to Ukraine and see what she saw. And all of that is this. If she is A canary in the coal mine. Is this a harbinger of a shift on the nationalist right now that Ukraine is winning and Trump seems to be more favorable?

[Eli Lake]

It's bigger than Ukraine. It's bigger than Ukraine. Because what this really gets at is if you look at Tucker Carlson and Nick Fuentes right now, they are basically saying they're no longer Republicans, they're attacking Trump. And what Laura Loomer represents is that very online, a wing of that very online kind of based like, I'm here to offend you, kind of basically calling that out and saying, you guys are no longer with our movement. And she is going back to again, this idea that Islam is a huge problem in our society is something that now has a 25 year kind of pedigree of not just, you know, serious policy intellectuals worrying about what to do about radical Islam and everything like that in the Republican Party, but also the kind of people who were starting with George W. Bush and then John McCain saying, don't call him Barack Hussein Obama. This was how you scored transgressive points. Lots of people remember that. And now you have Tucker Carlson saying, I think Qatar is a better ally than Israel. It's a great place to live. I've learned a lot about the Koran. I would apologize to Bin Laden's family. And that doesn't compute with a number of these people who became part of the MAGA movement. And in large part because they were extremely concerned and hostile to Islam. It's a big part of the immigration debate and everything else like that. She is exploiting that. And I think that it's genuine. I mean, I kind of understand it in a weird way. What I don't understand is the people who are with Tucker Carlson that would rather point the finger at like this phantom Jewish control and everything like that. I mean, I understand it as a Jew. Of course, history repeats itself fine, but it doesn't make sense in the context of the history of the American based right. And that's where that's coming from. And there's a lot, I think, that represents a lot of people at this point.

[Abe Greenwald]

But can I say something? I think the Tuckerites don't know or care about the history of the American based right. We're talking about a lot of very young people who, you know, came to this just yesterday, I think, and forget based right. The pre. Based right. You know, which, which is which. Which also had a vigilant understanding of radical Islam. So, you know, they're.

[Jon Podhorz]

Eli's. Eli's right. Eli's right. In the sense that you said they had a based, understand understanding of radicalism Islam. The thing that was different about Loomer and Trump and everybody like that is that they dropped the qualifying adjective the problem was.

[Eli Lake]

Right.

[Jon Podhorz]

And also, by the way, the problem was Islamic.

[Eli Lake]

Blame Obama too. Right, right.

[Jon Podhorz]

And here we are in 2026 and we have a Hamasnic Islamist possibly winning the Democratic nomination for the Senate in Michigan.

[James Patterson]

Right.

[Jon Podhorz]

I mean, so that's not radical Islam. He is not radical Islam because he was a public health official in Detroit. He's a doctor, his wife's a doctor. They're, you know, they're not, they're not like.

[Abe Greenwald]

Yeah, but I mean, Ayman Al Zawahiri was a doctor too. I mean.

[Jon Podhorz]

No, what I mean by that is he's an American and he is trying to move these views from what we would consider the radical overton window shifting to the middle like bom doni. And so that is also a prophetic. When Trump said we need to stop immigration from these eight Muslim countries until we know what the hell is going on. And that seemed very extreme. And then, you know, we have. This dates back before the eight Muslim countries, but you know, we have the 250,000 Somalis that we repatriated to the United States because of the Somali civil war, planting themselves in Minnesota, getting Ilhan Omar, getting into the house and stealing hundreds of millions of dollars and basically being this anti American force inside the nicest state in the union. So I think that that's the canary in the coal mine is that we're gonna have to start calling things by their true names. And that when Bush said in 2001, don't say that Islam is a religion of peace, I thought that's going too far. But the fact is that Most. There are 2 billion Muslims in the world. The largest Muslim country is Indonesia. Indonesia is a moderate country, not a radical country. Malaysia is a moderate. You know, they're not like madrasa driven Wahhabists who wanna overthrow the international order. And so you can't tar all of Islam with Saudi madrasa money. But here we are 25 years later and this is here at home. We are here fighting with politicians who are running as a kind of. Also sort of like Michelle Wellbeck's book submission where a character weirdly similar to Mamdani becomes president of France. But he wants.

[Eli Lake]

Can I give a very. There's a neocon. I'm gonna be very neocon for a second. There's a third way, excuse my Wolfowitzianism here Or what America can do is it can look to the victims of radical Islam, who are often Muslims themselves, and elevate their voices to tell the truth about this horrific totalitarian ideology which threatens the world. So I always thought that the way to square that circle was to encourage and uplift Muslims who had suffered as a result and were willing to stand up with the backing of Americans. And there should have been a project on the right 25 years ago to create an alternative to the Council of American Islamic Relations, which is a Muslim Brotherhood front, to say, no, we're the ones who represent Islam just as. So the idea that it kind of left and the Democrats were colluding in this effort that the National Voice of Islam. And this is the problem with Abdel Sayed, is just that, yeah, he's like, just a guy who was a public health official, but his energy, in many ways, and his ideology and his talking points come directly from basically an organization which is laundering radical Islam. So that's the. I mean, that would be the ideal solution. We didn't really do that.

[Jon Podhorz]

I disagree with you, and I'll tell you why. Because you know what annoys me? And then we have to end. Here's what annoys me. What are the wars that we have fought since 1990? We liberated Kuwait, a Muslim country, from a Muslim country being swallowed up. We liberated Afghanistan from a radical Islamic regime that was, you know, abusing women and destroying monuments. Worst thing, Right. We liberated Iraq from Saddam Hussein. We have spent blood and treasure this entire century and indeed, 10 years before this century.

[Eli Lake]

Don't forget the coast of our Muslims.

[Jon Podhorz]

The coast of our. We go to war to help Muslims. And you know what happens? Muslims get worse and worse and worse about the United States, including inside the United States. So what are we supposed to do?

[Eli Lake]

Yeah, to make it clear that we care, that we. Yeah, okay. Because. John. Okay, the alternate. Let me just answer that. And I know. Don't call me a squish. I'm not a squish.

[Jon Podhorz]

I'm not calling you a squish.

[Eli Lake]

I know you're not, but I'm talking to the audience here. But it's like, okay, in Somalia, it's a very similar problem as to what happened after World War II in Eastern Europe when you have Bolsheviks who are organizing in the community, they're gonna win even if they represent a minority point of view. That's the point. Is that like, you know, it's like, yeah, you got a bunch of people who just wanted most. And imagine, even in the Somalis, they Just want to, you know, open a small business and do things. But then you have a concentrated, well funded, often from the outside of America group of people who are willing to intimidate their own community, who are willing to do all kinds of things. And that's why you saw that world radicalized, that we should have understood that this was going to be a threat from the very beginning. And for some reason, even though CAIR was the unindicted co conspirator, nobody followed up on it. Not Jordan, not George W. Bush, no one did. I mean, Obama just dropped it altogether. But I'm saying.

[Abe Greenwald]

But can I just say one thing about this? I think about this all the time because it blows my mind. I think the ball you're talking about dropping here, our understanding, America's understanding post 911 of the threat from radical Islam to the US was purely in terms of terrorism and war and violence. If you look back at the books, I was remembering this like there was this great, like action series, Prayers for the Assassin. You know, it was all about how there was going to be a future, you know, takeover. It's a sort of interesting alternate to Welbeck's book Submission in that and it comes far before was all about how there's going to be a US takeover by radical Islam by virtue of a dirty bomb. Okay, Right, right. We were so focused on the, on the, on they're getting their way through terrorism and we got completely blindsided in that. They did it through politics. They came through leftist American politics. And like,

[Eli Lake]

who would have?

[Abe Greenwald]

I mean, as little as I think of the left, I didn't think that they were opening the door to actually giving political power to radical Islamists.

[Seth Mandel]

Years ago, Mark Stein would joke that Republicans were wrong. The problem is that Islamists were far too well integrated and far too American. They had learned how to use the ACLU and all these other organizations. The problem is not that they're foreign at all. The problem is that they know how to be American immediately. And there that it's a joke, but it was, but it was, you know, it was based in that idea that I think they understood the use of institutions and, you know, the patients and all that other stuff. And they also understood how to, you know, apply the politics. But the thing about the politics of the left right now is that because it is centered around Israel, that creates the sort of moment a lot of people have been waiting for. Right. If you've been like paying your dues to be part of the progressive coalition and now all of a sudden There is this moment where everybody has to denounce Israel if they want to win a primary. This is like. This is. This is the moment you've been waiting for. And so there's a convergence of that with incentives that make it very powerful.

[Jon Podhorz]

I just think that's a really brilliant point about, you know, the. Basically, they did the long march through the institutions and we assumed that they were too unsophisticated and that the forces inside the country that were of danger to us were the pulse shooter or somebody planting a dirty bomb or something like that. And that in fact, organizing at the local level and going through the city council and then becoming a congressman and that sort of thing turned out, you know. Yeah, it's as American as apple pie to use the. To involve yourself in politics and try to change the country through the legal means of getting yourself elected and passing laws and doing things like that. And that needs to be countered. The only way to counter it is by.

[Eli Lake]

It's worse than that. We had by its name.

[Jon Podhorz]

Yeah, go ahead.

[Eli Lake]

Just really quick. And then I know we go in. It's kind of worse than that because what we convinced ourselves was that we would get that kind of violence if the federal government in any way offended the sensibilities of Islamists. So you had David Petraeus, when he's in the middle of managing the war in Afghanistan, calling that lunatic guy in Florida saying, don't burn the Quran on video. I mean, that's what. But I'm saying. And you invited CAIR to cooperate with the FBI, even though the FBI had a huge number of files that said that care was a cutout for the Muslim Brotherhood. So there was a whole series of things that we did that because we were so focused on the tip of the spear. We really didn't acknowledge the fact that we were just opening the doors to. Again, it's not. There are plenty of other Muslims who are not like this, but it's the Salafi and jihadist. The Muslim by the Ikhwan version of Islam that we are talking about here that is very organized, has a lot of money globally. That's the problem. Okay, well, can I do a really quick commentary recommends.

[Jon Podhorz]

Go ahead.

[Eli Lake]

I haven't done one in. Okay. I think it is the anniversary, the 40th anniversary was this month of one of my favorite movies. Midnight Run with Charles Grodin and Robert De Niro, for our younger listeners and viewers, if you haven't watched, is really one of the most wonderful movies. It's up there with my favorite De Niro Films. Just a wonderful kind of performance. It's a lost world in many ways. I recently saw it again where you could smoke on airplanes and they had kind of early 70s technology for tapping phones and things like that. It's Dennis Farina is in it as it gives a kind of chilling performance. And at the end of it, even though it is ultimate, it's the ultimate kind of buddy movie. I'm not gonna give too much away, but it's basically about a bounty hunter and a convict trying to make their way across country so he can collect his bail bond. But it gets to some fundamental kind of lessons about humanity. And it's really brilliantly written. So if you like good movies, Midnight Run is a classic.

[Jon Podhorz]

It is okay, full stop, full bore. And the great performance in that movie is Charles Grodin's not Denise.

[Eli Lake]

Oh, Grodin is so great.

[Jon Podhorz]

Grodin. Anyway, but okay, so Midnight Run, watch Midnight Run, read Eli's piece on Laura Loomer, despair over our current condition in Iran and come back to and write us. The mailbag is open for 24 hours. Podcastometary.org Short questions we're going to do an hour show you here on Friday. Answering your questions podcast. Org. Thanks, Eli. And for Seth and Abe, I'm Jon Pod Horowitz. Keep the candle burning.

[Eric Gertler]

From the state House to the courthouse, in the emergency room and in the classroom, Americans are losing trust in their leaders. In a 2025 U.S. news and World Report survey, 85% of Americans said government leaders care more about their own power than the people they serve. 73% are disappointed in healthcare leaders, 72% in business, and 68% in education. But there are still leaders worth believing in. I'm Eric Gertler, CEO and executive chairman of U.S. news World Report. This is the Best leaders podcast sponsored by the Noble Reach Foundation. On this show, we'll go deeper into the stories, challenges and lessons of extreme extraordinary leaders across public service, business, healthcare and education. You can find the best Leaders podcast from U.S. news World Report on YouTube, Apple, Spotify, Amazon, Music, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[James Patterson]

I'm James Patterson. I write way too many books. Welcome to Hungry Dogs. The title comes from my maternal grandmother, Isabel Zelvis Morris. Nan used to always say, hungry dogs run faster, James. And I've been running fast ever since. Here's what will be coming your way soon. And this is a really terrific list. I think you'll hear from some incredible people like Stacey Abrams. Yay. BJ Novak. Yay. Kathy Bates. Dolly Parton, Josh Gad, and Pope Leo. Okay, maybe not Pope Leo, but who knows? Maybe he'll show up. Hungry dogs run faster. Thank you, grandma, for turning me into a hopeless, obsessive compulsive. Listen to Hungry Dogs with James Patterson. That'd be me on Apple, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

[Matt Ebert]

I started with one shop. No college degree, no big investors. It was just a willingness to work. Over time, that one shop turned into a multi billion dollar business called Crash Champions. All the lessons I learned along the way came from the grind. And that's what my show Pod Crash is all about. We have real conversations with people who've built things the hard way. We talk to founders, athletes, and blue collar leaders who kept going when things got tough. You'll hear stories of grit, leadership and growth. Plus real world lessons you can take back to your team and your life tomorrow.

[Jon Podhorz]

When you get momentum, you step on the gas.

[Seth Mandel]

That's how you get separation from everybody else.

[Jon Podhorz]

I was at Harvard Law School.

[James Patterson]

I was.

[Jon Podhorz]

Blah, blah, blah. I looked up, let me tell you something. There's kids in my neighborhood putting in sheetrock that is smarter than you. AI is going to disrupt a lot of stuff. It is never going to disrupt physical blue collar trade skill.

[Seth Mandel]

And the guy just looked at me

[Jon Podhorz]

and he said, it's bloody impossible. So I asked him this question.

[Eric Gertler]

I said, it's impossible.

[Matt Ebert]

Unless that's Podcrash with me, Matt Ebert. Watch on YouTube and listen. Wherever you get your podcasts.