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- [00:04]
John Podhoretz
Hope for the best expect the worst Some preach and pain Some die of birds the way of knowing which way it's going Hope for the best Expect.
- [00:21]
Abe Greenwald
The worst Hope for the best. Welcome to the Commentary magazine daily podcast. Today is Monday, December 2nd. I am Commentary's Executive Editor, Abe Greenwald. John is not feeling in full voice today. He's got whatever's going around. So we are going to do our best to soldier on without him today. And by we, I mean, of course, Commentaries. Washington columnist and Director of Domestic Policy at the American Enterprise Institute, Matthew Continetti. Hi, Matt.
- [00:57]
John Podhoretz
Hi, Abe.
- [00:58]
Abe Greenwald
And Commentaries media columnist and senior Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, Christine Rosen. Hi, Christine.
- [01:06]
Christine Rosen
Hi, Abe.
- [01:08]
Abe Greenwald
And Commentary Zone Senior editor, Seth Mandel. Hi, Seth.
- [01:12]
Matthew Continetti
Hi, Abe. This is an insurrection.
- [01:16]
Abe Greenwald
No, people.
- [01:17]
Matthew Continetti
People are going to wake up to hear Abe's voice doing the intro.
- [01:21]
John Podhoretz
Though I do feel like we're kind of the dogs who caught the car here today. Snow, John.
- [01:28]
Matthew Continetti
Everybody Prepare for a three hour.
- [01:34]
Abe Greenwald
Or 15 minute podcast.
- [01:38]
Matthew Continetti
Right.
- [01:39]
Abe Greenwald
So I say we lead off with Hunter Biden. Joe Biden has granted his son a very broad pardon after having said multiple times that he would not. Is anyone surprised? What do we think of the ramifications? Is anyone shocked? Outraged? Jump in?
- [02:01]
John Podhoretz
Well, I wouldn't say I was surprised at the pardon. I did think that Biden would wait till the sentencing and then commute Hunter's sentence. And that would make it easy for him to align his repeated assertions that he was not going to interfere with this case and he was not going to issue a pardon with his actual deed for his son to get his son out of any prison time. Instead, he went for the full pardon, which, while not surprising, is pretty brazen considering all the times that the White House has said that he wasn't going to issue such a pardon. And then the second thing that's striking about it, Abe, is exactly what you pointed out, which is its breadth. The fact that it pardons Hunter from all crimes he committed or may have committed between 2014 and yesterday is a pretty broad assertion of the president's pardon power. Some legal scholars who've been quoted in the media this morning say that the only pardon that matches this in breadth is Gerald Ford's pardon for Richard Nixon in September of 1974.
- [03:25]
Matthew Continetti
So, and once again, our national nightmare is over.
- [03:29]
John Podhoretz
Yeah, well, in a way, it could be just be beginning, because what this does is it creates a lot of questions about the Biden presidency. Of course, Biden issues this pardon and his statement, which we can talk about, too, and then immediately gets on a plane for Angola. So he's not answering any questions about this pardon and about why he reversed himself. And apparently there may be a press opportunity with Karine Jean Pierre, the White House press secretary, who has said that Biden wouldn't issue the pardon even more times than Biden has. So we might be able to get that. The second thing that happens, though, is it does raise a lot of questions, specifically this breadth. And there is some speculation that takes place on the political playbook this morning that this may have been not just a preemptive pardon in light of the upcoming sentencing for Hunter's trial, but a preemptive pardon in light of the Trump presidency. Because you can see among certain figures, not just political figures, people like Joe and Mika of Morning Joe, a kind of trepidation and nervousness that Trump may come after them. And this is why Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski kind of telegraphed their visit to Mar A Lago after the election. And here, too, the sense that if the Trump Justice Department would reopen the Biden cases and perhaps dig in a little bit deeper into the Biden business relationships, they may uncover, in fact, they're probably likely to uncover serious crimes. But now Hunter cannot be charged with any such crimes that took place during that period. And so one final point, the pardon that I'm looking for now is of Biden's brother, who was Hunter's business partner in a lot of these deals that has not been issued. But if that comes out at the last minute, remember, a lot of these pardons always come out in the last hours of a presidency. Then you can, I think, be sure that this was a preemptive move to stop any Justice Department investigation into the Biden business dealings.
- [05:50]
Christine Rosen
Well, and that's what was so interesting to me about the reaction to this pardon. No one, I think, on the right side of the aisle was surprised that he did this. We've been saying over and over again, of course he's going to pardon his son. We should talk. I want to say a few things about the tone of Biden's statement. But to the issue of pardoning relatives, I've heard a lot. I had a couple of friends say, oh, yes, well, Trump pardoned Charles Kushner. Now he's making him ambassador. And Bill Clinton pardoned his half brother for an old cocaine charge. In both of those cases, those men had served part of their sentence. They had actually, actually done prison time. And it's usually the case that a presidential pardon is given after sentencing and after in many cases, the serving of part of that sentence. So in this case, the preemptive nature of it really is novel compared to other presidential pardons of relatives in laws, et cetera. But Joe Biden's statement really bothered me because he rolled out the playbook that he has been using for Hunter Biden, the empathy playbook, and tried to play that song one more time, and I found it egregious. Overreach. In this sense, I believe he truly does care deeply about his son. It has clearly taken a toll on him personally for years, but the idea that it was his addiction to blame, and, oh, he's gotten better. The tax fraud happened after Hunter Biden became sober, supposedly. So the federal tax crimes for which any one of us would also be charged and sent to prison, because if we are writing off prostitutes and our children's law school tuition as deductions, we too will be investigated by the IRS and likely serve time. The fact that he again is trying to say, look, we all understand my son has this addiction issue, Americans will forgive me for forgiving him. I found that a little bit too much in this tone and the tone of his pardon was very much, we are all aggrieved victims of our own justice system. This is a two tier justice system. He was unfairly prosecuted. And that also falls flat given the Biden administration's own weaponization of the justice system during the last four years.
- [07:53]
Matthew Continetti
Yeah, a lot of jump on, right? I mean, that's, that's what, you know, Trump people are saying, like, we agree, we agree.
- [08:00]
Abe Greenwald
Well, not just. But not just Trump people. A lot of the sort of mainstream media reaction has been upset about this because it seems to put meat on the bones of Trump's claims about a two tiered, unfair justice system. So they're sort of like, you know, in a tizzy. It's funny, for my part, he just. No, I'm sorry, what was that?
- [08:28]
Matthew Continetti
He just announced he was nominating Cash Patel to the FBI. And we had that whole debate about that opened the debate about how much politicization has been going on at the federal level and Justice Department and what needs to be done about it and whether it's too much. People responded by saying, well, I guess I agree that if from Trump's perspective, I would want somebody who would, you know, kind of want a clean house maybe, but I don't know about this guy, whatever. But this came right on the heels of that, really part of the extended discussion. So now we have a kind of bipartisan presidential complaining about politics at the Justice Department in a way we haven't had in a very long time.
- [09:13]
Abe Greenwald
I had thought, for my part, that a lot of the talk about Trump's wanting revenge has been overblown and campaign scare talk. He didn't lock Hillary up after he said he was going to lock her up. You saw the comedy between Trump and Biden sitting together after the election, congratulating Trump, accepting Biden's congratulations and so on. And it seemed to be very much like, oh, that was all for the campaign, you know. But I think Matt has kind of convinced me that maybe this administration, the incoming Trump administration, would, in fact, go after dirty Biden dealings in the way that they fear.
- [10:06]
John Podhoretz
I mean, you never know. I mean, I do want to say something about the tone of the statement that Christine pointed out. Two things. The first is, you know, there are a lot of fathers in the world. There's only one president. And so, yes, I get it. You know, any father is going to want to help his son and to do what he can for his son. But the power of the presidency is such that, you know, there have only been now 46 people, 45 who have had it right. And they're granted extraordinary means to achieve their objectives. And so it would have been, I think, more telling if Biden had not done this, if he had just said, okay, he'll be sentenced, but I'm going to commute his sentence on the way out. Instead, this full pardon for anything, anything, who knows what else is there for a decade is pretty extraordinary and pretty brazen, as I say. The second thing is the weaponization piece. I have to say, if there were an Academy Award for gaslighting, the Biden administration would be cleaning up. I mean, they'd be coming home with the trophies for four years in a row. They'd have them piled in their closets. It's not. It's not just that this administration is saying that the DOJ is weaponized when they, of course, launched these political campaigns against Trump through the lawfare. And now we know that they're political because Jack Smith, the special prosecutor, is just closing down shop. I mean, all over now, right? It's that the double standard of justice was working in Hunter's favor until the whistleblowers came out and blew up that.
- [12:09]
Abe Greenwald
Plea agreement, by the way, that's what.
- [12:11]
John Podhoretz
They wanted all along.
- [12:12]
Abe Greenwald
That's what I wanted. To just know. You reminded me. The broadness of the pardon echoes the insane broadness of the plea agreement. Remember, that plea deal was, like, exempted Hunter from All, all future wrongdoings he couldn't be punished for.
- [12:29]
Matthew Continetti
So begins three months before he went to work for Burisma.
- [12:35]
Christine Rosen
Well, and the gaslighting point here is very important. And for the Democrats who listen to us and are kind of stalwart partisans of the Democratic Party, please hear my voice. Matt's point is important because if they don't learn a lesson here, they are doomed to repeat some of the mistakes that got Trump reelected this, this time, and that's this. Joe Biden once again broke a promise, lied to the country, has proven himself not to be a cuddly old guy who has everyone's best interest in heart, but a dirty and backroom dealing politician who will lie to cover up his corrupt family and is happy to profit off his access to power and allow his family members to profit off the access to power. And if they're only concern about the pardon isn't, wow, he lied to us and seems corrupt. But uh, oh, this will allow Trump to do even worse. They will not learn the lesson of how voters who swung from Biden to Trump, why they did that, what disgusted them about the system. And if Trump overreaches, they'll swing back to whomever runs before. But this is an important lesson. He lied to you, he lied to his own voters and he did it in such a blatant way and then made an Angola exit, which is what I'm going to call any politician who runs away from a problem he creates from here on out that he has, there has to be some accountability on the part of Democrats who really wanted to think the best of Joe Biden.
- [13:53]
Matthew Continetti
You know, the reason he made an Angola exit, by the way, is that there's no, we have no extradition treaty with Angola.
- [13:59]
John Podhoretz
Just letting you know he lied about his age. Right? I mean, it's just piles and piles of lies. And then finally ending with this one is such an, it's really quite striking. So even when we say we're not surprised, you're still kind of like in awe of the gumption. And we also should mention, you know, Biden, did Biden write the pardon? I'm just going to go there, I'm just going to say that. Or did Hunter sit next to him and kind of say, now, dad, you know, just sign this paper? Because that's my working theory for why Biden walked out of that bookstore in Nantucket Holding. Rashid Khalidi, the Terrorist Sympathizers History of Palestine. I think that one of his zoomer grandchildren who hate Israel and have been behind his Progressive move over the last four years. Kind of just, you know, shove the book in Biden's. The notch of his, you know, his. His hand and his arm, because his hands in his pocket. Here, Granddad, just take this book. Just take this book. And then 24 hours later, it's, hey, Pops, why don't you sign this piece of paper? Well, sure, son. You know, next thing you know, we have this huge national scandal. I mean, the man is not in a good state. There was a Politico story this weekend about how, you know, typically when a president is on his way out, now Biden's on his way out a lot sooner than he expected. But when a president is on his way out, they set up times where the staff of the White House and the executive office of the president can come and have their picture taken with the president. It was kind of a big deal. Like I say, there's only one president at a time. And in the 200 plus years of this. Of this republic, there only been 45 of them. And here we go. Biden hasn't done it. They don't want to expose the staffers to Biden because they're afraid of what he might do and what they might come away with saying. And he's still the president for a little bit over a month now. Right.
- [16:01]
Matthew Continetti
It also raises like the Kamala Harris video. Right. One of the. One of the responses to that was, what are her staffers trying to do to her, you know, videoing the video.
- [16:13]
Abe Greenwald
The video last week. That.
- [16:15]
Matthew Continetti
Last week. Yeah, yeah. To return to that, just there was this. The immediate response was, this is. This looks like sabotage. Like, how can you work for this woman and say, all right, here you go, this is good. That's a great take. Let's print it. And then, you know, Matt mentions Biden with the book. And so it feels like one of those, you know, Abe, it's even worse than that situations where it's like the staffers aren't just being kept away from them or not having their usual transition period, but their staffers are like there's some kind of meanness.
- [16:51]
Abe Greenwald
They're. They're decorating him with things that will get him in. In, In. In trouble.
- [16:56]
Matthew Continetti
Yeah, like they're putting things. Yeah, exactly.
- [16:59]
John Podhoretz
Yeah.
- [16:59]
Matthew Continetti
They got like a Christmas tree.
- [17:00]
Abe Greenwald
Yeah.
- [17:01]
John Podhoretz
Tinsel.
- [17:01]
Abe Greenwald
Yeah, Right. Yeah. I mean, the. Because that's why. I mean, that's why a president holds a book when people are around. So. So there he can. So there is some connection drawn between the two. Yeah, there is.
- [17:13]
Matthew Continetti
Obama did that Constantly. And it was like, you know, that's how you get a summer bestsellers. Obama would walk out, you know, in whatever his summer house was, with a book, and that's the book that would sell.
- [17:23]
Abe Greenwald
Yeah.
- [17:24]
Matthew Continetti
And for Trump, it was. He would say, this is a terrible book and a terrible person. And that's how that book would sell.
- [17:30]
Abe Greenwald
To Matt's point here, by the way, about the lies, and to Christine's point, there is. It's like this ever darkening cloud under which this administration is exiting. I mean, if you just go back to the campaign, the debate, where his performance, you have this one huge fiction exposed, right, that Biden is capable of cognitive being in sufficient cognitive shape to run the country into debate. And that's exposed along with the media's covering it up and the administration. And then you have the entire Harris campaign, which itself was this huge fiction, you know, this empty confection of joy that suddenly the moment she lost, it seemed like everyone could, could, could sort of acknowledge the, the fact in plain sight, which is that there was no there, there. There was something quite worse than a there, there. And now you have this, just this blatant lie. This, this, you know, what has become a blatant lie in retrospect. Biden's assertion multiple times that he was not going to pardon his son. He's. There's something sort of profoundly ignoble happening here in Biden's exit. The whole presidency has taken a downturn here, and we may not have seen the end of it.
- [19:12]
John Podhoretz
No, we still have time to go. This might be a good way to transition to the other big story of the weekend. There were plenty of them. And by that I mean Donald Trump's nomination of Cash Patel to be the director of the FBI. You know, 24 hours before this pardon was issued, all Washington wanted to talk about was Trump's personnel moves over Thanksgiving weekend, mainly Cash Patel as FBI FBI director. And we can talk about the merits of the nomination separately. But I do think the bridge here is the second that Biden issued this pardon, people stopped talking about Patel. And in fact, the Patel nomination makes a certain kind of sense now in light of the pardon. Because if you're on both levels, one, if you're like me, and you just look at this administration and say, gosh, you know, how, how kind of corrupt has it been? I'm not just the business deals, but the way in which they have bent the truth in order to hide the reality of Biden and his family. You would think, oh, well, an institution like the FBI does need somebody in order to come in and say, okay, here's what's what. Let's figure out actually what's been going on. And on the other hand, if you accept Biden's premise that the Justice Department has been corrupt and weaponized, well, then you would want also someone who's a reformer to come in and to knock heads around and to make sure that the people at the FBI headquarters are actually pursuing crimes and not political opponents. So it's, in a way, Biden did Trump an additional favor, not just in kind of reminding the public why people are so upset at Joe Biden, why his presidency is unpopular and deemed a failure, but also giving an explanation for why someone like Keshe Patel might be necessary at FBI.
- [21:23]
Matthew Continetti
Yeah, there's, and I also looking back over it, you have the situation where Biden was supposed to be the norms guy, the return to norms guy. And I don't say that, you know, as a gotcha. What I mean is when the Dems ran Hillary Clinton In 2016, they ran somebody who voters understood was basically as corrupt as they felt Donald Trump was. And they looked at the two of them and they said, well, Trump is honest about it, right? He's the honest liar or whatever Dave Chappelle christened him. And you know, and he said, I'll tell you why, I can tell you it's corrupt because I'm, I'm, I, you know, she was at my wedding, right? He looked over at the, at the debate and said, Hillary Clinton was at my wedding because I paid her to be that whatever it is. His point was, I bought all these people off. I know it's corrupt. I'm part of the system. And then they ran Biden. That was supposed to be the different one. Hillary was such a disaster because people took one look at classic Clintonian politics and said, are you kidding me? This is supposed to be the non corrupt alternative to this guy that you're telling me is going to blow up the whole system. And looking back, I mean, obviously there are plenty of people who said Biden was never the norms guy, but, you know, I understand that. But the narrative on the whole was we fixed it. We got it right this time. We acknowledge that we did a stupid thing by nominating an obviously corrupt person or a person who the public believed was deeply corrupt and part of this system in 2016 against Trump. We're not going to do that this time. This time we've got Joe from Scranton. And now when you look back, you see, first of all, people are right to question. Do they have anybody who's not like this? Right. Like, that's the bet. Like, what's the, what's the bench situation for the Democrats? Is the country looking at the party and saying, well, the alternative, the good alternative to Hillary was this pardon, pardoning of his son and maybe, you know, brother and all the other stuff. And so I think that it casts the shadow, Abe, when you talk about, you know, the sort of cloud they're leaving under, it casts the shadow back, you know, the whole way.
- [23:42]
Abe Greenwald
Well, when you say the whole way. But I want to get, we can get into Cash Patel. But I just want to add to Seth's point here. If you look at what the Biden administration is bookended by, right, Started with burying the Hunter laptop and everything that was involved in that, involving the national security figures, and now it closes on this note of this broad pardon of Hunter. And in the middle, you have four years of the media and Democrats saying, this is all nonsense. Nothing's going on here.
- [24:17]
John Podhoretz
Go back, go back farther. With the first impeachment, right. Trump was threatening to withhold the money to Ukraine because he wanted Zelensky to open up the investigation to Hunter. Somehow this has been Hunter's story. We've been living through. I don't know how we got here, but I, and I say, just. Seth, quickly, I think you're, you're right about Biden being the alternative. But remember, it's not so much the alternative to Hillary in 2020, it's the alternative to Bernie. The real thing that the Democrats fear is Bernie. They fear him for a lot of reasons. One is revolutionary aspect. Two, they think that he's a loser. And they're probably right. And so it's keeping Bernie away is what elevated Biden, who turned out to be completely not up to the job.
- [25:08]
Seth Mandel
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- [27:29]
Christine Rosen
But I have to say I was a Cash Patel skeptic going in. You know, when he was nominated I would sort of rolled my eyes and thought oh, it's going to be another Matt Gates situation. Perhaps. But this pardon has radicalized me because I feel like maybe we do need someone who wasn't a former agent who did. You know, look, he worked for Nunes. He delved deeply into the Russia conspiracy hoax. He does know how to investigate things. He doesn't have criminal prosecution background. That concerns me because that is as Matt said earlier, the FBI's job is to go after crime. But in some sense if you believe as I think a lot of voters and not just MAGA voters believe that our justice system has is two tier. It is unfair. It has become weaponized by political self interest on both sides sometimes. But but lately from the Democratic side against the Republican side then an outside rebel might be what you need for a transition back to what Department of Justice is supposed to be. And look, he said he went on Steve Bannon's podcast a year ago and said I'm going to from day one, I'm going to shut down the Hoover Building in D.C. and it's going to become a museum to the deep state. First of all, I would love someone to just destroy that horrible, ugly, brutalist building that is a mockery of architecture in our nation's capital. But perhaps there is a there there. I mean, he does need to be vetted. He does need to be subjected to all the scrutiny for such a powerful position. And he will probably be recess appointed because Wright's term still goes for what, three more years? Two more years?
- [29:00]
John Podhoretz
Well, it goes. So Chris Wray, of course, is Trump's own appointee to the FBI. Trump appointed Christopher Wray as head of the FBI after he fired James Comey in his first year of the presidency last time. And Wray was known to be a Republican. He was known to be a conservative, but for various reasons. And the truth is, I mean, I know that there's kind of, you know, MAGA reasons that they don't like Ray's leadership at the FBI, but whether that's enough to explain Trump's animus toward him, I'm not quite sure. There may have been some personal interactions that Trump just didn't like him dealing with him or not. But Ray has become an object of MAGA derision. But he's still in the job, as you say. And the FBI directors are appointed to tenure terms after J. Edgar Hoover's departure and death in order to make that position somewhat insulated from the political winds. It clearly hasn't worked because we've had cases of FBI directors who are extremely political and also not quite up to the job, most notably Comey. So Trump now, I think Trump has a decision to make, but really the decision is Christopher Wray's right. Now, Christopher Wray says that he is focused on running the FBI, large federal agency involved in many different investigations, criminal, counterterrorism. But does he decide to wait this out and tempt Trump to fire him? Or does he decide, you know what? I'm going to announce my resignation pending confirmation of my. Well, that would be something to do, too. If I resign pending confirmation of my replacement, well, as Christine suggests, Patel may not actually be confirmed. Remember, in all these appointments, if four Republicans say no, they're not going to get Senate confirmation. So the next big decision here is raise. And then, of course, the question is, can Patel go through the vetting process and still retain enough support among the Republican senators? I'll say this. You know, one difference, I think, between Patel and Gates right away is the personal side of the Gates ledger, let's say, was out in the open from day one.
- [31:44]
Christine Rosen
People knew, very diplomatic, Matt.
- [31:46]
John Podhoretz
People knew what was going on and whether it was the fact that the FBI had investigated and decided not to press charges. But the other stories that had been coming out about Matt Gaetz's personal life for many years, they were circulating around Washington and Gates had made many personal enemies, especially in the House and then later House members who moved up to the Senate. So I think right away that nomination was greeted with kind of a, you know, a raised eyebrow in many quarters in Washington. And it was relatively quickly that Trump called on Gates and said, hey, the votes just aren't there. Well, with Patel, the objections to Patel aren't personal. I mean, we'll see what the media dredges up, if they can or anything. But in fact, what they seem to be more based on his agenda and his affect. And I think that if he can use his affect in such a way that it charms some senators and he makes promises to people like Chuck Grassley, who's going to be the head of the Judiciary Committee and responsible for was Judiciary or is it oversight that he's responsible for? I'm sorry. Anyway, Grassley is going to be kind of responsible for this nomination. Finance, narcotics, yeah, Judiciary, maybe it will be enough. The agenda, I don't think will be the stopping block for these nominees. It will be other aspects of their biography and character. I could sink them.
- [33:22]
Abe Greenwald
I feel like this raises a broader issue with Trump, his, some of his appointees and generally the agenda here, which is to fix corrupt and broken institutions. Can you, can Trump find someone to do the job whose affect isn't that of a fire breather, you know, another type of outsider reformer other than the ones that you look at and go, this guy seems a little reckless. He's going a little overboard here, you know, and that's so. So that is why I also shared Christine's initial suspicion about, about Patel. But I don't know. I mean, it's. In Trump world, we know they're hard.
- [34:19]
Matthew Continetti
To find, feel fear. He wants to send a message. I think that he nominates people who immediately make the headlines as wrecking balls, in part intentionally because he wants the signal to the FBI, I'm bringing in a wrecking ball. And I think mainly cash Patel is. It's his loyalty to Trump that's the main thing for Trump, because I think Trump just wants to make sure that there's no, you know, I don't know, skunk works or whatever you want to Call it going on under the surface in an agency that, you know, is supposed to answer to him. But also that, you know, one of the things that helps Cash is that he is an expression of what everybody thinks Trump wants to do. And we litigated that in the election. And that's why he actually has a leg up on the confirmation Trump ran. And, you know, everybody's afraid of what Trump is going to do. Cash is like an instrument of what they. They're afraid Trump wants to do. It's much harder to vote down somebody who is, you know, a blunt instrument of the guy nominating him, rather than, as we said, you know, something comes out that shows he's not qualified.
- [35:33]
Christine Rosen
But not all the voters who went for Trump in this election are those voters. And by that I mean a lot of them are. And I'll put myself in. I mean, I'm. I didn't want either of them to win, quite frankly, just like the last, the last several elections. But there's a Bhattacharya version of this, too, right? Go into the NIH with respect for what this institution should do. Fix it. Be a rebel, but be a rebel with credentials, with a way, with allies, powerful allies, people who actually also know how the institution should run. Now, I don't know if that's possible with the FBI, quite frankly, at this point, it might not be. And you might, you might need some of these Patel folks to come in and knock skulls. But there is a version of reform reformer, slash slightly radical reformer that Trump doesn't tend to attract. He's chosen a few of them, and that actually bodes well. But whether they can actually tackle these huge bureaucracies will be a question. No one should want that job. I mean, it's a really tough thing to reform a bureaucracy of these sizes.
- [36:35]
Matthew Continetti
But I also think that was by accident. So the Batacaria thing is, I think, a happy accident. I think that Trump, what Trump sees is a guy who was blacklisted and cast out by his peers. And, you know, we had all those emails with Fauci and the others writing about Jay Barcaria and what he was saying and what he was doing and how to sort of sideline him from the conversation. I think Trump sees the exclusion, the outcast, and not necessarily the mild mannered respect for the institution below the surface. I think he likes the fact that who are the guys that they tried to cast out last time and who turned out to be more right than they were on some of this stuff?
- [37:23]
Christine Rosen
But I want the guy to take a professional risk to tell the truth. And he was one of those guys with the Great Barrington Declaration, like he took. He took a genuine risk to his own professional reputation to say the truth and was called a liar and whose reputation was smeared, turned out to be right. Trump needs more of those types of civil servants.
- [37:42]
John Podhoretz
I mean, in Patel's defense, that's how MAGA views him, Christine. Right, because he was the main author of the Nunez memo, which got into the whole FISA warrants into the Trump campaign. And, you know, he has been someone who has really stood out there in defense of Trump, but not just kind of whatever Trump says goes. Also kind of unearthing various schemes in these institutions to weaken Donald Trump. So he's a MAGA hero. I think after the Gates defeat, the America first movement was a little bit, oh, gosh, are we not going to have our people in there other than Trump, of course. But now they have someone here in Patel who will be their representative. And the question is, how does this next month or so play out? The one disadvantage that strikes me with these early appointments, just the incredible job Trump has done with all these appointments. We get to one other appointment, maybe that will be a segue into the Middle east here in a moment. But they are kind of dangling there in a hook for a while. Right? And so, you know, with Gates, like I say, everybody kind of knew everything. And so Washington was like, no, I don't think we're going to do that. But you look at what's happening to Pete Hegseth, he's out there. And once the bad media, you know, the drive by media is coming at him and whether it's the New York Times obtaining that email that his mother sent him during a ugly divorce talking about his treatment of the women in his life. To now a Jane Mayer special in the New Yorker filled with damaging material. Who knows whether it's supported by facts, considering the author of the reporter of the report. But that's going to build up and it's going to cause trouble. We'll see whether something like that happens with Patel. But right now, I would say the nominees who are under the harshest light are Hegseth and RFK Jr. Those are the ones. And if those become the main event, then I think someone like Patel has a way to get confirmed. But why don't I talk about another of the appointments? I think that made a lot of people scratch their heads over the weekend. That was Trump's appointment of his, I guess. What is it?
- [40:21]
Abe Greenwald
It's his daughter's father's father in law. But by the way, two of his daughters. Father in law.
- [40:26]
Christine Rosen
Yes, two father in laws.
- [40:28]
John Podhoretz
But what are they to, what are they to the father?
- [40:30]
Christine Rosen
Yeah, there's no, I looked it up.
- [40:32]
Matthew Continetti
I'm not quite makatanim.
- [40:33]
John Podhoretz
It just occurred to me. Yeah, they're a relation, I guess, but. Right. So in the case of Ivanka, they.
- [40:42]
Abe Greenwald
Are, by the way, can I just interrupt? They are what Martin Lawrence and Eddie Murphy are apparently going to be, as his son is, will be marrying Martin Lawrence's daughter. That's an aside.
- [40:53]
John Podhoretz
Well, Eddie Murphy is president and Marlon Lawrence is appointed to ambassador.
- [40:58]
Abe Greenwald
Ambassador.
- [40:58]
John Podhoretz
Well, there will be historical precedent for that. So Ivanka's father in law, Charles Kushner, who Trump pardoned at the end of his first term, will be the ambassador designate to France. And then yesterday, I believe Trump announced that Tiffany, Trump's father in law, Boulos. Yes. Whose name is Massad Boulos, will be a special envoy to the Middle East. And this is interesting. He's very rich Lebanese businessman, Mossad Boulos. He has many connections and seemed to have played some role in Trump's outreach to Arab American voters in Michigan. As we've been saying on the podcast, mainly that outreach was to Lebanese Americans living in Michigan. But this is an interesting position and I think it speaks to Trump's interest in maintaining the ceasefire deal that Lebanon, Hezbollah struck with Israel last week. And so, Seth, you were on vacation last week and we didn't get your take on the cease fire. There's some civil disagreement, mild disagreement between me and John on the ceasefire, just mild. But interested in your thoughts on the ceasefire and what you think appointment of Mossad Boulos might mean?
- [42:29]
Matthew Continetti
Yeah, I, I think that loyalty, I mean, for Boulos, I think it's again, loyalty. He helped him with the Arab American vote. But in terms of the ceasefire, I think, you know, Lebanon is not, it's in, it's in pieces. Right. And so Biden made a point and Macron, the French president, Emmanuel Macron, they made a point of saying that this is a cessation of hostilities between Lebanon and Israel. And they repeated that in the statement. In fact, they repeated it twice in one sentence. At one point, they just kept saying Lebanon and Israel. So the whole thing feels like a way to kind of gloss over who we're really talking about here, which is Iran. This is a ceasefire agreement between Iran and Israel, if it's an agreement between anybody. And so, you know, putting, as I mentioned in the, in a post if this were in a ceasefire between Lebanon and Israel, you would not be putting the Lebanese army in the buffer zone. Right. So it's, the whole thing feels a bit ridiculous. It feels like an attempt to just kind of COVID over what we're really talking about here, which is one of my ongoing complaints of our general ongoing complaints about this administration, which is ignoring the Iranian elephant in the room as far as Boulos is concerned. You know, he ran for Lebanese parliament. So here's the thing. In 2018, he ran for Lebanese parliament. He ran, I believe, on a ticket that was allied to some extent with Hezbollah's own parliamentary parliamentary group.
- [44:19]
Abe Greenwald
Right.
- [44:19]
Matthew Continetti
Hezbollah does not have. Hezbollah has a veto, essentially a working veto in Lebanese politics, not because they have a majority, but because they have enough friends and can make enough trouble in Lebanon's parliament. And so generally it runs, Hezbollah runs for seats. It often, it often doesn't get, you know, into the double digits, even in seats. But it's really about Hezbollah sort of mapping out its alliance within Lebanon's parliament. And the question is how much of that applies to Boulos. He ran to be part of that, essentially that group. And everybody knows the game, everybody. You don't run for parliament in Lebanon without knowing what, who exactly you are aligned with or intending to pledge alignment with. And so I think that's one of the questions that they're going to have to deal with is, you know, he's obviously a mover and a shaker and a deal maker in the Middle east and Trump likes that. But he might also have some things that come out that make people a bit nervous. He's not subject to Senate confirmation. So we're not talking about him getting voted down. But a lot of people are scratching their heads because if you would take the father in law part out of it, he would be very low on a list of people. You would expect this administrative, this Trump administration, which is, has been focused on maximum pressure on Iran to pick for a role like this. And you wonder if what he's thinking, if he knows that, if he knows, you know, the extent of what people are actually concerned about in terms of the politics.
- [46:13]
Abe Greenwald
But you know, it also could be that Trump just wants to thank him for helping him with votes and that he has absolutely anything policy wise going forward that you should also be happy for Tiffany.
- [46:30]
Matthew Continetti
By the way, I'm torn because I'm happy for Tiffany.
- [46:32]
Christine Rosen
Shout out to Tiffany, who is getting recognized Trump daughter who is long sought her father's approval. And you know, poor Tiffany, poor forgotten Tiffany, can I also add that there's something weird about during Trump's first term when, when Ivanka got a job in the administration and Kushner did, her husband did as well. And there was a lot of talk about nepotism. And I personally was not comfortable with him putting his family members on the payroll, as she in particular didn't have any qualifications for the role that she was being paid to do. But there is a sense in which that's another way. The Biden administration has also undercut any argument against that. I mean, the. It's a family thing. You know, they've turned the White House into. Not in a charming way either. Just we're using the public's house for our family things. You know, he had a granddaughter get married there. Hunter was living there. There's a way in which it's no longer charming when the President's family sort of invades. This started under Clinton. I think there was a lot of concern in the mainstream media about the role that his family members, particularly even Carter, too.
- [47:34]
John Podhoretz
Yes, Jimmy Carter.
- [47:35]
Christine Rosen
Yeah. So, but, but that story, the President's family story, and how the People's House, you know, the White House is used as an extended family spot is so fascinating to me. And I wonder in Trump's second term if we're going to suddenly see the return of all the concerns about family members on the payroll, family members being given important jobs, etcetera, etcetera.
- [47:56]
Abe Greenwald
I mean, it's. This is another Hunter, you know, residual here. It's hard just after seeing the kind of money that the Bidens raked in by virtue of Joe being vice president and President, it would be hard to blow up Trump family appointments to the level of scandal now, I think. And it also falls short of predicted dangers of a Trump administration were right, which is not, oh, just that his family is going to be around, it's that, you know, he's going to affect some takeover and ruination of our democracy. I think we should use, though, the Bulow's point to talk a little bit more about what's going on in the Middle East. The ceasefire seems to be fragile, holding. I mean, it's being tested every now and then, but in the main seems to be sticking. And now there are some very big sort of shockwaves in the region happening as a result of the ongoing seven front war that Israel faces, namely, I'm talking about this reignited civil war in Syria, where you have these Islamist factions now on the move elsewhere. Matt, you had some thoughts on this earlier, and I Want to hear from all you?
- [49:29]
John Podhoretz
No, I mean, I do think what's happening right now is a consequence of Iran's weakness. I think that's true with the ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah. I do think Hezbollah got beat up pretty badly and Iran got beat up pretty badly when Israel sent the IAF in October to take out a lot of different sites and the entire Iranian air defense network. And so what's happened? Well, Hezbollah agreed to this again, ceasefire, which is very tenuous, but it's significant in two respects. One is it has separated the northern sector from Gaza. And so now that Hezbollah is no longer in the fight with Hamas against Israel, this isolates Hamas. And so that has now created an opportunity for another round of negotiations between the United States, Qatar, Hamas and Israel over hostages. There was this heartbreaking video of one of the American hostages, Adan Alexander, which came out over the weekend and I think just reignited all of our desire to see the hostages released by Hamas. But that will, I think may be, there may be more of a chance of some type of agreement than in previous times. Because whoever leads Hamas now, and as I've been saying on the podcast, it's unclear who does, but whoever leads Hamas now has telegraphing that maybe they're more flexible in the, in some of the arrangements that they might concede. Now we have to wait and see. And of course we're very skeptical that's in Gaza. But in Syria, Iran's weakness has led to this new move by the Syrian rebels. These rebels are from the north, they are backed by Turkey, they have ties to Turkey, they're Islamists. Some of them have connections to the Al Qaeda elements, the ISIS elements that have been, you know, roaming Syria and Iraq, the wastelands there for decade, decade now. And they had an extraordinary feat of arms in seizing Aleppo, Syria's one of Syria's largest cities, and moving south and gaining ground. And I think that what that shows is that the equilibrium that had been established in the Syrian civil war between the Kurds, who America supports not as fulsomely as we should, in my view. Nonetheless, we support the Kurds, then this more Islamist faction, Sunni faction around Aleppo, and then of course the Assad regime, which is minority Alawite sect of Shia Muslim, but then also serves as kind of the self appointed guardian of the different minority religions within Syria, including many Christians in the south. That equilibrium that had been established for many years after the initial outbreak of the Syrian civil war, which was in 2011, let's not forget it was a long time ago that equilibrium is now upset and that's what happens when Iran is dealt a blow. And so we're now seeing the emergence of perhaps of a new picture in the Middle east with a weak in Iran and Iran that needs to be even further weakened by the incoming Trump administration.
- [53:03]
Abe Greenwald
I just want to also add that this is also a result of Russia being preoccupied with its own, because we should also know people of the connection between Russia, Iran and their support for the Assad regime.
- [53:21]
Matthew Continetti
Right. But we should also mention Turkey's role in this because Turkey is a NATO country and they are on all sides of this. But they are. Remember that the Hamas leadership that has been politely asked to leave its quarters in Qatar has reportedly, and from what we understand, gone to Turkey. That's not new. I mean, it's new now, but Turkey has played host to Hamas in the past, before Qatar also. They're sort of a regular one. Turkey was behind the flotilla, the Mavi Marmara incident. That was what, 2009, I think. But you know, sending armed men on a so called humanitarian flotilla into Gaza, I mean to, to confront the Israeli navy. It's been going on, you know, so we're talking about a decade and a half of Turkey really willing to confront Israel. And now you look at what's going on in Syria and Turkey is taking advantage of that, willing to ally with any bad actor in Syria in the rebellion as long as he can crush the Kurds, as long as Erdogan can crush the Kurds. And so we're, we've got a NATO country, just, you know, we call this the Yiddish wood as kochleffel. Right. It's a pot stirrer. Erdogan is just going around the region setting fires. And this is a pretty big fire to be going on in Syria. And I think that's also a crisis for the alliance is that NATO has to figure out what do we do here in a situation like this where a NATO ally is constantly stirring the pot of revolution in the Middle East.
- [55:16]
Abe Greenwald
And this, I have to say, it's all very dispiriting to me because it brings me back to like the 2010s and this thing when you have jihadists fighting Islamist backed dictators and you don't want anyone to win.
- [55:33]
John Podhoretz
No, no. And again, you know, it's all Obama's fault.
- [55:37]
Abe Greenwald
Yes.
- [55:38]
John Podhoretz
In 2011, Obama did not.
- [55:40]
Matthew Continetti
Thanks.
- [55:40]
John Podhoretz
Obama did not support the Free Syrian army with the initial revolution against Assad, was not Al Qaeda and Obama did not support them. And the civil war just kind of metastasized and then the second thing Obama did was remove our troops from Iraq at the end of 2011, thus opening the gateway to ISIS. And we've been living through the consequences of Obama's awful, awful, terrible, no good, very bad presidency.
- [56:08]
Abe Greenwald
That's right for Obama. Introducing Russia into the Syrian, welcoming Syria.
- [56:15]
John Podhoretz
In order to, well, remember, because Russia was going to make sure that Assad's chemical weapons were disposed. Thank you, John Kerry.
- [56:22]
Matthew Continetti
And the reset, even before the reset, the reset was the big thing. She had the button that said overcharge in Russian instead of reset because whoever was at the State Department had spelled it wrong. And Hillary was happily holding a button that did not say research.
- [56:38]
Abe Greenwald
Right. Well, it's good that while this is all happening, we have Joe Biden in office in Angola.
- [56:44]
John Podhoretz
I want him to go into the wilderness in Angola, just like he did in Brazil.
- [56:49]
Christine Rosen
Wander.
- [56:50]
John Podhoretz
My hope was that he would be wandering. The pardon, I think would be a lot more dramatic if he had issued it from the Amazon. You know, day 30 in the forever, long ago day 20 in the Amazon. I am I, Joe Biden, hereby pardon my son, hunter of all crimes he he did or may have, may have committed. We really don't know what's what lies beneath the surface there. I'm going to make a recommendation, if I may be so bold here, please. Now Commentary podcast rules. I have to make my recommendation. Then one of you have to comment and either approve or pounce on your recommendation. Yes. So just you can chime in. Yes. Okay. My recommendation today is a new memoir by the filmmaker Barry Sonnenfeld. It's called Best Possible Place, Worst Possible True Stories from a Career in Hollywood. Barry Sonnenfeld is the director of the two Addams Family movies. He's the director of the Men in Black trilogy. He's the director of one of my favorite all time movies, Get Shorty. Before he was a film director, he was a cinematographer responsible for the lighting and camera work on such pictures as Big When Harry Met Sally, Miller's Crossing and Blood simple, two great Coen brothers films. But in addition to his great work in film, Sonnenfeld is a really great writer and a couple years ago he came out with his first memoir, Barry Sonnenfeld Call youl Mother, which was pretty hilarious but also a window into how crazy his upbringing was. This new book, Best Possible Place, Worst Possible Time, is just more a kind of collection of stories from his career in Hollywood. The chapters are very short, tells little snippets the tales of his interactions with producers and studio executives who he names. I mean, it's pretty, pretty bold. He kind of takes no prisoners here. They are hilarious. It's very entertaining. If you're interested in movies, if you've liked any of Barry Sonnenfeld's movies or even if you just like funny writing because there are some pretty just plain laugh out loud moments and lines that he uses, I'd recommend this new book by Barry Sonnefeld.
- [59:18]
Abe Greenwald
Okay. Yeah. I will now comment.
- [59:20]
John Podhoretz
Thank you.
- [59:21]
Abe Greenwald
I'm on the fence about this. Is there any scandal or sleaze?
- [59:25]
John Podhoretz
There is no. Well, there's. There's kind of intimated scandal. So it is interesting. He does tell about the filming of men in Black 3. I think it was where they were filming in New York. For whatever reason, Sony decided that the entire movie needed to be filmed in New York and Sonnenfeld doesn't like that. He likes filming in studios, on stages, in Hollywood. But also Will Smith didn't like it because he lives in Los Angeles. And so apparently Will Smith had to fly back to LA every weekend to be with Jada. And Sonnenfels says, I'm not sure what was going on at that time. So that's kind of implied that there's something there. And the other scandal that's not implied or at least kind of now recognized is Sonnenfeld directed a movie called Nine Lives which I have not seen and I don't plan to see because the premise of the movie was that Kevin Spacey is kind of an ornery businessman who was turned into a cat. That's the premise. This is a point in Sonnenfeld's career where he was really looking for work. This is more recent times he's been. Well, he's actually made a transition to tv. He now does the show Shmigadoon on Apple TV plus, which is like a parody of musicals. And he did. But in any case, when he. Toward the end of his film career, he was really looking for work. He did this film Nine Lives, but the cat was played by Kevin Spacey. And he said that, he says in the book that Kevin Spacey was terrible, awful to work with, just a mean man. But as soon as the actor Robbie Amel, who is a Canadian heartthrob, showed up on stage, Spacey, who had been bad mouthing this actor from weeks without seeing him, completely changed his tune. Ed was very, very, very nice. So that was. Again, there's kind of an implied scandal. So there's stuff, there's stuff like that.
- [61:25]
Abe Greenwald
Okay, I'm in.
- [61:25]
Matthew Continetti
So Spacey was the voice of the cat and it was not like cats where he was.
- [61:31]
John Podhoretz
No.
- [61:34]
Matthew Continetti
We didn't have to see Kevin Spacey in body paint is what you're saying.
- [61:37]
John Podhoretz
No, I've seen. I don't think we're either tonight but it's like the shaggy dog except with the cat which I'm sure is how they pitched it boy. And yeah it doesn't work out okay so.
- [61:48]
Abe Greenwald
And the name of the book again.
- [61:50]
John Podhoretz
It'S best possible place worst possible time True Stories from a career in Hollywood by Barry Sonnenfeld. A very enjoyable read that I had over the weekend.
- [62:02]
Abe Greenwald
Terrific. So that's our recommends that's our show without John. He's on the mend. Sure. Everyone listening, watching, watching on YouTube don't forget to subscribe wants him back urgently. I know we do. He will be but for today this is what you got for Christine, Seth and Matt and the absent John. I'm Abe saying keep the candle burning.