Poor Mike Johnson

Summary

The Commentary Magazine Podcast: “Poor Mike Johnson” – Episode Summary

Release Date: December 19, 2024

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Introduction

In the December 19, 2024 episode of The Commentary Magazine Podcast, host John Podhoretz, along with panelists Abe Greenwald, Matthew Continetti, Seth Mandel, and Christine Rosa, delves into the tumultuous political landscape surrounding Speaker of the House Mike Johnson. The discussion navigates through Republican Party dynamics, the influence of prominent figures like Donald Trump and Elon Musk, internal legislative struggles, and broader issues impacting both domestic and foreign policies.

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Republican Party Struggles and Mike Johnson’s Leadership

The episode opens with Abe Greenwald setting the stage for a critical analysis of Speaker Mike Johnson's recent challenges within the Republican Party. The panel discusses how Johnson's attempt to secure a continuing resolution (CR) to keep the government open has backfired, leading to internal conflicts spearheaded by Donald Trump and dissent from within his own party.

Notable Quote:

“Johnson was really trying to be a good soldier and got pretty shabbily treated.”
— Abe Greenwald [02:49]

The speakers highlight the complexity Johnson faces in balancing the demands of a fractured Republican caucus and maintaining support from the pro-Trump base. This balance has placed Johnson in a precarious position, especially as Trump publicly criticizes his spending-oriented CR, labeling it as a "bad deal" for Republicans.

Notable Quote:

“Mike Johnson is really in danger. And I don't think that Trump would want to begin his second presidency with a fight over the speakership.”
— Seth Mandel [10:44]

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Donald Trump’s Influence and the Elon Musk Factor

A significant portion of the discussion centers on Donald Trump's wavering support and the unexpected involvement of Elon Musk in political matters. Initially backing Johnson's CR, Trump’s recent withdrawal of support has intensified Johnson's challenges. Elon Musk's vocal criticism on social media platforms like Twitter/X has further complicated the situation, with the panel debating the extent of his influence.

Notable Quote:

“When Elon Musk decides he's against something, it carries huge weight because he controls this platform.”
— John Podhoretz [08:56]

Christine Rosa likens Trump to a "groom" and the public to a "bride," illustrating how Trump's actions inadvertently place Johnson in a difficult role akin to a meddlesome in-law, exacerbating internal party tensions.

Notable Quote:

“Trump is following MAGA in this case, not leading it.”
— Abe Greenwald [07:00]

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Legislative Deadlock and the Continuing Resolution Debate

The panelists dissect the intricacies of the current legislative impasse, emphasizing the unrealistic expectations placed on Speaker Johnson. The reliance on Democratic votes to pass the CR, compounded by Trump's conditions regarding the debt ceiling, has created a “Catch 22” scenario where any maneuver risks alienating key Republican factions or conceding too much to Democrats.

Notable Quote:

“The catch 22 is when you find a way to get Democratic votes, well then the people who, the Republicans who won't vote for a continuing resolution then attack you for betraying the cause.”
— John Podhoretz [06:02]

Matthew Continetti adds that Musk’s interference is a symptom of broader populist movements undermining traditional legislative processes, making it challenging for leaders like Johnson to navigate and achieve bipartisan consensus.

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Media Dynamics and Antisemitism Concerns

Shifting focus, the conversation touches upon the role of media personalities and the rise of antisemitism within both political spectrums. Christine Rosa expresses deep concern over the cultural acceptance of antisemitism, linking it to younger voters' susceptibilities and the influence of certain media figures.

Notable Quote:

“The cultural acceptance of a level of antisemitism that I've never seen in my lifetime is so alarming.”
— Christine Rosa [43:58]

The panel critiques the normalization of extremist views in mainstream media, arguing that platforms like Tucker Carlson’s and Hasan Piker’s shows contribute to this disturbing trend by providing a semblance of legitimacy to anti-Israel sentiments.

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Foreign Policy: Israel and the Houthi Conflict

A substantial segment of the episode is dedicated to Israel’s aggressive stance against the Houthis in Yemen, as discussed by Abe Greenwald. The panel evaluates Israel’s military strategies to curb threats from Iranian-backed groups and the broader implications for U.S. foreign policy.

Notable Quote:

“What happened after October 7 was that as Naftali Bennett's complaint was that Israel mowed the lawn but did not go at the head of the octopus.”
— Abe Greenwald [49:59]

John Podhoretz criticizes the Biden administration’s handling of the Houthi threat, attributing it to a failure in American foreign policy that left critical vulnerabilities open for adversaries to exploit.

Notable Quote:

“This is an indictment of American foreign policy. It is a complete and utter failure of the policy toward the Houthis in Yemen.”
— John Podhoretz [48:44]

The discussion underscores the urgency of decisive actions against Iran’s geopolitical ambitions, suggesting that mere deterrence is insufficient without robust military engagement.

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Conclusion and Future Outlook

As the episode draws to a close, the panel reflects on the broader implications of the discussed issues. They express skepticism about the Republican Party’s ability to effectively govern amidst deep internal divisions and external pressures. The conversation also anticipates future challenges, particularly in leveraging upcoming elections and shifting political landscapes to possibly regain stability and coherence within the party.

Notable Quote:

“Hopes that Republicans are going to be able to rewrite Washington, reframe Washington through legislation that they can pass is illusory.”
— Abe Greenwald [35:38]

Podhoretz concludes by urging listeners to stay engaged, highlighting the importance of maintaining momentum in advocating for common-sense policies and Zionist values, despite the current political upheavals.

Notable Quote:

“Keep the candle burning.”
— John Podhoretz [57:47]

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Final Thoughts

This episode of The Commentary Magazine Podcast offers a comprehensive exploration of the precarious position of Speaker Mike Johnson within a fracturing Republican Party. By intertwining insights into internal politics, media influence, and foreign policy, the panel provides listeners with a nuanced understanding of the challenges and dynamics shaping the current political climate. The incorporation of direct quotes and specific timestamps enhances the depth and credibility of the analysis, making it a valuable resource for those seeking to comprehend the complexities of American politics.

Transcript

[John Podhoretz]

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[Abe Greenwald]

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[John Podhoretz]

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[Abe Greenwald]

Expect the worst Some preach and pain Some die of thirst the way of knowing which way it's going Hope for the best expect the worst welcome to the Commentary Magazine Daily Podcast. Today is Thursday, December 19, 2024. I'm John it's the editor of Commentary magazine making one or maybe the second to last request I will make this year for your support for commentary Inc. The 501c3 nonprofit that puts out this podcast, publishes our monthly magazine and does our daily website commentary.org Commentary Inc. Commentary, the podcast, Commentary Magazine all depend on the generosity of our listeners and subscribers who have already been generously contributing in the form of subscriptions. But it's not enough to keep the lights on and to keep the the candle burning. So we are very much grateful if you could find it in your heart to make us part of your year end giving. And that's very easily done by going to our website, going to commentary.org/donate and our gratitude will be endless. And by our I mean Executive Editor Abe Greenwald. Hi Abe.

[Matthew Continetti]

Hi John.

[Abe Greenwald]

Washington Commentary columnist Matthew Continetti Hi Matt.

[John Podhoretz]

Hi John.

[Abe Greenwald]

Senior Editor Seth Mandel hi Seth.

[Seth Mandel]

Hi John.

[Abe Greenwald]

And Media Commentary columnist Christine Rosa. Hi Christine.

[Christine Rosa]

Hi John.

[Abe Greenwald]

So we talked about this yesterday got worse during the day after we had our podcast where Donald Trump, I believe fearing that he had gotten himself in the wrong position in the Republican Party parade maybe for the first time in years, backed and filled and decided that the deal that Speaker Mike Johnson had come up with a jury rigged deal to get a to Keep the government open basically for the next two and a half to three months was a bad deal for him or for Republicans. After an onslaught of criticism and led by Elon Musk, who is now taking a very unusual role in our governmental proceedings, at least for the time being, until Donald Trump decides that that role he is overshooting and needs to kind of pull him back in. But what happened yesterday was that Trump essentially withdrew his support for a bill that he had essentially obliged Johnson to pursue, featuring new spending and new things that should happen, particularly on disaster relief. And Johnson, rather than doing what, what might have been called a clean cr, a clean continuing resolution that simply kept government spending at the levels that they were at currently without any new spending, just to get over pump until there could be a new Republican Senate and the new House could be sworn in, Johnson obliged the president and then got attacked for it for his troubles, apparently. According to Punchbowl, Trump trashed Johnson yesterday to senators on Capitol Hill. He and he and J.D. vance put out a statement sort of saying Mike Johnson was doing the wrong thing and being a big spender. And so some of the idea this. I don't know if this is the end of what Matt has been calling the Trump moon, but it's certainly the first big fight that the newlyweds are having. If the newlyweds are the incoming government in the House and in the Senate and between Johnson, who was really trying to be a good soldier and got pretty shabbily treated, in my view, when.

[John Podhoretz]

We talk about presidential honeymoons, the newlyweds are the president elect and the people. And the people. So I think it's too early to say that the Trump moon or the Trump moment is over. We'll have to see data showing that his favorable ratings and his job approval ratings are slipping. This is another episode of just House Republican dysfunction. You know, the House leadership is in a catch 22. They have these members who will not vote for any continuing resolution. And so you have to figure out a way to get around that. And which is Democratic votes, which is.

[Abe Greenwald]

Democratic vote because there are only three or four seats in the Republican the.

[John Podhoretz]

Margin is so small. Right. So the catch 22 is when you find a way to get Democratic votes, well then the people who, the Republicans who won't vote for a continuing resolution then attack you for betraying the cause. So once again, the worst job in the world is to be a Republican speaker of the House. This bill, though there were there are legitimate criticisms of the bill, not so much for the spending, but for all of the policy riders that have been attached to it at the Democrats request. And the best path forward, I think, for Johnson is some way to get a cleaner CR simply with the spending and simply with the disaster aid. But there's a complication that Trump introduced, as he usually does introduce complications, and that is in his statement last night. In his truths last night, he demanded that the Congress also raise the debt ceiling so that it won't come up in the spring in his first six months as president. But again, the Catch 22 applies. To get Republican only votes for a continuing resolution that raises the debt ceiling, Johnson would have to cut spending massively. And or to get Democratic votes, he would have to give away more policy riders. And this leaves Johnson in a very vulnerable position where just as we were talking about this issue 24 hours ago, I said that he was pretty secure because he had Trump support. Trump seems to be following MAGA in this case, not leading it. And just one final point. You'll see again and again and again. Oh, Elon Musk killed the bill. Elon Musk killed the bill. And parallels have already been drawn to the immigration compromise that Senator Lankford put together earlier in the year. And then the House turned against it. And there the narrative was, Trump killed the bill. Trump killed in both cases. The individuals, of course, are so large and their platforms are so big that they seem to take up all of the oxygen. And it seems like, oh, they did it by themselves. In both cases, though, MAGA is what killed the bill. In both cases. The grassroots argument against this continuing resolution did not just begin with Elon Musk's tweet. I have been tracking it since the Bill was released 24 hours before Musk got involved and then killed it. So we have to remember there's a movement here, not just the major figures who dominate that.

[Seth Mandel]

But was Musk the one who brought it to Trump's attention?

[John Podhoretz]

I don't think Musk even talked about it with Trump. I think he just began posting about it and Ramaswamy came in and yes, they When Elon Musk decides he's against something, it carries huge weight because he controls this platform. That's massively influential. But let me tell you, before he began posting about it, MAGA was already upset about the deal.

[Christine Rosa]

But this is where to extend to torture. This analogy we're making about Trump as the groom and the public as the bride and him being on a honeymoon, he has just unwittingly and for no good reason put poor Speaker Mike Johnson in the role of like the meddlesome mother in law who's been tasked with like the table arrangements with two dysfunctional families. And he's done. He got him. He got them all at tables. It wasn't going to blow up. No one's going to be happy. But he did his job. And for some reason, and this actually strikes me as something that might have a different reaction from the public now than it did in Trump's first term. He's expending a lot of political capital just to make a singular point on a Friday at the end of the year, Thursday or Friday at the end of the year, and not playing the tape forward with regard to his relationship with Congress, his agenda when he comes in in January and what he will need from the non MAGA Republicans. Now, the first term, he could argue, I don't need them, I have my movement.

[Abe Greenwald]

But.

[Christine Rosa]

But he actually is going to need them to get anything done. And the public reelected him to get things done. Johnson would like to try to do that. This is the first stage. But clearly, I mean, I don't think Elon Musk clearly understands how Congress works. That's fine. But if Trump is, is following his own MAGA movement as Matt describes, then this is going to end in him not getting any of his agenda through because Johnson needs to bring on board not just some Democrats, but also the non MAGA Republicans who are still in the coalition.

[Seth Mandel]

I also think that Trump is the only thing protecting Mike Johnson from MAGA backlash that could cost him his speakership. Now, I don't know if he's without Gates and some of the ringleaders. I don't know if he's in. Mike Johnson is really in danger. And I don't think that Trump would want to begin his second presidency with a fight over the speakership. Nonetheless, he's the guy who can give the thumbs up or thumbs down to Mike Johnson. I mean, if a rebellion comes from Mike Johnson and Trump says give him a chance like he did last time, then he gets a chance. And if he doesn't, then it spills out into a whole fight. And I don't know that Trump really understands that. He has to. If he wants Mike Johnson to stay as speaker or if he simply wants that just for the stability of having the same SPEEC speaker and not beginning his term with a fight over the speakership, he has to protect Johnson and he has to communicate that he doesn't want Johnson's head lopped off to maga.

[John Podhoretz]

And he might think Trump cares about any of this. And I don't think that the public actually really cares either. You know, we have. We're in this weird situation where governments, if the government shuts down, you know, who does it hurt? It actually hurts Democrats more because they're.

[Christine Rosa]

The win the PR war when there's a shutdown.

[John Podhoretz]

But even that, I think the PR war, I just. I feel like no different pr.

[Abe Greenwald]

It's.

[John Podhoretz]

It's just kind of. The fact is we're. We're running this huge deficit, $2 trillion a year. The interest on the debt is now higher than our defense budget. And the Republicans, many Republicans are like, well, hold it. What are you doing? We're just adding more on top of this. It's not just the hurricane relief, which everyone agrees should be done. It's also the AG Bill. They just dumped that in there. They dumped in a security giveaway to public employees and there's a congressional pay raise. So I can understand the outrage at this bill.

[Abe Greenwald]

I can totally understand it, except for this, which is the thing that Republicans are going to have to deal with. I agree with you, by the way, that there are3.2 million people in this country at most who even have any clue what the term cr means. Maybe 2 million, I don't even know. As compared to a clean CR versus an omnibus spending bill.

[John Podhoretz]

Omnibus.

[Abe Greenwald]

Yeah, yeah, whatever.

[Matthew Continetti]

All of this skinny CR is what?

[Abe Greenwald]

None of this is real. None of this has anything.

[Seth Mandel]

People know. Far more people know what wins over replacement level.

[Abe Greenwald]

Plus, way more. Way more people understand. And. And I don't blame them. They shouldn't. Not like all of this is itself a function of congressional dysfunction. A lot of this stuff shouldn't exist. It's. It's all happened as a way of getting around a political problem with Republicans and Democrats working together that is now really two decades. It's almost two decades long.

[Christine Rosa]

They bureaucratized the dysfunction at this point.

[Abe Greenwald]

Yeah, totally. It was 20 years ago that in his effort to get control of the House and to please Republican to the most politically or ideologically contained Republicans that the now disgraced Denny Hastert came up with this rule that said that the Republican Party would not bring to the House floor any. Any bill that was not supported by at least 50% of the house Republican caucus. This has now morphed over time as the Republican majority, or even there has. Has shrunk to almost nothing to. You're not allowed to bring any bill that will not receive unanimous Republican support and can pass without a single Democratic vote. And Johnson was not. Is not in a position to do that, because there are at least two Republicans who will vote against any bill that he brings forward. And that was why Democrats had the whip hand with him on structuring this bill, because he needs Democratic votes to get it over the hump. And so they said, we want this, we want that, we want the other thing. The more he gives them, the more outs. This is the irony. The more outs he gives Republican members to vote against it. By which I mean, if there are, say, 20 Republicans who say, I'd really prefer not to vote for this bill because my voters think it's garbage, well, then he needs 20 Democratic votes. And then the Democrats go, well, we want the Francis Scott Key Bridge to be paid for. And we'd like this. And we'd like this rider, and we'd like that rider, and we'd like the other rider. And in an effort to help his own people in his own party have a free shot at voting against it, he then provided Democrats with an in to writing the bill that is now being rejected. So he is. He was trying to do Trump and his own members a solid. He's getting catch 22.

[John Podhoretz]

You can't win. You can't hear in leadership in the Republican Party. You cannot win because the populists just reflexively believe that establishments and party leadership are corrupt and are standing in the way. It doesn't matter who occupies that position. Right. So here's Johnson. He can't do something with only Republican votes because the votes aren't there. And it's one thing to have the Hastert rule in the early 2000s or even after the 2010 congressional election when Boehner was the speaker, because you had some breathing room.

[Abe Greenwald]

We had 20 to 30 seat majority.

[John Podhoretz]

Exactly. Now you have. This is the narrowest Republican margin in the House in almost a century. And the next Congress will have an even narrower margin. I feel as though they should change maybe the whole structure of what the speaker of the House should be. It should just be rotating. They should just every six months or so, they should just draw straws. And that's the sacrificial lamb, the Athenian democracy.

[Abe Greenwald]

Hey, you guy. You from Idaho. The one. The one who speaker now. Speaker, you know, mazel tov. Congratulations.

[John Podhoretz]

You get to do the deal.

[Abe Greenwald]

And Tom Massey wants to see you.

[John Podhoretz]

Yeah, Tom Massey wants to see you. And you're out of here.

[Abe Greenwald]

Except. That's right. Except it's more like random.

[Seth Mandel]

It's more like yellow jackets where you're drawing straws to see which member of the eat.

[Abe Greenwald]

Yeah. Who gets Eaten.

[Matthew Continetti]

I want to pick up on a point that John alluded to early on here. There's way too much Musk too soon happening here. And I do think that's something that the public will generally not appreciate in the long run. It's unseemly, it's distasteful, it's very unusual. It's cute that he's the first buddy. I'm partial to Musk in a number of ways and problems with Musk in other ways. But as a general principle, the idea that this guy is somehow has inserted himself or Trump has inserted him in the workings of the executive branch is really worrisome. I think all the criticisms here are on target.

[Christine Rosa]

This is important because Americans, despite all the crazy up and down of our politics of the last 20, 30 years, have always had a healthy suspicion of unelected officials being given too much government power. It's why they're suspicious of first ladies like Jill Biden, and they were of Nancy Reagan. Anytime it seems like someone who didn't have to earn a vote is given anything like access to the reins of government power and particularly the funding of the government, I think that's a really healthy impulse that should be attended to. And Abe's right. The backlash for Musk might be kind of longer term, undermine some of the things he wants to do with regard to Doge and whatnot.

[Seth Mandel]

I think. I think this is. I think this is on. It's already on its way out. I think it has a clock over his head because Musk is getting attention. That is going to annoy Trump and he's not even in office yet. And these things really annoy Trump.

[Abe Greenwald]

Limiting Trump's freedom of movement, that is limiting.

[Seth Mandel]

He's going to have, you know, if you remember, during the Obama administration, there was a point where I think Obama himself may have said from the lectern that. Or maybe one of his advisors said that Rush Limbaugh was the leader of the Republican Party. Elon Musk is going to get their. Starting with that now. Elon Musk, President Elon Musk, Prime Minister Elon Musk, that sort of thing. Just even aside from whether it limits Trump's range of movement, the. The power dynamic is going to get to Trump.

[Christine Rosa]

He's supposed to be a wingman.

[Abe Greenwald]

I mean, I mean, okay, so what's interesting about this situation, of course, is that Musk is the richest man in the world and a. An industrialist in some ways without peer in the 21st century. So he's not Steve Bannon. Steve Bannon was this guy who was elevated into the leadership of the Trump campaign in 2016 and got to be co chief of staff after Trump won unexpectedly. As somebody who ran a website and had invested a little money in Seinfeld in 1991. And he lasted six months because he thought he was co president. And there was a headline. Newsweek magazine did a cover story called President Bannon, and that was the end of Bannon. Trump can't do that to Musk in the same way because the Bannon stuff really was kind of like outrageous. He was this has been loser who now runs a psychotic podcast. And yes, I said loser and psychotic and I mean it. And his too big for his Britchesness in 2017 was slapped down appropriately. Musk can't be slapped down. He not only owns the most important private space program the world has ever seen, he owns Twitter. He has an important car company. I mean, he's a very big person in his own right. The question is whether Trump can privately say, hey, back off. Like I this. I like you enjoy politics and everything, but, you know, this is a very complicated situation. I don't need you out there kind of like, as I say, limiting my, my freedom of movement. That would the normal thing for somebody to.

[Matthew Continetti]

Trump won't say it privately. They'll say it publicly when the time.

[John Podhoretz]

Make a joke. Didn't he make a joke a couple weeks ago that about Elon hanging out at Mar A Lago so much? He might. Yeah, he did move in. You know, kind of like the old Ben Franklin chestnut about guests and fish getting old after a couple days. Yeah. And it is interesting. There are reports that last night Trump had dinner with Jeff Bezos and Bezos's fiance, Lauren Sanchez. And apparently Musk stopped by the table again and sat with them at Mar a Lago. But again, I want to just caution everybody in turning this into too much of a Musk story. Obviously it's a Musk story, but this is a perennial populist conservatives do not like these end of year spending bills. And they especially don't like this one because of the different policy riders that have been attached to it. And Musk amplified those concerns. So here's what my takeaway is. When you think of leaders, oftentimes leaders have to go against their movement, Right. They have to take a stand against their movement. That's the responsibility of leadership. You're supposed to have a larger view of things. And for many years, we referred to kind of the populist conservative base as the conservative street take off of the so called Arab street in the middle right, the conservative street. And the conservative street really doesn't like spending, really wants to crack down on this stuff. Previous Republican presidents have said, okay, well, I'm going to try, but I can't get it all. Sometimes the government has to function. We want to keep it open. This is the best I can do. And we're just gonna have to live with it. That is not Donald Trump and it's never been Donald Trump. Donald Trump has always wanted to be on the right side of the conservative street. Take the coronavirus vaccine for example. That is his accomplishment. Operation Warp Speed was an amazing demonstration of how actually government can work with private enterprise in order to have innovation and production. But he doesn't talk about it anymore because MAGA doesn't like it. And so here what happened was Trump, according to the reporting, was well aware that this deal was happening and he just wasn't going to talk about it to just let it go through. But once it became clear that the base rejected it and then Musk spent all day on Twitter x lampooning it, Trump had no choice because he needed to get straight with the base. And one last thing that I find very interesting about Trump's statement at the end of the day was that it was not just from President Trump. It was also from Vice President elect J.D.

[Abe Greenwald]

Vance.

[John Podhoretz]

And if I'm J.D. vance, I need to have my name on that statement because otherwise I'm completely cut out of this entire debate. All of a sudden, Elon Musk is demonstrating far more power than I. And so now we have this kind of triangular relationship that's forming. It's not just Trump and Musk. It's also Trump, Musk and Vance.

[Abe Greenwald]

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Go to quints.com commentary for 365 day returns plus free shipping on your order. That's Q-I N C.com commentary to get free shipping and 365 day returns. Quints.com commentary in 2011, when the first government shutdown of the modern era, after the shutdown, the Gingrich shutdown of 1995 took place, there was a kind of divide among Republicans and conservatives. There was, there were Republicans and conservatives who said we need to fight, we got to fight. We won. We won in 2010. We won the house in 2010. We need to fight. Obama needs to be punished for spending too much. And it was August and it was take them down. We need to fight, need to win. We need to shut the government down. We need to win. And then you had other people who were like, okay, then what? So you shut down the government, you fight, you shut down the government, then what? And Obama did something interesting that backfired on him and he said, okay, look, you want to do this and we're going to do this and then we're going to come back, we're going to have a cross the board cut. And that means that things that you like are going to get cut, just like things that you don't like are going to get cut, meaning defense. So he thought Republicans, Patriots, supporters of the Iraq war, Republicans were so committed to defense spending that he had them, he had them over A barrel. And it turned out that the revolution of 2010, the Tea Party movement and everything, really was revolutionary in this sense and was a sign that the candidate who was going to win the presidency next for Republicans was going to be somebody who was not a traditional Republican supporter of classic defense spending, which is they said, fine, we. We like. We like an across the board cut way more than we care about defense spending. And they got it. And it was not good for this country. It really wasn't. I mean, a lot of what's happened over the last 14 years, I'm not too big a topic to talk about. A lot of what happened in terms of our weakened position in the world had something to do with the fact that defense spending was reset at a lower level than it had been for the previous decade. And a lot of our reach, a lot of the things that we wanted to do, a lot of the power projection that we could have done, and also the symbolic notion of America being the country that would spend anybody into oblivion who tried to wrest the title of Omni Power from us, kind of ended then. But the point that I'm bringing up is that there was no strategy. Obama was the person who stumbled into the backward strategy that reopened the government in 2011 because he thought, well, I'll get what I want by making the package unpalatable to the Republicans. And they were like, no, this is palatable to us. You're doing something we like. Then you move forward to 2013. Ted Cruz is allowed, essentially by Mitch McConnell, to shut down the government and has no strategy for its reopening. Because Ted Cruz wanted to launch his presidential campaign and he was the voice of the. We fight. We're not just going to spend like Democrats, and we fight and we're fighters. And they didn't have control of the House or of the Senate. So the weird position that Trump faces.

[John Podhoretz]

It was the Obamacare shutdown, right?

[Abe Greenwald]

The Obamacare shutdown. This was the. After Obamacare passed, this was this. He was going to make Obama not implement Obamacare. Right? Okay. So the situation that now exists is that Republicans, you say to Republicans, shut the government down. And a whole bunch of them are like, great, anytime you mention it. I love it. I love it. Shut it down. Shut it down. On January 3, the new Senate will be sworn in. It will be a Republican Senate, and the House will be sworn in, and it will be a Republican House, and there will be a Republican president of the United States. Will the public hold Donald Trump responsible for the workings of government in this way? Are Republicans responsible? Maybe not. Maybe it's a larger, it's too complicated. But they don't have Obama, they don't have a Democrat who is at the top that they are knocking down and attacking. They're the ones in charge. And the problem they face is that this is not a mandate election. We know it's not a mandate election because of the vote in the House. The fact that Republicans shrank the majority, the Republican majority, which was already like six seats, shrank to three or whatever it's going to end up being, means that you cannot claim the Republican Party has a majority, has a mandate to work its will on the United States. The public voted for a completely dysfunctional House. Now, I know that's not the way people vote. People vote in local elections. The House is a local election. And so they're not, you know, strategically voting in the same way.

[John Podhoretz]

But I do, I do.

[Abe Greenwald]

That's just the political reality.

[John Podhoretz]

Yeah, I want to just push back a little bit. I mean, the House Republicans total popular vote was actually higher than Trump's. The national House vote was 51% for the Republicans. But thanks to our gerrymandered system and rotten boroughs in blue states, that computes to this, this extremely small majority.

[Abe Greenwald]

So, and by the way, an important point to make because come 2030, when the next census is done, the people that I trust and who seem to know a lot about this, technically believe that there could be a shift of as many as 19 seats from the Democratic ledger into what would nominally, if the politics remain static, Republicans will have a natural 20 seat majority in the House because the gerrymandering of 2020 was pretty severe on the Democratic side. And state by state, population shifts mean that everything's moving south, moving to Florida, moving to Texas, moving to the Carolinas, other places, leaving California, leaving New York, leaving the Northeast and that. But Republicans have to get from 2025 to 2031.

[John Podhoretz]

Well, and just to pick up on your point about there's no Obama in January, there will be no Biden. And so I think that's why some conservatives in the House are fine with there being a shutdown in the next two weeks, because Biden will still be president. I mean, to the degree that he is president or, you know, functioning, he's, he's still the president. And this is why Trump wants them to have the debt ceiling increase now, because Trump knows that he doesn't want to deal with it when he's president. So there is, I think, some awareness of what you're talking about, John. In the background, just finally on the debt ceiling even. I think a lot most Republicans in the House are like and the senators say we're not going to be able to do that. So any way this works out, there are going to be a lot of disappointed people.

[Abe Greenwald]

I think the story writ large is that hopes that Republicans are going to be able to rewrite Washington, reframe Washington through legislation that they can pass is illusory, that a lot's going to change. There may be one or two subjects that you could have some kind of concord on. I think the border is the main one that you really could see Democrats in the House in vulnerable seats in 2026 wanting to vote for a tough border bill and that that will give Johnson the running room or whoever replaces Johnson the running room to get that bill through. I have no idea what if there is consensus on any other subject? Because there would be one issue you could find consensus on which we can move to in the Republican Party with some Democratic votes. But the Democratic Party is running in the other direction. That, of course, is aid to Israel to rebuild Israel's defenses after these, after the seven front war that it is now fighting because Democrat, I think Republicans and vast, vast majority of Republicans would not mind such spending, particularly since that spending is usually in the form of money that is either loaned or is paid back over time or whatever, you know, a kind of domestic support for our weapons industry. And it is Democrats who are hurrying in the other direction. This astonishing thing somebody said yesterday about whether or not Rahm Emanuel could be running for president. And it is now apparently openly acceptable in the Democratic Party to say, well, he can't run because he's a Jew because of the way the Republican, the Democratic Party now feels about Israel and the fact that its vanguard is now openly anti Israel. And so I don't even think they're three or four years ago, that could have been a second topic for comedy between the parties. And I don't but I do see any other subject any.

[John Podhoretz]

Oh, I mean, we should note that the defense authorization bill passed yesterday and it did include fair enough, right to Israel.

[Abe Greenwald]

It did. Right. But I mean, you're absolutely right at.

[John Podhoretz]

The national level of the, of the Democratic Party, the turn against Israel and the Jews is pretty remarkable in recent days. And my example is many Democrats suffer from Joe Rogan envy. They, they feel like they need to have a personality who is more cultural than political has again, a giant social media following. And so as they're looking around for who could do that, many Democrats Are especially on the left, are focusing on this streamer named Hassan Piker, who is an anti Semite. I mean, I'm pretty open about it. And the idea that this is even a plausible person for the Democratic left to rally behind ought to be frightening to many Americans.

[Abe Greenwald]

And we should mention, if we're going to mention that, that we should mention that Tucker Carlson, who is the other person there seems to be some envy of in the world of podcasting. In a really startling moment for people who remember the 1990s, had on a former leading figure on the planet Earth named Jeffrey Sachs, an economist who was at Harvard, who is kind of one of the fathers of what has been called global neoliberalism. And apparently Sachs has taken a very, very radical turn in the last 10 years, supported Jill Stein in the 2024 election. And he and Tucker had a two hour conversation about how Hamas and Hezbollah are secret creations of Benjamin Netanyahu, who incepted them to create the conditions under which he could rule Israel like a dictator. And he is really their father and their daddy and all of that. And so as we look at this global situation, we should note that the populist world, Hasan Piker on Twitch, Tucker on Tucker World Daily and you know, and the Stoins and X.

[Matthew Continetti]

He's on X. I mean, that's his right. This complicates the Musk story very much.

[Seth Mandel]

Israel's diaspora minister went after Tucker on Twitter for that interview with Jeffrey Sachs. So it turns into a thing, you know, he's not, he's not a nobody in terms of the effect that he has on the, on the public debate, even if it's not right clear that he, once upon a time people thought he had a certain influence when he was at Fox on what, you know, Republican senators actually said and did that. That is not the case now if it ever was. But he definitely has leaves an impression on the, on the public discourse. And I also think the key part of that Sachs interview is, is Jeffrey Sachs. And that is the point is that these guys, Tucker, Hassan, Piker and whoever else, they bring on guests who are from like another planet, right? I mean, that whole idea is we went through this when Tucker had that historian on World War II and he was talking about, you know, some revisionist history around Hitler and the Nazis and things like that. And these are the types of guests that come on shows when Joe Rogan got in trouble, when it was, you know, vaccine skeptics, right? And then, you know, people try to threaten to pull their music from Spotify or what.

[Abe Greenwald]

The thing is that they don't get in trouble.

[Seth Mandel]

They don't get. They don't get.

[Abe Greenwald]

But they get in trouble.

[Seth Mandel]

They don't get in trouble, but they, they blow. What I mean is they, they, they get the host associated with all these things and then the host is like, well, okay, well what's, what's wrong with that? You know, but the, the point is that the, the ecosystem is that people who are outside the mainstream are going to be not just the hosts of these shows, but the guests on these shows. Tucker believes. It's like what everybody.

[Abe Greenwald]

No, it's about what Tucker believes. In the end, it's about what Tucker believes and it's about what Broken believes and it's about what Hasan Piker believes. You cannot give them that kind of out. They are.

[Seth Mandel]

I'm not giving him an out. I'm saying they're, they're going to. What I'm saying is the story continues because it's not just going to be a repetitive. Oh, Tucker said this, Tucker said that. They bring on a parade, right?

[Abe Greenwald]

They are creating a Neo. They're creating a new. You're calling them cranks. No, no, they're cleansing it because.

[Christine Rosa]

Let me jump in because the problem here is that, and this is a problem on the cult, the cultural acceptance of a level of antisemitism that I've never seen in my lifetime is so alarming. And it's a long, this is going to be a long term problem that's becoming structural in the sense that Seth is describing. And that what used to be non mainstream is now the mainstream culture and the mainstream media and mainstream social media. And it exists on the left and on the right. And do you know who it appeals to most? The youth vote. The vote that everybody is always desperate to cultivate. The left, on the young people on the left, very anti Israel. Young people on the right, very anti Israel. And within that cauldron of anti Israel sentiment is a lot of really right now, ill informed antisemitism. But they go to these outlets to justify, to make arguments for, to do the research, to do their own research on arguments and horrible things that they then use to bolster their anti Semitism. And they don't even see it as anti Semitism. That is the problem.

[Abe Greenwald]

Now we should talk.

[Seth Mandel]

The guests, they build their audiences from that. In other words, Tucker makes Jeffrey Sachs a figure on the right, whereas yesterday he wasn't a figure on the right. That's. That, that is a bigger problem too.

[Abe Greenwald]

Right, but that's of course, that's part of the Fox News, MSNBC ification of this world. That was somewhere else. It they invent their own stars, people who are like the interns. You know, Jesse waters was Bill O'Reilly literally was Bill O'Reilly's intern. You know, Rachel Maddow was somebody who Keith Olbermann liked and had on a couple of times. And she now makes $30 million a year at MSNBC. They create their own personalities. And we're now seeing this happen in this other ecosystem. And the problem is that sort of like porn, I guess, you need to keep making the outre point more and more outre and more and more extreme to get the word like being a junkie, like you need to, you need the dosage to keep going up to keep the momentum of the here's the real story behind the story. Here's the hidden truth that the world isn't telling you. And it's not enough to then say, okay, I brought on five crazy people and that's they'll be my five crazy people. You got to bring a new one on every week to keep the momentum going. But we should talk about Israel today, because yesterday for the first time in several weeks, my sister, my niece, my, my, my, my nephews were running into shelters. Million people had to go in shelters because of a raid on Israel or attacks from Yemen, from the Houthis. Really love to hear how Tucker and Jeffrey Sachs come up with the idea that the Houthis are a creation of Benjamin Netanyahu down there in Yemen. But Israel, so off its back, back foot and on its front foot, basically launched a gigantic raid on Houthi sites in Yemen. And Benjamin Netanyahu, who is, you know, by the way, currently in the middle of a preposterous trial. If you think that Trump charges in the Alvin Bragg case are preposterous, you should spend some time looking at the charges against Bibi that he is currently facing in a courtroom in Israel. But he keeps getting time off from the courtroom because he's fighting a seven front war as the prime minister of the country. Anyway, he issued a statement yesterday and I think this is important because it, it gets to the larger point about what Israel is up to that does involve us. This morning he said the air force attacked strategic targets of the Houthis in the port of Hodeidah and deep into Yemen. We did this in response to repeated Houthi attacks against civilian targets in Israel. Last night they attacked a school in Ramad Gan. They are not attacking us. They are attacking the entire world. They are attacking the international shipping and commercial lanes. Thus, when Israel takes action against the Houthis, it is acting on behalf of the entire international community. The Americans understand this very well, as do many others. After Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Assad regime in Syria. The Houthis are almost the last arm of Iran's acts of evil. They are finding out, and we'll find out the hard way, that whoever harms Israel will pay a very heavy price. Now, I bring this up only to say that what he is saying here is so on its face true, that it is outrageous that Israel even has to be the combatant here. Israel is not required to keep the international shipping lanes between China and Western Europe open through the Red Sea Letter. NATO do that.

[John Podhoretz]

The United States has been involved in its longest naval surface action since the Second World War, and still the Houthis are able to launch an attack against an Israeli school. I mean, this is an indictment of American foreign policy. It is a complete and utter failure of the policy toward the Houthis in Yemen, who have basically been able to close down shipping in the. In the Red Sea while maintaining the ability to launch missiles against our vessels and launch drones and missiles against Israel.

[Abe Greenwald]

What.

[John Podhoretz]

What a disgrace. And why? Because of the Biden administration's de escalation framework and the idea that we have to be proportional in response. And the result is that we have been pinned, like in chess, we have been pinned down in this area with no result. Well, Israel has methodically taken out the arms of the Octopus. You know, there used to be a debate between Netanyahu and Naftali Bennett, the former prime minister. But Netanyahu, Bennett said, focused on the proxies every so often, mowing the lawn, as they say, in order to keep Iran's proxies in check. Whereas Bennett said the real strategy ought to have been to go directly against Iran. But as. As a result of October 7, what the IDF has done, what Israel has done, is lop off every one of those arms, starting with Hamas, then with Hezbollah, then Assad falls. And the only remaining part, the only remaining arm that's still flopping around and still harming people and creating chaos and havoc are the Houthis. So.

[Abe Greenwald]

Well, the danger to Israel is that, is that something is going to move. I mean, the fear now is that, is that the battle will move to the. To the west bank, that there is going to be a Palestinian power struggle right on the west bank where. And the Iranians are kind of playing. The Iranians are licking their Reins are in terrible shape. And this is, of course, the major big geopolitical issue of the next three to six months is what kind of blow can be delivered to Iran's geopolitical ambitions. Can, can Israel, with American support, deliver a final crushing blow to Iran's ambitions in a way that will have gigantic geopolitical consequences? And that's where we don't know where Trump's mind is.

[John Podhoretz]

My point is the Houthis should have been taken care of by us. Yes, they should have Iran as completely defenseless.

[Matthew Continetti]

Netanyahu has made this and similar points for a while now about how Israel is fighting enemies of Western civilization in Hamas, in, in Hezbollah and the Houthis and Iran itself. These are enemies of Western civilization. And whenever he makes the point, we applaud it. And people who are sympathetic to Israel's cause applaud it. But it doesn't have the impact that I think it should. But every time he says it and when he talks about the Houthis, I think this is going to matter for posterity, which I don't think is true about much of anything that is said or done today. But when the dust settles and Israel is victorious in this seven front war, these are the statements that are going to matter and stand.

[Abe Greenwald]

I think that's a very important point in this sense, which is that one of the reasons that it doesn't seem to hit the way that it should.

[John Podhoretz]

Yeah.

[Abe Greenwald]

Is that Joe Biden isn't out there defending Western civilization. Right. Keir Starmer is not out there defending Western civilization. Germany and France are the governments there are collapsing NATO in an effort to, you know, NATO coming into the war in Ukraine on the side of Ukraine, never able to properly frame the civilizational nature of the war in a way that rallied support. And certainly Biden had no capacity to rally support in the United States after a certain given point. To explain the stakes here and why it matters. And that's why a lot of people say, despite the fact that people seem to think that he's the world's greatest villain, including a lot of very stupid Israelis who cannot reckon with the fact that they have a world historical figure atop their political structure, that he is the leader of the west almost by default. Because who else is framing the fight that Israelis are dying for and are in internal exile for and are in the reserves for and destroying their economy and doing all this? Who else is saying, when we're done, we will be making the case that a democratic state in the Middle east showed the way to the future through this century that we're the freest, we are without oil, the wealthiest, we are the most able and we are the toughest and we are, you know, militarily a colossus. And you want to go down the road of being a gas station, you know, with camels, you go right ahead and remain, you know, remain a gas station with camels. All these countries in the middle, you want, this is, this is the way you want to spend the rest of your existences, mad at us and doing absolutely nothing to progress into the future. Good luck to you.

[Seth Mandel]

Can I add to that that I think one of the major lessons of the world since October 7th is that when we talk about deterrence, we talk about deterrence with normal states. Deterrence is the fear that they can take out something important of your capabilities or something like that that you don't want to see happen. Deterrence in the Middle east in the era of this imperial Iran is you actually have to do it. You can't deter Iran. And it's.

[Abe Greenwald]

Well, that was I.

[Seth Mandel]

By showing we. By showing them that you can take out their air defenses and their ballistic missile systems, you deter Iran by literally taking out their air defenses and their ballistic.

[Abe Greenwald]

Well, it's not actually deterrence in the end, it's military victory.

[Seth Mandel]

It's military victory.

[Abe Greenwald]

But it's the thing you do that you get successfully so that you don't have to achieve military victory. It becomes the kind of the pacification is the point. And what happened after October 7 was that as Naftali Bennett's complaint was that Israel mowed the lawn but did not go at the head of the octopus. Well, really beginning in July, Israel started going at the head of the octopus with you know, what are pretty astounding results that not over yet.

[John Podhoretz]

Of course deterrence had failed because in the Iranians eyes and in Hamas's eyes because Israel was consumed by the war over the judiciary and democracy and the United States was empowering Iran and clearly not interested in doing anything to put fear in the hearts of our enemies.

[Abe Greenwald]

So we'll leave it there for today. Got one more show this week, this year and then we're gonna have some holiday shows for you.

[John Podhoretz]

Yeah, right.

[Abe Greenwald]

Live show. And then we're gonna have some holiday shows for you that we are in the process of recording and we will do one of those as soon as we finish here and you'll hear it next week.

[John Podhoretz]

John, I have good news which can double as a brief recommend. Well, I logged on to YouTube last night and saw that we have breached the 5,000 subscriber ceiling we have broken and then some. And then I recommend to our audience to continue to go visit our YouTube page and subscribe and like our videos, because we, like you, are trapped in the algorithms. This one is not Elon Musk's algorithm. It's Google's algorithm. But we want to make the most of it. So if you go there and subscribe and, like, we'll just continue to broaden the audience and expose more people to common sense Zionist values.

[Abe Greenwald]

Thank you so much, Matt. Happy for that. For that rah, rah moment that I did not. We needed it.

[John Podhoretz]

We needed a pick me up.

[Abe Greenwald]

We needed to pick me up. Okay. So till tomorrow, for Matt, Abe, Seth, and Christina, I'm John Pot Horowitz. Keep the candle burning.