Loading summary
Transcript103 lines
- [00:01]
Shopify Ad
This episode is brought to you by Shopify. Upgrade your business with Shopify, home of the number one checkout on the planet. Shop pay boosts conversions up to 50%, meaning fewer carts going abandoned and more sales going cha ching. So if you're into growing your business, get a commerce platform that's ready to sell wherever your customers are. Visit shopify.com to upgrade your selling today.
- [00:27]
Abe Greenwald
Hope for the best.
- [00:33]
Christine Rosen
Some preach and.
- [00:34]
John Podhoretz
Pain Some die of thirst no way of knowing which way it's going Hope.
- [00:42]
Christine Rosen
For the best Expect the worst Hope for the best.
- [00:47]
John Podhoretz
Welcome to the Commentary Magazine daily podcast. Today is Monday, January 13, 2025. I am John Podhoritz, the editor of Commentary magazine. With me, as always, Executive editor Abe Greenwald. Hi, Abe.
- [00:59]
Christine Rosen
Hi, John.
- [01:01]
John Podhoretz
Washington, Commentary columnist Matthew Continetti. Hi, Matt.
- [01:04]
Abe Greenwald
Hi, John.
- [01:05]
John Podhoretz
And turning this issue, which we closed today and will be out online tomorrow, turning from being our media Commentary columnist to our more general social commentary columnist with the February issue, Christine Rosen. Hi, Christine.
- [01:21]
Matthew Continetti
Hi, John.
- [01:21]
John Podhoretz
Hey, let's quickly just talk about this just to get it, just to explain what what's happening here. Why don't you tell people what your social commentary column monthly in the pages of Commentary and online will be is and will be, and maybe we can talk a little about why, why we've decided to make this change.
- [01:44]
Matthew Continetti
Well, first of all, we made the change as an act of mercy because being a media columnist on the right side of the aisle is just, you know, it just wears you down over time. There's just so many options to point to. I slightly j After the recent election, with the shift in what happened with media coverage versus the result of Trump getting reelected, we've been talking for a while about sort of broader cultural themes that don't get enough coverage because we focus too much on what the media in particular is doing versus some of the broader cultural shifts that they're responding to. So that's sort of the goal is to kind of look at the culture each month and try to draw some through lines from how we got to where we are now, looking back not just in the recent past, but in the history of the country. The, the, some of the other cultural trends that are returning. I mean, there's the, the first column is actually about gender and gender relations and how those have changed and some of the cultural tropes that we use to try to understand each other, men and women. So it'll be broad. I, I welcome recommendations from listeners who think there are some underreported aspects of the culture. But in that Sense. It's a great challenge. It doesn't mean I'll completely ignore the media. They're constantly giving us examples of things for which they should be scolded. And when those occur and are linked to cultural issues, I will certainly take advantage of that. But it'll be fun.
- [03:06]
John Podhoretz
I mean, one of the things that I say in my editor's letter in this issue, which you can read tomorrow, like you can read Matt's Washington commentary piece, and you'll be able to read the first social commentary column, is that much of what we consider conservative media arose specifically from the need for. For media criticism. There was no conservative media in the 1960s and 1970s. The mainstream media, which was then, you know, three networks, two news services, and, you know, dominating papers in various cities, had the field of framing issues and events entirely to themselves. And the result were things like the conversion of a victory in the Tet Offensive. Excuse me, in 1968, into a defeat that was so pronounced, according to the media, that Walter Cronkite, the anchorman of America on CBS News, came out and criticized Lyndon Johnson for having no strategy for victory. And Johnson was so devastated by this, the fact that Walter Cronkite had basically published an editorial attacking him that. That punched the heart out of this increasingly difficult candidacy for reelection. He was running, and in a matter of weeks, he was out maybe a matter of days, I don't remember. He quit the race.
- [04:36]
Abe Greenwald
Can we pause on that and make a general point about how the liberal media often summons into being its own worst enemies? Because the causation chain you just laid out suggests that it was Walter Cronkite who gave us Richard Nixon's comeback. And now it's the liberal media, the Politico, New York Times, Axios Axis, and their friends in the Justice Department and in liberal cities all over the country that gave us Trump's incredible comeback. So my lesson to the media is this. Shut up. Just quit. Leave it to people who just want to report the facts, go become professors of sociology or something.
- [05:23]
John Podhoretz
And that continued to be politically true with the rise of the 1970s and 1980s, which is when media criticism of a conservative bent really came into being. And almost everything that we publish or talk about has within it, you know, a kind of spine of media criticism. We are here in large measure as a corrective to conventional wisdom. And what is conventional wisdom, but a kind of common opinion expressed across news platforms and opinion expression and TV shows on cable channels that completely elide any distinction between opinion and news gathering and the reporting of facts. And that after a half century of this, there are many consequences, not only the negative or unanticipated consequences of misreporting things as people realize that they're being misreported, but technologically and in terms of various other things. The media that we started reporting on, or, you know, like I started, I was going to write a book about 60 Minutes in 1982. Like, that was my first. Going to be my first major project as a grown up writer, reporter, journalist, on its distortions and its use of discreditable techniques to, you know, create these emotional stories. And we can talk about last night's disgusting, emotional story about how evil Israel is and how wide people. The State Department quit the State Department because the United States was participating in this supposed genocide in Gaza. A place where the population in 2026 will likely be larger than it was in 2023 before the war started. That was sort of like a new, fresh thing. Now it's 40, 50 years later and they're all dying. Like, in 10 years, there won't be a 60 minutes or there'll be a 60 minutes, which will be a substack, or there will be a 60 second.
- [07:29]
Matthew Continetti
TikTok account, and even that.
- [07:31]
John Podhoretz
And all these, you know, there are 10,000 reasons why this is happening, but one of the net effects of it is, it seems to me, is it's like covering vaudeville when Gone with the Wind is, you know, making $100 million at the box office. You're like looking in the rearview mirror to talk about the effect of mainstream media. And this may have been, indeed, the election, the second election of Trump may be the last gasp, in other words, the kind of punching out the heart of, of the idea that not only is this important and are we the most important people in the world, so effective and we need to save democracy and all that. But, hey, wait a minute. Did we do something that ended up having the exact opposite effect from what we intended? From the minute that he came down that escalator in 2015, he has a symbiotic relationship to the media that have ballasted him rather than destroyed him.
- [08:30]
Christine Rosen
I think it's as if instead of the president losing Cronkite, Cronkite lost the country. And that's another reason that it doesn't make sense to point out every false claim anymore. We know from polling that the media, that public trust in the media is, is distrust, is, is atmospheric. And we know from the election that they, that they didn't, they didn't cover the story.
- [09:01]
Abe Greenwald
And all this is true, all this is true, but, you know, they're, they're just really annoying. And I'd like to submit to you yesterday's edition of Politico Playbook. You know, there's been these awful fires that are terrorizing Los Angeles. The death toll raised to I think 25 this morning, by this morning, January 13th, scenes of utter devastation. And the Politico Playbook headline yesterday was California Dreads Trump's Return. And the out of touch nature. The idea that this is the biggest political story coming from these wildfires, as we've been having now a week long debate about the public policies that may have made this situation, that probably did make this situation far worse than it ought to have been, that Politico Playbook would come out and say, well, you know, the, the, the big worry here in California is that Trump's going to be back in office in a week. I mean, it just shows that the tone deafness has not been recognized here by the institutions that I agree, totally discredited, delegitimized power wanes. But in this city where I work in D.C. they still have an amazing hold over people's imaginations. That's my little note of dissent.
- [10:33]
Matthew Continetti
And in a populist moment, this is, what's important, is that we used to say what politics is downstream from culture, but actually culture, media, politics, they're all kind of in the same stew right now. And I think as a conservative, it's important to try to pull out those threads that actually are good conservative ideas, even in this very, this moment of great churning. In terms of the ideas I want.
- [10:53]
Abe Greenwald
To say, you know, think about California's priorities right now. The California Democrats who run this Uni party state in California, they have this immense human tragedy taking place. Apparently today, January 13th, the winds are supposed to pick up again. What did Gavin Newsom crow about yesterday? Not about containing the fires, he was crowing that the California legislature agreed to their deal to Trump. Proof the state that is spend millions and millions of dollars financing lawsuits against the incoming Trump administration and shielding illegal immigrants from Tom Homan and Border Patrol and ice. This is the cockamamie mixed priorities that give you this disaster unfolding before our eyes.
- [11:43]
John Podhoretz
I will also say that the example I give in my editor's letter explaining why it is that we are retiring our media column is that the major landmark work of media criticism, in my view, was a book published, a two volume book actually published in 1977 called Big Story by a former Washington Post journalist, editor of The Wilson Quarterly named Peter Braestrup which was an examination of the media coverage of the Tet effect. And it made the airtight authoritative case over a thousand pages systematically about how every aspect of the Tet offensive was. Was covered incorrectly. And with an eye toward this growing sense in the. In the establishment that Vietnam was a mistake or possibly an evil. And Bra Strip's book tore that to shreds. And it took nine years for Bra Strip to publish this account of Tet. And should we're Tet to be happening today in 24 hours the correctives of what was being misreported would be on X and would be on military analysts substack and there would be third party footage from iPhones showing that X or Y did not in fact happen and that X and Y did in fact happen while it was all going on. And you would this, this fact that it used to take years to gather and collect data. Think about the Pentagon. The fact that we didn't even know that the, that the Pentagon had been writing a history of the Vietnam War that was critical of itself, you know, until, until it was leaked years later by Daniel Ellsberg. That would just simply not be the case today. Like there wouldn't even need a Pentagon Papers. Pentagon Papers would be crowdsourced to 100,000 people who would say I don't believe what the New York Times is telling me. That doesn't sound right. I served in the infantry and that's not how infantry movements work. Or I was just in Vietnam and I can tell you X, Y and Z. So the need for a kind of 30,000 foot perspective on controversial events has been vitiated by the rise of this kind of cocal it citizen journalism, but a kind of like ongoing worldwide fact checking system by people on the ground near events. And so some of what we have done in this world to say this was really badly covered is already two months later. It's already been litigated practically. So that's also a reason why this has happened. It's an interesting ongoing story. And again if you think that there are going to be three broadcast networks in 2032 by the second election after this one, you got another thing coming. And the only large scale journalistic institution where the two that seem to have any future apart from collapse are the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. And everything else is likely to turn into a weekly again or a substack or some version of a thing that will be much less authoritative, much less profitable, much more lightly staffed and much Less able to set a national agenda.
- [15:28]
Christine Rosen
I just was going to add that the downside of this explosion in sort of fact checking, public fact checking, is that while there are this proliferation of important correctives, there's also a lot of noise. And it's also a sort of golden age for bad info at the same time, not only the bad information coming from major media organs, but along running down those same streams that the correctives are coming from.
- [16:03]
John Podhoretz
That look, that's true. And, and so all you have is the idea that, you know, the only solution to bad speech is more speech. That of course, was the horrible decision made by the social media companies that Mark Zuckerberg is now desperately trying to correct, which is shutting down the information that you think is bad is a way of saving people from the consequences of the bad information. And that is not how a free society works. And this, this notion that you could visit from above, you know, we got this detail Zuckerberg on Joe Rogan's podcast saying he gets, he was getting phone calls from Biden administration officials screaming at him or screaming at his people at Facebook, yelling and screaming because there were stories on Facebook about how there might be a lab generated answer to where Covid came from, screaming at them, government attempting to intimidate a private company that was trafficking in information. And that's pretty stunning news. And I understand people were in hysterical frame of mind because people thought that tens of millions of people might die from COVID And so this was some moment, discontinuous moment, but it gives you a sense of what it was, what this world untrammeled would be like, particularly in an age of political correctness where. And wokeism, where the idea is not only are your ideas bad, no one should be allowed to hear them. And if you talk, we will shout you down, we will throw a pie in your face. We will, you know, like have a riot outside your speech at Dartmouth. We. Our purpose is to shut you up. And so better A world in which there's a lot of bad information as well as a lot of good information. The world in which people like that dominate the ability of information to get out at all. I think maybe I'm wrong. I mean, you know, this is obviously very arguable point, but it, but whatever it is, technologically, the power of the, the power of the mainstream press is all but dead. Or, you know, will be.
- [18:26]
Abe Greenwald
Think about the difference between the press that published the Pentagon Papers, right, the Washington Post and the New York Times, taking as their mission to, as the cliche goes, speak Truth to power, right? Hold power accountable. And what the tech companies were doing during COVID and the Obama and Biden eras, it was the exact opposite. They were the handmaidens to power. They. It wasn't, it wasn't like, you know, commentary. We're a magazine. We get the editors. The editor, you gets to control what appears in his pages. Facebook, Twitter, now X. They're a little bit different because they're these platforms that are kind of premised on the idea that people will be able to share what they're up to and what their point of view is. So they're not, they're not quite publications, but they're not really a town square, right? And so they decided to do both for a long time. And not only did they decide to do both, be kind of a publication and a town square, they said, you know what? We're going to listen to the federal government for our editorial standards. What an atrocious mistake that was. And by the way, because media are now so dependent on these platforms, they had to kind of follow in line. And so you had this transformation of the media into basically the service dogs of the Obama, Biden White House, you know, and we are now living in a period of opening. It's amazing because the social giants, for a variety of reasons, some of them selfish, have said, okay, now we're just going to be platforms. We're not going to pretend that we're editors anymore. We're not going to try to control information anymore. We're just going to let you speak your mind. And you're right, it's a lot messier, but it's probably better for a free society because it breaks the connective tissue. I hope, between the platforms and the federal government, which is of such immense power, you cannot trust it with this sort of, with this sort of authority over controlling the speech of its citizens.
- [20:44]
John Podhoretz
I mean, the other thing is that Bezos and Zuckerberg taken together, right? Bezos suspending the endorsement of candidates in the Washington Post, and Zuckerberg making this apology and policy change tour where he is just like ripped off the band aids, right? He's just taken off. It's like, not only are we not doing this, but I'm going to explain to you that what we did was biased. It was all terrible. Like, listen, Donald Trump, let me assure you, I mean, what I say, where I'm bringing in George W. Bush's deputy chief of staff and throwing out the Social Democrat, British Social Democrat, who was running the suppression machine, you know, let me alone and I'm going to be a good boy now. Right? He did that. And every, everybody on the left is like screaming and yelling. But of course, that's what he did for them. Even after Trump won in 2016, it was, I'm really worried that I'm going to lose my audience and lose the people who pay attention and drive the world into a, you know, into a, the, the Upside down from Stranger Things if I don't start putting my finger on the scale of what it is that you can and can't read. Both of them doing that are saying basically that we made the wrong bet. Like, if Covid had been, in fact the result of a bat, and if social distancing had worked and if schooling hadn't produced, you know, a half a generation of kids with social delays and if crime hadn't risen, the COVID stuff that they did would be viewed far more favorably. They made the wrong bet. And similarly, ultimately with Trump, if they made the bet that what their purpose was was to make sure that the 2016 election was a one off and that he could be defeated in 2020 and go away and then maybe support, you know, maybe thrown in jail, they made the wrong bet. And they are ultimately purveyors of information in an open market looking for customers and people to participate on their platforms. And they know better than we do what's dangerous for them.
- [23:02]
Christine Rosen
You know, there's, there's another reason that I think, John, when you talk about the, what's, what's the media landscape going to look like in five, 10 years? It's not going to be good for the major outlets. That has to do with their readerships. Who is it that still considers the New York Times authoritative and the Washington Post to be straight up? It's people who were raised on an earlier diet of media consumption who believed in a kind of golden age of American media legitimacy. They're older now. And when you speak, and I'm not knocking them because we all, you know, sort of take with us our, as we get older, our sort of ideas about institutions and things. But it's been striking. If you speak to people who sort of quote the New York Times a lot or the Washington Post, they tend to have had no, little to no exposure to the online correctives that you're talking about. And there's just a generational actuarial reality here, which is that they're not going to be around forever now. And then you have this younger generation. Look, I'm not saying it's better to get your news from TikTok. That's a whole. That you got a whole new set of disastrous problems there. But.
- [24:35]
Abe Greenwald
And you better get it quick.
- [24:37]
Christine Rosen
Yeah, that's right.
- [24:38]
John Podhoretz
Because another gonna be around for about one more week. You know, Abe, you're right that there is this generation of people who like, want an authoritative voice. They look at the New York Times that, that's.
- [24:47]
Christine Rosen
They want to believe.
- [24:48]
John Podhoretz
I've always seen. Right. But then of course, the New York Times goes to a subscription model rather than an advertising model, and it becomes the, it becomes the locus of the resistance in the United States and that becomes an accelerator for its audience. In the United states, they have 10 million subscribers. Now, a lot of that is for cooking and games. But a lot of it did come this increase as they were in, you may remember, like 2015, 2016, there was this idea that this Mexican billionaire was going to end up owning the New York Times, Carlos Slim, because he was their largest non Sulzberger shareholder and they were taking money from him hand over fist just to keep operations going. Trump came along and saved them in large measure. And also they made very smart digital moves, as I say, cooking and games and going in this subscription way. But that subscription model depended on them going more explicitly left wing and biased than they had ever done. They had covered their tracks to some extent for that earlier audience, the older audience that you're talking about, and then for the younger audience, it was, oh, you're publishing an op ed by Tom Cotton. Everybody who even thought of publishing an op ed by Tom Cotton must be destroyed. And we will do it internally and we will do it externally. You're not going to endorse Kamala Harris as president. Washington Post readers say 250,000 of us are going to cancel our subscriptions. That's what we expect from you. We want somebody who indulges and confirms and reaffirms our priors. Right? And that's a pretty big world of people. 10 million subscribers is a lot of people. But it's a country of 330 million people, and Donald Trump just got 77 million of them to vote for him. And 77 million is more than 10 million. And if you're Jeff Bezos and you run the world's largest selling platform, you don't want those 77 million people mad at you. And if you're Mark Zuckerberg and you're depending on ordinary Americans using your platform to share information with each other, you don't want them mad at you. So the holiday rush is over.
- [27:03]
Quince Ad
Sometimes it's Nice to treat yourself after the holiday rush. I think because you're so focused on getting the gift, turning the gifts and doing all of that, that you might want to actually find a treat in finding something reasonable and wonderful that you can use for the rest of the winter and, and, and through the year even, particularly when it's kind of gross out and those of us who even love the chilly weather. And I do need something to break up long winter nights. So one thing I've learned to do in the last couple of months is, is to treat myself to quints. Treat myself to a little something warm, a little something comfortable, a little something beautiful. Quints where you can treat yourself to everyday luxury at an affordable price. Something everyone needs in their closet, in my opinion, based on my very deep experience. Now, Quince's iconic Mongolian cashmere sweaters, which start at $50. Or if you want to really up the luxe factor, check out their Italian leather handbags, washable silk skirts and European linen sheet sets. Whatever you're looking for, all Quint's Items are priced 50 to 80% less than similar brands. They're able to do that by partnering directly with top factories and cutting out the cost of the middleman, passing the savings on to you. Quint only works with factories that use safe, ethical and responsible manufacturing practices. And of course they use premium fabrics and finishes for that luxury feel in every piece. I'm telling you right now, every day in the last two weeks, every day in the last two weeks I have worn a Quint's sweater. So you should know that I know whereof I speak. Treat yourself this winter without the luxury price tag. Go to quint.com commentary for 365 day returns plus free shipping on your order. That's Q-U-I-N-C-E.com commentary to get free shipping and 365 day returns. Quints.com commentary.
- [29:20]
Bolland Branch Ad
It'S cold. It's cold out there.
- [29:22]
John Podhoretz
It's January. It's cold.
- [29:24]
Bolland Branch Ad
And when you're cold, what do you want to do? You want to crawl into a cozy, warm, wonderful bed that will help you sleep through the night. And no one's going to help you do that better than Bolan Branch. Bolan Branch the Bed Sheet and Bed Company Bedding company. If you really want to change the way you sleep, you need to upgrade to bowl and branches. 100% organic cotton sheets. They feel buttery, breathable. They get softer with every wash. They're the perfect foundation for better sleep.
- [29:55]
John Podhoretz
And you can easily add bowlen branches.
- [29:57]
Bolland Branch Ad
Bed blankets, duvets and quilts without making your bed feel heavy or hot. Just that great coziness. They're woven with the finest 100% cotton on Earth, crafted by artisans who earn the pay and respect that they deserve. You can try bowl and branch for an entire month, wash, style and feel the difference for yourself, risk free. If they don't change the way you sleep, you can send them back for a full refund. We're talking about designs and colors for every bedroom style and mattress size. And they have that breathable, unmatched softness to start with. That softness getting softer with every wash. Now's your chance to change the way you sleep with bowl and branch. Get 15% off plus free shipping on your first set of sheets at boleandbranch.com commentary that's B O L L A N D B R A N C h to save 15%. Exclusions apply. See site for details.
- [31:01]
Abe Greenwald
Before we get off this topic, I do want to make an editorial suggestion because, you know, retiring the media commentary column. That is a very storied column that's been going on, I think, since you became the editor.
- [31:15]
John Podhoretz
Hanni Ferguson, then you, then Christine. Yeah.
- [31:17]
Abe Greenwald
So maybe we should put out like a Kindle of the best of the media commentary column you are on.
- [31:24]
John Podhoretz
We are going to do that.
- [31:25]
Abe Greenwald
Yeah.
- [31:26]
John Podhoretz
Okay. By the way, I was just. Someone was pointing out, do you want to. Totally out of left field. Somebody said to me, hey, didn't you guys have a Kindle book where you collected all the jokes? The first four years that I was the editor of the magazine, we had a monthly joke and we actually collected them in a book that you can get on Kindle. The book is called oi the Commentary Book of Jokes. And I looked through it the other night. I haven't even thought of its existence in several years. And somebody said to me, there was a joke. Do you remember which one it was? And I was like, no. And I looked through it. It's pretty funny. So if you want to get it, it's Han Kindle oi, the Commentary Book of Jokes, much of it written by Joseph Epstein. And so anyway, that's one thing that just comes up out of nowhere.
- [32:13]
Matthew Continetti
You can call our media commentary Kindle the Three Stooges because that's basically.
- [32:20]
John Podhoretz
Which one of you is Shemp? That's really the main, the main question. Okay, so after, after this was. I didn't even expect that we would spend half an hour on this. So California Matt, you did talk about the, the fact that Gavin Newsom and Karen Bass, the mayor of la. And you're trying to figure out how to talk about anything but what is happening there, which is a kind of, you know, playing the orchestra on the Titanic as the ship is going down. Because you look at all of them and you see. And I don't know who all of them are. I would say right now we would say the insurance commissioner of California who's an elected official, the, you know, Newsom, Bass, other, you know, other people like we are seeing their careers end in front of our eyes. There is no answer. Explanation. Now, turns out that there's some evidence that the. This reservoir that. That holds 117 million gallons of water that was there to service the Pacific Palisades, the Santa Ines reservoir, was not only empty, thus explaining the famous. There was no water pressure in the Pacific Palisades after five hours. And people were like, well, what do you expect? Hydrants aren't supposed to be there to put out forest fires are just supposed to put out individual houses. So what do you expect? Well, Maybe you expect 1,117 million gallons of water in the reservoir that pumps the water into the hydrants. And that is not there now. And so that is an unanswerable question. So first we heard that it was offline for a year to make repairs. That turns out it may not have been true. It may have been empty since 2009. So in the world of the Campfire of 2017 and the other wildfire of 2018, and the fact that that Los Angeles is actually referred to as the Los Angeles Forest in some ecological documents, that you had 170 million gallons of water, a place to put it going empty for 15 years. I mean, I'm just saying, like, hence John Roll even. Yeah.
- [34:30]
Christine Rosen
Even if it were true, even if it proves to be true, that it's. That it was offline because it's under repair. What it. When the first wave of fires happened and they started talking to California officials and Newsom and Pass and they. And they were sort of saying, well, this is where this, the fire, the hydrants aren't supposed to handle fires like this. And then all. Okay. And I said, you know, this reminds me of the New Orleans officials explaining why they're.
- [35:00]
John Podhoretz
Why they.
- [35:01]
Christine Rosen
Why the bollards weren't there on New Year's, New Year's Day morning. That. And why the terrorists could. Could go drive onto Bourbon street and mow people down. Because there's this. There's this sort of, like I said at the time, dog ate My homework or just buck passing like, you know, but what, what do they say about the bollards? They're under repair. The reservoir is under repair. Like if, if it is true, this gets to your competence incompetence question, this sort of large scale competency problem in the country. Like does things, does nothing work? Are we sort of country under repair on hold? You know.
- [35:46]
John Podhoretz
Well, look, you know, we started talking last week in very grand long term historical terms about the how this is sort of the end 100 years into the. Or 110 years into the progressive era. That what we're seeing here is some kind of final judgment on the Progressive era. And I don't want to sort of go into all of the. But the one thing, the one central idea that, that dominated progressivism was the idea that government could be made to run more efficiently according to scientific principles. Right? That was, that is the root idea. So that if you can say, well, you're portraying human nature in a way it doesn't really exist, or you're expecting, you know, this is technocratic and semi fascist and all that, it would be like, whatever you want to think about it, if we take experts and we put them in charge of things, they're going to run them more efficiently.
- [36:42]
Abe Greenwald
Rational administration.
- [36:43]
John Podhoretz
Rational administration was the term. And now what we see is it's almost exactly the opposite. Progressives are. It's very easy.
- [36:53]
Abe Greenwald
I have a theory. Because rational administration collided with the movement of the 1960s and the New Age radical movement of the 1960s ate up rational administration. It was irrational administration. You saw that in New York in the late 60s, early 70s, and you're seeing it in Chicago today and you're seeing it in Los Angeles. Dealing with these firefighters were the biggest priority of the Los Angeles and California political establishment. Is fighting Trump seven days before he.
- [37:29]
John Podhoretz
Takes office or using diversity as the key principle on whom to hire to do things like put fires out and.
- [37:37]
Abe Greenwald
Shielding illegal immigrants from ice. When the person who was subject to a citizen's arrest when he had a kind of a flamethrower. Flamethrower, yeah, propane torch the other day was revealed to be an illegal immigrant. That's what happened. Whatever that movement was in the 60s, wherever it germinated from the universities, of course, but the philosophy behind it confronted it. Progressivism merged with it and then consumed it. And so now we are where we are. Where you talk about a competence issue, well, it's localized. You know, it's like it depends on who's in charge because there's no competence issue in Florida. And just to be bipartisan, there doesn't seem to be a competence issue in Pennsylvania either, which is run by a Democrat, Josh Shapiro, but who seems to know that he needs to hew to the philosophy of rational administration or at least competence in government, in order to get some of his more liberal social priorities across and not reverse those priorities in, in which case you get a lot of new pronouns, but you get bad government and you get a very disappointed and resentful electorate.
- [38:51]
Matthew Continetti
There's, there's a, there's a sort of. To invoke our old friend Noah Rothman. There's this like, sub rosa thing going on right now that, that speaks just to that, which is the, the Lake and Riley act that's in front of Congress right now. And that's an example where pushed by red state senators and congresspeople, this idea that actually you need to give some power back to the states when you have a federal government that refuses to actually enforce the law, in this case with, you know, border control and whatnot. And look there, there are some issues with regard to federalism with the like and Riley act, if you look at giving the power of states to sue and how that works, but that is a direct response to the lack of enforcement of existing federal law when it comes to immigration and what all of these people in all these states have experienced in terms of violence and crime and disorder. And really the most important thing is the tax of resources for these states. They are spending a lot of money on supporting people who have already broken the law by coming into this country in the first place. And the federal government's response was to shrug its shoulders and say, well, what can we do?
- [39:55]
John Podhoretz
Well, that I think, aside from the federal government, is where, as I say, this is the death knell for progressivism. Not, not progressives, not, not leftist thinking. That's never going to go away. And it will play a major role in the ideological battles that we live through for the rest of our lives and beyond. That's the nature of the whoop, you know, the woof and warp of, of world society. But when your progressive governor, governor, your progressive mayor, your progressive everything throws their hands up and says, well, what do you expect me to do when there's a wildfire? That's the whole point, which is that it would be one thing if you had a worldview that said human, the interaction of man and nature, requires a certain epistemological modesty. There's only so much you can do to control nature or contain it. There's only so much you can do and people have to, you have to empower people to take care of themselves and their communities and things like that. If you're somebody who says we're going to do all this stuff top down and then everything goes wrong. This is also sort of my point about, you know, what would have happened to Facebook had the COVID The interpretation of COVID been correct by the authorities rather than incorrect. Different result. There would have been a different result. It's opinions about it would have been different. People would have been more, more cowed. If you have a progressive saying I don't know what to do. That's all they have to promise you is that they know what to do to make the world a better place and to make your day to day life.
- [41:33]
Abe Greenwald
I think what they promise you is emotional satisfaction that you are part of the elect. What's the title of on the Right side of History?
- [41:43]
John Podhoretz
Yeah.
- [41:44]
Abe Greenwald
What's the great title of the Thomas Saul book Vision. The Vision of the Anointed. You were. Oh, Gavin Newsom, Karen Bash. We're, we're the annoying. We know, we know what's going on. And these kind of Neanderthal Republicans and populist conservatives who live in the San Joaquin Valley and kind of live and farm out there in the interior of California, they're a bunch of idiots. We don't have to deal with them. I think that's the new promise. The old promise was fdr, you know, where government's going to make your lives better, we'll take care of you. The new promise is you affluent professionals living in these extremely kind of gated. Whether the gates are physical or, or material communities. You, you're, you're right, you're better than, you're better, you know, better than the other people. And what's just how is it. What was disturbing about this fire is the, the gates. It doesn't respect gates. Nature does not respect gates. Right. And so that now we have this huge moment where a lot of liberal celebrities who live in the Pacific Palisades look around and see their entire homes destroyed. And they're saying hold it, how did I get here? It's going to be I think a, an eye opening moment for a lot of neofetizing moment.
- [43:06]
Matthew Continetti
And this is, I mean this is actually, it's a perfect example. And I'm glad Matt invoked FDR because this is exactly what Joe Biden's presidency foundered on. He was supposed to be another sort of FDR size figure, but it turns out that after decades and decades of liberal, liberal governance and progressive ideas in action in these blue states, it can't work. Even if you have that vision, even if you do really want to make things better, when you try to enact it, it fails utterly. And that since he's doing his farewell tour this week, it strikes me that we're going to see a lot of this again. He's going to return to where he started and sort of try to try to describe himself as this great political figure on par with fdr. But, you know, Carter has just been laid to rest. He's much more in that, in that side of the.
- [43:50]
John Podhoretz
Well, let's, let me, let me just read off to you what, what Joe Biden is doing this week. We are seven days from the inauguration of Donald Trump. So this week, Joe Biden will give five speeches or appear at ceremonies, making this, I think, the most active period of his presidency in a long time. I mean, you know, including when he was actually running for office. Right. When he wasn't even running for office. So according to Politico Playbook, which we just attacked, but now I will use it so we, you know, they could say, oh, it's so terrible, but you're using it. But I have, this is where I have.
- [44:29]
Abe Greenwald
It's a matter of convenience. The daybook is publicly available. You're just.
- [44:33]
John Podhoretz
Yes. Version today. Monday, Biden heads to the State Department for a foreign policy address at 2pm tomorrow. Tuesday, he'll deliver remarks commemorating a conservation proclamation. Wednesday, he will give his feral address in primetime from the Oval Office. Thursday, he'll be at the Department of Defense for a farewell ceremony. And Friday he'll speak in front of the US Council of Mayors. That's a weird. By the way, you're ending on a speech in front of the US Council of Mayors. Well, I guess cities are the only places that now vote reliably for Democrats. So maybe that's an understandable choice to.
- [45:10]
Abe Greenwald
And I think they might be in town, too. I don't think he's traveling for that. So it's like, okay. It's a convenient audience.
- [45:15]
John Podhoretz
Okay, so what are we to expect from these speeches? So we're told that today's speech at the State Department will lay out his theory of the case for his foreign policy, the accomplishments that in his mind should define how these four years are remembered on the global stage. So I like, I like the theory of the case for his foreign policy. The theory of his case. Okay, that's going to be fun. Yeah. Because the theory is really Good. The results. I'm sorry. Hard to claim good results. Okay, so what to expect in his farewell address? We're told that the address is still being sorted out. No kidding. What are you going to say to make a positive case? We've heard him in the last week on Friday say that he thought that he could have beat Trump in November. Maybe he should say that in his farewell address just to give Kamala Harris the final kick in the tushy down the stairs. It's such a demented thing to say that it.
- [46:17]
Christine Rosen
And he also said, by the way, I don't even, I can't even figure out what he means by this. He also said, and I think she could have won.
- [46:24]
Abe Greenwald
What does he mean, could have?
- [46:26]
John Podhoretz
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. She could have won. As I said, I said I would. We would have gotten away with a two of a word for you men.
- [46:36]
Abe Greenwald
I will be mercifully in the air. And I guess I could.
- [46:40]
John Podhoretz
Well, depends on what airliner you want. Tv.
- [46:43]
Abe Greenwald
Yeah, I, I mean, you may have.
- [46:45]
John Podhoretz
I don't know whether I'll watch it live or not.
- [46:47]
Abe Greenwald
But I will say this. I would like it if the, if programmers of the Democratic National Convention were in charge of the scheduling of his farewell address, because then it would like.
- [46:56]
John Podhoretz
Air, you know, 2:31 morning like red eye. No one would care.
- [47:02]
Abe Greenwald
No one would notice. I look at the survey data and I see an electorate that just wants to move on from this guy. He is less popular right now than Trump was after January 6, according to some surveys. Gallup had a survey last week showing that a majority of the country says this is a failed presidency and will be remembered as such. What can he possibly say to change that sentiment? So it's kind of, it's going to be a slog in some ways these next five days, but it's also a moment of, I think, kind of, at least in D.C. there's a certain electricity. You know, we've already existed in this atmosphere where Trump is functioning as the president.
- [47:48]
John Podhoretz
Right.
- [47:49]
Abe Greenwald
So it's, it's. The inauguration is almost a formality in a way, next week. And I think it will be, you know, a milestone in many ways. And I think the speech that Trump will deliver will be different than American carnage. This is my prediction, his inaugural eight years ago. But Biden's, Biden's kind of farewell tour is almost an afterthought, in my view.
- [48:13]
John Podhoretz
Just to go back to the competency question and why that is so important for leadership and why Biden's incompetence As it will be revealed in the course of these speeches over this week, because he will be making a case for how he wanted things to be better. Basically. That's what it means to say what was his theory of the case for why his foreign policies were good? Is all in theory. He's leaving Ukraine in a quagmire. The, you know, he is. There was a story that he is passing on the question of Iran's nuclear sites in the wake of the hostage taking and other things to the Trump administration in a friendly way. In other words, like, I think they're handing the Trump people sort of off the shelf plans for how to do what they might want to do if they want to do it, because he can't do it. He could end his presidency eliminating Iran's nuclear sites and oil exporting platforms. That would be kind of like a pretty strong exclamation point at the end of his service. He's clearly not going to do that. But that would be. So Trump has to go in and I think Gavin Newsom with a crisis that resembles, partially resembles New Orleans in 2005 and I would also say partially resembles 9 11. Obviously not at the attack that 911 was. But you have a city, parts of which are in ruins, just like lower Manhattan was basically shut down to the rest of the city below Canal street for three months as workers combed through the wreckage and as the environment, the environmental aftermath was potentially pretty toxic. You have this in la and what did you have, you had now the very compromised and pathetically charged and convicted Rudy Giuliani. But quarter century ago, Rudy Giuliani took the staff and said, here, follow me. I'm going to keep my cool, I'm going to keep my head. Here's what we're going to do. Here's how we're handling this. You know, do this, do that, do the other thing. And then Bush came and said, the people who did this will hear all of us soon. And the net result of good early leadership that involved taking responsibility, taking charge, and saying, I have a plan was inestimably important. Yeah. And imagine a Gavin Newsom or, or a Karen Bass.
- [51:06]
Abe Greenwald
Well, Karen, I mean, I know, but.
- [51:08]
John Podhoretz
I'm saying who had been able to follow that thing? Who had like gone. I know she was, she was in Ghana. But what if she had gone and stood by, you know, at the, at the, as the fires were going on, she put on a fire retardant suit. She was standing there, you know, cheering on the firefighters.
- [51:27]
Abe Greenwald
She hasn't got a clue no, she.
- [51:29]
John Podhoretz
Hasn'T got a clue. Right? But Trump, Trump is now coming into the presidency with this unbelievable state and local governmental failure staring him in the face. And this Biden failure in foreign policy and his ability to set the terms of his presidency at the beginning. As the competent guy, after decades of this nonsense, I have huge opportunity.
- [51:56]
Abe Greenwald
I have an observation here. I do think he'll visit Los Angeles, and I think the Trump team has telegraphed that sometime next week, in all probability, after he takes office. But you know that Politico article I mentioned about how LA dreads Trump's return? The argument about it was that Trump may actually drive a bargain in releasing some federal funds, some federal recovery funds. I'm not talking perfect phone call here, you know, political leverage, tying political leverage to monies. If Trump says, look, we're going to help California and Los Angeles, but you have to relax, permitting reform, you have to change your fire, your forest management policies. You have to get serious here about water reclamation and not send the gallons and gallons and gallons of water into the ocean rather than diverting it south. I, I have no problem with that. I have no problem with that because this political class in California will not change. It will not change unless it's forced to. So I think that could, that could happen, as well as Trump's kind of visit and commiseration and, you know, emotion directed toward the, the people who've been affected by the fire.
- [53:11]
John Podhoretz
Now, we have to say that Newsom yesterday did suspend certain types of environmental review and building regulation entirely, something that people have been talking about, but only for people with destroyed houses. Now, why is that important? Because we don't know what's going to be classified as a destroyed house. What if, as is the case with a friend of mine, a tree fell on your house, it wasn't destroyed, but a tree fell on your house. Are you gonna, is that, are the environment regulations going to be suspended so that you can get your house fixed without going through six months of review in the Pasadena City Council or by some bureaucrat in Sacramento? You, when you say things like, I am doing this large suspension, but you're, you don't do it statewide or you don't do it, you, you sort of pick and choose where it's going. It is going to raise way more questions than it answers. So that probably it's also better than it, than it will actually be in actuality. Right.
- [54:19]
Christine Rosen
It's also important because it, it means it, it's. He's not signaling a change in direction or a change in thinking he's treating this as. As a discreet emergency measure.
- [54:31]
John Podhoretz
And that wouldn't be so terrible, except that the scope of this calamity, there are, I think, a hundred and hundred, some odd thousand buildings that. Structures that have been destroyed. That's like, you know, half of a country in a small country like that is the landmarks.
- [54:52]
Abe Greenwald
You know, I mean, when you think about the. The Hearst Motel or the Will Rogers House or. I just saw the foundation devoted to the promotion of Arnold Schoenberg's music.
- [55:02]
John Podhoretz
Yeah.
- [55:03]
Abe Greenwald
His entire archive up in flames. There's been a temple, I think, that's been consumed by the fire, not to mention all of the homes destroyed. I mean, it is. It is a. It is a biblical in a way.
- [55:15]
John Podhoretz
And as you said, the winds. And as you said, the winds make up again today.
- [55:19]
Abe Greenwald
And you do wonder, too, that when you know that. That citizens arrest, that happens. There are a lot of, as we say, unhoused people. There are a lot of demented people in Los Angeles. And if they're trying to exploit this tragedy in some way, you have to have the full force of the law directed against them as well. So I think that just to get back to what Trump's going to do, I think he's going to emphasize that aspect as well. And that means that Newsom and Bass will. Will begin a fight. I mean, the whole argument about whether this should be politicized is kind of crazy to me because my entire career in Washington has been spent covering politicized tragedies and that. I mean, it's like all of a sudden, though, with this one, when you can't. There's not a single Republican you can blame for the policies affecting California. Because it is completely.
- [56:11]
John Podhoretz
Yes, you can. Because of climate change. You can.
- [56:13]
Abe Greenwald
Well, that's what's fascinating. Do you notice how the excuse is climate change? What does climate change deprive us of? Any agency or the agency is displaced into capitalism. This abstract system, industrialism. Right. It's not the responsibility of actually anyone in charge. It is this broader thing. Right. And so that's when. That's your only response. I don't think the people affected by the fires or the broader public are going to take it very seriously. Instead, what you have to do is, I think, create some sort of forcing mechanism to make Los Angeles rebuild better than before. And it's not going to be easy. And I think there will be a political fight. I mean, one, just one other example of this double standard that I see at work is Ron DeSantis was completely right. To point out that in the middle of the hurricanes season, during the campaign, Kamala Harris tried to politicize a hurricane by saying that he DeSantis wouldn't take her call. And the claim was so ludicrous it actually didn't really catch. But here you have the same group of people say, oh, how dare Trump suggest that our public policies are somehow making this worse. That doesn't pass the laugh test.
- [57:30]
Matthew Continetti
Two things with Newsom in particular, we should note. Almost immediately after he made that ridiculous statement about how, oh, we shouldn't be politicizing this moment, he went on Pod Save America, very left wing former Obama podcast, which then encouraged people to donate, ostensibly to help victims of the fires through Act Blue, which is Democratic fundraising arm which skims plenty of money off the top and sends it not necessarily directly to firefighters or victims of the fire, but to candidates for office, to crazy nonprofits that do all kinds of mischievous things. So he not only did he politicize it in terms of denying any sort of responsibility for his own actions, policy wise, but he immediately went on a left wing podcast and tried to raise money for left wing causes. It's the hubris and the hypocrisy of those actions is astonishing. Except that I think he thought he was pulling a Giuliani when he went out there, put his hands in his back pockets of his jeans and looked at the fires and sort of preened for the cameras. I think that's the left wing Democratic blue state version of what they think Giuliani did. It's. But it's only posing. There's no follow through except to go raise money for more left wing causes.
- [58:42]
John Podhoretz
The climate change claim is self defeating here, but it won't matter because tens of millions of people will believe it. So here's why, because I looked this up and amazingly I looked it up. Can you believe it? And you know, in early literature about California that's dating back to the mid 19th century when California was run essentially by the Catholic Church, these 18 missions that made up California, there are documents about how to build buildings and church and things like that, taking account of the phenomenon that we now know as the Santa Ana wind. So from the very beginning of the construction of California as a recognizable American place, people were having to deal with zoning and regulatory issues involving how to cope with this intermittent phenomenon of these winds. And then this passage has been going around from Joan Didion's the White Album that just vitiates the idea that things are so much worse that now because of climate Change. The Pacific Palisades, you know, burn down. You know, this is didion. It is hard for people who have not lived in Los Angeles, it's written in 1972, to realize how radically the Santa Ana figures in the local imagination. The city burning is Los Angeles's deepest image of itself. And at the time of the 1965 Watts riots, what struck the imagination most indelibly were the fires. Los Angeles weather is the weather of catastrophe, of apocalypse. And just as the reliably long and bare winters of New England determine the way life is lived there, so the violence and unpredictably unpredictability of the Santa Ana effect, the entire quality of life in Los Angeles accentuate its impermanence, its unreliability. The winds show us how close to the edge we are. So what's the other claim? The claim is that, well, there's a lot of drought and there's drought, and drought is the things were dry because of the drought. Well then I'm sorry, that's where you get to the 117 millions of water that were not in the reservoir. Wouldn't have saved the Palisades. Could have saved 500 houses, you know, could have saved some of the Palisades, not all of the Palisades. That's part of what you expect from government. It's not that there's a totalistic solution, but that you do the best you can. And then you have the story of the, of the diversion of water at a time of no drought into the ocean to save a tiny fish, where there you're therefore prioritizing nature over humanity. And that's I think, where the honest administration or, you know, effective administration thing, that's where it really does come into this weird semi religious world of post 60s thinking, where the earth, our responsibility to the earth is greater than our responsibility to the maintenance and good order of humanity. And that is an insane opinion. It's an evil opinion. And now it gets real world. This is like a real world test of what's going to happen in response to that. We're, we're running out of time. We hear there is word that the negotiations over the hostages in Doha are reaching a critical moment. And the little bits of leaks that we've gotten out are that it's a standard issue kind of hostage release. It's turned into a kind of standard issue hostage release negotiation where the question is, are there stages and how many Palestinian prisoners will be released as well as hostages released? And Maybe there'll be three stages and 25 hostages will come out first, and then there'll be a Palestinian release, and then there'll be a muh. And then there'll be. And it is my view that if that's the case, something very unworkable is going on here. And I will say flatly that if the Netanyahu government agrees to a hostage deal in which all the hostages are not released together before the 20th of January, but only 25, and then they have to wait to see who else is going to come out based on whatever. I don't know that the Netanyahu government can survive that. I don't think the hostage families, whose family members emerge, who don't emerge and are left in, in that captivity, given what we know about that captivity, are not going to have the emotional horror that they will express. And the fact that Bibi is a little infirm, he's going through recovery from prostate cancer surgery and other issues. And the trial, well, the trial's been suspended because of his prostate cancer surgery. But, but, but I don't know. Like, I, if that's right. And we only have that from, from sort of Arab sources. I don't know. I, I think that that doesn't fit as far as I can. It does not fit what Trump said.
- [64:14]
Abe Greenwald
Can we just end on a restatement of the utter depravity and barbarity of Hamas? I mean, the fact that we're even in this negotiation is insane. The fact that we don't know how many hostages are still living is insane. The fact that we don't know where the living hostages are is absolutely crazy. The fact that we have to negotiate through intermediaries with this terrorist group that's been almost entirely decimated and that is still killing just four soldiers killed in action over the weekend. What an utter, utter disgrace and stain on our conscience here. And so I think you're right that there will be high standards applied to any deal and that if we don't get answers, then Trump would be completely justified in unleashing hell, as he says he will.
- [65:13]
John Podhoretz
But it's also a question of whether he will feel saddest, whether he will want to un. Unleash hell. Not even that he will be justified. JD Vance went on a morning show yesterday and said what he meant by unleashing hell is. And then he did a kind of MAGA America first, where it's like they, he would, he would relax his expectations of the Israelis and we would do X. But it wasn't like we're going in and blowing things up. And murder and murdering the Hamas Niks who are holding Americans hostage.
- [65:42]
Abe Greenwald
Well, you have to remember, I know we're running up against time. You have to remember there's an ongoing national security debate happening already within this incipient administration, and JD Vance is on the more dovish side of that debate. There are other voices who I think have a different definition of what hell might look like.
- [66:00]
John Podhoretz
Is he speaking for Trump or not? Or is he voicing a kind of one possible agenda, one possible way of pursuing this as opposed to others? Because it sounded to me like what, what Vance was proposing is what Israel should do. Even if the hostages are released, by the way, even if the hostages are released, Israel still needs to finish off Hamas. Like that's not finishing. It's. It's like we're calling off the war. There may be a ceasefire while the hostages. But ceasefires are not war ends. I mean, they. One was, I guess in, you know, or in Korea, but. But that's not, that's not over yet. And so he's.
- [66:42]
Christine Rosen
Yeah, that's to say nothing of the Iran question.
- [66:45]
John Podhoretz
Right. Well, the Iran question deals with the ultimate. Or the Houthis. Or the Houthis. Right. So that's an interesting aspect of, of all of this. And we will see where this, this goes. Seven days. Seven days to go for Matt and Christine and Abel, John Pot Horitz, keep the caliper.