Project Haley Mary

Summary

The Commentary Magazine Podcast: Project Haley Mary (July 6, 2026)

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Episode Overview

In this lively and trenchant episode, host John Podhoretz is joined by Commentary colleagues Abe Greenwald, Seth Mandel, and guest Eliana Johnson (Washington Free Beacon) to discuss the frenzied state of American politics after the July 4th holiday, with a deep-dive into the Michigan Democratic Senate primary and what it reveals about the future direction of both parties. Later, they examine new polling on Republicans and Israel, and wrap with a mini-monologue on the New York Times' evolving stance regarding standardized testing in higher education. The conversation blends wit, exasperation, and genuine political concern, sticking to Commentary’s signature blend of general interest and specifically Jewish perspective.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Personal July 4th Reflections and American Patriotism

• John Podhoretz recounts a moving Independence Day spent at historic Fort Mackinac, appreciating an unironic celebration of the American founding, untouched by the contemporary waves of anti-Americanism or “Never Trumpism” in media commentary.
  “I had a wonderful patriotic, unironic fourth of July...” (02:20)

• The hosts also discuss the childlike joy of fireworks and the quirks of watching them with children and dogs, with some humorous banter on air conditioning conspiracies (“Big Air Conditioner”) and relatable tales of managing July heat.

  “I cannot recommend highly enough the childlike wonder of watching a kid see their first fireworks show every time. It gets me.”
  —Abe Greenwald (06:02)

2. The Metaphor of Presidential “Favor” and Disasters

• Podhoretz suggests that recent setbacks in Trump’s second term – including the botched American 250th celebration and DC storms – are metaphorical omens, reminiscent of moments that prophesied disaster for single-term presidents like Bush Sr. and Carter.

  “There was about this something, as I say, metaphorical about what things seem to be going wrong, have seemed to be going wrong in the last four to six weeks.”
  —John Podhoretz (12:30)

• Eliana Johnson spotlights Trump's on-brand response to adversity, noting his performative perseverance in the face of chaos:

  "He is, you know, you say God is laughing at him and he's like standing there and saying, persevering."
  —Eliana Johnson (13:40)

3. Democratic Party at a Crossroads: The Michigan Senate Primary

3.1. The Players and What’s at Stake

• The panel scrutinizes the upcoming Michigan Democratic Senate primary, particularly following moderate Mallory McMorrow’s exit, and the resulting face-off between establishment pick Haley Stevens and insurgent far-left candidate Abdul El Sayed.

  • Haley Stevens: Described as a conventionally attractive, experienced, establishment-backed candidate but lacking the “raw talent” of McMorrow.
  • Abdul El Sayed: Charismatic, talented, but holding extreme, controversial positions, particularly regarding Israel, anti-Semitism, and anti-establishment rhetoric.

• The hosts emphasize that the race pits establishment pressure groups (EMILY’s List, Chuck Schumer) against full-throated progressivism.

  “It is shaping up to actually be the race that the candidates in the race paint it to be... establishment pressure groups versus an insurgent.”
  —Abe Greenwald (24:28)

3.2. The Islamist and Anti-Semitic Undercurrent

• The show covers the inescapable controversy around El Sayed’s associations (notably with online influencer Hasan Piker, who infamously said "America deserved 9/11"), and his equivocations on condemning anti-Semitic attacks.

  “Hurt people hurt people.”
  —Abe Greenwald quoting El Sayed (28:50)

  • The panel is alarmed by the normalization of these views among the Democratic primary electorate.

  “Among Democratic primary voters... his views are not actually unpopular. In fact, they have all the energy behind them…”
  —Eliana Johnson (37:16)

• The possible "Hobson’s choice" Stevens faces: Attack El Sayed as an extremist and risk alienating the energized base—or hold back, maybe lose anyway.

  “If knocking his numbers down means attacking him on things that he's not that unpopular on, it's a test of the Democratic Party.”
  —John Podhoretz (40:15)

3.3. The Jewish/Muslim Statewide Demographics Angle

• Podhoretz spotlights the demographic uniqueness of Michigan as the only state with a larger Muslim than Jewish population, making the Israel debate particularly salient.

  “This is the one state in the country in which there are more Muslims than Jews. There are 400,000 Muslims, there are 270,000 Jews.”
  —John Podhoretz (39:00)

3.4. General Election Fallout

• All agree that while far-left positions may win a primary, they’re likely toxic in a general election, especially in a swing state like Michigan. The conversation draws analogies to Republican acquiescence to MAGA in 2016—and warns Democrats against a similar path.

  "If the radicals can win a Senate race in a swing state like Michigan, then the Democratic Party’s fate is sealed..."
  —John Podhoretz (44:33)

4. Data Check: Republican Support for Israel—Resilience Despite Far-Right Attacks

• Eliana Johnson introduces her new Washington Free Beacon/Echelon Insights poll of 1,100+ likely GOP primary voters:

  • GOP voters overwhelmingly support Israel and candidates who denounce anti-Semitism (by 50-point margins) and are turned off by candidates who bash Israel or support BDS.
  • Military aid to Israel receives significantly more support than for any other country.
  • Netanyahu is "favorable"; Ukraine, foreign aid in general, and Zelensky register as less so.

• Younger Republicans (18–34) are less pro-Israel than older GOP cohorts—a concern for the future, but not for current turnout.

  “Israel seems to be the exceptional nation for Republican primary voters. They view Israel exists in a different category from the rest of the world.”
  —John Podhoretz (54:10, 58:38)

• The “podcast bros” (Tucker, Candace Owens, Fuentes, Shapiro, Rogan) have influence among the young, but their anti-Israel messaging hasn’t swayed the base yet.

  “The Republican Party appears from this poll, it appears that you cannot swamp Israel out of the Republican Party's base. You... cannot come in with a wave of anger… and make them stop liking Israel.”
  —Abe Greenwald (61:30)

5. Moment of Truth for the New York Times: Standardized Testing

• Podhoretz closes with sharp commentary on the NYT’s surprise editorial defending the SAT and standardized testing for college admissions (in the context of California’s moves to abandon them), juxtaposed with the Times’ decade-long campaign to end New York City’s SHSAT for selective high schools.

  “If the New York Times does not reverse field, having published this endless editorial defending the sat, if it does not reverse field on the shsat and say that the shsat is a good thing… this is a moment at which the New York Times intense hypocrisy could reveal itself or some intellectual consistency should be paid attention to.”
  —John Podhoretz (62:26 onward)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Trump and July 4th Metaphors
  “There was this moment with Bush when things started to happen that suggested that he was not exactly in the favor of the divine… The same happened to Jimmy Carter... these things with Bush and with Carter were an indication of the trouble and catastrophe yet to come.”
  —John Podhoretz (09:45–13:00)

• On Democrats risking electoral disaster
  “You could have essentially two candidates running against El Sayed, both the governor and his rival Mike Rogers. That's why he's such a target of opportunity in a state that Trump won.”
  —John Podhoretz (43:52)

• On Democratic voters and radicalism
  “The people poised to go out and cast ballots... his views are not actually unpopular. In fact, they have all the energy behind them… Abolishing prisons, abolishing borders, telling murderers and rapists they should run for office. Those views are just not broadly popular with the general electorate, even if they are popular on the far left.”
  —Eliana Johnson (37:16–38:14)

• On Republican support for Israel as “rock solid”
  “That’s a rock solid 57%. When things get easier ... it's not like that number is going to go down. It will only go up ... It's not powerful enough to run Israel out of the Republican base. It is powerful enough to run Israel out of the Democratic base.”
  —Abe Greenwald (61:30)

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• Opening banter, Fourth of July stories – 00:00–09:24
• Presidential ‘bad omens’ metaphor, Trump’s setbacks – 09:45–15:57
• Michigan Senate primary, Democrat factionalism – 18:45–37:16
• Abdul El Sayed, anti-Semitism, campaign controversies – 27:34–37:16
• Possible general election outcomes, state demographics – 38:41–44:33
• Republican polling: Support for Israel – 49:27–62:26
• NYT on standardized testing; hypocrisy and stakes – 62:26–end

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Summary Flow & Takeaways

• The episode is a microcosm of the current American political crisis: Traditions nostalgically clung to by some, while both parties grapple with insurgencies threatening to redefine their soul.
• Democrats are facing their own MAGA moment: Can they police their extreme left, or will electoral realities (and states like Michigan) force a reckoning?
• On the right, Israel remains sacrosanct, for now: Alarm over youth trends is tempered by data showing that, for now, pro-Israel sentiment is a potent voting motivator among most GOP voters.
• Key questions hang over 2026: Will the backlash against the anti-Israel left kill Democratic chances in swing states? Can the NYT maintain ideological consistency about educational fairness?
• The Commentary crew leaves the listener with more questions than answers—poised for “watch this space” as a wild election summer unfolds.

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Transcript

[Abe Greenwald]

Foreign.

[John Podhoretz]

Expect the worst Some preach and pain

[Abe Greenwald]

Some die of thirst no way of

[John Podhoretz]

knowing which way it's going Hope for the best Expect the worst Hope for the best welcome to the Commentary Magazine daily podcast. Today is Monday, July 6, 2026. I am Jon Pudhoritz, the editor of Commentary magazine. With me, as always, Executive editor Abe Greenwald. Hi, Abe.

[Seth Mandel]

Hi, John.

[John Podhoretz]

Senior editor Seth Mandel. Hi, Seth.

[Abe Greenwald]

Hi, John.

[John Podhoretz]

And Washington Free Beacon editor Eliana Johnson. Hi, Eliana.

[Eliana Johnson]

Hi, John.

[John Podhoretz]

Eliana, I want to get to a groundbreaking poll that you have conducted at the Washington Free Deep Beacon with the superb polling firm Echelon Insights about Republicans and Israel. But before we get to that, I'd just like to hear how you guys felt and celebrated the fourth. I myself, unlike the three of you, was not boiling to death in heat. I was actually on Mackinac island in Lake Huron at the point of the Straits of Mackinac, where Lake Huron and Lake Michigan meet. One of the most charming places that I've ever been to in the United States. I sat on July 4th at Fort Mackinac, which has been there since the late 18th century and is a fully preserved fort because it actually never saw any combat, ever. The British took it, the Americans took it back from the British. And then in the late very end of the 19th century, it was decommissioned as a fort. So you can actually see what it was like in this 80 person garrison and a gentleman read the Declaration of Independence to a crowd of about 200 people. And it was unbelievably moving. And I was just very delighted to be out of the Washington, New York fray for a couple of days and not reading horrible op EDS about how no, the revolution was a mistake or look at how awfully we've handled things now and the American dream is over and everything else that I assume was in every newspaper or newspaper website and every website that seeks to take Never Trumpism to a new level of anti Americanism that didn't seem to be necessary when never Trumpism started 11 years ago. So anyway, I had a wonderful patriotic, unironic fourth of July and you guys.

[Seth Mandel]

Well, mine was, I would argue that I was in fact at a cooler temperature than you because I remained overwhelmingly inside my freezing cold apartment in Manhattan.

[Abe Greenwald]

You didn't keep it at 78 degrees like you were told?

[Seth Mandel]

Yeah, no, as if I could even do that. I have these old window units. There's a high mode and a low mode and they're indistinguishable from each other. They're both high.

[John Podhoretz]

Does Anyone actually believe that air conditioning units today that have numbers that those numbers mean anything? I think they just mean, like, when you hit 67, that gets a little cooler. And when you hit 64, it gets a little cooler. The idea that you're actually calibrating the temperature. This, I think, is big air conditioner. This is the conspiracy of big air conditioner to fool us into believing that we have more control over our thermostats than we do.

[Eliana Johnson]

Are you telling me that when I think I need to sleep at 66 degrees Fahrenheit, that it's not actually 66 degrees Fahrenheit?

[John Podhoretz]

Listen, if it works as a placebo, it's just as good as if it feels like 66 to you. It's 66. Let's face it. That's. That's.

[Abe Greenwald]

Do you.

[John Podhoretz]

What does it feel.

[Abe Greenwald]

Pressure gauge anyway, because of the World Cup?

[John Podhoretz]

What. How does. How does Fahrenheit.

[Eliana Johnson]

Do you think I'm following the World Cup?

[Sponsor/Ad Voice]

Yeah.

[Abe Greenwald]

How does Fahrenheit normally you just say

[Eliana Johnson]

60 degrees pressure to say anything about, you know,

[John Podhoretz]

that means. Good that we don't have to discuss this whole question of Trump calling FIFA to do whatever.

[Eliana Johnson]

So not following it that the first thing I heard about it was that Trump made a call to some FIFA guy, and that's the first thing I heard about the world.

[Abe Greenwald]

All I'll say is that the president of the host country calling the head of FIFA to get a penalty suspended is the least corrupt thing that has ever happened involving a FIFA official. So we can just move on from it.

[John Podhoretz]

And the least corrupt thing involving Trump based on what we're hearing, too.

[Abe Greenwald]

I will say, by the way, that over my weekend, all the kids of mine who hadn't seen fireworks yet saw fireworks. So I had a very. I had also a fairly, as you said, unironic or earnest July 4th celebration. On Thursday night, we went to see good old George Washington at Mount Vernon and my kids, because otherwise we wouldn't have been able to see it Saturday night because everything was so late and there's no way of getting in and the storms and all that stuff. So they did it Thursday night. So now all the kids have seen fireworks. And it is. It is. I just. I cannot recommend highly enough the childlike wonder of watching a kid see their first fireworks show every time. It gets me.

[John Podhoretz]

I remember when my younger daughter, when we took her, we actually got tickets to be in the sort of the VIP area of the Macy's fourth of July fireworks display, and she was three or something. Like that. And I have photographs of her that are out of a television commercial where she or Spielberg movie in which she is just gazing up in jaw dropped, wonder at the beauty of what is in the sky above her. So that is a. That is a great thing. Your dog, I assume, was not as happy.

[Abe Greenwald]

He, weirdly enough, Truman does not get upset by fireworks, and he does not really get upset by thunder. These are two things.

[John Podhoretz]

You are doggy. You're lucky, Abe, your dog.

[Seth Mandel]

Same, same situation. I mean, the way I look at

[John Podhoretz]

it is my daughter had to dose. My daughter had to dose because we're aware. My daughter's taking care of our dog. Had to dose our dog with trazodone, which is a. Which is a. What do you call a sedative almost, because she gets so absolutely, like, deranged, freaked out.

[Seth Mandel]

I think my dog is so neurotic that she skipped the usual suspects in terms of triggers. You know what I mean?

[John Podhoretz]

Okay, fair enough.

[Seth Mandel]

Too pedestrian for her. Yeah.

[John Podhoretz]

Okay, there you go. So air conditioning. We have George Washington and Mount Vernon. And of course, it was, as Mayor Soloveitchik pointed out in his piece and commentary this month, for Orthodox Jews, there was a bittersweet quality to the Fourth of July because it was Shabbat, and therefore they could not fully participate in all events that they might have been able, including, like, barbecuing, which, of course, you can't cook on the Sabbath if you are a very observant Jew. He had wanted. He would have wanted to go to Monticello to celebrate the Fourth of July because, as he points out in a wonderful couple of places in commentary, Monticello was saved from. It had fallen into incredible disrepair. And an American Jew named Uriah Levy, or Uriah Levy's son and Uriah Levy's son saved Monticello from disrepair and also turned it into a national sort of landmark site. And he buried his mother at Monticello. So you can both sell. Anyway, it's one of the early stories of American Jewish philanthropic contribution to the greatness of America, which we can talk about in a few minutes. Eliana, what about you? And the fourth?

[Eliana Johnson]

Had a wonderful fourth, though it was sweltering hot until someone in the Evening, you know, 8 o', clock, 9 o', clock, swam, spent time with friends. My daughter is still petrified of the noise from fireworks, so she wanted to watch them on tv.

[John Podhoretz]

Wow. Well, so I want to mention one thing which is maybe unfair. I mean, it's metaphoric, but just to make it clear that this is not simply Something that I'm saying relating to Trump that people who like Trump will be angry at me about. I actually made this point in my first book, Hell of a Ride, which was published in 1993, about the decline and fall of the one term George H.W. bush administration, which is that rather like what happens to King Lear. As the play goes on and the manifest injustice of his behavior toward his youngest daughter becomes clear, nature starts turning against him and the unnatural quality of his unreasoning treatment starts being expressed by nature. This catastrophe of the Great American Fair, both on Friday and on Saturday, having to be canceled, postponed, that they actually had people shelter. They announced that everybody who was on the mall for the great American 250th fair should dash into the nearest federal building to. To protect themselves from whatever horrible imminent catastrophe was about to happen. And what I said in my book was that there was this moment with Bush when things started to happen that suggested that he was not exactly in the favor of the divine. He had a terrible incident where he vomited at a state dinner. He would give of rallies and there would be thunderstorms. Everybody would have to run inside. Things weren't this. White Houses often work like clockwork. This was not the case. And the same thing happened to Jimmy Carter in 1979 and 1980, particularly and most notoriously the fact that he was rowing in a boat in his lake near his house and he was attacked by a feral rabbit. The feral rabbit tried to jump into the boat and bite him and the Secret Service had to beat the fe rabbit off. And it was sort of like in retrospect, these things with Bush and with Carter were an indication of the trouble and catastrophe yet to come to their reputations and their careers. And losing a single term, obviously that's not going to happen to Trump. He's already lost a single term and come back. But there was about this something, as I say, metaphorical about what things seem to be going wrong, have seemed to be going wrong in the last four to six weeks. Trump, he's not getting what he wants. The Iran war, of course, has turned into whatever the Iran War has turned into. Weird troubles on the Hill. His weird behavior about the SAVE act and making it possible for other legislation to get passed, losing it to Supreme Court on birthright citizenship. And then the stories coming out about what should be a good for him personally, which is this unbelievable enrichment that he has experienced since the beginning of his second term, but that are extremely bad for his reputation and conceivably for his presidency, should Democrats end up in control of the House and Senate in November. So I don't know if you guys. Does anybody want to push back on me on the God, Trump has lost God's favor.

[Eliana Johnson]

My only thought was that Trump's response was so Trumpian in that he got up on stage and said, you know, my people told me we can do it another day because it started, it was 105 degrees out and then it started storming at, you know, 9, 10, 11 o' clock on the 4th. He said, My people told me we could do it another day. And I said, no, if I have to stay out here and do it at 4 in the morning, I will do it. Because they said, you can do it. It doesn't have to be July 4th, it can be July, another July, July, whatever. And I said, no, if it has to be midnight, if it has to be four in the morning, I'm staying here and I'm doing it. And it was like he is, you know, you say God is laughing at him and he's like standing there and sang, persevering.

[John Podhoretz]

If he speaks after midnight, rather like the Gremlins, it is no longer July 4th anyway.

[Eliana Johnson]

But it was an interesting response and the speech was pretty good. It was pretty good. I thought the showmanship with the flags, the historic flags, was really amazing. But that was my only thought as you were saying, that

[Abe Greenwald]

I would. I was surprised at Eliana, if this is. I was surprised to read the Washington Post headline that seemed positive on the fireworks show. So I thought that I was very surprised to see anybody say anything. But apparently the show was. Was quite good. The. The headline was something like, the people who stuck around through the delays were rewarded with the show or something like that.

[Seth Mandel]

And.

[Abe Greenwald]

And I was like, that is very nice of the Washington Post to say that, because I expected him to have just a piece in the Style section about how the colors of the firecrackers were off. And, you know, the green was really like a lime green or something. But it was so apparently it was a good enough show that you couldn't even say it wasn't a good show, which is good.

[Sponsor/Ad Voice]

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[John Podhoretz]

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[John Podhoretz]

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[John Podhoretz]

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[Sponsor/Ad Voice]

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[John Podhoretz]

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[John Podhoretz]

So the question of Trump's political standing as we move into the heat of the summer is a very interesting one, in part because it is compounded by the anxiety and nervousness of Call mainstream Democrats about the turn that their party is taking. Big story in the New York Times this morning about the question of the party's takeover by its insurgent outsider radical Wing and how much a change this is from 2018, when in 2018, seeing a political advantage, Democrats lined up candidates who could be plausibly shown to be patriotic, competent fighter pilots, veterans, governors, whatever, people who could say, Trump doesn't know what he's doing, we Democrats are gonna come in and fix things. And that this message no longer has any valence for Democratic primary voters who are now where Republicans were in 2015, apparently, or 2016, which is like our party is made up of bums and we want to throw the bums out. And that it happens that the bums have liberal to leftist views and that the people who want to replace them have leftist to communist views is making political professionals who are desperate for Democrats to take over and do everything to Trump that anybody else would want to do, that they are very, very, very nervous that they are going against the wishes and the ideas of the American people, even if the tides are pulling the election toward the Democrats. So that the Democrats are becoming an issue, whereas they only want Trump to be an issue.

[Seth Mandel]

But, I mean, one way to look at it is they've found their own MAGA in the sense that they found the reckless people who say and believe in wildly unconventional things, who are extreme in temperament, unpredictable and unfit for office. I mean, we could talk about what MAGA is in terms of ideologies and policies, and Trump, that is, always was a piece of it, but the appeal was the breaking the mold was the theater.

[Eliana Johnson]

Here's the thing. MAGA turned out, you know, to the extent MAGA means a certain set of views which we could argue about. But MAGA turned out, Trump turned out to be representative of a broad portion of the American electorate. Whereas I don't think actually these far left wing candidates do represent a broad portion of the American electorate, although that will be tested probably in November. I think that my guess is the electorate will see them and think these people are freaks with fringe views. But it's interesting that the one of the candidates in the Michigan Democratic Senate Primary, Mallory McMorrow, dropped out over the weekend and she was running trying to straddle the moderate lane and the, you know, left wing freak Lane, Chuck Schumer, has endorsed the moderate Haley Stevens. And Abdul El Sayed is running on the far left and McMorrow was running between them. And there was just no lane for that. It was quickly becoming a two person race. And so now that's a race between El Sayed, who has the momentum, and Stevens, who's got Schumer's imprimatur I mean,

[John Podhoretz]

that's an interesting race because.

[Eliana Johnson]

And she does have political talent. McMorrow.

[John Podhoretz]

She has real political talents. She was one of the stars of the 2024 Democratic convention. She was there reading from the giant Project 2025 storybook that they printed that was like 12ft high and 17ft long. And she would open it up and then read passages from Project 2025. But attractive, smart, able, good talker. And Haley Stevens is exactly what you would conventionally want in a senatorial candidate. She has political experience, she's attractive, she's well spoken.

[Eliana Johnson]

Not a lot of raw talent. I don't think she's turned out to be clumsier. McMorrow, I think, is conventionally attractive, has some charisma. Stevens doesn't have quite the same charisma. And El Sayed turns out to be really charismatic, quite politically talented. His views, I'm not sure, are going to go over so well with the public.

[John Podhoretz]

I mean. I mean, the whole point about this

[Abe Greenwald]

is Emily's List is backing Stevens now, so there's not a total exodus over to El Sayed. McMorrow is probably not going to endorse, I would think, until the general election and just endorse whoever wins. But at least with. But it is shaping up to actually be the race that the candidates in the race paint it to be. Now, without McMurra, which really is a kind of establishment. And the establishment pressure groups versus an insurgent.

[John Podhoretz]

Look, what's really important here is there's a month until The Michigan primary, 30 days, I think, from now, or 29 days, and Haley Stevens could take out the big guns. I mean, El Sayed is a gigantic target of opportunity with many, many years of absolutely horrifying statements behind him that will be used against him when John James runs for governor as the Michigan gubernatorial candidate, assuming that he isn't overtaken by this lunatic Harry Johnson, who. I saw some of Perry Johnson's commercials calling John James a loser liberal who wants communism or something. But for all I know, in Michigan, he could come out of nowhere. This is a very weird year. But John James, assuming that he is the nominee and he's run very creditable races that he hasn't won twice before in the state, is just gonna unload.

[Abe Greenwald]

I love the idea that John James, the Apache pilot in Iraq who trained with the Army Rangers, is a loser. That's gonna be an interesting argument to try to make.

[John Podhoretz]

Yeah. But anyway, he. But it's just. He is just gonna go to town, and independent expenditure groups are gonna go to Town on El Sayed. And the question is, how much does Haley Stevens want to win? Or will she hold her punches? Because she doesn't want to be accused of trying to destroy this, accused of Islamophobia or something like that. If she goes after him, an ordinary serious politician who understands that she's playing for all the marbles would take this month to go crazy negative and just try to drive his numbers down. And that's something to watch because if she doesn't, she is certainly going to lose. She may lose if she does it, but she is certainly going to lose based on the trajectory of everything we're seeing without it. Unless we see some poll this week that shows that because McMorrow dropped out suddenly, 90% of McMorrow's voters go to her instead of to El Sayed and then closes the race to two or three points. But I.

[Abe Greenwald]

Well, his likely opponent for the Senate race would be Mike Rogers, who is, you know, an intel, former Intelligence Committee chair or ranking member. Right. And so Rogers is. Rogers is a national security minded type of candidate. I mean, he'll talk about what Michigan wants to talk about because he's running statewide for this, but he has the national security background to, I think fluently talk about the issues at play here, even without being necessarily, I want to say, provocative, but even without, you know, making it about El Sayed himself and his, and his, you know, the crowd that he runs with. But, you know, Rogers is the type of candidate who could paint a pretty clear, broad picture of what American strength and American foreign policy ought to look like and understanding who Americans friends are and who its enemies are. And that picture itself is one that puts El Sayed in a difficult place because El Sayed is the guy who said, you know, he worried about, he worried about condemning the terrorist attack, the attempted massacre of Jewish children at that Reform at the largest Reform synagogue in Michigan. Because according to the conversation he was, the debate he was having with his staff, it would seem one sided because the guy was connected to Hezbollah, his brother was in Hezbollah and had been killed in Israeli airstrike. And therefore what ended up happening was El Sayed came out with a, a condemnatory statement that also said hurt people. Hurt people. Right there, there was some sort of nuance for that. And also he learned that, he learned

[John Podhoretz]

that on his psychiatry rotation as, you know, as a, as a, as a resident or an intern at.

[Eliana Johnson]

He said it while standing next to Hassan Piker. Okay. That was at his rally with Hasan

[John Podhoretz]

Piker, I should point.

[Abe Greenwald]

He also had a problem with Khamenei. There was, there was also debate within the campaign about, about whether to, you know, there was no debate.

[Eliana Johnson]

He said, I'm not condemning the guy. And he said, I'm not condemning the guy. And if Trump, if the media asks me about it, I'll just call Trump a pedophile and turn it to Epstein. And the condemnation of the Bloomfield terrorist at the largest synagogue in West Bloomfield was not exactly full throated. And he had the little terrorist from the University of Michigan working on his campaign, who's now been indicted by the federal government. I think her name is Mariam or Miriam Oda. For terrorizing university officials and Jews in the Ann Arbor area for not buckling to the demands of the anti Israel student agitators.

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[Eliana Johnson]

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[Seth Mandel]

I would like to think that attacks on El Sayed for the horrible things he said and done would have the kind of salience that we would normally expect. What if they don't? I think that's a real concern here. We're all talking about this stuff because it's already been out there for a long time and yet he's in the position he's in. And Democrats have been sort of trained or conditioned over the past few years to defend this stuff, downplay it, interpret it in the friendliest light, and so on. So I fear that we're in a different place and that the kinds of things that of course would be a slam dunk, be a no brainer in Only an America 5 years ago May no longer have that kind of impact.

[Abe Greenwald]

Well, I think that's the key. I mean, I was writing a post about this this morning, and that's the view that I am also struck by is how prominent in the New York Times obituary for the McMorrow campaign was the condemnation by both McMurray and Haley Stevens, excuse me, of El Sayed campaigning with Hassan Piker, as Eliana mentioned. I mean this is a guy who's called Jews pig dogs and Orthodox Jews inbred and said he likes Hamas a thousand times better then Israeli said America deserved nine. Literally the quote is America deserved 9 11. He's so, so you know, what McMarrow did was she was, as Eliana mentioned, trying to straddle that line, right? And so she, Hasan Piker is so clearly anti Semitic that if you were in the race and trying to avoid condemning El Sayed for anything having to do with anti Semitism, you were now stuck. Right? You had, you, you could either condemn Hasan Piker, the Amer, The America deserved 911 guy, or, or not. And one way or the other, you, you could no longer be on that line. You could no longer be on the fence is what I'm saying. You had, you ended up on one side or the other because of Hassan Piker's entrance into the race. McMurra did the right thing, which she has not always done, but she, she couldn't, she couldn't not condemn has. And she compared him to Nick Fuentes, who is the white nationalist, you know, goofy gnome on the right, the podcaster. It's an accurate comparison. And so you have to say to yourself, what would I say if a Republican were out there campaigning with Nick fuentes? That's what McMorrow did. And the Times story calls that moment the end of her campaign. And the polls are, the polls pretty much justify that judgment. That was in late March. She gained a couple more points in the polls from what I've looked over into mid April, but I think that was just a two week period in which the campaign had to fully digest what had just happened and then produce polls that really started, including what had happened, because in mid April she started to fall off a cliff and she was in single digits when she ended. So that Abe, that is, that is the way that this is being framed, is she lost because she condemned Hasan Piker. I think that answers your question as to the overall narrative.

[John Podhoretz]

Well, if that's the case, then the question that I posed or the idea I posed, which is that HAILEY Stevens has 29 days to stop Abdul El Sayed, she can't. I mean, if the Mallory McMorrow story is that highlighting his connections to extremism helped Mallory Morrow collapse in the polls, then Haley Stevens campaign team presumably knows that and isn't gonna go there. But I'm just saying, if she doesn't go there, where does she go? What is she gonna say?

[Eliana Johnson]

Look, I'm not the expert on Democratic primary voters, but my sense, having watched some of these things unfold, is that among Democratic primary voters, the people poised to go out and cast ballots in these primary elections and energized about it, his views are not actually unpopular. In fact, they have all the energy behind them. She'll have to argue we're gonna lose. You guys wanna win or not? Because we're gonna lose if independent voters are exposed to those views. I actually think where independent, where his views are unpopular is among the independent voters who are gonna swing elections who aren't down with, you know, Islamizing the state of Michigan and, you know, having Jews bullied, harassed, you know, having the girl on El Sayed's campaign was throwing chemicals through the windows of private homes and cars of these people. You know, that's not actually popular, broadly. Abolishing prisons, abolishing borders, telling murderers and rapists they should run for office. Those views are just not broadly popular with the, you know, general electorate, even if they are popular on the far left.

[Sponsor/Ad Voice]

However,

[John Podhoretz]

the experience that we have of Democratic primary voters going with these extremists is the experience of these congressional districts in blue, blue, blue places, right? So that's one of the things that gives us pause last week in Denver and then, of course, New York the week before. And then we also have the example of Janet Mills crumbling against the insurgent Graham Platner and giving up the ghost rather than trying to beat him in a primary. But this is a state with the statewide vote here, so it's a state of 11 million people, I believe. And so, so it's one thing to run in a district of 700,000 people where 100,000 people turn out to vote in the primary. If in this state, which is, I guess, probably has 2 million or more Democrats, and I haven't looked up the numbers, presumably the Democrats are more varied. Now, this is also one of the reasons that, that El Sayed may have an advantage, natural base advantage over Haley Stevens is that this is the one state in the country in which there are more Muslims than Jews. There are 400,000 Muslims, there are 270,000 Jews. And so that was why the Biden campaign got all hysterical about the idea that the Arabs in Mission were going to refuse to vote for him in 2024. And he needed to change his policies on the go a war in order to shore that up. And in fact, in the end, Trump won Michigan, though we don't, I don't think, we think it's because of the Arabs.

[Eliana Johnson]

Well, he did win them.

[John Podhoretz]

Oh, he did win them. Okay, so, okay, so, so you're Haley Stevens. You're like in a, you've got a Hobson's Choice, you gotta go negative against the guy because he's the leader, he's winning and you have to climb up and you need to knock his numbers down. But if knocking his numbers down means attacking him on things that he's not that unpopular on, it's a test of the Democratic Party. It's like writ small, right? It's basically like, can Democrats say crazy socialist, anti Semite Hamas lovers do not represent our party? Or, or have they already given up? And even if they don't believe that, they're willing to go along with it the same way that non MAGA voters ended up going along with MAGA over time and then, not only that, but then deciding that they like MAGA or they like Trump. And so remember, Trump didn't win a majority of the Republican vote in the primary in 2016, but he won the delegates going away won on the first ballot, but he won 45% of the vote. And so the Republican Party had no answer to him, but the party was still resistant to him. So that's the question of whether or not there is a kind of like quiet Tory vote, a shy Tory vote against El Sayed in Michigan. She's gonna have to surface that or she's toast. That's, by the way, one of the

[Abe Greenwald]

reasons I have another, I have a question though, about the race. Did I mean, Haley Stevens, if she loses, she remains In Congress. Correct. She didn't. Did. She didn't have to. Did she step down from her seat in the House in order to run for Senate? I don't think so, but I don't know the answer. Do you know? Because the reason I ask is because if she's still in Congress, she's still in the House. She's going to face a brutal primary chance challenge as retribution for running against El Sayed. This is the other consideration. I just wonder if she's, if she has, if she's going to, if she's staying in the House, then the other consideration for her might be how hard do I want to bring it to this guy? How hard do I want to attract a, a primary challenge, you know, in, in, in revenge for it? And I think that has to play into your as a member of Congress. That has to be part of the consideration.

[John Podhoretz]

I'm looking, I'm trying to find out this question because there are different things in different states and so far I don't see anything about her staying in the.

[Eliana Johnson]

Yeah, I don't think she's staying.

[John Podhoretz]

I mean she would have to, there is a primary. So she would have to be running both on the Democratic line in the can you run on.

[Abe Greenwald]

Right. So then she's got nothing to lose. Right? That's the answer. She's got no reason because she is either going to win and be in the Senate or she's out of Congress.

[John Podhoretz]

Right. Well, but she has nothing to lose any. She has. Right. But that's the question. Has the party gone where Abe and Eliana are suggesting it's going where letting it fly will get him elected with Democratic primary voters rather than prevent him. Right. So one of the reasons I brought up John James as the gubernatorial candidate rather than Mike Rogers who was the senatorial candidate is that this is an John James is not only going to run against the Democratic nominee, he is going to run against El Sayed. If El Sayed runs, it's like he will be the I need to be here. This state is going crazy. The Democrats in this state are going crazy. He's the one who will say, effectively you independents better vote for me because these guys are coming for your throats and they are socialists and they want to take away your small businesses and they want to do this and they want to do that and they have these crazy anti American views. And so you could have essentially two candidates running against El Sayed, both the governor and his rival Mike Rogers. That's why he's such a target of Opportunity in a state that Trump won. I mean, if he weren't. Trump lost Maine, so you can see how Platner can win. Right. But Trump won Michigan, though. He lost Michigan in 20. So it's the ultimate swing state. If the radicals can win a Senate race in a swing state like Michigan, then the Democratic Party's fate is sealed, at least for the short term, because it'll mean that there is no counterweight whatsoever. You would think, in a state that has jumped back and forth, that would not be the case.

[Abe Greenwald]

And we should note that there is some evidence in Maine that Graham Platner's record is have. It is weighing him down. Now that it has moved to a general election. He has, he has, he has stopped shooting up in the polls. He has slipped in some. He has favorables have, have slipped and the, and the momentum has completely stopped. So there is that. There is that evidence that unleashing on Graham Platner in the primary did, didn't do anything to stop him, maybe even helped him win the primary and emerge as the Democrat. But already beginning the general election and knowing that stuff, the public is a bit hesitant about this guy. And I. And that might also be the case with El Sayed that something that could boost him in the primary, that, that injecting that stuff into the race will, you know, almost immediately bring about some sort of pushback from the, from the public to embrace it.

[John Podhoretz]

So. Haley Stevenson. Yeah, go ahead.

[Seth Mandel]

I just want to say I suspect that to the extent that that is dragging Platner down has to do more with his character and him personally than things we would call strictly political. I don't know if it's a good model for analysis and for other races in that sense.

[John Podhoretz]

Well, that's true.

[Abe Greenwald]

In other words, El Sayed isn't a dirt bag, you're saying.

[Seth Mandel]

I mean, I don't know why.

[John Podhoretz]

I bet he's perfectly willing to believe he's a dirtbag. I mean, and, you know, people who have his views, I will say this at the risk of, you know, being accused of being an Islamophobic monster, but people who have this. His views are, would tend to be extremely misogynistic. And, you know, you hate America the way he hates America and trumpet a kind of, even a kind of radical Islamism inside the United States. I don't know what's in this woodshed, but I wouldn't discount the possibility that there's bad stuff there. You know, once, you know, once you slip the bonds of ordinary conventional conversation, all kinds of things can. You're free to do all kinds of things. We just don't know that yet. But Haley Stevens is now, I mean the thing, Haley Stevens is now a, this is a national test case race here. She has a month. If the Democratic Party cannot face down this insurgent wing in a state that, that they need to win in order to save the, or win the Senate, if they can't make the argument against why he is an extremist because it's too dangerous for their reputations and then maybe, well, maybe he can pull it off if he is in the general after all. And you don't want to have the Democrats making the argument that Republicans are going to make. So Haley Stevens better keep her mouth shut then, then there's no antibody, I mean, there's the political antibody against the extreme radical Islamist monster that Abdul El Sayed is. So, you know, watch this space. Meanwhile, in the Republican Party might be

[Eliana Johnson]

the victory of these candidates this year and seeing their performance in the general election.

[John Podhoretz]

Right? Well, that would be the hope. And there's an important piece of data in terms of Republican enthusiasm and Republican issues that the Free Beacon, your Free Beacon, has released this morning, a poll that you've taken that is literally, that is about Republican primary voters or likely Republican whatever, and their views on a variety of foreign policy topics, but primarily on Israel. And aside from loving America on July 4th and feeling again grateful for being an American and everything that's happened, this poll came as ambrosia and nectar to me though Eliana has a, there is like a, there's a flea in the ointment that she's going to bring up. But this poll makes it clear that after a year or a year and a half of the relentless onslaught of the far right anti Semitic wing, the podcast Bros. Tucker, Candace Fuentes and all the talk about Israel and Jews and all of that, that Republicans are not only not buying it, but remain overwhelmingly supportive of Israel in a way that the poll might suggest, given the level of enthusiasm will be a voting issue for Republicans in a way that it might otherwise not be if they have people to vote against who have horrible anti Israel views.

[Eliana Johnson]

Right. The poll was taken in early June, so before the quote unquote ceasefire memorandum of understanding in Iran was signed in mid June. But and surveyed 11 over 1100 likely Republican primary voters across the country. And it shows that these voters remain hugely supportive of a close US Israel relationship of candidates who step forward and denounce anti Semitism and that by the same token they are less likely and by the way that's by 50 point margins, greater than 50 point margins, Republican primary voters say they're supportive of those candidates. And by the same token, they are. They are less supportive of candidates who describe Bibi Netanyahu as a war criminal, who support the BDF movement, BDS movement, and who this, you know, generic candidates who vote against congressional resolutions denouncing anti Semitism again by huge margins, over 40 point margins. The other thing that it I think is interesting more broadly, a couple of things quickly. The voters are supportive of the president's decision to focus on problems abroad, whether it's Israel and Iran or Venezuela and Cuba. However, when asked to list or say the biggest issue facing the country today, by wide margins, 33%, sorry, 31% say it's the cost of living, 13% say immigration and 12% say jobs in the economy. So, you know, nearly 50% are saying it's either the cost of living or jobs in the economy. And if you go into the cross tabs of the poll which break down what were the percentage of men, women, black people, white people, Hispanics who gave each particular answer, it does show that the youngest people, ages 18 to 34 are far less supportive of Israel and a close US Israel relationship than any older group 35 to 54, 65 plus. So that's concerning and I think that the $64,000 question is whether this is youthful stupidity or this is a view that these young people will hold onto as they get older. Right.

[John Podhoretz]

But let's focus on the because the details in the poll are fascinating. So Republicans tend to oppose actually most Americans tend to oppose foreign aid as a concept, always have. So if you go through this poll, it says do you support military assistance to Israel? And its is it 64% do or so I don't have the poll right in front of me right now, but very positive toward continuing military support for Israel, aid against it everywhere else. Ukraine, foreign aid generally and Israel, favorable feelings toward Israel, unfavorable feelings toward Ukraine, favorable feelings toward Netanyahu, unfavorable feelings toward Zelensky. I bring this up only to say that Israel seems to be the exceptional nation for Republican primary voters. They view Israel exists in a different category from the rest of the world. They are uniquely supportive of Israel as compared to others, which means that it's a strongly held view, which means that it has potential electoral consequences in a state like Michigan, let's say where I mean, I don't think Republicans are going to have a turnout problem in Michigan one way or the other. But if you really need everybody to drag themselves over glass to the polls and even though 50% of them are citing economic issues as the primary issue, which is also what you would expect nonetheless, an El sayed running in the race with offensive views about Israel is only going to make them more passionately dedicated to going out and making sure that he is not their next senator. And if this is true in other places, it also has the potential. I mean so I just think more generally we have been terrified that the tide is turning for Republicans in their views on Israel and the Jews and that the podcast bros are onto something and all of that. One interesting detail in here about the podcast bros is that everybody that Republicans in general don't like Fuentes and are weakly interested in Candace Owens, but like Joe Rogan, like Ben Shapiro, like Tucker Carlson, but they the 18-34s are more like like them more like them way more. But they still like but the 18 to 34 still like Ben Shapiro 41 to 22 or something like that. So even there there is room for the idea that they now are down the line, sort of like Tucker. Candace, Israel is evil people is clearly not. They might like Tucker and Candace for other things and not for this obsession.

[Eliana Johnson]

Yeah, you have a lot of evidence both in this poll and other polls that that many of these people have net favorable ratings. Even you know, Candace Owens is plus six people are listening to them and not necessarily imbibing or taking to heart what they say. Joe Rogan can be favorable, Tucker Carlson can be favorable, Ben Shapiro can be favorable among these people all at the same time and for different reasons. And it's true what you said initially, John, that well, 69% of these likely voters said they favor ending the discounted sale of weapons to other countries. 57% then said they favor continuing military aid funding for Israel, which is a much greater percentage. Just 35% said they favored that for Ukraine.

[John Podhoretz]

So it just shows that as I say, that Israel is for Republicans the exceptional nation. It is an exceptional nation and their ideas about it differ from their ideas about other countries and America's role in the world in general, that it has a unique status with them. And that is what the anti Israel forces on the right have been trying to chip away at, have been trying to reverse. And so I'm very heartened to see that it's not working. Again, maybe it's working with 18-34s but in the Republican Party in particular, those are the least likely people to vote number one. I mean they are the future. So I don't mean to downgrade, but

[Seth Mandel]

they may not be the Republican future, by the way, because the podcast bros may lead them right out of the party and left. Right, right.

[Sponsor/Ad Voice]

Yeah.

[John Podhoretz]

As the horseshoe becomes a circle. That's, that's, that's absolutely right. But anyway, people, there's also, there's also

[Abe Greenwald]

the, the, the idea of trending topics and how that governs. You know what people pay attention to. The listener ship itself gets inflated because everybody's like, oh, you got to listen to this guy and you know, whatever, and the numbers start shooting up and they're not necessarily loving what they're hearing. But also there's the issue of, you know, I think this goes Back to Mallory McMorrow. Why was she a star? Why was she a rising star? Abortion. Right. She had a, she went viral for her position on, on a board for statements on abortion. That used to be the path. Right. For Democrats, right now it's. Israel has clearly overtaken everything else. And some of that does get, does filter into right wing discourse. But the core, Israel is our friend. That's not going. That those people who still hold that, let's say that 57%, those are rocks. That's a rock solid 57%. Right. They're not. When things get easier so, you know, quote unquote, easier to support Israel as a Republican, let's say when a lot of this noise fades, it's not like that 57% number is going to go down. It will only go up. Right? That's like a, that's a base. And so the big difference here is that you, the Republican Party appears from this poll, it appears that you cannot swamp Israel out of the Republican Party's base. You, you cannot come in with a wave of, of anger and righteousness, anger, momentum on one issue like this and make them stop liking Israel. There's too much of a core that supports Israel. And to my mind, this is a period where a lot of things are at a low point with Israel where you actually have influential commentators like Tucker Carlson probably moving the needle against Israel and, and all this stuff. And so, and you have the war with Iran, which is, you know, again, not going to go on forever. So to me, this is a sort of perfect storm to see how powerful the issue can be in a party's primaries. It's not powerful enough to run Israel out of the Republican base. It is powerful enough to run Israel out of the Democratic base. And that's, I think, the most relevant thing about this for the future, for where those 18-34s are going to go.

[John Podhoretz]

Okay, I want to conclude on an unusual note here, the New York Times editorial page today, where its editorial site, because I haven't seen the physical paper, has an extremely long editorial that is shocking in its correctness. It is a. It is about the SAT and the University of California, which, of course, as many colleges and universities did in the late teens and then certainly because of COVID no longer required the SAT or standardized testing for college admissions. And this editorial argues that this is a grave mistake. This has proved to be a grave mistake. Everyone in the California system, teachers, administrators, everybody who has to deal with kids in classrooms, says that the degradation of their academic, immediate academic skills as they start school can never catch up. They don't know how to read. And that testing is the only way, as Christina Pax and the president of Brown and others have said is the only way. Grades do not tell you enough about how a student is going to fare in college and whether they are intellectually prepared for college and all of that. And you need standardized testing because even if it's weak and there are problems with it and it has cultural biases and all of that, that it's still a uniform national test that gives you a sense of where people are in relation to other people in their age cohort and gives you an independent sense of who they might be compared to the other people who are applying to college. I'm only bringing this up because, a, it's common sense, and this is very important so that, like our educated class in the United States, which has already become, like, vicious, politically extremely problematic because of the way it's being taught in the first place. If they have no intellectual gifts and they are unable to sort of do elementary or perform elementary basic functions of higher ed, they're not going to go anywhere in life. They're crowding out people who might and all of that. But the New York Times editorial page has spent the last decade campaigning against the test in New York City for entry into eight specialized, intellectually challenging high schools. That test is called the shsat. Kids take it in eighth grade, and for these high schools, it is the only admissions criterion. And therefore all the students who take it are basically compared to all the other students who take it. They rank which schools they might want to go to, and they're either offered admission or not. Grades don't matter. There's no teacher evaluation. There's no writing sample, nothing. It is this one test that everybody takes, and it has been determined by the powers that be that it's unfair, because the results have been absolutely heartbreaking about how African Americans in particular are faring at this point because the numbers of admissions are shockingly low. That is an indictment of the elementary schooling inside New York City and the public school crisis because the city's schools are so horrible. But what people are trying to take it as is evidence of systemic bias that will not allow African Americans in particular to succeed. If the New York Times does not reverse field, having published this endless editorial defending the sat, if it does not reverse field on the SHSAT and say that the SHSAT is a good thing because Mamdani wants to get rid of it, as de Blasio did. But the state education commissioner in New York State actually has sway here and can prevent it. But of course, who knows where the state educational commissioner in New York State is going to go as the party shifts sharply to the left. And it will matter a lot what the New York Times says here. So I just think this is massively. This is a moment at which the New York Times intense hypocrisy could reveal itself or some intellectual consistency should be paid attention to. This is an important moment and topic because this is the largest school system in the United states. There are 1.1 million students in it. And there are eight decent high schools that have about 50,000 kids in them or maybe fewer, I don't know, 42,000 kids in them who can basically find a way to get a real high school education that will prepare them for college. And everyone in the leftist establishment wants to destroy them. My kids didn't go to them. I don't have any skin in this game except the skin of America. After July 4th, wanting to be the best place that it can be. And New York City having been a font of having been a place from which people of very modest circumstances have risen over the last 150 years through a schooling system that was once great and is now lousy into, you know, intellectual achievement, scientific achievement and other kinds of achievement to better, better the country. So just an interesting hinge moment for the most important newspaper in America and maybe the world. Okay, so we'll drop it there. We'll be back tomorrow. For Abe, Eliana and Seth, I'm John Podhorts. Keep the Ken candle burning.