Re-President Trump

Summary

Summary of "Re-President Trump" Episode on The Commentary Magazine Podcast

Release Date: January 20, 2025

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Introduction

In an unexpected edition of The Commentary Magazine Podcast, host John Podhoretz and executive editor Abe Greenwald delve into the seismic political developments marking January 20, 2025. The episode, titled "Re-President Trump," explores the ramifications of Donald Trump's return to the White House as the 47th President of the United States, juxtaposed against the backdrop of President Joe Biden's final days, significant political shifts, and ongoing international crises.

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Donald Trump's Inaugural Address

Tone and Demeanor

Donald Trump's inaugural address was notably different from his first term. Both Podhoretz and co-hosts observed a marked change in Trump's demeanor, describing it as "soft-spoken" and "more inspirational" compared to the "loud and frenetic" persona of his previous term.

John Podhoretz [02:50]: "No American carnage."

Trump's speech exuded a sense of "existential relief," suggesting that he had overcome significant personal and political challenges, including an assassination attempt and mounting legal pressures.

Key Themes

Trump's address emphasized a revival of America's spirit and efficacy in governance rather than an apocalyptic vision. He acknowledged existing problems—such as the economy and border issues—but framed them as solvable through effective governance.

Matthew Continetti [05:36]: "I God saved my life to make America great again."

This invocation of divine purpose marked a new element in Trump's rhetoric, aligning his personal mission with a broader national revival.

Notable Quotes

• John Podhoretz [06:08]: "The impossible is what America does best."
• Seth Mandel [07:28]: Reference to William McKinley as his favorite president.

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Policy Proposals and Cultural Wars

Military and "Wokeness"

Trump's administration signaled a decisive stance against what it terms "woke" influences within the military and broader society. Proposals include reinstating military personnel dismissed for non-compliance with vaccine mandates and combating perceived indoctrination.

Abe Greenwald [24:02]: "Every person in the military who was dismissed... would be reinstated with back pay."

Border Policies

Declaring a border emergency, Trump outlined aggressive measures to shut down the border, hinting at deploying the military despite legal constraints under the Posse Comitatus Act.

Abe Greenwald [23:52]: "We are shutting down the border."

Executive Orders

The discussion highlighted Trump's intent to utilize executive orders extensively to implement his agenda swiftly, touching on issues like energy emergencies and military de-wokening.

John Podhoretz [24:01]: "He is going to sign a lot of executive orders on day one."

Notable Quotes

• Matthew Continetti [13:57]: "Get Carrie Underwood, problem solved."

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Political Shifts and Party Dynamics

Republican Party Transformation

Under Trump's leadership, the Republican Party has undergone significant changes, embracing a coalition that includes Hispanic and African American voters. The party has shifted towards being perceived as more assertive and rule-breaking compared to its previous image.

Matthew Continetti [30:30]: "This is low hanging fruit for Trump and the Republicans."

Democrats' Challenges

The Democratic Party faces internal fragmentation and dwindling influence, struggling to adapt to the changing political landscape dominated by Republican strategies and cultural narratives. Social media strategies have also shifted, with Republicans capitalizing on platforms to bypass traditional media gatekeepers.

John Podhoretz [60:32]: "The left pushed the right into being social media, as they say."

Notable Quotes

• Abe Greenwald [61:26]: "The right understands that they are social media. They're supposed to be social."

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President Biden's Final Days and Pardons

Pardoning the Biden Family

In the concluding days of his presidency, Joe Biden executed a series of pardons for his family members, igniting controversy and accusations of nepotism and corruption. These actions have deepened the political divide and fueled narratives of a compromised administration.

Abe Greenwald [46:31]: "If you take from the beginning of his administration to the end... he did everything beyond the reach of any investigative body."

Impact on Democratic Party

Biden's pardons have further destabilized the Democratic Party, leaving it leaderless and divided. The lack of clear leadership and ongoing scandals have diminished the party's cohesion and public support.

Matthew Continetti [42:41]: "It has no leader. No one's paying any attention to the race for the DNC chair because the job doesn't matter."

Notable Quotes

• Matthew Continetti [46:31]: "You can simply will a constitutional amendment into existence."

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Israel Hostage Situation and Regional Implications

Release of Hostages

The episode discusses the emotional and political turmoil surrounding the recent release of three Israeli hostages by Hamas. While their return is celebrated, uncertainty looms over the fate of additional captives, exacerbating tensions and fueling fears of renewed conflict.

Seth Mandel [68:00]: "Hamas is going to violate the ceasefire in a thousand different ways."

Hamas' Strategy and Propaganda

Hamas continues to employ tactics aimed at psychological torment and propaganda, undermining peace efforts and perpetuating the cycle of violence. The group's ability to manipulate media narratives and exploit hostages for strategic gains remains a significant obstacle.

Abe Greenwald [69:02]: "Hamas is playing with them over that and is going to be."

Political Crisis in Israel

The ongoing hostage situation has precipitated a political crisis in Israel, with debates over the appropriate response balancing hostages' safety against the risk of emboldening Hamas.

Abe Greenwald [75:20]: "If Israel starts looking like... what Golda Meir said..."

Notable Quotes

• Matthew Continetti [80:07]: "Peace for Israel means security, and we must stand with all of our might to protect its right to exist."

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Conclusion

The episode culminates with a poignant reflection on the enduring challenges facing Israel and the broader Middle East, underscored by a Martin Luther King Jr. quote emphasizing the imperative of supporting Israel's security and democratic integrity.

Matthew Continetti [79:13]: "Peace for Israel means security, and we must stand with all of our might to protect its right to exist..."

The discussion highlights the intricate interplay of domestic politics, international relations, and cultural conflicts shaping the current U.S. and global landscape.

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Key Takeaways:

• Trump's Return: Donald Trump's inauguration marks a shift towards a more composed and governance-focused leadership, with an emphasis on reversing previous administration policies and combating cultural "wokeness."

• Democratic Decline: President Biden's final actions, including family pardons, have further fragmented the Democratic Party, undermining its future prospects.

• Cultural and Social Media Warfare: The Republican Party has adeptly navigated social media platforms to amplify their agenda, contrasting sharply with the Democratic Party's struggles in the digital arena.

• Israel-Hamas Conflict: The ongoing hostage situation underscores the volatile geopolitical climate in the Middle East, with significant implications for U.S. foreign policy and regional stability.

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This episode of The Commentary Magazine Podcast provides a comprehensive analysis of the current political upheavals, offering insights into the evolving dynamics of American leadership and international conflicts.

Transcript

[John Podhoretz]

Hope for the best, expect the worst.

[Abe Greenwald]

Some preach and pain Some die of thirst the way of knowing which way it's going Hope for the best Expect the worst Hope for the best. Welcome to an unexpected edition of the Commentary magazine daily podcast. Today is Monday, January 20, 2025. We were not going to do a podcast today for various reasons. And then just the news over the weekend and the fact of the inaugural and the expected and in fact delivered pardons of the Biden family all I think conspired to lead us to believe that we could not really wait until tomorrow morning to get our licks in. So we are here this morning. I'm John Pod Horowitz. Not even morning. It's 1:00 in the afternoon as we're talking. I'm John Pod Horowitz, the editor of Commentary magazine. With me, as always, executive Editor Editor Abe Greenwald. Hi, Abe.

[John Podhoretz]

Hi, John.

[Abe Greenwald]

Washington. Commentary columnist Matthew Continetti. Hi, Matt.

[Matthew Continetti]

Hi, John.

[Abe Greenwald]

And senior editor Seth Mandel. Hi, Seth.

[Seth Mandel]

Hi, John.

[Abe Greenwald]

So the news is crazy, but I don't know where. I don't even know where to begin. So if we're gonna go chronologically, we go from the hostage deal. Yeah. And the hostages.

[Matthew Continetti]

Maybe we should start with our new president. We have a new president.

[Abe Greenwald]

I know. So I'm saying we're going backwards. We're gonna start. We're gonna start and go backwards in time. So Donald Trump is now the 47th President of the United States, having been the 45th President. United States gave a what appears to be about a 40 minute inaugural address, which for him is like the Gettysburg Address of in length terms. And I'm struck by one thing, and then I just want to see what you guys think. To say that he is a different person from who he's been over the last eight years in mood and feeling, I think is very, very evident. Like there is some form of existential relief in his mien and his manner. He overcame a defeat. He overcame the lawfare. He overcame everything. He overcame an assassination. And there's a kind of. I don't know how to describe it. Even when the speech got nasty or he started, you know, like basically he was sitting there with Biden three feet away, talking about how awful everything in America has been for the last four years. It didn't have the kind of crazy edge or like, like really harsh, you know, sandpapery quality than he could have American.

[John Podhoretz]

No American carnage.

[Abe Greenwald]

There were. Not only was there. Not only was there no American carnage, I would say that the speech was explicitly a Repudiation of the, of. Of the notion that the, the condition that he was entering into as president was not American carnage. I mean, things were bad. The economy's bad, the border's bad. This is bad, that's bad. But the, the apocalyptic tone of 2017 was not present. It was like the. America's revival begins today. And you know what, we're the greatest, and, you know, we got some problems, but we're going to fix them. And, you know, the. Really, the problems are problems of governance, not. Not of spirit. I mean, that's sort of what he was saying, which I thought was the most interesting. Did you. Does this jibe with your. Your guys feeling about it, or is this is my own? Like, too much time watching Trump over the years, seeing tiny differences in spirit.

[Matthew Continetti]

There's definitely a difference in demeanor. He's more soft spoken in public. He's not as loud or frenetic in public as he was eight years ago. The speech actually had similarities to the first inaugural, and it was a pretty bleak portrait of the problems facing America in the world today. But I think many people would agree that there are significant problems facing America, the world today, and I think that's the difference. When Trump came to office in 2017, he was the outsider. It was a shock that he was elected. To most people, he was making a critique of the American establishment and of the Obama administration that did not land in the right place for many people. They didn't understand it. It's like George W. Bush said famously at the end of it, that was some weird shit. Right. Now we're eight years later. The critique lands because of the problems of inflation and the border, the gender madness, which got the loudest applause when he said that it would be the policy of the United States to just have two genders, male and female. It lands, and people are more familiar with it. And to finish my catalog, he survived an assassination attempt. And I think one of the most memorable lines of this second inaugural address was when he said, I God saved my life to make America great again. I now have a purpose and a.

[Abe Greenwald]

Sense of, I was saved by God to make America great again.

[Matthew Continetti]

Right. The sense of providential working in the world, that is new to this speech. And I think he believes it, and I think his supporters believe it. And even as a bystander, it's hard not to escape the conclusion that had Trump not turned his head at exactly the right moment, we would be in a very different place as a country today than we are.

[John Podhoretz]

Yeah. And he also actually even strove for something inspirational here. When he was talking about what he has endured. He's endured Lawfare and they've come for his freedoms and they've come for his life. And he came back and he said something to the effect of let that, you know, be a. Be a lesson to everyone out there who's doubting what they can do. And he said, the impossible is what America does best. That's a vet. It's a good line. And it's not something that would have come out of his mouth the first time around.

[Seth Mandel]

And he said, sunlight is pouring all over this world. Earth.

[Abe Greenwald]

All over the Earth. Yeah. So.

[Matthew Continetti]

Well, the things that come out of his mouth are still remarkable. We're taking back the Panama Canal. We are changing the name. Yeah. It's the Gulf of America now. We're going to Mars. There are a lot of big promises made in this speech, and that's something that I think he will have to live up to if he wants to have a successful second term.

[Abe Greenwald]

See, I don't think that's new. Right there was the space Force. He talked about Mars in the first term. The renaming of Mount McKinley.

[Matthew Continetti]

His favorite president.

[Abe Greenwald]

Huh?

[Matthew Continetti]

His favorite president.

[Abe Greenwald]

Favorite President. Right.

[Matthew Continetti]

William McKinley.

[Abe Greenwald]

So I do think that in culture war terms, that line in his speech, I was saved by God to make America great again is the thing that actually, interestingly enough, will chill. We have this divide in the United States that I think is really best framed by people of belief versus people of no belief or people who are church going or whatever and people who are not. This is a very stark divide. If you do not have a life in which religion plays any role whatsoever, I think you are 70 to 80% likely to be a Democrat, certainly in the media. You are 90% likely to be a member of the liberal, the liberal part of the American media. And I think when he said that, that's where they go, oh, my God, he's crazy. He's a crazy person. He's insane. As though every leader in the history of mankind has not at some point or other, particularly if they are elected or have experiences like he's had, said, God had a plan for me. First of all, everybody until a certain point believed that God had a plan for them or wanted to believe that God had a plan for them. It is only our highly secular age in which that idea is sort of controversial or thought to be crazy. But you're going to see op EDS from now until Sunday about the theocracy. Trump believing now that he is beyond the reach of Anything, because God has touched him. Every leader thinks God has touched him. Obama thought God had touched him. Obama thought God had touched him. That he and that he was some version of Christ and God both thought.

[Seth Mandel]

God had touched us when Obama touched us.

[Abe Greenwald]

Right, exactly. So, I mean, I think, though, that. That though was not intended as the culture war part. The culture war part in the speech was obviously the gender stuff more than anything else. That's. I think that one of the big takeaways is going to be when people say, oh, my God, he's insane. He thinks God, you know, is playing a role in human affairs like this. And then all the people on the. In the United States who are like, yeah, God plays a role in our lives. And God, you know, and yes, had he. But not but turned his head a mil. Half a millimeter, he would be dead right now. And so there's a reason this happened. Thinking that history, thinking that there's a guiding purpose and that there's a transcendent purpose in life is really honest to God is the real dividing line in the United States.

[Matthew Continetti]

Yeah, I think if people make that critique, it's more about them than it is about either the American political tradition or American culture and society. I was struck watching the inauguration. First of all, I thought I kind of preferred it indoors. I liked the scene. Beautiful rotunda, statuary hall. I think it's the rotunda they were in. Yeah, yeah, right. And you could hear it better.

[Seth Mandel]

I was going to say better acoustics.

[Matthew Continetti]

Right? Better acoustics. They weren't freezing to death. It was all, you know, I kind of like that. But. And I was watching it, I was reminded of a line by former COMMENTARY assistant editor and contributor Irving Kristol, who wrote in the 1990s that conservatism is comprised of religion, nationalism, and economic growth. And you have that quote from irving Kristol some 35 years ago, and you just lay it atop the speech that Donald Trump delivered and all the pageantry and all the hit lines. It was an amazing, I think, example of the power of those three ideas that still resonate today.

[Abe Greenwald]

But let's pull back from the larger right structure where he said, I want to be a peacemaker. We're going to. We have liquid gold. I'm, you know, I'm declaring an energy emergency.

[Matthew Continetti]

Drill, baby, drill.

[Abe Greenwald]

All of Drill, baby, drill. To the very interesting fact that I think two minutes in, what he said was what we have witnessed and what has basically brought me back to power is the failure of simple government administration. Like, not big, not American Carnage, not our society has gotten diseased. But the people who have been running the mechanisms of government don't know what they're doing and have screwed up and they screwed up in North Carolina. There are earthquake there, excuse me, hurricane victims six months after the hurricane who haven't been properly treated. And then of course, we have the fires in California. And I thought, man, you know what? If he's a focused person, he isn't. But if he can come to understand that his challenge is in some ways far less dramatic than everybody seems to think it is, that if he can just make things work better or play a role in things working better after this sort of 20 year period in which things seem to have stopped working. Like one of our favorite long term topics on this podcast from the 2017 Academy Awards, the wrong winner being listed. I mean, 10,000 other things. It's a smaller challenge than keeping the world free and making America more prosperous than it has ever been. But it would make people feel a lot more comfortable if they could have confidence that elected officials are minimally competent. Like there's a border and you enforce laws at the border. It's a smaller challenge.

[John Podhoretz]

Well, you want to talk about small things, go ahead. We had an example today, right, right after his speech, Carrie Underwood was supposed to come out and sing God Bless America. And the audio accompaniment didn't work.

[Matthew Continetti]

She did.

[John Podhoretz]

It came on for a second acapella.

[Abe Greenwald]

Yeah, right.

[Matthew Continetti]

Acapella. And everyone joined. The perfect example of we're already fixing things.

[John Podhoretz]

Incompetence of the small things, though. Yeah, yeah, yeah, we're already.

[Abe Greenwald]

It's a good point.

[Matthew Continetti]

Get Carrie Underwood, problem solved.

[Abe Greenwald]

I mean, I do think, I do think that this move shift inside to the rotunda, this rally at the, at the, basically at the Capital One Basketball arena, you, 7th street and all that. Actually, that seemed to have been done relatively gracefully given the unwield. The fact that they had to move everything indoors and that they'd had these giant events planned that they had to scuttle and then figure out how to smush, smush them in. And I think, Matt, you're right, that the dramaturgy of the day was actually very entertaining. It was like now that the Oscars are boring and award shows are boring, it had a kind of award show feeling. It's like, oh, look, there's. Oh, what is Lauren Sanchez wearing?

[Matthew Continetti]

Well, that's what Mark Zuckerberg was interested in as well.

[Abe Greenwald]

But I mean, well, wait, who next.

[Seth Mandel]

To that actually the what are the what are you wearing? Has, you know, The.

[Abe Greenwald]

And then, of course, Melania.

[Seth Mandel]

Women in my life have been pointing out that Oscar de la Renta dressing Ivanka Trump and Usher Vance not tweeting out that Oscar de la Renta is dressing them. And what they're wearing is actually something of a. Of an earthquake in the. You know, politics is downstream from culture. What they were wearing, weirdly enough, really, actually did sort of signify something. Some sort of acceptance, some sort of welcome to normalcy.

[Abe Greenwald]

Yeah.

[Seth Mandel]

In a way that I wouldn't have noticed otherwise, but it's clearly noticeable To.

[Matthew Continetti]

Having the four most powerful tech executives in the planet sitting behind the Trump family also signaled some type of. I'm not actually sure how to describe.

[Abe Greenwald]

Sergey Brin showed up. And then Sergey Brin showed up.

[Matthew Continetti]

Oh, I didn't know Brin was there.

[Abe Greenwald]

Yeah, I saw Sundar in the back or something. So you've got that. I don't know why Melania wanted to look like Zorro, but. Okay, fine, she wants to look like Zorro.

[Matthew Continetti]

That's very striking.

[Abe Greenwald]

It's fine with me. You know, it was more Carmen.

[Seth Mandel]

Sandy.

[Abe Greenwald]

That's a little.

[Matthew Continetti]

For our purposes as a political podcast.

[Abe Greenwald]

We should focus on important point because of course, is a Mexican hero. Matt. And so she was maybe signal.

[Matthew Continetti]

Yeah.

[Abe Greenwald]

More Catholic. She looked beautiful. Yes. She looked beautiful.

[Matthew Continetti]

Yes. Who made it inside the rotunda and who had to sit in the Capitol Visitor Center?

[Abe Greenwald]

Yes.

[Matthew Continetti]

That is a very Washington game that is being played right now. And so I was interested that the senators were sitting in the rotunda, but the governors were in the Capitol Visitors Center. So Glenn Youngkin, my governor here in Virginia, Greg Abbott of Texas, they were in the visitor center. They didn't get the prime seating like the tech Bros. And like the Supreme Court. The entire Supreme Court. Plus Breyer shows up as well.

[Abe Greenwald]

Stephen Breyer retired. Retired.

[Matthew Continetti]

It was quite a scene.

[Abe Greenwald]

So here are some totally pointless observations I would like to make since we're here doing this fresh. Number one, Deb Fisher, the chairman of the inaugural on the Republican Senate side. Very short. I didn't realize she was that short. I didn't actually realize that Alana Kagan is incredibly short. So I got the. And you know who was the. Who helped point that out by, you know, in. In the camera angles was Barron Trump, who was apparently 6 9. He's very tall, so he's 6 9. But I mean, then you have these. These women come in and they are like, they're like 5ft tall. And so they're literally like 2ft shorter than Baron Trump. So Not. And I do also want to quick shout out to Amy Klobuchar, who made a terrific opening speech. And once again, and where you have one of those things where you run history backwards, had. Klobuchar was the obvious choice to be vice president in 2020. She came in third from a major. You know, she. She sort of a semi swing state Midwesterner. I know he said he was going to pick a black woman. Imagine a world in which he'd picked Klobuchar and not Kamala and that 2024 had rolled around and that it had been Klobuchar, not Kamala. Anyway, I just thought it was. It was.

[John Podhoretz]

You would have lost anyway.

[Abe Greenwald]

Okay, What's. Whatever. I know. Fair enough. Okay, so. But the speech.

[Seth Mandel]

He wouldn't be there. But the question is, would Klobuchar have won? Right. Isn't that the question?

[Abe Greenwald]

No. Well, yeah, I get. Anyway, so the interesting thing about the speech was that it. It started and restarted and restarted itself. It had about it a quality of many drafts. And then the drafts were strung together, and the introductory part of each draft was simply attached to the bottom of the introductory part of the final draft. Because it just kept going back to say, today is the day of our liberation. Well, today America starts again. Today we are great again. He did it. Every repetition.

[Matthew Continetti]

But I will say this is the speech that he should have given at the convention.

[Abe Greenwald]

Yes.

[Matthew Continetti]

If he had given this speech instead of the hour and a half speech, there would have been no question that he would have won. I mean, he still wanted me to.

[Abe Greenwald]

He would have walked away with that.

[Matthew Continetti]

And it was much more of a political speech than it was a classic inaugural speech. The inaugural addresses tend to be much more conceptual. They tend to be abstract. Talk about pride in our country. This was a political speech through and through, talking about himself, his recent past, and the Biden agenda, with Biden sitting right there, smiling. And then. Well, Bill was smiling. The best part was Biden was he kind of had this just flat face when Trump was going after him. But if you look behind Biden, you would see Bill Clinton. And he was kind of smiling because he kind of. He got what was going on.

[John Podhoretz]

Hillary was not.

[Matthew Continetti]

But Phil was. And then there was the turn to action. What I'm going to do, specific policies. Again, it's not something you really associate with an inaugural address. And Trump's first inaugural was among the shortest in history, certainly the shortest of the most recent inaugurals. This one is kind of medium length, 40 minutes. It's not long, but it Was not. It was.

[Abe Greenwald]

We should also talk about what he didn't say that people thought he might say. Right. So he said, I'm declaring a border emergency, and there's going to be this, this, this, and this to it. And he said in something that's kind of very striking. We don't. You don't know quite what he means, because part of what he's talking about is legally controversial, if not on, you know, which is, I'm gonna send. I'm gonna send the military to the border now. He can deploy the military anywhere. The military, under the Posse comitatus law of 1871, cannot. Cannot be used as a police force. So it can't be used to arrest people. National Guardsmen can be used in different ways because they have a. They have. They have a different legal standing, and they have been used that way in Texas and Arizona, I believe. But. So he did say, I'm doing this on the border, and we are shutting down the border. He did not say in this speech that he was ending birthright citizenship. And he did not talk about. I'm trying to think of. There are a couple of other things that we have been. Oh, he didn't talk about the January 6th pardons. He said nothing about pardoning anybody for January 6th, which I think is. Again, even if there had been a passage and somebody had said five minutes before the speech, do not talk about pardons. Today is the day that the world is gonna be talking about Biden pardons. Don't do a thing. Do not complicate this disgrace that is going to help you launch your. Your honeymoon here, which is Biden's final day, which we can get into. But assuming that he wasn't actually gonna go there, it does raise interesting questions about what is sort of pie in the sky in the world of Magaville, like ending birthright citizenship and what he thinks practically he needs to do to score some. Some victories. Right. I mean, that. And that's what we're going to see over the next month to six weeks. Is he going to do this? Government hasn't worked. I got to show that I know what I'm doing, and I got to show that I can put points on the board and give people better sense of confidence in Washington. Or is he gonna, like, go off and, you know. You know, spend three weeks talking about Greenland and the Panama Canal? Did have the Panama Canal.

[Matthew Continetti]

Yeah. But did have the Panama Canal and Manifest Destiny and territorial expansion in the inaugural.

[Abe Greenwald]

Yeah.

[Matthew Continetti]

Pretty amazing. I think he's gonna do it all I mean, but he doesn't have to.

[Abe Greenwald]

Do it all at once. Like that's the thing. It's that impulse to do everything at once that get that trips these guys up. Even if he is coming in essentially second term.

[Seth Mandel]

Orders. So he is, he is.

[Abe Greenwald]

No, he is going to sign a lot of executive order.

[Seth Mandel]

Sign a lot of executive orders on day one.

[Abe Greenwald]

I'm just talking about what he's. What he's going to stress. Right.

[John Podhoretz]

Well, he also stress.

[Abe Greenwald]

Going to stress.

[John Podhoretz]

He stressed de woking the military and reversing anti American education.

[Abe Greenwald]

Right.

[John Podhoretz]

Which I thought were both the military.

[Abe Greenwald]

I think was very interesting because it was so specific that he said not only was he going to, you know, return the military to being a fighting force and we're good and stop the preachment now. Stop trying to brainwash the military into being woke warriors. He said every person in the military who was dismissed or suspended or whatever, discharged for not compliant, refusing the vaccine would be reinstated with back pay. And again, very specific idea. Not a huge number of people in that category. I mean maybe a couple hundred. Probably not. Probably not much more than a couple hundred people.

[Matthew Continetti]

I think there are a lot more.

[Abe Greenwald]

Were in the military that were dismissed.

[Matthew Continetti]

That were dismissed because of the vaccine. Yeah, I mean we can look that up.

[Abe Greenwald]

Okay. I don't know. I'm sorry.

[Seth Mandel]

I mean they weren't necessarily. I, I don't think that's right. Because fired. There were people who were like you could leave now and take whatever pension you have sort of thing. And there were people who made the choice to do that.

[Abe Greenwald]

Okay. I'm not, all I'm saying is that it is, it's not, it's both small and focused and specific on a specific injustice that deserved correction and remediation. With a larger point. Right. With a, with a, with a larger point. Which is a good way to make larger points. 8,000 people making a larger point first and then doing the little policy second is where people start going ah, you're full of it. You don't mean it. You're just, you know, whatever. Anyway, I thought that was, that was.

[Seth Mandel]

Part of the competence thing too though, because. Right. The, the, the mago world, but especially the, the culture war side of it and the tech side of it, the Elon Musk side. There, there's the idea, the prominent idea is that the wokeness has been. There's an opportunity cost to wokeness.

[Abe Greenwald]

Right.

[Seth Mandel]

It's a distraction. Can't fight fires. Well, if we're so focused on DEI and fire, we can't do this. Well, if we're all, if we're prioritizing that. So it's the culture war stuff also blends well into the practical. Get things working again. Because there really is a belief that we have distracted ourselves from the task at hand. And the military is a big part of what is the military for. Right. Used to be not very controversial and now, you know, there is this feeling. Noah Rothman was on the podcast the other day telling us that, you know, it, it, it is a legitimate, it is a legitimate cause of recruitment hemorrhaging in the military, that military families really are put off by this stuff. They really don't tell their kids to follow in their footsteps, stuff like that. So there, there is a sense of like, what is this thing for? What's the purpose? And the form will follow the function. And, and that's in that context is where all that woke stuff and doge and whatever comes in.

[Abe Greenwald]

A very important point is that the New York Times did the final poll, I guess released Saturday, I think, of the Biden presidency on where issues stand and the numbers on wokeness and trans were jaw dropping. I mean, it's about 80% of people who say either this has gone far enough or it has gone way too far. And the number of people who say that the focus on trans has gone too far was 50%. Then the number of people who said that we need to keep going in this route was 21%. Now granted, you, you know, sort that.

[Matthew Continetti]

Sort of work at the New York.

[Abe Greenwald]

Times and they all work at the New York Times, so. And there was more than that. But I mean, that was the most striking top line number. Like this is low hanging fruit for Trump and the Republicans, which is what nobody really understood particularly. I think this is what the tech company Rush to Trump's side in part is about, which is they not knowing anything about public opinion except marketing as a matter of marketing and how to sell things to people. They got sold a bill of goods. They believed what they were being told by the liberal elites about how Americans were changing their social and political attitudes.

[John Podhoretz]

You know what?

[Abe Greenwald]

Yep.

[John Podhoretz]

There's gonna be no women's march this time. Do you know why? Because a huge chunk of the people on the women's march have come to be anti trans. Because they see quietly. What's that?

[Abe Greenwald]

But quietly, quietly or not politically bad. It's still discomforting, but they see it.

[John Podhoretz]

As endangering women in various situations and aspects of their lives.

[Abe Greenwald]

Oh, the sports number. The sports number was crazy. It was like 85% of people think that biological males should not be participating in women's sports. 85%, including 60% of Democrats or something like that. That's why I say part of the woke stuff is I remember I did some work as a freelance speechwriter in 1994 on the contract with him on promoting the Contract with America. I worked at, I'd start, I started a speechwriting firm and we were contracted to write speeches about the Contract with America. And the thing about the Contract with America, which was very supposedly very, very controversial, is that every single element of the Contract with America was poll tested above 65%. Like nothing that was in. Not all of it got passed, by the way, obviously, including the tax cuts, which didn't pass through the Bill Clinton, you know, 1995, after the Congress, you know, after Republicans won Congress. But they went after low hanging fruit. And just because liberals don't know what low hanging fruit is, because they lie to themselves or they live in this world in which you're not allowed to say what it is you think and all of that, you know, Trump and the Republicans have been handed this gift, which is all they have to do is say, no, we're stopping all of this. They don't even need to change anything or, you know what I mean, they just have to say, no, we're ending these policies.

[Matthew Continetti]

Who was it recently who said we're a nation of J.K. rowlings? You know, the whole nation. Yeah, it's kind of adopted her, like, kind of shock at the radicalism of the left, specifically on the transgender issue, but more broadly about political correctness. Dei and how, as Seth points out, how it's also a matter of basic competence. I thought it was interesting that Trump also had a shout out for his new coalition, talking about the Hispanic voters and African American voters who supported him. This time around, it's another again change. Between 2017 and 2025, the country, or at least the electorate, is more Republican now than it was eight years ago. There's a shift where now more people identify as Republicans than Democrats and Trump is the beneficiary and in some ways the agent of that shift. And the more important cause, though, is the person who is now boarding his flight to California where he will begin his retirement, his permanent retirement, Joseph Biden.

[Abe Greenwald]

I want to get to him. I do want to point out one important aspect of the, of the speech that. Or not of the speech, but maybe of the moment. Trump is now 78 years old. I'd say he looked better than he's looked in Years again, that's part of the thing about his new spirit. Like he didn't have that kind of like it's not like his jaw was tied and his face was all, you know, his body was taught with coiled energy or rage or anything like that. He had this kind of relaxed me and. And then standing there is his 40 year old running mate, brings his three children come out to stand there while he is sworn with their nanny. The nanny hands his daughter whose name is Maribel to Usha, his wife who is 2 maybe, I don't even know, sucking her thumb. And she had three bandaids. She had band aids on three of her fingers. So if you've had, you know, children in the last 10 or 15 years, you will know that children have a. Some fixation on particularly Paw patrol band aids seem to have been. There were Dora band aids when my kids were very little. But I mean Paw patrol band aids I think, I think I thought one of them was paw patrol on, on her fingers. And it was like this startling moment of a kind of glimpse into a very interesting American future because there you have J.D. vance, the representative of MAGA White Hillbilly. We've been left behind culture with his, with his Indian wife. His m. His sort of mixed race is not the right turn, turn term but South Asian and hillbilly children. She's a successful, you know, she's a lawyer, he's a lawyer. She's apparently a Dynamo that she's 40 years old with three kids, none while being a dynamo and is holding her daughter with the three band aids. I mean, I'm sorry but he's bringing.

[Seth Mandel]

Beards back to the White House. First beard in the White House in a very long time.

[Abe Greenwald]

But I mean just talk about like relatable like he. We did not think this was the, this was not the JD Vance that we knew, you know. And some of us know J.D.

[Matthew Continetti]

Vance well, I think it's the same J.D. vance. But he, you know, he's had an incredible journey of his own from being a Trump critic to now being the Vice President of the United States. And you say, you know, the vision of a future that. I think it's the vision of our future maybe four years from now.

[Abe Greenwald]

What I mean is that you cannot caricature the horrible mistake that the liberals made in the last four years was this caricature that basically the J6 protesters and the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville. Yeah, that's who was voting for Trump. Right. And then the New York Times publishes this amazing map on Friday, which is this color map of every precinct in the United States. Just go search for it. And. And the shift from 2020 to 2024, and everything moved red. When I say everything, I mean everything moved red. If you were in a red state, it got redder. If you were in a blue state, it got redder. If you were in my Precinct, which went 91 to 8 for Biden, it went 87 to 12 for Harris, every single spot in the United States moved to the right in the 2024 election. It's.

[Seth Mandel]

I mean, having grown up in New Jersey, it's wild to look at the New Jersey.

[Abe Greenwald]

Yeah.

[Seth Mandel]

Version of that and make it look like it's some sort of swing state, which not. But, I mean, the movement is so. So it's.

[John Podhoretz]

It's an interesting sort of addendum to your point that you made on an earlier podcast last week, saying, well, the. Trump didn't. This wasn't a blowout election. Right? Right. By the numbers. But in this sense, it was.

[Abe Greenwald]

It wasn't a blowout. It was a. That's one of the reasons that he's got to tread carefully, because he did not win a landslide in any conventional sense. Right. He basically won the same number of electoral votes that he won in 16 and that Biden won in 20 and that he won this time. And he won by one and a half points. And he didn't. He just got either slightly under or just to 50%, but in winning the popular vote. So not. This is not a landslide, as we would understand it, but it is a countrywide shift. But the evolutionary shift is astounding. Like, you would think some places would, you know, have gone in the other direction. I mean, that's how Biden won in 2020, was. There was a reversible field. Right. I mean, he won five states that Trump had won in. In. In 2016. You reversed field there and took them. And then it all just sort of. Those states reverted back to a kind of mean. And everything else in liberal ville was more like, I don't know, for whatever reason, Biden's too old. Biden's senile. I don't like the policies, inflation, whatever. Everything moved. And it is the source of if they're going to continue imagining that the Republican Party is just this white redneck party when it's the party of J.D. vance, who is the redneck who made good. It wasn't even really a redneck, but from a hillbilly background who made good. What goes to Yale goes to the, you know, goes into the military, goes to Yale, becomes a senator, becomes vice president, United States, married again to somebody who is the daughter of immigrants, right, who is herself and a father of three small children and all that like you're making a big mistake. What does the future hold for business? If you ask nine experts, you're going to get 10 answers. A bull market, a bear market rates rising, rates falling, inflation's going up, inflation's going down. You need a crystal ball. But of course there is no crystal ball. And that's why 41,000 businesses have future proofed their business with NetSuite by Oracle, the number one Cloud ERP. Bringing accounting, financial management, inventory and HR into one fluid platform with one unified business management suite. There's one source of truth giving you the visibility and control you need to make quick decisions. With real time insights and forecasting, you're peering into the future with actionable data. When you're closing your books in days, not weeks, you're spending less time looking backwards, more time on what's next. If this were the kind of product commentary needed, we would take it in a heartbeat. Whether your company is earning millions or even hundreds of millions, NetSuite helps you respond to immediate challenges and sees your biggest opportunities. And speaking of opportunity, download the CFO's guide to AI and machine learning at netsuite.com commentary the guide is free to you at netsuite.com commentary netsuite.com commentary so the holiday rush is over.

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[Abe Greenwald]

You were underestimating the depth of this change.

[Matthew Continetti]

This is the state of the Democratic Party as Biden leaves office. It has no leader. No one's paying any attention to the race for the DNC chair because job doesn't matter. The party is split. There are some Democrats who will be voting. They've already voted for the Lake and Riley act in the House. They're going to vote on it in the Senate tonight. They will have bipartisan support. Who are the most prominent Democrats right now are dissidents. People like John Fetterman, Richie Torres, Eric Adams, who I think was at the inauguration.

[Abe Greenwald]

He is working that pardon and I.

[Matthew Continetti]

Have to tell you, maybe he'll change his party. I have to tell you, it's all Biden's fault. It's amazing. It's all Biden's fault. And it was just as if he wanted to remind us that it was his fault. In his last act of president he pardoned everyone in his family except Jill, which I think is interesting. Hunters clean. That was December's disgrace. Today's was the sister, the brothers and their spouses. And Lady McBiden, she still look Republicans in Congress. You can still go for Dr. Jill.

[Abe Greenwald]

Nene did not invent the term Lady McBiden. No, that's the reference the term Lady McBiden. Alexandra Pelosi, Nancy Pelosi's daughter, in an interview with Politico. Documentary filmmaker, interesting person by the way makes interesting person. Lady McBiden shouldn't be attacking my mom. She should be looking in the mirror. I mean, you know, that's the state.

[Matthew Continetti]

Of the Democrats crack up.

[Abe Greenwald]

Right?

[Matthew Continetti]

Yeah. Right.

[Abe Greenwald]

Yeah. Okay. So that was a pretty I mean and Then the New 2 New York Times pieces about how everybody knew Biden was senile. Like, let's muddy the wall. Let's gaslight you out as he's going out the door. So that we. If you say to us, years from now, you were covering up for Biden, the New York Times people could say, what? We published these two pieces. Here they are, look. One says this and one's, you know, Schumer did this. And, you know, everybody knew that if you, if it was after 2:00, you better not bring bad news to Biden and stuff like that. All of this. And then, of course, the, the. The pardons at 11:45am of June, following.

[Matthew Continetti]

The pardons earlier this morning, the preemptive pardons of Millie Fauci and the members of the January 6th committee members and staff, I believe.

[Abe Greenwald]

Yes. So the fulfillment of every berserk. Oh, you MAGA people, you're all crazy. Fantasies have now been given, you know, like, have basically now been proven not fantasies by the behavior of Biden out the door using the excuse of, well, they're crazy and they're gonna. They're gonna be mean to my family and they're gonna be mean to poor, you know, poor Tony Fauci and, and Mark Milley. And so I better pardon everybody on, on. On my way, along with the 4, 000 criminals that he let go. And then the commutation of Leonard Peltier. Leonard Pel killed two. Was it either national guardsmen or policemen in, in the 1970s, a Native American activist and therefore supposedly either either they deserved it or he didn't do it, or he didn't do it and they deserved it. And he did do it, but they deserved it and he didn't mean to do it. I can't. I can't.

[Matthew Continetti]

He's an activist in the same way that Manjoni is an activist.

[Abe Greenwald]

Yeah, I used to know something about this case. Like, I once learned a lot about it because it wrote like 35. It's been, it's been on the Liberal docket for 35 years, but I forgotten everything I learned about it, and I refused to read another word.

[Matthew Continetti]

So I have learned over the weekend or since I've been gone from the podcast, I've learned that you can simply will a constitutional amendment into existence.

[John Podhoretz]

That's right.

[Matthew Continetti]

And so I would like to announce today that I have willed what will, I guess, accepting the logic of former President Biden, be the 29th amendment to the Constitution, which is twofold. One, you can't make pardons in the lame Duck, period. And two, the pardons you do make need to be approved by Congress. I'm a little bit, I'm going to let the people decide. I'm a very open minded person. I'm going to let the people decide whether Congress can approve it by just a simple majority or by 2/3 vote. That's up for the people. But Biden's reckless disregard for the rule of law since Kamala Harris lost the election in November I think necessitates a new amendment to the Constitution restricting the pardon power.

[Abe Greenwald]

Sarah Isker has a piece up at the Dispatch in which she points out that Biden might be the most lawless president in American history. If you take from the beginning of his administration to the end the actions that he took or announced by executive order, by fiat, that he knew and everybody knew were willfully unconstitutional and did them anyway and therefore wasted the courts and America's and the public's time adjudicating them only to find that they were in fact unconstitutional. And I'm not going to rehearse what they are now. You could, you know, aside from student debt is the most obvious. But I mean there were, there were, there were seven or eight majors.

[Matthew Continetti]

The employer vaccine mandate.

[Abe Greenwald]

Right when he tried to make mandate the entire rent, suspension of rents. I mean there's all kinds of these emergency things that he did anyway. But I mean the piece is very convincing and Sarah is no, you know, was not a MAGA person. So she writes for the Dispatch, which is not a MAGA site. It's a very, it's an impressive marshaling of, of, of argument and, and I think today just puts paid to that. It's like, okay, yeah, guess what? We are the Biden crime family. Nothing we did from 2014 until now, everything is now beyond the reach of any investigative body. I mean you could investigate them, you could be Congress and have a committee and waste your time. There will be no prosecutions of anybody for anything. And it's almost like saying, yeah, you know what? Yeah, we took the money from China. You know what Tony Dokapil said back in 20? It's true. It's all true. You know, now like Scrooge McDuck, he is going to go back to Rehoboth and swim in his basement full of money. I mean, what else are we to think here? When he said in an interview the other day, Hunter's making a really great living with his painting. I'm so proud of him.

[Matthew Continetti]

Well, I think some of the paintings were lost to the fire, so Maybe.

[Abe Greenwald]

That'S why he set the fire. All right, I'm not gonna go there. All right. Okay. So is there anything. I just want to say that we did a McLaughlin Lightning Round at the end of the Friday podcast where we said, what were the odds that he was gonna pardon? So I heard, and it was 100%. Basically, Seth was at 90. So Seth gets.

[Seth Mandel]

I was at 90 because I wanted to allow for the possibility he would forget.

[Abe Greenwald]

Okay. But we did not. I don't think we deserve that much credit because we did not know that the other four family members, aside from his brother Jim, were going to get. We're going to get pardoned. So. Which raises the question, why are they pardoned? Well, I'm sorry, It raises the question.

[Seth Mandel]

Is there a legal version. Is there a legal version of the Streisand effect?

[Matthew Continetti]

Well, it's a Biden family business.

[Seth Mandel]

What is Sarah Owens Biden, doing that to know about.

[Matthew Continetti]

She's part of the family business, which is trading his name for money for money from foreign. Foreign actors, among others. That's kind of clear now, and it's.

[Abe Greenwald]

Kind of just Peter Schweitzer. Every. People owe the number of apologies that are owed by every single person who has covered this administration and covered Biden from 2019 on. I'm only going to go into the laptop, but, I mean, that has covered this guy for years. The apologies that are owed to people who said, oh, this is just beneath contempt. How dare you. Don't you know that his wife and daughter were killed in a car accident. His son died of cancer. Leave the man alone. He's in pain and he's got a son who's got a drug problem. Leave. Leave him alone. How dare you, you monster. And basically Biden just said, yeah, it's all true, but, you know, this is.

[John Podhoretz]

Where his cognitive debilitation actually helped him because he. The more helpless he seemed, the more sympathetic he became. In a certain way, it became harder to paint him as sitting at the top of this crime family also.

[Matthew Continetti]

I know you would think that, but that's not really what the polls show.

[Abe Greenwald]

Right?

[Matthew Continetti]

I mean, in a weird way, the more it was apparent that he's not there, the less popular he became.

[Abe Greenwald]

Right? Yeah.

[John Podhoretz]

For other reasons, I think, though.

[Matthew Continetti]

But, yeah, but the media still rallied behind him. And just go back to the comer committee that we had been following on the podcast, looking into this. The entire time, the chorus from the media was, there's no evidence here. Look at this fishing expedition. Well, in light of the pardons hunters in December and then these pardons today, you have to say that Comer is owed an apology, I think.

[Seth Mandel]

Yeah. Well, I think you're making the Robert, her point, right?

[John Podhoretz]

Yes.

[Seth Mandel]

Really, which is like he's sympathetic as a, you know, a sort of addled old uncle's point who just tottering around, you know, and that. And he did, he did do these wrong things. We found them, you know, but we prosecute him because if you put this old guy in front of a jury, they're going to be like, yeah, that's kind of, it's, I mean, basically, Rob.

[Abe Greenwald]

That'S exactly what happened in America. Imagine a world, imagine a world in which Biden had decided in early 2023 that he was not going to run for office. You know, he was going to retire and let the Democratic Party choose another nominee to run in 2024. Every action that he would have taken during that lame duck two years would have been viewed sympathetically by Democrats, would have been viewed the even getting to this point, there would have been a sense, let him, let him pardon his son and his bro. You know, let, it's like, you know, look, he did, you know, he got us, he got us through Trump. It'll be over. He got, you know, we'll find some, somebody else is going to run. He drained the reservoirs of sympathy for himself on his own side while simultaneously driving all of us crazy because we were sitting here, not them, not they. He wasn't our candidate saying, this guy can't be president. He's non compos mentis. What, what the hell is going on? And here he is now, you know, basically a marionette for whoever is, was actually making policy over the last year and somebody put the piece of paper under him and said, you know, you know, Jim must have said, you better pardon my wife because, you know, she, her names are on some of the checks. I mean, I don't know, somebody made the decision to not just be his brother, whom we know was in business with Hunter. We didn't know anybody else was in business with Hunter. Anyway. All right, so he, that's it for Biden. He is an unperson. I think people don't quite understand how much of an unperson he's going to be. Bill Clinton, I'm reminded, did last day pardons in 20 2001, most notoriously of Mark Rich, the fugitive financier. But there were a couple other people and it was extraordinarily damaging to him. Like he was not seen in Democratic circles for quite a while. Like he was not oh, we loved him. What a great president. Da, da, da, da. Like, first of all, they were sick of him from Lewinsky and all that. But that was a real moment in America, like, where Democrats who had defended him were like, okay, we're to know.

[Seth Mandel]

This is public approval ratings were like 30 points higher than Biden. So imagine how much of an unpersoned Biden is going to be in those circles.

[Abe Greenwald]

Yeah. And they still had nothing to say. Right. And like Matt said, this is all Biden's fault. I mean, Trump may have won anyway because the Democratic Party or the liberals reached this level of out of touchness that meant that they didn't know that you couldn't, that it was okay to say that boys shouldn't be beating up girls on a football field or, you know, whatever in a swimming match or whatever. Swimming match. You know, they lost the thread of normal, ordinary life. But still.

[John Podhoretz]

But Biden left the party in a shambles. I mean, people not talking, airing their dirty laundry pardons left and right.

[Seth Mandel]

You know, what Matt said about the DNC chair is like, it reminds me of the old Statler and Waldorf bit from the Muppets where they have their perfect seats, you know, on the balcony looking right over the stage. And in one of the skits somebody asked, hey, how did you get such great seats? And they go, we entered a contest, we lost. Yeah, that's what the DNC chair feels like. How did you, how did you become the DNC chair? I drew the short draw.

[Abe Greenwald]

So Ezra Klein of the New York Times has a very interesting, inadvertently interesting piece this weekend about how Democrats feel that they lost social media. Right. They lost social media and they don't understand how it happened. Trump seems to understand social media in a way that they just never understood social media. Now, this is an astonishing thing to say since, of course, in 2020, they so understood social media that they got, that they bullied all the social media platforms into suppressing stories about anything they wanted to have the social media platforms suppress. So they knew plenty about social media and its power as long as they could use their enforcement mechanisms of social, you know, including sort of their own brainwashing of their own liberal followers and everything else. But I was struck by this because it said, like, at some point, look, you know, it's just like, Donald, what the right knows about social media is the Democrats use social media, but the right understands that they are social media. They're supposed to be social. It's them. And they're on social media and they're doing it. And they're making outrages and they're doing this. And Democrats are too serious about policy to do that kind of thing. And you know, and I will now explain to you why Democrats lost social media and wokeness is the reason. And I say this because when you live in a world in which every word that comes out of your mouth, you are scared, excuse me for saying this, shitless, that if you, if you say niggardly that you will be fired because the word niggardly sounds like a bad word. If you don't, if you.

[Seth Mandel]

Politician who lost his seat or something for that.

[Abe Greenwald]

No, there was a. There was, yes, there was somebody in the DCC Council, I think somebody. This is actually long ago. But I'm just saying if you live in a world in which every single word of yours is like a death trap, a potential death trap, as opposed to the right that decided at some point around 2021 or that, like. No, but there was immunity. Like there was total immunity. You could practically say or do anything.

[Seth Mandel]

Blanket.

[Abe Greenwald]

Elon Musk came in, bought Twitter and said, just say anything. And Kamala Harris couldn't use social media because she was tied up in knots, because all of these politicians are tied up in knots because there are landmines every half step they take in every single direction. And, and they can't. And they can't get out of their own way. I think, except to say Trump's a fascist. That's it. That's fine.

[John Podhoretz]

I think there are a few more factors here. Right wing social media is a response in part to the left's dominance of media. Media, Right. So the, the left pushed the right into being social media, as they say. That's part of it. Also, the Democrats left, they go about social media particularly. I'm thinking about the Democratic Party here in an inorganic way, right. They tried to strangle, they tried to lean on social media companies to suppress the story. They had paid armies of tiktokers and whatnot. That's not how it worked or how it works for the majority of the right. It's an organic response to the left's dominance of media.

[Abe Greenwald]

But, you know, they could do it badly. And I think, and the thing is that in 2012, the idea was that the Obamas and these people, they were Silicon Valley. There was a complete mind meld between Silicon Valley and the Democratic Party or the Obama administration universe. Right?

[Seth Mandel]

It was a, there was a, there was a revolving door between Silicon Valley and the Biden administration. Four years ago, what, five years, he started his administration, there were people who were leaving and coming and going, and basically there was, There was a sense of the legal people who worked on the boards of these Silicon Valley companies coming in, and the legal people, the legal executives were coming on precisely because they knew we were going to be having this fight. And the Biden administration was arming up.

[Abe Greenwald]

Yeah.

[Seth Mandel]

Will do what, what Democrats wanted to do to social media in that way.

[Matthew Continetti]

I think it, you know, goes down to the fact that the Democrats are the. Become the party of rule makers and the Republicans are now the party of rule breakers.

[Abe Greenwald]

Right.

[Matthew Continetti]

You know, the, the bad boys. Right.

[Abe Greenwald]

That's a total. Right, That's a total reversal shift. I mean, social, cultural shift like that we haven't even begun to scratch the surface of.

[Matthew Continetti]

And so, yeah, they were making the rules from Silicon Valley during the Obama administration and into the Biden administration. They make the rules that govern the economy when they get in charge of the elected branches of government. And the Republicans have adopted this mentality of the outlaw, you know, and think about Trump's official portrait for his 47th, for his second term as the 47th president, the first official portrait from 2017 to 2021 was a much more traditional presidential portrait, greeting people and entering a government building, Trump smiling. Now, the new one is patterned off of his mugshot. Right. And it's that same look, and that represents a certain edge, I think, that the Democrats kind of used to possess when they were, you know, when they had much that. When their roots in the counterculture were more recent. Right. But now they just seem like a bunch of boring people who are kind of have nothing to say of any originality and who want to suppress different points of view rather than embrace them.

[Abe Greenwald]

And they're all scared of each other.

[Matthew Continetti]

They're terrified of their, of the identity.

[Abe Greenwald]

That's what I mean. Like, they can't say anything because. Because identity politics is always. Is a growth field. Right. So it's a, it's a, it's, it's always looking for a new sub, sub, sub, sub, sub identity to advance that. And the way they advance is to be offended, to be, to be a subject of outrages, to claim that they are being discriminated against and therefore to throw themselves on, you know, which is, which is basically, you know, sort of like the Hamas encampment, people who are breaking laws and then. And then claiming that they are the ones who are being suppressed when they're refusing to allow Jews to walk on campus. So let's transition from there to what happened on Sunday the release of the three hostages back into Israel, the beating, you know, the tearful meetings with their families, the joy expressed in hostages square in Tel Aviv and the political crisis that is now beginning in Israel over the next six weeks, which will either see the 90, we'll see 33 of the 95 hostages emerge over six weeks, leading then to the question of what happens to the other 66, 65, or it won't happen and, or something will happen that means that Hamas has violated the ceasefire that will impel Israel to start fighting again, which will then lead to accusations that Bibi Netanyahu needed to hold his fire because of the hostages. So on the one hand, joy, on the other hand, the anxiety is just, just beginning.

[Seth Mandel]

Yeah, I mean, we sat through the weekend with Hamas missing the deadline repeatedly to announce the names of the three hostages. We, we nearly went into the release without knowing their names. I mean, it was like just a couple hours before practically they were, you know, they were, they were transferred to Red Cross van. So I think Hamas is going to, they under Hamas has proved that over the course of this war that they really understand the emotional, the art of emotional torment, that it's very important to them to make people emotionally and psychologically suffer in Israel and around the world as part of their strategy. And so they're not going to follow the ceasefire by, you know, they're going to violate the ceasefire in a thousand different ways because they're going to do stuff like this, not give you the names. And by the way, you know, people looking at the, at the hostage list, they knew that, and we talked about this last week, that the choreographing of the return of the hostages was very important. Right. Because Israelis wanted live hostages back first. They understand they're getting bodies at some point in the, in the, during the ceasefire, but they said do you can't give us bodies first? Because imagine what the reaction will be. I mean, the, the orchestration of the optics of the whole thing is very important and Hamas is playing with them over that and is going to be. And so when you don't know who the names are until right before they're going to be released, it means you also don't know who's still alive. You also, right at Hamas is, according to the terms of the deal, seven days into the cease fire, Hamas is to give the Israelis a full report on which captives are still alive and which are not. They have a week into the ceasefire. Nobody believes that's actually going to happen, that they're going to give A full report. They want you to. They want everybody to wonder who's alive and who's dead. They want everybody to wonder who's really coming out. In the first ceasefire deal, they released someone that they had said was dead. So, you know, this is. This is a long period now of this kind of anxiety. And we know that this is not the fog of war or anything. This is not a mistake. This is not chaos. Hamas has a very specific policy of making people suffer emotionally, mentally, and draining the Jewish state and Jews around the world along in this process.

[Matthew Continetti]

I don't see how you can watch what unfolded over the weekend and believe that there's any possibility to a Palestinian state as long as Hamas exists. The way in which they have orchestrated this transfer in order to be a propaganda victory. I think they're lying, by the way. It's a psychopathic, genocidal organization. Of course it's going to lie at every turn. I think there's real damage that's been done to Hamas in this war. And so the crowing and the celebration of this ceasefire and the surrounding of these three poor girls as they leave the car by this mob, braying mob of males with the Hamas soldiers on top of the car, it's all regime propaganda. And I don't think anyone should be fooled by it. I think they've been very much weakened by this war.

[Abe Greenwald]

And I think it's not just that, by the way, I mean, because the Israelis can get fooled too. This is part of the psychological torment. So one of the things that happened is that Hamas emerges from the Nasser hospital, you know, back in uniform, right? The ceasefires in place, and suddenly marching out from a hospital complex, which, as you know, can't possibly be a terrorist site because it's a hospital. And how dare you even claim such a thing? Hundreds of them come out in Hamas uniform. And so the Israelis, with weapons that.

[Seth Mandel]

Were not being stored at the Nasser medical complex, they all have guns too, right?

[Abe Greenwald]

And the. The Israelis who want the war to be over are going to use this to say, why are we even doing this? See, they're still there. You spent. We spent 15 months fighting this and they're still there. But for all we know, that's all they are. You know what I mean? Like, for all we know, because it depends on what angle you take the photo of. You know, if you take an angle of the car, if the car. If the close up of the car coming, you know, of people coming, the girls coming out in the car is close up, it looks like total Insane, riotous chaos. If you're, if you see a picture from 250 meters away, there weren't that many people there. And we. Hamas has been decimated. I mean it's, first of all, its leadership has entirely been decimated. There's one major leader left. Everybody else has been killed. We don't know how many fighters are left. The Israelis don't know how many fighters are left. Now there is a propaganda war on and the propaganda war on is going to be about whether or not Israel has the stomach to go back to fight the war should Hamas break the terms of the ceasefire. A lot of negotiating time was spent over the weekend ensuring that, that the Americans in particular would say Israel has the right to restart the war. And Matt, you said you can't see a Palestinian state. Well, so the good news, if you are somebody who thinks that that's an obvious thing to determine from what's gone on the last 15 months, is that the incoming ambassador, Mike Huckabee literally said as much on television yesterday. He said there was a Palestinian state, was called Gaza. Look how that turned out. He's right and he is right. And it's something that I believe, you know, Mike Waltz thinks the national Security Advisor and you know, I'm sure Marco Rubio believe. I mean, even if you think that at some point in some indeterminate future there will have to be a two state solution, we are now, it was a general Oslo was 30 years ago. We got another 30 years to go. In other words, it's like, it really is like the Israelites, the ability, I mean, you know, they have to die, these generations have to die.

[Matthew Continetti]

The way that they turn on a dime like the Stalinist Comintern is amazing. Going from it's a genocide, it's a genocide, it's a genocide to we won, we won, we won. More victories ahead. This is the group of people who are murderous, awful, out of their minds. You can't deal with them. The best we can hope for is that we get as many of these hostages out before this deal collapses under its own weight. But it will collapse because you're dealing with the devil.

[Seth Mandel]

The problem of the campus thing, which is in 2014, Israel also went into Gaza and, and you know, did not exactly get pushed around. I mean Israel, you know, I don't want to say one wars were fighting over one, obviously Israel is the stronger party, went in 2014 to make a point and came back out. But in 2014 you didn't have the, the orchestrated statements coming out of Campus groups and youth groups and NGOs and whatever in America saying this is the greatest victory against imperialism in history. Right. In other words, there's a weird chorus that is egging them on in ways that they haven't been egged on.

[Abe Greenwald]

Right? That's very true. So in 2014, most of the focus, if there was focus on this, was Israel's going too far. Like, okay, they're firing all these rockets at Israel, but you know, the rockets are all getting shot down anyway and why do they have to go in? And okay, they went in, but they're do it. They're same stuff, like they're hitting too hard, it's too much. They should leave. John Kerry is the Secretary of State. He's doing, you know, like shuttle diplomacy between Gaza City and Jerusalem, blah, blah, blah, blah. It was all the focus was, this is ridiculous. Hamas doesn't, Hamas can't score points on Israel. Israel is like too strong and they're, Israel is not suffering very much. And so we just have to like, you know, okay, there's this one town, the road, it's pretty bad there, but the rest of the country is fine. The difference now is a Hamas showed it could, it could kill and wound 5,000, you know, do do the equivalent of like 10, 9 11s inside Israel and force Israel into this 15 month war. So it did real damage, real pain, real suffering, real horror. And because it proved effective in that way, suddenly had actual open support. That's the conundrum here, is that what it took for Hamas to become a rallying point for so many people was that it showed its effectiveness. Which is why in reverse, Israel has to win this war in order to show that this is it and say to Iran and then say to Saudi Arabia and everybody else, we're here forever. Nobody F's with us. You know what, we tear each other apart and our hearts are broken and we're having, but we, we are not stopping until we win. Because if you don't, when you show that you have skin in the game, people rally to your side and you know, show you have like you've, you've done something daring or you've done something bold, or you've done something that's world changing. Suddenly you give people, even if it's evil, some kind of weird cause to rally behind. That's, that's what's new.

[John Podhoretz]

You know, as it stands now, the, the pro Hamas protesters in the street are saying this is the beginning of the resistance. We, this, it's still not over, right?

[Abe Greenwald]

Yeah.

[John Podhoretz]

So I agree. Israel has to make it over, and then it's over.

[Abe Greenwald]

I mean, we'll see. But, you know, it doesn't feel like it did in January. I do have to say. I mean, you know, there are, there are these rally, you know, there are people marching on Sixth Avenue.

[John Podhoretz]

But that, that is in part a fun function of the string of Israeli success.

[Abe Greenwald]

Exactly. So that's why this moment is fraught with peril. Because the question is, if Israel starts looking like, you know, I mean, what is it that Golda Meir said? She actually said, you know, when Israelis were willing, you know, to speak politically incorrectly about, about the Arabs, she said, you know, when the Arabs care about their children as much as we care about our children, then we can make peace with them. But they don't. They don't care. They. They don't mind if their kids die. And we, we can't bear it, you know, And I mean, it was a kind of real. That was a, that was a general sentiment in Israel until Oslo was, you know, they live in a death cult. They don't care. You know, make peace with us. You know, look what happened. It took two years for the Camp David Accords to be reached. Once, once Sadat flew to Jerusalem, two years it took, it was when the.

[John Podhoretz]

Arabs love their children more than they hate us.

[Abe Greenwald]

Oh, right, okay.

[Seth Mandel]

Fair enough.

[Abe Greenwald]

Yeah. I mean, there was also, there, there are also corollaries in the, you know, we, you know, we, we're, we're suspending a war to get back 100. You know, and listen, 1900 prisoners are going to come out. And the horror story is that thousands of Israelis are likely to die in the next. Or likely or possible will die in the next 20 years from the release of those prisoners in order to save 98 Israelis now, right? That's the Sinwar story, right? 1120 people came out for Gilad Shalit. One of them was yahya Sinwar. And 5,000 people were killed and injured on October 7 because of the release of Yaya Sinwar from an Israeli jail. Something like that is going to happen.

[Seth Mandel]

And the Israeli media was covering it as it was going, meaning, you know, he came out in 2011. By 2014, there was already a body count from people who had been releasing that deal, and the media was already covering it. So it's something that they pay attention to. They pay close numbers, something that they watch.

[Abe Greenwald]

So the hostages, you know, everyone is like, this could be my kid. You know, this could be my kid. I would move. I would do exactly what they're doing to get their kids out. But the cost could be, you know, emotionally astronomical. And it's horrible to do these kind of calculuses. But this was why the policy in the. Through the 1980s, everywhere, after what happened in the 1970s, was don't negotiate with terrorists because the end result is more terrorism. Like, it's not that you get, you know, you solve a problem, you create more problems than you solve. And in Israel's case, that is actually dead soldiers and dead people in terrorist attacks. And, you know, again, if they crush Hamas and they really, you know, it will be a different world, and it won't be so easy for terrorist groups to reconstitute themselves.

[Matthew Continetti]

I would like to read a quote to end the program.

[Abe Greenwald]

Okay.

[Matthew Continetti]

So you just let me know when you're ready. Go ahead. Okay, thank you. Because this is Martin Luther King Jr. Day that we're recording this on. And I just want to quote Martin Luther King here. Peace for Israel means security, and we must stand with all of our might to protect its right to exist, its territorial integrity, and the right to use whatever sea lanes it needs. I see Israel, and never mind saying it, as one of the great outposts of democracy in the world and a marvelous example of what can be done, how desert land can be transformed into an oasis of brotherhood and democracy. Peace for Israel means security, and that security must be a reality. He said that on March 26, 1968, just a few days before the assassin killed him. And so, of the many things we can learn from Martin Luther King, support for Israel is among them.

[Abe Greenwald]

We'll be back tomorrow. For Matt Seth and Abram John Potvoretz, keep the candle bur.