Speech Pathology

Summary

The Commentary Magazine Podcast – “Speech Pathology” (July 17, 2026)

Host: John Podhoretz, with Abe Greenwald, Seth Mandel, Noah Rothman
Theme: Dissecting Donald Trump’s recent speech on election security, responses from both sides, and a broader discussion about political violence and left-wing extremism.

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Episode Overview

This episode dives into Donald Trump’s July 16, 2026 speech, in which he purported to present "bombshell" evidence about election interference, focused on China and the security of American elections. The hosts critique not just the substance and delivery of the speech but also its political implications for both the Right and the Left. In a significant pivot, the second half takes up the urgent issue of political violence—especially from the left—giving particular attention to the case of Rep. Adam Smith and international parallels. The episode closes with book recommendations and reflections on revolutionary violence.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Trump’s “Bombshell” Speech: Substance, Delivery, and Political Fallout

A. Content and Substance

• Trump’s speech was framed as an exposé of election vulnerabilities, with particular focus on Chinese interference and threats to the system. Notably, he avoided explicit claims of a stolen election.
• John Podhoretz (03:04): “He did not say that his election had been affected. He did not say that any election of any kind had been affected or that any vote had been changed.”
• Trump alleged that intelligence agencies kept vital information about Chinese interference out of his Presidential Daily Brief (PDB), implying a dereliction of duty (“which is the document that the president gets every morning…”, 01:08), despite widespread knowledge that Trump didn't regularly read or attend PDB briefings.

B. Complexity and Confusion

• Abe Greenwald (03:52): “It’s actually quite complicated… he’s talking about four separate tranches of documents… I was kind of lost, actually, once he got into the weeds right away because it’s hard to know exactly what he’s saying…”
• The hosts concurred the speech was somewhat muddled, lacking clear evidence and instead recycling old grievances.

C. Impact and Audience Reaction

• Noah Rothman (04:59): “I think it was a dud from the perspective of the right… [but] I don’t think it was a dud from the perspective of the left, which doesn’t really need much goading to go directly to level 11.”
• The speech, while not energizing the Republican base, provides fodder for the left—potentially galvanizing opposition and justification for concern about Trump’s intentions.

Memorable Quote:

“We should never have to watch a stolen election again. Which is a nod to his own vanities.” – Noah Rothman (04:59)

D. Criticism of Trump’s Messaging Tactics

• Trump’s pattern of promising document releases (“aliens or whatever… Epstein files… declassify this…”, 08:13) rarely produces "smoking gun" evidence.
• Public voter rolls and data privacy were proposed as a real but under-discussed vector for interference—foreign and domestic.
• Instances of alleged non-citizen voting are undermined by bad data—leading to mistaken voter roll purges (Texas example, 17:11).

E. On Election Security and Political Intent

• John Podhoretz (19:00): “It’s a very different matter to say [there are irregularities] and then to say the Chinese are trying to involve themselves in our elections.”
• The hosts argue that highlighting vulnerabilities is valid, but Trump's lack of new evidence and continued focus undercuts the seriousness of more urgent global issues (e.g., U.S.–Iran war).

F. Iran, Priorities, and Distraction

• Trump's speech gave only fleeting mention to escalating hostilities with Iran, which the panel considered a gross misprioritization.
  • “He is talking about narishkeit, about elections. It’s disgraceful.” — John Podhoretz (25:46)

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2. Political Violence — From the Personal to the Global

A. The Adam Smith Case and Direct Political Intimidation

• Seth Mandel (43:58):

  “Rep. Adam Smith… voted for [an amendment to end aid to Israel]. He put out a statement… ‘My family and I have had our home vandalized, a fire has been set in my driveway… a staff member has been physically assaulted. Those who engage in this type of behavior model a dangerous form of corrosive politics that seeks to intimidate those who disagree with them.’”

• The hosts assert: Smith’s implicit message was that physical threats shifted his vote—an unprecedented and alarming admission.

B. The Broader Pattern and Lack of Coverage

• Such incidents have received little media attention despite being severe.
  • Noah Rothman (52:32): “But why didn’t anybody know about any of this?... if it was a January 6th thing, we would have all known about this.”
• The panel discusses how left-wing violence, often downplayed or excused, is emerging as a direct threat to democratic processes in the U.S. and U.K.

C. International Parallels: UK Parliament

• Seth Mandel (56:52): Gives example of the UK Speaker of the House changing parliamentary procedure for fear of members’ safety, stating:

  “I never, ever want to go through a situation where I pick up a phone to find a friend of whatever side has been murdered by a terrorist.”

• The fear of violence has tangible effects on legislative outcomes, both in the U.S. and abroad.

D. Historical Context

• Noah Rothman draws parallels to the 1910s–1920s and 1970s waves of political violence (COINTELPRO, Palmer Raids) and warns that public tolerance for left-wing violence tends to shrink—eventually prompting government overreach, but only once public sentiment fully turns.

  “That is what there is a real hunger for and an interest in. And that’s how you would arrest these groups and prevent them from executing some of the attacks that Rubio outlined yesterday.” – Noah Rothman (48:10)

E. Left-Wing, Islamist, and Transnational Terrorism

• The merging of extreme left-wing activism and Islamist radicalism is seen as a new, potent force.
  • Abe Greenwald (61:23): “He [Rubio] noted that there was underground networks that use safe houses, finance each other, transnational financial networks. And you’d be crazy to think that… Iran’s proxy networks are not cultivating the sympathies… within a violent element inside the West.”

F. Solutions and Recommendations

• The need for real databases and network analysis of political violence; more aggressive law enforcement presence; and greater public awareness are all emphasized.

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Notable Quotes & Moments with Timestamps

• On the “dud” speech:

  “He did not say that any election of any kind had been affected or that any vote had been changed.” – John Podhoretz (03:04)

• On complexity of the speech:

  “I was kind of lost, actually, once he got into the weeds…” – Abe Greenwald (03:52)

• On public voter rolls:

  “I want to know, and I wanted to know this for years, why voter rolls are public… in a world in which we believe in the secret ballot, I don’t quite understand why so much information about voters is a matter of public record.” – John Podhoretz (09:30)

• On lack of legislative pathway:

  “He is not going to get that piece of legislation. His party has said that in so many ways, so many times, unequivocally, like, there’s no pathway to pass this legislation.” – Noah Rothman (31:44)

• On personal intimidation:

  “All right, you guys got my vote, now leave my family alone.” – Seth Mandel, paraphrasing Adam Smith (45:20)

• On international procedural changes under threat:

  “I never, ever want to go through a situation where I pick up a phone to find a friend of whatever side has been murdered by a terrorist.” – UK Speaker Lindsey Hoyle quoted by Seth Mandel (57:18)

• On transnational threats:

  “You’d be crazy to think that… Iran’s proxy networks are not cultivating the sympathies… within a violent element inside the West.” – Abe Greenwald (61:23)

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Timestamps of Important Segments

• Trump Speech Recap and Analysis: 01:08 – 20:39
• Election Security, Mail-In Ballots, and Voter Roll Discussion: 09:30 – 17:11
• Impact on U.S.–Iran War and Broader Political Priorities: 19:06 – 25:46
• Political Violence, Adam Smith Example: 43:00 – 53:12
• Historical and International Parallels to Political Violence: 55:30 – 61:23
• Recommendations (Books, Policy Solutions): 63:04 – 65:53

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Book Recommendations

• Dangerous, Dirty, Violent and a Fugitive Family in the Revolutionary Underground by Zaid Ayers Dorn – memoir about growing up in the Weather Underground, recommended for its insight into ideologically motivated violence. (63:04)
• Blood in Progress by Noah Rothman – on left-wing political violence in America, cited as source material for recent congressional and Senate speeches.

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Closing Tone and Takeaway

The panel’s tone is frustrated, analytical, and deeply concerned—regretting the misallocation of political attention (Trump’s obsession with electoral minutiae over war and technological upheaval), but more alarmed by the normalization of political violence and intimidation, particularly from the Left. They urge greater public awareness, historical perspective, and a renewed resolve—both legislative and cultural—to confront these threats directly.

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For listeners seeking an in-depth account of Trump’s election security rhetoric and a forceful discussion of modern political intimidation and extremism, this episode is both a warning and a call for vigilance.

Transcript

[A]

Foreign.

[B]

Expect the worst Some reach and pain

[A]

Some die of thirst no way of

[B]

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 Friday, July 17, 2026. I'm Jon Pauthowartz, the editor of Commentary magazine here in Smoky, New York, and elsewhere in Smoky, New York, executive editor Abe Greenwald. Hi, Abe.

[C]

Hi, John.

[B]

And an even smokier suburban Maryland, based on the air quality numbers that we just looked up, senior editor Seth Mandel. Hi, Seth.

[D]

Hi, John.

[B]

And I'm not sure whether he's smokier than Seth, but I think smokier than New York. In New Jersey, our good friend, former Commentary staffer, former daily communicant here on the Commentary podcast and author of the book Blood in National Reviews, Noah Rothman. Hi, Noah.

[A]

Hi, John.

[B]

We will try not to cough as we are doing this. So I guess we have to start with Donald Trump's speech last night, the half an hour speech in which he claimed to have bombshell information revealing the extent of election interference and the vulnerabilities of our election system. And I fear that the speech was a big dud only because it was responsible. The interesting thing about the speech is it was reasonably responsible for Trump. He did not say that the 2020 election was stolen. He did not say that any election was stolen. What he said was that there are vulnerabilities in the system that China has been actively working to gather information on the American electorate. And the only real confusing part is the part about whether he was properly informed by intelligence agencies in 2020 about the extent of these threats from China or the vulnerabilities from China, because according to him, the CIA and others knew and kept it out of the Presidential Daily Brief, which is the document that the president gets every morning and has often spoken to him about what threats there are to the country in the preceding 24 hours. Now, one of the only reasons to think that this is much less meaningful than one would have thought is that we have already long since been told that the President doesn't take the Presidential Daily Brief, doesn't listen, you know, doesn't have the meeting with the briefers and doesn't read the Presidential Daily Brief. So even if it had been in there, he wouldn't have read it.

[A]

But.

[B]

So I think it's a big nothing burger. But there are lots and lots and lots of documents and who knows what somebody may pull out of it. But I was struck by how carefully he trod the line he did not say that his election had been affected. He did not say that any election of any kind had been affected or that any vote had been changed. That's something he'll say. He said for years, he said in 2017 that he thinks he thought millions of votes had been switched magically. But anyway. So what did you guys think of the speech, John?

[C]

I thought just sometimes we talk about the sort of production or theatrical aspect of these things too. I think it was a dud also because it's actually quite complicated. I mean, he's, you know, and involves additional materials, you know, which is that's a sort of rough speech. You know, he's talking about four separate tranches of documents that show different complicated aspects of this larger story. So in that sense, it was like I was kind of lost, actually, once he got into the weeds right away because it's hard to know exactly what he's saying in this matter. You know, what is being compromised? At what stage was it compromised and sort of how. So it's, I don't know.

[B]

It was like

[C]

I was puzzled, to be honest.

[A]

I think it was a dud from the perspective of the right, conservatives, MAGA types. I don't think it was a dud from the perspective of the left, which doesn't really need much goading to go directly to level 11. He didn't say that there was outcome altering election interference, but he did imply it when he said, you know, we should never have to watch a stolen election again. Which is a nod to his own vanities. Also going off on how mail in ballots are inherently corrupt. They should have no mail in ballots except for illness, disability, travel, military service and vacation. And therefore you should support the SAVE Act. Nobody should need much goading to believe any of this. The Chinese Equifax hack captured 145 million US Social Security numbers in 2017. Everyone acknowledges that in 2020, the Trump administration accused Beijing of election interference. Democrats didn't really argue the fact. And in 2024, Tony Blinken said, we've seen, generally speaking, this is a, quote, evidence of attempts to influence and arguably interfere. And we want to make sure that that's cut off as quickly as possible. So everybody kind of acknowledges that these activities are ongoing. What Democrats want to see evidence of is the President proactively attempting to meddle in elections. They have very little evidence of that. They have reactive evidence that the President doesn't like an election result and then retroactively attempts to invalidate it. But they keep trying to see, like in 2020 with the post offices and the moving of the mailboxes and what have you, evidence that the President is actively attempting to subvert an election before it occurs. And they don't have much of that except for the President's own statements. And I think they can divine from this speech plenty of evidence of his intention, even if that's not his, you know, even if that's not there to. For us to see it, they can see it. So I don't think it rallies the troops on his side, but I do think it galvanizes the left.

[D]

So I mean, he, it's also, it's very like, I mean, I think we talked about this the other day, but it felt very future oriented to me. That's why I didn't like it felt. It felt like. It felt like our elections aren't secure. That's what the speech was. It wasn't. He didn't actually make a case that anything was stolen in the past except data. And so he was saying, you know, and then he started the speech by saying, our economy is great. John, I think you noted how many times he said than ever before. Was that the phrase that he used over and over?

[B]

He said, than ever before. Six times in about, in the first, in the opening.

[D]

So it was, you know, our country's great, everything's great, but we don't have secure elections and therefore we can't be. So that's what sets people off. Because that doesn't sound like, hey, we've solved, you know, McGriff Cry the crime dog solved. Who stole the 2020 election? This was like, I don't know if you can trust the elections coming up in a couple months and I don't know the ones after. Unless you pass my bill and then you can trust elections going forward.

[A]

This, by the way, is every. Why every Trump speech is 10 minutes too long. Because he says a note and then he says, this just happened. I just reported it out. I don't know. It's news to you. Probably not news to you. It's news to me. Like, there's no need for any of that. Just say the lie.

[B]

I'm struck by the. His. He loves to say, I'm releasing documents. I'm going to release all these doc. I'm releasing documents about aliens or whatever we call aliens now. I'm releasing, you know, even though he didn't want to do it finally. Right. I mean, thought it was bad. Like they release the Epstein files, they declassify this, they declass. He releases this, he releases that because nefarious things have been going on inside our government that he is intent on exposing, changing and ending. And then the documents are released and they are, they don't have smoking guns because there are no conspiracies. I mean, I hate to put it this way, but he wants there to be conspiracies because it explains his worldview. And then there aren't really conspiracies. There can be behind the scenes people doing crappy things like at the Justice

[C]

Department

[B]

where Lisa Page and whoever her boyfriend was, were screwing around and that sort of thing. But that's not really a conspiracy. That's not like a large multi year effort to suppress information. The idea that there is foreign, there has been efforts to kind of muddy our political waters. Coming from abroad is an axiom of American politics now, dating back at least 10 years or more. Not just 2016, but 2015, that to sow chaos, not necessarily to get Trump elected or to get Biden elected, but just to that the disinformation campaign of Russia that Putin's disinformation system is to try to sow discord and discombobulate his enemies by sowing discord. So that could be to support Trump or not to support Trump or support and then also support Biden or do whatever. And how much have we talked about this? I mean, Noah, you just mentioned Blinken talking about it in 2024, in 2021, in 2022, they were talking about this. Then they were talking about it during Trump's term. They were talking about it before Trump's term. What the Office of National Intelligence released in March of 2021, which initially, based on what Trump was saying, sounded like a smoking gun almost, was that China didn't interfere. But if you actually look at this paper that they produced on foreign interference, what they say is that there's no evidence that anything that China did had any material effect on any vote. Which isn't to say that China wasn't trying to collect Data and getting 220 million names on the voter rolls. I want to know, and I wanted to know this for years, why voter rolls are public. I actually don't understand it. And I found, for example, that when we are in the run up to or on election day, right? Or in the days before election day, you have people during the election day able to say things like 60% black turnout, or the Democratic turnout is really high in this district, or the Republican turnout is really low because they are watching the voter files and they know how many Democratic voters are in this district, how many Republicans are in this district and all of that. And I think that is election interference domestically. This is data. These are data points that I don't think should be public. They're public because the electoral election professionals across the country want them to be public because it makes their job easier and so that they can go out and harvest votes or do whatever they can do. But in a world in which we believe in the secret ballot, I don't quite understand why so much information about voters is a matter of public record. Am I, I mean, am I wrong? I don't know. I mean, I've always had this, how do you know this on election Day, how do you know that? Democratic turnout is high, but I feel

[C]

as if it weren't public, then wouldn't there be greater opportunity domestically actually to mess around with what's going on? Because no one's seeing what's going on.

[B]

It's a question of what information people should have about voters. So we know, the one piece of information we know that voters do not have to disclose and constitutionally should have to disclose is their vote. Secret ballot. You don't have to tell anybody your vote. They can't ask you, nobody can subpoena you to ask you who you voted for, anything like that. I just think if you extrapolate backwards, I don't know why they know you're a Republican. You could say you're Republican or you can join the Republican Party officially if there is a sign up sheet or something like that. But, but again, again, maybe I'm being too pristine here or something.

[A]

This is all state level.

[B]

I know, I'm not talking about federal.

[A]

States could do whatever they want. Right? I mean, Congress has been. The president himself. Donald Trump has been calling for a nationalized voter registration list.

[B]

Right. Which I think is, yeah, horrible.

[A]

Because he wants to federalize elections.

[B]

No, this is state level and I don't think. And by the way, states do it in different ways. A lot of states do not sort through data in this fashion. Trump himself said that when they calculated after God knows how many billions of dollars they spent on this, that there were 270,000 non citizens who voted in the 2024 election. And he said that's only 18. We could only get data on 18 states and we came up with 270,000. Now, A, nobody knows what that means because you just know that they're on the rolls, not that they voted. Right. That's number one. Number two, it is very likely that that number is exaggerated because people have the same names. And therefore you can say that someone is a non citizen, but there's actually another citizen with the same name. It's not like me. I'm the only John Pod Horitz in the United States. I fear that somebody named Pedro Gonzalez. There are probably 3,000 Pedro Gonzalez in the United States and some of them are not legal. And you therefore say that somebody in some district is illegal and you don't know that that' the case. And the people who have been collecting this data, hired by the administration to collect this data, I guess are naturally inclined to try to find, to prove the prior, which is that there are a lot of illegals voting in American elections and therefore I don't think are to be trusted in the numbers that they summon up. But even the numbers, the name stuff,

[D]

they do actually look for the names. I mean, I say this as someone who was once kicked off the voter rolls because there was another person named Seth Mandel in a different county in New Jersey who registered to vote. I was kicked off the Ocean county voter rolls and had to file a provisional ballot in one of the presidential elections because they couldn't get, they didn't get me back on the rolls in time. So they do, you know, look, Seth Mandel is not the most popular name in the world. So Seth Mandel popped up in Jamesburg, New Jersey. And so they kicked the Lakewood Seth Mandel off the of the roles. They do, they do check these things. They do notice when they think they have duplicates. I'm not saying it's perfect by a long shot, but I am saying I don't, I don't. I think that even the problem of allowing the duplicate names is probably exaggerated if my personal experience is any indication.

[B]

Well, that's New Jersey. But you know, In Texas in 2019, there was a systematic effort to purge the voter rolls of duplicates. And the Secretary of State of Texas announced they had, I don't know, 200,000 people they were removing from the voter rolls. And it was a disaster. The data was corrupted and bad and the Secretary of State of Texas resigned over his handling of this very sensitive matter of trying to get, of trying to clean off and clean up the voter rolls. So this is a complicated issue. It's always been complicated. Elections have always been mucked around and interfered with. Of course, it is a different matter. It is a very different matter to say that and then to say the Chinese are trying to involve themselves in our elections. And obviously if the Chinese were really materially attempting to involve themselves in our elections in some way where you could materially say they were adjusting votes or something. That would be an epic scandal of the sort that he promised he was going to expose in this speech and then did not. I don't think it's a bad thing to highlight the problem of irregularities and complications and weaknesses in our voting system. One of the things that is very clear is we do not spend enough money on our voting system. It's like one. Because nobody benefits from it. Elections are run by volunteers. Nobody gets any money out of it. And therefore it's not anything that you can bring home as a goodie to some constituent group.

[D]

And all those stickers cost money.

[B]

Yeah, I voted.

[C]

It's frustrating to me, to be honest, because rigged elections is Trump's hobby horse. And in fact, I think the actual foreign, the real foreign disinformation campaigns that are going on having nothing to do with elections of which the US is a target. Those foreign influence campaigns are so much of a much bigger deal. And I wish someone would pay attention to that. I'm talking about all the social media stuff, all the TikTok stuff, all the, you know, of the kinds.

[A]

How's he gonna talk about TikTok, Abe? He saved TikTok.

[C]

I know, I know, I know.

[A]

This is why this whole thing. I'm gonna sound like a lefty here. This is whole. This is also offensive to me. There's no reason to give this speech at all.

[C]

That's what I'm saying.

[A]

This is not a five alarm fire. This is not a national conundrum that we have to address in prime time. You know what might be the resumption of a war in Iran that is going to spike energy prices for the foreseeable future that Americans have to deal with. That is a generational project. And he didn't even mention it.

[B]

He did mention.

[A]

He said inflation's better than it's ever been because he stopped fighting the war that is now on again.

[B]

It is just.

[A]

It is.

[B]

It is very frustrating because this is

[A]

his hobby horse and he just wants to focus on this. And this is why I sympathize some with Democrats, because there's no other point to this other than to establish the predicate for what maybe he wants to pull out of the box come November. I think they have a point there.

[B]

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[E]

now that

[B]

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[D]

He's personally removing the seed oils from the rations that our soldiers eat in

[A]

the field, but it's not a small thing. He opened the speech with trust. Right. This whole point of this was trust, parents, not hag.

[B]

Says here, right?

[A]

Yeah. No Trump, no trust, no greatness, quote, unquote. But what is he displaying but an utter lack of trust in the American people who have repaid the favor by not trusting him and his capacity to execute these operations competently and adroitly. They don't trust him to secure the objectives that he set out because he doesn't elaborate on, because he doesn't tell you what is expected of you, what burdens you're expected to bear, what benefits we're expected to derive from this campaign, just leaves you in the dark. So, yeah, what are the American people going to do but withhold their own trust from the President, who obviously does not want to level with them?

[B]

Oh, that's depressing. I mean, I do think that what happened here is the culmination of a whole line of effort that began on January 21, 2025, to put meat on the bones of the election was stolen narrative. And so there's stuff in the intelligence agencies that was investigated. There's stuff at the Justice Department that was investigated. There's stuff at the Department of Homeland Security that was investigated. If I remember right, those are the three places that where the information that. There are three different reports, an intelligence report, a Justice Department report, and a Homeland Security report. And they've been doing it for 18 months, as I said, have probably set hundreds of people on this matter at very significant expense. And this is the fruit of their labors. A series of reports that say that we knew that the Chinese were interfering, but that nobody told him. So how come I knew in 2020 that the Chinese were materially. That this was something that China was doing? Because I'm pretty sure I knew.

[A]

Yeah. The Trump administration said it in 2020.

[B]

Right.

[A]

That there was Chinese interference.

[B]

And so did the Senate Intelligence Committee. Mark Warner, Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee. Yes, he's a Democrat, so. Ooh, he's terrible. Whatever. Mark Warner is actually a responsible steward of the Senate Intelligence Committee, which is one of the few responsible committees. Mark Warner said we literally investigated everything that he is talking about. We have been. This is. It's not that people haven't been following this for 10 years. We in the Senate have done what we could to investigate the question of foreign interference in American elections. We are on top of it to the extent that we can be on top of it. So what does he mean that Nobody told him. I don't know what that means. Of course somebody told him. I mean, so he believes that, like, I don't know who's stealing the votes in Georgia. If he believed that the votes in Georgia were being stolen. Right. Didn't he think it was China? Who did he think it was? I guess he thought it was Joe Biden. I don't know. I don't know what the logic was of this presentation, you know, and they found two memos, half redacted memos, one from a CIA agent, one from somebody else, saying things like, I'm running a shadow government to keep this out of the Presidential Daily Brief or something. You look at these things and there are a lot of redaction. You don't know who it is and you don't know what they're talking about. Somebody at the CIA did say, we're trying to keep election matters out of the PDF. We're trying not to have election stuff in the PDF. That's the Presidential Daily Brief.

[F]

Why?

[B]

I don't know. But that was the Trump administration's. That's the Trump administration's PDF pdb. And I understand that there's a deep state inside the. There was a deep. That was like, hostile to Trump's intentions, but the PDF would have gone through many layers, goes through many layers of clearance before it's finished, including to the, I assume the head of the CIA and the head of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. And so were they keeping it out from them? I don't. Doesn't.

[A]

It's also just. There's an element of weakness that the President betrayed here, because this is like his 15th effort to lobby the public to support the SAVE act, the Save America Act. He is not going to get that piece of legislation. His party has said that in so many ways, so many times, unequivocally, like, there's no pathway to pass this legislation. So he's just going to keep pounding the table about it and not get it. That's not an exercise in strength. That doesn't demonstrate that you bestride the American political scene like a colossus. Everyone's ignoring you and you're just pounding the table about it. Why would the President or anybody around the President think this helps his political position? Seems like it just undermines it.

[B]

Well, you could then say that it's really. It is the one thing he believes.

[A]

I mean, the Republican Conference, the conference already believes this is just. He's laying the groundwork to blame the GOP for a disastrous midterm election. So they already have lost a lot of trust in this White House.

[B]

In other words, you're saying that he's gonna say that because the GOP didn't pass the SAVE act, that the election. That the election was stolen.

[A]

I think John Cornyn has said as much. Every other Republican is being coy on background, unnamed House Republican tells Axios, et cetera, et cetera. But I think Cornyn was explicit about it.

[B]

But, I mean, it can't pass. It's not a budget. You know, just so people understand how these things work, there are bills that can pass the Senate without 60 votes. That's the famous filibuster cloture thing. There are bills, and you and Biden was pretty good at figuring out how to make a bill one of those bills, because any bill that involves the budget can be passed with 51 votes and avoid the cloture process. The Save America act is not one of those. So it would need 60 votes to make it to the floor of the Senate to be voted on. And there are, what, 52 Republican senators. So you would need eight. Is it 53? 52. I can't even remember. Okay, so you would either need seven or eight Democrats to vote for it so that it would pass cloture and then get to the floor of the Senate, and there is not a single Democrat who would vote for it.

[D]

Well, you have 53, but you don't

[A]

necessarily know if you conference who won't vote for it either. Right.

[D]

I was just gonna say you have 53, but I don't. You don't know. You don't expect to get all 53.

[A]

Right.

[D]

That's the problem. You think you have to get 10

[B]

Democrats, but if he could get all 53, the bill still wouldn't pass. And by the way, the House has a margin of 2. The majority in the House, as I understand it, is two at this moment, with the weird whoever's sick or who's not there or whatever, Surely there are three Republicans who would vote against the Save America act if, in some fantasy of Trump's, you actually got it to the floor of the House, and you got it to the. And you got it to the well of the Senate. It wouldn't pass. So, as Noah says, it's like, I don't know what he's doing wasting his time and breath on this, except that he believes it with every fiber of his being.

[D]

Well, it's messaging. I mean, again, it's messaging about the election. To him, it doesn't matter as much that the bill passes or doesn't pass because he can make hay of it if the bill doesn't pass. This is similar. Excuse me, I'm sorry. This is similar to the way that Democrats handled immigration for a long time. Right. Every so often, immigration would seem to be killing the Republicans and the Republicans would say, all right, we got, we have to solve this, you know, whatever, fine, we'll get together, we'll talk about it. And there were times where you got close to the edge and then Democrats were like, this would be really bad for us if we fix the immigration system. Because it's really great to have Republicans have like a series of anti immigrant psycho town halls six weeks before every midterm election. You know, like, let them take themselves out, let them sweep their own leg before the election. I think Trump is thinking similar things here. I think he's just, it's not about, if I make one more push, it'll pass. It's about, I'm warning you, I'm warning you. And then I warned you.

[B]

And then, and then what? Let's say he's doing that.

[D]

Let's just say he, then he'll warn us again.

[B]

And the election, and the midterm election goes really badly for Republicans right now, by the way, the data suggests that it might not. I mean, it's not going to be as bad for Republicans as one would. One would expect it would be given his numbers and everything else like that. We're. Nobody seems to be preparing for like a 2010 style wipeout of Republicans or a 2014 style wipeout of Republicans in the Senate, which is interesting, but so what if he comes out the day after and says, see, I told you we should have passed the Save America Act. What does he get from that? I don't understand what benefit he derives from it. I mean, yeah, if you want to follow the most paranoid ideas that people have now about what Trump is up to, he'll say, these elections can no longer be trusted and therefore I'm going to make myself dictator of the planet and like, not allow the 2028 elections to happen. Does anybody really think that if he just say, follow that logic down the road and it's 2020 and he tries to suspend the election somehow and he's at 27% in the approval ratings. Does anybody think that, you know, his order is going to be carried out? He's just going down and down and down and down and he hasn't made any major asks of Republicans that would be really injurious to their Reputations yet in this term. But I just don't understand what he thinks he's going to get out of it on November 5th or whatever the day after the election is.

[E]

What?

[B]

What, Practically speaking, what. What does he get?

[A]

I don't think there's a plan. There's almost never a plan. There's options.

[B]

Like what?

[A]

Keep the options open.

[B]

But what are the options?

[A]

Maybe he says China did it. Maybe he says the deep State and the FBI did it. I don't know. He doesn't know. Okay.

[B]

Keeping the portfolio available, he can say anything. But what will happen will happen. And then there's a new political reality. And it's like the problem with this whole speech is it's 2026. We're at war. We have this massive technological disruption that we are in the early stages of with AI. That is a real issue that we have to figure out where we are in relation to China. We have possible inflationary pressures returning because of the return to war and all of this. And he's talking about how he didn't get a memo from the CIA about something that everybody knew already. And note, by the way, the focus on China and not on Russia. Can we just get to that? He says China got 220 million files. Okay? Voter files. That's the big, like, alarm bell. Russia has been interfering in our elections. Like, we know this. They admit it. They kid about it. They're doing all this social media stuff that we've been talking about and all of that, but he didn't. He mentioned Russia in a list. He said Russia, North Korea, something else. But that was the one mention, I believe, of Russia's involvement, which is arguably much more serious than Chinese involvement. But of course, you know, that would then get us to Russiagate. Oh, Venezuela. Well, he doesn't want to talk about Venezuela because we won there, so he doesn't want to bring up Venezuela's dominion. Smartmatic. Whatever that conspiracy is.

[E]

I'm James Patterson. I write way too many books. Welcome to Hungry Dogs. The title comes from my maternal grandmother, Isabel Zelvis. Morris Nan used to always say, hungry dogs run faster, James. And I've been running fast ever since. Here's what will be coming your way soon. And this is a really terrific list. I think you'll hear from some incredible people like Stacey Abrams. Yay. BJ Novak. Yay. Kathy Bates, Dolly Parton, Josh Gad. And Pope Leo. Okay, maybe not Pope Leo, but who knows? Maybe he'll show up. Hungry Dogs run faster. Thank you, Grandma, for turning me into a hopeless Obsessive compulsive. Listen to Hungry Dogs with James Patterson. That'd be me on Apple, Spotify, YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

[F]

I started with one shop. No college degree, no big investors. It was just a willingness to work. Over time that one shop turned into a multi billion dollar business called Crash Champions. All the lessons I learned along the way came from the grind. And that's what my show podcrash is all about. We have real conversations with people who've built things the hard way. We talk to founders, athletes and blue collar leaders who kept going when things got tough. You'll hear stories of grit, leadership and growth. Plus real world lessons you can take back to your team and your life tomorrow.

[B]

When you get momentum, you step on the gas.

[D]

That's how you get separation from everybody else.

[B]

I was at Harvard Law School as blah blah, blah. I looked up, let me tell you something, there's kids in my neighborhood putting in Sheetrock that are smarter than you.

[D]

AI is going to disrupt a lot of stuff.

[A]

It is never going to disrupt physical

[B]

blue collar trade skill.

[D]

And the guy just looked at me

[B]

and he said it's bloody impossible.

[A]

So I asked him this question.

[B]

I said it's impossible. Unless that's.

[F]

Podcast with me, Matt ebert. Watch on YouTube and listen wherever you get your podcasts.

[B]

One thing we talked about yesterday and alluded to and Seth alluded to yesterday, but that I don't think we made enough of and that really became incredibly explicit in the middle of the day. Yesterday goes to the central point. The warning that Noah poses in his book Blood in Progress that I have to say emerged from an article that he wrote for us called A Clockwork Blue that left wing violence and the threat of left wing violence in the United States is now having a direct political impact. And we have one member of Congress out of 435, but a significant member of Congress who yesterday effectively said

[A]

it

[B]

happened to him and it had some effect on a vote. So Seth, can you.

[D]

That's right. So Rep. Adam Smith, he's the ranking Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee. He's a congressman from Washington State and he has been going back and forth. We discussed the history of, of this yesterday. He's been going back and forth on certain bills having to do with aid to Israel and yes, and when Democrats had their, I guess it's now two days ago, had their vote, had the vote on the Massie amendment in which Massie was The only Republican, 103 Democrats voted for this amendment to the larger State Department bill that would have ended aid to Israel. Adam Smith, who has always been known as a supporter of the U. S. Israel relationship and who has argued intellectually for it as well, he's been a proponent of the benefits of this relationship to the United States, voted for this amendment that would end aid and basically freeze the US Israel strategic relationship. And so he put out a statement yesterday. I'll read the first two paragraphs of the statement. The statement is longer and he goes into what he doesn't like about Bibi Netanyahu and the coalition and this and that. He's, it's a, it's, it's a pretty long statement, but he begins with this, these two paragraphs. And this is what's really important. This was a very close vote for me. I am a supporter of Israel and I recognize they are under profound existential threat. We should not forget October 7th or the reality that Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran want to eliminate Israel. I also recognize that many of those who want the US to completely abandon Israel do not support Israel's right to exist and are willfully blind to the dangerous, violent, extremist beliefs of Hamas and others who threaten Israel. I am deeply concerned about the tactics used by those on the far left to advocate for cutting off aid to Israel. To date, my family and I have had our home vandalized. A fire has been set in my driveway. My neighbors lives have been disrupted by demonstrations in the middle of the night. Town halls meant to be forums for dialogue have been shut down, and a staff member has been physically assaulted. Those who engage in this type of behavior model a dangerous form of corrosive politics that seeks to intimidate those who disagree with them. We must be able to have civil discourse if we want to solve difficult problems. And I remain committed to open, respectful engagement. So those, that is how he, he opened his statement. On what, on his explaining his vote. And what he's basically saying is, I mean to me what I'm hearing is all right, you guys got my vote, now leave my family alone. And that to me is a bigger deal than people are making of it. Because he's talking about physical threats. He's not talking about, you know, they're mobbing me online and, and they're, and they're, and they're saying mean things on Twitter. He's, he's talking about physical threats to his home, to his family, to his, his child, his neighbors. That is a different category than a tentifata protest even where people are shouting things like from the river to the sea. They're coming after members of Congress.

[C]

But. But, Seth, he's not even just saying that. The statement opens with his saying, I have every reason not to give them my vote, but here's what happened to me. I mean, that's the extraordinary thing is the contrast between the first part of what you read in the second.

[A]

He's saying what everybody on the right is saying explicitly, but he's saying it implicitly. Left wing violence is murderous. Left wing violence is real, active, and a pernicious threat that we all have to deal with. He's being sort of coy about it because he's trying to convince skeptics on his side of the aisle. Amy Coney Barrett wasn't when she testified that she's had to wear bulletproof vests, that her sister was targeted with a bomb threat. They got threatening deliveries with the name of a person's son who was assassinated on it. What she didn't talk about was the time when her house was swatted. Secretary Besant yesterday said very explicitly, you people don't think this is happening. Somebody tried to kill me in February of last year. He will be sentenced in August. I hope you attend that sentencing hearing, because you don't think this is happening, and it is happening. And all of this dovetails, of course, with Marco Rubio's speech yesterday before a group of invited nations, which is exactly the speech that Trump should have given if he was going to deliver a stem winder, you know, political speech. This puts Democrats on the defensive because they don't want to address this issue. It's an urgent national problem. It's an urgent international problem. As the Secretary of State elaborated on with some detail that I found new to me and also really enlivening and quite disturbing. All this stuff is happening. And the first step, and that's the only point of my book, the only achievable objective that I set out to attain was to convince people that this thing they continually insist is not actually happening is a myth, is that is real. And that's it. That's all I set out to achieve. I wish I could have done more because some of the things that I noticed were lacking in Rubio's speech and what he was crying out for, sort of not, not explicitly, were two things that I couldn't do for the lack of resources and time that I had. One, create a database that establishes what violence looks like on the left and the right. All these databases are deeply flawed and probably fatally subjective enterprises. But nevertheless, the Lack of one is a hindrance. And second, establish and track the networks that interact and engage and finance one another. I simply don't have the resources to do that. That's a law enforcement issue more than anything else. Now, academics and think tanks can't even pull that together. But that is what there is a real hunger for and an interest in. And that's how you would arrest these groups and prevent them from executing some of the attacks that Rubio outlined yesterday. I didn't have those resources, but the federal government sure does. And it's about time that they coordinated with other governments and established some shareable network that they could use to intervene in these groups, track their finances, put, you know, informants inside of them, disrupt them, turn members. That's the sort of thing that is a governmental enterprise. And it's long past time for the west to get engaged in this.

[B]

I think I just. I don't think I've ever seen anything like this statement that Seth read. I mean, he did not write the sentence that bridged the two. I'm voting for the Massie amendment, and they're coming after my family and they beat up my staffer. But the bridge is implicit. So he's saying he changed a vote for his own personal safety.

[D]

And we should just note here, by the way, that the other thing we talked about with Adam Smith, a different bill, had a different a. One that went through his committee, had like, I think it was the defense authorization bill, but I'm not 100% sure. When it went through his committee, Ro Khanna pushed a. An amendment similar to the Massie amendment. Okay, this is a different bill, but it went right through Adam Smith's committee. When Ro Khanna pushed that amendment, Adam Smith said, this isn't right, this isn't accurate. This is a misrepresentation of the way the U. S. Israel relationship works and we should not vote for it. And the committee blocked the amendment a month later, a month, he put out a statement to his supporters saying he had changed his mind on that specific amendment and he would now support it. This was. So his committee had essentially defeated this amendment. But he came back a month later. He had clearly, in the interim, been hounded so much by supporters over this bill and this amendment that he said he was changing his mind on amendment he had already basically successfully quashed just to shut them up. And then this amendment happened, which is a different bill, just, you know, I don't know, two or three weeks later.

[A]

But why didn't anybody know about any of this? Like, I follow this pretty closely. I didn't know his house was, you know, vandalized.

[D]

20. It was 20. I believe it was 2023 when that. I believe that December 2023 was when he, his home was vandalized. So I think it just got lost

[A]

in, you know, if it was a January 6th or we would have all known about this.

[B]

Right? That's number one. Number two, maybe he's mentioning the home thing in 2023, but the idea that the hounding wasn't happening now is, of course, right.

[D]

The staffer thing is more recently, more recent, obviously another.

[E]

Right.

[B]

He didn't have to mention it. I mean, it's a weird question whether he was looking for pity or something. Oh, poor guy. They're hounding him, which I understand, but I mean, that's a weird thing for a politician who is like representing the public to say, like, I'm too scared to vote first, so I'm going the other way. I think that there is an interesting aspect of the dsa, the sort of the emergence of the DSA candidates and they're running for office, which is that they are supporting supporters of political violence. I mean, they are open, explicit supporters of political violence. I don't know that outside of kind of like, I don't know, Trump saying, go beat the hell out of the people at the rallies in 2016 who are yelling and trying to disrupt the rallies. I can't think of a politician who is likely to end up in the House of Representatives who has spoken on behalf of political violence in the United States as a positive means of change. We are entering a dark wood here because it's one thing, we know that people think this and we know what people in the encampments were saying in all this. If they're now moving out of the encampments and into legislatures and they support criminal action to affect politicians to change their votes. Where are we? Obviously, Noah's recommendation, which is that we've got to start interdicting. This comes afoul of somewhat recent American history where that is what the FBI did in the late 60s and early 70s with the last wave of major political violence. And they actually had a program to disrupt, to disrupt domestic political organizations that were engaged in violence. And it became a huge scandal.

[A]

Cointelpress, that's what happens when these waves of left wing violence happens. You have cointelpro, which was a disaster for law enforcement. It was disaster for the effort to police this kind of violence because it boomeranged on the FBI and discredited a lot of the FBI's operations. The same happened in 1920, 19, 19, 1920, the Palmer Raids and the effort to get their hands around the anarchist violence and pro labor violence that the public soured on law enforcement's approach to it. But why did that happen in the first place? It was because the public withdrew the toleration that it had initially for expressions of political violence like this. They had tolerance for the pro labor violence. They don't like it, but they understood that the industrialists were the problem and they needed to be contained, even by the socialists and the anarchists. Why was there Marxian revolutionary violence in the 1970s? Well, the war and Johnson and all that nonsense. They had some level of understanding and sympathy for it, even in the abstract, which is what gave the space for law enforcement and political officials to overreach and to overextend, but to do so in support of an initiative that the public generally supported, which was to contain this rampant violence. And we'll get there. We'll get there in this wave because it is in my view very similar to the 1910s, 1920s, 1970s, 1980s.

[D]

And can I give a more recent example comparison in Britain though? But because I think it, it is relevant. Last year there was, in February of last year, the Scottish National Party put forth a, an anti Israel resolution in the, in the House, in the House of Commons. And normally when that happens, procedure which the British do care about. I mean this is, you know, it's a, it's a stereotype for a reason, right? Procedure has you voting on what they just put forth. In a bizarre turn of events, the speaker of the House, which is in, in the, in the uk in the House of Commons is a procedural, you know, first and foremost a procedural position, essentially like almost like a referee. He changed the rules to allow Keir Starmer's Labor Party. This was before Starmer was Prime Minister. The Allow Keir Starmer's Labour Party to amend the text and vote on. And water it down. The reason he did this. And again, it doesn't sound crazy, but procedure is everything in Parliament, right? And the reason he did this is, was explicitly because of the threat of violence. And I will, I will read you what he said because he was emotional afterwards and they were. And he was under fire because he had changed the rules to allow labor to water down this bill before they vote on it. Here is what he said. His name is Lindsey Hoyle. I will defend every member in this House. Every member matters to me in this House. And it has been said Both sides. I never, ever want to go through a situation where I pick up a phone to find a friend of whatever side has been murdered by a terrorist. That's explicit. That's the speaker of the. Of the House of Commons. He then referenced the fact that in 2017 there was a terrorist attack right outside the Parliament building. It killed four. A driver killed. It was an Islamic terrorist attack. A driver killed four. And then he got out of his car and with a knife and was eventually killed by police. Okay, this was right outside where Parliament is. And he said, I also don't want another terror, another attack on this House. I was in the chair that day. I have seen, I have witnessed. So this is not an abstract thought. This is not a. This is. This is. It literally just happened in Britain. This was 2024. Sorry I said last year, but I think it was 2024 where the speaker of the House is saying, we changed the rules because people are afraid of getting assassinated. So we had to water it down. Now, just to explain, the reason they wanted to water it down is because the Laborites would have voted for the hugely anti Israel bill, but Starmer told them not to because it would embarrass him because of the anti Semitism. So he wanted to be able to water down the bill to something he could stomach them voting for. But that was the speaker of the House of Commons saying, I was there the last time there was a terror attack. I know we're getting threats. I don't want to pick up the phone to find out that one of you is assassinated. On why he changed the rules of the House. The next day, a Jewish member of Parliament stood up in Parliament and said, if we have a rerun of the debate we had yesterday, we will have exactly the same thing happen again. We, which is that members will not vote with their hearts because they are frightened and they are scared. I just want people to understand what this does to democracy. It's not abstract. It's not hard to see how it affects and it's not hard to see how it is beginning to happen here.

[C]

But, and this also, Seth, your example speaks to something that I think is pretty specific to this wave of violence, which is the merging of Islamist terrorism and left wing violence. It's the full embrace of Islam's terrorism on the left that has supercharged the willingness and the incentive to be more violent in the name of their cause.

[A]

Rubio spoke to this. He spoke to the transnational elements of this and he noted the speech.

[B]

You should say, this is in the speech that he gave yesterday that I believe was influenced by your book and your article. I think the two are very. He adduced evidence and used examples and themes that are in Blood in progress. So if you want to.

[A]

It was almost organized in the same way. Yeah, was chapter by chapter.

[E]

Yeah.

[A]

But yeah, he noted that there was underground networks that use safe houses, finance each other, transnational financial networks. And you'll be crazy to think that, for example, Iran's proxy networks are not cultivating the sympathies that are organically arising within a violent element inside the West.

[B]

They are.

[A]

You said they are intimately tied to left wing militant groups around the world, the Iranian proxy networks, as well as Cuban intelligence. The director of Intel Directorate of Intelligence in Havana, which of course midwifed a lot of these groups into existence in the late 60s and 1970s and who still orbit around them today. It was only a couple of months ago that this DSA chapter went on this goodwill tour to Havana singing its praises. You're insane if you don't think they have contact with Cuban intelligence. Indeed, the Justice Department is rolling up a Cuban intelligence cell that was in league with Hasan Piker for this. That's what the Justice Department alleges. You just have to be blind not to see it.

[B]

You know, in light of this and the fact that we are coming up on our hour, I want to make a recommendation of a book I never thought in a million years I would recommend. But it is an object lesson in the mindset, very personal, very, very impressionistic mindset of radical revolutionaries who believe in the use of political violence. And that is this memoir by the son of Bernadine Dorn and Bill Ayers, Zaid Ayers Dorn, called dangerous, dirty, violent and a fugitive family in the revolutionary underground. This is his memoir of growing up on the run as his parents were, fugitives From justice for 10 years as part of the Weather Underground. And it is a very honest and sobering portrait of what it's like if you're literally inside a unit that exists to further and advance revolutionary causes. That is the family unit, he and his kid brother. And there they are going through this experience, learning how to lie, how to catch, how to steal, how to keep their mouths shut, how to take on false identities. And the extraordinary coldness, the extraordinary cruelty, sort of the emotional cruelty of his mother, whom he does not describe as being abusive emotionally. But a person who can do things like support the bombing of innocents and plant bombs and believe in planting bombs and all of that is a person who obviously, her own children exist only as extensions of her revolutionary ideology. And so as an ability to give you a sense of the kind of people that we are confronting here are going to increasingly going to confront because they were here just 55 years ago. This Zaid Dorn book, dangerous, Dirty, Violent and Young, is a pretty remarkable American memoir that unfortunately is necessary because what he is describing is no longer in the rear view mirror, but is now right in front of us again. So aside from Noah Rothman's Blood in Progress, which you should read since Marco Rubio clearly just read it, that is my recommendation. Noah, thanks for joining us. We'll be back next week. For Abe and Seth, I'm John Pod Horowitz. Keep the candle burning. Hi, Ryan Reynolds here for Mint Mobile. Are you looking for a beach read this summer? May I suggest your big wireless bill? It's got suspense, mystery, a slightly flat emotional arc and a shocking twist where you realize you've been overpaying the entire time. Fortunately, though, Mint's story is better. Every plan $15 a month, even unlimited.

[C]

That's it.

[B]

Happy ending, zero tears. Give it a [e-mail] Switch upfront payment

[A]

of $45 for 3 months, $90 for

[B]

6 months or $180 for 12 month

[A]

Plan required $15 per month equivalent taxes and fees Extra initial plan term only greater than 50 gigabytes. Me slow when network is busy.

[E]

See terms.