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A
Hey, it's John. I want to talk to you about Shopify. A lot of people talk to me about starting podcasts. This podcast is 10 years old. It's in a different place from a lot of podcasts because we're obviously part of a nonprofit institution and it's not a way that we are seeking to earn our livelihoods. But a lot of people look at this and say this is something I can really do to create a business and run the business and do it in a really comfortable, practical and serious way. Gotta wear a lot of different hats when you start your own business. Can be very intimidating. But one of the things that I know from a lot of people is that if your to do list is growing and growing and growing and that list starts to overrun your life, you need a tool that not only helps you out, but simplifies everything that can be a game changer for millions of businesses. That tool is Shopify, the commerce platform behind millions of businesses around the world and 10% of all e commerce in the US from household names to brands. Just getting started. You get started with your own design studio. With hundreds of ready to use templates. Shopify helps you build a beautiful online store to match your brand style. You can accelerate your content creation because it's packed with helpful AI tools that write product descriptions, page headlines and even enhance your product photography. You get the word out like you have a marketing team behind you. Easily create email and social media campaigns wherever your customers are scrolling or strolling. And best yet, Shopify is your commerce expert with world class expertise in everything from managing inventory to international shipping to processing returns and beyond. If you're ready to sell, you're ready for Shopify. Turn your big business idea into kaching. With Shopify on your side, sign up for your $1 per month trial and start selling today at shopify.com commentary. Go to shopify.com commentary that's shopify.com commentary. Hope for the.
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B
Expect the words Some.
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A
Pre champagne some die of thirst no way of knowing this way it's going.
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B
Hope for the best expect the worst.
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A
Welcome to the Commentary Magazine daily podcast and welcome to the month of September. I am John Pod Horace, the editor of Commentary magazine. And because we're only six weeks out or seven weeks out from our roast on October 19, the commentary annual roast this year the Roasty Cliff Asness, the Head Fun Genius Head Funge Hedge fund genius and all around great guy and this is our great event and we are getting close to capacity and that's not me just blowing smoke and trying to sell tickets at the last minute. Like we have a limited number of people who can fit into the space that we have the event at. So if you want to come, if you want to look into buying a table or buying a ticket, next couple of days is it. And then you're going to be out of luck. So go to commentary.org roast it is one of the great events of the year. That's what everybody tells us. This is our 15th, our 16th, our 17th. I can't even remember what number roast this is. It's really the kind of thing that people talk about all year because it's an evening of high good humor, hijinks, fun and community. So that's commentary.org roast and if you come, you will get to meet my fellow panelists, among them, executive editor Abe Greenwald. Hi, Abe.
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C
Hi, John.
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A
Senior editor Seth Mandel. Hi, Seth.
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B
Hi, John.
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A
And Social Commentary columnist Christine Rosen. Hi, Christine.
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D
Hi, John.
- [04:21]
A
So Friday night, an appeals court upheld the notion that the executive branch did not have the right, the power, the authority or the ability to impose the tariffs. Most of the tariffs that have been imposed by, by executive order under terms of an emergency. And now I guess it'll go to the Supreme Court and I guess that the liberals who are looking at this and who exist in a state of a complete panic and B, this really disgraceful idea that conservative justices simply do Trump's bidding because that's what they're there for. I, I myself would not expect that the Supreme Court and that the justices that have been confirmed on the conservative side would view the tariff impositions sanguinely and that and that this is likely to end up going against Trump. But what do I know? We are now in a moment of extreme economic uncertainty is what this means, because it's going to be very hard for people to make long term plans on where they site plants and where they source materials and all of that if they don't know whether the tariffs are going to stick or not, which tariffs are going to stick or not, what tariffs the president is allowed or is not allowed to impose. It is highly problematic to be in this bizarre nether region of economic uncertainty. And as we know from the Biden years and said many times, economic uncertainty is poison to a well functioning and calm economic situation in which people make investment decisions and all the decisions that have to be made to run a company and run a society and all of that. Anybody want to jump in?
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D
I will, because I think the next few months are also going to show US some economic impacts of the tariffs, which are, which were left in place until October when giving the Trump administration time to appeal this to the Supreme Court, which everyone assumes they will. I welcome the discussion of the abuse of emergency powers, which we talked about a bit last week. I think this country is long overdue and this is not a partisan issue. Presidential administrations on both sides of the aisle have abused this power, and we need to reckon with what, what going forward, whether they should be allowed to do so. There are a few hits that American consumers are going to start feeling. One is if you ever buy anything overseas, like click on a website that's, say, in the UK or anywhere else overseas, your de minimis shipping exemption is about to end. So if it's, if you bought something that's less than $800, you used to be able to just bring it in and now that's going to be, there's, there's that that's been lifted as well as a result of tariff policies. So consumers will start to see some of those prices rising, rise. I think that the attempt to cast any of these supreme, if it reaches Supreme Court and they take the case casting this as a partisan issue is wrongheaded. Trump has obviously pushed the envelope on tariffs and on emergency powers in general. He's just talked over the weekend about doing it, you know, more for crime and law enforcement, again at the border. So this is something he feels is a tool in his arsenal, and it's up to the court to, to endorse that view or to reel it back in a little bit. So I think our liberal friends, our consistent liberal friends and our consistent conservative friends, when it comes to Supreme Court jurisprudence, will be the ones to listen to, obviously. Adam White, my colleague, Jack Goldsmith at AEI also, these are folks who have a consistent understanding of the branches of government and power, and I think that's how we should look at this. Let's hope, though, that the court does take this case, because we do need some decision on these emergency powers.
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C
Yeah, I mean, you know, it's part and parcel of Trump's approach to a lot of things, which is he thinks that you could just take shortcuts and there's sort of no price to pay. You declare emergencies, you issue executive orders. And, you know, as we did touch on last week, when you go around the normal business and roots of policy making, you're going to come up short here and there and you're going to, you're going to stub your toes and you're going to have to Fight it out. That's, you know, again, they have obeyed the courts, this administration, when the rulings come down. I mean, that, that question that was hovering early on in the administration, I think has been answered pretty resoundingly when, when the courts rule against them, they, they accept it or they fight it, but they, they don't, they don't do some third world other option.
- [09:35]
B
You know, there's also a weird thing where we, like, the sides are scrambled because there's a lot of hoping that the courts, there's a lot of hoping that the tariffs somehow disappear, are made to disappear. And there's a, there's a bit of a contradiction between hoping for that and also, you know, wanting the courts to stay within their lines. But there's a lot of nervousness about what the tariffs will mean. And I think a lot of conservatives, just because they really don't like the tariffs, would love a sort of deus ex machina to, you know, come in and strike it down and, you know, let's all move on or something like that. But it's an interesting thing because there is, there's a lot of, well, I don't know if the court is right in this, but I guess I hope they strike it down sort of thing like, you know, saving us from ourselves. And so that, you know, that gets into the question of the court's role and, you know, it not being one to save us from our own policy decisions, but to just one other point.
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D
Additional questions, one other aspect to this, it's not just a domestic challenge here because he's been using these tariffs as a policymaking tool basically in foreign policy. And so over the weekend, one of our natural allies, or should be a natural ally, which is India, we've slapped them with, with large sheriffs or threatened with large tariffs, was hanging out with the leader of China and Russia, and all three of them holding hands, literally holding hands in a photo op that is sending a very clear and deliberate message to the west and to the United States in particular. And I think it's also a rebuke of this idea of using tariff policy as a foreign policy. Le not so far worked for the Trump administration, even though I think the idea, in theory, perhaps it sounded good, especially for more isolationist types in the administration. But in practice, I haven't seen clear results on that score.
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A
The Supreme Court has traditionally, and this happened in 2017 with the fight over the imposition of the travel ban and other things, has said that legislation and the Constitution give the president extraordinarily wide latitude in matters involving national security. It's the national security Act of 1952, as well as the structure of the Constitution itself. Assuming that tariffs are a foreign policy issue as opposed to an economic issue is not anything that was envisioned in the Constitution. And tariff power is quite explicitly put in the hands of Congress. That's why I assume that this is not a hard case. Exactly. That Trump's way around it has been to say that there is an emergency and he has to assume emergency powers. And obviously, times of war and various other things the president can presumably make, you know, can intrude on the economy in ways that he can't at other times. But those would have to be moments of declared war, number one or number two, some unique and unprecedented situation like the pandemic. And look how well the assertion of emergency powers worked there in terms of the American people and their sense of whether or not the government is serving their interests or its own or some other idea of power. But I think this is probably a really important fight to have going forward in the 21st century, because if the Supreme Court does not say what I said about tariffs and says it does not agree with the lower courts and says none of the president can have his head do this or whatever, it would say we're going to have a very significant, what would you call it, like, mandate for the rebalancing of authority in the US Government in terms of checks and balances to the executive branch as against the legislative branch. Now, that's happened, but it's happened de facto. It has not happened de jure, meaning it's happened because the president asserts powers and Congress, whether it's Congress under Biden, which was a Democratic Congress, or for two year, whatever, and then Congress under Trump doesn't want to challenge the president's authority for whatever reason. That was not always the case. Senators in previous eras, particularly in the Senate, leaders of the Senate were very jealous about the prerogatives of the Congress and would oppose presidents of their own party if they started to impinge on or. Or go beyond the boundaries of what they thought senatorial power was or House power was or that. That sort of thing. We seem to be beyond that. And so we will almost need a de jure finding by, you know, by law that this goes too far. Because if. And if that doesn't happen, then we are in a new reality. We are in a. In a, not in a strong man reality. And I don't think we're in an authoritarian reality. We're just in a Reality, presidents will have more latitude to do things that I think make a lot of people uncomfortable on both sides of the aisle, depending on who's the president.
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D
So this, this is important because the, the, they're floating the next round, which is a housing emergency. So Scott Besant went around this weekend, Labor Day weekend, getting photo ops at diners in the D.C. metro area and talking about no tax on tips, which I think is actually in part a distraction from the news came down on Friday from the federal courts and saying, well, you know, we also, we're talking about maybe having to declare a housing emergency. So what power would that give the president a housing emergency? What could he economically, how might he intervene in the housing market? Again, if you're a Trump person through and through and you think he knows exactly how to cut a great deal and do all these good things for the economy, you might be cheering that. But if it's President Gavin Newsom and you look at what's happened to housing in California, you should think about the principle applied in that way because in a couple of years it might, might be. And so that's where I think these principal discussions really matter. And I agree with you, John, keeping my fingers crossed that the court is able to just do its job and ignore the noise because we do need some, I think, curbing of this power at the same time that we need Congress, as you say, to step up and do its job more vigorously.
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A
Meanwhile, just to follow through on this issue of the Trump administration's intrusion on the world economy, we can talk about this question of the Trump administration insisting on or playing these games in which it's starting to take stock positions. Exactly. Taking stock positions in American companies. The large of the big one last big announcement last week was that it was taking a almost 10% equity stake in the Intel Corporation. That's 430 million shares of Intel. And as my friend, our friend David Bonson puts it in his newsletter, the transaction also includes a five year warrant whereby the government can acquire up to 5% more of the equity in intel at a strike price of $20 per share. The stock is currently trading around 25. If Intel's ownership of its foundry business drops below 51%, you don't have to really understand the meaning of all these numbers. What you can know is if, if the government decides to buy 5% more of the equity in intel at a strike price of 20 per share, the government will be taking borrowed money. Right. Because the country is in $37 trillion of debt. So it will, it Will borrow. It will take more borrowed money to buy stock in a company. So it's in essence like your kid. You know, you, you have a kid and your kid costs you whatever the kid costs you in college and all that. And then the kid says, hey, can I have another hundred thousand dollars so I can do X, Y or Z? Really, in the end, it'll, it'll all. It'll all be paid back. Like, this is debt. It's. You're using debt to buy stock. Nobody believes that it is wise to use debt to buy stock. That is not, that is not a sensible. Like, no rational person would do that because the interest on the debt will eat into whatever profit you can make on the stock. And then comes the secondary point, which is Intel's an important American company. If the US Government has a significant minority position in intel, and intel says for our stockholders and for the good working order of our company, we need to buy X from, you know, Tanganyika. And then Secretary of State Marco Rubio says, well, we're in. We're in Brygas with Tanganyika. We don't like the way that they're doing X, Y or Z. With X, Y or Z, we're 10% of your stock base. You can't buy what you know. You can't buy this rare earth material from Tanganyika. Or intel thinks it has to do a round of layoffs because AI means that it now needs 10,000 fewer people working at its factory in Podunk. And then the Treasury Secretary, the Commerce Secretary, whoever is doing this says, we don't want you to lay off 10,000 people because we need those votes in Podunk. So you can't run your business that way. This is state capitalism. This is the danger. This is something. So we're now moving. It's not that the government hasn't had nationalization power and authority over certain industries, particularly like the railroad industry. Look how that's worked out for the railroad industry. But this is a very, very dangerous precedent. We're using debt. We're thinking about using debt to buy stock. As David Bonson says, countries that have sovereign wealth funds, that is that they do play in the stock market, are doing so with surpluses, not with debt. They're doing so because their countries run a surplus. They need to figure out what to do with that surplus. If they're not going to return it to the taxpayer in forms of rebates, they need to find some place to put it. So they might otherwise have bought T bills and now they've decided that they're going to buy stock and play in the stock market. But that's surplus money. That's not debt. Every single dollar in the federal government that the federal government needs to go to service our debt.
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C
So because I'm frankly, this is, you know, like sometimes I just ask these questions because I really don't understand why is he doing it?
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A
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D
Hey, it's Ryan Reynolds here from Mint Mobile. Now I was looking for fun ways to tell you that Mint's offer of unlimited Premium Wireless for $15 a month is back.
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A
So I thought it would be fun.
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D
If we made fifteen dollar bills but it turns out that's very illegal.
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A
So there goes my big idea for the commercial.
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D
Give it a try@mintmobile.com Switch upfront payment of $45 for 3 month plan equivalent to $15 per month required new customer offer for first 3 months only. Speed slow after 35 gigabytes of networks busy taxes and fees extra c mint mobile.com oh I know.
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E
Well, what, what's the idea?
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D
Well, I'm guessing I will give an educated guess because this is so that you said state capitalism, John. And I think that's the phrase that has been bandied about for years when we talk, talking about government getting involved in bailouts in various industries. But the new phrase that everyone's using for this because it is an order of magnitude larger is pay me capitalism. And what that means is that, and it's not just intel, it's Nvidia, it's US Steel. He's been doing this for, for a little while now. And, and it is a, it's a power mechanism. He does it so that he can go to these companies and do exactly what John was, was theorizing, which is say we don't, we want to make policy decisions that impact your business. That is not free market capitalism. And that's exactly why I think strong free market conservatives are appalled. And Seth is right, a lot of them are sitting there keeping their fingers crossed that the court will solve this on tariffs. But it needs to also think about this, this kind of pay me capitalist mindset. And then alongside that, we also have a president whose crypto company, whose family members and members of his own cabinet's family members are all invested in just made billions of dollars over the weekend in issuing a new coin. So this is an entirely new universe of financial largesse and financial control coming out of the executive branch. And again, I say to all of our lovely Trump listener, pro Trump listeners, thank you. It's the principle of this, it's the model it's establishing. And ask yourself if in four years you want someone from the Democratic Party using this power in the way to tell them not that we want to build, you know, we want to own intel and Nvidia to encourage our AI industry at home and to protect it from, from China, ironically, China, a country where we're now going to accept hundreds of thousands of more Chinese students into American universities. Also going against the argument that we should be worried about China. But if you don't mind, if you don't mind that, then how will you like DEI mandates restored under a Democratic administration and imposed? Because who's got a share at the, at the board table now? Well, the Democratic administration in the White House. So this is the principle. And I know I'm, I, I'm kind of ranting, but it's very important that right now we establish that principle because we're not going to like it anymore if there's a different person in the White House wielding this power.
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B
Also, that if, from what I understand, it is essentially subsidy money being converted into shares into permanent shares. Right? So that's the other, that's, that's the other mold that they're breaking, which Is that. Imagine in the future, think about for a second how much the American government subsidizes companies in the private sector, either, you know, through, you know, bailouts, financial rescue bills, whatever. Converting. Think about how much potential there is to convert subsidies of future projects into straight ownership of the companies. You could not. It would be very hard, I guess, in other words, to argue against literally any other application of this, no matter who it is, you know, intel you could talk about. Well, it's chips, CHIPS act. We have, there's national security concerns, you know, we have this, that. But the truth is that the format of it converting, you know, what are essentially, you know, government subsidies into government ownership. Where. How could you disapprove of that? You know, on the, on the, you know, on the facts. In any other case, you could see the such a wide application of this.
- [27:15]
A
Well, Seth, you, you were a local reporter and New Jersey, which is a very transactional state, as is New York. And you know, people say Trump was never in politics until 2015, and that was never true. Trump is a real estate developer. Real estate development is a political job. You are often bidding on, on plots of land or projects in which the government has an interest or controls the land and is selling it off or something like that. And the government has asks. Government will make asks and will say. I mean, primarily it's like, well, you need to. Some laws in different states will say, well, you need to accept the highest bid on real estate projects, as you know, by a contractor, instead of the lowest bid, which is a weird one, the state of New York, or you need to do X or you need to hire a minority owned firm, or you need to do this or you need to do that. There are these asks and negotiations how well you negotiate with governmental authorities that can be a mayor, it can be a selectman, it can be a governor, it can be whoever is how you succeed. And famously we know this even in, you know, conservative states when they declare that they have just made a deal to make sure that so and so's company is not leaving the state of, you know, East Slobovia for West slobovia, thus preserving 5,000 jobs and they've agreed to build a new plant and they're going to be 5,000 jobs on that. And all we've had to do is make sure that they will be subsidized within an inch of their life for the next 35 years with tax breaks. So essentially the government using its taxation power or the ability to limit taxation on an individual project on One thing, it's giving a benefit to one company that it does not give to any other company. That is how business is often done at the state level. And it is, it's not only is it an atrocity and it's an injustice because, you know, the taxation should be equal across all. You should have one rule that applies to everybody. But it's what politicians can do when they can no longer do things that they used to do, like say I'm building 10, 10,000 units of housing, right? Used to be in the 50s and six, when all this is going on, it was like, the state is going to build all this new housing. Well, the state can't do that, but it can subsidize others to do it and pay for it that way. That's the business that Trump knows. That's the business that Trump was. It's in like his amniotic fluid from. And then how his father did business, how everybody did business in Brooklyn and Queens, how these. And he is bringing that knowledge to bear on the federal government. He's not the first to do so. What is he, how is he doing the intel deal? He's doing it in part through power, power and authority granted by the CHIPS Act. CHIPS act is. It was a Democratic piece of legislation passed in 2022 by Biden and the Democrats allowing for certain types of subsidies if the, if the, if a company will bend its will to how the federal government wants things to, to work. So on a diff, on a thousand different fronts, when we talk about, you know, why no one trusts government anymore, no one trusts institutions anymore, they've all been chipping away at the foundations of, like, we're a country where we make rules and then everybody lives by the same rule. That's. So you pay taxes and I pay taxes. Why do I think the Lisa Cook Federal Reserve story is a bet is a better story for the Trump administration and a bigger and a worse story for the Democrats than people realize. Because if it highlights the fact that a governor of the Federal Reserve is playing fast and loose with mortgage rules that I would never myself in a million years play fast and loose with, like, I only own one home. But if I bought a second vacation home and I decided that I was going to risk audit and say both homes are my primary residence and then get, you know, my, the forms back, I then send back with my, with my IRS forms, you know, in. When I report my income and losses and everything like that at the end of the year and just assume, like, there are 175 million tax forms that the IRS is getting, and they're not going to spot this, then if she gets away with this, 5, 10 million other people are going to do this.
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D
By the way, the fact that she owns more than one home was the least reported part of this whole story. And the fact that the elite journalists and others who are complaining about her being targeted didn't even note that fact is, to me, a huge part of the problem. Who owns more than one home. Most Americans are still struggling to own one home. And the fact that she had two and thought, oh, I'll just claim them both, I think that shows that that's the kind of elite sort of attitude that. You're absolutely right, John, is a huge part of why people no longer trust our institutions.
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A
But one of the honest things about Trump is that he says the quiet part out loud, or he doesn't. He doesn't care about hiding. He's not hiding what he's doing. That doesn't make it good. It's bad. But he's not hiding what he's doing. He's like, we live in a system of state capitalism, so we might as well do it the way I want to do it. And, you know, you would say he.
- [33:25]
B
Can argue, there are a lot of ways to argue that what he's doing. If we're going to be in the business of state capitalism, as you say, and we, if we already are, what he's doing is a smarter move for the government. Right. He can argue that rather than subsidies based, with a return based on the success of future projects, the government just has, you know, a ghost seat at the table because we don't have, you know, board, board seats with this. But, you know, we, we own what we own outright now, and wherever the company goes in the future from that, we gain from that. So you, you can argue like, well, look, if we're already basically doing this, why don't we just own outright shares in this company? And then, you know, next year it's going to be, well, why don't we just. If we're giving. Once you introduce this idea, you know, well, if we're giving subsidies and you argue that it was actually smarter to just take 10% up front, maybe instead of, you know, these bailout loans and sorts of things that we do, or these loans where everybody knows they're not going to be paid back, they're not expected to be paid back, why don't we just take ownership next time there's something like Covid and we tell all these businesses to shut down rather than go through the process of use, you know, of financing all this debt to, to throw loans at people that we're never going to see again. Why don't we just take a piece of, you know, everything that's going around and it'll stay open and it'll grow from there?
- [34:52]
A
Well, I mean, the, the easiest answer to that is because they're not taking anything. Trump is a temporary occupant of every. Everybody in politics is a temporary occupant of their. Off of their, of their office. And therefore, you know, it's not like they get it. You know, they're going to get it and they can play with it forever. You know, Scott Besson or Howard Lutnick may love the idea of getting 10% of intel for the. But at some point, Howard Lutnick is returning to Cantor Fitzgerald, and then he won't have 10% of intel to push around the CEO of Intel because he'll be back in the private sector trying to get business from intel, which might or might not be angry at him for how he behaved. There's no necessary virtue for a political leader to control this kind of stock. Bribery we can understand, right? Bribery is very simple and a monument. You can understand wanting to take a position in intel when you do, when you are not philosophically committed to the idea that the government should have ownership of much of the private sector, which is socialism. Right? I mean, that's. The government should own the means of production. But if you're sort of philosophically opposed to that or you're in the party that is philosophically opposed to that, and then you just accede to it, then there's no argument left against it.
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D
And they don't oppose it consistently. That's the other thing that's so bedeviling about all of these conversations, because I mentioned the Chinese students being let in. And then there's TikTok. I will continue to harp on TikTok. He is breaking the law every single day by not shutting it down. And that, that actually has a legitimate national security concern component to it. That's why Congress passed the legislation. So I.
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B
And what is he. What is, what is TikTok? What is China supposed to do with TikTok? What is the whole fight about the government in China owning. Owning private platform.
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A
Yeah, well, but why doesn't. Why doesn't he want to shut down? Why doesn't he want to do this to TikTok?
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D
Because he likes the fact that he got a bunch of followers when they Opened a White House TikTok account. He's doing good on tik to, as he said at one point over there during the campaign.
- [37:23]
A
Right. But we're back to this crisis that everything goes back to, which is the Congress passed a law, the law was signed into law. The president says, I'm not going to enforce the law. Congress can actually make him enforce the law. And that, you know, that's why maybe we need to, we really do genuinely need divided government because somebody has got to, I don't care if it's Obama or Biden or Bush or Trump. Somebody that's not the Supreme Court has got to have, that's elected, has got to have the power to make sure that enforcement of the law is not conditional through the means that the Constitution provides for that to happen. Because if you, if we're now back, if we're now back to depending on the goodwill of people, you know, or like, you know, they're, I'm gonna be Caesar's wife. Like, I'm gonna go above and beyond. I'm not only just gonna follow the law, I'm gonna be better than the law. I'm going to be more self sacrificing than law. It's why the Trump sons are so gross and Trump is so gross. It's like, you know what? Pride, simple pride and my country and my, for my country for having elected my father twice or something like that should say that I want to show how wonderful this country is by not taking advantage of it. I don't take advantage of my position because all of our people out there in East Palestine, Ohio, they don't get to issue a cryptocurrency. They, you know, I want to help them, not help myself and show that I can help them and not help myself. That's something we sort of expected from political leaders and their families. And on those rare occasions when that really didn't happen, like Jimmy Carter's brother who was like getting money from the Libyans or the question of whether or not Neil Bush, George H.W. bush's son, had a special deal for his SNL, his, his savings alone. And like that they were so horrified because it's like, what are you doing?
- [39:41]
C
Like, well, you can't leave out Hunter Biden.
- [39:44]
A
And well, I mean Hunter Biden is. I, I didn't mean to leave out Hunter Biden. Obviously what they're responding to is Hunter Biden. If they want to be outraged about Hunter Biden, are they going to be outraged about Hunter Biden or are they going to Go like, oh, that Hunter Biden, he's such a loser. He only took 10 billion. 10 million. I'm going to take 5 billion. 10 million. What a putz. Look at that. 10 million. He leaves his laptop in Wilmington, Delaware. Like, what a schmuck.
- [40:13]
D
If you're gonna be a cautionary tale, Biden, Hunter Biden was supposed to be a cautionary tale. If you're conservative, you look pointed at that and said, this is not how we should be operating our government. They took it as a roadmap and they've avoided his, you know, personal errors and they're quite, they are quite successful. What they want those folks in East Palestine to do, to buy the cryptocurrency, they want to convince them that this is going to be what's transformative for them.
- [40:36]
A
And you know, where else they want to issue cryptocurrency to help? Not they, but there is this idea abroad and this will allow us to transition to what is going on as, as it. As the conflict between Israel and Gaza is now approaching its second year, third year, excuse me, is that in the discussions of the depopulation of Gaza and the relocation of Gazans, there was that. There is this idea being floated that the Gazans who leave for the property that they might be surrendering might be issued some crypto. I don't know if you heard this, that, that, you know, if you go to Sudan or something willingly, you'll get some kind of a stake in, in some kind of a Bitcoin thing or some. Whatever. Whatever. Bitcoin is a company, not. It's not the coin. So I thought this was interesting because it shows how outside the box people are thinking. So what we'll do is we'll invent a financial instrument that doesn't exist, that is backed by nothing, and we'll give it. It's sort of like 40 acres and a mule, only there are no acres and there's no mule. There's just, you know, a ledger.
- [42:01]
D
But this is. It's interesting to me that, that the Trump family, in particular the Trump empire, is now so all in on crypto. Because I was thinking about that when I was reading the new poll results about Americans sense of their economic future and how uncertain they feel and how unhappy they feel and how pessimistic they feel. Even though, you know, the economy is kind of chugging along, we. It hasn't completely tanked, but those numbers are about projecting a few years ahead or maybe a decade ahead, and also thinking about the kind of economic lives and paths Their own children might have. We are not very optimistic right now. And there's some sort of, like, insane hyper optimism around crypto, particularly among the people who are all in on it. That I've never understood. I'm not a joiner, so that's probably part of it. But what they're trying to sell is not landing with the American people right now. If you look at some of these poll results, they live in the real world. They don't live in crypto world. And so they need to understand how to continue to be able to buy houses, afford their groceries, send their kids to college if they want to. All of these things are on their minds, and they are not buying what the Trump family is selling with regard to the economic future.
- [43:09]
A
You know about the phenomenon of boosterism, right? 19th century boosterism. So the boosterists were. There's an ad in a paper in New York or Baltimore, somewhere east in the 1860s, and it says, come to Paradise, New Mexico. It's beautiful. We have an opera house, we have a hotel. We have this. You'll come buy land. Here's the prose here, you know, here's the prospectus. Buy land, get on a train, come out here. So people, you know, it's like, whoa, five cents an acre. So they buy land, they get on train, they get off the train, and there's nothing there. There's no art, there's no nothing. And there. But what there is, is a welcome. Welcome wagon from the boosters of Paradise, New Mexico. And what do they say? They say, now you got to be in on this, too. Write everybody you know and say, come to Paradise, New Mexico. Because if we get enough people here, then we can build the opera house and the hotel and the general store, and we can build the town that we see in our heads with. By getting you out here. But the original. But the. But. But what we. What we're offering is not what we offered you and you. You fell for is notional. You need now to become part of the conspiracy to make it happen. So if you buy into crypto, you are not only in crypto, you have to explain to everybody else why crypto is the greatest thing ever and why they should go into it. Because otherwise crypto will be a bubble and will collapse. If you can outweigh the bubble, period, until you establish it, until, as a firm thing and it turns into St. Louis, Paradise New turns into St. Louis and doesn't become a ghost town, then you're. You will be rich, you know, beyond the dreams of avarice. Later On. And that is where crypto is now. We're now 15 years into crypto. 20. When did Ryuishi Sakamoto or whatever that guy's name was, when did he invent bitcoin? After reading Neal Stephenson's novel Reimb. How did. How did that happen? That was like 2008, 2009.
- [45:34]
D
Okay. But your scenario is actually the optimistic one for crypto, that it'll somehow turn into something that other, you know, into something. I actually think we're much more. And this is because I'm a Florida native. It's much more like the land boom in Florida in the 1920s where everybody came down there and then, you know, what happened? Hurricanes, because they didn't understand where they had moved. And this paradise turns out to be, you know, a subtropical, constantly under, you know, motherhood.
- [45:58]
A
I'm sorry, you're wrong. Because if you didn't give up, if you. If you stayed and you didn't sell your property, you had 15 acres of downtown Miami and your family is now.
- [46:11]
D
Very few people were able to hold on to that.
- [46:13]
B
Okay, but our version of this, by the way, our version of this is trying to convince people that you don't have to be in the Maryland suburbs, in Montgomery County. If enough of us go to Northern Virginia, then there will be enough for an Aruv and a chabad and a kosher Chinese restaurant, and then that's. That's the modern orthodox boosterism.
- [46:38]
A
But you're in Maryland.
- [46:40]
B
I know.
- [46:41]
A
Well, that's. What are you going to go to Northern Virginia?
- [46:44]
B
I'm saying when everybody exits. Yes, Montgomery county because of the craziness and goes to Northern Virginia. Only the modern orthodox are left back saying, we don't have. We don't have an AR of, you know.
- [46:56]
A
Yeah, so we go.
- [46:57]
B
All right, we'll be Khalutzim. I'm Oliver Darcy. And I'm John Passantino. We have spent years covering the inner workings of the news media, tech, politics, Hollywood and power now through our nightly newsletter status. And we're bringing that same reporting and sharp analysis to a new podcast, Power Lines. Every Friday, we're breaking down the biggest stories shaping the industry, explaining why they matter, and saying the things most people are thinking but too timid to say out loud. No spin, no fluff, just sharp analysis.
- [47:27]
D
That isn't afraid to call it like it is.
- [47:29]
A
We also pull back the curtain via.
- [47:31]
B
Our exclusive reporting to take you behind the scenes. My understanding, having reported this, is that the Pentagon protested to CNN and tried to effectively exile the CNN producer And when the moment calls for it, we've got some hot, hot takes. I just think Brad Pitt, honestly, he kind of seems a little washed up.
- [47:50]
A
Oh, my God. That's Power Lines presented by Status.
- [47:55]
B
Follow Power Lines and listen on Apple, Spotify, Amazon Music, or your favorite podcast app.
- [48:04]
E
I'm Mark Halpern and I want to let you know that two Way Tonight, the destination for the best political news and analysis anywhere, is now available as an audio podcast.
- [48:12]
A
Podcasts.
- [48:13]
E
Each weekday I'll be joined by special guests from the worlds of news, politics and the media, along with members of the two Way community for conversations like no other. It's the best way to stay informed at the end of your day or first thing in the morning every weekday. It's a show like no other because we involve the community. We hear from people from around the country, around the world. They're part of a conversation. There is no other platform like this. And I hope you will find it to be not only different than everything else, but more meaningful as you become part of a special community around the program. So listen and follow two Way tonight with Mark Alperin on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or any other major streaming platform.
- [48:51]
A
Okay, I'm gonna have to translate now. And ARUV is a. Is a literal string that goes around a geographical area that makes it possible to. For people, certain types of. To carry things on the Sabbath. And I'm not going to get into a deeper explanation of why you need a string over your head in order to carry things on the Sabbath. Just if you are a believing Orthodox Jew, you do. And where Seth lives has one and where he is talking about, you know, if you. Yeah, if you were going to go somewhere else, the one of the first things you need is an airu. Because then a woman literally can't carry her baby outside of her house on the Sabbath. So. Or a man for that matter. Anyway, all right, so that's an interesting analogy and we needed to explain it to our listeners and we now need to explain very clearly.
- [49:54]
B
I thought, I hope that the kosher Chinese part made it clear.
- [49:59]
A
Well, you know what, you're right that. But that is a kosher Chinese is very problematic. There are maybe two good kosher Chinese restaurants on the planet Earth and the others are disgusting. So that's all I'm going to say on that front. However, talking back seriously about the almost three year war now in Israel and what is going on this week, we are on the precipice of something big one way or the other. Either Israel is about to move hundreds of thousands of people in to try to take Gaza City and end the war that way. Or the prospect of that happening and a couple of other things that have happened this week will mean that there is going to be some kind of a grand deal to forestall that. And what I mean by that is last week Seth has been, you know, detailing this stuff brilliantly on our blog. Last week Israel assassinated, eliminated, as they say in their social media feeds. Abu Ubaidah, who was the most famous member of Hamas. I don't know how you would describe Abu would be like Abu Obeydah is a combination of the White House press secretary, the Steve Bannon.
- [51:29]
B
Baghdad Bob style figure.
- [51:32]
A
Right. But he, but he's been famous since 2004. He be just to show you how repugnant and evil Hamas is in every possible regard. Abu Obeirah became famous because he was a guy who came before the cameras and said hahaha, we just kidnapped Gilad Shalit and we're going to hold him forever and torture him for the rest of his life. Like that. That's, that was his big debut was announcing the kidnapping of a 19 year old kid. Wasn't that wonderful of him? That was almost 20 years ago now. Anyway, he was assassinated and what's interesting about his assassination is that it is in some ways though they have eliminated almost every major member of Hamas in Gaza. This is kind of like the big one. Like he's, yeah, he's the superstar of Hamas. He's the face of Hamas. He is now gone. And Al Zamir, the IDF chief of staff said I believe on Thursday that it is soon to be the policy of the Israeli government that no member of Hamas is safe anywhere in the world. Which is a clear signal that, that Israel will not will do to Khaled Mashal, the head of Hamas who is living in Qatar and other people who are living in Qatar that it will do to them what it did to, you know, the guy in the hotel room in Tehran and, and the headquarters of the, of Hezbollah in Lebanon and that it is no longer, it can no longer allow their shielding from the consequences of the things that are going on. So the question is, is this the vice is the vice and they're about to move into Gaza City. So is this is the vice tightening such that Hamas will finally say uncle and say we're giving back all the hostages? Because the other thing that happened last week is that Bibi Netanyahu made clear, made incredibly clear that he is accepting no deal that does not involve the return of all the hostages, that they're going into Gaza City unless all the hostages are returned. Period. End of discussion. And the opposition in Israel has found itself its innate contradiction. The, the hostility to Bibi and, and. And their own hopes are. Have now come to total. Have. Have now reached a complete, logical, contradictory standstill, which is they say, bring all the hostages home and end the war. And Bibi is saying the only way to bring all the hostages home is for Hamas to send all the hostages home, at which point we can probably end the war. But if you keep protesting against me, you're making it easier for them to not send all the hostages home, because you're giving them hope that the war, you know, you're giving them hope that I'll fall or whatever it is they think, and they're still doing it, and it makes no sense. BB has said, our policy now is all the hostages come home at once. No half measures. We're not going to live in Zeno's paradox. It's not going to be that you get to send home 10 and keep 10, and then you get to send home five and keep five. We are not going to do this any longer. Seth, what do you think.
- [54:58]
B
The protests are at this point aimed at Trump? Now, I think that people understand that Bibi believes that the clock is ticking because of Trump and that a partial deal is off the table, in part because Trump doesn't want a partial deal. He has been saying for, you know, the last week or two very clearly that he's tired of the partial deals and, and the way that they can be manipulated by others. Steve Witkoff has been telling the Israelis, you know, my message from the President is no partial deals. We're done with those things. And so Bibi understands that his, the war effort really depends on the approval of the American government at this point, with the cascade of, of, of. Of, you know, Palestine recognition gambits from all over Europe and, you know, the, the EU talking about imposing more sanctions on Israel and stuff like that. There isn't, there isn't the feeling that, you know, this is the West. This feeling is that this is Israel and America and it's Trump. And if Trump says no partial deals, what are we supposed to do? Because we're dependent on his support. So I think, you know, there's that and then there's the, the, the army chief of staff does not love the situation, and I think that he's the reason for the leaking of some of these Cabinet arguments. The meetings, the Cabinet meetings in which you know, things get pretty lively and people bang on tables and, and yell at Bibi, you know, oh, where were you on October 7th? And this and that. I think the reason for the steady leaking of those is because Trump is the audience or a key part of the audience. And the protesters in the streets have been holding up signs appealing directly to Trump and have been chanting directly to Trump. It's kind of like when the, you know, I have the, I should say the, you know, that's, there's, there's no comparison. But when the Iranians would hold up signs in English, you know, and people will go like, what's the. Well, yeah, because the signs are not for the Iranian government. You know, common A doesn't care what the signs say. The signs are for the outside world. And the outside world speaks English. This is, there's a, there's a similar thing here where they're just, literally just saying, you know, Trump, you should make history. Some of the signs say Trump, make history and things like that. I think everybody sees Trump as the audience for every appeal. And it is, it is uncomfortable to be in that situation as a, as an independent, democratic, self governing country where you have to kind of, you know, it's like when you used to play horse and used to say, like, off the wall, off the mailbox, nothing but net. You know, if you want to get to Trump, you have to bank it off Bibi's forehead and into Washington. And that's sort of what's happening now. And so that's, you know, that's Bibi himself, I think, is just trying to judge where Trump is going and solely where Trump is going.
- [58:20]
C
I think there's an interesting mutual or reciprocal delusion among the Israelis and the Americans. Americans have been complaining, not us, but, you know, the ones we can't stop hearing from for years. They think there's some magical way that Israel could, quote, just end this war. And, you know, that will automatically, as John says, and then yada, yada, yada, you know, that will magically bring all the hostages back, neutralize the Hamas threat, all in one. Israel can just do that. They're not doing it because of this, that and the other, because Bibi wants to stay in power because they want to blow up this country, all this nonsense. And the Israelis have seemed to have placed this extraordinary amount of faith in the idea that Donald Trump can actually make any deal happen, that he is the one who can. He can do the magic thing for Israel if he just snaps his fingers and sends Witkoff to the Right. Meeting or something. It's a curious kind of balance.
- [59:41]
A
Seth has been chronicling the increasingly radical attacks on Israel's existence, world, Jewry and all of that on our blog. Very brilliantly. And of course this weekend, if you don't know it, saw this. I don't even know what to say to call it. I mean, it was like a two minute, two day hate of Jewry, America, the West, Israel on the part of pro Hamas, pro Palestinian forces at a conference here in the United States. And I think perversely though, obviously these people are having a huge impact on the Democratic Party in ways that are very distressing, that they are providing both Trump and Bibi with a freer hand, including the Europeans who want to declare a Palestinian state, I guess in two weeks when the UN General assembly begins and all of that, than they might otherwise have because they are growing increasingly crazy and unreasonable. BB says on the table, give back all the hostages. This is something with which 100% of everybody on the planet earth should agree. No one should be a hostage. There should be no such thing as hostages. There's no good argument for ever having a hostage under any circumstances, anywhere on earth at any time. Hostage taking is a monstrous evil that has no justification, period. And what Bibi Netanyahu has said is, I'm done negotiating over how many hostages you get. No more hostages. And the world either isn't hearing it or it doesn't care. It thinks he's evil. It doesn't matter. He is taking the position that is the most humane, that is the most reasonable, send back all the hostages. And we are not, we are likely that he hasn't said this, but, but we're not going to go door to door to kill all of you now. We're not going to go into Gaza and kill all of you and blow up all your tunnels. If you give us back the 20 hostages and the 30 dead bodies, they're saying the west needs to be eliminated. Israel's evil Jews should be, you know, doxed in their homes and all of that. So where, what's the middle ground position? What's the, you know what, These people have an argument on one side, these people have an argument on the other side in the middle. They should give back 10 hostages and Israel should continue fighting a war that it is not really trying to win fully because it's still worried about the hostages. Like, I think Israel now is totally freed in a way that it wasn't last year. And Trump is only getting impatient because he wants the war to end. Not because he wants peace. I mean, he wants peace. He wants the war to end. And he says Hamas should be destroyed. And, and, and he'll look at, the question is not that he'll look at Bibi and say, you're not ending the war fast enough, which is what the Democrats are saying, but you're a wimp. You wimped out.
- [63:12]
D
He said he had an interview with the Daily Caller recently and they released the transcript, and he shows that bit of irritation in the interview and he mentions the fact that Israel's losing the PR war. Basically, it's like they look bad. They look bad. And that's a part of Trump that Bibi should be very cautious about seeing, because he cares a lot about image, Trump does. And if he's imposing that on what's going on in Israel right now, that's not good for Bibi because it means exactly what you say, John. He's, he's becoming irritated, impatient. He thinks it looks bad. These are all qualities that with the amount of power he has and the need that Israel has to have his support, that's not a great position to be in.
- [63:54]
A
Right. But it looks bad. He doesn't. He thinks that the solution is for Israel to crush Hamas and get the hostages back. And he is not lever. He is not unlike the Biden administration, sort of imposing conditions to make that harder. The conditions on Israel winning the war, the way Trump wouldn't mind it winning the war, are internal to Israel, which is it's been fighting this war for three years. The military is tired, soldiers are tired. They're going to have to call up reservists again. You know, the country was not prepared for a three year war. The war was three years long, largely because America compelled it to go on. I just want to add to the dishonor role of people whom history should shame name and put on the, you know, in the, in the dock of infamy. Former National Security advisor Jake Sullivan, now husband of a lousy congressman in New Hampshire who said, yes, there should be an arms embargo on Israel now because Israel just now, there should be an arms embargo. Why? Because it's good for his wife that he says there'd be an arms embargo while he was the national. He knows perfectly well there shouldn't be an arms embargo on Israel. He only is trying to keep himself in good with the future of the Democratic Party. He's a quizzling and a fraud. And he should, you know, as I say he should. His name should either be erased from history or remembered in history for his, for the barbarity of this shift in his view and his position. But importantly, if he's going to say that if, if it's now the place where Jerry Nadler, my congressman, 35 year, 40 year congressman from the Upper west side of Manhattan, who endorsed Zoran Mamdami in order to maintain his viability within the system, has announced that he is retiring from Congress, will not run again next year. Why? Because even endorsing Mamdani, even supporting an arms embargo in Israel, even even being as far left on Israel as he can possibly be while being a Jewish congressman, he will still likely lose in a primary to somebody further to his left. So Israel's got nowhere to go. Israel's got, there's no, there's no case that Israel can make any longer. It's been three years. There's no case to be made. You're either with Israel, you're not with Israel, and Israel needs to act freely. I here in the United States, we.
- [66:40]
B
Should add, by the way, that the Trump admin. One of the things the Trump administration is doing is pushing back on other countries who are attacking Israel over the war.
- [66:54]
A
Right.
- [66:54]
B
This is, I don't want to say it's unprecedented, but it's been a long time, maybe since, I mean, the 80s and you know, Bolton at the UN and places like that, where the US was really throwing elbows in the international community and saying, you know, you can have the Palestinians or you can have American money, you can have them or you can have us sort of thing. And one of the things they're doing is revoking or at least temporarily withdrawing visas for basically anybody affiliated with the Palestinian national government, which is, you know, and so they can't come to the UN General assembly in two weeks, which is supposed to be the big celebration. It's a huge affront to Trump to have this, you know, big coming out party for something he doesn't support in New York in his home, in his home city, and he's not going to stand for it. And so they're not allowing Mahmoud Abbas and his government to come and participate in this ceremony. And they're going to put it to the UN to either do what they've done in the past when this has happened, which is move part of the General assembly outside of the United States, have it at the UN's office somewhere else, Switzerland, wherever in order to do this, or have it without Mahmoud Abbas. But the Trump administration has been pushing back on all the recognitions and, and they have been not pushing back on the, the Israeli government's meetings that have been flow at which they've been floating the possibility of, of recognizing the sovereignty over certain parts of land in the west bank to Jewish community, existing Jewish communities, we should say, in Judea, Samaria and these places. So the Trump administration has actually stood with Israel, not just against Hamas, but right now it's standing with Israel against France and Australia and Canada, you know, and, and all this. So there's, there's a big fight in the international arena. And one of the pieces of evidence, John, for your case that Trump wants Israel to win, not just wants the war to be over, is that he seems personally invested in an Israeli victory and in, you know, and in the Palestinian side and the European side not getting their way on this in a way that's very important. But I also, and I also think that, that, you know, from Bibi's perspective and is that's sort of a gift that you don't know if there's a clock on also how much the US Is willing to, you know, suspend visas from the Palestinian Authority and threaten, you know, Ireland with, you know, trade restrictions or something for, for them boycotting goods made from the west bank or whatever. That's the sort of thing that, you know, there's a clock on at least as far as, you know, the clock when Trump is out of office, even if Trump doesn't get, you know, tired of it beforehand.
- [70:02]
A
Fair enough. Okay. Well, we'll leave it there for Seth, Christine and Abe. I'm John Pothorotz. Keep the candle burning.