Loading summary
Transcript81 lines
- [00:00]
James Patterson
Foreign.
- [00:09]
Jon Podhoric
Expect the worst. Some drinks champagne. Some die at first. No way of knowing which way it's going. Hope for the best. Expect the worst.
- [00:21]
Josh Kraushar
Hope for the best.
- [00:23]
Jon Podhoric
Welcome to the Commentary Magazine daily podcast. Today is Monday, August 3, 2026. I am Jon Podhoric, the editor of Commentary magazine. I wanted to invite you all to consider attending this year's commentary roast, our 17th or 16th. I think it's the 17th. I keep getting the number wrong. Our annual dinner at which we have hijinks, merriment and a lot of fun roasting a prominent person in the news, in the world, in the media, in the world of business. This year's roastie is Ron Dermer, long the right hand man to Benjamin Netanyahu. Before that, the right hand man to Nathan Sharansky, author, remarkable guy. Fun, talkative. This is gonna be a Great evening. It's November 8th here in New York City. It's an expensive ticket, but if you're anywhere in the vicinity or you want to have a great time or you want to support Commentary at our annual fundraiser, Please go to commentary.org roast for more information for the Ron Dermer roast on Sunday, November 8th. And at that roast, you will meet our panelist, Executive editor, Abe Greenwald. Hi, Abe.
- [01:43]
Abe Greenwald
Hi, John.
- [01:45]
Jon Podhoric
Senior editor Seth Mandel. Hi, Seth.
- [01:47]
Eliana Johnson
Hi, John.
- [01:48]
Jon Podhoric
Washington Free Beacon editor, Eliana Johnson. Hi, Eliana.
- [01:52]
Seth Mandel
Hi, John.
- [01:53]
Jon Podhoric
And joining us today, our old friend, the editor of Jewish Insider, Josh Kraushar. Hi, Josh.
- [01:59]
Josh Kraushar
Hi, Jon.
- [02:02]
Jon Podhoric
So it's, you know, we constantly talk about Taco Tuesday. This was Taco Saturday. For the third time in two weeks, Trump threatened a massive attack on Iran coming any second, and then pulled back, claiming that Iran has agreed to the perimeters of a deal to reopen the Strait of Hormuz. I believe he meant parameters, but let's just say they might have also agreed to the perimeters. If you agree to a perimeter of a deal, it basically means you're not agreeing to a deal since you're on the perimeter and not inside the perimeter. And so therefore, we are in a problematic state in terms of whatever it is that he was saying. And the Iranians say they agreed to nothing and they're making fun of him. And I don't know how you don't make fun of him at this point. He was going to destroy their civilization. That led to the first ceasefire. He was going to rain down terror on him three weeks ago and then he didn't. And then two weeks ago or three last week, and then he didn't. And this week, the Israelis are involved, they're going to destroy all the entire infrastructure in Iran and they'll never recover, and it's going to be just hell and fury. And he backed down a third time.
- [03:25]
James Patterson
So
- [03:29]
Jon Podhoric
I don't know what to say except that he is making those of us who have been very supportive of the war look like fools. And so I don't really appreciate that. But it's not about me. I'm just gonna say it's not about me. It's about America, America's position in the world, how America is viewed by our adversaries, and what his word is worth. So, and I think all of those are very bad and in very bad odor. Is there a defense for what Trump is up to?
- [03:57]
Abe Greenwald
I mean, if there is, it's the same defense that, you know, John, you said the third time or the second time in however many weeks, but it's really the umpteenth time, you know, that he's come to the brink of something conclusive and kinetic and then said, oh, no, we got it. We, we got, people want to talk. We got a new, new round of talks. And, you know, he's done this a billion times. If there's a defense, it's the same defense that, that has been dragged out each time he does this, which is, you know, Trump wants peace. He doesn't want to destroy a lot of people. He doesn't, he doesn't want to escalate or, you know, or if he wants to escalate, he wants to escalate to de escalate. That defense has failed as many times as it's been marshaled. So there's a defense rhetorically, but it's not sound. I mean, the only defense, but this is so incredibly problematic in itself is that we may not have the defensive munitions to respond to an Iranian counter response on allies and interests in the region after a huge bombardment. And if that's the case, then we have a separate or related enormous problem on our hands.
- [05:25]
Seth Mandel
Yeah. The reporting indicates that what happened over the weekend was that after building toward what would have been the coup de grace, definitive strike on Iranian energy infrastructure, the Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman called the President and asked him to call this off. And that may have been because MBS was worried that the Iranians in retaliation would attack not US Facilities, but Saudi oil facilities and Saudi tankers. And I think that is worrisome because two things like the President is broadcasting his intentions and then he's broadcasting that other world powers can force us to call it off. We're supposed to be the world leaders.
- [06:38]
Eliana Johnson
So there's, there's one, there's one country that, that is not making the calls here. And it's, it's not Saudi Arabia. Like, it's, again, to raise the point that we've raised before, but this idea that, you know, the American domestic argument around this war centers Israel. And meanwhile, Israelis are waiting. Are we going to be called up? Are we going to be part of this? Like, they, they really have to know. And they generally don't know. But the Saudi, the leader of the Saudis can call Trump and say call it off. And so the skewed version that people are getting here at America is also, it's like yet again, in similar vein to Gaza, we're watching, the American public is watching a completely different war than the one that is happening.
- [07:23]
Seth Mandel
But look, I think that's absolutely true. And we've always consulted with our allies and taken their needs and interests into account. That's not different. But the President broadcasting the fact that we called this off because the Saudis called us and asked us to do it, and you know, their concern that the Iranians may retaliate, it does suggest that Iran and not us has the deterrent power. And that appears to leave us with no place to go right now. And Abe, to your point, you know, the umpteenth time the Wall Street Journal editorial on this this morning opens with an amusing line that the President should definitely win the Nobel Peace Prize because he's already ended the Iran war eight times.
- [08:21]
Jon Podhoric
Josh. Josh Kraushar, you cover this and other issues of national international interest granularly on a daily basis in Jewish Insider. And Seth does bring up the fact that the domestic opposition to the war on the right focuses on the idea that this war is somehow in service to Israel. Israel is at the ready. We keep hearing these reports about how all this stuff on airfields, and they're standing there waiting to just get a signal if the President wants Israel to go. And Israel is clearly not a determining factor here. Israel was involved in the first phase of the war, has not been in the war since the ceasefire in March, early April. And so the fact that Israel is still even being mentioned in the same breath as this war that involves the Strait of Hormuz, which is not an Israeli issue because that's not how they supply their oil. And sort of all the kind of strategic questions about how to protect the Gulf, which are not an Israeli issue, except to the extent that they're asked to help defend or provide instructions on how to defend themselves to the friendly Abraham Accords, nations like the UAE and even Saudi Arabia, which is, of course not a signatory to the Abraham Accords, but is a sort of secret or quiet, maybe not ally is not the right word, but a sort of working partner. And yet we're still hearing it like, we still see it like three, four times a day from the podcast bro community that this is somehow a Israeli Jewish war that Trump is insisting on fighting, and that only JD Vance is standing up against this tidal wave of evil Jewish influence over Trump that led him into this cul de sac or, you know, blind alley or whatever.
- [10:37]
Josh Kraushar
John, look, Israel is very sensitive to that narrative that certainly emerged in the United States in the aftermath of Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu's last meeting in the United States. And I will underscore that if you listen to Netanyahu's public comments and all the interviews he did with, with the press in the most current visit last week, he was very careful not to say, this is what Israel wants. In fact, he, his line was essentially like, we're sharing intelligence with the Americans. We're having a conversation. There's a diplomatic path, there's a military path, there's a economic path, but we're not putting our finger on the scale for any one of those options. So, I mean, to me, that's as much political conversation, understanding that the closeness of Trump and Netanyahu, both on the left and on the right, led to these conspiracy theories and frankly, a lot of misinformation about who was really calling shots during the war. As far as Trump goes, and I echo the comments made earlier, the line about that Teddy Roosevelt said, speak softly and carry a big stick. I mean, Trump is speaking loudly and carrying a very little stick. And I think that has very serious consequences on the, on the stage, not just for the United States, but for our allies. I mean, the biggest strength of Trump going back to the first term, when it came to foreign policy, is that he was unpredictable, that you actually, everyone had. Even if, even if you didn't like his views or didn't like his impulsivity that you never could. Your enemies would have always have to be kept on guard because you never knew what he was going to do. And the reality is, I almost feel like it's Groundhog Day. Every week we have the same conversation. I've literally had the same conversation talking about Iran in the pages of Jewish Insider on Fox. Like, will they? Won't they? The unpredictability has become utterly predictable at this point. And Iran is not stupid. They know this game. They've called the President's bluff. And it's, you know, I share Eliana's concerns that, you know, it sounds like he had conversations with the Saudis and the Emiratis and that may have led him not to go through with the planned military engagement that he was talking about this weekend. But I will say, like, this has been part of a pattern for John, as you say, the last few months. This has been the pattern, like making big threats that he can't really execute on and then finding a way to walk them back at the last minute. And at this point, I just don't believe a lot of the rhetoric and, you know, and a lot of the posts that are coming off Truth Social and, and coming out of the White House is this is a credibility gap between what's being said and what's actually being done.
- [13:21]
Jon Podhoric
I'm back to talk to you about Brooklyn Bedding. I've told you this story before that they came to advertise on the commentary podcast and they sent me a mattress to test and I got one for my son's room and I lay down on it and so did he and it was so comfortable that I got two more mattresses. Breach of my daughters. So I am a Brooklyn Bedding customer. I'm a Brooklyn bedding enthusiast. I'm big on buying things I know will last. Brooklyn Bedding is that kind of purchase. These mattresses are cost effective, but they're also built with long term durability in mind. And they're built right here in the usa. They use Glaciotex covers, copper infused foams, temperature regulating materials to help keep you cool and comfortable all night long. I don't know how much more I can say except that I got them for myself, paid for them myself. And so should you go to BrooklynBetting.com and use my promo code commentary at checkout to get 30% off site wide during the back to school sale. That's right. That's BrooklynBetting.com and promo code COMMENTARY for 30% off site wide. Exclusive with my code. BrooklynBetting.com promo code COMMENTARY. I am concerned about two things, one of which is that Trump may have a different scale of what it is that he thinks he can do when he calls these attacks off. And that we don't think about, we're talking about sort of the geopolitics, the geostrategy, America's position in the world for the next 25 years. And he's thinking about the next 25 hours, by which I mean, I think he thinks, oh, you know what's really great? I'm gonna come out and I'm gonna say that we're halting the war. And then Monday morning the markets will rally. And then, look, I rallied the markets. Everyone's talking about how the economy is bad, but look what I've done over the last six months of this war. I have, by my machinations and feints and plays, I have managed to keep oil prices within a reasonable range and I've managed to keep the stock market free from tanking. And that he gets a surge, a frisson, like right up, you know, sort of like the thrill up his back when the stock market opens Monday morning and it's in good shape, or the oil prices don't go up or down and they remain the same or they go down. And that may be playing a much larger role in his psychology here than the whole question of what on earth are you doing to your reputation as a world leader and to the United States reputation as the world leader that puts its money where its mouth is? And he's like, well, I got a lot of different things going on here, and I'm saving the worldwide economy from recession. But in that case, it's like a quarterback scramble. That is to say, he decided to run this play. He called the play, which was the war, right? So he calls the play as the war, and he starts to scramble. He runs back five yards, he goes to the left, it looks like he about to break through into, into the opponent's territory. And then they come at him and he starts running backwards, and he runs backwards and he runs backwards and. And he's sort of around the 20 yard line, 20 yards behind the line of scrimmage. And he's running around and they're not catching him. Then he's going to move forward, but then he runs back and it's all him. This whole. He's in the backfield, he's hasn't gone into, into, into sort of like enemy territory. And he's the one who called the play to begin with. So if we're still alive and we haven't been tackled and haven't lost the war, he's still nonetheless somebody who like started this thing without any clear sense of what it was gonna mean to finish it. Cause I think he thought, I'll scramble, I'll break through the line, you know, I'll go two yards back and then I'll run forward and I'll go into the end zone. And then it turned out that was not the way the play was going to go.
- [17:29]
Eliana Johnson
Can I make a comparison? When I was a kid, I had a comparison.
- [17:33]
Jon Podhoric
Okay. It's not a hot.
- [17:33]
Eliana Johnson
No, no. I'm going to stick. I'm going to stick with football since.
- [17:36]
Jon Podhoric
Okay, about football.
- [17:37]
Eliana Johnson
When I was a kid, we had these blooper. These tapes of blooper reels. And my favorite was the jets years ago, had a. Tried a. One of those forever lateral plays on a kickoff at the end of the game, right, you're down and. And you don't have time to actually stop and snap the ball, so you try to run it back for a touchdown. And that means you're just like throwing it to each other and laddering or whatever. This play is amazing. And the NFL Films guys put really great music behind it. And you, after a while, you almost don't really know which direction everybody is going in and supposed to going in. But it just. It obviously doesn't work, but it goes on and on and on. And it was so legendary that other coaches actually had the league make copies of the film for them because it was like the greatest attempt at a West coast we've ever. And the stats were that the jets had covered more yardage on that play than they had in the game. But a lot of that yardage is backwards. And that's how I feel it is with Trump. He's looking at the final numbers and going, oh, we covered 160 yards on one play. And really that's because he runs 80 yards back and then forward and then flips the ball to the Vance Core and then back to Trump and then Trump tosses it to the Rubio team, you know, and they tried. There is no, like, underlying structure here, but that is what it feels like.
- [19:10]
Jon Podhoric
I'm frightened, frankly, because I just, I don't. The degree to which, if we take Abe's initial point, which is, what if we've run out of munitions? I heard on NPR on Friday something like that, that the number that is being bandied about is that we have 800 patriots left. And that, you know, that's it. That's it. That we have 800 patriots left. First of all, I don't want to know that number. It's bad that I even heard that number. And second, if we only. If we had 2000 patriots and then we used 1200 of them and we have 800 left, we knew we had 2000 patriots and only 2000 patriots when the war began and he shouldn't have started the war. If we don't have sufficient munitions to fight a war that's going to last more than two weeks, we shouldn't have started the war. So if this is true, and I don't know if it's true is the point I find that, you know, Kane, Admiral Cooper and General Kane and all that, would they have been so positive about this or is it just like, yes, sir, if you want to go to war, we'll go to war for you. We'll do our level best. And then nobody could bring him bad news. So nobody was telling him after two weeks, man, we've gone through twice as many patriots as we expected. And so we gotta, like at that point you gotta ramp up the war. Like you gotta make it harder and tough. That's when you have to start hitting carg island and stuff like that because you're running out of the munitions. You need to keep this going over a year. And that's where the taco stuff starts coming in. He started a war and was unwilling to fight the war that he started by getting it over with sooner because he was dealing with the daily phenomenon of the markets, the oil shock, the stock market, the fact that the public thinks the economy is bad and his numbers were going south. But it does really bring up this question about whether or not he's the only person who would know, he and like five people, whether or not this war was practical or practicable. And I assumed that it was practicable. And now I sort of getting to the point where I assume that it wasn't practicable and that absent a complete regime collapse after the first day of strikes, we were just in this territory where we were going to inevitably end up at this point.
- [21:50]
Abe Greenwald
Yeah, I think, you know, I, this is why Trump, riding high on what happened in Venezuela on The, you know, 24 hour or whatever it was, 48 hour operation to extract from Maduro, believed that. I don't know if he believed it would be that quick, but clearly he had thought this was going to be a historically short, successful war and he was prepared only for that. There must have been some team inside of advisors who reassured him of that. I don't know to what degree there was dissent on this point, but whatever it was, that's what he went with. And after a certain date he was done. And for him he thought it was practicable because he figured we had enough for that for that short month long war. And here and here we are. And you know, something else strikes me about this to Eliana's point about us. It's like we are the only big power making moves that I don't believe right now. Whose bluff is worth calling right now? Iran. They keep, they keep, they're not letting go of the strait. They're, they're, they're, they're sticking to their threats. Right. Putin's still throwing Russians into the meat grinder in Ukraine. You know, I have no reason to doubt that. Say China still has designs on Taiwan. It's the US that keeps now coming to the brink. And then, you know, bluffing. And that is terrible because we've, we've got this geopolitical, geostrategic situation where all these bad actors are not bluffing.
- [23:57]
Jon Podhoric
Josh Trump tweeted this this morning, or trust, or whatever the hell you want to call it. My real polling numbers, not those made up by the fake news media, are the best they have ever been. And why wouldn't they be? With the biggest tax cuts and employment numbers ever, the biggest outside investment in American world history, a totally secure border, giant victory in Venezuela, the denuclearization of Iran, unparalleled respect and success throughout the world, and much more. Don't believe the radical left's fake poll numbers. So I'm reading this, and it goes to the psychology question. Is he saying this cynically and consciously with the idea of rallying his base to say, don't believe what you're hearing. Like, don't believe what you're hearing. We've denuclearized it. We wanted it as we've done it. Or is he living in a world of complete and total delusion? Because we know that he is now polling at the worst level and we're talking about aggregate polling of any president since George W. Bush in early 2008.
- [25:05]
Josh Kraushar
Yeah, he has a base problem. I mean, the polling overall is job approval. If you take the average of the best polls, it's mid to upper 30s. We're nearing W. Bush, Katrina, the territory. And that was when you started to see Republicans jumping off the ship. And you're already starting to see that. Now, granted, folks like John Cornyn, Bill Cassidy, Thom Tillis are, have no political skin in the game because they're retiring. They're not going to be on the ballot in November. But this is what you see when your numbers are in. I always say actions speak a lot louder than polls. Well, you see these type of actions from your own members of your own party when your numbers are getting to the point where they are. I also wanted to kind of address Abe's point. And just, I think this ties together with Trump's psychology and, and why, why the Iran war hasn't gone according to, I think where Trump was at. You do see the February war being compared to Venezuela, the short, sweet, you know, in and out. And I think that certainly was what was on Trump's mind when he initiated the, the conflict. But I mean to me, the 2025 dropping of the bunker busters against Iran's nuclear program, that is much more akin to a short and sweet. I mean, take, take the victory and then, you know, then re calibrate on where things are. That's much more in the Trump style. When you take out the leadership of a country, I don't know how you don't game out the fact that a, it's going to take a long time because you're declaring war and they're going to have to fight back and it's going to be in all likelihood very, very, you know, long and drawn out and you need the, the supplies that, that are necessary to fight that war. But, you know, it just, it beggars belief that a lot of these kind of planning situations weren't kind of fully fully thought out because as you said, the, if the munitions were as low as now we're hearing from press reports and you know, and if Trump also was not willing to commit ground troops. So that's another, I mean, but what war wars are fought without, you know, ground trip. I mean, if you're not willing to go to that level like our enemies are, then you're probably not going to win when you play this out in the long term. So I mean, to me, the, the success of the 12 Day War was much more consistent with the kind of the Venezuela strike. Get it, go in, go out, achieve a foreign policy objective. It doesn't seem like even if that's what was on Trump's mind at the time, it doesn't seem consistent with a lot of the, the characteristics of the Venezuela operation. Foreign
- [27:46]
Jon Podhoric
I'm back to talk to you about Brooklyn Bedding. I've told you this story before that they came to advertise on the commentary podcast and they sent me a mattress to test and I got one for my son's room and I lay down on it and so did he. And it was so comfortable that I got two more mattresses for each of my daughters. So I am a Brooklyn Bedding customer. I'm a Brooklyn Bedding enthusiast. I'm big on buying things I know will last. Brooklyn Bedding is that kind of purchase. These mattresses are cost effective, but they're also built with long term durability in mind and they're built right here in the usa. They use Glaciotex covers, copper infused foams, temperature regulating materials to help keep you cool and comfortable all night long. I don't know how much more I can say except that I got them for myself, paid for them myself. And so should you go to BrooklynBedding.com and and use my promo code commentary at checkout to get 30% off site wide during the back to school sale. That's right. That's BrooklynBetting.com and promo code COMMENTARY for 30% off site wide. Exclusive with my code BrooklynBetting.com promo code COMMENTARY. I feel like we've seen a very almost unparalleled month in the modern presidency here because we not only have this going on with Iran, we have the Senate revolt against the nomination of Todd Blanche to be Attorney General. That is a Senate revolt basically of two Republican senators, two that you mentioned, Cornyn and Tillis saying that they will block Blanche's confirmation if Blanche and Trump don't commit to ending this so called weaponization fund, this weird multi billion dollar payout kind of, I don't know what you would call it, like, you know, payout pile of money that Trump and others will get by as a settlement from the Justice Department for pursuing them unjustly as a result of political pressures in the Biden administration. Something that you know is, is, is outside of all understandings of presidential power and all of that. You got that happening on one side, you've got the collapse of the, of the case that the Reflecting Pools resurfacing was destroyed by sabotage in Jeanine Pirro, one of his most slavish supporters functioning as the U.S. attorney for the Acting U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, dropping the case against this ex Olympian for supposedly peeling the, destroying the Reflecting Pool and saying that based on all the evidence, the Reflecting Pools resurfacing had been done incompetently. And we also know that the Reflecting Pool's resurfacing was done on a no bid basis with a very odd guy. Clearly there's some shenanigans there. And he is just like nothing is. Nothing looks good. Like nothing looks good. Even from the most slavish Republican perspective, nothing is looking good for him. And here we are, it's August, we have three months until election Day and it's like, can he put the wheels back on? I mean, can he go to, can he win the war In Iran. Can he straighten the ship? Can he like stop doing these crazy half assed things and help Republicans move forward? Or are we just beyond this? This is who he is. He's 80 years old. You know, yesterday he announced that he had won the Bedminster Golf Club tournament with a score of 70. I don't even believe that. I mean, maybe he did, maybe he didn't. Maybe Mulligan, I don't, you know, who knows? But if you see him saying he's honored to have won the golf tournament at the age of 80, I'm gonna be skeptical that he won the golf tournament at the age of 80. There's nothing that he says now.
- [32:10]
Eliana Johnson
It's like watching Putin practice with the hockey team, you know, and he always, he had the national Russian hockey team. There's always one image of him getting a breakaway and scoring on a goalie. I was the goalie trying his hardest. I don't really believe it.
- [32:24]
Seth Mandel
Yeah, I mean, these are all self inflicted problems and totally self inflicted problems. The Tillis and Cornyn and the guy in the other guy. There's one other one.
- [32:44]
Jon Podhoric
Cassidy.
- [32:45]
Seth Mandel
Yeah, Cassidy. Yeah, Cassidy. The opposition in the Senate is created by Trump, you know, unwilling to brook dissension in his own party. And that's created this set of confirmation problems for him. The blanche confirmation problem and others. That's one set of problems separate and apart from candidates who are reluctant to appear with him because. Who will be reluctant to appear with him because of his sinking approval numbers. And the war is a different problem, and I think one that is a failure of imagination on the part of his team, which is, this is a different type of, I hate to even use the term, but it's a different type of drawn out and forever war that's created disaffection, dissatisfaction and opposition from the people who are not, I think the people. He was afraid of brooking criticism of forever wars from now. It's not the type of forever war that's creating mass casualties, lost limbs, PTSD and those sorts of things, but it's a type of low simmering conflict that is constantly in the headlines and that is creating opposition from people who are supporters of American leadership, a muscular American foreign policy, and who, you know, probably represent the majority view not only within the Republican Party, we know that for sure, but within the country who don't like to see the headlines that an American strike was called off because the President got a phone call from the crown prince of Saudi Arabia. And I think that's something unexpected. And the third thing I would say is it is a declaration of war to drop a bunker buster on Iran. That's war. And it was surprising at the time that Iran didn't retaliate. I think it was a strategic decision by them to mislead the President about what their capabilities were. And he certainly should have expected retaliation when he went in for seconds this time. But I think it misled him into believing that their aspirations to be a dominant regional player, that they had set those aside and what they're moving towards now is a demonstration that they want to. Not only do they want to survive, they want to be a dominant player in the region, not necessarily as they did before, by building a nuke in the immediate term, but by controlling the geography. And they're doing that quite successfully. The question really in my mind, and sorry to go on, is, is the President playing the quote, unquote, you know, forever war game or low submarine war game just to get through November because the markets are of importance and he will make more definitive moves, you know, on November 5th, 6th, 7th, 8th, or is he really spooked by this? And I don't think any of us knows the answer to this question.
- [36:26]
Jon Podhoric
I know the answer to one part of this question, which is that even if that is the strategy, it's demented because he will never, he will only lose power and authority and force and the ability to work his will the longer this goes on. And particularly if the midterm elections go the wrong way, by which I mean, if the midterm elections go the wrong way, the Republican Party has been standing behind him. If they, first of all, if they lose the House and Senate now, they probably won't lose the Senate, but if they lose the House and Senate, how the Republican Party feels about him in the House will be of no moment whatsoever. But secondly, it's going to be every man for himself. It's like, okay, we stood behind you for two years. You and your cronies, like billions of dollars are somehow flowing into yours and Witkoff's and Lutnick's and your kids pockets from crypto and this and that and the reflecting pool and you tore down the ball. We're taking all this water on for you. And you have taken our power away. You've humiliated us. We're lined up with you. You have a 30% approval rating. Go to hell. You're done. And we're running in the other direction.
- [37:53]
Seth Mandel
You are starting to see Republicans come out and express opposition to the strategy on the Iran war. Tim Sheehy in Montana has been relatively outspoken, and they're not naming the president, but they are saying that they think the strategy is somewhat misguided. Tom Cotton in Arkansas is saying the same sorts of things. And I think you're right about the course after, after the midterms, and I'm not that confident about their ability to retain the Senate. I think it's a real toss up right now. We're seeing.
- [38:25]
Jon Podhoric
We should, we should talk about that. Why don't we move on to that? Because, Josh, this is, this is part of your, this is a big bailiwick of yours, right?
- [38:32]
Seth Mandel
Yeah. I think two things that are worth talking about. And John, obviously chime in if there are other things. I think that polls in Texas are concerning, and we're seeing a drumbeat among Republicans that say Texas can't go red. But those polls are close. And the same in Ohio, where the candidate is little known nationally. And again, Trump's decision, his decision to endorse Paxton over Cornyn Paxton may have run anyway, but that's a difficult race that Republicans have to pour money and resources in, finite money and resources into now as well as Ohio. And we just don't, we don't quite know about, about Maine and Iowa. And Iowa, I think, is a red state where Republicans are likelier to win, but again, they've got to spend resources there. Yeah, Ohio's red, too, but.
- [39:30]
Jon Podhoric
No, Ohio's red.
- [39:31]
Seth Mandel
Challenging terrain.
- [39:32]
Jon Podhoric
Yeah, right. Ohio's red. But the poll, I mean, the point here is that Democrats are making it a race everywhere, that a race is conceivable.
- [39:42]
Seth Mandel
Yes.
- [39:42]
Jon Podhoric
Now everything may go back to homeostasis, and you could end up Iowa, you know, Republicans winning Ohio by four and winning Iowa by nine just because of the general homeostatic nature of American partisan and ideological politics. But you could also see how the conditions of 2026 are uniquely favorable to unexpected reversals in that home. We're not in homeostasis. In fact, we are in disruptive territory.
- [40:14]
Josh Kraushar
If I can add some crushing morosity to the tie between policy and the politics. Look, I actually think this is the height of Trump's foreign policy powers. If Democrats take the House, which I think is very likely not guaranteed, But I'd say 95% chance, you're going to have oversight, you're going to have, you know, Democrats are going to have a platform to challenge much more effectively what Trump is doing in Iran, you're going to have the politics very much play out in the, in the platform of a presidential campaign coming up in 2028. And you have J.D. vance waiting in the wings on the Republican side if he seeks the presidential nomination. So, I mean, I think the closer you get to 2028, it's actually going to be this is the time if you want to win the war, if you want to actually do some kinetic action to actually change the realities on the ground, this is the time to do it. After. No, Trump is learning that, by the way, with the whole issue with, with the attorney general, he first said that, oh, well, I'll wait till November and appoint Blanche as an interim AG and wait till, you know, Tillis and Cornyn leave the Senate. Well, those seats are, Cornyn's seat could flip and certainly the Attila seat could flip. And I think he realized the math is not going to get any easier because Democrats are going to win some of these seats. So I mean, going to the politics on the Senate, I agree with Eliana. I think laid it out really nicely. I mean, my big question, and I may be a little more bullish on the Senate map for Republicans because it'll take a sizable wave for Democrats with all their own problems and their ideological direction to win states that have been reliably Republican and have gone for Trump by over double digits, 11 points in Ohio and even more in all the other battlegrounds that Democrats are trying to pick up. So I just have a, I think on the Senate side, we're, I know we'll be discussing the divisions and the issues with the Democratic Party, but the rise of the socialist left on the Democratic Party may not affect their ability to win the House and may not affect their ability to win a lot of seats. But what it will have an impact on is winning Ohio, Iowa, Texas, Alaska. I mean, you have to, if you're the Democrats, you pretty much have to win at least two of those, maybe three to win the Senate majority. And I have a hard time once these campaigns get underway, seeing how a party that's really catered to the left wing is, isn't gonna have issues winning over those rock ribbed Republican voters.
- [42:39]
Eliana Johnson
They'll need a flip and they might lose Michigan. Who the Democrats might lose. They might lose some ground.
- [42:48]
Jon Podhoric
Right. Well, okay, so let's get to that. So tomorrow night is the primary in Michigan between Haley Stevens and Abdul El Sayed, obviously a matter of immense moment. And there's an interesting question. If you are like a partisan Republican and an ideological conservative, which is on the one hand, boy, you know, if Mike Rogers, the Republican candidate could pick up Michigan, that will gets pretty close to holding the Senate for Republican. I mean Democrats would have to win a really unexpected seat or like run the table everywhere else and play even places that they shouldn't necessarily win to get there. And so hey, let Abdul El Sayed win. Like don't, don't be so upset if he wins. He's an easier target for Rodgers. But you do not want to hope that Abdul Al Assad wins tomorrow night. I don't care. First of all, he has a significant chance of winning. It's not that, it's not that. It's a lead pipe cinch that Rodgers wins that race. The polling right now has Rodgers up three or four over. Say it doesn't have him up 15. It doesn't have him up 10. It has Rogers doing it has Stevens beating Rogers by three or four points. But the earthquake that would be represented by an actual Hamasnik whose leading supporter is his father in law who is an unindicted co conspirator in Hamas funding cases. Getting into the Senate is a, is a history altering moment in America's sister
- [44:39]
Seth Mandel
is out spitting at cops outside ICE facilities and is a Hamas nick at the University of Chicago. I mean this is, you know, all in the family truly.
- [44:51]
Jon Podhoric
Right.
- [44:51]
Eliana Johnson
The key with El Sayed is that he is focused on the Democratic Party and changing the Democratic Party as are plenty of other Democrats. But he doesn't, you know, I don't know if he knows who Mike Rogers is. He doesn't seem to be paying attention to the Republican Party. And that, you know, as I, as I wrote the other day, that's not saying he doesn't want to win. Of course he wants to win because success is the way to remake the Democratic Party in the image that he wants it to follow. He wants the incentives to change and for people to know that you can run screeching about AIPAC 10 times a day, noun, verb, apac and Jewish money and win the Democratic Party. That's the first thing he says. Because that's why in the leaked audio to donor, in his zoom with donors last week or the week before, you know, the comments that had been made public that he called John Fetterman an ogre and said you put an ogre on a pike, you know, as a sort of warning sign that, that will, that will affect the way people view the power of AIPAC and other groups in the primaries, he is, he is concerned about what Democrats say and what they have to say, what he feels they have to say to get elected. It's all about this internal party. So him winning the, if El Said wins tomorrow night, that is a massive victory for a lot of genuinely terrible people.
- [46:22]
Jon Podhoric
Look, it's not just him, right? So that's the Israel. We have a specific issue with the Israel component. But Francesca Hong.
- [46:30]
Eliana Johnson
Well, also, I mean, Hasan Piker, he's one of the guys who has, you know, had Hasan Piker front and center. And Piker is, aside from the Jew stuff, as we say, you know, also a guy who likes to take trips to China and hold up mouths, you know, like aged copies of Mao's Little Red Book or whatever.
- [46:48]
Jon Podhoric
So, yeah, but so we have the Israel stuff, then we have the radical leftist stuff. But we also have a very likely statewide. I think it's now a foregone conclusion that Francesca Hong is going to win the gubernatorial primary in Wisconsin. She is as far left as he. We had the victory in Iowa of Kiros. We have, we have essentially the Colorado, Colorado. I'm sorry, I'm sorry. Molly Quiros. We have obviously the swapping of one DSA person for another in Maine, having run the regular Democrat out of the race, Graham Platner giving way to Troy Jackson. We have a national, we have a national wave of state level and local level takeovers of regular Democratic seats by DSA people who are, who have two qualities, one of which is that they are uniquely loathsome or loathers of the Jewish state and anti Zionist and believe the Jewish state shouldn't exist. And the other is. Yeah, that they are basically anti American, like openly anti American. They, they support China, they take trips to. They talk about America as though it's a great evil. From 1619 onward and all of that, and effectively that takeover has already happened even if they don't win in November. The fact that all this energy among Democratic rank and file primary voters has like just sort of like has been an accelerant to them is an amazing fact.
- [48:37]
Josh Kraushar
What makes these elections this week so consequential is that they're not taking place in deep blue districts, which is where all the other primary DSA successes have taken place in New York City and Denver and Philadelphia. These are among the deepest blue socialist friendly parts of the map. This is a statewide battleground. Michigan, Wisconsin, even more so, John, because most it's a governor's race. This is, you're actually running the state usually even in, at a time when people will go to the further left or further right in a congressional primary, because a lot of people view Congress as something of a debating society. So they just want to send a message. This is your state's governor who's actually the top chief executive. And Democrats are about to nominate Francesca Hong in a landslide election. The governor, the sitting governor in both states by the way, Whitmer in Michigan and and Evers in Wisconsin, they've endorsed the more moderate candidate and it's had no or little effect to frankly to my surprise in Michigan. So this is a sea change. It's a lot of Democrats I've talked to have described it as a virus in the system where you know, it starts at the very far left district like the one in New York City. But because there hasn't been a sustained pushback from party leaders, it just grows and grows and grows. And now you're seeing even in, you know, states and swing states and swing districts, the Democratic Party has been taken over or at least a very sizable faction has been taken over by this, this radical DSA DSA group. And you know, I think the most politically effective, you know, this is what you're going to see in November when you have Mike Rogers go up against potentially El Sayed and the Wisconsin race where you have Tom Tiffany as the Republican, likely Republican nominee. The we're obviously focused on anti Semitism Israel. Those are very it's crazy to look at the DSA platform and see that this is these are the views that these folks espouse but they also want to abolish according to the DSA platform, abolish police, abolish prisons, you know, and borders and the this is why the power, the powerful I was I was on Fox News Sunday when Shannon Bream read that list of the DSA platform to the co chair of the national dsa. And it didn't just go viral in conservative media, went viral in liberal media because this stuff is so insane. So I look I the key in Michigan for elite I mean it's not the anti Semitic, you know, it's crazy that he is palling around with Hassan Piker that he won't condemn a Hezbollah terrorist attack. I mean it's just insane. But the stuff that's going to be the most politically salient for your swing voters is going to be the other stuff that they I mean and an El Sayed by the way has been on record in the recent past as supporting defund the police as well. So there's a whole lot there. The question is for the Republicans can they litigate this effectively because Democrats sure as heck haven't been able to do that.
- [51:36]
Jon Podhoric
You know it's funny, before Eavers, three
- [51:39]
Eliana Johnson
of the four before Eavers three or three of the last, the past four pre eavers governors in Wisconsin were Republicans. So it's just like a key point to make for people is that Wisconsin very often has Republican governors, not just moderate Democrats. It's, it's, it's, you know, this is not like, you know, this is not a state where you can just, it's not a state where it would be shocking like when Chris Christie won in New Jersey and it was like, oh, this is a big, you know, Wisconsin is, is, is not a, you know, we think of it as Matt. We think of Madison and we think of all the progressive energy in and around Madison and all that stuff. But statewide is a very different picture. And Republicans would be, you know, Republicans are, would be salivating at running against somebody like that in Wisconsin.
- [52:30]
Jon Podhoric
But that's the danger. Yeah, go ahead. Sorry.
- [52:33]
Seth Mandel
Oh, Josh, I agree with you to an extent. I agree with you that in, in our circles, the hatred of Israel and the hatred of American supporters of Israel, all El Sayed talks about, his only response to any challenge is aipac. And you're a tool of aipac and AIPAC this and APAC that, which the average Michigan voter I doubt really knows what AIPAC is. And $46 million from AIPAC and this, that and the other is not the most important issue and is not salient for the average voter. But I do think his proximity and the proximity of a lot of these candidates to Islamism and his embrace of Islamism, his father in law's enmeshment with it, his sister's enmeshment with it, I do think that's politically salient and I don't think voters will abide that. And I, I think it's an important issue if he's the candidate for Mike Rogers to run on to press him about for reporter, I mean, good luck. But for reporters to press him about, for journalists to investigate, because that's something that I don't, I think it's just like defund the Pentagon and defund the police and open the borders. Voters don't like that. It's un American.
- [53:58]
Jon Podhoric
Right.
- [53:58]
Seth Mandel
In the same way these other things are.
- [54:01]
Jon Podhoric
So if this were a presidential year and the entire electorate were going to turn out now, granted, midterm elections now are much more popularly attended than they were the earlier decades of my life. Right. 120 million people voted in the 2018 midterms, which was like the biggest number percentage wise in 100 years. But if the entire electorate were voting, these guys would be toast. But remember it's going to be 60% of that, probably, or less. And these enthusiasm numbers are what tells Democrats are not quite twice as enthusiastic about voting, but something like 33 to 40% more enthusiastic about voting in November than Republicans. And that's where a Hong can beat Tiffany. That's where El Sayed can beat Rogers. Because if Republicans don't turn out with the same passion as Democrats, these guys can win. If the entire state were deciding, really, as would happen in a presidential year, they probably wouldn't, can they? In this atmosphere, particularly with everything that I laid out about where things are going wrong for Trump, yeah, they can. That's why it's so important that Haley Stevens win tomorrow night, because you just don't want to take that risk. You know, not that we have anything to say about it. I'm saying that existentially, you don't actually want to test this. Can I just make one?
- [55:51]
Seth Mandel
Yeah, I agree with you. And I've been surprised by the number of Republicans who I've heard saying, oh, we'd much rather run against El Sayed. But the amazing thing, and this underscores Josh's point about the takeover of the Democratic Party, is Haley Stevens is asked about, you know, do you think El Sayed's an anti Semite? She says, yes. And then she says, and then she's asked, are you going to endorse him in the general election? She says, oh, yeah, I'm on the team.
- [56:23]
Jon Podhoric
Yeah, that used to be right. If you said to somebody, is El Sayed a racist? And they said, yes. And you say, do you endorse him? And she says, yes, that you would. That would be. That would be an oceanic moment in media coverage. Open, racist, you know, support for someone you say is a race that is not acceptable, but it is apparently acceptable to say about someone you say is an anti Semite. And so that's, again, another sea change.
- [56:52]
Abe Greenwald
I just have a thought on this issue of which is the more sort of salient line of attack, going after their crazy socialism or going after their Islamist ties. I think that the question is almost academic because the problem, I think, is that, like, you can't get a critical mass of people to believe either one. There are all these voters, liberal Democratic voters, who are not socialists, who are not in their hearts friendly to Islamism, who don't really accept that these candidates want to destroy the Senate or abolish the Supreme Court or that they have genuine Islamist sympathies or ties or histories with them. It's just like they don't they view it as the distortion of that. Republicans have distorted a much milder position and they're not going to fall for the right wing propaganda on these candidates.
- [58:09]
Jon Podhoric
I just want to talk about this
- [58:10]
Seth Mandel
is why I think it's important for candidates to point out that we've actually run this experiment. You know, we've had left wing district attorneys who when people saw the results of you know, abolish bail, go light on crime. People in the most left wing cities in the country in San Francisco have been horrified by what they've seen. Chesa Boudin was tossed out on his tuchus because people were horrified. And San Francisco now has a centrist, happens to be Jewish mayor who is reversing all of these policies. And that's happened in many, many places. We actually do know what this looks like in practice and people have not been happy with it. And I don't think it's unfair in the least. In fact, I think it's essential for these candidates to point to, to show images of, to, to marshal the statistics of what's happened when you know, it's not. The prisons were abolished. They did that in a much lighter way and the results were horrific.
- [59:25]
Jon Podhoric
I just want to propose this as a thought experiment. One of the things that's happening here is that the logic of the political, the sort of the political positions in the air on the liberal left are being crystallized by the dsa. In other words, you're not for abolishing the police or abolishing prisons as a normal Democrat, but you accept that the country was born and racist and you accept that justice is unequal and that black people and Hispanic people are sort of treated worse by cops and by the system and you accept all of this, but still you're not a crazy. So prisons are good and cops are good. Except then you have people who say, okay, well if you believe X, Y and Z is your predicate, then you should probably put your money where your mouth is and say we should abolish prisons and abolish the police and abolish ICE and do all that. And that is more attractive to voters than people realize because it suggests a seriousness of purpose that the eh, you know, just, you know, whatever, just let's go on and have things go. If you think that the country is on the wrong track and you think that things are going wrong and something fundamentally unjust is happening in the country, the people who say I agree with you, something fundamentally is unjust in the country and I have some pretty serious measures and steps I want to take to address that as opposed to the, you know, you're right, everything is terrible, but we're just going to go along with the status quo because changing the status quo is too dangerous. If the electorate is more in the let's disrupt mode, then the disruptors look more attractive. It's just a fact of life. There was a point at which Rick Perry, the very popular governor of Texas, was calling for the abolition, by the way. Interestingly, given the DSA's stance on the Senate, wanted to end or reverse the constitutional amendment that led to the direct election of senators. That was a position he took in his manifesto that he published as he was thinking of running for President in 2012. Meaning then Republicans were in the hey, let's, you know what, let's go to first principles. You know what hasn't worked? Direct election of senators. We should get rid of that. That's crazy. You know, what on earth was he talking about? But, you know, conservative magazines had come up with this idea that, you know, that was bad, or one man, one vote is better than the undemocratic nature of the Senate. All kinds of weird things were being proposed on the right in 2010, and there was nonetheless this wave. Now, some of it went too far, so that those four famous Republican candidates for Senate, o', Donnell, Murdaugh, Akin and Angle, were tossed out, didn't win because they were too extreme. And that would be the analog in this election year to El Sayed and Jackson and whoever else in the, in the states, maybe Hong or whatever. It's like, no, no, that's really too far. But in general, we go for change. We're going for change. And the more change, the better.
- [62:58]
Josh Kraushar
We also have a real life example just in the last few months about what Democrats would tolerate in Maine, where first Graham Platinum we learned he had the neo Nazi tattoo. The party didn't care. Then we learned he watched Hamas videos and cheered for Hamas. Didn't matter. And then we learned he was a sexual abuser and not really a whole lot of people cared. It wasn't until the rape out. I mean, it wasn't until. And even, even when the New York Times story, it was softened and it didn't. So the, the partisan instinct is that. I totally agree with your comments earlier, John, that you're gambling, you're playing with fire. If you think El Sayed can't win a Michigan general election, he's going to cost them some points. But in a wave election where Democrats across the board are doing quite well, then and the desire, as we've talked about, for, you know, throw the bums out, anti establishment, like, it doesn't. Nothing really matters. Like, he's certainly very much in play and the polls suggest it. Polling shows he's losing about five points. That, like, there was a gold standard poll that came out this weekend. Else, I think is down by three points against Rogers, whereas Stevens wins by a couple points. But that's not a huge gap. And, you know, and I've seen enough elections, like in my home state of Virginia, we just elected an attorney general who was revealed to have fantasized about, like, committing violence against his political enemies. And he lost a lot of points on the margins, but he still won the election against a very, you know, very down the road, middle, middle of the road incumbent attorney general. So the reality is we're very partisan, that this stuff doesn't matter as much and that doesn't matter whether it's ideological about Israel, but you're going to pay a penalty. But the penalty isn't as much as it's been in not the distant past where this was disqualifying stuff.
- [64:39]
Jon Podhoric
You know, we've been going an hour, so we have to stop. And the funny part is, and it's not funny at all, but it's interesting is that when I got in touch with Josh to ask him to come on today, my thought was we were going to spend this entire program talking about the meteoric rise. He didn't think it could be meteoric, but over the last two weeks, in openly anti Semitic acts of violence here and abroad, and we haven't even gotten to that topic, but I'm talking about the beating of this teenage kid in Rome, the firebombing of a kosher restaurant in Montreal over the weekend, the defacing of the statue of Maimonides in Cordoba, a bunch of other things that happened last week. It is now almost a daily action that, oh, cancellation of a book launch in the home city of Nashville of a writer who has written a book called White Blonde Jew. The bookstore on the grounds that its followers were gonna protest and make a scene. And this is like her local bookshop that she's gone to her entire life, or at least as long as she's been an adult in Nashville. I mean, just on and over and over and over again and politics and the. Things have moved so quickly that we couldn't even get to this. But, Josh, I did want to give you a chance just to ask you whether you're feeling as somebody who commissions pieces on this Particular stuff, like every day, the extent to which you are feeling amazingly an acceleration because, you know, one wouldn't, would have thought that it couldn't accelerate much faster. But are you feeling an acceleration?
- [66:44]
Josh Kraushar
Look, we, I will say that there has been such an acceleration since October 7, that there have been these spasms of anti Semitic harassment, violence, assault, that they don't seem all that abnormal these days. I mean, I think the thing that we're seeing a real shift in is the politics in the United States. I would have said maybe a year ago, John, that Canada, like the Canada, the Canadian situation, where you just have synagogues under assault, people being abused. I mean, that was happening here, but it was happening at a greater level and greater rate in Canada. And their politics were far worse in terms of the left in Canada and the lack of responsiveness from their liberal leadership in the country. The thing that kind of alarms me, as we've been talking about these last few minutes about Michigan and about these swings the mainstream Democrats totally throwing in with accepting and accommodating the dsa. That's what we've seen in England with Corbyn. That's what we've seen in Canada more recently. That is to me the more crushing morosity of the situation that we have been admirably with Democrat, Republican across the board. For the most part, the government responses have been, you know, condemning anti Semitism, acting to fight the scourge, even if it hasn't been all that effective at times. But now that with Madani's election that that kind of opened a Pandora's box and we're seeing the end point or the acceleration as you talk about it, John, that we now have a Michigan. We're on the verge of having a nominee in Michigan that is openly anti Zionist and has said anti Semitic things and that you have other candidates that are following suit in the Democratic Party.
- [68:20]
Jon Podhoric
Okay, I want to make a quick recommendation and go totally non political here. I was in Maine this weekend and I went to one of my favorite places in America and I want to heartily recommend the place and what I did there, that is the Algonquin Playhouse. The Algonquin Playhouse has been in algonquin, Maine since 1932 or maybe a little earlier than 1932. So early that in fact, one of its earliest players was Bette Davis before she became a huge star in Hollywood. And the Algonquin Playhouse, this sort of. It calls itself the foremost summer theater in America. It is a delightful, wonderful, uniquely American institution. And they are staging right now and will be for another three weeks the best unknown Broadway musical of the last 50 years, which is City of Angels, which won six Tonys in 1990 or something like that. Very difficult show to stage a musical that is partially about Hollywood in the 1940s and at the same time a film noir, a detective mystery, the screen. It's about the story of the writer of a book, of a mystery novel and tells that story and the story of the writer in Hollywood getting screwed by the studio as he tries to write the screenplay to the novel. And it's a very complex, visually complex show, delightful, hilarious, one of the great all time Broadway scores by Sy Coleman, incredibly witty book by Larry Gelbart, incredibly witty lyrics by David Zippel and performed by this astounding cast of like major American talent and directed by someone named Hunter Foster, who, who is a Broadway star who has lately become a director, whom I saw stage a production of Sondheim's Little Night Music two years ago that was brilliantly staged. And this is even more brilliantly staged. And if you are anywhere near Algonquin, Maine, if you're in Boston, if you're in Connecticut, if you're anywhere in New England and you have a chance in the next two weeks to go see City of Angels at the Algonquit Playhouse, trust me, you should do this. And this is one of these, like wonderful local American institutions that Burrows itself in, has stayed there, has, you know, has a mandate to provide the best in entertainment, American entertainment, to an American audience. And it is spectacular. So that's City of Angels at the Ogunquit Playhouse, directed by Hunter Foster. An amazing show, an amazing place, a wonderful place to go in the summer. We'll leave it there. So Josh Kraushar, everybody. Follow Jewish Insider next to the Free Beacon, my favorite online source of all things morose and aside from commentary and the free Beacon. Anyway, subscribe to the newsletter. Subscribe in general every day.
- [71:36]
Eliana Johnson
And we had the revelation that the Kamala campaign feared the Jewish Insider morning newsletter. So if you, if you want, if you want to see, get a part of what presidential candidates wake up in the morning fearing. It's Josh.
- [71:52]
Jon Podhoric
There you go. Right. So anyway, an absolutely. An absolutely Central American publication. So Josh, thanks for coming on and for Eliana, Seth and Abe, I'm John Pod Horowitz. Keep the candle burning.
- [72:21]
Eric Gertler
From the State House to the courthouse, in the emergency room and in the classroom, Americans are losing trust in their leaders. In a 2025 U.S. news and World Report survey, 85% of Americans said government leaders care More more about their own power than the people they serve. 73% are disappointed in healthcare leaders, 72% in business, and 68% in education. But there are still leaders worth believing in. I'm Eric Gertler, CEO and executive chairman of U.S. news World Report. This is the Best Leaders podcast sponsored by the Noble Reach Foundation. On this show, we'll go deeper into the stories, challenges and lessons of extraordinary leaders across public service, business, healthcare and education. You can find the Best Leaders podcast from U.S. news World Report on YouTube, Apple Spotify, Amazon Music, or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [73:22]
James Patterson
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.
- [74:19]
Matt Ebert
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.
- [74:53]
Jon Podhoric
When you get momentum, you step on the gas. That's how you get separation from everybody else. I was at Harvard Law School. I was 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. AI is going to disrupt a lot of stuff. It is never going to disrupt physical blue collar trade skill.
- [75:10]
Eliana Johnson
And the guy just looked at me
- [75:12]
Jon Podhoric
and he said, it's bloody impossible.
- [75:13]
Josh Kraushar
So I asked him this question. I said, it's impossible unless that's.
- [75:19]
Matt Ebert
Podcast with me, Matt Ebert. Watch on YouTube and listen. Wherever you get your podcasts,