Ten Years of Podcasting

Summary

The Commentary Magazine Podcast: Ten Years of Podcasting – Detailed Summary

Release Date: March 14, 2025
Host/Author: Commentary Magazine
Guests: John Podhoretz, Noah Rothman, Christine Rosen, Abe Greenwald

---

I. Introduction

Celebrating a decade of insightful discourse, The Commentary Magazine Podcast marks its ten-year milestone by reflecting on its journey, significant discussions, and the evolving landscape of political and social commentary in the United States. Hosted by Noah Rothman, the podcast features prominent voices from the magazine, including John Podhoretz, Christine Rosen, and Abe Greenwald.

---

II. Major Discussion Topics

A. U.S. Domestic Politics and Government Shutdown

Key Points:

• Hostage Release and Ceasefire: The podcast opens with news about the imminent release of American hostage Don Alexander and the tragic confirmation of four dead Israelis.

• Chuck Schumer’s Voting Decision: The discussion centers on Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer's unexpected vote in favor of a continuing resolution (CR) to avert a government shutdown. This decision has caused significant unrest within the House Democratic Caucus, particularly among the progressive wing led by figures like Kirsten Gillibrand.

• Democratic Party Fractures: The conversation delves into the growing rift between the Democratic establishment and its progressive constituents. Figures like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) are voicing frustration over the lack of "theater" and decisive action against the Trump administration.

Notable Quotes:

• Noah Rothman [04:32]: "Social Commentary columnist Christine Rosen. Hi, Christine."
• John Podhoretz [06:42]: "There's a lot of news from yesterday. So here, here's how I break it down."

B. Future of Democratic Leadership and 2026 Elections

Key Points:

• Leadership Void: Abe Greenwald highlights the absence of a clear leader within the Democratic Party, contrasting it with the strategic prowess of Nancy Pelosi.

• Primary Challenges: The possibility of progressive candidates like AOC challenging senior figures like Chuck Schumer in upcoming primaries is discussed, emphasizing the internal pressure for leadership renewal.

• Senate Vulnerabilities: The podcast examines the potential vulnerabilities of Senate Democrats heading into the 2026 elections, including preemptive resignations and retirements, which could shift the balance of power.

Notable Quotes:

• Abe Greenwald [09:15]: "This is a continuing resolution... It's a more complicated matter... it's still a continued resolution."
• Christine Rosen [15:09]: "The Democrats who are going to come from the left to primary, the centrists, how are they going to do?"

C. Foreign Policy and the Ukraine Conflict

Key Points:

• Vladimir Putin’s Stance: The podcast discusses Putin’s rejection of a ceasefire in the Ukraine conflict, analyzing the Trump administration's strategy in engaging with Russia.

• Administration's Handling: John Podhoretz criticizes the administration for its inconsistent and overly conciliatory approach toward Moscow, arguing that it underestimates Russian statecraft.

• Implications of a Ceasefire: The intricacies of a potential ceasefire are explored, including the challenges of unilateral concessions and the lack of tangible monitoring mechanisms.

Notable Quotes:

• John Podhoretz [35:43]: "The United States is being mortified and subjected to an embarrassing spectacle by the Kremlin."
• Noah Rothman [39:17]: "There’s a huge risk, though, that they get an activist judge who just gives them a bad ruling."

D. Mahmoud Khalil Case and Free Speech

Key Points:

• Legal Proceedings: The discussion shifts to the court case of Mahmoud Khalil, a Palestinian detained under allegations of posing a foreign policy threat to the United States.

• Free Speech Claims: Khalil’s defense argues that his free speech rights have been violated, citing historical grievances related to his family's displacement during the Nakba of 1948.

• Government’s Legal Basis: The podcast critiques the government's vague assertion that Khalil's presence poses "serious adverse foreign policy consequences," questioning the lack of concrete evidence presented.

Notable Quotes:

• Noah Rothman [30:27]: "His story is bullshit and there's a whole lot of bullshit relating to Mahmoud Khalil."
• Christine Rosen [46:45]: "The burden of proof is on the government to prove that he's a terrorist before we do anything to him."

---

III. Insights and Analysis

A. Democratic Party’s Strategic Missteps

The podcast underscores the Democratic Party's strategic vulnerabilities, attributing internal discord and a lack of cohesive leadership to potential electoral setbacks. The tension between progressive activists and established party leaders is portrayed as a critical challenge that could influence future legislative and electoral outcomes.

B. Foreign Policy Critique

Podhoretz’s analysis of the Trump administration’s foreign policy, particularly regarding Russia and Ukraine, highlights perceived naivety and miscalculations. The discussion emphasizes the importance of strength and clear objectives in international negotiations, criticizing the administration’s approach as overly deferential and ineffective.

C. Legal and PR Battles

The Mahmoud Khalil case serves as a focal point for discussing the intersection of legal processes and public relations in shaping political narratives. The podcast debates the implications of executive discretion in immigration policies and the broader impact on free speech and civil liberties.

---

IV. Reflections on Podcasting and Ten-Year Journey

Key Points:

• Origins and Evolution: The hosts reminisce about the podcast’s humble beginnings during the COVID-19 pandemic, highlighting its rapid growth and adaptation to changing political and social landscapes.

• Technical and Content Development: Discussions include the challenges of maintaining high production standards, the shift from low-budget setups to more polished formats, and the balance between scripted content and improvisation.

• Audience Engagement: The podcast acknowledges its rise to prominence without extensive promotion, attributing success to the engaging and timely nature of discussions that resonated with a captive audience during the pandemic.

Notable Quotes:

• Noah Rothman [58:13]: "We fell, you know, over time, we settled into the audience that we now have, of which people who are listening now are very kind and patient."
• John Podhoretz [63:24]: "The success of this podcast is a source of profound joy for me and makes me very proud of the contributions that I've made to this institution."

---

V. Conclusion

The Commentary Magazine Podcast celebrates ten years of providing incisive political and social commentary. Through in-depth discussions on Democratic Party dynamics, foreign policy challenges, and landmark legal cases, the podcast has established itself as a pivotal platform for opinion and analysis. Reflecting on its decade-long journey, the hosts express optimism for continued relevance and influence in shaping informed public discourse.

---

Notable Quotes with Timestamps

• Noah Rothman [08:01]: "Gonna get memories of 2011."

• John Podhoretz [12:45]: "My Galaxy Brain take is that voters generally blame the party that wants the shutdown for the shutdown."

• Abe Greenwald [20:24]: "I'm sorry, but they are, they are... the real problem right now with the Democratic Party is it hasn't really had a true reckoning with its own elitism."

• Christine Rosen [44:40]: "ABC Sundays. American Idol is all new."

• Noah Rothman [50:19]: "But this is not just about Hamas on campus. That what I think the broader campaign is..."

---

This comprehensive summary captures the essence of the podcast episode, highlighting the critical discussions, insightful analyses, and the reflective journey of The Commentary Magazine Podcast over its ten-year tenure.

Transcript

[John Podhoretz]

Your data is like gold to hackers.

[Noah Rothman]

They'll sell it to the highest bidder.

[John Podhoretz]

Are you protected?

[Noah Rothman]

McAfee helps shield you blocking suspicious texts.

[John Podhoretz]

Malicious emails and fraudulent websites. McAfee Secure VPN lets you browse safely.

[Noah Rothman]

And its AI powered tech scam detector spots threats instantly. You'll also get up to $2 million of award winning antivirus and identity theft.

[John Podhoretz]

Protection, all for just $39.99 for your first year.

[Noah Rothman]

Visit mcafee.com/incancel anytime terms apply.

[John Podhoretz]

Hablas Espanol Spritz du dzoich com Du.

[Noah Rothman]

Nosch if you've heard that sound from Babbel before, I bet you do.

[John Podhoretz]

Babbel is the science backed language learning.

[Noah Rothman]

App that actually works with quick 10 minute lessons.

[John Podhoretz]

Handcrafted by over 200 language experts, Babbel.

[Noah Rothman]

Gets you on your way to speaking a new language in just a few.

[John Podhoretz]

Weeks with over 16 million subscriptions sold.

[Noah Rothman]

And a 20 day money back guarantee.

[John Podhoretz]

Just start speaking another language with Babbel right now. Up to 55% off your Babbel subscription at babbel.com Spotify podcast spelled B A.

[Noah Rothman]

B-B-E-L.com Spotify podcast past rules and restrictions may apply. No way of knowing which way it's going. Hope for the best, Expect the worst. Hope for the best welcome to the Commentary Magazine daily Podcast. Today is Friday, March 14, 2025. Happy Purim to everyone. And I hope people did get so drunk last night that they did not know the difference between Haman the villain and Mordechai the hero. That is one of the it is one of the few. It is the only holiday in the Jewish calendar in which you are mandated to get drunk. So it's fun time for all and kind of an important spirited moment for people in Israel and others who, showing their defiance of the efforts to drive them into despair and self doubt and self loathing went all out last night from what it appears with dancing, partying in the streets and general revelry. With me to discuss not that, but other very important matters, including an important anniversary. We have executive editor Abe Greenwald. Hi, Abe.

[Christine Rosen]

Hi John.

[Noah Rothman]

Social Commentary columnist Christine Rosen. Hi, Christine.

[Abe Greenwald]

Hi, John.

[Noah Rothman]

And joining us today, our old colleague, national reviews Noah Rothman. Hi, Noah.

[John Podhoretz]

Hi, John.

[Noah Rothman]

Noah's here. We'll talk about why. One of the particular reasons Noah's here in a bit. But first, got a lot of news from yesterday. So here, here's how I break it down. We have news overnight of the release of one of the American hostage Don Alexander, who should Be coming out tomorrow, I believe, along with four bodies of dead, dead Israelis. What a great deal. Good work by Steve Witkoff and everybody to get one living person out while the ceasefire was extended for two weeks. I mean, I don't want this guy. I'm sorry. I don't want this guy, like, trying to sell me a car. Buy or buy, you know, be my real estate agent negotiating over a house. What a great negotiator. Hoo. Boy genius. Okay, so that's Steve Witkoff and his magical Doha mystery tour. We have Chuck Schumer blinking and announcing that he will be voting and therefore, I assume, has seven other Democrats with him who will be voting for the continuing resolution averting a government shutdown, causing angst and horror in the House Democratic Caucus, which of course voted against the shutdown en masse, though it did pass with only Republican votes. We have Vladimir Putin rejecting a ceasefire, though we had a real moment of confusion around noon yesterday when people were reporting that he had accepted a ceasefire, which is one of the reasons why nobody trusts media. Am I missing, am I missing anything else?

[Abe Greenwald]

Withdrawal of a nominee. But that was sort of previous day's news.

[Noah Rothman]

Well, we could, we could go into a whole thing about the, this weird second tier anti Semite installation of crazy, conspiratorial anti Semites at the second tier of the foreign policy and defense establishment of the Trump administration. But that probably deserves its own show. So, Noah, as our guest, where you want to, you want to start with the.

[John Podhoretz]

Yeah, I'm going to throw you a curveball.

[Noah Rothman]

Okay, go ahead.

[John Podhoretz]

Say the real fun story today is the Democratic angst, as you put it.

[Noah Rothman]

I don't think that's a curveball at all. I think that's straight down the middle. So go ahead.

[John Podhoretz]

Okay. Well, it's a lot of fun.

[Abe Greenwald]

Oh, it's like old times. You guys already bickering? I love it.

[John Podhoretz]

Not yet. We'll get there. Right now we're on the same page. It's very strange. So, yeah. The reaction from reporters yesterday, Hill reporters was the most satisfying from my perspective because they were aghast at the lack of strategy on display. There seemed to be no plan B. I don't. The assumption seems to be among reporters, Hill reporters, Rachel Bade at Politico, Sahil Kapoor, which I think is NBC, they concluded at the outset of this surrender declaration by Chuck Schumer that there was just no plan B. They didn't think that Johnson would get a cr. And once he did, they didn't know what to do. So they were just asking for things that they were never going to get to circumscribe Doge, for example, to get Republicans to essentially sign on to a document that says Trump and Elon Musk just shouldn't be governing right now. They don't really know what the plan was. So ultimately, the Democratic Party's progressive wing that has expressed all this angst and frustration with their leadership, because what they want is theater. They want really good dramatic theater scene chewing displays of resistance style opposition to Trump. And they're not getting it from the geriatrics in control of their party. I'm sure you guys have talked about this New York City guy, Zoran Mamdani, who's really tapped into something in my view. One of his first commercials was making mayoral.

[Noah Rothman]

He's a mayoral candidate in New York City running as the far leftist candidate in the June primary, Democratic socialist who.

[John Podhoretz]

Wants Democrats to or run socialists to register as Democratic to vote for him in the primary in New York City. And his first commercial was making fun of Chuck Schumer doing his little dance and summoning the semiotics of the 60s 1970s protest era. And the commercial is, these guys just have no idea how to do resistance. Right. We do. And that's what he was doing the other day when he was yelling at Tom Homan. So I think Democrats are really, and everybody knows the groups are on fire and the Democratic base is on fire and they want to see some impotent display of hostility to the Trump administration that demonstrates your willingness to sacrifice your reputation, your political position, what have you just put something on the table and risk it for this moment. That's what Democrats are desperate for. And they, even if it comes to a shutdown, which apparently during this closed door meeting was really, Democrats were very hostile to it, including Kirsten Gillibrand, who was apparently screaming at a decibel level that could be heard outside the door about how disastrous this strategy was going to be. So they're up against a Democratic Party that doesn't care about strategy, doesn't care about tactics, just wants to see somebody set themselves on fire and eventually they're.

[Noah Rothman]

Gonna get memories of 2011.

[Abe Greenwald]

But this is interesting that the progressives, the activists class, both the ones that are elected in the House, like AOC and others, and the outside organizations, which obviously put a lot of pressure on Democrats in the Senate in particular. I think they seem to believe that if there was a shutdown that would just contribute to the idea that Trump and Elon are, you know, that it's a Chaotic administration, the Republicans would be blamed. But this is where Schumer, for all of his conceits, is really such a poor manager of power compared to someone like the very Machiavellian Nancy Pelosi. Because behind the scenes, he was telling them all, yeah, maybe a shutdown. Yeah, that would be good. It would contribute to the sense of chaos and the economy is not doing great. But then when push comes to shove, he says, yeah, we're going to pass it. So there he was also talking out of both sides of his mouth, but in a way that was not that enraged his own coalition on the far left versus what Nancy Pelosi was always able to do in the House for quite a while, which is give them one little thing that would shut them up for a while or threaten them. She was very good at alternating between carrots and sticks. And it strikes me that Schumer has neither carrot nor stick for his progressive left wing right now.

[Noah Rothman]

This is a continuing resolution. So there are a couple of manifold ironies here, one of which is that, despite what you're hearing, I listened to NPR this morning and heard this. But we were hearing about how this is designed to give Trump and Musk latitude to make severe cuts. This is the Biden 2024 budget. That's what a continuing resolution means. It means that all policies that are in place, that were supposed to end as of midnight tonight or midnight Saturday morning, whatever, remain in effect. You're voting to continue the resolution that kept the government going last year.

[John Podhoretz]

It's not a clean CR, though, right?

[Noah Rothman]

It's not a clean CR, but it is 80% or 85% the Biden budget. So this is a more complicated matter. It's not a new bill. It's not the Trump budget. It is a continuing resolution. And simply put, if it's voted down by the Senate, Democrats will be shutting down the government. They need to say, I want to shut down the government. Republicans in 2011, that's why he was singing Memories, wanted to shut down the government. In 2013, when Ted Cruz had his weird strategy for whatever the hell it was that he was strategizing, they wanted to shut down the government. Democrats have been spending six weeks talking about the horrors being committed against the federal government by Trump and Musk by shutting down programs and firing people, and then they were gonna vote. Then the House voted, and the Senate was gonna vote to shut down the government, thus sharing in the idea that the federal government should stop working for the American people. This is their only issue. This is the only issue. They're running on is how the danger, the threat that is being posed to federal spending, federal workforce, federal regulations, federal buildings, federal everything. And then they're like, no, we're shut it all down. We're shutting it all down because resistance or because musk or something. I don't even know what the logic is. So Schumer and the. And the. And the Senate Democrats who clearly, like Gillibrand and others, like, do they have to do something? Were like, basically, are you all crazy? Like, why would we do this? Like, this is not. And I'm sure there's polling. We only have one public poll. Polling is, of course, very bad now, but according to Quinnipiac, 32% of the public would blame Democrats for a shutdown, 31% would blame Republicans for a shutdown, and the rest would blame Trump. My guess is adding Trump in there, of course, is an interesting game, because that's not really the question you want to ask, because if they blame Trump, then neither Republicans nor Democrats will be blamed. Even though if you use that formulation, I think they saw terrible numbers. That's what I think. I think they saw. How will you feel? Will you be positively or negatively affected, or will you feel positively about a government shutdown? And my guess is the numbers are hugely against a government shutdown, and Democrats were going to own it because the term Schumer shutdown would have been correct.

[John Podhoretz]

Yeah. My Galaxy Brain take is that voters generally blame the party that wants the shutdown for the shutdown. So in 2018, 2019, it was Donald Trump saying, I'm proud he said, proud to shut down the government. So people blame Donald Trump. Makes a lot of sense. This time you have people like Jasmine Crockett saying, you can't fire a furloughed worker.

[Noah Rothman]

Talk about Galaxy Brain.

[John Podhoretz]

They're rationalizing themselves.

[Noah Rothman]

I don't know what galaxy that is, but Galaxy Brain. It's the Galaxy Brain. Seeing the Jetsons, maybe. Yeah. No, I mean, and aoc. Now, here's where it gets interesting. So AOC came out and said, we all feel betrayed. We're betrayed. We're betrayed. We're betrayed. So she has a decision to make in 2026, and that decision is, does she primary Charles Schumer as a. In the Senate race in 2026 in New York? And a lot of people want her to do so. I assume that her hesitancy is that she might want to run for Senate, though I don't know why she couldn't run for President, though. I don't know why she Couldn't do both. And Schumer, this is what Schumer is scared of. That's why Schumer played the both sides of his mouth thing. Like he knows he doesn't want to shut the government down. He's got to pretend that he does because he's worried about primarying from his left. And Democrats are right to start worrying about primary from their left. This if they are following the Republican pattern after the shocking Obama, there is going to be during, during this Trump term, there is going to be an internal civil war in the Republican Party where progressives are going to be primary, non progressives, moderate Democratic Party, liberal Democratic Party. Right. This is going to happen and this is will be one of the data points on the road. So.

[Christine Rosen]

Well, I mean they can, I agree with you, they will do that. But what about the national mood here? I mean the progressivism? The Democrats have gotten so entirely flabby because they thought the world was their way and they didn't have to. There were all these muscles that they no longer had to exercise. They were on cruise control and it's like suddenly the cruise control stopped and they forgot how to drive or something. You know what I mean?

[Abe Greenwald]

Yeah.

[Christine Rosen]

So the Democrats who are going to come from the left to primary, the centrists, how are they going to do?

[Noah Rothman]

I mean it depends on where you live. Like that's the whole point is the House, the House is now an ideologically purifying body. Right. Because of the great sort and where people and how these things work. Jasmine Crockett of Texas aoc, the squad, people like that. We did see two defenestrations in the, in the Biden years. Right. Or of Jamal Bowman and Mondaire Jones were both sort of essentially defenestrated.

[John Podhoretz]

Cori Bush, wasn't she, Cory?

[Abe Greenwald]

Yeah, Cory Bush.

[John Podhoretz]

Also.

[Noah Rothman]

There were three defenestrations, but in districts where in fact these Democratic candidates were way out over their skis with their populations, which is not true of aoc. One of the reasons that this can happen is because Democrats, ideologically purified by the, by the great sword in the House can in fact primary other other Democrats. And the question is how does that, how is that what's that going to be like at the state level in Senate races in 2026? Now, you also have the phenomena which we haven't mentioned this week of the flight to retirement Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire after one bad poll. I mean, maybe there's more bad polls suggesting that she would lose to Governor Chris Sununu. Former Governor Chris SUNU basically announced her retirement. We've had Senator from Michigan, Senator from Tina Peters of Minnesota announcing her retirement, a couple of other people. So the atmosphere in the Senate going into 2026 is Democrats are going to have a very rough night of it. And it's possible that rather than spend two years fighting to secure a reelection that is unlikely, you're going to have these preemptive resignations. And then the question which we have, as I say, and then the question is, who's going to replace them? Is it going to be, you know, like a person who can win, who sort of statewide tax a little more toward the center, or will the party machinery, as was true in Southern states, in the Republican Party, will everything just attack left? And you're going to have Republicans running in these states against very beatable candidates and increasing the Republican majority in the Senate, you know, to 56, 57 seats could happen. I mean, a lot has. We're in March and that election is, you know, 18 months away. So I, I don't want to overstate things, but they're the ones who are making this, Democrats are the ones who are making this path evident by saying.

[John Podhoretz]

Alternatively, you could have a really bad environment in 2026 and Donald Trump could be virtually a lame duck by that point. Given the present trajectory, it's not hard to imagine. And the assumption, and the counter argument is Democrats are doing the Nancy Pelosi thing and making way for the next generation under the assumption that 2026 will be actually a good night, which is counterintuitive given the signals that retirements usually send. The counterargument to that is Grijalva, who passed away yesterday, who ran for reelection with stage four cancer, knowing that this was probably the likely outcome. So there's not necessarily a wave of prudence that's overtaken.

[Noah Rothman]

Well, okay, so prudence dictates that Trump will be a lame duck in 2027 because it is very unlikely that Republicans retain the House given their one or two seat majority. And the dynamic in a midterm like obviously Democrats would only need to win four seats net, net four or five seats out of 435 against an incumbent president to take control of the House, in which case the Republican advancing the Republican agenda starts coming to a screeching halt. So we're now just here talking about the Senate. I'm just saying that the na, the statewide atmosphere, it's going to be very telling to see what these parties do in these states that are not firmly in one camp or the other. Right.

[Abe Greenwald]

You're assuming coherence on the part of the Democratic Party. And I would just pose this question, who is the leader of the Democratic Party right now? Because we've got Tim Waltz about to go on a barnstorming tour. We've got Pete Buttigieg kind of, you know, putting his toe in the water. We got Gavin Newsom sitting down with Steve Bannon, but all of that. And we've got what, Chris Murphy and others all sort of jockeying for the role of leader. But who's gonna win? I mean, they actually, they're not bold enough to really kind of go for it the way that someone, a Trump or a Vance or on the Republican side would. So they are. It's not just that they have these ideological commitments that they're fighting in the House and the Senate. It's that they are leaderless right now, truly leaderless.

[Noah Rothman]

What does the future hold for business? You know, if you ask nine experts, you're going to get 10 answers. A bull market, a bear market, rates rising, rates falling, inflation's going up, inflation's going down. You need a crystal ball. But of course, there is no crystal ball. And that's why 41,000 businesses have future proof their business with NetSuite Oracle, the number one cloud ERP, bringing accounting, financial management, inventory and HR into one fluid platform with one unified business management suite. There's one source of truth giving you the visibility and control you need to make quick decisions. With real time insights and forecasting, you're peering into the future with actionable data. When you're closing your books in days, not weeks, you're spending less time looking backwards, more time on what's next. If this were the kind of product commentary needed, we would take it in a heartbeat. Whether your company is earning millions or even hundreds of millions, NetSuite helps you respond to immediate challenges and sees your biggest opportunities. And speaking of opportunity, download the CFO's Guide to AI and Machine Learning at netsuite.com Commentary the guide is free to you at netsuite.com Commentary netsuite.com Commentary hey, everybody. Look who doesn't love the good things in life. Even though I enjoy a little luxury, doesn't mean I can always afford it. Not with three private school and college tuitions. Then I discovered quince. Quince is my go to for luxury essentials at affordable prices. People know this, by the way, because they come up to me on the street, if they recognize me from the podcast and say, is that a quint sweater? And I'm like yeah, it is. And I'm also wearing a quince puffer jacket. I'm wearing a quince shirt. I'm wearing all kinds of quince materials. Ever since Quince started advertising, I have become a fanatical quince customer. It offers a range of high quality items at prices within reach, like 100% Mongolian cashmere sweaters from 50 bucks washable silk tops and dresses, organic cotton sweaters and 14 karat gold jewelry. The best part, all quince Items are priced 50 to 80% less than similar brands. By partnering directly with top factories, Quince cuts out the cost of the middleman and passes the savings on to us. And Quince only works with factories that use safe, ethical and responsible manufacturing practices and premium fabrics and finishes. So give yourself the luxury you deserve with quince. Go to quince.com commentary for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. That's Q-U-I-N C E.com commentary to get free shipping and 365 day returns. Quints.com commentary that can be an advantage, right?

[Abe Greenwald]

Well, if somebody's bold, it is. But if, if they are all just kind of tiptoeing around, I mean, the.

[Noah Rothman]

Question is the agenda that they, that they settle on to run on conforms with the reality of what the American people are seeing. In 2009, there was no leader of the Republican Party. The Republicans were smashed to smithereens. Democrats had, you know, 60 seats in the Senate. You know, Obama had won 70 million, had gotten 70 million votes. They're passing legislation at will pretty much in the first three or four or five months. And then a populist movement arose without a leader. In some ways, the leader of the Republican Party in 2009 was Dick Cheney, who was making speeches about the feckless foreign policy of the, of the Obama administration. He was the retired vice president. Like this was, that was weird. So stuff happened. But the thing is that when they came at the Obama administration essentially for being too left wing and ignoring the Constitution and printing up those copies of the Constitution and hanging them out at Tea Party rallies and things like that, they were more congruent with the general mood of the public than the Democratic Party was. Even though Obama had won, that was what the 2010 election largely centering on Obama.

[Abe Greenwald]

Well, and that was an, that was an ideological, the Tea Party was a bottom up ideological movement which then interest groups on the right also kind of co opted or merged with and then led to candidates that espouse that bottom up philosophy of the Tea Party was, in a weird way, much more organic than what you see on the left now, which is a very entrenched, very well funded left wing series of interest groups. They are not organic. They're the opposite of organic.

[Noah Rothman]

Right? So I don't think that they need an issue set that is appealing not only to, you know, Mahmoud Khalil, but also to some guy in Michigan who's like, you know what, I may have voted for Trump even because I couldn't handle it otherwise, but these guys are crazy. And I don't like what Elon Musk is doing. And this is pretty bad. That ability to expand the Democratic coalition a little bit will be under challenge from the fact that all of the juice in the party is on the radical side. And of course, the secret of the Tea Party, though people forget this, is that while Democrats screamed and yelled and said that they were all fascists, they were handing out the Constitution. They had rallies where they cleaned up the garbage as they were leaving. They went to town hall meetings and argued with the, respectfully, with the sitting Democratic congressmen and senators. It was a civilized revolt.

[Christine Rosen]

There was a lot of weirdness in. There was, there was a lot of.

[Noah Rothman]

Like, I'm not saying there wasn't mercerism.

[Christine Rosen]

And, and stuff going on in the.

[Abe Greenwald]

That's always there.

[Noah Rothman]

No, no, I don't want, I'm sorry, I don't want to like romanticize it, but, but it was not that easy to say, oh, they're just a bunch of psychotics. You know, this is just, this is just Ruby Ridge, you know, at the, at the polling place. Like, it was a much more complicated thing going on. And, and it was underestimated, underrated, and too easily dismissed by, by, by liberals and by the mainstream media. The question is, can Democrats sort of, or can Democratic groups foster the right mood? I think that they're too elite.

[Abe Greenwald]

I'm sorry, but they are, they are. They're staffed by elite former undergrads from elite liberal arts colleges funded by elite money. And this. They. I think the real problem right now with the Democr Party is it hasn't really had a true reckoning with its own elitism. That is really what I think had a huge force on the last election. And until they do that AOC going to red states and sort of. I don't know what she thinks she's doing there because she's not engaging them on their, on their side of the issue. She's basically saying this. I am the future. That's elite. I mean, that is, is A through line that I don't think they're going to be. It's not going to be easy for them to escape because the only people in their party who are challenging that, people like Fetterman, although he himself comes from an elite background. And some of the new elected representatives who are actually are from the working class, they don't listen to those people.

[John Podhoretz]

Well, it's greatism, but it is also insularity. And those two things are probably hard to distinguish because they're concomitant, but insularity and the hothouse environment in which they inhabit. And that's a problem for both parties where they're completely isolated from dissenting views and really get a jazz, really get a charge rather out of just irritating the right people, just being as obnoxious as possible and getting the right being provocative and provoking proper reaction. That seems to be like a really a profound source of psychological gratification. I don't quite understand. But that's the, that's how you talk yourself into the notion that voters will really appreciate it if you shut down the government.

[Noah Rothman]

But this is the dynamic Tea Party wouldn't have prospered had it not been for Obama's overreach. So we'll have to see what the Republic. It was a response. So Trump's in, you know, we're in seven weeks here, so we'll have to see where this, where this goes. And of course, some of the, it's more complicated because the inflation numbers weren't bad and all that, but, you know, like the, the economic news is not good and Trump is dub. You know, Trump's behavior on the tariffs is obviously extremely inconstant. And, you know, next, by October, we'll have a sense of whether or not the public is feeling like they are. There's interesting stuff going on in Washington that they kind of like, which would be the salvation of the Republicans or like, well, we didn't want this. You know, I guess we gave it a shot and we don't want this either. I mean, we don't know. We genuinely don't, don't know yet where that's going to be.

[John Podhoretz]

By October, we'll be having the same conversation.

[Noah Rothman]

Right.

[John Podhoretz]

Because the CR only goes to the end of the fiscal year since September 30th.

[Noah Rothman]

Right.

[John Podhoretz]

So we'll be having this very same conversation.

[Noah Rothman]

Right. But again, and if we're having the same conversation and the Democratic messaging still centers on the depredations of Elon Musk and efforts to spend less and make the Federal government smaller. They're going to be in the same trap, which is, do they vote for something that helps make the government smaller, or do they oppose the thing that's supposed to help make the government smaller, but then shut the government down? Like, it is kind of a brilliant. You know, it's like the, one of those Chinese finger, you know, you know those, the things where you put your finger.

[Abe Greenwald]

The finger trap. Yeah, the Chinese finger trap.

[Noah Rothman]

Yeah. Okay, so tell me you weren't watching.

[John Podhoretz]

Severance without telling me you weren't watching Severance.

[Noah Rothman]

I, I, I, I, I was watching Severance. I don't want a prominent role. That's what happened last night. It was. Yet yet again.

[John Podhoretz]

Don't tell me.

[Noah Rothman]

Okay. Anyway, okay, I know Abe's already given up on it, but.

[Christine Rosen]

No, no, no, I'll keep watching it because it's interesting, but it's terrible.

[Abe Greenwald]

I gave up on it. I stopped watching after the goat episode.

[Noah Rothman]

That was already like War and Peace compared to some of the stuff that followed. Anyway, we don't need to talk about Severn side, but I am thrilled to be able to say that I was outraged by last night's episode, as I have been by the previous episodes and the refusal to move the plot forward. Very lost, like, as we have been saying. Anyway, let's move on from that. We have host. So we talked about the hostage release. We've now talked about the, the, the continuing resolution. I texted Abe yesterday morning after yesterday's podcast to say, I'm gonna look like an idiot because the news. Because I said, well, you know, Putin's obviously going to reject the ceasefire. Why would he accept the ceasefire? We're going with hat in hand, and what good is that going to do? And then the news came over the transom that Putin accepted the ceasefire. So I said, oh, man, people listening to the podcast this afternoon are going to think I'm a moron. And then Abe's like, I don't think that's what. That's just AFP Jean France Press saying that he accepted the ceasefire. I don't see anybody else saying it. And then 15 minutes later came the actual story, which is that he had rejected this. He had said, theoretically, I'd love a ceasefire if it meant that Ukraine was surrendering, that would be great. Sure. Right, we'll go, we'll take care, son, and 22% of their territory, and they'll lay down their arms and then we'll, you know, we'll, we'll kill everybody and everything will be great. But, you know, until that happens. I'm not accepting a ceasefire.

[Christine Rosen]

Before the yesterday's news and after Ukraine had agreed to the ceasefire proposal and the Trump administration said they're gonna now put the ball in Russia's court, we were talking on the podcast saying, well, what do you think Putin's gonna do? And Matt and I, or really me, Matt kind of agreed. I said that, you know, I think Putin's gonna give Trump something to work with here to sort of talk up a piece while getting more for Russia. And, John, you said, I think he's gonna sort of flatly reject the ceasefire proposal. And I think he did both, actually. I mean, there is no ceasefire, and he's now working on Steve Witkoff or on Trump using Witkoff as a relay.

[Noah Rothman]

You were out of town. You were just complaining that you were on vacation last week and missed your opportunity to weigh in on the hijinks.

[John Podhoretz]

Yeah, this. It's just been a tragedy, a national tragedy. Yesterday, the Russian side apparently shut out Keith Kellogg. This is his peace plan.

[Noah Rothman]

Keith Kellogg is literally our envoy to the Ukraine, Russia war.

[John Podhoretz]

He wrote the thing. He's been as on board with the Trump administration's effort to cast Ukraine as the bad guy in this whole pageant. He equated them in remarks the other day, analogized them directly to a rented mule that needed a beating in order to get, you know, get them to move in the direction they wanted them to go. So much for that. That the Russians do not respond to obsequiousness. If you study Russian statecraft For all of 20 minutes, you determine that they respond to strength, they respond to hard power, they respond to physical, tangible limits and nothing else. And they'll test and test and test. And my fear going into this thing was that the administration had presented itself in such a supplicating manner, had offered concession after concession, sweetener after sweetener, with no public understanding of what the Russians were supposed to come to us with, that he would present to Moscow a distorted image of what they could extract from Washington, and they would continue to make demands, subtle demands, the sort of, you know, Russian style demands where you don't even know whether saying they accept the ceasefire or they don't accept the ceasefire because they're saying everything in the same sentence. I mean, this is just classic Russian statecraft. And that's what we're seeing. And it's humiliating. The United States. The United States is being mortified and subjected to an embarrassing spectacle by the Kremlin. And, you know, this administration presents itself as being uniquely sensitive to slights, really Easy to offend and very focused on intangible national assets like prestige and respect. But they're utterly contemptuous of anyone who suggests that other nations might value these commodities, too. Those names.

[Noah Rothman]

That's.

[John Podhoretz]

That's naive, that's foolish. Other nations make commitments based on raw material concerns, tangible assessments of their own position, and they don't value emotional nonsense like that and that we shouldn't have a foreign policy like that. But they talk out of both sides of their mouth. I've written this piece a couple of times now. Politics happens in other countries, too. Why are we seeing, you know, the Canadian right collapse? Why did we see Greenland make, you know, efforts to insulate itself against an American Anschluss like this happens in response to American rhetoric. American presidential rhetoric matters. This is something Republicans talk themselves out of, and yet they acknowledge it when the border. When the border suddenly gets quiet. Because presidential rhetoric matters. All of them. It's all situational. There's no consistency whatsoever. And as a result, we're talking ourselves and working ourselves into a corner that will be very difficult for us to extract ourselves from. This war isn't going to end because there's a lot of fluidity on the battlefield. Still, you can't have a ceasefire when both sides understand that they can achieve their objectives via military means. Sorry, that's just the reality of the world that we inhabit. You can try to muscle these parties into it, but we're only muscling one of them into it, which is to conclude that we're trying to muscle Ukraine into a surrender.

[Noah Rothman]

That's.

[John Podhoretz]

You know, I think you said that actually recently, this week, that I believe that if it's only one party conceding, that's. It's not a ceasefire.

[Noah Rothman]

Yeah, right.

[Christine Rosen]

I do think, though, that you can't say yet that the US has been humiliated. I think we're on our way, and I think ultimately we will be. But there are, I think, a significant number of people who. Trump can continue to sell what's happening here as progress to.

[John Podhoretz]

But domestically.

[Noah Rothman]

Right.

[John Podhoretz]

Are you talking about foreign actors or a domestic audience?

[Christine Rosen]

Domestic, I guess.

[Noah Rothman]

Yeah. Yeah.

[John Podhoretz]

Well, what does that mean?

[Noah Rothman]

But here, the one objection that I would. That I would enter to the. Okay, so let's just put it this way. He has said that the. Because Ukraine agreed to the ceasefire, that military aid will continue to flow and that the intelligence sharing will be restarted. So Putin has now rejected the ceasefire. So the war continues. Proof of the pudding is going to be in the eating. He bullied Zelenskyy into saying he would accept a ceasefire. And effectively, though Zelenskyy hasn't said this, he is accepting the notion that Russia is going to keep the 18% of Ukraine that it has seized. Is, are the weapons going to flow? Are they going to get intelligence sharing? If so, then Ukraine can continue to fight the war. Will the Trump administration betray the promise that it made to Zelensky without telling us? We know that this can happen because it happened with the Biden administration and Israel. Biden administration told us that arms were flowing freely to Israel during 2024. And then we heard when everything was over and Trump was in from Ambassador Michael Herzog, who is no right wing lunatic, that in fact the Biden administration had been withholding important aspects of military aid from Israel. So could Trump do that without telling anybody? Sure, yeah, they can do it. They can do it. They can do it tomorrow, Pete. He could do it tomorrow.

[John Podhoretz]

I agree. That's really important. As well as the monitoring mechanisms. What institutions are monitoring the ceasefire? Are they capable of identifying violations? What are the teeth associated with those identifications of violations? What's stage two? What are the metrics to get to stage two? All that stuff matters, but it's speculative because we haven't gotten a ceasefire yet. What matters now is how Donald Trump pushes Russia into this negotiation. A lot of speculation that, wow, once, once we're done with this whole Ukraine muscling operation and Russia balks, wow, we're going to see Trump really lose his patience with Moscow. Still waiting. Still haven't seen any indication that this president has reached his limits of his patience with the Kremlin. It seems he has a bottomless tolerance for Moscow's prevarications and recalcitrants, but none for anybody who's an American partner or ally.

[Noah Rothman]

Right, last point before we get to our special feature today. So today in a New York City courtroom, the case of Mahmoud Khalil, now having been allowed to have two sessions with his lawyers, according to the order of Judge Jesse Furman, will proceed. And the Khalil lawyers issued their brief and it went public yesterday about what it is, what claim that they are making about him. It's a very interesting document. It's worth reading because mostly it's a press release on his behalf making the case that his free speech has been violated and talking about how his grandparents were forcibly expelled from Tiberius, comma, Palestine, Tiberius being a city in Israel. This is a reference to the Nakba of 1948. Tiberius actually a place in which the Haganah, the Pre Israeli IDF fought a battle against Arab forces and won the battle. At which point the population, the Arab population of Tiberias exiled itself, left town having been on the losing side. So they actually, they self deported, shall we say. They were not forcibly expelled. There was no forcible expulsion. There would have been a two state solution in 1947 under the terms of the UN partition plan had the Arabs agreed to such a thing. He was born in 1993. So what the forcible, not actually forcible expulsion of his grandparents from Tiberias Palestine has to do with him being born in a Syrian refugee camp for Palestinians in 1993 is not clear to me in any way, shape or form since of course you have four grandparents and he has an Algerian passport. I don't know what that story's about. I don't know who paid for him to go to the, to sipa, the graduate school of Columbia that he attended and apparently, you know, finished his PhD or whatever in about five seconds or whatever degree he's getting there. He's only there for two years. But here is the key element that I wanted. So his story is bullshit and there's a whole lot of bullshit relating to Mahmoud Khalil and his life that we do not know or do not understand. And gee, would there's, you know, whole press out there that could maybe find some of that out. But our friend Hugh Hewitt sent me this passage from the, from the pleading at the court, paragraphs 82 and 83. Mr. Khalil's counsel did not receive DHS's asserted legal basis for his arrest and detention until the afternoon of Tuesday, March 11th. That's right, three days ago, pursuant to an agreement with counsel for the government. So in other words, he was arrested on Thursday. They did not present him formally with the charges of his arrest or detention. His NTA states, quote, the Secretary of State has determined that your presence or activities in the United States would have serious adverse consequences, foreign policy consequences for the United states. Citing section 237A, 4Ci of the Immigration and Nationality act, the NTA further states, quote, the Secretary of State has reasonable ground to believe that your presence or activities in the United States would have potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences. Paragraph 83 states the Rubio determination was exclusively motivated by Mr. Khalil's lawful, constitutionally protected past current or expected belief statements or associations. That's their claim. This is a Rube Goldberg machine and maybe in a conventional courtroom they give the game away. Here, the only formal communication that they've had with the government says the Secretary of State has determined that your presence would have serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States under our laws. That should be enough for him to be expelled. I'm ready for my life to change.

[Christine Rosen]

ABC Sundays. American Idol is all new.

[Noah Rothman]

Give it your all. Good luck.

[John Podhoretz]

Come out with a golden ticket.

[Noah Rothman]

Let's hear it. This is immense words. I've never seen anything like it.

[Christine Rosen]

And a new chapter begins. Carrie Underwood joins Lionel Richie, Luke Bryant and Ryan Seacrest on American Idol News Sundays, 8, 7 Central on ABC and stream on Hulu.

[John Podhoretz]

This episode is brought to you by Lifelock. It's tax season, and we're all a bit tired of numbers, but here's one you need to hear. $16.5 billion. That's how much the IRS flagged for possible identity fraud last year. Now, here's a good number. 100 million. That's how many data points Lifelock monitors every second. If your identity is stolen, they'll fix it, guaranteed. Save up to 40% your first [e-mail] podcast terms apply. Well, do they have to demonstrate that to the satisfaction of a judge?

[Noah Rothman]

Yeah, well, obviously, because it's going to be in a courtroom. But my point is that there was no communication in which they said. The only communication that we know that they may have gotten an error was they said, we're arresting you for violating your student visa. The formal charge that they were handed by the government is the Secretary of State has determined that your presence has serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States. And that language precisely mirrors the powers of the Secretary of state in the 1952 legislation, which gives the Secretary of State enormous latitude. That may be unjusticiable and that Judge Furman may find he does not have the standing to oppose.

[Abe Greenwald]

Well, that's why they're doing the free speech claim, because there's a legally debatable question about whether he is covered by the right, the protections of the Constitution, even though he is not a citizen.

[John Podhoretz]

Right. But it doesn't seem to me like it would be difficult to make the case if you had to make the case. And we have all the evidence in the world that the guy was associated with this group that was handing out Hamas propaganda. And the Biden administration demonstrated pretty conclusively that there were material links between the protesters and Iran, Iranian financial mechanisms. I don't think it would be too hard to at least infer some connection there, although you probably have to prove it to the satisfaction of the judge. Nevertheless, I mean, this seems like it's a, It's a risky test case. But. But the predicate is there and the evidence is there, right?

[Noah Rothman]

I'm not saying we should not be viewed. So all I'm saying is they have no evidence because they would have put it in this document that the government said to them. It's because of what you say that we are arresting you. They are asserting without evidence that that is why the government is throwing them out, as opposed to saying, we're throwing you out because you blocked street, you blocked pathways, you handed out literature. You're part of an organization called Samadoon that is materially connected to. We don't even have to lay it out. I'm finding a Secretary of State that your presence has adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States. But fine, we haven't seen the government's filing, but it will presumably lay a lot of that out. And yet you would see.

[Abe Greenwald]

But in the, in, in the PR war that's going on, that the distinction you're making is crucial. But it's not the one they're making in the PR war. The PR war is acting as if the burden of proof is on the government to prove that he's a terrorist before we do anything to him. But in this case, actually, legally, it is not. There is no burden of proof on the government to prove it. It's an assertion of executive power and discretion, and he can fight it through the courts. But it's a very different sort of battle than a citizen who's been charged with a crime or any of these things. Which is why I think we had a delay and this is all about pr, because if we had a delay before the wife was trotted out for very flattering profiles, clutching her pregnant belly and going, he's such a sweet man. So, and I am saying that with a lot of sarcasm because the idea that this is going to detract attention from what his actual behavior has been and its consequences for Jewish students on campus, it should not. But it, but again, this is, this is as much a PR and political movement as it is a legal question for a non citizen and his status.

[Noah Rothman]

Okay, so let's, let's go into the PR thing. So first of all, the pr. If the PR effect affects the courts, then obviously that will be something.

[Abe Greenwald]

If, if, if it should not. But we know from past experience.

[Noah Rothman]

Right, okay. Yeah. Okay. But let's say that somehow this is dealt with strictly as a matter of statute. You really think this is a winning PR issue? Who is a winning PR issue with. Is It a winning PR issue with the Columbia Journalism Review and the New Yorker and the people who say that the Trump administration is a fascist state. And MSNBC. Yeah, it's a huge issue for them. 80% of the American people think that Hamas is a terrorist organization. He has, the government is going to assert today that he has ties to Hamas. I don't know what they're. I mean, that is essentially what they're saying is that Rubio has determined that he is foreign policy threat to the country because of his associations who wins the PR war.

[Abe Greenwald]

But this is not just about Hamas on campus. That what I think the broader campaign is, is you should fear Trump whether you're a citizen because he's a fascist or a non citizen, even a legal green card holder, or he could sweep you up and deport you at any time. And there are data points, unfortunately, that might boost that argument. Although I don't agree with the argument they are appealing the birthright citizenship decision. They are. They are still pushing certain sort of ideological transformation of how we can determine who is and who is not a citizen anymore as part of their broader immigration policy.

[John Podhoretz]

But, Christine, that presupposes there are more sympathetic victims out there than this guy.

[Abe Greenwald]

Yes, I, yes, exactly right. No, there are better, precisely, better faces.

[Noah Rothman]

For this guy on the PR issue.

[Christine Rosen]

You know. So yesterday, those protesting the detention of Khalil, where they went, they protested at Trump Tower in New York. There's a video that was going around social media yesterday where some of these protesters were up against, were harassing a woman inside her car, cursing at her, spitting on the car, banging on the window, yelling, I love Hamas.

[Noah Rothman]

Yeah, yeah. That's what I mean by the PR thing. Like we're seeing our own elite pr. It's clearly an elite PR loss, if one can say that there is such a thing. But here's how I would put it. Say you are the hackiest of political hacks. You are a person of no principle whatsoever. You'll say anything, you'll do anything. You're like an ambulance, whatever you are. You'll take a Democratic client, you'll take a Republican client. You'll. You'll argue anything as long as it gets you to 50.1%. Which side do you want? If you have a political client and you're, you know, like, you could somehow, you can come at this as a blank slate. If you. Let's play the. Let's play. Let's play the blank. Let's play the. God. What's the guy's name? John Rawls. Gay. You're the blank slate. You're the, you know, you're, you're the veil of ignorance. You could invent a candidate to run for office. Whose side, which side do you want to take? That's where the PR game ultimately comes down to. Where do you want to go? Because I'm telling you, you think it's been a bad week for the Trump people? I'm not sure it's been a bad week for the Trump people.

[Abe Greenwald]

Well, this is where actually, to Noah's point, what would be effective if you want win the Trump side of this PR war is to start arresting others who also are doing the exact same thing all across the country who have these ties to terrorist financing networks and political networks and to Iran and start getting them out of the country and say, it's not just this one guy. It's a lot of. It's a network. It is a network, and we are cracking down on it because it is a danger to our country. That would be a more persuasive PR argument.

[Noah Rothman]

I mean, it's, I presume. It's. I presume that's coming. So we'll them. We'll see.

[Abe Greenwald]

But again, to strategy. They should have, maybe they should have tied.

[Noah Rothman]

They did not handle this well. They did not handle last week well. They sent in the wrong agents. They were briefed wrong. They didn't have their ducks in a row. And that. That's very clear. So, like, though, though, you know, there was. What is Stanley Ky's line to bl. You know, they had this date all along. Like there was going to be this kind of confrontation all along. It's what has protected the students on campus from October 8th onward is the idea that they're just exercising their rights to free speech and peaceful assembly, or as Matt would say, mostly peaceful assembly. So this was gonna happen. And I'm saying that like the CR and like the Democratic, like, I don't think they want to be on this side. I'm sorry, I don't think that maybe.

[John Podhoretz]

There'S a huge risk, though, that they get an activist judge who just gives them a bad ruling, and then the Trump administration gets mired in process arguments, and then you're losing. And this is too important, far too important of a political project to mishandle. Imposing some caution and prudence on the humanities departments in this country is a huge priority for me, and to see that handled so cavalierly is disheartening.

[Noah Rothman]

Okay, so, Noah, we wanted to talk Today, it being March 14th, perhaps people remember that five years ago, pretty much today or maybe yesterday, the world shut down over Covid. I think it was on March 12 that the word came that Tom Hanks and his wife Rita Wilson had tested positive for Covid. And then came the announcement, either in the middle or just before the beginning of a Knicks game, that the Knicks game was being canceled so that people would not gather at Madison Square Garden for. And that was. And then within 24 hours, the entire country had sort of shut down. Schools were canceled, parks were padlocked, all that stuff. And then we were, we were, we were in hell. So this, this then mean we, the four of us working together, we did this podcast, Abe, Noah and I in an office at the Commentary offices, a little closet like area with some sound baffles on the wall. And Christine very laboriously took us a long time to figure out how to do this, phoned into our soundboard and we then did the Commentary podcast twice a week, week. And somehow it popped into my head that we should follow the pattern of Nightline in 1979 or what was simply called the America Held Hostage specials on abc. ABC started doing after the hostages were taken In Iran, a 15 minute news summary at 11:30 at night after the 11:00 news with Ted Koppel as the host called America held hostage. And 25. By 25 years later, that program had been running for 25 years under the name of Nightline and was in my view the best production of television political news ever done in the United States. Anyway, you know what, this is a.

[John Podhoretz]

Bit of a digression because I was too young for this, but what on earth were they talking about every night during the hostage crisis? Still hostage. No, first of all, day 198 still there.

[Noah Rothman]

They pulled it off. No, they had talking heads. They had, they had people talking about what the, what the strategy still there.

[John Podhoretz]

Yes.

[Noah Rothman]

And remember, there was an election, 1980 election was turning on the hostage deal. And then you had moments of, you know, that was also Death to America protests.

[Abe Greenwald]

And were they the yellow ribbon around the.

[Noah Rothman]

Yeah, yeah, there was a lot. Anyway, so I thought maybe what we should do is we'll do a daily Covid emergency news summary.

[Abe Greenwald]

Yeah, this sounds, I just want to add, this sounds very highfalutin and intellectual, which it was to some extent. But also all four of us were trapped in our houses going crazy. It was very cathartic to speak.

[Noah Rothman]

We could then we could have a conversation over zoom, which we hadn't yet used, tape it over zoom. And then we could also, it Was like, also a way of figuring out what would go on the blog that day, since that was Noah's primary obligation was writing the blog. And. And we'd have a. We'd have a sort of 50. We'd have a brief editorial meeting. Yeah, right, an editorial meeting that we would do. And so we started that, I think around the 17th or 18th of March, something like that of 2020. And as it happens, that also happened to be the five year anniversary of the origin of the podcast altogether. I tell this story in my editor's letter in the April issue of Commentary, which should be up today, if it isn't [e-mail] along with the rest of the contents of the April issue. It's up. Okay, so 10 years of this podcast is what we're here to talk about in the next 10 minutes or so. So, Noah, you came to me probably in 2014 and said we should do a podcast.

[John Podhoretz]

Well, you hired me in 2015, so if I came to you in 2014.

[Noah Rothman]

Okay, so 2015, you came to me, you said we should do a podcast. And I was like, no, I don't want to do a podcast. I. I've been doing the Glop Culture podcast for three years, which, which was there were a lot of stupid, incompetent technical issues related to that and related to how Jonah Goldberg Roblong and I were technically incompetent at doing this over the phone, whatever. And so it was kind of nerve wracking to me. And I only did that once a month. That was one thing. And the other was, as I said to you, like, I like things that are polished to a high technical sheet. And that's why we work very hard to make sure that the physical magazine of Commentary is as. Is as pristine, as physically attractive, and as high quality a physical product as you possibly have. And therefore, I don't want us to be producing this audio program that will sound like amateur hour. And I don't want to. And I don't have the money to spend to turn it into the Daily or whatever, you know, like a fancy.

[John Podhoretz]

Well, the Daily didn't exist yet.

[Noah Rothman]

Okay. But I didn't want it to be a fancy podcast, like serial or something like that with clips. And, you know, we cut in clips and we had. So I was like, I don't want to do it. And you press me and press. And then here's the deal that we came up with. As I recall, we're spending no money. Get four mics and a soundboard. It was like $600, plug it into a computer, and then we'll see what happens. Maybe it'll be good, maybe it'll be bad. If it's bad, we'll just stop doing it. It. Was that. That a fair.

[John Podhoretz]

Yeah. And let me say my pers for first of all, okay. When you give me credit for inventing the podcast, it. I cringe over it because as far as I remember, I think I pressed you maybe three times over the course of a year, and you. You really weren't that resistant. And then you said, you know, it has to be low production value and we'll see what happens with it. Which is fine with me because I came from a radio background and knowing what AM FM is like in the background, it's. It's all chaotic and it's all low production value, with the exception of production pieces with the lasers and the whistles, big announcer, that sort of thing, you don't need. You don't need that for a podcast. And that's the only production value you have to worry about in radio. So low production value. That's radio to me. And then. Yeah, we did the one episode in the conference room without Abe. I don't remember when Abe came in. I think it was just the second episode. But the first episode was just us.

[Christine Rosen]

It was after. No, it was after a few. It was after a few. I remember we had a really weird first episode for me, for some reason. This was. This was before we had set up the studio as a studio, I think.

[Noah Rothman]

Yeah. No, we were in our conference room, which was a very big room.

[Christine Rosen]

No, this was even weirder. Very first time I was on. We were all, John sitting at your desk.

[Noah Rothman]

Okay.

[Christine Rosen]

In your office. Do you remember this at all?

[Noah Rothman]

I literally. I have no memory. No.

[Christine Rosen]

Do you have some memory of this?

[John Podhoretz]

Vaguely. Vaguely.

[Abe Greenwald]

See, this is why we were not this good. It wasn't on YouTube, because the first one of the first times we had a guest before we'd figured out how to, like, have more than four people at a time, Eli Lake came to my house and sat in the corner of my bedroom where I record from, and we were, like, crouched over the same microphone. It's hilarious. I have a great picture of it.

[John Podhoretz]

The point that I'm trying to make is, though, that John, it became your baby real quick. I mean, I don't remember it being my project for very long. It was a commentary.

[Noah Rothman]

Okay. But you. You were to be. Also, to give you credit, you were the producer of the podcast. You were the only person who knew how to tape it, how to edit it, how to mix it. When we decided we were going to use this Mel Brooks song that opens the movie, the twelve chairs. Look for the best, expect the worst. You figured out how to tag it, when to dim it, when to dim the sound out, how to add a little tag of music at the end, none of us would know. And what's more, to this day, none of us knows how to do that. None of the four of us or Matt Continetti knows how to do that. Saurabh Omari, who was on the podcast the first year, did not you, only you.

[John Podhoretz]

I like to maintain the illusion that it's all very difficult and technical.

[Noah Rothman]

Yeah, it was. Well, you had to pay a lot to get expertise. Fair enough. So we did it and we did it for five years and it was good. Like it was. People liked it. You know, 10 or 12,000 people would download it. It was, was good. It was. And it was our promotion for the, for the magazine. It was the way we were doing marketing for the magazine after direct mail laid an egg and was no longer a way to promote anything. And you didn't want to spend money advertising because that wasn't going to get you anything or was going to get you bad subscribe, bad subscriptions that wouldn't stick. So this was a marketing game and we did it very, very, very cheaply. And then Saurabh left and Christine came on board on staff. And so it was then the four of us for like three years, I guess, and it remained the four of us. And then came 2020 and the Daily version of the podcast. And as I say in my piece, it is like a kind of endorsement either of the, of supply side economics or the field of dreams whispering voice that says if you build it, they will come. Within three months, our audience had quintupled in size routinely. In the summer of 2020, we were among the top 50 political podcasts on earth. I don't know how it happened. We never promoted it. There was no way to promote it. How are we going to promote it? We were all locked in our rooms.

[Christine Rosen]

Well, that's how it happened.

[John Podhoretz]

That's how it happened.

[Noah Rothman]

Yeah. Everybody happened. Yeah, that's right.

[Abe Greenwald]

Everyone was a captive audience.

[Noah Rothman]

Yeah.

[Christine Rosen]

And. And the news every day was getting crazier and crazier because. Because the COVID story turned into the George Floyd story.

[Noah Rothman]

Right.

[Christine Rosen]

And then, you know.

[Noah Rothman]

Yeah. So Covid turned into George Floyd turned into Trump's nightly disaster of a press briefing to, you know, Biden in the basement, to the choice of Kamala. To these bizarre conventions and onward. Anyway. And so apparently our. The conversations that we were having were of interest to people. We fell, you know, over time, we settled in to the audience that we now have, of which people who are listening now are very kind and patient. Part. We remain among the top 200 podcasts in the world for the most part. And it's been an incredible. And then Noah went. Noah left us for National Review, and then we asked Nat Continu to join and ask. And then after October 7, Seth Mandel came on to essentially cover the war on our blog and then joined us as the fifth. So that is the history of the Commentary podcast, Noah. You having. Having done the Twice Weekly, having done the five times weekly, and now you are on, I'd say, what, like, half the time on the editor's podcast, Which. Which brings. Which goes back to a Twice Weekly on National Review, back to a Twice Weekly format. I think what struck me is that we. It's like we never didn't have anything to talk about.

[John Podhoretz]

No. Which is a struggle. I mean, some days. Some days we did have nothing to talk about. It's just you're very good at talking and making nothing entertaining and. And enlightening. And, you know, you guys shouldn't rest on your laurels too much, because I don't think Commentary Podcast should have a monopoly on daily punditry. I'm lobbying very hard behind the scenes to give you guys a little nudge from the corners here. We're gonna. We're gonna go back to it in the mattresses. But, you know, the success of this podcast is a source of profound joy for me and makes me very proud of the contributions that I've made to this institution. And I wish it well. And its success is not in any way owed to me in any possible shape or form. You guys have. Have made this thing into what it is today, and I hope to see its continued success up until the point at which we overtake you.

[Noah Rothman]

But by the way, it is interesting to me. I mean, Gauntlet throne.

[John Podhoretz]

I love it.

[Noah Rothman]

There's the Gauntlet. You know, listen, you know, leagues expand. You know, like the Mets came in. Did take them eight years. Eight years to win a World Series or seven years to win a World Series. But it is striking to me how. How little competition we have had in that respect. I mean, obviously, Ben Shapiro does a daily podcast. He's in a different realm. I mean, he's like 10, 15 times our size, at least, not 20 or 30 times. There are daily podcasts it is striking to me. And I think part of the. That there hasn't been more competition, as you would say, or more. Not even competition, just like more people where I do this. And I think some of this is really hard. Well, I think it's.

[John Podhoretz]

You make it look easy, but it's. It's pretty difficult to have something, you know, compelling to say every day about what's going on in the news, because sometimes we're not on the news. Ben has your gift, and you have that gift. I don't like that's. It's a struggle.

[Noah Rothman]

That's true. Right. I mean, maybe the story is. And the one thing that I did not mention and that we could serve is that I said, we're not going to do any prep. Like, I. If we're going to do it, we're going to do it, but I. I am not writing intros. I am not. We're not gonna. We. We're not gonna do any prep because I did not want to invest the emotional capital in doing it in the early going. And though we have had conversations over the years about how maybe we need to change format, we should time our segments. We should. We should be more like the editor.

[John Podhoretz]

We did that experiment where we timed our segments. That didn't work out.

[Noah Rothman]

Yeah, yeah. But like the Editors, which is a wonderful podcast, you know, the Editors has a very, very strict, extremely well organized format. And, you know, Rich makes an opening topic statement, throws it to one of the, you know, first throws it to Jim Garrity usually. Then the second segment throws it to you. Noah. Third segment throws it. Then you have. Then you have. You guys talk about the things that you did last week, and then you talk about the pieces in the magazine and the website that you would like to write very precisely formatted. And I didn't want to do that because I thought it was going to be too much work. And we did. And I didn't want to have to do the work. So in the end, it became an improv, and maybe that's easier. It's the what. What seems. And what seems intimidating people is the fact of, as with all writing, for example, like the blank page, that you start with the blank screen or the blank piece of paper, but if you just start talking, you just start talking, you know, And I guess maybe we also were. We had Trump, and then we had. We had just had the world on fire. We've had the world on fire for 10 years. It's. If it had been, you know, the. I don't know. The second Clinton, first Clinton administration or saying although there was Lewinsky there, but if there had been, it's not like there was. It's not like it's hard to find things to talk about.

[Abe Greenwald]

Well, and we also all have weird hobbies and interests, you know, sort of not both political and non political. So it allows for a great bit of unusual trivia to pop up and turn the conversation in the direction of, you know.

[Noah Rothman]

Right. All right, so I'm going to end with a commentary recommend since we should be following our own format that we violate all the time by not even having one. But I do want to recommend on Netflix this new situation comedy comedy called called Running Point with Kate Hudson, which is essentially the fictionalized sitcom version of the life of Jeannie Buss who took over the Los Angeles Lakers when her, when her father. This was the subject also of, of Running Time. I can't remember the name Showtime or Running Time or whatever on. On. On Max a couple years ago. The sitcom about the. The show about the Lakers. Anyway. But Kate Hudson plays the newly installed CEO of her family's award winning, but now a little down on his heels basketball team because her brother turns out to be a crack addict and she's the only one who can take over. And I've seen two episodes now and it's really pretty good. Very funny. With an absolute staggering breakout performance by none other than the seemingly troubled son of one Tom Hanks. Chet Hanks, whom you may have heard read about in the news over the last 10 years. He's got a lot of tattoos he wants. He's a white rapper. He's said some things that are very controversial. Anyway, he plays like an out of control lunatic basketball player and he is fantastically good. Like he is really, really good. So that's Running Point on on Netflix with, with Kate Hudson and I seems pretty.

[John Podhoretz]

I think my wife is really into it because she coaches basketball and she makes you watch it. Yeah, she coaches the kids basketball.

[Noah Rothman]

Yeah.

[John Podhoretz]

And she turns into Pat Riley during basketball season. Like she's got clipboards and spreadsheets and she's really working these kids, makes them do push ups if they don't listen. Like she gets into it. So yeah, she likes basketball stuff.

[Noah Rothman]

Are push ups still a thing?

[John Podhoretz]

My God, yeah. Yeah.

[Abe Greenwald]

They're very important for women to keep. Maintain upper body strength.

[Noah Rothman]

People do other weird.

[John Podhoretz]

Well, they're entirely punitive.

[Noah Rothman]

Is it the full body? But is it the full body push up or is it the knee? You. Could you put your knee on the ground?

[John Podhoretz]

Absolutely. Not. No.

[Abe Greenwald]

That's not a push up gun. If you put your knees on the.

[John Podhoretz]

Ground, it's not a push up knuckles. Yeah. It's the real deal.

[Noah Rothman]

Got it.

[John Podhoretz]

But she liked that show. I had no idea that was Chet Hanks. He is. He is pretty interesting.

[Noah Rothman]

He is pretty dazzling. Yeah. No, I mean it. The one thing I was never able to do my entire life was the chin up. They used to desperately try to make you do the chin up. And there were all these kids were like, okay, you know, and they put the hand up and they would leg up and then they got the chin over the bar.

[John Podhoretz]

You don't come to the commentary podcast for upper body strength. None of us here could.

[Noah Rothman]

We do have a black presidential exam. I never get a tire of saying that. We have a black belt on this podcast.

[John Podhoretz]

Yeah, it's true.

[Noah Rothman]

Arts black belt.

[Christine Rosen]

I remember, John, when we were joking actually about the what to call the commentary studio, you said something like, no muscle shoals. And I said flabby road.

[Noah Rothman]

That's. Yeah. Good times. Good times. All right, well, Noah, thank you so much for joining us for this trip down recent memory lane. And we'll be back on. We'll be back on Monday. So for Christine and Ava and John Pothor, it's keep the candle burning.