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- [00:00]
Unknown Host
This episode is brought to you by Hulu. Buckle up, everybody, because the Kardashians are back. The new season of the Kardashians is now streaming on Hulu. I have been watching the Kardashians since I was a kid, okay? I grew up with this family, okay? I always want to know what they're doing. And in this new season, Kim is juggling multiple businesses and her blooming acting career. Kim Chloe revisits old feelings, and the family members support one another through their personal journeys. And as always, it's full of fame, family, and fun. You won't wanna miss it. The new season of the Kardashians is now streaming on Hulu.
- [00:41]
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- [01:20]
John Podhoretz
Expect a worse.
- [01:22]
Abe Greenwald
Some preach a pain, some die of there.
- [01:26]
John Podhoretz
The way of knowing which way it's going. Hope for the best. Expect the. Welcome to the Commentary magazine daily podcast. Today is Friday, February 14, 2025. It is, of course, Valentine's Day, so happy Valentine's Day to all who celebrate. It is also the birthday of my sister, Ruthie Bloom. So happy birthday to Ruthie. Did I already introduce myself? I'm John Pod Hortz, the editor of Commentary, and with me, as always, executive editor Abe Greenwald. Hi, Abe.
- [02:02]
Seth Mandel
Hi, John.
- [02:03]
John Podhoretz
Senior editor, Seth Mandel. Hi, Seth.
- [02:05]
Eli Lake
Hi, John. That was a very. I'm Ron Burgundy.
- [02:09]
John Podhoretz
Well, honestly, I think people are seeing a cognitive decline, and you and Abe are going to have to, like, shore me up and pretend that everything is okay, because all week, I've been having trouble saying what date it is, and we have to restart over rerecord. I don't know what is going on. I've been in. I've been in a Washington hotel room for, like, three days. So maybe that's the. Maybe that's the issue. But I am kind of. I'm embarrassing myself, and so I can't remember if I just had used my name, you know, 15 seconds earlier. So I apologize for this unseemly look into the apparently problematic workings of my brain. But you know who doesn't have problematic brain workings is our. Is our guest panelist Today, Eli Lake, of course, Commentary contributing editor, expert on all things lawfare and weaponization, host of the Breaking History podcast, which is a is a new iteration of his Re Education podcast. And what is your title at the Free Press? Columnist, reporter, columnist, reporter, Podcaster, essayist.
- [03:30]
Abe Greenwald
I guess I don't know.
- [03:31]
John Podhoretz
And and Eli's I guess it's your Is it your first or your second podcast that is now out is yes about California and the craziness of California stretching back many times. The San Francis, inspired by the why on earth is California run so badly Question that was raised by the response to the fires and you locate California's decrepitude, political decrepitude, let's say to this extraordinary moment in San francisco in the 80s when the lunatics lived 70s excuse me, when the See see what I'm saying? See how it's see what's going on here when when the lunatics took over the asylum.
- [04:20]
Abe Greenwald
It's a really fun listen.
- [04:22]
John Podhoretz
It's great. It's great. And so go subscribe to Breaking History on Apple, Spotify, wherever you get your your fine podcast. A little programming note for everybody, which is a homework podcast. Homework assignment. Monday morning we will have on the podcast Dan Senor, course Commentary board member, author of the Genius of Israel and Star Nation and the host of the Call Me Back podcast. And he is coming on in part to talk about an absolutely jaw dropping conversation he has with former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant. And the podcast is largely about the internal Israeli conversation right after October 7th about how to fight the war in against Hamas and whether it whether the war should start with Hamas or whether the war should start with Hezbollah, oddly enough, or interestingly enough, and there are details that no one's heard before. Gallant, fascinating character who spent two years after his military service in Israel as a commercial sea fisherman in Alaska.
- [05:33]
Abe Greenwald
In Alaska.
- [05:34]
John Podhoretz
Anyway, so what I'm saying is you might want to listen to the Call Me Back podcast with Yoav Gallant before you listen to the podcast on Monday. Never done this before. Like giving people a homework assignment. Your homework assignment also is to read the March issue of Commentary now up@comMENTARY.org or should be up by the time you hear this.
- [05:59]
Eli Lake
A pretty great Sounds like a character out of Yiddish Policeman's Union.
- [06:03]
John Podhoretz
He does. That's exactly right. Except I don't think he wasn't he wasn't really serving the interest of Right the Union is Michael Chabon's novel fanciful what if novel about what if what if Israel were actually located in Sitka, Alaska if the, if, if a part of the Alaska peninsula had become the Zionist homeland and a murder that takes place there. It's sort of a, it's an evil anti Zionist piece of filth, but a very, very, very captivating book as Chevon's a really wonderful writer though. An anti Zionist piece of filth. Anyway, to move on from this, separate.
- [06:48]
Abe Greenwald
The art from the artist. John okay.
- [06:51]
John Podhoretz
Yesterday, the interim U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, Danielle Sassoon, resigned because she claims in an absolutely jaw dropping eight page letter that the new Trump administration. We know that Trump said earlier this week that he was going to move to drop the charges against Mayor Eric Adams of New York City, believing them to be unfair and that she says I, I can't do that. In this letter. She says I can't do what you are asking me to do. You know that nothing has changed in the status of the case except that you don't want me. This is a letter written to Pam Mondi, the newly installed confirmed Attorney General. You want me to drop charges? I have to go to a judge and say we're dropping the charges and explain why. And I don't have an explanation for why because nothing has changed in the case. You don't. And in fact the conversations that I've had with you with the acting Deputy Attorney General who was assigned to this case for a Trump lawyer, Emil Bove, who was worked with new soon to be installed Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanch on Trump's defense in the New York City in the Alvin Bragg case, on the 34 or 91 charges of check kiting or whatever, you know, the, the Michael, whatever the bribe case that, that Trump was convicted on bo, she said, well, you know, in these meetings with Bowman, in a letter with BO and things that are going on with, with, with Adams's lawyers, that basically a quid pro quo was agreed to where, where we dropped the charges and then we would sucker with Adams and Adams would do things that we want, some of them policy driven, meaning unserved migrants. But I can't do that and this is inappropriate. This is inappropriate. It's essentially a political deal and I'm not a political person. I swear to faithfully uphold the law and so I can't do this anymore. And then in response, Bove writes this eight page violent screed about Danielle Sassoon and how she's refusing to fulfill the President's wishes. And she says in the letter she said, yeah, I mean she didn't respond to it, but her letter is I can't do what you're asking me to do. I have to resign. I don't want to resign. I've been here forever and I don't want to resign very. And like, I've been working in this office and I believe in what we're doing, but I, I, I can't, I'm in good conscience do what you're asking me to do. So the. Eli, that's Eli's daughter. If you're on, if you're on YouTube, you can see this, you can see the paint of Eli's daughter. Zora.
- [10:24]
Abe Greenwald
Say hi to the, to the, to the commentary listeners.
- [10:27]
John Podhoretz
Hi, Nora.
- [10:29]
Abe Greenwald
How are you?
- [10:29]
John Podhoretz
Okay, so, okay, well, just to finish this, to try to finish this point off, to finish this point off, she says, I, I'm going to have to resign because I can't do. And then he's like, you're, you're terrible. What a terrible person you are. You're not, you won't, you won't, you won't enact the President's wishes. And she doesn't want to quit. She has no interest in quitting. She has worked in the U.S. attorney's office for like six or seven years, and he just like lambastes her. And I gotta tell you that based on what I know and hear and people who know her and all that, she is a very conservative person. She is politically very conservative. She was a Scalia clerk, she was a Hickenbogn clerk on the, on the Court of Appeals. She's an Orthodox Jew and raised as an Orthodox Jew and apparently is, you know, actually personally, or what I hear may be very supportive of the, of the Trump agenda, but can't do what she's being asked to do here. And Bove says, okay, we accept your resignation and we're going to move this case to Washington under my supervision to the Public Integrity section. And of course, for good measure, we're going to investigate you, Danielle Sassoon, and people in your office who are refusing to carry out the president's wishes, which is weird because she's resigning on a matter of principle. And what, what exactly is it that he's going to investigate? Who she, what did she do? And five officials, right? And five officials in the Public Integrity Office in Washington, the Department of Justice resigned right afterward because they were like, we're not touching this with a 10 foot pole. This is a legit indictment gotten against Adams. And she says, we're actually, we're planning to add to it. We have, we have other, we have Obstruction of justice charges we are planning to add to it.
- [12:35]
Abe Greenwald
Okay.
- [12:37]
John Podhoretz
So I think, you know, we've had three weeks of Trump and everybody's saying Trump is causing constitutional crisis and Trump is terrible and everything he's doing is terrible. And all of this, I, A lot of this is ridiculous. This is the first real thing where I think you can look at this and say, oh, boy, this is like not good. This is highly problematic. That, that they're doing this and that a lot of this, maybe they could have figured out a way to cover their tracks, but that Bove was literally serving as Adams's legal counsel effectively in this case. And then also basically saying, this is really great for us because we're going to, basically Adams is going to do whatever we tell him to do. So Trump can, and she says in the course of the letter, so pardon him. Like if you want a pardon, President Trump pardoned Eric Adams, then this case goes away. But I can't go to a judge and say we want the case dismissed because I have no argument to make that the case should be dismissed. Dismissed. Now, Eli, you as the master of the argument.
- [13:44]
Abe Greenwald
Well, no, I mean, I'm in agreement with you, so I'm not.
- [13:46]
John Podhoretz
I know, but I'm just going to say, yeah. If we try to figure out what the counter argument to what I've just said is.
- [13:53]
Abe Greenwald
There is no counter argument. It's just raw. This is what happens when you have people who take over the government who believe that the entire system is a sham. Because what they would argue is that, well, how is this any different than U.S. attorney David Weiss closing down investigations of Hunter Biden for several years, whether it's the IRS or looking into his obvious violations of the Foreign Agents Registration Act. And in many ways, and you could say in substantively, it's not really different, but when Weiss did it, it was a five alarm fire, correctly, a five alarm fire for giving the President's son special treatment. And this two tiers of justice because there were people who were ensnared in a kind of new interpretation of Farah and enforcement of Farah under the First Amendment. Farah being the Foreign Agents Registration Act.
- [15:00]
John Podhoretz
Agents Registration Act.
- [15:02]
Abe Greenwald
So that was an argument for why people like me became, you know, slightly red pilled about a lot of these things and called for FBI reform, saying this is an abuse of power. So then what, what does the Trump administration do in the first four weeks? Oh, we're going to, like, we're going to get rid of the middleman. We're just going to say we're dropping the case for a political favor, and you work for me now, so you've got to go in front of a judge and you just got to, oh, well, come up with something. It doesn't matter. Well, that's. That completely undermines our system. It undermines our rule of law. The reason I was outraged, I think the reason why Commentary listeners and why this podcast was outraged about those kinds of things when they were done more subtly under Biden, is because we believe in a principle that these institutions should not be weaponized, that they should not be politicized. Well, this is exactly that. And so what you're really. This is the reveal, and we knew it all along. It's not even a reveal. The reveal is these institutions were never what they said they were. They've always been weapons of whoever's ever in power. I'm in power, and I'm gonna use them as a weapon. And that's why we have a system of checks and balances. And this needs to be checked and balanced. This is an outrage. And guess what? Danielle Sassoon is a hero. Can we give her, can we roast her at the Commentary dinner this year? Can we give her a Sakharov Award? Because she's terrific. Good for her. That, that took real guts. And that, that's. And that's. That's called understanding. And like, you know, your, your principles as opposed to just going with the crowd in the moment.
- [16:37]
Eli Lake
And it feels a bit like the Biden pardons in a way, because it's just, I mean, Eli, you said cutting out the middleman, but it's like, it's so such an obnoxious version of the thing that people are realizing now who never held that opinion before. Right. Like after the Biden pardons, we saw a lot of people saying, boy, we should really do something about the pardon power. Which is, by the way, very difficult to do because the pardon power is explicitly in the Constitution and there isn't an explicit limiting principle and whatever. But it got this whole discussion about, you know, boy, I would really like to limit the pardon power. And we should do this, and we should. You never had that before, even though you had sneaky and bleak pardons, you know, from, you know, basically every administration. So this is, this is one of those situations where I think you accidentally woke up the kind of, you know, non politics brained people who were like, well, even I can see that that is really bad. Right. And that sort of thing gives, I think, the opening to the opposition to be able to Expand this into a much larger conversation. Like, see, now do you understand, you know, Chuck Schumer saying, now do you understand why I was dancing around with an avocado chanting, we will win? Now you get it. You know, it's like this is what we were talking about. Sort of gives them an example.
- [18:06]
Abe Greenwald
I don't want to hear anything from the Democrats for another, like three years because they, they, they defrauded the American people by pretending that Joe Biden could, was, was mentally competent to be president. And they, and they conducted disgusting warfare against their political opponents and they colluded with social media companies to censor people. Do not tell me for a second that they have fidelity to the Constitution.
- [18:29]
John Podhoretz
Anyway, by the way, I just want.
- [18:30]
Seth Mandel
To say on this point, though, that there's almost something refreshing about the nakedness of this version of it, of the, of the, that it's not sneaky. You know what I mean? Because whenever anything happened under the Democrats, the pardons, whatever, you also had to endure arguments about why it was good, why it wasn't bad, why Hunter was being persecuted and so on and so forth. So at least this is out there.
- [18:57]
Eli Lake
Yeah, Dave Chappelle calls him an honest thief, right?
- [19:00]
Abe Greenwald
Honest liar.
- [19:01]
Eli Lake
Honest liar. Dave Chappelle calls him an honest liar. And that was Chappelle's argument for why Trump was successful in, in the elections is that he, you know, he doesn't pretend not to be that thing that he's obviously not.
- [19:13]
John Podhoretz
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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 well, look, I mean, Bo's conduct here is like a really bad scene in a political thriller where, you know, the person who is trying to uncover the conspiracy finally meets the head conspirator who says, you know, look, we've got things we gotta do here. And this is, you know what? You're so naive. This is how the system really works. Yeah, don't give me your guff about being moral and political. You know, this is, this is how we do it here in Washington. You know, generally speaking, people know not to, you know, show who the guy, the man is behind the, behind the curtain. No, because that never works out well. And you do. And Eli, your sort of your rant about the Democrats and three years of gaslighting and all of that is a rev. They do that because it's more politically effective. What? No, we're just trying to get the truth. And then you go, oh, this is awful. And then the public basically decided, after years of this, that. That it had gone too far. This is Trump, just to make it clear, dropping, demanding that the Justice Department drop the case against a Democrat who is the mayor of New York City, who is accused of taking money from a foreign government that, at least to my mind, is not a great friend of the United States in the form of things that. I mean, what the indictment alleges is that he got. I mean, some of this is he got upgrades on Turkish Airlines, and some of it is there's more stuff going on there. And I suppose in the broadest brush, you could say that if. If someone has failed here, the failure is a failure of prosecutorial discretion, which is that Trump looked at. You could say Trump looked at the case and he said, oh, come on, he got some upgrades. And then, you know, he has friends that he said to the, to the New York City Fire Department, can you just, like, be nice about the inspection of the new Turkish consulate? Because they want to open, and you're not giving them a certificate of occupancy based on supposed fire code. Give them a break. Come on. That's not. He's not like, you know, rolling around like Scrooge McDuck in Turkish money. Okay, so that's Trump's perspective. But the indictment is sitting there. And I know, you know, I know that grand juries can do. But Danielle Sassoon didn't indict. As a matter of law. Danielle Sassoon didn't indict. Or the office. The U.S. attorney's office in the Southern District didn't indict Donald Trump. A grand jury, not Donald Trump. Excuse me, Eric Adams. A grand jury indicted Eric Adams. And the code of conduct of the Justice Department says we need to be able to prosecute people at all levels without fear or favor. And you are literally explicitly saying, because this guy is mayor of New York City and is useful to us, the charges should be dropped against him. That's, as I say, it's genuinely bad. And if the opposition to Trump didn't light its hair on fire when he says, I want to lay off, I want to give government workers a buyout, or I don't like what USAID is doing, and we're going to. We're going to like, close a lot of it down, both of which are within the. Within his remit. And then they act like this is the Reichstag Fire. Then something comes along. It's not the Reichstag fire, but is like a classic case of political, you know, self dealing.
- [26:48]
Abe Greenwald
Can we, Can I add something? Nobody voted for this. This is very important point. People. You could argue. People voted for Doge, people voted for the DEI order, people voted for the Trans Youth Medicine order. Okay? Those were things that were campaigned on. And that's. That's politics, ain't beanbag. That's how we play the game. But nobody voted for, like a president instructing a US Attorney to make something up or whatever he wants to do, to drop the case and act like, oh, we found something here that's just, that's just wrong. Like, we. You can't vote for somebody saying, I'm gonna just undermine the Justice Department and revoke a grand jury indictment. There is a process. Pardon Eric Adams. I mean, she's absolutely right. That's the constitutional way. And maybe there's an argument that, yeah, okay, fine, we got somebody in there who, you know, has a different view of things, and that's why, okay, fine, but this is. Nobody voted for this. And that's the point that I think is very important to make. This is not a question of, like, you lost an election. Deal with it.
- [27:53]
John Podhoretz
Okay, so the argument that I would make counter to that, not an argument I believe in, but that you could make as a devil's advocate, is the reason that they want the charges dismissed against Eric Adams is they want him as an ally in the illegal immigration fight and that his gratitude toward Trump will be so great and his insistence, his that. That he will be there. He will be their enforcer in New York City. And there's already sort of this 59 million dollar payment by. By FEMA to New York City to cover the expenses of illegal immigrants at the. In part at the Roosevelt Hotel in Midtown, where that the terrorist group Trend. I can't remember the third word. It's like, I was gonna say trend to agua, but it's.
- [28:46]
Seth Mandel
Yeah, yeah, isn't that agua? Yeah, it's something like that. I had it before you said it.
- [28:52]
John Podhoretz
I know, okay, sorry. I apologize. Anyway. And, you know, then there's this whole argument. It's like, oh, well, the Justice. The Congress appropriated money for fema and. And so there's money to give FEMA to help defray the expenses to localities for illegal immigrant stuff like that and that. And so he wants. But he bo. Is essentially like I say, you know, being the man behind the curtain and saying, we want Adams to be our puppet in this. Which is fine. So. But don't. Don't make somebody else do your dirty work. If that. If what you want is Adams as your puppet, pardon him. They don't want to pardon him because Bove says what he wants is to dismiss the case without prejudice.
- [29:44]
Abe Greenwald
That's what this. That's.
- [29:45]
John Podhoretz
Let's talk about. Let me just finish.
- [29:47]
Abe Greenwald
That's the part they didn't vote for.
- [29:49]
John Podhoretz
Right. Okay.
- [29:49]
Abe Greenwald
Yeah.
- [29:50]
John Podhoretz
He wants it dismissed without prejudice. What does that mean? It means it's the opposite of what it sounds like. It means that they are not. They don't want to dismiss. They don't want to say they're. These charges are dropped. They're dismissing the case with that prejudice. But they could reactivate it at any time if they want to. And Bo says either in a letter or he said it in a meeting or something like that, that. That's. So they have enforcement power over Adams. He's not in the clear. That's also why they're not pardoning him. He's not in the clear. They want to have this sword of Damocles hanging over Adam's head so that he does what he wants. And that is illegitimate in our system.
- [30:33]
Abe Greenwald
Totally.
- [30:34]
John Podhoretz
You cannot use your political power to force another political player to do your bidding. Right. It's not exactly a bribe, but it's some version of that anyway. So I just want to complete this thought by saying that there are people on Twitter, as there will always be people on Twitter on the right, who are saying, oh, it doesn't mean anything that Danielle Sassoon was a Scalia clerk. Scalia always liked to have one clerk who was a liberal so he could have the argument in his chambers and to have someone express the contrary view. So don't tell me that she's a conservative because she was a Scalia clerk. And I am telling you right now, she is a conservative. She is a political ideological conservative, Federalist Society person. And like many believing Orthodox Jews, I think was an enthusiastic. Was almost. Was almost. Almost certainly an enthusiastic Trump voter. And for an enthusiastic Trump voter to say, I can't in good conscience do this. Think about that for a minute, by the way, there.
- [31:49]
Seth Mandel
But there are also people on the right now who would consider the fact that she's a conservative as a mark against her right. They don't. They don't. They don't associate conservatism with. With. With the right.
- [32:01]
John Podhoretz
Yeah, no, they want maga. Right. And that. And so, and, and they, they look at this and they're behaving. In a resolutely anti ideological way. Right. That's part of the point here, is this isn't how politics works and how it works. We people want, you know, immigrate, we're immigrant, we're elected to do something about illegal immigration. We're going to use whatever means are to our at our disposal to have successes in this realm. And if that means dismissing charges against Eric Adams so that he's our puppet, we're going to do that. And what's more, we're proud of it. And what's more, if you, if you call us out on it, we're going to go and character assassinate you in a letter.
- [32:40]
Abe Greenwald
Yeah, I want to get to the character assassination part.
- [32:43]
John Podhoretz
Yeah.
- [32:44]
Abe Greenwald
And maybe this is just like, you know, probably a pointless intervention on this podcast, but to our fellow scribes who are on the right or the center, right, you're not being a friend to Trump by going along with this. This is like basically telling your alcoholic friend, no, no, no, no, no, no, you don't have a drinking problem. And this, this is the thing that it's like, that's what really gets under my skin. It's the fact that, like, in order to prove, you have to constantly prove your loyalty to a political movement. And it's just illiberal. And these are the same people who only a few months ago were invoking liberal principle, small l. Liberal principles that we agree on here in order to criticize the Biden administration. And I guess I'm saying is that, A, you're discrediting yourselves and B, you're not even really being a friend to Trump because what is your role as a, you know, as a journalist? What is your role as somebody, you know, who, you know, kind of writes publicly in the political conversation? Is your role just to sort of just validate everything that, you know, your team does? I'm sorry, but I just find that to be terrible. I don't know. And it really bothers me that you can just erase somebody's objective career and life and who they are because they've become a convenient critic or convenient enemy of Trump. It's disgusting. And again, I give her awards.
- [34:27]
Eli Lake
And to add to that, the key point about Danielle Sassoon is that there's no reason to believe that she's trying to become a resistance figure. Right, right. The Trump MAGA world is very sensitive to their antenna are always up.
- [34:43]
Abe Greenwald
Yeah. They're sensitive to big men's out there.
- [34:45]
Eli Lake
Yeah, yeah. You know, in the first, in Trump's first administration, there Were, you know, Anonymous, you know, the guy who wrote as Anonymous and then came out and then now Miles Taylor.
- [34:57]
John Podhoretz
Right. And then Alexander Vindman, who was the whistleblower who ca. The first impeachment.
- [35:03]
Eli Lake
There were people that, that felt like, I mean, even in the, in the doj, there were, there were people who seemed to relish the idea.
- [35:11]
Abe Greenwald
Right. And I want those people purged. By the way, I'm with you.
- [35:14]
John Podhoretz
Yes. As a.
- [35:16]
Abe Greenwald
Activists. Yes, absolutely.
- [35:18]
Eli Lake
Like, as a, as a, as a feeling of. It was like their way of, of, of earning their way back into good, like, oops, I serve Trump. So now, you know, to clean my record, I'm going to, you know, turn. The key point about Danielle Sassoon is that she does not, she does not fall into the category of people who be. Tend to behave this way or would behave this way. And so, you know, sometimes you're going to have people who actually do believe what they say and are doing, you know, what they think is the right thing. They're not always a resistance plant looking for a book deal.
- [35:57]
John Podhoretz
But, but in Eli's, in the way Eli sort of described this, and he's right. Or Abe described this also, they don't. If you don't do what Trump wants, you are effectively a resistance fighter.
- [36:11]
Abe Greenwald
Yeah.
- [36:12]
John Podhoretz
If you're not with him, you're against him. If you say, I can't really do this, I'm really sorry, I got to resign. I understand. Maybe you think you can, but you, I actually am here to tell you you can't. And then not only is your resignation accepted, which is fine.
- [36:28]
Abe Greenwald
Yeah.
- [36:28]
John Podhoretz
But then Emil Bove says, we're launching an investigation into you again.
- [36:35]
Abe Greenwald
It's nuts.
- [36:37]
John Podhoretz
That's. It's not even. It's not even. It's not nuts. It's like it's an enforcement mechanism.
- [36:44]
Abe Greenwald
No. I want to watch the investigation into both. Well, should be investigated.
- [36:49]
John Podhoretz
Yeah. Right.
- [36:50]
Abe Greenwald
Well, yeah. I mean, it's outrageous.
- [36:52]
John Podhoretz
It's outrageous. Okay, so we're, we are, we are, we are all in agreement on this. And, and we'll see. We'll see. I mean, this isn't going anywhere. He has Bov. Has removed the case to the Justice Department and now has to find. Now he's going to have to find somebody at the Justice Department to do what? By the way, here's the thing. Somebody at the Justice Department has to do what Danielle Session would not do, which is go before the judge who is supervising this case, whose name is Kathy Ho, I think, and say I want the charges dismissed at which point Judge Ho will say on what grounds? And ordinarily, when you go before a judge and say you want a case dismissed, though the indictment is already present, you would say there's new evidence, exculpatory evidence. And as Sassoon says in her letter, there is no new evidence. Somebody is going to have to go before a judge and commit a disbarring offense.
- [38:00]
Abe Greenwald
By the way, this is. I just want to Also, we should distinguish. This is very different because a similar thing happened with Michael Flynn, which I wrote about for the magazine. That was an example where there was a review BY an independent U.S. attorney that found all kinds of information that showed that he should have never been in, you know, the crosshairs of the Mueller investigation in the first place. It showed that the lead investigator that was looking into him said they should drop the case. It showed that the transcript didn't say anything about what was leaked in the phone call. We can get into the fun stuff, you know, all the details. That was where there really was new evidence that was not shared, that was not shared with Michael Flynn's counsel. Like all of that legit, you know what I'm saying? That is apples and oranges here so soon. Said there's no new information. On what grounds am I going to dismiss? It's outrageous.
- [38:55]
John Podhoretz
I had a conversation with a friend yesterday who is sort of in the same boat that I feel like I'm in, which is that it's like being bipolar from 9 in the morning until 3 in the afternoon. I find myself thrilling to many of the things that Trump has done or is doing. His support for Israel, the interesting way he has shaken up the political conversation about the Middle east with the Gaza, with the Gaza plan, the war on woke. I have a whole the COVID story in the March commentary is by me. We call it Trump to the Good, the Bad and the Ugly. And a lot of it goes into why everybody is so startled at what Trump has done. And then at 3 o'clock in the afternoon, almost every day, he does something and I go, oh, my God, now I remember why it was that I what it is that makes me suspicious of him, that makes me uncomfortable with him, that makes me worried that he is his inconstancy and his flightiness and the fact that he observes no niceties, including niceties like the ones we're talking about here, where it's like, you're not supposed to say the quiet part out loud about how you're trying to get blackmail. Eric Adams. Do something nice for Eric Adams. So Then you have blackmail over him, compromise over him, and then I crash. Because I would like nothing more than to think this is really going to be a creative and innovative presidency, even though I have problems with Trump's, you know, personal morality or whatever. See, for me.
- [40:48]
Seth Mandel
I'm in a slightly different place in that it's everything he does, the good, the bad and the ugly, all seems so ephemeral that I never know if it's going to last. Are they. Are they really going to get bogged down in this? Are they really going to pursue this? Or is this. Is this a throwaway? So it's like I'm sort of up in the air at all times. You know, I just never. I never know. I can't land.
- [41:14]
Abe Greenwald
I agree with everything. I agree with what you just said. I agree with what you said it, John. But I will say this. It was a binary choice in the election, and I still am glad that we do not have President Kamala Harris, because that's how much. That's how deep the rot is on that side of the ledger. So my eyes are wide open. And I would say it's more than just that he doesn't observe the niceties. It's that he doesn't understand that there are checks and balances on his power, and he has no appreciation for the spirit of the Constitution. And under normal circumstances, we went in a time machine. You know, 10 years ago, all of us would say, totally unacceptable. I'll hold my nose and deal with the Democrat. But the Democrats, in part because Trump drove them so crazy, have become, in my view, such a pernicious danger to the Republic. At this point, I am still comfortable with the fact that Trump won that election, and I still can't bring myself to say it would have been better had Kamala won. So I just want to point that out.
- [42:23]
John Podhoretz
Yeah, I'm only right. But I think it's important. Yes, it's a binary choice. And we're now in the world that the Democrats delivered to us by defending. Here's why. Because they spent two years gaslighting America about Biden's condition. Ordinarily, the conversation that was had in July of 2024 would have been had in January 20, where Pelosi and Obama and everybody would have gone to Biden and say, you can't run for a second term. And if you try to run for a second term, I'm afraid that we're going to have to drop some bombs on your head about your condition to the American public. You come out, say, you're not going to run. Say it's been the honor of your life to be president. You will be remembered. You will be lauded in the history books for restoring normality to American politics after this period of extreme abnormality. You were cincinnatus. You went back to your plow. It's, it's, it's amazing, right? And then that didn't happen. And then Biden declined and declined and declined. And there's also the policy issues that we, we don't like him for, but he declined. And then they pulled this switcheroo. And then a person who I, I believe I would. I have thought about this a lot, was the least impressive person in the modern era ever to top a presidential ticket. The least personally impressive, the least intellectually impressive, the least compelling person ever to top a presidential ticket.
- [43:58]
Abe Greenwald
Walter Mondale.
- [44:00]
John Podhoretz
Walter Mondale was a serious legislator. And he, I mean, he, his performance was awful. George McGovern was a terrible candidate, but, you know, McGovern was a war hero, I'm just saying. And they both represented aspects of the party that, had it not been they who had been the candidate, somebody else very much like them would have been the candidate. That wasn't the case here with Kamala Harris. She was an accidental presidential candidate chosen as a diversity hire, unexpectedly elevated into this position without the party having the right to choose her. And so Trump is the product. Trump's victory, in part, is the product of Biden and the Democrats. The binary choice that was put before us was a choice that might have gone the other way had the Democrats not destroyed their own norms by, by acceding to the fiction that Biden was capable of being president. Now that's over with and Trump is president, and we have to deal with the things that Trump does. And as I say, many of them, I'm thrilled by many of them. A very anti Trump person that I saw last night said, you know, look, I don't know what to. I mean, I, you know, I hate him so much. And yet there are things that he has done that nobody else would have done. We used to say in the first term. And Noah Rothman on the podcast would say, what Trump has is doing here in the first term of the Trump administration. That's good. Any respectable Republican, anyone on the. Who had won, who wasn't Trump and won would have done, you know, sort of maximum pressure on Iran, you know, tax cuts, deregulation, all of that. Where he was good in the first term, he was good as a. Applying conventional Republican policy. That's not the case anymore. Nobody would have done what he is doing with usaid. Maybe you don't like that, or maybe you do whatever with wokeness, with the DI orders, with the gender orders, at least not in the opening days. They all would have said they were going to do it, but they would have been much more ginger about it. They wouldn't have taken a sledgehammer to them and all of that. And so it's a very different term.
- [46:29]
Abe Greenwald
When Trump moved the embassy, that was a promise that all these candidates had made for 30 years, and he actually did it. So that was a little bit of a preview. That was a little.
- [46:38]
John Podhoretz
Right. The embassy. And that was a small move that.
- [46:43]
Abe Greenwald
Had a very dumb column about, like, oh, we gotta worry about the Arab world and blah, blah, blah. And I totally regret that. And it trained me in some ways to be like, you know what? All these pieties of Washington establishment policies is just, you know what, like evaluate case by case. You know, I mean, I'm not signing up for the entire Trump agenda there, but it's like, no, but that's what I'm also.
- [47:06]
Eli Lake
There were also people who would, who were say, who said, don't move the. I don't want Trump to move the embassy, even though I agree with moving the embassy, because it's going to delegitimize, like, anything Trump touches, going to legitimize this and that. And that sort of brings up a different part of the Trump discussion, which is people who, you know, friends of ours who are, you know, who are anti Trump, have sort of taken to deriding the idea of calling balls and strikes on what a president does. Right. They sort of use this as a, you know, it's kind of become, you know, an insult almost. But the reason to do that, to call balls and strikes, to say that good policies are good and bad policies are bad, is not just for your own credibility and all that. Obviously, we have principles that we stick with. You know, I had people who were like, I, I was school choice. And then, you know, I didn't like Betsy DeVos or whatever. And I was like, well, I still think parents should choose the school they.
- [48:06]
John Podhoretz
Go to their kids too.
- [48:07]
Eli Lake
No matter what you think of what Betsy DeVos said today, I believe what I believe. But the other side of that is that, look, we, you know, you want the president to feel incentivized to do good things and deterred from doing bad things. It's true that Trump doesn't really listen to us when we tell him not to do something. But the reaction to some of these policies, they do matter, they do get to him and he does hear them, read them and process them. And it would make no sense to say that thing you did that was obviously good was bad because that would be like trying to convince somebody to do the opposite. Right? In other words, what you, if you think Trump, if you think Trump is bad, if you think Trump has terrible anti democratic instincts, then what you want is almost toddler like to sort of treat him, you know, to reward him, give him candy for doing the things that are pro democracy or whatever, you know. The point is you want to try to sort of, you know, my wife Bethany used to call this dolphin training. You want to sort of dolphin train the president into doing good things because you want the president to do good things.
- [49:29]
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- [49:59]
John Podhoretz
But I mean you don't, that, that's, that's interesting. Although it's a little, you don't have to condescend to try. It's almost the opposite. It's like, that's great. This is lousy. Why can I say that? You're a truth teller. You, you, you, you, you say I don't want to stand on niceties. I, I can't. That was, that's bad what you're doing. I, I, I, I'm doing you the, I'm doing you the credit of taking you seriously and telling you what I think. That's actually intellectual honesty requires, by the way, that you don't trim your sails in either direction. If you think that Trump is doing innovative, spectacular things on using executive orders, on gender ideology and di, you are obliged even as my friend said that if you hate him, like if he looking at him engenders rage in you, your intellectual honesty obliges you to say, okay, I look, I felt very negatively about Joe Biden and then after October 7, for about seven weeks, he did what I thought was good and noble and proper in these regards. Although, you know, I think Yoav Gallant is going to be telling us different stuff as he goes through the dance, you know, call me back podcast we're going to talk about on Monday. But, you know, you have to say it like, you know, okay, we've spoken.
- [51:33]
Seth Mandel
A lot on this podcast about the difference between this Trump term, the first and the effectiveness of this term having a lot to do with Trump, having people in the administration who are actually on his team as opposed to opposing him. This is the dark side of that. There's no one to say who would even dream of saying this is bad. The team is there. What they want is for his will to be done.
- [52:13]
John Podhoretz
Right. And they're also interpreters of his will. I mean, we do know he wanted the charges dropped against Derek Adams. Do we know that he wanted the charges dropped against Eric Adams because he wanted Eric Adams to be his puppet, or because he looked at Eric Adams as he looked at Rod Blagojevich, whom he fully pardoned last week and said, they did to them what they did to me. And in a weird way, he's doing himself a terrible injustice.
- [52:39]
Abe Greenwald
Yeah.
- [52:40]
John Podhoretz
Weirdly enough, because he was pursued malignantly and wrongly in the lawfare cases, and Blagojevich tried to sell pardons, and. And Adams took bribes from. From Turkey. He. He wasn't Putin's puppet. He didn't take bribes from Russia. He didn't do what they said that he did. What he did in the case with Alvin Bragg was not illegal, and it was not a felony. It was a misdemeanor if it was. If it was illegal, but it probably wasn't. Why is he lowering himself to the level of. Of a guy who was trying to sell a Senate seat and another guy who took money from Turkey? And that's why I think Bove is like, we're doing this not because we're do. We was, like, trying to almost find a weird justification for doing it by saying, you know what? If we're gonna do it, we better get something out of it. Like, Adam's better work for us. You know, it's like that we own you now. Like I said, these bad movie scenes.
- [53:44]
Abe Greenwald
There'S a complete lack of Sechel in the sense that America is not like, we don't.
- [53:50]
John Podhoretz
Okay, set. We got to do our translation. Sechel is sort of like good common sense. Hard good common sense. Yiddish do.
- [53:57]
Abe Greenwald
You know, like, in our country, we go through these waves, right? So, you know, we're in a reaction right now. You could argue to, like, a neoliberal consensus. Right. It's coming due. Okay. But it's not gonna stay there forever. And the genius of our system is that it protects Us from excesses, from the executive. And so it's like, do you. Is there no concept? Do they think the Democrats are never gonna win another election? Because there is an element here where it's like they feel like, you know, they're the Bolsheviks after the revolution. You know, it's like, no, it's not gonna be this way forever. Okay, I'm sorry. It's eventually gonna balance back. And that's why you gotta, you know, in some ways have an appreciation that you do not wanna model the behavior that your political opponents are gonna do. And why didn't he learn that lesson, by the way, from the excesses of the Democrats in the last eight years? It's amazing to me he didn't. He just like, okay, then, then that's a license for me to do it when you see a chance.
- [55:04]
John Podhoretz
I guess the solipsism that is his greatest character flaw would say, well, it's not about principle. They just hated me and wanted to get me and that's the way the world works. And so I'll get them the way they got me. But you're right, it's like I said many times that the most important political statement made in the 2010s was when Mitch McConnell warned Harry Reid not to suspend the filibuster in judicial nominations. He said, you will reap the whirlwind because you want to do this, because you have an immediate political advantage. But if you do this, and I say this as the, you know, as the Senate Majority leader in waiting, as he eventually did become, if you do this, I will use this power and you will regret ever having. Ever having. I would never open this Pandora's box. But you have just opened it.
- [55:59]
Abe Greenwald
Hashtag Merrick Garland, right? And, and then we get Merrick Garland and out of control Attorney General before here. So it's like, you know, this cycle, let's just end the cycle a little bit for a second. He will never do that. He could never, you know, but, but it's.
- [56:14]
Seth Mandel
Yeah, we're deeper into it.
- [56:15]
Abe Greenwald
Is, you know, we are deeper into it. But. Yeah, what I'm getting at here is that like the Democrats are not going to be out of power forever. I think it's going to be a long. They're going to be in the Siberia for a while, but they're going to come back at some point and when they do, they're going to remember all this crap anyway.
- [56:33]
John Podhoretz
I think we're all, we've all Syria, by the way.
- [56:36]
Eli Lake
That's not necessarily too far because you know, if the Senate's going to be 5248 or whatever, you know, in other words, it's. It's like even when they're out of power, there's a. There's an equilibrium that has kept things close enough in Congress throughout these past few, even when the presidential election flipped constantly back and forth, that the parties are not, you know, they're not in a situation where, you know.
- [57:00]
Abe Greenwald
Yeah, but they're, like, cringe right now. No, but, you know, Democrats are the culturally cringiest party. It's like there's. They. Yeah. Did you see those videos, by the way, of, like, you know, septuagenarians, like, singing old, like, union songs about, like, you know, Doge.
- [57:21]
John Podhoretz
Yeah. But the federal workers.
- [57:22]
Abe Greenwald
Yeah. Which side are you. I'm like.
- [57:24]
John Podhoretz
Yeah.
- [57:24]
Abe Greenwald
Oh, my God. Like, this is.
- [57:27]
John Podhoretz
Yeah. The popular front.
- [57:28]
Abe Greenwald
Yeah.
- [57:29]
John Podhoretz
Back again.
- [57:30]
Abe Greenwald
Yeah.
- [57:30]
John Podhoretz
Except, you know, wizard was written about people who worked in coal mines.
- [57:35]
Abe Greenwald
I know. And, like, this is for people.
- [57:38]
John Podhoretz
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Think they don't want to come back. Right.
- [57:43]
Abe Greenwald
Well, there is a mine in Pennsylvania where they process the retirement papers, according to Elon Musk.
- [57:48]
John Podhoretz
So. Yes. Yeah. But it's. But it's. It's. It's. No. By David Fahrenhold. This is an interesting thing. There was this. Yeah. Elon Musk says, you know, oh, my God, can you believe this? There's this. We don't. We're so retrograde that we have this mine in Pennsylvania where we keep all of the physical records of people in their retirements and all of that. Why on earth do we have this? And people were like, what is he talking. He's crazy. He's a lunatic. And There was this 2014 story in the Washington Post by David Fairhold, revealing the existence of this mind which is hardened against nuclear attack. Because the idea was, from the 50s onward, there needed to be a record of. Basically, for Social Security, of. And that was. There were paper records then. And you're now going to take every single paper record involving hundreds and hundreds of millions of people and somehow digitize them so that there's not this mine. I know. It's a. It's a funny story because people, like, when it. When it. When it went at Musk, and all they needed to do was Google and they could have found the original.
- [58:52]
Abe Greenwald
Yeah.
- [58:53]
John Podhoretz
The urinal. Boy, this is crazy. There's this mine in Pennsylvania where. Where all of the personal records of Americans are kept. It's. It's funny. I assume there'll be a movie there and somebody in that, you know, will be set in the conspiracy to take over that mine or find everybody's information. And then, you know, when the guy finds out the conspiracy, he'll have Emil Bove saying, oh, yeah, you think, you think. Oh, you're so naive.
- [59:18]
Eli Lake
What's Nicholas Cage up to?
- [59:19]
John Podhoretz
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yes. That's the final national treasure. Okay, so I guess we haven't talked about the Munich security conference. We haven't talked about a lot of stuff, but that's, that's the way. That's the way the cookie crumbles. So.
- [59:42]
Abe Greenwald
Sarah, Commentary. Recommends.
- [59:43]
John Podhoretz
Do you have a recommends?
- [59:44]
Abe Greenwald
Yeah. Podcast. Breaking History. I'm pouring my passion and my heart entirely into it. These are really. There's a lot of work that goes into it. There's a lot of great clips. The next episode we just closed the script is a little preview. It'll come out on Wednesday, is a look at really how Oliver Stone's film jfk, which I think is a good film, though I defer to John, whether he thinks it's a good film, but I think it's a good film.
- [60:10]
John Podhoretz
It's a brilliantly made film. It's an evil film, but it's a brilliant.
- [60:13]
Abe Greenwald
It's terrible history, and it's, it's really great filmmaking. And how that film sort of is the. If you want to know how we got that very dramatic moment about three weeks ago where Trump signs an executive order to declassify the remaining assassination records the government has. Well, it starts with Oliver Stone and his rehabilitation of New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison. And so as a look at sort of the history of JFK conspiracy theories, and I think it's, it's. I think we keep getting better, and I think the audience will really like it, and it relates to kind of our moment.
- [60:50]
John Podhoretz
Now, if I could just say about your podcast.
- [60:53]
Abe Greenwald
Yes.
- [60:54]
John Podhoretz
That these are, like, great documentaries.
- [61:02]
Abe Greenwald
Thank you.
- [61:03]
John Podhoretz
But they're, they're audio documentaries. It's not just you like, it's not us blathering for an hour. You tell history, you provide back. You provide just very compelling, you know, time sense eclipse from American history and the retelling of American history. And, and they're just, they're. They've been, they've been great. This is, you're, you're, you're doing something that I don't think anybody else is. Is doing. It's sort of like a true crime podcast, but about American history that is kind of.
- [61:40]
Abe Greenwald
Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. I think that's right. We got a great little snippet of Dirty Harry's. The first Dirty Harry, which is a classic in the San Fran 70s.
- [61:49]
John Podhoretz
Yes.
- [61:50]
Abe Greenwald
So that'll be a little easier.
- [61:54]
John Podhoretz
You have people leader of Jim Jones. You have.
- [61:58]
Abe Greenwald
We have Willie Brown defending why he was a political ally of Jim Jones.
- [62:03]
John Podhoretz
Yeah.
- [62:03]
Abe Greenwald
Who got it all.
- [62:04]
John Podhoretz
Yeah. Anyway, so that's break again. Breaking history. Subscribe wherever you can. And we'll be back on Monday. Please do read if you are a subscriber and you will have total access to the March issue of Commentary magazine now. And if you're not a subscriber, go and subscribe. We'll be back on Monday. So for Seth and Abe, John Pakhoras keep the camel burn.