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A
Hope for the best, expect the worst. Some drinks and pain Some die at first 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 Wednesday, July 1, 2026. It's Canada Day, or as some would have it, day of the next four states to join the Union. But until that happens, we'll muddle through. And by we, I mean Executive Editor Abe Greenwald. Hi, Abe.
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B
Hi John.
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A
Senior Editor Seth Mandel. Hi, Seth.
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C
Hi John.
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A
Washington Free Beacon editor Eliana Johnson. Hi, Eliana.
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D
Hi, John.
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A
And joining us today, our old friend Aei Poobah, author of the The 100 Year History of American Conservatism. Matth Nettie. Hi Matt.
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E
Hi John.
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A
So Milad Kiros, the 29 year old DSA candidate running against 14 term Democratic Progressive Congresswoman Diana DeGette, won her primary last night, indicating that the DSA insurgency within Democratic ranks now has geographical depth and width going into the Mountain state.
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F
And
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A
I think this means, by the way, two now of the DSA aligned candidates, that is Adam, Hawaii in New Jersey and Kiros in Colorado are effective defenders of the attacks on the United States on 9 11. So we actually have now a pro 911 wing of the Democratic Party. It's small, but you can't say it doesn't exist. You can't say it doesn't exist. So I think we kind of felt this coming. I wrote a piece for the Free Press earlier this week in which the likelihood that Melancholas would win was sort of the the opening salvo in a piece about the 40 year history of the Democratic Party's unwillingness to deal with anti Semites, anti Semitism, Jewish issues and all of that within its ranks that led to the results that we're seeing right now. Eliana, where do you what now? Like now actually these people have to win, obviously in several districts. There's no question that they will win. The Brooklyn seats are not there's no chance that a Republican is going to win any of the Brooklyn seats. I guess we now really do move to Graham Platner. And whether or not this can get statewide and whether or not the unpleasantness of these views, the anti Americanism, the anti Semitism, all of that will face a larger electorate that will be repelled by them.
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D
I have to say, John, this insurgency in the party appears to me right now relatively unstoppable. These, these candidates, these DSA aligned candidates, America hating Israel hating openly communist, Marx embracing lunatics, are winning in Blue districts. So there, there aren't races in a lot of these seats. I do think Abdul El Sayed will win the primary in Michigan. That will be a very competitive race. Obviously Platner and Collins will be competitive in Maine. But what we're seeing now, Jewish Insider reports this morning, is that Democrats will not commit to having in their party platform a line committing to the security of the state of Israel and backing the state of Israel. And I think that's really where we're heading. This is obviously where the party is going. And I would not be surprised to see Hakeem Jeffries facing major problems and Schumer tossed overboard as well where he'll face a primary from aoc.
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E
You know, go ahead.
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A
I just want to say briefly, just
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B
Eliana's point, it seems unstoppable. It does. But I think this is also a function of the fact that other Democrats aren't out there trying to stop it and haven't been.
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E
That's exactly what I was about to say. I am getting so frustrated at the headlines proclaiming a Democratic civil war.
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B
What war?
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D
There's no war.
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E
There's no fighting. It's a typical Democrat surrender. Doesn't matter whether it's to Iran or to the Communists trying to take over their party. They're giving up. You're muted.
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C
Here's Hakeem Jeffries yesterday. I don't think there's a single member of the House Democratic Caucus right now that identifies as a communist. And on Dariel Isa Vila Chevalier, she's been pretty clear that she's walked away from many of the things that have been unearthed and has pretty clearly indicated that she's a different person.
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E
Can I.
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C
These are things that she has not done. This is the floor leader of the Democratic Party just making stuff up, pretending.
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E
Pronounce her full name every time we ID her because it's very hard to say. Could we just say Abila Chivalry? Is that another.
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A
Let's just call her dac.
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E
Dac? Yes, dac.
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A
That's where we're going with her.
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E
Thank you.
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D
You know, the Free Beacon interviewed the chairman of the New York State Democratic Party, who on the one hand won't commit to endorsing her and on the other hand says, well, you know, she deleted the X posts. These people are, I don't wanna say asleep at the wheel cuz they're aware of what's happening, but not one of them will say I support the state of Israel.
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C
And it's reminds me she destroyed the evidence. So I don't know what people are upset about.
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A
I mean, it reminds me of when Mike Pence was running as Trump's vice president in 2016 and he would say in that debate that he had and then elsewhere he would opine about the views of Donald Trump. He would just say whatever it was that he believed, assign it to Donald Trump and say that this was what he and Trump were going to do as president. Hakeem Jeffries wants DAC and her friends to not have the views that they have. So he is going to say they don't have them anymore.
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E
But rewind a little bit further before Trump wins the nomination. In early May, there was a civil war in the Republican Party. I mean, I remember some of those debates when it narrowed down to Trump, Cruz, Rubio and Kasich. And people were memeing it, as, you know, the fight from Captain America, civil war with the Iron man banging up against Captain America's shield. And both Cruz and Rubio were pounding Trump from both directions. Rick Perry calling Trump a cancer on the party. There was months Cruz got up on
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D
the stage at the RNC and basically
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E
at the convention, Cruz says, vote your conscience to the world, that none of that is happening here. It's just one fold after another.
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A
Structurally, structurally, something happened yesterday that is very important that will show whether or not Democrats have any capacity to resist this, which is that the Supreme Court said that it would be. It's a violation of the First Amendment to forbid candidates from coordinating with the national party or with the state parties. This is an epochal moment because it will allow parties to channel money to plan strategies with candidates. That includes primary candidates, includes anybody that they want to. This is the power that's literally been sort of taken away from them that has degraded the parties and strengthened PACs and made independent expenditure people much more powerful than institutional Democrats. That decision came down yesterday. That means it is in effect today. That means that the Democratic parties in these states today, the Michigan Democratic Party today, could in some sense or other, organize itself against Abdul El Sayed's nomination, should it choose to do so.
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D
People who are willing to do it. And I don't.
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A
Yes, that's Matt's point, people.
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C
I think one more piece of evidence, by the way, is yesterday's or this morning's Axios story that Kamala Harris has been calling Zoran Mamdani and the others in that group and trying to talk about how she can essentially get on their good side because she's still considering running, obviously as something for president, maybe one day for Governor, whatever. But her chances of succeeding aside, the Democratic nominee for. The reigning Democratic nominee for President of the United States and the last vice president is calling around all the.
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B
The.
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C
The Gaza Dems and. And asking how she can get in their good graces and how she can essentially communicate what they are communicating to people. So it's literally from the top. I mean, I know we don't think of Kamala Harris as the leader of the Democratic Party, but it is hugely significant that the last Democratic nominee for president, who was at the time a sitting. The sitting vice president, is doing this.
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F
Yeah.
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E
I mean, it's clear. I think she blames Israel for her loss. But what I would say is this speaks to a much larger problem with the left and something that William F. Buckley, Jr. Used to delight in pointing out, which is the liberals, mainstream liberals often don't know how to relate to the far left because they in most cases share the same ends. Right. More equality, social justice. Right. It's just that liberals tend to view communists as liberals in a hurry. Right. They're willing to break through the glass a little bit faster. And so you have someone like Hakeem Jeffries, it's like, oh, well, you know, she's said all that bad stuff. What he's worried about is the possible electoral consequences of DAC's ideology, not actually the ideology, because in most respects, he doesn't really have a problem with it. It means more equality. Right. It means fairness for him. And so they are disarmed in the face of this challenge, which is clearly very well organized. There's got great energy. It's from young people, right, who get involved and are much more active in pursuing their ends. And it has these leaders who are popping up who, to varying degrees, even I can recognize their charisma. I mean, obviously, AOC has, you know, she rates, as they say in the television industry. You want to watch her. You want to hear what she says, Even though what she says is often just babble. Mamdani clearly is able to present his Marxist radicalism with a cuddliness that makes people kind of, you know, again, disarmed. I'll use that word. You don't know how to react to it. Then when you go lower right, it gets more complicated. And someone like dac, you listen to her and it's very disturbing. But that's the ingredients, to me, for a successful movement in the context of a Democratic Party that has no antibodies to reject socialism or Medicare for all, which is why I think the Senate races are where this revolution is Going to come to a brick wall?
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A
Well, that is the question, right? I mean, part of what's going on here. And it's important to note because I think we do not want to undersell the ideological assault on Americanism here in any way, shape or form. That is what's important here. But it is also important that Benat quiros beat a 15 term, 14 term Democratic congresswoman who has been in Washington since 1996, who is a very unpleasant person, looks very old, has no particular political standing as far as I can tell, because I honestly had not heard of her until this race and I'm a relatively literate person politically. So she's just been there in the kind of Democratic blob pool as a kind of, you know, just one of an, one of 217 votes voting down the line for whatever it is the party believes in. And she's gotten more progressive as time has gone on. And, and if you are living in that district, why not go for Kiros? What do you want this, like, broken down old hack for when you can have this really pretty young dynamo? And unless Israel really matters to you, why wouldn't you vote for her? And that very big turnout, by the way, it's not that she won it going away the way, say, Brad Lander did against Goldman. That's a one or two point race. Almost 100,000 votes cast in the primary in that district. That's a huge turnout for a Democratic for any House primary.
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E
I mean, I do have a Democratic. I think the people are maybe exaggerating the differences between the deep blue districts where these candidates have won elsewhere, primarily in the Acela corridor and, and Colorado. Let's not forget that Colorado has been transformed over the past generation. It is not, you know, it still has, of course, natural beauty, wide open spaces, but it's been deluged by young, highly educated whites who are affluent, they like the outdoors, they're environmentally minded. They have transformed Colorado from what was once a, you know, brick rack state. Yeah, exactly. You know, into a, to a blue state, more or less. And it's been the case of about 15, 15 years of transformation. So you look at that district where heroes won. I mean, again, it's, it's young white professionals, women. Right. This is exactly the same people who are voting in those contests in New York City for the socialist candidates. And it was statewide, as I think that there's a really important race in Colorado's, I think the Colorado 2nd district with Gabby Evans or Gabe Evans. I'm sure I pronounce his first name,
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D
Gabe Evans and Rootnell.
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E
Yeah. Well, Gabe Evans is the Republican incumbent who won narrowly. And there was a Democratic primary between Manning, Rudenel, is that right? Yes. Yeah. And then an establishment candidate, Rudenel, who is a climate activist, lawyer, Gen Young, he walloped the establishment cannon. He's up by 30 when I checked this morning. And then you go to the California governor's race. Right, I'm sorry, Colorado governor's race. There it was the state AG Weiser, who is a kind of resistance hero against the Colorado senator, Michael Bennett, who I believe is perhaps the most boring person on planet Earth. And guess what? What happened? The more exciting resistance candidate beat this United States senator because he was better able to take the fight to Trump. So Colorado over the past, again, 15 years or so has changed in such a way that makes it ripe for this type of dsa, a democratic socialist party politics, that it appeals to the highly educated. You know, you listen to DAC on Sharpton. I caught a clip of her. It's like I was back in a Columbia University semiology seminar. She's talking about structures. She's talking about signification. It has nothing to do with the reality of working people, but it's the same thing that highly educated young people who are up and coming and feel that they haven't gotten what they deserve out of the economy. It's catnip. It's what they're used to hearing. And of course blame it on the structures. You know, who cares?
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A
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E
In 23.
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A
In 23. Excuse me. Remember, 15 votes till he could find.
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E
It started after 22. You know, it started as soon as they won the House.
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A
Yeah. Well, that's this exact parallel, right? This is 2026. That's two years after the election. If the Democrats win the House, but they win by a small margin, these incoming new House members would knock Jeffries off.
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E
I don't think any of the insurgents have said who they would put up against Jeffries. Right, of course, Jeffries.
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A
That's the same problem with the McCarthy revolt.
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E
Right. Jeffries clearly a weak leader, I think far weaker than McCarthy ever was.
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A
You know, I.
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E
But what's the alternative?
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D
You know, what's so interesting is Harris was, in part, so uncompelling and such a failure as a candidate because of her attempts to straddle this divide between the far left and the mainstream Democratic Party on gender, on Israel, on, you know, pick an issue, she wouldn't pick a lane. And Democratic leaders have. Democratic leadership has apparently looked at her and said, I'm going to follow that path. You know, I'm going to do that. Rather than looking at her and saying, you know what? That was a catastrophic failure. And maybe we should take some lessons from that and do the opposite or stand up for something.
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G
And.
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D
And even Harris seems to have taken away something from. And said, I'm gonna go with the lunatics. I'm gonna go with the Palestine lane. But, you know, it's actually amazing.
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B
But this is.
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D
Why can I say they're repeating the same errors?
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B
I think it's worth making a distinction here between liberal voters and liberal politicians in response to what's happening. I think the Buckley point that Matt was referring to before is very sound regarding liberal voters. I think they can look at these radicals and tell themselves, well, we're all basically on the same page. They're just a little further on. As I put it, once the left liberalism is a consensus and the right is a coalition. And so as long as they're sort of on this same consensus page, I think when you get to politicians, when you get to Jeffries, when you get to others, they know what's going on, they know the difference, but they're just, they've made a sort of fight or flight decision to try to hang on for their lives here. And that's why they're crumbling in the face of all this is I think, the biggest deal. Cuz if you look back on the fight that the internal fight that happened on in the GOP when Trump first emerged, the moments we were talking about before the framing in which pre Trump Republicans put the stakes was like, we have a moral crisis on our hands here. This is not what conservatism means. This is not what the GOP is. This is not. And whatever Trump bent everything to his will in the end, but that was at least the fight they tried to mount. We've seen nothing along those lines. Just explaining the stakes here.
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A
Okay, so here's an important thing. What if Harrison.
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C
I also think, Sorry, but I also just one more thing on Hakeem Jeffries is that the other lesson from the Republicans carousel of Speakers of the House is that you can't stave that off forever. You can't stave off the coming for your head forever. Right. Hakeem Jeffries is going to be swept aside by this, barring some miracle because Hakeem Jeffries isn't doing anything about it. Hakeem Jeffries is going to be swept aside by this wave too. Maybe not, you know, maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but no, but really, like he's, he's going to get hit with this because at some point he's going to do something that's going to upset them and they're going to crank it to 11. The lesson of what Republicans went through is that you can't actually, you can only buy yourself some a little bit of time at the helm of a party that doesn't want you leading it when you have this kind of, you know, base energy. So for Hakeem Jeffries, he's hanging on now, but history says this is not going to save him. He's just going to be the guy.
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A
I'm not sure I agree. I'm not sure I agree with you. Because if you think about this is now a relatively small tendency in terms of the aggregate Democratic Party and even in the House. But it's a vanguard, and it is where all the energy is. And the classic thing that happens in politics, if you think about presidential bids, for example, is that there's a candidate often who pops up, who has no chance of winning, but who ends up exciting everybody. And the trick for the person who wins is to figure out a way to subsume that energy by adopting the issue that seems to be relatively radical and essentially dog whistling and telling the people who follow that issue that they're gonna follow it too. Mitt Romney saying he's severely conservative, for example, or, you know, taking up some version of the flat tax, you know, canceling his support for his own healthcare initiative in Massachusetts in order to create a broad coalition. This is popular front strategy. If Kamala Harris goes to these people and says, I will give you whatever you want as long as you, A, leave me alone, or B, support me, my presidency will be your presidency. And they don't have, they don't have the goods. Like, they don't have the. They don't have the long range goods to get, you know, 80 million voters going into a popular front alliance with a more electable candidate. Even in communist terms. Communists believed in the popular front. That's a communist idea, the Popular front. So Hakeem Jeffries could be that if they go into caucus in November and he says, I am your servant, just tell me what to do. You know what I know how to do. I know how to. Maybe he doesn't really, but I know how to get bills through Congress. I know how to use procedure. You give me the agenda, I will work out the agenda, and then you'll like me and I'll have the power and you'll leave me alone because you don't know this stuff yet. And I will train you. I will be Mr. Miyagi. I. I will be Obi Wan. I will train you in the arms.
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C
In this case, the communists think they're the ones with the power. They don't think they need to attach themselves to anybody.
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A
But they're right.
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C
That's what we're seeing from that.
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A
They're right. But this is no joke. Like something happened here where over the course of the last 10 years, the middleman was cut out. Right? That means, I'm saying there was always a way of getting an issue into the political bloodstream with a candidate who wouldn't win, but who would affect the larger party. So Trump ended the middleman. Trump was the guy on the extreme who had the crazy views on immigration, who said we should have no Muslim Immigration, who said whatever the hell he said about everything. And the idea would have been, well, I mean, come on, you can't really get elected. But a lot of this stuff we can put into the platform and run on if it's popular. And that was no, like, you're all sclerotic and bad, and you don't represent the energy that we want. And here it is. And Mamdani is exactly the same figure. He took out Eric Adams. Eric Adams was that guy in 2021. He was like, I'm everything you are. He wasn't really, because he's too nuts. But I'm everything you are. But I can pretend to be a cop. Cause I was a cop once. So I'm going to walk around and say, I'm going to take a gun into a church. Don't you think? I'm not going to bring a gun into a church with me, so I can show you that I am, like, tough or something like that. And he won. He ended up winning in a complicated race. And then he didn't really. He didn't deliver the goods to the left. And then they basically slaughtered him. Now, he didn't deliver the goods to anybody. But that's the counter example to my Hakeem Jeffries serves as their, you know, serves as their front man. Is maybe there are no front men anymore. Maybe that's just not satisfying anymore. And you don't have to have experience and you don't have to have, you know, sort of like carry wisdom. Maybe the best thing to do is to say, yeah, I'm a Communist. Come at me. I'm happy. I stand my ground. I will not recognize the existence of the State of Israel in the most populous Jewish city in the world with a population that makes up 11% of the electorate, come at me and, you know, and he only won. Mamdani only won 50% of the vote,
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E
whereas his arrival's a margin of. Don't you think the margin will matter quite a bit in relation to this question of Hakeem Jeffrey's future? You know, narrow margins that Speaker Johnson and then Speaker McCarthy had to deal with before him cause a lot of trouble. We see that in Washington this week, where the House agenda was once again derailed by infighting. If it's a narrow margin for the Democrats, assuming they win the House, this will present Jeffries with quite a few issues. Because we know that these Communists will be elected, right, because they're winning primaries in the deep blue, safe districts. We don't know whether in the end because there are so few competitive districts, the battleground seats will go to Democrats who are more in line with the general electorate. And we just have to keep reminding ourselves, I mean, the media is so caught up in the swoon of the DSA takeover of the Democratic Party that they just recite what these candidates stand for without any acknowledgment that what the candidates stand for are incredibly unpopular. But that's why Medicare Federal Racist is a loser. It is an electoral loser. Climate justice is a loser.
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A
What about Israel and Gaza? Do we know if that's a loser or a winner? That's one of the great things implicitly is gonna be on the ballot here.
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E
Here's the thing about Israel and Gaza. I mean, I'm amazed that this has become the defining cause of the American left. And I mean, and the issue that is roiling American politics, this conflict that is, you know, on the other side of the earth. By the way, there's been a ceasefire in Gaza for, for months now. I'm amazed at that. But you know what? Most Americans don't give a second's thought to what is happening in Israel and Gaza. And that's the thing. It's like, you're right. There is an issue where if the left presents their case in a certain way and it's not rebutted accurately by supporters of Israel, then a voter might say, oh, yeah, gosh, you know, why are we doing that? But the truth is they don't care. This election, like every election, is based on how voters feel about the economy and how they feel about the President's performance. And this is why I'm saying.
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A
Right, but that's why I'm saying Senate
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E
races are where the revolution may be in trouble. Because we see now polls in Maine that show Platner, who is among these far left candidates, is not performing where he should be by any reasonable measure. And the Fox poll, he's behind Collins. Now let's. These are all. These results are within the margin of error. Let's not forget that there wasn't a single poll before election day 2020 that showed Susan Collins ahead. Now we have one where she's ahead. So Platner's clearly falling behind.
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A
It's worse than that for Platner because the New York Times Siena poll, which came out before the Fox poll, which had Platner ahead, shows what you might call a very strong shy Collins vote, because Platner's nominally ahead 49, 47, and Collins is ahead by 20 points on every other. On every substantive and characterological question, do you think the candidate is a good person? She's like in the 60s and he's in the 30s now.
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E
And we have reports, by the way, that the Platner campaign is appealing for money to Democratic power brokers across the country. So Platner's not where he wants to be. Let's just put him there.
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A
Right.
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E
If El Said wins Michigan, that's going to be a huge battleground contest here because he may be in line with what's happening in the asylum, to use Eliana's metaphor, of the Michigan Democratic Party. We got a glimpse into that asylum at the convention. And anyone who looked at what was
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A
happening there, the Michigan state convention, the
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E
Michigan Democratic Party state convention earlier this year, anyone who looked at what was happening there had to be horrified. The antisemitism, the radicalism, the Islamism. Right. So El Sayed, clearly in line with that. And why I wouldn't be surprised if he's gonna win that primary on Aug. 3.
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C
But Michigan is a place where Alyssa Slotkin also is waving the flag.
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E
There are more. Michigan is not a majority Arab state. It's Michigan. You know, it's larger than that. There's voters there who might be turned off big time by what he represents. So this is why it's a difficulty for the left. These key Senate races, they might actually be the difference between Democratic control of Congress and a narrow majority in the House, if that. And maintained Republican control in the Senate.
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D
I mean, El Sayed is out there, you know, the Free Beacon, reporting on his comments in 2020, you know, webinars with convicted murderers and the crime.
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E
I forgot about that.
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B
Right?
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E
Abolish prison, defund the police.
- [37:36]
D
And you know what, Kitty Diddlers, you guys should run for office. You deserve representation. Those are views that are going to be toxic with the general public. I agree with Matt. You know, when I worked at Fox News as a producer in primetime hours, people would always say, oh, so what do you do? You write RNC talking points. And Fox News is actually a business. And they had a few rules back in the day, one of which was we don't really cover foreign policy very much because you know what Americans do? Don't really care about it. It doesn't rate. And so I think Matt is, unless bombs are falling, and bombs are not falling in Gaza right now. So I'm with Matt, these Columbia PhD students, where it's taught in the Middle east studies, wherever DAC studied, that's like the mother's milk there. But your average voter doesn't give a damn about what's happening in Israel Gaza. It's like the entry point for the nose ring wearing vegan lunatics who go to Poetica Coffee and protest. Dan Goldman but the average voter is not casting a ballot on that issue.
- [38:53]
G
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- [39:54]
F
part of me that everyone sees. I'm Howie Mandel, the comedian. Apparently I know what funny is. Funny bought me a house. But I also know what isn't funny. Ocd. I've lived with OCD my entire life and people throw the term around like it's no big deal. But OCD is severe, often debilitating. It's a mental health condition that involves unrelented, unwanted thoughts that can make you question your character, your beliefs, even your safety. General therapy can help with some things, but for ocd, it can actually, actually make things worse. That's why I want to tell you about nocd. NOCD is the world's largest treatment provider for OCD and is covered by Insurance for over 155 million Americans. Their licensed therapists specialize in ERP, the most effective treatment for OCD. If you think you might be struggling with OCD, go to nocd.com to book a free 15 minute call. They are here to help.
- [40:56]
B
I mean, this is a dark point, but I feel the Israel question moving from the foreign policy category into the domestic category. I think the issue, and this is the ugly part, is not whether or not foreign policy is foremost in people's minds. It's whether or not The Jews are. And in the form of dark money, Epstein class, AIPAC and whatnot. I mean, that's what they're going after.
- [41:39]
E
I think on the Democratic case. But we've seen in other primaries, including Nancy Mace's run for governor of South Carolina, that making Epstein as a stand in for the Jews again in a general election is not enough to get you past the finish line. Right. I agree with.
- [41:59]
C
We don't know how it's gonna be in those races in general elections. At the end of the day, the problem is that there's all these House seats that are safe seats. That's what you had with Republicans, right? Why the primaries mattered, why the turnover mattered. That's what you have with Democrats. So you have a numbers game of the Democrats inflating their numbers in the hopes of having control of the House and eventually the Senate. And in those safe seats, they are saying things to Abe's point. You know, our friend Dariel Isa says, you know, the reason that people in my district, that poor Hispanic and black people in my district don't have access to services is because we're giving that money to Israel. When Zoran Mamdani ran for mayor before, well, before he ran, but you know, in, in the lead up to that, in 23, I guess it was when he was at the, the DSA conference, he said, you have to make people understand that when the boot of the NYPD is on your neck, it's the IDF that laced up that boot. That was so each one of them, you know, Lydia, Lydia Grande, Greek.
- [43:08]
A
Right. So you're making, you're making it, you're making Abe's point.
- [43:11]
C
I'm giving example.
- [43:13]
A
This is a way.
- [43:14]
C
It's not just that people are saying Epstein island is what I'm saying. It's not just Epstein class stuff is what I'm saying. It's specifically they're going to their constituents and saying you're poor because the, because we're giving your money to Jews. And that, that is a more, that is an easier thing for voters to visualize than an Epstein class level conspiracy.
- [43:36]
A
Okay, So I see two possible scenarios going to November. So this, these House races are in these deep blue districts. We are going to get five or six new DSA congressmen to join the squad and they will then make up a fifth, 5% of the Democratic caucus. But the, but the, the most interesting,
- [44:02]
E
at least six now the three in New York.
- [44:04]
A
Right. And there are three.
- [44:06]
E
And, and our new friend Kiros here.
- [44:09]
A
Right. So, so 11 or you know, 10 or 11 squad to further left than squad. Small numbers, but you know, incredibly powerful. And already, you know, as Seth says, Senator Alyssa Slotkin is waving the white flag. And others are already responding to their rise with hints and signals that they're going to make their peace or try to make sure that the onslaught does not hit them. But what if it goes in a slightly other direction and we have Platner and we have El Sayed running And rather than them being the vanguard of a new aggressive, far left, anti Semitic coterie that is going to dominate American politics, what if they're the Herschel Walker, Christine o', Donnell, Sharon Angle, Murdoch, Todd Akin. What if the Republican Party, not that it's really good at this, can kind of nationalize the bid for the Senate by saying this party has gone insane. And normie voters statewide, not in 80% Democratic districts in ideologically complicated states. Maine and Michigan are ideologically complicated states. Slotkin is the Senate won the Senate race. Trump won the state in 24. Biden won the state in 20. You know, Maine is a, is a bi, you know, is a. Biden and
- [45:53]
C
the Senate races have been close. Yeah, not just the Slotkin won, but
- [45:57]
A
the Senate, the races Biden and Collins won together in 2026. And Collins didn't just win, she won by nine when she was behind by nine in the last poll. So these are complicated states that could go either way. And maybe the one thing we can hope for instead of panicking, following Matt's theory, is that if you can effectively make the case that lunacy is taking over the Democratic Party, you will have more success than you realize when you're saying, as the Democrats did in 2010 when that when Republicans won 63 seats in the House, but there were these four or five lunatic Republican candidates for Senate who lost and therefore Republicans did not take the Senate, which you would have expected in an election that lopsided in the House. But individually they were on, they proved unelectable in Delaware, in Nevada, the same
- [47:04]
E
thing happened in 22. You know, when I'm looking at this election, I see a lot of similarities between 2022 and 2026. I mean, 2022, I was one of many of my pundits who we almost had our cards revoked, you know, after the election, because we spent the whole year saying, oh, this is going to be a disaster. It's going to be like 2010, it's going to be like 2014 with Biden's approval numbers.
- [47:30]
A
It's just he's disaster for Democrats, for Democrats. Democrats Wiped out.
- [47:35]
E
Historical precedent shows. Right. They're going. And what happens? Well, a combination of factors. One is negative partisanship and polarization has just narrowed the playing field in the House where they're just, it doesn't seem like you can have as wide swings as we had even as recently as 2018 when the Democrats picked up 45 House seats. Right. The second thing that happened is Trump. Trump was again, as Abe said, shaping the Republican Party to his will. In this case by enforcing the lie that he had won the 20, 2020 election and picking candidates based on that alone. Or in the case of Pennsylvania, where He sidestepped Dave McCormick, who of course is now one of our great senators for Mehmet Oz, because Mehmet Oz and Melania are friends. But he put up these candidates who are just not primetime. Herschel Walker, Peter Thiel's former employee in Arizona, what's his name? Blake Masters. I mean, they're just not good candidates. And what happens? Well, it turns out that America is so polarized that even at a low approval rating, the President's party can kind of do pretty well. Right. Especially if it's up against in a statewide contest like those Senate races, not these engineered districts, but statewide where everyone is voting against weak candidates. And I kind of see the same thing happening here. I checked recently what Gallup had Biden's approval at on election day. 22, it was 40%, which historically would mean that the Democrats were wiped out and they weren't. You know, Republicans narrowly captured the House and Democrats maintained control of the U.S. senate. So that's what Trump is aiming at right now, I think is a performance similar to what happened in 2022. Not to say things can't change for better or worse, but that's what I'm seeing right now.
- [49:34]
A
Let me give you a cultural example of what's going on in the Democratic Party that isn't political but has a valence here because of everything that followed from it, which is imagine that the Democratic Party is the American college campus in 1967
- [49:56]
F
and
- [49:59]
A
the party is made up of college university presidents across the country. And then come the riots and the sit ins and the Vietnam moratorium and the takeovers of administration buildings and the demand for the earliest demands for sort of politicized study departments and efforts to sort of like institutionalize the black power movement on campus and other things. And what happened there? Everybody crumbled. Everybody except the president of the University of Chicago among the elite presidents of campuses across America. And the departments crumbled, folded because of the anger of their students because they had no convictions. Because what these students were coming and saying was that America is terrible and it's all garbage. And they had no civic culture themselves. They were all pedants, and, you know, they had all become academic pedants. And they, they did nothing to protect the integrity or dignity or theory of the university that they had, that they were working at and that they were serving. And that revolution bore fruit 60 years later, you know, with what happened on campus after October 7th direct through line with those students becoming graduate students, becoming professors. The retirement of that class of people who had folded in 1968, giving way to their radical, you know, the radicals who were undergraduates then, they then enshrined themselves. They then become institutionalized. They're now 60 years. And their supporters of the encampments, they're not terrified of the encampments. They're not worried that the encampments are gonna, like, take them hostage, you know, like a university president somewhere. They wanted them to win. And so the Democratic Party now faces an unbelievable challenge. And it does go to. What does the Democratic Party believe? Because I actually don't know that I can define that after Joe Biden. It's very complicated. Do they believe in single payer? Nah, not really, but kind of, but sort of, but not really. I mean, they won't. They'll say they're not if it's really politically unpopular. But, you know, they really do believe it, but they're not gonna go for it. They'll just do this and that, you know, Are they for rent freezes? No, they're really not, but they will be if it's popular. And then of course, why not have a rent freeze? You know, we don't know what they stand for. They don't know what they stand for. And suddenly there's all these people coming and we're like, we know exactly what we stand for. Harry Siegel says this on Eli Lake's podcast this week. It's like the thing about these candidates, if you interview them, if you went around Brooklyn over the last three or four years and you interviewed them, they have intellectual integrity. Even if what they believe in is monstrous. They don't bend. They're not be like us. We're not going to bend and say, no, no, we don't really think what we really think. They said, we think what we think, and we're gonna run for office and see if we can win saying what it is that we say. And that's pretty attractive in a world in which People are cowardly and wimpy and like I say, like, have milk in their bloodstreams instead of blood. That somebody with blood in their bloodstream is gonna be a hardier candidate than.
- [54:00]
C
This is kind of like that classic joke from the Onion. The headline from the Onion about how Al Qaeda higher ups were really upset about all the 911 conspiracy theories. And this is like, wiz what you. Is Dariel Isa going to be angry with Hakeem Jeffries for being like, oh, she stepped away. She's grown up. She's not a kid. Yeah, she went to college. Now she's grown up. She's not a little kid anymore. They don't actually want to be spoken about that way. They want to tell you, yes, communism. Go Communism. And Hakeem Jeffries is out here saying, like, well, you know, defund the police doesn't really mean defund the police. Like we went through three or four years ago. And they were like, no, it means defund the police. It means literally fire the police into the sun. That is my election campaign. You know, policy number one is firing the police into the sun. So I wonder how that is also going to play out the tension between trying to excuse them and the fact that they think, probably correctly, that they're winning because they're not making those mealy mouthed excuses.
- [55:14]
A
Okay, I want to move on to a story that gives us some sense of what if they're smart, in my view, Democrats will do if they take the House and the Senate with comfortable margins. And that is the. That is the revelation in these tax filings that Donald Trump has made $2 billion since, since becoming president in 2025, that he had made $400 million in 2024, and that he is now.
- [55:45]
D
Forget about Nina Totenberg, John.
- [55:48]
A
Okay, I'll get to Nina Totenberg, but this is more important then we'll get to NINA TOTEMBERG. TRUMP $2 billion richer. Not just Trump, the Witkoff family, the Lutnick family. Those are crypto fortunes. They're getting investments from Jared Kushner, getting investments from sovereign funds in Middle Eastern countries and others. And if Democrats are smart and don't get sidelined by idiot Russiagate things and have a real ability to construct the narrative here that the presidency, a person who is president, should not be $2 billion richer after a year in office based on policy changes and the behavior and actions of his family and his close friends and people who are in his cabinet, and that maybe decisions are being made about when we say do ceasefires in war, that Seem to make no logical sense at the request of Pakistan or at the quest of Qatar. Right. I mean, we don't really know. We don't know who wants what.
- [57:05]
C
Qatar is where they swell in modern.
- [57:08]
E
The field marshal loves making requests.
- [57:10]
A
That's right. So that's true. So all I'm saying is most of
- [57:15]
E
the money came from crypto. I think that's the real story here. Over a billion of the 2 billion came from the world.
- [57:23]
C
Liberty Finance.
- [57:23]
G
Yeah.
- [57:24]
E
Billion and a half, which is the
- [57:25]
C
like 3/4 of it.
- [57:26]
E
Right. Which is the Trump Witkoff crypto biz. And of course, the thing about crypto is it's secret. So the investigations into it are going to, I think, run up against some obstacles as they try to peer into the business. If the Democrats win the gavels still.
- [57:52]
C
Yeah, I mean, that's, That's. There's a phrase that comes. There's a phrase that comes up in the reporting repeatedly, and that is the President's crypto businesses. And that is a phrase. I'm sorry, but that's a terrifying phrase. The President's crypto businesses.
- [58:08]
A
Okay.
- [58:09]
C
And he's. Yes, they're making a lot of money, but also the point of all those things is that the Democrats are going to have a lot of trouble figuring out even how to explain what he's doing.
- [58:20]
A
I don't agree. See, I think where Democrats had trouble and why they were so stupid in the first term is that they went with this unbelievably elaborate impeachment argument about whether or not the phone call to Zelensky was a part of a thing to do Putin a favor because of Russiagate. The none of which made any sense because we were at that point still supporting Ukraine against. Why would firing a prosecutor. Who would that help? Like, nobody could understand that, that the president had this much money at the end of 2024 and he has billions more by June of 2026. And so do his sons, and so do the sons of two of his cabinet members. And that the investments that have made them all this money are weird and secret and private and they involve this currency that nobody understands. Something really ugly is going on here. That is something that anybody can understand. I mean, if they can understand the Epstein files, they can understand this, that this has never happened before. Presidents do not enrich themselves while they're in the presidency. I mean, they may grow. They may have money in a blind trust that grows along with the rate of the stock market, but the stock market did not quadruple in value since January of 2025, which is what Trump tried to say on the tarmac this morning when asked about this question. He's like, well, everybody's doing better. The stock market is up.
- [59:57]
F
Yeah.
- [59:57]
A
It's not up. So that you had 500 billion, 500 million in January of 2025, and you're worth 2.5 billion in June of 2026. That, that much. It didn't go up so well when
- [60:11]
E
he was on the tarmac, of course, he was about to get on his new plane.
- [60:15]
A
Yeah, the gutter plane cutter. Yeah. And let's hope that, you know, let's hope that the CIA was given the right and authority in the DSA and the NSA to get on that plane and rip out every single piece of listening equipment that the gutter is put in the plane. Or did Trump say, no, you're gonna hurt the upholstery. Okay, Nina Totenberg, I promised you. Nina Totenberg. So yesterday, in the middle of our podcast comes the news that Samuel Alito is retiring. We stop the podcast. Eliana goes, whoa. And then three minutes later, Noam, our producer, retirement, Texas is like, it's been retracted. Or Seth said it on the air. The NPR story that said that Alito was retiring has been retracted. So it turns out 82 year old ancient reporter Nina Tonberg, who was covering the Supreme Court when I first came to Washington in 1984, she was the NPR Supreme Court reporter. And here she is in 2026, after the fall of the Soviet Union, after 9, 11, after, after the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, after the financial meltdown, after the rise of the Internet, after Elon Musk, she's still there as the reporter on the Supreme Court. And she just had the fake scoop of a lifetime. So, yes, yes.
- [61:46]
D
So Totenberg, then NPR rushes the story up that says alito's retiring, then 10 minutes later retracts the story. And if you go to see what was there, all it says is, this story has been retracted. It doesn't say, you know, Nina Totenberg erroneously reported that Samuel Alito was retiring. You can't even see what was ever there. She then goes on All Things Considered to explain how she aired, and she claims that she somehow heard Justice Roberts say he was making retirement announcements, but actually heard retirement announcement. And that was enough for her to assume, to rush to the presses and assume that Justice Alito was retiring. And nobody at NPR bothered to give Justice Alito a ring and confirm the story, and they put it to print and that was that. So this is her claim and she is you know, legendary, highly respected, da, da, da, da. And it made me think, you know, this is the same person who reported back in 2022 that Justice Gorsuch, if you recall, refused to wear a mask despite John Roberts request that all the justices mask up because Sonia Sotomayor wasn't comfortable being around unmasked people. Which led to a joint on the record statement from Gorsuch and Sotomayor saying this never happened. And the chief justice saying that he had never made such a request. And the NPR public editor saying, well, she shouldn't have used the word asked. She should have said suggested. And you know how these people make subtle suggestions. And the fact that her husband was Ruth Bader Ginsburg's physician and she knew about RBG's health problems and never revealed them. It is a fitting capstone to an inglorious career of bias and incompetence.
- [64:24]
E
Matt, well put. Eliana. I just want to say that certain person close to me, my lovely wife, doesn't believe Nina Totoberg's story for a second. She thinks it's all made up. And I think, John, you also agree. And I think, John, you had the best point on this on social media where you said, can't Nina just retire? You know, she's 82 years old. I don't understand. I would retire today if I could. I would hang it up. I would go live on the beach, I would read, I would watch movies, maybe I'd write the occasional piece. And yet I look at my peers who are decades older than me, and still they don't stop. They get up.
- [65:17]
A
Why?
- [65:17]
E
Why? And then you kind of rush right into a mistake like this or perhaps a presumption like this, you jump the gun. I just, I don't understand it. Someone needs to explain to me or someone should allow me to retire and then I could just do it for them.
- [65:38]
D
This is the galling thing about this, is that a mistake like this, quote, unquote mistake, you know, whatever it was made by anybody on the right would see them drummed out of polite society forever. And those on the left can make endless numbers of humiliating errors and continue to be referred to as legendary, historic, held in the highest esteem. It is galling to those of us.
- [66:11]
A
Dan Rather. Dan Rather. Totally rehabilitated.
- [66:14]
D
Exactly.
- [66:15]
E
Exactly.
- [66:16]
A
Yeah. I do think that the story of Nina Todberg is one of three things. One, she is really old and having cognitive issues and misunderstood that just saying the word retirement didn't mean alito. And then she ran to the microphone and said it was Alito, or wrote something down, said it was Alito. And therefore npr, as a responsible news organization, needs to tell her that her time is up and she's done glorious service. But somebody else.
- [66:50]
D
So you made one key error there, which is saying npr, comma, is a responsible news organization.
- [66:54]
A
I know, okay. Or like humane, because it's, you know, if in fact, this is the result of age, they are doing her no emotional favors by having her career end in humiliation, for example. So that would be one thing. The other thing is that somebody told her that Alito was retiring and that she made up this cock and bull story about how she misheard John Roberts, in which case she is lying. She lied on air about her sourcing. Now, you can, you are not supposed to reveal your sources, right? That's fine. It's a, somebody tells you something on deep background, you're not supposed to reveal your sources, but you're not morally or ethically as a reporter or a news person supposed to tell a lie about your sourcing. You're not allowed to like, cover up by lying. I mean, you can, but it's like that's, that's a, that's a firing. That's a professional. You're right.
- [67:58]
E
Because the key here is if you accept her explanation as true, that she misheard that what was happening in the court was the retirement announcement, the question is why did she immediately go to Alito? Right, right. She was expecting Alito to announce his retirement. And I think it's interesting that when the NPR story came out, Speaker Mike Johnson's office circulated it with a statement thanking the great Justice Alito for his two decades of service on the court. Which suggests to me that Nina Totenberg is not the only person in the nation's capital who assumes that Justice Alito may retire.
- [68:47]
C
Yeah, I mean, it's a pre written, it's like a pre written obit in a way. You know, he hit send. But also, Mitch McConnell's office has a We thank them for their service. Ready to hit send also when, you know, when the obituary goes live.
- [68:59]
A
Well, John. Right, right. Okay. But I do think that one explanation, which is that she miss her. John. JOHN Robert, whatever she miss her is she really has to stop doing this job because she made this terrible error that other people wouldn't make, and it's probably largely due to age and they are humiliating her by keeping her there or she's lying about how she got the story, that the story is out. She heard retirement. She then put this together. And then there is my third conspiratorial option, which I'm just gonna float to you, that somebody dropped a dirty dime on her to see who was the leaker. That is to say, somebody said to her, alito's gonna retire. Somebody said to someone, alito's going to retire. That person says to Nina Totenberg, alito's going to retire. When she says, alito is going to retire, person number one knows that person number two is the leaker. And the person number two is exposed inside the Supreme Court and is, you know, revealed as somebody who is talking to the press. Remember, we still do not know who leaked the Dobbs decision. They spent a year looking for the leaker of the Dobbs decision. We're not able to find the case. They're still in the case. Yeah, right. Anyway, that's what that would be.
- [70:32]
E
He knows it has something to do with the wise Latina, but he can't. He can't figure out who that might be.
- [70:38]
A
Can figure it out.
- [70:39]
D
You know, if anybody retires, I suspect it will be Alito. Okay. I wouldn't be totally shocked. Nonetheless, you guys all heard my reaction. It was like, wow. Wow, this is a big deal. I don't know where she was exactly, but did she not notice other people around her weren't like, you know, oh, my gosh. Oh, my gosh.
- [71:04]
E
She claimed she was outside the court. That's what's. So. Yeah. So she. And then. Then my favorite part of her explanation is she just asked a random person what was going on. She never identifies this person who told her retirement announcements. And she, as she said, missed, didn't hear the S. So, yeah, she had no way of judging. She just. She. You know what happens when you assume.
- [71:27]
A
There you go. Okay, Matt, you have a recommendation?
- [71:30]
E
I do. John, thank you very much. I am recommending today the new novel by Michael Connelly, Ironwood. As longtime listeners and viewers know, I'm a Michael Connelly, Stan. I've read two dozen of his books easily. I think he's one of the great writers of our time. Ironwood is the second book in a relatively new series, which he started, that features Catalina island off the coast of California, and the sheriff of Catalina, Stillwell, who is a new character. The first book in the series I didn't recommend because I thought it was actually kind of weak for a Michael Connelly novel that came out last year. But I can say Ironwood, which is just out, lives up to the best. Michael Connolly, as always in the Michael Connelly universe, other characters from his other books, comes in so Renee Ballard, who's one of his great detectives, she's in the case, she's in the book. Harry Bosch has a cameo, of course, his original character, and it's a like most Connolly mysteries. Now it involves three different mysteries of various intensity, but the main plot involves a serial killer and it's a great read. I stormed through it in a couple of days. I think you will too. That's Ironwood by Michael Connelly.
- [72:56]
A
Just a programming note. Tomorrow, of course, the 2nd of July will be our last podcast this week and it is an advanced tape podcast because I'm traveling. A conversation with Ruth Weiss about the re release of her book if I am not for myself, the Liberal Betrayal of the Jews. We will not have a podcast on the 3rd of July as it is a federal holiday. And of course then the fourth on Saturday. And then we're not quite clear what's going to happen next week, Monday to Wednesday. We may have podcasts on Monday and Tuesday, or we may not. It's a little unclear at this moment. I feel a little guilty that we did not dedicate any specific podcast time to the 250th birthday of the Declaration of Independence. The July August issue of Commentary, which is online and available to you and for subscribers. The physical magazine should be in your mailboxes right about now. We're very proud of it. There are articles by me, a conversation between me and Mayor Soloveitchik about the Jewish roots in the United States, an extraordinary piece by the historian Alan Guelzo on the international effect of the Declaration of Independence and the creation of the United States, how it lit the minds of the world on fire and was a revolutionary moment not only here, but across the globe, in South America, in Europe, elsewhere. Just a remarkable piece full of things that I did not know and learned very much from. And of course, we all here believe that the United States is the greatest political project in human history and the most remains the most remarkably advanced system of government. Advanced, enduring. And despite all the tests that has been, it's being put to even as we speak right now. So strong, so brilliantly conceived, so layered, so rich in structure that prevents any individual ideology from taking over the entire country and imposing radical ideas and then shifting to other ideas that go entirely in the other direction. That's not the way things work here and it's why we are so stable, even though we don't feel stable. But in fact, if you look at Great Britain right now, our, our, you know, our predecessor country, seven prime ministers in ten years like that. Britain was the stable, was the rock of all parliamentary governance, and it is now showing the effects of the failures of parliamentary governance. And our system remains strong, hearty, able Supreme Court making its providing its check and balance in these epochal decisions this week. We obviously believe the House and the Senate are falling down on their constitutional obligations and responsibilities in ways that are overly empowering the presidency. But that could simply be a phase that can be reversed through will and choice and determination. And so I just, you know, and also just the remarkable degree of gratitude that I feel for the creation of the United States that made the prosperity of our people possible for the first time in two millennia, the Jewish people who lived in penury and servitude and powerlessness for so, so long until we were finally granted equal rights by a new nation. Cover of that July August issue reproduces the letter that George Washington wrote in 1790 to the Tour Synagogue in Newport, Rhode island, in which he commends the United States as a place for the practice of faith and the rejection of religious tyranny or religious abuse, and says that we are here for everyone to lie under their own vine and fig tree where none shall make them afraid, a quote from the prophets. And that is what America has been to us and for us. And I think we are all just cosmically grateful to be here. So for Matt, Abe, Seth and Eliana, I'm John Pothor. It's Keith the Candle bur.