The Case of the 20-Year-Old High Schooler

Summary

Summary of "The Case of the 20-Year-Old High Schooler" – Commentary Magazine Podcast

Release Date: May 28, 2025

In this episode of The Commentary Magazine Podcast, host John Podhoretz engages in a robust discussion with fellow Commentary contributors Abe Greenwald, Seth Mandel, and Matthew Continetti. The conversation centers on contemporary immigration issues, historical comparisons, the ongoing crisis in Gaza, and the intricacies of U.S. foreign policy under the Trump administration.

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1. Immigration Policy and Media Portrayals

The episode opens with Podhoretz highlighting troubling immigration stories from the New York Times, particularly focusing on the case of a 20-year-old high schooler allegedly residing illegally in a U.S. high school. Podhoretz criticizes the media’s portrayal, suggesting that such narratives paint immigration enforcement in an increasingly negative light.

John Podhoretz [02:04]: "This high school student is 20 years old... It's almost 20 years since... install a socialist communist government... But this is how the New York Times is now handling this."

Matthew Continetti adds depth by questioning the broader implications of these stories, emphasizing the potential risks associated with adults masquerading as minors in educational institutions.

Matthew Continetti [06:02]: "There's got to be more to the story. We don't know whether this student had links to crime."

Seth Mandel and Podhoretz debate the prioritization of deporting such individuals, with Mandel pointing out the broader dangers posed by illegal immigration.

Seth Mandel [05:39]: "Shouldn't the 20-year-old illegals hiding in high schools be among the first that we deport?"

The discussion underscores concerns about the strain on public services, societal integration, and the criminal justice implications of current immigration policies.

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2. Historical Context: The Galveston Project

Podhoretz draws a parallel between current immigration challenges and the Galveston Project of the early 20th century, which aimed to relocate Jewish immigrants from overcrowded urban ghettos to Galveston, Texas.

John Podhoretz [12:55]: "The Galveston Jews fanned out over the Southwest. They opened stores... 100 years later, they are all over America."

Continetti contrasts this successful historical assimilation with today’s illegal immigration dynamics, where legal structures and community support networks have eroded.

Matthew Continetti [17:20]: "There's a weird system in which these people come to America and they don't become Americans. They remain apart and outside."

This comparison highlights the importance of structured immigration policies and community-based support in ensuring successful integration.

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3. Gaza Aid Distribution and Media Coverage

Shifting focus to the Middle East, the podcast delves into the recent food aid distribution in Gaza, orchestrated by a private American company in coordination with Israeli authorities. Podhoretz criticizes the media's handling of the situation, arguing that reports often misrepresent the reality on the ground.

John Podhoretz [21:02]: "Aid is being distributed at sites. The foundation... has set up in coordination with the Israeli authorities."

Abe Greenwald expresses concern over the humanitarian implications, noting the similarity of aid distribution lines to those historically associated with atrocities.

Abe Greenwald [29:52]: "There were a lot of very troubling pictures posted yesterday at the distribution site... exactly what it looked like at Auschwitz."

Continetti counters by emphasizing Hamas’s role in complicating aid distribution, suggesting that the new plan aims to separate Hamas influence from the general population.

Matthew Continetti [26:27]: "Separating the population from Hamas... shows some promise to begin to separate Hamas from the non-Hamas elements of the population."

The conversation critiques mainstream media outlets like NPR for their uncritical reporting of Hamas statements, thereby perpetuating a biased narrative.

Continetti [34:38]: "Interpolated heroic efforts are now being painted as chaotic, misleading representations of the situation."

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4. U.S. Foreign Policy: Iran Negotiations and Middle East Strategy

A significant portion of the episode examines the Trump administration’s approach to Iranian nuclear negotiations. Podhoretz and his guests express skepticism about the administration’s handling, particularly regarding uranium enrichment.

John Podhoretz [40:08]: "If we're negotiating with Iran and they're just saying no to everything, why are we essentially giving them a couple of solats?"

Mandel critiques the administration’s perceived softness, arguing that it emboldens adversaries.

Seth Mandel [56:18]: "Trump has now projected a kind of weakness of a different sort that has given adversaries every reason to continue to think that they can play us."

Continetti warns against the geopolitical ramifications of current negotiations, suggesting that compromises on nuclear policies could destabilize the Persian Gulf region.

Matthew Continetti [46:04]: "We are introducing the prospect of nuclear instability into a region that has been nothing but trouble for the United States for the last 50 years."

The discussion extends to the broader implications for Middle East stability, touching upon the roles of Hezbollah, the Houthis, and the potential for further conflicts involving China and Russia.

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5. Media Bias and Information Warfare

Throughout the episode, the commentators emphasize the role of media bias in shaping public perception of international crises. Podhoretz and Continetti argue that mainstream media often fails to critically assess the actions of entities like Hamas, instead perpetuating unverified claims that obscure the true nature of conflicts.

Continetti [35:31]: "They are able to escape culpability and continue their devious plans without any real consequences."

Greenwald echoes these sentiments by highlighting how media narratives can sometimes equate terrorists with legitimate actors, undermining factual reporting and informed discourse.

Abe Greenwald [29:51]: "Hamas is trying essentially to set up what can only be described as a checkpoint... They rushed through it yelling F Hamas."

This segment underscores the podcast’s overarching theme of advocating for a more critical and nuanced understanding of international issues, free from media-induced biases.

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6. Conclusion and Final Remarks

As the episode draws to a close, the hosts reflect on the interconnectedness of domestic immigration policies and international foreign affairs, emphasizing the need for coherent and principled approaches to both.

John Podhoretz [60:04]: "And like, that will happen when I win a Pulitzer Prize. And so if I were he, I would start... stop looking to them for validation."

The discussion concludes with a call for listeners to remain vigilant against media biases and to advocate for policies that prioritize national security, societal well-being, and international stability.

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Notable Quotes:

• John Podhoretz [02:04]: "This high school student is 20 years old... It's almost 20 years since... install a socialist communist government... But this is how the New York Times is now handling this."

• Matthew Continetti [06:02]: "There's got to be more to the story. We don't know whether this student had links to crime."

• Seth Mandel [05:39]: "Shouldn't the 20-year-old illegals hiding in high schools be among the first that we deport?"

• John Podhoretz [12:55]: "The Galveston Jews fanned out over the Southwest. They opened stores... 100 years later, they are all over America."

• Matthew Continetti [17:20]: "There's a weird system in which these people come to America and they don't become Americans. They remain apart and outside."

• Abe Greenwald [29:52]: "There were a lot of very troubling pictures posted yesterday at the distribution site... exactly what it looked like at Auschwitz."

• John Podhoretz [40:08]: "If we're negotiating with Iran and they're just saying no to everything, why are we essentially giving them a couple of solats?"

• Matthew Continetti [46:04]: "We are introducing the prospect of nuclear instability into a region that has been nothing but trouble for the United States for the last 50 years."

---

This episode offers a critical perspective on current immigration narratives, historical assimilation practices, media biases, and the complexities of U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. The hosts advocate for stringent immigration enforcement, highlight the successes of past policies, and caution against perceived weaknesses in international negotiations, all while challenging listeners to question mainstream media portrayals.

Transcript

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[John Podhoretz]

A thirst no way of knowing which way it's going. Hope for the best. Expect the waste of the bed welcome to the Commentary Magazine daily Podcast. Today is Wednesday, May 28, 2025. I'm John Pod Horowitz, the editor of Commentary Magazine. Just a quick note. Our friend Dan Senor is going to do a live version of his Call Me Back podcast with former multi administration official Brett McGurk talking about negotiations in the Middle East. That live podcast will take place at the JCC in Manhattan and you can get tickets to it if you so choose by going to jccmanhattan.org I believe that is next week, June 6, something like that, if I have my time. Right? But you if you go to jccmanhattan.org, you can find the information there. People who will probably listen to the podcast after it's taped live are my fellow colleagues here. Executive Editor Abe Greenwald. Hi Abe.

[Seth Mandel]

Hi John.

[John Podhoretz]

Senior Editor Seth Mandel. Hi Seth.

[Abe Greenwald]

Hi John.

[John Podhoretz]

And Washington Commentary columnist and Director of Domestic Policy Studies at the American Enterprise Institute, Matthew Continetti. Hi Matt.

[Matthew Continetti]

Hi John.

[John Podhoretz]

I don't know where to go. So many things to talk about. I did want to make note of one inadvertently comic story in the New York Times where the Times portrays ice, the Immigration Enforcement Service, as having taken a step up in the evil of its monstrous behavior, attempting to secure custody of illegals by noting their arrest in a certain place they have in a courtroom or somewhere of a high school student. They're now arresting high school students. People, what is going on here? Drop down three paragraphs in the story. This high school student is 20 years old. Now granted, you know Bluto Blutarski, seven years of college down the drain. I understand that people do sometimes take a little while to get themselves through high school. They're held back. A 20 year old illegal in a high school is in a high school to mask himself or hide himself from authorities. Another story in the New York Times yesterday, I believe, about a woman who has decided to self deport to Venezuela with her two children because she's Afraid that she might get arrested. So what's the issue in the story? The story is she doesn't really want to go back to Venezuela. But they're make. But she's decided that she has to.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah.

[John Podhoretz]

And you know, she's been working at a convenience store and her kids are in school. Sometimes they're hungry. And so obviously the ultimate goal of Trump administration should be Biden or anybody's policy in relation to illegals, which is to have them not enter our criminal justice system, but rather to go home where they are legal residents. Even if, and I understand that Venezuela is not a great place to live, but they don't have, have legal authority, right, or standing to be here in the United States, that this should be a sort of tug on your heartstring story, which it is. I really do think, you know, maybe one thing we could do to help this is to work even harder to overthrow the Maduro regime in Venezuela and make life good for the Venezuelan people as it was before they made the inestimably stupid decision almost 20 years ago to install a socialist communist government in the person of Hugo Chavez, who then continued to steal elections and then his successor stole more elections. But this is how the New York Times is now handling this. Any, any story that comes their way about somebody leaving the country is a story of our evil and depredation. Even though we got a 20 year old in a high school class and, and a person in Kentucky or somewhere or other who is like, I can't take the stress of worrying about getting rounded up, so I'm just gonna do what I should have done in the first place and not, and go home and not cross a border into a country in which I am not legally allowed to be present.

[Seth Mandel]

Shouldn't the 20 year old illegals hiding in high schools be among the first that we deport?

[John Podhoretz]

I think they have to find them. I think that's part of.

[Seth Mandel]

I know, but, I mean, but, but that strikes me not as a sympathetic story to the, to the illegal, but a, but a sign of a particular type of danger here.

[Matthew Continetti]

There's got to be more to the story. We don't know whether this student, this.

[Unknown Speaker]

Student had links to crime.

[John Podhoretz]

Right.

[Matthew Continetti]

Certainly at the military age, male, you know, status in addition to being an illegal immigrant. I think the stories representative of the.

[Unknown Speaker]

Liberal blindness to the consequences of their policies on communities and on people who.

[Matthew Continetti]

Don'T have their social status or live in their type of closed off reality. You know, what, what has been the.

[Unknown Speaker]

Effect of the mass illegal immigration during.

[Matthew Continetti]

The Biden years on America's schools, has it been a positive effect or has it been a negative effect? I think it's been a negative effect. The public schools have been overcrowded. You have thousands upon thousands of kids showing up with no English skills.

[Unknown Speaker]

You have to devote resources to accommodating these kids.

[Matthew Continetti]

They, of course, need social support.

[Unknown Speaker]

So the impact on our welfare programs has been negative as well.

[Matthew Continetti]

And this leaves aside any of the potential criminality or violent effects of these.

[Unknown Speaker]

Individuals who should just not be in the country. They shouldn't be in the country.

[Matthew Continetti]

And it was a bad policy that.

[Unknown Speaker]

Has let them into the country.

[Matthew Continetti]

And that bad policy is one of.

[Unknown Speaker]

Two main reasons Donald Trump is the president right now.

[Matthew Continetti]

So when you read stories like these, you are reminded that liberals just cannot.

[Unknown Speaker]

Comprehend why Donald Trump is president.

[Matthew Continetti]

Because this is a gimme. The illegal immigration is a gimme.

[John Podhoretz]

You can make the argument that in the two or the three most highlighted cases since Trump became president, that is, of course, Brego Garcia, the man mistakenly deported to Maryland, Maryland man, the Mahmoud Khalil, here on a. On a student visa, married to an American. And then this. There are a couple of student cases, right, that in each case, there is something arguable. There is a document, there is. They're embedded in an institution, they're married to an American, whatever it is you want to. There is a justiciable argument that their treatment is unfair or unjust. Finding somebody who is in this country illegally detaining them and deporting them is not justiciable. Like that is. They do not have a right to be in the United States. They are not. They are afforded what you might call international human rights protections, or sort of like the protections that are due any civilized society due someone who is taken into custody. Like habeas corpus, for example, in some circumstances. But this is an open and shut case. So if you want to have serious arguments about Mahmoud Khalil, which is still in the courts, that's fine. Taking somebody into custody who is an illegal is. That's what we have, a border Patrol and, you know, we have these laws for. They're not allowed to be here, and so you are allowed to deport them. And what's more, if the message gets to some people that if they get into the system, they're going to be deported, maybe they can do it in a time, place and manner of their own choosing. That makes it more pleasant. Like somebody could meet them at the airport with their bags and take them to the home, into their home. So that they can have a place to stay until they're ready to find employment and work in their home country.

[Matthew Continetti]

May I use this opportunity to make a kind of random reading recommendation?

[John Podhoretz]

Oh, yeah.

[Unknown Speaker]

I have another recommendation for the end of the show.

[Matthew Continetti]

But as we're Talking about this 20 year old high school student, I was reminded of one of the greatest David.

[Unknown Speaker]

Graham New Yorker pieces of all time.

[Matthew Continetti]

And you can look it up online. It's called the Chameleon, the Many Lives of Frederic Bourdin by David Grand.

[Unknown Speaker]

It appeared in the New Yorker in.

[Matthew Continetti]

2008 and it is about a French, a Frenchman, an adult who spent years posing as a 15 year old boy. And of course, like all David Graham stories, it's this onion that he kind of peels back layer by layer as.

[Unknown Speaker]

You get deeper into the story.

[Matthew Continetti]

But the point of adults, legal adults, being in high school is that this.

[Unknown Speaker]

Is an inherently dangerous situation. Right?

[Matthew Continetti]

And so not only is there just a plain reading of the law that suggests that if this adult is here illegally, he needs to go home, it's that there is social contagion, you know, the danger of him preying on the children.

[Unknown Speaker]

That should also alert us to the.

[Matthew Continetti]

Fact that we don't want this type of outcome.

[John Podhoretz]

Look, I want to use the.

[Abe Greenwald]

The joke was always that if you had somebody in a high school that was clearly older, they were a narc, and now it's the opposite. Culture has changed. It was always, how do you do fellow kids? Right, you know, sort of thing. And, but, but the other thing is just, just to keep in mind, by definition, and I say this as a known squish on immigration and stuff, but by definition, the immigration stories are going to be sob stories. That's what the immigration system is largely made up of people seeking a better life. So it's very easy to see any immigrant story as, you know, a sob story, a sad story for them to have to leave or whatever. They've been through a lot, generally speaking, that's who's coming here, especially across our border in the South. So, you know, it sort of games the system to say it's true that these are, some of these are very sad and it's true that they are. That a lot of these people are sympathetic. I mean, I'm sympathetic towards somebody who has tyranny at home and would rather be in America. I have great sympathy for that person. But at the same time, most of the stories are going to sound like this, no matter the righteousness of the decision to deport that person.

[John Podhoretz]

Matt, you Recommended a book last week or the week before last. Memoir, sort of family memoir or an account.

[Matthew Continetti]

Oh, yes. Thank you for bringing this up, because I want to revise my recommendation.

[John Podhoretz]

Oh, you do?

[Matthew Continetti]

Oh, well, just a little bit, but go ahead. Sorry.

[John Podhoretz]

So I'm not going to talk about the book in question, but it dealt with the Galveston Project, which was an effort in the early 20th century to resettle Jews from Europe away from the ghettos of New York and Baltimore and Chicago in particular, in order to alleviate the burden on social services and Jewish social services and community social services with the mass influx of Jews from. Particularly from Eastern Europe. And so a billionaire philanthropist, or what we would now call billionaire philanthropist Jacob Schiff, had this idea of relocating Jews to Galveston, Texas, you know, a. I would call it a beach town, but, you know, town on the. You know, town on the Gulf of Mexico. And. And then they would come in the United States from the south and resettle in the south and make their way. And it didn't go well in the sense that though about 10,000 people came in, he had a whole visionary plan for. There would be social services and social workers and English classes and all of that. And then none of that really materialized. And these people got off the boat, and they were legal. They got off the boat, and they were on their own. They were totally at. And they were on their own, and they had to get off the boat. They had to find food so they wouldn't starve. They had to learn English as fast as possible so they could make their way in a place in which no one had seen a Jew ever. And they needed to assimilate or acculturate as fast as possible for their own natural survival. And this story is an unalloyed American success story. The Galveston Jews fanned out over the Southwest. They opened stores. They did this, they did that. 100 years later, they are, you know, their descendants are all over. All over America. And it's a kind of remarkable story. It's kind of the reverse of what happened with the illegal immigration beginning in the Obama years, which is that people came in. They came in illegally, they were kind of processed and then sent out into a country where they had the possibility of availing themselves of all kinds of social services. You know, they could use the schools, they could do that. They could. They could do all kinds of stuff. And the net result was that we have people who've been here for 10 years who have not assimilated or acculturated at all. They don't speak English. You Know, they sort of rely on their children who have been either born here or came very young to be their translators and to like, guide them through the system, like eight, nine, seven, eight nine year old kids. And so part of this is also a story of America's changing understanding of what the obligations are of somebody who legally or illegal come legally comes into this country and is supposed to like, become an American, basically. And we have this weird system in which these people come to America and they don't become Americans. They remain apart and outside, and they are not. And they give a lot of people in this country a very uneasy and queasy feeling about just what it is we are doing for them when they do not appear unless they are picking vegetables or working in horrible factories. And I don't think that that's, you know, not a net contributor to a country in which Americans aren't going to do those jobs. Nonetheless, they are not participating in the American experiment. They are not here because of patriotic fervor. They're here because it's an escape or they want jobs.

[Matthew Continetti]

You know, I mean, that's not.

[John Podhoretz]

There's nothing.

[Matthew Continetti]

Right. There's. What's bad is that there has been a. There's supposed to be a process. There's supposed to be laws that Congress.

[Unknown Speaker]

Has passed governing who gets into the country and how.

[Matthew Continetti]

And beginning in 2021, the Biden administration just said to heck with it. And, and we had an open border and millions of people crossed that no one, no one voted for and that violated the laws passed by Congress. That there was, you know, the difference between, I think, the immigration in the.

[Unknown Speaker]

Early part of the 20th century and today.

[Matthew Continetti]

So many of the groups that came in the early part of the 20th century, like the Galveston Jews, relied on community based civil society networks to not only come over.

[Unknown Speaker]

Right. But also once they're here in Galveston.

[Matthew Continetti]

There was a rabbi in Galveston who.

[Unknown Speaker]

Is a major character in this book.

[Matthew Continetti]

Melting Point by Rachel Cockrell. And you see how the Jewish community in Galveston and then up through Texas and into the Midwest and to Louisiana as well, helped the newcomers. Of course, with the growth of government over the 20th century, civil society, community based organizations are largely crowded out now.

[Unknown Speaker]

There's still non governmental organizations that are.

[Matthew Continetti]

Assisting the newly arrived, but those are kind of, you know, big NGOs, so to speak, right.

[Unknown Speaker]

That depend heavily on government contracts. It's a very different type of system.

[Matthew Continetti]

And I think that depersonalization has been a negative factor in our immigration debate.

[Unknown Speaker]

The one thing I wanted to say.

[Matthew Continetti]

About Melting Point when I recommended the book, I hadn't got into 1948 yet and the chapter on the establishment of the state of Israel is the worst chapter of the book. So while I still recommend the book, I would just advise everyone to just skip the chapter because it is not sympathetic to the state of Israel. Which is strange because as I said in my initial recommendation, every other part of the book to me reinforces the necessity of the Jewish state and its portraiture of of Theodore Herzl. Even its portraiture of jabotinsky is very 360 degrees. And you get, you know, so you.

[Unknown Speaker]

Don'T get any politicization.

[Matthew Continetti]

But the establishment chapter, the founding of Israel chapter is awful and terrible. So skip that part. And also skip all of the reviews by these liberal anti Zionist twerps who are praising the book because they think that it is actually an anti Zionist tract. And I don't believe it is so just I'm encouraging ignorance and blindness among.

[Unknown Speaker]

Our readership and viewership here.

[Anthony Scaramucci]

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[Dr. Rob Williams]

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[John Podhoretz]

Since you invoked Israel in 1948, we can move on to the to the main topic of the show, really, which is what I would call the education of Donald Trump, which I think is what we called yesterday's podcast that Seth and I did together. Because there are further developments in the last 24 hours, and particularly in the way the media are covering the developments in Trump's developing foreign policy. Israel began distributing food aid yesterday or not Israel, sort of a private company run by the United States began distributing, distributing food aid with the IDF kind of in the background to deal with utter catastrophe should something or other happen and like a mass riot break out or something like that. And the story seems to be that after, as you can imagine, an initial flood of people desperately trying to get food and the site being overwhelmed by the, the main site being overwhelmed, by the end of the day, they'd figured out an order, they had created a line, they had created a process that needed to be developed in real time because you never know what's going to happen in circumstances like this. There were deceitful and distorting stories about how the Americans were firing guns at people, which turns out not to be true. That the IDF might have been shooting off Canonry, which does not appear to be true. What does appear to be true is that people who, in a panic and desperation broke through the barriers and got into sort of the central area. The decision was made practically by the people running the process on the ground that they would effectively be rewarded for having, having done it this way. Like, the only way to really calm it down was let them take their bundles and go. And these bundles are very serious food packages. They provide 3,500 calories a day per person for five days. For a family, I think it's either four or six people.

[Abe Greenwald]

They are getting a flour pasta, white rice, beans, canned green beans, I think, which, you know, vegetables, along with the occasional condiment like a bottle of tahina and a bag of chickpeas, right. As the pictures that I've seen.

[John Podhoretz]

Anyway, it's all right.

[Abe Greenwald]

These are carbs and protein, in other.

[John Podhoretz]

Words, and it is deliberately high caloric food and, and for a lot of people. And of course, Hamas has announced that it will shoot anybody that they see carrying one of these boxes, because, as you know, there's a humanitarian disaster and Hamas is there to exacerbate it. In other words, if they can't steal the food, which is what they were doing with the previous food aid, they will at least prevent other Gazans from getting food. And once again, we are faced with this astounding and unprecedented circumstance in which an army attempting to defeat another, let's call Gaza Nation, though it really isn't, is also being tasked with the task of feeding the very people whose pressure on the, on the, you know, totalitarians who are controlling them is part of a military strategy to win the war. And so it's now been more than a year in which Israel's ability to bring this war to a speedy conclusion has been complicated, made more difficult, slowed down and indeed made more deadly by this demand that Israel be the feeder of this society that sought basically to overrun the south of Israel and create possible conditions for a full scale war in which not only would they come in from the south, but Hezbollah would come in from the north and catch Israel in a pincers movement. People seem to think this was not a serious strategy. It was a serious strategy and that then also gets us to Iran.

[Matthew Continetti]

But can I just go ahead on what happened yesterday? The first thing to be said despite the chaos is that this new plan to provide aid to the population of Gaza is already more successful than the Gaza pier.

[Unknown Speaker]

We should just keep in mind the.

[Matthew Continetti]

Gaza pier announced by Joe Biden in the State of the Union in 2024.

[Unknown Speaker]

And which never provided a single piece.

[Matthew Continetti]

Of aid to the people in Gaza.

[John Podhoretz]

So $350 million and there were 60 casualties. Yeah, 60American. I mean casualties is maybe not 60Americans.

[Matthew Continetti]

Yeah, had died. Yeah, there were accident there, but there.

[John Podhoretz]

Were 60 people injured in the, in the.

[Matthew Continetti]

So let's just keep that in mind.

[Unknown Speaker]

The most important words in life are compared to what.

[Matthew Continetti]

And I think what happened was the rush to get the packages. One, people wanted the packages because Hamas.

[Unknown Speaker]

Has been hoarding them and using them as a tool to control the population.

[Matthew Continetti]

But two, remember these sites are in controlled spaces. So I heard a complaint this morning. Oh, well, you're not. The UN used to check the names off. Well, sure, that's if the convoy got to where it wanted to go to begin with. But remember that these are being distributed.

[Unknown Speaker]

In places that the IDF has operational control over, which is part of the point.

[Matthew Continetti]

Separate the population from Hamas. And so I think that this is what, despite a chaotic first day and two of the sites, the other two sites are fine, actually shows some promise to begin to separate Hamas from the.

[Unknown Speaker]

Non Hamas elements of the population, such as they are.

[Matthew Continetti]

And that's the second point I want to make, which is remember this is happening amidst rising protests among the Gazans over Hamas rule. So the better the people should be invested in this, in this plan. Right. Because if you can remove one of.

[Unknown Speaker]

The main levers of power that Hamas has over the population, which is aid, right.

[Matthew Continetti]

And remove aid from Hamas, then you are actually creating the conditions where the war could be resolved more quickly.

[John Podhoretz]

To give you a sense of the mindset that Matt is talking about, I want to read to you from one of these bylines with 250,000 authors in the New York Times, which is now taken to evading responsibility by providing a single byline for which, oh, it's the.

[Matthew Continetti]

Worst trend in journalism. The, the, the number. The more bylines on a piece. My new rule. The less you need to read it, right?

[John Podhoretz]

But the more bylines there are, that means the less you can say, I'm really annoyed by so and so's piece in the Times because it was biased. It's like, well, I didn't write that paragraph. Patrick Kingsley wrote it, you know. But here is in the middle of the story about the distribution of the aid yesterday, here is the quote from the New York Times. Israel has said it was blocking aid from entering Gaza to prevent it from reaching the hands of Hamas. I like the Israel said formulation. Like it actually has a real reason for blocking aid, which isn't to prevent it from reaching the hands of Hamas. You know, like to kill babies because, you know, that's the blood libel. Under the new plan, aid is being distributed at sites. The foundation, this is the private foundation that's distributing the aid, has set up in coordination with the Israeli authorities. Here's the paragraph that you got it like, just, just breathe in. But the plan to have the Israeli military stationed at a visible distance from the sites has drawn an outcry from humanitarian organizations. Critics say it puts Palestinian civilians at risk of more contact with Israeli soldiers. I believe that even the Palestinian civilians being civilians, unarmed civilians who are not members of Hamas, being in contact with Israeli soldiers is not a threat to them. The threat to them is from goons from Hamas who will shoot them in the leg if they say, I want to go over there to get some food. Note that this now, now we have lowered the. The Israeli war crime level to Israeli soldiers in an area that they are now attempting to occupy almost completely in order to bring the war to an end. They are, they are showing chutzpah by getting anywhere near Palestinian civilians. This is a war zone.

[Matthew Continetti]

Proximity and is the new war crime.

[John Podhoretz]

Proximity is a war crime. Exactly. So I.

[Abe Greenwald]

You forgot lines.

[John Podhoretz]

Which line were a lot of.

[Abe Greenwald]

There were a lot of very troubling pictures posted yesterday at the distribution site of people lined up to get the food. And this was very worrying because at one point there were four lines and people were pointing out that this was exactly what it looked like at Auschwitz. Four lines of people waiting to pick up a box full of food. But lines now is the new war crime lines. But it's also, you know, Hamas wasn't just against the idea of these aid Distributions. Hamas was actively trying to disrupt them yesterday. I mean, part, the reason there was, according to those on the ground, the reason there was a rush at one point was because Hamas tried to stop people from getting to the outer perimeter of the distribution site. The outer perimeter is where there's IDF security. The, and inside there are Americans doing security and handing out the aid.

[John Podhoretz]

Right.

[Abe Greenwald]

So Hamas is trying essentially to set up what, what can only be described as a checkpoint. I mean, that's, that's what it is essentially. And they rushed through it yelling f Hamas. There are videos of, of Palestinians. They're not shouting F Israel when they rush through. So the, there's important context here too, even for the chaos, which was the word that everybody used in its headline, you know, of what happened yesterday. That's one. The second thing is that Hamas announced that they were going to be setting up a distribution sites to compete. Now what does that tell you about the presence of food in Gaza before anybody brings any aid, any additional aid in there? If there's, if Hamas can compete with boxes of flour and pasta and white rice and vegetables, the food is there. It's in Hamas's hands. And everything that people have been saying about that so far in defense of, of, of Israel's decision to restrict aid has been vindicated. It's as simple as that.

[John Podhoretz]

This aid distribution system that has now been put in place has been put in place basically as, as part of a goodwill effort toward the United States by the Netanyahu government, Rubio and Witkoff and Trump himself and said, and I believe Bibi said in a certain speech, senators friendly, American senators friendly to Israel said we can't see famine pictures help us figure out how to do this. And so this system was put in place as a, as essentially as an, as an effort not only to help feed the suffering Gazans, which I'm sure many Israelis, you know, of soft heart would like to do because they don't want to see famine either. But you know, trust me, like that is not the main reason that they would be doing this in order to sort of keep on America's good side and not give the Trump administration or friends of Israel any trouble about continuing to support Israel. So that's why it's happening. And apparently six hours of difficulty were resolved by the end of the day. And some, I don't know, 462,000 tons of food were, just some enormous number of amount of food was, was delivered by the end of the day yesterday. And apparently the things I've seen this morning suggest that at the at least the two functioning sites, and there may be a couple of others opening, that the process is now orderly and controlled. So that's one thing that we need to say, is that this is being done not as part of Israel's strategic plan to get this war over with, get the hostages home and defeat Hamas, but to keep its relationship with the Trump administration as friendly as possible. And that now brings us to point three.

[Matthew Continetti]

Oh, sorry. Just I want to make a point about the media role in this and because Seth reminded me the the way in which the media is reporting the war in Gaza now is just beyond the pace.

[Unknown Speaker]

We've gotten so used to the deviancy in media coverage that we hardly remark on it.

[Matthew Continetti]

But I think this is a good.

[Unknown Speaker]

Point to talk about it because of.

[Matthew Continetti]

Course, whenever Hamas was raiding these UN.

[Unknown Speaker]

Food convoys, it did not make the mainstream media.

[Matthew Continetti]

Right. It took a while before even the.

[Unknown Speaker]

Gazan protests against Hamas were being mentioned by the media. All those UN Figures that Seth debunked on the program last week about the.

[Matthew Continetti]

Famine, those are repeated without any scrutiny at all in the major media of the United States and, and I assume.

[Unknown Speaker]

The BBC and other Western media organizations.

[Matthew Continetti]

What happened here yesterday, the npr, which.

[Unknown Speaker]

Of course sued the Trump administration to.

[Matthew Continetti]

Retain its federal funding yesterday as well, NPR just simply said, well, Hamas said three people died and 60 plus people were injured.

[Unknown Speaker]

Again quoting Hamas, a genocidal terrorist organization.

[Matthew Continetti]

Without any mention of who Hamas is.

[Unknown Speaker]

What it is responsible for, and why it shouldn't be taken seriously.

[Matthew Continetti]

And my point is the fact that we have returned to a place where.

[Unknown Speaker]

The terrorists are put on the same.

[Matthew Continetti]

Footing as the Israelis and the Americans.

[Unknown Speaker]

And the terrorist claims are repeated without.

[Matthew Continetti]

Any incredulity, is the acceptable liberal edge of the sewer of opinion that feeds the atrocity that happened in Washington, D.C. last week. And so as much as we're used to it now that we hardly even.

[Unknown Speaker]

Talk about it, we should continue to be ashamed and disgusted by the behavior of the mainstream media and repeating the Hamas lies.

[Matthew Continetti]

And even we should be infuriated at an organization like NPR which while doing this, says that they are somehow entitled to federal funds.

[John Podhoretz]

Great. So again, moving on now. So Gaza, of course, is an Iranian satellite organization, Hezbollah, an Iranian satellite organization, and the Houthis in Yemen, an Iranian satellite organization. The, let's put it this way, the offensive capacities of Hezbollah and Hamas have been rendered neutral or have been largely neutralized. The Houthis continue to fire ballistic missiles at Israel at about 4 o' clock in the morning, waking up my, you know, one and a half year old and four year old and seven year old and nine year old nieces and nephews from their slumbers as they have to run into a shelter until the all clear. I only mention my own family because it just gives you a sense of what, it's, what it's like. It's, it happens in the middle of the night. And, and you have to take precautionary measures. And, and, and this, if this happens night after night, obviously what you have is traumatized, exhausted children who are, you know, not able to, you know, have a Pacific night's sleep. Okay, that's the Houthi. That's still going on. We were at war with the Houthis. United States was fighting the Houthis and an active conflict for 30 days. And then Trump called it off, said, I'm done, we've had it, whatever. And clearly this was some part of some, in my view, cockamamie notion about how to make some kind of a larger peace deal with Iran. And what we read today in the papers, which I only accept because it's clear they're coming from multiple leaks on various sides, is that the negotiations are proceeding apace. But there's a real sticking point there, Abe. The sticking point is we're saying no, enrichment of uranium. And the Iranians are saying, yes, enrichment of uranium. And then we're saying, hey, you know what? I got a really interesting idea. How about we enrich uranium and you get some, and the Saudis get some, and your Aunt Floss gets some, and everyone can get a little uranium. We'll mill it, but you don't make it. And the Iranians are like, no, we're going to enrich uranium. So then in an eerie echo of the jcpoa, the Iran deal that of course, Trump pulled out of, and that was the shame of the Obama administration. We are now apparently in these talks, floating the idea of them weakening their uranium. D. I don't know, there's some term that I can't remember, but essentially taking the level of enrichment down, diluted, like the purity level down below 3%, which is the sort of initial level that you're supposed to be at. And then you can move it up from 3% to 20% to 80%. When it's at 80% enrichment, then you are basically weapons. You're ready to fire it off in a ballistic missile at somebody. If you're going to negotiate with the Iranians, and the Iranians are just saying no to everything. The question is, if they're such good, great negotiators. If Witkoff and Trump and everybody are such great negotiators, why are they negotiating with themselves if these stories are true?

[Seth Mandel]

Well, I wish.

[John Podhoretz]

They're saying no enrichment. The Iranians are saying, yes, enrichment. Then they're like, well, how about a little enrichment? That's for Iran to say, not for us. We are not Iran's negotiating negotiators. We are our own negotiators. Our position is no, no enrichment.

[Seth Mandel]

I wish either side, and I mean this, would stick to their red line. If the US Would stick to its red line, that, that, that there, that there will be no enrichment, then there'd be no talks. And if the Iranians would stick to their red line, that there has to be enrichment, they will not stop enriching, then there would be no talks. But the truth is, Iran is getting out of this what it has wanted to get out of this, which is to drag it on, which is to pretend there are red lines. I mean, ultimately there are red lines, but this is all Kabuki anyway. This is for the process itself, because as long as they can drag it out, as long as Iran can say, we're not going to talk. Okay, maybe we'll talk a little. Well, we're definitely not talking. Okay, Wednesday, we'll talk a little bit about that. As long as that goes on, it buys the Iranians time. It keeps their currency afloat, and it keeps the Trump administration potentially staying Israel's hand. So all of this is aimed at something else, at other things it is not ultimately pointed toward. And this was also the problem with the JCPOA wasn't really ultimately about preventing Iran from getting the bomb.

[John Podhoretz]

So this leads us to the question of whether or not Trump is a paper tiger, whether or not he roars and the roaring means nothing. Because, of course, the American negotiating position is no enrichment, or else. And the or else is there are two or else's, one of which is incredibly crippling and severe. Sanctions far beyond the ones that we have already put in place, or a strike to destroy their facilities. These are, these are the two oars. And we therefore should be feeling as though we are in the upper hand in these negotiations because we have two triggers, one economic and the other military. And they have nothing. They have this, you know, they have this ragtag band of terrorists in Yemen firing missiles at Israel. What do they have? So why, why, if these stories are true, why we are essentially giving them a couple of solids if Trump is such a great, tough negotiator I don't entirely understand. And what the Iranians are bidding for is some kind of an agreement that is papers over the fact that there is no agreement that will lead the Trump people to say, oh, we have a win and we are therefore going to do whatever we can to block Israel and Netanyahu from striking Iran because we want to take a victory lap and stay at the negotiating table.

[Matthew Continetti]

Right. So there's speculation that the two sides might try to create or co sign.

[Unknown Speaker]

An interim agreement, an establishment of principles for further negotiation.

[Matthew Continetti]

And if they're successful in that, it.

[Unknown Speaker]

Would achieve Iran's main goal, which is.

[Matthew Continetti]

As Abe says, play for time, preserve.

[Unknown Speaker]

The regime, preserve as much of the nuclear infrastructure as they can in order to rebuild and rearm after Israel's successful.

[Matthew Continetti]

Strike last, last year, last autumn. The question for me is what would.

[Unknown Speaker]

Be in this interim agreement?

[Matthew Continetti]

And what would America offer the Iranians?

[Unknown Speaker]

Would they get sanctions relief by signing this interim agreement?

[Matthew Continetti]

What would they say they would be responsible for under it? Even an interim agreement kind of beggars the imagination. So this result of this is that Trump, despite his obvious desire to resolve.

[Unknown Speaker]

This peacefully, is beginning to look relatively.

[Matthew Continetti]

Weak and there's no reason for the.

[Unknown Speaker]

Iranians to not continue to push for more and more concessions from the Americans. I think this is related similarly to what's happening in Ukraine.

[Matthew Continetti]

But here the Iranians are playing their.

[Unknown Speaker]

Cards better than the Russians. With the Russians. When Trump gave his tweet over Memorial.

[Matthew Continetti]

Day weekend saying that I don't know.

[Unknown Speaker]

What happened to Putin, he's crazy. The Russian response was to insult Trump.

[Matthew Continetti]

That's never a good response.

[Unknown Speaker]

You don't insult Trump because then he's going to insult you again.

[Matthew Continetti]

And so the chances now of the sanctions Bill that has 82 co sponsors in the Senate on Russia passing is actually rising. Whereas the chances of us doing something.

[Unknown Speaker]

To finally end the threat from the.

[Matthew Continetti]

Iranian nuclear program is decreasing.

[Unknown Speaker]

Why? Because the Iranians know how to play the West. This, the Iranian psyop, is just amazing. On the one hand, they convince everyone.

[Matthew Continetti]

In the American military upper brass that.

[Unknown Speaker]

They are this huge military threat and that if America were to bomb their.

[Matthew Continetti]

Nuclear infrastructure, that somehow we would be facing a massive scale war in the.

[Unknown Speaker]

Middle east, which just to me seems incredible.

[Matthew Continetti]

While at the same time they're the smooth talking, smooth talking diplomats get there and say, well, we can all.

[Unknown Speaker]

Come to an agreement. And so let's understand here, we want peace and Trump is being so good. How the west has been played time and time and time again by the Iranian regime since it came to power.

[Matthew Continetti]

In 1979, needs to be the subject of a massive study. I'm talking psychiatrists, you know, neurologists, just study these documents and figure out how.

[Unknown Speaker]

Again and again, the Iranians have sold.

[Matthew Continetti]

Us a bill of goods.

[Unknown Speaker]

And this revolutionary regime, the world's largest.

[Matthew Continetti]

Sponsor of terrorism, is able to escape culpability and continue its devious plans without any real consequences.

[Unknown Speaker]

Hi, I'm Anthony Scaramucci and I'd like to tell you about my new show, Lost Boys. It's a limited edition series. It's hosted by myself and Professor Scott Galloway. We're having honest conversations about a topic no one wants to talk about. The crisis that young men are facing nowadays. Our talks discuss why so many young men are struggling to find purpose, connection and identity in today's world. We dig into what's really going on. Politics, culture, loneliness, even rage. And what we can do to help change the narrative. This is a six part series that will challenge your assumptions and encourage you to continue the conversation from the dinner table to the office. Follow and listen to Lost Boys on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. You can also go to Lostboys Men and sign up to get the latest episodes and news.

[John Podhoretz]

I mentioned this proposal that was floated. We don't know whom by whom or what circumstances. We know that the technical advisor on the talks between the United States and Iran is one Michael Anton, former somebody I edited 30 years ago at the Weekly Standard who wrote about culture, has somehow now refashioned himself as a foreign policy expert, a person who said that we needed to elect Donald Trump so he could fly a plane into the ground, which apparently was a good thing and is now the technical as a head of policy planning at State and the technical nuclear negotiator person. So let's just say if this proposal comes from the United States in some fashion, it comes from Michael Anton. This entire thing about Iran and its nuclear bomb is not just about Iran and has never been just about Iran. When it started, when we started talking about the need to do something about the Iranian nuclear program, it was almost 20 years ago after Ahmadinejad, the elected president of Iran, started talking about destroying Israel and leaving it and ending its existence. And we knew that they were nuclearizing in some fashion. And so John McCain and others started talking about the need to bomb Iran to do essentially what the Israelis did at Osirak and in Syria and kill the program off in its infancy. And why not? Just because of the existential threat to Israel. But, but because if Iran gets a nuclear weapon, it instantly causes a rush toward nuclearization in the Middle east. And that means Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia, the richest of the Arab oil states, the most powerful of the Arab oil states and the protector and the, you know, the sort of the. The guardian of Mecca and Medina. And we do not want Saudi Arabia to be a nuclear power. It would be demented and insane of the United States to wish actively or to participate in the. Participate in the going nuclear of Saudi Arabia, because it's not. It's a. It's actually a relatively stable regime in the sense that it's been in the family of the Sauds for 120 years. So it's not as though it gets overthrown all the time, but you never know. You don't know. It's a powder keg. Osama bin Laden rose from there. There have been there. There were demonstrations in Mecca and Medina in the 80s and 90s that suggested the regime might be looser and not as powerful as it might be. We want there to be no nuclear weapons in the Persian Gulf for the safety of the entire planet and to prevent and to protect what remains the lifeblood of the world economic system until we can develop fusion. Right. So now are we actually having a conversation with Iran in which we're talking about making sure that they won't enrich themselves so we'll create an international consortium allowing them and others to have nuclear fissile material? That is insane. Now we're getting into, like, not only bad negotiating, but, like, geopolitics of a nightmarish fashion. We are introducing the prospect of nuclear instability into a region that has been nothing but trouble for the United States for the last 50 years. We have two. We've involved ourselves in three wars in the region. We have had countries take over other countries in the region. We have had massive civil wars in the region. And we have this genocidal effort to destroy the one Jewish nation in the region. We want that place as less threatening militarily and like, in geopolitical terms, as it could possibly be. And now we're talking about helping them nuclearize.

[Matthew Continetti]

That's what we want. And the Trump administration is divided, but.

[Unknown Speaker]

The groups that are in the ascent.

[Matthew Continetti]

In the Trump administration want us out of the Middle east. And I think. J.D.

[John Podhoretz]

The great way, Vice President. Get us out of the Middle east is to have the Middle east go nuclear.

[Matthew Continetti]

That, that's, that's what they think. J.D.

[John Podhoretz]

Vance gives right.

[Matthew Continetti]

It's supposed to say we'll have Golden Dome and Greenland.

[Abe Greenwald]

I know we've always preferred to have no nukes, but hear me out. What if everyone had.

[Matthew Continetti]

Yeah, that's, that's current in some of the, you might call it Vance wing of the Republican Party.

[Unknown Speaker]

Vance gave a very interesting commencement at.

[Matthew Continetti]

The Naval Academy over the weekend. And he said, For 20 years, we've misspent our military resources. We've exploited you, the sailors and Marines, the class. We're not going to do that anymore. We're not going to do that anymore.

[Unknown Speaker]

We're going to very different foreign policy.

[Matthew Continetti]

And that's the type of foreign policy that Vance and his allies are putting into place.

[Unknown Speaker]

Whether it's the deal with the Houthis, which, of course, Vance opposed our military strikes against the Houthis.

[Matthew Continetti]

Now we have to deal with the Houthis. Israel doesn't have the deal with the Houthis. We have to deal with the Houthis.

[Unknown Speaker]

Whether it's the negotiations with Iran, whether.

[Matthew Continetti]

It'S Trump letting himself be tapped along by Putin in Ukraine. This is the restrainer wing, the GOP at work. Here's the issue. There is another wing, the peace through strength, underlying strength wing of the Republican Party, and that's in Congress. So the restrainer wing might be powerful within the administration, but the peace through strength wing still has major footholds in.

[Unknown Speaker]

Congress and including the Senate.

[Matthew Continetti]

And any deal, interim deal, real deal, any deal, if it happens, will have.

[Unknown Speaker]

To go through Congress.

[Matthew Continetti]

And you're already seeing calls from senators saying so.

[Unknown Speaker]

And I think that just as Trump.

[Matthew Continetti]

Trump understands that he is going to have to placate the Republican opinion in the Congress, which goes along with a.

[Unknown Speaker]

Whole lot of domestic stuff, because they.

[Matthew Continetti]

Agree with what Trump is trying to do.

[Unknown Speaker]

But on foreign policy, that still seems.

[Matthew Continetti]

As though they're not going to be just easy to roll over. And until that happens, I'm going to.

[Unknown Speaker]

Continue to say that there are still real differences between the Republicans in this.

[Matthew Continetti]

Congress and the Senate and then Vance.

[Unknown Speaker]

And his folks in the administration.

[Seth Mandel]

You know, I just want to make a larger point here about Trump's foreign policy. During the Biden presidency, we observed, rightly, that the disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan, Biden's easing of sanctions on Iran, these things invited global bad actors to test us and worse and invade and cause chaos because we projected American weakness. And the Trump administration came into office criticizing that. You know, along those lines, Trump has now, in his fruitless, pathetic pursuit of Putin, in his ongoing negotiations with Iran, JD Vance, in these speeches about how we're not Going to deploy American troops willy nilly. Trump doing things like lifting sanctions on Syria, negotiating with Hamas. At every point he has now projected a kind of weakness of a different sort all on his own that has given adversaries every reason to continue to think that they can play us. Now. This is a sort of momentum that, that, that our enemies have.

[Matthew Continetti]

And China's watching. That's, that's the big one, right? China's watching. We have this report just in the past few days that China is able.

[Unknown Speaker]

To switch from its current operations to.

[Matthew Continetti]

Offensive operations against Taiwan at essentially a moment's notice now. And so when you consider, consider what's happening or what has not happened yet might happen in East Asia and then you think about what's happening in Europe.

[Unknown Speaker]

With the NATO preparations and worries that.

[Matthew Continetti]

The, there might be a second front that Putin is planning while he continues.

[Unknown Speaker]

His wanton destruction of Ukraine. This administration which came into office wanting.

[Matthew Continetti]

To prevent World War iii, right, quiet.

[Unknown Speaker]

The two regions that are already on.

[Matthew Continetti]

Fire when they came in and then.

[Unknown Speaker]

Foreclose the possibility of the third front opening in the Pacific. That was the goal. The administration is not achieving the goal.

[Matthew Continetti]

And I believe it's because of its.

[Unknown Speaker]

Departure from the successful policies of Trump 1.0.

[John Podhoretz]

So the question is at what point does Trump awaken to the fact that if Putin's cat's paw, Dmitry Medvedev, his one time successor and now of course his, you know, his slave deputy because he wasn't even his successor, says when Trump says, you know, you're playing with fire, you're crazy. I'm, you know, things are gonna get really serious now. And Medvedev says in a tweet, you wanna know what serious is World War Three? So the Russ, they're not only insulting Trump, they're openly threatening. I mean, I know it's not open, it's Twitter, but you know, they're openly threatening direct confrontation with the United States in the form of a nuclear exchange. Is he going to sit there and take this? I think he is days away from dropping a bomb on Putin said, I mean, I don't mean a literal bomb, I mean a economic sanctions bomb on Putin. He has been, he's clearly lost his temper. He's lost his patience. He's angry. He feels like he's been played for a fool. He has been played for a fool. And let's see if he puts his money where his mouth is as a tough guy. And he's not just going after neurasthenic Harvard deans, which I'm all for. But actually goes after people who have, you know, in their power, you know, who are. Who are causing worldwide global instability and, and an absolutely horrific, generationally monstrous war and saying, no, stop it. Just like he can say, no, stop it to Iran. And he could say, no, stop it to Iran by giving Israel a green light. I mean, that's the question of the next six weeks. Is, is his self image as Mr. Peace going to give way to his self image as Mr. Peace and Strength or Tough Guy?

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah, Mr.

[Abe Greenwald]

Strength.

[John Podhoretz]

Yeah. And. And we would imagine, given his history, that the latter is more attractive to him than the former, but we don't really know yet.

[Unknown Speaker]

No, I mean, he seems really bent.

[Matthew Continetti]

On getting a Nobel Prize Peace Prize.

[Unknown Speaker]

I mean, he really want.

[Matthew Continetti]

He thinks of himself now as a.

[Unknown Speaker]

As, as a dove.

[John Podhoretz]

And that will never. The thing is, whoever is whispering that in his ear, it will never, ever, ever happen. And like, that will happen when I win a Pulitzer Prize. And so if I were he, I would start. If he's thirsting after that, they will never give him one. And he should stop looking to them for validation.

[Abe Greenwald]

He should also remember how angry the Obama. Well, Obama himself was when he got the Nobel Peace Prize because it created far more headaches for him then the last thing he wanted to do was have to go out and give a speech explaining why he had been nominated before he took office for the Peace Prize and have to sort of legitimize it. But also, I think the reason that it's significant that Medvedev puts this out in the tweet is because he's speaking to people that Matt mentioned earlier within the Trump administration, which is that there are this segment of the right of the Republican Party, the retrenchment segment, what, whatever we want to call them, they like to be able to warn of dire consequences for us, focusing on the strength part of the peace through strength. They like being able to say, well, you want World War 3, that's what you want. That's what you're gunning for. Medvedev is. I mean, these are, these are the Russians just kind of feeding lines in a way to people. And there are people who are highly receptive. Again, as Bach said, there. There are people highly receptive to that line in the Trump administration. And this is, I think, a way of him who remind them. It's like holding up a cue card. It's like, here's where you say, we don't want World War Three. Right? That's. That. That's part of what this is Sort of information, you know, strategy.

[John Podhoretz]

Okay, Matt, you got a recommendation?

[Matthew Continetti]

Yes, thank you, John. I do have a recommendation. This is a book that I wholeheartedly endorse.

[Unknown Speaker]

You read every chapter of.

[Matthew Continetti]

And that is the new memoir from Dave Barry class.

[Unknown Speaker]

The Memoirs of a Professional Wise Ass. How I went 77 years without growing Up.

[Matthew Continetti]

First thing to say is I can't.

[Unknown Speaker]

Believe that Dave Barry is 77 years old.

[Matthew Continetti]

The second thing to say is for anyone who has ever read a Dave Barry column, this is a special treat. The Pulitzer Prize winning, speaking of prizes, Pulitzer Prize winning comic writer, humorist, longtime writer for the Miami Heralds magazine and syndicated columnist, book author. My favorite writer. Probably the writer who made me want to be a writer when I first started reading him at age 7 or.

[Unknown Speaker]

So in the Washington Post and then.

[Matthew Continetti]

Picked up his first books. He finally wrote a memoir talking about his life and career. And it's a treat from start to finish. The one missing piece is he hardly talks about his writing and how he is able to sustain such a level of excellence over so many years.

[Unknown Speaker]

50 years now, basically writing.

[Matthew Continetti]

You get a little hint of it when he talks about actually his career. It's seven years he spent as a business writing consultant traveling across the country.

[Unknown Speaker]

Teaching writing to corporate, corporate employees.

[Matthew Continetti]

And in that few pages where he talks about that like a part of his life, he mentioned some of the rules that he would teach these. Teach these workers. My favorite rule is don't mutilate your verbs. Always make sure the verbs are used properly. Right. Another way of saying get to the.

[Unknown Speaker]

Point and use the active voice rather.

[Matthew Continetti]

Than, rather than the passive voice. But there's something about Dave Barry's writing.

[Unknown Speaker]

The way he can string us along in a sentence that culminates in a.

[Matthew Continetti]

Joke or the way that he's able to use kind of tricks consistently. You know, his, his great line, you know, I'm not making this up, which he's used again over half a century, but it still makes me laugh. That is still something of an ineffable mystery. But why complain? Just enjoy the book Classic Clown by Dave Barry.

[John Podhoretz]

I am reading it.

[Abe Greenwald]

Something he's really good about is, is getting you to laugh throughout with jokes, with repeating jokes. I love the fact that his repeating jokes don't really get old. And my fit, my favorite was when he wrote his History of the World. How, you know, he, he understood that, you know, one of the chief obstacles to learning world history is the. All the dates. And so, you know, how do you remember the dates? It's like Well, I remember my daughter's birthday. And so everything in the book happened, like, you know, on October 7th of that year. Like, and then they signed the Declaration of Independence and they wrote the Constitution on October 7, 1776. You know, on and on, like. Like that sort of thing. And it never really gets old because. Because all he has to do to make you laugh is just say that this. You know, and then the French Revolution broke out on October 7th, whatever. And it makes you laugh anew because you're in on the joke. He's good at that sort of thing where he just. You sort of walk along with him.

[John Podhoretz]

I'm reading the book as well. I got about 100 pages into it last night. I'm just going to read one paragraph which makes both of your points perfectly. This is the beginning of chapter to school. I began my education at Wampus Elementary, a public school that is still in operation, educating the youth of Armac. New York. Wampus comes from the Native American word wampus, which means, as far as I've been able to determine, wampus. So, you know, just the ability. He understands the rhythm of a joke. And a joke in print, of course, is very hard to pull off because it's one thing to hear someone say something unexpected, but reading it, you know, is. Is a. Is a horse of a different color. And he is one of the three or four people practically, in my experience, who have ever lived, who are able to craft a sentence that will make you laugh out loud. Paul Rudnick is one. P.G. wodehouse is another. Dave Barry. Wampus, which comes from the Native American word wampus, which means wampus. Anyway, that's class clown. So great recommendation. We'll be back tomorrow. For Matt, Seth and Abe, I'm John Pothorotz. Keep the candle bur.