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John Podhoretz
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No way of knowing which way it's going. Hope for the best.
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Christine Rosen
Expect the worst, Hope for the best.
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John Podhoretz
Welcome to the Commentary Magazine Daily Podcast. Today is Tuesday, November 26, 2024. I'm John Podhoretz, the editor of Commentary Magazine. Quick programming note. We will not be having shows Thursday, Thanksgiving or Friday. The day after Thanksgiving. You will have to soldier on without us. Go back into the archives to listen to great episodes past. Catch up with us on our YouTube channel where you can watch these podcasts now every day. And if you do that, I would really, really, really appreciate it if you would like and subscribe. The subscription number is very important for us to catch the eye of the YouTube algorithm and have it spread the news and gospel of the Commentary Magazine podcast far and wide to audiences that will maybe enjoy it the way that you do. So that would be a mitzvah you would do for us and I would really appreciate it and so would my colleagues. Executive editor Abe Greenwald. Hi Abe.
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Christine Rosen
Hi John.
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John Podhoretz
Sorry, Media Commentary columnist Christine Rosen. Hi Christine.
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Matthew Continetti
Hi John.
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John Podhoretz
Brain fart there. And Washington Commentary columnist Matthew Continetti. Hi Matt.
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Abe Greenwald
Hi, John.
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John Podhoretz
Okay, so something very peculiar is going on and you're going to have to give me a couple of minutes to dilate upon it today, sometime after we do this podcast, Benjamin Netanyahu, the Prime Minister of Israel, will be addressing the nation in Israel and explaining why it is that Israel is apparently agreeing. And the cabinet that he oversees is agreeing to a ceasefire plan in Lebanon with Hezbollah. This is, on the surface, a peculiar thing for him to be doing. Israel is engaging in a strictly defensive action in Lebanon, though aggressively to destroy Hezbollah's capabilities, to destroy its infrastructure, and to take out its command control and communications, among other things. For example, the other day it found a three and a half mile tunnel from Lebanon into Syria. It turns out it happened in October, but we only heard about it a couple of days ago. Destroyed it. So obviously there is a great deal of underground infrastructure in parallel to the underground infrastructure that we know that Hamas had in Gaza. This has been an extraordinarily successful operation. Though costly, 140 Israelis have died, which is a very high casualty number for a country as small as Israel. But all available evidence is, aside from all of the remarkable things that happened, like the pager operation and the elimination of almost the entire top directorate of Hezbollah, the goal very simply is to move Hezbollah north of the litany river, that's 18 miles from the Israeli border, to have its weaponry move north of the Litany river if it's not entirely and completely destroyed, and to therefore bring a measure of peace to Northern Israel, where 60,000 residents are still living in temporary shelter after a year and a year and a month, 13 and a half months since Hezbollah began bombarding Israel. Hezbollah began bombarding Israel on October 8. Hezbollah has fired thousands of rockets into Israel. Hezbollah has made the north of Israel uninhabitable to its residents. And so this effort is to pacify that area and make it possible for Israelis to go on with their normal lives. The ceasefire deal that is being agreed to, that was being negotiated by, among others, Amos Hochstein, an American envoy, has about it a. It's a 60 day process in which there's a ceasefire for 60 days. Hezbollah supposed to move all these assets north of the Litany River. The Lebanese army is supposed to come south into the area where, where Hezbollah was to control it and contain it, to keep Israel safe. And according to what Netanyahu says, Israel will have the right to strike at any moment, at any time, if it sees any aggressive efforts, any rocket is fired from Hezbollah, any troop movements south of the Litani river toward the Israeli border by Hezbollah rather than retreats, all of that, that it reserves the right to absolute action at any point. The ceasefire is not impregnable. It is conditional. And here. So that's. Those are the terms. It's not rational for Israel to be agreeing to this because it is on the. It's on the advance, it's on the offensive. Its purpose is, as I say, entirely defensive. It has no interest in controlling Lebanese territory, though it may, though I think part of the idea was it would probably have to occupy some of those 18 miles below the Litany river that it occupied from 1982 until 2000 before it unilaterally withdrew precisely to prevent terrorist cross border actions. The failure after that unilateral pullout in 2006, Hezbollah got frisky and Israel had to go to war with Hezbollah for 34 days until an agreement was signed, overseen by the UN, that UNIFIL, a UN force was going to patrol and protect the border and keep it from becoming a hostile area. And guess what happened? UNIFIL works with Hezbollah. UNIFIL is part of the overall, just like UNWRA just either turns a blind eye or is actually an open part of the Hezbollah military structure or command structure. And so Israel has had no from the international agreement that it signed to lead to a ceasefire in Lebanon in 2006. Why am I going into this detail this way? Because Bibi Netanyahu told the Israeli Cabinet last night what I assume he is going to tell the Israeli people when he speaks later after this podcast is over. And here is paraphrased by I'm sorry, Motte Castell of Channel 14 in Israel. Here's a paraphrase of what he told the Israeli Cabinet. The ceasefire agreement is not ideal, but there is a real danger that the United States will impose a unilateral decision on us in the UN Security Council to halt the war. On one hand, there would be sanctions against us if we do not stop, and on the other, we would have no freedom of action in case of violations. If that happens, we will end up with both a ceasefire and no agreement. Therefore, if we can delay the inevitable by two months and secure an American commitment to respond to any violations, that is certainly better than the alternative. Netanyahu's explanation for why Israel has to agree to the ceasefire is that the outgoing Biden administration is willing to go to the UN Security Council and go to war with Israel and vote against it or organize the Security Council to vote against Israel to impose a unilateral ceasefire. I'm dumbfounded. We can talk about this strategically, tactically, morally. This is the end of the. So I'm Okay, I finished my monologue. Please, Max.
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Abe Greenwald
But why. I want you to continue to monologue. Answer this question. Why are you dumbfounded by this? I mean, isn't it. Isn't it just part and parcel of the Biden administration's gradual drift toward kind of opposition to Israel? Gradual self defense.
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John Podhoretz
Yeah. Right. So it was gradual. Right. It was gradually steady. We began steady. We began this war. We began this war or we didn't begin. Israel began this war. And two weeks into the war, in order to prevent Hezbollah and Iran from really like starting a second front that is actually moving, invading Israel from the north the way Gaza Hamas invaded Israel in the south, we moved two carrier warships off the shore of Lebanon, ready, aimed and ready to fire to protect Israel's northern border. Now, it didn't work that well because we didn't engage with Hezbollah as it was firing the rockets. But it was a message to Iran, which is, of course, Hezbollah is simply a, is a, is kind of like the fifth brigade of the Iran Army. I mean, it's not a, it's not an independent actor here. It's part of the Iranian military structure and, and external force. That's where we were in October and November. It's now a year later. Israel is taking out an enemy of the United States. Hezbollah is an enemy of the United states. Hezbollah killed 241.
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Abe Greenwald
I'm not sure the Biden administration sees it as an enemy of the United States. I mean, remember, in one of, what.
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John Podhoretz
Is it, like a mahjong club? I mean, what do they do? What are they playing bridge on your.
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Abe Greenwald
Recommendation this morning I listened to the NPR Morning roundup and sorry, I apologize.
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John Podhoretz
For subjecting you to it.
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Abe Greenwald
Good to listen to it, to get a sense of what people on the other side of the aisle are thinking. And in the middle of the story about this impending ceasefire agreement between Israel and Lebanon, Hezbollah, the NPR correspondent says Hezbollah, which the United States and Israel consider a terrorist organization, comma, goes on and I was just kind of scratching my head while driving, which is dangerous, and say to myself, and we consider it a terrorist organization. And, or was it implied in the NPR correspondent that, well, you know, that's what the United States government says officially, and that's what Israel believes, but we don't really trust them anyway. I think the driving fact here is Biden has wanted Israel's wars to end for some time now. Gaza is essentially over. Right. Lebanon is more complicated because Hezbollah is a parasite on this supposedly sovereign state of Lebanon. And so you have to deal with the Lebanese government, you have to deal with Hezbollah, then of course, as you say, Iran actually is in control here. Syria has tender hooks into Lebanon as well. So they're driving for a ceasefire in Lebanon. And they're doing this, by the way, at the same time as they have been sanctioning Israeli individuals, Israeli individuals in the west bank, equating them with Palestinian terrorists. So it's not out of mind for me to think that the Biden administration would sanction Israel would, would say to the if the UN decided to pass a resolution demanding a ceasefire, what is Linda Thomas Greenfield going to do? She, she probably wanted to pass that resolution six months ago. So I'm not surprised by this move. I think in the end, though, it still preserves Israel's right to maneuver. I mean, if Israel, even if Israel agrees to this and they see something, they see rockets creeping up toward the river, the Litany River. I assume they're going to take those rockets out.
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John Podhoretz
But that's what Bibi said. What Bibi is saying is we need to agree to this deal because the language of the deal will mean that we will not be hauled before the Security Council if we do just what you said. But if. Yeah, go ahead.
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Christine Rosen
Hezbollah, through certain Lebanese government parties, is saying that that is not officially part of the deal. They're saying whatever the US May or may not be telling Israel on the side is not officially in the deal.
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John Podhoretz
Well, then Israel doesn't have to sign the document. In other words, the ceasefire is a document. Right. It's not actually just sort of like an understanding that, you know, it's a handshake. This would be an official UN document signed by the government of Lebanon, by Israel. Hezbollah is not really. Can't really be a signatory to it since it is not. It is not a recognized, legitimate international actor. So it would be, weirdly enough, France. And one interesting wrinkle here is that France was negotiating essentially on behalf of Hezbollah or as a kind of cutout for Hezbollah, you know, representing its interests at the table. And then when the International Criminal Court announced its intention to said it was seeking arrest warrants, where Bibi Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant and Manuel Macron, the premier of France, said that France would honor its obligations under the ICC to arrest them should they land on French soil. Bibi Netanyahu said, I am not negotiating with France. France is out of this conversation. Get France away from me. They are now an interested party agreeing to essentially a perversion of international law. How on earth can I take them as a fair negotiating partner? And 72 hours passed, and Macron sort of apologized. And Biden went to Macron and said, you're wrong and you're wrong to do what you're doing with the icc. And Macron said, I'm sorry, I don't know what else to do. We signed the Rome Statute, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Now, France is kind of back in it. But so this is the world in which Israel is operating, which it has literally one friend out of 204 nations on this entire planet. It has one friend. That friend is senile and stupid. And the worst foreign policy is the one friend they have until January 20th.
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Matthew Continetti
But this is not. This is my question, actually, is how much of this is. This is a unique lame duck period in our history, I would say, because now the now it can be said analyses of just how out of It. Joe Biden has been. And for how long are starting to trickle out, which, of course, our enemies and our allies are also reading. This is not just for domestic political consumption. And it strikes me that there's a lot, if you look at different. I mean, I've been looking at the domestic policy stuff, but I'm sure this is happening at State, too. Look at how people are wrapping things up for this administration. There's suddenly, suddenly there's a lot of concern about antisemitism on college campuses after this recent election from Catherine Lehmann, a, you know, a Department of Education official both under. Under Biden and previously under Obama, who could care less about any of this and did nothing when she could. So there is. There's a lot of sort of people rearranging deck chairs on the sinking Democratic Party Titanic right now. And some of this has to be an effort by those at State who have always wanted this outcome, for Israel to pursue that.
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Christine Rosen
I also think, by the way, I love John's construction. Get France away from Me.
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Matthew Continetti
I always call France bluff. Should be a foreign policy rule. Always.
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Christine Rosen
Yeah. I also think that the, The Biden administration, yes, has wanted this for a long. Has been saying nothing but elements, Elements of the Biden. No, no, but, but, but, but vocally, Biden himself has been saying nothing but there needs to be a ceasefire now. And he's waiting for months. And they want to go out one way or another on what they see as a win, on some sort of accomplishment, getting something that they have claimed to be working towards done. It's a bad thing. We all know that. But that's what they want. So if it's going to be either by supporting the UN resolution or forcing Bibi's hand because of the threat of the UN resolution, that's. That's what they're going to do. So this makes perfect sense to me from.
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John Podhoretz
Okay, you remember, you know, the. One of the most famous essays of the last 40 years was Daniel Patrick Moynihan's essay published in the American Scholar called Defining Deviancy Down. If you remember, this is about social. This is about social chaos and how in a world in which people are unwilling to look at true crime, causes of crime, causes of social instability, they start saying that things that once were viewed as deviancies are in fact normal. And you therefore define deviancy down. We are defining peace down. Or the Biden administration has spent a year defining peace down and fetishizing the word ceasefire. A ceasefire is not a peace. A ceasefire is by definition a temporary moment in a larger conflict. Perhaps a ceasefire can extend into a peace, though I don't know that one can name a single case in which a ceasefire ended up becoming a peace. Maybe Northern Ireland at some point, but mostly not. And so we fetishize the word ceasefire beginning in December, or. I mean, there was a ceasefire between Israel or Pause. Israel didn't even want to call it a ceasefire in November when the hot. When the 80 hostages came out of Gaza over six days. But this constant call for a ceasefire, ceasefire, ceasefire, ceasefire, ceasefire, ceasefire. And Israel saying, we can't, we can't, we can't, we can't. Or ceasefire to get the hostages out with Hamas. 14 ceasefire proposals announced by the United States or designed by the United States, agreed to by Israel, rejected by Hamas. Ceasefire. So now they want to go out on a victory. A ceasefire is not a victory. A ceasefire is not the end to a war. A ceasefire is nothing but the. But the freezing in place of positions in a war where the gunfire stops so famously over time. There have been ceasefires around holidays, right? Like During World War I, there was the famous Christmas ceasefire where everybody who was, like, in the trenches got two days off to celebrate Christmas, and then. And then they started murdering each other again. A ceasefire is a momentary thing. And that. This is how the Biden administration has degenerated its foreign policy into this fetishization of being able to say, well, at least we got a ceasefire in Lebanon. That clearly isn't going to hold. It's 60 days. And Hezbollah is not going to behave. Israel will, Will end up having to do something during the ceasefire to end it or on the 61st day after the ceasefire is over. And it's an embarrassment. It is a cue aside from everything else we can discuss about what it says about America and Biden and the Democratic Party and the State Department and the need to disrupt and destroy all of these, you know, the careers of people who are. Who have led to this moment. It is ridiculous on its face to make a ceasefire. The be all and end all the modus vivendi of American foreign policy.
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Christine Rosen
Can I say, because it's been a while, so I'm going to give you. And it's worse than that, a ceasefire.
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John Podhoretz
In this case, we need a special sound effect for the. Like we need a kind of trumpet.
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Matthew Continetti
No, no, cowbell. It's got to be a cowbell.
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John Podhoretz
Cowbell. Okay.
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Christine Rosen
A ceasefire in this case gives Hezbollah for the first time a chance to catch its breath, reconstitute its leadership, maybe supply lines get itself together. After it has been relentlessly bombarded and decimated by Israel for months. A ceasefire is just a total gift to Hezbollah right now. I mean, they couldn't. And Biden made that mistake in an interview when he was talking about a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas. And he said the same thing at some point. And then he said, well, forget. He said, I see. Sahara will just allow Hamas to regroup, but we should go on to other things. This would be a huge boon to Hezbollah at a time of great desperation for it.
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John Podhoretz
Important note, who is the ceasefire for? For whom would the ceasefire be negotiated? It is being negotiated in Israel's terms, to create the conditions under which those 60,000 Israelis who have been living in temporary shelter elsewhere in the country, including my niece's in laws, who have been breakfast right near the Lebanese border, who have been living around her in a sort of on a moshav in the center of Israel with my niece's family, they want to go back home. They can't go back home. It's not safe. So you would think this is great. Who wants the ceasefire more than the residents of northern Israel? Who can go home? Well, that the largest city near the border is called Kiryat Shmone. Its mayor is a guy named Avihei Stern. And what was his response to the word of the ceasefire? He called it in a Facebook post, a surrender agreement. When you propose to return us to the reality of October 6th in the north, where our sons could be taken captive, our daughters raped and our homes burned, we will not agree, we will not return, and we will not cooperate with these surrender agreements. That's the person, the mayor of the town for whom the ceasefire supposedly is being implemented in order to create the conditions under which they can go home. He says it's surrender. He's not saying, oh, thank God. Maybe we could build trust. We can have trust exercises and we can find common ground. And Hezbollah, they don't want to get killed. We don't want to get killed. People can go back to living in their homes south of the Litany river. And Pacific emotions can break out all over the Middle East. They know that they cannot return to the status quo. Hezbollah cannot be in a position where it can have a safe harbor 18 miles from Israel's border. It can no longer happen. We know that Hezbollah was almost on the verge of invading Israel on October 8th. It did not do so. Instead, it has fired 2,000, 3,000 rockets. Just yesterday, the day before yesterday, a rocket strike on a, I don't know, some 12 people were injured in a rocket strike. This happens almost daily. People are still getting. These are rockets that evade Iron Dome or evade the ability because they're low. They fly really, really low because they're so close and they're not going up and coming down and they get in and they hit a school building or they hit a house or they hit a town and they are not going home. I mean, so the ceasefire has no purpose in Israel's terms except to pacify the United States by refusing to allow the United or doing what it can to make sure that the United States does not advance in its anti Israel official, in anti official actions against Israel. Now a new administration is coming in, but this would establish a new fact on the ground which is somehow the United States using the Security Council against Israel. And that's where we should need to talk about the parallels to point.
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Abe Greenwald
Go ahead, a few points. I mean, Hezbollah is definitely not the same organization that it was on October 6th. Obviously a threat remains. There are rockets, though far fewer rockets that are being launched.
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John Podhoretz
But remember, they have 450,000 projectiles or they had an estimated 450,000 projectiles before October 7th.
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Abe Greenwald
That's right. But it's unclear exactly how much damage has been done and I assume quite a bit. I mean, even as we're speaking in the run up to this ceasefire proposal being authorized, Israel is striking caches in Beirut. And I mean, so I think that a lot of damage has been done to Hezbollah even though it still exists. So the question is, what is the desired outcome here? Is it some type of security zone that is in southern Lebanon between the Israel border and the border communities and the Litany River? If so, who is defending that, patrolling that? I mean, according to the agreement, it's going to be unifil, which as you say, is worse than useless. So that's something to think about. The other political aspect to this which we should mention is Trump wants this ceasefire too. Trump wants the Lebanon war over. He went and campaigned in Michigan and appealed mainly to Lebanese Americans living in Michigan. So there's a separation within the Arab American population between the Palestinians who advocate for Gaza and Hamas like Rashida Tlaib, and Americans of Lebanese descent who have been crusading for some type of.
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John Podhoretz
Who are primarily Christian, by the way, Christian point out who are Shia.
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Abe Greenwald
Right. I mean, so they're different. It's a different sect or different religion altogether. So I think actually if this were to happen, Trump would be somewhat pleased. On the other hand, it's the 60 day ceasefire leads up right to inauguration. You know, he doesn't want this to expire and them to go to war again. Right.
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John Podhoretz
As the first week, the first week that he swore.
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Abe Greenwald
Right.
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Matthew Continetti
Well, he can be accused of restart of. Right, exactly.
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Abe Greenwald
This is so those are just two quick observations that I had after listening to you.
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John Podhoretz
Okay, well, let's talk about 2016, because we have this whole question of is the Biden administration just Obama 3? Right. Has it proved to be Obama 3? Is Obama in Christine's terms, like since Biden is non compos mentis and has been, there has always been this theory that somehow, secretly, mysteriously, conspiratorially, Lee Smith and others, it's like, but Obama's actually the president. Obama's really the president. Biden's not the president. Obama would be smarter as president than Biden. So I mean, he more pernicious in some ways, but at least smarter. I don't see Obama's hand here because he's. Because this administration is too stupid. But what did Obama do on his way out the door? What was the signature thing he did during the period between Trump's election, 2016 and leaving office on January 20th? He allowed, for the first time, he allowed, by abstaining, a Security Council resolution uniquely and disgracefully hostile to Israel to be officially signed into UN law, which is to say the UN should no longer exist. I do not recognize its legitimacy. People of goodwill should not recognize its legitimacy. But unfortunately it has legitimacy as a marker point of international law. And Obama wanted to go out the door kicking Bibi Netanyahu in the balls for having given the speech against him in the Congress in March of 2015 against the Iran deal and hated Bibi. And this was his petty, slimy lefty, Rashid Khalidi. I'm coming out of the closet as an actual anti Israel academic leftist, like you always thought I was, but I pretended I wasn't. Last moment of clarity and revelation of his true nature. Don't think this describes Biden, who is not as interesting and not a man of, you know, the boom, is not a boomer really, and is not a man of that generation.
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Matthew Continetti
And yesterday, pardoning Turkey, I mean, he's not even. Is it clear he's even meeting with his advisors at this point? I mean, I'm not being, I'm not trying to be.
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John Podhoretz
Well, presidents always pardon turkeys.
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Matthew Continetti
Well, I know, but. But what else is he doing besides pardon turkeys? I look, you know me, I look at his schedule every day. I'm not seeing, I've seen parties and I'm Seeing, you know, social events. But I'm not seeing a lot of even like, I guess he gets his brief every morning, but I don't think it's conspiratorial.
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John Podhoretz
Dinner. They had a dinner last week at the White House where he wanted to thank everybody for the just wonderful work they did and having a failed first single term that be remembered in history as one of the worst presidencies of all time. So I hope everybody who was there in the room was really, really celebratory about all the great work they did to raise prices 20% to cause, to give, to give Russia the weird green light. Afghanistan. Yes.
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Abe Greenwald
Please say something about that dinner that I noticed reading the pool reports. The dinner was last Friday. It was on the South Lawn. I happened to pass by the South Lawn in the evening. It was quite a tent that they set up. It was really nice. But then reading the pool reports afterward, the first lady spoke for much longer than the President of the United States.
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Matthew Continetti
That's correct.
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Abe Greenwald
It was late at night and it was very interesting. She gave like a 15 minute long speech and then they called President Biden up and he spoke for one or.
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John Podhoretz
Two minutes max and said, don't jump in the pool.
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Abe Greenwald
Yeah, right.
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John Podhoretz
I think his main, the main thing he said, don't go all, Go jump in the pool. Now.
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Abe Greenwald
It was, it was a pretty revealing detail that of course, only someone who is a lunatic obsessive about politics like myself would notice. If you're reading these, these pool reports that the White House Correspondents association sends.
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Matthew Continetti
Out, you are not alone, Matt. You are not alone.
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Christine Rosen
John, on this point about Obama and what he did on heading out of office. You don't have to be conspiratorial. It doesn't have to be Obama pulling the actual strings of the current administration to see his fingerprints on this, just in terms of legacy, but making this thinkable in some ways preferable for the Democrats by their way of thinking. So he's there, there's a, there's a through line that it's unmistakable. But if Obama hadn't done that and many other things, this wouldn't be happening.
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John Podhoretz
It is the natural through line. It's why Biden's behavior at the beginning of the war was so surprising because he actually interrupted the Democratic Party's journey on its road to being an almost explicitly anti Israel party. There was this moment of discontinuity where Biden said, I have Israel's back. Israel's completely justified in what it's doing. It needs to go and destroy Hamas. I'm going to Israel on a solidarity mission to show Israel how much I support it. And that was jaw dropping because that was not behavior that one would have expected from a Democratic administration in the 21st century. And guess what? We're never going to see it again. We will never see it again unless.
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Matthew Continetti
Richie Torres gains power in the Democratic Party.
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John Podhoretz
Well, Richie Torres, right. Richie Torres, the congressman from New York who is going to run for governor of New York in 2026 and I think likely will win. Maybe, yes. By the time he becomes president, he's a young man, and by the time he became president, perhaps the entire world will have changed such that all of the whip hands that are held by people who feel the genocidal fury, feel that Israel is a genocidal monster and all that, all the geopolitical realities, including advanced fracking, the Abraham Accord, all sorts of things will happen, including maybe the fall of the regime in Iran that will no longer and gutter that will no longer be paying tens of billions of dollars to create the worldwide move against Israel in this kind of conspiracy of antisemitism around the globe. So I'm saying that for the time being, if there is a president in 2028 who, a Democrat who wins in 2028, that president ain't going to Israel, even if Israel is hit by a nuclear bomb by Iran. Because somehow the Democratic Party will find a way to say, well, it's all Israel's fault that Iran nuked Israel because, you know, it never gave the Palestinians a state or whatever like that is where this party is going. See no evidence or indication. We already see how efforts to speak in heterodox terms against the ideas of the Democratic left, particularly the conduct toward Seth Molten, raising questions about boys and girls sports. You know, Seth Bolton is the new Jeff Flake or the new Bob Corker. Like Seth Bolton is a dead man in that party. I'm sorry, he is not. He is going to be primary and he is going to lose next year. That. That is going to be a number one target. $100 million will be raised against him by somebody. They will beat him in a primary and knock him out. Because you got to get. You got to extirpate that dissent. Right? You got to pull it out right from the root before other people get the idea that this new set of leftist ideas.
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Abe Greenwald
My head is spinning. I mean, we went from Richie Torres to becoming President to $100 million spent primarily Seth Moulton to Israel being hit by a nuclear bomb. I mean, let's Just take a step back.
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John Podhoretz
You know, I've been watching Taylor Sheridan shows. I think that's very, they're very melodramatic. So I may be in a melodramatic frame of mind, but I didn't expect, expect to hear from the Israeli Prime Minister that he had to agree to a ceasefire deal because the United States was going to get going to go against Israel at the UN Security Council.
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- [37:05]
Abe Greenwald
His stated reasoning, but don't you think that in an Israeli political context where he is managing a coalition that includes some very religious and very nationalist parties, it might make the medicine go down a little bit more smoothly if he were to say that we have to accept this because the Americans were threatening to veto or threatening not to veto some demand at the un?
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John Podhoretz
I absolutely do. I absolutely do. And Bibi is not above mischaracterizing or, you know, playing an angle to get what he wants with less able politicians who have had him be Lucy with the football in relation to them a billion times since he became a politician in Israel.
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Christine Rosen
But then why would he want this otherwise?
- [37:53]
John Podhoretz
But he doesn't. That's why. I mean, the reason that I believe it is that BB has no reason to want the ceasefire. There's no political question where is the war going?
- [38:03]
Abe Greenwald
I can see in Gaza. Yeah, you're destroying Hamas. You're trying to get the hostages back.
- [38:08]
John Podhoretz
Yeah.
- [38:09]
Abe Greenwald
With the war in the north, which was always in some ways more strategically important.
- [38:14]
John Podhoretz
Right, right.
- [38:15]
Abe Greenwald
Because Hezbollah was a bigger threat in many ways than Hamas was. Despite the Hamas atrocities, I have struggled somewhat to see, like, what is the actual endgame? Unless you are essentially going to recreate the buffer zone that existed there for 20 years in where Israel is occupying parts of southern Lebanon in order to defend Israeli sovereignty.
- [38:41]
John Podhoretz
That is a perfectly fair, larger geostrategic question, and it's too big a question because what Israel is doing is degrading Hezbollah to the greatest extent possible. It does not want to destroy Hezbollah. It does not believe it has the capability of destroying Hezbollah. So what can it do is degrade Hezbollah's offensive capabilities, destroy as many of its missiles as possible, destroy its command, control and communications, kill its leaders and make it clear that they know everything that's going on. They will not relent. They will bomb that neighborhood in Beirut that has blocked controls, every tip for.
- [39:22]
Christine Rosen
Any crater, all its supply routes, all of that.
- [39:25]
John Podhoretz
Right? So it's a degradation process. It is not a. It's not a war in that weird conventional sense in which they have a territorial aim because they don't want to occupy the area south of the litany. They did, they pulled out. You know, it's been. But they can't do nothing. So in that sense, maybe the point is that the deal that Bibi has struck, and if you listen to it carefully, whatever Hezbollah is saying, it says we're agreeing to a ceasefire deal. If Hezbollah raises its pinky, we reserve our right to drop a 2,000pound bomb on its head, that pinkies up, the bomb comes down. That if you want that ceasefire that we agree to, we're not going to stage sneak attacks or, you know, do surprise this or anything like that. But if they breathe, you know, what is it, what is it that Don Corleone says in the meeting? If my son should. If he should get a hangnail in his cell, I will blame the people in this room and that I will not forgive. That's what Bibi is saying. And therefore, if that's the case, then it's not a bad deal per se, because it's a ceasefire. That the only way the ceasefire holds is if Hezbollah holds it.
- [40:52]
Abe Greenwald
So I would be more confident in the ceasefire holding if that was the message from America.
- [40:57]
John Podhoretz
Right. That we haven't heard a message from, but we don't know what the message from America.
- [41:01]
Abe Greenwald
America needs to say, okay, that's the agreement. This is going to give 60 days. Maybe some of the people can move back to the north, which to me is partly the goal. But if Hamas makes any move, we will intervene.
- [41:16]
John Podhoretz
We will do.
- [41:17]
Abe Greenwald
We will make sure that Hamas pays for that, because this is how we are able to police this ceasefire. Enforcement is always the question of ceasefires. And that when I look at this ceasefire, it seems to me to be making assumptions about the ability of the Lebanese government, which is a shell, and unifil, which is terrible to police, to enforce something that is. That is agreed to by the parties. That's where I'm skeptical. But I. I still think from BB's purposes, this might be. It might be useful to. To create some breathing room.
- [41:53]
John Podhoretz
I think that's. Look it is very difficult to explain how hard what has gone on in Israel has been for the Israeli people. I mean, it is very, it's. They've never had a war. This war is four times longer than any war they've ever fought. It is a small nation.
- [42:13]
Abe Greenwald
The drain on the families of the reservists.
- [42:16]
John Podhoretz
I mean, just to give you my own family story, I have a nephew and a nephew in law, both with small children. My nephew was in Gaza for more than 200 days, was nearly killed in an ambush, had a, had a, had a business that was starting to take off, that he essentially had to put into hibernation. My nephew in law also off for hundreds of days, has two kids, including a baby who was born on, I don't know, in early mid October, after October 7th. You know, my niece is, you know, alone with a three year old and a baby much of the time. As I said, she's living with her in laws because her in laws had to abandon their business and home in the north to protect themselves from Hezbollah rockets. The grueling nature of this ongoing conflict, which blessedly took a emotionally positive turn with the success in Gaza, the elimination of Sinwar, the elimination of Haniyeh, the display of technological prowess and the pager operation in the assassination in Tehran, all of that, that kind of gave Israel back its sense that it was on the front foot instead of on the back foot. That was all emotionally very important. But I mean, this is an unbelievably difficult challenge for Israelis. And yes, I think a little breathing room it would, could be a good thing. And so that's why I say, I think the deal, if it is what Bibi says it is, has the advantage of saying, okay, we will do what we can do. Hezbollah breathes wrong. And that's it. It's all on them. It's all on them.
- [44:16]
Christine Rosen
Except in the event, were that to happen, you could see exactly how it would be characterized that Israel violated a ceasefire on the pretense that Hezbollah was moving around weapons or rearming or recruiting or whatever else.
- [44:37]
John Podhoretz
Well, that's what we can't trust the Biden administration to do, right in the end. That's the thing about these two months, is a, we need to hear from them. We need to hear from them explaining, sorry guys, I don't know why this thing is making noise. We need to hear from them on what is happening, how we characterize the ceasefire deal and what they will do to have Israel's back should the ceasefire be violated by Hezbollah. Until we hear that BB's characterization has to stand as the only one that we have. But you know, I don't trust him and we shouldn't trust them and there's no reason to trust them. And the party's center of gravity has shifted into this position in which people seem to think, look, the Hezbollah raids on it. What Hezbollah has done there is no defense for. I mean, I look, you can say, you know what Hamas, they had to the people of Gaza suffering under the Israeli jackboot, they had to explode outward. That is not the story with Hezbollah. Hezbollah is a 40 year resident of is an Iranian proxy army in southern Lebanon that has no tactical or strategic interest in firing on the north of Israel. None. There is no plan, There is no effort to sort of like do whatever. It is simply there as the extension of the Iranian existential threat to Israel. Which is why, by the way, to answer Matt, and then we should move on a little bit. But there is no end game in a war with Hezbollah because the endgame in the war with Hezbollah is the war with Iran. Hezbollah is ended as a threat. When Iran is ended as a threat. And that's the question of the next decade is what is the nature of the Iranian threat? How does the world, how does Israel respond to it? How does America respond to it in tandem with Israel? We have an administration coming in where the new incoming Secretary of the treasury says let's make America great again and let's make Iran broke again. We have a president who was proud of the fact that he pulled out of the, out of the Iran deal. We have a president who says if you could get rid of the nukes, you should get rid of the nukes. That is the new administration that is coming in. Whether it will lift a finger to do any of that, because Trump is obviously not an interventionist by calling, except economically is a different story. But.
- [47:22]
Abe Greenwald
Well, I completely agree, John. And that's why part of me sees this potentially as a bridge to getting, to getting an administration that is actually that understands that at the end of the day, Iran is the problem in the region, which of course the Biden people have never really believed or they've said it more recently, but they haven't acted on it with any type of serious intent. But the Trump people do.
- [47:51]
John Podhoretz
I mean, well, we know, we know.
- [47:52]
Abe Greenwald
That you listen to the Senate, I mean, you listen to Stefanik. I mean, look, and so that I think in addition to the type of maximum pressure that the Trump administration will.
- [48:03]
John Podhoretz
Begin and Hegseth, by the way, if he makes it through. So we have the entire foreign policy and defense establishment insight. With the exception of Tulsi Gabbard, the entire team believes that Iran is one of the leading world.
- [48:16]
Abe Greenwald
She hasn't said much about Iran lately. No, I think she's learning some new lines. My suspicion, I think she's a quick, I think she's a pretty quick study and she's, you know, she's getting ready to say aloha, Senators. Iran is our number one enemy. You know, I mean, anyway, so you have that going in and then you have the idea that if Israel has to strike Iran again, the Trump administration is, would be much more, I think, open to allowing a more fulsome response and perhaps even an assisting in it. And so in that sense that you're right, that's the end game. Iran is the end game. But that end game is not going to be achieved in the next two months because of the Biden administration's obstreperousness.
- [49:06]
John Podhoretz
Okay, so let's move on to the Trump admin, the incoming Trump administration and the announcement made by Trump on Truth Social that it is his intention to slap a 25% tariff on goods coming in from Mexico and kind of surprisingly from Canada, which I didn't really expect would be part of the equation here, and a 10% tariff on Chinese goods. Now, the argument here in relation to Mexico and China, but Mexico specifically is. Mexico is flooding our borders with fentanyl, which killing people and migrants and all that. And they need to pay a cost. They need to pay for it. We need to put pressure on the government to do what it needs to do to stop this, you know, this drug invasion and this, you know, invasion by foot. The Canada thing is kind of thrown in there because I guess we have the North American, we have nafta, we have the North American Free Trade Agreement.
- [50:08]
Abe Greenwald
Which is America, Canada and Mexico, usmca, which replaced nafta.
- [50:14]
John Podhoretz
Okay, fair enough. Anyway, so he is blowing that up by putting a tariff on Mexico. He's blowing up the U.S. well, he.
- [50:21]
Abe Greenwald
Put tariffs on Mexico and Canada before. I think USMCA gives him the ability to do that. Okay, but these are much larger than he ever imposed.
- [50:34]
John Podhoretz
That's a honkin big tariff.
- [50:35]
Abe Greenwald
And I just, you know, Canada, I think it's in for a bruising. I don't really mind.
- [50:42]
Matthew Continetti
Look at the smile on that face when he sent to Canada.
- [50:44]
John Podhoretz
You know, I don't mind when Canada, Canada is telling Rabbit. When police in Montreal are telling rabbis pick up their kippos.
- [50:52]
Abe Greenwald
Yeah.
- [50:52]
John Podhoretz
And they're arresting journalists for taking.
- [50:54]
Abe Greenwald
I'm going to be like the Biden Harris administration and distinguish between the Canadian people and the Canadian government. So, you know, I, The Canadian people are nice people. They're very nice and polite people. But that government, I mean, okay, we can. 25%. Okay. You know, I can handle that. Because they've done a lot of, they've done a lot of bad.
- [51:16]
John Podhoretz
Right.
- [51:17]
Abe Greenwald
In recent times.
- [51:18]
John Podhoretz
Fair enough. But the rubber is meeting the road. Like, once again, we're talking entirely different.
- [51:25]
Matthew Continetti
Sorry.
- [51:28]
John Podhoretz
I don't know who. Yeah, we are. Yeah, we are. Let loose. Matt. Matt is imposing tariffs.
- [51:34]
Matthew Continetti
Here's the bottom line.
- [51:35]
John Podhoretz
You know, going out to Canada, I had a bad meal at an Italian Wrestler Restaurant. 30% tariff on Italy. You know, you know, you know who was mean to me? I had a, I had a, I had a Lithuanian cab driver.
- [51:51]
Abe Greenwald
Well, he does what he does. Remember when there was a pastor that was being held by Erdogan in Turkey?
- [51:59]
John Podhoretz
Yeah.
- [51:59]
Abe Greenwald
And Trump always makes it a big thing. He wants to free people, bring them home. And so he told Erdogan that if he didn't release this pastor, then Trump was going to impose these huge tariffs and I think literally use the words crush the Turkish economy. And guess what? The pastor came home and he did the same thing with Mexico. When the argument over remain in Mexico, it was like, if you don't get this agreement through, I'm going to do these tariffs that will crush your company. So I see something very similar happening here with these two posts that he released.
- [52:33]
Matthew Continetti
Well, he's like a social media which by the way, in all caps on truth social and carries his tariff stick and that's how he tries to negotiate. It's very blunt and it. But he doesn't actually do this.
- [52:45]
Abe Greenwald
My favorite part of the truth. My favorite part of the truth was the last sentence of the second one where he said, this is the one about China where he's promising a 10% tariff. And at the end of his little statement, he says, thank you for paying attention to this matter.
- [53:08]
John Podhoretz
We are, you're Trump. We're paying, we got, we got nothing but attention for your policy. Thank you for paying attention to this matter. So two, two things suggest themselves to me about this. One is that we are now in anti progressive Teddy Kennedy territory. What did Teddy Kennedy, Teddy Roosevelt say? Right. He said, speak softly and carry a big stick. This is exactly the opposite of what Trump does. Trump screams at the top of his lungs. And then generally speaking, when he implements the policies, the policies are more moderate than the rhetoric would have led you to believe. So this is the bully pulpit with an emphasis on the word bully, not, not and bully, of course, being a bully. Social media, another Teddy Roosevelt phrase, bully media. But I mean, that was also. It was, it was Teddy, Teddy Roosevelt who said that the presidency was a bully pulpit, meaning, boy, what a great place to get your, get your views out to the world and you know, and preach good things to the world. But so that, that's one thing, which is that Trump is attempting to make policy through threat, right? Saying do this or we're going to do X. And then maybe Claudia Scheinbaum, the new president of Mexico, or Justin Trudeau, the man who makes Joe Biden look like Albert Einstein, Prime Minister of Canada or xi, are going to try to sue for peace in some fashion and give Trump what he wants without Trump actually formally going there.
- [54:48]
Christine Rosen
Which this was Trump's approach to NATO too. Why should I kick in if you guys aren't going to defend yourselves against Russia?
- [55:03]
John Podhoretz
Now, all that, having said all that, tariffs are horrific policy. They've been proven not to work as a matter of long term. You create trade wars and you destabilize things and you disrupt supply chains and you create inflation. And there's a reason that they are used sparingly, if at all, unless they're put in place for national security reasons. And so I don't think they work. And I think that Trump is playing with fire. And while I think we're amused and think that he's fulfilling a campaign promise and presidents should fulfill their campaign promises, this is very nerve wracking and it should not be fun to joke about like he will reap the whirlwind if he puts them on and bad things happen. So at least he's putting his money where his mouth is and daring, you know, seeing where that, like I've said.
- [56:02]
Christine Rosen
Before with the tariffs, we just don't know if it's like the wall. It's like this is, this is the moment where he said the wall just got 10ft higher.
- [56:09]
John Podhoretz
Right, Right. Well, that's the, I think the hope that we would have is that it's the wall and that he is using suasion, not persuasion, but suasion to get people to do things. Not quite clear what exactly he wants. I mean, he wants Mexico to close the border on its side to deal with the drug smugglers on its side, to deal with the migrants on its side to prevent them from coming into the country. What he wants from Canada is not clear. The cost of the tariffs on the.
- [56:39]
Abe Greenwald
US There are immigrants and drugs coming from Canada too.
- [56:43]
John Podhoretz
Well, that's what he says. That's what he says in that. Right?
- [56:45]
Abe Greenwald
Yeah, I think that's been substantiated.
- [56:47]
John Podhoretz
Right. Okay.
- [56:48]
Abe Greenwald
So the border is not. I mean, Stefano talks about this. Anyone who has a district along the northern border has had concerns about what's been going on for some time as well.
- [56:59]
John Podhoretz
Fair enough. Yeah. And her district is right on the Canadian border. Right. It's literally like, like the Niagara Falls. So I don't think Niagara Falls is in the district, but it's right next to Niagara Falls. So, yeah, she knows. She knows where if she speaks. There is. There are very large potential long term consequences for a tariff on Mexico of this size. A lot of automobile construction takes place south of the border. There are huge auto plants south of the border that, you know, that make cars that are sold in the United States. This could, you know, this is the largest single consumer good that anybody in America buys is a car. If the price of automobiles goes up as a result of a tariff on Mexico, you know, that is something that the American people are going to shoulder. And we're just coming out of a horrible inflationary period that has set a new normal for prices higher than they, you know, significantly higher than they were four or five years ago. And you would think he wouldn't really want to futz with that. I gather from some responses I've had on Twitter from the world of Maga people that they are now like the people who believe in modern monetary theory. That was the idea that. No, no, it's okay. Inflation's fine. Inflation, don't worry about it. Inflation's fine. It's not a big deal. Inflation, that was modern monetary theory that tariffs, they won't. Walmart won't raise prices if we put tariffs on things because Walmart knows if it raises prices, it will lose customers. So this is a guy named John Carney at Breitbart who actually got into a fight with me on Twitter about this last week. Walmart knows it can't raise prices. What? What are you talking about? Walmart raised prices like everybody else raised prices over the last four years because the cost of goods went up and the cost therefore is paid by the consumer who buys them where it isn't paid at all. Walmart is a consignment business. It sells things. It doesn't buy them. It's a transshipment point. Prices go up 20%. Walmart charges you 20% more.
- [59:03]
Abe Greenwald
Yeah, I mean, I think, I don't.
- [59:04]
John Podhoretz
Know how the world, the laws of economics have been suspended just because Donald Trump wants tariffs.
- [59:10]
Abe Greenwald
I think that the Trump view is any inflationary effects of the tariffs are counteracted by the rise in investment and productivity in the economy more generally because of the other aspects of his economic agenda. And that is something of what we saw during Trump's first term. I mean, inflation was not an issue. There were tariffs imposed on China during.
- [59:36]
John Podhoretz
But not in this, not of this size.
- [59:38]
Abe Greenwald
These are larger. There's no question about it. But the, I think what he's looking at the net effect overall rather than the price level at any, you know, for a particular good. Now, look, I'm just giving that view. It's not necessarily my view. And there are effects, you know, the trade wars never, like any war, never, never go the way that you plan. Right. I mean, one of the effects of Trump's initial round of tariffs in China was not to move production to the United States. It was to move production to Vietnam and to Mexico. Right. So you're not necessarily. Labor is so expensive here that companies are always going to find some type of alternative to do the arbitrage. And then, of course, even if the inflationary effects are not as pronounced as the 20% increase in the price level that Biden gave us. Right. Over the past four years, which were not from tariffs, it was from the spending. There were, there were consequences in terms of our GDP growth from these tariffs. There was, there are declines in investments at these, there are losers to tariffs as much as there are winners. And one of the big losers in Trump's administrative first administration was the ag sector. And I think that will, that, that too. You're going to see some people from farmers saying, hey, you know, already we're seeing this is not what we want to do, because any retaliatory tariffs imposed on American goods will affect, you know, America is the breadbasket of the world. We feed everybody. And so they're not looking forward to that.
- [61:15]
John Podhoretz
My main, my main concern is that even if you believe in this, this the logic that says you put tariffs on to make it more costly, so costly to build plant, to export jobs, as they would say, or to move manufacture these places, that they'll just do it here in the United States. And maybe there's logic to that, but that's a 10, 15 year process that doesn't happen in six months. And presidencies, including the Biden presidency, often do things like pass bills that have a goal, like the CHIPS act has a goal. Right. Which is to help create a domestic manufacturing industry for silicon chips and all that. And they pass the bill and then they say they did it and all the jobs have been created. Well, the jobs haven't been created, the plants haven't been built, as it happens, until we find better supply of rare earth minerals and things like that to go into some of these chips, it's not going to be that great a business and it's going to take 10 years to build anyway. And so whatever benefit you get, it's good to think long term about these things. But you're going to get the weird disjunction between Trump claiming victories because somebody says as he did with Caterpillar at the beginning of his administration in 2017, Look, I saved all these jobs at Caterpillar. Caterpillar is not going to move its plant out of so and so. And then a year later Caterpillar moved its plant because it suspended what it was doing so that it could get, you know, it could get Trump to pat it on the head. But the economics didn't work no matter what, no matter what happened there. So I wish, you know, this would be a wonderful system if it worked in theory. The reason that we don't have tariffs anymore, we don't play tariff games is that we have two centuries of evidence to suggest that tariffs are a self reinforcing failure that create more problems when they solve and that in an effort to create top down economic growth by government policy that is actually not what American capitalism, that's American capitalism worked because it violated every thought like that forever over the course of the time that it became the most powerful economy. Okay, Christine, we do have interesting a little bit then we should, we need to go. But we do have interesting stuff going on inside Trump world as this incredibly efficient transition goes on. All the cabinet picks going, a lot of the secondary picks going, all of that. Susie Wiles seems to be an extraordinarily efficient person getting choices made, things through, decisions done, all of that. There does seem to be an interesting palace guard strut. We're already hearing about how people are getting into fistfights on the Mar A Lago patio or push shoving each other and stuff like that. Is this just like the Alpha? The Alphas are back baby. And Trump is the ultimate Alpha and everyone else is like a Neo Alpha and they're just behaving instead of pajama boy like behavior in the Obama Biden administrations. They are all strutting like peacocks and showing their plumage.
- [64:47]
Matthew Continetti
Well, I think it's actually sort of a little bit of nostalgia of what happened in 2016 when Trump won the first time. Right. Suddenly it brought into the orbit of the sort of lifelong political class in D.C. and the media class in New York, whole new cast of characters, some of whom I think played their roles really well in terms of providing dramatic fodder and completely out of control behavior. But the scandal du jour or potential scandal, is that Boris Epstein, is that how we pronounce his name? Epstein? Epstein has. Evidently he's being accused of asking for money from people who were seeking Cabinet.
- [65:27]
John Podhoretz
Yeah, Epstein. Yeah.
- [65:28]
Matthew Continetti
At seeking money from people who were trying to find positions in the new administration. So whether this is true, we don't know if this is true. This is an accusation. But he has obviously upset a lot of people already within Trump world where there are, as you say, various factions. So I'm just simply enjoying it for the drama of. There's always these transition dramas, but when it's Trump, it's a little more circus, like in its atmosphere. So we'll see how this pans out. But he's got the cardinal sin that Epstein is being accused of is that he's trying to make money off of Trump. And as we've discussed many times, the only person who makes money off of Trump, as Matt said before we came online, is Trump. So this might be the one bit of behavior, not the punching or the slap fights at Mar A Lago, but trying to make money off Trump might be the one thing that gets you ejected from Trump world.
- [66:27]
John Podhoretz
So he's selling Trump dulgences. Exactly. This, of course, is what created the, you know, one of the things that created Protestantism was the effort to sell favors, sell access. And, you know, Trump is the only reason that Epstein is still in the game. Trump likes Epstein. Nobody else seems to like Epstein. He literally got into fights with Scott Besent, the Treasury Secretary, Howard Lutnick, the Commerce, the incoming Commerce Secretary, and somebody else. Like, the stories have come out like he is like walking around Mar A Lago shoving people and punching people. I don't know what the hell else is going on. It is kind of funny. I mean, it's, it's, it's, you know, usually this happens when someone sneaks behind somebody's back to call Maggie Haberman to say so and so is being mean to me. Or Trump threw a plate of spaghetti against the wall or something like that just to, just to, you know, get their Yaya's out. Boris is like out there upfront using, using fisticuff. Using physical, physical threats or something like that. I think we're. We've probably seen the back of him. I don't think that this. I don't think he survives this. Whatever it means for him to survive things. No one is ever really fully out of the Trump orbit if Trump likes them. But still, we need a little comic relief in the world in which I know half the people are saying, well.
- [67:59]
Christine Rosen
There'S Matt Gaetz selling cameos.
- [68:03]
John Podhoretz
Yeah, well, he's going to go on. Only when he goes on, only fans let me know.
- [68:07]
Christine Rosen
Might as well. Yeah.
- [68:08]
John Podhoretz
That's all I want to say. Abe, you have a commentary recommendation?
- [68:13]
Christine Rosen
I do. I saw a new movie called A Different Man. It stars Sebastian Stan, the British actor Adam Pearson, who has neurofibromytosis, which is a condition whereby you have all sorts of tumors growing throughout your nervous system and on your body. And Norwegian actress named Renat Reince. I don't know how to pronounce it, so I'm going to go with Renat Reince.
- [68:45]
John Podhoretz
So star of a great movie called the Worst Person in the World, which came out three or four years ago, one of the best young person's movies of the. Of the last decade. Renata rents or what?
- [68:57]
Abe Greenwald
How?
- [68:57]
Christine Rosen
Yeah, anyway, I'm going with Renat Reince.
- [69:01]
John Podhoretz
Okay.
- [69:02]
Christine Rosen
And so it's, it's. It's a little. The movie A Different man is an odd, small, dark comedy drama. And it's going to be hard to describe because I don't want to do what terrible movie trailers do, which is sort of tell you way too much so that you're not interested in seeing it. So I'm going to be a little vague about what's going on. But Sebastian Stan plays someone with that condition, but he plays someone. His character is someone who is. His face is covered in tumors. And he's an actor of sorts who seems to only primarily act in public service films about disability, things like that. And then Renata, Renata, her character is a playwright who moves into the apartment next to him. And she's attractive, she takes some interest in him and they develop kind of a friendship and. But it gets a little awkward at points. And Sebastian Stan's character is presented by his doctor with some new treatment that can cure his condition entirely. And he takes the doctor up on it and he's cured. He becomes very handsome and all the tumors are gone. And he essentially puts his old life to death and becomes a different man, as the title says. And he goes on to other areas. He's no longer an actor. Exactly. Although that comes up again and then the Adam Pearson character comes into all their lives. Someone who is suffering from the condition that the Sebastian Stan character had suffered from and sort of shows him up and is this magnificent figure that completely confounds Sebastian Stan's character now that he's no longer disfigured by this condition. And it's very funny and it's particularly good at not at all being pitying about the disabilities and the. And the. And the. And the. And the Adam Pearson character and the condition. In fact, it's quite the opposite. And it is about ultimately sort of triumphing with the hand you've been given. And it's. It's a very funny. Great dark goes. Goes to very dark places. Odd little movie. And I left out some things because I really. It's. It's. It's an odd enough movie that you're not sure where it's going. So I don't want to tell you.
- [72:29]
John Podhoretz
Where it's going before you watch this on. On pvod on.
- [72:33]
Christine Rosen
I rented it on Amazon Prime.
- [72:36]
John Podhoretz
Right. Okay. So, yeah, so it's. So that's a different man. Sebastian Stan, known to people as the Winter Soldier in the. In the Marvel movies. Bucky Barnes, really quite a superb actor who, you know, has not.
- [72:52]
Abe Greenwald
And Donald Trump.
- [72:53]
John Podhoretz
And Donald Trump and the Apprentice, a movie I have not. I've not seen. However, our colleague Stephanie Roberts saw it and was blown away by him. And Jeremy Strong from Succession, who plays Roy Cohn. Anyway, so that's a different man. Can rent it on probably Amazon prime or anywhere they do that. Pvod pay VOD and great. So we will be back tomorrow for our again final show before the Thanksgiving break. You may have noted at a point here in the proceedings that Christine vanished from our screens and then returned to our screens. This is our new. If you were watching YouTube, this is our new system. And Christine's Internet went out and then it came back in and she was able to come back in. And so how much fun was that? Really? It's like a special effect. She popped in like Samantha from Bewitched after having disappeared from our screens. It's really mysterious and wonderful. So I hope you enjoyed that little.
- [74:07]
Abe Greenwald
It's great to have her back.
- [74:09]
John Podhoretz
It's great to have her back.
- [74:10]
Abe Greenwald
Thought we lost her there. Then she came back.
- [74:13]
John Podhoretz
Then she came back.
- [74:14]
Abe Greenwald
That was reassuring.
- [74:15]
John Podhoretz
Yes. So till tomorrow for Abe, Matt and the absent and then present Christine, I'm John Pod Horitz. Keep the candle burning.