The Ceasefire Two-Step

Summary

The Commentary Magazine Podcast

Episode: The Ceasefire Two-Step
Date: May 29, 2026
Panel: John Podhoretz (Host), Abe Greenwald, Christine Rosen, Seth Mandel

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Overview

This episode centers on the theme of the “ceasefire two-step,” examining how ceasefires in modern conflicts, notably regarding the ongoing confrontation between the US, Israel, Iran, and their proxies, often serve to advantage adversaries rather than promote peace. The panel explores the strategic costs of ceasefires, delves into recent developments in the Iran conflict, scrutinizes the U.S. administration’s negotiation approach under President Trump, and widens the discussion to touch on profiteering, political corruption, and shifting norms in American law and politics.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Ceasefires in Modern Conflict

[00:48–09:08]

• Ceasefires as Strategic Tools:
  John Podhoretz opens by citing CNN’s report that during the ceasefire, Iran rebuilt underground missile sites, negating recent allied military gains.
  “The ceasefire...has been an unalloyed benefit for the Iranian regime with which we are at war… The Iranians are winning the second [battle].” — John Podhoretz [01:51]

• Ceasefire Mythology & Inequity:
  Abe Greenwald asserts modern ceasefires are “bad,” usually helping the losing side by granting them valuable time to regroup.
  “Ceasefires are not peace treaties...the break always, always is one-sided in the Middle East.”
  — Abe Greenwald [04:15]

• Restraint as a Western Weakness:
  Christine Rosen and Seth Mandel note the West, especially Israel, often abides strictly by ceasefire terms, even when their adversaries do not.
  “Ceasefires have become like this sort of idealized supposed step toward peace, which it never actually is.”
  — Christine Rosen [06:27]

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2. Negotiation Follies and the Iran Situation

[09:08–16:00]

• Opaque Diplomatic Exchanges:
  Descriptions of chaotic behind-the-scenes communication, with rumors of unsigned memorandums and floated proposals seemingly designed for public consumption rather than real progress.

• Proposed Iran Reconstruction Fund:
  A new negotiation detail emerges—a $300 billion fund to rebuild Iran—prompting allegations of potential corruption and administrative cronyism.
  “That is insane ... it really does, I am sorry, raise questions about the deep personal corruption of the people who are negotiating this deal.”
  — John Podhoretz [10:54]

• Parallel to Past ‘Postwar Profiteering’:
  Recollection of Libya (2011), the Marshall Plan, and American political history where “postwar profiteering” and jockeying for contracts are inevitable after conflicts.
  “It’s easy to lose sight of winning the war because they’re talking about who gets to, you know, what private contractors get to win the peace.”
  — Abe Greenwald [13:36]

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3. Domestic Political Ramifications: Slush Funds & Corruption

[16:00–23:33]

• The ‘Weaponization Fund’ & Congressional Deadlock:
  Seth details GOP infighting over a $1.8 billion anti-weaponization fund holding up a border security appropriation, highlighting Trump’s conflicting political priorities: protecting his legacy vs. satisfying the base on immigration.

• Historical Context & Precedent Concerns:
  The panel draws lines from Obama-era special funds to concerns about norm erosion:
  “It’s the precedent here and it’s bad ... If we allow this sort of thing to continue, it’s bad for the country long-term.”
  — Seth Mandel [16:11]

• A Qualified Defense of Legal Funds:
  John Podhoretz concedes inequities in law may warrant some form of fund for politically targeted individuals, but warns against blanket, non-oversighted slush funds.
  “It is true that one of the great inequities in criminal law is that there is an imbalance between what the state can do and what a private citizen can do…”
  — John Podhoretz [18:11]

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4. American Corruption: “Swamp Logic,” Both Sides

[23:33–31:57]

• ‘Everybody Does It’ Mentality:
  John describes how both Democratic and Republican administrations have abetted family/circle enrichment, listing examples from the Clintons to Trump to the Bidens.

• Trump’s Open Embrace of Profiteering:
  “In the first term, I didn’t let my sons profit from my presidency…this time, you know, everybody does it, anything goes. They can’t stop me.”
  — Seth Mandel paraphrasing Trump [26:59]

• Erosion of Standards & Public Trust:
  The group laments the deepening transactionalism and how “draining the swamp” has morphed into “wallowing in it.”
  “He’s almost going to be proud to be impeached a third time, because who’s been impeached three times?...That’s how you show your appreciation for the players. That’s how you show status.”
  — Abe Greenwald [33:06]

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5. January 6th, Law, and the Decaying Social Contract

[35:59–48:33]

• Blanket Pardons and the Weaponization Fund:
  Panelists worry that a sweeping ‘anti-weaponization fund’ could reward people convicted of the January 6th insurrection, blurring lines of accountability and equal justice.

• Both Sides-ism in Prosecution:
  John and Christine warn that all sides are succumbing to “favorite crimes”—areas where they bend or ignore law to achieve political ends (e.g., left-wing non-prosecution of protest violence; right-wing downplaying of J6).

• Undermining Rule of Law:
  “We are living in a world that is creeping, perilously close to antinomianism about our own laws when they involve things that…feel politically righteous to someone.”
  — John Podhoretz [45:05]

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6. Return to Iran: Strategic Paralysis

[48:33–55:20]

• Stalemate and Iranian Advantage:
  Trump’s indecision allows Iran to regain military footing, dig out missiles, and set up new tactics.
  “We're letting them dig out their missiles. That's crazy. We started this war..."
  — John Podhoretz [51:45]

• The CNN Paradox:
  Abe drily notes: “If CNN knows they’re digging [missiles] out, we know they’re digging them out ... We knew when they went to the hardware store and picked up three shovels.” [53:15]

• Iran’s Calculus:
  Christine: “They know that we know. So from their point of view, they’re saying we’re safe, we can do this in plain sight because Trump is done." [54:46]

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7. Leadership, Legacies, and Consequences

[55:20–58:13]

• Presidential Responsibility:
  John invokes Henry V:
  “He sought this job, he took it, he wanted it, he got it, and he started this war. And he will be a figure of historical humiliation if this somehow ends with the Iranians stabilizing themselves…”
  [55:20]

• Eroding Deterrence:
  Abe: “What confidence could any of us have that when they start digging out the nuclear facilities…that will be a line the President won’t let them cross?” [56:41]

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8. Domestic Political Outlook: Republican Infighting & Senate Races

[58:22–61:34]

• Matt Continetti’s WSJ piece highlighted:
  A schism is developing in the GOP Senate caucus, raising the specter of Trump being isolated if the Iran conflict is seen as a loss.

• Texas Senate race as a case study in candidate quality and the culture war (“neighbors with uteruses” quote, [60:11]), demonstrating the left’s pitfalls.

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9. Cultural Sidebar: Literature, Memory, and Movie Moments

[61:34–72:19]

• John recommends Faulkner's Light in August, sparking a reminiscence about the power of literature and the oddities of remembering (or forgetting) books and movies over a lifetime.

• Iconic “cinema moments” that reshaped expectations:

  • Star Wars hyperspace jump,
  • Back to the Future alternate present,
  • Terminator 2 liquid Terminator.

• On the endurance of some memories:
  “The younger I was when I saw something, the more profound, weirdly enough, the more burned in my memory... So I probably remember Flintstones episodes better than the book I read last week.”
  — John Podhoretz [70:56]

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Memorable Quotes & Moments

• On Ceasefires:
  “If you pause a fight in the middle…the guy who needs the break more is the guy who benefits. The break is always one-sided in the Middle East.”
  — Abe Greenwald [04:15]

• On Reconstruction Funds:
  “Who’s going to get the $300 billion? Trump’s friends…”
  — John Podhoretz [11:23]

• On Rule of Law:
  “When you have a favorite crime, you don’t care about the Constitution.”
  — John Podhoretz [45:13]

• Iranian Perspective:
  “We seize concessions not through dialogue, but with missiles. In negotiations, we merely make them understand we have no trust in guarantees or words. Only actions are the measure.”
  — Golubov, Iranian official [48:38, quoted by John Podhoretz]

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• Begin Ceasefire/Iran discussion: [00:48]
• Ceasefire theory and impact: [02:48–06:27]
• Trump administration’s Iran negotiations: [09:08–12:30]
• Weaponization Fund and political implications: [14:31–23:33]
• Corruption and ‘everybody does it’ culture: [23:33–31:57]
• January 6th and American law breakdown: [35:59–48:33]
• Return to Iran standoff: [48:33–55:20]
• Presidential responsibility narrative: [55:20–57:33]
• Senate/GOP infighting: [58:22–61:34]
• Literature and cinema culture chat: [61:34–72:19]

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Tone & Style

Conversational, irreverent, deeply informed, and occasionally dark, the episode balances policy analysis with cynicism about the American political class, employing historical parallels, pop culture, and a deep skepticism toward both sides of the political divide.

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For New Listeners

This episode is a must-listen for those seeking exasperated but sharp insight into the state of U.S. foreign policy, domestic politics, and the subtle ways American ideals and institutions are being eroded—sometimes by the very people sworn to protect them.

Transcript

[John Podhoretz]

Foreign. Expect the worst Some reach your name

[Matt Ebert]

Some die at first no way of

[John Podhoretz]

knowing which way it's going Hope for the best Expect the worst Hope for the best. Welcome to the Commentary magazine daily podcast. Today is Friday, May 29, 2026. I'm John Butthoricz, the editor of Commentary magazine. With me, as always, executive editor Abe Greenwald. Hi, Abe.

[Christine Rosen]

Hi, John.

[John Podhoretz]

Senior editor Seth Mandel. Hi, Seth.

[Abe Greenwald]

Hi, John.

[John Podhoretz]

And Commentary social Commentary columnist Christine Rosen. Hi, Christine.

[Seth Mandel]

Hi, John.

[John Podhoretz]

So ceasefires are an interesting pause in action. And while they supposedly mean that there should be no kinetic action exchanged between the parties at ceasefire, that doesn't mean that other things can't be happening while the ceasefire is going on. We can position new forces, move our forces around, and so on. And it appears that the Iranians have been busy little beavers, because according to cnn, Iran used bulldozers and evacuation trucks to reopen at least 15 entrances to 18 underground missile sites during the ceasefire and returned missiles and launchers that US Israeli attacks closed inside mountain shelters. So this is yet another interesting indication that the ceasefire that we are still holding to and that the negotiating team, the US Negotiating team seems to be intent on continuing has been an unalloyed benefit for the Iranian regime with which we are at war. They have stabilized their control over the Straits of Hormuz. They have succeeded in making it appear as though the United States is paralyzed, and they are restoring some of the military capability that we had denied them and that we could have continued to deny them by continu to hit these sites. So the ceasefire is. If you view Operation Epic Fury as the first battle of the war with Iran, the ceasefire might be considered the second battle in the war in Iran. And we won the first, and the Iranians are winning the second.

[Abe Greenwald]

Can I make a broad, a very broad statement? As silly as it sounds? Ceasefires are bad. Like, the whole concept of a ceasefire in modern warfare is absurd. Ceasefires were not, you know, they were not formal peace offerings. They were like a word. It was a. Like a word used to describe as sort of mutually understood stoppage for a very defined short period of time for reasons that both sides liked, neither of which having to do with the war or the state of the war or negotiations itself. A ceasefire is not originally a bridge to negotiations. It's not a halfway house for peace. It's like, I don't know, let's not shoot each other on Palm Sunday or something sort of thing.

[John Podhoretz]

Well, Christmas, the famous Christmas season, right?

[Abe Greenwald]

And that was. And that. But that wasn't Even planned. Right. I mean that wasn't, that was just sort of a. So ceasefires are not, we've taken, we've turned them into this established thing and they're always, are always advantageous for the side that is losing at the moment of the cease fire.

[Christine Rosen]

Right.

[Abe Greenwald]

I mean, that is, I think, undeniable that if you, if you pause a fight in the middle of a fight, the guy who needs the break more is the guy who benefits from the break. But the break always, always is one sided in, in the Middle East. Israel ceasefires. This is the first time that Israel has really punished ceasefire violations by Hezbollah or by one of, you know, one of, on one of the fronts of its wars. But very often Israel shows tremendous restraint during ceasefires. And in fact there was a Wall Street Journal article not too long ago, I wrote about it a bit which talked about Israel's targeted assassination policy. They weren't carrying out targeted assassinations of Hamas leaders or people involved in October 7, except on days when Hamas had already broken the cease fire and they could plausibly argue that they were responding and then they would push the button for the guy they've been tracking for three weeks. So restraint has been the West's move in ceasefires. It has never been the other side's move. Gaza Hamas has never been restrained during a ceasefire. Hezbollah has stopped firing during some ceasefires. But Hezbollah has a permanent war footing. The ceasefires are not peace treaties. And Israel doesn't even have a peace treaty with the broader state of Lebanon. These are non state actors. This is the way Iran is behaving to just the way its proxies behave. And the whole idea is, is that if we need to push them into negotiations, then keep them in the corner. It's bizarre to me that we let people out of the corner, out of their corner in order to then negotiate, which puts us immediately on less advantageous footing. And I think the whole concept has just gotten blown out of, you know, sort of out of control. It's like you something you say, cause you, the oil markets are spooked and that's not good enough to me.

[Christine Rosen]

Seth, I think that's a really terrific refreshing point. It's true. Ceasefires have become like this sort of idealized supposed step toward peace, which it never actually is. It's like what summitry has become. The people want to have summits for the sake of having summits without there being a real partner for it, without there being anything agreed before, you know, without even understanding that there are two parties here to Make a deal. And as you say, ceasefires are always advantageous to the side that's losing. Which is why, for example, whenever Trump says, we're very close to a ceasefire with Russia and Ukraine, depending on where the state of battle is at the time, one side is not eager to stop shooting because you're taking away their edge at the moment. And unlike them, we do it to ourselves.

[Seth Mandel]

Well, it is almost become a bureaucratic tool in these geopolitical situations. Although I was thinking at a more low culture state right now when a friend asked me, do you know what's going on with this whole Iran deal? And it did strike me that we are all like the briefcase girls on Deal or no Deal, and we're all just kind of holding our briefcases in Iran is sort of saying, yeah, we'll do this. But then someone counteracts that within Iran, saying, no, we're not negotiating that, we're doing this. And it's just started to become farcical in a way that is disturbing to me. But I'm glad you brought up Ukraine, Abe, because I wouldn't be surprised if there was suddenly Russian openness to some sort of ceasefire because they just struck a NATO ally with one of their drones. So that's bad. And that's a conflict that we haven't spent much time discussing, but that is ongoing. And I hope that the Trump administration is using the ceasefire talk with Iran in order to continue these negotiations and that we'll hear sometime soon about where those. But the story about. John, you're absolutely right to point out that this is advantageous to the Iranian regime. While they are probably getting help from allies and whatnot and rebuilding, and we're sitting here not even quite sure who we're negotiating with. Again, the lack of information coming out of the administration about where we are in the negotiations, the back and forth over the course of this week has been very frustrating as an American trying to figure out where we stand

[John Podhoretz]

from what we can tell. There was this line being proffered, I don't know when it was, Monday, Tuesday, something like that, that a memorandum of understanding had been reached.

[Seth Mandel]

Right.

[John Podhoretz]

And it wasn't true. Whoever did it, Steve Wykoff, whatever, whoever briefed Barack, Ravid Axios or whoever, and then other people were briefing other people said that these points had been agreed to and it was not true because the Iranians hadn't agreed to them and Trump hadn't agreed to them. Therefore, there appeared to be some form of external pressure being levied, I would say, on Trump to take a Fedacom plea, to be afraid to say no to the ceasefire deal because the public now knew about it. And after all, isn't that what the negotiators are supposed to be doing is coming to. Coming to a resolution? We got a second version of that on Tuesday or two days later. Trump hasn't responded. Just think about that for a minute. Trump says he wants a few more days to think about it or something like that. That's not a negotiation. He's basically saying no without saying no. And then we read the John Kerryization about the. What I would call the John Kerryization of this negotiation. A very bizarre, very bizarre floated proposal that the United States will provide, along with allies, or there will be some kind of a $300 billion reconstruction fund created for Iran after the war. Now, that is insane. And it really does, I am sorry, raise questions about the deep personal corruption of the people who are negotiating this deal. Because what is a reconstruction effort? It is real estate. It is the reconstruction, rebuilding of real estate. And who's going to get those contracts if that deal is ever made? Who is going to get the $300 billion? Trump's friends, people who are friendly to the administration, people who have been supportive of the administration, people who have real estate organizations that might want to participate in this. Sort of like when we were talking about Gaza Lago or whatever. Mara. Gaza. Right. Which was always fanciful. I think this is fanciful, too. I mean, there is no way on earth that the Congress of the United States is going to authorize or appropriate $300 billion of American taxpayer money to reconstruct Iran, a country that we have basically deemed our enemy. Unless there's regime change, unless we're talking about an entirely new country that we want to put on its feet, even then, that money is not going to get appropriated. Why are they talking about it?

[Abe Greenwald]

What is going on? It's like the Libya stuff. When Hillary Clinton was Secretary of State and Libya was in the crosshairs during the Obama administration, the emails that had been unearthed by Hillary's bathroom server, whatever it was, had emails in which Sid Blumenthal was, you know, writing to people in the administration about getting contracts in Libya. He was like, I've got these guys who will build mobile hospitals, field hospitals, for after the war. They were. They were already kind of staking. In other words, the Secretary of State's own advisors were already kind of staking claim dibs on what kind of contracts they and their friends were going to get in the rebuilding phase of the country we were supposedly at war with, or some form of, of war, because obviously we did NATO. What NATO did was decapitate the regime. So it's, we can call it war. So this, this reminds me a lot of, a lot of that, where people are sort of counting their chickens and it's already, you lose. It's easy to lose sight of winning the war because they're talking about who gets to, you know, what private contractors get to win the peace.

[John Podhoretz]

So there's a famous term, right? War profiteering. There was the Wade Commission during the Civil War. There was the Truman Commission during World War II, which made Harry Truman's reputation, led to him becoming vice president and then president, in which it was investigated who was getting government contracts to build up our forces to defeat the enemy, and whether or not they were absconding with the money or misspending it and all of that. Now here we're talking about post war profiteering. Now, maybe that's always been the case. I mean, maybe the Marshall Plan was a foreign postwar profiteering. I don't know. In fact, nobody really cares because the Marshall Plan was a uniquely historical achievement.

[Abe Greenwald]

At least we all profited from the Marshall Plan.

[Seth Mandel]

Well, this is the point, actually, that is an important point because there's something unique about Trump's approach to some of this kind of profiteering that I think is worth noting because there's a domestic political context here happening right now, which is what did, what was one of the main reasons Trump won reelection, getting the border under control. Right now, a 70 billion, $70 billion package is in. A reconciliation bill to fund ICE, to fund border patrol is being held up by senators, Republican senators, over a $1.8 billion anti weaponization fund. So that is, I think, a data point. He's got two priorities in conflict right now on his own side of the aisle, which is his need to kind of rewrite history, particularly regarding January 6th. But anyone he felt was a victim of the weaponization of the Justice Department, including himself, but also the border, which is what voters want to see, really maintain that security and with the funding required. And the other data point there is, bunch of federal judges have sent a letter to the federal judge who oversaw the original case with the IRS when Trump was private citizen filing this case and asked her to reopen. And look at this, because the settlement was not something she had oversight over. So there's a whole lot of pieces moving around with the anti weaponization fund. And I think how the administration chooses to deal with that is going to be very Interesting to watch because even Republicans who have been generally loyal and voted for the things that the Trump administration has asked them to are really uncomfortable with this. And I think the American people will become increasingly uncomfortable with the idea of what this fund does. And I know there was a small scale version of this done under Obama with Native American farmers and stuff. And at the time, a lot of conservatives said this is a bad idea to have a fund of taxpayer dollars with no oversight from Congress, no oversight from the courts, that can just become a slush fund for whoever's in office. And I think that danger has now been we're going to have a similar set of questions with the way Trump is doing this. I'm of course looking further ahead and thinking, well, this would be great if I was a crazy left leaning, say, AOC or someone like that who gets elected president. And I want slavery reparations. I want reparations for all the groups in society that I think got the shaft from history. This would be a way to do it. So it's the precedent here and it's bad. And it doesn't matter if you think Trump was wrongly treated by some of our Justice Department and previous administrations. We've had that discussion. It's about if we allow this sort of thing to continue, it's bad for the country long term.

[John Podhoretz]

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[Seth Mandel]

Well, that's.

[John Podhoretz]

And you are not allowed. You know about legal defense funds, right? So people's heavily. You are not actually allowed to. A lawyer is not allowed to provide. It's considered a gift. If a lawyer does too much work for a private client, and therefore that is taxable to the person who gets the legal work. So this is a tiny defense of the theoretical justification for a weaponization fund,

[Seth Mandel]

and it's completely legitimate defense. And there would be nothing wrong with having that created with certain guardrails and oversight procedures in place for how those sorts of claims were determined. In this case, this fund would basically not have those. And that's one of the things that I think the Senate is saying, you know, if you want this to the president saying, if you want this, then we need to come up with some sort of way of oversight so that this is not abused, so that someone who actually did commit a felony isn't then allowed to draw from the taxpayer's wallet money for their own benefit. And when you look at some of the people who have already spoken publicly who would like their hands on some of that money, these are people who are convicted felons. So those whether or not, well, maybe they've been pardoned by the president, but the point is that that's not something that taxpayers should have to support. There should be some oversight. So I agree with you, John. And there been a lot of politically motivated prosecutions that have bankrupted totally innocent American citizens, some of whom had served their country in great capacity. But that's a very easy fix. And this is not an administration that's been open to any of that kind of oversight.

[John Podhoretz]

I think the general thing is that the administration or the Trump people look at American politics before they came to power, and they say what we see is this swamp. And we see the swamp and we see how advantage was being taken. And Trump is a New York City real estate guy, so he knows very well that New York City and New York State is a bribery and political influence machine. And God knows how much money he and his company and his friends have paid that we'll never know about to get people to look the other way when they're buying steel or whatever. You know, like this is a real thing. And so he thinks this is how government works. Right? And there were some, as you say, as Seth says, like there were. There was the arguments, arguments being made during the Obama administration that Sid Blumenthal should get contracts or his friends should get contracts. Then we get Hunter Biden and the Hunter Biden story. Then we get Covid. We get. And we're getting these fraud stories coming out about, right, the Somali fraud. Now we're getting these stories about autism fraud, which could be a gigantic story that people haven't even begun to make reckon any sense of. Right. These autism clinics and autism treatment centers in California that turn out don't exist. All of which dovetails with the obsession of RFK Jr. With supposed, you know, incredibly rising autism rates and those incredibly rising autism rates where we went from in one generation, 1 in 166 kids being diagnosed with autism to 1 in 30. And it was, what's going on? Is it the environment? Are we poisoning Earth? You know, what's happening? How has this happened? Maybe it's older parents, all of that, or maybe all sorts of things happened in Medicare funding and other forms of treatment that made it incredibly advantageous for medical professionals and people who run for profit institutions of education and others to announce that there was a huge spike in autism that needed to get state, local and federal dollars paying for it. So we're not even at the. We're not even at. We're at like the camel's nose, right? Just trying to poke under the tent of whether this generational. There may have been a kind of generational bullshit line that scared everybody half to death and created this entire world that we might start getting exposed the way the Somali fraud was exposed. But Trump looks at this and the Trump people look at this. And that's not, I'm not saying they believe this. I'm just pointing it out that there was all the COVID theft and there was all the COVID fraud and all of that, and they're looking at it going, okay, we're just doing what everybody else did. If Steve Witkoff is going around negotiating with the Qataris while he is negotiating for the United States, how's that any different from anybody else? Don't tell me it's not just the Trump family.

[Seth Mandel]

The sons are going around like buying up, merging with Kazakh mining companies. My colleague Tim Carney wrote about this recently. The crypto coin, the Meme Coin, which is bought by basically a Gulf State bank. I mean, there's a lot of financial corruption and self dealing going on. And Trump has been very open about it. He said, in the first term, I didn't let my sons profit from my presidency. Although that's a questionable statement. But he's like, this time, you know, everybody does it, anything goes. They can't stop me. And that to me is a real distinction right there. Like in the first term, he had advisors around him. He said, you know, this is unseemly. This is not. It also opens you up to the risk of all kinds of investigations and your family into investigations. And second term, Trump is saying, I Don't care about any of that. I don't care about norms, obviously, but ethics, rules, all these things. And, you know, the Democrats, if they regain control of the House, which we've talked about, will likely bring some form of an impeachment procedure. If they bring it on some of this financial corruption stuff, they might have a pretty serious case. They won't. They'll make the mistakes they've made before, I would predict. But that stuff is really disturbing to me because, again, that's entrenching exactly what he claimed he was gonna run against each time he ran for president. It's wallowing in the swamp like a pig in mud. It is not draining it. And I think that's a distinction that a lot of people who might have voted for Trump the second time around are starting to realize.

[Christine Rosen]

You know, I think that Trump looks at the Biden blanket pardons and the record of. The interesting financial record of Nancy Pelosi, things like that.

[Seth Mandel]

And he says, AKA the whale.

[Christine Rosen]

Yes. And he says, I'm safe because they want to start digging. I know where some bodies are buried, and they all have bodies buried. And I am. So I am not going to be hemmed in this time. I'm not going to abide by a rule that just applies to me. It's bad. It's a terrible thing. I'm just saying I'm trying to get in his head.

[John Podhoretz]

And look, it's true. He's got some magical I'm rubber, you're glue element to his career as a politician. Right. So what was the name of the Atlanta prosecutor, the Georgia case? Fonny Fani Willis. Yeah. So Fani Willis goes after, says, I'm gonna find any way to go after Trump. She's ruined and destroyed by that prosecution. Michael Avenatti, ruined and destroyed by saying he was gonna take Trump down various other cases. Like, there is this weird thing where you come at Trump and stuff happens that, you know, you do summon the demon upon yourself if you are not Caesar's wife and are completely above reproach. So you're right that Trump.

[Christine Rosen]

I left Ilhan Omar out of that.

[John Podhoretz]

Yeah, well, that's right. The Somali fraud. Right. So he may think, okay, everybody did it. Come at me. Or of course, the most, the biggest one was the purloining of the classified information for which he is indicted and for which, you know, there is a very. That we even said, okay, well, now they've got him dead to rights. Like, he did it and then Biden did it. So, you know, so he may look at this and say, nobody can come at me because like the entire, this is a house of cards and the entire thing could come down, Democrats and Republicans alike.

[Seth Mandel]

The difference this time, and this is why I wanted to talk about the anti weaponization fund, is that it's potentially undercutting his political priorities. The things he has done well, particularly at the border, the things American voters like and want more of. And he's doing that if he has to choose.

[John Podhoretz]

It'll.

[Seth Mandel]

That's why I think it's going to be interesting to see if he compromises on that with Senate Republicans. The other thing is he's now doing at a time where the economy is not great and, you know, people are dissatisfied and inflation is not decreasing at the rate that, you know, we've been promised and there have been some, some bad economic signs for people and gas prices not really where we want them to be. So all of these things combined, I think, make his cavalier attitude about some of these rules seem even more removed from what people are concerned about. So if you see someone building ballrooms and, you know, doing all these lavish things while saying, I don't care about the economy and I'm focused on this war and your gas prices are up again, I'm trying to put myself in the head of the voter in the way that Abe just, I think correctly put himself in the head of Trump. Trump is not addressing those concerns in the way that people want to need right now.

[John Podhoretz]

And you know what? He doesn't have to, he doesn't have to.

[Seth Mandel]

No, he's a, he's a lame duck.

[John Podhoretz]

He can, he's a lame duck also. He's embraced lame duckery. So therefore, maybe the next are, are, are about, you know, are about bringing, bringing home the cash. Now he's 80 years old. I don't even know why he needs to bother. Well, he doesn't need to bother for his kids because it's a mark of

[Abe Greenwald]

success that it's a. Yeah, it's how he counts. It's like, it's like when we, when we, when we look at, at max contracts in the NBA, nobody looks at the final number and goes, oh, well, thank goodness that he's getting 237 million over 10 years instead of 228 million over 10 years or something like that. These are numbers that no longer have any meaning. But the point is that it's 5 million more than the last biggest max contract was. That's all that matters. And in a league like that, the players continuously, they continually Admit that when you ask them, they say this league is set up in a way that that's how you show your appreciation for the players. That's how you show status.

[John Podhoretz]

Right.

[Abe Greenwald]

I mean, it's more than the other guy is actually more important than whether you need $300 million or whatever. There's something very similar happening with, with Trump. And he comes from that world, that world of, of competition in a very similar way. I think it's a status thing among anything. And I think he just, he wants to win and he wants the money and he wants to, he wants to, you know, he's almost going to be proud to be impeached a third time, because who's been impeached three times? It's like he's, he's going to be in the record books, you know. But the other problem with Trump and the way he handles this, these things to me, is that he believes that there's a herd immunity of sorts in his world. That's what I don't like. Well, it's part of what I don't like about the anti Weaponization Fund and all this debate, which is that I agree that some of the behavior of prosecutors toward Trump was totally irresponsible, unprofessional and targeted in a way that it would be obviously inappropriate if it were done to somebody who wasn't the most powerful man man in the world. Right. Some of the behavior against him. But if he's going to start a fund and pay off like people who stormed the Capitol on January 6th to stop the peaceful transfer of power, those guys, maybe some of them got a bad rap, maybe some of them didn't just sort of got pulled by the crowd or whatever. I'm willing to believe there's a whole range of offenses and levels of offenses in the January six riot. But a sort of blanket idea for Trump is that I was mistreated. Therefore anybody who was, who was prosecuted because of something having to do with their defense of me, they were automatically mistreated as well. And so now there's this big netcast, when in reality, the lesson from what Trump went through in the four years between presidencies is that the, his enemies had lost sight of themselves and, you know, and their professions, and they had gone too far. They had done a trick in New York to turn, you know, something into 32 felonies instead of, you know, two misdemeanors or whatever. There were things that they were tricks that people even who weren't law experts could say it doesn't look right. That doesn't sound right. And I wouldn't expect that to be done to anybody else unless you were trying to get someone. That's not the case with somebody who's on video. Storming the Capitol.

[Eric Gertler]

From the State House to the courthouse, in the emergency room and in the classroom, Americans are losing trust in their leaders. In a 2020 U.S. news and World Report survey, 85% of Americans said government leaders care more about their own power than the people they serve. 73% are disappointed in healthcare leaders, 72% in business, and 68% in education. But there are still leaders worth believing in. I'm Eric Gertler, CEO and executive chairman of U.S. news World Report. This is the Best Leaders podcast sponsored by the Noble Reach Foundation. On this show, we'll go deeper into the stories, challenges and lessons of extraordinary leaders across public service, business, healthcare and education. You can find the Best Leaders podcast from U.S. news World Report on YouTube, Apple Spotify, Amazon Music, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Matt Ebert]

I started with one shop. No college degree, no big investors. It was just a willingness to work. Over time, that one shop turned into a multi billion dollar business called Crash Champions. All the lessons I learned along the way came from the grind. And that's what my show Pod Crash is all about. We have real conversations with people who've built things the hard way. We talk to founders, athletes and blue collar leaders who kept going when things got tough. You'll hear stories of grit, leadership and growth, plus real world lessons you can take back to your team and your life tomorrow.

[John Podhoretz]

When you get momentum, you step on the gas.

[Abe Greenwald]

That's how you get separation from everybody else.

[John Podhoretz]

I was at Harvard Law School. I was, blah, blah, blah.

[Abe Greenwald]

I looked up, let me tell you something. There's kids in my neighborhood putting in

[John Podhoretz]

sheetrock that is smarter than you.

[Abe Greenwald]

AI is going to disrupt a lot of stuff.

[Christine Rosen]

It is never going to disrupt physical

[John Podhoretz]

blue collar trade skill.

[Abe Greenwald]

And the guy just looked at me

[John Podhoretz]

and he said, it's bloody impossible. So I asked him this question.

[Eric Gertler]

I said, it's impossible.

[Abe Greenwald]

Unless

[Matt Ebert]

that's podcrash with me. Matt Ebert Watch on YouTube and listen wherever you get your podcasts.

[John Podhoretz]

The important point here is that everybody who is, I don't know, it's possible that somehow somebody did not commit a crime, trespassing. If they were arrested inside the Capitol, I don't quite know how that would work. You would need a talmudic explanation. To me, they were, you know, they were just standing there and the crowd pushed them into the you know, they happened to be standing 50ft away, but somehow they were pushed into the building. They didn't want to be there. And then they were. They were there, but like.

[Seth Mandel]

Well, they'd already crossed barricades at that point. I mean, yeah, this is where it does become Talmudic and kind of, you know.

[John Podhoretz]

No, the problem is. The problem is.

[Abe Greenwald]

I'm just saying I'm open to the idea that someone's getting punished more than somebody else in the same.

[John Podhoretz]

Okay, no, whatever. Okay. I'm not.

[Abe Greenwald]

I'm not defending J6. My point is exactly the opposite. That. That point, the problem with these funds is that they're helping J6 people, when in reality, those people were not generally mistreated. And there's been no case to be made. There's no individual determination. This person was mistreated by law enforcement. There's just. He was charged with a crime because he likes Trump, and therefore I'm going to give him money.

[Christine Rosen]

But can I say, I think there's another way to frame this, the difference, the way Trump. Trump was unjustly pursued, and he was unjustly pursued in many ways, largely was high tech and informational, beginning with Russiagate

[Eric Gertler]

and

[Christine Rosen]

suppression of the Biden laptop. It was cleaner. There were all these sort of parties working behind the scenes in ways that it took a long time to sort of tease out and sort out. Trump, as you know, John said before, sort of comes at this as like a sort of New York real estate. You know, everything is. It's much more conspicuous when he does it. You know, it's sort of like it's out in front. He's not steeped in the institutional tricks that were used against him in the same way. So he's sort of coming at it in this very brazen way instead.

[Seth Mandel]

Well, and I think he mistakes transparency for moral certitude in these cases. Like, well, at least I'm doing it out in the open. Whereas I. I think the argument a lot of us would make is it's bad no matter how you're doing it. It's bad for the system, it's bad for the country. It's bad for the American people to have leaders who think it's fine to just look, Biden's blanket pardons at the end of his term, particularly his pardoning of his own son and family members, was reprehensible. And we were very clear about that. Just as reprehensible were blanket pardons for all the J6ers. This is the tit for tat that I think MAGA folks think is, yeah, that's us winning. We've been so weak before. They're failing to see the forest for the trees. Long term, you're clear cutting the forest. And that's our system and the way it should work. And, yes, there's always been corruption. There's always been people who try to take advantage, but to make the system maintain its health, we have to be willing to point it out on either side, and that's what we lose. I think with some of these, the kind of MAGA approach to, well, at least I do it out in the open. I'm not trying to cheat you behind the scenes like the previous guy did.

[John Podhoretz]

Everybody.

[Abe Greenwald]

And now there's barricades where they didn't used to be barricades. Now we have to have closed off public buildings. Buildings. Because of that. But. But also because of the fact that he won't. That he. He won't denounce J6 for what it was. Right. Like, if we had a system of norms where the President was like, oh, guys, no, that's not what I meant. What are you doing? You can't storm the Capitol. We probably wouldn't need the barriers. Right. The thing that. That cements it as, like, a new norm, you know, or a broken, permanent broken norm is Trump's defense, his defiance.

[John Podhoretz]

It's worse than that because he did say it, and then he took it back. He said it on January 6. He said, Go home. You're doing the wrong thing. People in his administration said it, Ivanka said it, this one said it. And then as 2021 continued and as he left the press and all this, he started thinking, that's not fair, and started hinting at a new lost cause.

[Seth Mandel]

Yes, exactly.

[John Podhoretz]

Exactly. A new lost cause. And this is where the selective prosecution stuff comes in, because, in fact, there's nothing to compare to January 6th. No. Maybe the people who, like, occupied the Wisconsin State House in 2011, attempting to prevent the passage of legislation that Scott Walker had been proposing bears some minimal resemblance to this, but nobody practically in American history had ever gone into the Capitol building or into a public to attempt to interfere with the proper process of the workings of the government. That had never happened before. It's sui generis. The crime is sui generis. And unless you punish it and make clear that any thought of doing this again means you're gonna be thrown into a cell and rot there for a while. So don't even imagine it. And Trump has now, of course, made that imaginable, because there is the example of people who did it. And then, yeah, they went through hell and they went to jail and all of that, and then they got pardoned. So maybe that can happen for the AOC people or for, you know, or for, I don't know, for President Vance or for President whoever in whatever timeframe that will happen. So there's no comparison to other crimes or other circumstances. Political violence has a particular valence. But I do have to say we're also living through this period in which there were riots in Minneapolis, there were riots in Kenosha, Wisconsin and places like that. And the people who did that were not prosecuted. Now, that's not federal and it's not political in the same way. But we are living through a time in which left wing politicians do not want to prosecute offenses like trespass, like shoplifting, like misdemeanors of any kind, because they claim that it is racially inequitable to do something.

[Seth Mandel]

I'm just gonna add, they don't wanna prosecute any alleged perpetrator who fits certain categories either. It's not just the crimes, it's the perpetrator.

[John Podhoretz]

Right. So the way of putting this is my mother used to say, everybody's got a favorite crime. That is to say there's a crime that you don't care about. Niceties like you hate. You know, I mean, this is gonna sound terrible. Cause everybody does. Well, like you hate rape or, you know, me too. Happens. So then you go and you start petitioning to change all the laws so that 30 years after something happened and the statute of limitations had been, you know, had long since been frozen, you changed the laws ex post facto to allow for prosecutions of things that happened 30 years ago because you hate them so much. And then people get prosecuted under those terms and then they're maybe they're found guilty. And then a court says, no, this is unconstitutional because it's ex post facto prosecution. But once when you have a favorite crime, you don't care about the Constitution, your favorite crime, throw the book at him, you know, let God sort it out. It's sort of like. And it's like, you know, NYPD Blue logic in the. When, you know, David Caruso in the first season of NYPD Blue, there are all these criminals, he can't get them on the charges that he wants to get them on. So he plants evidence and arrests them on other charges and they go to jail anyway. And it's kind of like biblical justice. That was kind of this, you know, weird left wing, right wing fantasy Thing that went on just before the crime wave broke in the 90s. Everybody's got that. So mostly peaceful protests in Minneapolis, blocking bridges during protests against Gaza. 500 people could get arrested for blocking a bridge protesting Gaza. It was a deliberate decision of the political forces in the cities in which that happened to let them all go. Or if you arrested them, you put them in plastic handcuffs and then the cameras were off and then you cut off the plastic and you let them go. And so that's the world we're living in. We're living in a world that is creeping, perilously close to antinomianism about our own laws when they involve things that happen, that feel politically righteous to someone or some other force in the country. And Trump is a big part of that, maybe the largest part of that. But so is Mamdani. So was, you know, so was Jacob Fry. So is Karen Bass. So is that whoever that awful mayor of Portland is, you know, and Seattle. Like, they don't. They like they want the crime, they don't want the criminals to be prosecuted because they don't think it's really a crime. And it's a terrible precedent or whatever thing we're living through. And I don't know how it's going to get reversed. Let's go back to Iran for a second here. So Trump is not responding to his own negotiators and what they're saying. So we are literally, I don't even know where we are today.

[Seth Mandel]

That's why I said we're the briefcase girls. We're the briefcase girls, all of us. Deal or no deal, that's who we are.

[John Podhoretz]

Are we still blocking the Iranians access to the strait? I think so. Not sure. I think so. They announced they were going to start Project Freedom. They're not doing Project Freedom, which is the American escorting of private commercial traffic, are we? You know, all I know is that we're not saying anything. We're negotiating and leaking stuff or someone's leaking stuff. That's that about deals that sound pretty advantageous to the Iranians and the Iranians aren't buying it. The Iranians, Galobaaf. The premier just said, if I can find this now. I can't believe I keep having these things and then they disappear on me. Golubov just said this 48 minutes ago. We seize concessions not through dialogue, but with missiles. In negotiations, we merely make them understand we have no trust in guarantees or words. Only actions are the measure. No action will be taken before the other side's, before the Other side acts. So he is saying, we're going to fire missiles at you and then you're going to concede to us. This is us having like spent 48 days bombing the crap out of them. So Iran is not going to do anything until we concede is what he's saying. So how are we supposed to continue negotiating? What are we negotiating over? Trump has one red line, right, which is no nuclear weapons and we get the dust and he's saying, I'm gonna fire missiles at you. So I don't we have to start the war again. I mean, am I, I am taking crazy pills here? Because it doesn't, Nothing is making rational sense except that some people like Steve Witkoff and Tom Barrack and others are looking at the possibility of collecting hundreds of billions of dollars in real estate fees. Why haven't they walked away from the table and flown back home? What are they doing there?

[Seth Mandel]

And some of the reporting we have in terms of what's going on in the Pentagon is that our military leaders actually have presented Trump with the available options were hostilities, kinetic action to resume. It's just they're waiting on him to make that decision. So I would be curious if anyone would speculate about who's talking to him about waiting. Why is he sitting on his hands? What is the delay? Is he waiting for inflation numbers, gas prices, bond markets? I'm curious because up to now we've at least seen him kind of ping ponging around on social media with various statements and this time he's, he's not deciding yet. So I'd just be curious if anyone would speculate who's got his ear on that.

[John Podhoretz]

I mean, I think the danger here is the danger that we began with, which is not just that he's not making a decision, but that the Iranians are putting themselves in a position to make a stronger showing in part two, if there is a part two than they did in part one. They're digging their missiles out. They've had like six, seven weeks to do this. They're digging their missiles out. They're probably repositioning their forces. They're making different battle plans, trying to figure out maybe they're like, let's not waste missiles on Israel, which can basically knock them down. Let's go at Saudi Arabia, which ordinarily they wouldn't hit because of fear that they would, you know, that they might hit the holy sites, or let's, let's, let's destroy the UAE or something like that, and we're letting them do that. We, we are letting them dig out their missiles. That's crazy. We started this war that we need. You know, if they start at this point, if they use those dug up missiles and they start killing people in the Gulf, that's on us. Unless we knock them down. Now they're digging them out. We saw the CNN story. So fly the planes over where the missile sites were and blow up the missile sites again.

[Abe Greenwald]

Well, that's the thing is, right, if CNN knows they're digging that, we know they're digging them out. That's the thing, right? The government knows what they're doing.

[Seth Mandel]

CNN's reporters are probably helping them dig them out.

[Abe Greenwald]

But yeah, this is, but this was like, this was like, you know, when, when, when Assad used chemical weapons, was it 2013? Was the, was the, the big attack in Gouda that the subsequent reporting made clear that the, the Obama administration, because they were still in there, we're going to enforce our red line phase, was watching them do it, not saw it happen, was watching them. They watched, we watched from space or whatever step, set up the material, dig things out, set things up, set targets, load them up, literally. Because initially the whole point was we have to be able to prove, we have to be able to say without a shadow of a doubt that Assad is responsible, Assad's forces are responsible for using chemical weapons. This is something that after World War I, the world understood can never be allowed to happen again. So we're going to take action. They had to build the case instead. What they ended up building was the case for, of their own bystandering of this, of this horrible crime. But in the end we learned that they watched as it was happening. If they're digging out missiles in Iran and CNN is like, look, they're digging out missiles in Iran. We knew three weeks ago when they, we knew when they went to the hardware store and picked up three shovels. We knew when they rented a truck.

[Christine Rosen]

Not only that, they know that we know. So this is a state from their point of view. They're saying we're safe, we can do this in plain sight because Trump is done. And if this is where they're putting their energy and resources into digging up missiles, why would we even imagine that they're interested in negotiating a peace?

[John Podhoretz]

Well, you know now as, again, as ever. So now, you know, uneasy lies the head that wears the crown. Henry V. Wandering around the battlefield at night, unable to sleep because he knows he's gotta make a decision about whether to send his men into battle and possibly lose Their lives. And, you know, he sought this job, he took it, he wanted it, he got it, and he started this war. And he will be a figure of historical humiliation if this somehow ends with the Iranians stabilizing themselves and us having put on the table, if we have put on the table $300 billion in reconstruction money and that they, even to that they say, drop dead. I mean, nobody else. He got nowhere to turn, got no one else to blame. Nobody else. Can't blame Bibi, can't blame the Gulf, can't blame anybody. He stopped it. He got all head up and said he was going to destroy their civilization. And he's like, no, I'm not going to destroy their civilization. Ceasefire. And now they're making it more and more difficult for him to restart the war. And that's all on him.

[Abe Greenwald]

And what confidence could any of us have that when they start digging out the nuclear facilities to get them up and running again or to reclaim uranium, enriched uranium, that's buried underneath. What confidence are any of us supposed to have that that will be a line the President won't let them cross? He'll let them dig out some weapons but not others. We're watching them again. We're watching them dig out what we've buried. And so the idea all along has been, well, if they really try to resurrect one of the enrichment facilities that, that we won't let them have, but obviously we would, right? I mean, what lesson would I take from this? If I were Iran, they will let me get away with it. And if I'm in the public, I'm saying, yeah, they'll probably let him get away with it. What was, what was it all for? You know,

[John Podhoretz]

I mean, this is a real time of testing. We will have a weekend here. The days, every day is a week, meaning every day the Iranians recover and recover and recover and recover. And every day that we do not do something about them, we get weaker and weaker and weaker. Unless, you know, we're somehow. We've got a production line going we don't know about, that is like making, you know, a million drones that we're going to fly at them and have a new warfare strategy and destroy them or something like that. But that's sort of science fictional.

[Seth Mandel]

So he can't get approval for the budget for the Border Patrol stuff right now. I mean, there's a real funding issue in that pipeline too, right?

[John Podhoretz]

And you know, Matt Continetti has a piece today in the Wall Street Journal in the free expression section in which he's saying, look, there's now developing an anti Trump or at least Trump skeptical wing of the Republican Party in the Senate. And a resolution of the Iran war that appears to be a capitulation will leave him not friendless in the Senate, but will leave him effectively powerless. And with November coming and the real possibility that he will be depowered by results in November and then just two Republicans have to cross the aisle or one Republican will have to cross the aisle to block his desiderata or pass things that he doesn't like. And I don't know where that goes. I do believe, and maybe we can end on this, that the results in the Texas primary that I think we all four of us at least find disheartening, that Paxton beat John Cornyn and that Paxton is a worse candidate in the general election than Cornyn would be. The more I read about the Democrat James Talarico, the more it seems absolutely science fictional to me that he can actually make it into the Senate.

[Seth Mandel]

I think he actually was, he must have been one of the actors in that Men for Kamala advertisement, because he sort of exactly embodies everything about that version of masculinity on the Democratic Party side. I mean, it is kind of surreal.

[John Podhoretz]

I mean, he referred to women as our neighbors with uteruses, which I'm sorry,

[Seth Mandel]

I get to do the. As a woman because I'm the woman. That I'm the token as a woman. Those are fighting words. I just want to come at someone who would actually say that instead of use the word woman. But that's, that's a signal. That's a signal to the left on where he stands on transgender issues, on all of the host of culture war stuff that the Democrats should have learned in 2024 is not a winning issue for them.

[John Podhoretz]

I want to close with a recommendation.

[Abe Greenwald]

So it's offensive to.

[John Podhoretz]

That you got. Sorry.

[Abe Greenwald]

Hysterectomy patients. It's like another, it's like another childless cat lady thing. It's like, oh, they're, they're people if they have a uterus. That's not actually what defines.

[John Podhoretz]

My God.

[Seth Mandel]

If you get cancer and you have to have your. You have to have a hysterectomy, then I guess you're not a woman according to Talarico.

[John Podhoretz]

Or a neighbor. You're not a neighbor.

[Seth Mandel]

You're not a neighbor either.

[Abe Greenwald]

Yeah, the neighbor.

[John Podhoretz]

Not my neighbor. If you have had a hysterectomy, get out of here. I'm putting in a restrictive covenant in my HOA because You had a hysterectomy. I need neighbors with uteruses right now. That's all.

[Seth Mandel]

I just think an army of Crohn's with an understanding of human biology is all that is needed to take down

[John Podhoretz]

that sort of thing. I mean, there are 10 or 15 things that he said, and clearly he's a more winsome candidate in certain ways than others have been in that role. But. But he is. He is takedownable. That's a. He's like a. He's a rich target of opportunity. Not that Paxton isn't also, but. But. Yeah. So I, I don't think that that, that the, that the revolutionary moment that will flip the Senate to the Democrats is going to come in. In. In Texas. Based on what I've been reading the last couple of days. Quick final recommendation. A book I haven't read since I was 15, 16 years old, and I am now halfway through. I haven't read this writer in decades, William Faulkner's Light in August, which is just astonishingly beautiful. And it's not. It's very hard to describe. It's a story that begins with a. Basically a teenage girl who has been impregnated by a wandering guy and she goes out to find him in the wider world on foot. And it is. We're always reading Faulkner imitators. And I know Abe is a. I'm not as much, but Abe is a huge fan of Cormac McCarthy, who is probably the signal or signature sort of follower of Faulknerish, Faulknerish literary style or literary approach.

[Christine Rosen]

His early stuff especially.

[John Podhoretz]

Yeah, but McCarthy's early stuff. Yeah, McCarthy's early stuff. But this is just unbelievably beautiful piece of writing and laden with a certain type of emotion that doesn't appear in some of his other work. And as I say, I'm only halfway through, but it's been unexpectedly elevating and calming in some odd ways, given.

[Seth Mandel]

Can I ask you a question?

[John Podhoretz]

Yeah.

[Seth Mandel]

How much do you remember from your teenage reading? I'm a huge fan of rereading classics that you first read when you were not an adult and then picking them up again. I do that with Middlemarch every few years. My favor. What did you remember? Are you having sort of recollections from having read it as a teenager now, or is it all kind of a blank?

[John Podhoretz]

I had very little in the way of memories of it because it's such an impressionistic kind of picaresque story. I remember that Lena, the main character or the woman that we're following the Girl that we're following. What I did remember was her. This is gonna sound crazy, but her. Her love of sardines and penniless, beyond penniless. And if she can get 15 cents together, the great pleasure of her life is being able to buy a can of sardines. And this description that Faulkner gives of her, the way that she eats the sardines and licks her fingers from the oil that the sardines are packed in the can. And this. The fact that you can take such astounding and astonishing pleasure in something that seems totally workaday. And how she is going through life, living entirely in the present, while everybody around her is looking at her in grief, thinking, my God, she is, you know, she is on her way to misery and ruin is a very potent thing.

[Christine Rosen]

It was a great question, Christine, and great answer, because I forget everything I read, which is a blessing because I get to enjoy rereading stuff all the time. But I have to say, in particular, you're right. I mean, when I'm thinking back on the Faulkner books I've read, they really sort of atomized in your mind when you close them, which is not a knock, but they're like dreams almost, you know, so they sort of float away once you're not in it.

[John Podhoretz]

Right. Well, I remember the Bravura, like his two real bravura books, right, which are the Sound and the Fury and As I Lay Dying. So the Sound and the Fury, of course, begins with this long. You know, the sort of first third of the book is. It's called the Sound of the Fury because it's the tale told by an idiot. It is the narrative account of a mentally disabled member of the Compson family, Benji, who lives in a perpetual present. So as you're reading it and you have no background, like, there's no. You haven't gotten the plot line. It is Benjy explaining what is happening in his family. But something could have happened 20 years ago. Something could have happened today. His dead brother comes alive and then is dead again, then comes alive again. And this evocation of what life is like for somebody in this condition is a piece of writing that is so, as I say, bravura, that even if you don't remember the details, what you remember is your jaw dropped. Amazement at Faulkner's ability to evoke this sort of thought pattern. Something like that. And then as I lay dying, which is about the. What would you call it? The moving of a corpse, Dead body that has to be buried and told from 15 different perspectives each of them. And, you know, again, unbelievably bravura in this coffin that has to go through. The coffin goes through intense tribulation. So those books are incredibly memorable, but as a whole, not really incident by incident or anything like that. Whereas there are books whose plot incidents I remember very vividly. Dickens, certainly Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy, because the Bronte sisters, because those are books in which plot is essential to the moral frame of the story. Like the story is what is teaching you, what the writer is trying to impart.

[Seth Mandel]

Well, and Dickens has so many unusual twists that are like just accidents of fate in his plots, which are incredibly memorable. The letter with the handwriting that someone reminds someone of.

[John Podhoretz]

Yeah, yeah. So. But, yeah, it is a very interesting thing. But I really am also at the point where I picked up a book I loved, an Ed McMahain crime novel, 87th Precinct crime novel. And I'd read them all when I was a teenager. There were 40 of them or something like that. So I picked it up and then I realized that not only had I read it before, but about 50, 60 pages in that I reread it three years ago.

[Seth Mandel]

So you have to start marking those books with the date read or something so that, you know.

[John Podhoretz]

Yeah, yeah, well, because those are. Those are formulaic. Those are. You know, those are basically. The characters never age. They're all the same age over the 40 years, although the city that they're in changes. So they remain the same. And this evocation, really, of the Upper west side of New York follows the. It follows the historical pattern of what was going on at any given moment when he wrote them. But that was a kind of humbling experience. Humbling experience. I had that experience once watching. I was watching the remake of Shaft with Samuel L. Jackson made by John Singleton, and I was like, I can't believe I never saw this before. It's not really as good as the original, but it's. And then literally an hour in, something happened. I went, oh, yeah, I saw it on a. On a date in 19, like 1999. And it was so mediocre that it had left absolutely no impression on me whatsoever. Has that happened to you guys? Like, with a. With a movie?

[Seth Mandel]

I have many dates that I. That have left no impression.

[John Podhoretz]

Yes, yes.

[Christine Rosen]

Yeah, that's happened with plenty of movies. Or sometimes I'm just not sure. Especially if you watch a lot of sci fi movies and you go, this is pretty similar to something I saw. Let me keep watching. Did I see this exact. Yeah, I saw this. You know, Yeah.

[John Podhoretz]

I think the weird part is that the younger I was when I saw. I mean, this is the horror of getting older. Like, the younger I was that I saw something, the more profound, weirdly enough, the more burned in my memory, you know, it is. So I probably remember Flintstones episodes better definitely than I remember the book that I read last week.

[Abe Greenwald]

Yeah. I mean, I watched, you know, when I watched Jurassic park with my kids, I was in a state watching it. Re. Watching it all these years later for the whatever number of time and knowing everything that they didn't even achieve watching it the first time. Yeah, because they didn't. You know, I saw. I saw it in the. I saw it in the theater. And, you know, when you. When I was a kid, TVs didn't look like what they look like now, you know, and you didn't. And so it was a. It was a totally different experience. But also when Jurassic park came out, it was. It was different. It was. It really was. It was like something different.

[John Podhoretz]

Yeah.

[Abe Greenwald]

That you hadn't seen before. And now there's 12 Jurassic park movies. But, like. Yeah, but there was. This was. It was a revolution, in a way. It was a revolutionary. So for, like, you know, kids who were 10 years old when it came out. Indelible, Indelible experience seeing this in the movie theater. And my kids are like, well, we've, you know, we've seen dying. We've seen things like it. And it's just a very different experience.

[John Podhoretz]

I mean, there are three or four moments like that in my. I mean, interesting, because I took my kids to see Star wars on May 4th. Two of my kids at a revival. And I saw it the day it opened in Times Square. 4:30 show at the Loews Astroplaza Theater. And the moment that they jump into hyperspace, the entire audience. This is a movie theater. Burst into applause. Just that thing where the stars stretch and then the ship go. You know, it's the simplest special effect you've ever seen. It changed the world, that moment. No one had ever seen a moment like that in a movie before. It changed the world. It changed the way people saw movies forever. And there were two others that I can think of. One was the. As the end of Back to the Future. No one had ever done what was done at the end of Back to the Future, which is that you change the past and the present is better for what you did when you changed the past. It was such a brilliant plot twist because all you ever knew was, it's gotta go back to the way it was. You know, that's how these things work. Those are the ironclad rules. And Bob Zemeckis and Bob Gale, who wrote it, they had another idea. And then the third one, which I remember vividly as being the moment at which everything seemed to change, it's a little moment, is in Terminator 2. Terminator is a great movie, and I love Terminator, and it's amazing. But there is this moment in Terminator 2 where the floor, this checkered black and white floor in this insane asylum starts to morph and change. And the bad Terminator rises from the tiles and reconstitutes himself as the actor Robert Patrick in the cop uniform and is there ready to kill Linda Hamilton. And no one had ever seen anything like that before. That special, that moment, which was like, okay, now they can do anything. They've crossed the barrier and they can show you anything. And that is actually true because that was when that was the moment at which, besides, like, Spielberg and Lucas and stuff like that, somebody else came along with new ideas about how to use special effects. Not in space stories and not in. But in, like, as an element of a thriller, mystery, serial killer thing in the real world in a building that you recognized or something like that. And that sort of. So those are the three that I remember. Okay, so this has been fun, particularly after how horrible the first 50 minutes of this podcast was. So I hope we've left you with a pep in your step and changed the mood from dour and dark and bleak and horrible to better. So I hope you have a wonderful weekend. We'll be back on Monday. For Abe, Seth and Christina, I'm John Pothorot's Keep the Candle Burning.