Loading summary
Transcript130 lines
- [00:00]
John Podhoretz
Hey there, Ryan Reynolds here. It's a new year and you know what that means. No, not the diet resolutions.
- [00:06]
Abe Greenwald
A way for us all to try.
- [00:07]
John Podhoretz
And do a little bit better than we did last year. And my resolution, unlike big wireless, is to not be a raging and raise.
- [00:14]
Abe Greenwald
The price of wireless on you every chance I get. Give it a try@mintmobile.com Switch $45 upfront.
- [00:21]
John Podhoretz
Payment required, equivalent to $15 per month. New customers on first 3 month plan only.
- [00:25]
Abe Greenwald
Taxes and fees. Extra speed slower above 40 gigabytes on unlimited. See mintmobile.com for details.
- [00:34]
Matthew Continetti
Hope for the best, expect the worst.
- [00:41]
John Podhoretz
Some preach and pain Some die of.
- [00:44]
Matthew Continetti
Thirst the way of knowing which way.
- [00:48]
Abe Greenwald
It'S going Hope for the best, expect the worst.
- [00:55]
John Podhoretz
Welcome to the Commentary Magazine daily podcast. Today is Wednesday, January 22, 2025. I'm John Podhortz, the editor of Commentary magazine. With me, as always, executive editor Abe Greenwald. Hi, Abe.
- [01:07]
Christine Rosen
Hi, John.
- [01:08]
John Podhoretz
And the two AEI nicks. We have director of Domestic Policy Studies and our Washington Commentary columnist, Matthew Continetti. Hi, Matt.
- [01:17]
Matthew Continetti
Hi, John.
- [01:18]
John Podhoretz
And our newly minted social Commentary columnist, Christine Rosen. Hi, Christine.
- [01:22]
Abe Greenwald
Hi, John.
- [01:24]
John Podhoretz
So we have joked yesterday that the mood of our days now echoes the theme, so of the 1980s Girls Boarding School sitcom the Facts of Life, where you take the good, you take the bad, you take them all, and then you have the facts of Life. So let us Discuss the first 48 hours of the Trump administration and the fire hose of executive actions and policies that have been enacted that our friend Mark Halperin in his morning newsletter says indicate a kind of energy in the executive and a lifetime of learning on Donald Trump's part that the thing to do is to run your opponents ragged and dizzy with announcements controlling the conversation. And that Democrats do seem, Democrats and liberals do seem in a kind of completely as though they have been dazed into a kind of paralysis by the actions that have been taken and their utter impotence in responding in any way that isn't simply redolent of 2017 by saying he's a fascist, someone's making a Nazi salute in front of him. Oh, my God, here it is. Oh, my God. Oh, my God, oh, my God. Rather than the kind of a very structured counterattack that hit Trump in 2017 in the form of the Women's march, in form of the protests at the airports when he announced the Muslim ban, they were loaded for bear. They were ready. They had a strategy. And that strategy carried them through to victory in 2018 in the midterm elections. And now they just look like they've gone, they're a chump who's been put in the ring with Muhammad Ali and that they've gone like three, three rounds and are staggering around the ring. So that, that being the case, Trump is doing some amazing things and he's doing some awful things. And the question is, this is just day two. Is this day. This is. This is what? Day thousand, whatever. I don't know how long for four years is, but day,014,12 is going to be like also.
- [03:59]
Matthew Continetti
Oh, is that a question? That's. Yes. Get ready, get ready. This is the next four years. The whirlwind has returned. You know, it's not much different than the first term. I think part of our perceptions of the first term are shaped by what happened in its last months with the COVID lockdown and with the George Floyd summer there. All of the fire hose of news seem to be reduced to two main stories, both of which were cutting against Trump. But if you go back before the arrival of the pandemic from China, you had the same thing, just this blizzard of activity, all the different agencies doing different policies, policies reflecting Trump's worldview, which is conservative populist. You get mix of bad and good. And from a conservative perspective, and this is where we are 48 hours in, it's hard to keep up, but I would say. Yeah, so I would say that it's. This is a return to what normal is under Donald Trump.
- [05:05]
Abe Greenwald
But can I also add that I agree with Matt, but there's one difference too, which is that the press has been a lapdog for four years and where in the first term they tried to treat, I don't know, they treated Trump as a sort of unusual clown and they used a mood ring to try to figure out what he was doing day to day. Now they actually understand that he's always been the guy with the brass knuckles and he's coming in with the brass knuckles and they are forced to cover him in that way.
- [05:30]
Matthew Continetti
Now, I'd like to revise and amend my comments based on my colleague's astute observation. There is a difference, which is the staffing. I mean, the scene of Staff Secretary Will Scharf at the Capitol One arena introducing the various executive orders before the cheering crowd, one after another. And then Trump taking the presidential pens and tossing them into the audience like the T shirts at a Wizards game, though the pens are more valuable than the T shirts thrown into the audience at a Wizards game and then.
- [06:12]
John Podhoretz
Carrying.
- [06:12]
Matthew Continetti
Over to this, the Oval Office later in that Day where Will Scharf again has a table full of executive orders passing one or the other that was missing from the early days of the administration. I think right at the end, you began to get the momentum, which we're seeing carrying over four years later. But. But it was interrupted by the events I mentioned, and then by, of course, the 2020 election and its aftermath. But, so you are seeing this, the machine that Trump built now operating at a very intense level. And that has, I think that has kind of shocked Washington out of its kind of slumber that it's been in for the past four years.
- [06:56]
Christine Rosen
There was something interesting that came up on the interview that Trump did with Joe Rogan a few months ago. Rogan asked a good question, just sort of like, take me, what was it like when suddenly you're the president and you've had no experience in politics at all? And Trump said, you're just sort of overwhelmed with this staffing question and these decisions that are, you know, you've got thousands of things to do before you that you have had no experience doing. Clearly, that's not the case this time. I mean, he still has the decisions to make, but he's not flying blind. That's very, very obvious.
- [07:31]
John Podhoretz
And he did try in 2017 to do what you might call a coalition building within the administration. Right. He goes to Condoleezza Rice for advice on whom to make Secretary of State, and he takes her advice. It was bad advice. Was bad advice for him personally, was bad advice for the nation. Rex Tillerson was not only an ineffective Secretary of State, but an almost brainless Secretary of State. A kind of embarrassing mediocrity as Secretary of State, who also did not have any sense of feel or connection to the guy who was his boss. Similar problem with Jim Mattis at Defense and then his parade of national security advisers. He thought, you know, I will bring people into the tent. And he kind of expected their loyalty. He called upon them at that notorious Cabinet meeting, I think, in March of 2020 and 2017, where Mike Pence went around and made every, every person in the five families profess their fealty to Trump, you know, in full view of the cameras. None of that worked to create an airtight administration.
- [08:45]
Matthew Continetti
It probably will happen again later this.
- [08:48]
John Podhoretz
Year, though it may. But by the way, the protestations of love and support will probably be more genuine than not, as opposed to the way they were in 2017. And even more important is that the White House staff is going to be airtight, and they are going to be airtight because the people who are there a, are true believers. And even if they are tempted to have Maggie Haberman on their speed dial, they have no idea what security measures have been put in place or will be put in place by White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles to watch them, to make sure that that kind of stuff doesn't happen. So you really may have a kind. It's a different atmosphere inside.
- [09:34]
Matthew Continetti
No Omarosa, no Ivanka.
- [09:38]
John Podhoretz
Right, right.
- [09:39]
Matthew Continetti
The family is outside, which is different. They came from the pageantry.
- [09:43]
John Podhoretz
Right.
- [09:43]
Matthew Continetti
Bannon is outside.
- [09:45]
John Podhoretz
Right.
- [09:45]
Matthew Continetti
And so you, you have a more professional operation. Yeah. That is kind of aimed at taking Trump's worldview and desires and implementing them. And so the, the root, it's the routinization of charisma, as Weber would say, it's the routinization of Trump that we're seeing in place. And before we get into the good and the bad, and there's a lot of both, in my view, we should just give a warning to all the people very excited about what's happening, and I'm excited about a lot of it. If you live by executive order, you die by executive order. And so what Trump has done is institute a whole suite of executive orders while also reversing Biden's executive orders. And that if it's not implemented in legislation and if it's not, you know, sustained over several administrations, all of this can be reversed the next time there's a Democrat.
- [10:49]
Abe Greenwald
And this is. I just, can I just add, the deeply conservative part of my soul is really resonating with this message because it's the same thing when we see, in some ways, Trump and Biden were very much mirrors of each other. We had an administration under Biden whose cabinet never met because they were all covering up his mental and cognitive. His cognitive, it turns out Biden then.
- [11:07]
Matthew Continetti
But.
- [11:07]
John Podhoretz
But now and then never met.
- [11:09]
Abe Greenwald
Right. They rarely met. They met like once or twice.
- [11:12]
John Podhoretz
But then you did not have one meeting with the Secretary of the Treasury.
- [11:16]
Abe Greenwald
Exactly, exactly. But then, but then I also don't like the president who insists on this kind of insane, over the top pledging of fealty and love to him either. That's also unappealing if you're a conservative. So this is just to say we all have to travel a path. Now. If we think of ourselves as conservatives, whether we're neocons or old school cons, we're not going to be happy. And that's good, healthy skepticism to have about any income administration, particularly this one, which is going to do Some good things if you're conservative, but also some terrible things.
- [11:49]
John Podhoretz
I think it's important also to note that this four year period has coincided with a lot of flowers blooming on the right out of power. So you've had a lot of people on the right with a lot of time to think about what they did wrong, learn from the mistakes of the Trump administration and figure out what to do to implement some of the, particularly the sort of what we put under the rubric of the culture war stuff, how to do it effectively so that it's not embarrassingly jejune, like the way they tried to do and make the arguments over the election fraud between November 2020 and January 2021, losing 61 different court cases, listening to bozo fourth rate lawyers, because nobody first rate was really thinking about this. When we go through some of these executive orders and things, we are seeing significant thought given by people who had had some experience in the federal government and know something about how its structure works and how to phrase things like executive orders so they don't sound like a, to do them in a way that may make them stick or at least some of them stick. Now, an executive order, it's important to say, has a weird provenance. So the executive order is essentially the rules that bind the officials and policies of the executive branch of the government of the United States as CEO of that. It's like the employee handbook. And you add things to the employee handbook and they function as the guidance from the president on how you are supposed to do things inside the federal government. So that is a pretty powerful thing. I don't know, 4 million, is it? 2 to 4 million people work for the federal government, either directly or indirectly. And so that's still 1% of the population. But it is a very significant way of expressing yourself. It is not law for the rest of the country. But we're going to get to where you can maybe extend some of the policies in the executive orders out beyond that narrow writ. They understand that that is the writ. They understand that one of the ways to protect themselves in the courts is to phrase, if you read the executive orders as they come out, they are written properly to say this binds officials of the executive branch who must do X, Y and Z. It doesn't say we're going to stop all Muslim immigration until we find out what the hell is going on. That is not what's going on here. These are professionally, they're drafted to withstand legal challenge. And that is totally different from where we were in 2017 and in some of these cases, it's fascinating how little, based on reading them, how little. The habits and behaviors of the executive branch, particularly on racial policy, have simply been continued over 60 years without ever having been enshrined into law only by what Jews call minhag, or custom based on interpretations of executive orders, not based on the language and executive orders themselves. And people have gone through this with a fine tooth comb, I guess, led by Stephen Miller, who's the director, I guess the director of policy at the White House.
- [15:31]
Matthew Continetti
And Russ Vogt, too. He was planning a law, lot of this stuff at the end of the first term and now it's in action.
- [15:38]
John Podhoretz
Right? So they're more formidable is what I'm saying. Liberals was like low hanging fruit to go after Trump actions in 2017 because it was, frankly, it was amateur hour in the Trump White House. And they didn't know what they were doing. And now it appears again, 48 hours, they know what they're doing. They are, they are playing chess. They are seeing we do X, they will do Y. And in what we've done, we've already answered their argument with a more airtight justification of our actions.
- [16:17]
Abe Greenwald
I just can say they also have a model on the DEI order, in particular in several red states, most notably Florida, which under DeSantis eliminated DEI in the state level bureaucracy and other states followed. So there is sort of a playbook in place here.
- [16:30]
John Podhoretz
And the laboratories of democracy are states. There we go, Reagan called them. There are laboratories of democracy.
- [16:37]
Abe Greenwald
And they've part of the challenge legally. These have been challenged legally. And the challenges have been one. So that there is a path forward at the federal level that's already been shown by some of these states.
- [16:46]
Matthew Continetti
I think that, you know, in 2016, MAGA was the movement that caught the car. It wasn't expecting to win. And I'd often thought that what happened during the first Trump term, especially the first two years, was what the world would have looked like, what government would have looked like, had Barry Goldwater unexpectedly won in 1964. But William F. Buckley Jr. The founder of the conservative movement, was skeptical of a Goldwater victory in 1964, despite this big victory for a resurgent conservatism in the United States, because he felt that the structure around Goldwater, the actual conservative movement, hadn't been developed yet. And I think something similar happened in 2016 where Trump was this revolutionary figure. But MAGA, or National Populism or populist conservatism, whatever you want to call it, hadn't really adjusted, hadn't been built out. And now we have, eight years later, this structure that is coming along with him as he takes office. And so it makes 2024 more like 1980 than 2016, when at the time I thought 2016 could be a 1980 like event. That wasn't the case. But 2024 seems more like it because it's not just Trump this time. It's this entire movement that he has shaped and filled out and developed.
- [18:13]
Christine Rosen
You know, there's something else that I think it's at work here, which is that this time around, the Biden administration has left Trump a lot of obvious dumb things that need undoing so the incoming administration doesn't have to invent and aspire to do crazy new things. They need to turn back some very obviously damaging decisions that will make Democrats.
- [18:44]
Abe Greenwald
And the Democratic Party's leaderless now. So who's responding? There's no consistent messaging in response to anything that's gone on in the last 48 hours.
- [18:52]
John Podhoretz
And I'm sorry, but it's also the case that the Biden administration, the Biden White House was a Z team. They were D team or a B. They, they were lousy. They were lousy in their jobs. What I'm talking about here, in terms of trying to make policy that could be defensible in the courts, for example, they didn't do it. All they, what they did was say, oh, there's an emergency. We can do anything. And I think intelligent political players understand. And there weren't that many in the Biden White House, which of course was kind of like an exhausted third term of the Obama administration, didn't understand that payback is not just instant. It's like, oh, you announce a policy and everyone, Republicans scream, and then you just keep going, okay.
- [19:41]
Abe Greenwald
But it's worse than that. You're being, you're being too kind. Sorry to interrupt. Plus, I got to say the catchphrase, which always makes me happy. The Biden administration actively defied the courts, defied the Supreme Court, it defied other courts and said, we don't care if this is illegal. We're just going to do it. And you have to, you know, somehow find a way to undo it.
- [19:59]
John Podhoretz
That's a corollary to the point that I was making, which is that they, they built in time bombs into their administration. Because if you don't do these things well at the beginning, maybe it's a year later, but a year later, they blow up and they blow up closer to the next election, and they blow up while you're trying to implement them. Like they, this is not a good way to make policy. And they only made policy this way because they had two attitudes, one of which is, we own the future. We are in the right. They are morally depraved, and, you know, God is on our side. And the second was I, you know, never let an emergency go to waste. Like, we're just gonna do whatever we think is best. And I don't, we don't care if 80% of the American people don't think that Lia Thomas should be in a pool, you know, with, you know, Tiffany Smolding of Consohock in Pennsylvania. Let Lia Thomas win everything that's really important. We don't care if we're appointing a suitcase thieving S and M person, trans person, to be the head of our nuclear weapons policy.
- [21:25]
Matthew Continetti
He was a beaut.
- [21:27]
John Podhoretz
You know, I mean, this is, it's like, okay, good, do all this, then see how people react to you.
- [21:35]
Matthew Continetti
Look, there are some time bombs in the executive orders that Trump is signing as well.
- [21:40]
John Podhoretz
Birthright citizenship.
- [21:44]
Matthew Continetti
The repeal of birthright citizenship or the challenge to birthright citizenship that he has signed into law is already being challenged in the courts. And as the resistance begins to recover from the shell shock, it will challenge other aspects of the Trump agenda, primarily on immigration, in my view, but I'm sure in other aspects as well. And of course, Trump and Vice President Vance sat in the front row of the National Cathedral as the Episcopal bishop of the diocese of Washington, D.C. lectured them about the people, fearing for their lies now that Trump and Vance are in power. So there will be some resistance and there will be challenges. I'm, of course, waiting, you know, the first national injunction against some of these measures, which was a constant thorn in the side of the first Trump administration and really hasn't been addressed all that much now. I think that the Trump team is better at quickly elevating cases to the Supreme Court so that we get a final decision early on. But, yeah, there will be resistance. What I take away from the first 48 hours, though, John, is that the left really has not learned the lesson of the 2024 election, because the issues where they're doubling down are exactly the cultural, social issues, where popular opinion and public opinion is on Trump's side, not theirs. So it's an exercise, I think, in self alienation on the part of the left.
- [23:21]
Abe Greenwald
Can I say there are two examples of that that are important to note. The first, let's just say a word about this bishop and her weird little scolding using a national event to do so. It also exposed the deep seated classism and racism of the left on display because you know how she described immigrants to this country as the people who mow your lawns and, you know, stock the shelves and clean your houses. She sees the servant classes at risk and boy, does she care a lot about her servant class. That was appalling to me. Beyond. Beyond politicizing. Yeah, beyond politicized message. The other, though, to Matt's point about immigration, Dana Bash interviewed Homans recently and was asking him questions about what the plan is. And he very logically, and I think in a way that reflects public opinion, said, look, you know, if we go, if ICE is going in to round up these criminal immigrant people who've come to this country illegally, who have committed crimes, that's our goal. We want to get them out. We go into blue sanctuary cities and they won't let us come into the jails and just pick them up and, you know, take them back across the border. We have to go. They release them and then we have to go find them. And if we find them among other people who are here illegally, we got to take them all in and then we got to figure out who's who and they're all breaking the law. So they all go. She was horrified, but I think most Americans were like, yep, seems. Seems about right given how crazy policy has been. So he is actually tapping into what voters told him in this election they wanted, particularly on immigration.
- [24:45]
John Podhoretz
I want to talk about the bishop just for 45 seconds. Her name is Marianne. Buddy. Buddy. Something like that. So I decided to do a little look, see, I don't know anything about her. I mean, I saw, I saw, I saw her give a speech with a mask on, talking about George Floyd. That was one thing that was on YouTube. Let's talk about the National Cathedral, which is a beautiful, beautiful building. It's the most beautiful ecclesiastical building in, in Washington with a lovely bishop's garden, which everyone should visit their ruined choir where late the sweet bird sang. Which is to say the Episcopal Church in the United States right now has 1.5 million adherents nationwide. 2 million people are Mormons. 6 million people are Jews. 1.5 million people are Episcopalians. Guess the size of the Washington episcopate of which she is the bishop. The membership of the Washington Episcopal.
- [25:50]
Matthew Continetti
I know the answer because I read your tweet.
- [25:54]
John Podhoretz
38,000 people there are, I would wager there might be a single African Methodist Episcopal church in Washington that has more than 38,000 adherents. There are probably more people attending a Sabbath service at Congregation Addis Israel down the block from the Washington Cathedral than attend Mass at the Washington Cathedral on a Sunday. She is a leader without a flock. She is a priest without a congregation. And it is only the fact that somebody didn't quite do their advance work well and thought that it would be a good idea to have this service in the holy. The holy precincts of the National Cathedral, because it's so pretty. Didn't understand what they were. What PR mistake they were making. I don't think that PR mistake is gonna be made again, certainly by this administration or by any Republican ever. And I don't think that we should tally belief or whether or not anyone should have the right to say to Trump's face, don't do this. Have compassion, have mercy. That is fine. But it's under false pretenses that she is, you know, a powerful ecclesiastical leader in the United States who is speaking in the voice of her church because her church is moribund.
- [27:33]
Matthew Continetti
Just one comment on this. You know, again, this idea that we've lived through all this before. Her remarks in the sermon reminded me of when I think it was Daveed Diggs at a. At the end of a performance of Hamilton shortly after the 2016 election, lectured Mike Pence, who was in the audience, and about the importance of democracy and norms and everything. And Pence kind of sat there and nodded, and it became a huge story. And I feel, eight years later, with now the bishop doing this, no one really cares, honestly. I mean, it's okay. She said her piece. The look on J.D. vance's face, which was captured by social media, is hilarious. Again, he has this quality about him that also came through in the vice presidential debate, where his facial expressions are dramatic and revealing without being kind of disturbing or something. You know, it's almost.
- [28:36]
John Podhoretz
He wasn't doing this sort of like.
- [28:39]
Matthew Continetti
Yeah, exactly. He's not grimacing. But it's very subtle, and yet it's. It conveys across the camera. It's a good skill for a politician to have. But I just. So there's this sense of change over time that even when you see events that almost exactly parallel earlier incidents, the atmosphere, the reaction, the response has changed. Of course, what hasn't changed? Trump did criticize her on his social media account, as he will always do, but even that is kind of anticipated because you should just know at this point that if you attack Trump by name, especially to his face, he's gonna go after you.
- [29:20]
John Podhoretz
I wanna put in a word for Daveed Diggs because this woman, Marion Buddy is a crashing boar. And Daveed Diggs, well, no, he's a fantastic guest that we've ever seen on stage performance as you know, again.
- [29:33]
Matthew Continetti
But that is a sign as well, right? The quality, the quality of the response.
- [29:37]
John Podhoretz
That's right. It's like she's supposed to be the Episcopal bishop of Washington and she's like a bus and tour of Arsenic and Old lace compared to 2017 when you had the star of the biggest show in the history of Broadway getting worldwide headlines for what he did. Look, it's winter, it's cold, it's cold. It's cold everywhere. It's cold here in New York. Gets colder every night. And what you want when you're cold is coziness. You want coziness, you want warmth, you want that beautiful scents where it is cold outside your bed and it is warm inside your bed. And you can get that with our sponsor bowl and Branch, which will help you build the coziest bed imaginable. They're the makers of the iconic bedding that will change the way you relax and sleep. You start with bowl and Branch's best selling signature sheets which feel buttery, breathable and get softer with every wash. These sheets are the perfect foundation for better sleep and you can easily add bolin branches, bed blankets, duvets and quilts without making your bed feel heavy or hot. Abe and others tell me who are real Bowlen Branch users that they can they felt the quality immediately change the way people sleep, give them a real sense of comfort and ease and they feel different after washing because they get softer, as I just said and they are made different. They are woven with the finest 100% organic cotton on earth, crafted by artisans who earn the pay and respect they deserve. And we wanted to tell you that just now. Boland Branch is advis joined a philanthropic program called Helping from Home to bring comfort and care to communities in need. Particularly right now we're thinking of course about Southern California, the wildfires and they're going to be making donations of bedding essentials like sheets, blankets and pillows. Helping from Home, launched in 2020 is a philanthropic initiative. It is supporting the people in Southern California and Bowen branches joining in. If you or someone you know needs additional support right now, apply to the Helping from Home program at Boll and Branch. That's B O L L A N D B R A N C H dot Helping from Home all one word, all together. Now's your chance to change the way you sleep with bowl and branch to try those sheets for an entire month. You can wash style and feel the difference for yourself risk free. If they don't change the way you sleep, you can send them back for a full refund. So please get 15% off plus free shipping on your first set of sheets@bolandbranch.com commentary. That's B O L L and Branch B r a n c dash.com commentary to save 15% exclusions apply. See site for details. What does the future hold for business? You know if you ask nine experts, you're going to get 10 answers. A bull market, a bear market, rates rising, rates falling, inflation's going up, inflation's going down. You need a crystal ball. But of course there is no crystal ball. And that's why 41,000 businesses have future proofed their business with NetSuite by Oracle, the number one cloud ERP bringing accounting, financial management, inventory and HR into one fluid platform with one unified business management suite. There's one source of truth giving you the visibility and control you need to make quick decisions. With real time insights and forecasting, you're peering into the future with actionable data. When you're closing your books in days, not weeks, you're spending less time looking backwards, more time on what's next. If this were the kind of product commentary needed, we would take it in a heartbeat. Whether your company is earning millions or even hundreds of millions, NetSuite helps you respond to immediate challenges and seize your biggest opportunities. And speaking of opportunity, download the CFO's guide to AI and machine learning at netsuite.com commentary the guide is free to you at netsuite.com commentary netsuite.com commentary so we should get to the good and the bad and I'm going to just use two examples here, one domestic and one foreign. Okay. And so I so this morning there came out the language of the executive order involving racial preferences in the federal government. So it goes through. We've heard little bits and pieces of it. There's all this stuff about there's going to be a 60 day people are being put on paid leave if they work specifically on as officials supposedly implementing diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives in the federal government. Anybody who's primary job is that is being put on a 60 day paid leave as their jobs and their departments are being unwound. Various other terms in that category. Federal government is obliged to no longer hire to have any, any, any color consciousness in its hiring policies. Which I didn't realize again because you know how many like that either Obama or I guess it was Obama put in place that the federal is supposed to prioritize race in hiring, which as far as I can tell is a, somehow this slipped under the radar because that really is a direct violation of the language of the Civil Rights act of 1964. Like, you are allowed to you to look at Ray, whatever, but you are not allowed even in the private sector, as far as I know, to make race a deciding factor. Or like, you can put your in private sector, you can put your finger on the scale in any way. No one can. You know, like, but if you do it and you say you're doing it to do it for this reason, that violates the civil rights of the people who are competing or contending for the same job. That's not what interested me though. What particularly interested me is this clause. Okay? The head of each agency shall include in every contract or grant award a a term requiring the contractual counterparty. That means anybody who gets a grant or a contract with the federal government to agree that it's compliance in all respect with all applicable federal anti discrimination laws is material to the government's payment decisions and B, a term requiring such counterparty or recipient to certify that it does not operate any programs promoting DEI that violate any applicable federal anti discrimination laws. And then importantly, this proviso C, this order does not prohibit persons teaching at a federally funded institution of higher education as part of a larger course of academic instruction from advocating for endorsing or promoting the unlawful employment or contracting practices prohibited by this order. This is the nuclear missile being aimed at at the American University because it says take grant money from the federal government or a contract from the federal government. You have to pledge that you are not going to do anything that is seen by the federal government as discriminatory in your hiring practices. But if you teach at a school, you have full free speech rights to complain about this policy, to fight against the policy, to advocate against this policy. We are not saying that this is not open for discussion. What we are saying is if you want a federal contract or a grant, you are going to abide by these rules. Will this be challenged? Yes. Is it the key to everything that we have been talking about now, not only since October 7, but long before, which is the federal government? If you are going to go and put your finger on the scale in hiring and this and that and the other thing, no matter where you are in the federal government, you got the sense for the last 30 years, 40 years, 50 years, that you would be Given pride of place, if you did these things that your contract would be looked on with favor based on how you did minority hiring or minority, you know, whatever advocacy or something like that. This has now been turned on its head. And if the administration is going to go at the universities and their endowments and the taxation of their endowments and cut them off from grant money, that is. And I.
- [39:07]
Matthew Continetti
It's just one policy. It's just one policy. Trump instructed every DEI officer in the federal government to go on leave today, Wednesday, January 22nd.
- [39:20]
John Podhoretz
Right.
- [39:21]
Matthew Continetti
So the entire federal government, they're rolling back not just the programs, but the actual personnel.
- [39:29]
John Podhoretz
Right.
- [39:29]
Matthew Continetti
Then you add to it this contracting aspect. Then you add to that the different regulations that will be coming out of the Department of Education and additional executive orders dealing with higher education, in particular, anti Semitism and anti Semitic conduct on university campuses. You just, you have a full spectrum war against higher education and the way.
- [39:56]
John Podhoretz
In which it is constituted as the.
- [39:58]
Matthew Continetti
Way it has been constituted as an instrument of political indoctrination.
- [40:02]
Abe Greenwald
And it does, it does. Actually, it's going to make it much, much more difficult to evade what they're saying in this, in this declaration. And by that I mean, if you look at what happened in the wake of some of the affirmative action cases and the Supreme Court's decision on affirmative action, lots of universities found ways to kind of weasel their way around, seeming not to take race into consideration, but still doing so. I think the. Now, because of this executive order, any professor, any administrator on a college campus who says, oh, well, we're just exercising our speech rights by declaring that people who talk about DEI are the ones we prefer, as, you know, for hiring, promotion, they're not going to be able to get away with this. This delineates between speech and action. And that's really important because especially for hiring and promotion at the university level, that's how you got a professoriate who all were lockstep in on DEI because it was very difficult to, to complain about the process. As someone who was against DEI and didn't want to sign a statement to get a job, this will now allow them to say, well, I'm exercising my free speech rights, they're exercising theirs, but they're still using DEI as a, as a means of hiring. And that's actually been really important if we want to see generational change in how the professoriate looks on campuses, which is important. This will help do that, I assume.
- [41:17]
Christine Rosen
And, you know, I think no matter how hard the legacy media will try to demonize this and they will try very, very hard. Trump is going to keep the American people on his side on this because even beyond education, all throughout industry and people in their daily lives are so burdened with having to deal with this DEI business that whether they can say it out loud or not, the majority will be happy to see it go or to see it being taken on.
- [41:53]
John Podhoretz
People forget what a central issue in the United States from 1966 through the 1990s, affirmative action in the form of racial quotas, was. It was a key one of the three or four major domestic issues in the United States, the subject of massive amounts of litigation. First, ensuring that jobs in the public sector were not handed out according to a racial spoil system. There were, I don't know, four or five major Supreme Court decisions about firefighters, about police officers, about staffing in cities and in states where urban machines have come into power to say, no, no, no, we are going to, you know, make sure that 40% of our police department is, you know, is. Are people of color. And then, you know, the Supreme Court said, no, you need to make sure that your police officers can be police officers or that your firefighters can, as we've now seen in Los Angeles, like carrying people out of buildings and do the job. And you can't favor one person over another using race as a positive. Like, you can't do it. So this was a huge issue, and then it kind of dribbled out because there was a consensus view in the public, in the private sector that this was not a culture war that the private sector wanted to be a part of, and that to the extent that it could humor and satisfy activists on the, you know, on the affirmative action side, it would do so. And therefore, you know, a lot of the heat and force kind of dissipated. And the only place that you saw litigation, have seen litigation over the last 20 years is in higher education, led by my dear Fred, Ed Bloom, who has been the key leader of this, from the Michigan case in 2003 to the Texas case in 2010, and to the affirmative action case in 2023, that was the Harvard and North Carolina cases, in which the idea is, no, you are not allowed, particularly if you are a state school, but even if you're not a state, you are not allowed to make these decisions based on race. It is a violation of the. That was the argument. And it wasn't fully implemented as an argument until the Asian. The Asian students decision in the Harvard case. But this has been very quiet after, you know, literally 25 years of it being a central issue. But as Abe says, just because it stopped being a central issue because nobody talked about it, and because Americans lost the vocabulary to say, hey, you know what? This is not fair. Like, why is this middle class black guy getting an advantage over me getting into Harvard when I'm a working class white guy like that? You know, you go to Exeter and then you get into Harvard, like, just as a matter of course. And I'm the valedictorian of my class in Idaho, and I don't get in.
- [45:11]
Christine Rosen
Their parents, liberal parents, have complained endlessly to me about this.
- [45:16]
Matthew Continetti
Just about education, though, because one of the more specific executive orders targeted DEI in the faa, in the Federal Aviation Administration. And so I think what has happened over the past four years is there have been case after case. You mentioned the fires. We talk about all the problems with the air traffic control and flight delays that we've been experiencing in the country, whether it's the FEMA and the hurricane response in North Carolina. We have case after case where the politicization, the political correctness, the DEI mentality has led to incompetence. Especially when you look at the way in which the woke ideology has intruded into medicine. Right. Even that. That. That's. So it's hitting people in a different way than in private previous years where it was, oh, yeah, this awful injustice being committed against students who have had high educational attainment and yet are denied spots in college. Should we move on, though, to the bad.
- [46:28]
John Podhoretz
Mention one other case aside from the. Aside from the case you mentioned, because there was a specific dismissal on yesterday of the Coast Guard commandant. Yeah. Her name is Linda Lee Fagan, and she was removed from her position as the Coast Guard commandant. She described DEI upon her hiring and as her implementation of her job as the operational imperative of the U.S. coast Guard implementing DEI. Okay. That was her. Literally.
- [47:05]
Abe Greenwald
She has a sinking feeling. I'm sorry.
- [47:06]
Matthew Continetti
No, that's good.
- [47:09]
John Podhoretz
Anyway, so a letter from Eli Crane and the somewhat disreputable Matt Gaetz, written to Alejandro Mayorkas, the Homeland Security Secretary under Biden. This is what came up about Fagan. We have heard from service members concerned with trainings and events they believe to be extraneous to mission critical TAs, specifically sexual orientation and gender identity inclusivity training programs, including examples of official USCG announcements encouraging service member participation in transgender shipmates inclusion training. So what do we have here? You're saying the faa. They're also saying the Coast Guard. And of course, this is proof positive of the Pete Hegseth culture war in the military Though the Coast Guard is part of the Homeland Security Department and not the military, nonetheless, it is a law enforcement agency.
- [48:08]
Matthew Continetti
Or think of the CIA ads which were trumpeting DEI and LGBT rights. Again, it's a misalignment of the original intent of these policies. The original intent of these policies was to make good on the promise of America for black Americans. Because of the legacies of slavery and segregation, they have now been twisted into the instrument of a radical ideology that really goes to the very heart and soul of what it means to be human in the case of transgenderism. And so people, I think, don't want to take it anymore because they're seeing the real life aspects. The CIA's mission is not diversity. The CIA's mission is to gather intelligence, primarily human intelligence, which we're terrible at these days, in order to supply it to the President. And it's. The Coast Guard's mission is not dei. The Coast Guard's mission is. Well, it's in the name. Right. So there's been a complete distraction because of the cityology. And these executive orders, I think, are a positive corrective to how we've gotten out of whack. And there are other decisions that are not so positive.
- [49:22]
John Podhoretz
Yeah, but I don't think that it's just positive. I mean, that is to say, if this alone, if the destruction of dei, if the rebalancing of the American federal government's approach to employment and promotion and things like that go to colorblindness and the idea, as Trump keeps saying, of reestablishing merit and equality of opportunity as the two leading elements which we view how people get ahead in the United States, that will be a revolution in consciousness or a restoration in consciousness, or maybe we should say an evolution in consciousness that could be as transformative to our future as anything else that Trump has ever done. So, though. So that's. This is an example of the good thing. There are many other good. Okay, but now we gotta get to some of the bad things.
- [50:28]
Matthew Continetti
Can we focus on the personnel decision? I think that is of particular interest to our audience.
- [50:33]
John Podhoretz
Okay, so I wanna talk about one of the interesting announcements that was made as we heard about, you know, the appointment of these kind of like, hawks. Maybe they're Jeffersoni, maybe they're Jacksonian hawks now. Like, you know, like Rubio, who was a neocon and is now sort of like a Jacksonian hawk or something like that. But the. The appointment of Mike Waltz and. And Hegseth and all that.
- [51:02]
Matthew Continetti
Stefanik.
- [51:03]
John Podhoretz
Stefanik seemed to suggest, you know, a Foreign policy that was at least hawkish toward Iran. Hawkish toward, you know, like accepting of the notion that Israel had the right to defend itself and that it. And that it's. There was an American interest actually in Israel destroying Hamas for the security of our interests in the Middle east and suspending the Houthi attacks on shipping and all that. But in the middle of all this came, you know, a bulletin of five, five people being appointed to various jobs. This was a month ago. And one of those people is Eldridge Colby, a young policy intellectual focusing on issues of American engagement in the world. And his hawkish claim supposedly is we've taken our eye off the ball and that all we should focus on is China and the threat from China and Ukraine was off the ball. Israel's everything. All we have to focus on is China and we're going the wrong way and we need to focus on China. Though, when you push him and you really push them hard, Bridge Colby, he's like, you know, if they invade Taiwan, they're going to get it. So, you know, there's nothing we're going to be able to do about that. And he is associated with a think tank in Washington called the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, as it is called, which is basically where the world of the isolationists who don't want to say they're isolationists, has now come to center, both right and left, supported equally in some ways by George Soros on the left and the Koch brothers on the right. So we just heard that appointed to be the person. And Bridge Colby has been made head of the policy planning staff.
- [52:59]
Matthew Continetti
He's the Undersecretary for Policy, which is a Senate confirmable position. So a bridge.
- [53:04]
John Podhoretz
He's not there yet.
- [53:05]
Matthew Continetti
I mean, Bridge is a well known name in foreign policy circles. We can disagree with him, but he has carved out a niche for himself with no big surprise he got this job. The surprise came from when they released the name of the non confirmable appointments, which included an asti, an Assistant Secretary of Defense for the Middle east who thinks America should get out of the Middle east and has no interest there.
- [53:31]
John Podhoretz
Right. His name is Michael Dimino and he is on the staff, I believe, of the Quincy Institute, although they were raised in Ohio.
- [53:40]
Matthew Continetti
He was on another think tank called Defense Priorities, which the priority of Defense Priorities is to have as little defense as possible.
- [53:48]
John Podhoretz
Right, Right. He has said that our policy toward Israel is wrong, that we are too pro Israel to pro Israel. And I have in front of me a piece he wrote in January of 2024, saying that the United States was making a huge mistake involving itself in the Houthi crisis, meaning the fact that the Houthis had started to get active in the Persian Gulf and the Red Sea in attacking Israel. Indeed, despite at least eight. This is what he wrote. This is January 2024. Despite at least eight rounds of US strikes that expended hundreds of valuable precision guided munitions, Houthi attacks on ships transiting the Red Sea have only increased in frequency and scope. And why? Because of Israel? Because he says, you know what we need to do in order to prevent the Houthis from attacking shipping. He uses this example. Working to increase aid shipments to Gaza would not just help to alleviate the humanitarian crisis there, but would deprive the Houthis of their claimed justification for attacks in the Red Sea and provide the group with an off ramp for de escalation that would also serve to prevent indefinite US Participation in a broader.
- [55:10]
Matthew Continetti
So I ask our audience, who does it sound like? Who does it sound like? Does that sound like Trump? No, those words sound exactly like John Kerry, Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Jake Sullivan and Antony Blinken. Why would Donald Trump want to appoint someone to his Pentagon who has an Obama Biden foreign policy? It makes no sense to me.
- [55:31]
Christine Rosen
He's returning the favor, especially on the.
- [55:33]
Matthew Continetti
Issue of Israel, which is so important to his coalition. There's a real difference here between, I think, oh, we need to prioritize our defenses and we need to prepare for great power competition with China and saying Israel is the problem in the Middle East.
- [55:46]
John Podhoretz
Yeah, I mean, it is really striking. And of course it happened because nobody cares except Bridge Colby. And Bridge Colby is trying to staff up the Pentagon with people who share his worldview, which is disingenuous. You say we need to take Bridge. I take Bridge Colby seriously. I believe he is an entirely disingenuous figure. He is trying to make create a kind of isolationism with a human face and that he is doing what smart, capable people do, which is he is trying to put people in position that will follow his policy priorities as he sees them, that he believes are best for Trump and for America. I don't doubt that he thinks that he's right and in the right here, but that are very, very disturbing and need to be seen as very disturbing because, of course, he said this in January of 2024. The Houthis didn't need an off ramp. The Houthis don't want an off ramp. They're a catamite of Iran.
- [56:47]
Matthew Continetti
There's a ceasefire right now in Gaza. And the Houthis are still attacking.
- [56:52]
John Podhoretz
Right.
- [56:53]
Matthew Continetti
His entire argument is bogus.
- [56:55]
John Podhoretz
The Houthis are not operating on their own.
- [56:59]
Matthew Continetti
He also, in another piece, this gentleman in another piece wrote that, you know, we, to pretend that the Iran is a paper tiger is completely fantastical. I mean, the air defense systems of Iran are impregnable. What did Israel just do?
- [57:17]
John Podhoretz
They took out the entire air defense.
- [57:19]
Matthew Continetti
System of Iran in one night.
- [57:21]
John Podhoretz
Yeah, but if you, why would you.
- [57:23]
Matthew Continetti
Want to trust this judgment of this person if you're Donald Trump or Pete Hegseth?
- [57:27]
Christine Rosen
So if you get to the actual bad of Trump, what, what is bad is. And he says this when he talks about staff and potential staff, he'll say things like, who's been so loyal to me, who was, who's so supportive during the campaign. He rewards overtly loyalty, whether that's, whether that's the person he's hiring or the person who says, hey, I did you a solid. Now could you do me one and hire so and so, or go with so and so's recommendation for hiring?
- [58:01]
John Podhoretz
And that's, that's, that's not the bridge. Called the bridge. Colby case.
- [58:05]
Matthew Continetti
John, we don't know who, how this guy got hired.
- [58:08]
John Podhoretz
I know. I am telling you right now, I will bet you 1000 bucks that he is.
- [58:12]
Matthew Continetti
We only, we only bet Frappuccinos on this.
- [58:15]
John Podhoretz
Okay, we're going to bet, we're going to bet 10 Frappuccino. I'm going to buy you a Starbucks card for 10 Frappuccinos, not consume 10 Frappuccinos.
- [58:23]
Abe Greenwald
That's so much sugar.
- [58:25]
Matthew Continetti
Okay, don't need it.
- [58:28]
John Podhoretz
Cappuccinos anyway. Okay, Christine, let's talk about another bad policy move. We've been talking about the pardon. We talked yesterday all day about the horrors of the pardons of the J6 people and the offenses there, too. And then yesterday, Trump pardoned somebody else. And I can't believe my eyes that he did it. And that's the head of Silk Road. So what is Silk Road?
- [58:59]
Abe Greenwald
So Silk Road was an online drug distribution network. Basically, it was like Amazon for drugs. And not just like a little weed or a little lsd. It was, it was trafficking in cocaine and heroin. Some, some of it's, the people who sold on this marketplace were sold to 16, 15, 16 year olds, some of whom died of overdoses or have tainted product. And the guy who created this became a Libertarian hero. And a couple of years ago, when Trump was talking to the Libertarian Party, he said, I'm going to release him he was over prosecuted. It's really unfair. And look, you know, Jacob Solomon and others at Reason magazine and other libertarian outlets will still staunchly defend this guy, saying, you know, these were just transactions between consenting adults and the government shouldn't be involved in this at all. But what was shocking to me was that this guy wasn't just involved in setting up and pursuing an illegal drug trade online. He was taking out, according to charges filed by the feds, hits on his opponents. You know, he basically was a drug lord. But because he did it online, he captured this sort of ideological libertarian space that, that sees him as a kind of folk hero when what he is is just a dirty drug lord, you know, and he went to prison. And the fact that he was commuted, I, I'm, I was asking myself, who benefits from this in Trump world? Why would he do this? Now, Elon Musk was very big on this guy being his sentence being commuted, but it strikes me as a very huge expenditure of capital on Trump's part for very little reward. Because the libertarians in our lives, and we all have them in our lives, we love our libertarian friends, but they're a little nuts on drug policy. And the idea that this guy was doing something harmless when we know in fact it was quite harmful, leading not only to death, but to drug addiction and all the problems that cascade from that. Trump putting his stamp on releasing this guy, I don't understand who benefits beyond him maybe seeing it as a, as a favor to the. Elon Tech, bro, Libertarian Party.
- [60:56]
Matthew Continetti
It's a payback. It's a payback. It's a payback. Trump, you know, addressed the Libertarian Party convention. There were Trump supporters within the Libertarian movement and the Libertarian Party and the Libertarian vote played less of a factor in this election than in previous elections, where it often is the difference between Republican victory and defeat.
- [61:18]
Abe Greenwald
Right.
- [61:18]
Matthew Continetti
And in the course of the campaign, Trump, in his outreach to the Libertarian said he would pardon this man, and he did. And this is all of a piece of Trump's promises made, promises kept mentality. And, you know, it's. That it's going to, it might carry some political bite. But I think it's interesting that they're sequencing all these pardons right at the top, and they're kind, they just do it right away. Kind of rip the band aid off and then move on. But we'll see, we'll see. If there are other consequences down the road of letting Ross Ulbricht free, then the Republicans might pay a price.
- [62:00]
Christine Rosen
This is also another case where Biden set a kind of precedent here that's made things easier for Trump. Had Biden not gone out.
- [62:09]
Matthew Continetti
Oh, absolutely.
- [62:10]
Christine Rosen
On, on this, you know, I mean, the lens of pardons and commutation.
- [62:14]
Matthew Continetti
Leonard Peltier, commutation alone, right. I mean, you know, this is a man who killed two FBI agents and Biden let him out prison. And then you stand up the J6 pardons of the violent offenders. And Trump's argument is like, well, look, Biden is just as bad, or Biden did it too. And it's, it's hard to, it's hard to maintain standards. But even, even though you have to.
- [62:47]
John Podhoretz
Well, you know, we have, we have Trump explicitly connecting Ulbricht's prosecution to his.
- [62:54]
Matthew Continetti
To his own, the law.
- [62:55]
John Podhoretz
He said, quote, the scum that worked to convict him were some of the same lunatics who were involved in the modern day weaponization of government against me.
- [63:05]
Matthew Continetti
And that's the connective tissue to the January 6th pardons as well. Right. It's all of a piece. Trump was the object of the weaponization of government and he views himself not in isolation. He thinks that the, his supporters who, you know, rioted at the Capitol that day also were unfairly treated by the Justice Department. And he thinks this guy Ulbricht, you know, it's not a, it's not an American case. But there's also the case of the founder of Telegram, right. Another of these apps, the very private secret apps, who was arrested in France. I think you would, Global Maga would make the same case. I think. I forget. His name is Pavel something Durov maybe. I don't know, I could just be making that up. But there's a sense that the judicial branch of government has been turned into a weapon against populists and libertarians and anti authoritarian figures. And Trump clearly is a, has decided that he is going to take the side of the victims of that perceived weaponized government.
- [64:13]
Abe Greenwald
So that's actually, if you're a criminal mastermind, just pitch yourself to the Trump administration as being unfairly persecuted in some way and you too will receive no consequences for your evil. And I really do think the Silk Road stuff did a lot of damage to a lot of families in this country. And I do think there will be long term repercussions, especially because I doubt this guy is not going to go back into some sort of questionable gray trade online and something, it's what he's good at.
- [64:40]
John Podhoretz
Okay, so we are, we are, we are at the end, I'm going to make a recommendation. It's A very. It's a very heartfelt recommendation and it's a little weird, so just give me a second. The recommendation is for a Broadway musical if you're in New York or around New York or coming to New York. It is a small show called maybe Happy Ending with a very unusual provenance. It was written and created in South Korea by an American and a Korean who are collaborators, and it premiered there in 2014. There was a production here in 2020 before COVID in Atlanta. It is a what sometimes is called a chamber musical. It's really about two people, but they're not people. And when I describe it, this is why it's weird, because I'm going to describe it. You're gonna be like, I don't want to see that. That sounds ridiculous. Set in the 2000s and it is about two retired robots who are Android, look like real people, who are companions and help meets and butlers and that sort of thing to people in the future world not too far distant from our own. And that for reasons that we come to understand during the course of the show, have been released from their employer's employ and they are basically put in a retirement community for, as they're called, helper bots. And they live across the hall from each other and things as the show progresses, they come to know each other and then they decide that they are going to take a trip, though they're not really allowed to do this. They're going to go to an island in Korea and go look at fireflies and find the owner of one of them whom who he has been waiting, who the protagonist of the show has been waiting to come pick him up, believing himself to only have been placed at this place temporarily. It is an hour and 45 minutes long. It is very odd, it is gorgeous, it is heartbreaking, it is very earnest. The music, interestingly enough, is the first Broadway show tune music that I've heard in many years that is more redolent of Burt Bachrock than it is of Sondheim or a Broadway composer and therefore is sort of unusual and fun to listen to in that respect. And it's a real triumph and it's a real thing that is the kind of thing that you have never seen before. Staged very brilliantly by a director named Michael Arden. Stars Darren Criss, whom you might have seen on Glee, and a brilliant young actress named Helen Chen. And maybe happy ending. It's selling out. It's had a very successful three month run so far. And I. If you're coming to New York or you live in and around New York. Take my word for this one maybe happy ending at the Belasco Theater. So we've will be back tomorrow for Christine, Abe and Madam John Pothorotz. Keep the candle burning.