The Green Carding of America

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Commentary Magazine Podcast – "The Green Carding of America"

Release Date: March 13, 2025

Hosts and Contributors:

• John Podhoretz – Host and Editor of Commentary Magazine
• Abe Greenwald – Executive Editor
• Christine Rosen – Social Commentary Columnist
• Liel Leibovitz – Guest, Host of Tablets Rootless Podcast, Author

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1. Introduction to the Episode [00:54]

John Podhoretz opens the episode by greeting his co-hosts and introducing Liel Leibovitz. The discussion is set against the backdrop of the Jewish holiday Purim, adding a culturally specific flavor to the introduction.

Quote:

John Podhoretz [00:54]: "Welcome to the Commentary Magazine daily podcast. Today is Thursday, March 13, 2025."

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2. The Case of Mahmoud Khalil [01:35 – 09:08]

The conversation centers around Mahmoud Khalil, a green card holder detained in Louisiana. Khalil's legal representation includes 19 lawyers, notably a former senior policy advisor from the Biden White House. The hosts express skepticism about the Democratic Party's handling of Khalil's case, suggesting it represents broader issues within immigration policies.

Key Points:

• Legal Representation: Khalil is defended by a high-caliber legal team, including individuals with significant experience in Democratic administrations.
• Democratic Party's Stance: The hosts argue that the Democratic Party is leveraging Khalil's case as a civil rights issue to gain political advantage.
• Free Speech Argument: Khalil's defense frames his detention as a suppression of free speech, aligning with other Democratic narratives on protecting individual rights.

Quotes:

John Podhoretz [02:20]: "He is being illegitimately or fraudulently or kidnapped by ICE for simply exercising his right to speech."

Christine Rosen [09:08]: "He is not a citizen of the United States. He does not deserve or has not yet received the protections of a citizen."

---

3. Critique of Democratic Immigration Policies [10:31 – 22:00]

Christine Rosen and Liel Leibovitz delve deeper into the immigration policies under the Biden administration, criticizing the loosening of immigration laws and the influx of individuals who, according to them, may harbor anti-American sentiments or affiliations with terrorist organizations.

Key Points:

• Green Card Processes: The hosts highlight the broad and vague definitions within the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952, which they argue facilitate the entry of individuals with potentially harmful intentions.
• Allegations of Bias: There is an assertion that Democratic policies favor immigrants who align with their ideological views, often at the expense of national security.
• Legal Loopholes: The discussion points to procedural oversights, such as the lack of thorough vetting, which allegedly allow individuals like Khalil to obtain green cards despite questionable backgrounds.

Quotes:

Liel Leibovitz [10:23]: "That's precisely what I had to swear when I received my own green card."

Christine Rosen [12:57]: "The Biden administration flooded this country with millions of people who are totally unvetted."

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4. The Role of Higher Education Institutions [20:21 – 25:25]

The hosts examine the involvement of academic institutions and their responsibility in monitoring and vetting students. They criticize universities like Columbia for allegedly failing to uphold disciplinary standards, thereby enabling individuals with extremist views to flourish within academic settings.

Key Points:

• Institutional Accountability: The argument centers on the failure of universities to enforce policies that could prevent the admission or retention of individuals with extremist affiliations.
• Civil Rights Implications: There is a debate over whether non-citizens like Khalil should receive the same First Amendment protections as U.S. citizens, with the hosts suggesting differentiation based on citizenship status.

Quotes:

Christine Rosen [09:08]: "If Columbia had imposed discipline and punishment according to its own regulations and rules, we wouldn't be here today."

John Podhoretz [23:05]: "We literally have been provided no evidence, except for lawyer statements, which are not sworn and are not, you know, we know nothing."

---

5. Broader Implications on National Security and Free Speech [25:25 – 40:03]

The discussion broadens to the implications of current immigration and free speech policies on national security. The hosts contend that defending individuals like Khalil undermines America's ability to protect itself from internal threats and promotes an environment where anti-American sentiments can thrive.

Key Points:

• National Security Threats: Emphasis on the potential dangers posed by allowing individuals with extremist views to remain in the country.
• Free Speech vs. Security: The hosts argue that protecting Khalil's right to free speech conflicts with safeguarding national security, suggesting that such defenses are misplaced.
• Political Ramifications: The stance taken by Democratic officials is portrayed as politically motivated, aiming to secure power rather than address genuine security concerns.

Quotes:

Liel Leibovitz [28:10]: "This is an actual national security threat. This person staying here means a person organizing for a terrorist group that is holding American hostage."

John Podhoretz [40:03]: "Mahmoud Khalil's ease of entry... all happened under the Biden administration, which, as we know, had no, as Lielle mentioned earlier, was letting anyone in."

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6. Historical Context and Future Outlook [40:03 – 54:33]

Christine Rosen and Liel Leibovitz provide historical comparisons to past U.S. immigration policies and discuss the potential future trajectory of America's immigration stance. They argue that current policies are leading to a fundamental shift away from assimilation and towards cultural separatism, which they believe threatens American foundational values.

Key Points:

• Historical Comparisons: Drawing parallels between current policies and past restrictive immigration laws, highlighting perceived repeats of history.
• Assimilation vs. Acculturation: The debate over whether immigrants should fully assimilate into American culture or retain distinct cultural identities.
• Potential Consequences: Concerns that failing to address these issues may lead to increased cultural conflicts and weaken national unity.

Quotes:

Christine Rosen [47:39]: "America's own history works against the idea that yes, we have these universal values, but sometimes we have to defend specific things about America."

Liel Leibovitz [42:54]: "What it is that we believe and how fiercely and committedly are we willing to protect it."

---

7. Conclusion and Final Remarks [54:33 – End]

The hosts wrap up the discussion by reiterating their concerns over the current immigration policies and their impact on America's future. They emphasize the importance of upholding American values and ensuring national security through stringent immigration controls.

Quotes:

John Podhoretz [54:33]: "I live in a country where my passions are therefore controlled by the rule of law."

Liel Leibovitz [57:30]: "We are poised right now to have another debate about assimilation in this country."

---

Notable Omissions:

• Advertisements and sponsorship messages at [00:01], [20:21], and [22:00] have been excluded as per instructions.
• Brief interludes and non-content exchanges were omitted to maintain focus on substantive discussions.

Overall Summary: In "The Green Carding of America," The Commentary Magazine Podcast hosts a critical examination of current U.S. immigration policies, spotlighting the case of Mahmoud Khalil as a symbol of broader systemic issues. The discussion underscores perceived Democratic Party missteps in balancing immigration liberalism with national security, advocating for stricter immigration controls and emphasizing the preservation of American values through assimilation. The hosts argue that lenient policies not only pose security risks but also threaten the foundational principles that define the United States.

Transcript

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[Liel Leibovitz]

Hope for the best, expect the worst.

[John Podhoretz]

Some drink champagne Some die of thirst.

[Liel Leibovitz]

No way of knowing which way it's.

[John Podhoretz]

Going Hope for the best Expect the.

[Liel Leibovitz]

Worst for the best.

[John Podhoretz]

Welcome to the Commentary Magazine daily podcast. Today is Thursday, March 13, 2025. I am John Pod Horowitz, the editor of Commentary magazine. With me, as always, executive editor Abe Greenwald. Hi, Abe.

[Abe Greenwald]

Hi, John.

[John Podhoretz]

Social commentary columnist Christine Rosen. Hi, Christine.

[Christine Rosen]

Hi, John.

[John Podhoretz]

And joining us today, our friend, occasional Commentary contributor, host of Tablets Rootless podcast, author of how the Talmud Can Change youe Life, and All Around Polymath, Leal Leibovitz. Leal, thanks for coming back on the show.

[Liel Leibovitz]

What a pleasure. And an easy fast day to you too, John.

[John Podhoretz]

Oh, thank you very much. Yes, it is the Tanit Esther, as we call it. We're not supposed to be eating until the holiday Purim begins tonight. I don't know about you, Leel, but I am actually going dressed up as Peter Beinart because I am playing Heyman in the in the porm spiel. And so there's a little culturally specific joke for our listeners. I'm not going to belabor it, Leo. We are now in day seven, or something like that of the Mahmoud Khalil controversy. Got two things to mention yesterday in a New York City courtroom, he was granted two conversations with his lawyers, which apparently, or they claim he had not had yet because he is in detention in Louisiana and that the hearing will recommence, or some version of this hearing is going to recommence tomorrow, where the case will be made that he is being illegitimately or fraudulently or kidnapped or whatever by ice and for simply exercising his right to speech. He has apparently a legal team of 19. I think it's worth mentioning that his lead lawyer was a senior policy advisor in the Biden White House, so that it's important to mention that because it's not just the Senate Judiciary Democrats who said free Mahmoud Khalil. He actually has a lawyer who was a who was a leading official in the bi. In The. In the last Democratic administration who is claiming that this is the civil rights issue of our time. So I think the Democratic Party can now justly be said to own this issue if they want it. They seem to want it. Not clear to me why they would want it. Do you have any explanation of why they might want it, Leo?

[Liel Leibovitz]

I mean, I could try. First of all, look, what. What a. What a missed opportunity on their behalf. Had this been a Jewish defendant, the number of lawyers would have been 18. Such a better number. Guys, come on, get. Get with the program.

[John Podhoretz]

Another culturally specific joke.

[Liel Leibovitz]

5 lawyers.

[John Podhoretz]

18. 18 is the numerical value of the word chai, which is. Is the little necklace you sometimes see around the necks of Jews. That's two. Two Hebrew letters. Anyway. So, yes, 18. Very important number.

[Liel Leibovitz]

My cynical explanation, with apologies in advance for the grimness of it all, is this. I think we've seen plenty of evidence in the last. Call it four, call it 10, call it 40 years, that the Democratic Party is increasingly interested, not in principle, but in power as such. The main game is basically policing where you are on any given issue and what you're allowed and not allowed to say. If you want to enjoy the benefits of, I don't know, having a major motion picture produced or being on some corporate board or teaching at some great big university. I think the messaging from the very beginning, ignoring the incredibly complicated legal machinations of what precisely the Immigration and Nationality act of 1952 allows or does not allow the government to do with someone who's not just a visa holder, but a green card holder, which is a certain category of visa. I think ignoring all that and framing it very clearly as, say, Connecticut's Chris Murphy has, as several other very prominent Democrats had as a free speech issue. We've seen David Hogg basically saying, this is the president shutting down the opinions and voices of young Americans while dropping a few F bombs. I think the game here is very simple. We frame it as a free speech issue, and if you dare cross the lines, well, then you are not only a free speech opponent and some kind of fascist troll, but you're doing it on behalf of very powerful interests, John, a powerful group of people who can never be criticized. I won't tell you who it is, John, but, you know, and we don't want to be standing with them. It's a very similar trick to what Obama did with the Iran deal. It's like, I'm sorry, we're not going to let a small group of powerful people influence us to abandon our American principle. It's just not who we are as a people. That's the game, that's the play. That's what they've been doing all along, and that's what they're doing now.

[John Podhoretz]

I want to quote from an interview Politico did. How did I just lose this? Here we go. Politico nightly did last night with Michael Roth, the president of Wesleyan. Not my favorite academic leader, but I mean, he's not the worst. But in some ways, as some of these quotes will, the bar is low, but yeah, some of these quotes will indicate sometimes when you're not the worst, you're worse than the worst because of the COVID you give for the worst. So Michael Roth is an opponent now of the policy of institutional neutrality. Institutional neutrality being the idea that on college campuses, campuses should strive in the model of the University of Chicago, not as institutions. Universities should not take positions that they should have institutional neutrality so that everybody within them can exercise their rights to free speech without seeming to be crosswise of the institution's own views. And he calls this cowardice. It's a institutional neutrality making cowardice into a policy. Anyway, it's an interesting thing we could have a larger debate about. But here's what Michael roth told Calder McHugh, Politico Nightly. What was your first reaction he's asked to hearing of Mahmoud Khalil's arrest? I was really shocked that someone in the United States would be arrested for having participated for having participated in a lawful demonstration. I assumed there were some other justifications. I thought there would be some crime that had been committed for which the individual was being held accountable. But as I learned more about it, I saw that this was part of this broader attempt to intimidate people from protesting in ways at the White House doesn't like. Okay, then. Calder McHugh asks, says Khalil had sent a letter to Columbia's interim president asking for protection after a doxing campaign was launched against him shortly before his arrest. What responsibility do academic institutions have for their students or recently graduated students? Listen to that elision there. Their students are recently graduated students. Khalil Mahmoud Khalil is a has graduated from Columbia, though he is still living in apparently in Columbia housing. So he is no longer a student at Columbia.

[Christine Rosen]

And there's another elision, which is this lawful protest. He was suspended for actually breaking the rules of Columbia's campus when it with regard to allowable protest, he was.

[John Podhoretz]

And then they revoked his suspension for reasons that we don't entirely understand.

[Christine Rosen]

Can we just, can we just add that If Colombia had imposed discipline and punishment according to its own regulations and rules, we wouldn't be here today. And I, I've been getting into wrangles with more left wing friends of mine about this, who they also want to ally this distinction between citizen and non citizen. He is not a citizen of the United States. He does not deserve or has not yet received the protections of a citizen. He is in a different status. Does it and the really interesting constitutional question, and we've had cases on either side of this question, is does he benefit from the same First Amendment rights, the same rights as any citizen? So the court has said in some cases yes, in others, no. But I think it's important for anyone who wants to talk about this case to understand he is not yet a citizen. And as Secretary of State Marco Rubio said yesterday when asked about it, if he lied on his student visa application, that's enough, which is the pipeline to get the green card. If he lied on that and said he wasn't going to do anything and then lied again on his green card application, where you must forswear terrorism, engaging in any form of terrorism, that alone, just as an administrative issue, let me.

[Liel Leibovitz]

Tell you as a green card holder, Christine, that is precisely what I had to swear when I received my own green card.

[Christine Rosen]

Yes.

[John Podhoretz]

In, in, in your podcast earlier this week, Leo, with Ilya Shapiro of the Manhattan Institute, you went through a lot of the statutory challenges to Mahmoud Khalil and the case that he is attempting to make. And you and Ilya both, both of you not native born Americans, been through this immigration process. And as he said, it's not just that you are supposed to swear that you're not part of a terrorist organization. The terminology in these forms is way broader than that. I believe it says, or Ilya says, authoritarian. Have you been, are you aligned with or promoted? It's not that you even have to be a member of authoritarian organization. Authoritarian. We're not talking about terrorism. We're not talking about communism. The term was left clearly by the law, by the people who wrote this deliberately broad in order to take in a large range of behaviors and associations that we might deem or authorities might deem inimical to the American experiment.

[Liel Leibovitz]

I think that's a really important point and I think it frames it, and Christine was getting there too. It frames it as precisely what this is. This is not a Jewish issue. It's not a freedom of speech issue. It's not an academic freedom issue. This is an America immigration issue. What kind of nation do you want to have. And who do you believe has the right to be here? Again, the Democrats have made their answer incredibly clear. They opened the borders wide. They invited everyone in. They said they believe that an American citizenship or residency at the very least is a basic human right. Just like, you know, food, shelter and wi fi. I think a lot of Americans believe differently that this is the greatest privilege. This is certainly as an immigrant here myself, John, this is how I feel. And I think that if you cannot take the very simple step of not cheering for an organization designated as a terrorist group in 1997 currently holding American citizens hostage, you really shouldn't be here. How about that for a legal complication?

[Christine Rosen]

Well, and I think. Oh, go ahead, Abe.

[Abe Greenwald]

I was just saying he only got here in 2022. I mean, it's not like he was a completely different person, you know, or he came here as a kid, you know, I mean he came as a fully fledged adult only a few years.

[John Podhoretz]

Ago, 28 years, 29 years old, I believe, when he came to this country. 29 years old. And there are various mysteries about him that I guess are going to start getting cleared up when the hearing begins. He claims to be a Syrian born Palestinian. He is traveling on an Algerian passport. Riddle me that. Where does he come to an Algerian passport if he's a Palestinian born in Syria? I don't get that. I was unaware. Did he like a Jew seeking to reestablish his paternity in the Sephardic countries of Spain and Portugal? Did he apply for a 500 year passport that some people are doing now? What is going on there? Is he a Palestinian? Is he a Syrian? I don't know that. I didn't know Algeria was handing out passports like, you know, candy.

[Liel Leibovitz]

John, I think he's the Bob Dylan of terrorism. He arrives rather from the Midwest, from the Middle east into Manhattan, reinvents himself as this kind of American bard of chaos and destruction.

[Christine Rosen]

But this is why I think to Leo's earlier point about now, the struggle being quite more about political power at least, and how it's being handled by Democrats. That's why they want to hammer home the free speech issue. Because once you start doing a deep dive into this guy's past, I suspect a lot more nefarious things are going to surface. And the free speech thing though is also going to fail for them because I don't think the American people trust the party that was, was certainly happy to police the speech of its own. You know, people on the left side of the aisle for the last 10 years and who were actively suppressing the speech of Americans in violation of the First Amendment under the Biden administration on social media platforms. So I feel this is a poor strategy for them, but I guess let them try.

[John Podhoretz]

Can I return to the Michael Roth interview? Because there's. It frames the conversation. It allows us a view into the perspective of non radical liberals horrified or terrified or whatever by what is going on here. Okay, here's what he says. The first Trump administration, even before it began, there were many demonstrations in many colleges and universities across the country, including at Wesleyan. Wow, really? Including at Wesleyan. I would never have expected Wesleyan, one of the most leftist campuses in America, to have protests against Trump. Ooh, college campuses have been much quieter this time than they were in the first Trump administration. Yeah. Because college campuses, very quiet. Quiet, you know, in the last couple of years. Very quiet.

[Liel Leibovitz]

Shh.

[John Podhoretz]

No one's been protesting or having scenes over the last year and a half or anything. Okay, fine. So they're not protesting the Trump administration. They're still in an overhang with Gaza. And of course there were some. Columbia, Barnard. Very quiet. They only had scenes last week or the week before last. Closing down libraries, preventing people from going to class and all of that. So yeah, very quiet. I think students are trying to understand what's going on in the country and are not sure how best to react to the flood of executive orders coming from the White House. And this is part of the White House strategy. I think a lot of people are reeling, especially at the level of students and faculty and at the institutional level, a lot of people are frightened. I think this is the greatest fear in civil society, including in the higher education system, since the McCarthy era. People are really afraid to be targeted by the government whose powers are extraordinary. And when they're willing to arrest or detain someone without charge and threaten to deport him without charges, that's very frightening. 60 schools got letters about anti Semitism on campus, and that's going to cost all those schools money to investigate and maybe to defend themselves. So I think there's a lot of fear that the current administration thinks of retribution as a legitimate political tactic, and that has not been the case at this level for a very long time. Okay. I mean, there's 10,000 things we can object to in this paragraph, but 60 schools got letters about anti Semitism on campus. Gee, I wonder why. Any reason anyone can think of why they might have gotten letters asking whether or not there was selective discrimination against a body of students ethnically identifiable as such, who whose not only viewpoints might have been discriminated against, but who were being discriminated against on the basis of who they are in violation and contravention of Title 6 of the Civil Rights act of 1965. Is that, am I, am I taking crazy pills? It's like out of nowhere, they're just investigating these colleges. How could this happen? It's like the McCarthy era. Okay, so I think the reason I wanted to go into this is to say that what I'm hearing, what I'm seeing, what I'm witnessing from again, not radicals, not the people who are like demonstrating, pushing through barriers at City hall is they're going after free speech. This is all of a piece with the executive orders. There's no difference between having an executive order that questions environmental policy and going after Mahmoud Khalil and deporting him for lying on his green card. And is he being, is he being targeted for his views? Kind of. The question is whether it is legal to target him for his views. It may not be legal to target us for our views, but the, but the, but the rules operating on people who are green card holders or student visa holders are different. 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, infl. 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 sees 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 hey everybody.

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[Christine Rosen]

Views, it's a calls to action. I mean that, that's a step further than just saying I think Hamas is awesome. If he said that, I don't think we'd be. I mean he'd still perhaps not be someone we want in this country. But he's. He was distributing literature that was encouraging the mimicry of what happened in Israel on October 7th. Here he was celebrating the anniversary of October 7th. I mean these are what terror. These are activities of someone who is giving material support to terrorism.

[John Podhoretz]

But you don't even under. If I understood Ilya Shapiro's views as expressed on the Leal Leibovitz rootless podcast, available to you on the tablet podcast feed or wherever you get your fine podcast, you don't need to provide material support. You simply actually have to be congruent or a promoter of or an expostulator of a view of an authoritarian groups view.

[Liel Leibovitz]

Correct. The word is espouse. And not only that, thank you. Encourage others to support, which he certainly did by handing out pamphlets printed by Hamas.

[John Podhoretz]

Right now this is going to be adjudicated in the courts. I think it's fair to say that the Administration screwed up in the way it arrested or detained Mahmoud Khalil. They told him it was because he violated his student visa, apparently not knowing.

[Unknown Guest]

That he is a green card holder.

[John Podhoretz]

I, by the way, am willing to put in reserve until I see it in court that he has a green card, by the way. I assume he does. I don't think his lawyers would say that. Yet somehow I figure, like, we would be. Someone would have released a picture of his green card or something like that. Here's what we're told. We're told he's married. We're told his wife is eight months pregnant. We're told he was a student visa holder who got a green card, did a lot of this very fast, by the way.

[Liel Leibovitz]

What an industrious man.

[John Podhoretz]

Yes. On an Algerian passport, though he claims to be a Syrian. So there's a lot of weird non stuff that does not quite seem to add up in time. And his wife will not release her name, so we don't know her name.

[Christine Rosen]

We should add that all of this, his ease of entry, however that worked, given his views and the speed with which he got this green card, all happened under the Biden administration, which, as we know, had no, as Lielle mentioned earlier, was letting anyone in. I mean, we probably have quite a few foreign terrorist sympathizers on our soil right now who we are going to very slowly, unfortunately, going to have to find and deport. But he obviously came in under these extremely lax rules. So if he didn't dot every I and cross every T, there are these administrative issues. Did he lie on the thing? Did he go through the proper process? Was he interviewed the way he was supposed to? In any of those points, he can be booted for cause, even separate from his views, particularly the lying on the passport. The wife has been trotted out in front of the media yesterday.

[John Podhoretz]

No, she wasn't there.

[Christine Rosen]

Oh, sorry. The spokesperson. Right.

[John Podhoretz]

The spokesman.

[Liel Leibovitz]

Right, yeah.

[John Podhoretz]

The lawyer. This is twice that. The lawyer, this female lawyer read out a statement from the wife who does not want to be named. We don't know her name.

[Christine Rosen]

Mary, in haste, repent in leisure. That's probably what she's thinking. Sorry.

[John Podhoretz]

She needs him to hold her hand while she gives birth because he is the most wonderful person who ever lived, according to her statement. I read this in the Little Drummer Girl by John Le Carre, by the way, but I won't go into that. There was the famous case of the. You remember the story of the woman, British woman, who, like, got engaged to the Lebanese terrorist and basically Gave her a bomb to. To put on a plane from London to. Or. Or the reverse way anyway. I'm not saying any of that happened. I don't know what happened. I don't think we can necessarily take the propaganda case for him at face value, yet we don't. We literally have been provided no evidence, except for lawyer statements, which are not sworn and are not, you know, we know nothing. All we know is that he has not been. I think the only thing that was really said in court, though, we don't have a recording. What was said in court was his lawyers have not had an opportunity to talk to him. So Judge Jesse Furman said, okay, you can have a call on Wednesday or call on Thursday, a call on Wednesday, and then Friday we're going to reconvene and you'll. You'll have a better. We'll. We'll begin the proceedings discussing these matters. It's complicated. There's a very good piece by Jed Rubenfeld in the Free Press laying out the complications in these cases, that there are different contrasting Supreme Court decisions that offer different views of what constitutes a viewpoint or how to deal with these matters. I think it's fairly clear if they can prove that he lied on his visa application and on his green card application, that there is there, he has no grounds that that means that he would have perjured himself on his applications. The applications are then instantly deemed invalid, and then he is put on a plane and he goes away forever and never returns to the United States. You cannot.

[Abe Greenwald]

But I have a question.

[John Podhoretz]

Yeah.

[Abe Greenwald]

In order for that to happen, though, would they have to prove that he had. He was espousing pro Hamas, pro Hezbollah views then?

[John Podhoretz]

Well, he was in the green card. In other words, the green card he would only have applied for when he came here, and he was head of Qad at Columbia almost instantly. So I think whether or not he lied on the student visa application is one thing. Clearly he would have done so if this is how it's found on his green card application, if in fact he has a green card.

[Liel Leibovitz]

I want to raise another question, though, which goes back to something Christine says. Look, I am not to be any more of the bearded zealot than I already am. And I think the sort of procedural legal proceedings here are incredibly important and really look forward to seeing this resolved and believe that the case and the facts speak for themselves. But Christine raised a really important point. She said, look, Columbia and other universities did. Bupkas, did absolutely nothing to police or monitor anything. So you don't have Any, quote, unquote track record against these people. The Biden administration flooded this country with millions of people who are totally unvetted. And now if we have to play the kind of very, very Talmudic procedural game like, well, what did he say and when did he say it and what precedent from 1996 this may or may not violate, we'll be here all day. There's a larger point which is this is an actual national security threat. This person staying here means a person organizing for a terrorist group that is holding American hostage, I think, and I believe the Immigration Nationality act at least gives the Secretary of State the authority to do it, to basically come and say, guys, I hear all the debate about the procedure in the green card immigration. This is a national security matter. We don't want this person here. That's the end of story, which is more or less what Biden did with, you know, more than a thousand Chinese nationals, which correctly following up on the Trump first Trump administration's example, they said, we just don't want these people.

[John Podhoretz]

I want to read to you from a bio of Ramzi Qassem, who is the lead lawyer for Mahmoud Khalil. This bio, I'm not going to say anything about it, is on the site of the Paul and Daisy Soros Fellowships for New Americans. That's all I'm going to say. Paul and Daisy Soros. He was awarded this fellowship in 2001 to pursue the JD in Law at Columbia University. Ramsey Qasem is an immigrant from Syria and I'm going to assume that he does not have an Algerian passport. Anyway, here is the bio. Ramsey Qassem is a professor of law at the City University of New York. His writing, teaching and clinical legal practice grapple with the expressions and excesses of the sprawling US security state both domestically and abroad. From 2022 to 2024, Professor Qassem took leave to serve as a senior Policy advisor at the White House. At the Domestic Policy Council, he led interagency policy committees and other complex processes to support and drive the President's agenda on a host of sensitive concerns ranging from the Immigration Court backlog and immigration legislation and regulations to watch listing, screening and profiling policy. He also collaborated with the National Security Council Intelligence Programs Directorate and with the NSC Transborder Directorate. He has argued before the Supreme Court at Gitmo in 2009 and here. This is very important. Professor Kassam founded CLEAR, an award winning clinic and legal nonprofit at CUNY School of Law for over a decade. He also directed or co directed the law school's Immigrant and Non Citizens Rights Clinic. Okay. What is Clear, the award winning clinic and legal nonprofit CUNY Clear is about creating law enforcement, accountability and responsibility, providing Know youw Rights workshops, support for movements and community organizing and doing being essentially an activist lawyer particularly on matters of immigration. So he's got a pretty high powered, high level team arguing for him. 25 years in the Soros universe and didn't know Soros user was that old. And, and he is. He spent two years at the White House pursuing exactly the policies that Christine and Liel, you are both talking about making it as easy as possible for people like him to get into the country and to lower barriers and to have trans organization meetings and committees that would make sure that nobody ever did anything to question any immigrant who came into the United States. So, so clearly well suited to be Mahmoud Khalil's lawyer. This is what so the panoply of views goes from this guy, a radical law professor who ends up at the Biden White House to argue for letting in radical Muslims, let's face it, in the easiest fashion as possible to people going oh no, this guy is being persecuted or kidnapped or whatever because of the views that he held. I'm hoping that there are long term political consequences here for the people who are espousing these views. Slow burn Chris Murphy, Senator from Connecticut, the Democrat mainstream that has a guy like this on the, you know, literally serving on the domestic Policy council of their White House. The Senate Judiciary Democrats saying free Mahmoud Khalil. They are handing, I said this yesterday, they are handing Republicans a massive campaign issue because now it's not just they're flooding the border and you know, creating there's too many immigrants and they're chasing jobs and all of that. It is they are affirmatively defending and aggressively defending the rights of people who are coming into this country who hate America and are siding with terrorists who hold Americans hostage in tunnels in Gaza and advocating for Hezbollah which murdered 241Americans at a minimum in Lebanon at the marine Barracks in 1983.

[Abe Greenwald]

You know there's something else that that this brings up when you read off the lawyer's bio there that people have to realize there's this massive institutional architecture already in place that is the sole purpose of is to bring people into the US who will undermine the country and will work against the country. That's a whole issue that also needs going after and at least disincentivizing.

[John Podhoretz]

The.

[Abe Greenwald]

Creation of these networks international version of.

[Christine Rosen]

The Progressive Prosecutor project.

[Liel Leibovitz]

And I think Just, just the point is, is so important, just this bio that John just read, that's poetry in motion right there. Here's what we're going to do. We're going to bring these people in, then we're going to put them in some academic institution that we control, funded by some NGO that we control, move them into the political party and office that we control. And it's all just one big happy mishpocha designed to hate and undermine American safety and well being.

[Christine Rosen]

And this is, that's the Senator. Chris Murphy is an important example here because for the last four years under Biden, the we hate America contingent among elected officials on the Democratic side has gone a little silent, obviously because they were in power in the White House. But it's safe again to hate America. It's safe for even more mainstream Democrats to be, you know, very much. Trump is ruining our country. We're about to live under fascism. Democracy is dead. And it's not, it's got a different tone now than it did the first term, but it's still there. And they're, they're reawakening to an understanding that of course has been, they've been educated in for the last 10 to 15 years thanks to things like the 1619 Project. But I see that, I see that tone coming into a lot of the remarks of people like Murphy now where it's okay to sort of talk about their country in a way that they never would have done when Biden was president.

[John Podhoretz]

The immigration issue for the last 20 years has largely involved the poorest southern border and the question of whether or not people who are coming into the country illegally and are therefore by definition illegitimately present come in. And then there's a debate over whether or not this is quietly necessary for the good working order of our economy. They, they do jobs Americans don't want to do. They make it possible for, you know, for the agricultural system to work, various other things. Right. Then other people say it doesn't matter. They're here illegally. You can't have people here illegally. You have to have border security. And out of all of that, a certain number of people come in and then they come in, they commit crimes, they murder people, they run drugs, they do this. And they are coming in within the flood, protected by the flood of millions of people coming in looking for economic opportunities and to lead a better life. Maybe they shouldn't be allowed to do that because we need border security and they don't have the right to come here and they haven't filed Legitimately. But they're not here for bad motive. Right? The vast majority of people who come in, they're not here for bad reasons. They want to come here because they can't make a living where they are. They need to make a life for themselves and their children. But within that cohort are bad actors. And so the one way you may have to deal with the bad actors is, is to tighten everywhere because you can't. How can you. There's no filter. There's no, you know, it's not like there's a mesh where you can pour through and then you'll catch the, you'll catch the bad guys and then everybody else can, can run through. The Mahmoud Khalil example broadens this way out because this now means that at the elite level, elites in the United States are going to defend the presence in the United States of foreign nationals who are here to claim that America is a terrorist state, that Israel is a monster, that we have a terrible foreign policy and all of that. And now the argument of criminality, which is really an idea that there's a girl on a campus at the University of Georgia who is murdered, or it's somebody on the Bay Area Rapid Transit who gets murdered by an illegal, and this can't be permitted, is now ideological in frame, and it is. The Democratic Party is defending America. Haters and affirmatively wants the immigration system to let them in and to allow them a prominent role in elite institutions like university, like university campuses.

[Christine Rosen]

But is it at all?

[John Podhoretz]

That's a huge political advantage.

[Christine Rosen]

But there's.

[John Podhoretz]

We're enemies of the Democratic Party.

[Christine Rosen]

There's another, there's another layer to this, though, that I think when we're talking about Islamic radicalism, we do have to broaden out and talk about assimilation, which was the huge debate about immigration in the first huge wave of immigrants in the 20th century. Will they become American? What does that look like? Are they allowed to retain some of their cultural practices, but still, you know, embrace our values? Look to Europe to ask about assimilation of, of Muslim immigrants. They have largely not assimilated. In fact, they have. They. They are taking over neighborhoods and being quite aggressive and hostile about even in some cases enacting Sharia type laws over and above the laws of the countries they have come and settled in. I'm not saying that's what's going on here, but what I am saying is that we are poised right now to have another debate about assimilation in this country. And it isn't gonna. It going to capture, as you say, John all these well intentioned, yet law breaking people who come to this country for economic opportunity, it. It'll have to capture them. Because the debate about whether or not the countries of the, the values of our country will be undermined by people who come here and preach the upheaval and overthrow of our form of government, that is a legitimate debate to have. It has nothing to do with racism or Islamophobia or any of these things. As a nation and as a very multicultural nation, we must occasionally have that debate. And I think it's better to have it now in theory than to have to practice that action and then, you know, litigate it through the courts. But a lot of Americans are concerned about that. It's long been an American fear that we will not be able to retain our quirky system of government if people decide to just come settle in large enough numbers and say, no, we have our own way of doing things.

[Liel Leibovitz]

Christine. I think, I think it's even more complicated than that. I think the debate about assimilation really is a debate, you know, first and foremost for all of us. Namely, it's a debate about what it is that we believe and how fiercely and committedly are we willing to protect it. Do we still hold the same ideas about American, you know, foundational values as the founders have? And if so, are we willing to go out and actually say, I'm really sorry, there may be some ideas like, oh, everyone deserves a shot at the American. It's actually completely incompatible with a very specific set of values that we uphold. I think in a very major and still unspoken way. It's really strange to use the word unspoken about Donald Trump, but the 2024 election was about that. It was really kind of an attempt to understand or reconsider what it is that we actually believe. And I think it is very clear here's what we don't believe, we don't believe supporting terrorism.

[John Podhoretz]

I'd like to. I mean, Christine's point is this is not just a discussion that we're having now. I mean, the real fight over this question. There have been many terms used in the 20th century to explain the question of immigration and its role in the American polity. Right. The melting pot, which is a term that was invented by a novel in the early parts of the 20th century. Assimilation versus acculturation. So assimilation is you come here, you become an American, you lose your foreign identity and you become an American. You assimilate, you join, you. Acculturation is you come, you're fully American, but you can also be what you were when you came here. And some of your culture you might add to the melting pot and make it more flavorful. Right? So, so acculturation was the kind of more liberal version of you come here, you sink or swim, you learn English, you become an American. You're not Irish, you're not Jewish, you're not, you are, you're an American and that's what you are. And then it's like, no, here you can be an Irish American, be an Italian American, you can be a Jewish American, you can be an Icelandic American. That's all fine because the American part is universalist and America is a country based on an idea. And then in the 60s and early 70s as radical communitarianism and we started coming in, that's when you started having Hispanic organizations rise up, starting with the farm workers and all that, and starting to say things like we need to be able to teach children in Spanish, our public schools need to be bilingual because it's un. You're giving an unfair advantage to white people who speak English at home and our kids go to school, so we need bilingual education. And that, I think was the, weirdly enough it sounds, was an opening gamut in this much larger effort to say that America doesn't have the right to impose Americanness on the people who come to America to be Americans. And it took two generations for Hispanic Americans, broadly defined to themselves, object to the idea that they were not fully American. And I say that because I think the polling over the last three elections suggests that they have had enough of being treated as though they are. They want to be fully American and they want to be thought of as fully American. They are not here demanding and asking for special privileges. And a lot of them have been here for a lot longer than Jews have. For example, you know, New Mexicans are, have names that end in vowels and they're called Rodriguez. And they've been here since 1650, you know, and so there is this 40, 50 year ideological trend to say America does not have the right to visit American ness on the people who live here and Europeans because they are blood. And so it's like you can't become French, you move to France, you're a Muslim, sure, but you're not French. I don't know what you are. So you better set up your own world because we're not ever going to think that you're French. But we never thought that way in the United States. Or we have. I mean, there have been moments when the country said enough and put up immigration restrictions, but Our doctrine, our founding ideological doctrine is that America, you know, America is a universal freedom propounding, you know, God gave us all the same rights and so we can all be the same thing in the same country. And if we're going to start again, that Europe is the great horrible counterexample and we have now a real divide between these high end elites who don't have any antibodies against these ideas, these separatist, self hating, self abnegating ideas inside the United States and everybody else who seems to love America and lives in a country that has the largest economy in the world and the highest given 330 million people, the highest per capita income in the world of a country that doesn't have, you know, isn't small and all of that. And so now they're, well, they, this.

[Christine Rosen]

Is why they point to the extremes in the past of how Americans tried to defend American values which, which there were definite excesses. Look, the 1924 Immigration Restriction act was driven by racist, eugenic ideas about who was, you know, good and who was bad based on ethnic and racial background. That's not what's going on now. But it's very. Our, our own history works against the idea that yes, we have these universal values, but sometimes we have to defend specific things about America because that's the only way to protect us from, you know, efforts to undermine our system through terrorism, efforts to undermine our system through teaching America's children that they should hate their country rather than admire it. These are all threads in which they're it, they're easy responses that you can make if you're a sort of global citizen of the left who thinks that borders are themselves a crime. And I feel like that's become so much more mainstream in the last 10 years, this idea. That's why you see the no human is illegal signs on everybody's yards. I mean, they truly believe that that is not an American value. That has never been an American value. But it's not racist or Islamophobic to say that. But it's very easy to be tarred in those ways if you defend the idea of having strong borders.

[John Podhoretz]

I mean, no human is illegal, but it doesn't mean that you get to live here.

[Christine Rosen]

The borders are, that's what I always would say. I'm like, yeah, but it also doesn't.

[John Podhoretz]

Mean, like, I don't think that, you know, that the mullahs are illegal, but they're not coming to live here.

[Christine Rosen]

It doesn't even mean anything. I know, it's like a Zen Cohen gone wrong.

[John Podhoretz]

It's just not so. Yeah. Meanwhile, Michael Roth, the president of Wesleyan, of course, is going on about the problems of institutional neutrality and how it's cowardly for institutions not to take a stand about things like how bad the Trump administration is. And fine. Like, you know what? Institutional neutrality may be a dodge. Maybe all this, maybe this is a fight we need to have. Maybe this. I'm very upset at the fact that I am finding myself in conversations about whether or not what's being done to Mahmoud Khalil is terrible. Because I think anybody who thinks that what's being done to him is terrible is a fool. I mean, that is to say, procedurally, maybe the I's and t's were not dotted on this side, but anybody who looks at him and what he says and how he has behaved and thinks that is acceptable behavior for a 31 year old person coming to this country from another country is a moral or idiot. It is not. It is not acceptable. Now you can say our laws make it so that he can do that. This is where Jonah Goldberg referred to whether he's a Skokie Nazi. Like this free speech case in the late 70s when the Nazis wanted to march in Skokie, Illinois, and they were all American citizens. Those guys, a. They were American citizens.

[Abe Greenwald]

Can you imagine if, you know, a Hungarian white nationalist leader came here and agitated for the destruction of the U.S. what all the same people would be saying?

[Liel Leibovitz]

I mean, forget that. Let us. I mean, some of us here are old enough to remember that when Seb Gorka was appointed the first time around in the first Trump White House, this is an American citizen. Right. They came out and said, because there are allegations that his father, all of them, by the way, completely baseless, was somehow connected with a group that at some other point in time may have had connections to the Nazi party, he should be stripped of his citizenship and deported. These are the same people who right now are defending Mahmoud Khalil's right to be here in America. It's a farce. This whole discussion is a farce.

[Christine Rosen]

Well, there are also, there's plenty of Democrats who have been playing that little dance about Elon Musk saying the same thing. You know, is he really America? How long has he been here? He's only been here 13 or more.

[Liel Leibovitz]

Years of the Biden administration's kind of aggressive stripping of, quote, unquote, very violent settlers of any rights that they may have to, you know, return here, visit here, etc. Etc. But, you know.

[John Podhoretz]

Yeah, no. So everybody, so you Know, everybody's got the exception to the rule. Like everybody has a crime, everybody's got their favorite crime where you actually suspend all the rules because they're bad. Right. So every, every couple of years there's a new one like sexual harassment on campus. So no due process for anybody on a college campus from 2009 until 2016. If somebody said six years ago when I was drunk, that guy may have raped me or I just remembered that he raped me or I, something like that, and it's like, okay, you're right. And he doesn't, he doesn't get to face you as an accuser. He has no rights. In our star chamber, we're just gonna listen to you. And we believe all the accusations and all of that. Again, same people probably very close to being the same people. Who were they silent about. Columbia is a good example. Columbia, of course had the famous case of mattress girl who walked around claiming that she had been, I don't remember whether she had been raped by somebody who proved that he hadn't raped her. And then she spent two years walking around with a mattress strapped to her back because she was protesting the fact that she hadn't gotten her way. And of course the entire left liberal campus was on her side. As opposed to the due process rights.

[Liel Leibovitz]

Of the movement, undisclosed 7 figure compensation to those young gentlemen in question.

[John Podhoretz]

Right, Exactly. So I don't know. There is a. Everybody's got a crime. My crime is being an anti Semite. I'm happy to have all of your rights abused. You hate my people. I don't care. I would like you to fall down an open manhole and die. And I would dance on your grave. And that's fine. And that's why laws exist to protect you from my passions like that. I live in a country, I'm happy to live in a country where, where my passions are therefore controlled by the rule of law. But this is a rule of law question. Now. Rule of law says you sign a form, you say you were this, you weren't, you violated the terms of the form that you signed.

[Liel Leibovitz]

Shalom Mahuda.

[John Podhoretz]

Shalom Mahmoud. Exactly. So very quickly, Steve Witkoff is going. Our negotiator in chief, having apparently been negotiating with Iran, is now today going to negotiate with Russia. And tomorrow, I guess he'll negotiate with China and then, you know, he'll go to Roswell and negotiate with the aliens in Roswell, apparently. But you need to know nothing about anything except that you are a negotiator to negotiate as a negotiator it's really a thrilling example of expertise, cultural sensitivities and understanding of Russian history or of Iranian history or anything like that. Whatever. This is what Trump wants, so this is what he gets. Ukraine came, agreed to a seats, agreed to cease fire terms. And what was the response yesterday from Lavrov and Putin to the Ukrainian concessions? Right. Putin puts on fatigues, goes to Kherson and says, kill all of them and we will treat every, every captured Ukrainian soldier as a terrorist. And now Witkoff is going to negotiate for a wonderful ceasefire with these guys. So I don't know, like every now and then there is a moment. This is like going to Iran with a cake in the shape of a king. Matt Con Netti has a piece in our current issue, which should be up today, about the American, constant American delusion about being able to negotiate with Putin. Putin's making it pretty clear he's not going to accept this ceasefire deal. Does that then mean, do you think that we agreed to the weapons flow and to sharing intelligence with Ukraine because Ukraine assented to our terms and if Putin doesn't assent to our, doesn't come in on the other side, that Trump isn't going to find some way to cut Ukraine off again?

[Abe Greenwald]

Yeah, I don't know where he goes from here. I mean, if Putin is just a flat. No, I don't know what Trump does. I mean, I really had been imagining that Putin would give Trump an opportunity to pretend that this is going to work. That doesn't seem to be happening, at least not yet.

[Liel Leibovitz]

Look, the past is certainly not an indication of the present, less so of the future. But let us recall that during Trump 1, he started off, say, with the Iranians saying, you know, we should negotiate, we should really see what these guys have to say, etc.

[John Podhoretz]

Etc.

[Liel Leibovitz]

Which was disappointing to a bunch of us. And as soon as he realized that is simply not going to work, Qasem Soleimani was, you know, lying in pieces all over a battlefield. Let us hope that we're seeing a very similar pattern here vis a vis Putin.

[John Podhoretz]

We should talk about Iran because Trump said very interesting stuff about Iran yesterday. He said time is very short and basically said, if Iran doesn't want to come to the table with me, could blow up the nuclear sites, is effectively what he said. He said, time is very short, they cannot be allowed to get a nuclear weapon. They better listen to me and come to the table or some version like that. And yeah, if the mullahs, then, I believe the Khamenei called them retarded yesterday, something like that. Use the Farsi word for retarded. Said he was a fool, whatever, and said, you know, this is all a trick and this is a guy who violates signed deals that are signed and all of that. So maybe we're going to get lucky here. And Trump has put out his hand in some form of hey, let's make a deal. And how many slap is slapping his hand? And then Trump goes, okay, fine, you know what, Kaboom. We just had a little bit of technical difficulty, so I guess we're cutting off our conversation in the middle there. And I'm now going to turn to our guest, Leo Leibovitz, and thank you so much for being with us. For a Commentary recommends.

[Liel Leibovitz]

What a pleasure. As always. You know, these days for some light, fun reading, I'm returning to one of my absolute favorites, the Ambassadors by Henry James, a really surprisingly timely reminder of the hilarity that ensues when straight thinking, morally sound Americans go to the old continent and discover that the Europeans are doing and thinking about things very differently than we do.

[John Podhoretz]

It is the theme. It is his theme, even though he didn't much like living here himself, or.

[Liel Leibovitz]

The Jews, for that matter.

[John Podhoretz]

But that's okay. Yeah, well, you know, so much to say there anyway. But yes, the Ambassadors by Henry James. Remember, there is a break point in the Henry James literature around the 1890s when you could no longer make sense out of a word that he said. But the books written before the 1890s are all, you know, magnificent. So leal, thank you so much. Everybody should obviously read Leo when he writes and listen to LEL's Rootless podcast and read how the Talmud couldn't change your life. And read him when he is in the pages of Commentary. In the pages of Commentary, author of one of the most popular articles we've published the last 10 years, the return of Paganism. So if you haven't read that, just Google the Return of Paganism and you will find Liel an important part of this conversation, actually, as a sort of side measure. So and happy, happy Purim today to all who all who all who celebrate. May you get so drunk that you do not know the difference between Haman and Mordechai. And until tomorrow, for Abe and Christine, I'm John Pothoritz. Keep the candle burn.