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- [00:04]
Abe Greenwald
Hope for the best, expect the worst.
- [00:11]
John Podhoretz
Some preach and pain Some die of thirst the way of knowing which way it's going. Hope for the best, Expect the worst, hope for the best. Welcome to the Commentary magazine daily podcast. Today is Wednesday, February 26, 2025. I'm John Podhoritz, the editor of Commentary magazine. With me, as always, executive editor Abe Greenwald. Hi, Abe.
- [00:37]
Matthew Continetti
Hi, John.
- [00:38]
John Podhoretz
Washington Commentary columnist and director of Domestic Policy Studies at the American Enterprise Institute, Matthew Continetti. Hi, Matt.
- [00:45]
Abe Greenwald
Hi, John.
- [00:45]
John Podhoretz
And our senior editor, Seth Mandel. Hi, Seth.
- [00:48]
Seth Mandel
Hi, John.
- [00:50]
John Podhoretz
So 217 to 215, the House Republicans held together with losing one vote, the vote of the egregious Thomas Massie of Kentucky. Not egregious because of his vote on this, but many other things. Voting against the bill, Donald Trump spending the day apparently calling wavering Republicans to push them to support the bill. The first, it's not, it's not really a bill exactly. It's sort of like an outline of the document of a tax bill, that it's a resolution. It's a resolution that needs to be turned into a bill and then taken up in separate form by the Senate. And then after the, after the House votes on the bill and the Senate votes on its own version of the bill, unless it takes up the House bill, then the two versions, this is how legislation is passed, need to be harmonized and more votes need to be taken to get the bill to final passage to then go to the president's desk. So we are many, many, many steps away from this becoming law. However, as the first challeng the House majority of one or two seats, it happened and it is a political success for Speaker Mike Johnson and for Donald Trump. So, Matt, let's go through what's in the bill, why people would have objected to the bill and how the line that is now being proffered, which is that there's a controversy, there was a controversy inside the House caucus about this bill is belied by the fact that literally one vote was cast against it. Seems like you would have to say that the House Republican caucus is holding together pretty well on this relative, somewhat, maybe somewhat difficult vote, which we can talk about why it's difficult later.
- [02:42]
Abe Greenwald
Well, a few things. I mean, what, what does the bill do? The bill sets out the budget for next year under reconciliation rules. Reconciliation means that you can bypass the Senate filibuster and pass the budget, including tax cuts, with a majority vote in the Senate. What does the budget look like?
- [03:08]
John Podhoretz
Right. So just to explain that reconciliation bill, because it involves the budget for reasons too boring to explain. Unlike other Senate bills, which require 60 votes to close debate.
- [03:23]
Abe Greenwald
Right.
- [03:23]
John Podhoretz
Reconciliation bills can be passed with a simple 51.
- [03:28]
Abe Greenwald
And there are 53 Republican senators. So this would be.
- [03:32]
John Podhoretz
You could lose two senators and still.
- [03:34]
Abe Greenwald
Pass the bill, or three senators because J.D.
- [03:38]
John Podhoretz
Vance can break a 50, 50 tie.
- [03:40]
Abe Greenwald
So what does this bill do? Well, it has the Trump agenda. This is the big, beautiful bill that President Trump and Mike Johnson, the Speaker of the House, have been talking. It includes energy reforms, it includes money for dhs, ice, the border wall. It includes the continuation of the Trump tax cuts from the tax cut of 2017. And it adds to them Trump's populist tax ideas, including no tax on tips, no tax on overtime, and no tax on Social Security. In exchange, it prom some $2 trillion in savings over the course of the 10 year budget window. That's how the federal government in its insanity budgets is not. It's over a 10 year window, not for one year or two years, but 10 years. Those cuts have yet to be determined because again, this is a resolution. A resolution kind of gives you the broad structure and then you fill in the details later. Why did some Republican members of the House conference oppose this bill or say that they were going to oppose this bill? Mainly because, in their view, the bill did not cut enough. Remember, since the Tea party election of 2010, there's been a sizable group within the House Republican Conference that really wants to cut government and is willing to shut down the government or even cross the threshold of the debt ceiling to get substantial cuts. And so there were a few lawmakers at the beginning of yesterday who were still saying, this bill does not cut enough for me. I'm going to oppose it because of Trump's pressure calling and cajoling three Warren Davidson, Tim Burchett and Victoria Sparks basically said, okay, we'll support this bill. And then there was the one holdout, Thomas Massie, who I sometimes wonder, why is he even in Congress? I don't understand what, what his purpose is, except to vote against Israel. Is that what the voters of Kentucky send him to Congress to do? Because otherwise all he does is oppose everything. Everything. It's not, it's nothing constructive. When you're saying, well, I'm just going to oppose everything, what do you get except, oh, I'll oppose everything except resolutions condemning Israel. I mean, I don't understand how that works. In any case, he's a no. He'll be a no on everything. And because of the narrow House majority, you really can Only lose one vote in these things if you want it to pass. But at the end of the day, Trump and Johnson won a big victory. And I just want to make one final point about this narrow majority. I've been thinking a lot about something that Tom Emmer, the House Majority Whip, said before the new Congress began in early January. He said, look, the media, conventional wisdom is that this narrow majority will make it much more difficult for us to pass things. However, Emmer said, it actually makes it easier because if we had a 20 seat majority, well, then it becomes more complicated to cajole everybody. And you have the sense of people cutting side deals or dozens, dozens of people voting against a bill when you have a two or it's like five seats, I think with everybody, if everybody's in Congress, which is not the case right now, if you have a five seat majority, well, then you can really isolate different people and say, okay, really, you're going to be the person who stops Donald Trump from enacting his agenda in the window that he has. And usually first, I mean, this is his second first term. Right. But those types of presidents, recently elected presidents, get what they want in the first year when they're in office.
- [07:48]
John Podhoretz
You know, there's also, I think, the famous, right, the famous quote from the Revolutionary War period when Benjamin Franklin said we must all hang together or we will surely hang right separately. So all, all you're going to get in defeat is the image of a party in tatters, unable to work and enact its will. That might have a powerful centrifugal effect, drawing people into the voting. Because what are they going to go back to the voters with or for? They're not opposing Biden, they're not opposing spending, they're not, they, they're opposing Trump on the one hand. And they will have nothing to come back to voters to say, this is why you sent me here, I did vote.
- [08:35]
Abe Greenwald
And this is the logic, context, this is the logic of the big beautiful bill, which they've always been saying in the House, where you have a wide range of views and you have a significant number of people in the House Freedom Caucus, in the Republican Study Committee who are serious about cutting government. If you were to separate the spending and tax provisions from the energy and immigration provisions, which is what's happening on the other side of the Capitol in the Senate, well, then it's much more likely that you'd have mass exodus of Republicans saying, I'm not going to do this. But when you fuse them together like Johnson did, you're exactly right. It becomes more of a herd. Let's all get together in order to pass it. And so I think that despite the media covering this as barely passed, and it was a close run thing and trouble ahead. Of course, there's always trouble ahead. This is real life. I do think it was a significant victory for Trump and for Johnson.
- [09:38]
John Podhoretz
Okay, so there are two sides of things. Seth and Abe, let's talk about this. Matt and I were talking about this offline last night. So there's a way in which voting for this bill which has very reckless spending ideas, actually Trump's spending ideas. Right. No taxes on tips, no taxes on overtime, no taxes on Social Security payments. The cost, particularly of the latter, the third, is astronomical. Creating a world in which there's no tax on overtime could create bizarre incentives, workplace incentives, in terms of people being hired on weird circumstances and basically hiding income from the federal government, Stuff like that.
- [10:25]
Seth Mandel
Every New York City public employee will be very happy. No taxes on.
- [10:31]
John Podhoretz
There you go. Right. A lot, A lot of. Yeah, anyone on time and a half, you know, suddenly is getting paid time and a half and won't have any taxes on their overtime. Kind of stunning. But on the one hand, you have the question that was raised by Bill Kristol yesterday, which was this gives Democrats a running field to go at Republicans on unpopular provisions in the bill that people can then run against them in 2026 when they run for the House. But I was then thinking, you know, this also works in the opposition. 215 Democrats voted against this bill. I don't know, you're in a district, you want someone to come out and say they voted against, they voted to tax your tips and your overtime. And I would come in and support the Republicans who want to make sure that you are not taxed on your tips or your overtime or your Social Security. They want to raise, they want to lower the amount of money you get from the Social in your Social Security tech, your check by going back and revisiting, visiting it and putting, putting back taxes on your Social Security payments like that. Seems like if you're going to demagogue on the one from the left, you can weigh demagogue on the other from the right. And it's not like there aren't, you know, Trump districts that Democrats are representing. Not many. Yeah.
- [12:03]
Matthew Continetti
I don't see how the party that has been screaming about raising minimum wage forever can now come back, come out and say they're, they, they don't. To pay taxes on your tips.
- [12:17]
John Podhoretz
So I do think that there is, you know, that the politics of this are sort of very, very fluid. But what Matt and I were talking about was the fact that, you know, odds are that Republicans will lose control of the house in 2026 absent a gigantic economic boom or something like that. That really does put the wind in the sails of the right. The fact that they only have two seats to lose and the party in power usually loses seats in the, you know, in the midterms is, you know, just says get what you can get while you can because you're really, once 2027 rolls around, you're, you're dead in the water.
- [12:56]
Abe Greenwald
And so, yeah, that's the motivation of Democrats in 2010 when Nancy Pelosi said we have to pass the bill so you can find out what's in it. And it's what motivated Democrats in 2021 and 2022 when they said we're going to shoot for the moon with build back better and eventually we are going to cajole Joe Manchin into signing on to the Inflation Reduction act, which did not reduce inflation. So this mentality, you know, it's actually Republicans acting like Democrats do. And you know what, Democrats have been pretty effective in getting their agenda through Washington in the last 24 years. Of course, this upsets people who are part of the Beltway crowd a couple rational move.
- [13:43]
Seth Mandel
And it's also something that, you know, Biden, they, Democrats passed enough in the, in the first half of Biden's tenure. They didn't do as badly in the, the midterms went better for them than expected, but they passed bills in the first two years as if they expected the midterms to go worse than that. And they were crowing about, you know, the second coming of FDR and, you know, all this other Stu. So this, you know, you treat yourself like you're term limited. You treat yourself like you're the governor of Virginia instead of a congressman in the majority. And that's, you know, that's, that's a rational way to approach it if, you know, if things are going to almost certainly go a certain way.
- [14:27]
John Podhoretz
Look, I mean, Democrats did better in the 2022 midterms than anybody expected, but.
- [14:31]
Abe Greenwald
They still lost the House. Right. It was really the Senate. It was really the Senate where they overperformed.
- [14:37]
John Podhoretz
Right. And that was about abortion, let's face it. Like, that wasn't about, you know, the.
- [14:42]
Abe Greenwald
Well, it was also about the Trump pitch candidates about Herschel Walker.
- [14:46]
John Podhoretz
Herschel Walker and abortion really, really setting Democratic priorities on fire. But so there is this victory and a couple of other notable things worth discussing. Despite talk over the last week, weird, bizarre talk, doge related talk about the defense budget, the priorities outlined in this budget resolution speak to a significant increase in the defense budget. Despite the, despite the idea that Pete Hegseth or whoever it was said, yes, we're going to cut 8% out of the defense budget.
- [15:21]
Abe Greenwald
Yeah, this is worth remarking on because there seemed to have been some confusion about what those 8% cuts or reprioritizations are. Hagseth came out last week and said it's actually not a cut. We want to identify 8% of the budget that's going toward, you know, the Great Green Fleet, the Navy, or a Biden LGBTQ outreach program in the Pentagon. And we want to take that and we want to put it into things that are aligned with the Trump agenda. I hope that means building more ships more quickly, among other things. And then you have the fact that the Senate was always going to increased defense spending. So real question was, what did the House do? So the fact that the House here in this budget resolution leaves some room for a defense increase is, to my hawkish mind, very positive. There are some outstanding questions, right? I mean, will Trump actually decide that he wants to cut defense in order to, say, make up for the cuts to Medicaid that are promised in this budget resolution? We'll have to see. That's the issue with these resolutions, is the details have to be written out. Two points on that. The first is Medicaid. That's the big thing. The lead story in the New York Times print edition today is Trump's. Trump is going to savage Medicaid. He's going to the poor people won't have any more health care, nursing homes are going to go out of business. That's going to be a big fight. And we'll see what happens there. And the second point that I think is worth thinking about is that, you know, how does this math end up working? And are Republicans able to kind of get by with some promised cuts that may not actually materialize, but are there in order to get this, this narrow margin across when the bill is finally written and just finally, we still have to fund the government for the rest of the year. So there are so many trains running in so many different directions, it can be kind of confusing. But the train that just left this most recent station that's headed for next year's budget and solving the coming fiscal cliff we face in December when the Trump tax cuts expire. But we also have coming up in Two weeks, the end of the continuing resolution that's funding the government right now. And so Johnson has to pivot. He has to now move toward, oh, what are we going to do with the federal government between March 15 and September 30, the end of the government fiscal year. And that's going to be a whole new debate. And on top of that, we have Trump saying this might be a good moment to raise the debt ceiling, which America is going to hit sometime in kind of mid spring, late spring. So for I, I predict that actually we're going to stop talking about reconciliation for the next month or so, and we're going to begin talking about an entirely different subject, which is whether we can prevent a government shutdown.
- [18:37]
John Podhoretz
Look, Trump is an unconventional politician who's breaking the China and does whatever he wants to do. And Republicans are very much against this in theory, because it's so fiscally irresponsible. But I think Trump is going to go for the idea that the debt ceiling should go away. The debt ceiling is supposedly in place as a form of discipline on government spending to force people to vote to increase the debt ceiling and not to have it automatically increased as the debt goes up, so that they're on record as saying, yes, I agree to this, and so maybe they'll be shamed. However it was that the debt ceiling increases became this football. It would take a Republican president to be the one to say, let's, let's get rid of it. I suspect he will do that. This is sort of like a axiomatic thing that, that Republicans have supported as a way of controlling or containing Democrats and their hunger for spending. But now there is a president, Republican president, who has a comparable hunger to spend and then wants to use these cosmetic cuts that he's finding with Doge as a cover to do this wild increase in the deficit that is represented by those three provisions that we talked about. No tips on taxes, no tips on overtime, and no taxing Social Security. He needs stuff to say, look, hey, squirrel, over here, I just got $20 million out of this horrible DEI program at the Department of Education. And that may suffice to satisf populist Republican yearnings, but we'll also fill the.
- [20:25]
Seth Mandel
Coffers with mineral deposits from Ukraine now that the deal has been agreed to. Future revenue from mineral deposits that have yet to be dug, but maybe that will balance out the budget as well.
- [20:38]
Abe Greenwald
I will just caution, though, that it's going to be hard for Republicans in the House to vote to abolish the debt ceiling, no matter how much Donald Trump might want it. And remember, he raised this at the end of December before he took office. But when he was in that weird state of quasi presidency, you know, he was like in chrysalis. It was kind of a weird metamorphosis he undertook from the election to his actual inauguration. But at that point, too, he was trying. He intervened in the debate over the continuing resolution we have right now that's active right now and said, oh, just get rid of the debt ceiling. And Johnson, I believe, had to explain to him that the votes are not there for that. There is still this massive group within the Republican conference. It's not a majority of the conference, but it's definitely a significant number and able to shift votes that believes that America is headed toward a fiscal crisis of terrible proportion. And so we have to cut spending right now. I think they have a pretty good argument, but the problem is that it's very hard to cut spending, especially with the majority that they have.
- [21:53]
John Podhoretz
We are, we are headed toward a debt crisis of colossal proportions and we are not going to cut spending. So that's just, that's an axis.
- [22:05]
Seth Mandel
Well, and they also, they also have only one seat because they're hoping to put Elise Stefanik at the UN and she can't leave. She sort of, you know, tie chained to her to her desk on Capitol Hill until they get the votes they need from. So, you know, at a certain period, they're down a vote, but we'll have to hold the hold.
- [22:31]
Abe Greenwald
Right now. Right now, they're fighting with Governor Hochul over the scheduling of the special election to replace Elise Stefanik. But you're absolutely right, Seth. At this point, Stefanik cannot actually proceed in the nomination to become our representative at the United Nations.
- [22:50]
John Podhoretz
But for her, that she wasn't there to be the person to cast, have to do that. The vote from the other day against condemning Russia's Ukrainian.
- [23:03]
Abe Greenwald
I mean, she would have cast. She would have cast the vote if she was.
- [23:05]
John Podhoretz
She would have, but she didn't have to. So she is now her hands are clean.
- [23:09]
Abe Greenwald
Remember, remember, Jean Kirkpatrick really regretted having to cast the vote condemning Israel for the Osiric attack. Yes. But she did it anyway.
- [23:18]
John Podhoretz
Well, I mean, if that, if that's the administration's priorities.
- [23:21]
Abe Greenwald
Exactly.
- [23:21]
John Podhoretz
The administration's priorities are.
- [23:22]
Abe Greenwald
So, yeah, so at the moment, she's definitely going to be there, I think, for the next couple of months. You want to get government funded through the end of the fiscal year, if possible. And then if you need that vote in June, I think in order to set the course for America on energy, immigration and taxes for the next 10 years, you'll need her there as well.
- [23:50]
John Podhoretz
This is, by the way, the Stefan. The problem with Stefanik is the problem with the unconventional president who doesn't follow the rules and all of that, which is that gaming out that this would be the situation with Stefanik would have been something that would have been the first order of business when talking about staffing the cabinet in November. Despite the fact that everybody on our side was deliriously happy that she got the UN and you know, ordinary administration would say, well, you know, we got, we got a two seat majority in the House and she's in a seat whose successor election is in the hands of a hack Democrat who is herself in real trouble for her own reelection and is not going to do us any favors and right now is trying.
- [24:41]
Abe Greenwald
To arrest corrections officers.
- [24:43]
John Podhoretz
Yes, she's trying to arrest. Yes, yes. That's a big story here in New York, the guards. But by the way, there is a.
- [24:51]
Seth Mandel
Wildcat and whose own lieutenant governor just abandoned her.
- [24:54]
John Podhoretz
Yes, there was a wildcat strike in New York of prison guards and Hochul is fun, fun for a Democrat to go after a public sector union, it's amazing. But they're striking because they want changes to the law.
- [25:13]
Abe Greenwald
Yeah.
- [25:14]
John Podhoretz
That endangered them, protect them. Because there were all anti carceral laws passed in 2019.
- [25:21]
Abe Greenwald
Pro criminal policies have led to making assaults on prison guards.
- [25:26]
John Podhoretz
Yeah, yeah. And they want the law changed. And so she's now having to hunt them there, use the National Guard to go into prisons. It's like, it's like the state of New York. Yeah, yeah. So, yeah. Good luck to Kathy Hochul in 2026 is all I can say. God's sake. Anyway, but I do think that this is one of those moments where as I say, a conventional political administration coming in, looking at the order of battle would have said we can't be appointing people from the House so easily to the Congress with this margin. Like it's just not safe. We are endangering much more important that we have a working House majority for two years. And I mean she's not the only member of the House who got appointed to the.
- [26:15]
Abe Greenwald
Mike Waltz, of course is Mike Waltz.
- [26:17]
John Podhoretz
Security advisor and Secretary of Agriculture, I think was a House.
- [26:22]
Abe Greenwald
No. Brooke Rollins, she ran.
- [26:24]
John Podhoretz
I can't remember. There's one other. But you know, so they actually did.
- [26:28]
Seth Mandel
Pull now and presumably Trump can understand that. He needs Stefanik in the House more than he needs like he, I Don't.
- [26:35]
Abe Greenwald
Think there's any rush.
- [26:36]
John Podhoretz
I mean, no, there's no rush. Except like, you know, I'm sure she would rather be living in the beautifully appointed apartment on the Upper east side that the UN in the Waldorf Astoria. Well, it's not anymore. Oh, not anymore, I think, because the Waldorf closed. I don't know where it is now. But. But yes, I was once in that. I was several times in that luxuriously appointed gigantic apartment in the Waldorf Astoria for the you that the UN Ambassador lived in. And let me tell you, that was. That was one posting you desperately want.
- [27:08]
Abe Greenwald
Can I just say that in her speech to CPAC last week, Representative Stefanik pledged that she would bring Doge to the United Nations. And I have to say, despite all the controversy surrounding doge in D.C. and on this podcast, I wholeheartedly support taking, taking the Doge ax to the United Nations. Oh, good to hear you tell me.
- [27:32]
Seth Mandel
Five things you did last week, Secretary General.
- [27:34]
John Podhoretz
Yeah, but by the way, taking Doge to the UN And Doge to the Doge to the Department of Education, Linda McMahon had her hearing the other day and said, yes, I'm for abolishing this department, which by the way, I don't know why that should be controversial. Republicans have, since the creation of the Department of Education.
- [27:54]
Abe Greenwald
Reagan, Reagan tried to do it and.
- [27:57]
John Podhoretz
Most platforms, I mean, I think Bush kind of like soft pedaled it because he didn't want it to get in the way of the no Child Left Behind. But it has been part of Republican doctrine for two generations that the Department of Education is unnecessary and should be abolished. So the fact that Trump is saying it too, and that his secretary, his nominee for, would say it as well, should not be controversial at all, particularly given the horrors that have emerged from that department under Obama and Biden in particular. But that's.
- [28:28]
Matthew Continetti
I just want to second Matt's endorsement for Doge at the UN And I'd like Musk to go about it with the same carelessness and recklessness too. That wouldn't bother me either. But I want to say the flip side of that is it is sort of nice to be talking about the big beautiful bill right now because it has nothing to do with any of the, with the series of stunts that we have been subjected to over the past two weeks or so. This is sort of, you know, watching an administration at a party.
- [29:02]
Abe Greenwald
It's how Congress works, right? Yeah, it's how things work. As John opened up the podcast, How a Bill Becomes Law. And of course, if the reconciliation bill does pass this year. It's the law. And we will maintain our current tax rates and there will be, I mean, accountants will have like a full employment plan because they're going to have to figure out what's overtime, what's tips. You know, John, I've been thinking, I actually think my compensation for working for Commentary could be in the form of a tip, a gratuity, you know, and it could range over time. I'll just, that's a conversation you and I can have. And then me and my financial advisor. Right. So that's, that's going to happen. But it will be the law. It won't be subject to Biden and Obama appointed judges who just got in their district court offices last year and are now champing at the bit in order to say that their resistance figures to Trump and Musk. It will be the law.
- [30:02]
John Podhoretz
One point to make about the law is it gets to what you were talking about about Hegseth's priorities at the Defense Department. It sounds great to say you want to reprioritize spending so that X dollars that are going to X ships should go to Y ships. Most of that is spelled out in legislation. And legislation would have to be rewritten or the defense appropriations or whatever would have to be redone to reflect those priorities and be voted on again. You. It's not fungible. Like, that's not, that's part of the complication of doge that I think we're going to find over the next six weeks. It will slow down in this sense, which is that so much of where the actual major spending is in the federal government is either not discretionary, meaning you can't just cut it, or is appropriated by law by Congress. And you can't just say. Or there may be a huge either. If you want to say we're not going to spend it. That then raises constitutional questions about the Impoundment act, about rescission, things that have not been revisited in 50 years since Watergate, but will be. It probably should be.
- [31:21]
Abe Greenwald
Yeah. And will be in the next.
- [31:22]
John Podhoretz
But that's one that's not spending the money. Right. The other thing that people talk about, which is, yeah, I don't want to spend it on this, I want to spend it on that. You can't just do that. There are policy things that are going on that we learned in part in the first Trump administration that the president can reprioritize. For example, there does seem to be an effort by some of these resistance judges you're mentioning to stymie or change some of the ways that he is attempting to deal with illegal aliens. And the border crisis and the national security Act of 1952 gives the President and other pieces of legislation give the enormous latitude over immigration and border policy that was adjudicated in 2017. These judges are now violating the decisions that were made then that found these things in part by the Supreme Court. And they're going to get shot down. They're just putting. They're just gumming up the works. But that's not spending. Right. That's actually what is in the president's discretion as the commander in chief, to do less clear that, that the defense budget is a gigantic domestic jobs program, 75% of it is a jobs program. Policies or decisions are made to put things where they're done in order to support specific senators and congressmen in their districts and the. And the jobs and the things that they do in their districts.
- [32:57]
Abe Greenwald
I mentioned on Monday that I thought it was interesting that the first substantive challenge to Doge's authority occurred over the weekend when Trump Cabinet secretaries told their employees not to respond to the OPM email asking what the federal employees had done the previous week. And I do think that as these Cabinet officials are installed and the Senate has been making rapid progress filling out Trump's Cabinet, and you're going to see more Cabinet officials with the authority granted to them by the United States Senate in the confirmation say we have to respect the chain of command. I know this came up on the podcast yesterday, so that's one area of potential, kind of.
- [33:52]
John Podhoretz
By the way, just not to interrupt, but there is going to be a Cabinet meeting. The first Cabinet meeting.
- [33:55]
Abe Greenwald
Well, I was getting to that.
- [33:56]
John Podhoretz
I'm sorry. Go ahead.
- [33:58]
Abe Greenwald
So that's one break is the Cabinet official, another break is the Congress. What we're hearing from the. At least the House Republican conference lunch yesterday, and probably some similar things are happening on the Senate side, is that Congressmen are starting to say, you know, it would help if Elon Musk communicated to us beforehand what he was doing. You know, this is all very improvisational and quick. For example, the Doge dividend, which was Musk's idea last week. This idea, oh, well, we're not actually going to save the money from the Doge contract cancellations. We're going to rebate it to the taxpayer. Trump likes this idea. Oh, it's a populist idea, but for people in Congress who are fiscal hawks, it's like, no, I thought the point was to save the money, not to just give it out I mean, that's not the right public policy from the fiscal hawk point of view. So that's another area where I think you might begin to see some tension between Republicans and Doge. And then finally, yes, we have this Cabinet meeting scheduled for 11am Wednesday morning after we finish the podcast. And all the legal Eagles in Washington, D.C. and political junkies are very curious about where Elon Musk is positioned in the Cabinet room and whether he speaks and if he's wearing sunglasses and if he brings his chainsaw. That's, we're all paying attention to how he interacts with the Cabinet at today's.
- [35:40]
John Podhoretz
Meeting and whether the Cabinet, I mean, the Cabinet is biting back. And it's interesting because these are all ambitious people. Like everyone who is, everyone who was serving in the Cabinet is somebody who woke up from the time they were 8 years old saying, I want to be President of the United States. And having this guy come in from outside who never faced a voter, hasn't served in public office before, hasn't done anything, but is very rich and very reckless and very powerful and very creative and very loudmouthy, coming in and bigfooting you when you've been waiting your whole life for this chance. You know, I mean, they, they're, they're, it's not gonna sit comfortably with them. It's one thing to get it from Trump, they, that they understand.
- [36:32]
Seth Mandel
Well, they also, they also have polls and focus groups on their side because the most recent focus groups are having, are responding. The respondents are saying, I like Trump, I like what he's doing. I approve of this. And then they ask you about Musk and they go, that guy's a bit of a doofus. And I'm kind of starting to find him annoying.
- [36:51]
John Podhoretz
Yeah. And he's a drunk.
- [36:52]
Seth Mandel
Almost the way we talk about, right? Like, he's overexposed. He's everywhere. Like, it's enough already. They are able to, the focus groups have been able to differentiate between Trump, slash Trump's agenda and Musk. And you know how they personally see him. And that is going to help his Cabinet secretaries also, because everybody that works for those Cabinet secretaries would rather report to the Cabinet secretary than to weird DOGE and OPM emails on a Saturday night.
- [37:22]
John Podhoretz
So let me tell you my one quick story from my time in government, then we can move on, because it's obviously not Doge, but I was briefly in 1989, an official of a newly created very hot cross agency effort that was the drug czar, right? The Office of National Drug Control Policy created by one Joe Biden in the crime bill of 1988. That was his. The idea was, somebody needs to coordinate drug policy. 56 agencies were involved in dealing with illegal drugs. Create a czar's office inside the White House. Congressionally funded, mandated to coordinate. And Bill Bennett was appointed the head of the drug czar's office. And I worked as a special assistant to Bennett. And one of the first things that we did was make appointments with all these agencies that were dealing with the illegal drug problem. And we delegate. There weren't. There were, like, five of us working in this office, sort of like Doge, and we would sort of trap. You know, we would, like, traipse over to some agency's office and sit in a conference room and have a conversation with them about what it was. Basically like, what is it you do here? We would say to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms or something like that. The loathing and detestation on the faces of these officials, some of whom were lifetime, were civil servants who had been there for a lifetime, some of whom were political appointees who had been kept over from Reagan to Bush or were hoping to stay on or whatever. And it was like, who the hell are you to come in to my office and ask me what it is that I do, right? Who, you little pipsqueak? I mean, fair. I was 27 years old. I was a pipsqueak. And so were a bunch of us.
- [39:28]
Seth Mandel
Those guys, except for Mustard, those guys are younger than that.
- [39:31]
John Podhoretz
We didn't know anything, right? Bill didn't know. Didn't know much. He had been Secretary of Education. We didn't know anything. And they were like, we are going to chew you up and spit you out and leave you like a husk on the sidewalk. And even a meeting with Richard Thornburg, who is the newly installed Attorney General, had this quality of him sort of staring Bennett down. And he kept calling Bennett, heed, okay, keed, here's how we do things here in this. In this government, that kind of thing. And after, like, four or five of these meetings, I was like, this office is a misbegotten. This is one of the most misbegotten ideas that the world has ever seen. And I got the hell out of there and went back to journalism like it was. It was really not a good scene. Doge obviously comes in. Musk is a. You know, Musk is a phenomenon in his own right. Doge is coming in with the full endorsement of the President, who is enjoying that. Musk is taking fire. But it's Kind of the same thing. It's like, yeah, okay, you go in, you look at our payroll records. It's like, okay, you're not looking at our payroll records anymore. You know, we were kind of dazed there. And you were also doing this in the interregnum between who was ever running aid and who was going to run aid in the future. So you kind of had a free shot. But you're not coming into my HHS and like going through my records. Get out of here with your backpack.
- [40:58]
Abe Greenwald
I haven't heard Bobby Kennedy resist Musk, right? He's.
- [41:02]
John Podhoretz
Well, but remember the HHS told people said, right, don't answer the email, don't answer the email. And you can't look at financial records, right, because they are, there are massive privacy issues involving records at hhs, which, which involve HIPAA and, and, and, you know, secure information about people and their medical conditions and financial stuff. So.
- [41:30]
Seth Mandel
And Musk, Musk has a habit of tweeting what he finds. But also this is why there was some pressure for Trump to name the head of Doge.
- [41:37]
John Podhoretz
Yes.
- [41:38]
Seth Mandel
Is behind. Like, who is this? And so, you know, he has a name and this person was apparently on vacation or something and was caught a bit off guard. But, but this is, this, you know, part of this is formalizing this and saying like, okay, you have to treat this as if it were this floating agency with power that it does have. So it needs somebody running it, it needs somebody accountable for us to go to. We need a name, you know, so that, you know, they're also pushing it to sort of, you know, formalize into a, into a concrete thing which is going to slow it down just by its very nature.
- [42:16]
John Podhoretz
So I want to move on to something vastly more somber and vastly more upsetting with political and geopolitical ramifications. So Israel, of course over the weekend received the bodies of. Not only did six hostages come out, but last week and then over the weekend bodies of hostages. And there are, I think another. Is it four that are supposed to come from Egypt tomorrow. And today in Israel's afternoon were the funeral. Yesterday was the funeral for. Why am I forgetting? Because Lifshutz, oded lifshutz, the 81 year old peace activist and kibbutznik. And today was the mass funeral for Shiri Ariel and Kfir Bibas, the family murdered. And if you go and look at the footage of this, hundreds of thousands of Israelis, 10% or 20% of the country following in train, following the coffins behind as they did a processional to the funeral. I'm going to do something a little unconventional here. I want to read. I want to read two different eulogies. One is the eulogy by Yocheved Lifshitz, the wife of. The wife of Oded, if I can find it, because I had it here and then here it is. So the Lifshas were, as I say, peace activists. They lived in Neros and they. They were working to help Gazans and teach them how to do things and teach them how to farm and teach them and, and. And they were betrayed obviously by Gazans living on Neros, who provided the layouts of the kibbutzes for them to. For the Hamas Niks and everybody to invade and murder as many people as possible. Yocheved herself was taken hostage, but was released, I believe in last year, in the first 80 people who were released. And here is what she said at the funeral of her husband. Quote, Our abduction and your death have shaken me deeply. All these years we fought for social justice and for peace. Sadly, we received a severe blow from the people we helped on the other side. I stand here stunned seeing the number of graves and the terrible destruction of our community, which was completely abandoned on October 7th. Our hostages remain chained, starved and tortured underground in Gaza for over 500 days. It is possible to bring everyone back now in a single exchange. I will continue on our path and continue the struggle to free the hostages down to the very last one. In the apartment where I now live. A new piano has been waiting for a year. I so longed to hear you play once more in your special way with your great talent. Reality slaps me in the face and the pain is immense. Now you'll hear in this, if you analyze it closely, that the political message is we should get the hostages out no matter what. We can do it in a single exchange. That would require a permanent ceasefire in the. According to the terms of phase two, the kind of withdrawal of Israeli troops from Gaza, which unfortunately, which is not going to happen, and the attack on the government which is legitimate that that near us and these other places were abandoned on October 7, which is of course something that Yoav Gallant when, when. When Yoav Gallant went to tour the kibbutzim, the defense minister of Israel went to tour it on October 8th. Woman said to him, where were you? Where are you? Where were you? And the area had not yet been pacified. By the way, it was three days before Hamas was cleared from the Gaza envelope in Israel. So that is a remarkable speech. Seth and I, you were talking about you and I Were talking about this online. That though it's very short and it does not, it's not really ideological, it has a little bit about it. The scales are dropping from my eyes. Quality of the Khrushchev destalinization speech, right? Because this lifelong person who dedicated her life to this idea of peaceful coexistence with Hamas is saying, look what I have. Reality has slapped me in the face.
- [47:17]
Seth Mandel
It's, it's the sort of thing that you would be, if you were just a commentator in the media, you would be criticized for saying the same thing because it would be co opting the pain and the tragedy of these families, of these hostage families and everything that they've been through for what are seen as political ends and parts of arguments for the future and not for now anyway, that is, is there going to be a Palestinian state? What does it mean? What does all this mean for the future? Whatever, one thing at a time. But when you have Oded Levchitz's wife say it at his funeral, it costures it a bit for public consumption. Right? It's out there now and it is not out there. It is out there as a non politicization of the issue. It is out there as a legitimate subject of discussion. And people have tiptoed around it out of respect for the hostages, but also because it's been very difficult to know what will offend some people and not other. Right. There's different hostage forums, two different main hostage forums. They have very different tones in their statements, they have very different demands of the government and they have very different aims for the war. And so sometimes it's hard to navigate that what do the hostages, what do the hostage families think or what do the hostage families families want? It does not have one answer. And as soon as it's put out there by hostage families, it makes it easier to have a discussion about it and to say it. And so there's a certain amount of transparency now in the, in the public discussion where people can now say everything that they wanted to say and everything that they think about the discussion. The debate is not as constricted. At the same time, you know, Bibi Netanyahu has come under a certain amount of criticism for how public all this stuff has been and some of the knowledge that's been made public.
- [49:31]
John Podhoretz
Well, let me. Right, let me move on, okay? Because the Bibas family, so Shiri Bibas's sister came out and said the government should shut up. It's revealing information about the condition of my late sister and my, my nephews that are really private to us, and we do not appreciate that people know what happened to them physically, and they should. And because I think there's more that hasn't been said. She was trying to cut it off at the past to say no more, say no more. Which means we don't want to. Actually, we don't need to know more. It's probably too unspeakable even to think about, but I now this is going to take a little longer. Yarden Vibas, the surviving father and husband, also a hostage, delivered his eulogy to his wife and sons today, and I'm gonna read it. It's gonna take a while. Mi amor. I remember the first time I said mi amor to you. It was at the very beginning of our relationship. You told me to only call you that if I was certain I loved you, not to say it carelessly. I didn't say it then because I didn't want you to think I was rushing to say, I love you. Shiri, I'll confess to you now that I already loved you back then when I said mi amour. Shiri, I love you and will always love you. Shiri, you are everything to me. You are the best wife and mother there could be. Shiri, you are my best friend. Mish. Mish, which is an endearment in Hebrew, who will help me make decisions now. How am I supposed to make decisions without you? Do you remember our last decision together in the safe room? I asked if we should fight or surrender. You said fight, so I fought. Shiri, I'm sorry I couldn't protect you all. If only I had known what would happen, I wouldn't have fired. I think about everything we went through together. There are so many beautiful memories. I remember Ariel and Kefir's births. I remember the days we would sit at home or in a cafe, just the two of us talking for hours about everything under the sun. It was wonderful. I miss those times deeply. Your presence is profoundly missed. I want to tell you about everything that's happening in the world and here in Israel. Shiri, Everyone knows and loves us. You can't imagine how surreal all this madness is. Shiri. People tell me they'll always be by my side, but they're not you. So please stay close to me and don't go far. Shiri, this is the closest I've been to you since October 7th. And I can't kiss or hug you, and it's breaking me. Shiri, please watch over me, protect me from bad decisions, shield me from harmful things and Protect me from myself. Guard me so I don't sink into darkness. Mishmish, I love you. Ariel, you made me a father. You transformed us into a family. You taught me what truly matters in life and about responsibility. The day you were born, I matured instantly because of you. You, who taught me so much about myself. And I want to thank you. So thank you, my beloved Ariel. I hope you're not angry with me for failing to protect you properly and for not being there for you. I hope you know I thought about you every day, every minute. I hope you're enjoying paradise. I'm sure you're making all the angels laugh with your silly jokes and impressions. I hope there are plenty of butterflies for you to watch, just like you did during our picnic. Be careful when you climb down from your cloud, not to step on Tony. Teach Kefir all your impressions and make everyone laugh up there. Ariel, I love you the most in the world. Always in the world. Just as you used to tell us. Pupik. Kfir, I didn't think our family could be more perfect. And then you came and made it even more perfect. I remember your birth. I remember during the delivery when the midwife suddenly stopped everything. We were frightened and thought something was wrong, but it was just to tell us we had another redhead. Mom and I laughed and rejoiced. You brought more light and happiness to our little home. You came with your sweet, captivating laugh and smile, and I was instantly hooked. It was impossible not to nibble on you all the time. Kefir, I'm sorry I didn't protect you better. But I need you to know that I love you deeply and miss you terribly. I miss nibbling on you and hearing your laughter. I miss our morning games when mom would ask me to watch you before I went to work. I cherish those little moments so much, and I miss them now more than ever. Kefir, I love you most in the world. Always in the world. I have so many more things to tell you all, but I'll save them for when we're alone. Over the next week, Israel has very, very large decisions to make about phase two remaining hostages. Word that Hamas is regrouping, that they're re. They're going back into the tunnels. Things like that. Tough decisions are going to have to be made. Havi Redigur, our friend, Israeli commentator, has basically said, after. After today, all bets are off. There's no way. There's no way to say that Hamas can't now be utterly destroyed and that this has to be the primary mission and that everything else needs to be subsidiary. I don't know what this is going to do with the Israeli body politics, whether these eulogies and this event is going to make it more thinkable for them to say we have to end this now, we can't go on, or whether it's going to say we have to do whatever we can to move heaven and earth to get whoever is still in there. It is important to note that who remains in Gaza are men of military age. And though this is a horrible thing to say and was not the case in other hostage exchanges, particularly Gilad Shalit's exchange, there is a moral difference between a soldier being taken and other people being taken. Soldier is in combat or is a combatant, and therefore this might be viewed as a sacrifice necessary in war that you wouldn't, you know, stop an entire battle because of one person if that battle needed to be fought. But that's not a decision for, for me to make. But I just don't think that the status quo is sustainable, that the, the piddling, piddling out the hostages in a ceasefire manner like this can, will be satisfying. Yocheved Lifsha said everybody should come out at once now, Now. Anybody have any thoughts on the next week?
- [56:40]
Abe Greenwald
Steve Witkoff is going to the region at the end of the week. President Trump, of course, has said that Israel can do what it wants. It has his green light. The decisions are up to Netanyahu and the government. I think that the, the best resource to think about what might happen is, and this is my recommendation for the day, Dan Senor's Call Me Back podcast issue, a episode that dropped just the other day prior to these eulogies with the Israeli journalist Amit Seagal. It's very good. It's 35 minutes, so it's, you know, you can listen to it in one sitting. And I would say that public opinion may be shaped by these eulogies, but the essential dilemma remains, which is that the Israeli public wants the hostages home and they also want to defeat Hamas. And I think what happened to the Bibas family only hardens the determination to destroy Hamas. The question is, is when? And can some further hostage releases be negotiated before that. But I do think this completely ends the idea of a phase two to the negotiation and also completely ends the idea of a Palestinian state. And if anything, makes the Trump plan more likely than even, even before.
- [58:21]
John Podhoretz
One other podcast that, that Dan did earlier, before the Emmy Seagal podcast, is with my, my, my dear friend Andrew Roberts, the British historian and war historian Also very well worth listening to and wrote a piece for the, for the Free Press on this subject. But, but no, I think for the Free Beacon.
- [58:42]
Abe Greenwald
Free Beacon and then the Free Press sometimes.
- [58:44]
John Podhoretz
Right, yeah, reprints, that's right. But basically that you can't have mass population transfers after, after a lost war is absolutely ahistorical. They've had, they have have happened dozens, if not hundreds of times in the course of world history. And this would just be another one of them. One does not allow the defeated party to dictate the terms of the conditions under which it lives after, after its defeat. Those terms are dictated to it and it takes them and it sees what it can do to, to recover and recoup.
- [59:17]
Abe Greenwald
I would say just one detail from this Amit Seagal interview that I found really interesting. He said that the average age of the new Hamas soldier, these recruits that Hamas has gained to backfill the losses of its military brigades, which essentially it had at the beginning of the war, the average age of these new recruits recruits is 16 and a half years old. They're kids and they don't have the weapons and the technology that they have or the training or the training that Hamas had at the beginning of the war. So should the war resume, it's Seagal's belief that actually Israel could make great military gains. He thinks about Hamas is about maybe 50%, 60% depleted from where it was in the war, and a resumption of the conflict could bring that up even higher. He says. And so I think that, that having the green light from Trump, the Israeli government, far from me to prescribe policy, it needs to take seriously the idea that this war needs to begin again. Also, he points out, because of the ceasefire in Lebanon and the separation of the Hezbollah cause from the Hamas cause, there are now more Israeli forces that could be used in Gaza and they are somewhat rested as well. And so this could deal some crushing blows to this evil organization.
- [60:46]
Matthew Continetti
And also finally, and also because of Trump, Israel has the weapons, the flow of weapons.
- [60:52]
John Podhoretz
Exactly the final point, which is the voice that is not heard, interestingly enough though it is the mass voice of Israel is the voice of the hundreds of thousands of families that have, have members who will go in to combat against Hamas if the war resumes. By which I mean the sooner the bet for them to prevent casualties for active duty soldiers and reservists, you want Hamas as far back on its back foot as it possibly can. The longer they stretch out, the longer the effective ceasefire is in place, the more dangerous it is. For the Israelis who have to fight that those people, my sister, have not had that much of a voice in this conversation. They have been morally trumped by. And they themselves of course also feel deep reservoirs of sympathy and also have the capacity to empathize in the sense that what happens if their kids are taken hostage during the war? And then what will they want the government to do? But they also don't want to be killed in combat. And I've told this story before. My nephew was in an ambush in October when the war seemed to be petering out. His convoy was ambushed. Three of his closest friends were killed out of the. There were 10 of them on this convoy. And this was as the war was drawing down and it looked like they had basically, you know, achieved most of their aims. In Rafah that could still be the case like so you've got to get onto the battlefield when the conditions are most favorable to you. And Hamas will be using this Israeli feeling about the hostages as a time staller to get to train those 16 and a half year olds at the very least to strap, you know, bombs on their bodies. Hamas is not a suicide. Hamas doesn't, is not the suicide bombing aspect that they're. That's a military organization and they want people to come back and fight another day. But you know, you don't have the.
- [63:24]
Abe Greenwald
Rockets but they have those Kalashnikovs that they, they brandish at these disgusting Hostage transfer.
- [63:31]
Seth Mandel
That's why at the hostage transfer state we have seen the. Some of the things they've done such as showing signs of life of other hostages by tormenting them.
- [63:41]
John Podhoretz
Yeah.
- [63:42]
Seth Mandel
With the scene of people who are not them being freed right in front of them. That's a message to Israel and to Israelis to tug heartstrings and to and.
- [63:51]
John Podhoretz
Remember there is an American is still in America. Adon Alexander is still still in, in captivity. So we will be back tomorrow. From Matt, Seth and Abe, I'm John Pothor. It's keep the candle.