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- [00:04]
Jon Podhoretz
Hope for the best, expect the worst.
- [00:11]
Dan Senor
Some preach and pain Some die of.
- [00:14]
Matthew Continetti
Thirst the way of knowing which way.
- [00:18]
Jon Podhoretz
It'S going Hope for the best Expect the worst hope for the best welcome to the Commentary magazine daily podcast. Today is Thursday, June 26, 2025. I am Jon Pod Hortz, the editor of Commentary magazine. Before we get started, I want to announce for the first time on the podcast that yes, we have our 2025 commentary roast, our annual roast coming up on October 19th here in New York City. And the Roasty is somebody who is likely not particularly well known to you, but is a major figure in American finance and American econometrics and economic thinking. A member of Commentary's board, a hilarious guy. His name is Cliff Asness and he will be roasted by, among other people, Jonah Goldberg. And our guest today, whom I'm going to get to in a minute. They'll be comedians, they'll be musicians. It's a party. It's the. It's the event of the year in New York. Go to the Commentary website. You'll see the word roast at the top of the page. You can click on that or go to commentary.org roast to find out more. October 19th here in New York City. And I'm going to get to who everybody is, beginning with executive editor Abe Greenwald. Hi, Abe.
- [01:44]
Abe Greenwald
Hi, John.
- [01:45]
Jon Podhoretz
Washington, Commentary columnist Matthew Continetti. Hi, Matt.
- [01:47]
Unnamed Speaker
Hi, John.
- [01:48]
Jon Podhoretz
And joining us today, a previous common. I'm sorry, I hate this. I apologize. A previous Commentary Roasty, a man who generated a lot of dollars for that 501c3 commentary. So this is a challenge to Cliff Asness to see whether he can do.
- [02:10]
Dan Senor
I broke all.
- [02:12]
Jon Podhoretz
Host of the Call Me Back podcast, known to everybody as the. And the author of our June cover story that we entitled the Future of American jewelry after October 7, co author of the Genius of Israel and Startup Nation, Dan Senor again, record numbers. So this is a challenge to Clifford Asness, our friend, our Roasty. Is he going to let Senor hold that mantle or will he best him with his friends helping us generate those tables that make the roast worthwhile? Anyway, Dan, welcome as usual to the podcast.
- [02:51]
Dan Senor
Thank you, John. I cannot, I refuse to believe that you have to put out a like caveat that many of you may not know Cliff Asness, because in my world, nobody doesn't know Cliff Asness. And if you don't know if you're one of those, like tiny percentage of people fall into that category that don't know him, just after you listen to this podcast this morning just pop onto X and just search for cliff as this and just scroll through cliffs stream. I mean pick your like just over the last like year. Just pick a time period and I promise you you will leave X after doing that and want to know why you can't order your buy your seats right now for the cliff as.
- [03:31]
Jon Podhoretz
That is absolutely. That is absolutely right.
- [03:33]
Dan Senor
So much material.
- [03:34]
Jon Podhoretz
So much, so much. And by the way, also material, excuse me, on our economy, on the Fed, on how things work in this way. That is unbelievably intellectually serious and profound. And he is a hilarious. And he's hilarious and he is a, you know, he is a guy takes you into the corner and does the, and does the, you know, the body punching that, that needs to be done. Anyway, that's commentary.org roast or go to the Commentary website, click on Roast. Dan Cenor, of course, the Call Me Back podcast. One of the great success stories of the last two years in podcasting. Way up in the Apple charts, everybody comes to you to find out what's going on in Israel on a twice weekly basis. So, so much has happened. I don't want. In just the last 24 hours, the Israelis are slowly trying to put meat on the bones of the idea that the raid on the three nuclear sites was as groundbreaking and history altering as the first claims were by Donald Trump on Saturday night. I'm sorry, bits and pieces of leaks or little bits of indications that are coming out of Israeli intelligence. It's not like them to do that. They're not that good at making the public case for intelligence successes because they are so protective of their agents and their sources and their methods and they do not want people to know. There's a little controversy over the last six, eight hours where somebody said the Israelis know what's going on because they had, they had boots on the ground around the Fordo facility. And then somebody went, whoa, whoa, whoa, no, we didn't, we weren't there. I don't know whether that means that they were there and they're trying to back off anybody knowing that they were there or if they weren't there, that they were darting in and out of Azerbaijan somehow to find out. I don't know. But like, it's not their leaking is not there. Weirdly enough, leaking is not their strong suit on intelligence matters. But they are, they seem very determined as the days pass to say we did it and they did it and that this strike was successful. And I don't just think that is a political matter seeking to redound to the benefit of Bibi Netanyahu's political position because it's also coming from people who actually might benefit from Bibi kind of suffering. Do I have that right, Dan? Yeah.
- [06:28]
Dan Senor
I mean, look, I think there's been widespread support across the Israeli political spectrum for what Israel and the US did in Iran. I really, even in the days after October 7th, I haven't seen this kind of support so deep within the basis of Netanyahu's political opponents in terms of support for what was done in Iran. And so if you were supportive of what Israel and the US did in Iran, then you, you have a real interest in making sure the policy was successful. I mean, we can check. Do you want to. I mean, look, from the Israelis perspective, and actually from my perspective, too, this whole, there's, this whole thing is so preposterous. This whole story over the last 48 hours. I mean, it is really. I mean, I try not to spend too much time obsessing about individual annoying stories that appear in the mainstream media. But just the way this thing came about is like if you just did a sliver of serious critical thinking. When I was traveling. So when the story first broke, I, I saw it and I, and I called a friend of ours, like that we all have in common. And I said, I was traveling. So I wasn't really. I said, is this thing actually getting traction, this story, the CNN story? And he said, this friend of a friend of ours said, it's everywhere.
- [07:47]
Jon Podhoretz
I was shocked.
- [07:48]
Dan Senor
I was like, it's such a joke of a story. Why is it a joke of a story? One, the. There are, there are numerous, as you guys know, numerous, numerous agencies and bodies within the US Intelligence community. The dia, the Defense Intelligence Agency, is one of them. It is not the primary one, by.
- [08:05]
Jon Podhoretz
The way, that deals with 18, 18 U.S. intelligence agencies. That's all right. Yeah, 18.
- [08:11]
Dan Senor
Right. Right. So. And the DIA is not, certainly not the primary one, dealing with proliferation issues, tracking, you know, nuclear programs in the Middle east, specifically in Iran. They're just not. And they, and they don't have resources of their own on the ground. I mean, that's well known. Most of the US Intelligence community does not have resources on the ground in Iran specifically. In fact, that's why they've been so dependent over the years on Israeli intelligence across numerous administrations that most of the intelligence in Iran came from Israel, not from the U.S. so, A, the U.S. is kind of weak on the ground from an intelligence standpoint. B, they depend on Israel. B, whatever resources they do have access to. It's not via the dia. So the idea that, you know, a couple of officials, we don't have any context of who they are, you know, what level they're at, what intel they're actually reading, if it's DIA material, give me a break. And, and then it's like their interpretation, they handed the material over to the reporter. It was like their interpretation of the material. And from what I understand, there was, it was not high confidence. You know, it's with low confidence. It says with low confidence. And no one took it. No reporter took a step back to just think about everything I just said. A, B, that certainly would be. There are probably critics within the DIA of Trump and what, you know, in Trump's Middle east policy and specifically what Trump did in Iran. So there may be an agenda, obviously, that they didn't even offer that out as, like a possibility. And C, if we've learned one thing in the last, you know, since June 13, it's that Israel's intelligence and visibility and capabilities in Iran are like other level, other level. So if Israel is either saying, take a breath, it's going to take time for us to figure this out, or we've taken a breath and now we have some real visibility, wouldn't that at least factor into the reporters thinking about how to big deal this story or not? So I find, I mean, I could walk you through the mechanics of why it's impossible to believe that the, that the nuke program wasn't, at a minimum, severely set back. It may have been obliterated. It may not have been obliterated, but at least set back just, just using logic. But before we even get to the logic of that, I just, I'm floored that this has turned into a real story because the whole, the whole context of it is, as I said, preposterous.
- [10:43]
Jon Podhoretz
I want to point out one other thing, which is that I don't really think Trump is very flighty and, you know, you can't guess what he's up to and all of that. But his decision to go for the ceasefire and to tell the Israelis to back off after the firing of missiles, one of them hitting Beersheba, in order to reinforce this, you know, saying, well, they broke it and so we have to respond. And then Trump says come back. I don't see that he would have done that without reasonable assurance that he had gotten what he wanted out of the strike. In other words, that he and Bibi, in the hours after the strike, had had serious conversations in which he might have said, did we do it? And Bibi said, from everything that we can tell, yes. And then there's all this question about where the new, where the actual 800 kg of enriched uranium might be. And the one thing we need to be absolutely sure of is that whatever anybody is saying about that may not be true. In other words, the we don't know where it is, or we don't want this, or we don't want that. There are 10,000 reasons why we might know where it is. But we don't want the Iranians to know we know, or the Israelis have it, and they don't want the Iranian High Command to know that they have it somewhere in Iran, or they don't have it and it is buried in Fordow, and they need to make sure that it's buried in Fordow and that the chamber in which it's based did collapse or whatever. But I don't see any upside to Trump declaring victory, saying, Israel, don't respond, let's have a ceasefire. Because if you have Iran on the ropes, it's not like he doesn't like to punch down, he's not Bush in 91, like giving Saddam Hussein a sporting chance after defeating him. It's like, no, no, that's fine. You can have your helicopters and you can use your helicopters after a cease fire so you can go kill tens of thousands of regime opponents. Like, he would be perfectly happy to bomb Iran into the Stone Age after he dropped what we are told now was a third of the tonnage of the nuclear, of, of the atomic attacks on Hiroshima, that the, that the delivery of those bunker busters without, without radiation was essentially a third of Hiroshima. I mean, just think, just think about that for a minute.
- [13:24]
Unnamed Speaker
And I believe he said at his press conference yesterday at NATO that if there are signs that the Iranians are reconstituting the program, then Israel and the United States probably will strike again. I mean, the bottom line here is that over the course of the 12 Day War, Israel attained overmatch on Iran. Iran is. Iran is no longer in command of its skies, of its territories. Clearly it's been compromised by Israeli intelligence. There's no question that Iran was defeated. It lost about a third of its missile launchers. Its missiles, though deadly, were nothing like we feared they might be. Its proxies are defanged. Even the Houthis, which probably retain the most capability, barely got into the fight. And then when you look at what an actual nuclear program is, scientists dead, facilities destroyed, you know, the, the weaponization components targeted. It just is absurd to me to read a headline in the Washington Post this morning by another former friend of ours. This is the week of us quoting former friends saying that the nuclear deal set back the Iranian nuclear program more than the past 12 days had. I mean, what Curly Q logic could lead you to such a conclusion? It boggles the mind.
- [15:10]
Jon Podhoretz
Yeah, the JCPOA and then its end. But we don't know when any of this happened. Right. What we know is the Iranians got to 800 kilograms, or excuse me, 800 pounds of enriched uranium. That is what all the intelligence says. That's not just from the Trump killed the deal. Every aspect of the program was in place and working whether the deal was.
- [15:39]
Unnamed Speaker
Going to sunset this year.
- [15:41]
Jon Podhoretz
Right. And the.
- [15:42]
Unnamed Speaker
I would have left them with everything.
- [15:45]
Jon Podhoretz
Now they have very little. Right.
- [15:48]
Unnamed Speaker
Clearly Trump's better off.
- [15:51]
Jon Podhoretz
When Trump pulled out of the jcpoa, the IAEA said we cannot with any confidence say that the program has been halted because they were denied access to the places that they were supposed to be allowed to go to check on the program. That was 2018. That was seven years ago. And by the way, I do want to mention one other thing, which is that Rafael Grosso, whom we made fun of grossly the other day, the head of the iaea, whom we made fun of the other day because he came out with a statement saying this is really terrible because it really hurts. The Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty did come out yesterday and say that there is no way that the centrifuges. Centrifuges are the machines that take the uranium and enrich it and are in fordow that that they're not destroyed, that they are highly. They are precision machines. They are highly vulnerable to vibrations wrecking them. Vibrations. So drop a third of the kilotonnage of Hiroshima on the ceiling above the centrifuges and see whether the vibrations keep them going. He's saying that at least that aspect of the program is dead. Those centrifuges which cost billions of dollars to make are gone. And they would have to be rebuilt. And they would have to be rebuilt, meaning they would have to do it in secret in another building somewhere that they built somewhere. And now Israel and the United States are going to be watching every single centimeter of Iran to see what's going on now pretty much forever. They're not going to be able to build secret facilities.
- [17:40]
Abe Greenwald
You know, I have to say, unlike Dan, I wasn't surprised that the story took off the way it did. The second I first heard the murmurs of it. I said, oh, here we go. Because a lot of people desperately want Trump to have a mission accomplished embarrassment moment, you know, like George W. Bush did and they were going to run with this thing for as long as they could. I didn't, you know, I was skeptical of it, but I had, I had no idea. You know, I figured Cooler had said, there's a lot more information to come in, Wade, and as it's been coming in, it has all from various parties from Israel, from the UN from the CIA, has all contributed to Trump's account of what has happened. And there's really no reason to think.
- [18:38]
Unnamed Speaker
David Elbright of what we call the good isis, which is his foundation that tracks proliferation across the world. He also is saying that it's not.
- [18:47]
Dan Senor
Non partisan, nonpartisan Physicist.
- [18:52]
Jon Podhoretz
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- [20:36]
Matthew Continetti
I'm Matt Ebert, CEO and founder of Crash Champions. Welcome to Pod Crash. On Pod Crash, we'll dive deep with industry leaders and game changers because we want to uncover their secrets to success. We're going to explore everything from building trust, building a rock solid team to champion blue collar work. And we also want to talk about Crash creating explosive growth in your business. You'll hear actionable advice, real leadership and business lessons along with what's worked for these incredible people throughout their career. We're even going to go in depth into what I call a champions mindset. This is the very philosophy that I use to champion people and take crash champions from a single shop to over 650 locations today. And now I want to share that information with you, watch or listen to pod crash on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [21:30]
Jon Podhoretz
So, I mean, the other thing to be said here is we, we're sitting here and the churlishness. Joe Klein, of all people, not a Trump fan, wrote a newsletter yesterday. Author of Primary Colors, former political correspondent for New York magazine, Newsweek columnist. All that saying, where is the celebration of an American military accomplishment? Like, does anybody doubt that this was a huge accomplishment? We used B2 bombers for. Barely ever used them before we dropped these bombs. These bombs have never been used before. Those planes are in the air for 37 hours because of our unbelievable capacity to refuel planes in flight. I mean, using this technology, incredible precision bombing, leaving. And all you hear is it didn't really do any, you know, like, like it would just be sort of like normal for the opposition to say, we're in awe of, you know, our men, our pilots. God bless our pilots. Like, and they're leaving this field open, apparently. I think Hegseth, our defense secretary is having an event this morning with the pilots or some version of having an event with the pilots, because I'm not sure we want people to know the identity of the pilots. But to celebrate the pilots who did the bombing, that should be a bipartisan event. Like, there's no reason for Democrats to. There is a reason, because we know this has all gone haywire. But this is money that was spent by Democratic and Republican administrations alike over 30 years to develop the B2, to develop the bunker busters, all of that. It's not as though the defense posture of the United States is maga. Maga, I believe, probably believed in cutting defense spending last year at some point or other. I mean, so, you know, and they are, because of Trump Derangement syndrome, they cannot take a win. They can't and they don't want to because they also, a lot of them really genuinely don't believe that military forces can be a force for good. That's Ben Rhodes, the Obama. I literally said the idea that a bomb is better than A negotiation. It's so sad that so many people think that. It's so sad because, you know, if we'd only negotiated with Hitler and not done D Day, that really would have been so much more preferable.
- [24:15]
Unnamed Speaker
Remember Ben Rhodes nickname inside the Obama White House?
- [24:18]
Jon Podhoretz
Hamas.
- [24:19]
Unnamed Speaker
Hamas, yeah, right.
- [24:21]
Jon Podhoretz
But I'm just saying he.
- [24:22]
Dan Senor
As a voice on this point, John. Yeah, no, I was just saying on this point. So in Israel, I mean, there's an interesting parallel to Israel here in that there have been many Israeli political leaders. This is before the Iran operation, Israeli political leaders that were oppositional to Netanyahu, that were highly, you know, didn't want to praise Netanyahu at all. But they're constantly praising the idf, they're constantly praising the intelligence capabilities of Israel, while they're critical of Netanyahu. Obviously not in the same sentence, but in other words, they know excellence in Israeli military and intelligence talent when they see it, and they praise it and they celebrate it. And it blows my. I mean, what these critics of the Trump administration's policy with regard to Iran in the last few days, what's so striking to me about it is they are so invested in the incompetence of the Trump administration. Not just the. They operate outside the law, but the incompetence. It's a clown show. And so what the US Just did, in a sense, I think for them, gives lie to the clown show narrative, the clown show caricature. So they're just, they're just attacking the whole thing, as opposed to stepping back and saying they could say nothing about the Trump administration, they could say nothing about the policy, they could say nothing about the decision. They could just say, we are in awe of the excellence of the American military men and women and their capabilities built up over as. As I think you, John or Matt said, that we built up over years, through multiple administrations. And oh, my gosh, look what these people, these incredible people just make it all about the military. Like, don't even mention Trump. I mean, in Israel, that's what they do. They just go on. I mean, by the way, because I think it's heartfelt, I think they genuinely are genuinely in awe of these young people in Israel who do these, these extraordinary things.
- [26:17]
Jon Podhoretz
Of course, in Israel. In Israel, everybody serves in the military. That's one issue where you celebrate the idf, because it's like you're celebrating your own family, your own children. But I would say, and this is, I think, a key element here, that they don't believe in it. They don't believe in the mission. Obama has been completely silent now for four days, five days. Biden is licking an ice cream cone. So nobody expects anything different. And I wish it were the case that we had a bipartisan consensus on the need to end Iran's nuclear program, which we sort of did. I mean it's not like every, I mean people have been quoting every president since Clinton has said Iran can't get a nuke. Obama said it, Biden said it, Trump said it. Bush, Bush said it, Clinton said it. And, and you know, this is the now they're not going to get a nuke.
- [27:12]
Unnamed Speaker
The most prominent member of the Harris family to speak out in recent days has been Ella Emhoff, celebrating her comrade Zoran Mamdani's victory in New York City. That's the voice of the family of the most recent Democratic nominee. Kamala Harris herself has said not a word about what has transpired over the past 12 days.
- [27:37]
Jon Podhoretz
And by the way, Hunter Biden, Hunter Biden is now being just a little ruled. Hunter Biden is being sued by his lawyers for non payment. So you know, having surprise. Yes. So congratulations to everybody who ever got into business. Brett. Brett. With the Biden family. Abe.
- [27:56]
Unnamed Speaker
I'm Sorry.
- [27:59]
Jon Podhoretz
Brett.
- [28:00]
Dan Senor
Brett McGurk has come out in support of the policy. I don't know if anyone else blinking out of the piece in the New York Times yesterday, critical. Yeah, I don't know if anyone else has come out supporting it last administration.
- [28:11]
Abe Greenwald
Admittedly this is a very sort of self centered, neocon centric take here, but I can't help thinking that the reason that so much of the commentary around this operation is so curlicued in its critiques and so, you know, like there's no straightforward this was good kind of thing. I think people are so outraged that the neocons were right, you know, like because we have been, you know, portrayed as mad bombers for 20 years and that Bibi was right. I mean how much they hate Bibi and that Trump and Bibi did it together and it worked. You know, it's like every villain was right and successful and this is, this is to the left and to the right.
- [29:05]
Unnamed Speaker
Can I add on to the only.
- [29:07]
Dan Senor
Thing, the only thing you could have added to the narrative is if Sheldon Adelson came back. You know, it helped and was part of the conversation with Bibi and Trump.
- [29:16]
Unnamed Speaker
But it's even better.
- [29:19]
Dan Senor
Sheldon was picking targets.
- [29:23]
Unnamed Speaker
It's better than that aide because after the strike you heard from certain corners of the commentary, man, Trump must be so angry at Bibi for dragging us into the conflict. And Trump must really resent Bibi for, you know, kind of forcing his hand to bomb the three nuclear installations. And then what happens? Yesterday, Trump posts on Truth Social, an op ed length item denouncing Netanyahu's criminal trial and raising the possibility that he will sanction the. The prosecutors in Israel. Like, like the Biden administration sanctioned settlers. So, no, it's clearly, he still has a fantastic relationship with Netanyahu, who he thanked effusively during the speech on Saturday night.
- [30:19]
Jon Podhoretz
So I've never seen anything like it.
- [30:21]
Abe Greenwald
That's what I'm saying. They're coming up with all these subplots and they don't exist. Ways to say that the neocons are angry. Trump's angry with Bibi. The, the, the, the bombs didn't work.
- [30:33]
Jon Podhoretz
It's like, yeah, so, yeah, so let's go through that. So that. So the neocons are angry because the. Trump stopped the regime change.
- [30:45]
Unnamed Speaker
That's the whole thing, right? Yeah, right.
- [30:46]
Jon Podhoretz
And didn't get regime change. I literally, since I am, I am, I am sort of by default now king of the neocons. Like, this is the last neocon publication. So I guess I am king of the neocons. So what did I say last week?
- [31:05]
Unnamed Speaker
Right?
- [31:06]
Jon Podhoretz
You don't care on this podcast, I don't give a shit about regime change. So I don't know, maybe I don't represent the neocons, but I figure I kind of represent the neocons. And what I meant by that is, for 20 years, we've been talking about denying the Iranians the capability of striking Israel or anybody else with a nuclear weapon and creating a rush toward proliferation, nuclear proliferation in the Middle east, in places where we do not want people to get the bomb, like Saudi Arabia, because what if that regime fell to the Muslim Brotherhood? And then the Muslim Brotherhood had a bomb that was no bomb for Iran. Now, there was a possible offshoot of that, which is all things being equal. It's a disgusting regime. They're monstrous to their people, you know? You know, they have elections, they steal the elections, and they throw people in jail. They, they throw acid. The faces of women who take their, who take their head coverings off. You know, they beat people to death, they hang gay people from, from cranes. Everything about them is disgusting and awful. And if they fell, it would be a net positive for the world's good. But I have no interest in, in playing much of a role or America playing much of a role in that happening to the extent that you could if it were low cost, sure. But that's not the issue. It was never the issue. And for. And Abe wrote a newsletter about this yesterday for. For me or the neocons or whatever. To be tagged with the. We're only doing this in order to create regime change is an unbelievable intellectual injustice. It is not. The neocons who talk about regime change in Iran per se, as a good. On its own, that was kind of like mushy liberal stuff, you know, at the Carnegie Endowment and places like that. Not that again. I would be for regime change.
- [33:03]
Unnamed Speaker
But that's the point.
- [33:04]
Jon Podhoretz
I would be very.
- [33:05]
Unnamed Speaker
No one likes this government, but I think our position has been in the main. Yeah, right.
- [33:11]
Jon Podhoretz
More people than I knew liked it.
- [33:13]
Unnamed Speaker
That's a good point. But from our perspective, I think I can say over the last 20 years, it's been. The nuclear program is the issue. The regime is bad. We would like the regime to go away. But the way to do that is to help the Iranian people, not a massive ground invasion from two fronts like in Iraq, where we spent months building up our forces.
- [33:40]
Dan Senor
Yeah.
- [33:40]
Unnamed Speaker
It is just. That's the kind of boogeyman that the opponents of intervention against the nuclear program created, and it just didn't exist. And so a lot of neoconservatives, so to. So, you know, so to speak, whoever they are. Apparently, you're the king. I know we had a godfather for neoconservatism, but now apparently we're announcing today on the podcast, there's a king, and his name is J Pod.
- [34:04]
Jon Podhoretz
No kings. Yeah, I know.
- [34:06]
Unnamed Speaker
I'm gonna start the no Kings protest in neoconservatism.
- [34:10]
Jon Podhoretz
You could be the king.
- [34:11]
Unnamed Speaker
Yeah. No, no, I don't want to be the king.
- [34:14]
Jon Podhoretz
I don't want to be the king. I'm just saying. I think you chose it.
- [34:19]
Unnamed Speaker
I'm the. Yeah, I'm the drunk poster on Twitter.
- [34:22]
Jon Podhoretz
That's what you're calling me.
- [34:23]
Unnamed Speaker
I just say you. You could be like, the great uncle of neoconservatism.
- [34:27]
Jon Podhoretz
Fair enough. That's fine.
- [34:28]
Unnamed Speaker
That's, you know. Or the second cousin once removed.
- [34:31]
Jon Podhoretz
There is no neo conservatism. I'm kidding. But it was always.
- [34:35]
Unnamed Speaker
We were going to help. I know it's an aside, but we.
- [34:38]
Jon Podhoretz
Were going to help the Iranian people.
- [34:39]
Unnamed Speaker
That was the Green Revolution in 2009. And why Obama was so feckless. Because he didn't lift a finger.
- [34:46]
Matthew Continetti
Right.
- [34:46]
Unnamed Speaker
To help the Iranian people. And then there were subsequent ones. There was one in 2022 under Biden. Same thing. Huge Protests, Biden did nothing. Voices like the Commentary podcast were saying at the time, we should do something to help the Iranian people, but never the type of regime change that others were talking about. I will say this, though. Sometimes there are delayed consequences to the type of military action that took place during the 12 Day War. And I have been thinking a lot recently about the Kosovo War in 1999, where there was a Democratic President Bill Clinton, over the objections of many Republicans, not, Interestingly enough, John McCain and Bob Dole, who were the kind of the leaders of the Republican Party at that time, joined the NATO air campaign against Slobodan Milosevic's Serbia, who were. The Serbians were fighting the Kosovar Muslims.
- [35:46]
Abe Greenwald
Right.
- [35:47]
Unnamed Speaker
And for weeks NATO had an air campaign against Syria. And at the time when it ended the situation.
- [35:58]
Jon Podhoretz
Well, no, you said Syria, but that's. I said Serbia.
- [36:01]
Unnamed Speaker
I meant.
- [36:01]
Jon Podhoretz
Yes, Serbia. I'm sorry, I'm sorry.
- [36:04]
Unnamed Speaker
At the time, the results of that were a little bit murky. Right. It was because Milosevic was still in power. It was unclear. Eventually Kosovo became an independent state about 10 years later, but we weren't sure. Well, was that really a good thing? And indeed, the conservative movement was split on it. But within a year, Milosevic fell. And so you could kind of see how what looked at the time as an ambiguous result had in fact undermined the foundations of his rule in Serbia. And I wonder whether something similar might be happening with Iran. When you're a nation, a state, a state that has been so humiliated, despite all the propaganda you're putting out, despite, despite all these. You've been humiliated. Israel got your number.
- [36:56]
Jon Podhoretz
Yeah.
- [36:57]
Unnamed Speaker
Trump, with one operation, destroyed your three main nuclear facilities. There might be long term consequences which are ultimately for the good of the world and for the Iranian people. But that's not what this past 12 days has been about.
- [37:16]
Jon Podhoretz
I want to quote an amazing thing from the Economist. If I can find this. I'm sorry, I'm looking for it. I'm looking for it. John, while you're looking at the Economist.
- [37:28]
Dan Senor
You got it.
- [37:28]
Jon Podhoretz
All right, yeah, go ahead, go ahead.
- [37:31]
Dan Senor
No, I was just going to say that.
- [37:33]
Jon Podhoretz
Yeah, I was just going to say the Economist.
- [37:36]
Dan Senor
You know, from Israel's perspective. From Israel's perspective, which, which, you know, keep in mind, Israel was against, was very worried about the Arab Spring in 2011. Netanyahu specifically was in terms of where it would go and what would, what would. What kind of governments. And they were right to see what would follow the fall of Mubarak in Egypt in terms of the Muslim Brotherhood taking over. There are real concerns in Israel about what would follow this regime. You asked the Israeli leadership. You get a choice, a trip into the unknown in terms of what could follow this regime in Iran or a severely weakened version of this regime, which is a regime that has lost its proxy system, which was its primary way of fighting wars around the region. It's lost its proxy system that it's spent billions of dollars building up over the last number of years. Its conventional army is at best mediocre and probably severely hobbled right now. Zero, you know, zero capacity to fly over their own skies. Israel in the US Having total air superiority over. Over the country. Internal frustration and pressure domestically against the regime and an economy that's a basket case. A nuclear program that, as we're discussing, is severely set back at worst, and probably even, you know, worse than that. I mean, if you ask, I mean, this is, this, this country could easily become like Oman or Yemen. I mean, just like a weak, weak player in the Gulf. And so I mean, this, like, is that, is that, like maybe you just want that rather than going for some kind. So it's so absurd that people.
- [39:21]
Jon Podhoretz
Sure.
- [39:21]
Dan Senor
People want to put us in this regime.
- [39:23]
Jon Podhoretz
So I wanted to quote. Right. So I wanted to quote this thing from the Economist because it shows how crazily distorted if your premise is that doing anything is bad where you can, where you can end up coming out. Okay, so here's what the Economist said the other day. As the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps gains more control because, I guess, of the murder of other, the killing of other generals, its elite has been transformed by Israel's assassination. Gone are the veteran commanders who for years pursued strategic patience, limiting their fire when their totemic leader, Qasem Soleimani, was assassinated in 2020 and holding it when Israel battered their proxies, Hamas and Hezbollah, in 2024. Their demise, the veteran commanders has paved the way for a new generation that is more gung ho and is in the long run bent on redeeming national pride. The maximalist position has been strengthened, says an academic close to Iran's reformists. He claims the decision makers in place before the war were debating whether to ditch their anti Israel stance. But everyone is now a hardliner, he says. Are you following this? So the idea is there were hawks and doves inside the Iran Revolutionary Guard Corps. The Iran which killed. Which killed.
- [40:50]
Unnamed Speaker
And they were so reserved. They really were so reserved prior to last week. Yeah.
- [40:55]
Jon Podhoretz
Yes. Killed and wounded thousands of Americans in Iraq. They. This is the tip of the spear of the Iranian totalitarian regime, the creme de la creme, the people under whom the nuclear program was organized and run. And the idea now is that, you know, they were actually thinking about going, dropping their anti Israel stance. But not anymore. No. So you see what happened. The peace, the peace camp has been really damaged inside Iran, according to an.
- [41:30]
Unnamed Speaker
Iranian academic close to the reform camp. I mean, the sourcing is about as absurd as the sourcing on the DIA report that has caused all this kerfuffle in Washington over the past two days. That was. That itself was a low confidence report based on satellite imagery and some signals intelligence unclear. And it was just one voice where the consensus from several other voices, not only within our intelligence community, but also the Israeli intelligence community was saying, no, it's very different. The ability of the Economist to hang such a whopping conclusion on one single interview with an anonymous academic is so revealing of where the media's head is.
- [42:20]
Dr. Rob Williams
Hello, this is Dr. Rob Williams, executive director of the USC Shoah Foundation. Survivors of the Holocaust have long been the bravest voices speaking out against anti Semitism and all forms of hate around the world, whether it's European antisemitism of the 1930s and 1940s or the antisemitism we see on our streets and campuses today. We'll explore it on the USC Shoah Foundation's new podcast, Searching for Never Again. We'll hear stories that are heartbreaking and stories that are inspiring every Tuesday on Apple podcasts, Spotify, or wherever fine podcasts can be found.
- [42:56]
Jon Podhoretz
It's where. It's what they want to believe. They want to believe, as is the. They want to believe that military force, the use of military force, and this was as judicious a use of military force as the United States has ever done, by which I mean it was one bombing raid in one night and they came home and they hit exactly where they wanted to hit with 100% accuracy, with no American in any remote risk of being injured in any way, shape or form. That is called judicious use of force. And so even that has to be viewed as bad, because force is bad. The use of force is bad. You pointed out that Milosevic fell when that wasn't the aim. Maybe the Iranian regime will fall and that will not be the end of.
- [43:46]
Unnamed Speaker
The change will happen.
- [43:48]
Jon Podhoretz
That is frightening to some people, some very surprising, extraordinarily disappointing and morally depraved people who used to work here, who but now think that it would be terrible for Iran's regime to fall because things will be unstable. You know, it's like how. How I ended up employing a tool of the Iranian regime I don't really understand, but I did, and I apologize to everybody on earth that that happened for a while.
- [44:14]
Unnamed Speaker
The apology tour continues.
- [44:16]
Jon Podhoretz
The apology tour continues. Tucker. And. And the person I'm mentioning here. Okay, but I'll only bring this up to.
- [44:23]
Dan Senor
You're not mentioning this person by name.
- [44:25]
Jon Podhoretz
I'm not mentioning them by name because I don't know why. I'm just not big enough.
- [44:30]
Unnamed Speaker
Can I dwell on the economists for a second? Because I want to provide the audience a crib sheet to reading the news. First off, you want identified sources, not anonymous sources. Then within the universe of identified sources, there's a ranking to how credible or informed a source is, typically government officials. Okay. If they're saying something that you get what the government is saying about a given topic, then you can go down to like policy experts. Okay. That means probably they've been in government, sometimes they have policy expertise. They're looking at this situation typically from a. Yeah, at least professionally, they should aspire to objectivity. But when you get to an academic, I mean, come on. Because the academic really, what, it's a professor somewhere who clearly has a left wing tilt, knowing what we know about the viewpoint monolith that is the progressive left on America's campuses, much less an anonymous academic who's close to the Iranian government. I mean, tear out that piece of paper and throw it in the trash along with, I should say, the rest of the economists coverage of Israel in the Middle East.
- [45:47]
Jon Podhoretz
Yeah. Okay, so Dan, you mentioned. We mentioned that. Matt mentioned this, this astounding tweet by Truth, by Trump defending Bibi against the. The. Is it three or. It's now two cases against him that are. That he. He has actually been defending himself. It's three.
- [46:10]
Dan Senor
It's three.
- [46:11]
Jon Podhoretz
Three. It was four. And then they lost one. That became three. Okay, so there are three cases. He's in this court. Bizarrely, this trial is going to take 14 to 15 months. Don't ask me why. It's been five years in the making. It's already been going on for almost a decade, by the way. The whole, the whole. I say this, and I don't say this as an apologist for Bibi. These charges are ridiculous and they are, in fact, politically motivated. And. And it, it is a preposterous set of arguments about BBS being corrupt because somebody gave him cigars and a giant Bugs Bunny stuffed animal and some other things. Anyway, good, good. Get into this. But, but we have been told and Abu alluded to this, we've been told for months that Trump didn't like Bibi. Trump, Bibi was annoying. Trump. Trump Bibi was terrible. Bibi is so bad. Witkoff made Bibi get out of bed on Shabbos to negotiate with him. Bibi this, Bibi that. BB is not doing the right thing.
- [47:22]
Dan Senor
Israel during the negotiations.
- [47:23]
Jon Podhoretz
Blah, blah, blah, blah. Yeah, right. Okay. But here's the thing. Trump has now for four days spoken about foreign leader of an ally, Benjamin Netanyahu, as he has spoken about no other politician on the planet earth, including people in America who are his deepest supporters. And you proof of the pudding is in the eating. There was no reason for him to put out this truth about Bibi's trial. This is an ongoing matter that will is not even going to come to a resolution until next year because the court schedule like doesn't even see a finding in this case until at least next February or March. He is all in with Bibi. And so just keep that in mind when you see people say according to our sources, Trump is mad, so angry about blah, blah, blah or he is just fit to be tied about blah. When he is fit to be tied, he will let us know as he does four times a day. You know, we hate Jasmine Crockett. You know, it's not like I don't know how Trump is feeling about the people who annoy him.
- [48:46]
Unnamed Speaker
Not a fan of Mom, Donnie.
- [48:48]
Jon Podhoretz
Not a fan. Not a fan of Hamdani right now. Not a fan of Putin's.
- [48:52]
Unnamed Speaker
Yeah, right.
- [48:53]
Jon Podhoretz
He said at the NATO, you're my problem. And then he said something nice about Zelensky and NATO.
- [48:58]
Unnamed Speaker
NATO. He was glowing about NATO before leaving the summit yesterday.
- [49:02]
Jon Podhoretz
So you'll know. And by the way, Seth Mandel made a very important point here, which is that it was a love fest at NATO because he knows that NATO knows that since NATO is a. NATO has an interest in Iran becoming, having its teeth pulled because Iran is resupplying Russia. NATO is at war with Russia. And even though Trump is supposedly not at war with Russia, he, by doing what he did, what he and Israel have done to Iran has made NATO's job in Ukraine vastly easier than. And they are. It was a love fest at the Naito summit because what happened on Saturday materially affected NATO's primary interest immensely for the better. So that's a huge thing. That's a huge change in his temperature about Naito. And as I say, we know when.
- [50:01]
Unnamed Speaker
He'S angry and they also got on board with the 5% defense spend.
- [50:07]
Jon Podhoretz
Right. So we know when he's angry. And I. It's like, time for us. It's been 10 years now. The man speaks his mind, and when we hear that he's feeling stuff from inside, it's time for us to not believe what we're hearing or to take it as garbage or as some game that somebody is playing inside against somebody else. So it's Tucker's son working for Vance against, you know, Witkoff's son working at Commerce or what I. Or they're. They're on the same side or whatever. Or Hegseth is mad, or Tulsi is mad at Hegseth or Radcliffe is mad at Tulsi or whatever. And then they say Trump feels X, Y, or Z. And as I say, we know how Trump feels because Trump tells us how he feels. And. Yes. So, okay, just to Dan, I have a move to America for, like, five minutes, then you got to go. Okay.
- [51:05]
Dan Senor
Yeah, but. But let me just say one thing. You know, I have been. I've been critical of previous administrations that have expressed their frustration with Israel publicly, because I think just creating the daylight with Israel helps Israel's and America's enemies. But. But when the US has been critical of Israel publicly, it's usually been in parallel with. With a policy that was problematic for Israel, like when Blinken and Biden and Harris were very critical of Israel at the same time. That was when they were, you know, restraining Israel from going into Rafah, restraining certain arms sales later on, like, you know, in the. In the second half of. Of 2024, or the shipment of certain weapons capabilities. The policy was consistent with their public frustration. So not only is our people overstate. Have been overstating, wildly overstating, when. When Netanyahu has. Sorry. When Trump has had a frustration with Netanyahu. To me, it's irrelevant, because look at the policy. I mean, really just look at what is. Since Trump has been in office, he has completely. He has not restrained Israel at all or tried to in Gaza. He is not. He's lifted all, you know, limits and conditions on shipments of munitions to Israel. He just conducted with Israel coordination, the most extraordinary military operation in Iran that we have seen. And I can't even. I don't even know what to compare it to. So, I mean, it's just. It's almost all these people want to obsess about. You know, this one said to. This one and this meeting, and this is their. It's. I agree with you John, I think it's nonsense, but even if I didn't think it was nonsense, it's irrelevant to me. As long as the policy is strong and just anyone in the region, Israel's enemies believe, based on the policy they've seen since Trump took over, regardless of what you think of Trump, that it is so standing shoulder to shoulder with Israel.
- [53:01]
Jon Podhoretz
I mean, in the end, right, war, the Trump policy or wars, is the escalate. To de escalate. It is, let us return either to the status quo or to take out a player who is attempting to destroy the status quo or destroy the equilibrium of the world. So they either have to be removed or they have to be brought to heal. Escalate, to de escalate. So what we have here in the policy Trump enumerated by saying what he said at NATO yesterday, which is, look, if they start up again, we'll go after them again, that is the reestablishing of deterrence against Iran. Iran has not been deterred on its nuclear program. Since the program began, there has been no effort to deter Iran except by Israel through its clandestine means of assassinations and Stuxnet and various other things. The United States has done nothing to try to deter Iran. Trump has now announced a permanent deterrence of Iran. We did this hit. We think we destroyed them. But if it didn't happen or if we didn't get it all done, we're still, we're at the ready. You know, those planes are right there at Whiteman Air Force Base. We just showed we could have them take off, you know, with decoys, go 37 hours in the air, do whatever the hell we want, and come back in one night. So I'm not too scared of them reconstituting their program. And Israel is, you know, is much closer, and it's not scared of them either. That alone, aside from whether or not the 800, the 800 pounds of enriched uranium are missing or not missing or buried in Ford or not buried in Fordow. That's the ball game. I mean, I don't want to be like, you know, like a meliorist or something. I understand that, you know, that that's like the ark, you know, in Raiders of Lost Ark. And you want the canister that has, you know, you want the canister that has the uranium in it, and then you can take it and, you know, put it on your mantelpiece, and then you can say, I have it, and here it is. But that's not the point. The point is that Iran has no freedom of action. It spent 20 years with Freedom of action. It, it, it empowered Hezbollah, Hamas, the Houthis, the Syrian regime and its own nuclear program. And they're not all gone, but they're mostly gone. And the Syrian regime is gone and the nuclear program is to all, to all intents and purposes gone. And the size of this achievement, I understand people are churlish and petty and, you know, depressed or whatever, but, you know, it's just if you think it through, you know, this is a, this is a the end of the first quarter of the 21st century. One of the greatest threats to world stability has been the threat has been eliminated. The regime hasn't been eliminated, but the threat has largely been eliminated and will be prevented from revolution. Re being able to re. Establish itself.
- [56:07]
Dan Senor
Yeah, Danpur, who's it? Who's it? Yeah, I gotta run.
- [56:16]
Jon Podhoretz
Okay, so Dan's gotta run. Thank you so much, Dan Cenor, for your wisdom and your insight. And now we have to get back to the depressing news in New York City. Zoram Mamdani is, is consolidating his, his gains now. And there is there. So people keep asking me, can't there be, can't everybody get behind the non Mamdani candidate and somehow make the Republican candidate, Curtis Lewa disappear, get him a job in the administration and then everyone can consolidate behind Eric Adams, the sitting mayor, of course, pardoned by Trump, indicted for, for on bribery charges, but then pardoned by Trump. Can't we just get behind him and, and, and defeat Mamdani in November? So I don't want to monologue. I'm just going to say this. Who are. Who are you kidding? First of all, SLI was not going anywhere. He's got a lot of cats. He can't leave his apartment, loves his cats. And, and you know, he has been doing this for a year and isn't going to walk away from it. And why can't he be the one to defeat Mamdani? Would be Curtis's thought in his head. Second of all, Eric Adams is the dream. Mamdani won in part by spending five months beating up on Andrew Cuomo. And he will win in November by spending 4, 4 months beating up Eric Adams. Don't you don't.
- [57:55]
Unnamed Speaker
Who's going to beat up Mamdani? Won't someone try to beat up Mamdani?
- [58:00]
Jon Podhoretz
But the only Adams will try to be up Mamdani with a lot of money. Have you ever seen Adams try to beat anybody up? I'm just saying, like Adams is an extraordinarily ineffectual political voice. He's dumb, and he is infelicitous. And some people like him because he's kind of kooky and the kind of determined pressing of a case that he would have to do to get Mamdani out. Remember, the thing about Mamdani is he has no record. So. And Adams has a record of having. Of Mamdani's main issue, which is affordability in New York City. I mean, that's not. His main issue, is he hates Israel and wants to destroy it and hates Jews. But his nominal major issue, which is affordability. The problem of affordability in New York City got worse under his mayoralty. So that's just every day Mamdani says, you. You want me to be mayor so I can deal with affordability. You don't want him because he has already shown that he makes the city more expensive.
- [59:02]
Abe Greenwald
So I also think there's this, which is. Mamdani has a record of statements and ideas, and it's outrageous.
- [59:12]
Jon Podhoretz
Yeah.
- [59:12]
Abe Greenwald
And it's the kind of thing that. And it's known. And if it. If he got this far with it, there's nothing now to take him out. You know what I mean?
- [59:24]
Jon Podhoretz
Like, but we were.
- [59:27]
Unnamed Speaker
But the primary was not about him. He was a sleeper candidate in a lot of ways. No one expected him to come out on top in the first round of voting. Everything was bent toward Cuomo. A huge, huge liabilities from Cuomo. Cuomo ran a bad campaign. And so you're right that to some degree, people started to focus on some of the crazy things Mamdani has said, the crazy and terrible evil things in the case of Israel that he believes. But I don't think it got as much play as it could potentially have in a general election where there are very powerful people in New York who can help define Mamdani as a threat to the city. I think, in particular on the issue of public safety, the very least forcing him to take some positions that are more law and order in order to kind of inoculate himself from these charges. So I think that even if you're right, John, that he's. He will be the next mayor of New York, this is still an opportunity to hold his feet to the fire, so to speak, to, one, damage him as a political entity, and then two, make him a little bit worried that he has to say, keep Jessica Tisch as the commissioner of the nypd, at least for a time, in order to placate the voters in New York City. And just following up on our conversation yesterday. The precinct data now suggests that actually Mamdani did lose the black vote. He seems to have won whites. He. He won Hispanics by about six points, according to the data I saw. And his real segment was the Asian population of New York City, which encompasses, of course, East Asians as well as Middle Eastern immigrants, too. But I continue to believe that there are people who harbor doubts about him. And those doubts, I think, can be magnified by a campaign. And it might be a losing campaign in the end, but I still think it'll be worthwhile. And I'll just use the example briefly of AOC six years ago, when she did exactly what Lamdani did on Tuesday, Come out of nowhere as a socialist to overturn this kind of a representative of the Democratic establishment in New York, Joe Crowley. She was, of course, celebrated in the same way that Mamdani is being celebrated by the left and the media today. Young, vibrant, such a great campaign. She's so well spoken. But as time went on and she was allowed to talk more and people paid more attention to what she believed. Sure, she still represents that district that is, you know, indigo blue in the Bronx, but she has very high negative ratings overall. I don't think people take her as seriously as they maybe once did. Yes, she's important in the Democratic Party, but people understand she's a liability. I think that should be the goal with Zoran Mamdani.
- [62:56]
Jon Podhoretz
Okay. The problem is that you need a vehicle, and Sliwa and Adams are bad vehicles. So there is this dream of a unicorn. Someone steps in as an independent candidate. Right. Now, I. The problem is if I can't tell you who that person is, right. That person doesn't exist. I mean, I guess what I'm saying.
- [63:16]
Unnamed Speaker
Is there will be a lot there could be. I think there could be a lot of independent expenditures in this campaign that are not necessarily even tied to Adams, but are just warning New Yorkers about the fate that may await them.
- [63:31]
Jon Podhoretz
I just have to tell you that the last two weeks of this campaign before Tuesday night.
- [63:36]
Unnamed Speaker
Yeah.
- [63:37]
Jon Podhoretz
The amount of negative advertising, mailers, things like that against Mamdani was on spiring. And a lot of it was spent on exactly what you would want it to have been spent on by expenditures. And it might, arguably, might have helped. Right? I don't even know. I mean, he ended up. He ended up winning 43% of the vote. And nobody assumed that he on the first ballot. And everybody assumed he would be in the low 30s. I mean, every piece of data we had assumed that he would, that Cuomo would be in first place after the first running of the ballots, including the poll that got it right, that he would eventually win, which was Emerson had Cuomo winning on the first ballot, and Cuomo melted down or never grew and Mamdani grew. So I don't know. The problem is that it's all a question of what the definition of we don't know what the city is. Here's the, here's the other problem. People misunderstand New York. It's not like Chicago or Philadelphia or some other places. This is a city that's 29% Hispanic, 20% black, 12% Jewish, and I don't know what is 11% Asian. So. And then every, you know, and so Jews, I guess, form a subset of the white vote, but that is not a normal configuration. So even here, which you would think is a, is a, because of Al Sharpton and everybody else, that this is a black city, the way Chicago is a black city. It is not a black city. It is a, it is a. It is a white city whose second most important ethnic group is Hispanic. So Cuomo won in the black community and lost by eight points. Right? So. And he may even have won sizably in the black community and lost by eight points. So what that tells you is that's not a really solid basis on which to go at Mamdani in the general election to say, well, if we could just harness the black vote. The good news, it's a tiny bit of good news for our listeners because I think a lot of people look at Mamdani and they see how there's been this whole propaganda campaign on the part of very left wing Jews to say Mamdani is okay and we like him. And, you know, this just shows that, you know, there's. The Jewish community is not monolithic. And screw aipac. Although AIPAC played no role in this election whatsoever. Every piece of evidence and indication we have is that 80% of the Jewish vote went for people other than Mamdani. And the most Jewish, with the exception, bizarrely, of Brighton Beach, Brooklyn, which is where my grandmother lived and died and is like the home, as Anora will tell you to the. So to the Russian emigre Jewish community, Cuomo won every neighborhood in New York that was more than 15% Jewish. So. And the New York Times itself says that they, as they view it, one in five Jews voted for Mamdani. Now, that's one, and that's one in five too many. But it's not what you might have expected from the way people were talking, Jews did turn out, and they did turn out against Mamdani. And unfortunately, there are, you know, only 720,000 adult Jews in New York City. And again, that's not. Mamdani's going to end up with 500,000 votes. So if every single Jew in New York voted against Mamdani, he still has 500,000 voters who voted for him in the primaries, who will vote for him in the general, and can build on that. But I am heartened in this one small way by the fact that the Jewish vote did not that. That that Mamdani's Jewish vote was at most 20% and probably lower. And it's worth saying that our community here has not been. Has not been destroyed by the Jewish current Peter Beinart scum that you might have thought had poisoned it beyond recognition.
- [68:00]
Unnamed Speaker
Yeah. I'd also just note very briefly, I've noticed in the press coverage in the past 24 hours that his anti Semitism and anti Zionism are being totally left out. And I think there's a real attempt going on to sane wash Mamdani and to say, look, he just cares about the cost of living and isn't it great that he's so young? And look at these cute videos he does. And neglecting this major part of, of his ideology and of his rhetoric during the campaign, that is extremely dangerous both to Jews and to the United States and Western civilization.
- [68:47]
Jon Podhoretz
Which is why you're right that the Jewish community here in New York, as part of the fight against antisemitism, needs to shine a light on this.
- [68:59]
Unnamed Speaker
That's our job.
- [68:59]
Jon Podhoretz
Now, the problem is that, that he's going to win. And then that will be used as a truncheon to say, you see, the Jews tried to get him and they couldn't. And that shows that the Jews don't have the Pole that they used to or whatever. Even though of course, anti Semites want to believe that Jews control everything.
- [69:20]
Unnamed Speaker
Unfortunately, the Jewish people have a long history of getting it coming and going. So you might as well just stand up for yourself and point out your enemies when you see them and then take the consequences rather than trying to avoid any bad repercussions.
- [69:37]
Jon Podhoretz
Abe, you and I have been having conversations as, as people who live in Manhattan about what, what we're. What. What we would do, you know, you know, in the. In the event that. That this guy becomes mayor of New York City. And I had this weird. I have many logistical reasons why I can't, you know, pull up stakes and go to South Florida, but, or wherever. But I wanted to mention one fact which also goes to a larger Zionist question, and that is this question of, you know, we were talking about yesterday about what, what it means if the Democratic Party becomes anti Zionist or what it means that this is happening in America's largest city. And that if you are a believer in the, in the import, the central importance the, the historic world, historic, biblical, you know, transcendent importance of the Jewish state, not to be too like apocalyptic or whatever or, or sort of like grandiose, but there still needs to be a significant population of important and influential and indeed just numerous Jews in America to prevent America from becoming Britain. Right now there are more Jews in America than there are Muslims. Flip that over time and the political instincts in the United States will become to appease the larger minority group. And if Jews flee here and go to Israel, which is what you're supposed to do in some understandings of Zionism, Israel will lose its only defender on the world stage. And so I think a lot of us have to stay here. And they could say that about New York too. Like New York. New York is in this pickle because a lot of Jews left New York and went to South Florida and went other places. Not that they shouldn't, they could do whatever they want to, but, but if, if the New York population remained what it was in 1950, which is 31% of the population of the city. No, no, Zoran Mandami would be, would be mayor of New York ever. And that's no longer the case. So I don't know that we want there to be fewer Jews in New York City. So I feel like if I stay, if I feel like if I stay and people like me stay, we can fight the fight here with the means that we have. Some of those means are financial, some of that are, some of them are rhetorical, and some of them are just plane, just being here and not, not, not going soft and going to ground and saying, we don't have to think about this anymore. Abe, do you have any.
- [72:26]
Abe Greenwald
I mean, it's a super deep, tough conundrum, to be honest. I mean, in thinking about it, is, is it important that there be a diaspora anywhere else but in the US at this point? You know, like, like you mentioned Britain.
- [72:46]
Jon Podhoretz
It.
- [72:46]
Abe Greenwald
That's already sort of seated, right? So is it. I mean, at what point does the.
- [72:53]
Jon Podhoretz
Fight.
- [72:55]
Abe Greenwald
At what point are you fighting effectively still and at what point are you living with the repercussions of a loss? And that's that's, it's, it's that tipping point that you. That you've got a sense somehow.
- [73:10]
Jon Podhoretz
Well, it's also based on personal safety. Like if you. If you're a Jew living in France and you're leaving, you're leaving because you don't feel. You literally don't feel like you're safe or your family is safe, and particularly if you're a visible Jew of any shape or form, that if that happens in New York, people will make the decisions they have to make. That's a primary decision. But I'm saying there are, There are other arguments that. Yes. That attain to American Jews. That attain to Jews nowhere else in the world. I mean, do I want there to be Jews in Paris so that when I go to Paris, I can go to the Marais and have a kosher meal? Yes. And the same in London. Yes. Do I.
- [73:50]
Unnamed Speaker
What's ironic is the. The fear of physical safety drove many Jews to leave New York city in the 60s and 70s, but that was just the general public disorder.
- [74:03]
Jon Podhoretz
Yes.
- [74:03]
Unnamed Speaker
And now what we have to worry about is fear of physical safety based on one's Jewish identity. And that is not. That was not the case during the previous exodus from New York.
- [74:16]
Jon Podhoretz
No, that is.
- [74:17]
Unnamed Speaker
That in itself is terrifying.
- [74:19]
Jon Podhoretz
Right. But we took out the nuclear program.
- [74:27]
Abe Greenwald
Clinging to that one.
- [74:28]
Unnamed Speaker
And he hasn't, he hasn't won yet. He hasn't won yet.
- [74:32]
Jon Podhoretz
He hasn't won yet. And B, we took out the nuclear program. That was the biggest existential threat to the future of the Jewish people. And it has been, if not obliterated, it has been, as I said, deterrence has been created against the Iranians ever getting a bomb that is pretty solid and pretty eternal. And so that is the most important fact for Jews this week. Not, not the. Not this idiot. Pip, squeak. Sadly, he's not an idiot, unfortunately. I wish I were. But. But, you know, and we, we. We need to take. We need to keep, as our friend Mike Goldfarb says, like, let. Can we. Can we just enjoy one win? Can't we just enjoy one win for five seconds? Anyway, let's.
- [75:17]
Unnamed Speaker
Let's do it.
- [75:18]
Jon Podhoretz
Okay, so thanks again to Dan. Senor, if you've been listening to this point, it's conceivable that we had some glitchiness on Dan's part, and I apologize for that.
- [75:29]
Abe Greenwald
But it may not come through in the final recording.
- [75:31]
Jon Podhoretz
But it may not. Okay, so it may.
- [75:33]
Abe Greenwald
It may just have been. We had trouble with him, but.
- [75:36]
Jon Podhoretz
Yeah. Right. Anyway.
- [75:37]
Abe Greenwald
But if it is you're right.
- [75:39]
Jon Podhoretz
If we did, I'm sorry. And you know, not everything thing is as perfect as the B. As a. As a. As a B2 bomber strike. Like what?
- [75:51]
Dan Senor
Fine.
- [75:52]
Jon Podhoretz
Anyway, so for we'll be back tomorrow for Abe and Madam John Pot Horse. Keep the candle burning.