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- [00:01]
John Podhoretz
This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Fiscally responsible financial geniuses, monetary magicians. These are things people say about drivers who switch their car insurance to Progressive and save hundreds. Visit progressive.com to see if you could save Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates. Potential savings will vary. Not available in all states or situations. Expect a worse Some drink champagne Some die of thirst no 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 Monday, May 19, 2025. I am John Podoretz, the editor of Commentary magazine. With me, as always, Executive editor Abe Greenwald. Hi, Abe.
- [01:06]
Abe Greenwald
Hi, John.
- [01:07]
John Podhoretz
Washington Commentary columnist Matthew Continetti. Hi Matt.
- [01:10]
Matthew Continetti
Hi John.
- [01:11]
John Podhoretz
And Social Commentary columnist Christine Rosen. Hi, Christine.
- [01:15]
Christine Rosen
Hi, John.
- [01:19]
John Podhoretz
So I'm going to dispense with niceties because I don't like being false. It is of course, awful to hear that Joe Biden has an aggressive form of prostate cancer that is metastasized. And that's a terrible thing. But I'm deeply suspicious of the timing of the revelation of this. And not only deeply suspicious, but I believe as somebody who has had family members who have had prostate cancer and elderly people and all of that, the story that we are being told about this makes no sense whatsoever. As I think anybody who has dealt with this should know. You don't get the first indication of prostate cancer and metastasis because you're having some troubles, urinary troubles. And then you get a PSA test and then it says you're at a nine. You're, you're at a level nine. That's not how it works. He's an old man. He has tests every year. We all, I have a PSA test every year. Many, Most men over 50 have a PSA test every year. Prostate cancer is a slow growing cancer. None of this makes sense. And the timing of it being 20, you know, 48, 72, 96 hours before the tomorrow's release of Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson's book makes this, I think, inarguably a sign of the unbelievable bungling of the Biden people that they think that they can kill this story off the Thompson Tapper Biden's infirmities story by essentially appealing to the sympathies of people when this only highlights the feeling that a massive cover up was going on. That now extends to the possibility that, that we were not being told that the President had cancer.
- [03:13]
Matthew Continetti
Can I, can I interrupt you there? So first, we have seen this technique used by Team Biden before. If you recall, throughout Biden's presidency, whenever there were headlines about Hunter Biden, Biden Inc. The Biden family business, trading off Joe Biden's position in American politics for lucrative contracts among his family members, suddenly there would be major action on the lawfare front against Donald Trump. So you would have a bad news cycle about Hunter Biden and the Biden family. And then the very next day, a new indictment would drop, a new special counsel will be announced, all on Donald Trump. So that's one thing. If this had just come out of the blue, after years of us taking the Biden family at their word, well, then it would be, as it already is, sad, Right. And shock. But it's not shocking that the news came out in the way that it did. Let me put it that way. Number two, I just have here, Kevin, Kevin O' Connors, a letter from July 8, 2024, talking about the visit. If you recall, on July 8, 2024, not long after the New York Times reported that a neurologist had visited the White House. So this is in the aftermath of the debate, the disastrous debate there was.
- [04:42]
John Podhoretz
Which was June 27th. Right. So follow the timeline here.
- [04:46]
Matthew Continetti
Yeah. So just to follow the time to get back in that mindset when we were, you know, podcasting every day about the incredible emergency. Of course, this is also seven a week before this letter is coming out, a week before or five days before Donald Trump is almost killed in public. So just to take you back to that amazing, incredible, crazy month, so here's, here's what Kevin o' Connor says. You know, it's the results of this year's exam were detailed in my Feb. 28 letter. How we had there are no findings which would be consistent with any cerebellar or central neurological disorder. It's all about Biden's physical condition as of July 2024. And it's totally focused, if you remember, on his osteoporosis, his feet and, and the condition that was making him have that shuffle. Nothing about prostate cancer. Nothing. And I think you're right, John, that it kind of beggars belief that this, this stage of prostate cancer would suddenly be discovered in the past. What is that? Nine months, you know? Oh, ten months.
- [05:53]
John Podhoretz
Ten months, I think. Yeah, right. No, nine months. Yeah.
- [05:56]
Matthew Continetti
So there's, so there's this, which is only reinforcing the story, as you say that, that we went into the weekend covering, which is to cover up about his cognitive abilities, The Biden family, just to sum up here, before we talk about Other aspects of the story, the Biden family has this, I have to say, just kind of this terrible knack for politics. Every time they think that they're being clever and shifting the ground of a conversation, they only dig themselves in deeper. And so, yeah, people are like, oh, this is terrible news, is terrible news. But it's going to be natural for everyone to say, hold it. Why didn't we know about this earlier? And by the way, what is the deal with the recording from Robert her that was released on Friday night?
- [06:44]
John Podhoretz
Right, that's what happened. Right, exactly. Robert her recording came out. I was on Mark Halperin's two Way Friday night, and Axios released the recording and we listened to it for four minutes. The answer is incredible. And almost immediately since I listened to it live and was talking about it live. You are like the character assassination of Robert Hur by people who knew perfectly well that what her was telling was the truth. It's one thing to say they covered up Biden for, you know, that's terrible with the American people and all of that, but, you know, like elementary common decency. Hur obviously did the gentlest thing he could. He said, I could be indicting Biden for mishandling classified information. After all, an indictment had been handed down for Donald Trump mishandling classified information. And exactly in circumstances very similar. And I didn't do it because I couldn't secure a conviction, because any jury would look and say, this is essentially a senile old man.
- [08:03]
Christine Rosen
But this is, this is where I think there is not necessarily a strategy, but Matt's right to point to the weird timing of a lot of the way that Biden reacts to bad political news. And it's like the politics of personal lament. He trots out the fact that his son had this horrible death from cancer. And obviously all of us are deeply, deeply sad to hear that a former president now has this aggressive form of cancer. It's terrible. And many of us have lost loved ones to cancer. It's a horrible disease. We have nothing but sympathy. The issue, though, that is the distraction attempt is going to be a personal story from the Bidens, and then they use it to do personal destruction of anyone who challenges them. And so we've already seen representatives from the Democratic Party, people like Axelrod, saying publicly, now we can't talk about the her tape now we shouldn't be discussing whether or not he was copus mentis throughout his term as president, because there's this terrible news. And so I think that's what shifted that used to work for the Bidens in politics. He trotted that out many, many times early in his presidency and as vice president, to get out of sticky situations or to just appeal to people's human sympathy. And we all have that sympathy. But what he doesn't seem to understand is that we can hold in our minds two things. Sympathy for his individual condition right now and deep suspicion about whether or not this family and this president was honest with the American people.
- [09:24]
Matthew Continetti
I have outrage. I don't have suspicion. I think more we learn the magnitude of this scandal is over is overpowering. I mean, to listen to that tape of Biden, not he. He was out of it. He was totally out of it. He was the President of the United States of America. Yeah, right. And we were talking about this on the podcast at the time, and no one else was. No one else was. Maybe Alex Thompson. Every so often, Alex Thompson would kind of have a little thing and he was ignored. And then when the two reporters from the Wall Street Journal did it at the beginning of mid June with all their sources, they were attacked by major media figures. They were attacked. If Karine Jean Pierre gets any job. I'm sorry, any job, Public relations. That is a. That's a shame on whatever company hires her. She should not be active in public life. The people who gaslit and attack people and try to ruin people's careers to cover up for a man who is clearly incapable of being the commander in chief for four years. That is a massive, massive outrage.
- [10:35]
John Podhoretz
Well, that's why I brought up. I think that's why I said that the. Her. The treatment of her speaks to this deeper fact, which is, look, if we talk taclus here, as we say, Biden resigns the presidency, or is 25th Amendment out of the presidency, Kamala Harris becomes president, meaning there would be total ideological and partisan continuity. It's not as though he resigns and then they have to call elections and Donald Trump mysteriously then is reelected president. That's not how we work in our system. So it goes to the question of whether. So if your panic is, oh, no, Donald Trump is going to come back. Right. Which. Which is in fact, what happened. That panic is not alleviated or not alleviated by the fact that the president can no longer serve as president.
- [11:37]
Matthew Continetti
Yeah, it's pathological with these people. You look at Jill Biden, Dr. Jill Biden, on the View one week ago, interrupting her husband, knowing it is Lady Macbeth.
- [11:53]
John Podhoretz
I'm sorry, but this is the reason that. Right. So my point here is the people who Covered this up. Covered this up out of deep personal ambition.
- [12:05]
Matthew Continetti
Right.
- [12:05]
John Podhoretz
Like the line that they had to protect America from Donald Trump is a lie. This is about. And I'm sorry, I'm gonna name names here. This is about Jake Sullivan, his closest foreign policy advisor.
- [12:18]
Matthew Continetti
And.
- [12:18]
John Podhoretz
And Zion's. And Klein and Jill and Nina. Done. They knew we knew. So I know they knew we knew. That's why you say we were talking about it in 2022, 20 on the podcast, you know, before the Nova, whatever.
- [12:36]
Christine Rosen
Lots of slips very early on in his term. We were talking about it very. From the very beginning.
- [12:42]
John Podhoretz
Right. So they knew. And I'm sorry, there's a horn honking outside my window. New York light distracted. No, someone's annoyed, obviously, because someone's double parked. My point is they knew. So this was about protecting themselves. This is about protecting themselves. If you want Biden to have a sterling reputation, he resigns the presidency due to sickness or due to infirmity, and then people say, my God, look what he did. Because he understood what.
- [13:16]
Matthew Continetti
He had his chance in 2022.
- [13:18]
John Podhoretz
I know, right? That's what I'm saying. He could have said, we got through the midterms. I passed all this legislation. I'm now passing the torch to Kamala Harris. I'm really not well. And then he would have been a kind of celebrated, lionized figure, somebody who didn't do what the Wilsons did, didn't do what Kennedy, what JFK and his doctors did.
- [13:38]
Christine Rosen
But I just want to interrupt to say it's not just the Bidens and the Biden family and the immediate, you know, politburo guard, Praetorian guard, whatever you want to call it in the White House. This implicates Kamala Harris and every member of the Cabinet as well. So in that sense, it's a broader scandal for the Democratic Party because her constitutional responsibility, after seeing that he couldn't even hold a Cabinet meeting or deal with Cabinet members, was to call the Cabinet together and say, we have a problem, and to push that. That was her role. But her own desire for power meant that she didn't do it. And she lied repeatedly to the public. And for those of us who were not huge fans of Donald Trump coming back, if you have a choice between Harris and Trump, a lot of people went for Trump in part because she seemed to be continuing this myth about. About Biden's health and his abilities. And that's. That's the implication for the Democratic Party that the Thompson and Tapper book is part of. They are also Trying to make this about two years at the end of his, at the end of his term. And oh, they. Nobody knew and they were fooling us and fooling the public. And isn't this terrible? That's not true. That's not what happened.
- [14:45]
Abe Greenwald
You know, John, you're right about the personal ambition point. Because if you are on Biden's team and you hear the her tape and you care about him and not your personal ambition, you think, oh my God, we got to protect this guy from anything in the future. You know, this is, this is not someone we need to be trotting out on stage. This is not someone that needs to be waking up at a certain hour, that needs to be traveling, that needs to be handling questions before lights and cameras. This, this, this is a guy that needs to go off into the sunset. That would have been the kind thing to do.
- [15:24]
John Podhoretz
Well, okay, so this is really the key point which is had. If, if we're right and the prostate cancer news is older than we know, he could have been treated. In other words, they created this storyline about him. It is unlikely, as I say, that he just suddenly discovered that he had prosecuted.
- [15:56]
Christine Rosen
Possible he was treated in Delaware when he spent a lot of time in his presidency at a place where there was no law captive who visited him.
- [16:03]
John Podhoretz
Is it possible that he was treated for prostate cancer 10 years ago? This is HIPAA mad. This is a, this is a right.
- [16:13]
Matthew Continetti
So he, and he's had, hasn't he had skin cancer before?
- [16:16]
Christine Rosen
He has had cancer, but it was like basal cell. It was a slow growing melanoma.
- [16:21]
John Podhoretz
So my point is like, you know, the, the, the mindset that they were all in about protecting him may, that may be a much darker way. Darker way more gothic element to this, if you see what I'm saying. That, that, that because they had created this storyline from 2019 onward, that he was more than capable. He was just, you know, now he was disciplined. That's one of the things we were told. Because of course, he was a blabber mouth, right? His entire career he ran off his mouth like no one you've ever seen. And I've told the story about having lunch with him in 1986 when he came to the Washington Times for an editorial board lunch and somebody said, how are things going on the Judiciary Committee when he was the ranking member? And he opened his mouth and 45 minutes later, he closed his mouth without taking a breath, practically. So that's the real Biden. And then he shows up in the presidential race in 2019. And is answering very clipped, in a clipped, abbreviated way at debates. He was not filling his minutes. You know, everybody got a minute and then a minute to whatever. And, and, and so it was like, oh, no, he's a new Biden. He's very disciplined now. You know, he knows what he's. He knows what he's doing. He's.
- [17:45]
Matthew Continetti
That was also the first debate was in 2019. Right. And that's where Jill had to come on stage and lead him off. So the truth is, the signs were there from the.
- [17:56]
John Podhoretz
Well, look, the Castro again. I always can never remember which Castro ran.
- [18:02]
Matthew Continetti
Yeah.
- [18:02]
John Podhoretz
Aside Fidel in 2020, they trade off like the Vindmans. Right.
- [18:06]
Matthew Continetti
So you never know which one is right in which position.
- [18:09]
John Podhoretz
Let's say it's Joaquin, though it may not be Joaquin. Let's say Julie Castro. Yeah, it could be Julia, but I think it was Joaquin. Anyway, remember, he said, oh, Biden just forgot. He tried to surface the infirmity question, and the world came down on his shoulders. And he was basically out of the race for doing this because Biden was already in the lead. You see, he was already 10. This is before the first primaries. He was 10, 12 points up. And the Democratic Party was already looking at him and saying, he's probably the guy. We better organize a phalanx around him so that nobody talks about this. He's going to be the president.
- [18:49]
Matthew Continetti
And, you know, another example of this that doesn't have to do with Biden or his cognitive decline or his health, his physical health. The Dr. Jill scandal. When our longtime colleague and friend Joseph Epstein wrote a piece in the Wall Street Journal after the election in 2020 and kind of poked fun at the fact that Dr. Jill Biden, who. Who is not a medical doctor, but who holds a EDD, always refers to herself as Dr. Jill in a way to puff up her status. The Team Biden messaging apparatus targeted Joe Epstein, living in Chicago, a bookish intellectual, and tried to cancel him. And it's the same technique. You challenge these people, and they use their contacts in the media to go after you and gin up your story. And so you saw it. You saw it there with Dr. Jill. You saw it throughout the presidency. And the other scandal is, as we've already been alluding to, it worked. It worked because of ideological sympathy or partisan affiliation or sheer kind of, you know, kind of blockheadedness. The media went along for the ride. And if I may, I have a few excerpts I would just like to read from another book. We've been talking books now Original sin comes out tomorrow. But it occurred to me this morning to look at this book. This is the Last politician by Franklin Foer, one of the Foers. Staff writer for the Atlantic book came out in 2023. Okay. Halfway through the term and I went to the index and I looked up Joe Biden. Age Three. Three appearances. The age. And here's what they are. Page five. The critique of Gerontocracy is that once politicians become senior citizens, they will only focus on the short term because they will only inhabit the short term. But Biden, the oldest president in history, pushed for spending money on projects that might not come fruition in his lifetime. His theory of the case compelled him to push for expenditures on unglamorous but essential items such as the blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And same thing with Ukraine, whose creative diplomacy, a result of his gerontocratic status, was able to help us arm Ukraine. Quote, it was a bravura display of statesmanship. That's the first quote about Biden's age. Here. Let's see here. The primary. Here's 270 talking about the first year in office since Ukraine would be among the primary topics. Biden would flash the world a glimpse of his statesmanship. One talking to the public about it. Here's Foer. The primary problem with such appearances wasn't Biden's age or acuity. That wasn't the problem. It was his indiscipline and imprecision traits that stocked the entirety of his career. And when he worked his way through the reporter's questions, demonstrating his stamina. His stamina. He couldn't help himself. That's mention number two. And then finally, 375. The age issues tackled most directly in the Last politician, page 375. For most of his presidency, Democratic voters gripe to pollsters about Biden's advanced years. They seemingly preferred a president who projected vigor or who possessed oratorical chops. Silly plebes.
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John Podhoretz
Who would want that? Vigor?
- [22:29]
Abe Greenwald
Oratory.
- [22:31]
Matthew Continetti
Vox papule. Stupid. Biden's advanced years were a hindrance, Foer concedes, depriving him of the energy to cast a robust public presence or the ability to easily conjure a name.
- [22:44]
John Podhoretz
You know, I mean, come on.
- [22:45]
Matthew Continetti
Yeah, it was. But, you know, with Ukraine. 376. The advantages of having an older president were on display. He wasn't just the leader of a coalition, he was the West's father figure. Close quote. 3. Three mentions in this book. That was what we were served for four years until it became undeniable with that debate. And imagine if that debate had not happened.
- [23:13]
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John Podhoretz
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- [26:38]
Christine Rosen
Well, and also kind of bizarre given that in his personal family life, if he's so forward looking and worried about his kids and grandkids, he didn't even recognize one of his grandchildren until his hand was forced by the public demanding that he note that that his son had had an out of wedlock child who they were pretending didn't exist and trying to pay off. I mean, this is where like the Bidens are very keen on invoking personal affection and personal sympathy from the public when it suits them, but then becoming quite brutal and absolutely annihilating, as you say, particularly about Joe, their, their political enemies when it, when it suits them. And you can't, I think that's the, that's what's crumbled in the public's mind is you cannot do both. You, if you want our sympathy, then you have to actually behave like a sympathetic figure, particularly in post presidential life. And he has not done that.
- [27:27]
John Podhoretz
Abe, let me ask you this. So as I say, so Christine said this implicates Kamala and all that. But of course, Kamala, you could claim, you could look at and say, well, her personal ambition, interest would have been to rally potentially the cabinet to a 25th amendment circumstance so that she could rise to the presidency. Imagine. Or the cabinet could have done this. It's a complicated procedure, the 25th Amendment. I mean, if you read it, it's very, it's done. So it cannot be used as a couple. It takes four stages. There are letters at three weeks and this and that. There's all kinds of weird elements to it written to make it purposely almost, you know, like it could only really happen in a deep crisis. Imagine how bad Kamala Harris must have seemed to everyone in the Joe Biden presidency. Ambitious. That people who must have known that they needed to pull this trigger refused to pull the trigger. Because as I say, it's not as though Donald Trump becomes president. Kamala Harris becomes President, she doesn't have views that are markedly different from Biden's. Why not? But better than, better than. Okay.
- [28:56]
Abe Greenwald
But there's also.
- [28:59]
John Podhoretz
The fact or the.
- [29:01]
Abe Greenwald
Potential here that depending on what everyone in the inner circle knew about his health, about cancer, that had Biden stayed in the election and won President Kamala was inevitable anyway.
- [29:24]
Matthew Continetti
Right, right. And that's what that raises the question of the timing of the debate, which I've been contemplating past couple of days. You know, it was the June 22nd debate was extremely early. There was no reason to have that debate at that time. And if you recall, it was Biden who challenged Trump to the debate in that video he released in the spring of last year of 2024.
- [29:51]
Christine Rosen
With about 15 jump cuts.
- [29:53]
Matthew Continetti
Yes, yes. Remember, with all the jump cuts. And so you wonder what was the strategy? What was the theory of the case? You get it out of the way. And so we just showcase him this time. And so if there's any bad effects, then they won't, they won't continue. Was, was there a sense that we need to see if he can perform because switching out Biden for Harris was doable. It would have been much harder once the Democratic Convention had taken place. I'm not even sure if it was possible. We went through this back in 2016 in one of our many Trump panics over the years with the, One of the most dangerous for Trump was the Access Hollywood videotape. There were discussions within the Republican Party. Well, how does, how would it even work if, because Trump's the nominee, the ballots are being printed?
- [30:43]
John Podhoretz
So I'm just, I'm wondering, I mean, the thinking.
- [30:46]
Abe Greenwald
Yeah, the thinking could have been the longer we wait, the worse he gets, you know, but I mean, like, it's.
- [30:53]
John Podhoretz
Getting worse by the day. Right. So that's also Right.
- [30:56]
Abe Greenwald
I just want to add one thing here to the, to the TABOR book and to the other books. And this, you know, the whole question about how this news may shape the discussion of the COVID up more generally of Biden's condition. If the family and the White House and the inner circle knew about cancer far longer than they're letting on and that this has been an ongoing situation for Joe Biden, then it kind of renders the books, like, useless in a way already because they're not even getting the larger story. Yeah, yeah, they're getting, they're getting the COVID up of the COVID up of the COVID up now. You know what I mean?
- [31:50]
Christine Rosen
Because they don't want to tell the larger story because they're complicit in the larger story.
- [31:53]
Abe Greenwald
Now, it turns out there's this whole other layer to the onion that they didn't even know was there.
- [32:00]
John Podhoretz
Right. And so. Right. So the infirmity was better publicly, you know, shown, even though they certainly knew that that was not good for him because it distracted from the question of. I mean, we all saw this, like you said, about talking to seeing the neurologist, the idea that he had osteoporosis because that's why he was, why he.
- [32:26]
Matthew Continetti
Was doing that weird look, the walk.
- [32:28]
John Podhoretz
Yeah, I knew all the, I knew these friends who are doctors who were like, he's got Parkinson's. Like, that was the thing. He's got early onset Parkinson's. So maybe he had something that was affecting him.
- [32:40]
Matthew Continetti
Well, for all we know, he does have early onset Parkinson's disease.
- [32:43]
John Podhoretz
We don't know when to bring that up, too.
- [32:44]
Matthew Continetti
We'll find out about that three months from now.
- [32:47]
John Podhoretz
I'm just saying that every way you look at this, we have a very. We have a situation that we really will not get fully explored, I believe, because there's no. The Biden family has no interest in fully exploring it. And HIPAA privacy laws make it that you can't, you know, subpoena a doctor or something like that, you know, and make him talk.
- [33:11]
Christine Rosen
But you can subpoena Biden, White House aides and ask who ran the auto pen, who approved this pardon, who did this? Who did that? You can, if you're in Congress, you have oversight, you can ask those questions because those are implied. Those are actually the serious issues. Who was running the country is the question.
- [33:26]
Matthew Continetti
Everybody. Kevin o' Connor, I mean, this is Biden's physician while he was in the White House. And this is the. What did he get? Regularly screened for prostate cancer. You're supposed to once you reached age 65. Right. I mean, what's the deal? Why, why do we just find out about this now? I think that's a legitimate question, but I also think we for all of the. And like I say, this story infuriates me. And there was, it was from the moment he stepped on that stage, it was clear that America had had the wool polo attempted to pull the wool. Right. For, for a long time. But there's also the angle of, you know, what his presidency was doing to the country and the world for those four years. And you just think about where we would be right now had the scheme worked. Right. Either with Joe Biden in the office, Oval Office right now, where this diagnosis becomes Undeniable. And of course, his condition, as we saw in the interviews on the BBC and the view, as we saw there, that his condition has worsened, Right? So either he'd be in the Oval Office now, continuing the policies of his first term, or Kamala Harris would be in the Oval Office right now doing God knows what, probably hiding from the cameras as she tried to figure out, you know, what. What her line was on any of the innumerable crises facing the country. The, you know, sorry, my. I'm not wearing my MAGA hat right now, but it is. It is, I think, reason how. Why the election turned out the way it did.
- [35:11]
John Podhoretz
Right. Well, look, as people have been noting over the last couple, you know, so the elite of the Democratic Party form this phalanx around Biden. The rank and file of the Democratic Party, two thirds of them from 2021, 2022 onward, said, he's too old. We need a new president in 20, need a new candidate in 2024. So it's not even that the wool was being pulled over the American people's eyes.
- [35:42]
Matthew Continetti
I saw through it.
- [35:43]
John Podhoretz
The people was a gambit. It was a spin. Nothing could be done to remove him except by his inner circle.
- [35:54]
Matthew Continetti
It was a power play, Right. It was the same power play that was embedding DEI into our institutions. It was the same power play that was having those, you know, rallies where the trans activists were burying their breasts in the White House. It was the same symbology of that celebration in late June. I think it was after the debate. It was a. Or was right before the Juneteenth. It may have been The Juneteenth Celebration, 2024 at the White House where people are dancing and Billy Porter's wearing a dress and, you know, Biden is. Doesn't. Clearly does not know where he is. But that's. It's just a power play, Right. And it. It failed. It failed.
- [36:34]
John Podhoretz
Well, let's talk about it. Look, There have been two constitutional amendments passed in the last 75 years relating to this very specific problem, right. And people forget this, but the reason that the Constitution was revised or was amended to make sure that presidents could serve no more than two terms were that in the forgotten scandal. Franklin Delano Roosevelt was critically ill in 1944, decided that he needed to continue to run for office because he was the war, whatever it was, and he.
- [37:16]
Matthew Continetti
And he needed to switch his vice president too.
- [37:19]
John Podhoretz
And he switched his vice president because he knew, very crucially, yeah, he knew that a Soviet Katamite couldn't be president of the United States. Henry Wallace is vice president and died in, I think, April of the succeeding year. Right. So that's Roosevelt. And so I can't remember when. I'm gonna look it up right now. But the amendment was passed saying presidents could serve no more than two terms because it was understood, it was done, that Roosevelt had hidden his condition from the American people.
- [37:54]
Matthew Continetti
And also, Republicans did not want.
- [37:56]
John Podhoretz
Right.
- [37:56]
Matthew Continetti
Another Roosevelt. Right, right. Democrats didn't want Eisenhower to get a third term.
- [38:01]
John Podhoretz
To get a third term. Right. That's right. So anyway, but the point was that we lived through something where two presidents in the 20th century, Woodrow Wilson and FDR. So Wilson has stroke and was effectively not president, and his wife was president. Right. So that's where the 25th. The exposure of that, and then little bits and pieces of the news about how sick JFK was when he was in office before the assassination, much of which came out not before the passage of the 25th Amendment, but after, but there. But people knew about it, that he was. He had Addison's disease. He was on 12 different medications. He was on uppers and downers and all kinds of stuff, and was in just, you know, much worse shape than we knew. And so the idea was, okay, we got to do something, because the Constitution has no provision for how we deal with a president who is gone but is still has time left in office. And because no, in it would have been maybe before the 20th century or something, you would just die. You know, you couldn't somehow, you know, modern medicine, you know, and so that we've already been through this, and here we are, and. And Biden and these people thought that they could trick their way into a second term. I mean, and you know what? Like the fact that the cognitive elite of the United States went along with it. When the. When the ordinary people in America looked at. Took one look at him on television and said, he's too old. Get me somebody else, is astounding.
- [39:52]
Christine Rosen
But this is also why that condescending attitude towards the American people which the Democratic Party and the media elite have long displayed, came at an exact moment of populist fervor and a candidate in the form of Trump who said, they're out to get me because they hate you. They don't trust you, they think you're stupid, you know, and they're lying to you. It's, you know, fake news this, fake news that. Now he goes much deeper into his critique of the media.
- [40:21]
John Podhoretz
But.
- [40:21]
Christine Rosen
But those two things in combination led a lot of voters who otherwise would not have voted for someone like Donald Trump to put him back in office. And it's understandable. And that's where I think, even if you're. I'm a more traditional conservative, I'm not a populist. So a lot about populism annoys me. But I do understand what that appeal was for a voter who thinks both parties are corrupt. But one party is a lot more corrupt than the other right now because they've been lying to me about what I see with my own eyes.
- [40:49]
John Podhoretz
I continue to think that the key moment in American political life in our lifetime, not maybe in our lifetime, but maybe in the adult lifetimes of a lot of people who are under 60, was Bill Clinton staring into the camera and saying, I did not have sex with that woman, Ms. Lewinsky. And I did not lie, not one time. That some kind of compact with the American people, the political class in the American people, was broken there. And I still think that Trump is unimaginable without Clinton, because Trump's personal indiscretions would have rendered him unfit for office. Except that 20 years, not quite 20 years earlier, the Democratic Party rallied around somebody who had. Who had had.
- [41:41]
Matthew Continetti
Trump was running against his spouse.
- [41:43]
John Podhoretz
Right, Exactly.
- [41:45]
Christine Rosen
So had also. And it wasn't just the political. It was the feminist establishment, and it was Hillary Clinton who was the establishment. As a woman, I get to tell you, that's the day feminism died in Trump.
- [42:01]
Matthew Continetti
Among Trump's incredible luck is his luck in enemies and opponents.
- [42:06]
John Podhoretz
Well, that is the key to everything. But reason I bring this up is only to say that Christine talks about the populist, the populist moment, that Trump's message resonates and connects. And I think a lot of people think, well, you know, this is really because of Iraq, or, you know, they lied us into Iraq or Bush, you know, whatever. And it's much, much more about the person than it is about the policy. So Clinton basically stares in the camera, says, I did not have sexual relations. The Democratic Party rallies around him. They defeat efforts to take him down. And then when all is said and done, he acknowledges he did this, he acknowledges he did that. He pays off Paula Jones. He's disbarred in the District of Columbia. He starts pardoning his brother and. And Mark Rich and people like. And various other people. And he. From then on, the idea that you couldn't look a president in the eye and assume that he was telling you the truth, I think it just grew and grew and grew. And then Obama says, if you want your doctor, you can keep your doctor. And you know, it's like so the.
- [43:29]
Matthew Continetti
Crucial thing here, and I agree with that. But again, if you think just in power terms, what was what enabled Clinton to muscle through the Lewinsky scandal? What enabled Obama to talk about this is the moment when the seas stop rising. If you like your plan, you keep your plan 11 times. I don't have the authority to legalize the dreamers or the relatives, but I'm going to do it anyway after I lose an election in the midterm. The power to sustain for a time up until. Up until, even though the public saw through it, the debate last year, that that relies on an infrastructure you mentioned, the cognitive elite, the credentialing institutions of this country, the mainstream media of this country all supported these messages because again, there's a shared ethos there, there's partisan affiliation there. There's kind of a disgust of the alternative and the Republicans and the conservative movement that cracked. It seems to have cracked and it seems to have cracked during Biden's presidency. So you're right that there are some parrot. It may have the signal moment may have been Clinton. But I continue to look at Biden in the way that I think many people looked at the aging Soviet leadership at the beginning of Reagan's term, where, you know, Reagan was asked why, why haven't you met with any Soviet leader? And he said, because they keep dying, dying on me. You know, there's one, it was one after another, Brezhnev, Andropov, Chernenko, they'll just go, go, go. And what that symbolized was there is this huge transition taking place within this opaque political system, the Soviet Union, that we were only beginning to see. And what's happening now is we're living through that right now. And there's something new forming and it's the youth vote. It's this new media environment. And in this new world which Trump has benefited from the ability of the Democratic Party and its enabling institutions to do a Clinton, to do an Obama, to do A Biden in 2020 is rapidly waning.
- [45:44]
Christine Rosen
I'm glad, by the way, that to that point, I'm glad you read from the fore book which tried to make Biden's personal problems given age about a whole narrative of gerontocracy. Because actually this is also an opportune moment for the American people and their representatives to demand a new constitutional amendment placing a cap on an age for a president, for example. We have a floor. Why don't we initiate a ceiling? Both parties actually have pretty aging political leadership. And so that's actually been a discussion that prompted by, obviously, Biden's infirmities. But there's no reason we couldn't make that actual constitutional amendment in the end.
- [46:25]
John Podhoretz
As was true in 2016 and in 2024. I think it's very easy to make the case that Trump won both years because of whom he was running against and not necessarily as a positive expression of his, you know, the American people toward who he was or what he wanted to do. I mean, that obviously many people in America support who he is and what he wants to do, but as many. If you look at this latest New York Times CNN poll, as many don't. As do. Yeah. A lot of people really, really, really don't. His. His disapproval rating, his strongly disapproved rating is twice as high as his strongly approved rating.
- [47:17]
Matthew Continetti
Right.
- [47:17]
John Podhoretz
You know, it's like, there's 16.
- [47:19]
Matthew Continetti
He's never been Mr. Popularity, according to public opinion polls, in the three elections that he's running.
- [47:25]
John Podhoretz
Right. So in the end, as you say, he's like, blessed in his enemies. But it's not just these blessed his enemies. It's that he stands there and says all of this.
- [47:36]
Matthew Continetti
It's B.S.
- [47:38]
John Podhoretz
Is a fraud. Yeah.
- [47:39]
Matthew Continetti
It's all baloney.
- [47:40]
John Podhoretz
It's all a fraud. It's a terrible thing for the American people to believe because it's very bad for our, you know, political health. But facts are facts and truth is truth. And this was a fraudulent presidency that Biden was conducting and argued with. Fraud. And it did so in a fraudulent manner. The inflation is growing, and they say it's not. They say it's transitory. When it hits 10%, you know, all.
- [48:11]
Matthew Continetti
Of temporary surge at the border.
- [48:13]
John Podhoretz
Yeah.
- [48:14]
Matthew Continetti
Nothing we can do about it, by the way.
- [48:15]
John Podhoretz
And it is that, you know, it's what people said in 2016. You're gaslighting me. It is a little like Sean Spicer saying, that was the biggest crowd ever, and you're like, you're gas. You can't say that. I'm standing right here. I saw the crowd. And it's not the biggest crowd. Don't do that to me.
- [48:33]
Matthew Continetti
Except it's not crowd size. It's the American retreat from Afghanistan.
- [48:37]
John Podhoretz
Yes.
- [48:37]
Matthew Continetti
Where the president and the Secretary of State and the national security adviser, like, this was a triumph of American statecraft.
- [48:43]
John Podhoretz
Yeah.
- [48:43]
Matthew Continetti
I mean, that is. That is so much worse. And just as one.
- [48:47]
John Podhoretz
Yeah.
- [48:47]
Matthew Continetti
The spouse of the former national security adviser is currently in Congress.
- [48:52]
John Podhoretz
Yes.
- [48:54]
Matthew Continetti
What does she have to say about this?
- [48:56]
John Podhoretz
What.
- [48:56]
Matthew Continetti
What conversations did she have with her husband about this and why hasn't she taken a lead in accountability for what's going on and she decided not to run for the Senate. My understanding is next year, but there's a lot of ambition in Congressman Maggie Goodlander and what her husband was a part of should follow her for the rest of her political career.
- [49:20]
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John Podhoretz
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John Podhoretz
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- [53:44]
John Podhoretz
That her husband is the key because we're talking about Gerontocracy, Biden and Gerontocracy and all of this. Who was empowered in the Biden administration? Not Biden. Okay, so Jill was empowered. She's what, 10 years younger than he is? So she's in, she was already in her 70s. But who is empowered? Jake Sullivan, 44, 45 years old. You know, like Jeff Zients is, I don't know, 56. You mentioned Karine Jean Pierre. You met Pete, Buddha, Judge. It's not as though they took this old man and they propped him up and walked him around and you know, animated his, you know, animated his stiff limbs so that they could work their will on the American people. So they could not so he could. He didn't know what the hell was going on. That's the whole point of this. Did he know what he was Signing. Did he know what he was doing with student debt? No, he didn't know what anything.
- [54:50]
Matthew Continetti
Well, he, yeah, he thought, you know, there's public comment where he said that the student debt relief which he enacted unconstitutionally through executive order was passed by Congress.
- [54:59]
John Podhoretz
Yeah.
- [55:00]
Matthew Continetti
And Mike Johnson, the Speaker of the House has told the story about Mike Johnson confronting the president on the issue of the natural gas import export ban, again through executive order. And Biden looked at him and said, I don't know what you're talking about. I didn't do that. So who did?
- [55:17]
John Podhoretz
Anyway, so we do have, I think it turns out, I think Abe's exactly right, that what we have here is a colossal misdirection in our discussions this week of the Tapper Thompson book, which you fall for it, right. And age may just be the tip of the iceberg. I don't know that we'll ever really know. In other words, like, you know, we know, we know people who are 82, who, who are fantastic, spry, hardy, kind of a full of beans. Trump is obviously full of beans at 78 and a half. Biden's being sick. Biden's having. The condition he was in is a relative. It's not extreme. But he was actually on the sort of leaning in the more extreme trouble person, old person thing than he was, you know, oh, this is just normal. You know, he forgets names and stuff like that. You know, a lot of this is a person who's 80 years old probably shouldn't be president. This gets to Trump, too, just because of the demands. Like, we don't know how they are emotionally. But of course, then, you know, you know, there are people who are over 80 who are still totally with it. So that's why Christine is right, that this whole question of, and it may take 10 years to work its way through, but both in the, in the House, the Senate and the presidency that you say, okay, 80 and you should need to retire.
- [57:00]
Abe Greenwald
I wonder what Obama has known all along about Biden here. Because Obama was always like a Biden presidency. A Biden candidacy is bad news. And I wonder how informed he was about all the health issues and how much that, that.
- [57:24]
Christine Rosen
Well, I'm sure Susan Rice was keeping him updated. I mean, she also is a key figure in that Biden administration.
- [57:30]
Matthew Continetti
I just want to make a small political point because we talked about this for a long time. But the 2028 Democratic nominee for Democrats to have a chance, has to run against this, has to run against this. If the 2028 Democratic nominee is Part of this is a Harris is a Buttigieg is, you know, they're in, they're in deep trouble. But no one yet has said that this is terrible and a hindrance. And so Buttigieg, the most he did in his appearance in Iowa last week was say, maybe it was a problem, maybe he should have spent more time on the air traffic control system, that's not going to cut it. But if I'm Reuben Gallego, if I'm Wes Moore, if I'm Andy Beshear, I want to take a hard break soon because you have to run against the party if you want to get a movement behind you to win the nomination in the White House.
- [58:22]
John Podhoretz
I think that's a really important point. Okay, let's move on to Israel, which has launched Gideon Shield, the new offensive in Gaza to bring the war to an end. And the question now is, I think remains this impossibility of harmonizing in the way that the Israeli public and a lot of people would want to harmonize the goal of getting the hostages home and the goal of defeating Hamas in the war. That Hamas incentive is to use the hostages to make it impossible for Israel to complete its task. And Israel's task is to win the war. But the Israeli public more supports the return of the hostages than it does, they say, than the positive conclusion of the war. All this gotten wrapped up with opinions about Netanyahu and what his role is and all this. So I think we all wish Godspeed to the Israeli forces and to the effort to at the very least, you.
- [59:39]
Matthew Continetti
Know.
- [59:41]
John Podhoretz
Bludgeon Hamas into being cooperative at the negotiating table, which there are some signs that they appear to be. So let's talk then about the American response. So what happened last night, this morning is that is that Bibi told the Israeli people that he had to turn on the aid spigot because, and this is an important thing that he did, he said it wasn't that Trump made him. He said friendly American senators came to me saying we can't see pictures of famine in Gaza. That will be very hard on us. Now I don't know who he's talking about. It's kind of a weird thing to reached down to say, you know, we need to keep faith with our friendly senators. So I don't know. I and Witkoff negotiating basically is getting angry at the idea that once again that Bibi will not accept the deal that he is proposing without more conditions, which is 10 hostages out for a 45 to 60 day ceasefire. And that Bibi says he agrees with this idea in principle, but has some concerns in practice. And again, we get these leaks that Witkoff is now mad and he's mad at Bibi.
- [61:01]
Matthew Continetti
We may get that deal, but in a couple of weeks, say, right. As the military campaign continues and Hamas is pressured, then there may be a point at which Bibi says, okay, fine, I'll a halt for now. If, if we get 10 more hostages out. That is still a possibility.
- [61:21]
John Podhoretz
In my total possibility. I just, you know, once again, the weird fact that the Trump administration has decided to insert itself, like, try to play a role in this process.
- [61:36]
Matthew Continetti
They are playing. Did you hear about the. I assume you did, these reports that the Trump administration is talking to Libya about resettling up to 1 million Gazans.
- [61:46]
John Podhoretz
Well, then they denied it. Right? They denied it. Whatever.
- [61:50]
Matthew Continetti
They're also denying that, you know, they're conducting intelligence reports on our next territorial acquisition. Greenland.
- [61:57]
John Podhoretz
Yes.
- [61:58]
Matthew Continetti
You know, I mean, I think these things are happening behind the scenes.
- [62:01]
John Podhoretz
Right. But, but I. Look, you know, when, when the history of this administration has written, the book that I'm going to want to read right now is the book about Steve Witkoff, the man with all portfolios, because we also have the situation in which he has now completely flipped. He was negotiating with Iran on enrichment numbers. And yesterday, and he was the guy in the administration who was like, you know, 3%, whatever they want to enrich, they can have a civilian program. I don't know. He went on TV yesterday, on Sunday morning and said, no enrichment.
- [62:37]
Matthew Continetti
Very strong.
- [62:37]
John Podhoretz
No enrichment. No enrichment. That means that door, that door is now shut because there's no benefit to him now to negotiating with enrichment. He publicly has said this is not going to happen, which is probably the end of a deal, is my guess, I suspect. Anyway, there's that, and then there's Russia and Ukraine. Trump is talking to Zelensky and Putin today, supposedly on the phone. So Putin just decided to, you know, send 2,000 billion drones to hit civilian targets in Ukraine overnight just to make it clear that he's not going to make any deal that, that, that Trump wants, and that's also in Witkoff's portfolio. So.
- [63:30]
Matthew Continetti
I think we're just. I think the point here is the window of deal making does seem to be closing with Russia and with Iran, and there's still going to be some more negotiations. You know, Trump is just slowly building up with Putin. He often spins. You know, the way that Trump spun Putin's refusal to go to Turkey last week was Trump suddenly saying, well, if I wasn't going to be There. He wasn't going to be there. Right. You know, Trump, because of his positive thinking, always been turns things around in a way that gives him more opportunities and benefits him. So we're going to have this call again. But it does seem like we're tiptoeing toward bigger sanctions. We should point out that right now Lindsey Graham sanction bill in the Senate has a super majority of co sponsors, could easily pass and it's going to event if the current trajectory continues and there's no reason to think that Putin's interested in a deal, there will be a point at which America has to apply pressure on Putin. And similarly with Iran. You know, as, as I've been saying, it does seem like they've settled on this no enrichment line, which is good policy. That's also the policy, by the way, that every Republican senator other than, of course, Rand Paul.
- [64:54]
John Podhoretz
Yeah.
- [64:54]
Matthew Continetti
And a majority of House Republicans signed a letter telling the President that is our red line, that cannot have Iran enrich uranium. So Republicans are unified on this issue. And I think you're right. I don't think the Ayatollah is ever going to accept it. So there too we're going to find at least more maximum pressure. Remember, the snapback sanctions at the UN Are coming up in the, in the, in the fall. So we would support those, I assume the extension of those as well. If there's no deal and then possibly this a military response.
- [65:25]
John Podhoretz
Right. So the military response question is. So we go to whether Trump, extending an olive branch to Iran then gets really angry that Iran has rejected this overture and has its being Iran and then is sympathetic in a way. It's clear he is not at the moment to an Israeli strike and sympathetic. The question is how sympathetic does he get? Sympathetic enough to allow it to happen or to provide the intelligence necessary for it to happen or to go all in with the Israelis or something. Which seems very unlikely.
- [66:08]
Matthew Continetti
Yeah. I mean, most likely it's with the peace talk. The thought that occurred to me this morning is what Trump in Israel is resembling what Daniel Patrick Moynihan urged Richard Nixon on the race question, which was benign neglect.
- [66:25]
John Podhoretz
Right, Right.
- [66:26]
Matthew Continetti
Just kind of let it go. So, yes, that's right. There. The Republicans communicated to Israel that there should be some food aid at the same time operation, the current operation is going forward and there's no American criticism.
- [66:42]
John Podhoretz
Right.
- [66:43]
Matthew Continetti
All of the airstrikes that took place last week went forward and there was no American criticism. And yes, they're having these, deny. They're denying these conversations about depopulating Gaza, but does seem like that is a conversation that is happening at very high levels throughout the region and with the superpower of the United States. So I could see a scenario in which the deal falls through, Trump produces the crippling sanctions, and again, Israel has a moment opportunity where they could destroy the Iranian nuclear infrastructure with an American backstop. Not necessarily public, you know, support or rather, you know, military assistance, a co cooperated tactical plan, but with America there in behind them, that's. That's going to be what Bibi will have to decide.
- [67:35]
John Podhoretz
Right. Well, look, when it comes down to it, in the end, if the Iranians don't agree to a deal to either suspend or end enrichment or destroy the centrifuges or whatever it is that in some ideal world a negotiation could produce to force them to end this program and to do it in a public way that involves making sure that they can't just press a button and start it up again. Bibi's entire political legacy, 20 years of talking about this. If he does not move, if he does not move to destroy the Iranian nuclear sites, he will judge himself a failure. And the Israeli history is already going to take a reckoning of him because of the concepcia and the misunderstanding of Hamas that led to the attack on October 7th. This is the last thing he has. It's the most important thing to him. And so now it gets to the question of whether the Israelis are actually have the capability to do this without direct American involvement and that we just don't. We don't know. So, Matt, you said you have a partial recommendation.
- [68:57]
Matthew Continetti
Thank you, John. I do have a partial recommendation. Over the weekend, I finished the new memoir by restaurateur Keith McNally. It's called I Regret Almost Everything A Memoir. This was a book that I came across by reading Tina Brown's Substack. But I'd never heard of Keith McNally, who is well known for building these famous restaurants in New York, such as Balthazar Pastis, the Mineta Tavern, which actually just opened up a branch in Washington D.C. his FA, his famous. His first big success was the Odeon. He did a lot of restaurant building down in the Meatpacking district in Soha, Soho, Tribeca areas in New York back in the 80s when they were still what we might call underdeveloped parts of the city. I found this book fascinating because this was a world that I really knew nothing about what it's like to start a restaurant and to be incredibly successful at it. And it's also fascinating because McNally suffered a very, very tough stroke about. About 10 years ago now. And it really caused disruptions in his business. It caused disruptions in his personal life, of course, his physical condition. And so the story alternates between his recovery from the stroke and then kind of a tour of his career creating all these very successful restaurants. And so the only reason I'm saying it's a partial recommendation is that the more you get into the book, the less, the less appealing Keith McNally is as a person because he clearly, he's a very witty writer. And that's one of the joys of the book. He's a very good writer, but he's clearly has a part of his personality which makes him kind of difficult to the people around him, including his two ex. Former wives, his kids, his siblings. And eventually that part of his personality, he's very good at communicating that of the page. So that by the end of the book you're like, wow, this is a pretty good book. But. And I want to try his restaurants, but maybe I don't need to meet Keith McNally in person anytime soon.
- [71:18]
John Podhoretz
He does own and run my favorite restaurant on the planet earth, which is Cafe Luxembourg on the Upper west side. And there is something about these restaurateurs, the people who really know how to do this, who have a lifelong career of doing this. Danny Meyer runs the Union Square Partnership and various like, they have some supernatural understanding of how to make people feel like it is fun to be at their restaurant and to go back to their restaurants. And I. It. It's. It's very hard phrase.
- [71:56]
Matthew Continetti
A party every night. And he wrote that phrase. And when I came across phrases, that's a really interesting way of thinking about never. You know, I just go to the restaurant to eat and I enjoy myself many times. But for them, they have to put on a party every night. And that. That does take a very unique personality.
- [72:13]
John Podhoretz
Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Well, I guess we will be back tomorrow to talk about. I don't know. I mean, I hope we don't.
- [72:24]
Matthew Continetti
The same thing.
- [72:25]
John Podhoretz
Exactly the same thing. Because you know what's going to come after.
- [72:28]
Matthew Continetti
We'll have more thoughts on the subject.
- [72:31]
John Podhoretz
So for Matt, Christine and Abe, I'm John Pothoritz. Keep the candle bur.