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- [00:04]
James Patterson
Hope for the best, expect the worst. Some drinks champagne, Some die at first no way of knowing which way it's going. Hope for the best, expect the worst, hope for the best.
- [00:23]
John Podhoritz
Welcome to the Commentary magazine daily podcast. Today is Monday, July 20, 2026. I am Jon Pudhoritz, the editor of Commentary magazine. With me, as always, executive editor Abe Greenwald. Hi, Abe.
- [00:36]
Seth Mandel
Hi, John.
- [00:37]
John Podhoritz
And senior editor Seth Mandel. Hi, Seth.
- [00:40]
Abe Greenwald
Hi, John.
- [00:41]
John Podhoritz
So, of course, the two most important things over this weekend are the end of the World cup so that we can now go back to being America and stop with all this narish kite caring about countries playing a sport where they're where you only win if you get a penalty shot. So enough. I don't care anymore. Blech. And the opening of the Odyssey, which,
- [01:10]
Abe Greenwald
John, you're ready to get back to hockey, and I don't blame you.
- [01:14]
John Podhoritz
At least in hockey, games aren't won or lost on whether or not you get a penalty and get a free kick like that. This is how a sport goes. That you. That the. The thing that makes you the victor is that you. You manage to score a free kick. This is not the way it should be. And America's interesting because we have interesting and complicated sports. Baseball is very complicated. Even basketball has complicated rules. Football has complicated rules, aside from cricket. I don't know if, like, other sports that anybody else plays in the world have complicated rules. Soccer is people running up and down a field. I've had it. I know it got good ratings. I know we're now, like, in for it. And they're going to broadcast soccer games and they're going to pay billions of dollars for professional soccer leagues now because everybody needs something to put on streaming services. But I'm 65 years old. I never liked soccer. I still don't like soccer. And I'm glad it's over. And as I say, we'll get to the Odyssey later. So we have a major escalation in the war with Iran, with Iran apparently succeeding in striking American positions, particularly in Jordan. And I believe, as I understand it, that one of the reasons that there are American positions in Jordan is that other American sites in military sites in the Middle east have been largely abandoned because the Iranians had fixed targets on them. And so they've been shifting people around, including into Jordan. And a ballistic missile hit hit some target in Jordan, injuring many, killing, I think, three. We get a story this morning from the New York Times saying that there have been 400 wounded in the war with Iran since the beginning of the war and that this is a number that the Pentagon has effectively been hiding from us. And it occurred to me, and I texted you guys on the chain that we have another example of how in the 21st century, how we conduct wars or how we think about wars or how a nation thinks about wars has been flipped on its head because in prior conflicts, a nation like ours would use the fact that the enemy was killing and wounding our people as a rallying cry for retaliation and victory. And it seems to be the decision of the Trump administration to downplay any threat or any example of Iranian counterstriking in favor of Trump's constant line that we've hit them, we've destroyed them, they have nothing. They got nothing. He said it last night again after what happened this weekend. They got nothing. We destroyed their navy, we destroyed their army, we destroyed their Air Force, we destroyed their Coast Guard, whatever it is that he wants to say, they got very little left and we're going to go after them. And clearly it's not true that they have very little left or if they have very little left, it's enough. It's enough to bedevil us and to and to continue to threaten traffic in the strait.
- [04:55]
Seth Mandel
Well, you know, John, when you mentioned that on the text chain, it reminded me, I'm thinking back to the war on terror wars, Iraq and Afghanistan and the situation you described held until it didn't. There was a threshold after which American casualties at the hands of our enemies went from being rallying cry to being evidence that this was all a terrible mistake. And once we passed that threshold, we were in another place. Everything was considered a disaster because there had been too many deaths, too many casualties. So the thing is, we're still on the other side of that threshold. We're still on the other side of the war on terror threshold in terms of our ability to deal with American casualties. It's not, we didn't. There hasn't been a reset for this war or any war. It's as if we are, it's like one long war in some sense to Americans who went through that. Yeah.
- [06:22]
Abe Greenwald
Why the, the war on terror comparison is a good one because it's, it's, the truth is that we've come back to the war on terror framework just because that's what reality has, has forced us to do. And so, you know, we sort of, everybody wanted to abandon the idea of a global war on terror because it was a war on a concept. You can't kill an idea, you know, this and that. And also because people domestically were really unhappy with some of the additional surveillance powers and the bureaucracy and the Department of Homeland Security and this and that, and they just, they just don't like the framing of it. But the truth is that that's still the best way to understand a lot of what's happening, which is that war, now, the conflicts that we face because of the decisions made by our enemies, not by us, are these drawn out, perpetual, you know, sort of struggles and that. It's not actually that different historically from the way conflicts have been in the past, from the way rivalries have been in the past. We, the Cold War was not all cold. There were hot spots. They were, there were real fights, and there were military confrontations during the Cold War through proxies and others. So it's actually, it's not that different hit historically. It's just that once we introduced the framing of the War on Terror, we thought of it as non state actors and didn't really think about the state actor part of it as much. And, but that's back to where we are. That's Iran is, is, is still, first of all, controlling these proxies, but also the fact that Iran has a group in Iraq that shoots at American servicemen in Jordan. I know that's not what happened this time. This time was a direct shot from Iran, but it is what happened last. And the fact that at the same time this is going on, you're seeing them crack IRGC plots in London to, to bring chaos to Golders Green and to hire local people to stab Jews and things like that. There is a, there is a simultaneous thing happening here that is really only best understood in the framework of the War on terror, where there are all these subsurface things happening that are part of the greater conflict and can't really be compartmentalized.
- [08:47]
John Podhoritz
Well, the one problem I have with your analysis here is that this is a deliberate choice that's being made by the Trump administration. Maybe it has its roots in all of this, but my father, Norman Pot Horitz, wrote a book called why We Were in Vietnam, in which he explained that the war in Vietnam had been fought on the cheap, the military, strategic and tactical cheap. And here we have kind of Trump fighting the war on the cheap by pretending that there is no war, in effect, that the war has no impact, should have no impact on the United States to the great, greatest extent possible. And if it does have impact, then he pulls back from it. In other words, if gas prices go up or the markets are roil, he pulls back so this is a choice that is ultimately an act of condescension toward the American people in the sense that they're not being given the right or the information that might make them say, boy, these Iranians are bad guys and we need to best them because look what they're doing now. They might say, well, fair is fair. We fired at them, they fired at us. That's what sort of military what you would say if you're analyzing a battle, but just if you think your country is the good guy and that the other country is the bad guy, you value your people more than you value theirs, and you want your blood avenged and you want to beat them because they are inflicting damage on you. And this is. I just think it's an entirely new way of fighting. I mean, even in Vietnam, where there were famously, you know, this. This nightly body count thing where they would announce at the five o' clock follies in Saigon how many Vietnamese they had killed and wounded as a way of, like, rallying American support, it's not like they help withheld information on American deaths, which in some ways you probably couldn't have done even in the slightest moral fashion, because it was a draft and people were there, you know, because they had been sent there and had been brought in, had been conscripted to send there, and you couldn't hide what was happening to them. That would have been sort of like an infamy. Just think that, you know, we're in this very weird, liminal space between being at war and not being at war. We're at war, and we're not at war, and this country is not at war. The Trump administration is at war. Our military is at war. America is not at war.
- [11:59]
Seth Mandel
You know, I think there's a counterpart, John, to your observation about the difference now in treating American casualties. The counterpart is that we also have all these leaks about our dwindling defensive munitions, which I think is unbelievably problematic. You know, I understand to a certain extent, taxpayers have to know sort of what, you know, where defense dollars go. But we broadcast to Iran and whomever else long ago that we've got this dearth that we have to make up in defensive munitions. And then over the weekend, there was a leak, even the Washington Post, about this, saying that the White House seems unaware of the extent to which we don't have. We are low on these munitions.
- [13:10]
John Podhoritz
Like, so that was a weird leak, though. We should talk about that, because that leak is one of those bizarre things that was intended to Kind of kasher Donald Trump by saying, I don't think he's aware of how bad our munitions problem is. And therefore, if only the President knew, he wouldn't be talking so recklessly or talking about expanding the war out as he has been talking this week. That's a weird. First of all, he's the President, so if he doesn't know, and it's his business to know, the same thing is happening that he sort of claimed was happening with electoral problems in 2020, which is during his administration, nobody was telling him how bad things were. The problem with your citing this, Abe, is that, you know, for two months on this podcast, John Schanzer and Eli Lake have told us that their sources say that our defensive munitions are dwindling and that they've been, and that we've used a lot of them up. So they know Trump knows. Now people are trying to give him an out. It sounds to me the restrainers are the people who want this war to sort of be halted in its tracks by saying, oh, if only the President knew. And then Trump can say, well, I didn't know, so we gotta do something differently. Of course he knows. That's one of the two reasons that he called the ceasefire, as we understand it. One was that he had made a threat that he was unwilling to sort of to fulfill, which was the destruction of their civilization, and the other was that we needed a pause to refill our stocks and that. So what does that mean? That means that you knew that we were low on. We were low on munitions in one fashion or another.
- [15:20]
Seth Mandel
Yeah. But I just, you know, part of me wishes that, you know, Shanzer and Eli didn't know in some sense, because when you're actually at war, whatever we're calling it, having that information be readily available, broadcast everywhere, not only does it mean that we know and that Trump knows, but it also means that the Iranians know. And that undoubtedly affects their calculus in terms of how they're going to respond to these bids for peace and what kind of punishment they're willing to take militarily because they're aware that the US can't keep it up.
- [16:22]
Eric Gertler
From the State House to the courthouse, in the emergency room and in the classroom, Americans are losing trust in their leaders. In a 2025 U.S. news and World Report survey, 85% of Americans said government leaders care more about their own power than the people they serve. 73% are disappointed in healthcare leaders, 72% in business, and 68% in education. But there are still leaders worth believing In. I'm Eric Gertler, CEO and executive chairman of U.S. news World Report. This is the Best Leaders podcast sponsored by the Noble Reach Foundation. On this show, we'll go deeper into the stories, challenges and lessons of extraordinary leaders across public service, business, healthcare and education. You can find the Best Leaders podcast from U.S. news World Report on YouTube, Apple Spotify, Amazon Music, or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [17:22]
James Patterson
I'm James Patterson. I write way too many books. Welcome to Hungry Dogs. The title comes from my maternal grandmother, Isabel Zelvis Morris. Nan used to always say, hungry dogs run faster, James. And I've been running fast ever since. Here's what will be coming your way soon. And this is a really terrific list. I think you'll hear from some incredible people like Stacey Abrams. Yay. BJ Novak. Yay. Kathy Bates, Dolly Parton. Josh Gad. And Pope Leo. Okay, maybe not Pope Leo, but who knows, Maybe he'll show up. Hungry Dogs run faster. Thank you, grandma, for turning me into a hopeless, obsessive, compulsive. Listen to Hungry Dogs with James Patterson. That'd be me on Apple, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. Thank you, thank you, thank you.
- [18:23]
John Podhoritz
We have the largest military in the world. We spend 10 times the amount of any other country on our military. And the idea that we can't fight a three month war against Iran without draining us of all our materiel, I'm a little suspicious of this, to be honest. I understand that we had to give a bunch to the Israelis and to the Kuwaitis and to the Omanis and to the uae. But I mean, just color me skeptical. It may just be that, you know, this fight inside the administration over the dwindling reserves has to do with saving them for the next war, you know?
- [19:19]
Abe Greenwald
Well, also because we started up again, right? I mean, we talked about this last, like we had conversations about we're running out of munitions. And then Trump was like, this, mou is dead. The Iranians are dead to me, and I'm going to make them dead. And then, you know, the, the he lit up the night sky again. And so it left a lot of us wondering, well, where was the shortage? Why are we able to turn the spigot back on when we need to? And why is it suddenly the case that according to the president, that the war restarts when based on the actions and activities of the Iranians and not based on our needs, Right? And what we actually have in stock all of a sudden it's, well, if the Iranians are not going to Follow it, we're going to, you know, bring down, we're going to open the gates of hell on them. And it was a few weeks before that. Well, you know, what do they want us to do? There's no more places to hit, there's no more targets and we don't have the bombs to do it anyway.
- [20:23]
Seth Mandel
No, but the shortage was defensive and we are seeing the Iranian strikes get through. I mean, so, you know, to tell you the truth, John, I was skeptical when these stories first started coming out.
- [20:37]
James Patterson
But
- [20:40]
Seth Mandel
this in combination with I think the at this point, undeniable fact that the administration had no plan for, for the Iranians threatening the strait, I'm more inclined to think this is just more evidence of gross mismanagement of a war whose cause was righteous and justified and wise.
- [21:06]
John Podhoritz
Well, when I say that I'm skeptical, I don't mean I believe totally that in classic war planning or long term Pentagon planning, that the idea that our missile defenses or our defensive missile battery needs to remain at this level before the refill gas light starts going on as your tank gets close to empty, that there is a base level that you do not want to go below where that level is set, I don't know, nor do we. But generally I think you can assume that it's set at a pretty high level because it is, after all, defensive. And you never know when you're going to be attacked. So you need to be at the ready if you're going to be attacked. But when you make the decision unilaterally to go to war, you have to use, just as you have to fight the war with the army you have, you have to fight the war with the resources you have also. And so if I'm right and the munitions really may be there, but that there is a huge fight over how much of them we can possibly afford to use, that may constitute gross mismanagement, but ultimately the gross mismanagement is that given everything that we've discovered, you say that it was a just cause, but that we shouldn't have have done it in the first place because we don't have the sufficient weaponry to prevail. And that there was a lot of guesswork going on here that we could decapitate the regime, that the people would rise up, that this would happen, that would happen. And then basically a bunch of decisions were made along the way that lengthened this, including not letting the Kurds sort of come down from the north or arming the Kurds or whatever, all sorts of ideas the Israelis had. But I don't think it's mismanagement if I'm right and that we probably have the stuff to use, but that it will drain our coffee, drain our stores. And we are going to have to, like, Trump is going to have to go hat in hand to Congress and say we got to refill them and he doesn't want to have to do that already having spent more on defense than he wanted to. But if we can't fight a three month war without draining our materiel, then we shouldn't have fought it, then we shouldn't have gone to war. I don't know what else to say.
- [23:59]
Seth Mandel
I'm not prepared to say that I think it still depends on what the outcome looks like. If Seth's written about this and many others have, there are all these systems and innovations to get fuel and energy through the region in light of what's gone on, in light of the Iranian pressure on the strait. So if we can somehow end up in a place where, yes, the Iranians nuclear program has been crushed and the fact that they can exert their control or impose tolls or whatever they think they're doing on the strait, if that fact becomes increasingly less salient and because of all sorts of market and technological ways around it, then I don't know that I can say that, that we shouldn't have fought it. But it was ugly and messy and certainly raised a lot of problematic questions.
- [25:15]
Abe Greenwald
Yeah, the strait is going to be less important as time goes on, but
- [25:21]
John Podhoritz
that time is like two years, three years.
- [25:24]
Abe Greenwald
So the Iranian strategy has been, Trump and his party are facing midterms. We won't be the straight won't be replaced by then. Can we pile on the consequences of this war, the financial consequences of this war for Americans enough to break Trump's will before it becomes irrelevant. Before we, before we, we, we, we begin just naturally losing our leverage to do so. And as other things come online, that's their, their one advantage is that the midterms happen before any new overland route is established, you know, firmly established or whatever. And so they're, they are racing. I mean, I've come to believe that's one of the reasons that they've done what they've done recently. I mean, I remember on a recent show I was, I was like flabbergasted. Why they didn't just open the straight for 60 days, collect gazillions of dollars, right, Feed that money to Hezbollah, which, you know, Israel was being restrained from attacking, and then close the strait on day 61 because the thing says after 60 days, then we negotiate the future of the strait and say, okay, let's negotiate the future of the strait, but pocket the money over 60 days. I've come to believe that the reason they, they didn't do that is because they don't. The money is not the main thing. The time is here. And they, they know that there's a certain race against the clock. And right now they have Trump at his most politically vulnerable spot because it's before the midterms and not after the midterms when he won't be running for reelection again. They've got basically one more election to pressure Trump, and I think that they're throwing literally everything they possibly can to just pile on the damage and try to scare off Republicans from this before November, in, you know, in which case they sort of, they get what they want. So I think that's the mad rush. But it, yes, it is the grand finale because it's. They're never going to have this opportunity again. There's never going to be a straight of Hormuz again. Not just this straight of Hormuz, but the world has now understood how this works and we've now understood how the shadow fleets work. I wrote last week about Pakistan and, and how they're docking off Pakistan to avoid being sent back into the, into the stoppage zone. And, and, and all that we have seen, we have opened it up. It's, it's like the fountain pens that are clear, that have the clear, you know, case, and you can see the working of the pump and where the ink goes and everything like that. We've now seen an X ray of how all of this works. And, and so I think the Iranians know that they're just, this is it, this is the chance. This is when you put all the chips on the table and hope that it's enough.
- [28:29]
John Podhoritz
We're having this conversation today and I think the expectation is that the war is going to accelerate this week, where we're having a kind of threnody for the failure of the war to secure the aims that we wished. But of course, Trump is going back in now. He, being as flighty as he is, could reverse that. But we know that refueling craft have gone to Israel, that Israel is itself is getting into a state of high readiness for re involvement. Of course, basically, Israel was told to stand down and not participate in striking Iran after the ceasefire was created. And then Israel had to participate in this dance about whether or not it was going to be unwillingly drawn into the ceasefire by sucking up to Iran, by insisting that Hezbollah be left alone and be part of the ceasefire terms and that Israel not go after Hezbollah. And that, of course, when fell by the wayside, Israel was not a signatory to the ceasefire and Hezbollah was not included in the ceasefire. So. And this deal was made with Lebanon, between Israel, Lebanon and the United States, with the idea that the Lebanese government was now actively going to participate in helping Israel sideline Hezbollah to the extent that it was possible for it to do so. So something's going to happen. Israel's like they've drawn the. I'm trying to think of them. They're in readiness. And Trump has been saying, we're going back in this week.
- [30:26]
James Patterson
So
- [30:28]
John Podhoritz
I think there's nothing that we're gonna do or say that is going to scare the Iranians into stopping the Hormu, because it's the only thing that they have. And you're right about the money, which is they don't care about the money. They really don't care about the money. They're fighting for their regime's survival. And so if that means immiseration, it means immiseration nations can be poor, be enemies of the United States and continue to survive. North Korea is sitting there, the poorest country on the planet earth, and all it needs to do to not be the poorest country on earth is to give up its nuclear program. And it's not going to do that because it's too important for it to do so. So other things take the place of money. Maybe not in Trump world where that's the only way you measure success, including crypto billions. But maybe it's very hard for them to conceive of a world in which somebody would be motivated by some force other than, you know, having a lot of, you know, having your bank account restricted. Gonna talk to you about Brooklyn Bedding because when I first laid down on my kids new Brooklyn bedding mattress, I immediately felt a difference. So did they. I bought two more for two other kids. That's what's going on in my house. This isn't just your average bed. It's a handcrafted, precision built comfort manufactured right here in the US you don't just sleep on a Brooklyn bedding mattress, you experience it. I'm big on buying things I know will last. And Brooklyn bedding feels like that kind of purchase. They design and assemble every mattress in an Arizona factory. No middlemen, no gimmicks, just top tier quality. If you sleep hot, Brooklyn bedding use glaciotex covers, copper infused foams and temperature regulating materials to help keep keep you cool and comfortable all night long. So go to BrooklynBetting.com and use my promo code commentary at checkout to get 30 off site wide during the summer sale. That's BrooklynBetting.com and promo code commentary for 30 off site wide exclusive with my code BrooklynBedding.com promo code commentary
- [32:50]
James Patterson
now that
- [32:51]
John Podhoritz
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- [38:10]
Abe Greenwald
Well, also we should note in that, in that exchange, right after that exchange, Tapper's response, which was very smart, which was, you know, yes, it had be. It began about Jake Tapper ask. One of the questions he asked him was about Abdul El Sayed saying that he, you know, he, he couldn't comment or he wasn't sure he should comment on the death of the Ayatollah because the people in his district, like the Ayatollah, whatever. At the end of this conversation, Tapper says, I was specifically asking you about comments you didn't want to make because you didn't want to offend people in Dearborn, which is Michigan. So we should point out that Tapper was on that and pointed to that and, and said that, that a lot of this is people like Abdul Al said saying, I want to talk about what affects my district. When the question is about him saying things or not saying things specifically because he is saying how that will affect the opinions and the emotions of the people in his district. That's the two sided game. And yeah, and Jake Tapper is absolutely right to call that out and to make that very specific distinction, which is also part of the larger question that he was asking and he brought in, which is also part of this discussion. Lulu Garcia Navarro's interview with Mayor Mamdani in the New York Times, which was a day or two earlier, maybe a couple of days earlier, where they had very similar things where they said they would say they were talking about essentially litmus tests. Who can be a Democrat, who can be part of the tent, who can be in this with you? And that is a question about Americans. That is a question about American voters and American activists and all that. Who is in your coalition? You over here who are trying to get elected in New York City, you over here who are trying to get elected in the state of Michigan and who can join you in that fight. And they're saying people who can join us in that fight have to take specific stances on Israel 6,000 miles away. And then you say, well, that's not a very big tent because Democrats used to have room, plenty of room for people who believed in Israel's right to exist. And they say, why are you asking me about something 6,000 miles away?
- [40:37]
John Podhoritz
I want to quote that passage from the El Sayed part, not the Mamdani interview. Asked about the this tent question, El Sayed said to Jake Tapper, there's always room in the tent for folks and I'm for human rights and equal rights to peace, dignity and self determination. Whatever you think about the right of Israel to exist, I wonder if they have a right to our tax dollars. Whoever said Israel has a right to our tax dollars, no one has ever said Israel has a right to our tax dollars. Representatives of the American people in Congress assembled have voted over the years to provide aid to Israel representing the people of the United States as they do so. It's not a matter of right, it is a matter of law. And the people decide, and the people decide through their representatives. And he is lighting that distinction and he is trying to make it sound as though Israel claims a right to American tax dollars when not to say this for the hundred thousandth time, but the tax dollars that are spent on Israel are spent by the American government inside the United States to buy American equipment that is then sent to Israel. It is therefore has been for, since 1979 when this aid really started, you know, in earnest, a domestic industrial policy that is there to help the American defense industry and provide it with a subvention that Israel obviously benefits from because it doesn't have to pay for the weaponry. Now, whatever happens in two, three years, I don't even know when Israel is going to either. That is never going to be voted on. Israel is going to reject that subsidy and it's just going to buy the materiel on its own. That's what Netanyahu has said. I think that's consensus in Israel that Israel has put itself into a certain amount of political danger by accepting this American largesse. Now, let's see what happens. Because of course, what will happen with these people is that they'll say that Americans shouldn't be. American companies shouldn't be allowed to sell military equipment to Israel.
- [43:24]
Abe Greenwald
Right. And it's following Abe said this the other day in his column on Rokhana and Ro Khanna going on the drop site podcast, and Jeremy Scahill saying to him, well, if you believe what you say, you believe, why don't you believe that Palestinians can kill Israelis? And Abe said, you know, this is what happens when you are made to follow to the logical endpoint of your own position. And that's the logical endpoint of his own position. The people who are saying Israel's, Israel shouldn't get our tax dollars, Israel, we, we shouldn't have aid to Israel because they're committing genocide or whatever. If you really believe that, you wouldn't agree. You wouldn't support selling weapons to them. You wouldn't, you wouldn't support having any relationship with them whatsoever. And so, excuse me. And so now we see what happens. So they say, so aid becomes unpopular because of the way it's mischaracterized. Fine. So Congress puts up this new design that says it's going to be cooperative projects. What do these people say? What are the Ro Khannas and all those guys say? They have another objection to it because it's not about Israel is a rich country and they can afford it on their own. It's because they're following to the logical endpoint of their own positions. And their position is that Israel is evil and deserves nothing from us.
- [44:54]
Seth Mandel
Yeah, I mean, if you think about it, their argument is there, meaning the earnest Israel haters of the left. Israel should be denied the revenues that come from what they make there.
- [45:15]
James Patterson
Right.
- [45:17]
Seth Mandel
Israel should be denied American aid, and Israel should be denied the ability to spend what they make there over here. So there is no hole that they don't want plugged up here. It's not, you know, it's not this. Each segment of that. They can make the case. They'll try to make the case for on their own, but it's the totality of the position. And when they get one, when they accomplish one, they'll move to the next and to the next and the next, and they can just eat away at the entire relationship and all its pillars. Another interesting point that may be kind of a sort of side point here. But what's interesting also is that the people on the right who have turned on Israel are also the ones who have been clamoring about industrial policy. And you'd think that they would have some appreciation for the point you make, John, about this being a boon to American manufacturing. But as usual, Israel and the Jews trumps every other one, every other concern that is oh, so important to them. You're muted.
- [46:46]
John Podhoritz
I wanted to ask you guys Mamdani's point that he made in the last couple of days that he was seriously considering seeking the arrest of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, should Netanyahu come to New York for the UN General Assembly. Now, surely he knows that that is. He cannot do that. Those leaders come to the United States under, first of all, whether or not he can do it, because there's no. He. He's violated no law and he is in no position to. There's no American law that he's violated. And therefore he can't be charged and arrested. And he's the Prime Minister of another country and he would be coming to America under a condition of diplomatic immunity regardless.
- [47:42]
Abe Greenwald
And we're not a party to the icc.
- [47:45]
John Podhoritz
And the.
- [47:46]
Abe Greenwald
He keeps saying, I would honor the ICC arrest warrant.
- [47:51]
John Podhoritz
Right. So, yeah. The International Criminal Court in the Hague has issued an arrest warrant for Benjamin Netanyahu and that he would arrest him under those circumstances, which is yes. And the United States, unlike Spain and some other, is not a signatory to the international, to the ICC and therefore isn't a participant in this. Is he trolling? I mean, now I'm sort of wondering is he trolling? He doesn't need, he didn't need to go there. He doesn't need to do this. He's already won as an anti Zionist, you know, saying he does, you know, he doesn't believe in Israel as a Jewish state. And you know, he's basically a supporter of the Palestinians and thinks that, you know, the Gazans are legitimately resisting and whatever else he was willing to entertain. I, so it's like he can't move on. And he, he, he wants to keep stressing this.
- [48:53]
Seth Mandel
Yeah. But I don't think it's because he's trolling. I think he's trying to push American politics in this direction every chance he gets so that I don't know if he's actually going to try to arrest Netanyahu or not. Maybe not. I mean, probably not. But I think the point is to start having this fight and to make it something that future Democratic officials will try. And it could be sort of a new ongoing delegitimization campaign against Israel where whenever their leaders come over, some blue city official is going to try to have them arrested or something like that, you know, and then God knows, you know, what the future brings. You know, I mean, there's no, there are no straight line projections. But he's trying to steer, steer, steer, use every opportunity to this. Because he's the window. This is his window. I mean, you know, this is the country and certainly his side, his party is seized by this mania. So he's gonna push it in this direction every, with every fiber of his being.
- [50:16]
Abe Greenwald
Yeah. And he's also doing this in an environment when in other countries people are being arrested not by mayors and it's not prime ministers who are being arrested. So the other thing he's clearly trying to do here is to copy what goes on in Belgium and wherever where an Israeli comes in and that the Hyndra Job foundation, essentially a Hezbollah offshoot or, or founded by a Hezbollah guy, files some kind of complaint and he want, and people try to arrest him. Israelis are getting arrested throughout Europe. That is something that has happened. Then they get released. But, you know, they are getting, they are landing in Europe, modern Europe, and getting and you know, and being arrested and having their rights read to them and interrogated and then sent home. That's, that's what's happening in Europe. And what Mamdani is talking about is Those, you know, he knows to a certain extent that Netanyahu has, I guess you could call it diplomatic immunity or. Though it's really just the. The law, like he's making up laws. Not. Not pb, but whatever. Whatever he wants to call it, he had. There's a certain amount of diplomatic protection that makes Mamdani's statements on this ridiculous.
- [51:36]
James Patterson
But
- [51:39]
Abe Greenwald
nobody else has diplomatic protection in Israeli. You know, in Canada, there are. There. There are websites compiling lists of Canadian Jews who fought in the. Who fight in the idf, their families, where they live and the schools that they went to. This is the environment. This is what really bothers me about all this, is that Bibi's not going to be arrested and no one's going to try to arrest Bibi, but he's going to just. Mamdani is going to use the excuse that his lawyers told him he can't. His lawyers told him that Bibi has diplomatic immunity or whatever. He's going to make it sound as. As bad as possible, you know, as if, like, well, my lawyer said he's going to intimate that, you know. Well, we could. If he didn't have diplomatic immunity, whatever. But the point is that people are, Are turning this into a way to. Into a net to catch innocent Jews throughout the world because they have thrown suspicion on their service in the IDF simply because they served in the idf. And that's the case that. And in a city like New York, that's a big problem.
- [52:49]
John Podhoritz
I think that what it displays, if it's not trolling, is genuine fanaticism. And it's interesting that Al Sayed, who is a. Who is a very slick character and a good talker and like, knows how to be fluid and fluent in making the points that he makes, saying them and then taking them back. And all of that is basically the same kind of fanatic. You don't bring up Israel and AIPAC in every sentence if you don't want to further this larger agenda. Not just winning the primary that he wants to win, everyone in Michigan now understands that he is the anti AIPAC candidate and that his purpose is to show off and show down aipac. So he's got two weeks to win this election to talk about what Michiganders really want, but he talks about aipac. So Mamdani is running the city. He is doing all kinds of socialist, crazy, terrible things with rent and building, city grocery stores and God knows what else. But he keeps returning to the subject
- [54:10]
Eric Gertler
of
- [54:12]
John Podhoritz
Israel and Gaza because that's really what they're in this for.
- [54:19]
Abe Greenwald
And his high level aide tried to meet with the Iranian ambassador on the sidelines of the UN until she was told. You can't do that.
- [54:29]
John Podhoritz
Yeah, I mean, my point is that El Sayed is clever enough to know, to say, why are you asking me about the Israel and AIPAC when I just want to talk about Michigan? But it's these Jews, these AIPAC Jews that just keep getting in the way. And AIPAC is getting in the way and the foreign money, and he keeps using the term foreign money. That's American money. Michigan is not an independent country. Michigan does not have, you know, does not have sovereign currency that is being invaded by, by, by, you know, international crypto. This is as egregiously, classically antisemitic as you can get accusing a small cabal of a tiny population that has unwarranted economic power of levying that power to crush ordinary people and make sure that ordinary people don't get what they need and that the blood sucking, vampiric Jews, you know, benefit from their, from their
- [55:52]
James Patterson
blood
- [55:54]
John Podhoritz
and you know, it's. That we're talking about this in 2026 remains an absolutely unthinkable change in the political atmosphere and temperature in the United States. Happening again in Maine. Right. The candidate who is going to take Graham Platner's position in Maine, not the Secretary of State of Maine, not sort of like I'd see, but the person who most closely resembles Graham Platner's views not only on the economy but on Israel, is the one that everybody is clearing the way for to be the Democratic candidate for the Senate in Maine. I don't think that that is a wise play for Maine Democrats who may ultimately give up on even the thought of winning this race against the incredibly able Susan Collins, even though that's now close to being a blue state. But that's what they want. And this is.
- [57:01]
Abe Greenwald
Well, can I add to what you're saying from the elf, just not before we on the El Sayed interview, just to add to what you're saying. Jake Tapper plays a clip of El Sayed saying, are we going to let, at a rally? Are we going to let Trump donors, billionaires and apac lies steal this election? Right. So you talk, John, you were just talking about the, the, the supposed illegitimacy of Jews and their money and their opinions and, and all that in the election. And that is a very stark way of saying that. And Jake Tapper says to him, well, that's a pretty stark term. Haven't really heard steal this election since 2024. And then he says, look, it's a close, this is tapper, look, it's a close race, okay? You know, you're, you're running, excuse me, against a four term congresswoman, okay, who's endorsed by the outgoing senator, you know, of, by the current holder of the seat that, that you guys are running for, okay? So you know, it's not like this person materialized in from thin air. And, and he said, are you saying that if you lose it'll be because the election was stolen? And El Sayed says, I believe in the rigor of the democratic process, but also the corruption of billionaire money, APAC money, et cetera, et cetera. Then he says, if you were to take all the outside spending in this race out, this would not be a close election. So again, the, the, the legitimacy of the electoral process is being undermined by Jews. That's what he's saying straight out, once again, okay? And then he says, he says the phrase, I think the sentence, I think that's anti democratic on its own terms. So you know, just to, just to add to your point there, this is, this is the Jews endangering democracy.
- [58:49]
Seth Mandel
You know, I just want to bring up something here. I mean, yes, there are liberal leaning broadcasters who will question people like El said on these things, but you know what they really don't do that they always do with someone from the right is follow up these challenges with fact checking challenges. You know, they never make the factual points that John, that you were making about that this is American money. They never get into the percentages on foreign spending in relative countries. They hit them with a question that's, they sort of challenge them really like three questions too late, you know, because we've known, you know, what El Sayed and people have been saying, you know, so long ago, this question should have been answered, you know, asked a long time ago and sort of let them make their defense and move on, you know, and they don't face the same kind of grilling on a factual basis as they would were they on the right.
- [60:08]
Abe Greenwald
It's frustrating and they, and they, and the thing that, that's an important point and also one raised by the interviews this weekend because of the times that the interview viewers didn't do that. It raised something important. These guys don't have an answer. If you say to them, what does that mean? That question, what does that mean? Is something they don't have an answer to. Right. And I'll read, you look, I'll read from Mamdani's interview, right. She says, Lulu Garcia Navarro says is Benjamin Netanyahu is coming for the UN General Assembly. You've talked about arresting him because of the icc. He said, Mamdani says, I believe that Prime Minister Netanyahu belongs in the Hague. He's a war criminal who has been charged by the International Criminal Court. And what you will find is that an opinion that is held by many purely because of what his actions have wrought over these last many years. I've also said that I will follow the laws that we have here in New York City to because I believe that there is an importance in following the law as a leader who presides over our city. LULU GARCIA NAVARRO I'm sorry, I don't understand what that means. And then he's forced to say what it means one other time that comes up in this in this interview, which is actually really important on a completely different subject. Okay. She says, they're talking about now, you know, the working class. She says, how do you define the working class?
- [61:35]
Seth Mandel
Mom?
- [61:36]
Abe Greenwald
I think if you have to work to pay your bills, I think that is one definition of being part of the working class. LULU GARCIA NAVARRO so someone making 250 grand a year is working class? MAMDANI I haven't asked myself where it starts and stops. What I would say is those who are working to try and afford the basic dignities of life and aren't able to do so, blah, blah, blah. And Lulu Garcia Navarro follows that up by saying, that just doesn't ring true to me. And Mamdani says, why? What do you think? And she says, you know, you're basically saying anyone under a million dollars a year in income is working class. And then she says to him, someone who is a janitor is going to feel some kind of way about that description if you're lumping them in with someone who's a lawyer. This is what happens when you ask them, what does that mean?
- [62:26]
John Podhoritz
Yeah, that's a really wonderful point, and I'm really glad you elucidated all of that because it just gives us a sense of the the nature of the enemy here and the games that they play and the way that they need to be addressed and spoken of. I'm going to conclude here by making as strong a recommendation as I have ever made, which is Christopher Nolan's the Odyssey, which of course, opened on Friday. As most of you probably already know, this movie has been part of the cultural conversation for at least a year. Nolan is a brilliant publicist. And the fact that he was making this movie has been at the forefront of cultural conversation forever, in part through what might be considered an act of PR trolling on his part by casting the gorgeous African American African actress Lupita Nyong' o as Helen of Troy, thus causing a million tweets from psychotic racists and right wing morons and all sorts of other people as to the question of whether or not Helen of Troy should only be portrayed looking like Marilyn Monroe if she was the face that launched a thousand ships, as opposed to being one of the most beautiful women on earth, which Lupita Nyong' O is. Anyway, this thing went on Lupita Nago's in the movie for three minutes by the way, and she plays not only Helen of Troy, but Nolan contrives to make her the twin sister of Clytemnestra, the wife of Agamemnon, who murders Agamemnon upon his arrival home. That's the great counter to Odysseus effort to get home to his wife Penelope. And he is warned both in the poem and in the movie by the shade of Agamemnon to return home and tread carefully because he was only there for six hours when he was dispatched by his wife. So Odysseus better take care. Anyway, that's the Lupita Nyong' O part. This is maybe one of the greatest movies ever made. I don't quite know whether it deserves that appellation yet, cause time will tell. It may be the most sophisticated and, and most remarkable adaptation of a great work of cultural art in the 113 year history of the narrative cinema. I cannot think of a great work of art that has been translated as relatively faithfully and relatively in the spirit of the Homeric telling that does justice to the imagery and the ideas that of course form this one of the formative stories of the planet Earth. Narrative stories of the planet Earth. All of the main events in the course of Odysseus journey are shown to us in remarkably imagistic ways. The Cyclops, the, the Scylla and Charybdis and Circe's transformation of Odysseus sailors into pigs, which is one of the most remarkable straight out horror sequences I've ever seen. When, when you see a movie like this you realize that we've been talking about how the cinema is basically finished. It's had its hundred year, it's been around for 100, been the dominant form of popular art for like a century and things last that long. Epic poetry was in the 1816, 17, 18th centuries was the key way that culture was transmitted. And then. Then came the novel and then came the movies and all of that. But obviously, this form, used at its highest possible, in the highest possible way, still has the power to be as overwhelming as any other, or maybe more overwhelming than other forms of art when it is fully realized. And what Nolan did here, which you don't see, but you feel it every second, and there's no reason for anybody to know that this is how it was done. He filmed this movie entirely on IMAX cameras. IMAX cameras weigh 400 pounds and they are very large. And when the motors are running on IMAX cameras, they sound like a lawn mower. And so all of these new techniques had to be added to make it possible for narrative scenes with dialogue in them to be filmed with IMAX cameras, which is really never been done before. It's also that IMAX cameras can only take three minutes of film before the film runs out. And so you have to finish three minutes and then reload, and it takes 10 minutes to reload. So a scene that takes five or six minutes, a narrative scene, how long
- [68:11]
Abe Greenwald
did it take to shoot this movie?
- [68:13]
John Podhoritz
I think seven months or something like that, Eight months. You're seeing scenes in which the actors only get three minutes at a stretch to interact, to create dramatic tension, anything like that. And when the cameras are in the middle of the scene between them, they are the size of an suv. And so the only way that they could act against each other is to have mirrors set up so that when Matt Damon is talking to Anne Hathaway and having an intimate scene with Anne Hathaway or with Charlize Theron, who plays Calypso the nymph, they are talking to each other in mirrors. They are interacting in mirrors in three minute segments. And there are seven or eight great performances in this movie delivered under astoundingly difficult conditions, and the filming process itself a matter of astounding difficulty, all of which is done not as a trick, but in service of trying to tell this great story in the best and most memorable possible way. It is therefore, both a technical achievement, it is a directorial achievement, it's an actorly achievement, it's a writerly achievement, because Nolan wrote the screenplay and found a way to tell Odysseus story the one. It goes beyond practically anything that any individual writer, director, has ever achieved in some ways, in the history of the cinema. Having said that, thematically, Nolan does something very nervy and interesting in this movie, which is that he. He imposes a modern moral dilemma on Odysseus. That has to do with the siege of Troy. I won't sort of talk about it, but it is. Odysseus is experiencing an emotion that the Greeks did not themselves either know, acknowledge or were interested in. But that is an emotion that we live under, live, breathe and eat by every day, which is guilt. And so this is a movie about guilt. And, you know, Greeks were all about honor and shame and not about the internal torments inside the person, but how his behavior affected the natural world, how the natural world affected his behavior and what he needed to do to expiate the divine retribution that was often very capricious and amoral behavior of the gods toward him, to get them not to just sort of kill, as Shakespeare said, to make us like flies, as flies to wanton boys who kill us for their sport. So it is a titanic achievement. You would be crazy not to see it. If you listen to these lunatics who are telling you that it's woke and that it's a woke. So you are guilty. You will not only deny yourself something great, but you will be guilty of participating in not the expansion or the defense of Western culture, but it's destruction. Because this is a cultural document that once again makes the point that the west has the greatest of all lessons to teach us. And that those lessons were being taught at the very beginning of Western culture, at the very beginning Homer and the Bible began Western culture. And no one has ever improved upon them. So if you think about it, there is no greater work of art than the Odyssey. And so being able to render a respectable and intellectually satisfying adaptation of it that has all of the drama, all of the flavor, all of the portent of the original is. Is just, you know, sort of beyond praise. So go see the Odyssey. We'll be back tomorrow. For Abe and Seth, I'm John Podhoritz. Keep the candle burning.