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- [00:01]
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- [00:45]
Matthew Continetti
No way of knowing which way it's going.
- [00:49]
John Podhoretz
Hope for the best, Expect the worst, Hope for the best welcome to the Commentary Magazine daily podcast. Today is Tuesday, December 17th, 2024. I'm John Podhortz, the editor of Commentary magazine. With me, as always, Executive editor Abe Greenwald. Hi Abe.
- [01:08]
Abe Greenwald
Hi John.
- [01:08]
John Podhoretz
Media Commentary columnist Christine Rosen. Hi Christine.
- [01:11]
Christine Rosen
Hi John.
- [01:12]
John Podhoretz
Senior editor Seth Mandel. Hi, Seth.
- [01:15]
Matthew Continetti
Hi John.
- [01:15]
John Podhoretz
And Washington Commentary columnist Matthew Continetti. Hi Matt.
- [01:18]
Seth Mandel
Hi John.
- [01:20]
John Podhoretz
You know, during the entirety of the first Trump presidency, there was a general plaint among people who kind of liked the policies that Trump was pursuing, but could not bear the manner in which he was conducting his presidency. A kind of if only there was all this if only he could not tweet, if only he could not attack the African American congresswoman with the crazy hats. If only he could get a hold of himself and not send out a tweet that said covfefe if only. And then our general thing is Trump is Trump. You can't expect him not to be himself. He is who he is. Some people like it, some people hate it, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Okay, yesterday, pretty impromptu, he gave about an hour long press conference which I was fortunate enough totally by happenstance to listen to in the car because I was happened to be driving and discovered that it was on and if only Trump to some extent has now arrived, I mean arrived sort of four years too late to help him in 2020. But to say that this was a different incoming President Trump from the incoming President Trump of 2016, or certainly the Trump during his tenure as president, I think is a drastic understatement, Matt.
- [03:02]
Seth Mandel
And I think he explained why in the press conference he said, there's a lot less resistance to me this time than there was in 2017. Talk a little bit about this phenomenon in the current issue of Commentary magazine. In my column I call it the Trump Moon. Our friend Mark Halperin coined the Trump moment in his newsletter today. So pick whichever label you will. I won't be offended if you go with Mark over me, but the Trump Moon is a thing. And why? Well, I think it has more to do with the change in attitude toward Trump than any change on his part. What I have found studying Trump over the past 10 years is that if you approach him with open arms or you begin by flattery, you can go a lot farther than if you approach him with raised fists and with insults, because then he will retaliate. This is the classic Trump. So what do we have now? We have him winning the popular vote. We have him making the most extraordinary comeback in modern political history, winning a non consecutive term, despite the indictments, despite all the judgments, despite the assassination attempts, despite the hostile media, despite the great switcheroo replacing Biden with Harris. And people who are approaching him, from the business community to even the media and corporations, like we discussed on the show yesterday, are coming at it in a more approachable manner. And finally, I'd say one center of Trump resistance throughout his first term was within the Republican Party, the pre Trump Republicans and conservatives who thought that Trump represented a awful deviation from conservative principles and from the manner in which Republicans ought to behave in the public arena. And now all those people are gone. They've either adjusted and accommodated themselves to Trump or If you're the McCain, John McCain is gone. Of course, Jeff Flake has retired. Liz Cheney is no longer in the Republican Party. She endorsed Kamala Harris, as did her father, the former vice president. So all of that base of resistance from within the party is absent. And we have this new moment, this new Trump. We'll see how long it lasts. I expect it will last up until the minute things start to get hairy and then he'll start counterpunching as usual.
- [05:57]
John Podhoretz
So let's talk substance, because I was actually, I think that that's a very good sort of description of why he seems to be lighter of spirit and less combative. But it was also a pretty commanding press conference in terms of policy and I would say a kind of self confidence. Not that Trump ever lacked self confidence, but a kind of policy self confidence, some of which I liked and some which I was very troubled by. But nonetheless, his comfort with it was striking. Even through the fourth year of his presidency, when he had been president four years, he, of course, you just never knew what was going to come out of his mouth during one of those Covid press conferences in 2020. So he said someone asked him about RFK and he said, I like polio vaccines. And then two hours later, RFK Jr. Said I like polio vaccines. So it's like, who's the president? Trump is the president, you are not going down that road. He said, I think you're going to be surprised at how moderate Bobby is about these matters, which was a statement. Not to us, though. It was to us, but was very much a statement to Bobby to let him know that Bobby's agenda was not. Bobby's radical agenda was not something that he was going to see pursued. The most radical version of his agenda, even though he said, I don't like vaccine mandates, which is again, by the way, a complicated, much more flavored question, which, of course, people in the mainstream, particularly younger people in the main, do not know, because vaccine mandates are not like a lead pipe cinch. There was a very big debate 15 years ago, maybe even longer than 15 years ago, about a vaccine mandate for the HPV vaccine, which a lot of people did, really, really thought was not only unnecessary, but was morally highly problematic because it seemed to be a kind of social endorsement of the idea that teenagers, if teenagers were going to be having sex, the government should smooth the path to them having sex in a safe way, which was not anything that the American people had ever adjudicated, let's say. So vaccine mandates. The controversy over vaccine mandates has a longer history than just, should you force people to take the COVID vaccine? Because we were in the middle of a pandemic. And though Trump may or may not know that, he certainly knows that he hews to a more libertarian view of government telling you what to do than most people who set conventional opinion in the United States. And it does not ring badly on the earth to say, as Trump said, I don't really like mandates, but this is, this is.
- [09:05]
Christine Rosen
This points to something that is underappreciated about Trump. I think it was underappreciated in 2016, but because the resistance and the media were so loudly anti Trump, this message didn't come through. It did obviously come through to voters in this last election. He's not that ideological, and that's, I think, part of why the Project 2025 thing didn't stick to him. He's very facile about, like, what he believes and what he does. He changes his mind all the time, too. Of course, in cons, consistency is actually a strength for him, but he can say that and mean it and people believe him because he isn't. He doesn't have a very core set of principles beyond vague statements about usually himself and how he wants to exercise power. The other underappreciated thing, and I think the reason the press conference was so notable, I only saw Part of it is that it's a normal presidential press conference, which is an irony because Trump has been held up as this highly abnormal politician. But in fact, we have been starved of the normal give and take between a president and the press corps, and the press corps even seemed excited about it. He didn't have cue cards. He didn't bumble over answers. No one had to clean up his answers later. I mean, we have had.
- [10:13]
John Podhoretz
Biden has not had a press conference in more than a year.
- [10:18]
Christine Rosen
Exactly.
- [10:18]
John Podhoretz
And I mean, he's taken questions from Harris.
- [10:21]
Seth Mandel
Harris never had one.
- [10:22]
Christine Rosen
Well, and it's very, very.
- [10:23]
John Podhoretz
That's amazing.
- [10:24]
Seth Mandel
Isn't it amazing?
- [10:25]
John Podhoretz
You just literally spoke those words. The candidate for the presidency of the United States, of the Democratic Party never had a press conference. It is.
- [10:37]
Christine Rosen
She couldn't handle. Give and take. Yes. No. But people. That's actually.
- [10:41]
John Podhoretz
I was so.
- [10:41]
Christine Rosen
It was so normalizing to see that he's not president yet, but you can.
- [10:45]
Seth Mandel
See how he is one of the most accessible politicians in American history, maybe.
- [10:50]
John Podhoretz
The most at that level. I don't think there's ever been anybody remotely like him.
- [10:55]
Seth Mandel
You know exactly what's on his mind on any topic.
- [10:58]
Matthew Continetti
Stephanie Rule. Stephanie Rule was. Was made a comment about this yesterday, or she was at, you know, some media event where she was being interviewed, and she said, you know, she. She called, she told the story where she said, after the Madison Square Garden rally, Trump's Madison Square Garden rally, she picked up the phone and she called Trump's cell phone, and he answered the phone. This is Stephanie Rule at msnbc. You know, not. Not somebody in Trump's inner circle. In other words, this was not Tucker or somebody who normally would have that number. She calls him, he picks up and she says, Mr. Not Mr. President, you know, Trump, whatever. You said a lot of things tonight, let's get them on the record in an interview. Why don't you sit down with me and we'll have an interview. You know, there's 10 days to go in the election. And in her retelling, he told her to F off. But it was not clear that those are the words he used. But she said so laughingly. She was like, I called him, he picked up the phone, I asked if I could have an interview. You know, I obviously failed in that request. That.
- [12:11]
Seth Mandel
Can I also say, what a stupid request by Stephanie Rule. What is she thinking?
- [12:16]
Matthew Continetti
But I think her point, that was almost her point. It was like, you know, you can.
- [12:19]
John Podhoretz
If you have his phone number, he'll.
- [12:21]
Matthew Continetti
Answer the phone, he'll Answer his phone. And she said, like when she was trying to get through to either Biden or Harris on the campaign, you passed the note to this person, who passed the note to this person who left the. Who texted this person, who left a voicemail for this person. She said there were 20 people you had to go through, like a layer cake to get, Just to get your request for the interview to someone even standing next to the candidate. And she said that that was typical. It was typical that you could.
- [12:52]
Abe Greenwald
Yeah, I just think Trump's cell phone.
- [12:54]
Matthew Continetti
And he'd pick up.
- [12:55]
Abe Greenwald
In the course of the Biden presidency, our expectations have been lowered in ways that we don't even realize. We've forgotten what outraged us four years ago. We've. We've become used to it. So now when you see Trump simply give a press conference and answer questions, John, you refer to it as commanding. Maybe it's not even that commanding. Maybe it's just sort of, you know, doing. Doing the job.
- [13:28]
John Podhoretz
Well, let me, let me put it this way. So if you follow an arc of the presidency over the last 40 or 50 years, I've said this before on the podcast that Reagan, Ronald Reagan, considered the great communicator, did not appear very often before the public. He gave two or three speeches a week. He did not give many press conferences. There was, as was true of Hollywood, as was true of all celebrity in America, an understanding, even if it was not totally explained, that scarcity was part of the power of celebrity, that you doled out your presence in little bits and chunks and you remain kind of aloof, distant, so that, like, you saw Robert Redford twice a year. You know, you never. You didn't see Robert Redford. You saw him at the Oscars once. And so 80 million people would turn in to watch the Oscars just so they could get a glimpse of him, because otherwise he was off in Utah skiing or something, and Reagan was one of those people. And then over the course of the 90s and 2000s, and then you get to Obama, and Obama is doing Zach Galifianakis show, and with the girls who bathe themselves in milk in the bathtub.
- [14:46]
Christine Rosen
And Clinton, Arsenio, don't forget that.
- [14:48]
John Podhoretz
That was Clinton going on Clinton going on Arsenio. Right? Everybody. But there was this thing, right, where it was like, ok, we're going to accede to the modern celebrity culture. So one appearance on the View, maybe one appearance on the Tonight show, if you're like a presidential candidate, but you don't want to blow the mystique you don't want to. Okay, so Obama was really the revolutionary figure in this respect. And then Trump just blew the doors off everything. To the extent that if you want to talk about madness and madness in media coverage and why people don't trust the media and why the media have lost all their authority is there was Trump. He was President of the United States. He wanted to engage with the press on an almost daily basis from the minute that he became president. And what was the view of people in the mainstream media? Don't cover him. Don't show his press conferences live because he's like Dracula or the Ancient Mariner. He will fix you with his glittery eye and tell you lies and control your brain. And we needed to put him on delay so that Daniel Dale of CNN could fact check what it was he was saying before you. The American people had the right to hear what was coming out of the mouth of the person for whom 65 million people had voted.
- [16:18]
Matthew Continetti
And this was picturing Daniel. I'm picturing Daniel Dale be the sign language guy who turned out to be a hoax, have lied his way into it at the. At the funeral in South Africa. And so what he was saying was totally different than what Obama was saying. Yeah, that's why I picture Daniel Dale.
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John Podhoretz
Right.
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Matthew Continetti
You say that is doing, you know, complete translation in real time.
- [16:42]
John Podhoretz
But my entire life in the media, as somebody beginning like in the early 80s, was we don't hear enough from the president. The president doesn't give enough press conferences. It's been 67 days since the president gave a press conference. It's. The president is covered. Is, you know, Michael Deaver is making us see photographs of Reagan waving from the helicopter. But when you yell questions to him, Reagan pretends he doesn't hear your questions. This is an outrage. We deserve to hear. We need to talk to him. We need to hear what he has to say. Then we have a president who is like, I will not stop talking. If you trained a camera on me 24 hours a day, I would talk into that camera. I would eat my hamburgers. I would watch tv, I would pick up the phone. I would be perfectly happy to live in the Truman Show. And they're like, turn it off, turn it off. Don't listen.
- [17:35]
Seth Mandel
I do think something has to do with the substance of what Trump is saying. And so I'll just return to that for a moment, because contrast, say, the reception to yesterday's press conference at Mar a Lago with the reception to the pandemic press conferences during 2020, where at the beginning of those pandemic press conferences, people felt reassured. Trump wanted to be in command. He delegated to Mike Pence, if you recall, at the very outset. And so he would kind of say a few words and that then Mike Pence would come in. Then President Trump discovered that a lot of people were watching these press conferences. So suddenly, Mike Pence was not invited to say more than a few words. And it was Trump's press conference. But as we all know and remember, Trump got into trouble more than a few times with things he said at that press conference. And that's because I don't think he had quite the grasp of the situation that he wanted to have or that all of us were kind of stumbling in the dark. Right. I mean, we didn't know especially that those first months of the pandemic, and we deferred to authorities like Fauci.
- [18:46]
John Podhoretz
So we're Cuomo.
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Seth Mandel
Right?
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John Podhoretz
Cuomo press conference became this cultural phenomenon solely as a counterweight.
- [18:54]
Seth Mandel
And Cuomo is interesting. Cuomo had the charts on. Whenever you see a chart, it's like, carries more weight for whatever reason. Who cares what the chart says?
- [19:02]
John Podhoretz
Oh, he has a chart.
- [19:03]
Seth Mandel
We have to trust him. And then, you know, Dr. Birx was there, or as Rush Limbaugh used to call her, scarf lady. I'm sorry, that was uncalled.
- [19:10]
John Podhoretz
Scarf lady.
- [19:11]
Seth Mandel
That was. Yeah. Think about yesterday's press conference. He had. Trump had something to say on everything and just run down a few things. He talked about the drones. He was the most presidential figure, not yet president, but kind of the quasi president right now addressing the drone scare. And he said, well, we need to have more transparency, and we know. We know what's going on, and the Pentagon needs to come clear. And guess what happened? The Pentagon actually issued a lengthy statement on the drones after the Trump press conference. He talked about Ukraine, by the way.
- [19:51]
John Podhoretz
Let's go back to the drones just for a second, because he was, for maybe the first time in his career in this role, relatively reassuring. He said, basically, trust me, we know what's going on, but it really would be better. People are nervous and concerned. We know Biden knows the President knows what's going on. They want to talk about it. Now. It's become an issue, and we have to reassure people. So that was actually reassuring. First of all, I believe that to be. I myself believe that to be the case. So, of course, I'm happy to hear that. But he wouldn't have said it if someone hadn't told him, pretty much. So he probably was briefed that morning or something like that. And he went out and he said, I don't think this is worth panicking over, but you know, they're not handling it right. And he was right and that was a good thing that he did. And the Pentagon statement, by the way, still isn't properly very, it was still weird and kind of dodgy, but okay, like this is a hard situation. Clearly there's national security stuff going on that we don't want to expose. And I understand that, but that was a thing where that's what you're supposed to do, come out and say something that can calm the roiling waters a little bit.
- [21:13]
Seth Mandel
And now he also commented on the United Healthcare CEO killing. And he spoke common sense. He basically said my column from last Friday saying that the lionization of the assassin is a sign of sickness in parts of our culture. And he was very strong on that. You mentioned the polio comment. I do think it's interesting because of Trump's age. He knows the poly, the kind of the remnants of the pre polio vaccine life in America. And so he's, he came out strong. No, we're going to keep the polio vaccine for the newer vaccine schedules and such. He's, he's a little bit, he's like, well, you know, I'm not, I'm not a mandate guy, but we'll have to see. Right? And then he said that of course, as you said, RFK would not be as radical as some people think. And then on the hostages we should also comment that too. He, he said, look, we're trying to get a deal, but if the hostages are still there when I come into office, it's going to be held to pay for Hamas.
- [22:23]
Matthew Continetti
And so he, and could we add the Iran thing also, which a lot of people were praising, right?
- [22:29]
John Podhoretz
Oh yeah.
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Matthew Continetti
They said, are you going to, do, you know, are you going to take, are you going to strike Iran's nuke? Essentially asking if he was going to strike Iran's nuclear. And he said, why would I say, why would I say whether I'm do preemptive.
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John Podhoretz
What are you asking?
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Matthew Continetti
Why are you asking Trumpy answer a question about preemptive strikes?
- [22:50]
John Podhoretz
Yeah.
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Seth Mandel
Tell you so I think what made this press conference interesting and, and revealing was not just the fact that this changed attitude which I discussed, but as you say, John, the substance of his comments were reasonable, commonsensical, which is what he, his new thing is now that he's not conservative, he's not Republican, he's common sense, right? But that's actually a pretty good political pathway for him to follow into his second term. And so the Trump moon continues.
- [23:25]
John Podhoretz
I mean, okay, so let's talk about some of the things that he said that weren't, at least to my mind, particularly praiseworthy. That largely focuses on Ukraine. And he said a couple of interesting things that gave you some sense of how he is feeling about the transition with the Biden administration, which has been civil, right? I mean, clearly it's been civilly exchanged civil words with Jill Biden at Notre Dame. They had the meeting with Biden and the Oval and all of that. But he said on Ukraine, I think it was a terrible thing that they let them fire the missiles deep into Russian territory, meaning that the Biden administration had loosened the attack on the rules on the ATACMs so that they could be fired into territory. And he said, and they didn't even talk to me about it, which I think they probably should have done. Now we only have one president at a time and he doesn't get to make policy, even if the president who was currently there seems to be non compos mentis and they're not obliged to consult with him on policy. But they are kind of. And I think that again, in a more normal transition, indeed, he would have been given a briefing on where the administration policy was going with Ukraine, so that he was fully engaged with it by the minute that he started the presidency. I don't think that George W. Bush would have had any difficulty telling Obama what plans they had relating to how they were going to deal with Iranian incursions into Iraqi airspace during the Iraq war. And so I think a. I don't like what he said. I think, in fact, that, you know, letting the atacms go, particularly if he really wants to pursue a ceasefire even, he should understand that it would be best for Ukraine to be in the best possible military relationship to Russia at the time that it the negotiations start, and that this was a species of his own generalized hostility toward the Ukrainian effort to free itself from the Russian yoke, which is very important.
- [25:39]
Abe Greenwald
And also it's a mistake for someone who said, rightly, why would I tell you how I'm going to deal with Iran? He's telegraphing here to some degree what he's going to do regarding Russia and Ukraine.
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John Podhoretz
Right. An important point. But to get back to the larger point, he is completely comfortable talking about any and every issue under the sun. He talked about Xi, he talked about, he talked about Kim Jong Un. Right. He said at some point, people don't like it when I say that she's kind of an amazing person. But he's kind of an amazing person and I would like him to come to my, to my inauguration. Now, again, do I like it that he says the G, who is, you know, who is an adversary of the United States is an amazing. I don't really mind. I don't see anything wrong with that. Exactly. But he doesn't see it. And what's where, he wasn't combative about it. Even when he was saying things like you're all terrible in the press or something like that. There was a lack of.
- [26:38]
Seth Mandel
Well, he said it so many times now that it's.
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John Podhoretz
But there was a lack of iron behind it. Like he. It's like, you know what? I am. I won and I'm feeling good about it. And you people screaming at me right now are not going to harsh my mellow. Like I.
- [26:54]
Matthew Continetti
There is one counterpoint from yesterday, which is the report that he's suing Ann Seltzer.
- [26:59]
Doug Emhoff
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- [27:08]
John Podhoretz
I kind of prefer the act where.
- [27:12]
Doug Emhoff
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- [29:20]
John Podhoretz
Right. Well, you talked about that too.
- [29:22]
Seth Mandel
He made.
- [29:22]
Matthew Continetti
I mean, that's the other talk about.
- [29:24]
John Podhoretz
Yeah, there were two threats, right. There was Anselzer, the pollster of the Des Moines Registered, claiming that her reporting out of the poll that had Kamala up by three was an act of election interference. And then there was one other media thing that I now the Pulitzer board. Oh, the Pulitzer board for the, for the. Russia. Russia. Russia. Yeah, yeah.
- [29:49]
Seth Mandel
And this, of course, is all in response to a question about the ABC News settlement, the ABC settlement that we talked about on the podcast yesterday. Right. So he's, he's still continuing those things, but even the tone, as John was saying, is much softer. And I wonder whether that's a combination of age and also kind of the experiences of the past year of from the doing the trial sitting in that courtroom every day to then almost to being shot and then almost being killed again not much long after. He has seemed over the course of the year to be a little bit more reserved, which is an odd word to put to use to describe Donald Trump. But that does seem to be carrying through his kind of manner, certainly since the assassination attempt. Just one comment on the inaugural. You know, Trump has invited several foreign leaders to attend his inauguration, which would be unprecedented. And he has received one rsvp. Yes. And that is from one of my favorite world leaders, Argentina's President Javier Milei, who will be at the inauguration. So I'm very excited about that. And apparently the Italian prime minister, Giorgio Meloni may come as well. She is not an official. Yes. So Xi Jinping has not responded to the invitation. Donald Trump said at the press conference yesterday that that doesn't mean it's a no. So he's still holding out hope for some reason that Xi might come, but Milei is definitely coming. And I for one, am very excited about that.
- [31:36]
John Podhoretz
Now, I'd ask you this if you.
- [31:37]
Matthew Continetti
Thought it was a lot of work to do. The seating chart for the commentary roasts, just wait till you have to get Javier Melee and Xi Jinping and at the right time.
- [31:48]
John Podhoretz
Clearly, Javier, Millie is like Trump. He'll talk to anybody.
- [31:53]
Seth Mandel
I want me lay next to Obama. Oh, man, that was world's great colliding.
- [31:59]
John Podhoretz
Or next to Claudia Sheinbaum. That would also be interesting. It's like, hey, guess how my economy is doing compared to your economy.
- [32:07]
Seth Mandel
I don't know if she Was she invited too?
- [32:09]
John Podhoretz
No, but I'm saying that would be interesting because I'm about to convert to Judaism, says Javier Millay. Claudia Sheinbaum, extremely pro Israel now, had Trump given the press conference later in the day, he might have been in a worse mood because Judge Mershand in New York, the judge in New York overseeing the Alvin Bragg case, denied Trump's bid to have the case dismissed over the Supreme Court's immunity ruling, claiming in a very interesting federalist claim that I'm unaware most liberal judges would accept that because it's a local case, the Supreme Court saying that the president is immune from acts that he took while in office. And of course, the payments that are at the heart of this happened in 2017. The supposed 34 felonies for which he was convicted did happen while he was in office. And Judge Mershand says the people's use of these acts as evidence of the decidedly personal acts of falsifying business records poses no danger on the intrusion on the authority and function of the executive branch. And even if the evidence was, quote, admitted in error, such error was harmless. He added, noting, quote, the overwhelming evidence of guilt unquote, introduced at trial. Now, this will be appealed. I'm no expert on, I don't know what court. I mean, I know what court in New York State's appealed to, but who knows who will be on that appeals panel and stuff like that. This is a self evidently absurd ruling. The idea behind the immunity ruling of the Supreme Court is that the president of the United States has to be allowed to conduct his work as president without spending his life distracted. As right now, for example, Benjamin Netanyahu is spending his life in the middle of a war, being distracted by legal proceedings and that. And that if he made a decision while president to make these 34 payments, that decision itself might have been made credibly as a means of getting this off his plate so that he wouldn't have to think about it because he was president of the United States and had more important fish to fry and didn't mind spending whatever it is he spent. I don't remember, was it $135,000 or something like that over the course of in those 34 checks or something like that? $3,500 a check. So, I mean, I don't understand logically how Mersham, except being a jerk and mad at Trump because Trump insulted his daughter, who was a Democratic political operative at a relatively high level in New York state and therefore should have recused himself from being the judge in this proceeding. Nonetheless, Judge Mershand is trying to keep that sort of Damocles hanging over Trump's head. And I don't know what to say about it.
- [35:19]
Seth Mandel
I mean, the timing, you know, the payments were made prior to the election. And I think that has something to do with merchandise corkscrew logic here that it wasn't actually done in his capacity as president and therefore the trial could keep going.
- [35:37]
John Podhoretz
Wait, is that okay? Am I. Did I completely get this wrong?
- [35:42]
Seth Mandel
Well, are you sure the payments were made in 2016?
- [35:46]
John Podhoretz
Maybe one of the payments to Michael Cohen.
- [35:49]
Seth Mandel
Oh, the. Okay, that's right. He.
- [35:52]
John Podhoretz
No, they were made in 2017.
- [35:54]
Seth Mandel
You're right. Cohen paid Daniels in 2016.
- [35:57]
John Podhoretz
Yes, he paid Daniels. And Trump said, I'll reimburse you. And Trump reimbursed him when he was president. Yeah.
- [36:04]
Seth Mandel
Okay, so you're right.
- [36:05]
John Podhoretz
All right, so no, Mershand's like, no, you don't get to tell me that. I don't get to hold him liable. Supreme Court, guess what. The presidency is a federal office. And yes, people, our state, we do have a federal. We do have a federal system, and there are 50 state laws, and he was indicted under 50. We still haven't. The appeals in this case, by the way, are. There are many other versions of appeal in relation to this case that we haven't even gotten to, like the famous elevating the misdemeanor to a felony without saying what the actual felony was part, which hasn't been heard, and various other things. But I wonder, would he have been in as good a mood, or is he already basically decided? Emotionally, I'm over this, you know, I don't care.
- [36:59]
Seth Mandel
He would have had harsh words for Murshan, and he would have attacked.
- [37:04]
John Podhoretz
And deservedly so for once, I can say deservedly, he would have attacked Letitia.
- [37:10]
Seth Mandel
James, and he would, you know, talk about the witch hunt and. Yeah, and he would have been largely.
- [37:16]
Abe Greenwald
Right, you know, and he's faced scarier legal battles than this one in its current standing anyway. I mean.
- [37:25]
John Podhoretz
Well, he's not he's not afraid because there's no way he goes to jail. Nothing happens to him. Right. It's just that he will be deemed a felon if the, if this decision is allowed to stand. Well, he will be. He will, though he will not have been sentenced. Right.
- [37:43]
Seth Mandel
The sentencing would happen after his term. Right. So he would still face legal jeopardy here. And it's crazy and insane. And so you're absolutely, you're absolutely right to say what Mershon did is ridiculous. They should just drop it. But what this does is it means that the case will kind of hang out there in this netherworld for four years if, if Trump doesn't.
- [38:07]
John Podhoretz
So Michelle Goldberg and our friend Stephanie Rule and Rachel Maddow and Keith Olbermann on Blue sky, and everyone can say, he's a felon, he's a felon, he's a felon. In this one case that, as I recall, when the indictments came down, there was almost nobody in America of any legal standing who believed that it wasn't garbage. This was the garbage case. Remember, this was the, ah, I don't know. What do you mean? It's a misdemeanor. I don't understand how it's a felony. I mean, how many op eds did we read from liberal jurisprudence? People saying, this case has given me the heebie jeebies? This is like, don't, don't go with this.
- [38:53]
Christine Rosen
There's, there's also the fact that the public's perception of politically motivated prosecutions has also shifted dramatically in the past, I would say, six months to a year. The Daniel Penney verdict should teach the Michelle Goldbergs and the Keith Olbermann's of the world to rethink some of their prior convictions, pun intended. Because there is, I think, a mood about, and it's linked as well to the chaos at the border and the crimes committed by people who are in the country illegally, the statements by elected officials in blue states and blue cities saying, we will not cooperate with federal law when it comes to immigration. Immigration. All of this sort of toxic brew has affected public opinion about this sort of, this kind of prosecution. And in a way, I think there are a fair number of people who see the political prosecution of Trump in that larger orbit.
- [39:44]
John Podhoretz
That's an important point, and I think, but at least it makes it arguable. At least the point is that you can't say, well, most serious people look at this and say, you know, he was convicted, you know, and that's fine, and, you know, he deserves what he gets.
- [40:03]
Christine Rosen
The phrase most serious people and Alvin Bragg should never be in the same sentence.
- [40:07]
John Podhoretz
Fair enough.
- [40:07]
Christine Rosen
Because those two things are on.
- [40:09]
John Podhoretz
Absolutely fair enough. I want to go somewhere. I've been a little hesitant about this because it involves somebody that I know with whom I have friendly relations. But I was so deeply offended by this that I really felt like I needed to bring it up on behalf of the listeners of this podcast and some other people. And that involves the Hanukkah party at the White House last night. I'm not even going to go into the deep offense of Joe Biden standing at the White House Hanukkah party claiming to have secured the release of 100 hostages, which he did not do. First of all, I believe the release of the hostages is about 80. That was almost a year. It was more than a year ago. He had nothing to do with it. I'm sorry. I don't know who. I'm sure there was an American sitting at the table. It was Israel's crushing of Hamas in the first weeks of the war that had Hamas saying, whoa, whoa, we need a break. You know, let's have a pause here. And the idea was, okay, we'll pause. You know, you let hostages out every day. And then after seven days, Hamas said, we're not doing any more. And Israel said, okay, the war starts again. I don't know what credit Joe Biden gets for that. If he wants to take it, fine. If. If the Israelis would want to give it to him, fine. He shouldn't be standing in front of the American people saying that he secured the release of 100 hostages. That's not right. It's a. It's a. It's a. It's a brag that he doesn't deserve. And so that's just unseemly. So, Matt, you wanted to point out also a missing person from the White House Hanukkah party.
- [42:02]
Seth Mandel
I just thought it was fascinating that when the announcement for the Hanukkah party came out, the release said that the Hanukkah party would be hosted by the President, Biden and her husband Joe. And then accompanying them would be the first gentleman, Doug Emhoff. And then I looked for the name of Doug Emhoff's spouse, who recently ran for President of the United States and who is a sitting vice president. And I couldn't find it. And I just think it's a little weird that.
- [42:40]
Matthew Continetti
It's Kamala Harris, by the way.
- [42:42]
Seth Mandel
That's her.
- [42:42]
John Podhoretz
Thank you.
- [42:42]
Doug Emhoff
Thank you.
- [42:44]
Seth Mandel
That's her name. I just thought it was weird that Kamala Harris couldn't make the trek down Massachusetts Avenue, which takes about five minutes max, in her motorcade to attend the Hanukkah party, when I know that shortly after we're done recording the podcast today, she's going to take the longer drive out to Maryland and give a speech to young people telling them to continue the fight, to keep on fighting, in a way to signal to the Democratic fundraising community that she intends to continue her political career. So why can she go do that and not go to the Hanukkah Party? Now, my working theory is she couldn't go to the Hanukkah Party because she was too busy preparing for her speech the next day. Because if there's one thing that we've learned about Kamala Harris over the course of the foreshortened 2024 general election campaign, it's that she has an extremely difficult time making any decisions and has to prepare extensively for even the smallest speech. But that's still no excuse.
- [44:05]
John Podhoretz
I didn't think you were. Oh, Abe, go ahead.
- [44:08]
Abe Greenwald
I was just going to joke. And that preparation always pays off.
- [44:12]
Seth Mandel
Yeah, I was.
- [44:13]
John Podhoretz
I thought you were going somewhere else. I thought you were saying she couldn't leave because she needed to make Dougie's brisket. Because, you know, that brisket really brings Doug closer to his Judaism, the Judaism that he does not profess. And in which he did not. And. Yes. And in which he did not. Subsidiary faith in which he did not raise his children or the child by the nanny.
- [44:36]
Seth Mandel
Hanukkah, of course, begins on Christmas Day this year.
- [44:40]
John Podhoretz
Yes.
- [44:41]
Seth Mandel
So they held the Hanukkah Party over a week before the holiday.
- [44:47]
John Podhoretz
Well, it's the miracle of the oil. Why could last 16 days?
- [44:50]
Seth Mandel
Because this afternoon, the President Biden is going to Delaware. This afternoon.
- [44:59]
John Podhoretz
No. Really? Yes.
- [45:01]
Seth Mandel
Oh, taken off. This is what we've been talking about all morning. There is no President of the United States. And so it defaults to the president elect, who, I mean, honestly, was never really out of the spotlight at all during the past four years.
- [45:18]
John Podhoretz
So in reality, this is like Trump's.
- [45:21]
Seth Mandel
Third term or beginning next month.
- [45:24]
John Podhoretz
Yeah, he had a first term where he was president. Yeah. He had a second term where he was ahead. He was the second most powerful person in America by dint of being the leader of the Republican Party. And now he's back being president. Okay.
- [45:39]
Matthew Continetti
It's like what local, like, police chiefs do. You know how they, instead of taking vacation, they accumulate it and then when they retire.
- [45:47]
John Podhoretz
Yeah. They take a year and they get.
- [45:49]
Matthew Continetti
Like, two Years to start off there. That's Biden's doing is I've accumulated the hours. I'm done.
- [45:56]
John Podhoretz
Yeah, you know, when you work four hours a day, you accumulate a lot of vacation time, by the way. I mean, one of the things that is happening before I get to the final point I wanted to make is Biden is. So Biden's going off to Delaware to do whatever. And meanwhile, the west is falling apart. Of course, we had the replacement of the government of France last week by the president with the resignation of the prime minister, appointment of a new prime minister by Emmanuel Macron. The weird structure of the French government being so different from ours, it's hard to explain what I mean when I said, when I say it's a new government if it's the same president. But we have the collapse of the government of Olaf Scholz, the premier of Germany, and apparently, possibly today or tomorrow, the final collapse of Justin Trudeau, Canada's Prime Minister, couldn't be happening to a nicer guy overseeing the journey of his lovely country into an ant fetid antisemitic swamp about which he has absolutely nothing to say. And by the time all of these hijinks come about, the question is, how many of Those? Is it 35 million? Canada is a peculiarly small population, given its size. I think it's 35 million people. Something like that really might want to.
- [47:36]
Matthew Continetti
Be moved, from what I understand.
- [47:38]
John Podhoretz
But they might want to be taking Trump's offer up in that tweet where he welcomed the Governor of Canada, Justin Trudeau, given that Canada, you know, in Trump's view, should become part of the United States, generally speaking.
- [47:53]
Abe Greenwald
This just to loop this into the first half of our discussion about Trump, this adds an interesting coloration to another line of attack on Trump that we always hear, which is foreign leaders very worried about the incoming president. They are. They don't know how to handle what to deal with them. They don't. He's an unknown quantity. He doesn't know anything. He's a bull in a china shop. He's this. And meanwhile, they've all got their own houses to clean up big time. Right?
- [48:24]
John Podhoretz
Well, the one excuse that Democratic regulars who want to claim that the election was not a disaster for Democrats have said is Trump is just another example of a worldwide phenomenon in which world leaders are experiencing the withdrawal of affect by voters in their countries all over the world. And Biden and Harris, whatever, are no different. Trump won by a point and a half. Harris ran a perfectly good campaign when she really focused Meaning in the battleground states, she lost.
- [48:58]
Seth Mandel
Battleground. She lost everyone.
- [49:00]
John Podhoretz
No, but by less, Matt, by less. When you see those maps that show the arrow, I would give them credit.
- [49:06]
Seth Mandel
For that argument if she had won one.
- [49:08]
John Podhoretz
I know. No, but. So they have those arrows, which are the waves of things going to the right. Right, right. The entire country. She didn't win a single county that Biden hadn't won. Right. She took not one great campaign. But in the battleground states, the shift was less than it was in other states. You see, it was less. She limited the damage. And in fact, of course, there were the fact that some of the senatorial candidates in Michigan and in Wisconsin prevailed over Republican challengers because she was not as weak at the top of the ticket as she was in other places. So there is this argument that, you know what this is? Everyone's mad at the incumbents and so they're all having trouble. And. And that's why Trump won. And you shouldn't think that that was such a. Such a grand, wonderful thing. Good, fine. Please, please to enjoy. I forgot one other, by the way, lovely person, Keir Starmer, the Prime Minister of Great Britain, of course, less than a year ago, won this colossal victory, right. 419, I believe, seats in the Parliament, the largest victory maybe since out of forever. And he is now at 27%.
- [50:25]
Seth Mandel
And did you mention South Korea polls?
- [50:27]
John Podhoretz
Oh, South Korea, of course. Right. This still very, very hard to understand.
- [50:34]
Seth Mandel
He's been. The president has been impeached.
- [50:36]
John Podhoretz
The president has been impeached. Claiming that he had needed. Well, he was. But claiming that he had needed to stage this coup because North Korea was taking over. Was secretly taking over South Korea. And of course, then we have all the instability in the Middle East. But it is this one funny aspect of this, that there is a body of opinion, as Kamala Harris comes out today to speak, to say that she is not leaving, she's not going anywhere that wants to support the notion that she did perfectly fine in an election that she lost, which. Please enjoy, please. I mean.
- [51:18]
Matthew Continetti
Well, can I say something, though? On the five stages of grief, you know, the one thing I would say on Canada, though, is I object to the suggestion that they should be made the 51st state now because Canada alone among really the countries that you're talking about, has a sort of Javier Millie type waiting in the wings.
- [51:40]
John Podhoretz
That's true, actually.
- [51:41]
Matthew Continetti
Some reason for encouragement that Pierre Poliev will, you know, will, I don't know, turn things around. I don't know what. What you Know what you can say. But you can say that he is.
- [51:53]
Abe Greenwald
I could listen to him for hours.
- [51:57]
Matthew Continetti
Right.
- [51:57]
Christine Rosen
And he.
- [51:58]
Matthew Continetti
And the way that he communicates also. And so I very.
- [52:01]
John Podhoretz
It's very rare who would make an excellent.
- [52:03]
Matthew Continetti
It's very rare that conservatives in America look at Canada and go, oh, that guy waiting off stage. He's going to be great. But what.
- [52:10]
John Podhoretz
Who didn't love. Listen this podcast. Charter members of the Stephen Harper fan club. So that was.
- [52:17]
Matthew Continetti
But how long ago was.
- [52:18]
John Podhoretz
I know we used to joke that.
- [52:21]
Matthew Continetti
Stephen Harper was the leader of the free world.
- [52:23]
Seth Mandel
Yeah, we should say they're. They're about 40 million Canadians.
- [52:27]
John Podhoretz
40 million. Okay, I got it wrong.
- [52:28]
Seth Mandel
They have had explosive immigration, too, in the past decade.
- [52:32]
John Podhoretz
But gee, I wonder. I wonder what net effect that's had on their politics. Right?
- [52:36]
Matthew Continetti
I mean, it will be interesting to see economically in terms of the trends, if there is a trend, if there is a sort of melee like trend that goes against what Kamala and the others are saying, that it's just an incumbent thing, that there might actually be some sort of ideological pull in the other direction.
- [52:53]
John Podhoretz
Okay, fair enough. I need to go to our friends at Jewish Insider to conclude the podcast today. Their report on the White House Hanukkah Party. First of all, while I made fun of Biden and said, you know, it's shocking that he would claim to be the hostage releaser extraordinaire, he did say, I learned a long time ago you don't have to be a Jew to be a Zionist. He called himself a Zionist. That still matters. It does matter that he said it. And I am. You know, I think that that's an important thing and that it highlights double time that Kamala Harris wasn't present to say it. I am thrilled to point out that Doug Emhoff announced at the White House Hanukkah Party that he is rededicating himself to fighting antisemitism and hatreds of all kinds. So you know what? If you're going to fight antisemitism, leave off the hatred of all kinds. We're all against hatred of all kinds. If you want to talk about antisemitism, that is not a hatred comparable to all kinds of other hatred. It is its own kind of hatred. I thought that was what we had come to learn, not only after October 7, but in the debates over the last 10 years over the IHRA definition of anti Semitism and what anti Semitism is. And once again, the idea that Doug Emhoff was going to be the representative of Judaism in the United states should Kamala Harris have become president, was so outrageous and unseemly. Again, mentioning not that I It's not my business how anybody raises their children or in what circumstance, but if you are a Jewish man who has children and you don't raise them as Jews, you don't get to claim that you are Mr. Jew. Sorry, you don't get it. Go ahead and claim it. Go eat your brisket, go impregnate another nanny and go away. Okay? Go away, Doug Emhoff. Go perform entertainment law and stand there next to your wife while she figures out what she's going to do with the rest of her life. But that is not how I want to end things, even though I'm being incredibly insulting toward Doug Emhoff. Here is the concluding paragraphs of the report. Throughout the festively decorated rooms in the White House, weary Democrats swapped stories of the vacations they'll take after January 20th and the stress of finding new jobs as the new administration comes down. Still, disappointment in the election results did not keep attendees from enjoying the party. A crowded kosher buffet table featured lamb meatballs, several varieties of latkes, roasted vegetables and more alongside sushi and sufganot, soufganyot being jelly donuts. Here is what I wanted to read to you. Rabbi Elliot Cosgrove of New York's Park Avenue Synagogue lit the menorah, acknowledging the holiday is still a week away. He opened with a sentence that captured the attitude of the room. Quote, on behalf of American Jewry, with one voice and one heart, we are here to say we love you and we will miss you. Elliot Cosgrove is a longtime acquaintance of mine. Park Avenue Synagogue is the largest Conservative synagogue in Manhattan and the richest. His daughter attended day school with my daughter and I have broken bread with him and talked to him many times. I am disgusted with the sentence that he spoke. First of all, he is a Conservative rabbi in a community that is divided in many different ways. I'm a Conservative Jew. Seth Matt sends his kids to a Conservative day school. Seth is an Orthodox Jew. There are Reformed Jews. There are Reconstructionist Jews. There are Jews of no Judaism whatever. We do not speak with one voice and one heart about anything. And one thing that we have learned is that we are not supposed to walk around saying, on behalf of American Jewry, here's how we all feel. And Elliot knows this and decided nonetheless to be the spokesman for American jewelry at a party where there were some delicious jelly donuts and tell Joe Biden, we are here to say we love you and we will miss you. American Jewry voted in greater numbers against the Biden Harris administration than it has voted against the Democratic administration in decades. We do not speak with one voice. I do not love Joe Biden. I will not miss Joe Biden. I am offended at the notion that a leading American Jewish cleric would have the chutzpah dick to announce the view of the entire community in relation to this matter. It was inappropriate. It's wrong and it's factually untrue that American Jewry with one heart loves and will miss Joe Biden. Many of us cannot wait to see the back of him through the door so that Israel can finally possibly resolve the matters in the Middle east that will, if Trump does not fully get his way before January 20, will see the return of the hostages back to Israel and will see the potential destruction of Iran's existential threat to Israel in the form of its nuclear program. So badly done. We'll be back tomorrow. For Matt, Seth, Abe and Christine, I'm John Pod Hortz. Keep the candle bur.