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- [00:04]
John Podhoretz
Hope for the best, Expect the worst.
- [00:11]
Jon Pothorst
Some preach and pain Some die at first the way of knowing which way it's going Hope for the best Expect the worst Hope for the best welcome to the Commentary Magazine Daily podcast brought to you today by the Hamilton School at the University of Florida. At a time when American higher education has lost its way, the Hamilton School at the University of Florida is setting a new standard, offering an elite education that's anything but elitist. Led by world class scholars, Hamilton is reviving the classical liberal arts tradition grounded in the great works of Western civilization and the founding principles of the American Republic. In small discussion based classes, students study history, philosophy, economics, literature and America's founding texts, developing the discipline, eloquence and moral confidence to lead with purpose in their careers, their communities and their lives. Learn more at hamilton.ufl.edu commentary the Hamilton School at the University of Florida Leading a Revolution in higher education Hamilton UFL Eduardo Today is Wednesday, November 19, 2025. I'm Jon Pothorts, the editor of Commentary magazine. With me, as always, Executive Editor Abe Greenwald. Hi Abe.
- [01:33]
Seth Mandel
Hi John.
- [01:33]
Jon Pothorst
Senior Editor Seth Mandel. Hi Seth.
- [01:36]
Eliana Johnson
Hi John.
- [01:37]
Jon Pothorst
And Washington Free Beacon editor Eliana Johnson. Hi Eliana.
- [01:41]
John Podhoretz
Hi John.
- [01:42]
Jon Pothorst
I've mentioned this before, but in 1982 I did my bachelor's thesis at the University of Chicago on the relationship between the United States and Saudi Arabia and boy, was that a interesting subject because the United States was thumpering around trying to figure out how to handle the fact that this implacably anti western and hostile country, the most Islamically radical or conservative, as you might want to put it country on the face of the earth, that had banned all television, all music, all public displays of anything that might be considered feminine, forced women to be dressed in full abaya if they were to go out on the streets and had religious police out on the streets beating people up if they were not properly comporting themselves. And yet sitting on this gigantic underground lake ocean of oil that we needed but wanted to destroy. Israel, we're selling them arms. The Congress is up in arms. About is clearly not a friendly country, but it is an ally because it cannot be denied because it was the key to the lifeline of the Western industrial or the world's industrial production facilities. 40 some odd years later, Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman arrives at the White House for a state dinner and for a visit with the President of the United States. And times have changed. Saudi Arabia Oil is no longer providing Saudi Arabia with the kind of resources that it needs given the expense that it has to go to to pay for all of its royals. It has also consolidated power in the person of Mohammed bin Salman in a way that was never the case before. He is pretty much like the absolute monarch of the country. And before this, in the time that I'm talking about, power was spread among the seven. The seven sons of the favorite wife of the Sudairi seven, the favorite sons of the One of the many wives of the sitting king, Muhammad bin Salman consolidated power with an eye to changing, radically changing Saudi Arabia. Donald Trump is there with open arms to welcome him into the fold of the future. And here's what's interesting. He's doing so despite the fact that the liberal media in the west are still obsessed over the single murder of a single critic of the regime. And I'm not again going, as I never will, defend the. Defend the dismemberment of Jamal Khashoggi, despite the fact that he was a Muslim Brotherhood propagandist and an anti Semite and an enemy of everything that I hold dear. Nonetheless, nobody should be dismembered in a, you know, nobody should be dismembered in a consulate in Turkey. And it's terrible. But, you know, we have deals and relationships with regimes that do way worse every single day. We always have. We always will. And this was some weird effort made by the Washington Post, whose columnist Khashoggi was, and by the liberal media to somehow hand Trump a foreign policy defeat by making sure that we never had a relationship with Saudi Arabia again. Something that the Biden administration, having come into office saying, we are going to isolate Saudi Arabia, then a year later is like, hey, we're friends. Let's all be friends. It's really wonderful.
- [05:37]
John Podhoretz
It was turn them into a pariah state, I think, was the phrase.
- [05:43]
Jon Pothorst
Actually, that was a phrase used by somebody like an actual senior member of the Biden brain trust, said, we're going to turn them into a pariah state. And then a year and a half later, it's like, they're in office and they're like, oh, what did we do here? This is really not a really great idea. Because they seem now to be tilting toward Iran. They're gonna make a deal with their boat. They were tilting toward Israel, now they're tilting toward Iran. They're gonna make a separate peace with Iran. That is not anything that is of any really great interest to us. Let's see if we can rehabilitate this relationship. And basically said, now we're good. We'll see what happens in the next election. You guys stink. You've been doing nothing but attack us. Okay, so here we are, November 2025. And there was a bear hug yesterday at the White House between Trump and MBS which included MBS saying that the gravest mistake of his premiership was what happened to Khashoggi, that such a thing would never happen again. And also saying that, you know, what's really important is that we come to a place where if we're going to make more deals, we're going to, we have a pathway to a Palestinian state. Seth, what does it mean that he said at the end of the day there needs to be a pathway to a Palestinian state? Why is that a radical, surprising and heartening thing for him to have said if you are a supporter of Israel and someone who is skeptical about a Palestinian state?
- [07:17]
Eliana Johnson
Because he's, he's, he, what he's saying is that all he really wanted was the F35s. He wanted the planes and he got, and he's, you know, he, he may, he may get the plane. He was told he's going to get the planes. That was the big announcement, the F35s. But really what he, the way he phrased it was essentially saying that he'll, he'll take a, a word game and not the real thing when it comes to a Palestinian state. That he is, he, he will accept a, you know, roadmap style euphemism rather than a, you know, a physical map that says, here's the borders of a Palestinian state and when you sign this map, I will sign the Abraham Accords. He's just willing to take, I mean he want, I would say, I was going to say he's willing to take less, but he's not willing to take class because the, he doesn't care about the Palestinians.
- [08:18]
Jon Pothorst
The planes are a pathway is not a state. In Henry Kissinger's memoirs, he describes going to Riyadh and meeting with the king and having to spend three hours as the king. This is after the, I think after the 73 war. I can't remember exactly when this was, but having to sit there and have them have the guy lecture him for three hours nonstop about the evil perfidy that, that Israel is committing against the Palestinians with maps and details and this and that. Obsessively, obsessively so 50 years ago this was the primary obsession on the mind of the leader of Saudi Arabia. And 50 years later he wants to build 110 mile long city called Neom and create kind of a Disney World. Of a new metropolis that will only have, like, maglev trains and flying cars and I don't know what else he's got. The vision of the world, as Karen Elliot House explains in her book, largely emerges from having been a person in Saudi Arabia allowed to play fun, futuristic video games as a very young boy and having that help create people in their basements, like Musk and others reading speculative science fiction create his image of what he could do with Saudi Arabia in the future if he could just sideline the clerics and shut off his family members and just motor ahead and motor through.
- [10:00]
Eliana Johnson
Yeah, he's. He's. Yeah, I just. He wants to live the. He's like, you know, the. It's like, well, I grew up in Lakewood, New Jersey, which is like yeshiva town, you know, yeshiva capital of the world. And all the yeshiva kids, they. They couldn't watch. They didn't have TVs. They didn't. Although we. There was this running joke that if. That people used to smuggle in TVs into their homes in an air conditioner box. So if you saw an air conditioner box at the curb in Lakewood, and then somebody was trying to stay enrolled at the Haider without getting in trouble, but they, they. They couldn't play video games, they couldn't watch tv, right? They. They didn't have all this stuff. They played basketball and baseball outside, and they were so good at it because they, they had nothing else to do, right, besides outdoor sports. And they became like, shockingly, you. You think of, you know, yeshiva kids as like, you know, pale suited, hatted, you know, whatever.
- [10:57]
Jon Pothorst
I'm losing.
- [11:00]
Eliana Johnson
Mbs. MBS had a pathway to fun. And he got. And he understood how popular it would be if people were just allowed to do this one fun thing. And so he's, you know, he's basically trying to make people's dreams come true. He wants like a Disney World sort of thing, right, for the Saudis, and there's nothing really to stop him. I mean, the question was whether there was going to be real, you know, internal opposition to liberalization of this level. And then the opposition fell out of a helicopter. He.
- [11:32]
Seth Mandel
He wants less than the European leaders wanted. They wanted the declaration of a Palestinian state. He wants a pathway.
- [11:42]
Jon Pothorst
Well, they recognized a Palestinian state. He hasn't even done that.
- [11:46]
Seth Mandel
Right. Look, I think it's mostly great. I'm slightly concerned that if he gets everything he wants, if he's gonna get the F35s upfront, if Israel and the US has already taken out the Iranian Nuclear reactors. He has somewhat. He's somewhat less incentivized than he would be otherwise to normalize relations with Israel down the road.
- [12:19]
Jon Pothorst
Here is the counter to that. What regime is the biggest. Aside from Iran, what regime is the biggest enemy of the Saudi regime? Yemen. We're at war with Yemen. Israel's at war with Yemen. Saudi Arabia is at war. Well, not with Yemen, but with the Houthis. He wants the F35s to destroy the Houthis first and foremost, or at least to put them, keep them in a box and keep them from trying to overthrow their control of the holy sites. In that respect, this is a perfect example of the Nixon doctrine in play, which is to say that you empower regional powers to. To protect American interests by giving them the tools to do what they need to do. That also comports with what we wanna have happen. So I'm less concerned. I mean, if you're saying as a negotiating tactic, the Trump people have given in too quickly or are gonna give him too, too much without enough in return, you might be right. I don't know. And we don't really.
- [13:26]
Seth Mandel
It's just on my mind. As I said, I think it's mostly great, but it could be. It could sl us down.
- [13:34]
John Podhoretz
I share Abe's concerns, but I do think it's worth looking back at the Biden administration's policy on Saudi Arabia and contrasting it with Trump's. We had Biden on the campaign trail in 2019, and it was Biden himself who said that because of the murder of Khashoggi, he. He wanted to make, or he pledged to make, Saudi Arabia pariah on the international stage. And then as a result, once Biden got in office of sanctions against Russia and tariffs on China and his commitment to green energy in the US and gas prices spiked up. He had to make a trip over to Saudi Arabia in 2022 and ends up fist bumping MBS and looked like an absolute clown because he had to bow to reality. All of his moralizing just crumbled in the face of, you know, the reality of world politics. And that is Trump's strength. He's always recognized, like, the reality of world politics. But I think in this case.
- [14:51]
Jon Pothorst
You.
- [14:52]
Seth Mandel
Know, can I just jump in and just say, yeah, yeah, just contrast. So what did Trump say yesterday? I had no fist bump here. I grabbed that hand. He said, I don't care where that hand has been. I grabbed it.
- [15:06]
John Podhoretz
And by the way, that, again, is Trump's. He's paying attention to the optics of it all yeah, because the Biden fist bump is something nobody will ever forget. From pariah state to fist bump. And Trump knew how humiliating that was. And it was the picture worth a thousand words. But I do hope, as Abe said, if you're giving the F35s upfront, you better get the normalization with Israel in return and also get some concession. And the Wall Street Journal editorial board makes this point today, distancing or at least weakening Saudi Arabia's cooperation with China.
- [15:51]
Jon Pothorst
Another important thing that MBS did yesterday was acknowledge the Saudi role in 9 11, which is something that has never been officially expressed by the Saudi government, that the hijackers, 15 of the 19 hijackers, were Saudi. Obviously Osama bin Laden himself is a Saudi national or was a Saudi national. He's now in hell. But you know, during his life he was a, he was a Saudi national. And that is part of clearing the decks. Like, he doesn't say that. He doesn't say we shouldn't have killed Khashoggi. He doesn't, he doesn't say stuff like that without that being a preparation for this on ramp to normalization in the Middle East. I mean, there's no reason for him to do so. He's not, he himself is in no way, shape or form implicated in, in, in 9 11. I mean, he was, I don't know how old he was. He was 14 or 12 or something like that. So, you know, it's not like he was, you know, he, he was part of the Saudi. There's, there are now little bits of stories coming out about a question of whether or not people in the Saudi embassy or consulates in the US knew about the 911 plot earlier. I don't know if that's true or not. Makes perfect sense to me that there might have been an inside hand given how really coordinated it was and who found the flight schools and all of that. Nonetheless, you know, he is trying to deal with the two major problems with a close American and close Western relationship with Saudi Arabia, which are what's the story? What's the deal with 911 and what on earth were you thinking? Or what the hell happened in that consulate in Turkey with this one guy who annoyed you and somebody rid you of this meddlesome priest and created just a whole lot of trouble for you that you would have been better served letting him write his stupid monthly essay for the Washington Post that literally nobody read and that was ghostwritten by the now departed Karen at to you anyway, so who cares?
- [18:14]
Eliana Johnson
Well, on the Washington Post in their Own, in their own review of what happened, had discovered that he was the ghostwriter, really was somebody with the Qatari foundation, which was a, you know, essentially a quasi governmental, you know, the Qatari government was essentially telling him what to write about and stuff like that. So the MBS saw this as, you know, he, he freaked out because he saw this as, you know, like a whole kind of spy game sort of thing. And he was, you know, 35 years old and he, and inexperienced and he, and he, you know, and he just completely fell.
- [18:48]
Jon Pothorst
It's a terrible, it's a terrible thing. But one single person dying does not, and even being murdered in a gruesome way does not should not be the hidden, you know, the sort of the spoke on which American foreign policy toward the region and toward the world's second largest or largest oil reserve takes place. How about a quick detour into the other world's largest oil reserve, Venezuela? Everybody is wondering what the, what on earth is going on with Venezuela, right. Why we're blowing up ships. We're declaring Maduro the head of a narco terrorist organization, which is interesting because apparently the organization that we have deemed him the head of doesn't precisely exist. It's kind of just sort of an umbrella term for drug trafficking or drug smuggling. And in Spanish, he has now, according to the New York Times, authorized covert action to disrupt and undermine and destroy the regime in Venezuela while negotiating back, while opening having a back door open, I assume, to a negotiation from Maduro to go into exile. Very aggressive, like extraordinarily aggressive measures being taken short of actual war with Venezuela. Trump mentioning he might put boots on the ground in Venezuela. And I'm sure. So it seems as though either they see a path to getting this to happen and are pushing on it and that, you know, internal whatever things that they've heard because of intelligence or others suggest the regime can be toppled. Or Trump is both with Saudi and with and with Venezuela attempting to secure the continued flow of petroleum outside of the, with regimes that aren't going to try to disrupt that flow. And we were told this was less and less important because of fracking, because we're now a net exporter of oil as we were not, you know, for most of the last half of the 20th century, in the first quarter of the, you know, the first decade of the 21st century. But it's just interesting because we keep hearing about how we don't we're going to need oil less and less as electric cars come online more and more and more. And that does not appear to be the way the administration is thinking or the way Secretary Rubio is thinking or anything like that. That this expression of interest in the Monroe Doctrine and the idea that this, you know, we need the Americas to be an American, a friendly area for America. Anybody have any thoughts on this?
- [21:58]
Seth Mandel
Well, I mean, I think there's actually a lot of good reasons to lean heavily on Venezuela, at least put a lot of pressure and try to intimidate the regime. Maduro's governance being one, legitimate, drug trafficking being another. The fact that Venezuela plays a small role in this axis that we talk about, they are supported by Iran and Russia and they are. It represents a genuine bad actor against the kinds of things that the Trump administration is trying to do. So I don't know what it's all gonna lead up to. And with Trump, you get the feeling that he doesn't know yet either. But geostrategically it's always made perfect sense to me. I was happy to see it happen.
- [23:02]
Jon Pothorst
Right. Well, I mean, now let's talk about what it means for, you know, our obvious and America's, America's obsession this month or the last six weeks, which is the.
- [23:12]
Seth Mandel
Okay, can I just add one, one thing to that?
- [23:14]
Jon Pothorst
Yeah, please.
- [23:14]
Seth Mandel
And then. So when the Nobel Peace Prize went to the Venezuelan anti. Maduro.
- [23:21]
Jon Pothorst
Machado.
- [23:22]
Seth Mandel
Yeah, Machado. So Bibi congratulated her publicly and she called up Bibi and they had a phone call and then she took to social media saying, I'm not surprised that Iran has done this. The same nation that supports the Maduro regime, it's natural that they would support terrorists like Hamas and Hezbollah. And we look forward to all people need to fight for freedom. And we look forward to a peaceful Middle east and Trump's vision of it.
- [24:00]
Jon Pothorst
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- [29:17]
John Podhoretz
So this, I think, is, I think that's a key point. Trump is somebody who wants all options available to him. He is never going to say, I subscribe to an ideology that's going to limit my optionality when it comes to confronting some enemy of America. And so on Monday, he said, when it comes to Venezuela, he's not ruling out anything. We just have to take care of the problem. I think he specifically said, I don't rule out any anything. We just have to take care of Venezuela. So he's leaving himself maximum leeway. And, you know, it's interesting, reporters also asked him, well, would you consider strikes in Mexico to stop the flow of drugs? And he said, it's okay with me. I do whatever we have to do to stop drugs coming into this country. And it does reveal, first of all, he wants to keep people guessing. He's not going to rule things out and take options off the table for himself. And he is willing to project American power to push back on America's enemies. And the response that we've gotten, this does have the Venezuela thing in particular, has the neo isolationist parts of the MAGA movement, I guess, in a panic. And the response from them has been, and this is Tucker Carlson in particular, that Nicolas Maduro is really good on gay marriage. He's really Conservative. Venezuela is a very conservative country. Why are we concerning ourselves there? Because, you know, this is solid on the marriage issue and also, I mean.
- [31:18]
Eliana Johnson
I think we can also go back to Trump's first term and say this is completely consistent, because in Trump's first term, they also went after Venezuela. And so this is not a surprise at all. And what he did in his first term was he let the US Take sort of a back seat. Right. The Organization of American States had, sort of. Had. Had, you know, wanted to recognize this, you know, opposition leader Juan Guaido, who was, you know, you know, he won the last election.
- [31:47]
Jon Pothorst
He won the last stolen election.
- [31:49]
Eliana Johnson
And so they want to recognize him as the official, you know, constitutional head of government in Venezuela. And the Trump administration was fine with it. They let the oas, you know, basically take the lead, but the US Lent its weight to that, and that was essentially recognizing Maduro as not the legitimate elected leader of Venezuela, not the, you know, head of government or head of state, whatever. That was a very big move, you know, that he did. It was mostly diplomatic. It didn't require any troops or anything like that. And of course, he was following, you know, all these other states in Latin America who were willing to stand up to Venezuela first. You know, Trump made sure that he wasn't propping anybody up, that they were really willing to put their necks out there. But, you know, since then, I mean, Maduro has been illegitimate to him. And so, you know, he has. There's. There's no surprise that now he comes in, he's like, this illegitimate guy is still there. He's still taking money from Putin. He's still sending, you know, migrants and whatever, causing trouble in my backyard. And he's still illegitimate. So he's still a problem. So I'm still going to address him as the problem I did.
- [32:52]
Jon Pothorst
You mentioned. Yeah, yeah.
- [32:54]
John Podhoretz
I think the difference with Trump versus, you know, previous Republican administrations is he's not in the democratization game.
- [33:06]
Jon Pothorst
Okay.
- [33:06]
John Podhoretz
Like doing what George W. Bush did. And it is similar to what the previous Trump administration did with Soleimani and Iran, where they presented him a plan to take out a bad guy, and he's going to go for it. And then what he does domestically is cast it as a major victory, which it is. And I think he'd do the exact same with Venezuela. And by the way, when he's asked on Venezuela, would you negotiate with the guy? He says, I'll do that, too.
- [33:37]
Jon Pothorst
He is.
- [33:38]
John Podhoretz
I talk to anybody?
- [33:39]
Jon Pothorst
Yeah. The news stories say today he has authorized covert action to take out the regime with backdoor negotiations. So, which is exactly what you would sort of want. In other words, if there's a way to do it by saying, you know what, we are really taking you out, but if you want to talk about an exit, we're here to help you figure out a way, you know, a way to exit. I think mentioning the first term versus this term is very interesting because, yeah, he ruled out like large scale serious action outside of economic sanctions and things like that. And clearly coming in now, if he's gonna move on Venezuela, he's gonna step it up. Didn't work the last time. The, the methods that they adopted to try to get Maduro out and Guaido in didn't work. Maduro's still there. Therefore, obviously, if you're, if you're going to go down this road, you've got to up the stakes and up your approach and make it more aggressive because, because this is phase two of Trump's efforts and you don't do the same thing and expect a different result. If he were pursuing it in that way, he already knows that Maduro has the ability to survive it. So that's the other thing of this weird fact that he is sort of in his second first term is that he can use his own first, first term as an example where things didn't work, of how not to do that and to build on and to try a different approach. But there's a twofer aspect to this. He's not a democratizer. He doesn't care about it. On the other hand, here, Maduro has now stolen successive elections and has a completely illegitimate regime. And if he ousts Maduro, he'll get a democratic result. He will have the person who won the election effectively restored as the legitimate leader of the country. So it's not like full democratization, but it is the end of a dictatorial communist regime that will be replaced by, by somebody who actually won according to the will of the people and had the election stolen from, from them.
- [36:06]
Eliana Johnson
Okay, first term was, you know, the other thing is that, that because he had a term in between those two terms, it's been longer than it normally would be for a second term. So it's worth noting that, you know, he started this a decade ago, like 10 years. He was doing this 10 years ago. So he really can argue. We've tried. You know, it wasn't like two years ago before my reelection. It's been going on for a decade and he's been, he's been able to watch it and see where it goes.
- [36:33]
Jon Pothorst
Right. Okay. Well, now we've, you know, we've given you that. We've had the meat, we had the salad course, and we've had, you know, making sure you eat your vegetables and learn all about important geopolitical matters. But now it is time to turn to dessert. And that would be the souffle of Ryan Lizza and Olivia Nutzi that we must now discuss in excruciating detail. So Olivia Nutzi, as you may know, is a hot, young, and I mean hot in all sense of the term, young reporter in Washington and in New York in the late teens, early 20s. I don't mean her age. I mean the, you know, in, in 2019-2023, whatever. And Olivia Nutzy and, and was writing for New York magazine and various other places and cut quite a glamorous personal figure and was getting all these jobs and writing assignments and things like that. And she became the girlfriend of one of Washington's premier reporters. Ryan Lizza, who was at the New Yorker but then ousted in a MeToo moment, ended up at Politico, among other places. And then he and Olivia Nizzi were a power couple in Washington until everything blew up last year when it was revealed that Olivia Nuzzi was in some kind of a relationship with the very married Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Married, of course, to Cheryl Hines of Curb your Enthusiasm, whose enthusiasm toward RFK Jr. Seems not to have been curbed, by the way. So they're still together despite the revelation of this relationship between them, which happened behind Ryan Liz is back and then led to the cancellation, led to the end of their relationship and then the cancellation of the very, I assume, highly monetarily advanced book project that they were working on the 2024 election. So Livy Nutsi has come out with a memoir. I haven't read the memoir, but I read the excerpt of the memoir in Vanity Fair, which is like the winner of the Edward Bulwer Lytton contest for the worst writing in the history of the English language. There's literally a contest named after a 19th century British writer named Edward Bulwer Lytton, who wrote the famous sentence, it was a dark and stormy night. That was. That's what he is. That's what he is most famous for. Anyway, this excerpt in Vanity Fair is like, mind blowingly pretentious, bad, horrible. It's all about, you know, like, their feelings for each other and all that. And then so that's coming. Jacob Bernstein in the New York Times did this worshipful profile of her, which she's driving in her convertible down the Pacific Coast Highway. I don't know what that has to do with anything. And talking about how she wants to rebuild her career. And then comes the coup de gr, which is that Ryan Lizza, heretofore silent, has a substack now. And he began a multi part series, of which we have only seen part one, about him and Olivia Nutzi and a problem that they had with a presidential candidate. And as you're reading the piece, of course you think the presidential candidate that he is talking about is RFK Jr who was then a presidential candidate. He sees notes in her bag in her closet that suggests that she's writing love letters or exchanging love letters with somebody that she is covering, which of course is a. You're not supposed to sleep with your people that you're covering, especially if your boyfriend finds your letters. And then do I spoil. Do we spoil it here or do we tell people to go to Ryan? Liz, do we want to get traffic for Ryan Lizard, or do we just want to spoil?
- [40:55]
John Podhoretz
You should read it yourself because there's more ridiculous stuff in there, but you have to spoil it or we can't talk about it.
- [41:01]
Jon Pothorst
Okay, so it turns out that the year that we're reading about is not 2024, when she had the affair with RFK Jr and blew up that book project and ended their relationship. But the year is 2020, because the person that he discovers that she is sleeping with is former South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford. Mark Sanford famously disappearing from public view. I don't know, in 2018 or 2017 or something, whenever it was going to hike the Appalachian Trail alone. But it turned out that in fact he was having an affair with some South American woman whose name I once knew and now would be a great trivia question.
- [41:45]
John Podhoretz
It was 2009.
- [41:47]
Jon Pothorst
Oh my God, 2009. I am so.
- [41:50]
John Podhoretz
Yeah, come back in 2020. Yeah, we're all old.
- [41:54]
Jon Pothorst
Yeah. So Mark Sanford was, of course, a very conservative governor of South Carolina, famous for his budgetary restraint and apparently his personal lack of restraint. But, you know, he was a classic pro, you know, classic conservative, hard right, anti abortion, pro gun, very, you know, and, but, but notable for his absolute hardline qualities on the budget, all of which would seem to be the sorts of things that Olivia Nutzi, a classic Washington, New York City female journalist, would find abhorrent ideologically. And he's running as a Republican, which she should find abhorrent ideologically and nonetheless. Ryan Lizza in the M. Night Shyamalan Twist at the end of his substack, calls his editor and says, my God, Olivia is sleeping with Mark Sanford. And that's the last line of part one.
- [42:55]
John Podhoretz
They were supposed to be writing a book about the presidential campaign in which Sanford was briefly a candidate.
- [43:00]
Jon Pothorst
Right. Which means that they were gonna write a book about the 2020 campaign. They had to drop it. And then they signed a deal to write a book about the 2024 campaign, which she also basically put a knife in the back of because she then ended up sleeping with a candidate in 2024.
- [43:21]
John Podhoretz
We should put a. So she says that she didn't sleep with RFK Jr that they had a digital relationship. So I guess they were, you know, sending.
- [43:35]
Jon Pothorst
It was an emotional affair.
- [43:38]
John Podhoretz
Well, more than that. But sending texts to each other and talking on the phone and presumably exchanging, you know, dirty pictures.
- [43:48]
Jon Pothorst
Yeah, that's the dirty pictures part. Makes it worse than the way I think about it.
- [43:55]
John Podhoretz
Worse than an affair. That's. It's just.
- [43:58]
Jon Pothorst
I don't know what it is. It's gross. Anyway. All right, so aside from the fact.
- [44:04]
Eliana Johnson
Can I just say I'm really looking forward to the Ryan Lizza, Olivia newsy book on the 2028 presidential campaign.
- [44:12]
Jon Pothorst
Well, then she's gonna sleep with Maduro, obviously, and maybe a Mola. You know, she's gonna have to. She's gonna have to expand her focus. She has a Republican in 2020. She has a Democrat, radical Democrat, who becomes a Republican in 2024. Who knows? She's got to go. She's. She's. She's. She can't just rest on her laurels. She has. She has now, like Zuleika Dobson in. In Max Beerboom's novel, she is now sort of, like, sliced through all of Oxford. Now she's got to go ply her wares. You know, I just.
- [44:48]
John Podhoretz
Can I just rewind for a second?
- [44:51]
Jon Pothorst
Yes.
- [44:52]
John Podhoretz
So Olivia Nuzi came on to the public scene as a, you know, young, you know, 20, 21, 22 year old, whatever. In 2013, she was an intern for Anthony Weiner's campaign, and she went to the New York Post or New York Daily News or something to. To write a story about what a disaster the campaign was. And that's how she broke on to, you know, a public scene which was working on a campaign and then stabbing the campaign in the back. And it was Anthony Weiner's campaign. Okay, Wieners spokeswoman.
- [45:35]
Jon Pothorst
And fair is fair. That was one hell of a piece, right? Actually. One hell of a piece.
- [45:40]
John Podhoretz
Okay, Wieners spokeswoman then came out and called Nuzzy a fame seeking underachiever who sucked at her job and also called her a slut bag. Okay, fast forward to, you know, 2020 and apparently Olivia sleeps with Mark Sanford while also sleeping with and being engaged to. She gets engaged to Ryan Lizza. And Ryan Liz is writing Playbook, the preeminent political newsletter of, you know, Washington D.C. and he's apparently shocked, shocked to discover that he's engaged to a fame seeking, you know, whatever, to a fame whore. And then shocked again to discover four years later that he's engaged to a fame whore. And you know, what a great reporter, great reporting. Right?
- [46:45]
Jon Pothorst
His word.
- [46:46]
John Podhoretz
Apparently the person who's like, you know, narrating our politics. But you know, I just thought all of these people, Wiener, Nuzzy Lizza, they, they are so much.
- [47:02]
Jon Pothorst
Yeah. Okay, so Fame Liza is apparently writing on his substack, by the way.
- [47:09]
Eliana Johnson
Just, just so, just as an addendum to that, that was Barbara Morgan, the aide who called. Who called, according to that Bernstein piece, John, that you mentioned. Barbara Morgan and Olivia Newsy are good friends now.
- [47:22]
Jon Pothorst
You know, you know, if you want a friend in Washington, buy a dog. I was just going to say that. The Ryan lizza story, given 2020 and then 2024, it is as though Charlie Brown is writing a history of his football interactions with Lucy. Because you would think once burned, twice shy, she already slept with somebody. Don't get involved in writing a campaign book with Olivia Nutzy again because she, you know, she already showed you what she did the last time. And yet here he was, it's the.
- [47:54]
John Podhoretz
Campaign writing that you wouldn't want to get involved with. That's the bridge too far.
- [48:00]
Jon Pothorst
Look, according to the Brian Lizard piece at his substack, she was, was pestering him to get engaged. She wanted to get engaged. She wanted to get engaged. She wasn't ready to get engaged. Of course, the backstory of this is that.
- [48:14]
John Podhoretz
That I think is such a classless thing to say. He stayed with her and did propose to her. I mean, yucky, yucky to say something like that.
- [48:23]
Jon Pothorst
Now the other funny part is the literary trope in the Ryan Lizza substack. The beginning of the the secret history of the Nutsy relationship is that he's got some bamboo in his backyard. That is. And you know, bamboo is an invasive species that is going to kill off his garden. Excuse me, is going to kill off all the plants in his garden. And apparently she's the best. She's the bamboo. In other words, if you follow the, if you follow the symbolic logic of the piece, Olivia Nuzi is the bamboo that is going to strangle his and destroy his garden, meaning his career and his life and everything like that. A very infelicitous, I believe, objective use of the objective correlative to liken her to bamboo.
- [49:19]
Eliana Johnson
It's Chekhov's bamboo.
- [49:21]
Jon Pothorst
Can we. Is there a larger point to be made here or are we just enjoying this too much because we are who we are. They are who they are. Ryan Lizza is an uncommonly self satisfied example of the self satisfied nature of the washing. The weird combination of reporter, pundit, analyst sort of figure, kind of created in the 90s by the, in the 80s by the New Republic. Somebody who both goes on the campaign trail to interview people, but also expresses his opinions in his pieces and also goes on TV to talk about how things work and all of that. And I would say he had a particularly, to my mind, skin crawly quality of self satisfaction that his various humiliations, now his firing by the New Yorker and then this stuff with Nutzi are kind of, I don't know, you call like sort of just desserts for his self, for the iron self regard that he seemed to show that is also comes out even in this excerpt a little bit. In other words, that he doesn't really understand what he looks like as he's writing this. Elliot, you're so sad. It's repulsive to read it, even though you're kind of have to be on his side a little bit. Like he.
- [51:02]
John Podhoretz
I'm not on his side at all.
- [51:04]
Jon Pothorst
Okay, good.
- [51:05]
John Podhoretz
I'm not, I'm not on either of their sides at all.
- [51:09]
Eliana Johnson
But one thing we're on Mark Sanford's side.
- [51:12]
Jon Pothorst
Let's see. One thing I want to know about.
- [51:14]
John Podhoretz
The nuzzy book that I think is obsessed, her memoir.
- [51:19]
Jon Pothorst
That's the memoir that is now coming in.
- [51:20]
John Podhoretz
It's called American Canto. Is that the pretext of the book is that Trump did this, Trump made her behave that this way. Trump drove her mad and drove America mad. And I think that I don't even know what you want to call it. That conceit is preposterous.
- [51:46]
Seth Mandel
That's fascinating. I didn't even know that. And that's.
- [51:49]
John Podhoretz
Yeah. So if you read, if you read the description of the book, it's, you know, how, how Trump drove one reporter and the country mad. And you know that that is preposterous and insulting. And the idea that, you know, you had a, you sent, you know, lewd pictures to RFK Jr. And Trump made you do it somehow, or, you know, that's the conceit. I haven't read the book, so, you know, I may be getting out over my skis into what. What actually said is ridiculous. And I'm not on either person's side. I think, I think his revealing all of these things about his ex is gross. And particularly the insinuation that. Not the insinuation. His statement that, oh, she pressured me to propose and, you know, she was your fiance, and her, like, over revelations are gross. And the idea that this person was, you know, narrating our political broadsheet is an embarrassment to the, to the publication. Like, you're supposed to be such a great reporter. You obviously had, you know, oh, you were so shocked that this, you know, fame whore was living in your house and sleeping with their sources. Like, give me a point.
- [53:09]
Eliana Johnson
I think, give me a break.
- [53:10]
Seth Mandel
So I think this is the larger point, is that, like, look who our political taste makers are. Look what they're up to. And I'm fascinated by her blaming Trump because to me, the takeaway is the inverse, is that these are the people who have been pulling their hair out saying, my God, can you believe the conduct of Donald Trump? And meanwhile, this is what they've been up to for years and years and years. And it's, it's also part of why I think Trump being such an unusual, unorthodox political figure, became just another feature of the, of our political culture, because there is just so much madness going on.
- [54:03]
Eliana Johnson
John I'm Oliver Darcy. And I'm John Passantino. We have spent years covering the inner workings of the news media, tech, politics, Hollywood, and power now through our nightly newsletter, Status. And we're bringing that same reporting and sharp analysis to a new podcast, Powerlines. Every Friday, we're breaking down the biggest stories shaping the industry, explaining why they matter, and saying the things most people are thinking but too timid to say out loud. No spin, no fluff, just sharp analysis that isn't afraid to call it like it is.
- [54:33]
Jon Pothorst
We also pull back the curtain via.
- [54:35]
Eliana Johnson
Our exclusive reporting to take you behind the scenes. My understanding, having reported this, is that the Pentagon protested to CNN and tried to effectively exile the CNN producer. And when the moment calls for it, we've got some hot takes. I just think Brad Pitt, honestly, he kind of seems a little washed up. Oh, my God.
- [54:56]
Seth Mandel
God.
- [54:56]
Jon Pothorst
That's Power Lines presented by Status.
- [54:59]
Eliana Johnson
Follow Power Lines and listen on Apple, Spotify, Amazon Music, or your favorite podcast app.
- [55:09]
Jon Pothorst
Well, two things come to mind. One of which is that this is for her. This is like the equivalent of San Francisco Supervisor Dan White's defense of his assassination of Mayor George Moscone and Harvey Milk. Right. Which is that he ate too many Twinkies. The Twinkies made him crazy. He had too much sugar in his diet and his blood sugar had spiked and he therefore had to be found not guilty by reason of insanity because of the Twinkies. Right. So Trump made her sleep with Marx Sanford. And RFK Jr. Is some interesting analog to the Twinkie defense. The other thing that comes to mind is Mark Rudd, who was one of the radicals in 1968 who took over Columbia and was an early weatherman and you know, had a. Was a, basically was a domestic terrorist and in the 80s started apologizing for what had happened and why he had believed that violence against, you know, military facilities and violence was a good thing. And he said that really the Vietnam War had driven him and said that literally that the Vietnam War, thinking about it, because he didn't of course, serve in the Vietnam War, had driven him insane. And therefore this was his explanation, that the war was just the thing that had driven him insane. Anytime anybody tries to take a large scale American phenomenon, apply it to themselves and then say that's what made me do something bad is the con. It is the ultimate effort to find a way to say that your own personal conduct is not. You have no agency for your personal conduct because you are just a time being programmed by forces from the outside. That being said, I do think that Trump has driven many people crazy. I mean, in a weird way, it's one of his, it's one of his demonic genius qualities that he. For his opposition, he leads them into extremes of opposition that become self discrediting and that end up with him stronger than he was before. But not sleeping with RFK Jr. That's that. I'm sorry, you know, you don't get that one. You know, you don't get to put that one on your. As your buy.
- [57:46]
Eliana Johnson
So there's also like I was going.
- [57:47]
John Podhoretz
To read from the Simon and Schuster page on the book because I knew I had.
- [57:51]
Jon Pothorst
Yeah, it's.
- [57:52]
John Podhoretz
It describes the book as a mesmerizing firsthand account of the warping of American reality over the past decade as Donald Trump has risen to dominance, to dominance from a participatory witness who got so far inside the distortion field that it swallowed her whole.
- [58:10]
Jon Pothorst
Would that explain why she took let Keith Olbermann pay for her college education? Because I think that happened Before Trump, I could be wrong, and gave her Birkin bags and things like that. I mean, that's the thing here, is that she is like a character out of a Balzac novel. And so is he, by the way. The way. Or maybe a Mopassant story or something like that. Like. Like they are both examples of the corruption of a certain type of elite class.
- [58:43]
Eliana Johnson
Yeah.
- [58:44]
Jon Pothorst
That uses. That is essentially using journalism as their ladder to climb, as opposed to banking or money or whatever it is that usually. Or politics that people do. These are all adjacent to those things and the world in which we live or certainly that I've lived much of my life, you know, the, the use of other people as stepping stones and jobs as stepping stones, which is perfectly legitimate. You also have people who are literate enough or clever enough or something like that to be able to, to kind of say, well, we're not. It's not us. We're not. We're not. We're not cool. You know, we're not. We're not game players. We're just fault. We're just watching the game.
- [59:29]
Seth Mandel
But you know what's going to be interesting is I bet as more stories come out and as, as each side defends in turn the, the latest thing, we already have all these players, but this, this, this sort of web of sleaze, it's not closed with these. Note with these nodes, with these known people. Everyone in them has, you know, whether it's Keith Olbermann or Lizza or Newsy, like, they can. They have their own webs of further context that may or may not get drawn into this or feel the need to comment on it and so on. Like, you know, this could be. This could be a Covid.
- [60:19]
Eliana Johnson
You need a contact map.
- [60:21]
Jon Pothorst
Yeah, exactly.
- [60:23]
Eliana Johnson
But, I mean, look, but, but beyond, I think just beyond just that, I, I think that you can cast the net even wider because, you know, somebody said, somebody posted on Twitter the other day that something to the effect of, you know, I've always been trying to convince my, you know, my boomer parents or grandparents or whatever that they. The whole, the whole ecosystem, the whole political ecosystem is not just like a bunch of people who sit in hot tubs together and all that stuff. And then the Epstein texts came out and it's like, what's Larry Summers doing texting with Epstein ten years after Epstein gets, you know, convicted of, you know, of the first charges? You know, and it's not. And so it's like there is something about this culture, bringing it back to the Trump stuff. And the Trump made me do it stuff, it's like Trump entered the political world in which Epstein was already texting with a member of Congress during a hearing and Larry Summers and well, you mentioned Anthony.
- [61:27]
Jon Pothorst
I mean, you know, Olivia Nuzi emerging from the Wiener campaign. That was 2013. That was the mayoral campaign of 2013. That was one of those moments that must have led Trump to think, well, what the hell, I'll give it a shot. Like anybody can. Anybody can do anything in this country. No one. Even though Weiner, of course was humiliated. I'm just saying he was humiliated.
- [61:51]
Eliana Johnson
And Elliot Spitzer came back around the same time trying to run for controller.
- [61:56]
Jon Pothorst
Had Wiener been able to control himself in 2013 and not been texting with Sidney Leathers or whoever that person was, he would have won the mayoralty of New York. He was in the lead. He was.
- [62:12]
Eliana Johnson
Well, that was, that was. I was, we, I was at Commentary the first time back, back at the time I was at com and we had a discussion about this and I said, I don't understand how we, somebody else, somebody's going to beat Anthony Weiner. He's the only outer borough guy left in the race. I mean, you have Manhattanites, you know, who are, who are stained by their affiliation with Michael Bloomberg and his third term, you know, waiting in the wings. There was nobody. They were like these. And so how the, how does the outer borough guy like him, who's already got the name recognition, not win? And you, John, you said to me, he will not win because he is the prototypical self destructive person and he will self destruct. He will not allow, he's the type of person who will not allow himself to rise like a Phoenix from his own ashes, but rather he will, he will subvert his own. And you were, and you were right. He could not stop himself that was good. From blowing up.
- [63:13]
Jon Pothorst
I have no memory of that. I thank you. Now, now the world knows. My precious.
- [63:19]
Eliana Johnson
Yes, yes. But you, but you were like, no, you get you. This is a guy who won't let himself. But, but that, you know, the Anthony.
- [63:26]
Jon Pothorst
Stuff, that three years later he would destroy Hillary Clinton's presidential ambitions also. So he was a perfect, he was a perfect worm through the, through the system.
- [63:37]
Eliana Johnson
Right? And then there's this other thing that it makes me think of which is, you know, less well known, but in, in our circles, in the political journalism circles was a, was a really big thing a couple years ago, which was the, the, the memoir of Blake Butler, who was, who is a writer who was married to to the poet Molly Brodak. Brodak. And she, you know, she, she was in more in sort of like progressive literary circles than he was, but they were both in the scene and it turned out that. And so she, she took, they were sort of one of those it couples. She took her own life. And he, going through her phone looking for things to say at her funeral, found that she had lived an entire second life. And he wrote a memoir about this. Nobody knew that Molly had lived this second life cheating on him and carrying on all sorts of crazy things. And it turned out that, you know, she was like this emotional abus and crazy stuff. And then there was this whole secondary argument about, like, nobody could put the book down. If you were in like Washington or Brooklyn, you know, you were walking around with a copy of this book. Amazon ran out. You know, for a while it was like, it was like crazy. But then there was this whole secondary discussion about, like, what we're talking about with Ryan. Like, well, is it okay to say, you know, the things that you're saying about this person that other people didn't know? I mean, Molly was no longer alive at the time. So it's even more of a live question with Olivia Nuzzi. But we're, we're seeing the journalistic, the, the world of like political writing has an obsessive, like, navel gazing, you know, habit that has turned into, in our modern era, like just airing every detail. The things that people read in that book, in the book about Molly from her ex husband and the things that people will be reading about. I mean, there's no question, there's no way that Ryan, Liz's first part of that is going to be the only one with a bombshell.
- [65:51]
Jon Pothorst
But what's important here is that, is that she drew first blood in this sense. So they broke up. You know, both their careers are in tatters. She decides to rebuild her career by writing this memoir. And he's like, I can't just sit here and let you establish the record. Like, you know, sorry, you, you've, you know, I, I would have let this go, but now I have to defend myself by going on and destroying you. I mean, that's this, that's the gross part of this is. And, and we're all here for it because it's human nature, number one, but number two, it does. I'm glad you mentioned Epstein, because the whole point that we've been trying to get at over the last couple of weeks about why this won't go away is that it is a kind of it's not a flash vision because it's too long and it's lasted too long, but that there is that. The elites in the United States are rotted. And in a country in which we rely on experts and the only people who are ever on the Supreme Court go to three schools. And everybody, even though now even right wingers say they hate Harvard, every major person that you can think of lets you know that they went to Harvard in some fashion or other and all that. And it's all rotted to the core. And journalism is rotted to the core. Politics is rotted to the core. Like the elites that, that make billions of dollars are rotted to the core. And the Epstein thing is the revelation of it. And then you're gonna get these little ancillary examples of elite. The former Washington correspondent of the New Yorker, the former Washington correspondent of New York magazine with big book deals, glamorous people on tv, all of that just involved in sordid personal horrible behavior that you know, we should never even have to know about. They're not, they're not newsmakers. They're supposed to be news news followers. And it all plays into this narrative which is that there is something wrong with this country. And it's not necessarily, despite what everybody says, the suicide epidemic. And the problem with this and the problem with that, it's at the top. It's William Buckley's point 70 years ago that he would rather be ruled by the first 500 names in the Boston phone book than by the faculties of Yale and Harvard, like there is something wrong.
- [68:31]
Seth Mandel
I think, John, your point is more important than the point I want to make, but I just still do want to make it. No, honestly. But there was a time when if you were publicly humiliated, and this was not just a time, this was how things were for most of civilization. You would slink away and never want to be recognized or approached by a stranger again. That's all changed if you are publicly humiliated now the blueprint is expose more of yourself, become a full on exhibitionist. The only way out is through. Give them everything now. And it's that we see that in both sides of this scandal or whatever it is affair. And it's a remarkable thing because to even be able to do that once you are, once you're publicly humiliated in this way shows a kind of egomania or self regard that is just astounding.
- [69:49]
Jon Pothorst
We just, we no longer live in a culture in which shame plays a, plays a large role. In fact, success in America requires a kind of shamelessness that most societies have never, you know, have always succeeded in imposing a kind of external control over people's behavior through the, through the weapon of shame. Because we are all, all you have to do is look at a. Eliana said you both have very little. You know, shame is a six month old can feel shame. I mean, you know, like shame is a deep human response to when you think you've done something wrong and you think maybe you're going to get away with it. And then somebody calls you on it and you are, you not only get the punishment of someone saying you did wrong, but also the knowledge that you know that you could have stopped yourself from doing it and you did it already. Shame is an incredibly powerful emotion. And we, from Bill Clinton onward, I would say the elite class in America has learned that shame, that all you have to do is refuse to allow shame to govern your emotions and you can power power through that. Shame is a form of self defeat and that if you can somehow turn that off in your head. And then now we have Nuzi and Liza, both of whom are shaming themselves minute by minute. But if they don't experience it as that, it's not going to have the same. You're looking again saying, if that were me, I would like crawl in a hole and die. And guess what? That would probably be a mistake. It would be a mistake for you to crawl in a hole and die because you can get over it, you can get past it as long as you lose your humanity, your soul, your moral sense, your moral frame and everything that actually makes life worth living. If you can get rid of those, you know, you can have a good time while your soul rots away inside your body.
- [71:55]
Eliana Johnson
And by the way, the irony, by the way of that whole situation is that Mark Sanford was running as the non gross alternative to Trump, right? That supposedly the, the white blood cells of the American system had sprung up. Mark Sanford to guard against the infection, the total infection by gross people like Donald Trump. He was the sort of, you know, principled candidate, whatever he was, you know, that opposition candidate and he had, you know, the guy who'd been hiking the Appalachian Trail and now you see, but during that exact, during that election, the one in which Nuzi was saying Trump was making the country go crazy, Mark Sanford was supposedly the principled opposition alternative to Donald Trump and he was sleeping with the premier reporter covering the election who was saying that Trump was making everybody go crazy. So it makes you sit there and go, I don't trust anybody, right? I mean, like if you're just a member of the public and you're like, Mark Sanford comes out and he's like, like, look, I'm going to be the good dude from South Carolina who remembers, you know, what America, what, what America used to be like. And when there was chivalry and blah, blah, blah. And you're like, I don't know how many times I can fall for that. But are there any alternatives to any of this in the, in the public sphere? That's, that's kind of like the, the shocking part of it is that it's literally the people who are set up as the, you know, the saviors of the, you know, the culture of shame and, you know, and self respect and all that stuff. And then you just go, I don't.
- [73:42]
Jon Pothorst
I don't believe anybody, you know, not to conclude on the, on the journalistic game of Liza and Nuzi and people like that and Politico and various other things. So, you know, it's a sentimental thing, but it is true nonetheless to say that in the first half of the 20th century, the people who covered the news were news. Newspaper reporters overwhelmingly came from the lower middle and working classes. They often did not have college degrees. They were people who got involved in the game young. They learned all kinds of techniques. They did things that people were very hard to do, like go interview people when their kids had been killed. Russell Baker talks about how he climbed into somebody's window to steal a photograph of a murdered kid because his editor said, we need a picture for the front page. And the woman wouldn't let him in the house and he broke into her house to steal a photograph. And that was the sort of thing for which you were praised. I'm only bringing this up to say that there was a world in which the reporters and the politicians and the elite members of society reporters were cynical and they were for themselves from often hard bitten lives. They didn't make a lot of money, they knew a lot, but they didn't really have much to exploit from it. And they viewed their charges and the people that they wrote about with skeptical eyes because they were workaday people who understood that people, you know, schlepped along in life and that if you were a local politician, chances are you were taking a bribe from somebody, because who wouldn't, given the opportunity and the circumstance? When this all became professionalized, when every major reporter in the United States ended up not only being a college graduate, but having come from the top 50 colleges in the United States and all of that, there became a Confusion between what it meant to cover things and what it meant to be part of things, because, of course, they had all gone to school together. If you're a reporter and you went to Harvard, you're going to college with Tony Blinken, and you were in an eating society at Princeton with so and so, and you were in Skull and Bones with somebody else. And you aren't on the outside looking in, casting a skeptical eye. You are also on the inside, and you are writing kind of like the class notes for the alumni magazine rather than explaining what's actually going on in the world to the people whom you are trying to get to pay a nickel for your newspaper. And the end result of this, which is like the story of my lifetime in journalism, is that coverage is bad. People get rooked and snookered all the time by the people that they know and that you can't trust what you read.
- [76:46]
John Podhoretz
Can I just add, I totally agree with you, John, particularly about the whole inside game where I'm a Yale graduate. And it's true, we have friends not only working at the major journalistic institutions. It's all Harvard, Yale, Princeton people. And then you all know people in the government. And, I mean, one of my big takeaways from working in the mainstream, and particularly as a White House correspondent, was that, oh, all the White House correspondents are friends. So, like, yeah, you're competing for each other for scoops, but there is, like, a pact that you don't really criticize and go after each other. And. And that's. That's dangerous when you're not pointing out the foibles or the mistakes of your competitors. But that is not the point I wanted to make the other. So I mentioned that the Nazi book is a critique of how she just lost her bearings in Trump's Washington. Lizza, when he started his substack. So he was anchoring Politico playbook during the Biden administration from 2020 to 2024. My understanding is that he was nudged out of that role when this drama exploded. They did announce, because she. She accused him or brought some lawsuit against him or restraining order or something of, like, hacking her devices or something. And anyhow, when he. So he launched a substack and he claimed to have left Politico because it was not anti Trump enough. Okay, so when. When Abe says, you know, these are the people writing our news and these are. Are tastemakers, like, both of these people are trying to restart their careers pointing the finger at Trump. And Lizza wrote in his inaugural substack that I recently left Politico, where I've served as the chief Washington correspondent since 2019. The main reason their style of political coverage is not meeting the unprecedented moment of Democratic peril we're facing. I know that sounds dramatic, but the gap between what's actually happening in Washington and how it was being framed and reported became much too wide. So his critique of reporting in the Biden era was that it wasn't anti Trump enough. And I mean, it's just amazing. It's just amazing. And then his example of this was that Politico didn't cover aggressively enough Trump's assault on the law firms, in which he. He noted that Paul Weiss took down, you know, the bio of this woman, Jeannie Rhee, which, you know, that's a good. It's a good story, but it's like, this was like, really the line in the sand for you that Paul Weiss took down this bio of the woman who, like, prosecuted the J6 attacks. So. So, yeah.
- [79:57]
Jon Pothorst
No, I mean, look, the whole point here is. Yeah, that. So basically, more examples of that which you cannot trust, which is to say that people are going to write frank, personal accounts of their own humiliations and all of that, and they're just lying, too. Their accounts are lies. The thing that they say that motivates them is a lie. Ryan Lizzo would be at Politico today if he could have been. If it is true that Ryan Lizzo was forced out of Politico, he didn't leave because they weren't. They invited him to leave. He created a narrative that's more favorable to himself, and now he's using the substack that was supposed to expose the truth of the horrors of the Trump era to go after his girlfriend and to try to destroy her the way she's trying to destroy him. Because that's real. That's human nature. Like, people cannot, as maybe as Anthony Weiner demonstrated, people cannot shut off who they are, and they don't really know what is best and what is not best to do. Which is why, as in all cases, with all the way we talk about these things, if you want to live not a pure life, but if you want to live a life where you're not embarrassed and shamed and humiliated by your own behavior, the thing to do is to just go ahead, go straightforward. If you're going to cheat on your boyfriend, leave him, you know, end the relationship. And you're not married yet, so you're allowed to do what you want to do. If you're gonna. If you're gonna, like, write what you're gonna write in order to promote liberal causes. Go work for a liberal organization and promote liberal causes. Like, don't hide behind, you know, journalistic, you know, objectivity and then just sort of like spin. Like, do be straightforward about what your motivations are and what's most important to you, and you will live a life of value. And if you, if you go hiding, you know, it's like, what's the, you know, what shall it profit a man if you gain the whole world but lose his soul? Like, don't live like this. It's not healthy. Most people don't. And there's a good reason why they don't. And as I say, for some reason, the elites are now much more uncommonly likely to be corrupt in this fashion. Or the elites that I, that I have grown up around and that I have come to, you know, my 60s being, being around are people who are increasingly, the more successful they are, the more likely it is that they are of somewhat low character. It's a sort of interesting thing. Like, you know, it's, it's, you know, you know, that they trimmed their sails or they're not telling the truth about things or that they, they know things that they don't report or they won't tell you because they're too friendly with and they're too much in bed with the people that they're writing about and all of that. It's a very problematic thing, but it is the nature. It's part of the nature of the success of the populist movement that has itself got so many dangers for the rest of us. And here we are at a minute 20 an hour 20. Excuse me. And we should probably all go to work. So for Abe, Seth and Eliana and John Potters, keep the candle burning. It's okay not to be perfect with finances. Experian is your big financial friend and here to help.
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Eliana Johnson
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Jon Pothorst
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Eliana Johnson
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Jon Pothorst
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