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- [00:01]
John Podhoretz
Shake, shake, shake.
- [00:02]
Abe Greenwald
Sinora, shake it all the time.
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John Podhoretz
When you add a shake of Frank's Red Hot, you open a world of better. A world where wings bring out the flavor of game day any day. Where Buffalo chicken dip takes any party up a notch. And where any slice of pizza instantly becomes the world's best slice of pizza. At least until the next slice Bring every bite to life with the perfect blend of flavor and heat. Frank's Red Hot. I put that shit on everything.
- [00:34]
Abe Greenwald
Hope for the best expect the worst.
- [00:41]
John Podhoretz
Some preacher pain Some die of thirst no way of knowing which way it's going Hope for the best Expect the worst Hope for the best welcome to the Commentary Magazine daily Podcast. Today is Thursday, January 23, 2025. I am John Podhor. It's the editor of Commentary, making an exciting announcement for all listeners and readers. Our own Abe Greenwald, whom I will introduce soon, has begun providing us with a daily newsletter. We've had a commentary magazine and commentary.org newsletter for many years, with links to things that are produced on the website and in the magazine and to the podcast on a daily basis for years. But beginning last week, Abe has begun providing a kind of daily essay perspective newsletter that we heartily advise you to subscribe to. The subscription is free. If you go to commentary.org and you look at the top banner, you will see in the middle where it says subscribe donate that you will see newsletter. Click on the word newsletter. It will ask you just simply for your email address and your name and then you can subscribe. And around 4, 4:30 in the afternoon every day. But the weekends you will get the Abe Greenwald Commentary daily newsletter, including links to articles and blog posts of interest and to this podcast, which you probably won't need since you're already subscribing, but a bunch of people do listen to the podcast through the link in the newsletter and we will be providing that as well. So that is the Commentary magazine daily newsletter now featuring abe Greenwald@comMENTARY.org Please go to the top banner, click on newsletter and subscribe. And here he is, executive editor Abe Greenwald. Hi Abe.
- [02:49]
Matthew Continetti
Hi John. Thanks for the. Thanks for the word.
- [02:52]
John Podhoretz
There we go. And Washington Commentary columnist Matthew Continetti. Hi Matt.
- [02:58]
Abe Greenwald
Hi John.
- [02:59]
John Podhoretz
And social commentary columnist Christine Rosen. Hi Christine.
- [03:01]
Christine Rosen
Hi John.
- [03:03]
John Podhoretz
I don't really care what's happening because the as we record, the Oscar nominations are being announced and I would really rather be watching those because I want to get angry at the nominations for Amelia Perez, a disgraceful and awful movie. It's going to get a lot, a lot of nominations, but I can't because I have to be here with you. So I hope you appreciate the sacrifice that I am making to discuss with you such matters as immigration, the status of Trump nominations and worldwide anti Semitism. So, so from the ridiculous to the sublime, here we go. Lot of stuff going on in immigration announcements that 350 people have been deported or either taken by ICE and deported or whatever. 1500 troops gonna go to the southern border, though it's not clear where, what role they will play or how. Many local officials across the country in sanctuary cities and places of clueless leftist psychosis were announcing their intention to disrupt ICE efforts to enforce federal immigration laws in their cities. With the mayor of Denver, for example, last week saying that somehow the police would prevent ice, the local police were going to be directed to prevent ICE or to somehow interpose their bodies between ICE and people that ICE was moving on to which apparently the Trump administration of the federal government vowed to potentially take action because the courts provide. The courts have affirmed the fact that immigration is a national responsibility, that border security is a national responsibility under the national security Act of 1952, and that this is a federal responsibility. It is not something that the states and localities have the power to manage or interfere with. So this is moving on a very, very fast track.
- [05:13]
Christine Rosen
And we also have our first federal case from forest attorneys general challenging the birthright citizenship declaration. Attorneys general from Washington, Oregon, Arizona and Illinois have filed in federal court in Seattle questioning whether the exec. Birthright citizenship executive order. So another piece, piece of the puzzle moving quickly.
- [05:35]
John Podhoretz
So can I tell a quick story and then ask you guys to respond to my, my idea about what is going on inside the sort of left Liberal head. About 25 years ago I was at a. 26, 27 years ago I was at a dinner party in New York City at which There were many 20 people around the table. But there were, there were mostly sort of like Democratic donor types at the table. And the conversation came up about Hillary Clinton, who was running for the Senate in New York. And I said that aside from everything else I did not like about her, I found this very disturbing because it was like a kind of affirmation that Hillary and Bill had a devil's bargain, that she was going to back him, support him. And then the minute that she could find a way to seize independent power, she would use his standing, her standing to do so by carpet bagging, coming to my state and running for office. And this guy across the table from me looked at me. Absolutely. The color drained from his face. And he said to me, you can't say that. And I said, what do you mean I can't say that? I just said. I just said it. So this comes to mind because there is about the response to Trump on immigration from the Denver mayor or whoever. This. You can't do that. And that Trump and the, you know, having run on immigration as hard as anybody has ever run on any issue ever, and having poll numbers that show that 50, 60, 70% of the American people, depending on how you ask it, have now come to the opinion that all illegal immigrants should be deported from the United States. All. I'm not saying some, I'm not saying, you know what, I really like my gardener. I want my, you know, I need my grapes picked. You know, they really make a wonderful. Can I interrupt you? Yes.
- [07:50]
Abe Greenwald
How many people have gardeners? Anyway, this is, I don't know. Christine talked about this yesterday about kind of the classism embedded.
- [07:59]
Matthew Continetti
Every Californian.
- [08:01]
John Podhoretz
Every California.
- [08:01]
Abe Greenwald
It's true.
- [08:02]
John Podhoretz
Every Californian. And a lot of people in Nevada, a lot of sort of like retirees in Nevada and Arizona and places like that where gardening is difficult because they're deserts. And you need to.
- [08:15]
Abe Greenwald
I think Abe is right. I think it's a Hollywood liberal thing. No, it's like, oh, my gardener, East.
- [08:19]
John Podhoretz
Hampton, or in East Hampton, Apod. Okay. I mean, these places, people have garden. They have these giant hedgerows, right? 10 foot high bushes that need to be constantly kept in order. Otherwise your house starts looking like, you know, the Adams family mansion. So I don't know. Anyway, I'm sorry to go with Gardner. That was a. That was maybe.
- [08:45]
Abe Greenwald
Well, but you're repeating the arguments that you hear from liberals opposed to Trump's immigration policy. And I think you hit on the key difference between what's happening over the past 48 hours and what happened during the four years of the first Trump administration. And that's public opinion. Public opinion is now firmly on Trump's side on this issue. He campaigned on immigration both times. It is his signature issue, as you say. But when he took office, the first time, we all recall, the public was against him. They didn't even. On the question of the wall, something that had enjoyed broad public Support Prior to 2016, the public turned against building the wall. Now, because of the failures of the Biden administration, Trump is enjoying the wind at his back as he embarks on this anti illegal immigration campaign. He also did close some avenues of legal migration as well. The asylum program has been halted. But there, too, I think he'll enjoy some public benefit of doubt, suspension of doubt here. And that's what Democrats haven't really reckoned with, this shift in public opinion that is now firmly on the side of Trump.
- [10:13]
Christine Rosen
And there's also, I mean, he's got the Lake and Riley act now on his desk to sign from Congress. And I really don't think the public opinion piece is settled in on the left, the sort of open borders left. And Matt's absolutely right to cite it, people will give him a lot of benefit of the doubt because if you, even when you see the reaction to the news stories come out saying, well, he's gonna deputize mar and. And, you know, other DEA agents to act as have enforcement powers for immigration, this is horrifying. And everyone sort of shrugs and goes, well, that's great. Actually, unlike this sort of existential wall building that he talked about in his first term, he's deputizing people. There's manpower now behind his actions, and things are happening quickly. And people see it on the news that. And they don't mind it. And I think that's where the disconnect really is, not just with the sort of progressive elite left, but also with the media who doesn't really know yet how to cover this story because it is coming from several angles. The way they covered the Lake and Riley act was interesting to me because none of them wanted to talk about who Lake and Riley was and what had happened to her. And so that was actually a very good. And the fact that a couple of Democrats came across the aisle and signed onto that bill as well. So he should use each of these opportunities to remind the public this is a serious issue. This is why you elected me. I am getting things done from, you know, starting at day one. And he'll lose on. I think he'll lose the birthright citizenship argument. I think he'll lose things here and there in the courts. But for now, he's kind of asking for. He's asking for forgiveness, not permission from the public.
- [11:43]
John Podhoretz
Well, I mean, two things, one of which is birthright citizenship goes to an idea about what America is, how, what kind of country America is, as well as to precedent and what the 14th amendment says and all of that.
- [11:59]
Christine Rosen
Well, and the practical challenge, if you have an infant who isn't a citizen and two parents who are here illegally, everyone's gonna get deported or if they are a citizen, are what happens to the parents.
- [12:09]
John Podhoretz
I mean, I'm not saying it's not a. But I'm saying that, that there, even though it really does involve human beings and there's something abstract about it, it's more an argument about what America is in its third as we approach its, you know, triennial. I mean, it's 250th birthday. I'm sorry. What we have here is that public opinion has changed because the facts on the ground inside the United States have changed. There was a crime wave in the United states beginning in 2020. Crime has gone up. Illegals are involved in crime. So are natural born citizens who are apparently more likely to be criminals than illegal aliens, who may want to not do so much because they don't want to get on the radar of, you know, governments and things like that. But there is a crime wave and people who are not in this country legally when they commit crimes, there is some special quality to that that Trump isn't just making up. And the problem is that in 2017 when he said, you know, they're destroying our country or this is if you don't have borders, you don't have a country, that may or may not be true. But people did not feel, I think, the effects of immigration in terms of their feelings of existential safety. A lot of people may have thought that jobs were being taken and that sort of thing, but something changed between.
- [13:43]
Abe Greenwald
2020 and the number of, the number of immigrants changed. Millions and millions of people.
- [13:50]
Christine Rosen
Largest amount since ever.
- [13:52]
Abe Greenwald
Yeah, that's a change.
- [13:54]
Christine Rosen
Literally historic amount.
- [13:56]
John Podhoretz
But if that had happened at a time of, of public peace, let's say, or you know, like enforcement of the laws, people were there. Now that wasn't the case here, though you could say that that was necessarily not the case because not enforcing immigration law is a form itself of antinomianism that was going to have far reaching consequences and might give people an idea that they were free to do whatever it was that they wanted to do. But the public does not feel safe. And when you start, and that is not a partisan opinion, but for the is not partisan, like that's why 60, 70% of the public now favors mass deportation, which is a pretty astounding shift over like, over a 20 year period. Like something that probably 10% of people would have said they were for in 2005 and it's now 2025 and close to 2/3 of the American people say that there should be mass deportations.
- [15:02]
Matthew Continetti
For the liberals freaking out about it, they've gotten very, very accustomed to illegal immigration and border security problems. They've gotten very used to that as a topic to discuss, to argue over, to pontificate. It's an issue. The idea that you were supposed to do something about it has thrown them into a panic. The action is like the craziest. It's sort of like where we all are on, say, Social Security reform. Like when something happens to that everyone. It was never supposed, it was inconceivable that something's gonna actually happen on it.
- [15:43]
Abe Greenwald
I think it's also because many of the people who are at the forefront of opposing the deportation policy, the wall policy, they're insulated from the effects of the open border from the past four years. So you think about the same way that they've been insulated from the effects of the inflation people, because the Democratic Party has realigned to this highly educated or high levels of college attainment, they're not so educated, in many cases, affluent party, they didn't have to feel the inflation in the same way that the middle and working classes felt the inflation. And when you have mass migration to the extent that we've had over four years, the affluent and protected don't feel the consequences. There was a report out about Fairfax county public schools yesterday. That's the school system where I graduated from high school. It was known as the best public school system in the country when I attended. It's now running huge, huge deficits because of the money it has to spend on esl, on English as a second language as a result of the migration. So the people I'm going to wager, who are saying this is anti humanitarian, this is cruel of Trump, we need to oppose what Trump is doing at every cost. I bet a lot of them send their kids to private schools so they don't feel the brunt. And it's the same in housing. It's again and again and again. And it shows you the cocooning of the Democratic Party that's taken place over the past half decade.
- [17:25]
Christine Rosen
Can I just add, this is such an important point because it actually speaks to a broader theme throughout American history that I think we're seeing a resurgence of now, and that's that when your political class becomes an elite, and that includes the left and the right, when you have a lot of people in the political, political class who are elite and removed from the everyday life of ordinary Americans. I'm not saying every politician is, but in general, if you have an elite class, a technocratic elite, they forget how pragmatic the American people can be. And the idea that if there's a huge problem and the people vote in someone who's like, I have these three things on my list to take care of that as a solution. They're going to choose that person and they're going to set aside any qualms they have about anything else. That pragmatism, that deeply rooted pragmatism has been repurposed and called hate by the left. Oh, they hate immigrants, they hate people. And there are plenty of people who are racist and terrible. But most Americans have a very pragmatic approach to solving problems. It is what made, it's made our country very strong, less prone to revolutionary outbreaks, and more likely to get things done. And I think this should be a reminder to Trump that he needs to keep tapping into the pragmatic response that American people have rather than the more ideological response, because he'll get more done tapping into that pragmatism.
- [18:37]
John Podhoretz
There was a term for what Matt was describing, right? The get your, you know, you, your school system can stink because you're, it's fine and fulfill. And so because it fulfills political and ideological priors for a bunch of people, because they don't have skin in the game, they, they, they pay the extra tax and send their kids to private school. This was limousine liberalism. This is where the term limousine liberalism came in in the 1960s and 1970s and had enormous political effects, positive political effects for the right in the United States as opposed to the limousine liberals of the left. Politically, affirmative action, which was a classic case, busing was, I think, the signature classic case, which is the idea that your kid, instead of walking 10 minutes to their local school, is going to get on a bus and be driven half an hour to another school in a different neighborhood with people who were not the people that you wanted them necessarily to associate with because you lived where you lived, because it was where your parents lived and where your grandparents lived, and you wanted your kids in this kind of network cocoon. But no, a larger purpose was being imposed upon you and your children. Busing was insanely unpopular, despite what happened between Joe Biden and Kamala Harris in the 2019 debate where she said, I bussing was the greatest thing that ever happened to me. Which of course is, I'm sure, absolutely not true. But it was when there was a kind of riot against busing or the construction of low income housing in middle and upper middle class neighborhoods in urban or things like that, or the crime wave. And the crime wave, as the ultimate example of this, and the idea being.
- [20:27]
Abe Greenwald
And the college degree getting out of the draft and then turning against the war a lot of people who didn't go to college, who did fight in Vietnam, were very incensed at that as well.
- [20:37]
John Podhoretz
Right. So you take all that together and you say, I understand. I'm talking about stuff that happened half a century ago. Many, many, many people who were involved in public life have either were not alive, have no memory of it, have no experience of it, but I do. And I'm telling you that the similarities are absolutely jaw dropping in terms of the tone, which is kind of what? You can't say that. What do you mean illegal aliens are bad. They're not bad. This is the promise of America. And you're a racist for thinking what you're thinking.
- [21:15]
Abe Greenwald
Think about the language change that the Trump administration had to make within the Biden administration. For the past four years, they have been referring to illegal immigrants as non citizens. And now the new team has reverted back to the classic legal terminology, illegal alien. But the presumption that the millions and millions of people who have entered this country through the southern border beginning in 2021 are simply non citizens, implying that one day soon they will become citizens, is itself a completely ideologized take on this issue. And I also want to emphasize what you.
- [22:01]
John Podhoretz
No human being is illegal. Like that was in the 2020 election. That was kind of like a mantra, right? And no human being is illegal.
- [22:11]
Abe Greenwald
And that comes out of the law schools, and you began seeing it around the year 2000 is when the, you know, the left is so obsessed with language. That's when they began changing the language and the appropriate terms to use to describe this. I also think what you bring up about the 2020 debate between what happened in 2019 between Harris and Biden on the issue of busing is extremely important because when Biden came out against busing early in his Senate career, he was right and he was on the side of public opinion. And what happened when he became President finally, almost 50 years later, he joined the left wing side. He became de facto Kamala's views on a whole variety of issues and look at the consequences. And so the story is not just kind of the persistence of limousine liberalism. It's also the change in the Democratic Party that has left it at this impasse.
- [23:16]
John Podhoretz
And there's a toothlessness to the response. That's what strikes me. Again, in wild Contrast to 2017. How many people came out to the airports when Trump announced the Muslim ban? Tens of thousands. I mean, it may have been more than that.
- [23:31]
Abe Greenwald
There were also people stuck at the airports, which made it even crazier.
- [23:34]
John Podhoretz
Right? Yeah. Okay, so there was a real sense that, you know, Trump was going too far. Yeah, he ran on things and he talked about things and all of that. But, you know, when he came, you know, when, when all is said and done, government changes incrementally, policies change incrementally. He didn't want to do that. He tried. He. He, like, swung for the fences at his. In his very first week. Right. And they were ready for him. And oddly enough, boy, should they be ready for him now. Like, it's been eight years. He was leading in the presidential race from March of 2024 until November. The issue had bite. The polling showed it had bite and all of that. And all they can do is basically say, you can't say that. What was it that the. What was it that the. The Episcopal bishop of Washington, D.C. said in her speech, her yelling at Trump on Tuesday? It was like, have mercy. Have mercy on these poor people. There are. Yeah, they're like mowing our lawns. Have mercy on them.
- [24:41]
Christine Rosen
And she is. I'm sorry to interrupt, but she is. Especially if we, if we trust what Homans and other administration officials have said about this initial roundup of three. What, about 380. These are murderers. These are child rapists. These are not the kind of people who should be shown any mercy whatsoever, regardless of their immigration status. And they are lumping them all together simply because they broke the law by crossing the border. They're all put in this group of sort of, you know, near saints who should be protected because no human being is illegal. It enrages me because that is not appropriate. There has to be some distinction made.
- [25:14]
Matthew Continetti
I think there are. There are two categories of progressives here who are opposing this. On the one hand, I think you have the limousine liberals who don't know. They haven't quite grasped that they are in the minority on the issue. And then you have the ones who have. Which then leads them to the determination that they're living in a fascist country. A madness has seized the rest of the country because this is what people want. There's never any actual reckoning with public opinion.
- [25:51]
Abe Greenwald
Well, unless you're Richie Torres or John Fetterman.
- [25:54]
John Podhoretz
Right, right. And I think it's important what. What Christine said about pragmatism and what Trump is doing and why this is important, because going to the birthright citizenship matter, like I say, that is a radical idea that has been promulgated for the last 25 years by a set of radical conservative legal thinkers who are using creative left wing style interpretive methods of getting at a result that they want through the courts, led by this guy John Eastman, saying, oh, look, no, actually it was never supposed to be this way. Da, da da, da, da da. And that I don't know that there's support for, however, arresting criminals and throwing them out of the country. Not only is there 60%, I'm sure there's 90% support for that. Like, say to any human being. This is where I started getting tripped up on being a total immigration dove in the, like in the 2000s, which is. I would say, look, I'm a dove on immigrant. I'm a Jew. You know, if my family hadn't been allowed to come in, I wouldn't be here today. The Jewish people wouldn't have survived all of that. And they're like, well, a didn't there. Your people came in legally. How does that justify people coming across the border in the United States illegally and then receiving social services and their children becoming sick? Like, how does, how do the. How do those two connect? You, You. Your. Your family didn't trigger this rule. And then I can say, well, the Restrictive act in 1924 prevented a lot of Jews from coming into the United States who could have come in, millions could have been saved by that. And then they could say, well, okay, but it was the law of the land. You don't get to pick and choose what laws of the land are enforced and what are not enforced. That's what it means to live in a democratic republic. And they were right. Like, my emotions were very much engaged in the idea that I had a moral responsibility in some ways to support immigration or the idea that, you know, immigrants were a net benefit to the country and that America is the greatest place on earth that we need to house people who can't make a future for themselves, and they will. They will be a net supporter to the country. And then others would say, well, I'm sorry, that's not. That's the laws. Say something else. Change the laws to the way you want them if you can, but you can't ignore them. And there is this huge policy of ignoring the law, particularly when it came to certain types of agricultural. You know, how much sectors of our economy relied upon this workforce. And, you know, it was something that I myself had to reckon with and that now, you know, all these liberal groups and stuff had to reckon with. Of course, they also have billions of dollars in support from NGOs and progressive billionaires and all of that from oligarch.
- [29:08]
Abe Greenwald
From the left wings are the left oligarchs oligarchy.
- [29:11]
John Podhoretz
Right. That, that do say that no one is illegal and that blah, blah, blah. But however, however you want to slice it and I, I just think that when you see a political movement or a political section of the United States going starting to make an argument that is weak because they've never tested the quality of their argument against either the real world or in a actual electoral setting. And it just got tested in the most basic way. Right. A guy said this is what I think and here's what I'm going to do. And he won and now he is going to implement what he won. And I was listening to Matt's and my favorite hate listen of the morning up first from npr and they, they have those formulations which is like many are saying, yes, this is going to make life. This is there are going to be many questions.
- [30:19]
Abe Greenwald
I'm glad, I'm glad you brought this up though, John. I'm glad you brought this up because I didn't listen this morning, but I did listen the other day. And I would like to propose a new executive order for the president to sign. And this order would ban public radio employees from using the foreign language pronunciation of foreign capitals. So that when you were, if you are, according to this executive order, the continental, the Continenti order, if you work for npr, pbs, when you say Nicaragua, you are forbidden from saying Nicaragua. You know, you cannot roll your Rs and have the tongue going in every direction. That would be illegal for institutions receiving taxpayer funds. End of proposal.
- [31:12]
John Podhoretz
CHARLES Krathammer, the late, our beloved Charles Krauthammer wrote an entire piece about this, that there was a in the new republic 30 years ago that one of the signposts, one of the ways socially, culturally that you could tell where somebody was from was whether they insisted on pronouncing foreign names of places as though they were from those places. Right. So and Nicaragua was his. Was, I think it was his at the time.
- [31:41]
Abe Greenwald
It was the Contras and the Sandinistas.
- [31:43]
John Podhoretz
Yeah. Pacifica Radio or whatever. Nicaragua.
- [31:46]
Abe Greenwald
Yeah. But it was all over, it's all over NPR now with the immigration debate.
- [31:51]
John Podhoretz
Yeah, it is. And of course, yeah. So, so I think it's a wonderful executive order. I don't think that it could be properly enforced.
- [32:00]
Abe Greenwald
Well, it's a taxpayer subsidized organization.
- [32:04]
John Podhoretz
Many, many, many, many, many of these things are going to, are going to fail. What does the future hold for business? You know, if you ask nine experts, you're going to get 10 answers. A bull market, a bear market rates rising, rates falling, infl up, inflation's going down. You need a crystal ball. But of course there is no crystal ball. And that's why 41,000 businesses have future proof their business with NetSuite by Oracle. The number one Cloud ERP bringing accounting, financial management, inventory and HR into one fluid platform with one unified business management suite. There's one source of truth giving you the vis visibility and control you need to make quick decisions. With real time insights and forecasting, you're peering into the future with actionable data. When you're closing your books in days, not weeks, you're spending less time looking backwards, more time on what's next. If this were the kind of product commentary needed, we would take it in a heartbeat. Whether your company is earning millions or even hundreds of millions, NetSuite helps you respond to immediate challenges and sees your biggest opportunities. And speaking of opportunity, download the CFO's guide to AI and machine learning at netsuite.com commentary the guide is free to you at net suite.com commentary netsuite.com commentary now one thing that is not going to fail are the almost all of Donald Trump's cabinet nominations that that became very clear over the course of the last month. There are 53 Republican senators get the vote to the floor. With the maybe possible exception of RFK Jr. And Tulsi Gabbard, everybody is going to get confirmed. That seems now like just of the.
- [33:59]
Abe Greenwald
Cabinet nominees RFK has a hearing scheduled January 29th and my rule of thumb has been once your hearing is scheduled and you make it through, you're likely to get confirmed. Interestingly enough, Kelsey Gabbard's hearing has not been scheduled.
- [34:15]
John Podhoretz
Right. That is an important proviso because the classic rule of thumb is that when a cabinet nomination is going to fail, the person gets out before before that can can happen. That's what happened with Matt Gates. It's what happened with Zoe Baird. It's what happened with, I don't know, Linda Chavez. I mean there's a whole bunch of people who were nominated for cabinet posts who never got to their hearing because their hearing was was going to be a failure. And it's a huge embarrassment to of course be voted down by the Senate. So you think rfk, but I'm just saying with the exception now. So that leaves leaves Gabbard. However Matt, what is happening with the nations Marco Rubio has been confirmed.
- [35:00]
Abe Greenwald
Marco Rubio was confirmed on the first day of the Trump administration unanimously. Unanimously.
- [35:06]
John Podhoretz
It was two senators did not participate.
- [35:08]
Abe Greenwald
He went to the state Department. He is already making changes. He, of course, ruled that the only flag to be flown at US Diplomatic installations is the American flag, the Stars and Stripes. No politicized flags like the BLM flag or the Trans flag. He has played a part in redesignating the Houthis as a foreign terrorist organization. The President signed that into order, working with his National Security adviser, Mike Waltz. But Rubio also is supportive of that. He has made calls. He's called several Latin American leaders. He met with the Quad. He met with the Foreign Ministry, Foreign ministers of India, Japan, Australia and New Zealand. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I think so. That's the four members of the four. I'm going to check that. So he's doing the job. Oh, no, we're the fourth member of the Quad. I'm sorry, it's not a quintet. It's the us, Australia, India and Japan. The Quad. But he's the only one. He's the only one. In fact, in Trump's first term, he had more Cabinet secretaries confirmed at this point than he does eight years later, having won the popular vote, having had not a single member of Congress challenged the certification of his election, enjoying his highest popularity ever. Rubio is the only confirmed member of the Trump Cabinet, and the question is why?
- [36:48]
John Podhoretz
And it's clear, technically, Senate rules say that any senator. This is a weird Senate custom. Any senator can delay the vote of anything for a week. Yes. Can put a whole gum up the works. Anything. A nomination, a piece of legislation, anything. One senator out of 100 can do this. And so that has now been done in the cases of, as we know, of everyone. Of everyone. Right. That has. Insane. Right. So Pam Bondi was supposed to be the Attorney General. John Ratcliffe.
- [37:23]
Abe Greenwald
Yeah.
- [37:24]
John Podhoretz
Can I talk about Ratcliffe for a second?
- [37:25]
Abe Greenwald
Because here's Ratcliffe. He's been a member of Congress. He was already confirmed by the United States Senate as Trump's DNI Director of National Intelligence in the first term. And yet, as Tom Cotton pointed out on the floor of the US Senate the other day, the Democrats in the Senate, who are in the minority, are preventing a vote on John Ratcliffe's nomination. This is hampering the ability of America's national security agencies to do their job to protect us from foreign threats. And it is out of spite. It is out of spite, and it's. The same thing happened. The same thing is the case with Bondi. The same thing is the case with Besant. Besant's gonna get. He's gonna get 60 votes easily. He'll probably get higher than 60 votes. I mean, the guy is amazing. But it is simply out of spite that they are delaying these. And so the response from the Senate leadership, the Republican leadership is fine. We're going to work through the weekend. We're going to stay here, cancel your flights, because if this is the way the Democrats want to proceed, then we're going to have to go through these one by one late at night into the weekend votes. And of course, that leaves Hagseth, right. Who should be confirmed by now as secretary, as Defense secretary. His nomination was reported out of committee on a party line vote, but he won the vote in the committee. And that is also being delayed now perhaps into this coming weekend. And their Democrats are engaged in a one last minute attempt to sink the nomination through this report in NBC News of an affidavit signed by his former sister in law who and this is very confusing to me.
- [39:23]
John Podhoretz
Yes.
- [39:24]
Abe Greenwald
Because I'm always obsessed with who is an in law. Do you know what I mean? Are your in laws the siblings of your spouse or they also the spouses of the siblings of your spouse?
- [39:40]
Christine Rosen
Technically, it's the just the person. It's the.
- [39:42]
John Podhoretz
Yes.
- [39:43]
Christine Rosen
If your wife has a brother or sister, they are your in law.
- [39:46]
Abe Greenwald
They are your brother in law, but the spouses are not. And this, this lady is a divorced spouse of Hagseth's brother.
- [39:58]
Christine Rosen
Right.
- [40:00]
Abe Greenwald
So she's not, I don't know what she is.
- [40:03]
Christine Rosen
The woman at issue issued a statement. This is the, the, the, the wife who was supposedly attacked said flat out this is a lie. This is not true.
- [40:12]
Abe Greenwald
This is Haggs, his second wife. Yes.
- [40:14]
Christine Rosen
The second wife said this is second wife's.
- [40:16]
John Podhoretz
It was her. It's her ex sister in law. In law. In law.
- [40:27]
Abe Greenwald
Where's the connection? Because it's even more confusing because the ex wife, ex wife of Hegseth's brother kept the Hegseth name.
- [40:36]
John Podhoretz
Yes.
- [40:36]
Abe Greenwald
So this is why it got confusing.
- [40:38]
John Podhoretz
When I was reading the allegations.
- [40:39]
Abe Greenwald
Hold up. Who was this person married to and what is the.
- [40:44]
John Podhoretz
But you know what they say, believe.
- [40:47]
Matthew Continetti
All ex in law. In laws.
- [40:51]
Abe Greenwald
That's the new slogan.
- [40:54]
John Podhoretz
Not only has Hegseth's ex wife. Second ex wife. Yes. Said it's not true. She is lawyering up to sue her brother's ex wife. She's.
- [41:11]
Christine Rosen
Yeah.
- [41:12]
John Podhoretz
Okay. So I think this is I Cotton and others are saying. You're saying it's out of spite. I think that there is a kind of desperate Hail Mary quality here, which is activist groups are saying to Democratic senators, just buy us a week, just Buy us a week so we can see if we can, like, get some dirt on some of these guys. You know, we haven't. We haven't. We haven't yet. But if you just give us another seven days, we're out there. You know, God knows what Soros money can do. If Soros money is directed in the right. If the fire hose is sprayed.
- [41:49]
Abe Greenwald
I think it came up short in this. In this case with the. With the affidavit.
- [41:54]
John Podhoretz
Well, you know, not according to Jane Mayer.
- [41:57]
Christine Rosen
Can I just add.
- [41:58]
John Podhoretz
That's why I have to say that's, you know, if there's character assassination somewhere, Jane Mayer's name is going to be right there.
- [42:05]
Christine Rosen
But this is an important shift, actually. I think what's happening with. With this attempted late hit on Hegseth, and that's that the machine that the left in particular has tried to use for decades and decades against any Republican nominee, whether they're to the Supreme Court or to the Cabinet, it's breaking down in real time. You can see it happening, because as soon as this came out, there were alternative outlets where the wife in question could go and say, no, no, no, this isn't happening. I'm. You know, this is wrong. This is. And they still ran the story and.
- [42:34]
Abe Greenwald
Told the mainstream outlet. Yes, in the story. This is ridiculous. Yeah.
- [42:41]
John Podhoretz
So I.
- [42:42]
Abe Greenwald
Look, I mean, I think the thing with Hegseth is you kind of know what you're getting at this point. He had the confirmation hearing. The questions about his personal behavior were litigated in the hearing. He made the point that all. Most of it is based on anonymous sourcing. We know his resume. We've discussed his resume on the podcast many times. He doesn't have the typical resume of a Secretary of Defense, typically someone who spent a long career in business or government. And more recently, probably to our detriment, we've had generals in that position. But we know that. We know that. So it's kind of. If you're either going to say, okay, we need to. We're going to need to roll the dice with Pete Hegseth. He's going to bring an interesting, very different perspective to the Department of Defense. He's going to focus on kind of restoring what he calls the warrior ethos and improving recruitment and Secretary of Defense, or you say he's just not up for the job. Either case, have the vote, you know, have the vote.
- [43:57]
John Podhoretz
So, you know, Hegseth's nominated. I read his two books the weekend after his nomination. They're more interesting than I expected. I Thought they were going to be kind of classic ghostwritten Fox News. Argyl Bargle There's a lot of material in there about the degradation of the military by ideologized cultural policy that is well argued, well sourced, and to my mind, very frightening. I will also say this, and I don't want to like, it's like name drop. It's not name dropping precisely, but let me just put it this way. So Hegseth is nominated. Tom Cotton. Our friend Tom Cotton, who is in fact our friend Tom is a veteran. Right. I mean, he'd served in Iraq, he served in Afghanistan in combat positions. The status of our military and, and, and the, the conduct of our military is a matter of supreme importance to him. And I have, you know, spoke his level of outrage at the treatment of Hegseth. He is the kind of person who could have torpedoed Hegseth's nominee. He's in good with Trump. He could have said, I'm sorry, I can't in conscience support this. He's not good enough for this job. This is the most important job in the US Government or something like that. Not only didn't he have that attitude, but when the left started coming at Hegseth, he got very, very angry. And I think it's also important to note that Joni Ernst, there was all this idea, Joni Ernst, a 17 year veteran, there was the idea, Tony Ernst is going to say no. He, the way he talks about women in the military or, you know, what roles they should play in the military. She will never accept this. And this could really be a problem for his nomination. And she talked to him, she listened to him, she this. And maybe Trump scared her. I don't know. Who cares? There's all, oh, we're going to make into Iowa to run against. She said, okay, this is fine with me. So what we have here is the military wing of the Senate, of Republicans in the Senate.
- [46:13]
Abe Greenwald
Yeah.
- [46:14]
John Podhoretz
Who could have said I'm sorry?
- [46:18]
Abe Greenwald
Well, and Roger Wicker, the chair of sask, the Senate Armed Services Committee. He is fully behind Hegseth too. And I think you raised an important point because it relates to what's going on with the Gabbard nomination. Tulsi Gabbard for dni. There was a moment, remember in December, when it looked like Hagsest's nomination was on the rocks. The accusations about his past behavior were roiling the media. Ernst was wavering. Remember, the Republicans can only afford to lose three senators. What happened? Hegseth decided, he told Trump, I'm going to fight for this before you pull my nomination and nominate Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida for DOD. I'm going to fight for this. And Hegseth launched a public relations campaign where he got in front of the cameras, he rebutted the allegations and he got MAGA World behind him to support him as well. And he saved his nomination. And he, he, most likely he will be, he will be confirmed by the Senate sometime by the end of the weekend. Gabbard, it now seems, according to press reports, is facing the same challenge and Trump is communicating to her. This is based on the fake news media. So take it for what you will. You're going to have to do a Pete. If you want to save yourself, you're going to have to do a Pete. And the question I think is, is Tulsi Gabbard capable of doing the type of full bore public relations communications campaign in defense of her nomination that Pete Hegseth clearly is.
- [48:11]
Christine Rosen
I'm sorry, but her issue is also not a personal one. It's about, it's a judgment call related to the work she's been nominated to do. And that's. Did you hang out for a couple of hours with Assad in Syria and what did you talk about and what did that mean? And actually having to explain that to a very skeptical American public, to say nothing of the Senate.
- [48:28]
Abe Greenwald
And why did you oppose Donald Trump's Iran policy exactly. When he was president?
- [48:32]
John Podhoretz
Yeah, I mean, look, it's very interesting about Gabbard because one of the reasons that a guy like Hegseth can rally Republicans to his side is that he's a Republican. Tulsi Gabard got famous because she ran for pre for president as a Democrat. She was a Democratic congressman running from the left on foreign policy. That was her issue in 2019. She was very impressive in those debates because she knew her stuff. But the stuff that she knew is so radically dissimilar, not only from conventional Republican ideas about foreign policy, but as Matt Trump's ideas about foreign policy.
- [49:21]
Christine Rosen
But she has a horseshoe that meets with the extreme isolationist right wing. That's actually nomination.
- [49:26]
John Podhoretz
And by the way, we should. And so that is the big question is, is, is that enough? Because clearly no vote has been scheduled because she doesn't have the votes.
- [49:39]
Abe Greenwald
She changed her tune on section 702 authority. This is the war surveillance program that of course has been the subject of debate in this country for almost 20 years.
- [49:50]
John Podhoretz
It was more than 20 years. Yeah.
- [49:51]
Abe Greenwald
It was unveiled. Right. In December, December 6th, I think it was James Risen wrote the thing.
- [49:57]
John Podhoretz
So wait, didn't. Didn't. I'm sorry, didn't the enforcement of some part of warrantless wiretapping stuff? Wasn't that the famous anecdote where Comey goes to Ashcroft, goes to the James Comey who was then, does the hospital bed story, goes to the hospital bed to get John Ashcroft to do X, Y and Z relating to. So it's more than 20 years.
- [50:21]
Abe Greenwald
Well, but I think that was part of Rising.
- [50:23]
John Podhoretz
Yeah.
- [50:23]
Abe Greenwald
I mean, it was implemented right after 9, 11. But James Rison exposed it against the wishes of the United States government, I think, in 2005 or six.
- [50:33]
John Podhoretz
Whatever. So 19 years, 21 years we've been arguing about it.
- [50:37]
Abe Greenwald
And she was always an opponent of it because, of course, the FISA system was abused against Trump and the Trump campaign operatives in 2016. But she's all against it. She's recently changed her mind, according to accounts of her meetings with senators, and said that this is an important tool to use against terrorists. But is she saying that publicly? I think it's interesting. What Hagseth did was, I'm going to open up the process, and I'm gonna talk to you, and I'm gonna say. And I'm gonna be on social media and I'm gonna say to the cameras, all of these things are lies. I'm ready to do my job. I'm gonna go on Megyn Kelly and say, I'm not gonna drink if I'm the Secretary of defense. We're not really getting that from Gabbard. You see her. You see her next to, by the way, the Chinese vice president at the inauguration.
- [51:26]
John Podhoretz
Yep.
- [51:27]
Abe Greenwald
But you don't have that argument. And I think that's what's gonna be necessary if she finally gets the job.
- [51:34]
Matthew Continetti
I think she'll make it. By the way, I say this not as someone who wants that to happen, but the thing about the Trump right is they accept late converts of all sorts. The forgiveness of sins is perpetual. And if you can. And she historically does a good job of explaining herself and who she is.
- [52:04]
John Podhoretz
In the horseshoe that Christine talked about those views, opposition to warrantless wiretapping, her general isolationist foreign policy opinions and all of that, that's not a late convert thing. The people who want her, not just Trump who wants her because she was a Democrat who endorsed him. And then people, but Tucker, people like that, they. This is not late conversion. This is what they want, the Republican part. They want the horseshoe to come full circle.
- [52:36]
Christine Rosen
They are the converts to that view.
- [52:38]
John Podhoretz
They don't they are mad at her, is my guess, for saying that she supports section 7. They think that section 702 is the devil is the worst thing. This is the Glenn Greenwald, Edward Snowden Wright. And that's a real thing. That's not. You know, just so you know, the politics here are kind of complicated. And it is one thing, it appears that when people fight for themselves by. By being willing to say as Hegsus was, what they're saying about me personally is a lie. It is not true that I molested people or I did this or that. It is not. Prove it. Prove it or prove it or shut up. Which is essentially what Kavanaugh did at the unbelievable character assassination assault on him. And he. We. We were there, we watched this the day of his hearing where Christine Blasey Ford testified in the morning and said, oh, and it was in this house and I was on a bed and it was blah, blah, blah. And then, you know, it was over. And then at lunchtime, everybody was like, well, Kavanaugh's finished. He's totally done. You can't survive this. And then he came out after lunch and said, she is destroying my life. My life is now ruined. But everything she said is a lie. I'm going to prove it to you right now, even though I know that I have no hope. And then he brought out those notebooks and he said, my dad always said to keep a calendar. And guess what? I have a calendar of every moment that I lived that week, that month that she said this might have happened. She doesn't know where it happened. She doesn't know when it happened. You want to see where I was at 3:00, I was at soccer practice. At 5:00, I was. I was at an alternate.
- [54:26]
Christine Rosen
Define the year. I mean, she was kind of hazy on what year it happened.
- [54:29]
John Podhoretz
And then, like two hours later, Kavanaugh is done, right? Kavanaugh's in. And about three or four days later, Susan Collins gets up on the floor of the Senate and says, I will support him because I believe his. I. Not only is his. Are his accomplishments remarkable, but I believe what he said to be true. So Gabbard doesn't have that. And Hegseth kind of did that. Or he said, look, you know, my life is very complicated, and I'm. I feel bad about what I'm not going to do.
- [54:57]
Christine Rosen
Hegseth had his West Point acceptance, which is another example of, like, document everything if you hope to be in politics and you're on the right. But she does have, she took that trip. She did state that she thinks Edward Snowden should be released. I mean she has a record that she has to defend.
- [55:12]
John Podhoretz
She has a record and people aren't coming at her with character assassination untruths that then become self discrediting. Because if the idea is, look, if you want to oppose the guy because you think his ideas on law are noxious, that is your right as an American, as a senator. Nothing in the rules, it says advise and consent. It doesn't say you have to agree on policy or disagree or the person needs to be a person of low moral character. You can say no for any reason. If you are a senator to any nominee that comes before you. There is no, there are no limits. Just like there are no limits to the pardon power. But if you're doing it and you're using character assassination, that may boomerang on you. That really may be problematic. And every time we see a Republican fight really hard for their lives. And I would say Clarence Thomas was the sort of the ur example of this, right? He had this sort of the hours of Anita Hill and this and that and he got up and he said this is a high tech lynching. And he dared the Democrats who were in the majority in the Senate, he dared them to vote against him. He said none of this happened. And then came and there was Jane Mayer, the character, the fraudulent character assassin with her dear friend Jill Abramson writing books showing that Clarence Thomas supposedly. And none of it, it's all he said, she said. He said it didn't happen and they weren't willing in the end to use that as the sole reason that they were going to vote against him as a nominee. This is a very effective counter assault method. But she doesn't have it at her disposal.
- [57:02]
Abe Greenwald
That's just one final point, and that is when Biden was president in 2021, Democrats controlled the Senate by a narrower margin than Republicans do today. 50, 50, 50, 50.
- [57:17]
John Podhoretz
So the vice president had to break.
- [57:19]
Abe Greenwald
And yet his, his Cabinet secretaries were being confirmed at a, at the, at the normal clip, right. And so the next time this situation was reversed and there's a Democratic president with the Democratic Senate trying to fill out his Cabinet. I would hope Republicans say, all right, this is what it, this is how it feels and just do the same thing.
- [57:42]
John Podhoretz
I mean, you know, right. That's the problem here. That's why I say, I think that they're only doing it again to buy their donors a week's time to find, you know, a gas station. Attendant who would say that Scott Besant made a pass at him or something like that.
- [58:01]
Abe Greenwald
That's insane. And stories come up when people are already in the offices, as happened during the first Trump administration. But it just seems to me like a completely spiteful, this is the only lever of power we have. And so we're just going to make it as miserable as we can for you. And it's clearly not going to work. It's just going to take longer for these nominees to be confirmed. And also, by the way, the longer it takes, the more you're going to hear Trump say to the congressional leadership, as he did during their meeting the other day, just go into recess, just go into recess. And he's going to revive that idea he had originally, after the election of just the Senate would just simply go into recess and he would appoint 1400 people to positions. And, you know, I think just again, look at how, if you want to protect that norm that says no, the Senate should have a role in confirming these.
- [59:04]
John Podhoretz
Why?
- [59:05]
Abe Greenwald
Why delay and trash someone like Ratcliffe and someone like Bessant and someone like Bondi? It makes no sense.
- [59:13]
Matthew Continetti
But those aside, I think it's not pure spite. I think they look at Gabbard and Hegseth and they say, this is so target rich. You're telling me we can't find something. Give us a little time. There's got to be a credible claim somewhere that could sink some of these people.
- [59:35]
John Podhoretz
I want to do a quick update since we're talking about Tulsi Gabbard and the, and this sort of caucus, the, the Horseshoe caucus of sort of right wing isolationists. I wanted just a quick update on something we talked about yesterday, which Michael Dimino sworn in not a confirmable position as the deputy assistant deputy Assistant Secretary for Policy at the Pentagon with responsibility for the Middle East. And every three hours yesterday, things were being dug up about this guy, Mr. DiMino. The latest is on the responsiblestatecraft.org website run by the Quincy Institute, to which he was contributing. And it's very notable, by the way, that that website and an earlier one that he wrote for, which is called Defense Priorities, was hysterically scrubbing.
- [60:40]
Christine Rosen
Yes, I mentioned that yesterday. They've been doing it since the minute his name came to media attention.
- [60:45]
John Podhoretz
Yes, well, people have saved his tweets.
- [60:47]
Christine Rosen
Too, by the way, which is worth going back and looking over.
- [60:50]
John Podhoretz
So one thing that he happened to say in the middle of last year, two, by the way, I believe Glenn Greenwald, again, let us just point out Glenn Greenwald is the handmaiden of one of the most traitorous acts in American history, which was the Edward Snowden exposure of, you know, much of America's defense secrets in 2011.
- [61:15]
Matthew Continetti
And let me point out, there's no.
- [61:17]
John Podhoretz
Relation, no relation to Abe. That's right, no relation to Abe, that he said, quote, the Abraham Accords, left out the issue of Israel, Palestine. And I think that's a massive mistake. This is Michael Dimino. That was largely done because people thought that's the thorniest issue, that we could set it aside and solve 80% of the rest of the equation. But it doesn't work that way. This conflict is so central to the region. You really can't address any kind of long term political arrangements in the Gulf or the Middle east without also addressing it. So he is a believer in the idea that peace in the Middle east runs through Israel. Palestine linkage, as you say, is the name.
- [61:57]
Abe Greenwald
Thank you. John Kerry. John Kerry is working in Trump's Pentagon.
- [62:02]
John Podhoretz
Yeah. These guys are pulling off the shelf any argument they can because Trump and the Trump administration, the first administration, cut through the Gordian knot of Middle east stasis by saying, we're going to ignore this and see what happens if we try to make policy without saying there has to be a solution to the Palestinian state problem along with everything else, or before everything else. And it turned out to be wildly successful. And he is still standing in opposition to it, thereby effectively endorsing some of the terms of the more ridiculous elements of the Hamas Israel ceasefire deal, which is. Which is the third stage, which of course will never be reached, where this is somehow going to get resolved, which is to say it's not going to get resolved, but he, he has been put in place. There's a story in Jewish Insider this morning that the person who has been sort of spearheading this effort with the assumption that these guys are all going to work for Elbridge Colby, the fake interventionist in the China himself, maybe a key isolationist figure on the right, in my opinion, who has been made head of policy planning at the, at the Defense Department. That is a confirmable position. He has not been confirmed yet that Dan Caldwell of the who works for the Kochs and, and has been the person who has been helping White House personnel with these appointments. And you know, now that these appointments, people like Dimino and others have made it clear that they opposed Trump one foreign policy in many of its particulars. I wonder, remember we were talking about Cabinet secretaries and confirmations, you know, if Elbridge Colby is pre Positioning people at the Pentagon who stand in opposition to Trump's foreign policy successes in his first term. Again, are you giving Republicans in the Senate grounds on which to turn his nomination down? Because he is, in fact, not serving. He is not serving as a good Trump soldier. He may be serving as a good Tucker Carlson soldier, and maybe as a good, you know, Donald Trump Jr. Soldier, but he is not serving as a good Donald Trump senior soldier. So that is one to watch. What happens?
- [64:43]
Abe Greenwald
You just wonder what Mr. DiMino thought of Trump's executive order redesignating the Houthis as a foreign terrorist organization. You would want to think that people would be on the same page, policy wise. That's often not the case in any administration. But this is pretty flagrant to have this deputy assistant secretary have a view so contrary to Trump's Middle east policy right now.
- [65:10]
John Podhoretz
And in domestic policy terms, by the way, I mean, we know that so much effort is being expended to make sure that people who have even whispered or hinted at disagreements with Trump policy get nowhere near an administration job. Right. There's a lot. There's a. What the personnel stuff that is going on here where Trump said, if you worked for, if you worked for Bolton, if you worked for this one, if you worked for that one, you are not getting a job in our administration. But that's, you know, but that's all domestic.
- [65:42]
Matthew Continetti
But you can't. With Trump, you can't err on the interventionist side. You can err on the isolationist side.
- [65:50]
John Podhoretz
So far, yeah. But you think Trump isn't proud of the Abraham Accords? He should be proud of the Abraham Accords. I don't think he wants people in his administration who think the Abraham Accords are bad.
- [66:00]
Abe Greenwald
Well, maybe one reason that the Koch sites are scrubbing that material is the sense that, oops, Mr. DiMino will be in this position, but actually the policy will be slightly different. And we don't want to make that contrast visible. Though, of course, the Eagle Eyes, a Jewish insider were the first to expose it.
- [66:23]
John Podhoretz
Yeah, exactly. Okay, so I am going to announce as having seen this now, one of the more hilarious events of the Oscar nominations which did take place were announced while we were doing the podcast, which is that there is this movie, Emilia Perez, which you could only see on Netflix. It got 13 nominations. No human being has finished watching Amelia Perez. I now charge you challenge you.
- [66:58]
Christine Rosen
Oh, we could make it part of the comic series Drinking Game. Right.
- [67:04]
John Podhoretz
See if you could get all the way through Emilia Perez, which is a movie of such sustained, sustained awfulness that it has only been chosen because it centers on a trans figure. But not just any trans figure. The question that is raised by Emilia Perez is this. What if El Chapo got a trend, got it, got it with gender affirmation surgery and becoming a woman then becomes a social justice warrior now that he, now that El Chapo no longer has to live up to the toxic masculinity that was his.
- [67:43]
Christine Rosen
Estrogen is a powerful drug, people. Powerful drug.
- [67:47]
John Podhoretz
I think the lesson is the plot of Emilia Perez.
- [67:50]
Abe Greenwald
The theme of this podcast is they just don't get it.
- [67:53]
John Podhoretz
They just don't get it. This is why.
- [67:55]
Christine Rosen
Wait. Can I make the recommendation then?
- [67:57]
John Podhoretz
Yes, please.
- [67:57]
Christine Rosen
This is not Emilia Perez. Abe the Good Greenwald's newsletter. This should be today's recommendation.
- [68:03]
John Podhoretz
Yes, Abe the Good Greenwald and his newsletter. Newsletter top banner commentary.org right there in the middle. Click on newsletter, fill in your name, fill in your email address and it will land in your mailbox every afternoon. So that is our recommendation. I am amused at the 13 nominations of Amelia Perez, which may win one, but I don't think he's going to win any more than one. Zoe Saldana may win for best supporting Actress. Not going to win anything else, but it's pretty funny anyway because everybody, no one has watched it all the way through. We'll be back tomorrow for Abe, the newsletter writer. Christine the social commentarian. Commentariat. Comment, comment. Commentator.
- [68:51]
Abe Greenwald
Commentator.
- [68:53]
John Podhoretz
Jeez, that's really bad at me. And the Washington commentator method. I'm John Puthoritz, the editator. Keep the candle burning.