The Wrath of Rothman

Summary

The Commentary Magazine Podcast: "The Wrath of Rothman" – Detailed Summary

Release Date: January 15, 2025

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Introduction

In the "The Wrath of Rothman" episode of The Commentary Magazine Podcast, host John Podhoretz welcomes Noah Rothman, a senior writer at National Review and the author of the thought-provoking February cover story in Commentary Magazine titled "A Clockwork Blue: How the Left Came to Excuse, Advocate, and Embrace Political Violence." Joined by executive editor Abe Greenwald, senior editor Seth Mandel, and contributor Christine Rosen, the episode delves deep into the themes of political violence, the recent Israeli-Hamas hostage deal, Senate hearings on Defense Secretary nominations, and corporate stances on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI).

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1. Israeli-Hamas Hostage Deal

The conversation opens with a detailed analysis of a recently struck deal between Israel and Hamas concerning the release of hostages.

• Deal Terms: Israel has agreed to release 33 of the 98 hostages currently held by Hamas. These hostages will be freed over a period of six weeks, with only six or seven expected to be released within the first two weeks, including the Bibas family members (Noah Rothman, [04:24]).

• Implications: In exchange, thousands of Palestinian prisoners will be released, Gazans will be allowed to move north, and Israel retains the right to re-enter Gaza if the ceasefire fails. Additionally, a buffer zone known as the "Philadelphia Corridor" will be established to separate Israeli and Gazan territories ([07:00]).

• Political Context: Rothman criticizes the involvement of Steve Witkoff, a negotiator sent by Donald Trump, describing his approach as "very bullying" towards Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu ([07:30]). Seth Mandel adds that former Ambassador David Friedman's cautious stance on the deal ("a call for understanding and patience") reflects uncertainty about its long-term benefits ([08:57]).

• Concerns: Christine Rosen expresses apprehension about the deal's emotional and political ramifications for Israel, questioning how it will affect families of hostages not released early and the overall national spirit during the negotiation period ([13:11]).

• US Political Dynamics: Rothman highlights the Trump administration's contradictory positions—celebrating the deal while maintaining a hardline stance against Hamas' future role in Gaza. He points out the challenge of reconciling diplomatic success with rhetoric aimed at the complete demilitarization of Hamas ([17:07]).

Notable Quote:
John Podhoretz ([03:49]): "But in exchange, thousands of Palestinian Prisoners are gonna be released. Gazans are gonna be allowed to move north."

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2. Senate Armed Services Hearing on Pete Hegseth

The podcast shifts focus to the Senate Armed Services Committee hearing for Pete Hegseth, the nominee for Secretary of Defense.

• Hegseth's Performance: John Podhoretz praises Hegseth's composure during the hearing, noting his ability to handle criticism from female senators effectively without being derailed by the questioning ([26:17]).

• Key Issues Discussed:

  • Women in Combat Roles: Hegseth defended the need for maintaining high combat standards, asserting that women should meet the same physical requirements as men ([28:30]).
  • Ethics and Conduct: Christine Rosen mentions allegations of Hegseth's severe drunkenness in professional settings. Seth Mandel criticizes the opposition's focus on these personal issues rather than his qualifications ([28:47], [37:11]).

• Political Dynamics: The hosts discuss the broader implications of Trump's influence on Republican nominees, suggesting that many of Trump's picks, including Hegseth, are likely to be confirmed despite controversies ([38:52]).

Notable Quote:
Christine Rosen ([28:47]): "He said, yes, there's a role for women in combat, but we should never lower our standards for combat."

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3. Corporate Stances on DEI and Consumer Reactions

Abe Greenwald introduces a commercial segment for Quince, which is subsequently skipped as per instructions. The discussion returns to corporate policies impacting consumer behavior.

• Costco's DEI Policies: John Podhoretz criticizes Costco for not abandoning DEI initiatives, expressing his intention to switch to competitors like Sam's Club or BJ's. Seth Mandel shares a personal anecdote about enduring long lines at Costco, humorously comparing the experience to Soviet-style inefficiency ([49:36]).

• Implications for Consumers: The hosts debate the influence of corporate DEI policies on consumer loyalty and the broader cultural implications of businesses aligning with political agendas ([49:38]).

Notable Quote:
John Podhoretz ([49:38]): "I'm going to Sam's Club. I've had it. Or BJ. I am not doing Costco anymore."

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4. Noah Rothman's Analysis of Left-Wing Political Violence

The centerpiece of the episode is Rothman's comprehensive exploration of how left-wing factions in America have increasingly tolerated and even embraced political violence over the past 25 years.

• Historical Context: Rothman traces the evolution from 1999's anti-WTO protests in Seattle to the Occupy Wall Street movement post-2008. He highlights the shift in progressive rhetoric that romanticizes street action while downplaying or excusing violent outcomes ([63:22]).

• Media and Intellectual Support: Christine Rosen and Seth Mandel discuss how mainstream media outlets and progressive intellectuals have historically supported or failed to adequately condemn leftist violence, contributing to a culture that legitimizes such actions ([57:34], [68:33]).

• Current Implications: Rothman warns of the dangerous trajectory towards normalized political violence, emphasizing the lack of accountability for right-wing violence compared to left-wing counterparts. He argues for consistency in addressing all forms of political extremism to prevent escalating cycles of vengeance and reprisal ([72:54]).

Notable Quote:
Noah Rothman ([60:04]): "And we all know that what the preposition is a perfunctory exercise. You know, it just reveals how perfunctory the previous, whatever sentiment was expressed before."

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5. Conclusion

As the episode wraps up, Podhoretz reiterates Rothman's significant contributions through his article "A Clockwork Blue," urging listeners to engage with the content to understand the deep-seated issues of political violence and its acceptance within progressive circles. The hosts exchange light-hearted banter, reflecting on cultural references and personal anecdotes, before signing off with a nod to continued conversations on Jewish practices and societal observations.

Notable Quote:
John Podhoretz ([75:22]): "Noah Rothman's extraordinary piece, currently [e-mail] and will be in your mailbox if you are a Commentary magazine subscriber next week."

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Key Takeaways

• Complexity of Hostage Negotiations: The Israeli-Hamas deal illustrates the intricate balance between immediate humanitarian concerns and long-term geopolitical strategies.

• Political Polarization: The Senate hearing on Pete Hegseth underscores the deep divisions within American politics, especially concerning defense and ethical conduct.

• Corporate Influence on Culture: Companies' stances on DEI reflect broader societal debates, influencing consumer behavior and cultural norms.

• Normalization of Political Violence: Rothman's analysis highlights a troubling trend of progressive factions increasingly accepting political violence, raising concerns about future societal stability.

This episode provides a multifaceted examination of contemporary political and social issues, blending in-depth analysis with candid discussions among seasoned commentators.

Transcript

[Noah Rothman]

Hope for the best, expect the worst Some preach and pain Some die of thirst the way of knowing which way it's going Hope for the best Expect.

[Seth Mandel]

The worst Hope for the best.

[John Podhoretz]

Welcome to the Commentary Magazine daily podcast. Today is Wednesday. Is it Wednesday?

[Abe Greenwald]

It is.

[John Podhoretz]

Or is it Tuesday? Okay, Wednesday, January 15, 2025. I am John Pothor. It's the editor of Commentary magazine. With me, as always, executive editor Abe Greenwald. Hi, Abe.

[Christine Rosen]

Hi, John.

[John Podhoretz]

Senior editor Seth Mandel. Hi, Seth.

[Seth Mandel]

Hi, John. And it's almost Friday.

[John Podhoretz]

It's almost Friday, Yes. But by the way, like, there is so much news that, you know, it's barely Monday. Joining us today, I'm excited to have Commentary Podcast founder, inventor of the Commentary Podcast, long term Commentary podcaster, now senior writer at National Review, Noah Rothman, who is the author of the February cover story in Commentary magazine that we are going to discuss at length, title of which is A Clockwork Blue. How the Left Came to Excuse Away and Advocate. And now I can't remember our subtitle, Political Violence Embrace. Thank you, Noah. Thank you, Seth. Thank you, Abe. I'm not doing well today. I have a daughter going away for five months on her college trip abroad. And so I'm a little discombobulated by the thought I'm not going to see her until mid May, so. Oh, no, isn't that sad?

[Noah Rothman]

Anyway, wait, wait, wait, wait. Hi, John.

[John Podhoretz]

Hi, Noah. Welcome back. Everybody loves you. People are always like, where's Noah? Can't you get Noah back? What about Noah? Noah is on, though Not. Not everybody, every time. But Noah is on, of course, the Editors, the National Review podcast that comes out Tuesdays and Fridays, which I heartily recommend to everybody, where he has to do more work in some ways than he ever had to do on. On this podcast. Like preparing. You have to. You have to, like, you have to pick a thing where you. A light item, and you have to talk about a piece that you really like from National Review. Whereas, as I've told people before, our form of preparation is we all got together on this zoom, 30 seconds for the zoom. And I said, why don't we do this or that? And then someone says, why don't we do that or this? And then we just go. So that's how much preparation we do.

[Noah Rothman]

But back in the old days, I used to have to mix down the audio and edit it and then publish it. Now, that's all Abe's job. So, yeah, it's all Abe.

[John Podhoretz]

And Abe now has to prepare. Abe also has to prepare the YouTube video and I just to let you know, we are on YouTube now every day. Commentary podcast goes up around 1pm every day. We got. We have more than 7,000 subscribers just in the last six weeks. So you'll be able to see Noah's very, very nicely groomed beard. I would say. You look really, you look almost. I don't know what to say, like, like a mountain man who has gone into Kansas City to find himself his bride. That's. That's how good you look. You've taken your bath of the year. You got a haircut.

[Noah Rothman]

I know Broadway enough to know that that's a musical cue.

[John Podhoretz]

Yes, for Everything's up to Date in Kansas City.

[Seth Mandel]

Okay, how are things in Glaucomorra, Noah Glaucomora.

[John Podhoretz]

That is a terrible show, by the way. Wait, is that. That's either Brigadoon or Finian's Rainbow. I can't remember which, but they're both horrible. Anyway, whereas Everything's up to Date in Kansas City is of course, Oklahoma. Which landmark breakthrough show I. Now we're just off in the ether, Noah and I being theater kids, you know, like old theater kids, like dreaming of the days in which we were trotting the boards in our, in our high school.

[Seth Mandel]

It's like Ariana Grande and Cynthia Riva over here.

[John Podhoretz]

But they get, they got to do it as adults, you see, that's, that's, that's the. No wonder they're so happy. I've never had happier moments than when I was a theater kid. Anyway, to go from the delightfully pointless to the extraordinarily impactful. Let's say word is that the hostage deal has been struck, that Hamas has agreed to the terms of the deal that is before Israel and Hamas in the world. And if you listen to our podcast yesterday, you know that we are, we were extraordinarily ill disposed toward the deal, which seems very, very, very bad to me. And I don't want to, like, I don't want to sort of go back and rehearse everything that I said yesterday. But the key point here is that the Israelis have agreed to a deal in which 33 of the 98 known hostages and hostage bodies that are in. In Hamas captivity, 33 of them will come out, but they're going to come out in 40 over the course of six weeks, 42 days, and only six or seven are going to be out in the next week or the first 16 days, supposedly, including may God have kindness on them, the Bibas, the two Bibas kids. But in exchange, thousands of Palestinian Prisoners are gonna be released. Gazans are gonna be allowed to move north. Israel retains the right to go back in. If the deal, if the ceasefire doesn't hold, they're gonna hold some territory in the south at what's called the Philadelphia Corridor, which is what separates Gaza from Egypt. And there will be a buffer zone between Israel's G, Gaza envelope on Gazan territory and the population of Gaza. Basically, what I'm told is that this deal has to happen. The Israeli people, the Israeli emotional state gave Bibi Netanyahu no option but to strike what he would have thought two months ago was an unfavorable and unnecessary capitulation to Hamas needs and wants. And that we've talked, we talked yesterday and again, don't have to rehearse it again, that, that the, apparently the presence of Steve Witkoff, the negotiator sent by Donald Trump to the negotiations ended up being America putting a new kind of pressure on Israel, not Trump sending somebody to advocate, as we might have thought, given the way he has been talking for the last six months, advocate for Israel's strength, strength in these negotiations. He went, he was very insulting, from what we hear, to Bibi, who said, I can't meet with you, it's Shabbat. And he's also sick, recovering, recuperating from prostate cancer surgery. And Steve Witkoff said, bullshit, tell him to I'll be there in 10 minutes or, you know, he'll meet with me. You know, don't, don't, don't f with me, or something like that. Not friendly, very bullying, very unpleasant, apparently. And so the dream of the right wing Zionists, that Trump was going to be their bosom friend and Tribune showmare at the gates of Jerusalem, as Chuck Schumer likes to call himself, I think that dream has to be retired. Not that he's going to be an enemy or just that he wanted this deal. The person that he was worried about not making the deal was Bibi. And so he sent his guy, his New York billionaire negotiating Jew, who as far as I know, has literally had very little place in Jewish and Zionist affairs in the course of his life, to go and beat Bibi up, to make sure that he acceded to what is effectively Jake Sullivan and Tony Blinken's plan for a ceasefire and hostage deal. Seth?

[Seth Mandel]

Yeah, I think that, I think that, you know, I thought David Friedman, the former ambassador to the former Trump's ambassador, Trump's ambassador to Israel, I thought that his tweet this morning was telling because it was, it was a call for understanding and patience with the deal. It was not a ringing endorsement of the deal, but it was. It was a, you know, a request to not be so judgmental right off the cuff. And maybe it'll turn out to be a mistake long term, Maybe it'll turn out to be a great move long term, but we don't know. There's no really way to know. And I took that as the, you know, sort of almost not even backhanded compliment, because there isn't a compliment of the deal in it, but a more sort of beleaguered sense, like this is this was just always going to happen. They were presented with a deal. They have to bring the hostages home. And, you know, we've been through this, and let's give it some space. Rather than. When he was ambassador, I think he was a bit more dogged and determined in his statements on whether something was good or bad. And he was actually known for, you know, kind of being a straight shooter. And I know that he doesn't want to backseat drive not his successor, but another envoy. But I just think that you can tell the mood by the supporters, by the. By the people who are trying to calm the nerves over this deal, that it's not really selling it as much as it's just kind of saying, you know, have some Rachmanis almost.

[John Podhoretz]

You know, these Rahmanus is mercy. Rachmanis is Yiddish for mercy. And, you know, I have rachmanis meaning.

[Seth Mandel]

Right.

[John Podhoretz]

Give us a break, please. Stop beating us over the head. Have pity. Right.

[Seth Mandel]

Exactly right. And I think back to when Menachem Begin was involved in one of the early prisoner swamps, which I wrote about last year for commentary, in that his negotiator came to him and said, look, don't meet with the families. Said, I'm. I'm Anachem Begin. I'm the. You know, I. No one's gonna emotionally bully me.

[John Podhoretz]

I've been in the gulag. I've been in the gulag.

[Seth Mandel]

Nobody's seen what I've. Yeah. And. And he was wrong. That. That. The. The feeling of. The feeling that you feel when you are responsible ultimately for saying yes or no as to whether these parents who you often have come to know will see their children again. It just. It puts a weight on your shoulders that makes this not about the details of the deal as much as it is about a kind of ethos. And Israelis come back to this each time.

[Christine Rosen]

I have to say, for my part, the certainty that I had yesterday in my position against the deal is rocked considerably by John, you're saying that reportedly this is the will of the Israelis, of the Israeli people. There are times when Israel doesn't want to do something, wants to do something hawkish, right? And I usually defer and the Israeli people want to do something hawkish. And there's arguments for and against. I'm being very broad here, but I always factor in, I'm an American, I don't want to tell Israel what it, what's in its, ultimately, what's in its own best interest, if that is the will of the majority there. So that's.

[John Podhoretz]

Look, look, Bibi Netanyahu is the best politician in Israel's history. He is the politician with the greatest feel for where the boundaries and borderlines are in actual Israeli politics in terms of the body politic. If he has come to the moment at which thinks that there was no other choice but to make this deal, not only do the Israeli people have that, but that we need to take some wisdom from the fact that he went there and one of the things that we heard or people were saying in the last 48 hours is this could be very injurious to his coalition, that his two most right wing members of his coalition, Betsell El Smotrich and Itamar Ben gvir, would pull out last night. Smotrich, if explicitly, would not say that he would pull out of the coalition if the deal were struck. Meaning he's feeling it. If he's feeling it, then you really have what amounts to a national consensus from the right to the left that does not, however, excuse the question or, or it begs the question of whether the deal is good or not. Whether the deal is politically necessary or impossible not to agree to is one thing. It can be bad for Israel, even though in Israel it is seen as a, as, as necessary. And it could be emotionally really bad for Israel because there is many a slip between cup and lip here, like they're only letting a few out. They've got six weeks to let out a third of them, at which point there will be another negotiation. What is it going to be like for the families whose family members are not in the early stages, who are not in the early release? Is it going to be better for them or is it going to be infinitely worse? And how is the national spirit going to handle the next six to nine to ten weeks of anxiety about whether or not this deal will actually be completed, the hostages will be, will be brought home?

[Noah Rothman]

Well, isn't that the thing? I mean, this is what I think I'm going to Be writing on a little bit today. We should say that our friend Lahav Harkov, senior correspondent with Jewish Insider reports from Netanyahu's office, quote, contrary to reports, the Hamas terrorist organization has yet to give its response to the deal. So this may be a little bit premature, but it's also indicative of the degree to which there's probably very little command structure left in Hamas. And we don't know who we're talking with and who the representatives, the messages that they're sending to Qatar, whether they're indicative of what Hamas leadership wants. Israeli objectives could be domestic. Israeli objectives could be strategic. They might want to pivot to other campaigns like one that's slow boiling with the Houthis. And the Trump administration is going to face something of a political conundrum here. They're going to want to say, look, the rhetoric worked. The unleash all hell rhetoric worked. We got the hostages out. It's a deal. Deals are good. Trump likes deals. But all the members of his administration are saying there cannot be a role for Hamas in Gaza in the future. Nana say Waltz, incoming National Security advisor told our friend Dan Senor yesterday that Hamas cannot have a role, quote, unquote. ISIS doesn't have a role. Al Qaeda doesn't have a role. Quote, we, we have been clear that Gaza has to be fully demilitarized. Hamas has to be destroyed to the point at which it cannot reconstitute. Pete Hegseth yesterday on the stand said he'd like to see every single Hamas member killed in action. How do you square that rhetoric with the. Presumably what they're going to want to do, which is celebrated diplomatic success by virtue of Trump's muscularity, and I appreciate the muscularity, but it was always kind of hollow. The notion here that the United States could bring to bear more kinetic pressure on Hamas than the idf, always struck me as something that was not going to be very persuasive.

[John Podhoretz]

Remember, remember that the, that the, that the incoming president never said on whom the hell was going to be.

[Noah Rothman]

That's our fault. That's right.

[John Podhoretz]

No, no, no. Meaning Iran.

[Noah Rothman]

Well, that's the other thing.

[John Podhoretz]

The clear idea was if hell was going to be unleashed in a way that we've never seen before, that wasn't going to be beating the hell out of whatever remnant of Hamas is in the tunnels, unless it meant that we were going to drop bunker busters on Rafah and on the netsirem corridor. That's also a possibility. But otherwise.

[Noah Rothman]

And there was never going to be that kind of kinetic pressure in the Biden administration. That was always a Trump initiative. So but they set themselves up for having to meet this deadline, which was pre inauguration. That was their timeline.

[John Podhoretz]

So two possible.

[Seth Mandel]

There's a parallel here also with, I think, you know, what Trump has in the past and Republicans in the past have said, you know, don't give troop withdrawal deadlines. The January 20 deadline for the deal reminds me a bit of that. Whereas, you know, the idea that you just say, look it, it's got to be done by this day is telegraphing your moves without seeing the other side's moves ahead of time, something that Republicans are usually pretty wary of this time or very much willing to give it a shot. And we'll see what they feel about the result.

[John Podhoretz]

So there are two, from our perspective, hopeful, from some non conservative, non Zionist foreign policy, regular perspectives, catastrophic. There are two hopeful possibilities which people have been emailing and texting me, which is what if there's some kind of quid pro quo that after Wyckoff yelled at Bibi, he said, I'm giving you a green light to go at Iran or not only am I giving you a green light to go to Rom, but we're going to participate, we're going to help you if you strike this deal. Because this is the deal Trump wants. He wants to be able to announce that he did something to get the hostages home. And then we're going to go together. We're going to go and destroy Iran's nuclear program and maybe its oil export capacity. That is a hope. There is no evidence whatsoever that that is on the table, that that deal has been discussed. Now maybe friends of ours who are more privy to internal conversations are more, are more believe this more. I'm going to hear more about that today. But that, so that's one thing that people have been retailing to each other. It's like he's not giving the Israelis nothing. The big cheese is coming. I think there's a problem with that, which is if they really hit Iran hard, the rest of the hostages are never coming home. I mean, the one thing that Iran has the capacity to do is to tell Hamas to kill the rest of the hostages. I think Iran has basically by making this deal, if you assume that the deal is ultimately with Iran has frozen, Israel and the United States in place for at least six weeks, if not through the phase two or three, because you can't guarantee the continuation of a hostage release if you actually do pull the final trigger on Iran. So, yeah, that's what I would think.

[Christine Rosen]

And also, I just want to say that in my experience, I think when these secret quid pro quos happen, it's usually, they usually only come to light after the fact. And we go, oh, this was the, this was what was going on.

[John Podhoretz]

Yeah.

[Christine Rosen]

When we, when we predict it beforehand, it's, it's all wishful or conspiratorial or paranoid thinking.

[John Podhoretz]

Right.

[Seth Mandel]

And also it's, it's kind of like, you know, that it's not a great commentary on the deal itself because it's being sold with. Well, there's got to be something. There's got to be a side deal. Right. And that's sort. So that tells you that, you know, if the deal can't stand, if deal can't be sold on its own, I won't say stand. If the deal can't be sold on its own by the people selling the deal, there's a problem with the deal that, that presents automatically whether or not you trust that the side deal eventually come through. Because what you're doing is, you know, this is a democracy. People are going to be voting on things related to this and the politics around it, and the people want to be informed, and this is what they're being told is the agreement, and this is what they're expecting. And so there's a sort of, you know, disconnect, too.

[John Podhoretz]

But, but again, like, I think if the Israeli people do want this in large measure, that's what, what, what, what matters here. If they're trying to sell us on the deal, that's very nice. It's very flattering. People like us, hawks like us, or Ben Shapiro or David Friedman, who very pointedly is not part of the, did not go with Steve Witkoff, even though he has been. He was the chief, really the chief diplomat along with Jared Kushner for, you know, on these matters for the last four years or the four years of the Trump administration. So you would think that they would have brought him along. They didn't want him along because they didn't want that voice at the table. Obviously, they wanted a, you're going to make this deal or, you know, or I'm going to take out your other. I'm going to take out your liver as well as your prostate, which apparently is what Steve Witkoff basically said to Bibi. But if the Israeli people want. It doesn't matter what we think. I mean, it really, it really genuinely doesn't matter what we think. We're just worried about the geopolitical, regional and future ramifications like Oslo was popular too, and caused 30 years of suffering. Like, it's, it's not like. And you know, very few people, my father being one of them in 1993, said, don't do this. This is bad, this is a bad deal. The concept ramifications are going to be terrible. That was not a common opinion. That was a very much a wildly minority opinion in the Jewish world, among foreign policy thinkers, among everything. It was like, you got to try, you got to give it a shot, you got to see what happens. And the results were calamitous. So it's not like a deal is necessarily good. It's what the deal, what, what results from the deal. If the hostages can be brought, gotten out in six weeks, if Hamas remains destroyed, and if the circumstances surrounding the Iranian nuclear program remain something that is of open, it's an open possibility that they can still be destroyed, then the deal will have been worth it. If for Bibi staying in power, you know, his coalition staying in power, that was necessary for this purpose, then it will have been worth it. We just don't know where it is. Three years from now, will Hamas really be dead or can it be reconstituted? I note that yesterday, in a really astonishing statement that totally contradicted what he said three weeks earlier, outgoing Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that America assesses that Hamas has recruited as many followers as has been killed, have been killed during the Gaza war. Well, that's not what he said three weeks ago. He said Hamas is destroyed as a military operation. So suddenly Hamas has recruited 15,000, 20,000 people. Now, maybe they have handed someone a bag of food that they stole from the, from the crossing, from the Kerem Shalom Cross and said, here's a bag of food. Sign this piece of paper that says you are now a member of Hamas and people did it to get the bag of food. That doesn't mean they're going to fight for Hamas. That doesn't mean that they're like trained to go into the tunnels and then climb into Israel and kill people on kibbutzim. Like that was a 10 year project. That doesn't mean that there's real Hamas. It could just mean these kind of fake numbers. But if that is actually the case, then obviously the deal is horrible beyond belief because you're going to let out seasoned Hamas people back into Gaza or wherever in this prisoner swap who will then be in a place to train all of these new recruits. Now, I don't believe that, I don't believe that those recruits exist. I Don't know why Blinken said it if he said the said the other three weeks ago. But I think we've learned enough to know that his word is a pretty. It's not that it's bad or that he's a liar. It's like his word is insubstantial. It's immaterial. Yeah. It evanesces the minute that he says something. So. But. But it is very striking nonetheless. Okay, let's move on to yesterday's hearing. The Senate. I can't remember which committee it is. It's not Foreign Affairs, Armed Services House. No. Was it House?

[Noah Rothman]

Senate Armed Services.

[John Podhoretz]

Senate Armed Services Committee. For Pete Hegseth, the nominee for Secretary of Defense. I should. I no longer basically have to say nominee. Clearly, he's gonna. He's gonna win a 53, 47, maybe 5,248 vote if this one newly minted senator from Utah, Mr. Curtis, continues to say he's going to vote against him, apparently because of alcohol, which is, you know, an interesting return to old Utah politics. If he votes against. He votes against Hegseth for drinking. I gather a lot of Democrats are going to vote against Hegseth for drinking, which is fun for the party that, you know, has basically made our cities now basically marijuana den. So thanks very much for opposing the idea that Pete Hegseth drinks when, you know, like, I can't walk down the block in New York without my clothing stinking of marijuana smell. Nonetheless, not to be ad hominem, but to move on, Hegseth basically sat there, got yelled at, particularly by four female senators, and came out not only unscathed, but I think basically it was a jiu jitsu boomerang effect. Like, he looked way better at the end of the day than he looked at the beginning of the day. And having Kirsten Gillibrand say to him, that's just. What you say about women is just mean. Like, don't we want a mean secretary of defense? I'm sorry. Maybe you shouldn't be mean toward women. I understand that. Or, you know, women in combat, however you want to slice it. And she's a veteran, so she has some rights to say things. But, like, calling the head of the American military mean is not exactly the worst thing you could say about him. Wimpy would be more interested in. In di than in military readiness. From my lights, that's worse to say about a secretary of defense nominee than to say that he's being mean because he is worried that women in combat are not, you know, is a Bad idea. It's a bad idea sociologically, whatever it is that he said, and I've read his book, so I know what he said, but I'm not gonna go into it anyway.

[Christine Rosen]

Well, what he said yesterday, I think he acquitted himself well on this point. He said, yes, there's a role for women in combat, but we should never lower our standards for combat. They should be the same for men and women.

[John Podhoretz]

Yeah. So it's like I just thought of an analogy and I can't help myself from bringing it up, even though it's probably really bad. There is an amazing photograph from 1946 of the actress Beatrice Arthur, who of course then was in Maude and Golden Girls. And she was a wack or a wave. She was a truck driver. And there was a picture of Bea Arthur in uniform as a member of the American military. And yeah, if Bea Arthur of 1946 were every female who wants to be in combat, go look it up. Just type in Bea Arthur uniform or something like that. You'd say, sure, okay, fine. You know, she looks tougher than most, most men in 1946. And that would be amazing. She didn't like this picture. She tried to suppress it because it' first of all, it's not very attractive and it does make her look very manly nonetheless. Bea Arthur, fine. Most women.

[Christine Rosen]

I love your reference. I don't know why you worried about it.

[John Podhoretz]

I don't know. I don't know. You can figure it out if you, if you want to, like, go deep into it, make a Straussian interpretation of what I'm saying. You could probably figure out why I'm a little uncomfortable nonetheless. I'm just saying. Yeah, I mean, there are outliers. There are always physical outliers. That would say a woman could be, just to take an example, an LA firefighter. But being a woman is not a qualification for being an LA firefighter. Having xx, even though we're not supposed to say this anymore, having two X chromosomes is not a qualification for being a firefighter, by the way. Nor is having XY chromosomes a qualification for being a firefighter. Right. That's why we have military. That's why we have physical standards for things like this. Anyway, all right, so she said he was mean. And then there was this fantastic exchange with Elizabeth Warren. Oh, my God, was it good? It was so good. Where Elizabeth Warren says, generals have agreed to a 10 year or we have a rule, I don't know what it is. They cannot go to work for military contractors for 10 years after their, after their Active duty is over. Why won't, why aren't you committing to a 10 year ban for you for going to work for military contractors after your secretary of defense? And he said, senator, I'm not a general. And her point, she then said, well, you know, that's not what, you know, something like that. But the entire room erupted in laughter. It was a, it was a, it was a parry, right? Because it sort of, the issue is, is relatively similar to the generals selling their wares to a military contractor. Nonetheless, it gave you a sense that this guy is no pushover. He's no, you know, he, he, you know, as he would say, like he's faced, he's been in combat. Like he wasn't scared of his interlocutors, including the inimitable Maisie Hirono, who is senator from Hawaii, who is setting, I don't know, new, new, new, new comic standards. Like she's like a character out of south park or something. So the holiday rush is over.

[Abe Greenwald]

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[John Podhoretz]

So am I right? No. Did you watch?

[Noah Rothman]

I watched some of it. I was, I was actually in the Fox studios sitting with Dana and Bill and Martha, expecting to hit the air, but there was never an opening to do it. So I watched the hearings with the Fox people and that was fun. And then I left. What I saw was generally pretty unserious across the board. I think Pete Haggs carried himself well. He was an impressive figure there. And if we wanted to do substance, we should do substance because I don't think he's necessarily going to be able to meet the standards that he set for himself. You know, the argument that he's retailing when it comes to women in combat roles, by which he means, and which Tom Cotton clarified during that committee hearing, they mean ground combat roles. What you think of when you think of combat roles, women with a rifle in a trench firing at the enemy position. There's a lot of other things that constitute combat roles. A woman driving an MRAP through, through a minefield is in a combat role, but she's not necessarily on the ground humping a pack. And a drone pilot. A drone pilot, yeah, precisely. That's a combat role. And there's a lot of roles for, for women who maybe not necessarily meet the physical standards. If we're going to meet our recruiting objectives and repair the recruiting deficit that we suffer from, there are a lot of recommendations out there. Among them, relaxing some of the medical standards that have contributed to a lot of individuals who would otherwise meet those standards, failing to, to ascend to enlisted status because of them. Likewise, the aptitude test that you have to take when you get into the services is perhaps a little outmoded. And, you know, also junior enlisted pay is, is just simply too low to compete with the private sector. But if you really wanted to meet these recruiting goals, you know, we talk about woke stuff and social engineering as though it's a panacea. It's not. It's part of it. It certainly puts downward pressure on military families, which is the primary pipeline for two military service.

[John Podhoretz]

What you mean by that? Just, just, just to spell out what, what you mean by that is. Hegseth says that wokeness is driving people out of the military, military career. And so when he says, I want to end DEI and wokeness and the promotion of people based on, you know, who, you know, based on their identity and not based on their performance, he is saying that as a readiness issue, that he wants to do this not only because people are getting promoted who shouldn't be promoted, but also that. That people in the military are saying to their kids, don't go in. It sucks here. Now that he can change that atmosphere.

[Noah Rothman]

And that will help. I don't want to downplay it. That is a major contributing factor to. In fact, if you look at surveys, there was a piece in the Wall Street Journal, one authored by a former Trump administration official in the Defense Department, saying, you know, our surveys say that military families no longer want to send their kids into this institution because it no longer reflects our values. That's the warrior stuff that Pete Hegseth was talking about. And it's real and it' valid. But I do wish we heard more lines of questioning along, along the lines that Tom Cotton was. Was attempting to pursue. What we heard from Republicans and on that committee was kind of unsatisfying, as you would expect from a committee hearing where their whole goal is just merely to hold his hand and shepherd him through the process. But it matters little to me whether or not the Secretary of Defense knows what caliber of bullet goes into a service rifle. That really has very little bearing on the logistical role that he will be serving, which was Senator Sheehy's line of questioning. Likewise, Oklahoma Senator Mark Wayne Mullen attempting to suggest that it was a okay that Peeks Hegseth has multiple allegations of severe drunkenness, not having a glass of wine after work, but severe drunkenness in professional settings. And his argument in favor of being dismissive of that allegation was, look, a lot of these senators are drunk at night, two when they're in the well of the Senate. As though that is anything other than a non sequitur. Like what is, by the way, is that good?

[John Podhoretz]

The last defense secretary nominee to be rejected, John Tower in 1989, who was a sitting senator in the United States Senate and was undone by Democratic Senate.

[Noah Rothman]

Not by a Republican Senate ranking member. Jack Reed said to correct the record, when I forget who a Republican said, you know, no Republic, no senator would go through this process.

[John Podhoretz]

Yeah, he said, John Tower went through it. Right. But John Tower. Right. John Tower. I can't remember who it was. It was like, maybe it was Phil Graham, somebody like that said, you're all drunk. We're all drunk when we vote. So you can't attack John Tower for being drunk. That's not why John Tower was voted down. And the point is, it's disingenuous. It's disingenuous to go at him for this reason. They were going at him because they, because he, he has a, he has a spotty record. He is not like a distinguished military figure. He's a critic of the US Military and its readiness in a popular forum, best selling books, Fox and Friends weekend. Very attractive former veterans organization head. Not really the resume that any previous defense secretary has had. And, you know, deep skepticism about him by the Wall Street Journal editorial page. Very harsh piece about him on National Review's website by John Fund. I think that dropped Sunday night about how his background check came out too late. And people are very skeptical. John seems to have gotten that wrong since he said. Joni Ernst of Iowa, another veteran, was going to vote against him. And she announced in the middle of the hearing that she was going to vote for him or put out a statement that she was going to vote for him. I think what's more important than this, and let's sort of pull back here, is once Trump started flooding the zone with the nominees, whenever that was late November, right? And we got Hegseth, we got Gabbard, we got, we got Gates, we got Cash Patel, we got rfk mostly, we got RFK and all of that, there was this, well, look, somebody's gonna go, A couple of these people are gonna go down. He's just doing MAGA a favor. A couple of these guys are gonna go down. He's just serving the entry because it's not gonna happen. And Gates, yes, Gates went down. Gates left without hearing. And that's usually how it happens. It's not that people, that people go through the hearing and then get voted down by the full Senate. That or by the, by the committee. That's not the way it really works at this level. So Gates went through the process where he was so exposed that he could no longer have his nomination serve. But I think it's pretty clear that every single one of Trump's nominees, with the possible exception of Tulsi Gabbard is, is going to get confirmed. If I had said that to you on November 29, I'm not, I'm not sure we would all have agreed that that was, that was in the cards. Right?

[Christine Rosen]

I mean, I, I just don't want to predict yet is what is my reticence here. I, I'm on your I take your point and I'm mostly with you, but I just don't want to predict.

[Seth Mandel]

Well, there was a moment when Hegseth looked like he was going down.

[John Podhoretz]

Yeah.

[Seth Mandel]

And that moment passed. And that's why he's not going down, because the moment. But it was legitimately a moment where, you know, we were thinking, like, all right, people are floating names.

[John Podhoretz]

Yeah.

[Seth Mandel]

By the end of this week, we will probably have to discuss the qualifications of those names in.

[John Podhoretz]

And then what happened? What happened? Once again, the media did it to the jiu jitsu of the left, did it to themselves. What saved Hegseth? The interview with his mother where somebody released the email from his mother saying, I really hate the way you're treating your wife. You're disgusting. How dare you. And then his mother came out and said, I was very upset. An hour later, I apologized to him and why, how did you get my email? And right then, just like the Trump raid, just like this happens, they go too far. They push the wrong button. They think they've got the coup de grace or they've got the dagger that's going to take out Caesar. And it has exactly the opposite effect. Every Republican in the Senate who wasn't already was like, okay, that's it. They'll say anything and do anything.

[Noah Rothman]

I don't think that's it.

[John Podhoretz]

Oh, really? Okay.

[Noah Rothman]

I think the timeline you have is wrong. I think that was. That happened after an organic pressure campaign emerged on the right which equated Pete Hegseth with. With Brett Kavanaugh. And everybody's office was flooded with calls. Everybody's Twitter was filled with attacks. Everybody was threatened with primary campaigns from people very close to Donald Trump with his ear. And they caved. And that a confrontation caved. And that confrontation with their own cowardice manifests down the line. They're not going to kill Pete Hegseth. They've. They've bowed to that pressure. Okay. They resent the degree to which they were pushed into it. And you'll see that resentment manifest elsewhere.

[John Podhoretz]

Okay. I'm not denying your account of this, but I'm saying that whatever heart was still in it. In other words, like, well, Joni Ernst and Susan Collins aren't going to be swayed. Swayed by this. They have their own independent standing. And Joanie, you know, you can't primary Joni Ernst, a 17 year veteran, if she says, I'm sorry, But as a 17 year veteran, I can't countenance this guy being, having, being my commit. You know, if he were my. The guy who was running the Pentagon when I was there, I would be very upset.

[Seth Mandel]

Are you telling me that prolific tweeter with millions of followers catered to, who proposed sending Carrie Lake to move to Iowa to primary? Joni Ernst. You're telling me that was all fantasy? That was never going to happen?

[John Podhoretz]

No, it may happen and no, you may be right. But I think the two work together. And I brought this up for a reason, which is that the politics of the last two months have been just horrible for Democrats and liberals. Like it's crazy how badly things are going for them. I mean it's not like they were blown out in this election. Harris lost by a point and a half. You know, the House basically the Republicans are hanging on.

[Noah Rothman]

The GOP lost seats.

[John Podhoretz]

GOP lost seats in the House, granted gained seats in the Senate, but it lost seats in the House. It's not like 1980 when they were blown out of the water. You know, Reagan won 40 states and 12 Republicans won Senate election. You know, Republicans took the Senate for the first time in a billion years with, with it, with a 12, with a 55, 45 majority. Winning 12 seat. Like that was a blowout. This was not a blowout.

[Christine Rosen]

But I think it's, it's different when it comes to Trump. I think, I think a Trump victory, right, and a Trump popular vote victory is its own kind of paradigmatic blown out blowout.

[Seth Mandel]

And they're also getting, you know, the sort of what, what, what our friend Ollipundit used to call the day of recriminations after GOP losses, right, where there would be the finger pointing and the Democrats are getting that from their own side in a way that I don't think that they, you know, in 2016 I felt like the Democrats were a bit more united in that they were cheated or it was, you know, whatever, Russia, Russia, Russia installed their, their president, whatever. Everybody was out in the streets and we just got fight the fascists and blah, blah, blah. But now the discourse among Democrats is man, you, you guys in the campaign offices, right, and the higher reaches, you guys don't know what you're doing and you don't know how to talk to normal people who think that, you know, you're like some robotic, you know, like, you know, walking woke computer or something like that that says things like come on Latinx. And you know, there's a real, within the Democrats there's a real like stop. You guys gotta cut it out. Because it's different now. And that I think is fuel Democratic feeling of having gotten blown out Even though they didn't get blown out, there's just this, like, man, this was a disaster.

[John Podhoretz]

But this is. The fact remains. The fact remains that the party. There are all sorts of facts, right? Patrick Graffini now announcing, surfacing, the fact that there are now more people who identify as Republicans than as Democrats for the first time in almost a century and all of that, that's, that's very real. I'm just saying that the actual number of combatants on the ground who votes for one party versus who votes for another party did not change very much. And the Republicans did not, are not marching into Washington, you know, triumphantly, like the, like the Romans coming back from Gaul. That is not what is happening, is not what happened. What happened is that in their response to the election, they have proved to have feet of clay every bit as bad as the feet of clay they showed running up into the election. By which I mean aside from the general question of who's going to run the DNC and is it good that the Kamala Harris team that tweeted is going to be at the DNC tweeting, or is that crazy or whatever. It is Karen Bass and Gavin Newsom with the fires. It is Eric Adams in New York and Kathy Hochul with the subways and the subway disorder. It is Brandon Johnson in Chicago and the schools. People in Chicago, Democrats who are actually doing governance in the United States in very high profile places, in very high profile ways are at the worst possible moment showing incompetence, commitment to these ideas that Americans are increasingly discomfited with. Like, yeah, it's really important that we have DEI running our fire departments and things like that as the entire business class in the United States is running, running in the other direction.

[Noah Rothman]

Okay, well, here's the thing about Costco.

[John Podhoretz]

I read today and then Wall Street Journal that Costco is not giving up on dsdi. So I'm going to Sam's Club. I've had it. Or bj. I am not doing Costco anymore. I like a company that gives up on D. I don't like company that fights for Di. I'm going to vote with my feet in my memberships and I expect you to do the same.

[Noah Rothman]

Noah, you're not going to get me to get off Costco. I'm sorry. I actually this before. I realized right before we were getting on here that you're doing video now and I was wearing a Patagonia sweater. And some people are very triggered by Patagonia. So I got to get this off.

[John Podhoretz]

Okay.

[Seth Mandel]

What you have to understand about us suburban guy families is, is that, you know, I, we went to Costco the day before the big snowstorm last week, and if anything could ever put you off forever from going or. Yeah, you know, on the eve of an emergency.

[John Podhoretz]

But you mean the 350 person line? Is that what you mean?

[Seth Mandel]

Yes.

[John Podhoretz]

With everybody having 40. Having 40 items in their basket.

[Seth Mandel]

That's right. At one point, I took my kids for a bathroom break from the line. No kidding. And we walked past one of the lines that was snaking up the side that was going through the aisles, and somebody asked somebody else on the line, is this the line for the self checkout? And somebody else on the line said, we don't know.

[John Podhoretz]

That's very Soviet. It's like, just get online. Right. Who knows what they're selling? Who knows? Who knows what's at the end of this line? Maybe they have a potato. You know, you have plenty of stuff. But that's the problem. Anyway. Okay, I'm sorry.

[Noah Rothman]

Just briefly. As much as I appreciate, you know, as, as Seth calls it, glasnost, and he's right about that, I do appreciate the revolutionary reversal of fortunes here. I'm very uncomfortable with the degree to which the Silicon Valley types are now flattering my ideological pretensions out of nowhere and doing so with maximum zeal and obsequiousness. That speaks to me of the degree to which this, that, that says everything to me. Is, is this a response to the Democratic Party's pressure on these institutions, in particular Lina Khan and her crusade against Silicon Valley Enterprises?

[John Podhoretz]

That's the Federal Trade Commission. That's the Lina Khan, the losingest loser.

[Noah Rothman]

In this role, who nevertheless had all the right, you know, ideas and all her sympathies.

[John Podhoretz]

All the right ideas based for the left. Yeah.

[Noah Rothman]

Speaks to me about a government that has far too much influence over private enterprise, private affairs. And these individuals know it. And they know where their bread is buttered and they're cozying up to this administration in order to save their own bacons. Now, you can say, well, that's great, but you also have to admit to yourself that's temporary because Democrats will not be out of power forever. I want a culture that is responsive to the culture. I don't want a culture that is reflective of whatever the political makeup of Washington is at any given moment.

[John Podhoretz]

Look, you're right. However, it's time. It's long past time that we are Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman and Silicon Valley is Larry Miller sucking up to her in the store. As Richard Gere says, we need more sucking up after he insulted her when she came in to buy a dress for the big party. Like if they are suck ups, if Zuckerberg is going to suck up to the Democrats and change all policies at Meta and, or as it was then called, Facebook to give them sucker and have them be nice to him and do whatever. And then he says six years later, oh boy, did I make a mistake. First of all, this wasn't good for me. Second of all, it really wasn't good for me with this guy who was so transactional. And you know what? I'm going to go on Joe Rogan and I'm going to talk to Ben Shapiro and I'm going to throw a party with Miriam Adelson at the, at the, at the inauguration and all that. What's all that about? That's like, okay, so let me enjoy a little sucking up. We can enjoy the sacking up to us a little bit. You're right that they are conscienceless, sociopathic, doing this entirely transactionally but superficially. Can we not just enjoy it?

[Noah Rothman]

What am I if not the wet blanket?

[John Podhoretz]

That's true. Okay, well, yeah, you know, I mean.

[Christine Rosen]

I think Noah's point is interesting because it's not just that they are, that they are conscious lists. There's the problem that the line between mammoth industry, or particularly the digital world and Silicon Valley, the line between that and government, has become very, very blurry on both sides. When you have the Biden administration hoping or trying to work hand in glove with, and in some cases succeeding with, you know, online platforms to withhold information from the public. And then you have on the other side, Elon and the first buddy of Donald Trump, you know, trying to, and hoping to dictate policy about bills. This is, this is not on a much larger level. This is very, very bad.

[John Podhoretz]

There's no question that it's bad. There's no question that we're in this kind of weird return to the Gilded Age, some weird return where big business and government are going hand in glove and we have regulatory issues and all kinds of things that they're trying to make sure go there.

[Noah Rothman]

We're going to run the government through tariffs and we're going to break up the European sclerotic European empires with force. We're going right back to the 18th.

[John Podhoretz]

Century, total 19th, 19th, 19th century. But yes, you're right. And so I'm not, I'm not denying, and you know, I'm not denying any of that. I'm just saying in the most superficial way. I am hereby granting permission to the Commentary magazine podcast audience to enjoy the humbling of Mark Zuckerberg and others until such time as once again we get data that his company is destroying our children. At which point we are going to have to start reintroducing the idea of limiting their reach before our society is destroyed. But, and, but, but we have. But there's only like, five days till the inauguration, so we can enjoy it until then. And then the fight begins after that.

[Seth Mandel]

No, say we can only have this conversation because Christine is not on today where we can go around and, and say, let them suck up. Let the tech companies suck up to us.

[John Podhoretz]

I think she would agree. I think she would agree that five days of sucking up is fine. This is a, this is a, this is a generational challenge that is being posed by the extinction of experience. So you can't get rid of it in one day. But. All right. Noah Rothman, author of A Clockwork Blue, our our mammoth cover story. It runs. It is an extraordinarily authoritative and comprehensive account of the last 25 years of American public life through the prism of a slow and then accelerating apologia to actual advocacy, to bathing in political violence as a means of change or revolutionary force on the part of not only the left, the hard left, which has always had this temptation, but mainstream liberals. And you begin in the present and then go back to the past. And you begin with what?

[Noah Rothman]

Well, December. I like to think of myself as pretty even keeled and dispassionate in general when it comes to the news and my job. But the display to which we were privy from progressives, the media outlets that take their cues from progressives, and then lastly the Democratic politicians who glom on to progressive causes in order to burnish their own, all of whom rallied around or convinced themselves of the virtue of the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson. And I outline what that reaction was and how repulsive it was and also sort of a thesis that the Democrats who eventually attached themselves to it and said, well, this was a commentary on the state of American health care and just commercial, you know, commercial relationships broadly, and then also everything else that's broken in society, in American society. The indictment sprawled that it was really that the killing had given them some permission structure to indulge the nihilism that they felt on election night, that it was just a little too gauche to express by virtue of, you know, their own humiliation at the hands of voters with the elevation of Trump as, as Abe Said it was a paradigmatic defeat. But that to me was redolent of the reaction that we have seen. Some of it historical revisionism, much of it alive within, in the, in the timeline that these events are happening as they're happening, that Democrats and progressive activists in particular, and then up to and including some of the parties now some of the party's most leading lights have been very comfortable with the romance of political violence and have extracted it out.

[John Podhoretz]

Let's talk about the but here and then we can go into the pat, which is that you, you, in a really powerful passage, you cite major American political figures on the left, meaning Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, AOC Is it Chris Murphy.

[Noah Rothman]

Chris Murphy.

[John Podhoretz]

Okay. Elizabeth Warren saying of course political violence is abhorrent. And then you point out, quoting every single one of them, then begins the second sentence with the word but.

[Noah Rothman]

And we all know that what the preposition is a perfunctory exercise. You know, it just reveals how perfunctory the previous, whatever sentiment was expressed before.

[John Podhoretz]

Yeah. Now erase that sentence that I just spoke because the sentence, the words that follow are the important words, you know.

[Noah Rothman]

Yes.

[John Podhoretz]

But they, there's a yawp of everyone hates.

[Seth Mandel]

It's like baseball. It's like baseball signals. Baseball. The third baseman gives the sign. The third base coach, I mean, gives the sign. He gives a bunch of signals. First that's not the sign. Then he gives a signal that the true signal is that the next signal is the true signal. And then he gives the true signal and a couple more fake signals. That's what the is the but is. Okay, here comes whether you are going to steal the base or not.

[Noah Rothman]

And there were many examples of this, but Bernie Sanders was the most illustrative. But the campaign finance system is broken. The healthcare system is broken. The housing system is broken. The education system is broken. It is broken by what she means the United States. And then he's, he's attempting to connect these perennial laments with a cold blooded murder as though it's, it somehow advances the cause. And I think in his mind it does.

[John Podhoretz]

Right. So that is the current state of play among leading political thinkers. The most famous Democratic congressman and the two leading progressive lights of the Senate. Right. Sanders and Warren, two candidates for president in 2020, as I recall, running for president, like changing, changing the nature of the race, helping Joe Biden get elected by going so far to the left that he looked like he was the only figure in the center. That's how important they are.

[Noah Rothman]

And then taking over voice.

[John Podhoretz]

Yeah. And voicing Effectively voicing support for a man getting shot in the back on a Manhattan street at 6:45 in the morning. Who, as you say, unlike Luigi Mangione, the accused killer, grew up the son of a grain elevator operator in Iowa, wasn't no scion of a rich Baltimore family with two degrees from the University of Pennsylvania. It was somebody who lived the American dream, fought his way up through, up to the C Suite. Right. So that's the actual story of the, of what happened between two people on a New York City street. And then you turn it into this symbolic pageant, this, you know, passion play and bad and why. And that could only have happened. And I think this is the meat and heart of the piece as a kind of culmination, as I say, of a quarter century of slow and then accelerating ideas on the left about how street action is noble and blessed and an expression of the sort of Russovian popular will. So you start with what the left has now come to call the battle in Seattle in 1999.

[Noah Rothman]

That's right. And while I was a senior in high school at the time, I do remember it vividly. And I remember the reaction vividly. And it's captured in accounts from the period in the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal and others that I was reading in the archives about pretty much a universal revulsion of what we saw in the streets there. A very effective street action by a variety of a coalition of left wing thugs and agitators. And when they were subdued, and they were subdued violently by the national guard, citywide curfew, 50 block radius around the meeting place, which the meeting was nevertheless scuttled by this. But there was frustration and hostility with the anti WTO protests among Democrats. And in the intervening decades that the events have been subject to a lot of historical revisionism by progressive activists who attribute it to anti capitalist action, which has a very powerful and seductive valence to progressive activists. And those who are doing the retroactive conditioning on this also note, because it was so it was. That was the ideological project at the time they were doing this revisionism that 1999 was a direct antecedent to Occupy Wall Street. The Occupy Wall street movement, which, as you know, as we know, you know, there was this intervene, there was an intervention and break of street action after 9 11. But the sentiments that revived it followed the 2008 collapse of the mortgage market. And we saw when Occupy spontaneously erupted. And it was an organic phenomenon. It was adopted and embraced by progressive activists, Democratic political leaders, up to and including the president of the United States, Barack Obama, who attributed to it a lot of sentiments and nobility that were not in evidence at the time. There was an abstraction made of this force in order to revive what Democrats saw as some enthusiasm for their governing program that had been sapped with the debate over Obamacare in 2009, 2010. And it was obvious to those of us who are critical of this kind of impulse how foolish this embrace was. We were talking about lawlessness, we were talking about public health crises erupting in these self governed encampments.

[John Podhoretz]

Yeah, there were 28 of them. I think you, you enumerate. There were by, by the time the occupied in America burned out.

[Noah Rothman]

International right.

[John Podhoretz]

But by the time the American movement burned out, there were 28 encampments in cities across and college campuses across the country, the most famous being the one in downtown Manhattan in Zuccotti Park. That was finally, because it had a weird legal status that, that did not give public authorities access to it because it was partially private property. Finally, because of the safety concerns, the health. Safety concerns, was finally broken up by the authorities. But you forget the size of it. That's what I'm saying. It's like it was only 14 years ago. And one forgets how dominating a news story that was for three months until the winter hit. And then really it was gonna be hard for people to be living in those tents on, you know, on in city streets in Oregon and Washington.

[Seth Mandel]

Even before also many of those kids in the tents just had to go across the street to their brownstone.

[John Podhoretz]

Right.

[Seth Mandel]

Well, that's always for the winter.

[Noah Rothman]

But even before, I mean, when Democrats were embracing this thing, before police started to roll up these encampments, before mobs of occupiers stormed Washington's D.C. air and Space Museum, before Oakland, California's port was overrun by 3,000 of these people who attempted to burn it down. Before members of Occupy in Ohio were charged with attempting to affix plastique explosives to bridge abutments in order to take out American symbols of American corporate America. Rather, you had occupiers to the tune of 700 attempting to shut down the Brooklyn Bridge. That sound familiar? Does that tactic ring a bell to anybody? These were all people were all arrested en masse. But when they were arrested en masse, the intellectual, the response from intellectuals on the political left, and not just in like places like Jacobin magazine where the fringes sort of relegate themselves, but the Atlantic, npr, the Washington Post, the places that have real pedigree were much more enthusiastic about being hostile to the Police response, as though the police were the only provocateurs in this situation. Occupy there was. And the way they talked about Occupy was that it couldn't possibly be violent. They talked about it as though it was nonviolent resistance. They used these shibboleths that belong to another, another age, another time to describe Occupy that didn't describe the events they were witnessing before them. I think they were, and I suggest, submit that they were fooling themselves because in their minds, Occupy could not be violent because street violence was wrong, prima facie wrong, and Occupy was right. Therefore, we couldn't address, we couldn't assign violence to this, to this movement. And subsequently, in the years that followed, if this was tribute, vice paid to virtue, these intellectuals would learn to withhold that tribute.

[John Podhoretz]

Right. And that's really the second half of the piece, and we're not going to have time to sort of go into that, but basically we're talking about Ferguson, Missouri, the rise of Black Lives Matter, the rise of the anti Trump resistance in places like Chicago and San Jose, California, where people forget, though Trump was the one who was calling on, you know, people beating up people at rallies. It was actually leftist anti Trump protesters and agitators who were, who were, who were practicing violence on people standing in lines at Trump rallies and things like that. And then of course, 2020, the glorification.

[Noah Rothman]

Way you skipped over the glorification of antifa. A national conversation over whether it was appropriate or even funny to mete out physical violence to people with whom you disagree with, as long as you deem them Nazis, whether or not that's a proper descriptor. And then into the 2020 violence, 2020 and onward.

[Seth Mandel]

So, yeah, and one thing that, you.

[Christine Rosen]

Know, culminating in the pro Hamas crowd and the violence on campuses and everywhere else, and there is a through line of anti Semitism through virtually all of it, the Women's March, Black Lives Matter. Obviously the pro Hamas Occupy was riddled with anti Semitism.

[John Podhoretz]

Right. Anyway.

[Noah Rothman]

Usually it does go back to the bullshit.

[Seth Mandel]

That was the other, that was the other thing that I, that really jumped out at me from this piece, which is excellent, which, which was when you talk about recent things, you talk, you talked about the bombing of, or attacks on, on pro life pregnancy crisis centers and things like that. And you had, you got to understand, coming from Seth, you had defenders call, say, well, medical. Here's the quote that you put, put medical imperialism will not face a passive enemy. And what that reminded me was that the way, you know, things are going to turn violent, politics are Going to turn violent in America is when you hear academies preceding it. It's like academia, references to academic concepts and debates. They're like the warning sign.

[John Podhoretz]

Right.

[Seth Mandel]

Like when she said, when you use the word medical imperialism, it does. What you said before, which is like, violence can't be wrong in this situation.

[Noah Rothman]

That's insightful.

[Seth Mandel]

And therefore, you know.

[John Podhoretz]

Yeah. And of course, you don't really go into this, but, but the, but the, the defense. I mean, you do a little bit. But the defense of action on campus after October 7 was accompanied by actual defense and support for massive pogrom that killed 1200 people and wounded 3500 on October 7th. The thrill, the exhilaration, the images supporting the hang gliders that came in from Gaza to kill Jews in Israel. All of that campus based. Right? So that's the intelligentsia that you're talking about. And Noah, you say, you know, goes back to the Bolsheviks, you know, in our brilliant piece that we published a couple months ago by Gary Saul Morrison, you know, he would say it goes back to the neel, the piece he wrote on Dostoevsky's the Devils or the Possessed or the demons or whatever name you want to assign that astounding greatest political novel ever written that we are. That, you know, this is a deep root of evil in Western culture and that it predates all of this because it speaks to something black and monstrous in the human soul that when you release it, it's like, oh, it's fine. This guy got shot in the back. Just to go back to it. Like, he's just a. He's just a figurehead. He's an example. He's an abstraction. He's not a person with a family that just got. He was murdered. His family was devastated. He's just an object in a story.

[Seth Mandel]

Gunned down that would, that, that would jumped out at me reading it because I, I had almost forgotten about that. The five cops gunned down by a Black Lives Matter supporter in Dallas was. You know, that's the. That's the sort of thing that we usually call. We usually use words like massacre. You know, like that would. That would get the name Dallas Massacre, things like that. And it would be. It would be a thing. And it's amazing to think that somebody from that who supported the ideals of that movement shot and killed five cops on a spree. And it's just kind of been.

[Noah Rothman]

And no less amazing that the president of the United States at the time, in memorializing this event, lent credence and virtue to the delusions that their murderer was beholden to.

[John Podhoretz]

Right.

[Noah Rothman]

Anyway, I just want to say briefly before we conclude that the narrative is very long. It was 2,000 word longer than it is now when I submitted it. I was very embarrassed by the length of it. But it does attempt to be comprehensive. But one thing it does not do is make account of the right coded violence that we've experienced over the same time period. And very consciously, and I make a note of that, that the elision is deliberate because the extent of the extent to which American society, law enforcement, media, every institutional apparatus in this country is hypervigilant for right wing political violence. And when it occurs, we have prolonged discussions, introspective discussions, a lot of finger pointing and blame in those discussions. But it is not slipped under the rug. We confront it directly. And I'm one of those guys who does that. I am tragically sincere about what I think was the sum of all Madisonian fears on January 6th. That was really bad. And the movement that catalyzed it is really bad. I have made note of the degree to which right wing violence has become more prevalent as the right has come to look more like the left insofar as it sees people not as individuals but as avatars of the respective caste and tribe or class. All of that's bad stuff. And that's why I feel that I'm pretty well qualified to make account of left wing violence because I'm consistent on this. What this is is an appeal for consistency. And until we get consistency, we run the risk of running out of luck one of these days. If that bullet had been 3 millimeters closer to Donald Trump's head, the cycle of vengeance and reprisals and bloodshed that we might have invited might have been inevitable. We've been lucky, but we're not going to be lucky forever.

[John Podhoretz]

So that is Noah Rothman's extraordinary piece, currently [e-mail] and will be in your mailbox if you are a Commentary magazine subscriber next week. Sometime A Clockwork Blue how the left has come to excuse away and embrace political violence. Always thrilling to have Noah's voice back. Dulcet tones back on our back on our airwaves here.

[Seth Mandel]

And face.

[John Podhoretz]

And face. Now. Face. Now you can see Noah's.

[Seth Mandel]

There he is.

[John Podhoretz]

Now you can see Noah's ponum. Beautiful. That's face in Yiddish, since we keep having to, you know, by the time.

[Noah Rothman]

That was in Aladdin.

[John Podhoretz]

Fair enough. Oh, that's right. That's right. The nice put him there says says.

[Noah Rothman]

Robin Williams spoke it around the HOUSE Yeah.

[John Podhoretz]

Not not a Jew. ROBIN WILLIAMS we're right. But I do think, you know, if you listen to us every day over 365 days when Seth and I get going, you know, you are going to learn a hundred words of you're going to learn some stuff about Jewish practice. We had to talk about natilat yadaim, the washing of the hands, the ritual washing of the hands on the Sabbath this week. So you are, you know, you are basically going to be at graduate level in, you know, particularly in the current academic atmosphere in which no one has to learn anything. You will be at a 401 course if you listen to us for a year on Jewish practice. So congratulations to all who we don't have accrediting power, but I think that really could be the case. NOAH, as I said, thanks again for being with us. Thanks for the article. Everybody read it. And for Seth and Abe, I'm John Paphora. It's keep the Candle.