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- [00:04]
Abe Greenwald
Hope for the best, Expect the worst.
- [00:11]
John Podhoretz
Some preacher pain, some diapers, the way of knowing which way it's going. Hope for the best. Expect the worst.
- [00:22]
Christine Rosen
Hope for the best.
- [00:25]
John Podhoretz
Welcome to the Commentary Magazine daily podcast. Today is Wednesday, December 4th, 2024. I'm John Podhoretz, the subdued voice editor of Commentary magazine. Coming back to you after two days of being pretty much unable to speak. Thanks to the ministrations of my doctors and various wonder workers, I seem to have restored the ability to say things without coughing and finding it impossible to breathe. So I'm back with you and with my colleagues, Executive editor Abe Greenwald. Hi, Abe.
- [01:02]
Christine Rosen
Welcome back, John Hi.
- [01:04]
John Podhoretz
Thank you. Media Commentary columnist Christine Rosen. Hi, Christine.
- [01:09]
Matthew Continetti
Hi, John.
- [01:10]
John Podhoretz
Washington Commentary columnist Matthew Gary.
- [01:14]
Abe Greenwald
Hi, John.
- [01:14]
John Podhoretz
And senior editor Seth Mandel. Hi, Seth.
- [01:17]
Seth Mandel
Hi, John.
- [01:18]
John Podhoretz
So I've been noting over the last week or week and a half that very old friends of mine, old colleagues of mine, people that I used to gain sucker and wisdom from on almost everything they said, are all sounding like screaming, hysterical lunatic madmen. And I say this advisedly because what I read from them is we are now facing a constitutional crisis every day for the next four years. And aside from the fact that they are saying this while a president of the United States just offered a blanket pardon to his son that we I think all read as a blanket pardon to himself because some of it involves actions going back to when he, Joe Biden, was vice president and his son began obtaining filthy lucre as a result of his father's job. And as I think Matt keeps talking about, we got to see what's going to happen with his brother Jim, Biden's brother Jim, who was also part a participant in this matter. So that's kind of a constitutional crisis. But okay, let's leave that to one side. Here's what struck me in the news in the last 24 hours. So south Korea, one of our leading allies on the planet Earth, most important allies on the planet Earth, a hedge against China, a representative of the world of commerce among like minded democratic states. Has a president got not elected in 2022, didn't have really much of a parliamentary majority, couldn't get stuff through the parliament. So he announces martial law. Martial law is something in the South Korean tradition, was declared four or five times in the 1970s and 1980s when South Korea was under military rule, not when it was under democratic rule under military rule. I think the last time you can go back to martial law being declared in something that was nominally considered a democracy was Indira Gandhi In India in 1974 and 1975, India wasn't really much of a democracy, but, you know, it had democratic institutions. This is not a normal thing to happen. And in fact, the people of South Korea said, what? Martial law. What are you talking about? He said, no martial law, no free press. If you oppose me, I'm going to get you arrested. Cops are in the streets. Parliament is suspended, and basically the entire country said, nah, sorry. He suspended martial law six hours later. Parliament has now moved to impeach him, and he apparently will be impeached by Friday. Now, that's a constitutional crisis. That's what is an actual. That's what you call a constitutional crisis. A democratically elected leader decides to impose authoritarianism on his country by fiat. That's a constitutional crisis. Let's now go to France. France, second largest economy in Europe. Macron, the president called the snap election in the summer very foolishly, ended up with no working majority in any capacity. Took three months to find a prime minister. Prime minister just struck a budget deal. The budget deal pleased no one, and supposedly sometime today, that government will fall, and Macron can't call another election for a year. So the country of France, which has a weird structure where you have a president, that's Macron, but he actually doesn't run domestic policy. That's the prime minister. Kind of a constitutional crisis, wouldn't you say? Kind of constitutionally crisis crisisy. What do we have? We have an incoming president nominating a bunch of cabinet officials. Some of them are going to go through. Some of them are dropping like flies. The DA nominee dropped himself yesterday. We don't even know why. We don't even know why he was picked in the first place. He's, like, from a county in Florida. So we can assume that Susie Wild is the incoming chief of staff, had something to do with it, but seemed like a weird choice. And he said in his statement, you know, I'm kind of a weird choice. So I think I'm just going to go back to my old job now. Pete Hegseth is not looking good, and Matt Gaetz obviously didn't look good. So by the time Trump gets to his administration beginning, he will have made some foolish appointments that will have been cashiered, and note my use of the phrase cash in cashiered. We can discuss that in a minute. We are living through the opposite of a constitutional crisis right now, with the.
- [06:31]
Matthew Continetti
Exception of a sitting current president who keeps wandering off stage whenever he goes on a foreign trip. And no one seems to know who's running the country in his absence. It's not the vice president. So there's that. I mean, if you think that's a constitutional cris, which obviously the Democratic Party hasn't for four years, so why start now?
- [06:47]
John Podhoretz
There was a photograph on the day of the pardon of Jill Biden sitting at the Resolute desk reading papers and, like, looking like she was signing them.
- [07:00]
Abe Greenwald
Well, she's on her farewell tour right now.
- [07:02]
Matthew Continetti
Yes.
- [07:02]
Abe Greenwald
She just was visiting her ancestral home in Italy, and she's making a couple of other stops in Europe before ending up in Paris for the reopening of Notre Dame, where she will be joined.
- [07:16]
John Podhoretz
Of course, by the actual President of the United States, Donald Trump, who is President of the United States now, even though he won't be sworn in for another five weeks or six weeks.
- [07:28]
Abe Greenwald
It's not really a constitutional crisis. It's more like confusion, a little bit confused, but people seemed happy with it.
- [07:36]
John Podhoretz
I just think, first of all, Jill Biden shouldn't be sitting at the president's desk. She's his wife. She has no constitutional authority. The first lady is not a position that exists.
- [07:47]
Abe Greenwald
She had a Marine Corps band composed music to greet her, a version of the Hail to the Chief four for her.
- [07:56]
John Podhoretz
Yeah, it's a bad. It's bad, though. I think they deliberately made it bad. It's like no one is ever gonna play that after January 21st. The Melania will be interested in that. Yeah, Hail to the Chieftress is being. Ru. Is being retired. Yeah, it's like the. You know, it's like one of those things when you. If you turn on American Top 40 on Sirius XM on Sunday morning, and they play you the American top 40 from 1979, and you. And you are unfortunate enough to hit on it right at the beginning. So you're at, like, numbers 40 to 31, and you hear all the songs that didn't become hits but sort of charted for a minute. That's what the Jill Biden Hail to the Chief dress song is. Anyway. What I mean by us having no consensual crisis is we are moving along just fine. And if those people at the Atlantic and the Bulwark and everything would just, like, take some meds or keep their powder dry for what will inevitably be controversies, difficulties, confusions, and reasons to oppose Trump in his second term, they would retain credibility that they are losing second by second by second by being, you know, Chicken Little.
- [09:14]
Christine Rosen
Right.
- [09:15]
Seth Mandel
I had a friend growing up when we used to play basketball on the. At the park, and my good friend Went through a phase where he. Whenever he was called for a foul, he would say, oh, you want a foul? Also, I'll give you a foul. Learn that. And every time, then he would foul somebody harder. Every time he got called for foul, that was his. His way of not getting called for foul. That's what people are doing here. I feel like Trump is Trump. You want to see a Trump foul? You're going to get a Trump foul. I promise you. Don't call foul on whatever he's doing now during the transition. I promise you, when he becomes president, you will see a real foul. You'll get your chance to see a real foul. Maybe don't call it yet.
- [10:01]
Abe Greenwald
Can we back up and talk a little bit about these crises overseas? Because I think people are interested in particular in the South Korea, what happened there. It was a very fast coup. It was a speedy coup. The President Yoon gave this speech late Tuesday night where he said he was declaring martial law because the parliament was transgent and filled with communist sympathizers. And then by the dawn, basically, he had backtracked and rescinded his order. And I think that's actually a testament to the strength of South Korean democracy. The parliament met after the declaration and unanimously voted against it. And the chairman of Yoon's party also came out against it. And so this actually is, to me, kind of inspiring because it means here in South Korea, you know, almost 40 years after the transition from autocracy to democracy, there democracy has taken roots so that he was not allowed to. He can do this, but it didn't last. I mean, he had to back down. And as you say, he's now going to be impeached. I will say, though, this has put the Biden administration in a difficult position because President Yoon, from an American's perspective, has actually been pretty solid. He is an opponent of the North. He has worked to improve the bilateral relationship with Japan. And he's in a situation, too, where North Korea is increasingly belligerent and mysterious. So North Korea has changed the terms of the truce with the south and now classifies the south as an enemy state. That ought to be destroyed, of course, is deploying troops to Ukraine. It has been sending these garbage umbrellas over the border. There have been weird construction projects going on in the DMZ that has led to some shelling from the south into the North. The peninsula seems like a very dangerous place, more dangerous than usual right now. And to have Yoon take this gamble out of nowhere and to see it backfire with his possible removal only Makes the situation more unstable.
- [12:54]
John Podhoretz
It's a very important point that South Korea is a young democracy, by which I mean it's less than four decades old. I remember watching, I think, in 1982, when, during a crisis before this, Pat Schroeder, who was a congressman from Colorado, and I don't remember what her position was. She might have been chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee or I don't remember why she had taken this trip there and Nightline was with her. And she came off a. A Jetway, and the country of South Korea was so martially hepped up that it manhandled her on the Jetway and grabbed her to sort of pat her down. And she said, what are you doing? Let me go. You let me go. This was a nom. It was still an ally of the United States, as we, of course, had 38,000 soldiers in South Korea and one of its only friends. And the regime so didn't know how to behave, or its military so didn't know how to behave, that it was. Not only was it doing this to a, you know, a duly elected American politician, but to a woman, no less. The learning curve has been very steep. And this is a weird throwback to something. And as you say, I think maybe Yun has been unnerved to the point of instability by what the north has been doing and discerns collaboration in the south that he thought, I think it was necessary to make moves on.
- [14:47]
Christine Rosen
But I also think it's probably something of a byproduct of just the international sense of upheaval, political polarization, which is enormous there and everywhere, populist movements, resistance movements, and these. There have not been crises everywhere over the past few years. But since COVID we've seen convulsions of one sort or another in all. All sorts of governments and regimes. You know, in. In whether it's Israel prior to October 7th or Australia or Canada, there's. There are these. It's these strong forces of political polarization and sort of the resort to emergency tactics. I think that's a piece of this.
- [15:47]
Abe Greenwald
Well, that's.
- [15:48]
Seth Mandel
To which we might add America's absence also from. In some ways, I think, you know, this is. It's hard to prove a negative, but I think we can't ignore the anxiety that builds overseas. Matt. Matt mentioned how difficult the South Korea's neighborhood is becoming. You know, we can talk about China also sort of ramping up its provocations in the area. And I think that we can underestimate the anxiety that pervades when America appears to be either momentarily headless or asleep or distracted or something like that, too. Well, they need to take action themselves.
- [16:26]
Abe Greenwald
What Abe is saying about polarization is absolutely the case in France. The other story that's dominating the international headlines, you know, the situation there is very interesting. Earlier this year, of course, national populist parties did very well in European parliamentary elections. That scared French President Emmanuel Macron into calling a snap election, thinking that a snap parliamentary election would strengthen his position. That backfired. And in fact, in the French parliamentary elections, you had this very unusual result where the two extremes did rather well and Macron's party, its latest name I forget, but had, was weakened. And so this created a deadlock situation where you had the parliament basically dominated by France unbowed, which is the ultra left coalition, as well as Marine Le Pen's party, the National Populists. And Macron was forced into appointing this kind of technocrat, Barnier, who is the current prime minister. And that's been the case now for about, really only a few months.
- [17:48]
John Podhoretz
Three months, yeah.
- [17:49]
Abe Greenwald
Three months leading to this situation where they pass the budget through these extraordinary measures the French Constitution has, where you can pass budgets without actually having a vote on it. The key was that Le Pen had been kind of on the government side with this budget while the left was uproarious, because this budget keeps the early retirement age at the elevated level that Macron had placed it, whereas the left wants to lower it again to age 62. But Le Pen switched, and I thinking, I think that she could weaken Macron. She joined with the left. And so these two parties now are going to call for the no confidence in the Prime Minister collapsing the government. A very, you know, a very unusual move. Right before the reopening of Notre Dame in the midst of economic uncertainty in the Eurozone, where the European economies have just been underperforming greatly. And then, of course, amidst the background of the Ukraine war, where the west seems to be uncertain and in disarray while Russia continues to press forward at great cost to itself, but still slowly advancing.
- [19:26]
John Podhoretz
I should make. I want to make a quick correction. The person who was the subject of the scene that I saw in Nightline was not Pat Schroeder, but rather former American diplomat Pat Darien, who was actually a very incendiary figure in the Carter administration as a human rights envoy, who seemed to only find human rights problems and countries that she deemed right wing and was a kind of clownish figure. Doesn't mean that she should have been manhandled on A jetway by South Korean goons. And that point still stands. I think the point is that these parties of the left and the right in France are tanking the premiership and leaving Macron with almost no options. That's why I say it's a constitutional crisis of a kind. Because the way the French constitution is written, he can't call another election for another year. So how on earth he is going to find a prime Minister who can pass muster is very unclear. And therefore the government will be in some extraordinary caretaker moment in which it can make no policy. So getting back to the larger point, you know, a country works just fine. The United States of America is working just fine. You know where else isn't working so well? Britain. You know how I know that? So Keir Starmer, Prime Minister of Britain, won the most lopsided election in British history. Got 419 seats in the last election, though not a huge plurality of actual voters. I think he got 36% or something. But they were distributed perfectly for him to get 419 seats and to reduce the Conservative Party to ashes, except now he's polling at like 25%. This is a danger to us. And by us, I don't just mean America, but I mean world Jewry. Because as Stephen Pollard wrote in Commentary in a couple of months ago, where stormers bait, where the Labor Party's base now exists, is within the Muslim communities in Britain. And as the parties hold on the voters who went from Tory to Labor weakens. He will have to stand on his platform, and that platform is Muslim. And the behavior, the increasingly outrageous, dangerous, horrifying behavior that this community is displaying toward Britain's 450,000 Jews is really nothing short of terrifying and is designed really to create a mass migration. I don't know how else to look at it. They are, they are trying to convince British Jews to leave Britain and the.
- [22:38]
Abe Greenwald
Same in Amsterdam as well. But you know, I will say the connecting thread between the France story and what you just outlined in the United Kingdom is national populism, right? I mean, why did the Tories do so bad? Well, it's because Nigel Farage and Reform Reform broke apart. So splitting the Conservative vote in the UK and allowing labor to rack up this big parliamentary majority, even though its actual vote total was not that extraordinary. So, and here again in France, right, the fact of national populism creating fissures in the French, right, where the old Conservative Party is basically nothing now, the creating the phenomenon of Macron, but Macron is in, it seems to me, this rear guard defensive action continually to prevent Marine Le Pen and Jordan Bardella, her younger kind of protege, but sometimes they have falling out from taking power. So what's the difference between us and them? Well, it seems that the United States is much better in integrating these populist movements into our two party duopoly because of our first past the post system, because of the Electoral College, because of the structure of the Constitution, than these other parliamentary proportional representation democracies. I think this is a point where we should be happy about our Constitution and happy about the Electoral College and the two party system. Because what happens? Well, we have national populism arise in the United States after the financial crisis and the Bush presidency. And it is, I mean not seamlessly, but it becomes integrated within the Republican Party and on the extreme left. Rather than AOC and Bernie Sanders being able to form their own party and cause all these shenanigans, they have to be incorporated, you know, more or less within the Democrats. So it's actually another testament to the stability of American democracy. Now, you know, having just gone through another peaceful regular election and awaiting the incoming past president to return, my wife.
- [25:03]
Unknown Speaker
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- [27:23]
John Podhoretz
You know, Abe, people said throughout the election, we said, everybody said it's like this, this is what you get. This is 330 million people. These are the two people, or has it turned out three people that you were going to get to choose from.
- [27:39]
Christine Rosen
Like also, also a minor constitutional crisis.
- [27:43]
John Podhoretz
Fair enough.
- [27:44]
Christine Rosen
Yeah.
- [27:44]
John Podhoretz
Okay. But we got through that too.
- [27:46]
Abe Greenwald
Yeah.
- [27:47]
John Podhoretz
Because the voters said, sorry, but we're living through one. Now. You could say, given the fact that we have a non compos mentis president, Jill Biden sitting at the Resolute desk and Kamala Harris at the bottom of a Mai Tai in Hawaii. But you know, we, it turns out that, yeah, so these, these are the choices you get. And we're going to get through it. Like, we're going to get through it. Trump will be president. Some people will be happy, some people will be really unhappy. Doubtless, as Matt said the other day, if the Democrats take the House in 2026 or even before, given that there's like a two seat House majority, they're going to impeach Trump somehow, some way that'll happen. And then in 2028, there'll be another election. And you know what will happen? There'll be another president. Well, I'm going on. And then aoc, as Matt says, AOC isn't obliged to form a new party. She'll run for president of the party.
- [29:00]
Christine Rosen
I'm thinking about Matt's point because I think it's so brilliant and it's deep, but there's trade offs for everything. So yes, in some sense, excuse me, we can avoid the kind of crises that other parliamentary systems have. And but the fact that our system absorbs populists and extremists of various sorts, it's also kind of a poison pill because it mainstreams them to Some degree. Right. It can change the face and the shape of moderate politics, of what was moderate politics.
- [29:45]
John Podhoretz
But you know, here's what happened in.
- [29:47]
Seth Mandel
Sorry, that's what happened in Britain with Corbyn. Right. The party with the Corbyn hates Labor, had tried to assuage their revolt against the establishment by bringing them into the tent and trying to give them some position within the party and you know, really sort of merging them with the mainstream. And then of course, Corbyn became the leader of the party and we saw what happened. So there is a concern. Yes, that you can hug, you can hug the radicals too closely and they end up at the podium.
- [30:23]
John Podhoretz
Well, so if you look at America as a colossal marketing experiment and these parties as the two major marketing tools for American politics, what's important is you say, okay, we're going to try to bring these people in and then they're going to be essentially seduced and corrupted by their proximity to power and money and mainstreamism. That's sort of the idea behind bringing in the counterculture into the capitalist mainstream. Right. It's like, you know what all this horrible rock music we hate so much. You know what, maybe we can make a lot of money selling it. And then, you know, within 30 years all of these people who wanted to blow, you know, you're going to play fight the power, you're going to be public enemy player that's going to be on a car commercial. F the police is going to be on a car commercial.
- [31:26]
Matthew Continetti
But in politics, something else sometimes happens in that attempt to corrupt the. You could either say revolutionary idealists or whatever you want to call them, zealots on either side. And that's that they then push the party much further toward. They bring the party towards them a few steps each time. And I think what that means for a healthy two party system is that you do sometimes need moderate leadership that can form these coalitions in election and put someone up. Joe Biden was this person, not the first time around, and squelch that extremist. Now the Democratic Party though is having this real soul searching moment about the culture war issues. And that's the second part. I think a lot of that in terms of the health of our two party system compared to a parliamentary system worked in part because a lot of our disagreements in a more religious, less secular age were solved outside of politics. But in an increasingly secular society, our culture wars are our politics. And that does sort of make it a little harder to come to any sort of resolution or agreement with people for whom we have Serious disagreements. The trans issue for the Democrats being the one that's obviously front and center recently.
- [32:43]
John Podhoretz
Well, we should move on to that because there is an oral argument today in the Supreme Court on this bill in Tennessee or this law in Tennessee that restricts the use of, I don't even want to call it gender affirming care because I consider a gender destroying evil. So I don't, I don't even know what term to use. Trans propagandistic care, something like that, that. The Tennessee trans procedures. Trans procedures.
- [33:16]
Matthew Continetti
It's the sterilization and hormone treatment of children. Children sterilizing and treating with hormones. Children. That's what it is.
- [33:24]
John Podhoretz
So the case has been brought before the Supreme Court. The claim that is being made by the pro trans side is that every treatment that is used in this kind of care is treatment that has been authorized for use by, I guess, the fda. So you use a puberty blocker. Puberty blockers have been authorized for treatment by the use testosterone treatments. They have been authorized, I guess in the most extreme case, the right to dismember yourself has been approved as a legal procedure by the FDA or whoever approves such procedures. You know, the Eugenics and Monster Panel of Ethics of the Monsters of American Medical Ethics panel. And so therefore, if they've been approved, they've been approved.
- [34:32]
Abe Greenwald
Right. And well, they've been approved for use by biologicals.
- [34:37]
Christine Rosen
Sex.
- [34:38]
Abe Greenwald
So for example, if you are a biological male, who, if you're a male and you experience puberty early, doctors have prescribed puberty blockers in order to deal with this developmental issue. What the.
- [34:56]
John Podhoretz
And women, girls too, who often, if they have very early onset menses, for example, testosterone boost.
- [35:07]
Abe Greenwald
Right. If you're a male, then this is. Doctors are able to prescribe it for you. What the ACLU and the government of the United States of America is arguing before the Supreme Court today is that those treatments therefore should be available to women in order to change their gender, even though they've traditionally they've been prescribed to and conversely available to men to change their gender even though they've been traditionally prescribed for the sex. For the sex to treat conditions regarding sex. And so the implicit assumption of the government's case and the ACL's use case is that there's no such thing as biological sex. And so therefore it violates equal protection in order to say, well, you can use this to treat a developmental issue stemming from your sex, but not in order to change your sex if you are a minor.
- [36:10]
John Podhoretz
Right.
- [36:11]
Abe Greenwald
And so this is an equal protection claim. And it strikes me as a ludicrous one. But I do think there's a question about where the Supreme Court, in particular, Justice Gorsuch, will go. Because in the Bostock decision of 2020, Judge Gorsuch, Justice Gorsuch, as is his want, opened up a big door when he said that the government cannot. Government must use gender identity as a protected class.
- [36:41]
Matthew Continetti
You could not be fired for being. Yes.
- [36:43]
Abe Greenwald
Yeah. You can't be fired for being transgender.
- [36:45]
Christine Rosen
Right.
- [36:45]
Matthew Continetti
And two things on this. One is that this case might be different because of issues of consent and ability to consent if you are underage, if you're a child, the medical profession has rules to that effect in terms of whether a child can consent to treatments. And, I mean, there are huge ethical issues here. But we should spend a minute thinking about the last couple of years of this administration and its incredibly radical approach to sex and gender and trans issues, because there's another case in Texas, state case, where the Department of Federal case, but in Texas, where Biden's Department of Justice is prosecuting a doctor, a young surgeon, who blew the whistle on procedures being performed on children that had been banned in their hospital. Children's hospital, but were happening anyway. He blew the whistle, and he's being prosecuted for violating patient privacy. And this is a perfect example of what this Department of Justice under Biden, when it comes to trans issues, how it treats people who are on the other side of this issue. And they are. They. There's been a gag order now placed on this guy. He's, you know, going to be millions of dollars in debt trying to fight this case. All he did was point out that his hospital was breaking its own rules and procedures and harming children, and this Justice Department is going after him full steam ahead. So this is a. This is one of those areas where while we. We hear about, you know, the Democratic Party is, you know, thinking through whether it was too radical on trans issues in the last election, and should we moderate our tone when it comes down to it? The court's being asked the same question voters had in their minds when they voted on this issue, which is, do you believe that biological sex is real or do you believe that you can change it? That is the fundamental question. And the court, which now has a justice that wouldn't answer the question of what is a woman during her confirmation hearings because she claimed she wasn't a biologist. This will be a very interesting case to watch.
- [38:39]
John Podhoretz
There is another point that could be radically libertarian in a way that I think should terrify everybody. Which is that the way we handle medications and trials for medications and the approval of medications is. And anybody who has a teenager knows this about various things you are allowed to do X, Y and Z. Above the age of 18, under the age of 18, there are vast numbers of medications that are not approved for use because the research, and remember, most of these drugs go through research of an astounding, costly sort, hundreds of millions of dollars to make sure that the drugs that are approved do not have toxic effects, unseen toxic effects on other parts once you treat this part or that part or the other part, but what they cannot really measure because you can't do trials on children for obvious reasons, unless they're really terminal or something like that. They cannot explain what happens in terms of a child's development because children grow and their bodies change and their hormone systems grow and alter them. Should you say that a drug that has been approved for use in an adult should be approved for use in children because it was approved for use in adults? And the claim here, of course, is that it was approved for use in children, but was approved for use in children in, as Matt said, a very specific way, which is to. Which is to enhance or make easier or make more healing the process of that development from boy to man or girl to woman. But if you're saying, well, we said it was okay for them to be used for this, now they can be used for that. Well, and this, there's no limiting principle to that idea.
- [41:07]
Matthew Continetti
Well, and this is why Abigail Schreier's excellent book was titled Irreversible Damage. Because we do know rates of regret about some of these both hormonal and surgical transitions. We do know that a lot of people want to go back to what their biological sex is. I refuse to say male or female assigned at birth. I refuse to use that sort of Orwellian language. But these children are being asked to consent to something for which they might later change their minds. And if they change their minds, there is nothing that can be done for them. They will be permanently harmed. And that's what the court must consider. And there are amicus briefs that outline that.
- [41:44]
Abe Greenwald
And we should say too, you know, and our viewers and listeners are probably already aware, but it's not just Tennessee who has a law like this. There are 25 states that have laws like this. And if the Supreme Court were defined by a 5 to 4 vote that there is a constant. Parents have the constitutional right under the 14th amendment to trans their children. That means that all 25 state statutes would be Knocked down if this would be the equivalent of Roe v. Wade, except for trans. And why the court would want to get into this thicket after spending so much time reversing and correcting the judicial activism and judge made law of the 1970s. It was beyond me. And so I'll be paying attention to the oral arguments today to see whether you have five justices, maybe even six justices. We don't know how Gorsuch will view this issue in light of the minor aspect, as Christine points out. But it just seems to me that to be an opportunity for judicial overreach in a radical cultural direction, which this current court was composed to be against. And especially considering the election result where the culture clearly has decided that this issue, this trans issue, has gone too far. And so that the most effective ad in the election was the Kamala is for they them, Trump is for you ad. And then within hours of Nancy Mace and Marjorie Taylor Greene calling for women only bathrooms, in light of the first trans Congress person elected from Delaware, the Democrats back down. So I think this is once again the radical cultural element in this country is looking to the courts to impose something that they cannot achieve through the legislative process. And it would be a huge, huge act of judicial overreach.
- [43:55]
John Podhoretz
Well, not only the court were to.
- [43:57]
Abe Greenwald
Side with the ACLU and the government here.
- [43:59]
Christine Rosen
You know, to some extent. I think the problem here though is that the horse is out of the barn in that so called gender affirming care. Medical intervention in gender affirming care is legal at all. As long as that stands, there's going to be these cases, there's going to be these reaches for more and more. That's, that's the legal issue that.
- [44:33]
Matthew Continetti
But this is about the constitutional question. And this is why, you know, I have my weird conspiracy theory about why we should actually have the ERA passed if you're conservative. Because it will force the word to the court to define what a woman is. Right. And they the word woman doesn't appear in the Constitution. And many of these cases revolve around definitions. Even the phrase gender affirming care. No, gender is a biological. Sex is a biological reality. Gender is a cultural construct. And the court is being asked to mesh and merge those in the way that, as Abe says, a lot of our culture has already sort of come to terms with, but not with children. That I think is what is so crucial about this case and also about the whistleblower case in Texas. But they have to, in some ways they're going to be asked to define biological sex. Right? What is biological sex? Because there are two arguments about it before the court.
- [45:22]
John Podhoretz
Chase Strange, who is the lawyer who is going to argue the case on behalf of the ACLU in the Supreme Court, a transgender person. And I can't remember in which direction. So female to male, again, I don't care. I really don't care. Female to male, maybe, maybe go the other way in five years. You know, people convert. Like they convert to Islam and then they convert to Christianity. I don't know. Anyway, has argued on television that a child as young as two knows that that child was born in the wrong body. This is the view. This is a psychotic opinion. A boy who says he wants to wear the moana dress is not saying that he wants to be a girl. A girl who like, likes pants is not saying she wants to be a boy. This is not a construct in their heads. Now I don't believe this is a construct in anybody's head at any time. It is a matter of choice or theory. It goes against every theory that we were instructed to believe over the last 40 years about homosexuality, which is to say that these are things that are true at birth through or, you know, they're born this way. It's not a matter of choice.
- [46:56]
Seth Mandel
Well, see, that's actually, I mean, that's actually what I, this reminds me of, which is that it's, it's very easy to see the echoes of conversion therapy and the conversion therapy debate in this, except reversed, right. Young people say, you know, a boy likes putting a bow in his hair or whatever, and it immediately the option is to convert to, you know, convert them to a new gender, to convert them physically to match the gender identity that you think is in their head. But the reason the discussion on homosexuality brought this up is because it sort of erases homosexuality in a, in a weird way. And you've heard, you know, we've heard gay authors, Andrew Sullivan and others talk about this, which is that there's no longer you're gay, it's you were born in the wrong body and we have to surgically alter you. You know, so it's like, is there. There's no such thing as a woman, there's no such thing as being gay, there's only gender. And that sort of thing has changed from, you know, don't force children, don't convince them that there's something wrong with them to incentivize treating children like there's something wrong with them.
- [48:22]
John Podhoretz
Those of us who have children, four of us here have children, you know, a three year old Tells you that they're an elephant. You know, they're not an elephant. I mean, this is a reductio ad absurdum, but it actually isn't. Children live in a world that is half fantasy and half real. It's part of how they make sense out of the world. It's part of how they learn dividing lines between the real and the dream and the what is actual and what is not. And we are now in the business of legislating that. A literally infantile state of consciousness that says that. Not just infantile. I mean, there are religions that sort of. That delve into this. Obviously, Hinduism does to some degree, the idea that you are a soul detached from a body and that your soul can, in the course of eternity, migrate into any form. So I shouldn't, you know, belittle it that much, but, you know, this is a very real thing that we are about to, you know, people want to enshrine into law is an understanding of human nature as mutable that has consequences we cannot even begin to start imagining two generations hence.
- [49:56]
Matthew Continetti
Well, it also. There's a really deep irony to the movement itself, which I think Seth is correctly pointing to, and that's that it actually narrows the range of choices. So instead of broadening people's ability to live, I'm talking only about adults here, because children should. I agree with John. Children should not be subjected to this. But in terms of how you want to live your life, the range in terms of the gender spectrum is narrowing precipitously because the trans activists are insisting it does. Look what they did to the LGBTQ flag. They literally put a big old arrow through it, and it prevents. Look, I'm a very proud member of the former tomboy club. If I was growing up now with my tomboy tendencies, the short hair and the crazy skateboarding and all the stuff I love to do, and I was in a certain socioeconomic environment where that was a popular thing. They would say, I was a boy. I see this with some of my children's friends, given the sort of cultural and political leanings of the parents. And so. And they're. And many of our institutions are supporting this. Schools are supporting this. There's, you know, the cultural industry is supporting this in a way that makes it very difficult to argue against. And it does require brave people like this Texas doctor who's a. Who's a whistleblower, and conservatives standing up and saying, no, no, sex is real. Biological sex is real. And people who do that, like Carol Hooven at Harvard, get ostracized from their profession for saying it. But it has to be said. It must be said.
- [51:24]
Seth Mandel
And maybe by the way, Carol Markowitz, our friend Carol Markowitz likes to say men still get to be men. Yeah, it's deep. It's always this whole thing is about women and how, how vague, how vaguely defined a woman is. But you know, it ends up being a kind of misogynist it is thing, as you say, because as Carol likes to say, everybody still lets men be men. It's just women who get changed into, who get filed around into different.
- [51:59]
Matthew Continetti
Radical lesbians were the canaries in the coal mine of this movement. They identified early on the deep strain of misogyny in the, in the extreme trans activist movement and they tried to warn everyone.
- [52:11]
John Podhoretz
Fair enough. Okay. I guess I'm going to now lighten the mood. Although should we spend three minutes on Pete Hegseth? Pete Hegseth, the Secretary of Defense nominee.
- [52:24]
Matthew Continetti
That's not going to lighten our mood.
- [52:25]
John Podhoretz
But it's going to lighten my mood.
- [52:27]
Abe Greenwald
He says that he's fighting for it. John, it just came over the wires here. He said that he talked to Trump this morning. Trump told him to keep fighting. And so he had the interview with Fox and friends with his mother. And he may have another interview today, but Pete Hagseth says that he's going to continue fighting to be the confirmed as Secretary of Defense despite the bad media that is dogging him for the past week.
- [52:56]
John Podhoretz
Okay, so that means he'll be gone by Friday. I. Let me just say this. One of the hits on him is disgusting and I'm glad he went on TV with his mother. The New York Times piece surfacing an enraged email from his mother about the divorce that he was going through six or seven years ago and saying, you're bad toward women and I'm ashamed of you. Publishing that was an act of infamy. It was disgusting. It's what happens when editors stop working and people stop understanding what is and what is not appropriate. Internal family expressions of pain are not for public consumption. And if that were the reason that he were going to go down, I think that would be very sad. I don't think that's why he'll go down. I think he'll go down because the Senate will make it clear to Trump by Friday that he's not confirmable. We already have names being floated now, Ron DeSantis, of course, a decorated veteran, being floated. Don't know why he wanted to do it, actually. I don't know why he want to leave his governorship two years early. There are other people. Mac Haggerty.
- [54:21]
Christine Rosen
Michael Colby.
- [54:22]
Matthew Continetti
Joni Ernst has even been.
- [54:24]
John Podhoretz
Well, let's, let's, let, let's. Joni Ernst, right. Yeah.
- [54:27]
Seth Mandel
Joni Ernst is, is one of the people who would decide fate and seems to have indicated her, you know, I, I'm, I'm willing to step in in his place.
- [54:43]
John Podhoretz
The idea that Bridge Colby, who has no business publishing anything longer than a thousand word op ed of uncommon stupidity, would be actually a Secretary of Defense candidate would be a little like making me a candidate for the Archbishop of Canterbury in my view. But okay, he can have his moment there. From the Quincy Institute of selling out the United States. Congratulations to all who love Bridge Colby. The man who says that we need to husband all of our resources for the coming fight with China against Taiwan and then when asked if we should defend Taiwan if China invades Taiwan says no. So that should give you an idea of his brilliance and depth of sophistication in his discussions of foreign policy.
- [55:38]
Abe Greenwald
Sounds to me like you're making the argument for Pete Hegseth to be Secretary of Defense.
- [55:43]
John Podhoretz
Look, I already said from what I can tell, he would be fine with me, even though I'm sure there are a thousand people who would be better at it. Trump can pick him if he wants him. The Senate really may not want him because of his.
- [56:00]
Matthew Continetti
Even subdued, terrible, cold, bronchial John has that vim and vigor of like going after Colby.
- [56:08]
John Podhoretz
Well, you mentioned Bridge Colby to me and I just can't help myself. I'm sorry.
- [56:14]
Seth Mandel
You don't need Robitussin. You need isolationism.
- [56:18]
Abe Greenwald
Hagseth has some supporters, the conservative wing of the Republicans in the Senate have come out and said that they are for him. But the real issue is there are a lot of senators there in kind of the middle of the conference who have not come out. And Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina said that he was deeply troubled by some of the reporting about Hags has passed. And you know, for Graham to say that, I think should ring alarm bells in the Hegseth camp because Graham, of course is always concerned about getting right with Trump.
- [57:00]
John Podhoretz
And so. Well, that's why, that's why I say.
- [57:02]
Abe Greenwald
That without having had some conversation with Trump.
- [57:05]
John Podhoretz
I think when I saw, when I saw Graham said that yesterday, that's when I said this, this nomination. But he's all that dead.
- [57:12]
Christine Rosen
He's got problems, by the way. I'm fine with them too. But he's got problems, I think of a less scandalous nature too. I know, he says he's fighting, but I saw footage of him yesterday making rounds on Capitol Hill. He didn't look like he was fighting very competently. When he was asked about women in combat roles, he completely dodged the question because he has said in the past he doesn't believe they belong in combat roles. And he was asked about it and he says, we have many wonderful women serving in the US Armed forces and we're very proud of them. Do you believe that they should serve in combat? Walked right on. If you get called for one of these positions, you have to, you have to either stand by what you, what you think or renounce it totally or do something, but you can't. And that will come a little if.
- [58:09]
Abe Greenwald
We get to a hearing that will, that will certainly be one question. Yeah, yeah, that will come up. Including questions about his past, too. And I think one reason why the nomination could be in jeopardy is it's not. The initial police report and the non disclosure agreement that Higseth made with the woman in California in 2017 was not disclosed to the transition team. And so you would kind of feel, I think, betrayed if you're part of the Trump transition to go through with this nomination, say to the president, okay, let's do this. And then all of a sudden this drops right from interested parties and from the media that's hostile to Trump, but nonetheless it's causing him problems. And I think that was kind of the issue here is that not only will have to address some of these policy questions like women in combat, but if he gets to a hearing, he's going to have to deal with a lot of critical comments and stories about his past that so far mainly have been anonymous, some not anonymous, but the senators are going to raise it nonetheless.
- [59:24]
Christine Rosen
Can I make one more point here, Beth is, which is that if you look at the range of names, including heg sets and now the names that are being floated as a possible replacement and the range of types and ideologies and approaches we're talking about here, it's another indication that Trump doesn't care at all about ideology in this position, or a number of them just doesn't care.
- [59:49]
John Podhoretz
Well, we don't know who's floating the names so.
- [59:53]
Abe Greenwald
Well, Desantis I think would be in line with what Trump has been looking for because of course, DeSantis hates woke and DeSantis was also critical of Ukraine support during the primary. So, and he's from Florida, so he fit.
- [60:06]
John Podhoretz
He checks a lot of boxes and he breaks plates.
- [60:09]
Seth Mandel
He, Trump has lost two Florida question.
- [60:14]
Abe Greenwald
But no one would question DeSantis qualifications at all. I mean, no, not at all. And two term governor of Florida, he can definitely take on the Pentagon.
- [60:22]
John Podhoretz
Yeah. And he does face down his opponents and is incredibly tough. So, you know, if you actually want someone to go in and go to go into the trenches in the Pentagon to change things up, he would be a great pick. I don't entirely understand what it would do for him. And that transition from being an executive with his own independent authority to being somebody inside a larger executive organization, that is a tough transition. Like I remember Mel Martinez, the governor of Florida, who became the drug czar after I left the drug czar's office, one of the two jobs I had in government. And he became the drug czar after Bill Bennett was drug czar and he was traveling around with somebody, I think our friend John Walters, who now runs the Hudson Institute. And John said, well, how do you like being drug czar? And Martinez said, I hate this, I hate this job. It's horrible. Like when you're governor and like somebody says there's a pothole, you know, on a street in Tampa, you called somebody in the street department in Tampa and say, put, fix that pothole. And here I have 56 different agencies I'm supposedly overseeing and nobody will do anything I ask them. This is awful. That's actually what it's like to go from being an executive with independent authority to being, you know, admittedly a very powerful person in a very powerful organization.
- [62:02]
Matthew Continetti
But he's term limited and obviously Florida loves him and he has, I assume, still higher national level ambitions. And this could, you could see him understanding this as a stepping stone to 20, 28.
- [62:17]
John Podhoretz
Okay. Anyway, he's the most, that's the most interesting thing that happened was the DeSantis name float, I think, because everybody else, I think we already had on our radar screen and he was not on the radar screen. So the fun, the fun Trump transition, which is the whoa, that came out of nowhere, that he adds that we haven't had one of those and you know, I guess we haven't had one of those since Cash Patel. That was only five days ago or something, six days ago. And I'm already yearning for more. I want, I want more, I want more shocks, I want more fathers in law getting, getting jobs. You know, that, that's more Florida. More Florida, more Rubio.
- [62:58]
Seth Mandel
Rubio was the first one that made us go, oh, wow, this is going to be interesting.
- [63:02]
John Podhoretz
And he lost that Florida DEA guy. And Gates another. And Gates. So we need another Florida person.
- [63:09]
Seth Mandel
That's right.
- [63:09]
John Podhoretz
It's very important. All right, so recommendation from me on Max. I think it's. No, it's on Netflix. Yacht Rock, a documentary with a K, made by Ringer Films, which is Bill Simmons Co. And it is the story of yacht rock, which. Defining what yacht rock is is one of the things that the documentary spends 90 minutes attempting to do. The entire term, it turns out, comes from a series of Internet sketches by a comedy troupe that had named it and made comic videos in which different people in the world of this kind of smooth rock of the 1970s would, like, fight, like wearing wigs, you know, looking like Michael McDonald or looking like Steely Dan or whatever. Immense amounts of time in this documentary are taken up at the question of whether or not Steely Dan qualifies as yacht rock. The idea being that some Steely Dan doesn't. But Aja, the album that made Steely Dan's reputations, considered by many people to be the most perfectly recorded album ever, is the source of all yacht rock. The director gets Donald Fagan on the phone, one of the two guys in Steely Daniel, at the end of the documentary, and says, hey, can I talk to you about yacht rock and your place in yacht rock? And Donald Fagan pauses and says, f you, and hangs up the phone because he thinks that yacht rock is an insulting term. But basically, here are the documentaries. Michael McDonald, the lead singer guy who became the lead singer of the Doobie Brothers. And it's just about how these fabulous, fantastic studio musicians in LA in the 1970s, who could play anything and who knew jazz and who knew rock and who knew blues and who were able to synthesize all of this together on a series of different albums before forming their own groups and invented this sound that 40 years on is just. Or 50 years on is just extraordinarily pleasing.
- [65:34]
Matthew Continetti
Do they spend time on Christopher Cross? That's of course I care about.
- [65:37]
Seth Mandel
Thank you.
- [65:38]
Matthew Continetti
Okay, then I will watch it.
- [65:39]
John Podhoretz
Christopher Cross explains that he wrote Sailing, literally while he was on an acid trip. I like the wind. I'd like to win While he was on an acid trip. Driving.
- [65:53]
Matthew Continetti
Totally.
- [65:55]
Abe Greenwald
Soundtrack of my life.
- [65:56]
Christine Rosen
Now I'm going to do something Excellent radio. I'm going to do something very uncharacteristic and tell a personal story that I have to. Because this. Because you're. You're. The fact that they called Donald Fagan and asked him if Stevie Dan was. Was yacht rock reminds me of this. Over 20 years ago, I was having a conversation with a friend. And for some reason, Chuck Mangione came up. Do we remember Chuck Mangione?
- [66:22]
John Podhoretz
Oh, yeah. I have a story about him too, but I don't know if we can.
- [66:24]
Christine Rosen
Get Feels so good. Yes. Okay. Right. Okay. So my friend was not just.
- [66:33]
Seth Mandel
Not just the personal story, but the music to go along with it.
- [66:36]
Christine Rosen
You got it. So my friend said. Just described him sort of in passing as a jazz musician. I said, I don't. I don't think he's a jazz musician. I don't. There's no way he's jazz musician. I mean, that was like, played in discos. It's. It's like a. It was like a yacht disco, if you will. Okay. And this debate went on and on and on and on. And then somehow my friend obtained Chuck Mangione's phone number. And I called him and I said, do you think that Feels so good is disco? And he didn't. I didn't get quite the Donald Fagan treatment, but something close to it. That's my story.
- [67:21]
John Podhoretz
I have a quick.
- [67:22]
Matthew Continetti
That is an awesome story. I'm sorry, you just cold called Mangione. I love it.
- [67:27]
John Podhoretz
Okay. I will tell my quick Chuck Mangio, and then we'll go for a time in the 90s, I'm embarrassed to say, and proud, and I'm humble, bragging to say that I spent some time at Elaine's, the famous, legendary New York watering hole. Elaine liked me because I worked at the New York Post, and she knew who I was. And my dad had actually been one of the founding drinkers at Elaine's in the 60s. And so I was kind of grandfathered in, and she enjoyed my company. And one of the ways she showed you enjoyed your company was you came in, got a table, Elaine would come sit at your table and hang out with you. One day, Elaine, who was a very large woman with a very gravelly voice, is sitting there and complaining about somebody like Pete Hamill, whom most people don't know. And then she looks over and she goes, oh, no. Oh, my God. Oh, no, no, no, no, no. And Chuck Mangione had come in and sat down. She's like, oh, God, I know he's gonna do it. He's gonna do it, and there's nothing I can do. And I said, what is he gonna do? She said, he's going to play. And I said, is that bad? And she's like, every time. Every time he does this. And so he's literally saying, five minutes later, Chuck Mangione stands up and he takes out his instrument from a case in the middle of this crowded restaurant. And he plays Feels so Good. For, like five minutes. Everything stops. All conversations have to stop. Well, everybody has to listen to Chuck Mangione playing Feel so Good. He's done. There's a smattering of polite applause. He sits down and she says, I gotta ban him. I gotta ban him. This is no good. So that's my Chuck Mangione story. That's how far. That's far afield we have gotten from Yacht Rocket Documentary, an absolutely delightful piece of work on Netflix. So that is my recommendation. And we will be back with you tomorrow. So for Matt, Seth, Christine and Abe, I'm John Podhoritz. Keep the candle bur.