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Abe Greenwald
Hope for the best expect the worst.
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John Podhoretz
Some preach and pay Some die of.
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Abe Greenwald
Thirst the way of knowing which way.
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John Podhoretz
It'S going Hope for the best Expect the worst Hope for the best welcome to the Commentary Magazine daily podcast. Today is Wednesday, January 29, 2025. I am John Pod Horowitz, the editor, Commentary magazine. With me as always, Executive Editor Abe Greenwald. Hi, Abe.
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Matthew Continetti
Hi, John.
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John Podhoretz
Washington. Commentary columnist Matthew Continetti. Hi Matt.
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Abe Greenwald
Hi John.
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John Podhoretz
And senior Editor Seth Mandel. Hi, Seth.
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Seth Mandel
Hi, John. I just want to say, by the way, John, that I. I think it's possible we have a new Commentary Daily podcast listener in Anthony Mackey because he. After yesterday he has clarified to say. Let me be clear about this. I'm a proud American. And taking on the shield of a hero like Captain America is the honor of a lifetime. I have the utmost respect for those who serve and have served our country. Captain America has universal characteristics that people all over the world can relate to. So John gets results maybe?
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John Podhoretz
No, I think actually what happened was that the Disney Corporation had a gigantic meeting, you know, crisis management meeting, wondering how many tens of millions of dollars were just knocked off the. The first weekend gross of Captain America Brave New World. This making reference to Anthony Mackie, the star of Captain America Brave New World, saying that Captain, he did not believe that Captain America should be viewed as representing America because he was about dignity and free fairness and freedom. Then of course, America doesn't represent any of those things. A brilliant marketing ploy, John. By Anthony Mackie.
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Abe Greenwald
I was not on the program yesterday, but I would like to also say that based on the commercials, the movie looks terrible.
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John Podhoretz
So you don't think that Harrison Ford turning into a giant red Hulk monster. He's a.
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Abe Greenwald
He's the CGI. Yes, yes. At the age of eight. What is he, 80? 81?
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John Podhoretz
83.
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Abe Greenwald
Yeah.
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John Podhoretz
It's also the same week that 1923 is coming back.
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Abe Greenwald
I just want to point. Make an observation here, which Is that in my universe, superheroes should just have one thing. Just one thing. You know, Superman can fly. Yes. He has the heat vision, but he flies. Batman has the devices and the cool car. Captain America has his shield. And so I see these commercials. This Captain America has two things. He's got a shield and wings. That's. That's one thing too many.
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John Podhoretz
Just one thing. Before he was Captain America, he was the Falcon.
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Abe Greenwald
Yeah, but nobody cares about that.
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John Podhoretz
And Captain America. Yeah, but he doesn't have the Super Saiyan Soldier serum or whatever that they give to Harrison. Oh, I don't know. Like Captain America, you know, if you remember, is like a fife. Is like five.
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Abe Greenwald
Yes, that was.
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John Podhoretz
And then he gets the Super Soldier serum.
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Abe Greenwald
Yeah, and he turns into Chris Evans.
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John Podhoretz
Yeah, he turns into Chris Evans. Okay, we don't really need to talk about.
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Abe Greenwald
I just wanted to make that more point.
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John Podhoretz
Thank you. Thank you very much. It is interesting, however, because people were emailing me all day to say that this turn in the Captain America story actually originates in the comic books. That in the comic books, which by the way, are entirely separate from the Marvel Cinematic Universe. That is the Marvel. The Marvel Cinematic does not hue to the world of the comic books which take. Are now do limited series. And they take weird, weirdly different twists on different. Different superheroes and what they do that in 2011, Captain America said, I no longer represent America or something like that. I'm sick and tired of the American way. Or something like that. And then apparently Ta Nehisi Coates became the executive editor of the Captain America series and came up with this idea that Sam the Falcon, the black member of the Avengers, should then become Captain America. And then on the Marvel, the Disney plus series, the Falcon and the Winter Soldier, it turned out that they were using African Americans as guinea pigs for the Captain America serum. And that there was a guy living in a hovel in Baltimore with superpowers who had been sidelined and cashiered by the powers that be because he was black and could not therefore be like a Captain America. Very bitter, old and bitter. And what's interesting about that is how do you cashier, somebody who can like, you know, beat anybody up and can break through walls with his fist. I don't really understand and can't really be shot. So I don't understand how they kept him in the hovel in Baltimore in the row house.
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Abe Greenwald
Well, he was depressed, as I understand it.
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John Podhoretz
Yes, he was very depressed.
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Abe Greenwald
The country had broken him, which is the whole point.
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John Podhoretz
Right. This was a black lives Matter. Marvel. Marvel's effort to deal with Black Lives Matter, which was to go and say that, you know, the America that made Captain America was, you know, basically racist and monstrous and did terrible things to black people also. So this is really a wonderful basis on which to create a heroic character who represents, you know, the best best of America. And I guess this. In this movie, Harrison Ford plays the President of the United States, who is the Hulk's father in law, by the way.
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Matthew Continetti
Really, I'm glad we've decided not to talk much more about this.
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John Podhoretz
I'm sorry. Thunderbolt Ross was played by William Hurt in the last movie. A William Hurt. Now, of course, the late William Hurt, who looked like he was 102 years old. Harrison Ford, who was like 83, looks fantastic, by the way, looks amazingly good, but apparently turns into a monster. So America, of course, is the President is a monster.
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Abe Greenwald
Wouldn't it be great, and I don't want to continue with this much further, but wouldn't it be great if they made a Captain America movie where the villains were not the US Government? Every Captain America movie they make, the bad guys are the United States government also.
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John Podhoretz
Again, not to go Jason Bourne, but in the plotline of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Captain America believes that superheroes should be able to write their own rules and be representatives of justice as they see fit. And Iron man says, no, no, no, we've got to abide by the laws and sign these special accords with the UN because otherwise people are going to think that we're monster. We're using our superpowers and lording it over everybody else. And Captain America is the antinomian, in fact, kind of anti American person who says, no, I represent justice, so I should be able to decide what I do with my, my superpowers. Anyway, I'm incredibly embarrassed that I know this much about this. I'm humiliated to have wasted all this time on this.
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Seth Mandel
And then Captain America shuts down.
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John Podhoretz
Therefore, perhaps I should be bought out by Donald Trump, and by which I don't work for federal government. But apparently, if you don't want to hue to the seb five days a week, you have to work in the office rule. Yesterday it was announced that the federal government would buy you out, would pay you till September if you would leave your job. What is interesting about this is it's a very inventive idea about how to, how to reduce a workforce. I mean, layoffs, voluntary laying yourself off because the package is good is something that happens in corporate America all the time, if particularly at, you know, like higher levels of corporate governance. And it just that apparently it's not legal. Like, like there's no, you know, the president can't choose to spend money that hasn't been appropriated. There is no, there is apparently a program where there are certain jobs where you can get laid off or something and get a $25,000 payout. This is obviously something potentially much larger, depending on whether if you're like a, as we say in the civil service, if you're a CS15 or something like that, or an SES1 or 2, you could make as much as 150, $200,000. Nine months of pay would vastly exceed $25,000. And the idea somehow that the government is going to immediately pony up, say 100,000 people decided this buyout, suddenly you're like on. The government is on the hook for, you know, billions of, you know, billion dollars in paying out. Supposedly it'll save all this money. But of course that's only if you don't fill the jobs and you don't get to pick and choose which jobs. That's the whole point about voluntary buyouts. If you're like somebody who actually has a critical job in a critical area, that job will have to be filled and therefore.
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Abe Greenwald
But no one has a critical job in these, in the people who are taking the buyouts in the, in the federal workforce. No, a lot of these jobs are completely make work jobs.
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John Podhoretz
I agree. But there are jobs like, you know, there's like somebody who like watches the uranium, you know, but that's not.
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Abe Greenwald
Obviously not where. Who. The order.
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Seth Mandel
That's Homer Simpson. Isn't that Homer Simpson uranium And the.
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John Podhoretz
But the order. Okay, explain to me how I got this wrong then. Because I understood it was government wide. They sent out.
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Abe Greenwald
It's an offer to the, it's an offer to the federal government. It's an offer to the federal workforce which is massive.
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John Podhoretz
Yes.
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Abe Greenwald
That if they resign by now they get a buyout pay through September 30th. This is often the case now when you make firings or layoffs and companies.
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John Podhoretz
You say, well, I said, yeah, we're.
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Abe Greenwald
Going to give you the, the landing pad. It has been challenged, my understanding, not on the basis of the offer yet. Maybe it will be challenged on the basis of the offer, but on the basis that this email making the announcement went out to 2 million federal employees. So there are, there are federal employees who say that the President can't email the entire federal workforce.
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John Podhoretz
Yeah, I love that. That was, that's not the Only challenge.
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Abe Greenwald
That was that, was there a separate challenge?
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John Podhoretz
Apparently.
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Seth Mandel
But I want to see, but I want to see that challenge.
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John Podhoretz
Email.
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Seth Mandel
Yeah, that's the challenge I want to see carry through. That's the most important part to me because I want to see it go to the Supreme Court over whether the President can email you.
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John Podhoretz
Right. I mean that, that is, that was pretty funny. Now, the two responses were that Tim Kaine, Senator from Virginia. Virginia, of course, I think being the, the state in the union that has the most federal workers who work with, who live in it, said don't, don't agree to this deal because Trump is going to stiff you. He said, I really know how Trump is going to stiff you. I do know that it is dubious that the president. Where is this money coming from?
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Abe Greenwald
Is the point come from the agency's budget?
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John Podhoretz
But. Okay, so hold on, by the way.
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Matthew Continetti
But it's not, it's not comprehensive. The exceptions are military, postal, immigration enforcement and national security.
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John Podhoretz
I love that. Nobody can get out of the post office.
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Matthew Continetti
That's right.
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John Podhoretz
Unless you're shot by a disgruntled co worker, you're at the post office until well after your death. That is one civil service job that you are never going to be allowed to leave. Even though now it takes four days to send a letter in my own zip code. If you send a letter to somebody else in your own zip code and my zip code, it takes good luck to get there. So, so if you're watching the uranium.
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Matthew Continetti
Though, I would think that's national security.
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John Podhoretz
Okay, fair enough. So therefore nobody.
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Abe Greenwald
Okay, I would say that this is it of a piece of a general approach to the federal workforce that we have seen in the first two weeks of the Trump administration that could best be described as hostile. One of his first orders was, you have to go back to work. You have to go back to your office. Remember, the federal employees in Washington D.C. have not returned to the office since the pandemic.
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John Podhoretz
Well, why should they? They have to work in these brutalist buildings. They're really ugly. Well, imagine working at. Every day you walk in, your heart sinks.
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Abe Greenwald
Every policy has it.
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John Podhoretz
You work at the FBI or you work at the hud, Right. You go into this horrible building, this horrible, ugly building. I mean, it's very soul crushing.
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Abe Greenwald
Many, many of them don't do any work anyway. So are you doing the work in the office or outside of it? Who's to know? And I'm not casting aspersions against the federal employees who do do their jobs very well. But moreover, there's been a hiring freeze. So you have back to office hiring freeze. Now we have the buyout offer. We have plans of moving federal workers outside of Washington, D.C. which began during the first Trump administration. And you have the idea of attrition, that when people leave these jobs, in many cases, the Trump administration will not replace them. And you also have this large Trump effect where we've been reading stories even prior to the inauguration of federal employees leaving their jobs because they just couldn't bear the psychic burden of working under President Donald Trump. And I think the net effect of all these policies is going to be a completely transformed federal workforce by the end of Trump's second term, whether he wins every legal fight or not. And it's pretty stunning to behold. And it's also, in a way, justified. I was just looking at the results in the District of Columbia in the 2024 election. Kamala Harris won the District of Columbia 92 to 7%. So the idea that, by the way.
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John Podhoretz
Another place that moved toward Trump because I think.
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Abe Greenwald
Right, yeah. So you got a notch. And then I was also looking at US government political donations. This is from OpenSecrets.org, a great resource. And in the 2024 election cycle, US government employees supported the Democrats over Republicans by a ratio of about 3, 3.5 to 1. So this is Trump draining the swamp as he's promised to do for eight years. And it's finally, I think, having the intended result.
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Seth Mandel
Self draining swamp.
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John Podhoretz
Okay, so the self drinking swamps.
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Seth Mandel
Like self, like self deportment.
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John Podhoretz
Right? Well, we'll have to see deportation. I believe deportment would be a kind of like, bad behavior, but that's right. Self deportation, that too. Okay, here's the thing. I think what's happening is this kind of onslaught about employment in the federal government. And some of it will stick and some of it won't stick. Some of it will. Some of it will pass some kind of muster. And the thing about these executive orders and everything that's happened in the last week is what they're doing is they're saying, here is what. Here is the kind of government and the kind of society, to the extent that the president and his executive branch set rules or guidelines or something for American society writ large. This is the country that we believe that we were elected to try to get us to live in. And a lot of it isn't going to make it through the process. Either Legal challenges or logistical or constitutional challenges will make this impossible. However, some of it will. And the question is, is this a thing where even if 10% of it happens, it's revolutionary. And I think the answer to that is yes. So let's, let's. Let me just point out this other amazing thing that happened yesterday, a remarkable thing, which is the executive order called Protecting Children from Chemical and Surgical Mutilation. So this is an executive order that bans the federal government from paying, I guess from, not only from paying for sex change operations for anyone under the age of 19, but actually bans the surgery to the extent that the federal government can ban the surgery. And that also is not, it's not entirely clear how that would work. But here is the language of section 1, policy and purpose of the Protecting Children from Chemical and Surgical Mutilation Executive Order. Across the country today, medical professionals are maiming and sterilizing a growing number of impressionable children under the radical and false claim that adults can change a child's sex through a series of irreversible medical interventions. This dangerous trend will be a stain on our nation's history and it must end. Countless children soon regret that they have been mutilated and begin to grasp the horrifying tragedy that they will never be able to conceive children of their own or nurture their children through breastfeeding. Moreover, these vulnerable youth's medical bills may rise through their lifetimes as they are often trapped with lifelong medical complications, a losing war with their own bodies and tragically sterilization. Accordingly, it is the policy of the United States that it will not fund, sponsor, promote, assist or support the so called quote, transition unquote of a child from one sex to another. And it will rigorously enforce all laws that prohibit or limit these destructive and life altering procedures. In 2020. In March of 2020, I blurbed a book called Irreversible Damage by my friend Abigail Schreier, a book that was soft banned or banned by Amazon, a book that said that in particular there was an epidemic of gender confusion among teenage girls. And we're just here talking about teenage girls that because of the popularity and the cultural promotion of the idea of gender reassignment and sex change, that there was an epidemic, a psychological epidemic in which teenage girls in particular were following each other down this path to having their bodies, as this order says, mutilated, having, having their breasts cut off, taking hormones that would grow hair, you know, testosterone, all kinds of stuff like that. When I blurbed the book, I was afraid that blurbing the book would get me into a lot of trouble. And indeed, at some point a couple of years later, dealing with a psychologist that a family member of mine was looking to possibly see during the COVID pandemic. Said psychologist effectively said that it would not take on this patient because I had blurred the book and because I was there for. Since I was. This was done sort of implicitly, but since I was such a monster. And this was when you couldn't get shrinks or people to treat anybody who were having troubles during COVID because they were all so busy. So I was right to be nervous about this commentary. Fortunately, because of our structure and who supports us and all that did not. Was not going to cancel me for supporting that book. If I had told you in 2020, when Abigail's book came out, that less than five years later, the president of the United States and the federal government would issue a sweeping executive order banning sex change operations for teenagers, I think you would have thought I was crazy. This seemed to be a path down which all of western civilization, all of Western society was going without limit. And that. And that we were. Those of us who were arguing that this was monstrous were fighting a rear guard action, just trying to support each other and support people who wanted to convince their own kids not to do this to themselves or to give them strength to say to their children, no, we're not going to let you do this. We cannot let you do this.
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Matthew Continetti
You know, reminds me with much more dire consequences of Kamala Harris's campaign in that it was an insta craze with nothing actually behind it. They had to shove it down everyone's throat. And then it turned out that the research, the studies weren't there. In fact, there were studies demonstrating the harms of all this. It was too fast. This was not a real evolving, evolving movement in the way that other sort of, even other social justice causes have been. This turned on a dime because the question of gay marriage was completely off the table and they needed to repurpose immediately, and they came up with this thing and there really was no there there.
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Abe Greenwald
Well, I don't think it's over yet, though. The executive order is a great step in the right direction. I think you're right, Abe. To bring up the campaign, let's remember what the most important ad of the campaign was. The ad that the Trump campaign ran saying that Kamala is for they them, Donald Trump is for us, for you. This played a major role in the campaign, and Trump won. So as Obama said to John McCain in 2009, the election's over, John. I won. And an executive order like this is a consequence of that. I'd also say the reaction from the Democrats is noticeable, too, because when this executive order came out, the Democrats did not all of a sudden protest. Its its aim, which is to end the federal support for gender transition of minors. Right. The some Democrats seized on another executive order which was issued yesterday, which essentially is intended to prevent trans people from serving in the military. There were Democratic legislators who said this is illegal and this is wrong. But I heard crickets about the gender transition for minors, and I think that's revealing because Democrats understand that they are on the wrong side of a 7030 issue here. And just one more point about Abby Shriver and her wonderful book. There's another commonality between this executive order and the DEI executive order last week, because there, too, you see the executive order as the extension of work that was done by two authors, Christopher Ruffo and Richard Hanania, who had written these books that came out during the Biden administration, tracing the and you know, to some extent, our friend Christopher Caldwell's book as well, the Age of Entitlement, which came out in 2020, kind of tracing the growth of the civil rights enforcement mechanisms that were built in order to ensure that equal treatment under the law for American black people, but became this engine of either preferential treatment and also radical indoctrination by the time you got to the more recent era. And so there's a real interesting development here, which was that this set of executive orders, the DEI order and the gender transition for minors order in particular, you can see how the policy pipeline works here in a way that it did not work in Trump 1, because in the intervening years, you had ideas and intellectuals and scholars and authors, right? They come, they're coming out from out of the traditional, not from the traditional academy, but they're writing books and they're thinking about these things. And here Donald Trump is campaigning on them and translating them into action. And I think it's one reason why those two orders in particular are going to be very hard for people to either disagree with or dislodge.
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Seth Mandel
And I think the other, the other connection with dei, by the way, and this goes to the reaction, Matt, that you're talking about, is that and we found this out when Ron DeSantis targeted some of the DEI programs at State schools in Florida, which was that the faculty, especially some of the administration too, but especially the faculty at a lot of these schools, secretly welcomed it. Why? Because they like having the freedom to design their class as they see fit. They're not willing to go against the grain. That's for sure they'll lose their job or whatever or they'll be canceled, you know, and all that. But secretly they would love to be prevented, prohibited from enforcing, enforcing these for, from signing, from signing the sort of vows, the DEI vows and the statements of how you would put, you know, racial preferences into practice and what it means for your life and having to sort of lay out as you begin a semester how you will incorporate these ideals into your teaching. It turned out that people liked freedom, freedom of thought, right? Freedom to do as. And it infringed on academic freedom. When Abigail Shrier's book came out, and especially when John talks about the shadow ban or the soft ban and there were other things like that, it also created a template for a kind of quick ban for things, right? Amazon got in this habit of saying, of responding to the 25 year old workers way down the line that didn't like it by saying they would remove books from searches and things like that. Right. It had, it had accelerated the trend by which companies in corporate America had flipped upside down and, and the higher officers were taking their marching orders from, you know, in some cases, probably summer interns, somebody, somebody's nephew, whatever. It had turned the whole process upside down. It had begun also the sort of quiet book banning because you couldn't get things. I'm not sure that people really understood the full extent of this. You couldn't get things published, you couldn't get book contracts. Right. And a lot of conservatives saw this from the inside, dealing with publishers. They were terrified of these things and especially of the word trans. If you could take the word trans out of the book, then there were things that were changed with regard to online advertising and advertisers. The automatic money for ads that you got to place them on your site. If the, if the, if the article had a tag for trans issues, the, the price that was paid went down.
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John Podhoretz
Right.
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Seth Mandel
And I think a lot of people didn't see these sort of unseen factors. There was this, this suppression that you would never even realize was happening all around you. And Abigail was sort of, in a lot of ways, you know, the canary in the coal mine about that. But it, this, there was a whole system wherein a lot of people wanted much more freedom to discuss these things than they had. No one was willing to fight it on the left. And so you had DeSantis and now Trump almost sort of ride in to save the day and a lot of Democrats are breathing a sigh of relief. I don't know, aren't going to go out the Window.
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John Podhoretz
I don't believe that Democrats are breathing a sigh of relief or liberals are breathing aside.
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Seth Mandel
You don't?
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John Podhoretz
I really don't. I do believe I know a lot of people who, for whom trans was a bridge too far right. They really so. Okay, fine. Congratulations. I'm really happy that you, in the privacy of your own home or at a Shabbat dinner with me, you say this is really very disturbing. And then if you work in an organization that is promoting this, if you're a doctor at a hospital that's promoting this, you do absolutely nothing whatsoever to stick your neck out to do anything so secretly, privately maybe. And one of the reasons you do that is that you, you know that you are in the minority in your world. This has become a, this has become pseudo religious doctrine. There are no genders. People could choose anything, you know, oh, you better help this 15 year old girl who has gender dysphoria because she may commit suicide. When we start getting data out of Britain and other places that in fact the suicide threat is real after the surgery, that's that.
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Matthew Continetti
Ok, I just say why. I also agree that I don't think Democrats or liberals or anyone, anyone who's not somewhere on the right is breathing a sigh of relief here. I think the, the western tide is turning and has been turning against trans for a long time. You've seen it in other countries where leading gender reassignment clinics have frozen the process and studies have come out and all the rest of it. And now of course, the, the Trump executive border.
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Seth Mandel
But the cast review is the, the cast review.
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John Podhoretz
The cast review, right. Yeah.
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Matthew Continetti
But what it ultimately means is when, when it's, when we get to the other side of this and, and God willing, where this, this craze is over, all the Democrats, everyone who enabled this is going to be faced with, look what the hell we have done. There is a generation of parents and their kids out there now who, while this may be stopped going forward, their lives have been completely destroyed because of this, because of what was enabled here. And someone's going to have to take responsibility.
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John Podhoretz
I was just going to say someone, though.
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Seth Mandel
Well, that's, that's what I'm not sure.
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John Podhoretz
I don't think that anyone is necessarily going to suffer for this. Having said that, what's important about this executive order is not only that it is so sweeping and that it says what it says, but that it says it unambiguously. It has been the way, it has been the way of the Republicans seeking general consensus in America to apologize for their social views. Often it's like, we understand, you know, this is very tragic. You know, we want, of course we have to have compassion and sympathy and all of that. And one of the things that the DI orders and this do and it's, it's, it's a new voice, it's not a new voice on for the right or for like us, for neocons on things like foreign policy where we said something like, oh yeah, you want daytime with the Soviet Union. They're evil, they're evil. I'm sorry, we don't do business with evildoers. You're going to be really sorry if you think that we're going to get a good political advantage by having detent with the Soviet Union, by making Oslo with, with the Palestinians who are, who represent a death cult or, you know, like, like stretching out our hand in, you know, in conflict resolution. Like this was, this was very much a tone on the right in relation to foreign policy. But on a lot of these matters it was all this, don't be mean, people are suffering. All this, all that. This puts this, turns this totally inside out. This says we are mutilating children and we are going to stop. What is going on here is, is morally monstrous. And in affirmative action and dei, we are indoctrinating Americans. We are teaching them untruths about the United States, about its history, about where it's going. We are denying people academic freedom and the freedom to speak their own behalf. And we are empowering unelected administrators, particularly in universities, to self perpetuate through hiring practices and things like that in order to infiltrate institutions and advance their doctrines. And this ends now. Again, it doesn't in this case. In this sense, what's important here is that the cavalry has ridden in to battle.
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Abe Greenwald
Sure. Can I.
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John Podhoretz
No. Yeah, go ahead.
- [35:14]
Abe Greenwald
I want to draw a distinction between the force and clarity of the language in the gender EO and the deieo versus the abstract fuzziness of the language in the spending pause eo. And I think that is where the administration gets into trouble because I think the Trump White House would much rather be arguing over gender reassignment surgery for minors or DEI consultants and what they tell people who are forced to listen to them than saying, explaining, no, no, no, we're not pausing direct aid to individuals. And so they were forced into making such explanations as I think the new White House press secretary made very forcefully and explicitly from the White House podium at the press briefing yesterday. But they were forced into that because the language of the spending pause executive Order was not clear and it wasn't as it didn't have the same kind of direction and strength as the others. And so if as we proceed in this four year journey the country is now embarking on, you want to look for where are the instructions? Specific and easily discernible, that's probably where the Trump administration will be more effective. If the instructions are vague and more conceptual, then the Democrats and the resistance will cease on them, just as they did with the spending freeze yesterday.
- [36:58]
John Podhoretz
Okay, we're, we'll, we'll be, we'll be right back in a second. Okay. One other thing that is going on in relation to EOS is apparently today, sometimes the White House will be issuing an executive order relating to anti Semitism. And this again, I think, flips things on its head because what this will do, this will connect anti Semitic actions and hate crimes, particularly on campuses, but not only on campuses, with the immigration policies of the United States. Apparently what this executive order will do is, is create almost a special category of deportation for people who engage in hate crimes relating to anti Semitism. If they are here on student visas, if they are here on.
- [37:50]
Seth Mandel
So this is like the Hamas, Nixon college campuses.
- [37:53]
John Podhoretz
They want to be who are, who are not Americans. Right. I mean, who are. Okay, so, so, and, and again, I think what we have here is an example of a kind of policy creativity that is going on here that we don't know how this will ultimately come down, whether you will be able to get through the courts or whatever. Though immigration's, of course, as we know, because of the national security Act of 1952, the, the executive branch has enormous authority over, over, over immigration at the federal level. Nonetheless, can you throw somebody out for speech as opposed to action and stuff like that? These things will be adjudicated. It's all a question of whether putting these markers down has a transformative effect on the country. And I think here, what we had during not only the first Trump administration because the resistance was so effective, but during the Biden administration and all that, and because of George Floyd and all of that, a world in which the kinds of commonsensical arguments that many Americans who aren't even ideologically aligned with us necessarily do think it's like, no, you're not allowed to commit crimes. You can't burn down a dollar store because you're mad because somebody was some, somebody was killed by a cop in Minneapolis. You're not allowed to burn down a dollar store, period. You're not allowed to go and deny a Jewish student a pathway to get into his class at ucla. You're not allowed to deny anybody ways on a path in a public, on a campus that is owned by the state of California. You're not allowed to do that. And if you do that, you should be punished and you're not being punished. And maybe the way to deal with this is we're not gonna punish you, we're just gonna throw you out of the country, like let you. You don't have the right to be here and then do whatever the hell it is that you want and violate are laws. And this is a big change in thinking that if you go to an ordinary person. Right. What is the, what is the. What is the rule of thumb? There's a whole rule of thumb in law called the reasonable man standard. It's sort of what's at the heart of, of jury selection and things like that, which is that you expect people. Laws are supposed to speak to what most people think is reasonable and what is unreasonable. And excusing away criminality violates the reasonable man standard that is at the heart of common law. And this has been an act that, this has been something that liberals since 2015, as far as we can. This is a whole part of Noah Rothman's big cover story and our Clockwork Blue about the embrace of political violence by the left over the last 25 years. The excusing of things that has that, that, that were understood forever to be wrong. And now we can tie gender stuff into this.
- [41:07]
Abe Greenwald
Because before we do that, can I talk about Israel and the Jews and. Yeah, you know, it's also, can I just say, atrocious manners. If you're a foreign student and you come to a college here on a student visa and you say, you know what, I'm going to spend my time harassing Jews on campus.
- [41:24]
John Podhoretz
Yeah.
- [41:24]
Abe Greenwald
It's a change in mentality that. Okay, well, there will be consequences for that behavior. You're the guest here. You're not. It's not like you're completely this, you know, this monad who comes in and we don't really care what happens to you. You're going to be sent out. But it's also part of, I think, a larger program. And, you know, all of us on this podcast had many debates of varying intensity during the election about which candidate would be better for Israel and for the Jewish people. And I just want to say that this order is good for the Jews, as is the end of the embargo on Israel. Right. We spent a year debating whether there was an arms Embargo on Israel because Karine Jean Pierre and company said, what are you talking about? They're not doing anything. And we find out when Trump gets in office. No, they were holding back stuff and now that stuff is going to Israel. You have to think about what just happened in the Senate over the bill to sanction the International Criminal Court. Now, the president has authority to sanction the ICC on his own, and he has done that. But this new bill would broaden the powers and have the legislative force of the Congress of the United States also sanction ICC for its disgusting and anti Semitic campaign against the state of Israel. Well, unfortunately, the Democrats filibustered it and the show mayor, Senator Schumer was behind it. And so once again, he is failing in his self professed duty to protect the state of Israel by blocking this bill from coming to pass the United States Senate just yesterday in an act.
- [42:57]
John Podhoretz
By the way of like astounding chutzpah. Right. The famous, the famous theory of chutzpah is the, you know, the orphan who kills his parents and then throws himself on the mercy of the court. The kid who kills his parents and then throws himself on the mercy of the court. Cause he's an orphan. In March, Senator Schumer, Chuck Schumer has a book coming out about anti Semitism.
- [43:19]
Abe Greenwald
Yeah.
- [43:19]
John Podhoretz
So thanks very much. You know what I would like to shadow that book is shadow banned from my house.
- [43:27]
Abe Greenwald
But wait, there's more. There's more. Because these pro Hamas students who are foreign visa holders, who are terrorizing Jewish students on American campuses, they're going to be deported, but maybe not to Gaza. Because the President of the United States has now said several times that Gaza will be cleaned out. And he is pursuing this policy of really shaking up things in the Middle east and asking Egypt and Jordan why haven't they taken the Palestinian refugees from this war zone like every other country in the world except refugees from neighboring countries when there is a war going on. And finally, end of catalog, Donald Trump will be meeting his first foreign leader in the Oval Office next week. And that will be Benjamin Netanyahu, the Prime Minister of Israel. So I would say that the indications are from the first two weeks that this will continue to be a very pro Israel administration.
- [44:22]
Seth Mandel
Can I add one thing to that list, though? Those are all sort of direct things. There are also the indirect things. Ending dei.
- [44:32]
Abe Greenwald
Absolutely.
- [44:32]
Seth Mandel
Is also, in other words, part of this is a change in the worldview.
- [44:37]
Abe Greenwald
Great point.
- [44:38]
Seth Mandel
Away from a, you know, away from a systematic progressive worldview governing all our institutions. Including our public institutions. You know, and I wrote, I wrote an essay, campus Diversity is Campus Jew hatred about DEI for commentary. This was the June 2023 edition. So I mean, we're closer to two years, almost two years ago.
- [45:05]
John Podhoretz
And before October 7th.
- [45:07]
Abe Greenwald
Yeah, I mean, that was laser.
- [45:08]
Seth Mandel
Before October 7th.
- [45:09]
Abe Greenwald
Nat Glazer was the first to point out in the, in the 60s and 70s that affirmative action is not going to be good for American Jews.
- [45:15]
John Podhoretz
Right, right.
- [45:16]
Abe Greenwald
Because such a small part of the population.
- [45:18]
Seth Mandel
Right, right. So, you know, with this, part of this is also just changing the way that we are thinking in general. But this, the ideological brackets and the ideology, ideological bracketing of these institutions, breaking those brackets, that's good for the Jews too, in some of these ways that enable people to sneak in anti Jewish policies and anti Jewish biases without actually having to come out and, you know, chant for a beta in town square.
- [45:54]
Matthew Continetti
And it's also, broadly speaking, an issue where Trump has the public on his side. You know, polls still indicate that Americans on a bipartisan level are in favor of Israel. Support Israel and its war aims, support US Support for Israel and so on, by the way.
- [46:14]
John Podhoretz
And Matt, you mentioned the, the embargo which, the, this partial embargo on American materiel that Israel has purchased from the United States. I know we have a whole complicated grant loan system, whatever, but purchased from the United States that we're not being released. And everybody looked at that and said, well, this is about these 2,000 pound bombs. It's like we don't, America doesn't want to give Israel bunker buster bombs because of the damage that it might do. And then we would get blamed because they're the bombs that we gave them. Then it turns out what we learned this week or last week was that it went beyond these bombs. That to my absolute astonishment, one of the things that was on the list were these large bulldozers, right. These giant bulldozers that are used to clear out military territory. Right. Territory that is where you need to go through and either mine sweep or you're, or you're trying to, whatever. And they're these, you know, they're like, imagine a bulldozer, but it's five times the size or width of an ordinary bulldozer. And the United States was refusing to export these purchased by Israel to Israel. Now why would that be? We support the war in Gaza. We say Israel, we said, or the Biden people said, Israel is killing too many Gazans, so that's bad and they should kill fewer people. But in terms of battlefield Management. This is passive battlefield management. You blow something up and then you bulldoze the area so that there is. There isn't rubble around that people can hide in and shoot at you from. And that also, by the way, has post war benefits because it will allow reconstruction because the area will have been cleared and you won't have to do it. And it turns out that either the Pentagon or the state, we don't know who said we can't give Israel this stuff because we don't want them to be doing this. Why wouldn't we want them to be doing this? I thought we believed that this. We believe that Israel should fight this war to its conclusion or to a ceasefire. We actually were hampering Israel's military effort to win the war quickly by denying them this equipment. Somebody at the Pentagon got a bee in their bonnet about doing this or was worried again that the photographs of the. Not that there would have been many, but of the clearance using these bulldozers would somehow get to the people in Dearborn, Michigan and lose Biden the election in Michigan or something like that. This was a much more systematically ambiguous policy that Biden was pursuing toward Israel in the war in Gaza, which he nominally supported.
- [49:14]
Abe Greenwald
Remember that Biden guy? It seems like he's been gone forever.
- [49:18]
John Podhoretz
What the hell was that about?
- [49:20]
Abe Greenwald
Yeah, exactly.
- [49:20]
John Podhoretz
Yeah, I was just thinking this last night I was lying in bed and I was like, is he really president? Four years anyway. And this, by the way, is gonna be a generational crisis Inside American Jewry. Jay Lefkowitz published in our. We had our articles and discussions all year about what the effect, net effect was going to be on the Jewish vote of Biden's behavior and Trump's behavior and all of that. And there are some disagreements about this. I think you can see in the moves everywhere you can see a shift toward Trump or, you know, among American Jews, just like there's been. There was a shift toward Trump everywhere and even in liberal places. Jay's article for Commentary suggests that that shift is not really very strong. I don't know where this will be in four years, because the question is people for whom this is important as we go along. The unambiguous nature of defending Jews against anti Semitism and supporting Israel in its efforts to, if and if in fact this continues to be the case, supporting Israel in its efforts to remake its near, its near abroad, shall we say, in order to secure its future and make peace with Gulf states and advance the Abraham Accords as a bulwark against Iran and all of that, it's going to be very hard for Jews to say that's not happening. So it's the question is will will it matter more that you that you are opposing to trans surgeries, which, by the way, should also be can I.
- [50:56]
Abe Greenwald
Also add, I also think it's a cautionary tale for conservatives and populists within the Republican Party as well, because as we have been speaking about on the podcast, there is an internal debate within the Trump movement about the American interest in the Middle east, but also the American relationship with Israel. And when you think about some of the scurrilous attacks that have been coming out of Tucker Carlson in his recent podcast, I think it would be politically damaging for, say, the 2028 Republican nominee to adopt the Carlson view of American interests, specifically with Israel, specifically with Israel and the importance of the US Israel relationship. And conversely, if a Democrat like Richie Torres or John Fetterman or Jared golden decides to run for the nomination in 2028 and becomes the pro Israel candidate, well, then all the gains that Trump may have made will be lost.
- [51:54]
Matthew Continetti
But, you know, it's an amazing thing that I agree with you, Matt, regarding, you know, the damage it would do for a Republican to embrace the Tucker outlook here. But somehow it's okay. That's not okay. But somehow you, you survive politically if you stay kind of close to Tucker and if you are friendly toward this stuff without espousing it.
- [52:23]
Abe Greenwald
And that's it's a balancing act.
- [52:25]
Matthew Continetti
And that's a longer problem.
- [52:26]
Abe Greenwald
It's a balancing the big test coming up, and I know we're running short, but big test coming up with the Tulsi Gabbard confirmation. I think that that will be, by.
- [52:34]
John Podhoretz
The way, we should so we should talk a little about this as we speak in a couple of minutes, RFK Jr's hearing to be secretary, to be confirmed as secretary of Health and Human Services is will start. And we don't know what that hearing is going to be like. Apparently, it's all a knife's edge. He does not have the Republican caucus secured. There's a lot of talk about how it's all going to come down to how he performs. But I do want to make note of and Tulsi Gabbard is tomorrow, I believe Thursday. And she really doesn't, I mean, right now, I think if you did a whip count and we don't see the Trump administration like putting its muscle or its arm on she hasn't been anywhere.
- [53:24]
Abe Greenwald
That's what I don't understand. Rfk I know, you weren't bad, but RFK is visible. RFK has a whole political movement behind. Yeah, right. No matter what you think about Pete Hegseth fought for his nomination. It was on a knife's edge and he made the decision. I'm going to fight for it. Where is Tulsi Gabbard? She has plenty of advocates within the MAGA movement and even outside the MAGA movement who are advocating for her. But tomorrow will be the first time we hear from her directly. And I actually think that's a danger to her nomination. It ups the stakes for her performance. Now, she's given good performances in the debate stage in the past, but this will be a different setting. And I'll be watching closely how she first introduces herself and then how she answers the senator's questions.
- [54:10]
Seth Mandel
And also chi. It's, it's a direct challenge to Republicans in a way that RFK isn't ideologically, because there's an ideological out to vote against rfk, which is abortion. And so there's a sort, there's. There's an off ramp if you don't want to get into a fight over vaccines or any of the COVID stuff, for example, and risk backlash, you know, oh, look, you're an agent of Fauci or whatever, you know, you can say we are a pro life party. I believe that life begins when it begins and this would. This process is taking life. And so I therefore can't support for human services. Tulsi doesn't have a sort of that same out. Tulsi is going to present. Do you think that Edward Snowden is a hero? Do you think that someone who thinks Edward Snowden is a hero should be in charge of U.S. intelligence? The Republicans are going to have to face directly the challenges that she brings to orthodoxy. And I don't know how comfortable is.
- [55:19]
John Podhoretz
I don't know who's going to make that argument, because Democrats, a lot of Democrats think that Edward Snowden is a hero. Like in 2011, 2012, the liberal consensus was that Snowden, Glenn Greenwald and all that had done something wonderful and amazing and the documentaries made about them won Academy Awards and they won genius grants and all of that. And that's all part of the cultural establishment that supports the Democrats in the Senate. So I don't know who's going to make that argument. The thing with Tulsi Gabbard is going to be, what the hell was going on between you and. And Assad? Nobody likes Assad. You were like basically serving as a Assad.
- [55:56]
Seth Mandel
She's going to say, you know, well, Pelosi and John Kerry were also sitting and having tea with Assad.
- [56:02]
John Podhoretz
So. But I was just going to say about rfk, this is a larger point. It's got nothing. So yesterday, Caroline Kennedy came out and issued this video denunciation of her cousin. And it is vicious. Now, I revile RFK Jr. I revile him. I believe he is a tool of the tort bar, that he has lied about pollution, that he has sickened people with his false views on vaccines, that his personal conduct is appalling. He. I revile him. However, I don't need to see the Kennedy family anymore. John F. Kennedy Jr. Was assassinated.
- [57:03]
Abe Greenwald
No, John.
- [57:04]
John Podhoretz
Excuse me, JFK was assassinated.
- [57:06]
Abe Greenwald
Unless you're about to introduce some evidence.
- [57:08]
John Podhoretz
Yeah, I'm not. 61 and a half years ago. RFK's father was assassinated 58 years ago. They are the only two Kennedys of. Teddy Kennedy died ten years ago and. And murdered and drowned a woman in his car in 1969.
- [57:31]
Abe Greenwald
55 years ago.
- [57:33]
John Podhoretz
I don't. The dirty laundry of the internal battles of the Kennedy family. Go away. Go away, you people. Beat it. Scram. Like, I don't need to see you attacking each other. Just like I didn't need to see RFK spend 15 years doing this repulsive advocacy for his cousin Michael Skakel, who murdered Martha Moxley and got away with it for 20 years. And then somehow, over many, many years after he was in fact convicted of the murder, nonetheless wi his way out of jail with the help of his brother. Like, this family is poison. It is poisoned American public life. Not JFK and not rfk, but Teddy poisoned American life. You know, created a lot of the Joe.
- [58:27]
Abe Greenwald
The Joe. Joe Senior from the beginning.
- [58:30]
John Podhoretz
Senior from the beginning. Anyway, I'm just saying, like, maybe this, they thought this was great because, wow, you're gonna get so much attention. Really, it's very important that the Kennedy family stand and say, you can't do this and all of that. It's like, I don't care that you hate your cousin. Like, go away.
- [58:49]
Matthew Continetti
And it's also, by the way, you.
- [58:52]
John Podhoretz
Were ambassador to Japan because you sucked up to Obama. Go away. Caroline Kennedy, you have no role in our American public life. You are somebody's daughter.
- [59:03]
Matthew Continetti
Exactly.
- [59:03]
John Podhoretz
That's it.
- [59:04]
Matthew Continetti
But even her, even her inter familial attack, it all comes from the same place, which is this completely unwarranted sense of entitlement, you know?
- [59:15]
John Podhoretz
Yeah.
- [59:16]
Matthew Continetti
You are doing exactly what the cousin you hate is doing. You are foisting yourself into Our lives because you think you have some right to.
- [59:25]
John Podhoretz
I mean, everybody has a right to use whatever powers they have to try to affect the American. You have a privilege, but, like, it's gross already, you know, it's like, have a little, you know, I'm sorry. You have cousins who are drug addicts who have cousins who are this. Who are, like, go away. Like, you're not, you're, you know, it's not right. You're not a royal family. We don't have royal families in the United States. Your uncle escaped justice for his negligent, you know, negligent manslaughter because of the intercession of the Kennedy family in Massachusetts 60 some odd years ago, creating in part, not an insubstantial fact along the road of Americans no longer trusting the institutions and the levers of power. And the fact that there were people, that there was an unequal system of justice that favored the wealthy and the powerful. This was a very big moment in that Chappaquiddick and all of that. Just, you know, go away, please. Matt?
- [60:38]
Abe Greenwald
Yes.
- [60:39]
John Podhoretz
You have a recommendation?
- [60:40]
Abe Greenwald
I do have a recommendation and I think we'll end it the show on a higher note. I have a confession. Commentary Confession, which is until last night, January 28, 2025, I had never seen the film High Noon. And so yesterday I watched High Noon In a spectacular 4K print, of course, the legendary Western from 1952 starring Gary Cooper and Grace Kelly, about the sheriff who is about to retire when he finds out that the man that he sentenced to death row is about to return at High Noon and enact vengeance. And rather than leave the town, as everyone is urging him to do, Gary Cooper decides to stand and fight. It is an absolutely incredible movie, as I'm sure many in our audience already know. But if you have not seen High Noon, you really do need to watch it. It's only 80 minutes long. We could go on for a whole other show about the political messages contained in this very short film and communicated simply through images in many points. But there is one, one thing I do want to talk about, which is, you know, if you're a director of a movie and you're saying, okay, you need to make it as clear as possible the pull on Marshall Cain, Gary Cooper's character, to go away. So how do I do this? Oh, I know. Let's cast Grace Kelly as his newlywed because she is so stunningly beautiful in this movie. Anyone watching is like, well, of course you want to go with Grace Kelly, don't you? And for those of you who won't watch it, I won't spoil the movie. But there I've made my confession and my recommendation, High Noon. It should be executive order alert. If any members of the Trump administration are watching or listening, write it into an executive order. Mandatory viewing in K through 12 schools.
- [62:43]
John Podhoretz
Okay, I gotta offer you the secret commentary connection to High Noon.
- [62:47]
Abe Greenwald
Please.
- [62:49]
John Podhoretz
High Noon was written, produced by Carl Forman. Carl Forman's son Jonathan is a contributor to John.
- [62:57]
Abe Greenwald
I didn't realize that.
- [62:58]
John Podhoretz
His daughter Amanda is the author of several famous biographies and books about the Civil War. Georgiana, the Duchess of Devonshire. Johnny has written for us about Afghanistan, about the. He wrote the first piece in the American Prince about the Rotherham grooming Crisis, which appeared 12 years ago or something like that. And, and Carl Forman was himself a very interesting character. American Jew from the Bronx, very liberal to left politics. And when the House UN American Activities Committee and the sort of in the McCarthy era came to him and said name names, he refused. He would not name, even though he himself was not a communist and was in fact an anti communist. He was like, I'm not giving you what you want. Go away. And he was blacklisted, moved to England. He married Johnny and Amanda's mother, and he rebuilt his career. He then made the Guns of Navarone, which is a famous World War II movie, and various other things. And by the time he died, had become a neocon and sort of partially relating to Israel, partially relating to just general disgust with, you know, leftist politics in England and Europe and America in the 1960s and 1970s. And so there you have High Noon, the secret commentary connection. And so another reason to watch and appreciate High Noon.
- [64:36]
Seth Mandel
And now, you know, the rest of the story.
- [64:40]
John Podhoretz
The rest of the story. So we'll be back tomorrow for Matt Seth, an Abe up John Paul words, keep the candle burning.