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- [00:01]
A
I'm James Patterson. I write way too many books. Welcome to Hungry Dogs. The title comes from my maternal grandmother, Isabel Zelvis Morris. Nan used to always say, hungry dogs run faster, James. And I've been running fast ever since. Here's what will be coming your way soon, and this is a really terrific list. I think you'll hear from some incredible people like Stacey Abrams. Yay. BJ Novak. Yay. Kathy Bates, Dolly Parton, Josh Gad. And Pope Leo. Okay, maybe not Pope Leo, but who knows? Maybe he'll show up. Hungry dogs run faster. Thank you, Grandma, for turning me into a hopeless, obsessive, compulsive. Listen to Hungry Dogs with James Patterson. That'd be me on Apple, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. Thank you, thank you, thank you.
- [00:57]
B
Before we start the podcast, I want to talk to you about the University of Austin. Because if there was ever a case in which we can say that you should know the virtue of a place by its enemies, that is the University of Austin, which has come under attack in the past week for its role as the first institution created in the wake of the woke horrors of our time to teach great books, have small seminars, discuss topics as various as the Bible, politics, literature, and the proper sensibility with which to be an educated person. With Commentary contributors like Leah Leibovitz and Mike Duran and many others apprentice with America's top entrepreneurs. And places like Politico and and other places that are engaged in the assault on Barry Weiss, its co founder, are just going hammer and tongs at the University of Austin. And these are the people that the University of Austin was essentially created to overcome or to break the monopoly of opinion that they seem to hold in the US elite. So with those assaults on the University of Austin, the University of Austin's value is being proved daily as a target. And while Harvard hands out A's like candy, UATX produces the Navy Seals in the mine. No grade inflation and a simple application based purely on test scores. And it's free. UATX is free because it just eliminated tuition forever. So learn more@ustin.org. The way of knowing which way it's going. Hope for the best. Expect a waste of war. Welcome to the Commentary magazine daily podcast. Today is Wednesday, January 21, 2026. I am John Pothorz, the editor of Commentary magazine. With me, as always, executive editor Abe Greenwald. Hi, Abe.
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C
Hi, John.
- [03:23]
B
Senior editor Seth Mandel. Hi, Seth.
- [03:25]
D
Hi, John.
- [03:26]
B
Washington. Free Beacon editor Eliana Johnson. Hi, Eliana.
- [03:30]
E
Hi, John.
- [03:30]
B
And social commentary columnist Christine Rosen. Hi, Christine.
- [03:34]
F
Hi, John.
- [03:35]
B
So I began yesterday's podcast talking about feeling despairing about the circumstances surrounding the Trump administration's behavior over the past week. But I was nothing. I was candy. I was pablum next to the National Review Editors podcast that I listened to yesterday. Remember National Review being much more a flagship of classical, conservative, even Republican thinking, that then the commentary podcast, which is 501c3 nonprofit, is not involved in the Republican Party or in Republican politics. In any case, Jim Garrity, the daily columnist at National Review, said it's time to evoke the 25th Amendment. Trump is as mad as a hatter. His behavior is insane. He, he is being psychotic, and this is nuts. And our old friend Noah Rothman chimed in, and Rich Lowry, the editor of National Review, kind of tried to bring it down, bring the tone down a little bit. It was pretty striking. And, you know, Jim's case is, you know, if you're making efforts to break up the NATO alliance by talking about, by hinting at military invasions of territory held by allies, then you are a nut and you need to be taken to the nearest insane asylum. Interestingly enough, Trump yesterday at his press conference talked about recreating insane asylums and mental institutions as though they don't, don't exist already at this endless press conference he did yesterday. Abe tells me that this morning he was listening to Trump speaking at Davos and he turned it on and he was talking about windmills. Okay. So I'm bringing this up in a second just to say that this didn't come out of nowhere for me. They National Review, which has been trying, as I think a lot of people on the right have been trying to look at the good and take account of the good and put the bad in context. Jim Garrity lost it, no longer has that feeling or connection. And so I'm finding some safety in numbers in my own sense that something we moved into a new era in the Trump 1, 2, 1 era last week and whatever happens at Davos in the next day or two. And the responses to Trump at Davos yesterday, with basically leaders of NATO saying NATO is the Western alliance is being broken and will never be put together in the same way again. That's very apocalyptic rhetoric from very boring politicians who generally go to a place like Davos and say nothing of consequence. So I just throw this out to you guys and see where you want to go with it.
- [06:45]
C
So Canada said that the alliance is this is not a, this is not.
- [06:51]
B
A.
- [06:54]
C
I forget the word he used. This is not A. It's not a something, it's a rupture. It's not a trans. It's not a moment of transformation. It's a rupture. Emmanuel Macron said France needs a great deal more Chinese investment right now. I think they're bluffing. I don't. I don't actually think that this is a rupture. I think they're. I think they're trying to fight Trump's fire with fire. I don't see why a following president or Trump himself couldn't repair the damage that's been done already. And if, to the extent that we know the damage, that. That's been done already. But it's. Look, it's very ugly. It's not good. And. Yeah, I only. I only heard about five minutes of Trump at Davos today, and he was talking about how China sells windmills to stupid people. And China. China's smart. They make them, but don't use them because they know they're money losers and they sell them to stupid people. And that you could tell how bad a country is doing by how many windmills it has.
- [08:10]
B
That's very hostile to the Dutch. I just want to say I thought he was only going after, you know, Scandinavian countries, and here he is going after the Low Countries. I mean, he went after everyone. Okay, he went after.
- [08:22]
C
He went after sort of the old. What he considers to be the. The model of the. The green energy scam, importing foreign populations and outsourcing jobs and. And all the rest of it.
- [08:41]
D
It's no more Mr. Nice Trump. No, that's as he wrote. As he wrote to the Norwegians. That's, you know, he's not the peace guy anymore. Now he's gonna say mean things. You ain't seen nothing yet. That was Trump being nice. This isn't even his final form. I think, by the way, that there's, like, a kernel, as with. As with everything with Trump, there's. There's this kernel of.
- [09:07]
B
Of.
- [09:09]
D
Righteousness, which is the Europeans have come around to regret their turn against nuclear power and some of these other more traditional energy sources. And they have been pretty upfront about that. And I think that's probably what's motivating part of this, which is. Which is that they, you know, they got. They turned on nuclear, and then they became reliant on Russian gas to a certain extent. And these were very stupid moves, you know, overall, at least taken in tandem. And I think that Trump, you know, kind of wants to say, I told you so, but he doesn't have, you know, he doesn't have the details in his head the way, you know, somebody else might. So he, you know, it comes back to like windmills and, you know, treating them like they're cavemen or, you know, something like that. But I do, I do think at the heart of this is, you know, a desire to say. And if it were JD Vans up there, you probably would hear it with a bit more erudition. But I think what he's, you know, what he wants to say is you guys made your bed in so many different ways. You, you know, you screwed up on, on, on energy. You played into Russia's hands. I mean, Germany, especially Gerhard Schroeder and, you know, canceled nuclear, went to work on the board of a Russian, you know, energy company. And I think he wants to fold Greenland into all that. He wants to say there's minerals, there's probably oil, there's stuff around. This is a, this is a place that's going to be the center of competition. And he has, he just idea actually how to say any of this. And so what comes out is total gobbledygook. And so the point is completely lost.
- [10:56]
B
Okay, why does he want to say it?
- [10:59]
D
Because he's mad. Because he wants Greenland and they won't give it to him because he just wants to stomp his feet.
- [11:04]
B
Why, why, why, why does he want to go to Davos and like, be in brus with the, with, with. With the. Doesn't he want the Europeans? If you want the Europeans to ascent to our takeover of Greenland, don't you catch more flies with honey? I know that's not his style, and I'm not, and I'm not even suggesting that that would be a wise move. What is he doing? What is the purpose of going to Davos and giving a crazy aggressive speech after the last 10 days? Like, switch it up, like throw a curveball, you know, do a running play as opposed to a, as opposed to a 60 yard pass. He has no strategy. Is what's happening here. There. There is no strategy. He goes after Maduro one week, he says he's going to go into Iran. If they shoot protesters, they shoot protesters. He doesn't go after Iran. He then spends a week fighting with Greenland and Denmark and saying, you're mean because you didn't give me a Nobel Prize. And then taking Machado's Nobel Prize, like it's his Nobel Prize. There, there he is, like, he is cut loose from any sense of, like, what he does at 1:00pm Connecting to what he does at 2:00pm Connecting to what he does at 5:00pm I think.
- [12:24]
F
You know, it's, it's, we've, we've made this analogy before, but when you have a big personality who has a lot of power, you can often find it amusing, as I think a lot of people did during the first Trump term and even immediately after he was reelected, to see them project that power and bluster and shake things up. But then it becomes fatiguing if they don't actually follow through or their inconsistency creates new problems, which I think is what you're pinpointing here, John. I think Trump has forgotten, if he never knew in the first place, that his projection of American power still relies on the consent of the people he governs. That's us and, and a lot of what he's doing now, particularly with NATO, the NATO alliance and the belligerent language about Greenland doesn't seem strategic anymore to Americans. You can really never lose as an American politician making fun of the French or the Europeans. And this is a long standing tradition in American politics because of the contempt that the European countries often send our way. But this is a little bit different in tone and in inconsistent rhetoric and in the fact that everyone in his administration, when asked about it, seems to back up this idea of a more aggressive posture towards our long, long term alliance. But ultimately he still relies on the American people supporting these statements and supporting these actions, and they don't. I was, I was looking at the volatility index yesterday, which is a sign of, you know, uncertainty and angst about the markets. It is very high. The markets themselves are starting to react to some of his latest tariff threats. So he needs, I think, to remind himself of how the American people feel right now. And I think a lot of what we're reacting to in his tone, an acknowledgment that he seems just unchained from any sort of sense of politics as he's, he's reinventing a lame duck presidency by just doing whatever the hell he wants. There will be reckoning, though, for anyone on the right, regardless of whether you like or hate Trump. There's going to be a reckoning in terms of some of the policies, including some of the policies that we have defended here on this podcast that he has pursued in his second term.
- [14:35]
E
I do think we're just thinking through what you guys are saying. I wasn't able to see any of Trump's remarks, so A.B. i defer to you on that. But it strikes me as we're seeing a Little bit of a split screen with Trump in that. I did watch his press conference yesterday, and I suspect it will strike a contrast with what we're seeing at Davos. Trump's brand, his whole personality, is to go and to be hostile to the Davosi and the Europeans. And I'm reading the Axios newsletter this morning and it's saying, oh, the, the Europeans have finally had it with Trump. And I'm thinking to myself, I don't recall a time when the Europeans, oh, they were once warm and welcoming and now they're really laying down the law. It seems to me this has been their posture towards Trump the whole time. They continue to be hostile, Tim, at sometimes for good reasons. But it did strike me during his press conference yesterday, which was, I think 110 minutes. John, John had texted me, was he crazy? And I actually didn't have a chance to respond that his tone did seem to change a bit and it seemed to tacitly acknowledge some of the challenges he's facing. First of all, he was asked about the economy and he, well, saying it's a communications problem, not an actual problem. He backed off, blaming the American people. And he said, it's on us. He said, it's on us to convince you, and it's a problem that we haven't. And he didn't take a strident, angry tone. That struck me on immigration. He made an effort, the effort, I didn't actually think it was successful, but the effort was to convince people that were after hardened criminals and he showed their pictures. He wasn't super energetic about it, but the effort was certainly to say we're after criminals. And he called the shooting of Renee Goode a tragedy. And I thought he took a more conciliatory, softer line on Greenland, where he. The thrust of his remarks, I think, was suggested we're after a deal here. That may not be what he projects at Davos, but I was struck by those things in his remarks yesterday. And I do think part of the reason for that was the Dow dropping 900 points and his realization that his behavior is having an impact on the markets.
- [17:15]
C
Let me just say I don't, I don't know where, where his speech is going to go. I caught basically the throat clearing part. So, you know, so don't take the windmill rhetoric.
- [17:27]
B
For the entirety yesterday, the Trump friendly, Real Clear Politics Twitter feed put out a tweet saying that the average Trump's average polls at this moment in 2026 is roughly equivalent or exactly equivalent to where Obama's polls were at the beginning of 2014 and where Bush's polls were, Bush's polls were in 2006. This is not good as a harbinger. Bush lost the House and Senate in 2006, and Obama lost nine seats in the Senate in 2014. And by the end of 2016, Obama had lost more than 1,000 elected positions, or the Democrats had lost more than a thousand elected positions at the state, local and national level that they had held at the beginning of 2009. Trump is on a bad trajectory, and it's possible that his conciliatory words, as well as the reflection of the uncertainty in the markets, as Christine pointed out in the volatility index and his Eliana pointed out in the Dao's behavior yesterday, have spooked him or have, or have a splash of cold water in the face that is leading him to believe that maybe he's got to get somewhere real. And he's got, you know, 10 months or nine and a half months to do that in order to avoid calamity. A calamity, in my estimation would be, I mean, the likelihood that the Democrats will take the House, given the unbelievably slim margin that Republicans hold, which is now like two seats or one seat, some crazy narrow margin because a Republican legislator later died last month. And though it seemed unlikely, very good candidate recruitment in the Senate, in Senate races, that makes it thinkable that Republicans will lose the Senate, in which case he, of course, is impeached. He will be impeached by the House in 2027. And a Senate trial run by Democrats that will not end in his conviction, because you would need 67 votes for a conviction could nonetheless be structured to last three months, four months, five months. Is that how he wants to. And he does not want to live out the end of his presidency with an endless impeachment trial and, of course, the end of this world in which Capitol Hill is conciliatory toward his efforts to wrest legislative control from them in the form of executive orders. So he's got to wise up and sober up fast if he is not going to follow the trajectory that the last, I mean, not, not Biden, but I mean, the last two successful, actually successful presidents had in their last two years in office.
- [20:55]
F
Can, can I say something about that? Because I think that's, it's a very important challenge which he, I actually think he wouldn't mind being a protagonist again in the drama created by Democrats. I think actually that's where he rests comfortably in his combative defensiveness. And we saw that even when in the four years that Biden was president. But here's an example of where discipline, a little bit of discipline exercise in this administration could correct some of these excesses. So you look at what's going on and how the Department of Justice is behaving in Minnesota right now, we have, you know, Don Lemon and his weirdo minions crashing a church service, which we didn't get a chance to talk about, but which was a clear violation. Disrupting worship in a church, which is a clear violation of the Face Act. And the Department of Justice says. Says it's looking into that. That's good. That's exactly what our Department of Justice should be doing, whether it is a synagogue, a church, or a mosque. That is what that law is supposed to do. That's good. But then he's also now investigating the mayor and other officials in Minneapolis in a very vaguely worded, threatening way of saying, I don't like how you're talking about my administration's pursuit of immigration. And honestly, I don't. We all have discussed how Mayor Frey and Ellison and other people and certainly Governor Waltz, how their rhetoric has contributed. Is it Frey or Fry? I don't know.
- [22:15]
B
Do you know? I mean, I've never actually heard it pronounced.
- [22:20]
F
I'm not sure. But he. But his. But the. But the rhetoric that they dislike is all protected First Amendment speech. I don't like what they're saying. I think they're contributing to the. To the tensions. But that is not what the Department of Justice is supposed to be doing. And then you have this third challenge, which is the fraud investigation, which we've talked about at length, and the prosecutors having resigned, many of them having resigned under orders to investigate Rebecca Good or. And Rebecca Good's wife and, you know, Renee. So if they're. If the Department of Justice actually has evidence that the mayor of Minneapolis and that the, you know, wife of Rebecca Good is tied into some sort of, you know, radical left wing organization that's promoting terrorism, domestic terrorism. Fine.
- [23:06]
D
That.
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F
That should be investigated. But that doesn't seem to be the case here. So here's an example where the weaponization of the Justice Department actually undermines some really good work that this administration has done to restore some of the things that the Department of Justice should be doing in this country. And there's just a lack of discipline, and there's a lack of discipline in the administration's rhetoric, and there's a lack of discipline on the ground level for prosecutors who probably are trying to do their jobs and have this frustration of kind of answering orders from on from above that are asking them to do things and launch investigations into things that aren't really in their purview.
- [23:40]
B
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- [28:07]
E
Yeah. So my understanding is as follows. Six prosecutors have resigned from the U.S. attorney's office. I'm not at liberty to get into the details of it, but I will say the following. It is more complicated than the media accounts have portrayed or then the account that you just gave. They have resigned for different reasons. And they have not all resigned because the Justice Department gave this order and they didn't want to do it. It's more complicated than that. Nonetheless, Pam Bondi, the ag, has attacked these guys, which seems to me like, like a mistake. And it does mirror what happened in the Southern District of New York where our friend Danielle Sassoon resigned. They went after her, they got in a big fight, and it ends up being counterproductive. And that seems to me a mistake. And I agree with Christine that this office is understaffed and has a ton of to go after that could be both legally productive and politically productive for the administration when it comes to fraud and other things. They my understanding of what they're trying to do in Issuing subpoenas to Tim Walls and Keith Ellison and the Minneapolis mayor, Jacob Fry Frey. I also don't know how to pronounce his name, is to go after them for incitement and corner them for inciting the violence. And I think that will be tricky for them to prove in that it's tremendously difficult to link their speech to direct action. And I actually called our friend Andy McCarthy about this because I was curious, what's the Justice Department theory here? How difficult will be. Will it be for them to prove? And he drew the comparison to Trump's speech at the Ellipse, where, you know, look, what they said is bad, they shouldn't have done it. But it's also probably not legally prosecutable in a court of law. And it ends up being an enormous waste of time and resources in an office that is overtaxed and understaffed.
- [30:40]
B
I mean, to talk about the idea of going after elected officials for incitement raises issues relating to the common law, going back to the Magna Carta, in which the only people in the world who had free speech rights until pretty much until the Constitution of the United States was written were politicians in Britain, like, who could actually speak their minds, particularly after the, after 1688. But the idea that there had to be a free exchange of ideas in a place where you were debating sort of like taxation and things like that, the idea that an administration that itself is being accused of things like incitement and that and the other thing would go after elected politicians in Minnesota for incitement is so crazy that it, again, raises 25th Amendment.
- [31:46]
E
I don't agree. I don't agree that it's so crazy. I mean, you have Keith Ellison, okay, yesterday saying it's fine to storm a church. He said, this is great, it's fine. So it doesn't seem to me like it's so insane. I just don't think it's going to be successful.
- [32:06]
B
No, when I say it's insane, I mean it's insane because Keith Ellison works is an elected official and the people who punish him, unless he commits, I mean, yeah, obviously if he murders somebody, he can get arrested. If he commits, you know, if he takes money, he can get arrested. If he says, oh, people in this church are, you know, too sensitive like that. That's not. That's crazy to use a prosecutor, federal prosecutor, go after a local official who says something like that. It's the job of our political system to have voters say, how dare you say that? Get out of office. Maybe it won't maybe they won't do it. It's pretty astonishing that the nation's, I believe, first elected, statewide elected Muslim official Keith Ellison would make fun of people in a church for complaining that their service was disrupted. Because let's imagine that a mosque was raided by, you know, let's. That a mosque was, you know, that Baytar went into a mosque and started making a scene in a mosque. Let's see what Keith Ellison would do in terms of arresting the people who are coming out of the mosque.
- [33:33]
E
You know, beyond that, he said people have a right to lift up their voices and make their voices heard in this way. And none of us are immune from the voice of the public, including, you know, when you're in a church service. He went on Don Lemon show and did an interview. So he went a little bit beyond what they're saying. Like, I don't think it's, it's lunacy. I just think it's, there's a smart way to do things and a stupid way to do things, and this is a stupid way to do things.
- [33:59]
F
Well, and there's also an irony in that, you know, Trump has been highly critical of many things about European society, some of which I agree with his criticisms of, but European, the European crackdown on speech, particularly in countries like the UK recently, is absolutely draconian. People being opening their doors to police officers because they posted something angry on social media. You do. We do not want to cultivate a culture in this country that comes anywhere close to that, no matter how reprehensible. And believe me, I am no fan of Governor Waltz. And we talked at length about how he handled this poorly in terms of his, what he said and what he's done with ice. But he is allowed to say that. And, and as you say, John, the determination about whether it's legitimate or not comes from the people who he governs, who can vote him out of office, or who already sent such a strong message that he's not going to run again. So I really worry. Because Trump. Yes, exactly. Yeah, well, and Trump becomes personally offended by what someone says about them. He thinks he can use the power of the federal government to bully them, persuade them, threaten them. That's not how our system works when it comes to the First Amendment.
- [35:09]
D
Well, this is, this is like Mark Kelly also, right? I mean, we can throw Mark Kelly into this discussion, which is, you know, whether he's, you know, being censured by, by the army, by the military, for, you know, for that video that, that he and Alyssa Slotkin I guess. Right. Came out with, said, you don't have to follow illegal orders. But there is, you know, there's a way to go about this, that this is, you know, obviously, I think overreach to most people to, you know, to, to go after somebody's military record or something like that. Any sort of legal action. I think we're not used to it because you have, you know, in Congress you have the built in protections, right? So we're not used to this, this there being penalties on any politician really, for speech, legal penalties. Because in Congress you just have it plain that you can basically say almost anything, you know, on the floor of Congress and whatever. It's established that. And I think they're trying to chip away at that, too. And so, you know, I would say the backlash, the question is, is the backlash going to make a difference to them at all? You know, they, they in a lot of people, you know, the public trust the military. And so I think Hegseth has taken advantage of that by saying, you know, this is, this is, you know, what he's done is disrespectful to the military and to his own service, you know, and whatever. And I think it'll be interesting to see whether the, you know, sort of military penalties for speech is the line that, you know, can't be crossed or whether, you know, people will actually push back against this in any sort of meaningful way. But I don't think voters take that stuff into consideration all that much anyway. I mean, I think it's just generally like, look, you, you, you know, basically I think that this is one of those inside baseball fights that you see that is totally inapprop behavior from the Trump administration and I think especially the Mark Kelly stuff, but doesn't necessarily make an impact on the wider debate. And therefore, Christine, I guess your question is, you know, it's up to the people to decide this sort of thing. I think the administration is thinking that they can sort of sneak this in under the radar of the people, that this doesn't really land on the people's radar and that they can get away with.
- [37:35]
B
Okay, I'm glad.
- [37:37]
C
I think we're actually heading for a big conflict on this speech issue because while I agree that we don't want to be like Europe, at the same time, there is this new mode of protest speech that we haven't dealt with before, we do have these politicians at least inferring a right to break the law. And at the same time, we have pro Hamas protesters who there's a story in the New York Post yesterday, a new report shows them disseminating directly Hamas propaganda, genocidal Hamas propaganda, Hamas work. We're in a place where speech is being pushed to the breaking point that we haven't seen before.
- [38:42]
B
I think, I don't know if we haven't seen it before. I mean, a lot of the prosecutions of the domestic terrorists in the late 60s, early 70s, mid-70s, fell apart because speech was used in an effort to, to achieve convictions or was used as evidence to convict. And a lot of those convictions were overturned on constitutional grounds that speech had been improperly evoked. When people have a First Amendment right to say what it is that they, they want to say. So there, there is a, there's a history of this. People thrown in jail and their convictions overturned. Or, or, or, well, then we're headed back there. Okay, so we may be headed back there. And, and, but there is an American. These kinds of fights over how, what, what speech crosses the line into encouragement or participation in illegality really stretches back to the beginning of the republic and, and is one of, is the thorniest. It's probably, one might imagine, one of the consistent through lines in American jurisprudence trying to figure out what the First Amendment actually makes sure you have a right to do and what, you know, what, what, whether speech can ever be considered criminal action. And obviously, we're told you can't shout fire in a crowded theater. That is not, you know, that is not protected speech. You know, like speech that encourages death or whatever. I don't know. It's a complicated issue. But the thing that's different here, I think about you, Seth, bringing up Mark Kelly and the idea that his pension should be withdrawn or cut or something like that, or that he should be bucked down levels in his reservist standing or something like that. This guy who, you know, was an astronaut and a naval here and all that. No, voters aren't going to vote on that, because that's not how voters vote. Does it indicate a kind of behavior inside the Trump administration, the purpose of which is Pete Hegseth trying to lick the soles of Trump's feet and ascribing to an idea that all politics, that there are no Marcus of Queensbury rules left, and that you do whatever you can in whatever way, using whatever modality you have? It's like Mick, you know, it's like fighting in a John Wick movie. You know, you, you kick somebody, then you shoot them, and then you bite their ear off, and then you, you know, and then you spit in their nose and then you do. Everything is permissible if you are having a fight to the death. But this is, I don't think, just to finish this thought. I don't. That impression is going to be incredibly damaging for the administration overall. When people go to the polls in November, because they're stepping on the counter, they're stepping on the Keith Ellison story, they're stepping on the Jacob Fry story and the Tim Wall story. They are making sure that it is difficult for them to get that message through, because then every day they do something that maybe is not as bad in our eyes, but in general says, well, I don't know. I mean, you know, it's terrible what Keith Ellison said, but look at what Trump did.
- [42:41]
F
Well, okay, yeah, no, I mean, first of all, I will defend the fighting scenes in all John Wick movies because Keanu Reeves did a lot of work on in martial arts training for them and he has some excellent moves. But I see your point. The thing that struck me is that it's almost as if the message that brought, the winning message, the understandably winning message that brought Trump back in 2024 and that brought this coalition of unusual independent voters who have now are running in the opposite direction from him in a lot of the polls that we're seeing, it was this message of, I'm going to fight against the bad guys. The system that prosecuted me that wants to come after you. Remember, he was the retribution. He's the person standing between the system and the little guy. And I think what he's lost sight of, and a lot of it does have to do, John, with exactly what you point out, internal administration employees who have their own agendas that Trump is allowing to run roughshod over whatever his own is, is that now it feels like the retribution is entirely personalized for Trump. And he is doing the. He has a list and he's going down it in his second term, and he is settling scores. And where does that leave the little guy who trusted him to also settle some scores for him or her? Now, he is doing that here and there. We're happy with, you know, his, his behavior in the Middle East. We're happy with what's going on in university campuses. But the voters who brought him back aren't us. The voters who brought him back are worried, still worried about the economy, still worried about the capriciousness and volatility of the foreign policy that they're now suddenly noticing because they liked not having to concern themselves with those issues before. So I do wonder if he's. That message, which was so resonant with the American voter a few years ago, it's curdling. I feel like it's curdling and some of it's personal for Trump, but a lot of it is a very undisciplined administration with competing power bases and competing goals. In some ways, that's why the contradiction.
- [44:33]
B
Very disciplined. It's just very about it in the wrong sense of what it is disciplined to do. Like we think discipline is. Come up with a message, have a through line policy, try to get everybody on board in your party. You know, basically, it's like a tush push at the goal line. Like, you want to do it that way.
- [44:53]
F
Oh, he would never do that, though.
- [44:55]
B
We know that the purpose of the discipline is to get everybody to do whatever it is they think you want to do and never question it and don't come to you a second time. And then you also do it without even having to consult with him about doing it, because you already have inhered what it is that you're supposed to do, which is vanquish your enemies. You know, hear the, you know, this, the lamentations of their women, like, that's, that's what the discipline of the second Trump term is. And in that sense, it's incredibly disciplined. I mean, it's just disciplined in a way that is meant to serve one person and not the country and not the interests of the country either. I'll give you an example of this. Erik Erickson makes this point today in his newsletter, which is, people say, I've been talking, you know, angrily about Trump, says Eric, and people are like, you see? You see? Now say, you were wrong to vote for him in 2024. Eric, go ahead. Now that you're admitting that he's behaving wrong. And Eric says, I'm not gonna do that because. And here's what he said. He said, Alito and Thomas are going to resign at the end of this term. And am I happier that Trump is president or that Kamala would be president? With two Supreme Court seats open, I'm happier with Trump.
- [46:27]
C
Okay.
- [46:28]
B
I'm bringing this up for this reason. I don't know what he knows. I certainly haven't heard that Alito and Thomas are both going to resign at the end of this term. But there is merit in the idea that he. That they might, in this sense, which is that, say Democrats take over the Senate and they believe that they should be replaced by people with their general judicial philosophy, but Democrats take over the Senate at the end of 2026, they will hold open those seats for two years. Mitch McConnell established the principle that you don't have to fill the Supreme Court seat until the next election and they will not fill the seats. So if you're Alito and Thomas and you think you need to have a 45 year old person filling your conservative slot so that, so the court doesn't go liberal, you may have to quit in July so that John Thune can get two nominees through a tush push before November and get them onto the court. Okay, I'm running the scenario now, but.
- [47:36]
F
Do you think, do you think, who's he going to take advice for filling those slots? It's not the Federal society this time around.
- [47:42]
A
Right.
- [47:42]
B
Because he said that Leonard Leo, the head of the federal say, was a bad person. He said this at the press conference yesterday. Okay, so Trump, all this is set up, right? They're going to quit so that Trump can appoint two. This is a scenario. I'm not saying, but they're going to quit so that Trump can appoint two good, solid, originalist conservatives and he'll appoint Jeanine Pirro and Todd Bunch or he'll appoint Lindsey Halligan and you know, I don't know, you know, a vanderpump, I don't know who he's going to appoint, but will he. Will Trump understanding the stakes? And this is where, I don't know, I have no confidence now, when he, when he got Anthony Kennedy to resign in 2017.
- [48:37]
E
John, can I just make a counter.
- [48:39]
B
Okay.
- [48:40]
E
If he puts on Todd. Blanche.
- [48:43]
B
Okay, Did I say Bunch? I'm sorry, Whatever. Blanche. Yeah.
- [48:49]
E
It's better than whoever the Democrat would pick. Like Trump's worst is probably better than whoever. Okay. Katanji Brown. Jack. The second coming of Katanji Brown. Jackson.
- [49:00]
B
He is not going to get Todd Blanche on the court because there are going to be three closed Senate races in places where it will hurt Susan Collins and Dan Sullivan and somebody else to vote for Todd Blanche, and that'll be Harriet Myers.
- [49:18]
E
And then we'll, we can get an Alito.
- [49:21]
B
He won't have time. The scenario I'm laying out is it has to be done perfectly in 2017. He Let Anthony Kennedy pick Brett Kavanaugh. He said, if you resign, I'll appoint the person you want me to put in your place, which is what he should do with Thomas and Alito if that were a serious thing. And then he won't do it because he's crazy. Don't think he's not crazy. And why will he want to blanche there? Because. And, and, and, and Jeanine Pirro and, you know, I don't know who Eric Adams, since he pardoned him. Why would he want them there? Because he wants them to help him in the last two years, and everything is transactional and he can't trust. He's already mad at Gorsuch and Barrett for not voting exactly as he would wish them to vote. See? And that didn't work out for him as the way he wanted it to. So you tell me whether this is a thing, I mean, who he is and what may happen over the next six. I only brought this up because I was struck by Eric saying so flatly that they were going to resign at the end of the term, which means the clock ticks. He has to nominate somebody by July so that they can have hearings in October so the Republicans can push it through before Election Day. And those nominations have to be in the proper way. They would have to be relatively pristine so that they don't blow up in his face. But if he's not going to listen to the Federalist Society and he's going to listen to Stephen Miller, God help us all, that's.
- [51:09]
D
Well, he, you know, the big difference, right, is that he, he had to win votes for himself the first time around, and he doesn't now. I mean, his, his, his personal. Like, he was able to make a deal with people because he needed evangelicals to ease up on him and get behind him. And so that was a sort of easy pick, which is you, you can have this if you give me this. And the thing about Trump being sort of, you know, let loose now is that he doesn't have anything besides whatever he wants for his legacy to give to him. He doesn't. But he doesn't have the votes, so he doesn't. The people that he wants favors from, where. The people that he wants good behavior from, are not necessarily representative of conservative constituencies or voting constituencies. They're just random people who happen to have something that he wants. And that's why this whole thing is so wide open. He no longer needs somebody who represents, you know, 4 million voters who might otherwise stay home because he's not going to be out at the polls.
- [52:11]
A
I'm James Patterson. I write way too many books. Welcome to Hungry Dogs. The title comes from my maternal grandmother, Isabel Zelvis Morris. Nan used to always say, hungry dogs run faster, James. And I've been running fast ever since. Here's what will be coming your way soon. And this is a really terrific list I think you'll hear from some incredible people, like Stacey Abrams. Yay. BJ Novak. Yay. Kathy Bates, Dolly Parton, Josh Gad. And Pope Leo. Okay, maybe not Pope Leo, but who knows? Maybe he'll show up. Hungry dogs run faster. Thank you, Grandma, for turning me into a hopeless, obsessive, compulsive. Listen to Hungry Dogs with James Patterson. That'd be me on Apple, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. Thank you, thank you, thank you.
- [53:10]
B
Okay, but I gotta make a point for you. Remember, he's got the House. He's got the senate. Okay? In 2025, very quietly, 57 nominations, four Senate confirmable positions were withdrawn by the Trump administration who had nominated them. 57. That exceeds doubles the number that Biden withdrew in his first year and almost triples the number that Trump withdrew in his first year in 2017. So he has already had a record of appointing people that even the quiescent Senate that we're always complaining doesn't give any blowback that Thune has gone to Trump and said, you got to pull this nomination. You got to pull the 59 positions. Which means his impulse is to a point, or their impulse is to a point. Wacko, psycho, lunatic people who are beyond the bounds of even being touched by the Senate in a real vote. And is that directly from him, or is it just, you know, his influence on the rest of the people in the administration? We don't know. But now all the marbles. The Supreme Court nominations are all the marbles, and he may have two in the next year. Well, that's.
- [54:39]
D
I mean, that's. That's my point. That. That's basically. That's. You know, my point is that he's not. Not looking to people. He's not asking advice of people who represent broad constituencies. So you don't know where the nomination ideas are going to come from. That's my point. Instead of going to somebody who represents a wing of the conservative movement and has certain boxes that they'll need checked, but in return, will make sure that a handful of millions of votes show up that otherwise might not have shown up. He's not looking for batches of votes anymore in that way. So he's not going to reliable arbiters of, you know, conservative judicial opinion. He's just doing what he wants. If he needs something random from someone, then that random person is going to get to pick the Supreme Court justice or whatever. And that's. That's why. Craziness.
- [55:36]
E
It's true. Trump had a falling out with The Federal Society. I think we're. John, as you suggested at the beginning of this, getting ahead of ourselves to believe that he will have two nominations. I've heard some rumors about maybe one retirement, but I've also heard that Clarence Thomas is motivated to be the longest serving justice on the Court because of the experience he had during his confirmation. That wouldn't be until 2028, when he. When he would get that title. I've heard that he has told people, they took 30 years of my life. I'm gonna give them back 30 years. So I think there is a motivation on Thomas's part. Stick around. This is speculation, it's gossip, but that's how these things are done. And again, it's true. Trump had a falling out with the Federal Society. I don't believe it's true that Trump has nobody around him, no lawyers around him who are giving him serious legal guidance on these matters. He has a White House counsel. I know for a fact that, like, he's talking to serious people about these matters. It's just not true that, like, he's only hearing from people who say, you should put Jeanine Pirro or Judge Napolitano on the court. He's also been through this a few times before, and he knows who the serious candidates are. He has interviewed Hardiman when he nominated Gorsuch. He interviewed Barrett, you know, when he. Not when he nominated Kavanaugh. He interviewed a bunch of people. So he knows who the players are. I think actually the danger for Trump here is where we started, which is he's alienating Republican senators through some of these things, both through, like, Cassidy thing is kind of a danger in this. And also the investigation stuff with Mark Kelly and others. The Senate is just a band that sticks together. And we saw during the Kavanaugh vote that Republican, these vulnerable Republican senators swing. The Republican senators who become a swing can be incredibly important when unexpected things come up. That is what happened with Kavanaugh.
- [57:46]
B
Right.
- [57:47]
E
Okay. And so it probably would behoove him not to alienate these, you know, the Republican Senate ahead of something potentially like this. I actually don't think that the danger is he's going to nominate some lunatic. I think the bigger danger is he'd nominate somebody serious and something unexpected like the Kavanaugh crisis would happen.
- [58:09]
B
Well, so the defense against. Even though Kavanaugh, the Kavanaugh crisis obviously represents the, the negative of what I'm about to say is that one of the reasons that you appoint a relatively dull, like a person who isn't a Fox News TV analyst star is that you want somebody who has been through a Senate confirmation and has been through the vetting so that something untoward doesn't pop up in the middle of. Which is why the Kavanaugh thing was so horrifying and disgusting, because they had nothing on them until somebody came up and said, when I was 15 years old at a house, I don't remember where it was with people. I don't remember who they were or what day it was or what.
- [59:00]
E
Seared in my hippocampus.
- [59:01]
B
Seared in my hippocampus. And it happened when I, when we were all 15. That's how deep they had to go to make up this story about him. And to, you know, yes, I said made up. It was made up. It's one of the great scandals in American history that he went through that. And Susan Collins had the moment at which she could have torpedoed that nomination or saved it, and she saved it. So the ideal thing in a circumstance where there was one or two and you had these, this incredibly short deadline to get somebody onto the court is to get somebody who has been vetted in a hostile setting so that there was time, there had been time previously for the anti judicial right wing judicial machine to have gone after them, their jugular so that they wouldn't get on the court at all. Remember, that's how Miguel Estrada did not get his judgeship in 2007 or whenever that was. Miguel Estrada, earlier than that. I'm sorry, 2003. Miguel Estrada was put through the wringer and eventually withdrew his own nomination because the people in the world of legal, leftist legal jurisprudence said if he gets on the appeals court, he's the next Supreme Court justice. He will be the first Latino Supreme Court justice. It will be a walkthrough and this will be a disaster. We have to stop him here at this step because then he marches right onto the court. And that indeed probably would have happened. And that happened. And that was 20 years ago. And there's been a lot of that. But I don't trust that you think Trump is having wonderful conversations with sane people. And that's absolutely true. He had a lot of wonderful conversations with sane people. And then he appointed Pete Hegseth as his secretary of defense and he appointed Cash Patel as his head of the FBI. He can talk to sane people until the cows come home. And then the little devil on his shoulder that says, appoint a hack who will do whatever I tell him to do in case some case comes up before the Supreme Court, that's dangerous to me or that I want to rule some other way. I want to have direct influence on that person. That's how his mind works. That's how his mind works. And he's disappointed that he picked Gorsuch because Gorsuch he does not feel and Barrett are necessarily reliable arbiters of his needs. And so. And you know, that's a terrible, monstrous way to be a president of the United States, but that's who he is. Anyway, I didn't. However, let's finish on a, on a different note, which is before we, before.
- [61:58]
D
We do that real quick, just to, to pardon the interruption thing. It is, it is Fry. Jacob Fry. Just so we have that before we go off air. It is Fry. He had a, I found a, a Twitter thread in which he chose a Halloween Twitter nickname to emphasize, you know, that it's like Friday the 13th type of pronunciation and not fray. And it's very important to him. So anyway, Frank Fry.
- [62:26]
B
Okay, so, so just to retreat to our. Not to a comfort zone, but something I think we need to bring up. Abe mentioned the fact that Hamas propaganda is now being handed out directly by, you know, activist interest groups. Hamas is a terrorist organization. People are disseminating information from terrorist organizations, which I guess you were allowed to do, but does create that. It's. It's not, it's not a 100% layup that you can do anything with material like that. Something else is going on which is the effort to use free speech or use our rights to assembly or whatever to create the intolerable conditions for people who are simply attempting to practice their wares and run businesses and do things as Jews. So there is this comedian named Hockman who served in the IDF who was denied an appearance in Toronto last week with massive demonstrations outside the comedy club that were. Finally the comedy club withdrew his appearance. And this happened in New York yesterday. Jerry Seinfeld. Massive protests against Jerry Seinfeld at this club in Chicago. That also was it. Yochai Sponder, I think, was also greeted with a gigantic demonstration at this club last year. And these assaults on Jewish owned businesses, most recently Bread's Bakery. We, we know that the Civil Rights act of 1964 is now being deployed against colleges that failed to protect Jewish students because they were being discriminated against on the basis of their faith. I don't know where this goes, but this shift into these direct efforts to make it. Make it impossible for a person who is a Jew to work. What do you guys think?
- [64:48]
C
Well, this is part of. I Mean, what I was talking about, you know, when I said there's, there's pushing the limits here of speech because a lot of this is speech. I mean Seth's been writing about this for a long time in the, it's, in the music world. It's a constant. I mean shows canceled, venues scared off by, by, by, by the protesters. Obviously in, in Europe. It's a, it's a, you know, it's a, it's, it's de rigor.
- [65:22]
F
Yeah.
- [65:23]
D
And I, I would make two points and I'll try to do it very quickly. But the, the first point is that the organization behind some of these so called investigations where Israelis get detained at airports and stuff like that is the Hyndra Job foundation, which you know, as I've written as Eliana and the Free Beacon have also written about. A Jewish insider has reported this. This is, this is stuff that, that people should be talking about more widely. But the Heinrajab foundation is, is basically like a Hezbollah offshoot. I mean it was founded by a member of Hezbollah who was trained in Lebanon by Hezbollah left. He, he, he told the Europeans that he needed asylum or something. And then he later sort of admitted to, you know, futing his story a bit, you know, as if he had had a falling out with Hezbollah and they were after him or something like that. But it's not the case. These, these organizations are part of the first thing you mentioned which is the terror propaganda hydra job is there's nothing more than terror propaganda coming from the source. I mean these are people who served in Hezbollah who are now, you know. Have they gone legitimate? No, of course not. They organizations that are known for beating up Jews on the streets. I mean these are like, these are the Islamist like mirror reflection of the kind of like fascist street thugs, you know, that Europe used to have. So I think that people should first of all know that, that these, everything done by Hindra job is illegitimate and itself should be investigated, you know, for, for, you know, for numerous things. And, and so this is, you know, part of that sort of spread of terror propaganda and the, and the arm of these organizations that pretend to have political wings and media wings and all that stuff. The second point I would make is that Alan Garber who is, you know, now president of Harvard made a very interesting point the other day which I think is at the center of all this, which is that, you know, he.
- [67:27]
C
Said.
- [67:29]
D
Free speech for Jews on campus has been difficult because of all the professor, the activism in the professoriate, because of all the academic. Because of all their, their teachers and their deans have been, have taken their anti Israel activism. I don't think he used the word anti Israel, but into the classroom and therefore the political. And he. Therefore picture for yourself, I think was his point. Point. If you're a student, you're not being told, if you're a Jewish student, you're not told, you're not allowed to talk Jew. But you are surrounded by this propaganda and a, and a professor who is rewarding people who follow that propaganda and punishing people who don't. And so, you know, and that when that happens on a large scale throughout the campus, you have a campus chill zone of speech. And so I think, you know, his point was that something that I've been a point I've been trying to make over the past two years, which is that you, you have the, the kind of free speech, the clampdown on free speech that everybody knows and everybody sees and is obvious and is very easy to fight. It's the organizations like FIRE and others fight it because their First Amendment problems when a public university, you know, cancels classes or fires a teacher for the wrong reason, whatever. But there's this other thing where there is a culture of suppression of Jewish speech and it is undeniable, but it is also not necessarily an open and shut First Amendment issue. They're not necessarily rules being put out there. But this is a bigger challenge because it's much easier to find representation for a lawsuit that has a clear Title 6 angle or has a clear First Amendment angle. It is much harder to find strategies and to find partners who can strategize with you about how to alleviate cultures of speech suppression. And that is part of what you mentioned with the music, with the comedy, with the students on campus. That is the sort of common thread running through all of this, is that it isn't necessarily anything clearly illegal or unconstitutional, but it is obviously a culture of suppression. And how do we fight that?
- [70:01]
E
Can I just add one thing to this? Garber, he made a statement that said Harvard has aired, universities have aired. I mean, if you just substitute universities for Harvard, which when you're Harvard, you can do by allowing professors to engage in political activism in the classroom. And I think that's an easy diagnosis of the problem and the wrong diagnosis. I think it's debatable whether professors should be allowed to express political opinion in the classroom. But we all know, and Garber knows the real source of the problem is that because there is a monoculture on university campuses, political activism in the classroom expresses itself in exactly the same way in every single classroom across the country. And if there was ideological and political diversity in our universities, the expression of political activism would be in the classroom, would be much more tolerable if it was a let a thousand flowers bloom sort of thing. And it is a much harder problem to solve when you have to fix a monoculture in a 10 year system than to just say, oh, we have, you know, 99% leftists and we're going to tell them, you know, stop, stop sharing your views in the classroom, because their hostility shows up in a thousand other ways.
- [71:41]
C
You know, can I just add one thing here? Here's what's not a hard problem to solve though. And this applies to the New York. The recent case of the comic in New York, the protesters were blocking the entrance to the club. That's a matter for law enforcement.
- [72:01]
B
Where were they?
- [72:03]
C
When did they get there?
- [72:05]
A
What did they do?
- [72:07]
C
This is what I want to know. And given that we've had multiple events and we're not even done with the first month of the year of Mamdani's mayoralty, we need to figure out where this goes. And the NYPD needs to be on top of these things. I mean, there's no reason that everyone shouldn't have been arrested and the show shouldn't have gone on.
- [72:35]
E
And it's the same with the campuses where you have to call in the police and use force to cow these people into behaving in a civilized manner because they won't behave properly without the threat of force hovering in the background.
- [72:50]
B
To describe why this is a matter that relates to anti Semitism, not just simply to political correctness on campuses, let us think this through just for a second, and then we can, we can conclude monoculture on college campuses, right? No Republican professors, 97% liberal professors. You're recruiting a freshman class for your university, your admissions, your Harvard. Right. Harvard's now letting in 6% of its admissions, or the last number that we got because of the exposure in the affirmative action case. Six percent Jewish admissions, which is unnaturally low given the fact that 60 years ago or 50 years ago, 40%, 30 to 40% of the kids after the quotas were dropped were Jews. Which means that legacy admissions alone should be making sure that there were more Jews than 6%. So it appears that there is some actual conscious effort to limit the number of Jewish admissions into colleges. But if what you were interested in was simple ideological uniformity, there is no more reliable liberal kid in America than a teenage Jew. So if Your interest is get me some liberals on campus who will abide by our monoculture by default. You're doing perfectly fine picking a 17 year old Jewish kid. They're likely to vote 70 to 80% Democratic. That's what we see. Unless they're Orthodox. Orthodox kids are going to Yeshiva University in Stern and places like that don't necessarily want to go to Harvard. So the fact that this is happening in a place where Jews would be a reliable participant in the monoculture tells me that they are being dinged or blackballed or black for another reason. And that is that these campuses have become safe havens for Arab Muslim money, Arab Muslim politics, and that what they don't want are Jews coming in and saying, well, I'm a liberal, but you know, I like stop saying that my people are cockroaches. Like they are protecting the Muslim coloration of their campuses and the Arab money that is coming to their campuses by making sure that there are fewer voices on the campus to object. They've been able to do this by winnowing out the professoriate, but students are a wild card because then every now and then you'll get a Dory Feith or a Barry Weiss or you'll get a kid who is like, whoa, hold on there, this is not what I signed up for. I'm going to start an organization and say that my professor is an anti Semite, so just don't let him in. And that's the other aspect of this that we failed to talk about and that the recent talk about the Professor Dehesi at Columbia and others, like they are keeping Jews off campus so that Jews don't make trouble for the monoculture. Even though Jews are participants. Secular Jews are participants in the monoculture, but they might be stirable by actually having to hear what a radical Muslim professor supported by gutter might say to them in their classroom, which is, you know, which is so horrified, I can't even believe I'm saying stuff like this in 2026. But here we are. We're back tomorrow. For Seth Eliana Christina Abe, I'm John Pod Horitz. Keep the candle burning.