Trump at the Super Bowl

Summary

Summary of "Trump at the Super Bowl" – Commentary Magazine Podcast

Release Date: February 10, 2025

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1. Introduction and Overview of the Super Bowl

Timestamp: [00:34] – [01:15]

The episode begins with host John Podhoretz welcoming the panel: executive editor Abe Greenwald, Social Commentary columnist Christine Rosen, and Washington Commentary columnist Matthew Continetti. Podhoretz remarks on the Super Bowl as America's quintessential monocultural event, likening its significance to presidential elections. He reflects on his memories of past games, noting the recent disappointment in the Eagles' dominant performance.

Quote:

• John Podhoretz: “America's holiday, America's monocultural event, the only one I think we still have, except for presidential elections.” ([01:15])

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2. Trump's Involvement at the Super Bowl

Timestamp: [01:47] – [05:08]

The discussion shifts to former President Donald Trump's unexpected presence at the Super Bowl. Continetti expresses mixed feelings, initially enjoying the game but later criticizing the Chiefs for relying on controversial calls. The panel examines Trump's active role during the event, including his pre-game interview and visible presence, contrasting it with his predecessor's avoidance of media spotlight.

Quotes:

• Matthew Continetti: “I confess, I still very much like Patrick Mahomes and his wife Brittany.” ([01:55])
• Christine Rosen: “It was nice to see a president doing that thing which we have had four years of a president just running away in terror from any sort of media spotlight.” ([04:16])

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3. Halftime Show and Commercials

Timestamp: [03:50] – [05:58]

The panel critiques Kendrick Lamar's halftime performance, finding it indecipherable and lacking in clear messaging. They also discuss the commercials aired during the Super Bowl, noting a shift away from "wokeness." Podhoretz criticizes a Nike ad for its ambiguous stance on social issues, while Continetti laments the loss of substance in corporate messaging.

Quotes:

• John Podhoretz: “There was that moment where the dancers all formed an American flag and it did not seem to be ironic.” ([04:00])
• Christine Rosen: “The only wokeness that was present was... female athletes.” ([05:08])

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4. Analysis of Trump's Daily Report and Government Initiatives

Timestamp: [05:58] – [26:54]

John Podhoretz delves into Trump's efforts to reform government agencies through the DOGE initiative. The panel debates the restructuring and potential impact on institutions like USAID and the CFPB. Rosen and Continetti highlight the historical context of these agencies and the challenges of dismantling entrenched bureaucracies. They discuss the constitutional implications and the strategic maneuvering by the Trump administration to assert control.

Quotes:

• John Podhoretz: “Elizabeth Warren then had to go and shoot last night that it was inappropriate...” ([08:59])
• Christine Rosen: “Ideologically it was meant to bureaucratize the left's idea that every corporation that makes a profit is evil.” ([14:12])

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5. Tariffs and Economic Policies

Timestamp: [34:32] – [44:59]

The conversation turns to Trump's tariff policies, including the reimposition of steel and aluminum tariffs. Podhoretz criticizes the effectiveness and economic repercussions of tariffs, while Continetti explains Trump's strategy of reciprocal tariffs. They discuss the potential for a tariff war and its implications for the U.S. economy, emphasizing the need for congressional collaboration to mitigate negative impacts.

Quotes:

• John Podhoretz: “They're necessary, evil or something like that. He's like, they're great.” ([42:19])
• Matthew Continetti: “The inflationary effects of tariffs were not as pronounced in the first term... We need Congress to do those major supply side reforms.” ([44:59])

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6. Public Opinion and Approval Ratings

Timestamp: [30:05] – [35:06]

Continetti cites a CBS poll revealing Trump's 53% approval rating, attributing his popularity to his fulfillment of campaign promises to "shake things up." The panel explores how Trump's actions resonate with voters disillusioned by previous administrations' inefficiencies. They also discuss the challenges Trump may face if economic conditions, such as high prices and ongoing tariff tensions, fail to improve.

Quotes:

• Matthew Continetti: “Trump and his campaign promises, is he doing what he promised or different from what he promised? 70% say that Trump is doing what he promised.” ([35:06])
• John Podhoretz: “He is acting. And what we saw for a year before him was a senile president...” ([34:32])

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7. Hostage Releases and International Relations

Timestamp: [50:10] – [68:21]

A significant portion of the discussion centers on the recent release of three hostages by Hamas, who appeared physically frail, resembling Holocaust survivors due to their mistreatment. The panel reflects on the broader implications for Israel's stance against Hamas and the international community's role, particularly criticizing the International Red Cross for its perceived inadequacy during the conflict. They analyze the emotional and political pressures on Israel to respond decisively to hostage situations, underscoring the moral complexities involved.

Quotes:

• John Podhoretz: “They have this emotional pressure to say we have to get them out by any means necessary.” ([55:06])
• Christine Rosen: “Everything about both their treatment... are both war crimes.” ([53:56])

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8. Cultural Reflections and Recommendations

Timestamp: [66:49] – [68:21]

In a lighter segment, Rosen recommends Seicho Matsumoto's mid-century Japanese crime fiction, praising its meticulous pacing and engaging storytelling. This serves as a brief cultural interlude amidst the intense political and social discussions.

Quote:

• Christine Rosen: “It gathers steam as you read it. It's like a Hitchcock movie.” ([67:14])

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9. Closing Remarks

Timestamp: [68:21]

The episode concludes with Podhoretz expressing excitement for future discussions, while the panel members share brief personal notes, reinforcing the podcast's blend of political analysis and cultural commentary.

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Key Insights and Conclusions:

• Trump's Strategic Media Presence: Trump's active participation in high-profile events like the Super Bowl serves to maintain his visibility and reinforce his image as a proactive leader, contrasting sharply with previous administrations' media strategies.

• Government Reform Challenges: Efforts to dismantle or restructure established government agencies face significant bureaucratic resistance, legal hurdles, and constitutional debates, highlighting the complexities of executive power.

• Economic Policy Implications: Trump's tariff strategies aim to protect domestic industries but risk sparking retaliatory measures that could harm the broader economy, emphasizing the delicate balance between protectionism and free trade.

• Public Support Dynamics: Trump's ability to fulfill campaign promises bolsters his approval among supporters, yet economic challenges and policy controversies could impact his long-term political viability.

• International Conflict and Humanitarian Concerns: The treatment and release of hostages by Hamas exacerbate moral and strategic dilemmas for Israel, reflecting the deep-seated tensions and the urgent need for effective humanitarian interventions.

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Notable Quotes with Timestamps:

• John Podhoretz: “America's holiday, America's monocultural event, the only one I think we still have, except for presidential elections.” ([01:15])

• Christine Rosen: “It was nice to see a president doing that thing which we have had four years of a president just running away in terror from any sort of media spotlight.” ([04:16])

• Matthew Continetti: “Trump and his campaign promises, is he doing what he promised or different from what he promised? 70% say that Trump is doing what he promised.” ([35:06])

• Christine Rosen: “Everything about both their treatment... are both war crimes.” ([53:56])

---

This comprehensive summary captures the key discussions, insights, and conclusions of the episode "Trump at the Super Bowl," providing a detailed overview for listeners who have not tuned into the podcast.

Transcript

[John Podhoretz]

Ryan Reynolds here from Mint Mobile with a message for everyone paying big wireless way too much. Please, for the love of everything good in this world, stop with Mint. You can get premium wireless for just $15 a month. Of course, if you enjoy overpaying. No judgments.

[Matthew Continetti]

But that's weird.

[John Podhoretz]

Okay, one judgment anyway. Give it a [e-mail] Switch upfront payment.

[Christine Rosen]

Of $45 for 3 month plan equivalent.

[John Podhoretz]

To $15 per month required intro rate first 3 months only, then full price.

[Christine Rosen]

Plan options available, Taxes and fees extra. See full [e-mail].

[John Podhoretz]

Hope for the best, expect the worst Some preach and pain Some die of thirst the way of knowing which way it's going Hope for the best expect the worst. Welcome to the Commentary Magazine daily podcast. Today is Monday, February 10, 2025. I am John Pothoritz, the editor of Commentary magazine. With me, as always, executive editor Abe Greenwald. Hi, Abe.

[Abe Greenwald]

Hi, John.

[John Podhoretz]

Social Commentary columnist Christine Rosen. Hi, Christine.

[Christine Rosen]

Hi, John.

[John Podhoretz]

And Washington Commentary columnist Matthew Gottnetti. Hi, Matt.

[Matthew Continetti]

Hi, John.

[John Podhoretz]

America's holiday, America's monocultural event, the only one I think we still have, except for presidential elections. Super bowl took place last night. I myself founded an enervating and debilitating game. I remember this from the 80s. This was a rare. These games have been good for the last 10 years. This one, of course, was terrible because the Eagles just totally dominated. And by the end of the second hat, you sort of had this sense of kind of a runaway train and unless you were an Eagles fan.

[Matthew Continetti]

I loved this game. And I am not an Eagles fan.

[John Podhoretz]

Why.

[Matthew Continetti]

But I am a Chiefs hater. Okay, I crossed that line.

[John Podhoretz]

Really.

[Matthew Continetti]

This year, I from someone who like the Kansas City Chiefs. And I, I confess, I still very much like Patrick Mahomes and his wife Brittany. I'm like President Trump in that respect. But as the season went on, I became angrier and angrier at the way in which the Chiefs somehow miraculously pulled out wins by one score, usually after one or two controversial calls by the officials helping the Chiefs. And so for me, this super bowl, which, as you say, John, the Eagles started strong and never let up, was like a great weight being lifted from my shoulders and restored my faith in the National Football League, which, along with the Constitution of the United States, is the most important institution in my life. So those two, those two things now emerge from the game stronger than ever.

[John Podhoretz]

Because the Chiefs were denied, denied the three peat. Okay, so, but this is actually. So let's talk about the, the healing and repair of the National Football League. You are saying that order has been restored. This is not going to be some kind of an oligarchy run by the.

[Matthew Continetti]

Chiefs in collaboration with Taylor Swift.

[John Podhoretz]

With Taylor Swift, yes. Yes. Okay. And the. And the refs and all that. But that rather we have. That we have the NFL as one of the major indicators that the social pathologies of the last half decade are where the diseases created by those social pathologies are clearing up. Right. They took the end racism slogans out of the. Of the end zone. They took things off the helmets.

[Matthew Continetti]

No one was kneeling.

[John Podhoretz]

No one was kneeling. Weirdly enough, in the middle of Kendrick Lamar's indecipherable halftime show.

[Matthew Continetti]

Yeah.

[John Podhoretz]

There was that moment where the dancers all formed an American flag and it did not seem to be ironic. I. The jury.

[Matthew Continetti]

My jury is still out on that one.

[John Podhoretz]

I didn't understand a word he was saying.

[Matthew Continetti]

We also have. Yeah, Christine, go ahead.

[Christine Rosen]

I was just going to say to the. To the Kendrick Lamar halftime show. I didn't watch the entire game. Although I completely agree with Matt's take on. On the transformative power of now seeing the Chiefs fail. But the Kendrick Lamar, he sang it the most famous diss track popular right now, which struck me as being the perfect thing in our current timeline. Literally a diss track. But I appreciated a couple of things. The president actually having an active role in this major cultural event. Again, he did the pre. Pre game interview with Bret Bear. He was there waving from the box. He got a big cheer. It was actually nice to see a president doing that thing which we have had four years of a president just running away in terror from any sort of media spotlight. So that was kind of reassuring. Even though I too was slightly baffled by the halftime show. Some of the commercials were better too, except for the Nike one, which, you.

[John Podhoretz]

Know, still they had this weird. Right. There was that restoration. There was a restorative quality to some of the commercials. Also because the wokeness was gone. It's been four years of wokeness. And the only wokeness that was present was the a, you know, an African American girl in 2025 would beat a jock from 1985 and flag football if. If they magically ended up in the same timeline. Right. That was a weird Nike. So. So instead of there being trans. Trans men. Well, at least they were female athletes. They were female athletes. But. But the amount of wokeness was gone. I think there is a reason to be disappointed. Extremely disappointed in the. In the deracination or the de. Ethnification of the ad that was intended to be the statement Against Anti Semitism.

[Matthew Continetti]

Yeah, that was odd.

[John Podhoretz]

Tom Brady and Snoop Dogg fake yelling at each other. And then it's like, we don't, don't hate. Which is really not what stand up to Anti Semitism is supposed to.

[Matthew Continetti]

Which sponsors the ad Goose. Yeah, it's at the card.

[Abe Greenwald]

I confess I missed all this. I didn't watch. But I mean, Snoop Dogg's a defender of Farrakhan.

[John Podhoretz]

Well, that's maybe why they who know it's bad.

[Matthew Continetti]

You did watch the halftime show.

[John Podhoretz]

Yes. Yeah. Are we right?

[Abe Greenwald]

But, yeah, but I might as well not have because it was completely indecipherable.

[John Podhoretz]

To me at every level. But to talk about Trump. So it was time for me to deliver my daily report on MATS and my least favorite podcast.

[Matthew Continetti]

This podcast is really a commentary on that other podcast.

[John Podhoretz]

Yes, the NPR up first podcast, where. So Jean Baptiste is very poorly singing the national anthem, playing the piano beautifully, but really a very odd choice in the sense that he doesn't have a. He's not really a singer. And it wasn't really well sung. But of course, you know, they're playing along. And then the Jumbotron in the stadium flashes to Trump. So I've now watched the clip and listened to what happened. So the Jumbotron flashes on Trump and there is a huge.

[Matthew Continetti]

Oh.

[John Podhoretz]

Ovation.

[Matthew Continetti]

It's a roar.

[John Podhoretz]

Roar in the stadium. But according to Up Next. Yes, it was very mixed.

[Matthew Continetti]

That's the liberal press commentary in print as well. There were booze.

[John Podhoretz]

Right. So I assumed that this was correct. I wasn't really paying attention and I honestly did. I. I'm sorry. When I did the research, I did the work. I did the work and I listened three or four and I heard on YouTube, on. I heard no boos. I heard a roar of enthusiasm for Trump, which, I mean, anyway, it doesn't really matter.

[Matthew Continetti]

It may have been the reporters booing.

[John Podhoretz]

Right.

[Matthew Continetti]

Maybe that's what they are writing about.

[John Podhoretz]

Yeah, right.

[Matthew Continetti]

But I've listened to it multiple times as well, and it's not. It's not necessarily a huge cheer. It's a fascinating sound. It's. It's just this roar. Yeah, right, right. It's acclimation in a way, but which is, I think, even larger than him. It was just like, as Christine was saying for this event, as you say. Right. The only other comparable event that unifies all Americans is probably Thanksgiving now and the Fourth of July to some extent. But the super bowl is so much larger. I mean, 2/3 of the country watch it. And to have him there Amidst all of the kind of pageantry and patriotism slash nationalism of, of just the NFL, Right. The flyovers, the flags, the national anthem, it fit together. And I think that was kind of what the crow was responding to. Not so even much the figure of Trump, but the larger president, national sense and pride. Yeah, yeah.

[John Podhoretz]

And of course, Elizabeth Warren then had to go and shoot last night that it was inappropriate for Ospreys to be there, Blackhawks and Ospreys to be doing an overflight over the Superdome because, of course, of the accident in the Potomac, and that this was disrespectful to the victims of the accident. And she's having a bad weekend. Having a bad weekend. The agency that she accepted is essentially in a kind of a. We'll talk about this a little later, but in a completely ingenious way. He's bitterly clean choked to death by omb. It's an astonishing, actually, I mean, as a piece of political gamesmanship. And we could begin with the creation of the agency in the first place. It's, it's really, even if you love, it's sort of fantastic because, again, it shows this is not an amateur hour. Second, Trump administration, like, they, they are understanding the innards of the workings of government and how to use them in a way that, you know, we were distressing.

[Christine Rosen]

Well, well, well, sort of. I mean, if, if they really understood, I mean, perhaps they understand how the current bureaucracy is constructed and constantly like kudzu spreads, but if they cared about the constitutional separation of powers for a lot of this stuff, they would ask for temporary authority from Congress.

[Matthew Continetti]

Oh, but the CFPB is very special. That's why, that's, this is why it's so genius.

[John Podhoretz]

That's why it's genius.

[Christine Rosen]

Right.

[Matthew Continetti]

Because the cfpb. Right. Well, even I'm still haven't, I haven't figured out how USAID is structured. I mean, there's, it receives a congressional appropriation, but it's considered an independent agency.

[John Podhoretz]

It was never, it was never incepted by Congress. Congress. USAID is, though, it is funded by Congress.

[Matthew Continetti]

It's funded by. So there is some gray area there. Right. That I think they've used in order to shove it into the State Department and rejigger that. And of course, a lot of it has been suspended because of these judges who are also very active over the weekend. But the cfpb, of course, was created as a fully independent agency which receives its funding not from the Congress, but from the Federal Reserve. And so our friends, including Adam White, a frequent Contributor to Commentary has argued for years that there was something unconstitutional about the very nature of the cfpb, the Consumer Financial Protection Agency or bureau. Right. And so the new Trump administration says, okay, fine, if this, if we're now in charge of it and we're just going to simply say to the Fed, we're not taking any more money, so we're ending it.

[John Podhoretz]

By the way, it is not controversial that it's controversial. Like the creation of this agency was a huge political firestorm, fireball in 2010. And the idea was that this, using the Fed as the funding mechanism was the clever workaround because it wasn't actually going to get created otherwise. Congress was not willing to create a new agency and fund it. And the claim of this agency is that it will return more money to the government or to the Fed or whoever than it, that it will cost because it's doing work to help return money to the taxpayer, who will then pay whatever. Anyway, I'm just saying that getting out ahead of this, but this, but I'm just saying Elizabeth Warren had a bad weekend because this agency was her idea. And in fact, had she, she kind of ran for Senate because she didn't, because the agency wasn't created in a sufficient amount of, or she couldn't get confirmed. I can't remember what the specifics were, but she had the idea for it. Obama was going to create it and install her in it. When that didn't work out, she ended up running for Senate and winning in Massachusetts. So the, her, the failure of her appointment to this agency that she had dreamed up out of her head as a professor at Harvard, she ended up, has now gone through the entire gamut. It was created, it's there. She's now standing there watching it, watching its life being choked out of it.

[Abe Greenwald]

And you know what, what really is sort of its replacement, it is doge, which is intended to return money to the, to the federal government. For real.

[John Podhoretz]

Yeah.

[Abe Greenwald]

And which is, which is a special specially created kind of a workaround of itself.

[John Podhoretz]

Right. But DOGE is about going after the federal, the CPFB is about going after private businesses. It's a, it's a, it's a, it's a. You know, that's one of the issues in relation to it is that it's like a, it's like one of those call in or, you know, you write to your local TV station about how you were ripped off by the, by the tire, you know, by the person who sold you your tires and they're, and they're supposed to, then they're supposed to help you get restitution. And that was what.

[Christine Rosen]

Well, yeah, ideologically it was meant to bureaucratize the left's idea that every corporation that makes a profit is evil. And it kind of did that for a while. And that's actually why seeing it completely frozen in time is sort of a great thing.

[John Podhoretz]

I mean, it's fascinating if you think about it. It was all part of this period of time in which after the financial meltdown and, you know, banks weren't really held accountable. It's private businesses being held accountable. And then, you know, Piketty publishes his book capitalism in the 21st century, about how capitalism essentially become a kind of autarkic system of, you know, reinforcing inequality. And this became, yeah, as you say, a kind of overall doctrine of, of the left that the private sector had been, was responsible for destroying, you know, America and creating inequality and pursuing inequality, making inequality the nature of our, of our times. And that Obama was going to be the, you know, the instrument of the proper rebalancing.

[Matthew Continetti]

Can I, yeah. Make a point about Doge's targets That relates to the interview Trump gave to Bret Baier that aired during the pre game coverage yesterday. So usaid, of course, is the most famous DOGE target so far. You know, the entire world is on the brink of collapse because this agency has been severely shrunk and programs frozen according to the mainstream press. Trump, in the interview with Brett Baer said that next he's going to ask Elon Musk and Doge to look at the Department of Education. Trump seems very intent on ending the Department of Education over the next four years. Then he said in the interview, and after that, the Pentagon. And what I think is interesting is each step Dosh takes gets a little bit closer to programs that people actually care about. So if you think about foreign aid, it's the least popular item in the budget. It's a very small part of the budget. You know, people like Ben Rhodes, the former deputy national Security advisor under Obama and the kind of creator of the Iran nuclear deal echo chamber, he's very angry in the New York Times over at the end of USAID and Samantha Power and that when they, they're, when they're out and happy, I'm happy. So that's usaid, Department of Education. Well, you know, that does have some programs that do affect school funding that go into many districts, all the districts around the country that receive federal funds. There are probably more tripwires there. And then of course, the Pentagon, which People have tried to shrink or try to reform wasteful practices for decades and never had any real success is filled is with programs that are directed to particular constituencies and voting blocks. And so I do get the sense that slowly but surely the, the Doge boys with their black backpacks, as was reported in the New York Times this weekend, that they, they're going into these government office buildings wearing backpacks. Can you believe that? But the closer they get to programs upon which actual voting blocks depend, I think the more peril they enter.

[Christine Rosen]

Well, this is an important point. There was a preview of this a bit with the NIH funding, the overhead, the amount of overhead that universities are taking from these federal grants for research in science in Alabama. University of Alabama, Birmingham is the state's largest employer. They get a lot of NIH money. And Senator Katie Britt was asked about this and she, of course, I think beautifully walked this very fine line of, you know, acknowledging that there is waste in government spending and that, you know, everyone should be held accountable, but also not completely saying, yippee, they're going to lose all their funding. This is a major, major issue for her constituents. So I think we will see more and more senators in particular, but anyone who's bringing home pork back to their district is going to have to answer some of these questions if they're Republican and these programs are funding their constituents.

[John Podhoretz]

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And speaking of opportunity, download the CFO's guide to AI and machine learning at netsuite.com commentary the guide is free to you at netsuite.com commentary netsuite.com commentary you bring up something very important because you know the the kind of low hanging fruit that is represented by massive government spending and, and the question of how that spending is actually affected. The anti doge elements are not winning the argument because they just keep pulling stuff out of these books. Now I don't just mean the transgender comic books and stuff like that, but you mentioned the the overhead university overhead numbers. Schools are essentially charging 40% on the dollar that they get from the federal government to administer a grant in a lab for overhead. 40% to 60% according to what we have been reading. So that on Thursday or Friday somebody issued a memo saying we are now capping the overhead number at 15%. No one is allowed with any federal grant to any university to spend more than 15% on overhead. And you know the funny thing is, whenever there are financial scandals involving large scale non profit spending, there's A huge scandal in the 80s and 90s about the United Way, which was then the largest single foundation in the world. Turned out 50% of the United Way was going to pay for the United Way and it was, was like taking in $2 billion a year. Billion dollars was spent on like just administering the United Way non profits. And we, I run one. Commentary is a non profit. So you can go to our donate page, get a tax deduction for your donation to Commentary Inc. Nonprofits have an incredible temptation which is we're noble, we're wonderful, we're doing just such wonderful work. And you know, we really do need to do it well and do it, administer it and all of that. So it's not skimming, you know, we're not making what we could make in the private sector here in the, here in the nonprofit sector. And then when, when things come to light or there's a disgruntled employee at a foundation or something like that, then it turns out that like massive amounts of money that people are giving for the purpose of helping the poor are going to corporate retreats at Sanibel island for the leadership of the United Way, for the leadership of something. And that this is now it turns out that this incredible relationship between the federal government and universities in terms of funding mechanisms, particularly from health. But, but others as well have just been going to pour money down the gullets of, of, of universities, a lot of which have their own non profit endowments to begin with. And these buildings are already built. You know, they're not talking about like building a lab equivalent equipment's all the way to there. There's, you know, it's, it's, it's, it's fascinating because then you get the outrage, right? You get the how dare they. We're this, we're trying to cure, you know, cancer over here. And it's like really, you're trying to cure cancer and the university is taking 50% of the money for the clinical trial.

[Abe Greenwald]

That's why the, so, so the anti doge side can only argue on the broadest level. They can only say, oh my God, they're going to destroy, they're going to destroy the US's image because of what they're doing to USAID. They're going to, they're going to stop science in its tracks. They can't get into the actual numbers because they lose instantly.

[John Podhoretz]

I just think that's an interesting shoe on the other foot and the fact that I think that the crazy spending of the Biden administration over the four Years of its tenure really opened the door here because my guess is that a lot of this, some of the oceans of money, right, $6 trillion in new spending, beginning with COVID and the infrastructure bill and the inflation Reduction act and all of that, the amount of sloshing around that is vanishing or disappearing or is going into places that it shouldn't go. You know, there are only like 15 or 20 people looking. What if there were 200 people looking at this? I don't know. I mean.

[Christine Rosen]

But this is an interesting thing because I remember the discussion we all had many times during COVID about the federal money just like a. Like a fire hose being spent and how much of it was being used for fraud and graft. And Matt and I have a. Have colleagues at AEI who were tracking some of that in real time. It was. It was a massive amount of money. What's interesting to me about the narrative about. It's sort of a silver lining of the Doge debate is that Americans are once again starting to think of this as their money. I think there was for a long time the narrative actually really was quite successful on the left and in the media of saying, like, the government needs to spend all this money. And people didn't really. I mean, they knew it was their money in an abstract sense, but now people are becoming a little possessive of their money in a way that I think is quite healthy for a system where the bureaucracy has become. And the administrative state has become quite expensive and whose reach has probably extended way too far into people's lives.

[John Podhoretz]

So, you know, Matt mentioned the Pentagon and one of the great articles published in the 1980s in Commentary, there was a whole world, the neoliberal magazine Washington Monthly, which said, okay, look, we're. You know, we understand that government is inefficient and bad and all this, and let's look at ways in which we can help fix it. And one of the ways we can do that is to look at the Pentagon. Oh, my God, the waste of The Pentagon. The $600 screw, you know, the $300 nut.

[Matthew Continetti]

The toilet seat that cost $500.

[John Podhoretz]

Yeah, all of that stuff. And of course, it was very convenient because they were also basically a bunch of doves and they hated military spending. Anyway, so it was all. It all jibed. So Ed Lotwak wrote a piece in Commentary called why We Need More Waste, Fraud and Mismanagement at the Pentagon. And he was making a very broad and kind of profound argument, which is that unique among our efforts in government spending, the point of the Pentagon, when we were facing down the Soviet Union was the Pentagon budget was a way of saying to the Soviet Union, we're onto you. We are not, you know, we're not going to look at, we're not going to pick ourselves apart on how we're doing this. We're going to throw money at the problem of you and throw money at the problem of America's enemies and say we are the richest country in the world, we are spending. We don't even care what we're spending. There was a strategic, geostrategic and geopolitical purpose to the expansion of the Pentagon that without question led to waste, fraud and mismanagement, but actually was in service of a larger purpose. You cannot say that about spending to cure. It's like we're going to show cancer, that we're going to work, we're going to get cancer with our spending. And it doesn't matter how that money is apportioned because cancer is just going to give up. You know, that's not. The question is again, if you're doing it, the most money needs to go into the hands of people who are running the clinical trials and not in the hands of the di Administrator of the, of the, you know, medical, of.

[Matthew Continetti]

The Yale Medical School or just a slush fund. That's overhead, right? I mean, you know, 40% overhead that can go to anything. I would, I, you know, I'm trying to think a little bit about how voters are perceiving all this. Another piece of news that came out over the weekend was the CV CBS poll showing that Donald Trump has a 53% approval rating. It's in line with other polls that show him pretty much above water in his first now ever three weeks. Yeah, well, I mean he's been popular, you know, since the election and stuff, but as a president he's doing pretty well according to polling. And I think those voters kind of see what's happening as one Trump is doing what he promised to do, which is shake things up. And we have to remember, you know, in the exit poll voters were asked, you know, what, what's the biggest thing here? And they said what they want to change. And so when you look at the headlines, you're clearly seeing Donald Trump was the candidate who voters thought would bring change to Washington and he's definitely doing that. But I also think that the, the so called victims of Doge, according to the media, are, are people that most voters just don't understand as victims. So I think of government employees, federal government employees, federal workforce is Huge. But, John, you've noticed one of the reports last week from someone who might be affected by DOGE cuts to the federal workforce is saying, well, they're taking away my lifetime employment. Well, no one else in America has.

[John Podhoretz]

Lifetime employment except for university professors.

[Matthew Continetti]

Yeah. So if, if DOGE is targeting university professors and federal bureaucrats who have lifetime employment at agencies that do not produce their name. Right. So the Department of Education does not produce education. In fact, the latest round of national assessment scores shows that kids are really falling behind.

[John Podhoretz]

American kids, a third of eighth graders, are functionally illiterate, according to the naep.

[Matthew Continetti]

Yeah, usaid, does it really produce America's soft power? Do the LGBT comic books actually make people in Peru think, wow, I love the United States of America? I don't think so. Even, sadly, the Department of Defense. You know, obviously our military is extremely capable and technologically advanced and our soldiers are the best in the world, but the world is not a very safe place these days. So if what Doge is doing is saying, you know, we're going after the things that don't work and we're going after protected bureaucracies that aren't actually producing results, I think most voters will say, well, that's fine, that's fine. They're not going to, they're not going to spend too much time sweating the details, unlike the press.

[John Podhoretz]

Right. I think that's what.

[Abe Greenwald]

I think that's true. But I think eventually voters, even the supportive ones, are going to say, okay, now what about the prices that I'm paying every day?

[Matthew Continetti]

Oh, sure, yeah.

[Abe Greenwald]

I mean, that's, you know, this is all like, great upfront.

[John Podhoretz]

Right?

[Matthew Continetti]

Yeah.

[John Podhoretz]

So remember, we're three weeks. Right. We're at the three week mark today of the administration. So we're having conversations about, you know, about things we didn't ever expect we were going to have conversations about. But the American people think differently as to say, people are saying, he never said he was going to do dough. He never said he was going to go after usaid. He never said he was doing X, Y or Z. But according to the CBS poll, which is very interesting, Trump and his campaign promises, is he doing what he promised or different from what he promised? 70% say that Trump is doing what he promised. 30% say different. Now, remember, he's got a 5347 approval rating. So that means that people who don't approve of what he's doing say he's doing what he promised as well as one presumes, everybody who approves of him So a third of the people who don't like him say, well, I mean, you gotta give him. He's doing what he said he was gonna do.

[Abe Greenwald]

And he is.

[John Podhoretz]

Well, he is. But I'm fascinated by this because I think that the idea is that what he is doing is he is acting. And what we saw for a year before him was a senile president who couldn't even be interviewed on the super bowl or take a question. He has taken.

[Abe Greenwald]

It was a headless administration and now.

[John Podhoretz]

It now taken more questions from reporters in these three weeks than Biden took in two years.

[Christine Rosen]

But it's also. But it's years. It's also the way, I think a lot of the anger and reactionary politics of this is the way he's doing it. He's bringing in outsiders. He's bringing in. And Matt has a great piece about, oh my word, they're young. It's not just that they're wearing backpacks. Let's not forget. Do you remember when, when Bill Clinton brought in all these youngsters into the, into the West Wing? Everyone's like, oh, it's so amazing, the energy, these wunderkins. You know, it was fine when a Democrat does it, but I do think it's. It's that he's, he's not playing the bureaucratic game in the way that lifetime bureaucrats, especially in the federal government, expect him to play. And remember, we now have a lot of those people out of work now that there was a change of administration. So they have very little to do except complain and look for jobs in the lobbying industry. So there is a sense in which, because of his techniques, it' his style, obviously. But bringing in Elon Musk, bringing in all these young kids, whiz kids to do all this number crunching, this is upsetting to a very sclerotic bureaucracy right now.

[John Podhoretz]

Look, you change administrations, you change parties that are running the executive branch. 5,000 jobs turn over or, you know, they turn over whenever, Whenever the administration wills it to happen. Those are, those are political appointees that serve, are appointed by administration in jobs that it is understood will change hands in partisan terms. 5,000 of them. When we're hearing all this whining and crying and complaining from people who work at USAID and stuff like that. To be honest, I don't know how many of them. We don't know who they are. How many are they all. Are they all sort of GS15, GS13, you know, I don't think it's that easy. It's not that easy. To fire people who are, who are in the federal bureaucracy the way they're claiming. I'm suspicious about some of these stories because I think we might be having double.

[Matthew Continetti]

And they're going to be a lot of court fights.

[John Podhoretz]

There are going to be, this is what I always predicted, have been fired, who were going to be fired anyway because they were in political appointee jobs. And that the press is conveniently delighting the difference between people at USAID who are in the permanent, who are permanent bureaucrats and people who were in political jobs. It's like somebody said to me this weekend, I mean, look, I understand why he's doing this, but firing the US of firing the inspectors general. And again, inspectors general may be civil servant, may, may or may not be civil servants or maybe political appointees, depending on the agency. But it's like, why is that bad? What exactly is it about a, about a inspector general that makes that inspector general, like, deserving of continuing in his job forever when there's a change in administration?

[Matthew Continetti]

Right. Well, the issue there is the statute creating the IGs says that the President has to give Congress 30 day notification. But the argument from folks like our friend Andy McCarthy is that statute is probably unconstitutional because the way that the Constitution conceives of the executive and recent Supreme Court decisions emphasize the point that the president essentially has hiring and firing ability over the executive branch of government. He doesn't have to tell Congress what he's going to do. Congress is another branch of government. So that's a interesting constitutional controversy. Then there are all the controversies regarding labor law and the protections that the federal employee unions have spent decades building into the system to make them invulnerable to change.

[John Podhoretz]

Right.

[Matthew Continetti]

What I think is that just the very fact of rattling the system is, I think in the short term, good for Trump, because people want the system to be rattled and they look at the federal government now as almost another version of Joe Biden, as something that was completely out to lunch, that was on autopilot. No one knew what was going on for four years. And it was completely, it was also completely ineffective. So these fights, I think, are positive for him politically because Trump, because they show that he's actually trying to do something about a system that no one, no one likes. Remember all the two thirds of the country thinking that we're on the wrong direction as a country on election day. So showing that he's going to set a different direction, even if we're unclear how things will settle at the end of this is, is a good move. In my view.

[John Podhoretz]

I mean, look, 50% of the country voted for him. He is gone into office, you know, supercharged, doing all kinds of stuff, making announcements every day, you know, saying, you know, there's a new sheriff in town. We're doing things differently. We're, we're, we're dismantling. We're dismantling regimes that were constructed out of whole cloth during COVID and during, after George Floyd and all of that. They put them on you dei, you know, gender, all that. That's gone. Like, they insisted on it. We're just taking it away. That is what, 50%. That's when people voted for him. It's not that they necessarily voted on trans or they voted on di, or they voted on. This isn't working.

[Matthew Continetti]

Go ahead.

[Christine Rosen]

But just. Sorry to interrupt, but to Abe's earlier point, and I think if the Trump administration loses sight of this, they will be punished politically down the line. People really, they cared about the border and they cared about the economy. So if he's doing all this slash and burn, I think he's got a lot of tolerance built up. You're right. People want the country moving in a different direction. But if he gets bogged down in legal fights or bogged down in political fights over that over the next year and a half and the economy doesn't improve, if eggs are still super expensive and people are complaining about it and he doesn't address those concerns, he's going to find himself being punished by the electorate because the economy really is. And the tariff war that we haven't talked about yet, that's gearing up again this week. So I think, I hope he has someone who's carefully watching that part of the portfolio, because if he doesn't, he will correctly be punished by the electorate or his party will.

[John Podhoretz]

So, first of all, yes, the tariff, supposedly today tariffs are being reimposed on steel and aluminum, a 25% tariff. Trump basically said, I guess, to the, to the people who are on the plane, not to Brett Baier. But in this, he let them into the cabin again, something Biden hasn't done in years, and like, let them ask him questions. And he said, if they do it to us, we're going to do it to them. And it is true that a lot of countries have tariff systems to protect their domestic.

[Matthew Continetti]

So this is separate from the duties on steel and aluminum. This is the reciprocal tariff, reciprocal tariff that he's planning on announcing, which is interesting in itself because remember, he campaigned on the 10%, maybe even 20% in some appearances, global tariff.

[John Podhoretz]

Right.

[Matthew Continetti]

On all products. Now, what he's saying is America will impose a duty that is the equivalent of what another country imposes on American products in a way that's, you know, Scott Bessant, our Treasury Secretary, would say that's more strategic than just the 20%.

[Christine Rosen]

Like, I mean, it's for tat for Trump, but.

[John Podhoretz]

And also, you know, still an aluminum. Again, I am a, I am, I'm opposed to tariffs. We have a long conversation about why tariffs are bad and why tariffs, looking back to the 19th century, when this federal government was tiny and could be paid for by tariffs, is ridiculous. Because look at the federal government now, all of that, but steel and aluminum, those tariffs have been on and off and on and off and on and off for literally for 40 years. And Republican and Democratic administrations alike have imposed, reimposed, taken back, put them back on, based on domestic political considerations. There is a huge issue involving right now, this whole question of U.S. steel and Nippon Steel buying U.S. steel. A lot of that has to do with pension obligations that could bankrupt the state of Pennsylvania if, for weird reasons, if these companies are run badly or run into the ground or don't have enough money coming in. You had people, you had Republican administrations, like the free trading Bush administration, supporting tariffs in 2002 on steel because they wanted to do well in the 2002 senatorial elections, stuff like that. So this is very much an ongoing political football. Trump has not incepted it. The global tariff, also the praise of tariffs. It has been a long time since anybody praised a tariff. The idea was they're necessary as a, you know, if they do it to us, we should do it to them. They're necessary, evil or something like that. He's like, they're great. This is fantastic. It's his favorite word. We can get all this money and you don't have to pay, you know, they'll pay us, you know, for access to our markets. That's not the way it works. And where Abe's point and what Christine said has a larger macroeconomic effect is if some kind of a tariff war begins, I don't think that is going to be good for the economy or the bottom line for consumers. Trump himself said there might be a little pain.

[Matthew Continetti]

I do think that the fact that Trump is really the only person on the stage right now is distorting our view of the policy debate, because Trump is commanding, he's producing. Everything is a new show, a new press availability. Only in the past weekend have we seen the courts finally begin to gear up. So the courts will be the brake on Trump as they were in the first term. But that will take time. All that takes time, even if they do, you know, expedited a review up to the Supreme Court on some of these cases. The other break, of course, is Congress, and Congress is not a very effective break at all. And what I worry about with the Trump agenda is one reason that the inflationary effects of tariffs were not as pronounced in the first term. Part of the reason is the floating currencies in the world, the exchange rate mechanisms kind of nullify some of the inflationary effects while not while also nullifying any benefits to American workers. Right. But the other reason that the tariffs were not as inflationary as many people thought in the first term was Trump had major supply side reforms in energy and taxes. Well, we need Congress to do those major supply side reforms. Congress is responsible for the tax code. Trump can't rewrite the tax code on his own. So if they don't get that tax bill through, then the tariffs will have more bad consequences. What? The bad consequences of tariffs won't be mitigated by the positive consequences of supply side reforms. Right. So I think we're focusing on Trump when if we look over at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue, things aren't looking too good for Congress's ability to write this big supply side ultra mega maga bill that Speaker Johnson is dreaming of.

[John Podhoretz]

Yeah. And so as I say, it's three weeks in, so yeah, the ha. So the courts are gearing up, had this seemingly demented ruling out of New York, this guy, Judge Engelmeier, who basically seemed to suggest that the Secretary of the treasury to look at the payment system. Payment system inside the Department of the treasury, which it strikes me, I don't.

[Matthew Continetti]

Think that will be upheld.

[John Podhoretz]

I don't think that. I mean, God knows when it will be un. Upheld or whether or not. I mean, there's also this question of whether or not they will abide by the. Listen, I mean, if they believe that a ruling is patently in statute, it's patently unconstitutional. It is very interesting whether a court in New York has. This is where we get to the unitary executive and all kinds of other arguments that get very recondite and I don't want to like waste time on them. But you know, Scott Bessant really, he's not. When would, when would the Treasury Secretary look at the books? You know, he's gonna like go into the computer system and look at the payment system. That's why you Hire a kid with a backpack to help you because, you know, it's, it's too much. It's too much data. But you can see how the resistance, if it takes place in the courts, is going to take the form of we're just going to say you can't do anything, and then we'll let somebody else sort it out, how much you can do. So you say we're going to do this. I'm Judge Engelmeier in New York. I'm going to say, you can't do this. And some other judge maybe up to the Supreme Court is going to, is going to work it out. And we're just slowing, we're gumming up the work. And I think we all knew this was happening. I'm sure the Trump people knew was happening. That's one of the reasons why is Matt said, like, if you throw a lot of stuff, you're just like throwing logs on the fire. Users who are like, throwing out 10,000 proposals and every one of them gets challenged in the courts. By the time this all works through in a year or something like that, you'll get 25 to 40% of it at a minimum through maybe more.

[Christine Rosen]

Well, and if the changes will be.

[John Podhoretz]

Will be pretty revolutionary.

[Christine Rosen]

And if the proposal is meant to build political capital, which a lot of these are for Trump, I think it's the same thing that Biden did with the student loan, you know, debt transfer. I still refuse to call it a payoff or loan forgiveness. And the courts kept smacking him down. He just kept shrugging and saying, well, I'm going to do it anyway. Because politically, he felt that was useful for him. It didn't turn out to be. But, I mean, it's not as if folks on the left can stomp their feet and scream and yell about how this is unprecedented. Not at all.

[Matthew Continetti]

They can trust me.

[John Podhoretz]

They will, but they should. Yeah. I mean, the whole thing of the. Oh, my God. You know, people who work in the federal government, they're very, they're afraid. They're afraid there are loyalty tests and they're, they're, they may lose their job. It's the fear and the terror and the terror and the fear.

[Matthew Continetti]

It's like anxiety.

[John Podhoretz]

Have you lived in America for the last 25 years? Do you know what it was like for most people who, until the employment situation began to sort of revert in the, really, in the Trump administration back into the favor of workers, that people found themselves in a position where they had almost no bargaining power with their employers? So that they were, they sat there and didn't get raises and didn't get cost of living increases. And the one threat that they had was in a very functional economy where there can be a lot of job mobility, they could say, I'm leaving and going somewhere else, or look for another job that paid more. And there was a period basically about 10 years where that wasn't even really thinkable as the country was processing and digesting and dealing with the financial meltdown. And so federal workers, again, getting back to this, like people, most many people in this country have lived with that anxiety. And while I don't think it makes them particularly empathic toward the federal workforce, you would think they would say, oh, I went through that. It was terrible. Those poor federal workers. It's bad. It's more like, why are you any different?

[Matthew Continetti]

Should we speak a little bit about people that we do feel great empathy toward? And that as the hostages in Israel and the three released over the weekend, again to just the Hamas grotesqueries, the three male hostages who were released looked like, as the President said, Holocaust survivors because of their mistreatment and malnourishment. And it's a real question now, especially as King Abdullah, King Abdullah of Jordan is visiting the President later this week, what the future of this ceasefire looks like. Israel. Israel has left the Netzerim corridor, the highway bisecting the Gaza Strip that Israel has used as kind of a, you know, military base throughout the war. But the future of this agreement is very unclear, especially when we see that Hamas is really mistreating these captives brutally. And just finally, if there's one thing maybe we can help defund or sick. Dojan, where's the International Red Cross? It's just disgusting that they've been completely absent this entire, this entire conflict. They haven't done a single thing to check in on these hostages. They haven't lobbied for them. And we see these, these three released who just looked just terrible. And the international humanitarian community, which apparently depends on USAID and other agencies for its sustenance, has been completely awol.

[Christine Rosen]

And everything about both their treatment as we can we see from their horrible condition and their use as tools of propaganda by Hamas upon their release are both war crimes. I mean, so that the crowd that's always talking wants to talk war crimes. Again, totally silent. But I agree with Matt. The International Red Cross is not an organization that should receive another penny from a, you know, freedom loving person on this earth until it's investigated as to why it basically served as a handmaiden for Hamas rather than as an independent organization meant to help, you know, with the release of hostages.

[Abe Greenwald]

So Seth Mandel has a post up commentary now where he notes that in the recent handoff there's a use an image of the international Red Cross worker shaking hands with a Hamas which tells you everything.

[Matthew Continetti]

Yep.

[John Podhoretz]

There are two issues related to this hostage release. One is this question, this Weekend's Hostage Release 1 is the exposure as you say, the now what will be the undeniable exposure because of one's eyeballs of what Hamas did to these people that it kidnapped and brought into Gaza. Apparently the early release consciously was of the hostages who were in the best physical shape and they have run out of people who don't look like they were. I mean the test, their testimonies, the testimonies have since released are most are about tortures, mostly psychological tortures.

[Christine Rosen]

Starved. Yes, right.

[John Podhoretz]

But, but psychological tortures, being left alone for months and you know, or having to work as like household slaves for people if they didn't go down into the tunnels and stuff like that. Like, like and being abused and being, you know, having, being attacked and being, you know, verbally maligned and all of that. Now, now we are getting to these three and then some testimony that they're giving about the, the fact that they were repeatedly physically hung upside down, beaten with electrical cables and for what, for, for what reason? They weren't, they're not military people. Right. They're not, they're men, they're men of military age or they went through the Israeli military or something like that. No useful information to be gleaned from them through torture. They were being tortured to torture them. And the idea that people are now getting their minds around is that as, as another, I don't know how many more are supposed to come out. I can't remember what the number is now.14 or something like that. They've reached the limit of people who do not look as though they were. They were basically put through a death camp where, you know, well, they only fed them.

[Christine Rosen]

They, they said. One of the things they said is that they were only fed in the week or so leading up to their release because otherwise they didn't have the ability to stand. They were so in such a weakened and yeah, terrible state.

[John Podhoretz]

Right. So that then gets to the question of how Israel itself and the Israeli body politicians going to react. Trump is the first public reaction that we have seen that was interesting and commonsensical. Like he said, basically said, I don't know how much more we can take this is what they look like. I don't know how much more we can take and I don't know what that means. As with him always. It's a kind of very vague thing to say. It's like saying we're good, you know, we're going to unleash hell on you. Whatever. It could, could mean anything. But the, the Israeli body politic is now. Is. Is now really pathologically torn because it cannot not respond to the, to the signs of the treatment of these hostages by ending the war that that would be to grant Hamas and the, and, and the world of anti Semites and the world of Israel hate all that. A weird psychological victory that even though they were beaten and defeated and Gaza is in ruins and all of that, that Israel gave up the ghost because it needed to get the rest of the hostages back and it's going to just stop fighting and it's going to give in. There are 76 hostages left. So. And on the. They cannot not respond. The Jewish people got a state so that this would not happen. They need at least for deterrence purposes to make sure that this sort of secondary effect of the war, the fact that Jews are being kept in underground concentration camps, beaten and starved and killed is not responded so that people don't do it again. So that no one goes until it tries to do it again without having 2,000 pound bombs dropped on them. And yet the idea of the condition of the hostages who are still there as being so unimaginably dreadful. There is this emotional pressure to say we have to get them out by any means necessary. We have to get. I mean we can't just let them die there. We cannot just let them be tortured to death there. We have to do something. And there's nothing that they can do except stop the war. And so Israel is gonna, is going to go. Is going through a very dark night of the soul because the, the innate contradiction of the bring them home now. And there is this evil that has been unleashed against the Jewish people that must be extirpated are now really directly. The conflict is now inescapable. You probably can't have one without the other. You probably can't say we need to win this war and destroy Hamas and do this without an understanding that that probably means that the rest of the hostages after the first phase is over are not going to be rescued or not going to be released and it's unbearable. But they have to bear it. What? They have to bear it or they. So I don't actually know where this goes. This deal was the last possible step on a third path. And unless somehow Trump gets the gutteries or something like that to get Hamas to come out of the tunnels and surrender and release all the hostages before the second phase, which starts in another two weeks or three weeks or something like that, either the war is going to have to start or Israel is going to have been to war for 16 or 17 months and will not have conclusively won the war and will have granted some kind of weird victory to those who, you know, think that it's open season on the Jews.

[Abe Greenwald]

I just don't see the latter scenario happening. It could. I think the war restarts.

[John Podhoretz]

Well, I mean, the politics in Israel are immensely complicated and have been made more interesting in an odd way by Trump's proposal for Gaza. Itamar Ben Gavir, who is the. Who left, the. Who is the far right politician, unexpectedly powerful after the last election, who pulled out of the coalition, the government coalition over the hostage deal, has signaled his interest in rejoining the government because of Trump's Gaza plan, not because he wants Gaza reconstructed, because he loves the idea of the mass population transfer of Palestinians to lands far away from Israel. So there's a lot of different levers here, but Bibi's own coalition, the governing coalition, wants to restart the war. They also want the hostages home. That's the. It's like, not that anybody doesn't want the hostages home. You know, and there is this psychotic idea on the, on the Israeli left that Bibi doesn't really want the hostages home, or he could get them home if he just, you know, snapped his fingers. But the only way to get them home to snap their fingers is to stop the war. And what's funny about the Israeli left is that they're not saying stop the war, they're just saying it's all Bibi's fault. So. Which is convenient. You know, it's a convenient way to deal with a intolerable, you know, political and moral and spiritual and situation. But, you know, God knows what next weekend will look like if that's what, what this, this weekend look like. And these stories are going to start emerging. They've been emerging sort of piecemeal about what it's been like. And then, of course, the, the most nightmarish thing was that they let, they let that guy say, I can't wait to be reunited with my wife and children, without knowing was allowed to stay while he was standing there, and then had to be told when he emerged into Israeli custody that his Wife and children had been murdered on October 7th. One of the other people said, how's Hirsch? Is Hirsch out? You know, how's Hirsch doing? That's Hirsch. Goldberg, Poland, you know, who was one of the Americans six who were killed as a rescue attempt was approaching them in the tunnels. So he then had to be told that Hirsch was dead. I mean, the, the, the, the torment, you know, is just, just sort of unimaginable. And then you have at the super bowl, somebody, somebody at the Superdome let a guy in with a flag who ran around during Kendrick Lamar's number, ran it across the field with a Palestinian Gaza flag. That's the other thing about America, you know, is that, is that I was.

[Matthew Continetti]

On a college campus last week and I was amazed at. I had never really seen this before. On so many dorms, doors to dorm rooms, you would see the Palestinian flag next to the trans flag and this. And so this is, of course, a perfect representation of what has been called the Omni cause. Just the full spectrum opposition to Israel, America and Western civilization, but the ability to reconcile these two completely different things. Or at least from my, you know, bougie perspective, Hamas and LGBT rights do not go together, but for somehow in the imagination of the modern left and the young left in particular, they do.

[John Podhoretz]

Important point to be made about the CBS poll, if I could just share it. Because of course, what we've gone through over the last 16 months on college campuses and seeing this disgusting, disreputable evil supported and praised and buildings occupied and encampments and everything like that, Trump is plus 10among people 18 to 30 in the, in the, in the CBS poll. So young people writ large in the United States.

[Matthew Continetti]

Yeah, I'm not saying they all have these flags.

[John Podhoretz]

No, no. But I'm saying it's worth.

[Christine Rosen]

I was anti Semitism also on the rise among the young in the United States, which is worrisome.

[John Podhoretz]

Yes, well, they're right. But I'm just saying it is, it is interesting that the we. Because we are who we are and we are part of the educated elite in the United States, who. I have a kid on the college campuses. Christine has two kids on college campuses right now. You know, it's like it's impossible not to focus on that because that's where. That's our. The amniotic fluid in which we bathe. But as I say, if 10% of the people, the youngest voting demographic in the country, are more supportive of Trump than the people who are the next, who are the next age up, that's that's pretty interesting. And it's worth remembering that what we see on the campuses remember only what is it, 32% of people graduate from college, from a four year college or something like that is not the young. Like this has been a mistake that everybody has been making since the 60s. And I feel like I make it myself and it's not accurate to, to. To the true depiction of what these. What, what people actually believe and think.

[Matthew Continetti]

So Christine has a recommendation.

[John Podhoretz]

You do?

[Matthew Continetti]

Yeah.

[Christine Rosen]

And you know what I just realized? This is going to be. This I think will hit Matt's sweet spot. We'll see. I had the opportunity when I was. I was in London and I had the opportunity to browse some of the best. I mean they have some of the best bookshops in the. You know, in the world. But I had time between meetings and I was browsing and I came across a great mid century bit of Japanese crime fiction by Seicho Matsumoto.

[Matthew Continetti]

This is yours. This is yours.

[Christine Rosen]

But you also like Japan.

[Matthew Continetti]

Yeah, but I like Japan. But you are the mistress of the Japanese fiction.

[John Podhoretz]

You know it all genre fiction. Yes, yes. Not even existential Japanese fiction.

[Christine Rosen]

But this is Tokyo Express Express. It was published in.

[Matthew Continetti]

It's.

[Christine Rosen]

It's set in. In the 1960s. So this is post World War II Japanese crime fiction. Seiio Matsumoto. It is fantastic. He's. He wrote a bunch of crime novels. This one I loved because I mean it has a wonderful diabolical twist at the end. It. It gathers steam as you read it. I mean it's. It's short. You can. I got through it and still had time left over on my flight home. It is. But it's wonderfully paced. It's very meticulous. It's. It involves a lot of deep dives into. Into trains and timetables and who's doing what. And it is just. It's a perfect little gem. It's. It's very, very much like a Hitchcock movie. I mean it's. It's kind of fascinating. Wonderful. And I've now ordered all the rest of his crime fiction novels. So that's. That's my recommendation. If you want just a fun read. Seito Matsumoto's Tokyo Express.

[John Podhoretz]

Fantastic. Okay, well. Will be back tomorrow. For Matt, Christine and Abe, I'm John Pot Hortz. Keep the camp bur.