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- [00:04]
Matthew Continetti
Hope for the best, expect the worst Some preach and pain Some die of thirst the way of knowing which way.
- [00:18]
Seth Mandel
It'S going Hope for the best, Expect the worst, Hope for the best.
- [00:25]
John Podhoretz
Welcome to the Commentary magazine daily podcast. Today is Wednesday, January 8, 2025. I am John Pothor, the editor of Commentary magazine. With me, as always, executive editor Abe Greenwald. Hi, Abe.
- [00:38]
Abe Greenwald
Hi, John.
- [00:39]
John Podhoretz
Washington Commentary columnist Matthew Continetti. Hi, Matt.
- [00:41]
Matthew Continetti
Hi, John.
- [00:42]
John Podhoretz
And senior editor Seth Mandel. Hi, Seth.
- [00:44]
Seth Mandel
Hi, John.
- [00:46]
John Podhoretz
Matt, you and I watched, I believe, the entirety of Donald Trump's press conference yesterday. And he's back. Baby.
- [00:58]
Matthew Continetti
It's amazing. It's incredible to watch.
- [01:02]
John Podhoretz
So it's about 90 minutes. First 45 minutes were basically a monologue.
- [01:10]
Matthew Continetti
And a wide ranging.
- [01:14]
John Podhoretz
Yes, monologue. So just to pluck out what's important from what's not important, the most important thing that happened in the press conference was Trump doubling, tripling and quadrupling down on the idea that if the hostages are not released by January 20th, hell will break out in the Middle East. And I view that. I don't know how you view it, because he kept saying, do I have to spell it out for you, what I'm talking about? And the answer is he doesn't. But I'm not sure that people really understand what it means when he says hell will break out in the Middle East. The only way hell breaks out in the Middle east in the way that he is talking about is some kind of direct confrontation with Iran because there is no way to break out hell against Hamas. Yeah. I mean, in that. Or. Or the Houthis, there's more that can.
- [02:01]
Matthew Continetti
Be done, I think, based on statements by the former NSA McMaster, that we could be probably doing more with military assistance, intelligence assistance vis a vis IDF operations in Gaza. So that could be one element. But I do agree that's not hell.
- [02:25]
John Podhoretz
Whatever you. Whatever hell is, increasing military and intelligence cooperation isn't hell.
- [02:31]
Matthew Continetti
Well, Trump is not gonna say. He's gonna unleash purgatory. You know, this is Donald Trump. And if you watch the 85 minute press conference, as you and I did, you know, you were reminded of the rhetoric and the reality. And so it takes a fine toothed comb here to go through and say, okay, what is exactly is he saying? I thought it was very important that when he noticed that his friend Steve Whitake, off the special envoy to the Middle east, was in the back of the room, he summoned Whitaker up to the lectern and asked him to talk about the state of the negotiations. And this is noticeable for two reasons. The first is Trump is unusual in that he's a politician who's willing to give up the microphone. He does this at the rallies a lot.
- [03:22]
John Podhoretz
As long as he gets it back.
- [03:23]
Matthew Continetti
Well, he's always going to get it back. Right. But it's interesting to watch him over the course of the past decade because he'll always say, hey, why don't you say a few words? I think there's a showman quality to that.
- [03:34]
John Podhoretz
Right.
- [03:34]
Matthew Continetti
He's the ringmaster, but there's also a weird kind of deference or something like he's willing to give it up for a moment. I guess you're right. Knowing that he's going to get it back. But the second reason that Wyckoff's presence and statements were noteworthy was this was clearly top of mind for, For Trump. And I think the contrast with Trump's statements on Ukraine is important as well. Trump has dropped. I'm going to solve the Ukraine war in 24 hours. Right. He said at the press conference yesterday, this is a tough. It's a tough problem now.
- [04:15]
Seth Mandel
It's.
- [04:15]
Abe Greenwald
Yes, it is.
- [04:17]
Matthew Continetti
Whereas with the Middle east, he's saying, look, if we don't get those hostages out before I'm inaugurated, there's going to be hell to pay. So that's a day one action item.
- [04:31]
John Podhoretz
Let's, let, let's just unpack this. The reason I wanted to talk about the hostages first and then I think Ukraine, it's important to bring up second is, of course, that the big news that came out of it is he's going to invade Greenland, he's going to take the Panama Canal, he's going to Anne. Canada. And I think that's where you can see the way in which Trump is both the same person he was in 2016, 2017, and immeasurably more confident and weirdly skilled than he was as a public presence at the beginning of his first term, because he now effortlessly dominates the conversation and he sends the media down wild goose path, you know, on a wild goose chase for the worst possible thing.
- [05:21]
Seth Mandel
A wild goose chase.
- [05:23]
John Podhoretz
Yeah, exactly. No, I mean, it's interesting because does it matter geopolitically whether or not he makes a deal with Denmark that transfers sovereignty of Greenland to the United States? Yeah, I mean, it does. Obviously it would be kind of a big thing. We haven't really done that kind of thing in 100 years. But it's as though you say, doesn't matter.
- [05:47]
Abe Greenwald
I just want to. Just in terms of the press wild goose Chase, the Times said, characterized it as one of the most frightening thing he said was about the US Acquiring more land.
- [06:00]
John Podhoretz
That's what I mean. See, he is. He is setting them down the rabbit hole of Trump.
- [06:06]
Seth Mandel
He is trying to encourage derangement syndrome containing Greenland is. Trump is far from the first president to suggest that. Also, that's the other weird thing about the overreaction. Right. About Greenland is that it has been on the agenda every so on and off for, you know, 100 or years, just because it has that strategic.
- [06:30]
Matthew Continetti
So we should.
- [06:31]
Seth Mandel
After World War II, you know, Harry Truman was like, what are we going to do about green?
- [06:36]
Matthew Continetti
We should try to parse these out again.
- [06:39]
John Podhoretz
Yeah.
- [06:39]
Matthew Continetti
This press conference was so wide ranging. You know, we start with the hostages that less than 10 minutes in, we're talking about Maga Fest destiny, which I do want to talk about at length. But before we even get there, I want to start with another contrast, which is between Trump and Biden, because I think one reason Trump has been holding these press conferences since the election is to just put a pin in the fact that he is up to the task to take care that the laws are faithfully executed under the Constitution, whereas Biden is not and is in hiding. So you think about Trump on his feet giving this. You know, it's Shakespearean monologues. You typically deal with one problem facing the character. Right. But not Trump's. Trump's monologues, they range from many problems. You've got economics on one hand, then you go to foreign policy, then you go to lawfare. Anyway, so you have that part of it. But then he's answering these questions from all these reporters, not all of them friendly for the back half. What is Biden doing? Biden's sitting in the Oval Office for one exit interview one, and it's not on tv. It is with Susan Page of USA Today. And that was published. And I just, I think we can talk about that later as well. But that split screen is very important and it speaks to why Trump is going to be the president in two weeks.
- [08:11]
John Podhoretz
Important because Susan Page is Parson Weems in this interview. You can read it. They do actually have film of it. You can watch it on the USA Today site. But I read the transcript and, you know, she's sort of like gently correcting him when he makes mistakes. And she's not following up when he says things like, I created the best. I mean, he says stuff that is very Trumpy. And weirdly, it's sort of like I solved inflation. I. Everything is Better now. Our alliances are in fantastic shape, and there's, like, no pushback whatsoever. So he chose wisely in the. In the absolutely pathetic sentimentalist approach of Susan Page as. As Biden goes out the door. And the contrast is Trump, I think, is trying to encourage his enemies in the media to go insane about him again, because they shot at him and shot at him and shot at him, not only without proper result, although you could say the 2020 election was the proper result for them because he was not reelected in 2020, but they arguably got him elected the second time here because of their derangement and the absolute monomaniacal Ahabian pursuit of him as the. As the white whale. And I think maybe he thinks that will be helpful to him. He is not scared of them. He is not courting Maggie Haberman anymore. He has a White House chief of staff who is going to make sure that his staff doesn't have different reporters on different speed dials to report on who's having what fight in the hallway outside the Oval Office, as was the case in 2019 and in 2017 and in 2018. And reading through the New York Times's running account of the press conference as it was going on was like reading people going, he's doing it again. He's lying again. He's. Yeah, he's saying untrue things that he is. He is making claims that are not verifiable. And it's like, when are you people gonna. Are you ever gonna learn? Like Lucy and the football.
- [10:31]
Matthew Continetti
Now, there is not.
- [10:32]
John Podhoretz
Never. And it's. Yeah.
- [10:35]
Matthew Continetti
Okay, well, so my favorite is the framing of the Greenland debate, which we should talk about more at another time. But the framing of the Greenland debate is the crisis with Denmark. It's the first crisis of the Trump presidency, not even about the crisis in Denmark. I don't think that's the way most Americans, certainly most Greenlanders, interpret this debate. But there are other pieces of news that I just want to mention other than the foreign policy piece, which is clearly dominant in the press conference and may actually end up dominating Trump's second term in a way that people aren't fully expecting. Now, the first is political news. You know, Trump, over the weekend, as we discussed on the podcast, came out in favor of the one beautiful Mega MAGA bill, which is the one reconciliation bill that will cover everything from taxes to immigration to energy desired by the House Republicans. At this press conference, he continued stepping away from that bill, which he started in an interview with our friend Hugh Hewitt on Monday, saying that you know, whatever, whatever works. Basically typical of Trump to kind of leave himself the most room possible. He's now saying some people like two bills, and that's the Senate Republicans would prefer two bills in order to get some early wins on the board legislatively. The first bill covering immigration and energy and defense and then keeping the tax stuff to, to the second bill. So Trump has kind of moved away from his support for the 1 mega MAGA bill. That's the political news. But then I also want to comment on some of the economic news that Trump dealt with. And I think it's overlooked because as you say, John, the media is chasing these, you know, the Canadian, the Canadian geese, as Seth put it. Right, they're chasing the Canadian geese. And I think Trump's economic message is very important. He talked about inflation, he talked about how he's going to bring down inflation mainly through using our energy. He really went after Biden's decree, as we've called it here, that, you know, restricting or banning energy development on some of these coastal off offshore energy fields in the, in the ocean as he went after that. And then he really kind of broadened it to a critique of progressivism and its green utopianism in order to limit carbon based fuels. And of course, the best part was when he was talking about how he's going to protect our gas heaters.
- [13:15]
John Podhoretz
Not only the best part, the whales were the best.
- [13:19]
Matthew Continetti
Oh, I forgot about it. Okay, well, I want to talk about that too. But the gas heater part was great because it involved physical comedy. You know, typically you're laughing at just the way Trump formulates things. But in this case, when he was talking about the difference between gas heaters and electric heaters, he was complaining that with electric heaters you start itching. And he kind of, he kind of itched himself. With gas heaters, there's no itch. And so that's why he's going to sign a bill preserving our ability to have gas heat. And again, I think it's an important measured. He's discussing, but he does it in a way that is kind of loony but also kind of funny. And then of course, John, as you say, there was the whales. And I'll let you, I'll let you describe that.
- [14:05]
John Podhoretz
The windmills, I just want you to. The windmills are driving the whales crazy, Matt. So that was the best.
- [14:15]
Matthew Continetti
He goes, he's talking about how the offshore windmills are correlated with these beached whales in Massachusetts. And I've noticed that story too. But he said, then he goes the. And then he just says the windmills are driving the whales crazy. Obviously. Obviously. That's, that's the, that's the button of the joke, is the obviously.
- [14:37]
John Podhoretz
And of course, what's funny about this is it's actually a perfect environmentalist story in a way. Like horror movie story. Are, you know, are we, are we killing off the, you know, the. That was horribly endangered whales with this, these massive capitalist, government supported wind farms, you know, in the water. And of course that story will never be told by Hollywood because it violates the green agenda. That is more important. But it is funny that he is now, you know, sort of the Teddy Roosevelt of the whale. He is the conservationist of whale culture and against the depredations of encroaching. The encroaching wind farms. Wind farms, yeah. So the whales are being driven crazy, the heaters are making us itch. And so, and we didn't even get to the fluoride yet, and we haven't got right.
- [15:37]
Matthew Continetti
So he didn't bring up fluoride.
- [15:38]
Abe Greenwald
Can I just say, I don't think. John, you said, you said that he's somehow intentionally trying to drive the media crazy. I agree with you that he's not scared of them, that he doesn't care. I don't think, I don't think it's intentional. I think it's a leopard and his spots. And this is what he would say.
- [15:55]
John Podhoretz
No matter what the reason that. It struck me as I was watching that something. There's been a fundamental shift in American culture from 2017 to 2025, which is not surprising. It's almost a decade and enormous changes have happened in this country. President in the Middle Covid, inflation. All of this is that the gatekeepers, remember this also happened the morning that Meta announced the end of its content moderation rules. The gatekeepers have lost the confidence of the great American middle. Either either the great American middle doesn't care about the gatekeeping, or it has actively turned against gatekeeping in general. That was not true in 2016, 2017. Obviously the gatekeepers in the media have been facing their obsolete, you know, sort of their, their ongoing obsolescence since the rise of Craigslist and the, you know, and the, and the, the browser, you know, and all of that since the late 80s, early 90s. But they still had the capacity to halt him in his tracks to get a million people to airports in the week, in the first week of his presidency when he announced the Muslim ban and, and that kind of thing and the gatekeeping showing that the gatekeeping is impotent or almost non existent now is so much to his benefit that I don't believe that it's entirely organic. Meaning it's not just that he's the leopard. These are his spots and he's doing what he always did. There was something knowing about it. I don't know how to define it. It just felt like it as I was watching it, like they were standing there, David Sanger of the New York Times and various other people, and he was playing the reporters like a piano. They weren't asking the questions that they wanted to ask, really. They were asking the questions that were.
- [18:12]
Seth Mandel
They sort of demanded him. Like part of, part of this is that they, the reporters are, I don't want to say enjoying this, although I think some of them clearly are right. Veteran reporters have, you know, are enjoying covering a White House that, you know, is getting. I just saw the flash news that the French foreign minister has responded to Trump's threat to invade Greenland. So I certainly. Some reporters are really in, you know, the BBC is.
- [18:42]
John Podhoretz
That's terrible. He praised France. He said, during the.
- [18:46]
E
Really.
- [18:47]
John Podhoretz
He said the French did a really good job on the cathedral.
- [18:51]
Seth Mandel
Yeah.
- [18:51]
John Podhoretz
And I thought that was. That was very nice. He was very complimentary about the reconstruction of Notre Dame.
- [18:57]
Seth Mandel
He was. But. So I think some reporters are enjoying it. But yesterday at the press conference, they were pulling him back to the microphone, asking questions about things they had asked 100 times that get these quotes like when he, when Steve Wycoff was at the microphone, Trump was sort of trying to get them to pay attention to the guy at the microphone. At one point, you know, he was talking up Steve Wykoff as an envoy, as a negotiator, and saying how, you know, we have all these smart people in the US Government, but nobody knows how to talk. I have the guys that know how to talk. Listen to Steve. That was the theme. And at one point he said, you know, great negotiators are very rare. They're like great surgeons. So we got another, you know, kernel of wisdom out of it. He was trying to get people to talk to the people that he's going to be sending over there. And they kept shouting over Steve's head and going, well, what did you mean by hell to pay? What, what is, what does hell breakout mean? And that's when Trump said, well, do you need me to define it for you? And they just sort of pulled him back to the microphone. And then that was basically. And then he, you know, he shook Steve's hand And he was like, well, you know, you did, you did a good job or something like that. They are, they are addicted no less to the spectacle and their ability to partake in the spectacle than they were back in, in 2016. And now they seem to be doing it with a bit less horror in their voices. And so it's, it's, it's, it's, the addiction is almost a comical thing that you're watching people say hell again, say hell breaks out again.
- [20:39]
John Podhoretz
Yeah, but, but, but I'm telling you that that live blog on the New York Times site was very telling to me because that was Peter Baker and Matt and my friend Maggie Haberman, my old friend Maggie Haberman. Sanger was there and Sanger was there and he then wrote the right through story about, about the press conference. But, but it was this. Oh my God. You know, it's sort of like, it's sort of like he has risen, you know, Glenn Close has risen from the bathtub yet again to try to stab an archer in the face in Fatal Attract. He's back. And what are we going, oh my God, what are we going to do?
- [21:16]
Matthew Continetti
There is some, there is some shock and awe. I mean, just from a perspective different than the news writers of the New York Times. You know, just think about what he's talking about. Panama, Panama, the Panama Canal. It's straight out of Reagan's populist playbook in 1976. We built it, we paid for it, it's ours. He went on to say that the reason Jimmy Carter lost the 1980 election wasn't the hostages in Iran, wasn't inflation, it was giving up the Panama Canal, signing the Panama Canal treaties. Incidentally, that is William F. Buckley Jr. S view. William F. Buckley Jr. Defended the Panama Canal Treaties in the 1970s and then said retrospectively that while it was the right thing to do, it probably cost Carter the election to Reagan.
- [22:09]
John Podhoretz
We should talk about that because it's an interesting larger point about politics and how politics, things that people do have knock on effects and unintended consequences. So. Right. Buckley supported the idea of retrocessing the Panama Canal area back to Panama, which we did for a dollar, which Trump kept saying was a dollar, and we.
- [22:31]
Matthew Continetti
Built not a good deal.
- [22:33]
John Podhoretz
30,000 people died making building the canal and for a dollar. This is so outrageous. But what it revealed about Carter and the kind of president that Carter thought that he was, and the view of the world that Carter wanted to impart was very much present when Iran fell, when the Soviets invaded Afghanistan, and when word came that there was a, possibly a Soviet brigade in Cuba, all of which happened, you know, in, and the fall of Nicaragua to the Sandinistas, all of which happened in, in the year 1979, that imagine a world in which Carter hadn't given up the Panama Canal.
- [23:16]
Matthew Continetti
Well, it's a difference in style.
- [23:17]
John Podhoretz
Right?
- [23:18]
Matthew Continetti
Right. I mean, it's, it's Carter, Obama, Biden, apologetic liberals. America needs to withdraw, restrain itself, Restrain itself. We're the problem. Somehow Trump is now aligning himself with Reagan. Unapologetic American nationalism and interest, interest in the American interest, pursuing it, even if it means we hold on to things like the Panama Canal. That was Reagan's argument and it now seems to be Trump's argument resurrected, you know, at a time when we thought that this debate was over. So it's an important stylistic difference as well as an illustration of the kind of knockoff effects you're talking about.
- [24:05]
John Podhoretz
And to talk about knockoff effects, let's go back to the hell breaking out.
- [24:10]
Matthew Continetti
Hell breaking loose.
- [24:12]
John Podhoretz
Hell breaking loose. When you're Trump and you're looking at the world that is going to be, you know, in your hands in 13 days, I think. Is it 13 days? 12 days.
- [24:24]
Matthew Continetti
12 days.
- [24:27]
John Podhoretz
You'Re looking at an Iran that has been denuded of its capacity to strike back. If you strike it. The Israeli raid, support of America and all that took out Iran's air defenses and capacity to mount an offensive action. As far as we know, that's not simply terroristic in response to, to a military strike against it. Biden is sitting here in his senescence with the opportunity to take out the Iranian nuclear program and to harm Iran for what it has done for the last 15, 16 months in the shipping hostages, Hezbollah, obviously Hamas, and then Iran's loss of Syria, to punish it, to put the world on record that America will not tolerate this and to say get, give us these hostages or in 10 minutes, get the Hamas to release the hostages in 10 minutes or we are taking out your oil platforms and your, and your export abilities with oil, for example. And he's not doing it. I don't see why Trump wouldn't. That's, I think, what he's saying about the hell breaking out.
- [25:54]
E
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- [28:14]
Abe Greenwald
Excuse me. My only problem with that is that I want Trump to do it whether or not the hostages are released. Right, right.
- [28:23]
John Podhoretz
I understand that.
- [28:24]
Abe Greenwald
I want Iran to get a pass just because the hostages release it and Iran is now ramping up drills around Natanz because it's a real possibility.
- [28:36]
John Podhoretz
Okay, so I understand. I understand your point. But that is his negotiate. That is his chip. Right? The chip isn't. We're really going to come after you, Hamas. Like as you say, as McMaster, as Matt said, McMaster, there are things that the American government could do to make Israel's job much easier that apparently we are not doing. But those are, those are additive. Those are not transformative. And particularly, by the way, we could take out the Houthis. We could take out the Houthis in two days.
- [29:06]
Seth Mandel
The Gaza thing is also falls into that category that Abe's talking about because, you know, Trump, on the one hand, Trump has been suggesting that, you know, forget about humanitarian aid and forget about all these things that keep getting in the way and delaying things. I'm just going to say to Israel, go in and do what you need to do. But all indications are that that's probably going to be his policy, right? Whether or not we get a hostage deal, there's all these things. The, the point of Trump making all these statements to say America is back, we understand our power and we're going to use it, is that I think he wants these to be his policies. And that's why the question of what does hell breakout mean is interesting one, because the general threat is just being back in office. We expect his policies to be, you know, that way in Gaza. We expect. I personally think that it is more dangerous to not take out Iran's nuclear program for the US Than it is to send the bombers. And very rarely have I have I looked at a military strike or, or something of that consequence and, and said not taking action is very clearly the most dangerous. But it is. And so I think that there's just this consensus that there's things being left undone, like there's food left on the table, points left on the board. Whatever you want to use, whatever metaphor you want to use, that Trump is going to come in and collect on day one, and I don't know how much is going to be left over for punishment for hell breaking loose. The hell breaking loose is his new.
- [30:46]
John Podhoretz
Set of policies right now. Even more important is the fact that he kept mentioning, and it's important that he did so, that there are Americans among the hostages, because, again, in terms of knockoff effects, assuming that the hostage deal is not reached by the time he is inaugurated, it will be vitally important for him to do what he's talking about here to prevent further hostage taking. What happened during the Biden administration, Russia kept taking American hostages. Brittney Griner, Evan Gershkovitz, I mean, you know, we, we have a world in which there were no consequences. Four countries. And then, of course, it happened with Hamas and Gaza facing the Biden administration. They took these hostages. They could have figured out who was an American citizen and let them loose instantly because they were scared of the United States and they weren't, were they? They weren't scared. Trump's got to scare the world. This is part of the corrective to Biden's weakness. He, it will be very helpful to him in terms of, you know, kind of prophylactic care for him to wage hell to prevent. This is my point about the Panama Canal, to prevent further provocative actions against the United States during his presidency.
- [32:12]
Matthew Continetti
Yeah. The madman theory of international relations is clearly something that Trump subscribes to, and it informs a lot of his moves and rhetoric, including his threat that all hell will break loose. And, of course, I don't even think Trump knows what it means exactly. I mean, we'll find out. We'll see what happens. And maybe the threat alone will be enough to produce results. It's not clear. We should talk a little bit about some of the other foreign policy aspects. Again, I'm calling it Maga Fest. Destiny. You're going to change the name of the Gulf of Mexico? Apparently, we're going to change it to the Gulf of America. I have not done the necessary investigation to see how that works. You know, obviously, cartography is kind of a decentralized industry, you know, particularly now.
- [33:06]
John Podhoretz
That you don't need an app.
- [33:10]
Matthew Continetti
If we lean on Google Maps, you know, and we haul in the Rand McNally executives, go to the.
- [33:17]
Seth Mandel
What was it? Mount McKinley. So there's a process.
- [33:19]
Matthew Continetti
He also wants to.
- [33:21]
John Podhoretz
Obama reversal.
- [33:24]
Matthew Continetti
That would be a return to form to get denali back to Mount McKinley, his favorite president of his predecessors. But the news yesterday was the Gulf of Mexico will be renamed the Gulf of America. I'm. I'm fine with that. I think that's great.
- [33:39]
John Podhoretz
Okay. I got to say. I got to say we. We in New York have this habit, because the mayor has the power to do this, of renaming things. And of course, the most famous one was the renaming of 6th Avenue as Avenue of the Americas. That happened 60 years ago. There is not a person in the world who calls 6th Avenue except the envelope.
- [33:59]
Matthew Continetti
Well, we have. It's funny, I was thinking about this in relation to the Twitter X switch.
- [34:06]
John Podhoretz
Yeah.
- [34:06]
Matthew Continetti
It's another rename that people still have trouble with.
- [34:09]
John Podhoretz
Yeah.
- [34:09]
Matthew Continetti
Also, where I live, the Washington Commanders, I still occasionally refer to them.
- [34:17]
John Podhoretz
Is. It wasn't there.
- [34:18]
Matthew Continetti
I don't think they're gonna. There was some talk when the new ownership came in, but now we're also excited about the team that I think we're fine with the Commanders now. But, of course, I still refer to them as the Redskins. And I think that there's something innately conservative about that habit.
- [34:33]
John Podhoretz
What I'm saying. In New York, we have the Tribro bridge, renamed the RFK Bridge, the 59th Street Bridge, which is the greatest name of any bridge, even though it's actually technically called the Queensborough Bridge, now called the Ed Cotch Bridge, and the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel, now called the Hugh Cary Tunnel. Nobody is ever going to refer to any of those things.
- [34:53]
Matthew Continetti
Oh, okay.
- [34:54]
John Podhoretz
Bridge.
- [34:55]
Matthew Continetti
Oh, okay.
- [34:56]
John Podhoretz
Bridge. The New York Bridge or the Mario.
- [34:59]
Seth Mandel
I was just going to say getting the governor Mario M. Cuomo Bridge, which was renamed by Andrew Cuomo.
- [35:06]
John Podhoretz
Right. But no one calls the Tappan Z the Mario.
- [35:09]
Matthew Continetti
You know, the most successful name change, and maybe this can be a kind of a guide for Trump and the Republicans, has been National Airport to Reagan Airport. And for a time there, there was like a hybrid. And I think still the technical name is Ronald Reagan National Airport.
- [35:29]
John Podhoretz
Right.
- [35:30]
Matthew Continetti
But people now call it Reagan Airport.
- [35:32]
John Podhoretz
Airport.
- [35:33]
Abe Greenwald
Name changes.
- [35:33]
Matthew Continetti
Take. I mean, yeah, maybe it's a thing with airports.
- [35:36]
Abe Greenwald
Yeah.
- [35:37]
Matthew Continetti
Really, though, this is again, because when.
- [35:39]
Abe Greenwald
You travel, you can't mess around.
- [35:40]
John Podhoretz
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [35:42]
Matthew Continetti
But we have to know, we have to know how this applies to major bodies of water. Because I do want to see this happen. Yes.
- [35:53]
John Podhoretz
I mean, why isn't the Atlantic Ocean, the American Ocean?
- [35:56]
Matthew Continetti
I don't know.
- [35:57]
John Podhoretz
We could just call it.
- [35:58]
Matthew Continetti
That was. That idea was surface at the Continent dining room table just yesterday evening. This is the sort of conversations that Trump inspires. So that's just one small piece, though. There are other allied countries that Trump threatened and I think we should talk about them as well. There is also Canada. Right. So I want to kind of explain or provide an exegesis of Trump's stance on Canada. Now, the headlines are all come out of this question where he was asked, can you say, Mr. President Elect, that you will not use military or economic coercion to integrate Canada into the United States? And he said, no, no, I'm not going to say that. Now later he said he was asked again because to what Seth is talking about, this is what people are fixated on. He was asked the same question again, and he did say, canada. No. No military for Canada. And I think that kind of speaks to what Trump is up to. I think Trump has been convinced that the prospects of an economic union with Canada, similar to an EU type arrangement are beneficial. Now, part of his rhetoric cuts against this because at the same time he's saying we're going to absorb Canada into the United States, he's also saying, we don't need it.
- [37:20]
John Podhoretz
We don't need your lumber. We don't need your lumber. We have more than enough lumber. We don't need your cars. We don't need your lousy cars. Want cars to be made in America. And then he also said this really bizarre thing. He said, we spend hundreds of billions of dollars to protect Canada.
- [37:38]
Matthew Continetti
I'm not sure. What? That.
- [37:39]
John Podhoretz
What did that mean?
- [37:41]
Matthew Continetti
Whether it's a defense subsidy, because we.
- [37:44]
John Podhoretz
We. I don't know. But whatever it is. Yeah. We don't even spend hundreds of. We practically spend 800 billion on our own defense altogether. So we're not spending half of that protecting Canada. Unless you think that the American defense budget, which I guess it does in some.
- [38:01]
Seth Mandel
Well, maybe that's his point. Maybe his point is that Canada is protected because it sits next door to the.
- [38:06]
John Podhoretz
I think he is helping Pierre Polievre, the Conservative, the person who leads the Conservative Party in Canada with Justin Trudeau stepping down. I mean, Polyvora is almost certainly going to win an election later this year, but his party's up by 25 points. But Trudeau arranged this resignation so that his party could put it. Install a new leader before there was an election. And Trump, by going at this, has given Polyevra a little bit of a nationalist tinge because he's like, of course we're not going to be the 51st state. Canada is a proud independent country. We, you know, gets to be a little bit of a Canadian nationalist.
- [38:43]
Seth Mandel
Well, he's. And he's using it, I mean, to your point about helping him, he's using it against Trudeau. He's turning it into a talking point. Look, when this guy is prime minister, they're talking about Canada not even being a country anymore.
- [38:55]
Matthew Continetti
Well, I think.
- [38:56]
John Podhoretz
But.
- [38:56]
Matthew Continetti
So I differ in this. I think Trump is serious, and what I think he's serious about is this economic integration, which is. Which apparently is being advocated by Mr. Wonderful Kevin O'Leary of Shark Tank, who is a prominent Canadian businessman and also part of the Trump circle, unofficial circle of advisors. And the. So on the one hand, I think Trump likes this idea somehow of absorbing Canada, because as he told Hugh Hewitt, in a kind of an aside that was very revealing, he said part of America's golden age, which will commence when he becomes the president again, will be territorial expansion. I mean, he does think he's thinking this, but on the one hand, his economic nationalism that he voiced in the press conference undercuts the necessity to have an economic union with Canada. You would think. Right. And the second point is this is the America first guy basically trying to create or putting his capital behind a mag. Maga, nafta. Right. I mean, the idea of North American union was originated by Ronald Reagan in his announcement address when he began running for the 1980 campaign. He says it right there. You can look at the address. There are three paragraphs there. They are visionary because NAFTA came out of that. But I think Reagan's ultimate hopes were exactly what Trump is talking about now, that this economic union would eventually be something even more important, even leading to something like a political arrangement as well.
- [40:32]
John Podhoretz
So I don't want Canada.
- [40:34]
Matthew Continetti
I know.
- [40:36]
John Podhoretz
Let me just lay this out, because Canada is a country beset by politically correct woke pressures of a kind that we, we have only lately begun to experience. Quebec has for 50 years been led by a kind of ideologically separate thought process. French first, all of that. You have first nations activism throughout Canada that again, like, makes our own indigenous issues look like child's play. And just, just taking this seriously for a second. This is source that we don't, we don't need Canadian political culture infecting American political culture. It would be like, you know, in some ways, even though the conservatives are going to win their this year, it would be a little like having five Democratic states, you know, come in to the union without any Republican states or something like that. It could shift. You know, it's 40 million people. It's a lot of people.
- [41:46]
Seth Mandel
There's no reason to give Canada electoral votes.
- [41:49]
John Podhoretz
No, I know. I'm just saying we don't have them.
- [41:52]
Seth Mandel
As like a territory. But by the way, I think the most, the most impressive, there are Guam.
- [41:57]
John Podhoretz
There are big American Samoa.
- [42:01]
Seth Mandel
But as somebody pointed out to me, Ron DeSantis has presided over more Stanley cup championships than Justin Trudeau. And that I think is at the heart of all of this. Canada is now bad at hockey. And who this to make?
- [42:19]
John Podhoretz
This is a very, very important point.
- [42:21]
Matthew Continetti
The hate mail. You're going to get set.
- [42:23]
John Podhoretz
This is a very important point.
- [42:24]
Matthew Continetti
Saying that. I just want to make sure people know it was set. Not.
- [42:28]
John Podhoretz
Florida becomes the champion area of curling. That is when Canada really is like, falling into unlikely.
- [42:37]
Matthew Continetti
Unlikely Canada will become part of the United States. Yes, that Trump is continuing to troll the world by suggesting this, but I do think there may be some type of economic arrangement that is reached during his term.
- [42:50]
John Podhoretz
Okay, we should talk about Europe also, because.
- [42:52]
Matthew Continetti
And that's the next thing on the list, Right?
- [42:54]
John Podhoretz
So Europe first, Ukraine will put to one side for a second. He is now upping the ante on his commitment to NATO because he now says 5%. Every one of these countries should be spending 5% on their defense, not 2% on their defense. The troubles are close to them. We have this thing he said, called the ocean that keeps us out of trouble on the European continent. They need to protect themselves.
- [43:26]
Seth Mandel
The American ocean.
- [43:28]
John Podhoretz
Right, The American ocean. That's why it should be called the American ocean. If they need to protect themselves against Putin or believe they need to protect themselves against Putin, let them pay for it. So meanwhile, if you read Biden's interview in USA Today, he's like, I've strengthened our alliances, and we are now more unified than we've ever been before. And the person who won the election in 2024 is talking about making a demand on GDP in these countries that we don't meet. I mean, we're. I don't know where we are. We're. We're less than 2% known.
- [44:09]
Matthew Continetti
I think we're about 3%.
- [44:11]
John Podhoretz
We're 3. Okay, so we're 3. He wants them to do 5, and.
- [44:16]
Matthew Continetti
I think he's implying that we should do 5 as well. There was an, again, there was an aside where he said, yeah, you know, why not? I think, I think he wants to increase. We know he wants to increase the defense budget. We don't know quite how much he wants to increase it or where he wants to increase it.
- [44:33]
John Podhoretz
But he is putting Europe on notice.
- [44:35]
Matthew Continetti
Right.
- [44:36]
John Podhoretz
Again, not that Europe needs to be any more on edge about Trump becoming president, even though, you know, he's got friends in, in Europe that he didn't have in 2017. Right. He's got Giorgio Maloney. You know, I don't know. I mean, maybe he doesn't have that many friends, but so they're on edge. And then, and then came what he said about Ukraine, which.
- [45:04]
Matthew Continetti
Can we talk about Greenland before?
- [45:05]
John Podhoretz
You want to talk about green. Yes.
- [45:07]
Matthew Continetti
Currently Greenland is owned by Denmark, which is in Europe, so it falls under the bucket of European issues. And here, too, Trump is doubling down, and I think even more serious than he is about any economic integration with Canada, he talked about the geopolitical importance of Ukraine, which is true. The fact that the Arctic is becoming more of a space for great power competition. As the Arctic becomes warmer, there are obviously energy resources and mineral resources in Greenland. It is close to us. It's kind of a bridge, in a way to the North Atlantic and to Scandinavia and Russia. So he discussed that. He talked about how it's really, you know, this is up to the Greenlanders who have been part of Denmark for some time now, but many of them don't want to be part of Denmark. And at the same time as his press conference, Don Jr. Was in Greenland with some fellow MAGA personalities, including Charlie Kirk. And it was not an official visit, but I'm sure his dad knew it was going to take place.
- [46:27]
John Podhoretz
Well, he mentioned it.
- [46:28]
Matthew Continetti
Oh, did he mention that?
- [46:30]
John Podhoretz
He said don't done, John. Is there to something? Yeah.
- [46:35]
Matthew Continetti
So this, I think, is a sign that an idea that was first floated in Trump's first term will be pursued in his second. And here too, we get a sense of these zeitgeist change. Right. Because when Trump brought up Greenland in his first term, it was a good idea, but it was universally panned. It was just part of the daily outrage. We moved on to other controversies in this case. Are there people who are panning the idea? For sure. At the same time, I think it's taken more seriously than it was just. I think it was in 2018 or 2019 when he talked about it. So five or six years ago.
- [47:25]
Abe Greenwald
I think his presidency will be as would anyone's too overtaken by immediate events to even get anywhere.
- [47:35]
John Podhoretz
That could be the case. But when you're talking about territorial. That he has this interest in territorial expansion and is sort of laying it out, taking back the Panama Canal, all that stuff I am struck by. He mentioned during the campaign that his intention in 2026, which will be the 250th anniversary of the creation of the United States, is to have a nationalist jamboree throughout 2026. Sort of like the bicentennial, obviously, 40, 48, 49 years ago. Think about the America that Joe Biden began to govern in 2021. We were still sort of like half indoors from COVID The entire liberal establishment was apologizing for the existence of America, from the 1619 project to the rise of DEI to the changes in the way in which we discussed incarceration and. And punishment and the black experience and all kinds of stuff. And this shift into just outright American nationalism. I don't like the word nationalist. I don't think it's really fitting to describe America. Nationalism is a European phenomenon with a very distinct European root. So we have different, you know, we have a different kind of relation to our patriotism. But Biden could no more have sought, you know, the annexation of Greenland or the purchase of Greenland or something than he could have flown given the. The ideological constraints on his brain, his party, and the entire understanding of the United States.
- [49:34]
Matthew Continetti
Imagine.
- [49:34]
John Podhoretz
Govern them.
- [49:35]
Matthew Continetti
Imagine America's 250th with President Harris. I mean, yeah, kind of. That would kind of be a dull or even an apologetic party, kind of.
- [49:45]
John Podhoretz
A. Yeah, you know, we're not a party at all.
- [49:48]
E
Right.
- [49:49]
Matthew Continetti
Not even.
- [49:49]
John Podhoretz
I mean, you know, we have to.
- [49:51]
Seth Mandel
Have a party if we're going to be unburdened by what has been. We can't have a party.
- [49:59]
John Podhoretz
That looked forward.
- [50:00]
Matthew Continetti
And also, you know, the declaration does use gendered language.
- [50:03]
John Podhoretz
So I mean, it's, it's.
- [50:05]
Matthew Continetti
No, by the way, I have a problem with that.
- [50:06]
John Podhoretz
The other thing that happened yesterday was that Jimmy Carter's body was brought to the Capitol Rotunda to Lyon State until his funeral on Thursday. And Kamala Harris spoke, was the main speaker in the, in the rotunda, gave a, gave a eulogy. Biden will be giving the eulogy at the actual funeral tomorrow. Tomorrow. And it was such a bad speech. It was such a lame, cliche, riddled, energyless speech in which she said in a really remarkable way that Jimmy Carter was one of those kinds of people who did. Did the work. He did the work. Which is one of these liberal leftist phrases about surrendering to present day woke ideology.
- [51:00]
Matthew Continetti
DEI workshop indoctrination phrase.
- [51:02]
John Podhoretz
Yeah, exactly. So he did. Jimmy Carter, who was a supporter of segregation at some point in his life, who was a supporter of, of, of Lieutenant Cali's. And you know, who did. He did the work. Granted, he became a very liberal president, so I'm not, I'm not going there. But, but it was a striking reminder in a, to me, in a weird way of what we were spared by her, by her defeat, the lifelessness of her, this moment, which was sort of like her last. It's like her last major moment as vice president, as you know, until she runs again or whatever. And she booted it. She like completely, you know, flunked.
- [51:48]
Matthew Continetti
I. Tina Brown, the famous editor and kind of activist personality, has a substack, which I enjoy. And she remarked in her newsletter yesterday that she had to Google Tim Walls first name so quickly, so quickly had that tech faded from her memory. And of course, if Tina Brown knows what's hot and what's not, right, in terms of style and politics. So that was very revealing that she had to say that. And I think that's true of most people. It's kind of, gee, I'm glad that's over with. Right. Certainly many Democrats don't feel that way, but I think most of the country does.
- [52:29]
John Podhoretz
I just think, I just think even in a grading on the curve sense, when you have the idea that, you know, like this is a gimme, you know, like having, writing a beautiful, having your staff write a beautiful eulogy for Jimmy Carter, a person I revile. But nonetheless, it's not that hard a job. It really isn't. And speaking as somebody who wrote such things as a, as a presidential Speechwriter. It's the easiest of assignments. And she couldn't even pull this off. She and her staff could not, could not pull off a decent remembrance of a Democratic president standing in an incredibly solemn setting. It was dark, you know, the coffin is there. She's at a podium, very church, like, not hard to knock it out of the park. And she, you know, basically hit a squib to the pitcher, you know, that was just underhand tossed to the first baseman, and she was out by 30ft. I mean, it was very.
- [53:35]
Matthew Continetti
Did you want to comment on Trump in Ukraine?
- [53:37]
John Podhoretz
Yeah, we should. Well, so I, I think the main thing, and I think you, you, you, you pointed out is this is all very easily solvable, is now off his, is now off his plate because it's, it's too much pressure, among other things like that. This is the, oh, you said you would solve it in 24 hours. Oh, look at you now. But, you know, I don't think that he's going to revisit his idea that, you know, he doesn't want this, he doesn't want this hanging over him. He would prefer not to be spending this money, whatever it is that you want to look at. But I do think it's important to point out that he remains somebody who has not gone where the MAGA movement has gone rhetorically or where J.D. vance went.
- [54:30]
Abe Greenwald
He said bad stuff, though.
- [54:31]
John Podhoretz
He has not. I'm just saying that he has kept his powder more dry than most of the people who are his enthusiastic supporters in the realm of foreign policy. I'm not saying that means that he's going to revisit or change or, you know, or that he's not going to change the approach and all of that. But I am struck that he hasn't eerily said, well, you know, this is, you know, they're going to have to, Ukraine's just going to have to accept, you know, what, you know, what, what scraps Putin throws at them.
- [55:07]
Abe Greenwald
But what he did do was empathize with Putin's stated position that, you know, it was, it was NATO, NATO bringing Ukraine, you know, the, the closer to NATO, the prospect of bringing Ukraine to NATO, that put an enemy at their doorstep. And he can, Trump can understand the problem there. That's, that's just pure Kremlin garbage. And, yeah, it's coming out for him.
- [55:35]
John Podhoretz
It's Tucker Carlson garbage.
- [55:37]
Seth Mandel
Right.
- [55:37]
John Podhoretz
But, yeah, I, I take your point. I, I, maybe I'm like, I myself.
- [55:42]
Abe Greenwald
I've been where you are for, for a while.
- [55:44]
Matthew Continetti
And he says, I mean, he says, he says that, yes, NATO encirclement put Putin in a position where you could see why he invaded, according to Trump. But to John's point, he. He hasn't adopted the JD Vance line from a couple years ago that, you know, I couldn't care less what happens to Ukraine. Right. I mean, so he's not, he's not, he's. He's somewhere in between those pieces.
- [56:12]
Seth Mandel
And also magazine. He's also not where Musk is. Right. Musk has expressed the idea that's also popular in MAGA circles, that Zelensky is a, A scam artist. Yeah, that's, that's one of the main critiques of him now, which is, boy, did he pull the wool over our eyes. Never saw somebody pull off a highway. Well, he has, like, this Zelensky character. He has one thing that he, he hasn't gone there.
- [56:38]
Matthew Continetti
He has called Zelensky the world's greatest salesman every time he could write like Steve Whitcomb.
- [56:45]
Seth Mandel
Great salesmen are rare. Like great surgeons. Matt.
- [56:48]
John Podhoretz
Yeah. But he also has to. He remains the other party on the world's most perfect phone call. I want you to remember that it was with Zelensky that Trump had the perfect phone call that got him impeached the first time. And for him to say that Zelensky is a con artist and a flim flam artist would ruin the narrative on the perfect phone call. So he does have in his own history a reason to be to speak more softly about Zelensky or even more kindly about Zelensky than the other people.
- [57:26]
Matthew Continetti
My takeaway from Trump's comments on Ukraine was that removing a path to NATO membership for Ukraine may be on the table in any offer to Putin in order to freeze the war. It's not necessarily a good thing at all. But I also don't think it will be enough. Because in truth, what seems to have motivated Putin's concerns about Ukraine isn't so much NATO, but Ukraine's move to join the European Union and to become integrated into the EU and into the Western democracies and into the Western markets and to kind of pull Ukraine out of the Russo orbit. Right. So the NATO concession would not satisfy that demand.
- [58:15]
Seth Mandel
That's what precipitated the 2014.
- [58:17]
John Podhoretz
Right, right.
- [58:17]
Matthew Continetti
It's always been, ever since the Orange Revolution back in 04, this has been Putin's concern. And so I think what the Trump administration is going to realize if I think there are people who are going into the Trump administration who know this already, is that Putin's not actually interested in ending the war. Yeah. He thinks he can win the war. And until he thinks that he is personally in danger, he's not going to end it. He's not going to give to some, give into some negotiating process. And so the real question isn't so much what Trump is going to do on day one with Ukraine, it's what is Trump going to do when he has to recognize that Putin is not interested in a negotiation in 2025.
- [59:03]
John Podhoretz
Right. Matt, I think you have a recommendation for us.
- [59:07]
Matthew Continetti
Thank you, John. I do. I've decided I want to read a lot more books with a character who appears in many books, get to know the characters. So, you know, as we know, I'm a fan of the Michael Connelly series with Detective Bosch. I've been rereading the James Bond series. Actually, I'm reading for the first time the Bond series of novels by Ian Fleming. But there's another character who I just finished a book regarding that I also would like to recommend, and that is the character of Sir Harry Flashman in the series of novels written by George MacDonald Fraser. I am finishing the book Royal Flash, which is the second in the series. Now, I began the series in 2008 reading the first Flashman novel and it had come highly regarded by writers and critics. I respect that. I didn't really, as I recall, I didn't really like it. And so I kind of put the series to his side for many years. But it was just in the past week or so that I decided to, as part of this new obsession with series, for whatever reason, pick up Royal Flash. And I have to say, it's a delight. You know, Flashman is a rogue, he is a bigot, he's a sexist, he's a soldier. He's not that that's a bad quality. But it's kind of just part of his personality who gets into all these scrapes in basically Victorian England in the 19th century. And the first Flash man involves his adventures in Afghanistan, funnily enough. But the second one, Royal Flash, has to deal with Flashman's involvement in a plot by Otto von Bismarck to begin Bismarck's career by basically stirring up trouble in Schleswig and Holstein. Speaking of Denmark, another territorial dispute with Denmark. And it's a, it's just so, it's fun. It's, it's a picaresque, it's an adventure. There's laugh out loud funny lines. So I'd recommend the Flashman series beginning with Royal Flash.
- [61:15]
John Podhoretz
Royal Flash, by the way. I don't I should look it up as we're talking. But Royal Flash was made into a movie that was supposed to be the kickoff of a series in the late 70s with Malcolm McDowell playing flash man, you know, and it was really, really great. But. But I think it was a financial failure.
- [61:33]
Matthew Continetti
And now I was thinking the whole, I've been thinking the whole time reading it make for a great movie and I was wondering why Flashmen had never been translated. I wonder if casting might have something to do with that. I don't know if I should check it out, but I don't know. In my mind I'm not really picturing McDowell type character.
- [61:51]
John Podhoretz
I almost think young. Yeah, young McDowell was like the mid-70s, I would think.
- [61:55]
Matthew Continetti
So here's my casting suggestion. Different countries, but if you could get Chris Hemsworth in his comedic mode, I think he'd be a pretty funny Flash man. Because the thing about Flash is he is, you know, he's a soldier, sometimes a reluctant one, but he is kind of a big strapping individual who's also a terrible coward. But I think, I think you need a character who kind of kind of looks the part. But then of course his actions betray that he's not really what you expect. Right.
- [62:25]
John Podhoretz
Well, these are books that are, to put it mildly with you know, in the sort of the British tradition deeply unpopular with the British literary circle. These were Thatcher. Thatcherites love the Flashban series. Unapologetic imperialist bastard and his, the world in which he travels unquestioningly. And so I think that, that plays, that plays some role in say the BBC as far as I know, not doing, not wanting to promote it, not doing a, you know, a 12 year series, you know, which they adapt, adapt the Flashman novels because it, the, the opinions that he expresses and the worldview that George McDonald Fraser had are not.
- [63:15]
Matthew Continetti
Kamala Harris's worldview pretty, pretty much.
- [63:18]
John Podhoretz
I think that's, that's, that's very, very fair. Okay, so Flashman Royal Flash is your, is your suggestion George McDonald Fraser? I think there are 13 Flashman novels. So if you actually take, develop the taste that Matt has, you will have a year's worth.
- [63:34]
Matthew Continetti
It's a lifetime reading plan. I just go from character to character now and I'm set.
- [63:39]
John Podhoretz
Okay, well, we'll be back tomorrow. For Abe, Seth and Matt, I'm John Povoritz. Keep the candle.