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- [00:00]
John Podhoretz
Today's episode is brought to you by Sapir. If you listen to this podcast, you're likely a fan of Bret Stephens. And if you're a fan of Bret Stevens, who is a contributing editor to Commentary magazine, you should really be reading the quarterly journal he edits devoted to ideas for a thriving Jewish future. The journal is called Sapir S A P A R and it is currently offering free one year print subscriptions. Yes, you heard that correctly. If you live in the US you can now receive this excellent publication directly at your home, free of charge. The current issue on the theme of diversity includes deep and incisive takes on America's contentious diversity discourse with articles by Commentary's own Rabbi Marisoloveitchik on how we can reject identity politics while building Jewish identity, Adam Kirsch on inclusion and anti Zionism, and David Denby on the Mel Brooks classic Blazing Saddles that also includes an article by Israel's President Isaac Herzog on Zionism and diversity. So go to sapirjournal.org commentary magazine that's S A P I R journal.org commentarymagazine to sign up for your free subscription today. Again, S A p I r journal.org Commentary magazine Hope for the worse Some preach and pain Some die of thirst no way of knowing which way it's going Hope for the best Expect the worst welcome to the Commentary Magazine daily Podcast. Today is Wednesday, April 9, 2025. I am John Pod Horitz, the editor of Commentary magazine. With me, as always, Executive Editor Abe Greenwald. Hi Abe.
- [01:57]
Seth Mandel
Hi John.
- [01:59]
John Podhoretz
Senior Editor Seth Mandel. Hi Seth.
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Abe Greenwald
Hi John.
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John Podhoretz
And Washington, Commentary columnist and Director of Domestic Policy Studies at the American Enterprise Institute, Matthew Continetti. Hi Matt.
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Matthew Continetti
Hi John.
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John Podhoretz
You know, the movie the Producers concludes with these two shyster producers in jail having having sold way too many shares in their corporation to produce a musical they wanted to bomb. The musical succeeds and therefore they will never be able to pay back their investors. They're convicted of fraud. They go to jail. And they're in jail producing a new show called Prisoners of Love, which all of the inmates want to buy shares of. And they keep saying, congratulations, you have now just bought 50% of prisoners of love. And you have just bought 25% of prisoners of love. You have just bought 100% of prisoners of Love, thereby, of course, once again perpetuating the fraud in which they are selling more than 100% of the shares of the corporation. And this is how the movie ends. As they sing Prisoners of Love. Blue skies above why am I bringing this up because Donald Trump has now placed a tariff, a Prisoners of Love tariff, shall we say, on China, of 104. Now, I don't know if you are aware that in certain circumstances there cannot be 104% of, of anything on the grounds that, you know, you either have 0%, which is nothing, or 100%, which is everything. But not, apparently, in the world of the Donald Trump tariff. So I want to welcome Donald Trump into the world of Max Bialystock and Leo Bloom, the producers of the producers, for his innovation in creating a condition under which we are now producing tariffs in excess of 100%.
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Matthew Continetti
Well, John, I mean, mathematically, you can have higher than 100%. I know that math is not our strong suit on podcast, but nonetheless, you could have 200% or 300% of something. And indeed, that may be where we're going when it comes to tariffs on China.
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Abe Greenwald
And in fact, you know, when I was on our high school basketball team, we were always told to give 110%, and we did.
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Matthew Continetti
There you go.
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John Podhoretz
I'm sure you did. And I'm sure that Donald Trump is giving 104% of his effort to the tariff. I am only trying to explain that even though, of course you can have 200% of something, can increase by 200 to 300%, but that there is something comic. I mean, I made another crack the other day about how Trump has now put the world on double secret probation. Another line from another movie, Animal House, which is funny, of course. It's like, well, they're already, they're already on probation. Well, now they're on double secret probation. So, yeah, you don't like those tariffs. It's 104% now, is the tariff.
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Matthew Continetti
So I have some observations on the trade war. The news, of course, as we begin recording this podcast at 8am on Wednesday, April 9, is that China has retaliated. In addition to its initial retaliation, they announced last night, as the 104% tariff on Chinese goods went into effect, that they were now leveling 84% tariffs on American goods.
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John Podhoretz
It's a port to China. It's a bargain. We're getting away with it.
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Matthew Continetti
We're in this. We're in this trade war. It's happening. A couple of thoughts. The first is the White House seems to have settled on the line that it is open to negotiation. Heading into the week, this current week, there was some confusion and debate within the White House. Trump had said mixed messages. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessant, who people know is not the biggest fan of the current trade policy, even though he is a loyal soldier in support of it, publicly said that there would be some negotiations over the tariffs. Meanwhile, Peter Navarro, Mr. Tariff, he had published an op ed in the Financial Times saying there would be no negotiations. And that, of course, sparked a war between Navarro and another member of the Trump inner circle, Elon Musk, who I have to say, coined a Trump worthy nickname of Navarro. I know it's not go ahead PC or anything, and I just want to say I don't condone language, of course, but in his war of words on social media with Peter Navarro, Elon Musk, Peter began calling him Peter Retardo. And I have to say I think that is Trumpian.
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John Podhoretz
Okay, it is Trumpian, but in a weird way, just to pull back just a little bit, I don't want to give him too much credit because I could be wrong about this, but it could actually be profoundly witty. Not calling him Retardo, because that's not witty. But if he was intending consciously to echo the name of David Ricardo. Ricardo. Ricardo. David Ricardo, of course, being the pioneering comparative economist. Economist, yes. I mean, he was actually a businessman, you know, British Jewish businessman who came up with the notion that we should have free trade because we want to get things from people that we can't make on our own and then sell them things, things that they can't make on their own. And therefore we will have an exchange of goods and services that is to the benefit of everyone. That is the core principle behind trade and free trade. And so David Ricardo's name has been in the ether for the last week. And so maybe, maybe again, I am giving Elon Musk too much possible credit. But it's possible it had a, it had, it had like a bite to it that wasn't just like calling someone a retard. There was something a little extra there.
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Matthew Continetti
Anyway, yeah, so that's happening. And the outcome seems to have been a new concerted message on the part of the administration, including White House Press Secretary Caroline Leavitt saying, no, we are open to negotiation with one exception, and that's China. And so when you hear the President talk about this, he was bragging yesterday that he had a great call with South Korea. He had Japan ascending a team. Italian Prime Minister Georgia Maloney is scheduled to come to the White House next week. He leaves out China, and he says that he will not do anything with China until China backs down on its retaliation. And as I watch these things happening, I do think it was an interesting read that I'll Recommend to our listeners and viewers by the up and coming writer Park McDougal at Tablet, who, drawing on this Singapore based economist social media post, said, what's really happening here is Trump has begun a war against China. It's an economic war, but it's a war nonetheless. And, and it is. It's aimed at basically throwing the Chinese economy into disarray. And the global nature of the trade war is meant to block China from shifting production to other countries in order to get around the tariffs that had been imposed on them previously. Now, I agree with the idea that it's often a fool's errand to begin to impose concepts on, on Trump's moves. As we've said many times in the podcast before, he likes tariffs, he hates the global trading system. He's now at the peak of his power and he's decided to do enact his vision of the world at the same time. However, I do think this is interesting, the focus on China. And I'll just say this is very risky because, because typically trade wars don't just stop with trade wars. In fact, they can become hot wars. And we know the President doesn't want a hot war, but we don't know how Xi Jinping will react if Trump succeeds in essentially crippling the Chinese economy and forcing a hard decoupling of America and China. There will of course, be economic consequences to the United States. I happen to believe the consequences to China will be more severe and potentially far more dangerous for the world.
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John Podhoretz
Domestically, the question now goes to the durability of the tariffs and a choice that is going to be facing, really, the Republican elected officials over the next two or three months because let's face it, we haven't talked much about this. Trump is having a great time, everyone, as he said yesterday in a moment, in a somewhat unguarded moment, that would suggest that this isn't just about trade war in China, but has something to do with a kind of vanity that is of a, of a, of a world historical scale that everyone in the world is now kissing his ass getting these phone calls. They're kissing his ass to say, please, please, sir, please, sir, don't put on my.
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Matthew Continetti
He's creating all these metaphors too. We should say one stop shopping. So he's tying, just. Sorry to interrupt, but he's tying the negotiations on trade to everything.
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John Podhoretz
Yeah.
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Matthew Continetti
Including our defense alliances. Right. And this. So, and then he's talking about how these are tailored deals, not off the rack.
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John Podhoretz
Yeah. Apparently the off the rack trade deals.
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Matthew Continetti
Are the ones that he abrogated by imposing the tariffs on. Now, these are going to be tailored deals, but they're not just going to be about trade. And I think that's little noticed point, but. Sorry to interrupt.
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John Podhoretz
Okay. No, but the point I'm trying to make is that there are, there are many motivations, including a lifetime love of the idea of tariffs, because of course it is, it is, the fantasy of the tariff is that it is an imposition essentially of attacks on somebody else that then comes in and pays for your taxes and then you don't have to pay taxes, which is not actually how things work out in practice. But it does, it does sound good. Sounds like a good deal. Sounds fantastic. Right? So, but we all know, and we haven't talked that much about this as I say, that the, the authority that he has used to impose these tariffs from the White House is constitutionally extraordinarily slender. It is based on a single line or a couple of lines in a single piece of legislation from the late 1970s that has never been used in this way before. And the Constitution grants the power to levy tariffs to the Congress. Now this will require Congress, if it wishes not to have America descend into a trade war, to act to assert its constitutional authority as spelled out in the founding document of our government, not our country, which would be the Declaration of Independence, but our government that grants it the power. And of course Trump has say in that, because as the president, they right legislation, he can veto it and they would have to override his veto. But that he has the unilateral power to declare tariffs country by country by country is an assertion of executive authority unlike anything that we have really ever seen. And there is movement and ferment in Congress to stop it. Now that then puts the individual political interests of the members of the House in the Republican Party and the members of the Senate and the Republican Party on a collision course with the person whom they both like the most because he has given them all the power that they wanted by winning in 2024 and like and dragging them into the majorities again and whom they fear the most if he decides to turn his ire on them, as he turned his ire in the first term on people like Jeff Flake and Bob Corker whom you don't remember anymore because they lost their Senate seats because they opposed Trump.
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Seth Mandel
You know, there's, there's a sort of countervailing force here. I've been noticing on social media that social media maga, the enthusiasm over tariffs is building. As with all things that Trump embraces and then has to defend and gets attacked for the MAGA core, then gets more into, more invested, stuck in. And there's a lot of that. Now, I'm not talking about elected Republicans. I'm talking about the influencers and the sort of that orbit.
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John Podhoretz
Yeah, they are not just influenced by him, they are in the Plato's Cave. They are very much influenced by the shadows that are cast by maga. And whether or not those shadows really represent wild animals outside the cave who, if you leave the cave, they'll eat you, or they'll come into the cave as you're tied up on the rock and come eat you, or whether they are illusory and that they don't really have the power. You're just imagining that the shadows are, are, are real. We in and, and, and both can be true. There are some of influencers who probably don't matter, and there are some influencers who matter a lot, particularly if you are going into an election cycle where you have to raise a lot of money or face the possibility of a primary challenge. On the right.
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Matthew Continetti
Yeah, I mean, when I look at Congress right now, I see just disquiet, just nervousness, anxiousness, but very few people who are vocally against the policy. The main Republican who is against the policy is Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky, someone who sticks to his principles. Right now, I disagree with his foreign policy principles, but on his economic principles, he has always been very clear. He's for free markets, free trade, and he's vocal against these tariffs. Really, there's a steep slide after that. You have other Republicans in the Senate expressing kind of ambivalence or, you know, let's wait and see type rhetoric. I look at John Kennedy from Louisiana, for example, always good with a quip on television. He has not been the biggest champion of the policy by any means. I also look at Ted Cruz, someone, of course, who's always thinking about future presidential campaigns. He too is saying, look, you know, if this doesn't work out, it could be a big mistake. And so we have to make sure that we pursue this the right way. But you're not really going for outright opposition at this point. I think the real test will be six months from now when, you know, the election cycle really starts heating up. And whether Republicans look at the data, you know, median incomes, the inflation rate, the job numbers, and then they say, well, we have to separate from the policy if we have any chance of winning our elections. So right now I would look at the potential breaks on this policy and I don't see them really working all that much.
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John Podhoretz
I don't think immediately, and I totally agree with you, that there need to be real world consequences of the tariffs for Republicans to run for the hills. Like, it's not going to happen simply as a, well, Trump is usurping our authority and this just can't, can't be permitted to happen. And obviously, Republicans have made their deal with the devil in relation to that and in relation to him, as Democrats made it with Biden and as Democrats made it with Obama. And so I'm not, I'm not asserting that next week there's going to be a Restore the Constitution to its original meaning caucus that will, that will make an observable difference. However, if this trade war does start and if the economy contracts and if the market is at, you know, 30,000 by June, I don't, I don't know that any of this is going to happen.
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Matthew Continetti
You know, it's interesting what you're saying is that, and I think this is very true, unlike the Biden economic record right now, Congressional Republicans don't have any buy in because, because they didn't vote for it. Right. This is just, Trump just decided to do this. And some of the criticism from Republicans, again, I think it's pretty minimal right now, but some of the criticism is, as you say, is, well, this is our job according to Congress, according to the Constitution. And so, you know, you should really be, let us do this, Mr. President. But they're not, they're not invested in the policy, in the way, in the manner of voting for it.
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Abe Greenwald
And so, and I think that that brings up an important point about everybody in the, in the sort of sphere of influence in general, everybody's a bystander. I mean, that's what we're describing here is that, you know, the Republicans in Congress are neither part of it, nor fully against it, nor fully for they're sort of bystanders. But that's all that also applies to the influencers that we just spoke about. It also applies to a lot of his supporters online. In the past, when people would do, when presidents would try to enact some sort of reform that would affect this much of the economy, they usually would talk to friendlies in the media and, you know, prepare the ground a bit for it and not necessarily do trial balloons, but at least, you know, get some talking points out there to friendlies in, you know, influencer land or whatever. And Trump has that in spades if he wants to because he has influence among really independent media. So to speak, you know, YouTubers and, you know, guys on Rumble and, you know, and all this other stuff, rather than people who are attached to publications that may have, you know, limitations. And so. But he's not right, he's not actually doing that. And his advisers don't seem to know exactly what to say. It seems like there's only Trump. And so part of what's happening is he's playing a game of chicken, I think, with everybody in his own coalition, which is unusual, which is he's not telling them exactly where, where this is supposed to go and how this is supposed to end. And they are, they fear somewhat getting too far out against it because maybe he is playing 12 dimensional chess and maybe this is going to be, you know, a war on China and maybe it is going to close off avenues of economic cooperation for China with other countries, you know, in our alliances and in a sort of sneaky way, non military way. Maybe there is this whole plan and then they're going to look stupid or maybe Japan and all these companies are going to come and there's going to be a bit of short term pain. But you know, there's going to be 70 prime ministers lined up outside the White House and then the market will, when the market sees that, the market will bounce back and they'll go, okay, you know, whatever. I think there's a fear among people on the right who would normally support Trump to get out too far against this sort of thing. And that comes in part from being left in the dark the way everybody else is.
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John Podhoretz
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And our friend David Bonson who came on, you know, this in the past week to discuss the tariff situation has an investment advisory firm and he has a whole bunch of clients all over the country and he is collating information from them. They are calling him as apparently they are calling Bill Ackman who was a, was a very large hedge fund called Pershing Square. Bill Ackman who you know, went sort of, it's kind of red pilled on October 7th and sort of has followed along the path to sort of Trumpism. Trumpism. Who was hearing from his, the people who invest with him that their businesses are going to collapse because of the tariffs. We're talking about people who have businesses inside the United States, manufacturing businesses inside the United States that have to import certain elements of what they assemble in the United States or sell in the United States from abroad and their costs are doubling and they're not going to survive. And David promises that he will collate all this information and release it as it comes. But anecdotally he is already hearing Ackman's hearing, people are hearing that as it's not just the trade war that will make it difficult for China or China to do what it does or Vietnam to sell shirts, but that we have an interdependent globalized economy inside the United States. That, that as, as the famous Milton Friedman pencil video that has been going that Elon Musk put out that, that everybody has been watching again from you know, 40 some odd years ago. You can't make anything in the United States that doesn't have a part or two or something that comes from somewhere else. And if this trade war war is, is multi, is a, is a generation long or is, you know, 10 years long and it does rebalance the entire world economy. Maybe by 2050 you can make a pencil inside the United States without getting all half of what you need for the pencil from abroad. But that's you know, decades away. And then of course raises the question of why you even want, why you.
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Matthew Continetti
Want to make yeah, the rubber from.
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John Podhoretz
And why do you want to make a pencil in the United States which was Dave Chappelle, I hate to quote we're quoting Rand, praising Rand Paul approvingly though he's bad at Israel And I will now praise Dave Chappelle approvingly even though he has a problem with anti Semitism. Did a bit.
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Abe Greenwald
Looking forward to the Thomas Massie hat trick.
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Matthew Continetti
Yeah, yeah, that's not gonna happen.
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John Podhoretz
This whole thing about how I don't want an iPhone to cost $9,000 and I don't want to make that. Who wants to make that? Who wants to screw in those little screws? I want to buy that. I don't want to make it here, and I don't want to make my sneakers here. I just want to wear.
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Matthew Continetti
Chappelle would never admit it, but he has a little Reagan inside.
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John Podhoretz
Oh, totally.
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Matthew Continetti
Because he also hates taxes.
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John Podhoretz
Totally. Well, you know, like low taxes and free trade.
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Matthew Continetti
So, I mean, you're getting. He's getting close.
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John Podhoretz
No, I know, I know.
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Matthew Continetti
Can I do a historical analogy rather than a pop culture reference? My historical reference is Andrew Jackson's war against the bank of the United States. Andrew Jackson, the populist Democrat from the 1830s.
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John Podhoretz
The original populist.
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Matthew Continetti
The original populist. If you. Well, Daniel Shays may have been the definitely the original populist president. A president whom Trump resembles in many, many ways. Old Hickory. He conducted a war against the Second bank of the United States and its leader, Nicholas Biddle, that was intense. It was done on the basis of populist ideas that the bank and the creditors were really putting it to the little guy, Jackson supporters. And in the end, he won. And that was not good for the economy of the United States.
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John Podhoretz
It was not.
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Matthew Continetti
And so there is this tendency among populists to have economic own goals where they fixate on something, whether it's the bank of the United States or it's Wall street or it's in this case the trade deficit and foreign competition. And they do everything they can through political channels to defeat that enemy. And then when they succeed, the rest of the world looks around and the rest of the United States looks around, says maybe it wasn't really worth it. In the end, it took time for America to get back to the kind of infrastructure and industrial production that the bank was able to subsidize. So I fear the worst case scenario here is that that's where we're going to wind up a year from now.
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John Podhoretz
You know, go ahead.
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Seth Mandel
Regarding the. What Bonson is collating and what Ackman is saying, one thing is clear is that the whole argument that Trump just wants to help billionaires is over.
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Matthew Continetti
Not.
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John Podhoretz
Just on trade and musk.
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Matthew Continetti
We should mention too, that Trump now is signaling to senators that he is open to establishing the millionaire bracket in the tax code as part of the one big beautiful deal in order to raise revenue. This is something that I've been predicting for, for some time that that would happen. And it's again, it's, it's the, a sign of the shift in the Republican coalition to abandon kind of its free market tenants in favor of appealing to its new populist base.
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John Podhoretz
Okay. But important point relating to Seth and the larger party and the influencers and the old Republicans, all of whom merge at this moment in relation to what you're talking about in the figure of someone named Josh Holmes. Josh Holmes was a longtime aide to Mitch McConnell who became the co host of this wildly popular conservative right wing podcast, Ruthless, with, with comfortably Smug, who was once hilarious on Twitter and then stopped being funny and started just being populist. And Holmes. And this is, this is one of the great successes of the media successes of the mag era, the Ruthless podcast. But Josh Holmes does have this history. He was a McConnell guy who basically became a Trump guy. And last night he went on and he said, I mean, I can't even believe that I'm saying this, but if the Republican Party doesn't exist to cut taxes rather than raise them, I don't really know why there's a Republican Party. And that I'm not saying that this is not about trade. Right. This is not about tariffs, it's not about whatever, but it is about populism. And the question is how far can Trump drag the Republican Party? And this, this is the crossing of a Rubicon. Yeah.
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Matthew Continetti
Just a note on the millionaire bracket. You know, it has a history. Its origins come back from the debt ceiling crisis in 2011 and the fight over the budget and spending. And the millionaire bracket was floated by then Speaker John Boehner. No, populist, he, but he thought it would be a way in which Republicans could potentially raise revenue while also inoculating themselves against charges that they represent the party of the rich. So it's been around for a while and I do think there's. There's a difference politically. As always, I'm talking about politics, not economics. But politically there's a difference between establishing the millionaires bracket and letting the top rate rise among households making more than $1 million a year and just letting the top rate rise on households making $400,000 a year. But the kind of the upper, upper middle class, one might say there's a difference there politically right now. At the same time, it's not clear that this will happen because as you say, I think the, the kind of, the Republican muscle memory on taxes is stronger than the Republican muscle memory on free trade, which even there is kind of, you know, getting back into shape slowly but surely.
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John Podhoretz
I mean, the foundational moment of the modern foundational moments, right? Kemp, Roth, Reagan tax cuts of 1981. But there was a second foundational moment when the logic behind the Reagan tax cuts of 1981 was breached by a Republican 10 years later, right. By George H.W. bush making a budget deal with the Democrats that included a tax increase. And you can say that the post Reagan, post Bush, post conventional Republican budget hawk party was solidified by the, by the response, by the counter attack to Bush's agreement, having said no new taxes. Right?
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Matthew Continetti
Read my lips.
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John Podhoretz
Read my lips. No new taxes. Having violated that promise. So he had A, I broke. He broke a promise and B, that he broke that promise. This is 30, we're almost 35 years into this moment, and it's a different.
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Abe Greenwald
Country era with the taxes was also included Grover Norquist's tax pledge. Right? That was, that was under Reagan initially. That was in order to promote Reagan's stance towards taxes and that, that survived the Bush.
- [37:35]
Matthew Continetti
Can I just, can I make another historical point? Because I think it's, it's really key here. What, so Trump's first term. Trump, of course, ran as a rebel against the Republican establishment, and he ran a populist campaign. When he came into office, many people on the right and in the Republican Party were pleasantly surprised that in fact, his administration incorporated quite a bit of Reaganism, whether it was the tax cuts, whether it was the defense buildup, whether it was his peace through strength policy, which emphasized the strength part rather than peace part. And this is why he really went into 2020 in a really strong position before the pandemic arrived. What seems to be happening now is that Trump is, even though he has Reagan's portrait in the Oval Office and is definitely in his head thinking of himself as surpassing Reagan in importance to the country and to the Republican Party. He's. This second administration is not Reaganite in the issues that are being emphasized right now. Okay? And that's a danger because as you point out correctly, John, George H.W. bush ran for Reagan's third term in 1988, and he ran a, actually a pretty populous campaign on cultural issues, right. Death penalties, flags. Right. And he went in as somebody who's not going to raise taxes. Right. But when he comes into office, his muscle memory kicks in. And fundamentally, George H.W. bush was a Nixon, Ford, Republican. That's where he came from. He came from the establishment that Reagan overthrew. And I think is Trump is making these moves which make him, as I wrote in the Free Press yesterday, to really make the parallels between him and Nixon clearer than before. He is in danger of alienating the parts of the Republican Party because the Republican Party does love Trump, there's no question about it. But it still has a fondness for Reagan and Reagan's ideas that I think we're beginning to see where Trump can diverge from Reagan easily, as on the issue of immigration, for example, that's fine. The party is behind Trump on immigration 100%. The country is, too. But on trade, you see, Republicans say, no, I don't know about this. And then I think, just to take it to my other major preoccupation these days, I think the big test is Iran. That's the big foreign policy test. Because if Trump goes the way that he's leaning, it seems, and falls for an Iranian peace offensive and signs some agreement that essentially allows the Iranians to keep their nuclear infrastructure, I do believe you'll see Republicans come out in opposition, because that would be ignoring the strength part of peace through strength and focusing on, only on the peace part, which is very, very dangerous.
- [40:55]
John Podhoretz
Well, let's, so let's go there, not talk about Iran, but go back to China and bring this together with China. As you say, trade wars can move from being cold to hot. And there are arguments that, you know, the World Trade War was one of the causes of the Japanese empire going hog wild in the 1930s. So if we substitute China for Japan in the 1930s and there is this global trade war kind of freezing of international commerce in some fashion. Does this in a world in which China feels boxed in, does this then raise the possibility of China looking to break out or to destabilize the world order further in its own direction, having been destabilized economically by moving on, on Taiwan. And then what we really don't know, we genuinely don't know where Trump and the Trump coalition stands on this. We had yesterday the confirmation of Elbridge Colby as the sort of chief policy planner at the Pentagon. Bring up Elvis Crowley because he, he contains the multitude of the contradiction within himself as a defense intellectual, one of the few of his generation. He's, I think, 45 years old and, and has made built his career talking about the geopolitics, particularly in relation to China. And he says two things that are completely contradictory at once, one of which is the entire American foreign policy needs to focus on the threat from China. China is our adversary, 21st century adversary. We're wasting our time paying attention to Europe. We're even wasting our time paying attention to the Middle East. We need to focus all of our attention on China. It wants to be our great rival and we have to stop it in its tracks. And of course, the great threat, the conventional threat from China is on the island nation of Taiwan, off its shore that it claims is part of greater China. But Elbridge Colby has said, having written a book about how we need to confront China, that if China moves on Taiwan, there's nothing we can do. So we're supposed to stop them before they get to Taiwan. But if in the logic of stopping them before they get to Taiwan, if contained in that logic isn't, well, if they go at Taiwan, we are not going to stand still. We are going to retard. We, the United States, are going to do everything we can to retard that invasion and reverse it. If the leading defense intellectual at the Pentagon has already ceded the idea that the United States can do nothing to prevent China's takeover of Taiwan, then what's to prevent China from taking over Taiwan in the hot war scenario created by the trade war that you, Matt, lay out?
- [44:06]
Matthew Continetti
Well, you know, I mean, and of course, the problems compound because the global economy is heavily dependent on Taiwan production of semiconductors. And so there's a question of do you want that capacity controlled by the People's Republic of China or potentially even worse than that, though that's not an outcome I endorse is. Let's say Xi Jinping is facing all this economic pressure right, from the trade war, and it's real pressure. And he's clearly belligerent. When you look at the live fire exercises that have been taking place around Taiwan, the fact that Chinese naval vessels circum. Circumnavigated Australia recently, he's pretty belligerent. What if he says kind of what Putin said about Ukraine? What Putin said about Ukraine is, if I can't have Ukraine, I'm going to break Ukraine, right? I'm just going to. I'm going to kill children like he did this weekend. I'm going to make sure that half, about a quarter of the country leaves. I'm just going to destroy the country if I can't have it. What if Xi Jinping says, ah, gosh, you know, I needed something to break out, show that I'm strong, show that I'm fulfilling Mao's vision as we approach the 100th anniversary of the People's Republic. I'll just break Taiwan. Just destroy it. Destroy the fabs. Well, then you have a real, you have the potential for a real global economic catastrophe. I'm not saying that this is the likeliest outcome, just that it's a potential.
- [45:58]
Seth Mandel
Thing that we should think about on this. The question of where Republicans are willing to go, are willing to let Trump take them when it comes to emphasizing the peace part of the piece through strength, I think we've got a good indication of that on, in his Russia policy. I mean, Republicans are fine with it.
- [46:23]
Matthew Continetti
By and by, but Ukraine is not Israel. And I think, I think that's the difference. And that's where, I think, unfortunately, that's where we may be headed toward a test.
- [46:32]
Seth Mandel
Right, I agree, but it's some indication here that, you know.
- [46:37]
John Podhoretz
Right. Well, I mean, so Ukraine is a complicated matter. And it took Republicans, the massive Republicans. It took Republicans two years to get to the point at which they, it's not that they weren't with or weren't weren't opposed to Trump, but I mean, Republicans were also supportive of the Ukrainians of the war on Ukraine. They were kind of talked out of it over time. Yeah. By two things, one of which was the refusal of Trump to embrace Ukraine, though he also refused to embrace the Tucker pro Russia position during the campaign. But also Ukraine's inability to really turn the tide in the war. Like, it's obviously a nice edge. Had the offensive against Russia, you know, last summer, had that really, really had positive consequences. And we bear some responsibility for the fact that it didn't. But I'm won't go there. But I mean, had that happened, then the pro Ukraine position would be much stronger, just as the Israeli position is now infinitely stronger. Because with America's help, it wiped out Iran's air defenses, it wiped out its strategic defenses, and it is slowly wiping out or, or, or, or crippling or destroying its, its satellite groups that are attempting to, you know, expand out Iranian foreign policy beyond its shores to Israel. Right. Hezbollah, Hamas and the Houthis, all of whom are, are in, are in crisis or on the run. And so pulling back from Iran, pulling back from the confrontation with Iran, with Iran on the run, aside from everything else, seems a little meshuggah to me. I mean, forget how our own desideratum here, there's no grounds for it. The thing to do is to put pressure on Iran. The thing to do is pressuring Iran. Yeah, I mean, fair enough.
- [48:45]
Matthew Continetti
He put in maximum. Yeah, he put in maximum pressure earlier, earlier this year, the force posture in the Middle east of the United States has grown immensely.
- [48:59]
John Podhoretz
I mean, again, including with the Houthis. I said it wrong. And for the Houthis.
- [49:04]
Matthew Continetti
But of course, the Houthis are an extension of Iran and.
- [49:06]
Abe Greenwald
No, that's what I mean. I'm saying including, including, you know, and repression. Yemen and stuff.
- [49:11]
John Podhoretz
We are, we are in a hot war. I mean, it's not a war because.
- [49:14]
Matthew Continetti
We'Re, that's what my mystery is. I don't know where the, where this is going is. What Trump. Is Trump doing something to lay a potential legitimacy for assisting Israel in the strike against the Iranian nuclear infrastructure? Is he sending Wycoff to Oman this weekend to have a talk and then two weeks from now he comes back and nothing happens as the Iranians will never agree to anything? And then Trump is like, I'm sorry, Maga, folks, but I tried and I've said we can't let them have a nuclear weapon. So this is going to happen? Or is he sending Wyckoff there and Wykoff will come back and say, guess what? The Iranians agreed to have talks and they're going to close a nuclear power plant. Kind of similar to the agreement that Condi Rice made with the North Koreans in 2006. Right? That we agree we're fine. And then this means that we'll, you know, we'll take our troops out of Syria and maybe we'll back down a little bit on the Houthis. I don't know. But I can tell you I prefer the former outcome to the latter one.
- [50:28]
John Podhoretz
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- [51:45]
Abe Greenwald
Well, and also part of the concern is that if you, if you look at this from a, you know, from a bird's eye view, it looks like what Trump really likes is being able to deal with the stronger party in the war. That's what Russia and Israel have in common for him and Ukraine and Gaza have in common for him. And that's what worries me about China and Taiwan. His support for Israel is in some ways easier because he can say to Israel, finish them off and end the war and flatten them, because Israel has the power to end the war militarily using its strength.
- [52:26]
John Podhoretz
I mean, fair to him, to be fair to him, to follow up. He has said that. And it is, yes, no, Israel straining itself, right, because of the hostages. Israel could level Gaza tomorrow. And it is not doing so. I mean, it is systematically doing what it can to use its intelligence to, you know, to sort of play the game of operation and pull out this, you know, funny bone person from Hamas and that, you know, whatever, all of that stuff. But it is still restraining itself with the hope that it can get those two score, you know, that score of hostages that are alive out Trump. If Bibi said, I'm going in, sad about the, I mean, he wouldn't say sad about the hostages, but if he said, I'm going, we're done, Trump wouldn't say to him, oh, no, what about the hostages? Right.
- [53:24]
Abe Greenwald
But that's my point is that it's not, it's Israel is not really the issue. The point is that if you're looking at how Trump relies on the stronger party in a war.
- [53:35]
John Podhoretz
Right.
- [53:37]
Abe Greenwald
Who's that in China? Taiwan. That's what I'm saying. The lesson for China is that he's more likely to go to the side that can end things and clean things up and has the power basically to do whatever it wants, has the power to keep the war going, has the power to stop the war. You know, it's like a switch. And my concern is not that he would abandon Israel because it would be crazy, because Israel is exactly what he wants in Israel is a gift to him, right? There's this conflict, and on his side is the power that has the strength to end it. But what happens in the Far East, China is the one that has the power, and he is more likely to be solicitous of them, as he has been with Russia, which is the stronger power.
- [54:26]
Matthew Continetti
Well, but it is noted, it is worth noting the difference, though. He is not being very solicitous of China. Now, you know, it's pretty incredible. This war of words is something else between the United States and China. And very interestingly, Xi Jinping, the leader of China, the dictator of China, he. He's kind of not doing anything. He's just kind of leaning back and waiting and seeing. So I have to say, I agree with your analysis, Seth, but at the same time, as I open the show, I'm a little bit surprised how Trump really is taking the cudgel to China in a way that he really hadn't done before.
- [55:10]
John Podhoretz
So the nature of Trump's genuine rebelliousness against conventional wisdom is so far reaching that this is, I think, what we didn't quite understand, that it is a deep, the deepest part of his character to say, you say this is how things are. I don't accept any basis of how things are before I became so. For example, using Seth's analogy about the Far east, the axiomatic idea of American power in the Far east until the rise of China was we need to keep Japan demilitarized. Japan is a country that embraced pacifism after its unbelievably militaristic first half of the 20th century that led to such catastrophe and its own catastrophe in the form of being hit with two atomic weapons. They embraced pacifism as a national philosophy, as enshrined in their constitution. They are not a nuclear power. They would. They don't have nuclear weapons. They don't really have an army of any sort of meaning or moment. And they are the world's third largest economy. And this has never happened before in world history. That economy, this powerful country, this powerful, does not have force projection, but it does not have force projection because this was the consensus idea of the world, not only visited upon Japan, but then almost interwoven into Japan's national character over the last four generations. And if Seth is right and the thing what Trump wants is power, he's looking at Japan and saying, we're not going to defend you with the nuclear army. You go get yourself some nukes. Same to Germany. Go get more nukes. Like, the consensus world opinion was, we're still in the world after World War II, even though it's now 80 years after World War II, and we don't want these two countries that nearly destroyed the entire planet. It's still good if they're not that strong. And Trump's like, ah, the hell with that. And you know what? He may be right. I mean, at what point. Point does the anti world war, the lessons of Munich are eternal because they're about what you cede to aggressive irredentist forces. But the lessons of World War II being a country that has been through eight decades of democracy or whatever you might want to call it, has been through a sort of end, a period of transformational change into, you know, is not the same country that it was in 1930 when it invaded Manchuria. And, you know, maybe we need them to be able to threaten to invade Manchuria again. So we're not the only people in the world who could say to China, stop.
- [58:18]
Seth Mandel
Well, the flip side, and Seth has written about this as well, to Trump being on the side that has the power. The flip side is that the weaker side he sees as the target for his manipulation and pressuring. That's, that's, that's, that's the other part. You know, that's why he's. When we say he picks on our allies only when they're in the, in the weaker of the power relationship.
- [58:50]
John Podhoretz
Right, right. And by the way, this also goes domestically. So I was thinking about this yesterday or the day before yesterday with the, you know, ongoing shenanigans of our health and human services secretary, RFK Jr. You know, who announced essentially that he's putting in review the national policy of putting fluoride in the water to prevent tooth decay. And, you know, the minute I heard this, I think I, like most many people are like, you are so crazy. How crazy? You know, like, go saw a bear in half. Now is that is the worm in your head talking? What the hell is going on here? This is one of the greatest public health triumphs in the history of the planet that you basically, that Americans, like, don't get cavities anymore because there's fluoride in the water.
- [59:45]
Matthew Continetti
But General, General Ripper would disagree.
- [59:47]
John Podhoretz
General Ripper. But that just happened right when Dr. Strangelove was made. That was five years after we started putting fluoride in the water. Right. Okay.
- [59:57]
Matthew Continetti
So we now actually on the right at that time.
- [60:01]
John Podhoretz
Right. Okay. But here's what's interesting about it and where I don't, I still think he's a lunatic. And but people in the world of public health, people in the world of establishment policy, stop making arguments for things and start using tradition and kind of enforcement of political norms as the way to say everything should go on as it has gone. Right. So it's like no one has said, has gone to the American people and said, I just want to explain to you, we do this thing where we put fluoride in the water. Here's what's happened in 1952, 70% of people lost all their teeth by the time they were 60. And in 2022, 12% of people lose all their teeth. And the only difference is that we put fluoride in the water and that our diet got a little better. And so don't take fluoride out of the water. It's a public campaign to explain something that people stopped explaining. And I think, I don't want to defend what Kennedy is doing, but this is the flip side of the Trump not accepting the national consensus on anything.
- [61:13]
Matthew Continetti
It's like the I pencil video, right?
- [61:15]
John Podhoretz
Yeah, right.
- [61:15]
Matthew Continetti
Cared about the I pencil video up until yesterday, right.
- [61:19]
John Podhoretz
I did argument.
- [61:20]
Matthew Continetti
I studied this stuff, but most people had no idea it existed. Now, now they're actually being exposed to the arguments.
- [61:28]
John Podhoretz
Our magazine exists to make arguments that this magazine has been making for 50 or more years, over and over again in new contexts every month, because these are based on enduring principles and first principles. And you can't sit on them because the enemies of the ideas come at them in new forms and in new ways ten times a week. And you have to recast them, re. Explain them, put them in modern, modern framework. Or you just do say, well, we're only doing this because this is the way it's always been done. And once somebody in the United States, this is not. We're not, you know, says, well, why do we do it that way? That's where, you know, people go, yeah, why do, why do we do it that way? Let's hear a revisionist podcast on how we shouldn't have fluoride in the water. Or, you know what, like there's a.
- [62:29]
Matthew Continetti
Measles or Hitler was misunderstood.
- [62:32]
John Podhoretz
Yeah. 10,000 different things like you can't sit on it. And, and there is an amazing story broke last night in the. And the danger of the corruption of this, of not making the. Of not continually making the argument, which is. The Free Beacon has a piece out about how there is now evidence or the Biden administration got a report in 2021 that said that at least seven Americans contracted Covid in the fall. In the fall of 2019. Right. We originate the date of COVID I believe, to late December, you know, and this is where someone ate a, you know, the, the theory was someone ate a bat. And from the WET market in 29 got Covid. And then it spread like wildfire. And that this report that says seven people got it in whenever that was in September, October, which I think we'd.
- [63:32]
Matthew Continetti
Heard tell of before, and people have Been speculating.
- [63:36]
John Podhoretz
Well, people, this, this, this citizen journalism that was being done looking at Chinese language files and things that were, Remember.
- [63:44]
Matthew Continetti
There was a lot of pneumonia in that fall that people looking back say maybe that was the beginning.
- [63:51]
John Podhoretz
Right. But I only bring this up to say that, you know, the greatest public health failure of our time, which gets into China and gets into establishment, right. And gets into HHS and gets into the CDC and gets into Anthony Fauci and then gets into this whole question of whether or not there was a concerted conspiracy among the people who do this work with viruses to suppress the truth about the virus, because it was going to come down on their heads and bring them into disgrace and world historical blame for having supported a policy of gain of function research that had been rejected and had essentially, we had been told was not going to be done anymore because it was too dangerous. Nobody questioned. There was no skepticism about establishment ideas about health in 2020. And that means when you get to 2025, you have a guy who thinks that the measles vaccine, which has saved tens of millions of lives since its application, needs to be questioned or fluoride needs to be questioned in the water. And it's the classic, you don't know what the consequences are going to be of your policy failures, but particularly if you try to say shut up. He explained about all of this, it's going to explode outward in forms and ways that it was, it was ground.
- [65:32]
Seth Mandel
Zero for not just rejecting.
- [65:37]
John Podhoretz
What we.
- [65:38]
Seth Mandel
Take for granted in terms of science and health. Even reaches out to the history stuff, to the Churchill was evil, was the real villain of World War II. Once the public turned on the public health establishment and saw through this web of whatever it was, cover ups, denials, lies, then it became, what else have they been telling us that's not true? And who else has been lying to us about what? And it exploded out in every direction. I agree with you.
- [66:17]
Abe Greenwald
Well, and as Abe said yesterday, it also paved the way for the power grab and the idea that we can live under emergency laws and, you know, whatever the status. So it also paved way for the ability to do something about the suspicion that I can just call an emergency now and do the opposite of whatever it was. I didn't like that they were doing.
- [66:42]
John Podhoretz
And maybe to get to Matt's point about Trump's incredible aggression, rhetorical aggression, and now, you know, tariff aggression toward China, maybe this is Covid. Maybe this is the way in which make China. We are. We are making China. He doesn't, I don't know that he has this in his head. No. Or whatever.
- [67:07]
Matthew Continetti
I don't talk about COVID all that much anymore.
- [67:10]
John Podhoretz
And I don't think in 2015 when he came out and said everybody's stupid about everything and has been stupid about everything the whole time and everything is stupid, which seemed to be a pretty, you know, sort of, you know, that's.
- [67:21]
Matthew Continetti
A consistent theme of his as well.
- [67:23]
John Podhoretz
Yeah. But my point is, was that how people were feeling about the financial meltdown seven years later that was not properly adjudicated politically in the elections that preceded it? Yes. I mean, he mentioned it in terms.
- [67:38]
Matthew Continetti
Of Iraq and Obama's China policy was very appeasement oriented.
- [67:44]
John Podhoretz
Right.
- [67:44]
Matthew Continetti
China's peaceful rise.
- [67:46]
John Podhoretz
I'm just saying that we keep getting these things where policies seem to come out of nowhere. And you know, if, if Trump is operating against China in some weird expression of a national reckoning with China over not only its aggression and its effort to seize our manufacturing and our intellectual property, but also that it had this lab and it released a virus and then it didn't stop it and then it lied about it and then it. You never paid for it and now it's going to pay for it in the form of 104% tariffs. He's not saying that that's where it comes from, but I don't know that 75 years from now the next Paul Johnson who writes Modern times about the 21st century isn't going to adduce a connection between these two phenomena. Wouldn't you?
- [68:42]
Matthew Continetti
I would. May I make the recommendation?
- [68:45]
John Podhoretz
Please?
- [68:45]
Matthew Continetti
Well, you know, as we were talking and we're making all these references, it. It occurred to me that there are many people in the younger millennial cohort, as well as the Gen Z cohort, who have not seen Dr. Strangelove or how I Love to. How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love The Bomb, the 1964 Stanley Cooper masterpiece featuring the genius Peter Sellars in three different roles.
- [69:13]
John Podhoretz
Three roles?
- [69:14]
Matthew Continetti
Three roles. The President, Colonel Mandrake, and of course the title character, Dr. Strangelove himself. And whenever I hear that a person younger than I has not watched Dr. Strangelove, I kind of grip my chest. It's so pains me. And so I'd like to recommend today that everyone watch, even if you've seen it before or like me, half a dozen times, take a moment in the coming days to sit and watch Dr. Strangelove. I plan to. Having just made one reference to it today, it's already whetted my appetite for another viewing.
- [69:52]
John Podhoretz
You know, for For. For those of us who. For whom this is like a. I don't know, I mean, it's a touchstone document, let's say. But if you're interested in politics and you're interested in how in. In satirical depictions of politics, which. Of which there are very few good ones on film, this being probably the most. The most famous, maybe Duck Soup, the Marx Brothers movie Duck Soup. But. But the thing to look for is the phone call. The phone call in the war room between President Merkin Muffley, played by Peter Sellers, and his Russian counterpart, who is obviously Khrushchev or whoever. Yeah. Because what Sellers does, affecting this incredibly mid Atlantic, this incredibly harsh American Midwestern accent, is a master class in what I would call. Even though the America does, in fact, you know, war does eventuate. It's sort of like liberal impotence. Five minutes of liberal impotence.
- [71:10]
Matthew Continetti
But also the emotional arc of the phone call.
- [71:13]
John Podhoretz
Yes, because he goes into the phone.
- [71:15]
Matthew Continetti
Call feeling very confident. You know, he's. He's doing the right thing. He's informing his Soviet counterpart of the problem that's emerging, which is, you know, the looming.
- [71:26]
John Podhoretz
Runaway American bomber. That is, of course, the Soviet premier.
- [71:30]
Matthew Continetti
Reacts negatively to this and then he.
- [71:33]
John Podhoretz
Turns so kind of passive aggressive and offended and the apology isn't being accepted anyway. It is. It is as a. As a piece of satire almost. You know, almost too. Too. It's. It's almost. It's so funny and so painful and so absolutely perfect at the, at the. At the same time that you wonder, you know, how many such phone calls have taken place in the world. Because it is absolutely, utterly realistic, unlike most of the rest of the. Of the movie. You know, there is a weird phenomenon with, with Dr. Strangelove, which is that there. Because you could watch it and then you can watch the completely humorless version of it, which came out the same year. A very uncanny thing which is Sidney Lumet made a movie called Fail Safe which has almost exactly the same plot as Dr. Strangelove with Henry Fonda as the president and various other things in which. In which there's a, you know, communications problem that means that a nuclear war is mistakenly begins or sort of the preparations are begun almost automatically for a nuclear war. And that's actually pretty good. Pretty tense movie and brilliant book.
- [72:47]
Abe Greenwald
It's. Fail Safe is, you know, that's. That's the film version. That's the adaptation of.
- [72:53]
Matthew Continetti
Yeah.
- [72:54]
Abe Greenwald
Of the book, which is.
- [72:55]
Matthew Continetti
Doesn't have Peter Sellers, but it doesn't.
- [72:57]
John Podhoretz
Have Peter Sellers and it doesn't have it doesn't have George.
- [73:00]
Abe Greenwald
If you want the serious version, don't watch the movie.
- [73:05]
Matthew Continetti
Dr. Yeah.
- [73:06]
John Podhoretz
Man, I wish we had one of them Doomsday machine.
- [73:10]
Matthew Continetti
Or the buffet when he goes to the buffet in the war room.
- [73:14]
John Podhoretz
Yeah. Anyway it's these are anyway but 80, 60 years old.
- [73:22]
Matthew Continetti
64.
- [73:23]
John Podhoretz
64. So it's a movie is 60.
- [73:25]
Matthew Continetti
Goldwater, of course, plays into at that time the sense that Barry Goldwater was this crazy fringe cowboy who would who would lead America into the third World War and the end of civilization.
- [73:37]
John Podhoretz
Maybe the single most unjust casting of a political figure in that idea about.
- [73:43]
Matthew Continetti
Goldwater being totally character assassination.
- [73:46]
John Podhoretz
Yeah. Total character assassination for somebody who was as close to being non interventionist probably as you could have been in in America in a major politics in 1964.
- [73:58]
Abe Greenwald
That was the daisy ad, right? I mean one of the most effective.
- [74:01]
John Podhoretz
Political the daisy ad only ran once, the famous ad of a little girl smelling a daisy. And then there's a picture of a clear cloud and it's like don't vote for Barry Goldwater. And Barry Goldwater was as I say, like, you know, in the end was.
- [74:16]
Matthew Continetti
Was he did flirt with the idea that was, you know, prevalent on the right at the time that if you wanted to win the war in Vietnam, you should win it. And that meant entertaining.
- [74:28]
John Podhoretz
Fair enough.
- [74:29]
Matthew Continetti
All options.
- [74:30]
John Podhoretz
Anyway, anyway, this is, this has become a revisionist history.
- [74:34]
Matthew Continetti
Yes.
- [74:34]
John Podhoretz
Podcast tomorrow we will discuss discuss whether or not Churchill was a villain. We will not but we will be back tomorrow for Matt Seth and Abram John Pot words Keep the candle.