Trump in Asia

Summary

The Commentary Magazine Podcast

Episode: Trump in Asia
Date: October 28, 2025
Host: John Podhoretz
Panel: Abe Greenwald, Christine Rosen, Matthew Karnetti, Seth Mandel

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Overview

This episode explores President Trump’s high-stakes trip across Asia, focusing on trade negotiations, the political and economic repercussions of his tariff policies, and the overshadowing domestic drama triggered by inflation and his contentious approach to governing. The hosts link these unfolding events to broader trends in immigration, American conservatism’s institutional crises, and procedural breakdowns in US politics. The show is interspersed with lively banter, sports analogies, and references to current pop culture and historical precedent.

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Key Discussion Points

1. Trump’s Asia Trip & the Tariff Quandary

• Japan and China Summits:
  Trump met with new Japanese Prime Minister Takechi, displaying a show of unity, but failed to resolve key tariff issues. The big moment will come with his meeting with Xi Jinping of China, where he’s expected to try to “walk back” the self-imposed trade war (03:13–05:25).
• Rare Earth Deals:
  Trump has been busy collecting rare earth mineral agreements from Malaysia, Australia, and Japan, attempting to secure American supply lines and strengthen leverage prior to the China talks (12:52–14:10).
• Tariffs and Inflation:
  The panel discusses anecdotal and real evidence of tariffs driving up prices—especially as election season heats up. John uses the example of his wife discovering pants for their son now cost nearly double online:
  “If she represents a kind of American body of opinion that starts to look at inflated prices of things... Is that the tariffs? I don’t think that’s good for Trump.” (04:33–05:25)
• Supreme Court Case:
  The Supreme Court will hear a pivotal case—scheduled for Election Day—on whether Trump’s emergency-powers tariffs are constitutional. Trump may even attend the hearing:
  "Trump has raised the possibility that he may attend the hearing at the Supreme Court because of how invested he is in the outcome." (05:34–05:57)

2. World Series as Metaphor for Trade and Immigration

• International Roster:
  Discussion about the World Series (Blue Jays vs. Dodgers) is linked to American openness and the value of high-skilled immigration, especially with Japanese players dominating the Dodgers’ roster:
  “If you want evidence of high skilled immigration being a net positive for the United States, you need only look at the Los Angeles Dodgers.” (09:21–10:10)
• Diversity of Players:
  The hosts joke about the multi-national flavors—Canadian, Dominican, Japanese—in both teams and how it underscores both trade debates and cultural globalization.

3. The Substance & Optics of Trump’s Diplomacy

• Building Alliances:
  Trump, conscious of his leverage, is shoring up R.E. deals and the US-Japan alliance to face Xi.
  "What I’m doing, Trump is thinking, I believe, is making sure that America has independent capacity on these critical minerals in the case of any conflict." (14:10–15:54)
• Panel Skepticism:
  Matt suggests Trump is overestimating his leverage:
  "China still controls 80% of rare earth supply chain... Xi obviously having learned a great deal from Trump's first term." (15:54–17:17)

4. Domestic Shadow: Tariffs, Inflation, and Political Chaos

• Shadow Over Achievements:
  Despite what the panel acknowledges as an impressive string of foreign policy “wins,” Trump’s trade war is casting domestic uncertainty, undercutting his standing even as he amasses international deals (17:17–18:57).
• Ontario Ad Blow-Up:
  Trump’s furious reaction to a pro-free-trade Canadian commercial (which used a Ronald Reagan speech) ignited a multi-day political feud with conservative institutions, with both sides weaponizing Reagan’s legacy:
  "Trump is also wrong to say...that Ronald Reagan loved tariffs, all caps, exclamation, exclamation point. That’s not true at all." (25:39–28:05)
• Reagan, Trump, and the Politics of Trade:
  Abe clarifies the context: Reagan’s trade actions—mainly against Japan—were reluctant and under congressional pressure. The episode becomes a meditation on “who owns” Reagan’s legacy (28:05–31:10).

5. Trump’s Governance Style: Process, Distraction, and Power

• Distraction as Strategy or Temperament:
  The panel debates whether Trump’s “drama-llama” tendencies (animal cunning vs. strategic ploys) are intentional efforts to keep opponents occupied or simply a reflection of his temperament (24:09–24:30, 35:53–36:46).
• The White House Ballroom & Process Aversion:
  Trump's unilateral decision to raze the East Wing in order to build a new ballroom leads to a discussion of process aversion, the limits of executive power, and the inability of Democrats to frame their opposition in compelling, non-historical terms (38:01–42:46).
• Real Estate Analogy:
  John explains Trump's developer mentality:
  "Which is get the wrecking balls going before they’re on to you...He did have some inkling that he was up to something sneaky." (38:01–39:17)

6. The State of American Conservatism

• Institutional Breakdown:
  The Reagan Foundation’s denunciation of the Canadian ad, as well as conservative institutions straining to remain relevant under Trump, prompt soul-searching about the integrity, coherence, and future of conservatism (24:30–25:39, 28:05–31:10).
• Heritage, Claremont, Others:
  John argues that attempts to reconcile Trump’s philosophy with the conservative movement have sometimes reached “disgraceful” levels of revisionism (24:30–25:39).

7. Law, Norms, and the Limits of Power

• Yuge Legal Risks:
  The conversation pivots sharply to discuss Trump's relentless legal challenges, particularly the motion to overturn his hush money conviction in New York—highlighting the “lawfare” era and what it means for American institutions (53:11–58:24).
  • John: "His overarching view is that all norms were violated in the pursuit and attempted destruction of him."(53:11–58:24)
• Courts vs. Power:
  The panel weighs the Supreme Court’s role as a final arbiter and speculates on the significance if Trump ever refuses to follow a SCOTUS order—a possible “constitutional crisis” (59:50–61:00).

8. The Future: Institutional Restraint—or Lack Thereof

• New Executive Reality:
  Anecdotes reveal Trump’s surprise at how few formal constraints exist for the presidency—a revelation fueling his boundary-pushing behavior (64:45–65:10, 65:57–66:43).
  • “He was surprised to find out that he could do whatever he wanted. That is, in a way, what puts a brake on some of his worst impulses.” (64:45–65:10)

9. Final Notes: Book Review and New York Politics

• Book Recommendation (68:07):
  Matt recommends Sheepdogs by Elliot Ackerman—a “caper” novel about postwar special operators.
• New York Political Forecast:
  John hints at the Cuomo vs. Mamdani race tightening, with a tongue-in-cheek warning not to get too optimistic:
  “I don’t want to fill you with hope, only to crush your dreams.” (71:45–73:25)

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Notable Quotes & Moments

• On Trump’s Tariffs:
  "Tariffs are the greatest thing ever mood that he was in back in January, February, March 1st."
  — John Podhoretz (04:33)
• On Immigration & Baseball:
  “If you want evidence of high skilled immigration being a net positive for the United States, you need only look at the Los Angeles Dodgers.”
  — John Podhoretz (09:21)
• On Trump’s Strategic Thinking:
  “He’s just constantly testing the limits of executive power in all kinds of realms... and at each point, it does draw fire from his opposition.”
  — Matthew Karnetti (35:53)
• On Conservatism’s Institutional Crisis:
  “What the Reagan foundation did... to be among the most disgraceful things any conservative institution [has done].”
  — John Podhoretz (24:30)
• On Lawfare & Legal Battles:
  “His overarching view is that all norms were violated in the pursuit and attempted destruction of him.”
  — John Podhoretz (53:11)
• On Regulatory Gridlock:
  “If you follow the process, nothing will happen. You’re a sucker for exactly the reason…there are so many veto points in our system.”
  — Abe Greenwald (46:42)

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Important Segment Timestamps

• 03:13 – 05:25: Introduction of Trump’s Asia trip and the tariff dilemma
• 09:21 – 10:10: Baseball and immigration as a metaphor for trade debate
• 14:10 – 15:54: Deep dive into Trump’s rare earth deals and negotiation posture with China
• 24:30 – 25:39: Institutions and the crisis of conservative identity
• 28:05 – 31:10: Context for Reagan’s trade policies and comparison with Trump
• 35:53 – 36:46: Is Trump’s drama by design or accident?
• 38:01 – 42:46: The White House ballroom, regulatory bottlenecks, and political optics
• 53:11 – 58:24: Trump’s legal campaign to reverse the NY felony conviction
• 59:50 – 61:00: Role of the Supreme Court and the specter of a constitutional crisis
• 68:07: Book recommendation: Sheepdogs by Elliot Ackerman
• 71:45 – 73:25: Electoral trends and closing thoughts

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Tone & Style

The panel maintains their trademark conversational, wry, and irreverent intellectual style, with John Podhoretz keeping things brisk and lively, while the rest offer deeply informed yet accessible takes on the intersection of current events, history, and political philosophy.

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For Listeners Seeking Key Takeaways

• President Trump’s Asia trip is substantively focused on securing allies and resources ahead of fraught negotiations with China, but is dogged by self-inflicted economic pain from tariffs and inflation.
• The Supreme Court’s upcoming tariffs ruling could profoundly alter Trump’s authority and economic legacy.
• Trump’s erratic, norm-breaking governance style — alternately considered “animal cunning” or just temperament — is testing American institutions and the patience of allies and opponents alike.
• The conservative movement remains deeply divided over how (or whether) to reconcile Trumpism with Reagan’s legacy and free-trade orthodoxy.
• American politics in 2025 is marked by a crisis of process, a collapse of institutional restraint, and an ever-expanding appetite for executive power.

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End Note:
As the podcast’s theme song says, now is a moment to “hope for the best, expect the worst.”

Transcript

[John Podhoretz]

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Commentary.

[John Podhoretz]

Hope for the.

[Christine Rosen]

Expect the wor some preacher.

[Abe Greenwald]

Pain some die of thirst no way.

[John Podhoretz]

Of knowing this way it's going Hope for the best expect the worst. Welcome to the Commentary magazine daily podcast. Today is Tuesday, October 28, 2025. I am John Potorz, the editor of Commentary. We have a full house this morning with me as always, if you executive editor Abe Greenwald.

[Abe Greenwald]

Hi Abe.

[Seth Mandel]

Hi John.

[John Podhoretz]

Social commentary columnist Christine Rosen. Hi Christine.

[Matthew Karnetti]

Hi John.

[John Podhoretz]

Washington. Commentary columnist Matthew Carnetti. Hi Matt.

[Abe Greenwald]

Hi John.

[John Podhoretz]

And senior editor Seth Mandel. Hi Seth. Well, Seth is muted so I will say hi John for him. Hi John. Okay, go ahead. I know you're still weirdly muted. I don't understand why not muted?

[Abe Greenwald]

But his mic doesn't work.

[John Podhoretz]

Your mic doesn't work. So we will let you reestablish your mic while I bring up the following. Donald Trump is in Asia. We have not talked about tariffs. He's in Asia. He went to Japan. They had a love fest. They didn't agree on tariffs. He's going to have a meeting later this week where the Chinese are going to be present and apparently is going to attempt to walk back the tariff war that he started unilaterally. And that's kind of interesting because it's also happening on the day, this morning, later, when we're done with this podcast, where the Supreme Court is going to start hearing arguments about whether or not Trump has the power under these emergency. Does he have the emergency power to impose unilateral tariffs? So tariff day here. And I have one thing to say and then we can go on, which is my wife goes online looking for pants to buy online for my 15 year old son and she says, wait, this is really weird. They cost twice as much as they did three months ago, the pants. And then she says, do you think it's the tariffs? And I said, I guess so. I don't really know why, but I guess so. Now, if she represents a kind of American body of opinion that starts to look at inflated prices of things and starts instantly going to the place where you say, well, something's happened here. Unexpected large increases in prices involving goods that are made abroad. Is that the tariffs? I don't think that's good for Trump. So a lot of stuff is happening here where I think Trump himself and Scott Bessen and others are now looking at the political consequences of the high on his own supply. Tariffs are the greatest thing ever mood that he was in back in January, February, March 1st.

[Abe Greenwald]

Just want to correct something you said. Okay, the Supreme Court's going to hear the tariff case next Tuesday.

[John Podhoretz]

Oh, really?

[Abe Greenwald]

My God, how did I. November 5th.

[John Podhoretz]

November 5th. Okay.

[Abe Greenwald]

Trump will.

[John Podhoretz]

Which is also election Day. So that's an interesting.

[Abe Greenwald]

Trump will have returned from Asia by the time they hear the case. In fact, Trump has raised the possibility that he may attend the hearing at the Supreme Court because of how invested he is in the outcome.

[John Podhoretz]

Second, do you think he can get a seat? Because you have to line up early.

[Abe Greenwald]

I think they'll save him a seat.

[John Podhoretz]

All right.

[Abe Greenwald]

I just think so.

[John Podhoretz]

Second, by the way, has a president do you think ever sat in the Supreme Court At a.

[Abe Greenwald]

That's a question for Grok which may give an. Give you an anti Semitic answer.

[John Podhoretz]

You are my. You are my Grok.

[Abe Greenwald]

I don't believe so.

[John Podhoretz]

I don't believe so. Yeah.

[Abe Greenwald]

Remember only. It was only Woodrow Wilson who began giving the State of the Union in person.

[John Podhoretz]

Right.

[Abe Greenwald]

So there's always another precedent for Trump.

[Christine Rosen]

To set, but the answer is William Howard Taft.

[John Podhoretz]

Is it? Did you just groff? Well, no.

[Abe Greenwald]

He was the Chief Justice.

[Matthew Karnetti]

He became the Justice.

[John Podhoretz]

Oh, so I see. So you're saying he was present at all Supreme Court.

[Christine Rosen]

He was a, he was a proceedings.

[John Podhoretz]

When he was the Chief justice and.

[Christine Rosen]

A Supreme Court Justice.

[Abe Greenwald]

You know, remember there was some speculation that Obama would be appointed to the Supreme Court.

[John Podhoretz]

Yes.

[Abe Greenwald]

After he left office and that didn't happen.

[John Podhoretz]

But then he couldn't build the Death Star on south side of Chicago.

[Abe Greenwald]

The ship from arrival.

[John Podhoretz]

Yeah, the ship from arrival. It's the, it's Immortan Joe's palace in Mad Max Fury Road. Who knows what the hell it is. But if I'm living anywhere near that thing, I am moving the heck away. Anyway, please. I'm just, I just.

[Abe Greenwald]

I think the way to approach Trump's trip is through the prism of this wonderful World Series that we're having in America. It's an international World Series. It's the Blue. The Blue Jays, a Canadian based team, even though most, I don't think any of their players are Canadian. I'm not sure. I don't know that for a fact, but I'm speculating against the Dodgers, the what Bob Dole called the Brooklyn Dodgers, but who have been in Los Angeles for some time. And the funny thing about the Dodgers, who won an epic 18 inning game that ended at 3:20am Eastern time this morning, making the series 2 to 1, is that their stars are all Japanese and Trump is in Japan. So here we have Trump aligned.

[John Podhoretz]

Can I interrupt? Because this is a very important point. You know how we talk about jobs Americans won't do and you know, and like if you are a sort of fan of immigration, you say the thing is they're so hard work, immigrants are so hardworking. Americans have sort of gotten lazy and soft. Let's just talk about the jet, the two major Japanese players on the Los Angeles Dodgers. So we'll put Ohtani, Shoteo Ohtani off to one side. So this pitcher, Yamamoto. Right, right. Pitches the first complete game in a World Series in seven years. Yeah, seven years. Now, can pitchers pitch complete games? Yes. My whole life pitchers pitched complete games. Tom Seaver the best pitcher in the majors in the 1970s, pitched more complete games than he pitched games in which he was taken out in the, in the late innings. And now nobody does because of saber metrics and things like that. But Yamoto's like, I'm staying in this game. I'm gonna pitch this whole game, rip this ball from my hands. I am not leaving. And Shohei Otani, obviously the most supernatural player in history. What did he do last night over 18 innings and he's pitching tonight? Yes, he was up to bat nine times. He was walked five times. He got four hits, two of them home runs and two, eight homers in the postseason. And the story of his postseason, at least for the first couple of weeks, was he was having a terrible postseason. But he can't possibly have a terrible. And I'm just saying if you want evidence of high skilled immigration being a net positive for the United States, you need only look at the Los Angeles Dodgers.

[Abe Greenwald]

I think we can agree that Shohei Ohtani is an extreme case. You know, it's like, that's like.

[John Podhoretz]

But is he really? That's.

[Abe Greenwald]

I, you know, I agree with your general point.

[Christine Rosen]

I do, I do like Matt's point about it because you know, people used to complain that the calling it the World Series was another example of like American imperialistic thought or the, the American and an America centric, you know, outlook that Americans just think they're the whole world. But it really is the World Series because it really is the best players in the world. It is, it's in, you know, even the World Series involving more than one country.

[Abe Greenwald]

So even more important.

[John Podhoretz]

Yes.

[Abe Greenwald]

As, as much as it pains me to say this as a Max Scherzer, Stan, it is the anti Canada series because that is. As he met with the new Japanese Prime Minister Takechi in Tokyo, Donald Trump watched the Dodgers Blue Jays game and I assume they both were rooting for the Dodgers. Takechi because of Ohtani and Yamamoto and Sasaki, another Japanese pitcher that they have, and Trump because he's in midst a trade war with Canada.

[John Podhoretz]

Yes.

[Abe Greenwald]

Over the Ronald Reagan ad.

[John Podhoretz]

But I want to mention Toronto has one Canadian player and talk about the flavor of the world. Okay. The best player in the playoffs for Toronto, Vladimir Guerrero Jr.

[Abe Greenwald]

Yes.

[John Podhoretz]

Son of the great Vladimir Guerrero who like is hitting.700 or something insane in the postseason. Born in Montreal. Dominican. Yes.

[Abe Greenwald]

I didn't realize he was born in Montreal.

[John Podhoretz]

That makes sense. And his first name is Vladimir. Vladimir Guerrero Jr. The Canadian player on the Blue Jays. Yeah. That's interesting. What a world we live in.

[Abe Greenwald]

There you go. Okay, I stand corrected. So, one serious point about what's happening.

[Christine Rosen]

By the way, senior Vladimir Guerrero Sr's brother is Eliezer or Elizar. Vladimir and Eliezer, they're like a very biblical themed family. But so you have, you have Vladimir Elazar Guerrero. The whole family is wonderful.

[Abe Greenwald]

Okay, anyway, so onto that Asia trip. Kind of a.

[John Podhoretz]

This is like my brain as it ages. This entire podcast is now turning into a version of what I will be like when I have Alzheimer's.

[Abe Greenwald]

Well, we had to talk about the World Series. Yes, we did. That's, that's just incredible. It's been so much fun. I'm looking forward to game four in any case. What's going on with this trip? I think it's interesting. Trump goes to Malaysia first and he kind of gets a, an addendum to the ceasefire he helped negotiate between Thailand and Cambodia. Then he gets some rare earths deals, he signs those, then he goes to Japan. And you're right that the. Even though the tenor of the meeting was extremely positive, Trump brought Takeichi up to the lectern. When he addressed the troops, he had his arm around her in a very funny photo that I urge everyone to look at because she doesn't seem to all too comfortable, but nonetheless, he seems to really like her, which is excellent. They also signed a rare earths agreement, even though they didn't get into the weeds on the overall trade deal. And then he's going to go to Korea where he's going to meet with the Korean president, of course, who replaced the previous Korean president who was convicted for staging a couple.

[John Podhoretz]

The six hour coup.

[Abe Greenwald]

The six hour coup, yeah. And the current president is a die hard left winger. And so that's going to be a very interesting meeting. And then he meets Xi Jinping on Thursday. And when I look at this trip unfold, what I'm seeing is Trump going into the Xi Jinping meeting saying, look, I have my best friend Takechi, the ally of my previous best friend Shinzo Abe, arm in arm, the US Japan alliance is extremely strong, don't you think? Otherwise, Xi Jinping number two, I have all these rare earth deals that I'm accumulating, but before I left on the trip, I had one with Australia to all the Pacific Rim nations. What I'm doing, Trump is thinking, I believe, is making sure that America has independent capacity on these critical minerals in the case of any conflict. And so Xi Jinping, I have some leverage through de risking or decoupling or whatever. Term of art you want to use as we prepare to sign this framework on trade that has been negotiated with my trade, my treasury secretary, Scott Bassett. So I think this is a very substantive trip and but it all rides on the outcome of Thursday's meeting with Xi Jinping and whether this framework that has been announced, coupled with the leverage from the allies, actually gets us to a place where we have a deal with China that can maybe last at least through the end of the year, let's say.

[Matthew Karnetti]

But I think he's overconfident on the leverage he thinks he has. China still controls 80% of rare earth supply chain. 80%. And they've already shown, I think their decoupling from, from the U.S. began a long time before, you know, just this week. So they are, they've had these independent sources when, when Trump's tariffs were imposed and the soybeans weren't being sent, they just went and bought them from Brazil. So I think they come into this negotiation in a much stronger position with Xi obviously having learned a great deal from Trump's first term about handle things with him. And it will, it will be interesting to see. Trump also hasn't really engaged with the point, John, that I think you made about Ayala. Looking at prices of, of clothing. Americans are starting to ask when looking at higher prices. Inflation has remained at a level that is an ideal during an election cycle. And so he's got a lot to answer for with. There's a lot riding on this. But I also think he doesn't come into it with as much leverage as he might be projecting right now. It's great. I'm very happy to see the alliance with Japan be reaffirmed publicly, and that's all for the good. But I wonder if he's going to get a little outsmarted by Xi on this one. There are a lot of issues here that I don't think that the sense, sort of vague discussions of a framework have engaged. So we'll see. But I'm less confident that he's going to get what he thinks he's going.

[John Podhoretz]

To get if you consider where we are now and the degree to which Trump can claim a series of foreign policy successes. The shadow over this unambiguously positive record in these 10 months of his presidency are the tariffs or is the tariffs. I'm sorry, that's the shadow. That is the uncertainty he now has, not only the list of ceasefires or deconflictions that he has been involved in on three continents. I think aside from Asia, aside from Gaza and, and, and Israel or Hamas and Israel. He has. Whether his intervention played a role or not, and one can assume that it played some kind of role, he has. Javier Milei, the most pro American, pro Western leader in the history of South America, just won an astonishingly sweeping victory in Argentina. If you were reading about it in the months before this, you would have thought Milei was toast, that he was, you know, that he was gonna go down, you as in history as the guy who committed himself to market principles and was a weirdo. And then he got taken out and pretty much the.

[Abe Greenwald]

Can I interrupt by introducing the headline that I noticed on Sunday before the election that speaks to the conventional wisdom about Milei? This is a headline from the Wall Street Journal, October 24, Malay's overhaul of Argentina has another problem. He isn't great at politics. So. Sorry.

[John Podhoretz]

Don't. Sorry to yourself. Never write anything like that on the.

[Abe Greenwald]

I don't read anything anymore. Yeah, well, I guess I'd read something.

[John Podhoretz]

You read it to complain about. Yeah. I mean, no, but. So what I'm saying is, what's interesting is that he, he is now. He has compiled at least an almost unprecedented first year of foreign policy successes. I know it's a second term in some ways and a first term in other ways. Can't think of really anything that compares with this in different places. And yet here we are with economic uncertainty relating to the tariffs. And then the weird thing that happened last week where though he's having this substantive trip, it's again overshadowed a little bit by his mad king behavior toward the provincial government of Ontario's pro free trade commercial. And Matt, you have written the piece in the Free Press this morning about why it is that Trump was so rattled by the commercial and rattled by the use of this edited speech radio talk by Ronald Reagan about tariffs.

[Seth Mandel]

I just want to say something about this, the shadow of tariffs and his mishegos with Canada. Don't you think Trump always wants there to be a shadow? He needs it. It's part of how he operates. He needs there to be a long shot bid that everyone is counting against, that he needs to talk up, fight for and drive everyone crazy with.

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[John Podhoretz]

Is that a strategy or is that like a kind of animal cunning? He does it and. And because that's who he is and that it has this effect or is there method to this madness? I. I just don't know the.

[Seth Mandel]

I don't know the answer either.

[Matthew Karnetti]

I think it's just his temperament. He's a drama llama as we used to call some of the more dramatic he feeds on it.

[John Podhoretz]

Yeah, but like that commercial could have gone right. I mean it was a commercial it was on a couple of times on football, because I saw it a couple of times on football Thursday night or something last during Thursday Night Football. And then he just went absolutely ballistic over it. Yeah. I want him to say one thing before we go, which is the corruption of the conservative institutions of the United States that we've seen over the last couple of years and trying to figure out how to maintain their influence with Trump, who is obviously not a conventional conservative in any understanding. And sort of the way the Heritage foundation has gone, the Claremont Institute and other places have gone, I frankly find what the Reagan foundation did in disavowing the commercial and claiming that it misrepresented Ronald Reagan's views on trade, which it did. The Ronald Reagan foundation did say, I'm sorry, or the Institute said, I'm sorry, this is not how Reagan really felt about tariffs. To be among the most disgraceful things any conservative institution.

[Abe Greenwald]

I'm going to defend my friends at the Reagan foundation for a second, because they didn't. If you read the statement, it is very careful, says it met the Canada ad, which for those of you who haven't seen it, it's the 62nd spot it ran on the NFL and it ran in the world Theories again o Canada. And it's show. You know, it's a pretty, I think, anodyne political ad. It shows a lot of, you know, kind of illuminated images of shipping and stores and families. And then when it talks about the cost of tariffs and economic warfare, it shows empty storefronts and de industrialized places. But over that, over the imagery is Ronald Reagan's voice, and it's Ronald Reagan talking about the costs of trade wars and how tariffs start out innocent enough, but like most government interventions, lead to unintended consequences that are much more harmful than the ailment you're trying to cure at the beginning. Now, that speech that the ad quotes from took place in the spring of 1987. And what the Reagan foundation pointed out was that the speech itself was an announcement of tariffs and punitive, punitive trade measures against Japan, which was the dominant economic competitor, so to speak, during Reagan's presidency. And so I do think the foundation had a point here, which, which is that the speech itself left out the context of the speech. However, as I say in my piece in the Free Press, Trump is also wrong to say that, as he did repeatedly in his denunciations of the ad, that Ronald Reagan loved tariffs, all caps, exclamation, exclamation point. That's not true at all. Reagan's position on trade and tariffs was that of a avowed free trader. It was very important to his overall philosophy. And the trade actions he took as president mainly against Japan, were always done with an air of reluctance and regret.

[John Podhoretz]

So there were two major things that Reagan did on trade with Japan. One major thing related to national security and the question of whether or not Japan itself was exporting things to the Soviet Union or was trading with the Soviet Union products, a high high tech electronic products that were damaging to US national security. That was in the early 80s. This was about dumping. And nobody in the world of free trade believes that countries should be permitted to sell their goods below, you know, to sell their goods at a loss in order to destroy the market of another country. Dumping. Is there international trade agreements that, that, that say that dumping is essentially a violation of all trade compacts and Japan was clearly dumping semiconductors at the time. This is not the claim that Trump is making to support the tariff regime that included 83% tariffs on the Marshall Islands.

[Matthew Karnetti]

Also, can I just appoint a data point marshal? Aren't dumping any data point to remember is that Reagan also got Congress to pass that. It was. He was dealing with a piece of legislation in some of these cases with tariff protectionism. And none of the deals that that Trump is going around striking now will matter if the Supreme Court next week says emergency powers cannot be used to raise revenue in this way. I mean, not all of the tariffs, but he did. His approach was the one that I think is going to be the question that the Supreme Court is going to answer in these two cases next week, which is, is, is it Congress's power constitutionally to raise revenue through tariffs or do these emergency powers overstep that authority?

[Abe Greenwald]

Yeah, I mean, the question that the court faces next week is is Trump asserting a delegated power under a specific trade statute. The acronym is ipa. It's not the statutes that Trump. It's not the statute that Trump asserted his tariff powers under in the first term. And so the issue is, does what he's doing fall under how Congress delegated the authority under this particular act? Now, Reagan was retaliating under other acts, but I just want to point out that one reason Reagan was or took protectionist measures, even as he always supported the theories behind free trade, was he was dealing with a protectionist Democratic Congress.

[Matthew Karnetti]

Exactly.

[Abe Greenwald]

They would have been worse, which wanted much more tariffs and industrial policy to combat Japan. So he would have to kind of block or co op certain measures in order to forestall worse outcomes. What I think is interesting is It's.

[Christine Rosen]

A, there's not enough time in a 30 second spot, I think, to say all that, though, in defense of the.

[John Podhoretz]

Commercial, in defense of the spot, it's a 60 second spot. That's right.

[Abe Greenwald]

But, you know, this is what historians we like to talk about. And among the people who were critical of Reagan at the time was Donald Trump, who the year, it's interesting, in 1987, the same year that Reagan gave the radio address that's quoted in the ad. That was the year that one Reagan met Trump. It's the only recorded meeting of the two. It was a White House reception. Not in the East Wing, I double checked. Not in the historic East Wing that we must cry over every day when we wake up, but in the blue room of the actual White House. That's where they met. There's a photograph. And then Trump. And then not long after, Trump takes out his full page ad in the New York Times saying that you may have heard this before. America's allies are cheating us, they're taking advantage of us, and the only way to be tough is to tax them or tariff them. So Reagan and Trump were at odds in the 1980s over trade. And what I think is interesting about the fight over the Canada ad is Trump has been trying to co opt Reagan in particular during this second term. And so any reminder that Reagan had a different philosophy of international trade and more other aspects of their philosophies differ as well, I think gets Trump really angry. It's not just about influencing the Supreme Court, which is what Trump said. It's about the reminder that on this particular question and others, but on this central fact of Trump's economic policy. Ronald Reagan had a very different point of view.

[John Podhoretz]

Anyway, I think what's so remarkable about this moment, maybe we take it in Abe's direction that Trump always had. There has to be a thing where Trump takes something too far. You know, it's like sort of putting sugar out, you know, near a, near a. Flies, you know, sort of doing something to attract flies over here so that you can do something over there. So he puts out a sugar bomb or something like that. And then the meteor all like, you could say this about the, about the ballroom. The ballroom and the leveling of the East Wing. A week spent talking about the ballroom and the leveling of the East Wing is an insane distraction for the Democrats who have all kinds of other things that they could be engaging Trump on, about which Trump seems to be unpopular and about which their views seem to be more popular. But he has this uncanny ability to steal their attention and move them in another direction, away from the things that might hurt him more profoundly. Now, it's also possible that. Not that I think Democrats think this or anybody thinks this way logically, but if the tariffs end up having this effect on inflation and on the economy, it's going to be so big. It's going to be so, you know, it's. It's one of those things where it doesn't matter what you say or what you do. If the American people feel like their purchasing power is being halved and the costs are going up and all of that, no amount of saying Ronald Reagan thought this or I thought that or the tariffs are bad or this or that, people are going to go, I don't, like, things in my household are getting more expensive, and nobody's helping me with that. And I think Washington is responsible for that. Trump's going to pay for that next year.

[Matthew Karnetti]

He has to pay back the tariffs he's already collected. If this case goes against him.

[John Podhoretz]

I mean, I don't even know how. I mean, nobody.

[Abe Greenwald]

I don't know. No one knows.

[Matthew Karnetti]

But, like, theoretically, that's.

[Abe Greenwald]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, theoretically.

[Christine Rosen]

The new ballroom.

[John Podhoretz]

Well, he's already sold it. It's like the producer already sold it 500 times. He's probably raised $5 billion for the ballroom. But I want to push back, John.

[Matthew Karnetti]

On this idea that this is some, some cunning strategy that Trump has. And, like, I'm going to distract them by bulldozing, you know, the East Wing and building a ballroom. I don't think that is at all what he does. I think he's just constantly testing the limits of executive power in all kinds of realms. He's doing with immigration, he's doing the tariffs, he's doing it with bulldozing the Easter ring. And at each point, it does draw fire from his opposition, sometimes insanely stupid fire, and it's a distraction for them. But I don't think his strategy is to draw out his enemies in that way. I think he's just doing all the stuff he said he wanted to do, and he's taking it to the absolute max. He's a second termer, and in the next two years, he'll really be potentially, if Congress goes to the Democrats, he's going to be investigated nonstop. I mean, there's going to be all kinds of trouble. So he is really pushing it to get as much of his agenda done. I just don't see it as him being cunning. I think it's just his temperament as an executive.

[Christine Rosen]

I was thinking the reason I agree with that when it comes to the ballroom at least, is because the objections to the ballroom fall into two categories. There is the, you know, everything has a legitimate process, and there should be. We should know all the donors. We should know where the money's coming from. These things seem obvious, right? There should be transparency in anything the government is doing, whether with private or public money, especially to the White House. And category two, Eleanor Roosevelt sat in the east wing once, and there was even a photograph of her sitting at a desk in the East Wing, and Trump just destroyed it, and therefore Hitler.

[John Podhoretz]

Right.

[Christine Rosen]

Those are the two categories into which the objections are coming. And I feel like, I don't know that Trump is. Could even anticipate the. The swerve, which is, you know, hey, I don't know, there might be some serious corruption here. I don't think they're gonna. They're gonna go like, oh, he's. He's destroying history or something like that. Like, at this point, I'm not even sure that you can anticipate the silliness.

[Matthew Karnetti]

They release. They release the donors. The donors are a who's who of big tech companies, and there's a whole lot of, you know, you can. You can have an entirely separate ethical discussion of what it means that they are of full funding this. This ballroom. But I do think you're right, Seth, that the swerve to the. Oh, we care about historical integrity by the party that actively cheered on the toppling of statues of our founding fathers just a few years ago and can't even say the word Christopher Columbus on, you know, once a year. That, to me, is ridiculous.

[John Podhoretz]

But, yes, I don't agree. Because he was sneaky and prevaricating about the size of the project.

[Matthew Karnetti]

Oh, absolutely.

[John Podhoretz]

No, he had a bad contour or he didn't want to get attacked for it before the bill. You know, this is a famous New York City.

[Matthew Karnetti]

This is a developer story, landlord thing.

[John Podhoretz]

Which is get the wrecking balls going before they're on to you. Right. Because they could do a stop order with the court. Now, there is no stop order against him, but his idea was, we've got an ounce. We're doing. We're going to build a ballroom, doing a lot of stuff in the White House. And then it's like, wait, you're actually removing the entire east wing? When did that happen? You know, it's sort of a funny. So he did have some inkling that he was up to something sneaky.

[Abe Greenwald]

Right.

[Christine Rosen]

But I mean, he's, he, he, he understands that he's up to something sneaky. But the, the criticism that came in avoided fairly obvious sneaky things to, to go after like, do you have the authority to do this? And who are the donors? And stuff like that. And went straight to the moon with all this, like, okay, I want to.

[John Podhoretz]

Praise Ross Daffod who last week wrote a really one of those sort of weird synthesis idea columns where you go, oh my God, you're onto something that only you could have thought of, which is he's like, look, there needs to be a ballroom. No, no rational person would say that, that the President can't entertain people properly in the White House by having, you know, a tent city put up. That's ridiculous. And this is fine. And, but the Democratic response indicates a problem with the Democratic Party and its approach to, as he described it, beauty preservation and the future. So the Democrats have turned out in cities and places like that, or the, let's say the liberal establishment really good at preserving, preserving. Like where I live, you know, my building is now in a historic district here in New York, which means that nobody can do anything or you know, like the costs of doing anything on our building are incredibly expensive because it has to look exactly the way it did in 1908 and all of that. That's an effort to preserve New York, New York's historical legacy without, you know, allowing people to simply bulldoze and rebuild without any eye toward what made New York New York. And they're really good at that. And they do it all over the country except with the statues and some of that historical legacy. But they stink at beauty. They stink at building new beauty. Case in point, the Obama library. The hideousness of the Obama library, which seems to be the point. Obama didn't say, what I really want is a beautiful building that will be, will last for hundreds of years. He was making some kind of a statement we don't entirely understand with the hideousness of this building. And they make it impossible for there to be progress because they block the construction of, of new projects by making them prohibitively expensive using regulations. Here in New York City, for example, Zoram Hamdani is running for mayor on an affordability agenda. And remarkably enough, there is a way to build affordable housing in New York City that involves not taxing billionaires, but by deregulating the over regulated construction codes, half of which were put in place to enrich the building trades, which are mafia controlled or at least were mafia controlled. And Democrats have no antibodies in their system. That says, you know, you have to do is, like, let a real estate developer build something with, you know, materials that he can afford. If you want him to build something where he can make an apartment that can be rented for $1,500 a month.

[Matthew Karnetti]

For a family, that's the abundance agenda. That's the Ezra Klein.

[John Podhoretz]

Ezra Klein in his book, as Michael Warrenoff said in his review of it, they're like, we need abundance. So here's what we do it. We announce a project and want to build yada, yada, yada. It gets built and it's affordable, and now we have abundance. And yada, yada, yada is the sticking point. Because how do you make something affordable and abundant? You have to lower the cost of its construction. And the only way you can lower the cost of its construction is to deregulate. And they love regulation. They love regulation. They dream of regulation. And so Ross managed in this column to put all this together in a sort of new synthesis that I thought was incredibly insightful, which is that, again, using the antibody thing, like, Democrats had no antibodies, or Democrats didn't even know how to begin to attack the ballroom because they don't know how to talk about needing new things and building new things in America without getting twisted up in their own. We need this. We have to have this safety measure.

[Matthew Karnetti]

The best critique of the ballroom, actually, I think, was one of Matt and our colleagues. Gary Schmidt wrote a good. Like a short opinion piece in the Hill, I think it was, that just said, look, there was a way to do this where there was some process involved that would actually make people feel like thoughtfulness went into the destruction of something that a lot of people have an emotional connection to. It's the White House. And it was very. You know. But only a conservative can actually make that case for exactly the reasons you're right.

[Abe Greenwald]

Okay. I just want to make a distinction between the White House and the wings of the White House. I think this is kind of overlooked. When Trump said he wasn't going to disturb the structure.

[John Podhoretz]

Yeah.

[Abe Greenwald]

He meant the House. The White House. He hasn't touched the White House.

[Matthew Karnetti]

But Americans don't make that distinction.

[Abe Greenwald]

I do. I'm an American.

[Matthew Karnetti]

I know most of the world.

[Abe Greenwald]

People are upset, as Seth joked about, because the president's movie theater is gone. I mean. Yeah, come on.

[John Podhoretz]

You're making a very important point. And I'm live in Washington. All of us have lived in Washington. The picture of the White House that people see right from Pennsylvania Avenue, where people are on the lawn broadcasting from when they're standing there on the lawn from the White House, does not show the west, indeed wing, west and east wings of the White House that are behind.

[Abe Greenwald]

And people know the. The West Wing because of Aaron Sorkin.

[John Podhoretz]

Right.

[Abe Greenwald]

But by the way, the West Wing is incredibly small and old.

[John Podhoretz]

I know that needs the other.

[Christine Rosen]

And the show, the show itself, actually, that was a key theme of the show, the West Wing, when they hired people, they put them in windowless basement broom closets as offices.

[John Podhoretz]

Yeah. Because they. Anyway, my point is that what you. What people think of as the White House, which is why we all.

[Abe Greenwald]

Trump thinks of as the White House.

[John Podhoretz]

Which is the House. But the only powerful picture, therefore, was the picture of the earth mover, like whatever it was, you know, Mike Mulligan in a steam shovel taking down the East Wing. But the only vantage point from which you see the East Wing is from E Street or F Street or something. And nobody's on those anymore.

[Abe Greenwald]

It's how you got in. That was the entrance to the regular tour. You went in through the East Wing. That was the way most people would interact with it.

[Sponsor/Ad Voice]

But.

[John Podhoretz]

Right, but my point is, like, there was even a time when Washingtonians would routinely see that side of the White House because they could drive on these streets.

[Matthew Karnetti]

Yeah, we used to have. Yeah.

[John Podhoretz]

For 20 years.

[Abe Greenwald]

My other. But what I really wanted to say was, though, I think Christine is right, all the arguments against a lot of Trump actions come down to he's not following the process. He's not following the process. But from his point of view and the point of view of his supporters, if you follow the process, nothing will happen. You're a sucker for exactly the reason. Well, yeah, I mean, that maybe that added. But just nothing will happen because of what John Pot Horowitz is saying, that there are so many veto points in our system that have accumulated over time that has become almost impossible to do anything. And Trump's difference is that because he doesn't care about process, he actually creates facts on the ground.

[John Podhoretz]

Right.

[Abe Greenwald]

So that if you did follow the process, when would we have got in the ballroom? Maybe, maybe 10 years from now. At a cost. At a cost of what the Federal Reserve is costing to renovate its building.

[John Podhoretz]

How long did it take? I see that.

[Seth Mandel]

I see that in a lot of what he does. But he adds something extra. For example, he's once again joking about his third term as president. That's not just saying we're going to cut through. I mean, if it is, then I'm worried if that's. If that's how he's thinking about this. We're just going to cut through the process whereby president can serve a third term. What is that? Is that the shadow he wants to make the opposition crazy? Is that his temperament where he's just being a troll because he gets a kick out of it? Yeah. I mean, so it's, so it's a combination of this, sort of like it's also.

[Abe Greenwald]

You probably would want to run for a third term.

[Oliver Darcy]

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[Oliver Darcy]

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[John Passantino]

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[Oliver Darcy]

My understanding, having reported this is that the Pentagon protested to CNN and tried to effectively exile the CNN producer. And when the moment calls for for it, we've got some hot takes. I just think Brad Pitt, honestly, he kind of seems a little washed up.

[John Passantino]

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[Abe Greenwald]

Eisenhower wanted to run. Well, he couldn't.

[Seth Mandel]

Want to. Yeah.

[Abe Greenwald]

Reagan wanted to run. He couldn't. Clinton wanted to run. He couldn't. So Trump says, I'd love to do it.

[John Podhoretz]

Yeah.

[Abe Greenwald]

And then what does he say? He says, well, I'm not going to do the fancy plan, the vice president, vice presidential plan, where he runs as J.D. vance as Vice president and then Vance resigns. And so you mean the Medvedev. Even then it was, it's different because, I mean, that's. The plan is ludicrous. And Trump said as much in that appearance on Air Force One where He talked about 2020. And then the second thing he said was, you know, JD And Marco are so great together, they'd be unstoppable. So what he's doing is one, he likes the idea because he's Donald Trump. Right.

[John Podhoretz]

And two, you say every president likes the idea.

[Abe Greenwald]

But two, I mean, he takes it a little bit more, you know, he talks about it more often than the others. I mean, Reagan said a few times that, oh gosh, if not for the amendment, I would definitely run it. But he also understands that his leverage on the Republican Party depends on his, on his non. Lame duckness. Sorry, it's awkward, but it's nine o' clock in the morning. I've only had one cup of coffee. He has to present the image of power and strength for as long as possible because the second he becomes a lame duck, his power begins to seep away.

[Matthew Karnetti]

There's, there's also one, there's only one other pressure point to this, this narrative where were describing of him, you know, bulldozing ahead because otherwise things wouldn't get done. And that's that it throws every major policy question that he's, you know, not going to Congress for, but doing himself into litigation in the court system. And the only point that, where I'm, what, what concerns me about a lot, the rhetoric coming out of his administration, not just occasionally from him, but often from, you know, the Stephen Millers of the world, is the attempt to attack the justice system itself, which does have to litigate his bulldozing a lot of norms. So when, when you're doing, when you're doing the bulldozing, I don't care about process, I just want to get things done. And then the courts say, well, hold on a minute, because there, you might not be allowed to do that constitutionally. And then he's got the Stephen Millers of the world saying these federal judges are corrupt. We've got to attack the justice system. That's, I think, where the American public goes, well, wait a minute. I mean, I think people are willing to let those boundaries. That's why he was elected. You know, but I'm saying people are elected him to break the rules. I get that. But we do have a system. And it's not just me who thinks the system needs to hold, because whoever comes after him is going to test it in the same way. That's how it works.

[John Podhoretz]

Okay, but let me, let me play devil's advocate for a second by reading you something by AN Hoffman from the New York sun, who's a very brilliant writer, law school graduate, Stanford Law School graduate, has a scoop today. President Trump's filing of a 111 page briefing arguing that his hush money convictions were, quote, fatally marred and ought to be overturned as a landmark in his effort to undo his status as a convicted felon. So this is the Manhattan jury case presided over by Juan Merchant. This is the Alvin Bragg case where he was convicted for those 34 counts of how he paid off Stormy Daniels, the 34 checks that he wrote. And if you remember, this was controversial when the case was filed and then when it was, because ordinarily this would be a misdemeanor case the way that it was executed. And Alvin Bragg indicted him on the grounds that the misdemeanor was he could raise it to a felony because there was a second crime that was being committed by doing it this way. And that Bragg didn't have to tell the jury or anybody what the second crime was. And Judge Mershon said, sure, okay, you don't have to tell anybody what the crime was. And everybody that I know went, wait, what do you mean this is okay? And when the conviction came through, even though people were celebrating it even then, sort of like serious legal scholars on the left were like, I don't know what the situation is here. How is this possible? And Trump is going to court. He is being defended by a major law firm. I'm trying to, I can't, I can't remember. So I'm looking through the story to figure it out anyway. But basically, he's saying this case should never been brought. The jury instructions were wrong. Judge Mershand's jury instructions were faulty. Judge Mershand had himself a conflict of interest because his daughter is a Democratic political activist and worker. And he also said not only don't you have to know what the crime is, the jury doesn't even have to be unanimous. So he basically saying, this case is this case, this case should never been brought and it should be dismissed, and therefore, his convictions as a felon should be expunged. Now, read this. This morning, I haven't talked to the people I usually talk to about how strong this case is call Andy McCarthy to ask him. But it looks kind of strong to me. And here's because of the way everybody was talking about the case two years ago or three years ago when it was brought, and all of these objections were raised by people in the bringing of the case. So I'm raising this today to say that we say Trump is the violator of norms, but his overarching view is that all norms were violated in the pursuit and attempted destruction of him. So as Oliver twists orphan jailer, Mr. Bumble says, if the law says that, sir, then the law is a ass. He's basically saying, they use the legal system against me. They secured these. Here's a case. This was the most damaging case against me, and it was false, and it's wrong. And I'm not saying, all right, forget it. I beat it, you know, basically because I won the presidency, he is going in and saying, I want this expunged. Imagine what, what it will mean for the future of Lawfare, which I think we all oppose. If he succeeds in this case before the New York Supreme Court. Maybe he can't. I don't know. I really. I honestly don't know. But we're all like, Lawfare is destroying everything in every, you know, all over the world, Lawfare is being used as a technique, both the international courts, like in this, I believe, the lawfare case against Bibi Netanyahu in the Israeli courts. If you pursue lawfare, the one successful real case you get in the lawfare pursuit here is expunged because Trump has enough money to pursue this case forever and has a law firm willing to take the case to the, to the courts. Maybe it's good that he's a norm, violent.

[Abe Greenwald]

If he wins, I'm sure Letitia James, James Comey and John Bolton will all be hoping to use similar arguments.

[John Podhoretz]

Exactly. Okay.

[Abe Greenwald]

If they get there.

[John Podhoretz]

Right.

[Abe Greenwald]

I mean, it's hard. It's hard to say that because he's, as Christine points out, you know, he's not just trying to expunge the injustice done to him, he's also launching these politicized cases against. Right.

[Christine Rosen]

Well, it's dodgeball rules. It's dodgeball rules. If you knock out the one that knocked these three players out, these three players get to come back.

[John Podhoretz]

But that's an important point. But I'm just saying in the, in the sort of. From the perspective of history. So he's like, they did everything against me, so I'm going to use this the same way they use it against me. Unless we have a precedent that says stop doing this stuff.

[Matthew Karnetti]

Okay, Right. So this is the dodgeball. If you can dodge a wrench, you can dodge a ball. We need someone to start like he's throwing wrenches now, but then he's saying, I'm playing by the old dodgeball rules, but he's throwing wrenches at his opponents. I mean, he can't. And again, it's not just him. It's the way that some of the rhetoric of his administration, the delegitimization of our, of our legal and justice system, which of course is not, did not begin with Donald Trump, as for all the reasons we've just described, nevertheless does still require someone to play by the rules. And he wants to follow the rules for his own personal sense of justice, as you're showing in this case. But that means that the rules have to be restored for.

[Abe Greenwald]

It's a real contradiction. I think the test of what you're saying, Christine, is the Supreme Court. When you attack some of these district judges for being partisan hacks, you have a point. In a lot of cases. And the abuse of the nationwide injunction power became so egregious that the court stepped in earlier this year. The Supreme Court stepped in. You know, it's very rare for a president to defy an order of the United States Supreme Court. And Donald Trump has not done that.

[Matthew Karnetti]

Well, he has with TikTok. The TikTok case was a. He had.

[Abe Greenwald]

Well, yeah, I mean, that's not quite the same as an order. I hate to be legalistic here. It upheld the statute, but you're right. And that's one of the worst things he's done, in my view. Yeah, but that's the real test. Is the Supreme Court going to issue a ruling directing Trump to do something, something. And will he for the first time say no? Now, we've been in that place in American history before and it's very awkward, but that is what would rise to, in my view, a constitutional crisis. And we're not there yet.

[John Podhoretz]

Right. And the thing is, I think his impulse, 79 year old man, however rule breaking he is, however antinomian he is and all of that, he still has this. Well, this is the judge with the golden gavel on the Supreme Court. And you know, that's, I mean, he.

[Abe Greenwald]

Has said multiple times he wouldn't, he would follow us in his own head.

[John Podhoretz]

However, somebody, you know, because you mentioned Voldemort's name, I will, you know, I guess I can say, like the Stephen Millers of this administration do not think this they believe that everything is political, everything is about power, and that you assert your power when you have it and you dare someone to take it away from you. And so far they have reason to believe that that is an effective strategy because Congress has so abdicated its oversight responsibilities and the responsibility it has to act in on behalf of its own rules, like the TikTok ban. Congress is doing nothing because Republicans in Congress are afraid of Trump or like Trump or afraid of their voters or however you want to slice it. And if you're taking lessons inside the administration, you have, on the one hand, there's Trump sitting there as the conservative, and then you have all of these right wing Jacobins in the administration who want to exercise power as they deem fit, whether or not they should, or they should be allowed to, or there's any precedent that makes it legal. That's the dynamic here, which is that he is constantly being pushed. In the first term, he was being restrained by the establishmentarians that he hired in the White House and in the cabinet agencies not to do this. He now has people in direct positions of power who themselves want to violate all the rules at the Justice Department, at the FBI, his chief domestic policy advisor. All of these people who are revolutionaries and do not like the norms and do not think the norms are there to restrain the true will of the people. That's why I use the term Jacobin. I mean, I do think that there is something jackmanist in this Trumpian worldview. And it's obviously very tempting to him because he believes in the exercise of power. And so therefore being told, you know what, you could try it. I wouldn't, because, you know, think of your historical legacy. And you know, Trump, I don't, you know, I think he does think of his historical legacy. I think he thinks that like the, the Israel Gaza peace deal is his historical legacy. You know, I mean, that's, he thinks he's settling a 3,000 year conflict. I don't know where he got that number from, but that's where he, you know, and he was put on earth for a reason, survived the Butler assassination attempt for a reason. That's where his brain is going. As for all of this, it's like all these rules are here meant to sort of keep bad people in power and let bad people do to him what they want to. And so when he has someone whispering in his ear and saying, do whatever you want because what they are is bad, and so you're good and therefore everything you do is good, that's pretty tempting. And he doesn't have any resistance to it.

[Matthew Karnetti]

Although one little side anecdote from the stories about the ballroom that. That struck me is that he was surprised to find out that he could do whatever he wanted. That they're actually. That he didn't have to submit to a process that. That was sort of a formality that he could overlook. And did that struck me because it means that even someone who was a kind of brash developer mindset dealmaker was like, really, I can do anything. And that is in a way, what puts a brake on some of his worst impulses.

[Abe Greenwald]

I think, think. I think he's in a race to build the ballroom faster and cheaper than Jerome Powell's renovations at the Federal Reserve. It's the whole Wallman reek mentality. He wants to say, look, I got demolished. I built it. You remember when the demolition was happening, he had a press availability at the White House and he was like. Like that sound you hear of the bulldozers, it's to me the most beautiful sound in the world. Yeah, this is. This is who he is. A. You know, and so I think there's that kind of competitive edge. Yeah. He probably thrilled at the news that he didn't have to go through as complicated for the Trump. The Trump hotel renovations.

[John Podhoretz]

Right. But that, that moment took place in the transition in 2016. If you remember, Trump said at his first press conference when he won the election, I mean, of course I'm going to have to divest myself of my businesses like that. He assumed that was the case. And then he hired a lawyer. I can't remember who it was to help him. And the lawyer said, you know what? You don't have to divest yourself of your businesses. There's actually, you're the president. Those rules attained involved.

[Abe Greenwald]

It was just a norm, officers.

[John Podhoretz]

Yeah, it's a norm, but they involve inferior. No. No one with this kind of ongoing business has ever run for president in the same way. You don't have to do it. And then you saw when he came out and said, I don't have to do it, his eyes widened.

[Abe Greenwald]

That was quite the idea.

[John Podhoretz]

Like a kid at Christmas was co was the executive branch. And that he didn't have to do things that way because who was going to prosecute him for it? He was the executive branch. He is the justice system. It's like he told our Constitution.

[Abe Greenwald]

Jeffrey Goldberg in the Atlantic interview. This time I run the country in the world.

[John Podhoretz]

Yeah.

[Christine Rosen]

Well, can he?

[Abe Greenwald]

Can he?

[Christine Rosen]

I would just like to turn his attention very quickly by the way once he's finished with the ballroom, there's a couple of tunnels underneath the Hudson that could.

[John Podhoretz]

Underneath Gaza City. But okay, yes, the tunnels underneath.

[Christine Rosen]

He should, he should go on tour core fixing America as the president who doesn't have to get the green groups and, and you know, other it would.

[Matthew Karnetti]

Be the real infrastructure week. Finally we'd have.

[John Podhoretz]

That's right, that's right. You should take. Stop with the policing and actually finish the Gateway Tunnel.

[Matthew Karnetti]

100.

[John Podhoretz]

That's been needed for 100 years. Yeah. Bring in the wise guys. We know from the Sopranos that they're all right wing. You know, they want to, you know, they want to fight terror.

[Abe Greenwald]

He's going to help Zoran Mamdani by fixing that tunnel.

[John Podhoretz]

Well, how about if bom Donnie, how about if Mamdani loses and Cittarelli wins? Maybe there he has an incentive.

[Abe Greenwald]

Maybe there's your tunnel.

[John Podhoretz]

Okay, Matt, you have a recommendation.

[Abe Greenwald]

Thanks, John. Listeners to this podcast know I enjoy a good caper. And so I just finished great caper novel that I unexpectedly read. I picked it up at the bookstore just last week. It's a novel called Sheepdogs by the writer Elliot Ackerman. Elliot Ackerman, a very decorated veteran of the global war on terror who turned to writing. He's written many books, but this is the first I've read of his. Elliot Ackerman's written memoirs, he's written novels, he's written kind of future histories of conflicts with China. But Sheepdogs is kind of just. It's a caper novel. It's kind of like a. The. What was that Tom Cruise movie? American Made. American Made, yeah. That came out about the CIA and kind of a CIA caper. It involves an ex special operator who has kind of down on his luck because of his kind of interactions with the CIA. And so he answers an email from a man from a person who goes only by Sheepdog, who kind of runs an email chat group of ex special operators from all the various branches of the military and gives them tasks or, you know, help, help me out. And the email from Sheepdog says, can friends, I need you to recover this private jet that is in an airfield in Uganda. And so the main character enlists his friend who was a Afghan pilot who escaped the fall of Kabul and who is also down in his luck as a refugee in America living in Texas to go to Uganda to ferry away this private jet. And they think it's going to be a very easy job and it's going to land them pretty good Money. And that's where the adventure begins. And it's told breezily, a great pro style. It's comic. There's exciting turns. You learn a lot about special operators and different, you know, rankings within the special forces community. And you also learn about the CIA. And so I finished it in a couple of days. It was a lot of fun. I think people will have fun with it as well. So Sheep Dogs by Elliot Ackerman.

[John Podhoretz]

Look there obvious celebrity reviewers for this book, given what, how you describe it, Zoran and Mahmoud Mandani is a Uganda.

[Abe Greenwald]

Connection, because Uganda through line that we're.

[Matthew Karnetti]

Establishing this week on the podcast.

[Abe Greenwald]

You know, it's, it's an interesting. Ellie. I really know Elliot Ackerman from his journalism, I mean, and he writes and he's a very good journalist. And so what. What's fun about Sheepdogs is it incorporates some detail and commentary about both the fall of Kabul and the end of the Afghan war and the ongoing war in Ukraine. And so you, it, you get, you get flavors of contemporary events, but it's also just kind of a fun little spy crime novel. I hope it's the beginning of a series. It seems like it could be. And I hope that there are additional assignments, additional entries, because as much as I love a caper, I love a good series.

[John Podhoretz]

There we go. Okay, quickly, before we go, we're just gonna leave. I'm just gonna say I don't want to fill you with hope, only to crush your dreams. So it's very important that you understand that what I'm saying here is very unlikely to happen. But you're going to see over the next couple of days, if there is a betting, if there's sort of political betting over the next couple of days, that the Mamdani bet in New York is going to start looking worse and the Cuomo bet in New York is going to start looking better. As a result of data from these three days of early voting polling that shows Cuomo tightening the race by half and a couple of other things, it is very unlikely that Cuomo will prevail. It appears possible that Cuomo will deny Mamdani a landslide or something like that, or that something very big is happening. But I'm only mentioning this to say that this is the political story in New York. You've been hearing about it. We've all been very apocalyptic about it, and I don't think that there's any reason to get any less apocalyptic about it, really. But you have to take the evidence before you as it comes, and something is happening. It may be too late. It may be just ectopic life and nothing real. But it is something to get your hopes up only to have them dashed. So if you want to hope for the best and expect the worst, this is a very, very good moment at which to take our theme song by Mel Brooks to heart.

[Christine Rosen]

So if you're in line, stay in line. That's what John is saying. If you're in line at your polling place, stay in line.

[Abe Greenwald]

Need a bottle of water?

[John Podhoretz]

There we go. Yeah, Like Larry David bottle of water. And we'll give it to you and get arrested, Right? Exactly.

[Mark Halpern]

Okay.

[John Podhoretz]

Till tomorrow for Seth, Matt, Christine and Aba, I'm John Pod Horowitz. Keep the candle.