John Podhoretz (3:50)

If.

Seth Mandel (3:50)

If.

John Podhoretz (3:51)

If the people of Minneapolis are Anne Frank, Trump is Hitler. So, you know, I didn't know you were supposed to get on the phone with Hitler, but I guess, okay, Chamberlain.

Christine Rosen (4:00)

Was right all along.

John Podhoretz (4:01)

There we go. Anyway, the madness of.

Abe Greenwald (4:04)

But, John, can I just say, I don't.

Seth Mandel (4:06)

Yes.

Abe Greenwald (4:06)

I don't think that's bizarre for Trump at all.

John Podhoretz (4:09)

No, it's not.

Abe Greenwald (4:10)

It's.

John Podhoretz (4:10)

It's bizarre. You're saying. You're saying you think it's typical Trump that, like, Walls was like, didn't say no.

Seth Mandel (4:18)

No.

John Podhoretz (4:18)

For.

Abe Greenwald (4:18)

For Trump to come out and say, we're on the same wavelength with him. This is like what he did with Mamdani.

John Podhoretz (4:24)

He used to talk up his.

Abe Greenwald (4:26)

He used to say when he first came to office, he said he got along really well personally with Barack Obama. He was surprised once they met, how.

John Podhoretz (4:33)

Well they got along with Newsom at Donald.

Abe Greenwald (4:35)

Yeah, Newsom. We get along.

John Podhoretz (4:36)

He loves Newsom.

Seth Mandel (4:37)

Yeah.

Christine Rosen (4:38)

He had a love affair with Andrew Cuomo before Cuomo was even out of office.

John Podhoretz (4:42)

Yeah.

John Podhoretz (4:42)

All right, so bigger picture here. It's clear that all the while, there's been an internal debate in the administration about whether to aim to deport every illegal immigrant, which is enormously difficult, if not, it's impossible, or whether to focus on the worst criminals. And the former team was headed by Nome Bovino and Border Patrol, the latter team by Tom Homan. And it's clear that Trump, given the chaos in Minneapolis, has decided to demote the former team and promote Tom Homan, who throughout this has been the most sober and responsible communicator and who also knows the law well. But what struck me is that a couple things Tim Walls has succeeded in. All of this chaos, has pushed the Somali fraud scandal out of the headlines and turned this in. What was a crisis for the Democrats in Minnesota has turned into A crisis for Trump and the Republicans. And number two, immigration was an issue that united independents and the Trump coalition. And it has become because of this an issue that divides the coalition. And that's a dangerous position for Trump. And I think he recognized it and he's working to pull it back by focusing on the worst criminal elements and putting Homan on the ground there to bring it back into an issue that unites his coalition.

Eliana Johnson (6:35)

Can I something you said at the beginning is really important that I think we should spend a moment on because it's throughout the Trump administration been a point of contention, especially for those of us watching it. And that's the communication part because the other thing they did yesterday is strip Bovino of access to social media to the social media account. And I, you know, I, we laugh about how a lot of people call the sort of theatrics of left wing agitators. They're the grown up theater kids. But I think Kristi Noem Lewandowski, a lot of these guys who were on Bovino, they're the sort of grown up version of reality TV kids. They're always on social media. They're always performing like influencers. She's had a camera following her constantly since she's gotten this position. And Holmans is the opposite of that. You see him occasionally on television when he's been dispatched by the administration to defend a policy. You see him occasionally at a press conference. But he's not, he's not a social media influencer type. And I think it's important that they've not just had these, had them step away from Minneapolis, but step away from the social media account because that's also bringing a lot of negative attention from the independent voters who Eliana was describing.

John Podhoretz (7:40)

It's important that Homan was chosen because Homan is koshered a little bit with Democrats because he really first rose to prominence in the Obama administration as the chief executive at, at the Border Patrol for deportation. And he was awarded a presidential Medal of Excellence by Barack Obama for his effectiveness in the job that he had been put in. So he is not though he was also in Trump one he proceed. He is a career, he was sort of a career guy in this field and with Democrat with you know, sort of like a ribbon from, from the Obama administration. So it's not as though he is as easily dismissed by liberals and Democrats and all of that as I think many of the people engaged in this immigration policy are on the grounds that they are part of a, an ideological coalition that is entirely based on owning the libs. That's not who Homan is. I think it's a weird moment when you say, thank God that. Thank God. Tom Holman, who is not a particularly good communicator, we should say. And it's kind of scary when he goes on television. You know, it's like he's kind of a scary looking guy, but he sounds like an adult.

Eliana Johnson (9:17)

He sounds like a grownup. Even if you disagree with him.

John Podhoretz (9:19)

I'm just saying if you were to go and say who would be a really good person to come in and like, cool the temperature down? I don't think that Tom Holman would be the first person that would come into your mind. He actually has a kind of combative mien. You know, he's not, he's. And a very, you know, forceful man.

Eliana Johnson (9:41)

Okay, I'm sorry, I'm interrupting. But actually I love, I love his Persona right now for this particular problem because he's like the high school principal Bull and Kristi Noam and Corey Lewandowski and Bovino. They're all the, like, difficult children. And he's come in and he's like, all right, here's what we're gonna do. We're gonna act like, I don't know, I kind of like that. I think that's appropriate for now.

John Podhoretz (10:00)

They're the breast club and he's principal.

Eliana Johnson (10:03)

Exactly.

Christine Rosen (10:03)

I know, because I don't like that.

John Podhoretz (10:05)

Principal Democrats like Principal Rooney. I know. Well, Principal.

Christine Rosen (10:09)

What Democrats like about home and what they like about him being involved is that you can picture very easily picture home and turning that intensity with. On members of the Trump administration when they screw up. I think that's the key difference. Like Homan. Homan is like, he's all business, really. Likes deporting people and everybody that gets in his way and distracts from deporting people, you know, but if he sees unprofessionalism, I think the feeling among Democrats is that he's not going to let Republicans play fast and loose for that long either. That he, you know, he'll, he'll. He's sort of an equal opportunity, you know, aggressor.

John Podhoretz (10:47)

Also, I think the, the anti noam, anti Lewandowski leaks all day yesterday from inside the DHS deep state were pretty striking that they have been like using, you know, the accusation is that they are essentially using slanderous means to sideline and make the lives very difficult for longtime officials who may not be with their particular program. And these people have been gathering string and keeping memos and Keeping files. And now I think we are going to see days of really bad stuff coming out of nowhere about how crazy Kristi Noem is and what is going on with her and Corey Lewandowski and all kinds of stuff like that that, you know, by the end of the week will succeed in having Trump let her go.

Christine Rosen (11:56)

Yeah, she has agreed to testify, said.

John Podhoretz (12:00)

Didn'T say that their jobs were in jeopardy. That's not very. Should not be very reassuring to them. And of course, it doesn't really matter one way or the other whether.

Abe Greenwald (12:13)

The.

John Podhoretz (12:13)

Jobs are there or not, because the policy is the policy. Like, if she is fired at dhs, that's a symbolic thing and it will mean a lot, I suppose. I mean, it means that Trump understands the optics are really terrible and also that there's some accountability for lying and for absolutely wretched behavior. But, you know, the policy is what is at issue here. And the policy is the idea of you know, having sort of like, police, federal police actions in, in a city who's. And I think this does matter, even if I'm, you know, now, like, being a wimp. A city whose political leaders in a state whose political leaders don't want them there. It's not that they can't be there, but. And obviously, you know, Muriel Bowser didn't want the people there in D.C. and all of that. But, you know, there's. This is a war of choice going into Minneapolis to do, you know, like to do very aggressive, you know, deportations and seizures of illegals and all of that. There are 200 cities in the United States, like, that are the size. I mean, there are a hundred cities that are sort of like, around. Could be Minneapolis. And we know, as we said yesterday, they're in Minneapolis. They surged forces into Minneapolis to make political hay out of the Somali fraud scandal that Elliot.

John Podhoretz (13:47)

Which nobody's talking about anymore.

John Podhoretz (13:49)

Right, exactly. So when they say this isn't happening in places where authorities cooperate, the local and state authorities cooperate with federal officials in Texas and other places. That's right. It isn't happening there because there is a kind of political consensus on the policy. And I understand that immigration is a, you know, is an executive branch function, and it is not, you know, something that local and state officials have much power over. But you do things, the real world requires you to do things that won't backfire on you. This has backfired on the administration, and they should revisit how they do this going forward.

Eliana Johnson (14:40)

There is an interesting thing. It also forces the public to wrestle with Again. And it's been a long standing tension with immigration. And Homans has been very good about consistently talking about how his job is to get the worst criminals deported. And he, that that's what he said when he was first appointed to this position. And then we heard that repeated again a bit yesterday. And that speaks to something else, which is that there are a lot of Americans who will. The focus turning to the behavior of Border Patrol and ICE versus the, the crimes committed by the people they're trying to round up and deport was, was another fail on the part of the administration. So Homan's shifting the focus back to who they really are wanting to get out of this. The problem is a lot of Americans are a little more forgiving of people who are technically criminals because they came into this country across the border illegally, but who haven't committed further crimes, who are sort of members of communities. And that tension in the immigration debate is the thing everybody wants to avoid, but is consistently brought to the surface here. And I think Minneapolis was an example. And the left has weaponized that discussion of, you know, no human is illegal and which by implication suggests we should have a fully open border. That's a debate the Republicans don't want to have either. It's a difficult debate. What are we going to do about all the law by the people who came across here? They are technically here. They committed a crime by coming here and now they're here. So what do we do with those people? And that's a debate this country is long overdue for having in any case.

John Podhoretz (16:09)

Can I just point it? Yeah.

Abe Greenwald (16:11)

There's something, something else this all points to here. And there are people who need to hear this. This shows that every time Trump goes too far and then pulls back, it's not necessarily some example of brilliant 3D chess where he wound up where he wanted to be the hard way. He didn't want American citizens to be killed in order to get to where he is now. It's just, it's kind of a silly point, but it's not because I mean that this is a case where you cannot conceivably argue it. And every other time he does, there is someone willing to say, oh, this is what he wanted all along.

John Podhoretz (17:00)

I want to talk about the politics here because they're really interesting because we are alluding to the idea that he has divided his coalition. It's kind of worse than that. Echelon Insights, which is a firm run by Patrick Raffini and Kristen Soltis Anderson. Therefore, though very honest and you know, rated very highly is Republican leaning, has a poll out. And here, here is the story on independent voters. First of all, they have Trump at 41% and 51% disapproving on the generic ballot. That is, do you support Democrats or Republicans or will you vote for a Democrat or a Republican in the next election? Democrats are now up by 5, which is a tiny gain for Democrats from their last poll. But this is the kicker. This is the killer. Independents on the generic ballot are now 25 points more likely to vote for Democrats. And Republicans 52 to 27 was 21% not sure. So if you, if you divide that up, if you divide up the not sure half and half, it still stays at like 25 points. And here is the trend in the Echelon Insights poll In July of 2025, it was R +2. As you, as you say, you vote for Republican or Democrat, 2% advantage for Republicans. November Democrats plus 8. December Democrats plus 15. January Democrats plus 25. These are extinction level numbers for the midterm elections. Now, there's a long time until the midterm elections. As you can see from these numbers, they can change very dramatically in a short period of time. So they're not extinction level yet. But I assume Trump, somebody is making clear to Trump, John McLaughlin, his pollster or somebody, that they are on a trajectory that is unbelievably dangerous. And every, the thing is that we now have four or five different surveys that show exactly this, that independents are fleeing the Republican Party and that while his Republican numbers remain strong, there are not enough Republicans to carry the day, just as they're not enough Democrats to carry the day for Democrats. And indeed the last Gallup poll showed that there were more independents in this country by very significant number than either Democrats or Republicans. So he's got to move. And clearly this is the thing that moved the, that moved the numbers in January because while the economy continues to be something that people talk down, the macro economy numbers are kind of stunning. You know, like the Atlanta Fed is now projecting that when they come up with the final number for the, for the fourth quarter of 2025, that it's going to show a growth rate of 5.4%. We haven't seen a 5.4% growth number. And I don't know, we saw something like that right after, after the first really bad Covid quarter because of course the economy totally didn't exist. And then it came back. But it's been, I don't, I can't, I don't even know how many decades since we had a 5% growth number.

Eliana Johnson (20:49)

So what that growth number means for, I mean, he's going now to Iowa today and it sounds like every, you know, every few weeks he's going to be out there doing the affordability message. He's got to talk to people's concerns about housing still. That's still a very prominent cost for people. And, you know, he's floated these schemes about not allowing investor, you know, investment companies, finance companies to do single, single family housing. But that, that is still credit card rates. Right. I mean, the thing is he's someone, someone on his team understands that even if they can boast about growth rates, if people, and this was the Biden challenge, if people still feel like things aren't going well for them in general, there's, it doesn't matter if you're telling.

John Podhoretz (21:31)

People that growth is the comedy was in the Biden years that Biden was telling everybody that everything was good. And the numbers, not only didn't people feel good, the numbers, the numbers were particularly good. Here you have a different story.

John Podhoretz (21:44)

They are good. It's a lagging indicator in polls. Like, it takes a while for people to actually experience that, which is a problem. And the other thing that occurred to me, and I haven't totally thought through this, but maybe you guys will help me. I can't wait for the criticism that we don't prepare enough and I haven't fully formulated my thought. But Trump, Trump does have to pay attention to, to how his administration's policies are going to impact Republicans in the midterm and his coalition down the line. He very much has an eye to his legacy. I was thinking about this in contrast to, and actually, John, to your point, I actually don't think that his pollsters have to explain this to him. I think he has a very good fingertip feel for how his coalition and how the American public is reacting to these things. So I think he understood the, that the Renee Good shooting did not actually redound to his benefit, even if it was defensible on the merits, and that this latest Alex Preddy shooting compounded the damage. But Tim Walls, by contrast, who has been ginning up the resistance with whistles and direct action and encouraging people to shove phones in the faces of Border Patrol agents and ICE in Minneapolis, has nothing left to lose. He does not have to worry about a midterm election. He is not running for reelection. You have to imagine he doesn't care how Democrats fare in the next election. And I think that made this a lopsided fight. He's been bedeviled by fraud scandals, and he can be as radical as he wants. He can turn Minneapolis into a war zone because he will go out a resistance hero and reap the economic benefits and become a MSNow contributor and write a book. And so I think that that dynamic became very dangerous for Trump and for the administration.

Eliana Johnson (23:55)

Can we call it Snow from now on?

John Podhoretz (23:58)

Snow was good tips for him to moderate.

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John Podhoretz (26:01)

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Eliana Johnson (27:23)

Eliana I love the snout. Can we call it now? Sounds like a, like a rule.

John Podhoretz (27:29)

Whatever it's called now, I love that.

John Podhoretz (27:31)

Yeah. Okay, so, right. So Trump's incentive is. Trump's lizard brain should have told him if, you know, lizard cunning, should have told him that this was a bridge too far. But it didn't. And that's where I'm gonna object to your assumption that he understands his coalition. I don't think Anybody understands the 2024 Trump coalition. It was an entirely new kind of coalition for American politics. And it was a huge opportunity for him. The way in 26, at the end of 2016, he had built a different coalition that was an entirely new coalition of people who were not voters voting specifically for him. And the question was, could he deliver the good so that those people solidified into a new kind of base or a total shuffling of the cards? And some of that happened. Like, basically, now the Republican Party is the party of people who do not have college degrees, Whereas it was 20 years ago it was the party people who did have college degrees. But he had this weird coalition with Hispanics in it and doubled the black vote for Republicans and all of that. And I don't know that he understands the coalition because if he had understood the coalition, he wouldn't have made these mistakes. Like, if you think about it, think of what he stepped on in this month. Very big numbers on the Maduro seizure. Like Very popular. And then he has a domestic law enforcement conflict inside the state of Minnesota that pushes that off the front page. He doubles down on it and he, that is now, that's something that could have happened 12 years ago. The Maduro, you know, the Maduro event, right. He's basically, the war in Gaza is over. The last hostage has been recovered from Gaza. Israel is done. It has defeated Hamas in that way. Is he getting credit for it? Are we even talking, we talked about it yesterday. We'll talk about it.

Christine Rosen (29:53)

Well, I mean that, that's a good point. Right, because it's not only he's stepping on himself in a way in the Middle east, right? He, it's not even just fighting with walls or it's not, it's not coming from, you know, it's the Department of Homeland Security doing stuff that Trump then has to answer for in the Middle East. He's stepping on his own, is one foot stepping on the other foot. He did all this stuff. He was obviously a huge factor in the fact that the hostage crisis is effectively over and there are no more hostages in Gaza for the first time in a decade. And what's he doing selling billion dollar seats on a board, on a Gaza peace board that is talking about being the new United nations and this and that. And he can't stop. He always has to be in motion. And so he has a situation in the Middle east that he, his policies helped bring a certain equilibrium to. But he can't handle equilibrium. He can't handle the quiet, you know, of that. And so he keeps marching forward and, and covering his own successes.

Eliana Johnson (31:05)

There's also a built in domestic debate he could be having right now that would help Republicans in the midterm. And it's. We were all a fire on our text chain the other day about this amazing pirate wires piece by Mike Solano talking about what the state of California is doing to its economy and the attack on billionaires there and how they're all planning to flee or take their business and their, and their private wealth elsewhere. And that is a harbinger of 2028 for sure if Gavin Newsom runs. But it's a, but it's a, an ideological debate that, that the right and the left have been having for a very long time. And the mayor of New York City has come down on one side and we have, you know, red state governors coming down on the other. And that's a perfect issue for him to wade in on. He can boast about what he thinks he has done for the economy. And he can bring in some Republican lawmakers to talk about what they would do to fight that idea either in their states or at the federal level. But mainly I just said that because I want to talk about this incredible piece because it was just sort of. Oh, you're on mute, John.

John Podhoretz (32:11)

So Pirate Wires is a daily newsletter you can subscribe to online. It's, I guess. I guess it's a substack, but I'm not entirely sure. Run by this guy, Mike Solana. And it has. The daily newsletter is really funny. It's large. A lot of it's about tech, but it's kind of common sense. Right. Libertarian. What are you crazy people in government doing everything you do is crazy. And they're like three items a day. But they do do reported pieces every week. And Solana has a blockbuster, had a blockbuster that I think is on the Free Press's website today. So if you are a subscriber to the Free Press, you can read it. And what he did was there is a wealth tax being proposed in the state of California, as well as a whole raft of regulations in an effort to find new sources of income for the state government. And he called 21 billionaires in California, including ones that are aligned with the Democratic Party, to say, what are you going to do if this happens? And 20 out of the 21 said, oh, I'm gone. I'm gonna have to leave.

Christine Rosen (33:31)

Like, some are already preparing to leave.

John Podhoretz (33:35)

Excuse me.

John Podhoretz (33:35)

They're making plans.

John Podhoretz (33:37)

They're making plans, right? I gotta leave. And so that is a. Whatever income that you get at a state level from a single billionaire that goes into the tax coffers, which is to say wildly disproportionate amounts of money, tens of millions of dollars you lose per billionaire while you are taxing them at a higher rate. They have mobility. Mobility is relatively easy for them. So they are not gonna, you know, they're not just gonna sort of like pay the toll, the Gavin Newsom Democratic toll. When they're getting nothing back from the state, they don't need to be in the state. The state is arguably hampering their workforce. It was onerously regulatory. The schooling is bad for the kids of people who are employed by them. And all of that, 20 out of 21 will leave. And then if their businesses leave. So you not only get the hit to state income in the form of income taxes being removed, but economic activity in the largest state in the country. And that this is where the Democratic Party is going. Mamdani wants to impose And Kathy Hochul, the governor of New York, want to impose wealth taxes, new wealth taxes in New York State. And you know what happens when that happens. We already saw it during COVID Somebody like Ron DeSantis, somebody like Greg Abbott says, hey, guess what? We don't have any of those. Come here, the water's fine. We're going to help you, we're going to help you move. We're going to build new schools where you, you know, where if you move into X town, we're going to make sure there's a school ready for your kids in, you know, in, in, in September.

John Podhoretz (35:40)

His argument was nothing less than that California would cease to be the home of Silicon Valley and the major technological hub in the United States because all of the people who had built Silicon Valley would flee and they would not flee to a single place. People are considering Texas, Florida, Wyoming, lots of other states that wouldn't penalize businesses like this. He made a couple of other fascinating points. One was that nobody he spoke to believed that a, this tax devised by academics by the way, including Robert Rubin of the Clinton administration, nobody believed that this would be a one time tax on billionaires. Everybody believed that it would happen again when the state needed to raise revenue and, and nobody believed that it would simply be restricted to billionaires. Everybody believed that it would proceed to millionaires and hundred thousandaires and simply drain the wealth out of California.

John Podhoretz (36:46)

And you know, this is a fascinating 75 year story, the California wealth story. It's 100 year story, but it's a 75 year old story or 80 year old story because it really begins after the Second World War and the Cold War creating the need for not only to sort of refill the defense coffers, but also to innovate in defense because we were in this conflict with the Soviet Union and the sort of aerospace defense industry really grew in California and was the cause of the paradise that California seemed to BE by the 1960s where you went there, you got a job in five seconds, you know, all up and down the coast from the Long beach shipping yards to Caltech to you know, all this, that it was like a humming machine of prosperity interrupted by some social craziness and Hollywood lunacy and earthquakes occasionally, but like was just the golden land. And then things started to go wrong when the Cold War ended and the defense sort of like there was the famous defense rebate which really hit California very hard. Immigration started to hit California really hard at the same time and, and it's never been quite the same and As a result of some of this and demographic changes, the state also moved left politically, socially and politically. And so you have no resistance really inside the state's political system to the sort of unlimited hunger of state government to collect revenue and spend it as, as, as it might. And then also the need, because this is the other point that he makes. California is sitting on a pension bomb the size of which nobody has ever seen. Like we've heard about states with pension problems. Illinois has a huge pension problem. Promises made, you know, through state governments and, you know, payoffs to people and guarantees of that sort. But California in the next 20 years is sitting on a trillion dollar state pension deficit. And it's not clear how it's going to resolve this. There are tens of millions of people who are expecting to be supported by these pensions for the rest of their lives. And the pensions are the pension fund, Calpers and all that. They're going to go broke. And so it's not only that the rich people are leaving and Silicon Valley is going to leave, the state is going to collapse into an economic sinkhole.

Eliana Johnson (39:43)

But this is a.

John Podhoretz (39:44)

When the bills come due.

Eliana Johnson (39:45)

Well, and this is why it's such a perfect example to remind the American people of the direction the entire country could be heading. We have enough of an entitlement and deficits problem federally, but the thing about California is that despite having had a few Republican governors here and there and a few years here and there where Republicans controlled their state legislature, it has been a Democratic state legislature for most of its history, since the 60s. And that's actually what should be constantly pointed out to the American people, particularly independent voters who still think of California as a paradise. And in some ways I have family who've lived there for years. It's wonderful. I love California, love going there. But living there means living under Democratic Party uniparty super majority now rule. And that means you're paying tons of taxes if you, if you can't afford to leave. Your schools are terrible. Policing and law enforcement in the major cities is a disaster. And the people who should be prosecuting criminals tend to believe that incarceration itself is a crime. So you, you are living in a left wing paradise if you believe that all those things are good. And this came up during Kamala Harris's campaign, but it was so brief and so weird that it wasn't driven home. But it's a, it's a conversation that any Republican who wants to run for the presidency next should have. California is a perfect example of how things go wrong When Democratic legislatures control things and it's in. That is a useful argument for the midterms as well. And I, and I just don't see anyone in the Trump administration really making it. That should be easy for Vance to argue, but he's distracted with other things, I guess. But I don't know why that isn't constantly brought up in debates by Republicans.

John Podhoretz (41:22)

I think Seth answered it, which is that, you know, this is an ADHD administration and they can't focus on anything and they cannot let anybody sit with anything so that the truth of something that they're trying to say sinks in. I mean, you know, that that is a real thing in politics. I used to say that, you know, I was a speechwriter for Ronald Reagan, and, you know, Reagan spoke three times, you know, by the end of his administration, Reagan made public appearances like three times a week, maybe four, maybe made a, like a five minute Rose, ten minute Rose Garden speech. He was not that present in the sense, not that he had Alzheimer's. I mean, his time and his visibility and his connection to specific issues was considered so valuable that it was husbanded and parceled out very carefully. And mostly, though, Clinton sort of like really advanced the media stuff. You know, one administration later, the idea that, you know, when the President speaks, it should he. It's very, very, very loud. And what he says can have enormous resonance. And so he may, if you husband it properly, he only has to say it once for everybody to hear it and for it to make a real difference. One Oval Office speech, one support of X, Y or Z. And Trump talks so much, so constantly, so that he drowned as it's not just he's stepping on his own, you know, his right foot is stepping on his left foot. He drowns himself out. He drowns out what he said yesterday, drowns out the Maduro raid. He drowns out whatever else is happening, drowns out the ability to claim success in crushing Hamas. He drowns it out. And so this, what you're saying, Christine, is very good political strategy, but it's not pursuable by this administration because of the character of the person, the character, the personality and the approach of the person at the top. Now, none of us was elected to the presidency, so what do we know? He knows better than we know. It's just that the proof of the pudding is in the eating. Like he's losing. He's lost control of the immigration debate. That's now become a net negative issue for him. When it was a 20%, you know, it was a 20% positive issue for him a year ago. Like, that's just a real thing that's happened. And it's happened in response to his own behavior. That didn't come out of nowhere. You know, it's. People don't like to see these enforcement officers on the streets in cities, by the way.

Abe Greenwald (44:22)

That's. That's after he tanked on. On the economy, which was his. Which was his other right.

John Podhoretz (44:28)

I mean, at least he said, I'm going to do tariffs. And then he did tariffs like no one had the right to be surprised. Tariffs froze things in place and have made things very uncertain and all of that and have led to this crazy flight into metals. You know, gold is now selling for $5,000 an ounce or something like that. Flight to surety.

Eliana Johnson (44:46)

Because the dollar is tanking. That's why. That's why everyone's going to gold.

John Podhoretz (44:50)

Right. I know. So.

Christine Rosen (44:51)

So, you know, and you probably can get a special deal if you buy the Trump gold bars.

John Podhoretz (44:57)

Even that won't help you with if gold's at 5,000 an ounce. I mean, I'm just saying, like, it's a real weird moment. And he, you know, he's shooting himself in the foot over and over and over again. So you got no one to. Got no one to blame but himself. And that's the other. Maybe that's the part that, you know, we keep saying Walls and Fry are complicit in this violence. Like, they are doing nothing to damp it down. They're doing nothing to tamp it down. They are supporting people who are cosplaying in very dangerous circumstances. It's wildly irresponsible, but we can say it and Trump can say it and Kristi Noem can say it. And I don't think that message is coming across to people particularly. I think they're like, what they're hearing, even if they're not listening that closely, is what's going on here. This is, get them out of. Get the mask guys out of the street, you know, and so they don't even get the blame for their own, like, wretched behavior.

Eliana Johnson (46:12)

I don't know.

John Podhoretz (46:12)

All right, so. What should we talk about? We were talking about how there's a, you know, the biggest story in the world, I'm sure, in terms of. For historical purposes, is this giant purge going on in China, where Xi seems to be offloading everyone in his ambit or orbit who doesn't want the country on a glide path to invading Taiwan. I mean, that seems to be the. Seems to be the Big picture thing that, that, that forces within the military who are like, we're not really in a place to invade Taiwan are being, you know, basically forced out or being accused of being American spies or whatever. As he consolidates and reconsolidates his power with this clear end in mind. That is certainly the most dangerous, would be the most dangerous moment of the 21st century should it happen, should China actually make the move on Taiwan? I mean nothing, I don't think anything dwarfs Ukraine. Dwarfs, you know, I don't know what dwarfs God dwarfs Israel and Hamas. It dwarfs everything. Like.

Christine Rosen (47:35)

Yeah, I mean the Times today says that the, the purge has left two people on the, you know, on the, on the sort of in the military command, at the top of the military command and it's G. And the guy that he's been having carry out the purge, right, he's got, you know, he's got, he's got a, you know, he's got a henchman, right, who has been kicking everybody out and the henchman is the only person besides the president for life or whatever that is that is on. So that, I mean that tell. That is the sort of thing that suggests something is coming because, because China is as much as it's suspicious of leaks and all that. China is not usually looking to rock the boat that much and they're definitely not usually looking for chaos. Right. I mean the thing about China is that there's a certain patience to their strategic plans that usually you don't see the kind of Putinesque behavior that you see in Russia. You know, even with Erdogan and Turkey elsewhere, it's supposed to be a different kind of authoritarian country that doesn't, you know, have, you know, even Iran. The adventurism, right? All the, all the allies in China's orbit behave differently from China. China is the one who's supposed to be the Tom Homan, the adult in the room, right? And so this, this sort of crack up suggests that something one way or the other is coming because it's all, it's very hard to understand why he would consolidate power to himself entirely and then have some sort of, you know, breather status quo where it, it, it's an opening for any sort of opposition within the Chinese Communist Party to gather its strength and maybe start working against him. So usually it's the sort of thing that that means you're ready to flip a switch next. And I think that's what has people freaked out that it's very rare that somebody would purge everybody, take over all control himself and then sit and watch television. They feel like something has come.

Eliana Johnson (49:56)

There's also the fact that he's been watching very closely the crackup of the Western alliance. So, you know, the Canadian Prime Minister just visited. Keir Starmer is on his way to China today. And at the same time, news broke in the UK that Chinese have been spying on members of Parliament and, and prime ministers of several for the past several. At least a decade. And that the spy network that the Chinese have in Western countries is vast. We've talked about it on the podcast many times. But the recent NATO Frika, I think, has been very useful for Xi and very useful for America's enemies, of which China is our number one rival. And that's. That worries me from a domestic standpoint, like we. This is the time when you actually need an administration that has a very clear policy towards China as it seems to be gearing up to do something, and we don't have that right now. We do not actually have a pretty strong, singular message in the way that even Trump's first term, they did have a stronger message about China.

Abe Greenwald (50:55)

Yeah, that's what scares me the most, is that I have genuinely, absolutely no idea what we would do were China to make this move on Taiwan during Trump's watch. And, you know, who knows? This has been discussed a lot. If it would be any sort of traditional kind of kinetic move in the first place, the suggestion is it wouldn't. It would be electronic or, you know, sort of Internet related first, and who knows how we would respond. And if we don't respond, it's as scary as prospect is if we do.

John Podhoretz (51:39)

Well, you know, the Wall Street Journal reported this initially on Sunday, and their report was that the top Chinese general who was purged was accused of leaking nuclear secrets to the US And I have to say, the guy I read on China is Bill Bishop, who writes a wonderful substack every day. It's on the inside of what's happening in China. It's called Sinoism. And Bishop says he's skeptical of this accusation and believes it was leveled for internal purposes to justify this purge. But the truth is, we don't know. We. What I think the purge makes more likely is Bishop makes clear that this General Zhang was a source of realistic and relatively sound military advice for Xi. And the purge, I think, makes less likely that Xi will get any kind of military advice that challenges his preconceptions. He will get yes man as a result of that. And I think. I'm not sure it signifies that something's coming. But I do think there are fewer checks on what he would like to do as a result of this.

John Podhoretz (53:06)

And we do have the, we do have the administration's very startling inconsistency, which is say that it set itself up in 2017 as an antagonist to China, putting China on the spot on trade, on theft of intellectual property, on various other things and still seemed, I mean, if you're going to tariff, if you're going to use tariffs as a instrument of policy, China is the country that you're going to visit the tariffs on. It's the largest contributor to our trade deficit. Whatever you want to. I don't even believe in stuff like that. But nonetheless you do that and then you announce this deal in November or December or whenever it was that you're going to allow them to buy Nvidia chips to help them with AI. Now I know there's this argument that they're letting them buy the previous generation of the best chip. And so therefore this is actually a way of maintaining our technological advantage by addicting them to a worse chip chip. So we'll have the good chip, they have a less good chip. And therefore, you know, they'll be like still in, you know, Ms. DOS mode instead of in Windows mode or something like that. But it was, it's still as a message. It's very, very confusing and hard to imagine what incentive the administration had to this except that the administration makes you very suspicious if they're willing to, you know, sell spots on the peace board. And if the president's son in law and his closest aides are like, while they're being close aides are like doing major business with gutter which does not want us to go to war kinetically with Iran. And oddly enough, the two people that seem to be arguing most heatedly against American military intervention in Iran now are Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner who are the ones who are profiting the most obviously from our relationship with gutter. So how do we know that China isn't buying people off in the administration and getting their policy decisions made that way?

Eliana Johnson (55:21)

Well, two more data points on China and the second term Trump. The opening the floodgates for Chinese students to come study in the U.S. i mean hundreds of thousands, which was a reversal of what a lot of certainly Republicans had encouraged. And the tick tock issue, the tick tock issue is tied into this as well. The deal making, the, you know, the unconstitutionally extending deadlines to divest all of these things signal and actually something that drove all, all of us crazy for a while, the Chinese spy balloon scandal during late term Biden, I mean, this was, these were all sort of unanswered questions that Americans had in their mind. And I think, again, part of what Trump brought in 2024 was this, like, I'm going to deal with all this crazy stuff that you've been lied to about and, you know, wondered about. And I still don't know what happened with those Chinese spy balloons. And we do know, I mean, the, the salt typhoon thing in the UK that I mentioned, this is going on in our country too. There's a huge amount of spying going on and a lot of it is in fact done by Confucius Institutes and students who come and study. And so I, that danger is real and we don't hear much about it at all from this administration in this second term.

Christine Rosen (56:32)

Which is interesting because, you know, in the Senate, when he was in the Senate, Marco Rubio was a huge part of investigating the Confucius Institutes and, and the Chinese spying in general. Rubio was, that was sort of an issue that he was generally on top of. And so you wonder if he, you know, it's good to have him in the administration in the position he's in right now, which is a very trusted advisor because he has the suspicion of those institutes and because he's paying attention to, you know, possible spying. But the, the, the flip side of that is that, you know, it's like Xi getting rid of the, you know, everybody on the military council. It's, you know, Trump is Trump, Trump is making the decisions. And one suspects that the Nvidia decision is the sort of thing that Marco Rubio probably didn't love and doesn't love and wouldn't normally advocate. So the question is whether the, you know, the China hawks are being sidelined within the administration.

John Podhoretz (57:31)

Well, you know, there are two kinds of China hawks, which is what's interesting here, because now it's really where the rubber meets the road for the anti neocon hawks in the conservative coalition led by Elbridge Colby, who is the policy planning director at the Pentagon, whose line has been that, oh, you neocons are distracting everybody from the only thing that matters, which is our competition with China and the danger posed by China and our entire foreign policy needs to be reoriented to answering, combating, opposing and stopping China. Which sounds very hawkish, right? Except that if you dig deep into, deeper into Elbridge Colby's thinking and when people would say to him, okay, well, what does that mean to you if, say, China Tries to take Taiwan. He basically says, well, if they take Taiwan, there's nothing we can do about it. So it's like, great, dudes. Wow, you're. You're some hawk there. That's really fantastic. What great news that you are. You're. America's got to be really tough until the moment at which we allow China to swallow up this land that has been free for 80, you know, for nearly 80 years and free of communist dominion and has now built itself into a, you know, major world democracy. So they. They're on the spot. We don't hear much about them, which is fine because these are internal councils. We don't need to be exposed to them. But part of the problem with China is that the. There's so many fingers in the pot. Like, it's not just the Secretary of State, right. We do have the Pentagon and the CIA and, you know, the intelligence community, which have their own needs and think they have to understand and things they want to know so they know what to combat. And then, of course, you have Commerce, you have Commerce Department, you have the Treasury Department. You have the question of, you know, how we interact with this world's second largest economy and it's. And the role it plays in. In our own economy and our own supply chains and all of that. And so maybe nobody's in charge. And the hawks are, of course, not really hawks. They're isolationists who are posing as hawks and saying, you can't intervene anywhere, can't intervene in Ukraine, you can't intervene in the Middle East. You can't intervene anywhere because we have to save our intervention for China, except if China moves, in which case we're not allowed to intervene because it's too dangerous. So, you know, nobody. We don't know who's got the president's ear, what his own perspective is on this. He's not behaving, again, like, with any constancy. You know, we would. You thought he was the world's leading antagonist toward China, and then it turns out that he's not. So more. More, you know, that feeling of instability is also contributing to these bad numbers. It's not just the economy this or the immigration that or something like that. It's like, not that people think about policy, really ordinary people, but is it like, is it all just freelancing? Is it like, is there a plan? Does any of this show that there's a plan? Because, like, I, you know, I'm on this ship and there's a captain and like, if he's just spinning the wheel and like saying let's go right, let's go over here. You know, I'm going backwards.

Eliana Johnson (61:02)

This is like the ships that have the fake cap. So under Biden it was like the ship that had the fake captains wheel and Biden would stand and steer the fake captain's wheel while his left wing administration was actually steering the ship. And we didn't like that obviously, but this is scarier I think. And that's why he's losing the independence because they're like, we don't really know what's going on and we don't like uncertainty.

John Podhoretz (61:22)

Yeah. Anybody have a recommendation?

Eliana Johnson (61:26)

I'll have some, I'll have some later this week. I'm finishing up A, it's 250th anniversary history themed because you guys were talking about Gordon Wood last week and I was sorry not to be on that show. But I love Gordon Wood.

Christine Rosen (61:38)

But yeah, I have a, I have a recommendation. So I, I, I have, I've recommended this author once before. So, you know, it's, it's not exactly new, but I, I recommended a long Time ago David McCloskey As a, the new, a new spy novelist. He, he retired from the CIA and he, you know, he's sort of become the non anti western version of, of Le Carre in a way. He's very good. He's got a ton of inside knowledge and the right, the writing is very good. He's, you know, it's like he's coming out with a book every 18 months. I mean he's really churning them out. But the latest book is called the Persian and it is about this, this, the subject of this one is about the Israel Iran shadow war. And so with everything going on, it's not just. I would Recommend A David McCloskey book anyway. I've really fallen for them. But this one with everything going on in the news is about, you know, spies within Iran and Iranian spies within Israel. And he, he manages to, you know, first of all make everything realistic and, and, and fun. But also he, he does, he does not portray Israeli Masodniks as, you know, the kind of, you know, chowder heads of the spy world the way that others tend to do. And there's no, you know, there's no coldness really from them. There's, there's a, you know, they talk about wanting to protect the Jewish world and their experiences and, and all that stuff, you know, feeding into who they've become and what kind of country they want to leave to their children and it's not like, you know, the judicial protests or something like that. It's, it's, you know, it's survival and it's, you know, and it's why it's important and, and you know, and family and all that stuff. So they're, they're real, they're three dimensional and, and there's a real sense of, you know, non hostility to them, which is, you know, something that you don't at the current moment, you're not going to see a lot in popular culture in general. And in fact this since October 7th in popular culture, people have really chosen to just not show Israelis at all and in some cases not Jews. You know, whether it be shows, books, you know, we've had talks about the publishing industry keeping Jewish voices out, whatever. So this is, this is actually kind of a breath of fresh air and a very good one at that. So it's called the Persian. It's David Mo McCloskey.

John Podhoretz (64:16)

Fantastic. Okay, we'll be back tomorrow. So for Abe, Christine, Seth and Eliana, I'm John Pogoitz.

Podcast Host/Announcer (64:22)

Keep the camera.