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- [00:00]
A
Hey, it's John. I want to talk to you about Shopify. A lot of people talk to me about starting podcasts. This podcast is 10 years old. It's in a different place from a lot of podcasts because we're obviously part of a nonprofit institution and it's not a way that we are seeking to earn our livelihoods. But a lot of people look at this and say this is something I can really do to create a business and run the business and do it in a really comfortable, practical and serious way. Gotta wear a lot of different hats when you start your own business. Can be very intimidating. But one of the things that I know from a lot of people is that if your to do list is growing and growing and growing and that list starts to overrun your life, you need a tool that not only helps you out, but simplifies everything that can be a game changer for millions of businesses. That tool is Shopify, the commerce platform behind millions of businesses around the world and 10% of all e commerce in the US from household names to brands. Just getting started. You get started with your own design studio. With hundreds of ready to use templates, Shopify helps you build a beautiful online store to match your brand style. You can accelerate your content creation because it's packed with helpful AI tools that write product descriptions, page headlines, and even enhance your product photography. You get the word out like you have a marketing team behind you. Easily create email and social media campaigns wherever your customers are scrolling or strolling. And best yet, Shopify is your commerce expert with world class expertise in everything from managing inventory to international shipping to processing returns and beyond. If you're ready to sell, you're ready for Shopify. Turn your big business idea into Kaching. With Shopify on your side, sign up for your $1 per month trial and start selling today at shopify.com commentary. Go to shopify.com commentary that's shopify.com commentary Hope for the Expect a worse Some preacher pain Some die of thirst no.
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B
Way of knowing this way it's going.
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A
Hope for the best expect the worst. Welcome to the Commentary Magazine daily podcast. Today is Wednesday, October 15, 2025. I am John but Horace, the editor of Commentary. With me as always, Executive Editor Abe Greenwald. Hi Abe.
- [02:51]
B
Hi John.
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A
And joining us today, our frequent guest, the editor of the Washington Free Beacon, Eliana Johnson. Hi Eliana.
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C
Hi John.
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A
I don't want to get out over my skis. Obviously the settlement of the main stage of the conflict between Israel and Gaza over the last two years has is only 70 to 96 hours or something like that in existence, and bad things could happen. Anything could happen. But frankly, Abe. Frankly, Eliana, I'm tired of all the winning. Ten years ago, Donald Trump promised me that I would be tired of all the winning. And for the first time in those 10 years, I'm tired of all the winning. Because it's not just that the hostages came home. It's not just that the Trump plan has preserved Israel's strategic position in Gaza, with Israel maintaining its presence in almost 60% of Gaza with no rules of engagement that are problematic for Israel. And it's not as though the 20 point plan, the rest of the stages of the 20 point plan do not, I think if they were followed through, which I doubt they can be, would not create a better future for Israel, for the Palestinians and for the region, all of that. It's not that. It's some of the things that Trump has said and done since the deal was agreed to. And yesterday was my. My moment. And, Eliana, you had a moment, so we'll get to both of those moments. My moment was when people said, well, looks like Hamas is maybe not living up to the terms of the deal, which it is not right. Only, I think eight of the bodies of the murdered hostages have been returned when there are, I guess, another 20 or another 30. I'm sorry, I can't even remember what the number is. Have not yet been returned. They were supposed to be returned at the same time as the. As the living. And so they are therefore in violation also, they're behaving like the monstrous, vicious, barbaric animals that they are in slaughtering their own people to try to get themselves in a proper strategic position at this moment of lowest depth for them. And Trump said, in response to a question about whether or not they are, they are queuing to their point of the deal, one of which is that they will be disarmed, and that one of the heads of Hamas said, they will not be disarmed and they will not disarm. He said, quote, they will disarm. And if they don't disarm, we will disarm them. And it'll happen quickly and perhaps violently, but they will disarm. So just as I said that, some of the things that he said on the floor of the Knesset on Monday were words I never expected to hear any American president say in terms of kind of ideological, emotional, even romantic support for the existence and the vitality and the continued prosperity of the state of Israel. The fact that he is now going beyond some of the terms of the 20 point plan because he's not saying that Israel is going to go disarm them, use the word we. He is. He is expanding a kind of security guarantee for this deal to include the United States. Or maybe the we is everybody who signed the deal in Sharm el Sheikh. We don't know what the we, you know, sort of like comes under the umbrella of. But it was not something he had to say. He could have foreborne it. He could have sort of pushed it to the side and said, we expect all this is gonna be fine.
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B
Yeah. Not only is it something he had to say, it's the kind of thing I wouldn't have expected him to say, no matter what he was thinking. What Trump normally, to my mind, would have done in such a situation was, would be to happy talk it. You know, we're getting very close. We have good. I'm hearing good things that they're gonna disarm, you know, that kind of thing. You. But that he would do while Putin blows him off or whatever else. None of that.
- [07:34]
A
Right. And, you know, add that to these remarkable signals that he is sending to Putin. Let's pull out of the Middle east to Putin. That he's had enough of Putin's prevarications and pretenses and that he spent 10, 10 months sort of extending an olive branch to Putin in the sense that he was basically willing to. To kind of screw Ukraine to get a deal with Putin that would end the war in Ukraine. And he's now getting belligerent and saying he might send Tomahawk missiles and basically kind of join in the fight with Zelensky. That's another interesting knockoff of what's happened here. If he feels like he's had a huge success playing, okay, I was Mr. Nice Guy for a while. I'm done. You come to the table or I'm going to be happy to let your enemies do their will for you. That is a policy that, you know, kind of has global implications. And the immediate global implication is with the war that he also wanted to help bring to an end, which is Ukraine and Russia. So that's a. That's also not something that one would have expected from him. But success has many fathers and many children. And if he believes that what he's done here is a huge success, it makes sense that he would try to apply its lessons elsewhere in the world. And this is the elsewhere.
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C
Can I just add one thing on the. On Gaza. And I want to apologize for my Small children whom I'm neglecting right now, crying in the background.
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A
It's okay, don't be a helicopter. Don't be free range, kid.
- [09:24]
C
Yeah, they're. They're free ranging right now because you were recording a little bit earlier than typical. So they've not gone to school. Okay, so one, One facet of Hamas's failure to disarm is that the moment this deal was struck, Hamas began rampaging through Gaza and carrying out ritual executions of anybody they deemed a collaborator with Israel. And these are Gazan civilians who they accused of joining the Israeli opposition. These were captured on cell phone videos and they began circulating. And I don't think there was a single mainstream media news article about what Hamas was doing in Gaza to Palestinian civilians on its own watch about this. But this was one aspect of the result of Hamas's failure to disarm. And obviously Hamas is trying to consolidate power there in the wake of this. And so no media coverage of this and also no outcry about this from any of the people who have been accusing Israel of carrying out a genocide for the past year. In fact, many of those people said, oh, you know, what happened is terrible. There are flaws with this deal, but at least there's no violence happening in Gaza right now today. You know, as Hamas is unleashing hell over there.
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A
It's a very useful lagna to what's happening here. That, that the Ceasefire now people are literally hoisting themselves on their own petard. Ordinarily, you chant a slogan and the slogan becomes real and you go, hey, we want. We got what we wanted. This is amazing. Congrats to everybody. So if they're not doing it, it means that the slogan was disingenuous and that that wasn't the meaning of the slogan. Ceasefire now wasn't. Let's make sure that there aren't guns firing in it. Let's make sure there aren't people being killed in Gaza. It's fine if people are being killed in Gaza, as long as the Israelis are not the ones killing them. It's fine if Hamas is killing them. Because Ceasefire now meant Israel loses and doesn't achieve its objectives. That's what Ceasefire now was. Israel started to move on Gaza in late October of 2023. Ceasefire now was the immediate cry, one of the earliest things that happened in these demonstrations at the end of October, one of which closed down the Brooklyn Bridge as people were attempting to come to my son's Bar Mitzvah party, Brooklyn. So this will remain a very personal matter in the delay of the start of my son's bar Mitzvah party on moze Shabbat on October 28, 2023. I will never forgive them for that. Took people two hours to get to the party venue. So very personal to me. But that was the cry. And there's a ceasefire. And as you say, there are people dying and they're also Gazans and that's fine, whatever, dude, it's cool. Because they lost what they wanted and they're licking their wounds and staying quiet because their aim, which was the humiliation of Israel at the very least, has not been achieved.
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B
I also think, yeah, that there's a contingent of the cease fire now crowd, not a small one. The people who sort of never even heard of Gaza or thought about it until October 8, who believed that all the reports of Hamas being a brutal, totalitarian, terrorist organization that governed its own people by violence was Israeli propaganda, was Zionist propaganda, and now they got, one day after the ceasefire, immediate proof that it wasn't. And they don't know what to do with that.
- [14:11]
C
The comment that jumped out at me was I wanted to find it was from that comic Dave Smith, who's on this podcast circuit with Joe Rogan and Candace Owens, etcetera, Who on Monday, you know, moments after this was signed, wrote on X, I'm not optimistic about the long or even medium term prospects for peace in the Middle East. I hope I'm wrong. Either way, today innocent people are going home to their families and people aren't being killed in Gaza. And that is amazing. We should all be praying for peace.
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A
Well, you know what? His connection to truth is about as solid as his connection to comedy, actually.
- [14:59]
C
Exactly, exactly. And the lack of media coverage, of exposing, you know, what Hamas really is, who these people really are, the lack of interest in covering this is, as you said, John, if the Israelis aren't doing the killing, killing isn't happening.
- [15:22]
A
You know, the, the, the number of people, movements, approaches, ideas that have been discredited by what's happened over the last nine, ten days is pretty stunning. And I wanted to call people's attention to our friend Aaron McClain's piece in the Free Press, which he called Donald Trump gave war a chance and it worked. And he makes a point that very few people have quite factored in, which is that, you know, a week, week before the deal was struck, Israel, as he writes, appeared trapped. It had three options in Gaza, each of them unattractive. It could level what was left of the place, finally to meet him, defeat Hamas on the battlefield in a conventional sense, while signing up for further isolation and endless trouble. And whatever came next, it could attempt to wash its hands of Gaza or an endless rope, a dope in which Hamas would dribble out limited concessions and groups of hostages here and there. As it played for time. The Trump administration's demand that any agreement begin with the release of all remaining hostages seemed less an achievable goal than a welcome statement of moral clarity. But here is the end result, according to Aaron McLean, which is very little about the future of Gaza is yet resolved. But among the amazing consequences of this diplomatic coup is that the future of Gaza suddenly matters a lot less. The kindest thing that could have been done for the people of Gaza would actually have been the continued prosecution of the IDF's campaign to a successful conclusion, meaning that Hamas would have been completely extirpated and there would be a future without Hamas. That's my gloss on what Aaron wrote, but. And to return to what he wrote, but for now, Hamas is still there, taking revenge on rival Gaza militias and reinforced with prisoners released by Israel. But with the hostages released, Israel and the rest of us suddenly have the freedom to prioritize the Gaza file appropriately. Perhaps there will be a meaningful path to a healthier Gazan politics. I am skeptical, but then I was also skeptical regarding the full release of the hostages. In any event, Gaza's overnight deprioritization in what was for Israel a seven front conflict is an enormous relief as America and Israel work to shape a region utterly transformed by two years of war. In a bitter irony for the region's terrorists, this transformation is almost entirely for the benefit of America and Israel. So think about that. He's saying Gaza has almost instantly been deprioritized, one of the two leading subjects on the planet Earth, non domestic subjects, the other being the war in Ukraine. Deal is struck, hostages come out, and all the affect has been drained because Israel's not there shooting. Now Israel may have to shoot, they may come, there may be. In fact, Israel has had the other day killed five terrorists who are approaching a base. There will be things like that, sort of like insurrectionary actions that are met with violent force. But the deprioritization, the speed of the deprioritization, which has become necessary in part because of exactly what you're talking about, which is if it's still a priority and Gaza is still the major subject and what's happening, you have to cover Hamas killing its rivals and killing off the tribes and trying to reestablish itself as the dominant political force in Gaza through murder and through making public examples of people who supposedly are collaborators or whatever. And you don't want to cover that. So the left and the pro Hamas, pro whatever, people don't want to talk about it, thus accelerating the deprioritization of Gaza as the subject, as opposed to the question of whether or not there can be a future in the region in which Israel can start establishing new ties, new relationships, and the world can move on from the focus on this one place that has been its obsession. And it's amazing how quickly that happened and how much Hamas, having lost the thread, is playing into it. It's doing what it is. This is what it is. It's a. They're a bunch of murderous monsters who love killing people. And for a while, their focus was on killing. I mean, they weren't doing a lot of killing of Israelis, but their focus was on conducting war against Israel. And the minute that that ended, now it's time to do what leftist terrorist irredentists do, which is murder their opposition in place to set an example to quiet possible revolts. Well, but that it would happen in 72 hours. That, that I, that I couldn't have.
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C
Predicted I would push back on that, actually. And I think Aaron's. The headline of Aaron's piece is really important, which is Donald Trump gave war a Chance. And this relates directly to. I'm not sure if you guys touched on this. Yes. Yesterday I didn't have a chance to listen to the podcast, but all of.
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A
The Biden have a podcast yesterday, so.
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C
Okay, okay.
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A
In honor of Shiny out Sarah. Yes.
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C
So anyway, sorry, I can't. You know what, John?
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A
Having one today, because it is.
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C
I can't keep track of, you know.
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A
In Israel, the two concluding holidays of Sukkot, the holiday of Sukkot and the Simchat Torah, which is the day we celebrate the completion of the annual reading of the Torah. The beginning of starting once again with Genesis are on the same day. So I was using the Israeli calendar, and therefore we are here today. Okay, sorry.
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C
Okay, well, that works out great because. So then I know you didn't talk about all of the Biden administration officials trying to take credit for the Trump deal by congratulating, appraising the deal as a extension or continuation of the groundwork they laid. So Tony Blinken did this in a 12 tweet thread. And then Biden went out and called the Trump deal a renewed ceasefire. You know, by Trump, he said Trump renewed the ceasefire that he began, and this blew My mind, although it shouldn't have, but the way this relates to Aaron's piece is that the this deal could not have happened without the devastating military victories that Israel, with the US support offered by Trump, inflicted on Hamas. And then the strike in Qatar. It began in June when Israel bombed the Iranian nuclear sites and eliminated a bunch of the top scientists and generals. And then President Trump and the US joined in. Trump supported Israel going into Gaza City, the final Hamas redoubt. And then in early September, Israel struck Hamas leaders in Doha. And that was not a successful strike, but it did demonstrate that Israel was willing to go into a non enemy country and try to get at Hamas leaders in Ritz Carlton hotels or wherever they were camping out. And the Qataris came to Trump complaining, asking for protection, etc. And you know, this diplomatic triumph was not possible without these military victories. And there is no way on earth a Biden administration or a Kamala Harris administration would have permitted, would have allied with an Israel, would have encouraged, would have done any of this.
- [24:06]
A
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C
They did have been over here.
- [26:54]
A
Weirdly enough, the war could have been over in June of 2024 if the Biden plan had been hostages first and then we talk ceasefire. That was the thing that was flipped on its head here, is that America said hostages first, then ceasefire. They wouldn't have agreed, but that the and and and Hamas wouldn't have agreed because there wouldn't have been this regional pressure that was created by these victories from the beepers onward. But if they had had that theoretically in their heads, there would have been a way of doing creative diplomacy. It's got the chutzpah dick nature of somebody in the Carter administration on the day of Reagan's inauguration when the hostages came out of Iran, Iran saying, man, we don't know if we can trust this crazy cowboy. Who knows what he'll do to us with the hostages. We better send him home and bring this to a close. And then the Carter administration saying, well this is all because of the wonderful groundwork that we laid to have the hostages returned and we should really be getting the lion's share of the credit, you know, because it was our disastrous effort to rescue them in August in Desert One in August 1980 that really laid the groundwork for this. I mean maybe people are going to fall for it. There, of course, are propagandists on the left. Fantastic. By the way, piece exposing Substack's most popular essayist Heather Cox Richardson Pirate Wires published yesterday. It is like eating candy reading about how Heather coxson with her 3 million subscribers has created this distorted lens of History and time, all of which seems to exonerate Democrats and liberals for any responsibility for anything bad that goes on in the world, while blaming Republicans and conservatives for everything. And I only bring that up because I'm sure Heather Cox Richardson will be writing all week about how people aren't giving the Biden administration sufficient credit for creating these conditions. And so there will be.
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C
Can I just say, John, that that was a great essay, but what Heather Cox Richardson is doing on Substack, that's just like, you know, an extreme version or a little more exaggerated version of what the New York Times and the Washington Post do every single day.
- [29:26]
A
Yeah. Or Twitter feeds. It's like a. It's like a. It's like a daily essay, long version of those Twitter feeds, like Ron Filipowski or Joe from Jersey or something like that. All they do is adduce evidence and information.
- [29:43]
C
Yeah. It's just not that much different from what the New York Times is doing. The Times had a piece on the day that the deal came through and Trump was in Tel Aviv. That was why now about all the squandered chances for peace. That quotes Tony Blinken at length on this. And it, you know, it gives Trump a little bit of credit, but it's really not all that much different than these, you know, insane substackers.
- [30:13]
A
Yeah, well, you know, Neville Chamberlain really laid the groundwork for, you know, for. For the victory in World War II. I mean, it's. I'm not. Biden is not responsible for Gaza, for the Hamas invading Israel and all of that. And I. That, that was a. That was too extreme a joke. But I do think that there is something. So, as I say, Chutmatik, in trying to claim that the war that was extended for a year and a half, in part because the United States refused to back Israel unreservedly in its just effort to destroy this enemy that had killed and injured 5,000 people in a single morning in a sneak attack. More comparable to Pearl harbor than any other event in, you know, since Pearl Harbor. And they. They're the ones who kept withdrawing their support for Israeli action. Oh, it's too much. Oh, you're doing too much. You're not letting the food in long enough. We have to build the pier because we can't trust that you're going to let the food across the land bridge and, you know, tens of people are going to die building this absurd pier that, you know, that never literally took in a single truck that brought in food. And, you know, you're doing this, you're doing too much. We're going to withhold some weapons. And I know we didn't resupply. We're not going to.
- [31:42]
C
Kamala studied the maps and they can't go into Rafah.
- [31:45]
A
Can't go into Rafah. It was impossible to take nine months for Rafah, for the population of Rafah to move north. Which is a little like saying it would take nine months for the people of Evanston to leave Evanston to move to, like the loop. Just to give you a sense of the geography, I mean, you know, or, or at Eliana's home, like, it would take nine months to go from Bloomington, Minnesota, you know, into, into Central St. Paul. Like that. That is, that is literally what the vice President of the United States who just continues to cover herself in comic glory.
- [32:23]
B
But, you know, that brings up a good point, which is that, as Eliana said, not only does the New York Times and Washington Post and wherever else try to exonerate Democrats on this and cover for their failures, but another difference between the Trump administration and the previous one and what would have been a Kamala Harris administration, is the information flow in the other direction. Trump never bought in to the New York Times propaganda campaigns about Israel, about famine, about all that, whereas there was a perfect closed loop when it came to, when it comes to the Democrats and liberal opinion journalists on Israel.
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A
Well, we should talk a little about that closed loop because there's evidence of it in the piece that is not about Gaza, but is about America's new, the left's new favorite, you know, world groundbreaking politician. But before we do that, Eliana, you wanted to talk about the interesting effect of the one moment in the history of Trump's political career in which the shell of its former self. My first employer in journalism, Time magazine, I worked there and from 1982 to 1984. So it's obviously whatever it was then, when it had 4 million subscribers and was the dominant one of the four dominating news sources in the United States, it is no longer. It is a shell of its former self. And I haven't even seen it physically in years. But, you know, when they put out covers and things like that, the covers are put on Twitter so everyone can see the COVID So for the first time in 10 years time paying tribute to Trump or doing a piece on Trump's triumph and then what happened?
- [34:24]
C
I really don't have much to add to Trump's comment, which is just amazing. So you need to see the image. So for listeners, just Google the image of Trump on the COVID of Time magazine. And so Trump is on the COVID of Time magazine, which is honoring him, I guess, for the peace deal. And he is praising the story. But the picture is awful. Awful. It's like a picture from underneath. And I thought his neck looked kind of like a hot air balloon. All you can see is a big turkey neck. So Trump writes, time magazine wrote a relatively good story about me, but the picture may be capital letters, the worst of all time. They disappeared my hair and then had something floating on top of my head that looked like a floating crown, but an extremely small one. Really weird. I never liked taking pictures from underneath angles, but this is a super bad picture and deserves to be called out. And all I can say is, you know, any woman will know you don't take a picture from an underneath angle. Makes you look fat. Makes you look super fat. And this picture is horrible. He's totally right. It does look like his hair is like cotton candy, like totally gone. And, and who could say it better than this man saying it like that. And you know, his attention to the visuals of a moment like, is really impressive. He's 100% right.
- [36:13]
A
I really enjoy the COVID line. Is his triumph. So it is his triumph. And he looks literally like a chicken that is being held by a hand over the logo of Time as the chicken's about to be throttled by a balabusta so that it can be cooked for the Shabbat dinner table. Waddles. You know, all of that neck is really bad. It's really, you know, look, he's a 79 year old man. 78, 79 year old man. Does he have Waddles? Is his, is the area between his chin and, you know, where his shirt emerges like, is it very wrinkly? And he's a 79 year old man. And so the photo, deliberate effort to contradict or contravene the theme of the COVID which is his triumph. It's like it's his triumph. But man, is he ugly. Look, look at this. Will make you sick just looking at him.
- [37:19]
B
Yeah, he's smart. He's smart to take it on this way because his comment now becomes the story as opposed to the picture being the story. Had he not said anything, it would have been the story would have been. God. You see what Trump looks like these days?
- [37:33]
A
Yeah, you know, that's true. If anybody on earth ever saw the Time cover, which is, which is, I think my, my point, like I say, 1982, 4 million weekly subscribers, and now there are maybe four weekly subscribers. So, you know, it's a, Things change.
- [37:48]
C
But, and then his comment is so funny. So I have a sister who doesn't, who doesn't follow politics at all. And she just sends it to me and says, this is the best thing to happen to me in 2025.
- [38:04]
A
Trump's comment, I mean, it is. So the other thing about the last week, and Abe, you mentioned this, we talked about this on Monday, but it is true. And it has this potential effect on how he's going to make policy in the next couple of months, particularly abroad. He is enjoying the hell out of himself. This has been, this is the happiest week of his presidency, bar none. And, you know, it's not because, you know, all of his enemies are being indicted, like, which is what, you know, sort of the, the evil, the people who think that he's just an evildoer who, you know, who wants to be Michael Corleone and take out all the, all of his rivals in this way. The look on his face, the spirit not only in Sharm el Sheikh, at, in the Knesset, the way he's been talking, the, the, the visuals of him, aside from the time cover, which of course is not the visual that he is seeking to present, are, this is, this is the best week that I've had in my two presidencies. I, you know, I, there seemed to be something intractable and tragic going on. I directly intervened, interceded, played a role. The world is praising me for it. I deserve that praise. I'm going to learn lessons from it. And I am having a really good time here. And there is something about a president, even a president you don't like, who is having a good time. I was thinking about this, that Biden never appeared to be having very much of a good time, for reasons we now really understand. But, you know, there would be these moments with Obama, who was a president I did not like, when he would, like, stand on stage and he would, like, sing Al Green. There's a moment when he just sort of broke into singing Al Green. It turned out he had an unexpectedly really pretty singing voice. Or when he was joking with Key and Peele at the White House Correspondents Dinner or something like that, where, in spite of my deep difficulties with him as a leader, you're like, I like that my president is doing something likable or that he seems to be in a good mood. There's something reassuring about a president in a good mood because, you know, every morning he hears the world's worst stuff pouring into his ear at the Presidential Daily Brief Like God only knows what horrors are being visited upon him every morning. And so there. I think that's infectious even. I mean, it's not infectious to the people who are going to populate the no Kings demonstration on Saturday. I don't know how many people they think are going to be doing that nationwide. Obviously, those people, there's nothing, you know, that Trump could do, including like pull a baby from a, you know, burning car or something like that, that would, that would occasion them thinking anything good about him. But nonetheless, I think that it has this effect of making reassuring people that things are going the right way. If his mood is good.
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C
I would just add to that, John. You know, Trump likes to be at the center of events and have all things flow through him. And there could not be a more Trump moment than what's happened this week. I mean, watching him, this is like, he doth bestride the narrow world like a colossus when he's in Sharm el Sheikh or in the Knesset with all these other world leaders orbiting him. Like the world orbits him, the sun. I mean, he's like a sun God or something. And, you know, we were chatting in the office and just thinking, like, it's hard to imagine another Republican or Democrat, you know, taking his place and having the sort of presence that this guy has had on the, on the world stage.
- [42:33]
B
You know, it's interesting that he even had this months back before the deal. Remember his last trip through the Middle east, he was celebrated from stop to stop. He made a grand speech in Saudi Arabia about business ties and trade.
- [42:55]
A
He put his hand on the orb. He put his hand on the orb.
- [42:58]
B
Abe, that did it. Yeah.
- [43:02]
A
Who knows what was going on there? But that, that was the indelible image of his first term, as far as I'm concerned. That glowing orb that we still have no idea what that was in Saudi Arabia that he, that he put his hand up. But that's true. But you know, what was interesting about that is that the follow on consequences weren't, were reasonably positive in the sense that the Abraham Accords were sort of kicked off a couple years later. But, you know, it didn't. This is a, this, this was him seizing the reins of power in a way that was, had more ballast to it than him walking around saying, I just had a really good letter exchange with North Korea or, you know, we had a great meeting with Xi or whatever. He was like, okay, I'm the President, United States. We're in a kind of unipolar world. Why can't I Call all these Arab countries and say, listen, get on board. Or, you know, if you get on board, I'll give you a security guarantee. He said to Gutter, right, You don't want Israel hitting you. I'll make sure Israel doesn't hit you. Here's. Here's the price of the ticket. Saying the same thing to Sisi, likely in Egypt. You know, It's a nice $3 billion aid package you got there. Be a pity if something were to happen to it. You know, I don't really like foreign aid. My party doesn't really like foreign aid. I can't guarantee you're going to be getting that foreign aid. Maybe you better sign on to this deal. That stuff that isn't a proper application of American power, which is, as long as you're actually willing to exercise it, provide both consequences for refusing to agree to this unalloyed good, and then provide rewards commensurate with the acceptance of the. So, like, what did we do? Like, he wrote an executive order saying, no one's allowed to hit gutter. You know, it's like, who else is gonna hit gutter? You know, like, Israel already took its shot and got what it needed out of hitting Gutter, which was gutter going to Trump and saying, they hit us, and then Trump saying, okay, well, you better stop being, you know, stop supporting Hamas, and then I'll make sure they don't hit you anymore. Incredibly successful moment. But that's what's interesting is we're still debating and we will still have to go back to talking about whether Trump's exercise of executive authority inside the United States is or is not proper or appropriate, or the ways in which it is unconstitutional, or the ways in which it violates free speech, or the ways in which it is making things worse rather than better in certain places. But abroad, I don't think you can say that in any way, shape or form. I mean, maybe in relation to the tariffs, but remember, if the tariffs go bad, we're all punished, and he'll be punished. I mean, I think the tariffs are going bad and will go bad, then that result will be a problem for the US Economy that will. We're down against him. So that's a whole other thing. But here we see the kinds of things that Obama and Biden were unwilling, unable, and didn't have the guts or, I mean, frankly, the manliness to do. Like that was Biden with Ukraine. Biden's like, Ukraine, Russia should not invade Ukraine. And the entire west was like, Russia should not. There was A whole people forget, like, October 22, November 22, the entire world was united. Slava, Ukraine and celebrities, all with buttons and everybody, and everybody. Europe saying they were going to double their defense budgets to help Ukraine. And Biden saying all this, and then Biden saying, no, you can't have this weapon system. No, you can't have that weapon system. No, you can't have a tank, you can't have a plane, you can't have this, you can't have that. You can't have the other thing. Why was he saying that, oh, Russia has nuclear weapons, they might use the nuclear weapons. So, you know, that's really foremost in our minds is making sure that Biden doesn't use nuclear weapons. You know what? Like, first of all, wasn't going to use nuclear weapons. And second of all, like, be a man. You want to support somebody, support somebody. You don't want to support somebody. Don't. Don't give people false hope.
- [47:19]
D
Don't.
- [47:20]
A
Don't commit to a struggle that you were unwilling to back. Like, you know, make your policy consistent with your rhetoric or, you know, go back into your hidey hole, have a horrible debate and let your idiot vice president humiliate herself in November 2024. I mean, just like this is the way you're supposed to do it. Say what you mean, mean what you say. Have your policy match your mouth, you know, and Trump did. So, you know, that's just the way it is. Now, another politician that has emerged this year in a peculiarly Trumpian fashion, though almost like his, you know, bizarro world, opposite number right, reverse image is Zoram Hamdani here in New York, obviously, America's 330 million people. New York is 8 million people, not comparable, but America's largest city, the most important city in the world, and he is on the verge of becoming its mayor at the age of 33, with literally two years of political experience and no job ever before. How did this happen? Well, we have been given an answer by the New York Times and it's. It's correspondent who spent five months on the campaign trail with him, so to speak, as Steve Herndon or Asted Herndon And Eliana. Would you say that the reason that the New York Times induces for Zoram Hamdani's unexpected success is that he's just the most awesome. He's just so awesome. It's like reading a Taylor Swift fan blog. 15,000 words. Like, if he could lick the underside of Zoran Mamdani's shoe, he would do that it is. He eats a sandwich. You have no idea. He goes around New York having breakfast and drinking interesting ethnic drinks. And everybody loves him.
- [49:28]
C
They're like, oh my gosh. And he goes to like a rundown diner of the people. But, you know, five months, they can't find anyone in New York City with a negative word to say about this man. It's just amazing.
- [49:45]
A
Yeah, five months and he is real.
- [49:48]
C
Crack reporting team at the New York Times.
- [49:51]
A
He is at 45% in the polls right, right now. If the election were held today, he would win 45%. Cuomo win 33. Courtesy would win 17. Do you know the percentages by which Bill de Blasio and Eric Adams won their mayoralties? 72%. 70%. Mamdani has, in fact, his radicalism is putting off Democratic voters in unprecedented ways. And that's just a fact of it. You write a 15, 15,000 word piece about him called the Inside the Improbable, Audacious and so far Unstoppable Rise of Zoran Mamdani. And you're not saying, well, you know, a majority of New York voters, according to all polls do not want him to be mayor. Maybe that's a fact that should be reflected in the, in the article, which it is fair to say Mamdani is a remarkable political success, success story since he was a nobody at the beginning of this year and he's now kind of dominating figure as we approach the end of this year. That's a story to tell. It is a real story to tell. And I don't deny that a really, really a Richard Ben Kramer like piece about Zoramdani would be interesting, but not, you know, 16 Magazine. Win a dream date with Zoran Mandani, you know, and there's a fold out poster that you can put in your locker. Does that even exist anymore? I don't know.
- [51:22]
C
It's Seventeen magazine.
- [51:24]
A
That was.
- [51:24]
C
No, I would know.
- [51:25]
A
16. Excuse me. 17 was a teenage magazine. 16. When I was a little, when I was a kid. So this is like you're not, you weren't even. 16 magazine was win a dream date with Bobby Sherman and like Teeny Bopper stars of the 1960s. It was for like 11 year old, 12 year old girls like my sister at the time. And every issue had a pinup like you could take out from the middle and then you could put it in your locker. I assume kids, I mean, I have a kid who has a locker. I don't think they put up pictures of celebrities in lockers anymore. Since everybody has everything on their phones. But like that, that, that is the quality of Herndon's piece is he loved this guy. He loves him. He loves him so much.
- [52:16]
C
So I was rage texting John about this piece, which is actually self contradictory. The piece, the thrust of it is about how he's actually really, after you get past the, oh, you can't walk down the street with him. It's like walking down the street with, you know, Justin Bieber. He's just mobbed everywhere he goes. Everybody loves him so much. You can't even have a conversation because everyone wants selfies with him. It gets to like, you might think he's an extremist, but really he's seeking common ground. So I'll just read a couple sentences from him. He's acknowledged his lack of managerial experience and asked for advice. He sought common ground and heard out his critics, including wealthy New Yorkers in business and finance and some pro Israel activists who are turned off by his lifelong advocacy for Palestinians. So, you know, it's presenting him as, you know, he's just much more reasonable than you might think. But what's striking is at the end of it, it gets to a portion about the Israel Palestine issue. And I wasn't familiar with a group of progressives who call themselves progressive except Palestine. And the reporter says this is a coinage that has been used on the left for years. Well, I was not familiar with this. So I guess this is pro Israel.
- [53:58]
B
Pro Israel progressives interrupt my understanding. Maybe I misread. It was not that they call themselves that. Other progressives call them that.
- [54:09]
C
Oh, you're right, you're right. It's also fueled his impatience with a worldview that he describes as pep or progressive except Palestine. You're right. Okay, so this is what he says of this group of people. That exception is one I believe we should not only take issue with because of what it means to for Palestinians and Palestinian human rights, but also, whenever you're at peace with the making of an exception, you make it easier to make another exception wherever, whenever. So if you are progressive except Palestine, you're a pro Israel progressive. That is not okay with him. You are not welcome in his coalition. Which negates everything that was said above about his outreach to pro Israel progressives. And by the way, the Times just ran a piece about Mamdani's Palestinian advocacy as a college student where he, at Bowdoin College, which is a rich kid college in Maine, founded the school's chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine, which just yesterday students for justice in Palestine was calling for death to the collaborators, echoing Hamas. That's what they're doing in Gaza. So Mamnani founded the school's chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine at Bowdoin and instituted a policy of no collaboration with any group that supported the existence of Israel, including the left wing, quote unquote, pro Israel group J Street. So he's not moved on this issue. And I would say, you know, for him, everything else may be negotiable. You know, it may be true that rent control and, you know, government controlled grocery stores and all that. Like, sure, he may be open for negotiation, but it's quite clear that the through line for him is there is no negotiating on the Palestine issue.
- [56:14]
D
I'm Mark Alper and I want to let you know that Two Way Tonight, the destination for the best political news and analysis anywhere, is now available as an audio podcast. Each weekday I'll be joined by special guests from the worlds of news, politics and the media, along with members of the two Way community for conversations like no other. It's the best way to stay informed at the end of your day or first thing in the morning. Every weekday. It's a show like no other because we involve the community. We hear from people from around the country, around the world. They're part of a conversation. There is no other platform like this, and I hope you will find it to be not only different than everything else, but more meaningful as you become part of a special community around the program. So listen and follow two Way tonight with Mark Alperin on Apple, podcasts, Spotify or any other major streaming platform.
- [57:01]
E
I'm Oliver Darcy.
- [57:02]
A
And I'm John Passantino.
- [57:03]
E
We have spent years covering the inner workings of the news media, tech, politics, Hollywood and power. Now through our nightly newsletter, Status.
- [57:12]
A
And we're bringing that same reporting and sharp analysis to a new podcast, Powerlines.
- [57:17]
E
Every Friday, we're breaking down the biggest stories shaping the industry, explaining why they matter and saying the things most people are thinking but too timid to say out loud.
- [57:26]
A
No spin, no fluff, just sharp analysis that isn't afraid to call it like it is. We also pull back the curtain via our exclusive reporting to take you behind the scenes.
- [57:35]
E
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 it, we've got some hot takes. I just think Brad Pitt, honestly, he kind of seems a little washed up.
- [57:52]
A
Oh my God, that's Power Lines presented by Status. Follow Power Lines and Listen on Apple, Spotify, Amazon Music, or your favorite podcast.
- [58:08]
B
That's a great point. That, that's, that's the takeaway from the piece because it's, it applies also to his insistence that he will arrest Benjamin Netanyahu.
- [58:19]
C
Absolutely.
- [58:20]
B
If he comes to New York. But then there's this weird look.
- [58:23]
A
You gotta hold to principle. You got listen, right, you guys, you know, some things are just not negotiable and hating Jews is not negotiable. He doesn't really hate Jews. His policy, this is my favorite thing. His policy coordinator is named Morris Katz. So, you know, you can't say that the guy hates Jews or is an anti Semite or, you know, supports, is opposed to the national aspirations of the Jewish people. He's got Morris Katz on his side. You know, Tokyo wrote Morris. Tokyo Rose Cats. And you know, and Brad Lander, you know, who is, you know, whoever Brad Lander wants to be. And Gerald Nadler. My favorite thing is in this piece, Jerry Nadler, my congressman, who, you know, is on the far left of the Democratic Party and an opponent of Israel's, is characterized here as though he's John Fetterman. I mean, even the very moderate Jerry Nadler is endorsing him like that. So this piece comes out of a universe in which the far right is represented by the far left of the Democratic Party. One point I wanted to bring up is that, remember, he emerged as the candidate of the Democratic Socialists of America. Mamdani. Right. He's ran as a Democrat, but he's the candidate of the dsa. The DSA condemned the ceasefire agreement in a long statement called Until Palestinian Liberation. I'm not going to read it out because it's, you know, I don't read pornography slash porn. But I do think that it is very important to note that the movement from which he emerges opposes the ceasefire, believes in continued violence against Israel until Palestinian liberation. So he's running for mayor of New York City. He's not running to be Secretary of State. Mayor of New York City does often have a foreign policy because of the nature of New York and often the importance of the Jewish vote, which meant that people like David Dinkins, also not particularly a friend of the Jews, went to Israel during the Scud attacks. I know that because I was on the plane with him in 1991. There were like five of us on the plane going to Israel during the Scud attacks. And he was one of them. In order to, you know, that was 30 years ago. So the city's ethnic makeup and percentage of Voters and all that is, is very much different. He, this is the thing that he believes in, which is that Israel's evil and should not exist. So, you know, yeah, does that, can you then look at him and say, but he's reasonable. He's actually getting very reasonable. He's no longer attacking landlords. He's talking about when he says he wants to freeze rents, he's talking about giving help to tenants. That's the kind of learning that he has achieved in the course of his, of his campaign. He's a very impressive politician. He is unbelievably silver tongued. Really. His ability to speak in full paragraphs with total confidence, sound very authoritative given his absolute lack of any, anything but these words to back them up. He's an impressive performer. He has Obama in him in that sense. The way Obama seemed to emerge out of nowhere, fully formed, as a kind of silver tongued oratorial devil. Right. So he has that quality.
- [62:01]
C
I'll give that to you, John. Yeah, like, sure, he's impressive. But this reporter also says, oh, he's so rhetorically impressive. He's the only politician other than Bernie Sanders and whoever, you know, one other one that I've sat with who didn't have a flack with him and didn't record our conversations. Well, yeah, when you're like Ed, when your adversary in the press is a Stead Herndon who's writing a profile of you, that's like, oh my gosh, you just couldn't walk down the street with him when he was so popular. You know, that's not exactly the, the average reporter Republican politician deals with. You know, it's just so much easier for these guys.
- [62:43]
A
Also, can I just point something out? Like I'm not a very good reporter. I will acknowledge I've done a lot of reporting over my 45 years in journalism. I'm pretty bad at it. Like, I don't get things out of people and all that. But nonetheless, I've done, you know, hundreds of hours of reporting and I've talked to many politicians and I've done profile of politicians. I did one of the first profiles ever done of Newt Gingrich, for example, in the early 80s. And I, in the course of my life as a reporter, I didn't have politicians sitting there with flacks in the room and I didn't have tape recorders on the table. I think that's. Now that's a sort of relatively recent gloss. Trump obviously started doing it, right, like, because he said, I need to check that you're not screwing with me. Is this now totally normal that I mean, yeah, when you're J.D.
- [63:36]
C
Vance.
- [63:37]
A
Recorder on the table.
- [63:38]
C
Yeah, yeah. When you're J.D. vance or you're Mike Johnson and they're gonna slice and dice what you said to make you look like the biggest possible moron or distort what you said in edits, of course you want to have a recording of what was really said now, you know, Zoran Mamdani or Barack Obama. Don't have to worry about that.
- [64:04]
A
I'm just saying I'm sure that you have spoken to many politicians in your life when you're interviewing them where they don't just put a tape recorder on the table, particularly if you're having a conversation over the phone. I'm sure praising someone for this is again, it's like giving somebody credit for doing something that self confident politicians have always done. Which is also, by the way, to build a sense of intimacy, false intimacy with the reporter. There is that too, which is like we're just talking. You know, I look, ask me anything. You know, it's the John McCain game. You can ask me anything. I'll answer anything. Don't worry about it. You know, it's like I am so sure of myself that I'm not gonna, you know, I. Whatever. So am I, am I wrong? I mean, just this is.
- [64:52]
C
Now, I don't know. I don't know what the typical interactions between most politicians and the New York Times are, but I would guess that not a ton of Democrats talking to the New York Times are whipping out their recorders and bringing their team of flacks to make sure they're not mistreated.
- [65:11]
A
Right. Well.
- [65:13]
C
And their comments aren't bastardized.
- [65:15]
A
Well, the other problem is if you're a Democrat and you're doing something, you know, somebody might get into your effing shot. Get out of my effing shot. That's the. You know, was once, but I think is no longer the leading candidate for the governorship of California. Katie Porter exposed for having screamed at her flack for being in her effing shot. Although as my friend Rob Long said on the Glob Culture podcast the other week, speaking as somebody in. In show business, he would like to know why she was in Katie Porter's effing shot. I think that, that actually that we may have been doing an injustice to Katie Porter because like, yeah, why was her. Why was that aid in the, in the effing shot. But still looks very bad for Katie Porter. Rare. A rare moment when a Democrat is made to look bad by the media, I think we, we could say, but that is not the case. But with Stead Herndon's astounding 15,000 word felation of Zorum Dy, you know, I've read many in my life particularly that's the other thing that's similar to Obama. Right. It was like the way that the press wrote about Obama in 2008, early 2009, as typified by the famous, you know, comment of Evan Thomas, then the one of the leading journalists in Washington, that he was like God or something. He said on Washington Weekend Review it's kind of like God. So yeah, I mean there, that's something that we have some experience of. But so Eliana, just to return to get to talk about the Free Beacon this morning, important Chuck Ross exclusive, Elise Stefanik and Tom Cotton urging the Treasury Department to probe the Council on American Islamic Relations for financial links to Hamas. We've heard this from, from, from them before. I think now they're sort of like trying to put teeth in it and move it into actual sort of like actionable work at the, at the investigative level. Can you tell me, tell us anything about it?
- [67:44]
C
Sure. Stefanik and Cotton sent a letter yesterday afternoon to Treasury Secretary Scott Besant citing CAIR's historic ties to Hamas. CAIR was born out of an organization that was an unindicted coconspirator with Hamas. This dates all the way back to the 2009 case against the Holy Land foundation, which was a Hamas front group. And since October 7, CAIR's leaders said its executive director, Nihad Awad, said he was happy to see Hamas's attack on October 7th. And so Cotton and Stefanik are putting this all together and urging the Treasury Department to do an investigation because we don't know where, whether CAIR is taking foreign donations and who the foreign donations are coming from.
- [68:55]
A
So this is a very important moment because the 2009 date that you reference, the Holy Land foundation, which was based in Richardson, Texas, and which was a funding mechanism for Palestinian terrorist groups, was indicted in 2007 and in 2009. What's important is that the Obama FBI, which it turned out, had been in a cooperative relationship, the FBI had been in a cooperative relationship with care. I don't, we don't quite know what that means, but that it had been using CARE as a, as a sort of friendly organization to get in for whatever cut its ties with Care in 2009. Cut ties the FBI would know, could no longer trust that it could you that CARE could be a reliable source of information or something like that. That was 16, 17 years ago. CAIR has continued to function. CARE has been a voice during the Gaza war. It is a combatant in the Gaza war, either ideologically or maybe more practically. And it's very exciting to me that since Democratic administrations forbore from going anywhere near it because they didn't want to offend the people of Dearborn, Michigan, yet again, that CARE should actually finally come under the microscope that it needs to come under as somebody that might be illicitly funding is against the law in the United States to provide any material support to Hamas as it is a terrorist group. That's a federal law that CARE has implicitly been violating since then. But you know, if they can actually manage to figure out that there is a fund, there is a path from CAIR into Hamas's coffers, CAIR can be indicted and convicted and shut down. So. And CAIR is one of the great successful psyops of the last 40 years. It's essentially, it incidentally accepted the concept of Islamophobia throughout our culture, changed the way in which Hollywood treats issues of terrorism by basically saying that it's illicit and illegal and immoral or whatever to cover Islamic terrorism because it will have a terrible effect on domestic Muslims. Domestic Muslims, American Muslims and very, very successful.
- [71:30]
B
And it was always like, you know, always had a seat at the table because it successfully framed itself as the good guys. You know, these are the kinds. If you think that all Muslims are radical, well, then, you know, you need to talk to, you know, people from cair.
- [71:50]
A
Eliana Johnson, thank you so much. Thank you so much for joining us and for your high good humor and by the way, your children, very well behaved. You started out.
- [72:01]
C
Thank you.
- [72:04]
A
By warning us about your children and not only are they adorable, but they deserve a sticker for their conduct. People may not know that the way you reward children is with stickers. They love stickers. I don't know why they like stickers. They're suckers who used to get candy. Now they could get like a sticker. Someday they'll learn that we were cheating them with these 3 cent pieces of sticky things that they can put on things and they will go into therapy and condemn us for it. But until, please give them many stickers from me is what I'm saying. I will and we'll be back tomorrow. Thanks, Abe. I'm John Pothorotz. Keep the candle burning.