Trump's Ceasefire and Its Discontents

Summary

The Commentary Magazine Podcast: "Trump's Ceasefire and Its Discontents"
Release Date: June 24, 2025

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Introduction

In the June 24, 2025 episode of The Commentary Magazine Podcast, host John Podhoretz engages in a dynamic discussion with executive editor Abe Greenwald, senior editor Seth Mandel, and contributing editor Eli Lake. The conversation centers around former President Donald Trump's recent involvement in negotiating a ceasefire amidst escalating tensions between Israel and Iran, the subsequent fallout, and broader geopolitical implications.

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Trump's Ceasefire Initiative and the 12 Day War

The episode opens with John Podhoretz recounting Trump's announcement of a ceasefire during a NATO meeting, described in "biblical language" and characterized by a poetic tweet: "It was like at the 12th hour of the 11th day of the turning of the moon, there shall be a cessation of firing, and no, never again will the guns be loud." (00:57).

Eli Lake reflects on the strategic impact of Trump's intervention, urging a focus on the “geopolitical, enormous, miraculous change” this action signifies for the region and the world (03:23).

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Iran's Response and Ceasefire Violations

As the ceasefire deadline approached, Iran initiated a barrage of missiles, leading to the destruction of a building in Beersheva and continued intermittent firing three hours post-deadline. This violation prompted a swift Israeli military response. Podhoretz summarizes the chaotic aftermath and Trump's frustration with both Israel and Iran's actions (01:42–03:17).

Abe Greenwald adds that the ceasefire was not synchronized for all parties involved, contributing to confusion and Trump's subsequent ire: "Trump tweeted that Israel had 6 or 12 hours after Iran's ceasefire started" (05:01).

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Trump’s Reaction and US-Israel Relations

Trump’s dissatisfaction with the unfolding events led him to publicly chastise both Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu and Iranian leaders. He criticized the intelligence and decision-making processes, questioning whether the Iranians intended to breach the ceasefire (04:53).

Seth Mandel supports Eli Lake’s perspective, emphasizing the longstanding coordination between the US and Israel: "The US and Israel have worked together to do something extraordinary, and that will not be lost in any way to anyone over a throwaway Trump tantrum" (07:28).

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Media Influence and Conspiracy Theories

The discussion shifts to the role of media figures like Tucker Carlson, who are perceived as undermining American interests by promoting anti-Israel and pro-Iran sentiments. Lake criticizes Carlson for apologizing to Qatar and downplaying Iran’s threats: "Iran's restraint ... has become a sort of tick, something they don't... it's happening in an era where we all see everything that's going on" (09:41).

Podhoretz connects the rise of conspiracy theories to pivotal moments like JFK's assassination, 9/11, and the COVID-19 pandemic, highlighting how distrust in government fosters such narratives (43:18–51:21).

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Political Implications and the 2025 New York Primary

John Podhoretz and his co-hosts delve into the contentious 2025 New York primary between Andrew Cuomo and Zoran Mamdani. Podhoretz criticizes Cuomo's past governance and personal misconduct while condemning Mamdani’s campaign associations with extremist actions, notably his campaign political director Julian Gerson's glorification of a healthcare executive assassin (57:00–63:44).

Seth Mandel and Abe Greenwald discuss the broader impact of such political dynamics, emphasizing the erosion of trust in mainstream political candidates and the rise of extremist ideologies within party ranks (60:27–64:11).

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Concluding Insights and Future Outlook

The panelists express concern over the sustainability of the recent ceasefire, given Iran's history of missile attacks and the potential for further violations. They argue that Trump's actions have redefined US-Israel relations, asserting a new stance against rogue nations and reinforcing non-proliferation efforts.

Eli Lake remains optimistic about shifting political landscapes, advocating for a reality-based, pro-American, and pro-Israel political alignment to counteract the growing influence of conspiracy-minded factions (52:44–60:27).

John Podhoretz concludes by urging listeners to stay informed and critically assess political developments, emphasizing the importance of maintaining strong US alliances and countering misinformation campaigns (63:44–64:23).

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Notable Quotes

• Eli Lake (03:23): "This was a geopolitical, like just enormous, miraculous change for the entire region and for the world."

• John Podhoretz (04:53): "The Iranian control command and communications are so screwed up that he doesn't even know if they intended the launch after the ceasefire."

• Seth Mandel (07:28): "The US and Israel have worked together to do something extraordinary, and that will not be lost in any way to anyone over a throwaway Trump tantrum."

• Eli Lake (09:41): "Iran's restraint... has become a sort of tick, something they don't."

• John Podhoretz (49:58): "We're all learning. The elite... that's another moment."

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Key Takeaways

• Trump’s Ceasefire Efforts: Highlighted as a pivotal moment in US-Israel-Iran relations, with mixed reactions and outcomes.

• Iran’s Ceasefire Violation: Demonstrates the fragility of diplomatic agreements in volatile regions.

• Media and Conspiracy Theories: Increased skepticism and misinformation threaten informed public discourse and policy support.

• Political Landscape Shifts: Upcoming elections reflect deeper ideological divides and the struggle between mainstream and extremist factions.

• Future Geopolitical Stability: The episode underscores the need for vigilant diplomacy and strategic alliances to maintain regional peace and deter hostile actions.

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This comprehensive summary encapsulates the main discussions and insights from the episode, providing a clear overview for listeners who have yet to engage with The Commentary Magazine Podcast.

Transcript

[Eli Lake]

Hope for the best, expect the worst.

[John Podhoretz]

Some preach and pain Some die at first the way of knowing which way it's going.

[Eli Lake]

Hope for the best, Expect the worst, hope for the best.

[John Podhoretz]

Welcome to the Commentary magazine daily podcast. Today is Tuesday, June 24, 2025. I am John Pothor. It's the ed editor of Commentary magazine with me as always, executive editor Abe Greenwald. Hi, Abe.

[Seth Mandel]

Hi, John.

[John Podhoretz]

Senior editor Seth Mandel. Hi, Seth.

[Abe Greenwald]

Hi, John.

[John Podhoretz]

And joining us today, Commentary contributing editor and the host of the Breaking History podcast at the Free Press, where he is a columnist, Eli Lake. Hi, Eli.

[Eli Lake]

To be here, John, I've been walking on sunshine. To quote Christine in the Waves.

[John Podhoretz]

I was walking on sunshine until about an hour ago when Donald Trump came out of the White House to go to, I guess, this NATO meeting and cursed out Israel and Iran. Yesterday, he announced that he had negotiated a ceasefire in very biblical language in this true social tweet. It was like at the 12th hour of the 11th day of the turning of the moon, there shall be a cessation of firing, and no, never again will the guns be loud. And anyway, so he very the Lord.

[Abe Greenwald]

Said to Moses, thank you for your.

[Eli Lake]

Attention to this matter which should be called the 12 Day War. What should be called the 12 Day War.

[John Podhoretz]

The 12 Day War.

[Eli Lake]

Right.

[John Podhoretz]

Okay. So anyway, he was like, okay, he got a ceasefire. And then as the hour of the ceasefire was approaching, the Iranians launch the last, what one thought would be the last barrage of missiles they could get in before, you know, before the deadline. Blew up a building in Beersheva and then three hours, and continued firing intermittently for three hours after the ceasefire deadline. So the Israelis said, we have to respond. They violated the ceasefire that we agreed to, and planes took off to do just that. Whereupon Trump, everybody know this by the time you're hearing me say this, But Trump came out of the White House and was very peeved and he said, these two guys have been fighting for, fighting this war for so long. For so long.

[Eli Lake]

Yeah.

[John Podhoretz]

I mean, yes, Israel's been fighting for 20 months. And I do think that the war, the October 7th war is a war with Iran, but nonetheless that they don't know what the f. They're doing. Said Donald Trump and tweeted out that he had told Bibi Netanyahu to turn the planes around and that he was angry with him. And then apparently Bibi turned the planes around and with the idea, and I don't know if this has now been verified that it's happened or not, that they would take One shot. That they would retaliate with one shot.

[Abe Greenwald]

They hit a radar system or whatever as, as the token shot.

[John Podhoretz]

Okay, so honestly, your guess is as good as mine. What the hell is going on?

[Eli Lake]

I don't care. I know somebody. I don't care. I'm over.

[John Podhoretz]

Not here.

[Eli Lake]

That's. I feel like this kind of thing is priced in with Trump and it's probably the Iranians fault. I mean like again, like we don't really know. But my sense is that obviously the Iranians were trying to get their last legs in. They probably did violate the ceasefire. Israel was within its rights. And if we want to just focus narrowly on this one thing. But I can't keep my eye off the bigger picture here, which is this was a geopolitical, like just enormous, miraculous change for the entire region and for the world. And Iran was humiliated. This was a huge loss. And my hope is that this will give the Iranian people, and I think that the west should support the Iranian people the opportunity to finally take their country back. The regime is humiliated and weakened. The job's not necessarily over. But at this point, like, I'm not going to sweat the small stuff. Let's be real. Okay.

[John Podhoretz]

I just want to state for the record, it's not that I don't agree with you. And Trump said, and I think he may have intelligence at this. Yeah, to this effect that the, the Iranian control command and communications are so screwed up that he doesn't even know if. That they intended the launch after the ceasefire. Maybe people didn't get the message not to. And which is why I guess he pulled bb, why he had to curse everybody out. I don't know. You're saying it's priced.

[Eli Lake]

Just price it in. You know, like you caught him at the moment probably getting it. You know, the info, the ceasefire, the.

[Abe Greenwald]

Cease fire was structured so that it didn't start at the same time for everybody involved. And that was a big part of the confusion. You know, Trump even said that, you know, Israel had, depending on how you calculated, Israel had 6 or 12 hours after Iran's ceasefire started. And Trump tweeted something that's more posted this morning that, well, you know, they had their window then to respond. And you know, when I say you can respond, you don't drop all the biggest bombs in the first minute of that window. So it was like he under, he, he was saying that they were still within their rights to hit Iran even outside of the ceasefire. Ceasefire hadn't begun for Israel yet. But he said it was like, don't make a big spectacle of it.

[John Podhoretz]

Okay.

[Abe Greenwald]

So it's very hard to tease out what the specific things that are upsetting him, but I think he's just like, okay, we did it. It's done. Everybody move on.

[John Podhoretz]

Okay. I mean, first of all, Eli, as you know, I agree with you that this was a world historical moment. I think we have a new world of. In which non proliferation has teeth for the first time since the. Certainly since the fall of the Berlin Wall. A world in which, if the world.

[Eli Lake]

Goes somewhat multipolar, first time since 2003. Remember, Gaddafi gives up his weapons of mass destruction and the Iranians pause their weapons program after the United States invades Iraq. So I would.

[John Podhoretz]

Fair enough. But. Right, but. But the North Koreans had already gone nuclear by then 2003.

[Eli Lake]

I don't think they had gone nuclear yet. I think it was a little after.

[John Podhoretz]

Yes, they had. 2002, the Bush administration announced that North Korea had gone nuclear.

[Eli Lake]

All right, yeah, okay, fair enough.

[John Podhoretz]

Christopher Hill came out and said that. So, anyway, these are technical details. This is a remarkable moment. And it is. And what matters is that. And that we, United States struck. So, Eli, you're saying that it doesn't really mean that much that Trump had this. We should price it in that he had this, like, explosion of temper in which he drew a moral equivalence between Israel and Iran and said that neither of them knows what the f. They're doing. Abe, do you think that that's giving Trump too much of a pass, or does Trump deserve the pass?

[Seth Mandel]

It's not even. I mean, I'm with Eli on this. It's not even a pass, really. It's just that Israel and the US have coordinated so extraordinarily throughout this that even when the ceasefire was announced, I was not inclined to second guess it, and I'm not inclined to second guess the violation of the ceasefire or Trump's lashing out at both sides. Like, you know, I don't even know anymore what is a feint, what is genuine. But I am deeply secure in this larger sense that the US And Israel have worked together to do something extraordinary, and that will not be lost in any way to anyone over a throwaway Trump tantrum. That's my inclination.

[John Podhoretz]

Seth, what's your take, by the way?

[Seth Mandel]

I just want to add people online who were against all this. They're making a mountain out of this. You know, they think that Trump is mad now that. That Israel has, you know, led us into this war that we won't be able to get out of. And all that it's all a bunch of garbage. Obviously it's garbage because as you say, you know, Bibi has done what he's want, what Trump wanted.

[Abe Greenwald]

Yeah, no, that's what I think too. I think the watching the people who predicted World War III is actually what tells you, you know, what, what the takeaway from this war is that people who are, instead of saying, you know, well, I thought the whole thing would blow up and in fact it didn't blow up, people are saying like, well, you know, Iran really proved that they can blow up buildings in Beersheva and therefore, you know, Israel doesn't want to mess with them. And it's really like there's this. And they make this whole.

[Eli Lake]

No, no. And then they make the opposite, they make the opposite case. Iran's so reasonable, they're so, they're so peace seeking that they wouldn't respond to this unprovoked attack.

[John Podhoretz]

Right.

[Eli Lake]

Iran's restraint, you know, at a certain point it just becomes self discrediting. I mean, I don't think that there needs to be, you know, a series of commentary columns and Wall Street Journal op EDS saying how wrong they are. I think all you need to do is press record, play it back, say, what do you think, American people? Does this sound normal to you? You know, I mean, like Tucker Carlson's first response is, I want to thank Qatar. Come on. I mean, it's a joke at this point.

[Abe Greenwald]

Well, and then the interesting thing was.

[John Podhoretz]

That while this was going on, if you look at Tucker's Twitter feed, he posts something and then it says paid sponsorships for the Tucker Carlson show. You know, like, you know, moink this, whatever, you know, like various things. Blue, gray, the. It should say the Qatari government seven.

[Eli Lake]

Part document.

[John Podhoretz]

Comes flying into Maine, into rural Maine, pallet of cash.

[Abe Greenwald]

Ryan was hitting the airport in Qatar. They had to go somewhere.

[Eli Lake]

So they went something very important. Because the line from Tucker was not even implicit. It was an explicit. These Jews, these neocons, these hawks are undermining American interests. They won't fight in these wars. They're sending our boys off to die. As a typical kind of dual loyalty canard that, you know, we hear every generation, you know, from Lindbergh, and then we heard it in the early 2000s from the left. And it's a whole thing about, you're not real Americans. Who's not a real American? I mean, I'm just curious, like, Iran's got all this American blood on its hands. And the line from so many of that crowd is, oh, My God, Iran is so. They're just seeking peace and like, oh, the only thing I have to say about this remarkable set of events, the 12 day war that ends like, with pretty much a victory for America and Israel is, thank you, Qatar. I mean, give me a break. Who's the, who's the real American at this point? You know, I mean, that's what I'm saying. Let's have that conversation. And the other thing, who's really interested in America's interests? Let's have that conversation.

[Abe Greenwald]

But who's the other person that he sang? That's the other thing, Eli. Who's the other person? Trump. The people who warned against this are desperately singing Trump's praises now as a peacemaker. So they see the way this. If you want to see who has their finger on the pulse, look at the guys who came crawling back. Totally understand that Trump looks good because.

[Eli Lake]

Of all this stuff that happened to.

[Abe Greenwald]

And they need better get back on his.

[Eli Lake]

I mean, right, but we're thanking Trump.

[Abe Greenwald]

For what actually happened. I'm saying Trump and, and now are coming crawling back. And I think that's, that's all you really need to know about how this went.

[John Podhoretz]

But as I say also, you know, you just figure, just follow, follow the money or implicitly follow the money, because you're talking about commerce here. You're talking about, this is a business that's being run. These influencers have businesses, Their podcasts are businesses, their companies are businesses. And some of this may be entirely internal support, internal money, internal advertising. But I don't, I don't know.

[Eli Lake]

I think it's a little bit about, I don't know. Some of it is there's an audience, sadly, in America of people who want to hear Coughlin esque, Lindbergh esque garbage about why there is a fifth column undermining American national interests, et cetera. And they're hungry for it. And they'll find obscure amateur historians and they'll find Tucker Carlson and they'll find Candace Owens, and that's serving an audience. And there are, It's a big country. There are people who are really enthusiastic about that, and that's a real thing. And then there is a foreign info op that's kind of seeking to supercharge it. And so it's not one or the other, it's both. And I, by the way, want to say that there was a story going around about Tucker Carlson, to be fair, that was unfair about him, which said that, you know, somebody paid a PR firm to set up an Interview with Tucker Carlson. That's not Tucker Carlson getting Qatari money. That's Qatar paying a lot of money to a PR firm to get an interview with, with their prime minister. Fine. And people kind of misread the fair reforms on that. But you know, Tucker's clearly playing to that audience of Americans who think that Commentary magazine, because it is affiliated with Jewish Americans and so called neoconservatives are somehow disloyal Americans. And to which I want to say, yeah, let's have that conversation. Tucker, you've been basically defending and apologizing for one of the worst enemies for the United States. We've been telling the truth about that enemy of the United States. So you know, in the words of the great James Brown, don't tell a lie about me or I'll tell the truth on you. You know, so that's, that's how I feel about it. Great, let's have that conversation. Who loves this country? We love this country.

[John Podhoretz]

Well, well said. So the question that is raised now is will, will this ceasefire hold? And obviously the situation that Israel finds itself in with Trump is that Israel now has to wait and watch as the Iranians do act or don't act. The ceasefire is entirely in the Iranians hands. And I think since Bibi did what he had to do, which is he had to sort of acquiesce to Trump's request, if we want to call it a request not to strike back hard, he has played ball with Trump as he will.

[Eli Lake]

And.

[John Podhoretz]

Maybe now this is an indication if, if Iran acts, sends more missiles at Israel, that Trump's apologia today, which is, I don't even know if they meant to fire it off, will have been proved. He, he will he at on the second turning. That will be a, an offense to him from the Iranians unambiguously. Right. I mean, so he's saying, I don't even know if they meant to do it so Israel should come back, that no one knows what the f. They're doing if they, if they do it again tonight or tomorrow or something like that. Israel still has the interceptors. Obviously a couple of the missiles got through this attack on, this attack on this building in Beersheva. Not a mass casualty event exactly, but I don't know. Seven or eight are dead, 20 are injured. They haven't done the full battle assessment yet to see or you know, the injury assessment yet. But it's very bad, you know, earning, earning a response. So they did whatever they did here. If, if more happens now, I don't know why Trump would want Israel not to respond.

[Abe Greenwald]

Well, he likes to be able to say that things are clean and done, but I think, I think the other.

[John Podhoretz]

Thing and done, then he says they're clean and done, but if they're not, they won't, we'll know.

[Abe Greenwald]

Like that's, I think, the other perspective from the, from the American perspective. The other thing is that there's, there, there's an understanding that Israel has now a huge advantage also. And so there's this, like, remember when, you know, Trump tends to go to the stronger party in a conflict and have them, you know, and put pressure on them to go whichever way he wants the conflict to go because he knows that they can to, to a large degree control what happens next. And I think that Israel proved itself as the stronger in this conflict with Iran, not just with Iran's proxies, but with Iran itself. And I think that Trump is reverting to his classic, you know, okay, Israel is the one that controls the tides in the Middle east right now. So if I want something to go a certain way, I'm going to ask Israel to help me.

[Eli Lake]

Or maybe he could just say, he could come out and do the next tweet saying, Iran, you don't have the cards. You don't have the cards.

[John Podhoretz]

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[John Podhoretz]

Speaking of which, Trump, Trump is due to meet Zelensky later today and so God knows what's going to happen there in that conversation. Just, I don't really have anything to say about that. I just saw that he was meeting Zelensky today. Let's go back to the 30,000 foot perspective. What I said about the new regime, what I think should probably be called the Trump Doctrine. After many years of efforts to find a Trump doctrine and as Abe says, he resists any such thing. The implicit effect of the strike on Iran is to say that the United States has demonstrated in the person of Trump and with the weaponry that it has developed, that it has the means, the motive, the opportunity and the precedent now of eliminating nuclear programs before they achieve breakout. And that this then represents. It's the year, it's, this is where this year marks the end of the first quarter of the 21st century, effectively beginning with 9 11, with the attack on, the direct attack on the United States by, by a stateless terrorist group supported by a rogue nation. And, and the, this quarter century ends, let's say maybe not ends because there's another, you know, eight months to six months to go in this year. But with a rogue nation developing, the world's worst weapon, humiliated and its, its ability to project power completely eviscerated. That's an interesting progression because what were we worried about in the way, in the, in the, in the wake of 9 11, what was everyone on everybody's mind that this was an opening salvo and that the thing to watch for was the suitcase nuke. If somebody could get a nuclear weapon and bring it to Times Square, or a dirty bomb, not even a Newt, not even a fully armed nuke, but like a radiation, radiation device and let it loose in Times Square on New Year's Eve or somewhere where there were, you know, where there were a lot of Americans gathered, you know, super bowl, whatever. And then. And then you have sort of like the world goes dark.

[Abe Greenwald]

People don't. People who were young then don't. Won't remember just how powerful that fear was. It dominated pop culture. We had Jack Bauer, you know, for eight seasons in 24. That was. I mean, that was the plot of the first season, but that was the sort of. We had shows and movies about the suitcase dirty bomb. It had sort of taken over pop culture's brain for a long time.

[John Podhoretz]

It really was the way America, right? And the idea that unconventional weaponry was now the tool of the unconventional fighting force was not just because of the hijacking of the planes and flying them into buildings. It was also that several, you know, it was several weeks after that the anthrax envelopes started showing up at the New York Post, 10ft from where I was sitting at NBC News at the National Enquirer. Three people died, A bunch of people got sick. No one has ever fully made sense out of how. What happened there and. And that. But whether or not what happened there happened was, you know, was. Was in fact like a psychotic, domestic, weird, you know, terrorist attack by a lunatic that the. The anthrax coming hard upon 9, 11. I wouldn't even call it a national panic because panic suggests that the response was unreasonable. There was a kind of national terror, the terrorism work. The country was terrorized. What was interesting was that what you would have now, which is you'd have a bunch of people saying, well, that all happened in New York. I don't care. It's all New York. You know, they all suck and they have a bad school system and, you know, they're terrible. That was not the case quarter century ago. And everybody felt as though this was an attack on everybody else and that who knows what could happen? Someone could go to the Mall of America, you know, in the Twin Cities and, you know, and do a mass casualty event or something like that. Everybody felt implicated. Everybody was frightened. And that's where this doctrine that Dick Cheney enunciated, which was the 1% doctrine, which was if there's a 1% chance that a nuclear weapon can be detonated inside the United States by a terrorist group. We have to act to eliminate that threat. Because Even if it 99% chance it doesn't happen, the 1% chance would be so catastrophic we have to act as.

[Seth Mandel]

If it were a certain.

[John Podhoretz]

Exactly.

[Eli Lake]

But this gets to another Bush doctrine, which is like, which wasn't really a doctrine because he didn't follow through on it. But remember, his whole thing was if you house a terrorist, feed a terrorist, arm a terrorist, and if you're a regime that does that, then you're a terrorist. And that was part of the explanation for Afghanistan and Iraq. But he didn't follow through.

[John Podhoretz]

It was the whole, it was the whole explanation for Afghanistan that why we did as they say regime, why we went into Afghanistan to destroy the Taliban to try to find bin Laden and Al Qaeda at which we escaped through the caves of Tora Bora. But the, our idea was that the people who harbored bin Laden were bin Laden.

[Eli Lake]

The problem is that like they were.

[John Podhoretz]

To make treatment as though they like.

[Eli Lake]

Syria and Iran got off the hook. Now what's interesting, there's a couple interesting things. First of all, the connection between rogue regimes and terrorism predates 9, 11. It goes back to the Cold War and it goes back to specifically people like Richard Pipes and others pointed out that the Soviets and they were by the way, supporting all of these left wing terrorist groups all over the world, including some of the kind of forerunners to, you know, Arab terrorism. So, you know, the PLO had a very close relationship with, you know, Romanian intelligence and Carlos the Jackal had a very close relationship at the end of the day with the kgb and that these were, this was part of the Soviet sort of state policy to work through such proxies. And Iran has in many ways mimicked it. Now why is that important in 2025? Because what our adversaries are now saying, and one of their lines, which is incredible that this is being forwarded at this point, is that Iran hasn't attacked anybody. And they're trying to delink Iran's support for our ideological inside the, inside the.

[John Podhoretz]

United States, not our foreign ideological adversaries.

[Eli Lake]

Inside the United States are trying to say that there was zero provocation for Israel and that in fact, and they're not acknowledging the links between Iran and how it fights its wars, which is through these proxies and the network that costs them. Soleimani had built up. And obviously Trump totally understands that. And anyone who knows anything about these things totally understand that. And it was a dishonest argument. And by the way, I'm not so sure that we have to have the argument again. I think that that argument is over at this point. But it's interesting that that was one of the lines that they kind of put out there because this was, you know, again during the Cold War, especially kind of post 75, there was one side that used to be the rollbackers who then kind of said the Soviets are using the strategy of proxy terror groups. And then all the detentists and everybody else was saying no, no, no, there's no evidence of that. And then we saw it again after 9, 11, that became the thing and that was a part of what was supposed to be the Bush doctrine. And then we're sort of seeing it now in the Iran case. So that is a link that I think kind of closes that 25 year chapter that you were talking about.

[John Podhoretz]

That's a very interesting analysis because the world of the deniers of the threats to the United States posed by these revolutionary actors. In the case of the Soviet Union, of course, they were communist revolutionaries believing in the overthrow of the capitalist order. Soviets were happy to work with countries.

[Eli Lake]

Like slightly kind of proto Islamist groups too. They like terrorism.

[John Podhoretz]

Right, but I'm just saying. Right, right. So you had the, you had that and then you have the, you have the fight against terrorist groups, rogue nations like Iran. And throughout the, from the 60s to the present day you have had this alternate narrative which is like the United States existence is a provocation to all of these countries and all these places. Maybe it's because we're too good. Maybe it's because we're meddling and we're bungling and we go around places and we interfere. We stick our hands in things that we shouldn't and get people mad at us. But we bring a lot of this on ourselves and a lot of this is defensive. The Soviets are defending themselves by creating an alternate world structure and all of that. And they're using the means that they have to hand. That's why detente is a good idea. And simultaneously efforts made to pooh pooh the threat. So I was thinking, because we start I mentioned anthrax and you're talking about some of this, about the many year, multi year effort to prove that the Soviets had not used chemical weapons in Afghanistan, what was called yellow rain. And they clearly had or they had played games with it. And the world of scientific experts that we all came to know and love during COVID came down like a ton of bricks on the Arguments being made by the intelligence community and others that the Soviets were toying with the use of chemical weapons. Why? Because if you have to acknowledge that the Soviets want to use chemical weapons, they're not only in violation of a treaty signed in the 1920s, but that's just a demonstration that they cannot, that they are, that they are an actor not only in bad faith, but genuinely dangerous, willing to use weapons of mass destruction and therefore you have to deal with them as that. And we and these people wanted to think that the Soviets were an ordinary nation that you could do business with, that they had interests similar to ours in their own way, and that we should be able to negotiate with them and deal with them and be happy with them or have cultural exchanges with them. Move forward here. And we're going to have this, we have this two faced argument, one of which is maybe they weren't going nuclear or if they were, they did, they could and why couldn't they? And they shouldn't be, but they were and they're not. Or now we have the they were going nuclear and now nobody knows where the, nobody knows where the uranium is. And so can we, can we stop.

[Eli Lake]

On the nobody knows where uranium is?

[John Podhoretz]

Yeah.

[Eli Lake]

Given the string of successes of the Mossad and the fact that obviously Iran is wired and they had control of the skies and they have all this incredible technology, it's possible they don't know where the uranium is. But I am of the view that they probably have a plan, plan for that at a certain point. I mean, you just look at the string of brilliant successes of the Israelis, especially in the intelligence realm, and the fact that they had so many eyes on Fordeau, the idea that the Iranians were able to ferret out all this material and nobody could do anything about it strikes me as, you know, what's the opposite of wishful thinking. Like.

[Abe Greenwald]

My favorite, my favorite tweet on this was Dave Reboy said something very funny on Twitter, which was that there's a really high probability that the Iranians gave. Undercover Mossadniks. Yeah, the Iranians driving, literally driving the truck.

[Eli Lake]

Yeah. No, no, no, Robson, Johnny knows exactly where to put it.

[John Podhoretz]

Exactly. Yeah. Trump, in the same press availability as he was heading to the helicopter at like 7 o' clock this morning, that where he, you know, lashed out at Israel and Iran, also lashed out at CNN and MSNBC for pooh poohing the idea that the, that the strikes on the nuclear program had been effective. And here's what he said. I see CNN all night long. They're trying to say, well, maybe it wasn't really as demolished as we thought. I think CNN ought to apologize to the pilots of the B2. I think MSNBC ought to apologize. Cable networks are real losers. You're gutless losers. It's amazing how much damage has been done to this. Excuse me. That's not him. That's somebody else. Okay, so he's angry and it was true. If you watch the last 48 hours, you would think that this strike. Well, let's not get a, let's not get out over our skis. We dropped six bombs of a size in conventional weaponry that have never been seen before on this earth. Very specifically on perfectly targeted sites. And as Eli said, and you think that they didn't think about what, where the uranium was or was going to be. And I look at Bibi on Monday after the strikes and everything, looking like the cataw ate the canary. And I'm thinking, he's not worried about where the, where it is. He was, he was like, first he said, we know where it is. And then he said, I have some idea where it is, or something like that. The line that they are handing out or the sort of the spin is that Fordo has been buried so deep, so inaccessible, so that it's there and it's buried and no one will ever get it out. It's like the genie in Aladdin, the lamp that's there for 10,000 years until somebody can find it. Right in the cave of wonders or whatever.

[Abe Greenwald]

Yeah, it's like when you hide your keys where your kids won't find them and then you end up hiding them from yourself.

[John Podhoretz]

Exactly. Anyway, but I don't believe I, I, I am skeptical as I. They didn't move on this without a very specific. First of all, they know everything about this program. They stole. I'm sorry, they stole all the paper? Yeah, in 2018. Not that that means that they know where it is in 2025, but they knew what apartment in an apartment complex, you know, the head of the GC was living in and shot missile A right into the wall of the building to kill him and nobody else in the building. They don't know where the fissile material is. Give me a break. That doesn't make any sense. The one thing that they would know as part of their intelligence mission, maybe the one most important thing that they would know is where is it now? How do we know that they haven't milled it to 80%? You know how they know that it wasn't that they hadn't broken out yet. Two things. One of which, the Iranians hadn't announced that they hadn't milled it to 80%. And somebody in the milling room was their agent. So. So they know that if they know that and they know that they're close and all of that, that's because they had. I think it's even better than that.

[Eli Lake]

In the Departed, when Matt Damon's character realizes that, like, Whitey Bulger has another guy on the payroll, and the guy's like, you think you're the only one working for Whitey or something like that. Frank Costello or whatever his name is. Like, I think it's like that. I think it's like one guy was in the Fordo a uranium thing, another guy was in the Isfahan facility, and they didn't know they were working for the Israelis. But then they kind of, you know, it's like they had networks upon networks. I just.

[Abe Greenwald]

Three. Three ICE agents tackled. Three ICE agents tackled an undercover ICE agent the other day. I think that's what we're describing.

[Eli Lake]

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

[John Podhoretz]

Yeah.

[Eli Lake]

So.

[John Podhoretz]

Yeah, so. So. So I'm with you on this. One way or another. And Trump being angry at the cable networks. It is this bizarre effort to. To. First of all, I understand that people think, you know, he exaggerates. He says, overwhelming success. Maybe not. People say things like that about military before there's a full damage assessment or battle assessment or whatever. But. But this. The pettiness and the churlishness with which, again, the experts, who aren't even experts, because what do they have.

[Eli Lake]

What do they know on this about why it was unfeasible, how you can't bomb away an idea and all these things. I'm like, when are you going to readjust your analysis based on what we've seen the Israelis accomplish that you said was impossible? I mean, remember another thing. And.

[John Podhoretz]

Well, by the way, this is.

[Seth Mandel]

This is the readjustment. They've gone from these, from the broad conceptual.

[Eli Lake]

Like, remember, we don't even know if the bunker buster will work or. No, remember that one? We don't even know if it'll work.

[John Podhoretz]

Right.

[Eli Lake]

So never been tried before.

[Seth Mandel]

So now they have to. They have.

[Eli Lake]

Iran's air defense system is one of the best in the world. They've got the S500. I mean, come on, people. I'm just being a realist here. Okay, okay, sure. It's just the same people who said. Remember, the same people said, you can. You can't shoot a bullet with a bullet out of the sky. We heard it for 25 years. This missile defense thing that Reagan's talking about, it's never going to happen. It's science fiction. It's Star Wars. Okay. All right.

[John Podhoretz]

Yeah.

[Abe Greenwald]

One, one thing I, I, I want to say about this ideological.

[John Podhoretz]

Shot down 10,000 missiles in the last 15 years, 10,000 projectiles at Israel, from Gaza, from, from Lebanon have been. And from Iran now and, and Yemen have been shot down. Bullet hitting bullet in the sky, as you say. So, yes, that was a very big thing. I'm sorry, Seth.

[Abe Greenwald]

No, I just want on that whole thing, the ideological war and the people twisting themselves in pretzels during the Cold War, for, for much of it, the USSR was a closed society and there weren't cell phones with cameras and all that stuff around. And we were trying to, you know, the information war was like sneaking in copies of Dr. Zhivago. Right. I mean, there was a plausibility to.

[Eli Lake]

People who said planning stories in the Indian media. When somebody inventing aids, that was the other thing that the Soviets did to us, right?

[Abe Greenwald]

And like when, so when, when a dissident, when a Soviet dissident left got out and there were, there was a plausibility to the people who said, well, I don't know if I believe you. I haven't seen that, or whatever. What we're seeing now is an especially shameful display because we all know from the very beginning that Ron is evil. We all know what Hamas did. They wore GoPro cameras on October 7th. We all know that Hezbollah, Hezbollah's big, you know, debut was murdering 241 U.S. marines at the barracks in Beirut. We all know all of this stuff. We all know what they say and what they do and distill the twisting themselves into pretzels. There is this like, once upon a time there was an ideological war that was had enough of the fog of war that you weren't really 100% sure if anybody was telling the truth. That ended a very long time ago. And the people who are still pushing that sort of line, it's muscle memory. It's an instinctive anti American, anti Western, anti civilizational instinct that they have that they, that now has become a sort of a tick, something they don't. It's like blinking or swallowing. And that is, and that's happening in an era where we all see everything that's going on. We, the Israeli planes will have a camera on them. The B2 bombers will show you the videotape of the bombs that going through the roof of Fordo and so there's something especially risable about all this stuff, and it's harder to be patient.

[Seth Mandel]

But there's another. There's another element now, which is that ever since 9 11, every event, every conflict has its truthers. And the truthers have made inroads, or at least sort of applied some weird pressure on the mainstream to be skeptical. You know, they showed the mainstream sort of another way to be able to hate your own side.

[F]

Hello, this is Dr. Rob Williams, executive director of the USC Shoah Foundation. Survivors of the Holocaust have long been the bravest voices speaking out against antisemitism and all forms of hate around the world, whether it's European antisemitism of the 1930s and 1940s or the antisemitism we see on our streets and campuses today. We'll explore it on the USC Shoah Foundation's new podcast, Searching for Never Again. We'll hear stories that are heartbreaking and stories that are inspiring every Tuesday on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever fine podcasts can be found.

[John Podhoretz]

So, Eli did a brilliant podcast earlier this year about the JFK conspiracy theorists and the history of JFK conspiracy theories. This is the moment that that started. Arguably, it started a little earlier with people questioning whether or not Franklin Roosevelt knew that Pearl harbor was going to be attacked and allowed it to happen so that we could get into the war. Something that was conclusively, I think, theoretically disproven. First of all, there's no paper that says anything like that. And second, Roberta Walstetter wrote a great book on this subject showing how there was no way to connect the dot pattern of information and see this coming. But JFK assassination was the moment at which the. Oh, come on. This guy shoots him from a window and then. And then this gangster running a strip club kills him as he's being brought in to be arraigned. And then, Earl, you know, the Warren Commission says he acted alone. Come on, what the hell is going on? And from there, everything goes haywire. Right. It's that, then. It's the moon landing was faked. Yeah. There are still people who believe the moon landing was faked and that there.

[Seth Mandel]

Are more now who believe it than they were.

[John Podhoretz]

Right. Well, there are more, but this is.

[Seth Mandel]

But this is what? This is why this is a point I want to make differences. I agree. The sort of general state of paranoia and distrust began with those things. But 911 coincided perfectly with communications technology to allow for communities to arise out of people who believe in these things. And that, that was like the Beginning of the, of the, the all discourse had at least a drop of poison.

[John Podhoretz]

Yeah, Well, I think I have an even earlier moment to remind people of which is TWA Flight 800. Yes, Pierre Salinger, which took off, yes. So took off from Kennedy Airport, was 10 minutes in the air. It was near Center Marich's on the south shore of Long island and blew up in the air. And people with very early, not cell phones because cell phones didn't have cameras then, but who had like portable cameras that could take film. Two or three images suggested that there was a streak of light nearby just before the plane blew up. And that meant that somebody had fired a missile at the plane. And everybody said every, every in the world said this hadn't happened, that if it had happened there would be more, there was more film, there would be, you know, you'd actually see. Somebody would have been actually filming it when it happened. And that's not the case. There was no film of any, you know, and yes, Pierre Salinger, who had been JFK's press secretary and a foreign correspondent, Lee, chief foreign correspondent for ABC News for 30 years or something like that, was absolutely convinced, right, that there was, that somebody shot this down and that there was a conspiracy to cover it up. And he believed the conspiracy came not from, you know, this group that we barely knew of Al Qaeda or something like that, but from inside the United States. And the question was, why would somebody inside the United States take a shoulder fired missile and shoot at a plane and blow it up? Who was on that plane? Who was with the passenger manifestation? Why did it happen? What was being hidden? Was there some document on the plane that needed to be blown up? And all of that that bubbled like mainstream press was still very powerful, made fun of it. Salinger's reputation was ruined in many ways. But that was kind of like a, that was like a rehearsal, a dress rehearsal for what happened after 911 when people started with the steel. Can't melt steel. Right. According to, According to who? You know, what do you mean?

[Eli Lake]

What do you mean it can't.

[John Podhoretz]

You know, that was. Oh, you know, and so all of.

[Seth Mandel]

That fire can't melt steel or something.

[John Podhoretz]

Fireman. Yeah, whatever. I don't know.

[Seth Mandel]

Who know. It doesn't matter.

[John Podhoretz]

Yeah, whatever. I can't remember. Doesn't.

[Eli Lake]

Well, but you know, the flip side.

[John Podhoretz]

Of that is that it's like we all watched, we all watched the planes smash into the World Trade center. And then people are like, it didn't really smash into the world trades. I mean that Was the weird part was the. At least the circumstantial evidence patterns in the JFK case, let's say, or even in Flight 800, you understood why people needed to be convinced out of their skepticism. A plane just doesn't blow up out of nowhere. And Jack Ruby's killing of Lee Harvey Oswald, that was pretty weird. Like, wouldn't. Isn't that what you would do to silence somebody who was being taken into, you know, federal custody?

[Eli Lake]

And by the way, that happened at.

[John Podhoretz]

A time you have to explain that away.

[Eli Lake]

The government really did do things that it didn't tell us about. And that comes out 10 years later in the church committee or 12, 13 years later, because so it's 12 years later. But the point is, is that it's like there was a little bit of that where, like, yes, you should be skeptical of some of the official things from the government or things that, you know, people dismissed at first but were true. The CIA really did conduct LSD experiments on prisoners and mental patients and covered it up. And that was, you know, bad and we shouldn't have done it. And that really happened. And so sometimes not to say that, you know, you should believe conspiracy theories, but it's not always a clean cut, you know, all that.

[Abe Greenwald]

Well, it comes to your. Comes back to your point, Eli.

[Eli Lake]

To a point, Exactly.

[Abe Greenwald]

Right. The Eli Lake doctrine. To a point.

[John Podhoretz]

Right. And of course, we just lived through Covid.

[Eli Lake]

Yeah.

[John Podhoretz]

It's not. I don't. And I, I think that we saw. There is no question. I believe now that we can say that there was a conspiracy in March of 2020 to bury evidence of the involvement of the scientists around the EcoHealth alliance and the funding of the EcoHealth alliance to bury evidence of their involvement in gain of function research and funding at the Wuhan Labs. We know that. We know it happened. It happened right in front of our eyes. And it took these. It took people that we might have thought were crazy two years earlier, some of them, although not all of them, to surface this information. Showing these people in an email chain saying we need to. We need to suppress this and come out with statements and form a phalanx to protect ourselves. I mean, they never quite said it that plainly, but so that. That was just. That's just an example that. Yeah, sometimes there are and there are. It's not that there are.

[Eli Lake]

Okay, two reasons for some optimism on this. The first one is, is that to bring another one where I think there was perfectly legitimate grounds for skepticism was the so called, you know, was the Suicide of Jeffrey Epstein. Okay. I certainly didn't believe the initial story either. But now somebody who, who when he was a radio host, Dan Bongino is not the deputy director of the FBI and Cash Patel's the director of the FBI and they had to say a few months ago, we've looked at the documents, that was a suicide. I don't know what to tell you. There's no evidence that this was some sort of inside job.

[John Podhoretz]

Yeah. Bill Bard. Bill Bard.

[Eli Lake]

When Bill Barr said it's different because Bill Barr is from the kind of knowledge class and the insider class and so forth. When Dan Bondino, who, you know, I don't know how many shows he devoted to the Epstein files and like what are they, what are they hiding? He has to say, hey listen, I'm the deputy director of the FBI, I see everything and I'm telling you there's nothing there.

[John Podhoretz]

And you know, okay, that's my favorite part though. So now he's the said this and now the. Now this is proof, analogical proof to a bunch of people who hate Trump that this proves that Trump is in the Epstein files.

[Eli Lake]

I'm saying there's a lot of people.

[John Podhoretz]

They'Re not gonna release the Epstein files. And that's why they're saying there's a lot more people who were pro Trump.

[Eli Lake]

Who thought that there was an Epstein conspiracy, who would trust Bongino over everybody, over Barr certainly. And everybody else who now are like, you know, some are some of them gonna say of course they got to him too. Yeah, that happens. If once you believe one conspiracy theory, you know, it's like a gateway drug. But there's a lot of people who probably going to say, all right, well you know, if Bongino says it, if Cash says it, then maybe we drop it at this point. And that to me is good. And the second thing is this. We have an opportunity here and I'm very, I'm potentially excited about it. It goes back actually a few years before even Tucker left Fox. He would have on like Max Blumenthal and people who belong to kind of this conspiracy anti American wing on a show and you started to see the beginnings of this weird right left alliance. I mean we have an opportunity for a very clarifying moment. You know, if we could trade the kind of conspiracy minded Tucker wing for like the Fettermans and Richie Torres's and you would have one party that would be fully reality based, pro American, pro Israel, you know, versus the party of like, you know, kooks and haters, Baruch Hashem, thank you very much. I would love nothing more.

[John Podhoretz]

Can I speak to you about, can I speak to you about kooks and haters before we go? Because this is a very important point. So, of course, today is the primary day. There's been early voting for. There was early voting for 10 days, but primary day in New York. And the way the New York Times puts it is that the last poll shows that it's too close to call between, between Andrew Cuomo, the candidate, despite his disgrace and personal misconduct and horrible governance during COVID sort of the candidate of not being a crazy person and not being a socialist and not being an anti Semite versus the crazy person communist anti Semite Zoran Mamdani. And we don't know what's going on. Two things to point out about this. Number one, there was a lot of early vote. The indications are that the early vote was probably reasonably favorable to Mamdani. This is a very complicated election, but they will be reporting, reporting very. The polls close at 9. The first reports that are going to come out are going to be early, an early vote count. And it could look like Mamdani is doing really well. And people need to hold their liquor or hold their, hold their panic because as was true in 2020, as was true in 2024, the day of vote, which should be half the vote, will may go to Cuomo. And just like in 2024, Republicans were still voting on day of. And Democrats had taken advantage of early voting much more than Republicans had. And so the early, you know that you saw these numbers as the Republicans, like, for example, in North Carolina, like, marched ahead, like slowly marched ahead after early votes were counted in various places. But I wanted to point out it's as bad as you think. And it's not just about Mamdani's communism and anti Semitism, which is, I'm not saying it's not the worst part of him. He has a campaign manager, campaign political director who's 28 years old. His name is Julian Gerson. Julian Gerson has a blog. And I went and looked up the blog today, and at the end of 2024, he had a long blog post about Luigi Mangioni, the assassin of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson. And I want to read you a paragraph that he wrote about Mangione. Mangione, while his remarkable good looks hardly hurt, anyone who thinks his acclaim is primarily rooted in aesthetics is missing the point, probably on purpose. He is adored not only because he dared to target a leader of one of the most vile self enriching industries, darkening our society today. But. But because he dared to defy the stasis of nihilistic rejection. The question is not whether he was right or wrong, it's how many others he has shaken loose. This is a call for mass murder of health care executives, health care personnel. This guy is the campaign political director for this person who is either, you know, is tied in this race today. This guy, if he wins and then wins the mayoralty, controls the New York City Police Department and how it enforces things and where it stands on things. And his political director is a supporter of a person that we know without a shadow of a doubt shot a guy in the back on 53rd street at 6:45 in the morning while he was bringing a cup of coffee into his back to his hotel room.

[Eli Lake]

Why is that? J. Bide. Why? Let it go. Bring that up. Where's Andrew Cuomo's campaign? Why isn't he prosecuting this particular case? Why is it that there's the alternative to the Commie. Why is the alternative to the Commie this flawed, failed governor who got nursing homes?

[John Podhoretz]

I mean, come on. Yeah. First of all, there is an immense amount of anti Mamdani literature and advertising and stuff going around New York. The last you wouldn't have seen it because it's all here. If you live, if you're. Trust me, my mailbox has 10 things a day about how terrible. How terrible Mamdani is. And the advertising on TV during the newscast is unbelievable. You know, it's like, it's, it's unbelievable how much it is. Cuomo's a terrible candidate. He is a flawed, disgraced. But he had a lot of money and nobody else ran in his lane. Nobody else ran as the sane person in the race. Everybody ran to the left. It like classic because it's a ranked choice voting system. Anyway, the fact that I'm sitting here and a lot of people I know are sitting around like desperately hoping for a certain result here involving Cuomo is astounding to me. Like, I loathe Cuomo. I've loathed Cuomo for 30 years. I loathed him when he was at HUD. I loathed him when he once called me on the phone and threatened me because I wrote something about housing policy that he didn't like. And he said, you're gonna get yours, believe you me. Said to me on the phone, like, he's not. I don't like him. I loathe him. I loathe the way he was. But he has Some skills. He built, rebuilt LaGuardia Airport. He rebuilt the Tappan Zee Bridge. He rebuilt, he finished, he made sure the Second Avenue subway, at least some part of it was completed.

[Eli Lake]

And he's obviously better than an anti communist. Yes, of course. Without a doubt. I want FOMO to win.

[John Podhoretz]

Right. Well, okay, so I don't endorse candidates and we don't endorse candidates on this podcast, but that's fine. But that's the circumstance that we find ourselves in. And I just think like the meaning of the Mamdani victory. Getting to your point about whether or not there's going to be a kind of reshuffling of the political, ideological and partisan decks in the United States based on what's happened over the last five to 10 years, and that's already been ongoing with the shifts of the, of the more educated, less educated. The, you know, all of that stuff may really, really accelerate now because you will have. This will mean, if Mandani wins, that the three largest cities in the country are being governed by crackpot, lunatic, socialist, cop hating morons. Mamdani is not a moron. But Brandon Johnson is a moron in Chicago. Karen Bass is certainly a moron in la, as we've seen over the last six weeks. Mamdani is very smart, canny, never had a job before, so that's a pretty funny thing. But.

[Abe Greenwald]

Well, that's how you can tell he's a real socialist, by the way, because he's so incredibly bougie.

[John Podhoretz]

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Dad of college, professor, mama, movie director. But you'll be happy to know that according to his mother, Mira Nair, who made a pretty good movie out of the novel the Namesake, starring the actor Kal Penn, who then went on to work in the Obama White House for some reason that she cast Kal Penn in the Namesake in his starring role. And it actually was a beautiful performance because young Zoran made her watch Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle, the stoner movie in which he had starred. So apparently his credential for being mayor of New York is his casting genius, by the way, spotting Cal Penn.

[Seth Mandel]

But, you know, New York has already had a mayor who was cracked about social.

[Eli Lake]

Yeah.

[Seth Mandel]

Facts in de Blasio.

[John Podhoretz]

Yeah. How did that work out for us? Yeah.

[Seth Mandel]

But the thing is so much worse because.

[John Podhoretz]

Yeah, yeah, he's not just. Yeah. He's an active open anti Semite and. And a supporter of terrorism. A supporter of terrorist groups, I'm sure. Like these weird people tweeting over the last couple of days wants Iran to hit American bases to give us a taste of our own medicine. Like that professor at Georgetown, Jonathan Brown.

[Eli Lake]

I love that guy.

[John Podhoretz]

Literally, his father in law.

[Eli Lake]

Great job, by the way.

[John Podhoretz]

Yes, Bravo, Georgia.

[Eli Lake]

Way to pick them. You know, it's like everybody we're finding from Georgetown, all these elite universities, it's. That's another moment. It's another podcast. It's like we're all learning. The elite.

[Abe Greenwald]

The woman who just left Yale, the emperor.

[Eli Lake]

Especially for Jews. We love higher education, and it's such a. It's such a mitzvah to get into these selective colleges. I gotta tell you, the emperor has no clothes. They stink. All right, rant over.

[John Podhoretz]

That's true. Okay, well, that was a good rant, everyone. Subscribe to Eli Lakes Breaking History podcast. Has a. Has an excellent one up right now about the hundredth. The 100th anniversary of the birth of William F. Buckley, Jr. And the role that he played in fostering the conservative movement and where he was good and where he was less good every. Every time.

[Eli Lake]

Thank you.

[John Podhoretz]

Treasure trove. You rather do Letty Bruce. You do jfk.

[Eli Lake]

At some point, John, I gotta do. I gotta do Norman, do this. I just. It has to be done. Okay, well, it's another.

[John Podhoretz]

Okay. There. You have to do that. Okay. All right. So thank you for being on as ever, and for Seth and name of John Paul's. Keep the candle burn.