Trump's Constitutional Outrages

Summary

The Commentary Magazine Podcast: "Trump's Constitutional Outrages"

Date: August 26, 2025
Panel: John Podhoretz (host), Abe Greenwald, Christine Rosen, Seth Mandel
Theme: A deep dive into recent Trump administration actions stretching constitutional norms, their historical echoes, and the dangers of norm erosion in American executive governance.

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Episode Overview

The panel explores a series of recent executive actions under Donald Trump that, in their view, constitute fresh "constitutional outrages." The episode balances criticism of Trump’s apparent disregard for institutional guardrails with reflections on precedent—namely, similar overreaches by the Biden and Obama administrations. The participants warn of long-term fallout as both political sides normalize bending or breaking standards that formerly protected the American constitutional order. The discussion pivots between specific moves (targeted removals, executive orders, public safety measures, and punitive actions against opponents) and broader philosophical questions about what kind of government these accumulating actions are building.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Trump’s Latest Exercise of Presidential Power

• Lisa Cook's Removal from the Federal Reserve Board
  • Trump is attempting to remove Lisa Cook, a Fed Board member, ostensibly due to allegations about her mortgage application—a charge described as "clearly pretextual."
  • John Podhoretz (04:20): "No authority that we know of has actually brought any kind of action against her… this is a form of intimidation, an effort to, you know, use presidential power to force a political opponent from office."
  • The Supreme Court recently outlined that while presidents can remove members of some agencies, the Fed is purposely shielded; Trump’s move flies in the face of that.
  • Seth Mandel (06:39): "He just wants to scare the Fed chairman and maybe get her to quit because it’s too much money to defend herself in court."

2. Executive Orders and Norm-Busting

• Flag Burning Executive Order

  • Trump has issued an order criminalizing the burning of the American flag—an act the Supreme Court protected as free speech in 1989's Texas v. Johnson.
  • Christine Rosen (08:01): "When Trump pushes the bounds...the court has swooped in here and there...From his perspective, they want to do a lot. I think they’re thinking, we'll just keep pushing and the courts will do what they'll do."
  • The panel views this more as "performance art" and trolling than substantive policy, but still dangerous as a precedent.

• Public Safety & DC National Guard

  • Trump has signed executive orders creating new specialized law enforcement units in DC under the Department of Defense, potentially establishing permanent new arms of federal policing.
  • Abe Greenwald (10:07): "That sort of thing doesn’t go away...There are going to be lingering consequences for some of this stuff because some of them are government programs and some are executive orders that would be smacked down."

• TikTok Ban Delays

  • Despite rhetoric and congressional action, Trump’s administration is slow-walking enforcement of a TikTok ban.
  • Seth Mandel (07:11): "This is just a payoff to the Chinese Communist Party...They’re just completely flouting the way our system is supposed to work."

3. Trend of Tit-for-Tat Executive Power Grabs

• The panel notes this is not solely a Trumpian innovation—there's a throughline from Obama’s executive actions ("I've got a pen and a phone") to Biden (student debt cancellations, CDC eviction moratorium) to Trump’s own expanding of executive remit.
• John Podhoretz (15:50): "He’s just using the tools that Democrats used before me and after me...Executive orders, so the hell with you. And I think that's appalling. But I don’t think there’s a systematic effort to undermine the US. He just wants to do what he wants to do."

4. MAGA Rhetoric, Culture War, and the Erosion of Norms

• The show's participants emphasize that MAGA supporters and new right intellectuals see recent moves not as overreaches, but as necessary counterattacks in a long-running war—retaliating for perceived wrongs by the left and the federal bureaucracy.
• Christine Rosen (17:26): "His supporters come at it entirely differently...He is pushing back on those who would destroy him."
• The concern is not just policy, but atmosphere—public exhaustion and indifference that allow new precedents to harden.
• Seth Mandel (20:20): "We’re calling them niceties...the erosion of those norms, if it just keeps going back and forth, we have them no longer."

5. The Two Strains of Trump Administration “Revolution”

• 1. Trump the Pragmatist:

  • Sees norms as weapons wielded equally by both sides, now using every tool at hand but not seeking a fundamentally new constitutional order.
  • John Podhoretz (31:03): "Does Trump want to revolutionize America into a new system? I think the answer is no. He just wants to do what he wants to do....He is not in Mein Kampf."

• 2. The MAGA Ideologists:

  • A growing cadre of administration intellectuals do see the moment as one of permanent emergency warranting revolutionary responses.
  • Podhoretz (32:40): "I see no evidence or indication in the logic, language or rhetoric...that they are not embracing a new kind of idea about America—which is that we are in a state of perpetual emergency because the culture war is so severe."
  • The “Flight 93” mindset becomes official policy—people like the original “Flight 93" essayist are now in senior administration roles.

6. Political Consequences and the Future of Both Parties

• Democratic Crossroads:

  • Moderate Democrat leaders (e.g., Spamberger, Sherrill) could be swept aside in favor of more radical progressives akin to AOC and Mamdani if they don't win in off-year elections.
  • Podhoretz (54:34): "If Spamberger and Sherrill lose...it's the Tea Party all over. Why are you even running these faceless, colorless, meaningless people...You’re done. We're the future, you're the past."

• Republican Party’s Long-Term Shape:

  • Panelists fear the GOP is training itself for perpetual revolution—a norm-smashing, crisis-minded party, regardless of whom it nominates.
  • Podhoretz (40:49): "In an odd way, Trump isn't a revolutionary, but I don't know that the Republican Party is not training itself to be a permanent revolutionary force."

• Cycle of Emergency Thinking:

  • Repeated justification of exception and emergency is becoming a new default.
  • Abe Greenwald (42:08): "The problem with this way of thinking is the emergency...becomes permanent, a permanent way of thinking and governing overnight."

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the Executive Overreach:

  • "This is a form of intimidation, an effort to use presidential power to force a political opponent from office..."
    — John Podhoretz, (04:20)

• On Performance and Symbolism:

  • "If Trump really cared about the desecration of the flag...he should get a constitutional amendment passed. But that's not what he's doing, this is just pure performance art for him."
    — Seth Mandel, (06:39)

• On Escalating Power Grabs:

  • "You spent eight years trying to stop me, using all of these unbelievably illegitimate methods...So don't come at me like I'm just using the tools that Democrats used before me and after me."
    — John Podhoretz, (15:50)

• On Permanent Emergency:

  • "You don't need a revolutionary-minded person right in the Oval Office...a confused Joe Biden could lead to a whole shadow State Department and all this other stuff."
    — Abe Greenwald, (41:30)

• On Norm Erosion and Reciprocity:

  • "Erosion of those norms...if it just keeps going back and forth, we have them no longer."
    — Seth Mandel, (20:20)

• On Political Reckoning to Come:

  • "If they lose, then it's the Tea Party all over...You guys suck. You can't win. We can win."
    — John Podhoretz, (58:11)

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Important Segment Timestamps

• 01:18-06:03: Opening roundup of recent Trump actions—especially the Lisa Cook situation and its implications
• 06:10-10:00: Discussion of symbolic executive orders (flag burning) and their real political function
• 10:07-12:20: New policing orders in DC and their permanence
• 12:20-15:50: Historical perspective: Is Trump exceptional, or in the Biden/Obama pattern?
• 15:50-22:19: Tit-for-tat, cultural attitudes, and the MAGA perception of their campaign
• 22:19-31:03: Trump's rejection of Congressional process; bypassing constitutional levers
• 31:03-41:30: Are we living a revolutionary moment? Comparing Trump, his staff, and their intentions
• 41:30-46:13: Biden, the role of staffers, and how “emergency” policymaking becomes the norm
• 46:13-54:34: Whether the public would elect a "true revolutionary"; how the moderate vs. radical split may play out
• 54:34-58:13: The 2025/2026 electoral landscape—does a moderate Democrat even have a future?
• 58:11-end: Reflections and cultural recommendations (skippable for content summary)

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Conclusion: What’s at Stake?

The Commentary panel argues that while Trump’s current batch of executive power grabs may, on the surface, seem like more of the same (given recent precedents), the widespread disregard for process and the open justification of “emergency” thinking suggest a far more dangerous trend: the normalization of breaking constitutional traditions. Both parties, they fear, face futures where internal extremes use legitimate grievances to justify further norm-shattering, leaving less and less space for both restraint and the center.

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For listeners pressed for time:

• The first 35 minutes offer the heart of the legal and philosophical analysis.
• Key quoted moments:
  • [04:20] – On intimidation and the Fed
  • [06:39] – On flag burning as performance
  • [15:50] – On the circular logic of executive overreach
  • [31:03] – On whether Trump is a revolutionary
  • [54:34] – Electoral consequences for party futures

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Transcript

[John Podhoretz]

Mike and Alyssa are always trying to outdo each other. When Alyssa got a small water bottle, Mike showed up with a 4 liter jug. When Mike started gardening, Alyssa started beekeeping. Oh, come on. They called a truce for their holiday and used Expedia trip planner to collaborate on all the details of their trip. Once there, Mike still did more laps around the pool. Whatever. You were made to outdo your holidays. We were made to help organize the competition. Expedia made to travel. No way of knowing which way it's going. Hope for the best.

[Abe Greenwald]

Expect the worst.

[John Podhoretz]

Hope for the best. Welcome to the Commentary Magazine daily podcast. Today is Tuesday, August 26, 2025. I am Jon Pod Horowitz, the editor of Commentary magazine. With me, as always, executive editor Abe Greenwald. Hi Abe.

[Christine Rosen]

Hi John.

[John Podhoretz]

Senior editor Seth Mandel. Hi Seth.

[Abe Greenwald]

Hi John.

[John Podhoretz]

And Social Commentary columnist Christine Rosen. Hi Christine.

[Seth Mandel]

Hi John.

[John Podhoretz]

So the last five or six days have featured a flurry of activity relating to the executive branch and Donald Trump extending what he believes to be his executive powers in highly problematic ways. We spent much of the Biden presidency bemoaning and complaining and attacking Biden administration's extra constitutional behavior in a variety of manners. The behavior by the cdc, using executive power to suspend rent increases and evictions. The Centers for Disease Control taking over the housing market in the United States, student debt loan forgiveness, which was a big one. Almost every week it seemed like there were things that the Biden administration doing that were seem like constitutional atrocities to us. And I have to say that things that Donald Trump are doing, have been doing are very much in the same category of appearing to be constitutional atrocities. And simple honesty requires that while some of us at least have been delighted by some of the efforts made by the Trump administration on Civil Rights, Title 6, Anti Semitism, the campuses, Israel, Iran and the like. We can't be silent when these things happen that have happened before that we found fault with. And whether they're politically popular or not is really not the question. So the latest, the big one, the one that we're going to hear the most about, is his announcement that he is removing one of the Fed Federal Reserve Board members, Lisa Cook, on the grounds that she can no longer serve because there are supposedly issues with her statements on a mortgage application. It's clearly pretextual. She has not been charged with anything. No authority that we know of has actually brought any kind of action against her. There is a member of the Federal Housing Commission who has been pushing this matter named Polti, whom I've never heard heard of before the Supreme Court in ruling earlier this summer that Trump did have the power to remove members of supposedly independent boards like the consumer. I can't remember what it's called the Elizabeth Warren Consumer Commission, Financial Protection Bureau, something like that, that, that, yes, the President does have the power to remove and to do things with, because they're not, they, they are in fact, executive agencies specifically, in its opinion, said, you can't go near the Fed. The Fed is, of all the agencies, actually quasi independent. And the President does not have executive authorial power over, over the, over the Federal Reserve. And he has clearly decided to challenge that or to push or to push this matter either because he sees no political, he sees no political harm in saying he wants to remove a Fed chairman for cause and scare the Fed chairman and maybe get her to quit because it's too much money to defend herself in court. Which, which it will be. I mean, it's. She, as she has already said, Lisa Cook, that she will, she will contest this matter. That's not cheap. And I don't think the, she can get the Fed to pay for it. So, you know, this is a form of intimidation, an effort to, you know, use presidential power to force a political opponent from office in a, or what he, somebody he deems to be an opponent or someone whom he thinks is in the way. So that may not harm him particularly, but it harms us as a nation. Anybody have any thoughts on where all this is in? And we rating John Bolton saying he's going to go after Chris Christie. We talked about these yesterday. And then some other stuff like Christine's favorite, which is the executive order criminalizing the burning of the American flag, which is already a settled constitutional question, was settled by the Supreme Court 30 years ago or longer.

[Seth Mandel]

1989, Texas v. Johnson.

[John Podhoretz]

There we go. 36 years ago.

[Seth Mandel]

Yeah.

[John Podhoretz]

Where, you know, this was a very serious matter discussed very heavily. Part of the 1988 presidential campaign turned on the question of the American flag and how it was to be treated and whether it was a secular icon and therefore could not. It was beyond the bounds of speech. And in a famous opinion, actually the most conservative member of the court, Antonin Scalia, said, no, if you own the flag, you can burn the flag so well.

[Seth Mandel]

And we should add to this the weird weasel words in this executive order. If Trump really cared about the desecration of the flag and wanted to criminalize its burning, he should get a constitutional amendment passed because that's what it would take to do this, to have this exception to our to our very robust free speech rights. But that's not what he's doing. He's, he's, this, this, I think, is just pure performance art for him. And he, and there are all these weasel words like, well, it's only if it's burned in the immediate, immediate time before inciting violence or rioting, or. So basically it's when you see those news images of people burning flags during a riot on the street, marching around, he wants to criminalize that. Well, that's still free speech. So, so this is the, this is the point where I think his, his understanding of the Constitution or lack thereof becomes very clear. The other one, of course, is that while we still have to bring up that the TikTok ban passed by Congress is still not being enforced, and he was speaking again this week about extending the time through which it should not that TikTok is still allowed in the country, which is just a payoff to the Chinese Communist Party, and they've started a TikTok account at the White House. So this is all just completely flouting the way that our system of government is expected and should be operated and that the TikTok thing should be shut down very quickly. And it hasn't been. We're just, people just shrug and say, I guess this is the new reality. We shouldn't be accepting this new reality.

[Christine Rosen]

Well, we should say that, you know, largely when Trump pushes the bounds of acceptability, constitutionality, the court has swooped in here and there, judges all over the country have have, you know, paused, held objections to, to these actions. So from his perspective, from the administration's perspective, yet they want to do a lot of things very obviously. And I think they're thinking, well, we'll, we'll just keep pushing and the courts will do what they'll do. And they have listened to the court so far. I mean, that was the big sort of sci fi level fear about the administration earlier on, that there were 9 billion stories. Will Trump defy the courts? That answer is, so far, no.

[John Podhoretz]

Yeah.

[Abe Greenwald]

And there's also the question of which actions he's taking that are intended as trolls and bait and which actions are, you know, he intends to, to see as semi permanent. You know, like the flag burning thing is, I think everybody's first reaction was accurate, which was, we're going to see a lot of flag burning now. And that's, and that's pretty much all that a flag burning executive order is going to do. People aren't, you know, as Christine said, this is so settled that you Know, but, but it is going to bait people into burning the American flag. And that's an issue that, you know, people don't like the burning of the American flag, whether it's legal or not. And it looks like he's just kind of playing games with that. But then, you know, there are these other ones, like the, the, the executive order that he signed yesterday about public safety.

[John Podhoretz]

Is it.

[Abe Greenwald]

I'll read part of it. It instructs law enforcement agencies that a member of the DC Safe and Beautiful Task Force. I love that name, by the way. The Safe and Beautiful Task Force. Who could be against that? To create and begin training Manning, hiring and equipping specialized units that are dedicated to ensuring public safety and order in the nation's capital that can be deployed whenever the circumstances necessitate. And the secret. The order directs the Secretary of Defense to create a specialized D.C. national Guard unit trained to ensure public safety and order in the nation's capital when its activation becomes necessary. So that sounds like a permanent thing that is going to be under the rubric of the Department of Defense and just creating new, you know, creating new bands of, of enforcers. That sort of thing doesn't go away. Right. Because if you, if you create a program within the Department of the Defense that creates a new special Guard unit, it's not going to just disappear because people didn't fall for the bait or whatever. That's not so. There's, there's two different types of issues here, and they're both bad. But there are going to be lingering consequences for some of this stuff because some of them are government programs and some of them are executive orders that would be smacked down. And the government programs themselves will, you know, will linger on.

[Seth Mandel]

We should, we should add to the list of bullying that John, you correctly listed at the beginning of the podcast demanding of companies that the government get a stake in it. We didn't talk about this yesterday, but intel and the government taking a stake in country companies. As a free market conservative, I find this abhorrent also. It's just bad policy. It's bad economic policy. And I urge every single MAGA friend of ours who listens to us to consider. Would you like President Alexandria Ocasio Cortez telling companies how to run their businesses and telling this is the problem is Seth's exactly right. Some of these things will have permanent legs and opposition will use it very effectively as a weapon when they retain power, which they do, because that's how our system works.

[Abe Greenwald]

Owning Amazon, that's the.

[John Podhoretz]

I had a Long conversation yesterday with a, With a neocon, let's say neocon friend who is very, very alarmed by everything that's going on, wants, in part because of actions he thinks that Trump has taken that are heroic in, in. In defense of Israel, in attacking Iran, in going after the universities for their shameful conduct toward Jewish students. And yet he's looking at the panoply of Trump executive order efforts and saying, I just don't see how this is any different from the very reasons that I thought that Biden or Obama should have been impeached in other circumstances. And how is it different? And I'm freaking out, and I don't. I don't know where to go with this or with the emotions that this is triggering in me. And I think the problem with the more apocalyptic interpretations of Trump's behavior, beginning in the first term, through the interregnum and back to now, expressed probably best or most eloquently by Robert Kagan and others, is that, you know, Trump is essentially attempting to destroy the institutional foundations of the United States and replace our constitutional system with something much more autocratic that this is. We are in a period of revolutionary change. We're living through it. We always wondered what would happen if we had to live through such a period, and we're living through it now. And one of the ways that we're dealing with it is by pretending that it isn't really happening. But it is really happening. And, you know, here it is. And I think that that overestimates Trump's ideological purpose or his purpose in taking and maintaining and returning to power, which is not an effort to structurally redefine the United States to be a strong man's paradise. It is. He. It is. I want to change things. You want to stop me. And then you spent eight years trying to stop me, using all of these unbelievably illegitimate methods and means that, you know, go under the rubric of lawfare. Right? I mean, sort of this, the. The deep state stuff, pursuits by intelligence agencies and the FBI and Crossfire Hurricane and, And various other things. And then, and then on to the seven indictments during, during the period when she was out. Two. Two impeachments. Then he's out of office. Seven indictments in federal and then law estate level here in New York and in Georgia. And you're just coming after me and I want to do what I want to do. And fafo, like, you want to f with me. I'm now going to f with you. You're going to be my national security advisor and go write a book that's hostile to me after I, after all I've done for you? Well, you know, when I get back into power, I'm gonna take a hammer and try to hit you over the head with it, because that's what I do. If you're, if you're Chris Christie and you're gonna go on ABC's this Week and say nasty things about me, I'm gonna look into Bridgegate because that's what I get to do as president. That's what they did to me. I'm gonna do it to you. I'll do it to anybody. And if I get a good idea and just because Congress is so slow, I'm gonna enact it and then see what you can do to stop me. That's what Obama did. That's what Biden did. That's what Obama did with the daca. And that's what Obama did when he said, I have a pen and a phone and I'm not going to wait for Congress to act. He did that. Biden did all the stuff I mentioned at the beginning. So don't come at me like I'm just using the tools that Democrats used before me and after me. Executive orders, and so the hell with you. And I think that's appalling. But I, I don't think that there is a systematic effort to undermine the United States of America. I think that's outs. He's a very contextual person, not a theoretical person. He is not in. Right. Mein Kampf. He's not trying to impose a new idea of democratic or populist order in the United States. He just wants to do what he wants to do and thinks that these niceties that we're mentioning are forms of unilateral disarmament, that the Democrats get to do whatever they want to do. And then when we come in and try to do what we want to do, then you all get all hysterical and say, we're fascist. You're the fascist. You're the one who wanted to just forgive 35 million loans that are matters of private contract.

[Christine Rosen]

Yeah. Trump's support, you know, we're coming at this as, hey, look, Trump's doing this, Trump's doing that. Trump's doing that. His supporters come at it entirely differently. They're saying, no, no, this is, this is mid fight. This is, you know, this started long ago. This has been a sort of battle by battle for him. He is, you know, he is pushing back on those who would destroy him. You know he did speak at some point after being reelected of sort of that being not vengeance enough, but sort of like sort of, you know, after having say said I will be your retribution. He seemed to say, no, I'm not going to bother with that. I'm not. I'm not going to. They're the ones who criminalized everything. They criminalized it, not me. Weaponized. They weaponized everything. I'm not going to weaponize everything. Clearly he can't resist weaponizing institutions. Hi everyone, it's Abe. You don't want to miss this. Brickhouse Nutrition's Labor Day sale just went live for a few days only. You can save 25% on everything with code Labor Day 25. Start, fall off strong, reboot your health and save big. This massive sale includes the best selling weight loss formula Lean Doctor formulated. Lean helps turn excess fat into energy, reduce appetite and curb cravings. Lean helps you reach your weight loss goals without needles or prescriptions. And then there's Field of Greens. It's a daily go to. It's the super fruit and vegetable drink that promises that your doctor will notice your improved health or your money back. So I'll be stocking up. Plus there are favorites like Radiance, their super collagen booster, and even the new Brick House Whey protein. It's all on sale 25% off, but only for a few days. Kick off Fall feeling stronger and more confident than ever. Head over to brickhouse nutrition.com use code laborday25 for 25% off. That's brickhouse nutrition.com code labor day 25 labor day 25 brickhouse nutrition.com this episode.

[John Podhoretz]

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[Abe Greenwald]

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[Christine Rosen]

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[John Podhoretz]

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[Christine Rosen]

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[Seth Mandel]

There's just one we're calling them niceties. And that, I think already shows how transformative the culture has become around the erosion of norms. Because you're absolutely right, John. And Abe's correct too, that MAGA supporters are they're right to point to a number of these things and say Democrats did them first. But the erosion of those norms, if it just keeps going back and forth, we have them no longer. And what that means is what we there is a new newness to the quality of the things Trump is doing now because the norms have been eroded by both Sides. What I see with a lot of MAGA supporters, particularly the sort of MAGA self appointed MAGA intellectual types, the activist intellectual types, is, is that they say, you know, I don't really care about the principles behind whether or not people should be allowed to burn flags. We have bigger battles. That is what happens when there are no more norms any longer and when a very engaged faction of either political party has contempt for norms because we do need to restore and rebuild these. And the courts have been the last resort. Abe was absolutely correct to point that out, but it's the same reason why it's very frustrating. I thought a ton of Biden's pardons were just execrable. I don't think, I think we should completely reform the President's pardon power. I also think it's terrible that Trump gave blanket pardons to the January six participants. I mean, these sorts of things, the back and forth, the back and forth the average voter looks at and goes, what are we any longer? So restoring norms is very difficult and you do need at least one branch of government to cling to them. Right now, that's the courts. But again, Congress, Congress is really the place where these things need to be restored. He's not going to Congress for any of this stuff, but he is sending J.D. vance out, you know, to show the big beautiful bill and try to persuade people that this is all good. I don't see him trying to use the levers of constitutional power in a way he could. He's got a Republican majority. Why not use that? So I do. It's a little different in the sense that he has contempt even for the process, even if he doesn't want to completely undermine it. Yeah.

[Abe Greenwald]

I mean, he said yesterday, like, I'm going to, I'm going to put this, I'm going to put my Posse Comitatus executive order to Congress. And I was like cheering. I was like, that's great. Because in the past if you wanted to politicize, so called politicizing, I mean, these, this is politics. So I don't, I hate using the word politicized for things that are political. But if you wanted to play games with this stuff, you would go to Congress with something that the Democrat, that would put the Democrats in a difficult position, saying no, that's what you would do. You would put them on the record saying, no, no cops or whatever. Right. And what Trump does is he just skips that whole part. And there are all these ways that you could go through the system that you could gain the political Benefits from, you know, as they say, heightening the contradictions or whatever. You know, if he wants to highlight the fact that he believes in public order and Democrats don't believe in public order. And you know what, if you ask Democrats, they would say, no, I don't want cops on the streets of D.C. i want social workers. The move would be to put it in a bill and try to force a vote on something like that. And so, you know, when he joke, he, but he jokes about that, he said, well, I would even put this in front of Congress because it's so, you know, it's so popular. But he's not going to do it is the thing. It's like a tease. He knows that he, he understands that he could do this in a much more, you know, a much more legitimate way, but also a way that conforms to the norms of the past, which is that even if you're doing this to play games or politicize something, there is a legitimate way to do that through the levers of the law now that you don't actually have to set new norms or break old ones to do so. And, and he seems to be aware of that and just goes around it anyway.

[John Podhoretz]

So one of the norms that we were told over the last couple of months has been breached, and that is horrifying because of all of the good that the norm did before Trump breached it is this question of whether or not to withhold monies, grant monies to universities for their. Particularly for their health research, because these universities have behaved in execrable fashion on Title 6 and civil rights matters. And that basically this is something the administration is willing to go into negotiation with these universities on what kind of fines they're willing to pay to acknowledge, even if they don't specifically, in the documents that accompany the fines, acknowledge their wrongdoing, that it makes it. That they've established the precept that if they go back to the. Well, the way and do the things that they did before, that there is a precedent for them getting, you know, getting the hammer brought down on them. And this is all terrible because what they do is so wonderful. They're doing all this wonderful medical research, and it's just wonderful and great. And Trump and the Trump people who are involved in this are like, it may or may not be great, but these institutions have been behaving as though they have a right to this federal money. They don't. It comes with strings. The strings are obeying the laws of the United States. And if they don't they don't get the money. And if they agree to stop, and they're going to do, they will fulfill X, Y and Z efforts to show that they understand that they did wrong and that they're going to stop doing wrong and that they're going to start doing right and handling things in the right way. Then we can turn the spigot back on. So there's a case in which the norm, which is not a constitutional norm or anything like that, the norm is you give us money from the government and we do whatever we want, and we're prestigious, and we have the entire editorial boards of every newspaper and every elite person in America on our side, and we're gonna make immense trouble for you. You leave us alone. And that's something that Trump is not only immune to, but welcomes the fight for, and so do the people under him. Then you get to the lawfare stuff, and you hire Dan Bongino and you hire Cash Patel and you hire whoever this guy is who wanted to pursue Lisa Cook at the housing agency and all of that. And there's something different because I, as I say, I don't think Trump wants to rewrite the Constitution. I'm not. Or rewrite our Constitution.

[Seth Mandel]

No, he just wants to ignore it.

[John Podhoretz]

They do. The MAGA intellectuals, if you want to call them that, or the sort of activist intellectuals, the same crew of people in some weird way that in the early 90s, in the 1930s with FDR or in the 1960s with JFK, who came in from the academy, highly educated, with all kinds of cockamamie, socialist, intrusive ideas about economic behavior and all that, and sort of populated the administrations and started in on what would devolve into both the New Deal and the Great Society, both of which were very serious efforts to go at norms, and even constitutional norms, though with legislation to be fair, unlike executive orders. That's what these guys are doing now. But actually, they kind of do want a strong man. They want the two levels under Trump. They want a new system in which the effort to go at liberals and to change culture to revolutionary culture away from liberal norms require is. Makes this not only legitimate, but moral. And not only moral, but people like us who are saying, oh, no, no, you can't do this and you can't do that. We are effectively ceding the high ground to the enemy that wants to destroy America. They want to save America. And America is not saved by hewing to constitutional niceties and norms. America has to be defended in urban trench warfare in which you come at us with. You come at us with the, with the debt forgiveness. We're going to come to you with. We're seizing 10% of intel because this is also our way of controlling Intel's wokeness. Now, intel won't be allowed to be woke because we'll be at the board meeting saying we're the largest stockholder. You better not, you know, have a diversity department or something like that. I've been trying to figure out what it is that they want.

[Abe Greenwald]

I don't think they have seats with Intel.

[John Podhoretz]

Right.

[Abe Greenwald]

That was part of the deal.

[John Podhoretz]

Or I don't know. They don't. But that's why this is so mystifying. In a certain way, if you sort of game it out, it's not clear why it's about.

[Seth Mandel]

It's raw power. It's raw power. It's meant to actually cow other companies that might try to push back against something that Trump might tell them to do. There's obviously something going on with China here, too, where Trump is kind of blocking efforts. And then this part, again, I think this is very bad efforts on the part of some of our elected officials who are looking into the way China is trying to infiltrate some of these very crucial technology companies. But at the end of the day, they're doing the same thing that the radicals on the other side have long done, which is they go around the system by using claims of constant permanent emergency, which is we spent year, the entire Biden administration, correctly criticizing for being an overreach of an executive authority. He's doing exactly the same thing. And the courts are looking at that in terms of the tariffs and all these other economic policies, but also executive orders. He's completely abused that. You just write something down, has a photo op, signs it with his pen and that. And I think perhaps members of his administration think, well, unless the courts block us now, this is the law of the land. No, it is not. That is not how our system works. And I think constantly reminding people of that doesn't make us aiding and abetting the enemy. We've, we've all at least tried to be honest in pointing out the errors when the Democrats. But it is setting a precedent for the future.

[John Podhoretz]

But so, so I'm now good. I'm dividing what I started with into two, I don't know, you call tranches. So there is the. Does Trump want to revolutionize America into a new kind of system? And I think there, the answer is no. He just wants to do what he wants to do. He gets mercurial ideas that he wants to enact them, and he knows that he's getting into fights with people that he can win because they're stupid. Because the left has gone nuts and doesn't understand that saying, no, no, no, don't stop crime is like a winning issue. Like, there are people on the left, like Zora Mamdani, who wants to end all misdemeanor prosecutions in New York City, and the fact that in the District of Columbia, apparently they do not prosecute half the crimes that people are arrested for, which, of course, is very subduing of any police department wanting to do its job and all of that. And Trump simply highlighting that is like a gigantic political victory. And that's. That's nothing and that's fine. So he's taking on fights that he can win, that he understands in his amazing animal cunning way. Seems ridiculous to, like, even a fight over the American flag. Like, what does he want? Yeah, he's going to get communists in America to burn the American flag and then say, ah, you see, they hate America, and they do, and they're showing it. And then that helps in 2026. So there's that. That's for political advantage. And his own. You know, again, also the stuff where he's like, oh, John Bolton, you think you can do whatever you want to do to me, I get to use my power to make your life a misery, which he doesn't, and he shouldn't, and it's awful. And. But I don't think that its purpose is to overhaul America. I'm not so sure that's true of Cash Patel, who is the one who sent the, you know, the people to raid Bolton's house. I see no evidence or indication in the logic, the language or the rhetoric or the things that have been said since 2015 on Trump's behalf by this effort to create an intellectual framework for Trumpism that they are not embracing a new kind of idea about America, which is that we are in a state of perpetual emergency because the culture war is so severe, because the left wants to redefine what it means to be literally human and what it means to be a male or a female. And because they'll go at anything and they'll try to seize all your money and they'll. And they'll use Covid powers to lock playgrounds and tell you you can't go pray and that kind of thing, that is a permanent emergency. And the rules of the society have to be overthrown and the constitutional norms have to be overthrown because they have tended in the direction of the people who are doing these terrible things. So the problem is that, I mean.

[Seth Mandel]

I'm sorry to interrupt, but I think that's giving Trump a little bit too much the benefit of the doubt.

[John Podhoretz]

Not giving Trump the benefit. You mean, am I giving him. I'm saying it's them and not him.

[Seth Mandel]

He might not have as his intention to completely disrupt and destroy our republic and its constitution, but chipping away. And it's not just norms, chipping, you know, using these constant stress tests of our system at a time when there is a lot of polarization, a lot of anger, a lot of uptick in violence could have the effect of an exhausted public just going, just, just fix it. Just fix it. And he, he plays on that all the time. And I do think that that matters. And I do think his vanity here is a very important part of it. He's just unfurled some huge poster here in D.C. of his face on a federal building. That's ridiculous. And we should point that out that that's ridiculous. And as a conservative, we should be horrified of these things. He is not a conservative. And I know I'm going on an anti Trump ramp rant and I'll get the usual amount of hate emails and I welcome them because. Just frustrated that even in the way, even in the way that we talk about what he's doing, we, we need to come back to some standard of how an executive should behave. An executive who's beholden not to his own vanity, not to his own bank account or his own family or his followers, but to the people. And the people don't always agree. And he never acknowledges that. And I think that was Obama's problem too. The conceit, the arrogance of like, well, I know what's best. Trump has that as well. Okay, rant over.

[Abe Greenwald]

I don't, I don't believe in a negative hate emails thing, because in our reviews, even our neg reviews are always like, but that Christine is pretty great.

[Seth Mandel]

That's going to end. That ends today.

[John Podhoretz]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. You're like, you're like at 95% on Rotten Tomatoes.

[Seth Mandel]

Oh, no, bring it.

[John Podhoretz]

Yeah.

[Seth Mandel]

No, no, no, I'm terrible. Bring it.

[John Podhoretz]

Bring the criticism.

[Christine Rosen]

I applaud Christine's rant, but I think there's also another unique quality with Trump that gives these, what John's talking about, these sort of second level administration staffers, the people who are sort of drunk on his power, that gives them an opportunity. And this is his quality where if you come to him with something novel that seems to make sense on its surface without scratching it, without going one step deeper. He goes, yeah, why not? Sounds good. Yeah, seems reasonable.

[John Podhoretz]

Try it.

[Christine Rosen]

You know, so they have this great opportunity with him. He is willing to greenlight completely unorthodox ideas and approaches and see where they go. He enjoys it.

[John Podhoretz]

So that's a very good. That'd be great.

[Seth Mandel]

That can work really well in some contexts. I mean, that's, that can be an effective leadership tool.

[John Podhoretz]

Make a ludicrous analogy. So I, because the story I'm about to tell, I was 23. Trump is like approaching 79. Right. So it's ridiculous for me to analogize myself as a 23 year old to Trump as a 79 year old and in his second term as president. But I became a manager very young at the Washington Times. I became the editor of a section there at a very young age and then did some other stuff there. And I was always startled by the fact that I wanted to do what I thought were wild and creative things that I had a kind of license to do, and that the people under me or the people who were working for me, who were more poor, older and more seasoned and more, you know, professional, let's say, were always resistant. And it was like, this should be the other way around. Like, you should be coming to me with the creative, wild ideas. And I get to pick and choose. I'll do this one. But we'll do. It's too much to do three or four of them this week. We'll do one, and then we'll have a conventional section on Wednesday and Thursday, and then we'll do something maybe a little weird on Friday or something like that. And that I always thought, isn't this wrong? Like, I'm, I'm not supposed to be the creative force. I'm the managerial force. But you're also unimaginative. And you're, you don't seem to, like, want to do anything different or try to break the mold or anything like that. And Trump, yeah, it's like, don't come to me and explain to me how you can run the Justice Department 5% better. That's of no interest to me. I want to know how to do something fun. I want to do something new. I want to do something fresh. And the distinction here between me and Trump is that the people that I was working with really didn't want to do it, and they want to do it. That's all they want to do. They don't want to run the Justice Department properly. Having Said, look, here's how Biden and Obama ran the Justice Department improperly and how the deep state under Trump in the first term sought to control the levers of power at the Justice Department. And, you know, we had to have an internal civil war over it to control them. They want to screw around with the gears of power. That's why they're there. That's what they want. That's all they hunger for. It's not, we can do this better. And when we're done, this country is going to be 12% better than it was. And that's pretty great because this country is pretty great as it stands. They are. This country is a charnel house of garbage. And we are cleaning the Aegean stables. We're going to take this literally Herculean task and clean the Augean stables. We're gonna revolutionize the intelligence agencies. That's what Tulsi Gabbard is trying to do. And we're doing this at the, at the, at the FBI. Trump didn't come up with the posse comitatus idea, obviously. He's not like, let's get lots of little new soldiers to. It's not going to happen, obviously. And, and so that's where I get scared for the future. In an odd way, Trump isn't a revolutionary, but I don't know that the Republican Party is not training itself to be a permanent revolutionary force. And that's very frightening because we also have. And what's going on in the Democratic Party, the revolutionary forces in the Democratic Party. We're already talking here about people like Obama and Biden who are not revolutionaries. Right. They really weren't like temperamentally. They certainly weren't. And yet they of course took on revolutionary authority or revolutionary powers because it was just too alluring not to let a crisis go to waste, as Rahm Emanuel said when he was Obama's chief of staff. But real, actual revolutionaries are taking over the Democratic Party.

[Abe Greenwald]

You know, isn't Biden actually a very good point to raise, though? Because it was the people around him too. Right. I mean, this is, this is, this is the, the threat that you're describing is one in which you don't need a revolutionary minded person right. In the Oval Office to go on. All right, Trump, Trump does love messing with stuff and breaking stuff. But the point is that, you know, a confused Joe Biden could lead to, you know, a whole shadow, you know, State Department and all this other stuff.

[Seth Mandel]

But the other are things we should vot in the future.

[John Podhoretz]

Absolutely. But I'm just saying the other thing.

[Abe Greenwald]

The other thing that, that's the problem with this way of thinking is that the emergency, you know, we encountered this first in 2016 in a big way because of the Flight 93 mentality, which, you know, was, you know, the sort of intellectual framework for living as if we are in, in a state of emergency. And the thing about the state of emergency is that, well, Trump's people were in charge. I know they'll say, well, people were undermining us in the first term and we didn't know what we were doing, whatever. But this is his second term now. And at what point do you, do we as citizens get to say to these people, all right, well, you've got five years, you know, of governing under your belt. You've been running the Republican Party for a full decade now. If things are still getting worse, maybe you're not good at this. Maybe your, you know, attempt to clean things up is only making things messier. And what kind of, you know, in other words, are you just sort of doing the broken windows theory here? But the Paul Krugman version where he says, you know, aliens, it would be great if aliens, he once said to come down and break everybody's windows because we'd have all these, all these windows repairmen have jobs and the economic activity would boost. Right? Are you, are you like an army of Paul Krugman's in the federal government where you just break in stuff in order to have something to fix? I mean, that I think is legitimate. We, at what point do you get to say the people who are in charge, okay, well, show us some results. And you don't see it. And so it goes from being, well, we have to take emergency powers right now to stop this all from happening. And then it's, we have to keep emergency powers because look at the deep staters who are trying to undermine the reforms that we're doing and all this other stuff. And it becomes permanent, a permanent way of thinking and governing overnight.

[John Podhoretz]

Hi, everyone, I'm Matt Evert, CEO and founder of Crash Champions. Welcome to Pod Crash. On Pod Crash, we'll dive deep with industry leaders and game changers because we want to uncover their secrets to success. We're going to explore everything from building trust, building a rock solid team, to champion blue collar work. And we also want to talk about creating explosive growth in your business. You'll hear actionable advice, real leadership and business lessons along with what's worked for these incredible people throughout their career. We're even going to go in depth into what I Call a champions mindset. This is the very philosophy that I use to champion people and take crash champions from one single shop to over 650 locations today. And now I want to share that information with you, watch or listen to pod crash on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Abe Greenwald]

I'm Oliver Darcy. And I'm John Passantino. We have spent years covering the inner workings of the news media, tech, politics, Hollywood, and power. Now through our nightly newsletter status. And we're bringing that same reporting and sharp analysis to a new podcast, Powerlines. 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. No spin, no fluff, just sharp analysis.

[Seth Mandel]

That isn't afraid to call it like it is.

[John Podhoretz]

We also pull back the curtain via.

[Abe Greenwald]

Our exclusive reporting to take you behind the scenes. 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.

[John Podhoretz]

Oh, my God. That's Power Lines presented by Status.

[Abe Greenwald]

Follow power lines and listen on Apple, Spotify, Amazon Music, or your favorite podcast.

[Christine Rosen]

Breaking Norms to restore norms. I mean, is. Is. But.

[John Podhoretz]

But they don't want to. Right? But they don't want to restore norm. That's where Christine is right about this. And you, you mentioned the Flight 93 mindset. Well, the author of the Art of the Flight 93 article is the Director of Policy Planning at the State Department. Like, that's somebody who said America is already finished. So we need to do is fly the plane into the ground and then see what we can do to recover our national spirit or whatever. Rebuild after. After the plane has already, you know, been hijacked by the monsters and then we'll see if we can kill them. That I don't even know what the analogy was precisely, but we kill them and we kill us and we start anew.

[Seth Mandel]

So it was once the plane's going down, heroes have to step up and still do the right thing. Right?

[John Podhoretz]

And still do the right thing by helping crash the plane.

[Seth Mandel]

Right.

[John Podhoretz]

Okay, so. But he's at State Bridge. Colby is a justice. Vance has all these people around him. We know, you know, people who were not acceptable in the first term of Trump, like Darren Beatty, the white supremacist speechwriter is, has a serious position in the Trump administration. Those are the people. If I think Long term. That's why I'm saying like it's not that Trump is Hitler and I'm not saying that they're Nazis, but it is the question of what he leaves in his wake.

[Christine Rosen]

I thought about that.

[John Podhoretz]

Okay.

[Christine Rosen]

It's just a hunch. My hunch is that the American people, voters, the country would reject a genuine revolutionary at the top. I think this is actually the closest they'll get. I think you, you almost need an intermediary type figure between.

[John Podhoretz]

Biden was supposed to be that. Yeah, but, but that's literally why Biden got elected, was to be, was to say this. You've all, it's all gone too far. So we're going to appoint this broken down hack old guy who seems like he's got the temperament of a get along to go along person. And then he had no, he had no antibodies to fight. No, but I mean, but what I'm.

[Christine Rosen]

What I'm saying is that you know, if, if, if the six Trump successor is a true MAGA revolutionary, one of these people who wants to break norms, not to restore norms overtly, I don't think they will succeed electorally, that is my guess because I think someone like Trump, the country said, well, he's a wacky celebrity billionaire, he's a different animal who has these revolutionaries around him.

[John Podhoretz]

Okay, let me get crushingly morose then in response to you because we get back to the binary choice issue. So there was a binary choice between Trump and Biden and Democrats got a do over because they were heading down into the buzzsaw of the election with a senile incompetent at the helm. And so they swapped him out for whoever they could swap him out for. So she wasn't a senile incompetent. She was an incompetent person of what seemed to be very modest intellectual capacities and ideas and interests. And she, she had nothing to offer. So we have two different efforts there to have the normal versus the crazy. Right? Biden's the normal, but then he's not normal anymore because he's senile. And Harris is normal. But she's really, you can't imagine her sitting in the Oval Office. She's just too puny a figure to be run, you know, the free world or something like that. 2028 binary choice. JD Vance versus AOC. Tell me when you say electorally, the country won't choose a revolutionary. The country doesn't choose the Republican nominee or the Democratic nominee. Parties are not strong anymore. So activist wings of the party have more authority and more power. So it gets to JD Vance versus aoc. So choose your poison. You know, it's not like there's going to be another option. And I know people say that's why we need a third party. Or we need to that. What about no labels? Maybe the third party, you know. You know, that's why Greek dramatists who couldn't figure out how to get themselves out of the bind they were in, invented the deus ex machina, right? The. The figure who, you know, literally at the end of the play, God would come down from the sky and fix everything because there was no way to get themselves out of the plot. It's like in Dallas when you can't figure out how to finish the season. And so you say, oh, it was all a dream. It's not gonna all be a dream. And there's. We're gonna have a choice between one of two. And right now the real political question isn't, is it gonna be Rubio or Vance? Is it gonna be. Is. Is Mamdani the Herald of the final takeover of the Democratic Party by its. By its activist wing as the Squad, which was only five or six people. Is. Are they. Were they the Heralds for a new. A new future? I don't know the answer to that question. But I do think, and I wanted to bring this up maybe to conclude here, 2025 is an off year. So there are three elections that matter in this off year. There's a New York mayoral election, which didn't matter until this happened, with this anti Semitic Muslim communist winning the primary in New York City. And then you have the governorships of Virginia and New Jersey. And in those races in Virginia, New Jersey, you have figures that are theoretically the kinds of figures who would be the Democratic rivals to Mamdani, AOC and people like that. Abigail Spamberger and Mikey Sheryl. What do they have in common? They both have mil. They both are. Spamberger was a CIA official. Mike. Is Cheryl an Air Force pilot? Credentials Congressman. They. They sit kind of pretty much in the center of their party, though that's really not the center of America. Spamber, of course, the person who had a temper tantrum in 2020 about what happened to the house when she screamed at the squad members, saying, like, you. You nearly destroyed us. You nearly took us down and ruined everything. Like, what's the matter with you saying defund the police, you crazy people. They could both lose. Like Mikey Cheryl and Abigail Spamberger could both lose. Matt was talking about Spamberger yesterday, running this race against Winsome Sears and Mikey Charlotte was running against Jack chitterelli. She's at 44% in every poll. There's a big undecided. If that's not a quiet Trump, Quiet Trump Cittarelli vote, I don't know what is. What happens if Mamdani WINS and the two moderate faces of the Democratic future lose in 2025 in an off year cycle? I don't know what 2026 looks like in the Democratic Party, but it's like, okay, we gave it a shot. We nominated the people you say should be running the party because there'll be of more appeal nationally to people in these. They're not quite purple states, but they're close to being purple states. And guess what happened? Republicans won. You guys suck. You can't win. We can win.

[Seth Mandel]

It'll be interesting to watch in the next week or so. Spamberger is now doing a big new ad buy that focuses on the economic costs of the big beautiful bill and why it's bad for the average American. And that is a very powerful, powerful message in that state in particular. And if that lands, I think she, she might shift her tactics away from the culture war stuff where she's been absolutely floundering and way, way, way more extreme than the average American voter. So I think that's a sign that maybe they recognize they need to change tactics. And, you know, the economy will remain the very important issue for most voters in this midterm, and it is still quite volatile. And the we have still not experienced the price increases that will come as a result of the big, all these wonderful tariffs that we're constantly told we have. There's kind of a strange suspended reality right now economically, but people are nervous. Companies are not doing new rounds of investment and growth and all the stuff that you would want to see. Everyone's kind of holding their breath. But by 2026, we'll see where we're headed. And I fear it's not going to be as sanguine an environment, an economic environment for a lot of voters then. And can the Republicans capitalize on that? No, they're going to be explaining it. They're going to have to, they're going to be asked over and over in town halls to explain that.

[Abe Greenwald]

And Spamberger, by the way, is also the other question about the moderates is that do they even matter? Like, if a moderate falls in the forest and, you know, nobody's around to hear it, does the moderate exist? I mean, you know, Jewish Insider, the publication has been doing something very interesting recently, which is they've been, you know, anytime Trump or somebody in a repo or a Republican state senator somewhere in Idaho says something controversial, right, the entire press goes after every, every Republican they can find said, what do you think about this? So the Jewish insider has been doing that with regard to some of the anti Zionist staffers that have cropped up around insurgent Democratic politicians around the country in mayoral races in, in, you know, and some of these upcoming elections. And they've been asking the moderates, you know, hey, how do you feel about this? And the moderates have kind of been running scared. And then the Jewish. And then they will print a story that says, you know, we couldn't get Abigail Spamberger to go on the record about, you know, this Virginia, you know, Democratic House leader who's saying all this crazy stuff, and then she'll see a bit of a backlash. And two days later she'll, you know, she'll call them or send them a press release that says, you know, I abhor hatred of all kinds or whatever. And then the same thing will go on in Minnesota where a lot of this is, you know, happening now. And, and so, you know, how much does it matter for the future, for the trend, if Spamberger and Cheryl win? I think Cheryl is in a position where, because it's New Jersey, even though New Jersey has been creeping closer to a purplish state and everything below this, you know, the state level, really.

[John Podhoretz]

Because.

[Abe Greenwald]

It'S New Jersey, people will just say, well, she ought to win, you know, and whatever. But, but for Spamberger, you know, Virginia goes back and forth and the moderates are running from the non moderates. The Spam burgers and the Cheryls are afraid to cross the Mom Donnies.

[John Podhoretz]

Right.

[Abe Greenwald]

But the Democratic.

[John Podhoretz]

I don't think it matters if they win. I actually don't think it matters if they win. I think it's going to matter a whole hell of a lot if they lose. That's part of the point I'm making here. If they win, they're both leading in the polls. So that would indicate that, you know, these are states that are largely or, you know, or sort of trend red more than they trend, you know, they trend blue more than they trend red. This is not a huge year. It's not going to be high turnout. They'll win. Maybe they'll win by a smaller margin than one expects, but they'll win. But if they lose, if they lose, then it's the Tea Party all over. It's like, why are you even running these faceless, colorless, meaningless people who don't even have the courage of the conviction to push for the kinds of robust, progressive ideas that we need to save this country. You took over. You got the people you wanted. You, they're there. You ran them. You spent $100 million trying to get them elected and they lost. You're done. We're the future, you're the past. That's what happens if they lose. If they win, the fight goes on as it is now. I don't think it's going to say, oh my God, we need everybody. You know, Abigail Spamberger is going to be the President of the United States. But a defeated Abigail Spamberger is a much larger political figure than a victorious Abigail Spamberger in a very odd way because she points to the argument that can be made that the middle of the road Democrat as we now define them, even if she's not really middle of the road, is a dead end that leads to defeat and that we are up against unprecedented populist forces that have real seductive power and we need to fight fire with fire. So that's. And so there's nothing to be said until November to see what happens happens in November. I'm going to make a recommendation very quickly. There's a movie that opened on Friday on a relatively limited number of screens. So I don't know if it's going to be playing in your area. It's called Relay. It was made by David McKenzie who directed the really superb bank heist thriller Helen High water back in 2016. If you, if anybody remembers, that movie was unexpectedly nominated for best picture was Taylor. She was the great sort of not debut but like annunciation of Taylor Sheridan. The guy went on to write Yellowstone and Landman and Tulsa King and Mayor of Kingstown and sort of revolutionize television that, that movie. Helen High Water. This is David McKenzie's latest movie and it's a thriller about a, a fixer who helps people when they've got gotten out on a limb too far as whistleblowers and they want to sue for peace against the companies that they're blowing the whistle on because the companies are coming after them with extralegal means. And this guy figures out how to negotiate a settlement with extralegal means. And the way he does so is through a communication system where no one knows who he is and he communicates through a, a system for the, for, for the deaf where you, a hearing person can speak to a deaf person over the phone because the deaf person types, goes to a place called Relay and the person on the other end transmits the message that is being read. And this is how this system works. And it is a corker of a thriller. Very unusual, very powerful, very interesting. New kind of setting, new kind of plot, new kind of hero. And why, why it's sort of sneaking into theaters this way, I don't know. I mean it doesn't have any stars in it. It stars Riz Ahmed and Lily James and actually the guy who plays the lead in Avatar, Sam Worthington. So it's not no one you ever heard of. But and I don't want to oversell it, but it's really good. If it's anywhere in your ambit, if you can find IT theater near you, this really is worth a night out. So that's Relay in theaters now. It will also be good on streaming. By the way, it's small so it's not that it needs. You need to see it on a big screen. So you could wait, but you could also go see it if you need a good night out. So we'll be back tomorrow for Seth, Christine and Abom John Pot Horts Keep the camel burning.

[Abe Greenwald]

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