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- [00:00]
John Podhoretz
Hey, it's John. I want to talk to you about Shopify. A lot of people talk to me about starting podcasts. This podcast is 10 years old. It's in a different place from a lot of podcasts because we're obviously part of a nonprofit institution and it's not a way that we are seeking to earn our livelihoods. But a lot of people look at this and say this is something I can really do to create a business and run the business and do it in a really comfortable, practical and serious way. Gotta wear a lot of different hats when you start your own business. Can be very intimidating. But one of the things that I know from a lot of people is that if your to do list is growing and growing and growing and that list starts to overrun your life, you need a tool that not only helps you out, but simplifies everything that can be a game changer for millions of businesses. That tool is Shopify, the commerce platform behind millions of businesses around the world and 10% of all e commerce in the US from household names to brands. Just getting started. You get started with your own design studio. With hundreds of ready to use templates, Shopify helps you build a beautiful online store to match your brand style. You can accelerate your content creation because it's packed with helpful AI tools that write product descriptions, page headlines, and even enhance your product photography. You get the word out like you have a marketing team behind you. Easily create email and social media campaigns wherever your customers are scrolling or strolling. And best yet, Shopify is your commerce expert with world class expertise in everything from managing inventory to international shipping to processing returns and beyond. If you're ready to sell, you're ready for Shopify. Turn your big business idea into Kaching. With Shopify on your side, sign up for your $1 per month trial and start selling today at shopify.com commentary go to shopify.com commentary that's shopify.com commentary hope for the.
- [02:23]
Abe Greenwald
Expect the worst Some preacher.
- [02:25]
Seth Mandel
Pain Some die of thirst no way.
- [02:29]
John Podhoretz
Of knowing which way it's going Hope for the best Expect the worst Hope for the best welcome to the Commentary Magazine daily podcast. Today is Tuesday, August 12, 2025. I'm John Pot Horitz, the editor of Commentary Magazine, once again reminding you October 19th here in New York City. The 16th or 15th or 17th or something. Annual Roast Commentary Roast. Our big annual fun. I am going to count them today and have a solid number. I should know. We started in 2010. We missed one. So if you go from 2010 to 2025 and miss one. You can get the number yourself. As we know we are math challenged here, so I'm not going to do this as we speak, but it is the event of the year. Fantastic stuff planned. We are roasting Clifford Asness, financial genius and all around great guy who deserves a little ribbing. Tables and seats at tables available@comMENTARY.org roast. It's not a cheap ticket, but you are coming. You will join 500 other commentary family members at an evening of high good humor and hilarity. And you will meet my fellow panelists, Executive Editor Abe Greenwald. Hi Abe.
- [03:54]
Matthew Continetti
Hi John.
- [03:55]
John Podhoretz
Senior editor Seth Mandel. Hi Seth.
- [03:58]
Abe Greenwald
Hi John.
- [03:59]
John Podhoretz
And Washington Commentary columnist and Director of Domestic Policy Studies at the American Enterprise Institute, Matthew Continetti. Hi Matt.
- [04:07]
Seth Mandel
Hi John.
- [04:08]
John Podhoretz
Quick note before we start. Siena poll, that's New York State's sort of like golden poll, came out this morning on views of the mayoral race and they show what I think is self evidently the case, which is unless there is a major shift or a bad news story or something, Mamdani Zoram Mamdani is likely to become mayor of New York because nobody else is gathering sufficient momentum to overtake him. But his poll numbers are low. He's at 37% in the poll, not higher. This is of and the most important number for me and for this podcast is this despite the New York Times are telling you that Jews in New York like Mamdani and so many of them like Mamdani and they all go to the same shul in Brooklyn that hates Israel and you know, and wants to would like you to have a trans rabbi. Nonetheless, according to this poll, 20% of the Jews in New York City support Zoran Mamdani, which is totally in line with the results of the primary, which showed according by precinct count, about 20% of Jews voting for Mamdani, 80% voting for somebody else. Of course there was ranked choice voting, so it's much more complicated. Mamdani is not closing the sale with Jewish Democrats. He is not improving his standing among Jewish Democrats or among Jews in the city. He should not be because he is doubling, doubling down and tripling down and quadrupling down on his Jew hatred, his anti Semitism, his loathing of Israel, his support for terrorism. He has decided that this is a secret sauce for him and he may be right in terms of fundraising and other things. But he but do not be fooled. Do not buy the hype. Do, do not believe what you are hearing about the Jewish community in the largest Jewish community in the United States being split on Zoram Mamdani, 4/5 of them oppose him. Maybe it should be 98% oppose him. That's what I would prefer. But nonetheless, that is the truth of the number. There's too much evidence now to suggest that it's false. And so I just wanted to deliver this news before we get to the other daily news, because it's so important to understanding the conversations we're having not only about Mamdani and about anti Semitism in America and Trump's efforts to fight antisemitism on college campuses and how the media are covering Israel and Gaza, all of which are wrapped up into one neat ball. When you read things like New York Jews really like Mamdani when 4/5 of them do not.
- [06:59]
Seth Mandel
Can I interject with an observation about one of the American Jews who supports Mamdani, and that's Vermont's Bernie Sanders, who gave an interview yesterday where he was asked if Hamas bears any responsibility for the hunger in Gaza. And Bernie Sanders said no in a completely morally disgusting statement. So the. The. That's the type of person that's attracted to Zoran Mamdani. It's a commentary on them, not. Not the American Jewish community.
- [07:41]
John Podhoretz
That's absolutely right. Okay, so let's move on to the big story yesterday, which, of course, was Donald Trump announcing a takeover of the civil. What would you call it? The civil society aspects of Washington, D.C. the nation's capital.
- [08:00]
Seth Mandel
The police force.
- [08:02]
John Podhoretz
But not just taking over the police force, also bringing in the National Guard to supplement the police force. Right.
- [08:09]
Seth Mandel
But he federalized D.C. according to the D.C. law.
- [08:14]
John Podhoretz
Home Rule Act.
- [08:15]
Seth Mandel
The Home Rule act, the president has the ability to declare an emergency, or in a time of an emergency, essentially command the D.C. government, the D.C. law enforcement agencies, for 30 days. And that's what President Trump invoked at his press conference yesterday. In addition, Trump has sent in 800 National Guard members, and earlier he sent in about 500 federal security officers, DHS, ICE, DEA. And these are the three major moves that he announced in his press conference yesterday that basically made the Democratic Party go bananas.
- [09:11]
John Podhoretz
Over this move. Okay, so there are two ways of looking at this, in my view, one of which is the way that Democrats and liberals have been responding to this, which is to say this is crazy. The crime rate in 2024 was significantly lower than it was in 2023. So how can you call this an emergency when the numbers are improving? Well, first of all, the numbers on violent crime are improving everywhere. Right. There appears to be some kind of working through of the psychosis of the COVID period that has led to this. New York, its crime rate bottomed out remarkably this year. Chicago, which is of course like pretty much the murder capital of America, has seen a significant drop in the worst of crimes. But that doesn't mean that it's not an emergency. I mean, the numbers, when you look at them of D.C. violent crime, it's 494 violent crimes per 100,000 in D.C. now in 2023 it was 775 violent crimes per 100,000. But 494 is really bad for an actually very small city. D.C. i believe has a population of around 600,000. It was 500,000 when I lived there in the 90s, but I think it's around 600,000. And if you measure by homicide, that's all you care about is homicide, things are a lot better. However, Christine's not on today for one of her favorite subjects, which is like the carjacking sprees, the attacks on the street, on individual people, you know, the cases of terrorization everywhere. And of course it's an emergency. It's an emergency almost, almost everywhere. If you define emergency as that which is going on that is making life untenable for people in many places in the. If you're going to say that this is the new normal, congratulations, you go ahead and do that and see how the rest of the country reacts to this pre 1990s crime drop idea, which is, you know, there's nothing we can do about crime. We can't do anything about crime. Crime is just like the weather and if it's high, it's high. And that you're just going to have to learn how to walk in the street and not have a radio in your car. And if you get shot, you're probably mildly responsible for being in the wrong time.
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Matthew Continetti
But the scandal is that it hasn't been thought of as an emergency for so long in so many places. I mean, I would just say, you know, as a New Yorker, I would say what's going on on the subways and on the subway platforms, that's been an emergency for a long time in my estimation. Just, just if you look at it from the mental health crisis perspective alone, let alone the violent crime. And it's like when you see. Not that the, not that the data are significant, exactly similar. But if, when you see images of New York and other cities from the 70s and 80s and you see pictures of this graffiti covered housing and transportation and you see the state of what was going on in the streets. And what is always shocking when you look back on those images is, is the level of acceptance of everyone just standing there. You know, there, that's, that, that is the surreal element. And there's something of that in what we have been going through up until this point.
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Seth Mandel
Can I make a comment about the statistic that the journalists and Democrats are banding about this idea that D.C. crime is at a, quote, unquote, 30 year low? The first observation is that the statistic itself is under question. There is currently a scandal happening in the D.C. police Department over whether the data has been manipulated and someone was fired from, for, for exactly that reason. So we can take these statistics with a grain of assault. Second, you know, 30 years ago, it was the murder capital of the country. So if you're saying, oh, don't worry, the crime is back to where it was in 1995, crime in D.C. was extremely high in 1995. That's not an accomplishment. That's a, that's a reason to do even more to combat crime. And finally, the statistics tell one story, but any statistic doesn't have the same effect as people's emotional well being.
- [14:31]
John Podhoretz
How people mean their lived experience.
- [14:33]
Seth Mandel
Yes, thank you. Yes, the lived experience, which is usually a favorite phrase of the left. So in a poll that the Post char Center, the Washington Post conducted just, just earlier this year, this is In May of 2550, 91%, I'll put it this way, 91% of respondents, residents of the District of Columbia, said that crime is either an extremely, a very or a moderately serious problem. 91% of those, 50% of the respondents said that crime was either an extremely or very serious problem. And in particular, it is the poorest residents, the minority residents of the District of Columbia, who say at even higher proportions that crime is an extremely or very serious problem. Indeed, Black women, say 65% of Black women residents of the District of Columbia say that crime is a very or extremely serious issue. Now, those numbers are down from last year, but it's still extremely high. And so it seems to me that Trump, when he sees something that bothers him, whether it's crime or whether it's the homeless tents throughout the city, his first reaction is, can I do something about it? And in this case, the statute allows him to do something about it, and that's what he's doing, I do have, I do have some slight caveats to this, which is he's doing a lot. And we are kind of getting to the point where we got A hyperactive government right now. You know, today, before we set on to record this podcast, Trump announced that he's going to the Kennedy center tomorrow, which is Wednesday. I don't know what to do. Make some more amounts, announcements, probably announce a redecorating campaign, maybe say who the nominees for the Kennedy center honors are, maybe even say he wants to rename it after Melania Trump. We don't, we don't know. But you have him becoming the marshal of the Kennedy center while becoming the mayor of the District of Columbia, while negotiating peace between Russia and Ukraine, while getting a deal with Nvidia so that Nvidia pays 15% of Chinese sales to the US government. There is a real conservative perennial lesson here, which is that the government that tries to do everything accomplishes practically nothing. And I think it's be a shame if Trump, looking at the success of his efforts to combat illegal immigration on the border, then decides, well, I can do that everywhere. He might not be able to. And then the second caveat I have is this government by emergency. So it is crime is bad in D.C. trump has the ability to do something about it. I'm all for him trying to do something about it, but we just need to recognize that the more often he declares emergencies, the more likely it is that whoever follows him in the White House, and that could be a Democrat, will do the same for issues that disturb people on the right, disturb the mainstream. There may be, you know, a trans health emergency that Mayor Zamdani will declare next year and that could be picked up by a Democratic president sometime in the future.
- [18:18]
Abe Greenwald
Can I say something about the way, about the perception of crime also? A couple years ago, I was, a colleague of mine was brushing his teeth in the office bathroom and using a, what I thought looked like a very childish toothpaste. It was like colorful. And I jokingly said to him, that's, I think my kids use that, that toothpaste. And he said it was the only one in CVS not locked behind the glass. The only toothpaste, toothpaste not locked behind the glass. And this is not, you know, this is in, this is in a high trafficked neighborhood during the day, a professional neighborhood, whatever. But the point is that you can say that crime has gone down because CVS locked everything behind a cabinet and then nobody wanted to shop there anymore because it's embarrassing to ask for, you know, the deodorant you're looking for. I don't know, whatever. Right. And so what happens that CVS closes and suddenly at in a North in a northwest D.C. neighborhood full of, of young professionals coming into the city. There's no CVS anymore to stop and whatever. Now, that doesn't sound like a big deal, but my point is that you could say, look, crime in that neighborhood has gone down. There's no more theft because there's nothing to steal. And that is something that the people who live there and work there, they see reminders of the crime that caused cause that every day, right? It's not out of sight, out of mind because you have to ask permission to get something behind glass if you want toothpaste in CVS or there's no cvs there whatever @ all. The daily reminders of what it took to drive those numbers down, first of all, are still there for everybody in the city, even if they're not experiencing the crime itself, violent crime. And, and secondly, it is. It has an effect on quality of life that people would like to see reversed. They don't want the new status quo. They don't want this to be the way it has to be in order for crime to be low, because that feels artificially deflated to them in terms of the crime statistics. They want normal life.
- [20:49]
Matthew Continetti
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- [22:06]
John Podhoretz
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- [26:09]
Seth Mandel
And you're a lifelong resident of New.
- [26:11]
John Podhoretz
York City, and I'm a lifelong, and I nothing happened, but I shouldn't have to go through that with my subway car. Right? Nobody should.
- [26:24]
Seth Mandel
But liberals, liberals think that somehow they ought to or they, they, they, that's just part of life. And you have in up first this morning, our Daily Hate. Listen, they had the report on the announcement by Trump, and the report tackled two subjects. One was youth crime, which the hosts insinuated is just a racial dog whistle that Trump is blowing here. And then they went to the homeless issue. And I do, I do think that Trump, throughout his presidency has been greatly disturbed by the fact that here he is president, United States, Washington, D.C. beautiful city. And yet for, for a decade now, we have a homeless problem like most major cities. And these tent, tent encampments, which set up usually in parks around the federal area. So the up first talks about how this is dehumanizing to the homeless to say that they need to find shelter, they need to get out of these tents, where for me, it's dehumanizing to let them live in this squalor. It just makes no sense. The second thing is they talk about, they recognize that the homeless population most overwhelmingly is either severely mentally ill or addicted to hard drugs or true alcoholics. Right. They can't manage themselves.
- [27:59]
John Podhoretz
Cells.
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Seth Mandel
And so despite this, who does NPR go to for authoritative quotes on what should be done about the homeless problem? The homeless. So you have this reporter ask a man who's living under an overpass what they think about the Trump policy. And the best part is the answer that the homeless person gave was exactly the answer that an NPR host would give, which is that we need to spend more money on the homeless. That's, that's what, that's what needs to be done. I think any commonsensical reaction says these people need to find permanent shelter. And if they don't go there voluntarily, then it is entirely within the ambit of the government to say you have to go.
- [28:43]
John Podhoretz
So let's talk about the politics here. So I'm in agreement with you that this is a bridge too far in terms of Trump, you know, swallowing, you know, by biting off more than he can chew. Given what.
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Seth Mandel
I don't think it's a bridge too far. I think it's a risk. Right. Because you want to show results.
- [29:02]
John Podhoretz
Yeah. Okay. But there's various aspects of this. Once again, excuse me. Yes. To everybody who is listening, who wants to write me and complain that I'm clearing my throat, send me a receipt that shows that you were a subscriber to commentary.org and I will apologize to you personally. If you're not and you want to complain, go take it up with your wife or your husband. I have to clear my throat. That's all I'm saying. If I get one more email from you people and I know you're not a subscriber, I'm going to reach through your eye, through your phone.
- [29:40]
Seth Mandel
We already, we already asked yesterday why they even listened to begin with.
- [29:45]
John Podhoretz
I know. Okay. So I had to clear my throat.
- [29:48]
Abe Greenwald
There or now that we're on YouTube, you can listen on mute if you just want to stare at our faces, if that's why you.
- [29:55]
John Podhoretz
Well put. Well put. Yes. Okay. So politically, though, Democrats are being lured. It's like Charlie Brown and the football, historically on ice. Now on this and on various other things, if Democrats allow the Republican Party to become the party of law and order in the United States, the consequences of that are going to be incredibly parlous for them. Now, granted, we are not in the depths of a crime spiral the way we were in the 1970s, but crime has been so little a major issue in the United States that people do not understand who are younger than 50 that it was the number one issue in the country. There was no issue that was more important to voters than crime, punishment, liberal judges letting people off with light sentences, decarceration, the original decarceration de institution of the mentally ill that led to the homeless crisis to begin with and all of that. And it was like pouring gold on the Republican Party. It turned the south red. It gave. It was one of the things, in conjunction with a sense of a lack of order internationally that brought Ronald Reagan to a 40 state victory in 1980. Hell, it was the magic sauce that led Richard Nixon to a 49 state victory in 1972, which of course, was interrupted and his triumph there was, you know, destroyed by the Watergate scandal. We have 10 cities that are the focal points of Democratic votes in the United States. They all have, they have bad mayors who are pursuing bad policies on social order, on keeping their cities clean and safe for, you know, for, for their voters. And it hasn't bitten them yet, but if it bites and there is some kind of Neo Kannish effect over the next decade as they can, as Mamdani gets elected and he's got Karen Bass in la, Brandon Johnson in Chicago, Muriel Bowser in dc, all of these people running very large and very important cities, all of whom are on the wrong side of. We need to make cities safe for people. The, the consequences for electoral Democrats, I mean, are almost unthinkable. And it is a sign of how crazy our politics is now that they don't seem to know it. Now, maybe they know it a little bit because there is this one reversal turnaround story, which is Baltimore, which apparently has, after the, you know, multiple mayoral scandals in Baltimore, like three different mayors, like I don't even. One went to jail, two resigned, I don't know, has somehow now gotten back to a more conventional policy of law and order and with, with real effects.
- [33:30]
Seth Mandel
I think, I think the Democrats have responded in a few ways. One is the Federalist narrative, right? This is a power grab. Trump is using his authorities to insert himself in places where he shouldn't be. This was Karen Bass reaction and Governor Newsom's reaction to the deployment of the National Guard in Los Angeles earlier this summer. Now, it's. That narrative doesn't quite work in DC's case because as Mayor Bowser said at her press conference, Trump can do this. We really don't have any way to stop it. There's no even, you know, disputed legal authority as there was in the case of the national.
- [34:17]
John Podhoretz
We might want to explain, we might want to take two seconds to explain why this is Constitution provides for a federal district that is the seat of government that is not owned or controlled by any state, right? And until 1974, there was no such thing as a mayor of Washington D.C. or there was some kind of a city council, right? But Congress controls. Run by a. By Congress, Congress.
- [34:44]
Seth Mandel
Congress controls the district.
- [34:46]
John Podhoretz
And even now, right.
- [34:47]
Seth Mandel
Even now the granted delegated certain powers to home rule as part of this act. And then in that act, it also left open this contingency which Trump is using now.
- [34:58]
John Podhoretz
Right.
- [35:00]
Seth Mandel
The Federalist narrative doesn't quite.
- [35:02]
John Podhoretz
Right. But the central point here is that the districts the existence of a district government. From the time the District government was incepted in the 1970s, district government has been a calamity. The police department has been extraordinarily badly run for 50 years. It was completely incompetent in dealing with the crack epidemic and the murder spree and all that that you talked about in the 80s and 90s. The mayor was a crack addict.
- [35:35]
Seth Mandel
Mayor himself was a crack mayor himself.
- [35:37]
John Podhoretz
Was a crack addict. And. And so, in fact, the experiment with home rule, a 50 year home rule, has been a failure. Yeah. And could in fact be reversed by a simple act of Congress, which, which has constitutional authority over the federal district as established in.
- [36:01]
Seth Mandel
Well, one way. One way it could solve the problem, not to divert too far is just to simply cede most of the city back to Maryland. You know, Congress has ceded parts of the original district to Virginia years ago. But if you just ceded most of the city back to Maryland, well, then guess what? The residents would have representation in Congress. And in fact, Maryland might even pick up a House seat and it would be plugged into a larger unit, a larger administrative unit, a state. So it had a normalized politics. But also Congress is not going to do that. And it's not going to do that.
- [36:41]
Abe Greenwald
But it's. But it's just worth reminding listeners that the entire point of giving Maryland, giving The land for D.C. was to just have a, A literal capital. You know, the business of capital was not to create a tiny state that ran itself. That was not the plan and that was not what was agreed to, and it's what it has turned into. But the idea behind retrocession into Maryland is that this is not what anybody actually signed up for this.
- [37:09]
Seth Mandel
And Democrats will never agree to it. Because the Democrats want two senators from the District of Columbia.
- [37:13]
John Podhoretz
Yeah, they do. And that's crazy. Yeah.
- [37:16]
Seth Mandel
But I just. Can I say one more narrative? Because I got on this thing about the narratives. So the Federalist narrative, but then the other narrative which you see is the resistance narrative, and that's the jackboot narrative, which is here.
- [37:27]
John Podhoretz
Here he is. Here's the.
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Seth Mandel
Literally, JB Pritzker invoked the Nazis to describe what Trump is doing to the District of Columbia. He said that took the Nazis could dismantle the Weimar democracy within weeks. And look at what Trump is doing by sending 800 National Guard soldiers into the District of Columbia, who, by the way, most people won't see because apparently they'll be guarding federal buildings or in the back on logistics operations. And this, I think, is the true way in which the Democrats jump the shark is that they take Trump responding to a social problem that anyone, if they just put their ideology down for a second, can recognize, and they respond not by saying, oh, well, you know, that's the wrong way to deal with the problem, or we should be cognizant of the different powers of the federal government vis a vis lower, lower levels of, of government, but instead go, there he is, Hitler. He's coming now. It's next. We're one step away from a jackboot dictatorship that I think is delegitimizing to the Democrats arguments.
- [38:47]
John Podhoretz
However, I do, I just want to.
- [38:49]
Matthew Continetti
Say when I speak with sort of comfortable liberals, that's their default. That is that the jackboot narrative is precisely the one that they sink their teeth into. You never get the, well, I see that there's a problem, but there's a better way to deal with it. It is never that. It is, it is always the rise of the dictator again and again and again.
- [39:18]
Abe Greenwald
So.
- [39:21]
Matthew Continetti
They'Re getting feedback by doing this, that, that, that induces more of it.
- [39:26]
John Podhoretz
I do, and I think that the idea that we have a divide in the United States between people who think that the government is not harsh enough on people who violate not only our laws, but our sort of common standards, and people who think that the government has no place enforcing laws and standards because laws, standards, change is a real social divide. I mean, it's, it's not necessarily a 50, 50 electoral divide. It's a cultural divide. It's the up first versus commentary magazine podcast in the morning divide. It is a, it is a real thing and it has bite and purchase for people who are made uncomfortable by, for example, the oh, my God, we shouldn't have security officers in high schools. This is terrible. What are, what, what is going on in this country? That there is somebody with a gun at the doorway of a high school and that this is how you respond, you respond to the fact that high schools have become dangerous places in many places with, I would really rather stick my head in, in the sand like an ostrich, then deal with the reality of life as it is, which is that when crime gets out of control, enforcement has to be more visible, more present, and more tough in order to reestablish deterrence against criminals. This is something to which liberals in the left are allergic to. It is a cultural divide of significance. A lot of people believe it, and therefore it's going to go on. It's also a great way to raise money to say what Trump is really doing. Here isn't he? Isn't like dealing with a runaway immigration problem where we just let things go for 10 years in a dangerous fashion or 8 years in dangerous fashion, and now we have these people no one can keep track of and we don't know where they are. And we're creating a sort of an America in which we have no border protection or anything like that. And people who are like, I don't like the look of this. I don't like that there are border patrol immigration enforcement agents who are being mean to, you know, like, to people and like, arresting them when they have committed a crime. Like, this is where I broke down as a dove on immigration, as I've often said, which is, I am a dove on immigration. I have all sorts of cultural, historical reasons why I am a dove on immigration. But when somebody says to me, well, does that mean that it's okay that these, you know, 10 million people are literally committing a crime by being in the United States? What am I supposed to say? Yes, it's okay. Of course it's not okay. It's not. That's not okay. If you can give. 10 million people can commit a crime for being in this country illegally, 10 million people can commit a crime. That bothers me a lot more also. You know, I mean, and so it, it's a, it's a cultural issue that has real resonance. And the suppression of our side or this side or the tougher side in the cultural conversation with your friends, the comfortable liberals, is one of the reasons that they remain comfortable, which is confront the perplexities of your position. Do you let your kid ride the subway at 11 o' clock at night if you live in New York? Probably not. Oh, really? Why is that? 20 years ago you would. Now you're not. Do you want to, you want Zaramdani to be mayor? Congratulations. Let's see how you feel when he's mayor. But they don't hear that. In some weird way, they, they condition themselves not to hear it. And there will be practical consequences unless, and I want to move to this, unless we all, we misread cues and signals. And I want to talk about misreading signals briefly. Bureau of labor, not the, the inflation rate came out this morning and it was fascinating to me. For this reason, at 8:00 clock this morning, I was reading the New York Times and it said, had literally a story, you know, top, the top third of the homepage. It was like, chickens are going to come home to rooster Trump today. Boy, let me tell you, here come the inflation numbers and the tariffs are going to bite. And this is the moment at which the tariffs are going to show up in the inflation numbers. And you know what? The Fed, the FOMC is meeting and they're going to have to talk about interest rates and they're not going to cut interest rates because, yeah, blah, blah, blah. It's biting and terrible. And then at 8:31am the interest rate comes out, excuse me, the inflation rate comes out and it's exactly the same as it was last month, 2.7%. And then of course, we get the famous lower than expected. It was lower than. Well, who expected it? Okay, I believe that the tariffs are inflationary, but just because I believe it and they believe it and there's all sorts of reasons to believe that elementary math says the tariffs. I shouldn't ever mention elementary math because I'm bad. Even at elementary math. Elementary logic says that the tariffs should have an inflationary effect. We have an incredibly complicated country with an incredibly complicated economy and sometimes things go up. And then as a result of some things going up, other things go down and they balance out. And as it happens, supposedly core inflation did go up a little bit more from 2.7 to 3.1 annualized, which is not a huge jump, by the way, because it's annualized. That means that if you did it by quarter, it would be, I don't know, like almost nothing. And once again, we are faced with the crisis of expertise. They tell us tariff, this inflation, that Fed won't cut the interest rates. Trump is in trouble. Let's all go have lunch and you know, have a. And you know, have a Bellini. Because. Because things are going our way and it just doesn't happen like that anymore.
- [46:15]
Seth Mandel
Oh, and it follows this argument we've been having over the labor data. The unemployment data came out then a couple weeks ago and Trump said sacked the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Yesterday evening. Prior to this inflation release, Trump announced his nominee for the next head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics. First thing that strikes me is there are so many Senate confirmed positions. Why? Why the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics is a Senate confirmed position, I don't know. But the nominee is E.J. anthony, who is a economist. You may have seen him on such programs as He's a Troy McClure economist. You may have seen him on such programs as Fox News Sunday and Mornings with Maria because he is someone I've.
- [47:04]
John Podhoretz
Met often and War Room with Steve Bannon.
- [47:07]
Seth Mandel
Well, I'm going to get to that, and I'm going to get to that in a second.
- [47:10]
John Podhoretz
That's a.
- [47:10]
Seth Mandel
On my side. I have met him because he's a green room dweller. You know, he hangs out there. A lot of nice guy. A couple of things about him. First is, yes, as John alluded to, all of the coverage of E.J. antony's appointment is that he is the Steve Bannon candidate for bls. And it's true, Steve Bannon, the podcaster, former Trump adviser, did advocate for E.J. antony to win this nomination. But he wasn't the only one. He's not just Steve Bannon's candidate. He's also Kevin Roberts, his candidate, the head of the Heritage foundation, who works for whom he works. So we may have our disagreements with Kevin Roberts and especially on foreign policy in Ukraine, but you know, Roberts is more mainstream than Bannon. E.J. anthony was also Stephen Moore's candidate. Stephen Moore, the long former Heritage, former Wall Street Journal and now Committee to Unleash Prosperity, very important adviser to Trump, great economics writer. He supports E.J. antony's nomination. So it's not just Bannon, it's a wider spectrum of conservative economics opinion. And the second thing about it is that Anthony has been immediately criticized for lacking the experience and expertise for this job. My favorite of these criticisms came from Jason Furman, the former Obama economist who is a Harvard professor, very well known, accomplished economist. You know, he posted on X more in sorrow than in anger. You know, I never criticize appointments, but in this case, well, I have to come out and say that E.J. anthony shouldn't take this job. Then Furman had to correct himself because guess what, he has criticized appointments before. Another Trump appointment. He just doesn't like the Trump appointments. I understand, because he's an Obama economist. But I looked up E.J. anthony's credentials. E.J. anthony is a PhD economist. He got his PhD from Northern Illinois University. And it's true. He's, he, he's media facing economist. He's in these right wing centers and he's appears on Fox News all the time. But the person he's nominated to replace, Erica McCanner Tarver, well, you know, she seems to be a little bit, she's older than EJ so she might have more experience there. Her, her PhD is from Virginia Tech. Okay, so another kind of state school. And what is her real criticism?
- [49:54]
John Podhoretz
Tech in the name.
- [49:56]
Seth Mandel
Yes, does have tech. Does have tech in the name. And you know, okay, E.J. anthony's pro Trump, but she's a Biden appointee. She was with Biden So there's kind of, do we think that she wasn't kind of leaning in one partisan direction? What it seems to me is that her main credential that E.J. anthony Lacks is government. She has experience in the government. She has experience in the bureaucracy, in the norms and methods and languages of bureaucracy. And E.J. antony lacks that. But as you say, John, what does that expertise give you? Because all these people with experience in the norms and methods and manners and rhetoric of government have produced a mess.
- [50:47]
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.
- [51:41]
Abe Greenwald
I'm Oliver Darcy. And I'm John Passantino.
- [51:43]
Seth Mandel
We have spent years covering the inner workings of the news media, tech, politics.
- [51:48]
Abe Greenwald
Hollywood and power now through our nightly newsletter status. And we're bringing that same reporting and.
- [51:54]
John Podhoretz
Sharp analysis to a new podcast, Powerlines.
- [51:57]
Abe Greenwald
Every Friday, we're breaking down the biggest stories shaping the industry, explaining why they.
- [52:01]
Seth Mandel
Matter and saying the things most people are thinking but too timid to say out loud.
- [52:06]
Abe Greenwald
No spin, no fluff, just sharp analysis that isn't afraid to call it like it is.
- [52:10]
John Podhoretz
We also pull back the curtain via.
- [52:12]
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.
- [52:30]
John Podhoretz
Kind of seems a little washed up. Oh, my God. That's Power lines presented by Status. Follow Powerlines and listen on Apple, Spotify, Amazon Music, or your favorite podcast app. I will say that I hear from people who know better than I, who are friends of mine and who are economists and all that, that they are, they are not impressed with Mr. Antony. So I am, I am not I'm not here to deliver a full throated endorsement.
- [53:04]
Seth Mandel
I'm not endorsing, I'm not delivering the.
- [53:06]
John Podhoretz
Same thing, but, and I'm not even going to say but the idea that positions in the federal government that are tinged with science or social science are filled by definition by empirically driven, empirically minded trained professionals who bring a kind of gnostic Vulcans knowledge, Vulcan just logic, knowledge of the inner workings of the machinery of the world economy, of our labor markets, of the weight of these incredibly complex phenomena is a comforting illusion that is now verging on delusion. By which I mean as I've been saying, we've had this really since the financial meltdown. The world economy and our own economy are so unbelievably complex that like Socrates, the only person I really trust at this moment to tell me what is happening is the person who says I know nothing. What I know is what logic tells me, some of what history tells me. But I need to have modesty about this. The United states has a $31 trillion economy. I think the entire gross production domestic product of the planet Earth 70 years ago was half of the size of the US economy this year alone. We're not talking about China, not talking about India, we're not talking about Japan, we're not talking about the EU. Okay, so we have 330 million people. We used to have 150 million people or 100 million people. All these rules and procedures that were invented to try to measure where things are are pretty old. And we've been talking about this now for a couple that they, they're hard to update. People don't have agreements on what measures, what, where. And I don't trust that the things that we get are trustworthy not only politically but also because we know from actual revisions and things like that that when we get early they're not right.
- [55:44]
Matthew Continetti
But it's not. And it's not, it's worse than that if you will. Because if you think about it, it's not just economic data, it's not just financial data. It's when you think about the trust crisis and the rise of populism, so much of the abuse, abuse of government is about the abuse of numbers and statistics. The JIT where we've covered jobs numbers. We were talking earlier about crimes numbers, crime numbers, and the way that, that is played around with and called into question all the COVID stats. Everything about COVID about the herd immunity target, you know, and, and numbers.
- [56:30]
John Podhoretz
When you mean when, when, when you said I may make it 85%. I may make it 90%.
- [56:35]
Matthew Continetti
Absolutely.
- [56:35]
Abe Greenwald
Really?
- [56:36]
John Podhoretz
You're making it. I thought this was science. You don't make it.
- [56:39]
Matthew Continetti
The backbone of the anti Israel stuff is. Is taking the Hamas casualty numbers at face value. OMB projections are pretty slippery situation. There really is this. Like, people think that if you throw up a bunch of digits that this, this, now, this, this tells the story. And the truth is, it's not. It was comforting, I'm sure at one point. I kind of remember those days. It's precisely the opposite now. I think you see numbers and you go, I don't know what's going on. These, these are someone's numbers. Someone arrived at these numbers to tell me a story. And that's true.
- [57:24]
John Podhoretz
So I don't even mean to.
- [57:26]
Abe Greenwald
I was one. One thing to add, though, is that this is another case where Trump has a habit of being able to take something that at its core has a, you know, legitimate point and then sort of turning it into something crazy, which is, you know, the. He was claiming that these jobs numbers were rigged in favor of Kamala before the election in 2024 and now rigged against him now. And he throws out statistics that, that aren't true. Right. And he says, like, they weren't revised downward for Kamala at these times, and they were revised upward at the right time. When in fact, you know, right after she got, you know, became the nominee, there was a pretty bad downward revision in jobs and the October numbers were revised up after election Day. You know, revise, you know, again, another future revision that, that she would have loved if she were Trump. Trump would have said, oh, my God, that's crazy. You see, there were a lot more. So this is, this is the sort of thing that, that he does, is that. That backs supporters of the legitimate complaints into a specific kind of corner that is very common with Trump, which is you then have to walk this tightrope of it's not rigged. It's not, you know, whatever. The system is not rigged against Trump or Republicans in this or that way. This is the way it works. And so that's a problem, that. It's the way it works and here are ways to fix it or whatever. But it becomes very difficult to be associated with the position that Trump is holding because he's stomping around saying kind of wacky, conspiracist like things, okay, but.
- [59:16]
John Podhoretz
You know, the weird, of course, the Trump, the famous I'm rubber your glue, whatever doesn't stick to me, sticks to you. Phenomenon of Michael Avenatti And I'm trying to think of, you know, there 10, who is the prosecutor in Atlanta.
- [59:34]
Seth Mandel
You.
- [59:34]
John Podhoretz
Know, who kept $15,000 by her head.
- [59:37]
Seth Mandel
Who liked Greg Goose.
- [59:41]
John Podhoretz
Thank you. Okay, so two things in the house, right. And where you were.
- [59:47]
Seth Mandel
That was good, though.
- [59:47]
John Podhoretz
Yeah. So she was, you know, humiliated. It turned out that she had hired her boyfriend to be her. Right. Her, you know, what to be her aide and paid him $600,000. And then she had thousands of dollars of cash in her pillow because her dad, daddy told her to never know.
- [60:06]
Seth Mandel
Your head when you're going to have to run.
- [60:08]
John Podhoretz
So that really worked out well for her, you know, in terms of her national reputation. And, and now we have the phenomenon of this thing that people were worried about when they said Trump was going to, he was going to run, and then he was going to. You. He was going to be, he said, I will be the vehicle of your retribution. But he only met his own. And there are now signs of two acts of retribution that may be going on right now against Trump's enemies. One, an investigation into New York Attorney General Letitia James, who, of course, is the author of the indictment that caused him to be convicted on these ridiculous 34 counts of the same check, writing a legal check to, you know, somebody to. That wasn't found to be bribery. And the other representative, Representative Adam Schiff, I guess, who is now Senator Adam Schiff.
- [61:04]
Seth Mandel
Yeah.
- [61:04]
John Podhoretz
Okay, so looks bad, right? Like suddenly there's an investigation at the federal level into, into Tish James and there is a, The House Oversight Committee or somebody has, has let. Has released a document that a whistleblower who worked for Democrats on in the house for 10 years went to the FBI and said Adam Schiff told people on the committee that he was on that he was going to leak information hostile to Donald Trump in violation of the law. And then he promised them that they, that nobody's fingerprints, he was going to do it, but nobody's fingerprints were going to be on it. And in the Tish James case, she seems to have played fast and loose with ownership of property and residents, where she lives and where the property is and taking tax things or whatever. I mean, I don't, I haven't, I can't, like, cite chapter and verse on these stories. Here's the thing about the pursuit of retribution. Both of these cases look kind of solid, the Tish James case in particular, which is like one of these complicated things where people, you know, are doing things to evade, interestingly enough, you know, tax consequences for things, which is what she was accusing Trump and the Trump Organization of doing looks pretty solid. And the Schiff thing, unless somebody can say that this whistleblower, whose name we don't know is a liar, and this never happened. People were saying this about Schiff in 2017 and 2018 when he went on MSNBC and he said, I can't tell you how I know this, but Donald Trump did. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Right. Okay, so when we talk about how the system is broken and Trump is an authoritarian who's going to ruin. Take America, he's a Nazi. And he's doing this, and he's doing that, the entire apparatus of the Democratic Party, from local to state to federal officials, all elected, brought to bear on this one guy to try to destroy him on the grounds in their own heads that he needed to be destroyed to save the country. And that therefore, as I have now, I'm now going to quote for the 80th time, the use of excessive force against the Blues Brothers has now been approved that it was okay to do it against Trump, whereas you might have misgivings if you did it at somebody else because he was such a threat to our democracy. I don't know where this is going to end up or how this is going to go, but if I were James and Schiff and I looked at the history of people who are held to account for. Oh, got others. The people involved in Crossfire. Hurricane, right. Struck and page fired. Andrew McCabe fired. You know, fired. Not by. On Trump's insistence exactly, but after an investor inspector general report at the Department of Justice found that they had repeatedly violated protocol and indeed, privacy and maybe some laws, I'd be pretty worried that I am about to be held to account. And every time we hear Trump is a fascist, we then get evidence that it is his enemies who are guilty of extraordinary misuse of whatever power that they have in an effort to get him. And I say this, by the way, as somebody who. I am deeply concerned about all the evidence of emolument behavior in this administration favorably favoring crypto, while the family is deeply invested in crypto. 10,000 other things. We don't really understand why Gutter is getting such an easy time of it in the negotiations to, you know, make Hamas come to heel. But we know that Witkoff and the Trump sons and all this are sort of in bed with Gutter. All of this is very concerning to me. And once again, we're not even talking about that stuff because all they want to talk about is ICE doing its job. And Trump using obviously constitutional powers to take over the D.C. police Department and take 30 days to see if he can, if he can establish order in.
- [65:50]
Abe Greenwald
D.C. there's an important point about what you're saying, which is an argument I think we made at the outset of the Trump prosecutions, right, which is there was, the nationwide argument was nobody's above the law. Trump should be prosecuted if he, you know, committed these things, whatever. And the, and the, and the response to that was often, well, look, there are certain cans that you don't open unless you really, really, really need to open them. Right. It's not that the President should get immunity from, you know, from all laws and crimes and whatever. It's that we don't have a history of prosecuting presidents for a specific political reason. We don't, you know, the, the, we don't want to set certain precedents, but also, you know, how divisive it can be and all that stuff. And so there was an argument that you don't just willy nilly prosecute a president or an ex president, even if you think they might be convictable, because there is something that it does to the fabric of national politics. And that's, and that I think is present here, which is, you know, we, it's hard to make the argument, it's harder to make the argument that you shouldn't prosecute Tish James because it looks bad in the, in the, because of the fact that the reason it looks bad is because the government prosecuting her is led by the guy that she prosecuted. So it's very hard to make the argument now. Well, now we should, now we should simply not prosecute people when it looks bad to prosecute them. Now is when we're going to start, right? It's like starting when I start my diet tomorrow, you know, like that sort of thing. It is a New Year's resolution starting now. And that's what makes this a more difficult position to argue from. I agree with, you know, some of the, I agree with a lot of the arguments that opponents of the James prosecution are making, but those could and probably should have been made years ago when the shoe was on the other foot.
- [68:06]
John Podhoretz
Fair enough. Okay. I'm going to quickly make a recommend, and it's unfortunately only one that can really be taken advantage of by people who live in New York City at the moment. I went on Sunday to see a film made in 2019 that was called Jacuz in French and it's called An Officer and a Spy in English. And it is, it is A docudrama about the Dreyfus case told from the perspective of the officer who took over the intelligence service that had nailed Dreyfus with this forged, with these forged documents, straight up classic French anti Semite takes over this bureau and realizes that Dreyfus has been framed and that the actual traitor in the ranks of the French army is an officer named Esterhazy. Meanwhile, Dreyfus is on Devil's island and it is the story of his effort to get the army to acknowledge that it has committed this miscarriage of justice and that the army, in an eerie parallel to what we're talking about here, Watergate, you know, one of the early real governmental scandals in the west, participates in a cover up in an effort to keep itself from being held accountable for this terrible act of, of, you know, anti Semitic treachery. And the reason that you haven't heard of this movie, An Officer and a Spy, is that it was made, directed and co written by Roman Polanski and it was released in 2019. And after 2017, Roman Polanski, who pled guilty and has acknowledged the rape of a 13 year old girl in Jack Nicholson's house in 1972, pled guilty and was expecting, made a deal with the prosecutors for a light sentence of 18 months in, in an asylum or you know, like a mental institution where he would get treated for his, you know, sickness. Obviously he was himself a Holocaust survivor and his wife had been murdered by the Manson family. And so the idea was he had gone through this terrible trauma and so maybe he deserved a certain benefit of the doubt. And when it came before the judge who had to agree to this plea bargain, the judge said, no way, no how. No child rapist is getting a sweetheart deal like this. You come in and you're going to serve a major prison sentence. And Polanski fled to France and over the course of the last 50 years has lived in France. And then a couple of times he's left France, once to Switzerland, once to Poland. And the United States has pursued, pursued him there, seeking extradition to bring him back to the United States to be tried for his crimes. So whether or not you can abide seeing a movie by Roman Polanski because of his life story is one thing. As it happens in these shifting mores of psychotic Hollywood in 2003, all these facts being the same, he won the Best Director Oscar for the Pianist in Absentia and received a standing ovation from the same people 14 years later that would say, oh my goodness, this is what's going on in Hollywood with Harvey Weinstein is such so shocking to us. It's terrible. And everyone must be now be held to account for their horrible behavior. Well, where did Harvey Weinstein think he was getting permission from Hollywood to do whatever the hell it was that he wanted to do? It was giving awards to admitted child rapists. So, you know, like then, now. Now you can't show his movies. Now you can't show them. Then you could. Now you can. Okay, so here's the thing. It's a brilliant piece of work. It's one of the best movies I've seen in years. It tells this story, which I know. I mean, I know the sort of the Dreyfus story does it entirely different corkscrew way. It's not. All of the important themes are.
- [72:22]
Seth Mandel
Have you read the Robert Harris novel?
- [72:24]
John Podhoretz
I have not. Based on. Based on? No. Is. Is it. Are you a fan of that? Of the novel?
- [72:28]
Seth Mandel
I have not read it either.
- [72:30]
John Podhoretz
Yeah.
- [72:30]
Seth Mandel
Because it's told in the present tense and.
- [72:33]
John Podhoretz
Oh, and you can't go.
- [72:34]
Seth Mandel
Cannot read books told in the present tense.
- [72:36]
John Podhoretz
Anyway, it is a superb movie. It is playing in one theater in the Film Forum in Manhattan, supported by a foundation I've never heard of that is dedicated to promoting artistic works relating to anti Semitism. Oddly, it's only glancingly about anti Semitism if you can say that at the Dreyfus case. It really is about what happens when someone. Somebody attempts to uncover a conspiracy and has to fight against every impulse in his body not to like destroy, you know, but. But whose sense of rectitude is so great. This guy Pigot, the. The protagonist who was played by Jean Desjardins, who also weirdly won an Oscar for that silent performance in the silent Movie the artist 13 years ago where he played the star who can't trend who that. Who can't get to silent to talkies from silence. Brilliant performance. It's a wonderful movie. It's made by a morally unspeakable person. How you deal with that yourself is your.
- [73:43]
Seth Mandel
Like.
- [73:43]
John Podhoretz
That's a kind of. I didn't call it a Rorschach test. I don't know what to. You know, like, people listen to Wagner and they, you know. I don't know.
- [73:50]
Abe Greenwald
Can I. Can I ask.
- [73:51]
John Podhoretz
They look at a painting by Caravaggio. Caravaggio murdered four people. You know, it's like. Yeah.
- [73:56]
Abe Greenwald
Can I ask quickly though, 1. If you have any insight as to why now, why six years later was shown in New York when it wasn't shown previously? What the you know, whatever might have.
- [74:11]
John Podhoretz
Happened, no streamer would buy it, no pvod, no thing. Where ordinarily you would think, okay, some streamer will buy it, or you can watch it. When Woody Allen couldn't get distribution, you could still watch some of his movies on airplanes, right? Like, you could watch A Rainy Day in New York on airplanes, but they wouldn't buy it, so he couldn't get any. Unconventional or like what we now consider relatively conventional distribution goes more trouble than it was worth for Netflix or Prime or whoever to. Or Mubi or whatever to have it. They get letters of protest and all of that. Even though, by the way, not that I think that this is a sculptory, the victim in question has forgiven him and has made public affirmations of her fact that she thinks he has suffered enough or whatever.
- [75:00]
Abe Greenwald
But I'm wondering now.
- [75:02]
John Podhoretz
Yeah, but what happened? This foundation decided that it wanted to take up the cause of this movie, and the Film Forum decided that it would show it. My guess is there for two reasons, one of which is Trump hates free with free speech, so they'll. They'll show it because it's, you know, free speech. And the other is that there's a lengthy disclaimer on their website about how, you know, they understand that Polanski, you know, is a terrible human being or something like that, but that this is an artistically significant piece of work and deserves to be seen, which I, on balance, agree with. Though I do think that Polanski is a monster and that he did evade responsibility for his crimes and that not, you know, living for a free life, but he. That he couldn't live in the United States is really no reason for him to, you know, to be not considered a fugitive from justice, and we should not reward fugitives from justice. But he was already well rewarded with an Oscar. So anyway. But that's An Officer and a Spy at the Film Forum in New York. And maybe. Maybe it'll. Maybe it'll have similar showings in some other cities under the auspices of this foundation. It's called the CATS Foundation. Or not, I don't know, but. But there you have it. So till tomorrow. For Seth, Abe and Matt, I'm John Von Horitz. Keep the candle bur.