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- [00:04]
John Podhoretz
Hope for the best, expect the worst Some preach and pain Some die of.
- [00:14]
Abe Greenwald
Thirst the way of knowing which way it's going Hope for the best Expect.
- [00:21]
John Podhoretz
The worst Hope for the best. Welcome to the Commentary magazine daily podcast, brought to you today by the Hamilton School at the University of Florida. At a time when American higher education has lost its way, the Hamilton School at the University of Florida is setting a new standard, offering an elite education that's anything but elitist. Led by world class scholars, Hamilton is reviving the classical liberal arts tradition grounded in the great works of Western civilization and the founding principles of the American Republic. In small discussion based classes, students study history, philosophy, economics, literature and America's founding texts, developing the discipline, eloquence and moral confidence to lead with purpose in their careers, their communities and their lives. Learn more at HAMILTON UFL.edu commentary. That's Hamilton UFL.edu commentary. The Hamilton School at the University of Florida leading a revolution in higher education. I think. I did not say that. I'm John Pothor, it's the editor of Commentary. If I did, I'm saying it twice, so you should just have it imprinted on your brains. I'm here today on the 16th of October, Thursday. With the Jewish holidays now finally having reached their their end, weeks of weeks of holidaying have have now come to their conclusion. And so we are here once again with executive editor Abe Greenwald. Hi, Abe.
- [01:59]
Christine Rosen
Hi, John.
- [02:01]
John Podhoretz
Social Commentary columnist Christine Rosen. Hi, Christine.
- [02:04]
Seth Mandel
Hi, John.
- [02:06]
John Podhoretz
And freed from the constraints of no electronics demanded of him by our traditions, senior editor Seth Mandel. Hi, Seth.
- [02:20]
Abe Greenwald
Hi, John. I am out of the hut, so.
- [02:22]
John Podhoretz
Out of the hut. No booth. The booth has been. The booth will be taken down if it hasn't. Did you take it? Didn't take it down last night. You should understand the holiday of Sukkot involves the construction in your backyard of something called a suka or a booth. There are actual rules about how big they have to be, what they have to be made of, what straps go around them. They can't be assembled with nails or anything like that. And then there has to be bamboo on the top and it's a whole magilla and you build it and you're supposed to eat in it and sleep in it. Most people don't really sleep in it, but they eat in it. And as you say, we had very good weather during this Sukkot here in the Northeast. So therefore, it was not a labor to have to abide by the rules of the holiday when it's raining or it's like 40, 40 degrees or something like that. And you have small whiny children. It's rather a challenge.
- [03:23]
Sponsor/Advertisement Voice
You just have to schlep the food.
- [03:24]
John Podhoretz
Out from the house. It's a whole thing. So you got good weather. You look cheerful. You were not present for most of our conversations about the remarkable response to the peace deal, the hostages coming home and all that. I want to just give you a chance to express whatever, if you have any, any sort of broad thoughts on how the week has been.
- [03:59]
Abe Greenwald
Yeah, I mean, a couple. One is just that, you know, it was Simchas Torah was one of the two holiday days, you know, at the back end of this Sukkos holiday. And so that is the one where we dance with the Torahs and, and, and dance out sometimes in the street. If you, if we should also give.
- [04:20]
John Podhoretz
Our, give our, give our non Jewish listeners an understanding that Simchat Torah marks the end. You know, the Torah, we read the Torah in 52 week. Well, it's more like three parts of the Torah a week for a year. The Torah is on a scroll, an endless scroll that begins with the words in the beginning, right? And then it ends with Moses pretty much dying, you know, before the, before the Jews enter the. Cross the river and enter the Holy land. And so this scroll unravels, unwraps over the course of the year as you progress through the five books of Moses. And on Simchat Torah, you literally reach the end of the scroll. And the last reading on the Simcha Torah are the last words on this scroll. I meant to look up online like how if you laid out the scroll from end to end, how many miles it would be or how many feet it would be. These scrolls are, and they always have been handwritten by scribes. They can have no marker blemish on them. There can be no typo in them. So a scribe will spend a year or more writing one single scroll. And if he gets through number, if he's like way at the end of the scroll, like he's in the, he's in the middle of Deuteronomy way at the end of the scroll, the pressure's on and he makes one glitch, the whole thing goes in the garbage and he's got to start again. So.
- [06:13]
Abe Greenwald
And well, the sacred garbage anyway.
- [06:15]
John Podhoretz
Sacred garbage, the metaphorical garbage doesn't actually get. And so these scrolls you can fit.
- [06:22]
Abe Greenwald
There are ways to fix scroll with certain mistakes. There are ways to fix. But there are, there are definitely times when the scroll is just.
- [06:30]
John Podhoretz
But the pressure deteriorated and yeah, the pressure is on. It's all on lamb skins. It's this giant. And there are different sizes and things like that. And Most synagogues have 10 or 12 or 14 of these scrolls that they've gotten over time. And so when you're done reading with the year's reading, you then have a celebration that you have completed the task of reading through the Torah in the year. And then there is a, there is a celebration. And the celebration involves people carrying these, these Torahs around, dancing with them, singing their seven poems that you sing, you do them over and over again. And it's people then, you know, sort of like they imbibe. They have a, they have a very, a gay old time, as we used to say. And the.
- [07:26]
Abe Greenwald
Lots of candy for the children also.
- [07:27]
John Podhoretz
Lots of candy for the children. Lots of get hyped up. Lots of, you know, turned candy for the adults. And so that's, that is, that is how the, that is how the, that is how the holiday ends.
- [07:39]
Abe Greenwald
Yeah. So this was, this was a very, this was a special one considering that, you know, the, the, the attacks, the original hamas attacks of October 7 took, interrupted the holiday and since it's such a celebratory holiday, so it was nice to, there was an extra level of joy, you know, watching people dance around this time. So that was, that was something that was very nice. And the other thing that caught my attention was yesterday the, the funeral of a, an IDF commander, but attended by his, a recently freed hostage who actually spoke at the funeral of his commander. And you know, he was told, don't come. You know, you're not, you're not, you're not going to have the strength. You're not healthy enough. You know, you're still recovering. But that was the thing when I came back online that, that was, that's the thing since I've come back online that really, that caught my attention about the, the few past few days catching up on news was just watching this, this former hostage, you know, leap out of the hospital bed, essentially, you know, tear. I don't know if he, I don't know if he tore a needle out of his arm, an IV out of his arm. But you know, in the movies that's what they do, and in the books that's what they do. They tear the IV out of their arm and they spring up. But it was, it was very nice. It was very nice to see basically everybody, every part of the Jewish world seems to have an extra spring in its step that it didn't have, by the way.
- [09:13]
John Podhoretz
Also not just attending the funeral, but Avinatan all, who is sort of known as the sort of the romance of the hostages, that he was taken hostage with his girlfriend. She was released in November of 2023, and they were, of course, reunited. There's footage of them sort of falling on a bed together. And then the second night he was out playing guitar with an Israeli rock musician, like accompanying him on a guitar. It also turns out that he was, and this was kept understandably secret from Hamas, a member of the most elite. It's like Seal Team 6, the most elite unit in the Israeli armed forces, Sayeret Matkal, which legendarily was the unit that freed the hostages at Entebbes in 1976. With the one loss of life being. There were two losses, that Yonatan Netanyahu, Bibi's elder brother, was the leader of the mission and fell in the mission. And it was necessary to make sure that Hamas did not know that Avinatan or was a member of Sayeret Matkal, obviously with such personal resources that he was able not only to greet his Noah Argamani, as he did, but also to sort of get out of bed or whatever and then go, like, celebrate on the beach. Playing musical Noah was.
- [10:52]
Abe Greenwald
Noah was one of the rescued hostages too, right? In the. There was a Gaz in Gaza. There was that incredible rescue operation.
- [10:59]
John Podhoretz
That's right. That's right.
- [11:01]
Abe Greenwald
They were being held in a. In a. In a. In a Palestinian journalist, and his father was a doctor, whatever, home in an apartment complex. And so Israel, the Israeli forces, who.
- [11:12]
John Podhoretz
Who.
- [11:13]
Abe Greenwald
Who completed this rescue had to sort of go undercover for a while and, you know, scope the place out. And they went in trucks, I think, posing as they were moving to the neighborhood. You know, it was a lot harder. Not. It wasn't a base. In other words, they had to sort of embed themselves to a certain degree in this. And she was one of the. And that rescue was something that gave everybody also a nudge and a push of hope at a time when it was. When it was badly needed. So those two are back together again. Yeah. Nice. It's nice to see. It's nice to see everybody on their feet again.
- [11:49]
John Podhoretz
I mean, we know that they all came out on that.
- [11:51]
Seth Mandel
I was just going to add that Matan, the hostage who spoke at his. At his IDF commander's funeral, was the only survivor of that unit. And one of the things he said, that. He said two things in his remarks that everyone should find his remarks and read them.
- [12:05]
Mark Halpern
It's.
- [12:05]
Seth Mandel
It's heart wrenching and amazing, amazingly courageous for him to have come two days later to speak. But he said he turned to his commander's family and said, I will always be with you, with your family. I like for the rest of my days, I will do what I can to protect you. He also said he would suit up tomorrow and go back into Gaza to recover the remains of another hostage who was in his unit, which still has not been returned. And the discussion of what, why we're now in the next phase of whatever the 20 point plan is. Hamas still has not kept its word about returning all of the remains of hostages and now is claiming it needs special equipment. To which my response is a cynical laugh and well then the UN can provide you with that equipment. They are delaying the return or perhaps can't find them, but that's not Israel's problem. They need to fulfill their obligation to return all of the hostages, living and dead.
- [12:59]
Abe Greenwald
Whatever, whatever machinery they use to build tunnels, presumably one would think, dig earth for other reasons.
- [13:08]
John Podhoretz
One of the hostages that came out said, who came out said they know where all the bodies are. This is ridiculous. They know exactly where they are. And my presumption is, oddly enough, that the Israelis know where they are also because the Israelis had an absolutely correct and accurate count during the months leading up to the deal of how many hostages were had survived and how many were dead. And it never quite. There was always something slightly peculiar about the specificity of the numbers. How did they, how did they know? How did they know somebody didn't, you know, die overnight? How did they know that you know? And so either they had very, they had good intel, which they will probably not have any more because anybody who was giving them intel is now being slaughtered on the streets of, in Gaza by, by, by, by the still armed Hamas. But if they know, then Hamas knows. So this is some weird. It's like a power play when you've lost all your power. You know, it's, it's a, it's a game when you have no game left. And interesting question to deal with sort of psychologically for Israel and for Hamas and for everybody in relation to this, which is the terms of the deal are return all of the, return all the bodies. They're not returning all the bodies. Well, who, whom does that hurt? I mean, it obviously hurts the families that want to see their, see their relatives get a, get a burial, a proper burial. But Hamas is the only force here that is going to suffer from not returning the bodies because it delays any further implementation of anything that is going to lessen the pressure on them. It challenges the possibility, it raises the possibility of Israel moving back in to the areas from which it, to which it, you know, the line that it retreated behind, leaving 43% of Gaza without Israeli forces. If they violate the deal, they don't want to go back in. But, you know, there are various measures they can take, closing the Rafah corridor, various other things. But Hamas has nothing to gain from not returning the bodies except humiliation. Right. It somehow may have convinced itself that this is a way of forestalling the humiliation of the defeat that they have just suffered or making it look like they haven't been defeated, but it's frankly a little baffling. Or they're testing Trump's resolve or they're testing Israel's resolve or something like that, which I think is kind of a funny thing to do because that resolve seems pretty firm.
- [16:25]
Christine Rosen
But, you know, it's a good point because it, it was one thing for Hamas to play these games while the war was on because that's they, that they wanted Israel to stop doing it now in, as you say, John, would only tempt the opposite.
- [16:44]
Abe Greenwald
Yeah. And they won't even really tempt them to see, I think it's easy for Israel to avoid any sort of like really going back in, so to speak, if they don't want to, because it's almost not enough of an affront to, you know, to sort of to bait Israel into anything. You know, there's. Israel can actually display this self control if it wants to now because the public is treating the war as over because there is a sense some kind of closure. Obviously you don't, we don't want to say that and ignore the bodies that aren't home and all that stuff, but Israel has officially marked the atrocities and the day and the war and given it a Hebrew date. And they didn't do that until all the living hostages were out and they had all the information. And there, there was a real kind of marking of the being over in Israel. And so public opinion is a certain, is not really going to be demanding that either. I wonder if Hamas has just, you know, not realized that they, this is not real leverage, not the leverage that they thought it was. And the other thing is that they, you know, Trump, the only person they're really going to anger is, is Trump. I mean, Bibi Netanyahu had what was one of the triumphant moments of his life and career, right. With the US President extolling his virtues as a warrior king, sort of, in the Knesset. This was, you know, and especially considering Bibi was, was in office when October 7th happened, this, this was a sort of, not quite absolution, but there was really, there was really something, you know, for, for, for Bibi that I don't think that he'd ever gotten that kind, nobody had ever gotten that kind of personal call out in the Knesset. George W. Bush spoke in the Knesset. Does it. But, you know, it wasn't, wasn't like your prime minister is the greatest. And so, you know, nobody really. The people who are most angry are going to be Trump and his team who were very proud of this deal and went on, you know, a sort of world tour to promote the deal and, you know, went to Sharm El Sheikh and brought everybody into Sharm El Sheikh, you know, no matter what their position was. Mark Carney in Canada and Keir Starmer and in Britain, you know, whatever, whatever problems they had, it was sort of, you know, water under the bridge. And then Hamas is going to use this specific issue, this one thing to hold it all up. And Trump said, I mean, I think he said yesterday, if they don't disarm, we'll disarm them. Like, I don't know what they're.
- [19:30]
John Podhoretz
Well, he said that and then he followed on with that. He said basically Israel will return to those streets as soon as I say the word. Yeah, if Israel could go in and knock the crap out of them. They do that. Getting those 20 hostages out was paramount. So he's like Trump saying, all I have to do is wave my hand and Bibi will do what I tell him and go back into Gaza. Now, that's not the way it works.
- [20:00]
Christine Rosen
But also.
- [20:00]
John Podhoretz
But that's the tone that he's taking to Seth's point.
- [20:03]
Christine Rosen
And this, this is something that we've discussed before and I think Seth, you've written about it and it's part of Trump' swhat seems to be his genuine feeling for Israel and Israelis there. Trump has spoken very directly and even for him movingly about getting the bodies back. He has said specifically, this is for these families. They want them back as much as the families of the living hostages want their loved ones back. He has honed in on this. So it's, it's, he's not blind to what's going on.
- [20:43]
John Podhoretz
Okay.
- [20:43]
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John Podhoretz
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- [22:06]
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- [22:07]
Abe Greenwald
And I'm John Passantino.
- [22:08]
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- [22:17]
Abe Greenwald
And we're bringing that same reporting and sharp analysis to a new podcast, Power Lines.
- [22:22]
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Abe Greenwald
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- [22:40]
Oliver Darcy
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.
- [22:57]
Abe Greenwald
Oh my God, that's Power Lines presented by Status. Follow power lines and listen on Apple, Spotify, Amazon Music or your favorite podcast app.
- [23:12]
John Podhoretz
But I mean, it's also that the thing, if you are sort of on Israel's side, unreservedly, let's say as as we are the thing that was worrisome or that you feared both in the run up to the 20 point peace plan and then its implementation, is that Trump who said I love making peace. I've now made eight. I've now made eight pieces in the course of my second term here. And you know, I'm, I'm, I'm Mr. Peacemaker, I'm going around the world making peace. I love peace. I don't love war. That you would say, well, he's going to make a fetish out of this peace deal. And if Israel feels that it needs to go back in, he's going to say, no, no, you're ruining my beautiful peace deal. Don't you go back in just 24 to 48 hours after making that, you know, the Sharm elite Israel in the Knesset and then on to Sharm El Sheikh, he said the peace is conditional on Hamas fulfilling its terms. He is not making a fetish out of the peace. He's. He's the one who's saying, I'll make Bibi go back in to get the rest of the, to get the remains if Hamas doesn't make that evident.
- [24:28]
Seth Mandel
But he. Covert war against Venezuela.
- [24:32]
John Podhoretz
Yeah, well, that's a whole other. I mean, that's a whole other thing. Right.
- [24:35]
Seth Mandel
So he's making the deal like the deal making the deal's done. You got to stick to your terms of the deal. But that does not tie his hands from any of the other areas he wants to meddle in.
- [24:45]
John Podhoretz
Yeah, right. But I'm just saying that the sorts of things that conversations among people who are, you know, were nervous about how this was going to go, nervous about the terms that America might visit upon Israel, had been nervous about that from the, not only from the Biden times, when Biden was like, imposing terms on Israel that Israel would have had to fulfill if Hamas hadn't rejected all of these peace proposals. But it was like, well, I don't know what Steve Witkoff is going to come back with from Gutter, but if he does, and then they say you have to do X, Y and Z, it's going to be very hard for us not to do that. And Trump is occupying the hard right edge of the terms of fulfilling the deal. It's not Bibi staying there saying, we're going to go back in and eat you alive. It's Trump saying it. That's to say that that's new in Middle Eastern diplomacy, that an American would say, you know, sometimes you just gotta go in there and kick the crap out of you people. All American diplomacy, all Western diplomacy from the war of 1948 onward has always been, okay, let's calm it down now. Let's take it off the battlefield. Let's see if we can get it into the negotiating rooms. Let's see what kind of an arrangement we can get. Because after all, we're all Adults here, we're all, we all. Everybody has a different want and a different ask and, you know, reason. Men can get around a table and find an arrangement. And Trump basically saying, now, you got to prove that you're one of those people. And if you're not, you know, I saw what you did on October 7th. You're animals, and Israel can go kill you off, as far as I'm concerned, if you don't live up to the terms that we laid out here. That's one of the many creative differences between Trump's diplomacy and the diplomacy that has preceded him. Is that that threat, which has real teeth, is there. No American president has used the threat of force against people who are trying to kill off peace or efforts to make peace in however many negotiations. The Sinai negotiations, the negotiations ending the Six Day War, the negotiations ending the 73 War, the, you know, the, the Camp David Accords, Lebanon, you know, the Oslo Accords, the intifadas, the, you know, the Lebanon War in 2006. The idea that force is a necessary adjunct to forcing the bad guys to relent has simply not been in the vocabulary of the American diplomatic solution or Western diplomatic solution mindset. And now it's right there. It's present, it's in every breath.
- [27:50]
Seth Mandel
I think it also must matter to Trump personally that he never did have any sort of personal relationship with anyone on the Hamas side. You know, they were constantly negotiating with the shifting band of figures in Qatar. He has a very close personal relationship with Bibi, and he, he sees himself as needing that connection with the opponent, whether it's Putin, whether it's, you know, Kim Jong Il. He likes to have this sense of two men sitting across the table having a negotiation. It can be really, you know, they might be our enemy, but I'll make them my friend and vice versa. With Xi in China, and there was. That dynamic did not exist in this conflict. And in a sense, that probably helped him be more resolute about his support for Israel in the sense of the negotiation. He likes to negotiate one on one across the table. There was none of that here. And there was a lot of shifting priorities. And obviously the Qataris cannot be trusted. And I, I think that weirdly might have given this his sensibility now more heft.
- [28:49]
John Podhoretz
Look, our friend Dan Senor tells the story that he was at Mar a Lago in December 24, after the election, before the second inauguration, he and a couple of people having dinner with Trump, who was not a friend of his or, you know, an intimate of his or anything like that. But it was a crew of people that Trump would have every reason to know were deeply involved in the matters of war and peace in Israel and Hamas and the hostages and everything. And he began to talk about what happened on October 7th to the Israelis who were massacred and who were hunted down in very, very, very graphic detail, to people who didn't need educating in it, which Trump knew. And what Dan took away from this was that he was deeply affected by what he had seen. All that, you know, the 45 minute video that we have seen of what happened on October 7th is a very sanitized version of. Even though it's unwatchable. But if you think that's unwatchable, you have to see the unedited GoPro footage and stuff like that of things that they did, the tortures that they did, the rapes that they did, the burning that they did, all of that. And apparently it had an enormous effect on him because he could not stop talking about it. And then, of course, he also met during the course of the 24 campaign with hostage families. He had personal meetings with hostage families. And so everything that's gone on here is obviously informed by deep personal feeling that, frankly, I don't know that we knew, including his fans, knew he had it in him. And, you know, some part of me thinks that what happened in Butler and the close call and the idea that, you know, he keeps talking about heaven and whether he's going to go to heaven was on the Air Force One talking about going to heaven. Whether or not this question, which he could not elude him, that maybe he was saved for a reason, that this thing happening in the Holy Land impressed itself upon him as something that might explain why that millimeter that marked the difference between his life and his death, why that bullet missed him by a millimeter, why his head had turned just that millimeter, you know, and I. Because it's not like him. None of this is not. Not that he's irresolute or anything like that, but he is flighty and he is capable of getting into a rage about something minor or feeling frustrated. He's a human being.
- [31:54]
Abe Greenwald
We saw that. You know, there was. Apparently he held a grudge for a while because Bibi had congratulated Biden on the victory in 2020. Right. So he can. He can have that. That toward Israel or toward Israel's Prime Minister itself. It's not immune from the laws of Trump.
- [32:12]
John Podhoretz
No. Look at how much the personal feelings about Bibi on the part of, let's say, One Barack Obama. How that played a role in Barack Obama's international diplomacy and his vision for a future Middle East. Some small part of that, cuz he thought Bibi was obnoxious. He laid on the entire Israeli strategic position vis a vis its Arab and Persian, you know, antagonists, and sided with them over Israel because he hated Bibi so much. The personalization of, personalization of these things is a, is a, is a real, you know, is a, is a real thing. But something else just seems to have been going on here. And with him being the enforcer, not being the. No, you keep my, you keep my beautiful peace. Don't you be playing with this. You know, that building is going up and I don't want you, you know, issuing any injunctions against the building of my beautiful peace building. He's the one who's saying fafo to Hamas.
- [33:23]
Abe Greenwald
It's kind of, it's also part of the genius of the deal, right? Because the deal doesn't have Israel retreating to behind the Gaza border in the first phase. It's a phased withdrawal as part of the phase deal. And so, you know, from their perspective, Hamas is like, well, we can't find these extra bodies, you know, so it's like, okay, well then Israel will just sit here at 46% of the Gaza Strip. Like that's in the deal, though. Israel's following the deal by sitting exactly where it is. And Trump doesn't care. He's saying they could even go back in. But, you know, the whole point is that Israel doesn't have to move another foot back. This was one of the reasons that the deal was such a successful thing, because of the hostages were the one thing that were not phased. The withdrawal was phased. The hostages, all, you know, the living hostages came out right at once. And everything else happens after that. And you can see the genius of the structure in it now is that Hamas, you know, we're trying to figure out what Hamas thinks it's doing precisely because, you know, they've, they've been kind of checked into this corner of the board and by the deal.
- [34:34]
John Podhoretz
Let me propose to you a thought experiment for a minute because one of the things we are seeing and that everybody is now finally reporting on, though it started actually last week before the deal was implemented, but as it was clear that it was coming, is Hamas trying to settle all family business on the west bank, murdering dozens, scores of people that it's accusing of being collaborators or members of tribes that might seek to challenge its supremacy in the wake of this, of this Defeat. And instead it's on a rampage. Doing it very publicly to set an example, you know, I mean, again, more this death culture, this murder culture, this worship of torture and slaughter in these videos that they are taking of setting people's legs on fire and flaying their feet and dragging them by trucks and, you know, shooting them in the head and all of that. The, the lubriciousness with which they are presenting this to the world, you know, marks once again, the, the barbarism is, you know, without, I don't know, precedent in some ways, like this is not something that we're. Anybody is used to seeing. And as I say, Trump may have been sadism. It's what it is, the sadism, right, Sadism for its own sake and all of that. Here's my thought experiment. This goes on for another three or four days. Who's around to stop it? What? Who will publish the first op ed that says Israel has an obligation to go into Gaza City and interpose itself between Hamas and the Gazan tribes on human rights grounds? Because after all, Israel is really responsible for, for the condition of the Hamas of the Gaza polity with its, you know, destructive efforts. And can it just stand idly by while Palestinian kills Palestinian? You think that op ed is not coming? I promise you that op ed is coming, I promise you. They've already had 150 submissions.
- [36:37]
Seth Mandel
There are stages of the denial they're working their way through though, John. First they ignored that it was happening, right? It's not happening. It's not happening now. It's. Well, we're sort of reporting on it with hints that it's, it's really, you know, expected that the Palestinians will just slaughter each other the minute there's, you know, Israel withdraws. And then it will be the op ed saying Israel step in and do something. That, that expectation, I think shows everything about certainly the really, it's a kind of bigotry of Western intellectuals with regard to Palestinian people. We have also not heard any criticism from the people who were so worried about genocide and so worried about all these things that they claimed were happening now, seeing them turn on each other. I mean, they are slaughtering innocent people without trial, without rule of law. All of the, all of the charges they've levied against Israel, Hamas is now doing to its own people. And there is absolute silence from the most vocal, the Mehdi Hassan's, the Hassan pikers, all of those Iran Mamdani, who cannot agree that Hamas should even be disarmed. So I hope that question comes up in tonight's New York mayoral debate because it's pretty important that he has very strong opinions about how cops shouldn't police, but terrorist organizations should be fully armed after they've been.
- [37:44]
John Podhoretz
He apologized to Martha. Apologized. Yeah, that he was going to apologize to the New York City Police Department and that, you know, his views on that have modified themselves. He did not say that about Hamas.
- [38:04]
Seth Mandel
From the police union.
- [38:05]
Christine Rosen
I think about Hamas. He said he doesn't have an opinion on whether or not they should disarm. Yeah, he has an opinion on whether or not he's. He's going to try to arrest Bibi Netanyahu if he comes to New York. Yeah, but he doesn't have an opinion.
- [38:20]
John Podhoretz
Piece of fan fiction we talked about on yesterday's podcast. The, the astonishing New York Times magazine piece by Asted Herndon about the improbable, wonderful, wondrous rise of Zoran Mandani. Zoran. Britney Spears. Mandani. Zoran. Taylor Swift Mandani, you know, sort of lays out he's his lifelong passion on behalf of the Palestinian cause, which means that this is the only thing he cares about. Does he care about rent? Yeah. Does he care about is free buses? Like, is he going to sleep at night going, if I can just make sure that buses are free in New York City, I will have fulfilled my mandate for life on earth? No, but since he was in high school, the idea that Israel is an evil that needs to be combated, that is a through line from high school at Bronx Science, through college at Bowdoin, through everything else. This is the thing that he is holding onto. That's. It's an interesting Mark. Elian Johnson was on yesterday and we were talking about sort of various anti Semitism things, pointed out that we should have talked about the main Senate race just because it's such an odd set of circumstances. So Mamdani's in New York, thought to be a Jewish city, increasingly not very much of a Jewish city at all, even though it has 900,000 Jews in it. But as a percentage now, Jews make up, you know, less than 10% of the population of New York City. But so go up to Maine, right? Rural, you know, lobsters and, you know, the Acadia national park and the fentanyl and all of that. And you have this interesting Senate race happening with Susan Collins, I think, who was trying to get her fourth term in the Senate. And the governor of Maine has now decided, who is almost 80 years old, has decided to run to challenge her Democratic governor of Maine, Mills, Janet Mills. But she's jumped in the race because jumping in the race before her and making some noise is a guy named Platner who is an oysterman and he's a, you know, he's got a beard and he looks sort of like Fetterman a little bit during his run. Like he looks like a sort of working class, no bull guy who's you know, manly and hunts and does this and does that, but is obsessed with AIPAC and about how AIPAC is controlling American politics. And aipac, the Israel lobby must be stopped and the Israel lobby must be halted in its tracks. And this is an interesting primary for the Democratic Party because it's got the governor of the state who is popular and obviously has gotten votes from Maine. What do you call Maine people? Mainites.
- [41:33]
Seth Mandel
Yeah, well, there's down Easters. I mean, they have different regional identities that I think.
- [41:38]
John Podhoretz
So she's obviously gotten the majority votes in Maine into two terms or one term or whatever against this, you know, total upstart, nobody, nothing. And do we know that she's going to prevail? No. Like, what is the Democratic Party today? His, this guy's issue is, yeah, he looks like he's one of us, but he's got this very, you know, boutique issue which both is modern anti Semitism with Jews controlling Washington through lobbying and classic old line antisemitism, which is Jews, you know, Jews being the puppeteers controlling, controlling everything. So Mamdani is only the first test of where, you know, the American Democratic Party is going. This is going to be another one. I don't know when that primary is, but if Mamdani wins, there are going to be 40 of these platinum types emerging out of nowhere in places you wouldn't expect against Democrats that appear to be in, you know, relatively safe seats. Very analogous to the Tea Party, right? Very. You know, like sort of conventional, ordinary politicians with political views that, that seem to be in concert with the mainstream of the Republican Party are knocked out by insurgents who say how Washington works is not acceptable anymore. And you guys aren't tough enough to fight against Barack Obama on health care. But now the health care, health care is no longer the issue. I mean, I guess authoritarianism is an issue, but the foreign policy issue is Israel. So that's great.
- [43:30]
Abe Greenwald
I mean, nothing's motivating them like Gaza, nothing.
- [43:34]
John Podhoretz
So what happened is no longer a motivation. That's why. That's what we don't know. That's where the anti Semitism will reveal itself utterly, which is the war in Gaza will Be over. There aren't gonna. There isn't gonna be rubble in Gaza. There isn't gonna be like famine in Gaza. Everyone in Gaza is gonna be like, literally, you know, like up to their heads, like Winnie and Beckett's Happy days. Up to their heads in food, we should add.
- [43:58]
Seth Mandel
Actually, we have confirmation from several of the returning hostages that many of famine narrative was in fact totally constructed because they can testify to the fact that they saw people hoarding supply, like there was plenty of food and that they boasted, their captors boasted about stealing the food aid and then selling it for what? I mean, this, this is obviously been confirmed, right?
- [44:22]
John Podhoretz
So what we do know is that there won't be nightly images of whatever, you know, Pallywood images. So if there are, if, if the line about Israel's monstrosity goes on and remains this kind of fundraising juggernaut and passionate issue for Democratic primary voters, then it's just about Jews. Jews have too much power in America. Jews have so much authority. Israel dominates everything. Israel must be stopped. And then maybe we should talk a little bit about our own community and the disease within our own Jewish community, because there was a poll in the Washington Post this morning of American Jews and how they feel about everything. And from my perspective, it's not good. I mean, first of all, they say there's increased anti Semitism. A lot of them say things like they're now they won't wear anything that is visibly Jewish. Now that strikes me as an interesting thing because most American Jews don't wear things that are visibly Jewish. You know, most, you know, the people wear. Things are visibly Jewish are like people who wear kipot. Like that's as a daily practice. And there are people who wear highs or they wear Magen David necklaces or stuff like that. But that's, that's, that's all it means to be visibly Jewish. And 80% of the community never wears stuff like that. So that they wouldn't wear it is a kind of I am a victim because I can't wear my Jewish. I can't, you know, I can't wear a shirt with a bagel on it or something like that is what they mean. But they do, but they do say they don't, you know, they don't trust Trump and they don't like Trump and they don't like Bibi and they don't let you know, they don't know if they believe in the people that Trump means for there to be peace. The only real indication of a shift in the community is that they acknowledge that Republicans now seem to be more sympathetic to Jews in Israel than Democrats are, though they themselves are mostly Democrats. Which tells me yet again that when we talk about this, it is going to be very important as a matter of discussing. Israel is a subject that matters for people, particularly among Jews, that there are. That the Jewish community is bifurcated between people who claim a Jewish coloration of some sort, but who are unengaged or disengaged or actively looking to disengage with issues relating to the Jewish people, to Zionism and to the practice of the Jewish faith in the United States and in the world and people for whom it is a central concern, like us. And we're not the same population. I mean, we're all Jews. Hitler would kill all of us. So therefore we're all under the same rubric. And if you were Hamas wouldn't draw any distinction between an anti Zionist Jew and a. And a Jew wearing outward.
- [47:37]
Seth Mandel
They didn't on October 7th, that's for sure.
- [47:39]
John Podhoretz
Exactly right. So Seth, what do you make of that?
- [47:44]
Abe Greenwald
Yeah, I mean, I've compared this basically to the Catholic vote in the past, which is that, you know, the Catholic. There's a big difference. One is that the Catholic vote became the Americans vote, right. Catholics became so American, whatever that they, the Catholic vote is like, started mirroring the general vote. The Jewish vote won't do that, obviously, because Jews vote very liberal and you know, they won't. But in the, in the other ways it's very similar to what happened with the Catholic vote, which is that the Catholic community realized at some point that there was no such thing as the Catholic vote. And it became, you know, a sort of issue based vote which is Catholics voting rather than the Catholic vote. The Jewish, I think the Jewish vote is going through something very similar and needs to be reckoned with in a similar manner, which is that you, you can no longer say that the Jewish vote is the same as Jews who vote and how Jews vote because it's just, it's not, it doesn't tell you enough about that. It's not, that's not a comment on whether someone is Jewish enough. It's a comment on what it tells you about what is motivating voters and how the issues are playing. The reason that we look at demographics in voting, whether it's racial or ethnic or religious or regional, the reason we look at demographics in voting is to know how it's affecting people based on their priorities, based on their communities. It tells us something. Right. And so the Catholic vote stopped telling you anything a very long time ago. And the Jewish vote, I think, has gone on now past the point where it is telling you much, if at all, and that the Jewish community hasn't really, you know, reckoned with that because we have all these. There's a fear of alienating people. There's a fear of making it sound as if we're saying, well, they're not real Jews, you know, which is of course not what we're saying. But the point is there is that feeling within the Jewish community of protectiveness over, you know, inclusion and not wanting to make, not wanting to decide that this person's vote doesn't count as a Jew or whatever. But it would be more helpful if we could look at things through that lens as issue priorities. At least Israel is one way to do that. But as Israel became stronger and its position in the Middle east concretized, it went way down the list of, of voting priorities of American Jews. Right? It's there on the list, but it's like, you know, if Israel is in that war, it's like number eight. It's always going to be below health care and abortion and, you know, all this other stuff.
- [50:41]
Seth Mandel
But at the same time, this question of what happens now that there's no longer these images coming out of Gaza. Unfortunately, this is where I become cynical and not optimistic because I think what we will see, and we've already seen it, I think the main Senate race is a good example of it. You see a reversion to the typical anti Semitic tropes about Jewish influence. And those exist not just on the left. They've captured a large part of the Democratic Party. They've also captured a pretty big swath of the far right. And we see this in the scandal with all these GOP young Republicans, some of whom actually were elected state representatives or who worked for representatives, spewing all kinds, as you know, with a wink and a nod and a hahaha, things like I love Hitler and let's bring back the ovens and this sort of acceptance, the tolerance for that in a, in a telegram chat of thousands of pages that, you know, lots of people were involved in and everyone's in on the joke that exists on the right and then the version on the left, very similar. But I think we will see that that has long been this challenge that we've been discussing on this podcast for years. Culturally, the acceptance of some of the things that used to be absolutely unacceptable has disappeared. And the vice president of this country downplayed it. As kids just making bad jokes and they shouldn't lose their livelihoods over it. That is ridiculous. These are grown men and grown women and they should absolutely face consequences for their anti Semitism.
- [52:01]
Christine Rosen
Can I just jump in because I'm sorry, my Internet froze so I missed a lot. But the thing that I. The word that I dropped out on was when, John, you were talking about the Maine race and you were saying this could be like the Tea Party, but the issue is foreign policy. And I was about to say the issue isn't for this is to Christine's point, which I just jumped back in on. Yeah, the issue isn't stopping my rant. No, it was a great rant. The issue isn't foreign policy. The issue is Jews. And to Christine's point, with the war over, the anti Israel crowd can throw off the anti Zionism disguise or, or it will be tempted to or will need to and just. Just be nakedly Jew hating.
- [52:58]
Abe Greenwald
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John Podhoretz
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Abe Greenwald
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John Podhoretz
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Abe Greenwald
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- [53:25]
Mark Halpern
I'm Mark Halpern. I want to let you know that two Way Tonight, the destination for the best political news and analysis anywhere, is now available as an audio podcast. Each weekday I'll be joined by special guests from the worlds of news, politics and the media, along with members of the two way community for conversations like no other. It's the best way to stay informed at the end of your day or first thing in the morning every weekday. It's a show like no other because we involve the community. We hear from people from around the country, around the world. They're part of a conversation. There is no other platform like this. And I hope you will find it to be not only different than everything else, but more meaningful as you become part of of a special community around the program. So listen and follow two Way tonight with Mark Alperin on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or any other major streaming platform.
- [54:12]
John Podhoretz
One of the fears back in 2015 when Bibi Netanyahu was invited and agreed to speak before Congress to oppose the Iran nuclear deal that Obama was negotiating, one of the fears expressed by mainstream Jewish organizations which were, after all, cat's paws for Democrats and Obama and, you know, did things like Replace Abe Foxman, eventually. Abe Foxman, the head of the ADL with Jonathan Greenblatt, who was an Obama official, who then spent, you know, seven years before September 7th pretending that the interests of the Democratic Party and the interests of American Jewry and combating anti Semitism were one and the same. Shamefully, it's gotten better since October 7th. But one of the fears was that this would turn Israel into a partisan issue and that, you know, Republicans would support Israel and Democrats would not support Israel because they would be so offended because, you know, because Bibi was, you know, speaking out against Obama, who was, you know, sacrosanct and could not be. Could not be touched. Which is an interesting way of blaming the victim. Right. It's like Bibi went and said, this is a bad deal. It's a bad deal for you, it's a bad deal for us. This is. Represents an existential threat to us. It would be really great if you didn't do this, please. Because then we're going to have to figure out what the hell to do with a nuclear Iran. Who that wants to destroy the world's only Jewish country. That was terrible. How dare he? How dare he do that? Right. And so you had this kind of opening in the Democratic Party for, well, the hell with Israel. Like this. If the elected prime minister of Israel is going to go around futzing around in our politics, then we're done with them or whatever. Okay, so flash forward ten years later. Democratic Party is now almost institutionally anti Israel. I was going to say anti Semitic. I don't think that's quite fair. But it's institutionally anti Israel. The numbers are staggering. Right. I mean, who, who is more sympathetic to Israel? The Palestinians on the Democratic side stagger 75%, something like that, which will only necessarily have policy implications by definition. Like if that, if it's a 75% issue, then you're going to want to be on the other side. You're not going to want to be on the other side of it. And you're going to have to enumerate policies to make yourself palatable to the, to the vast majority of domestic voters. But again, as you say, Abe, and as Christine says, if it's not about a going ongoing war in Gaza in which Israelis are at arms fighting or being shown or, you know, dead, fake dead bodies of fake Gazan children from 2014 are being repurposed to say that they had just been killed now, all of that stuff. Yeah. Then the only issue is Jewish power. Jewish power, broadly understood. Right. So that's Jewish power in the Middle east and Jewish power here in the United States. That Jews are controlling Congress through their money, and Jews are controlling this and that through their money. And wait until this starts getting said openly about the donors who decided after October 7th and the shameful behavior of university presidents in how they handled campus protests and were dealing with the efforts to interfere with the rights of Jewish students. Those donors who decided they were no longer going to give to Penn and Harvard and other places, wait till they start coming under open attack for using their money and their power to control Harvard or to control Penn. These are people who don't have. No.
- [58:09]
Abe Greenwald
Bill Ackman has come under. You know, he's the. That's the first example, right, of. Of somebody who's been openly targeted because he was openly engaging in what you're talking about, which is, you know, you put your money where your values are and. And. And that's just going to happen more.
- [58:27]
Seth Mandel
Can I just add. Can I add to that? Because that those. Those people who've done that have shown courage and that. And what is being rewarded in our political system and in our culture more broadly is the cowardice of. Of people who won't criticize anyone on their side who reveals themselves to be racist, sexist, anti Semitic. This tribalism is actually not what most people feel. The fact that it's difficult now, as either someone right of center or slightly left of center, to point to their own side and say, you know, if you're running for attorney general in Virginia, you probably shouldn't have wished death on your enemies. And to point on the right and say, you know, if you're working in state government and you're talking about how you want to kill the Jews and put them in ovens, you probably shouldn't have that position of authority. Both of those things are true. And it's difficult now in a culture to break through and have leaders who say that. We say it all the time. But it's very difficult to hear that message from any sort of real leader.
- [59:18]
John Podhoretz
So, Christine, you're referring to this piece in Politico in which a telegram chat was leaked. And it's interesting because it's a telegram group of young Republicans who apparently, many of whom are nearing Social Security age, apparently to be young Republican, you can be 40 or younger. And I didn't really.
- [59:41]
Seth Mandel
40 is.
- [59:43]
John Podhoretz
You're young.
- [59:45]
Abe Greenwald
This was like. This was like when, remember, Kevin McCarthy and Paul Ryan were the young guys. Nobody, nobody in that young was under like 46 years old at the time, Right?
- [59:55]
Seth Mandel
Yeah, I fully support this, but.
- [59:57]
John Podhoretz
Yeah, but so they're young. So they're young Republicans. And this chat, like many seemingly private chats, gets very rowdy, right? Because it's sort of like, okay, we're all in our. You know, we're all in our parent in our basement rec room, and the adults are upstairs. We're gonna close the door, and now we're gonna, like, talk about girls and, you know, and talk about girls in the most disgusting, graphic possible way. No one's gonna be. So this is political chat among all of these, apparently overwhelmingly male, from what we could tell. Thousands of people. And, you know, we haven't seen the whole thing, but, like, yeah, some of the messages are just, like, disgusting. Like, and they're anti Semitic, they're sexist, they're. They're loathsome, they're racist, they're homophobic. I mean, everything on the list, right? But it's all. It's all sort of like the. All right, you know what? We're all. We're all here. No one's looking. Let's, you know, let's let our IDS out together. We're just going to say what we can't say, and the hell with all of you. And now it's out. Out in public, and the proper response to it is, jeez, this is disgusting.
- [61:26]
Seth Mandel
We.
- [61:27]
John Podhoretz
We're not going to stand for this among our, you know, our young men working in. Working in Republican politics, you know, we better teach them better or discipline them or do something, because this is not the way a civilized society works.
- [61:43]
Seth Mandel
Okay, but did you read the one advice. Did you read the one. Sorry to interrupt, but the one. The one. One of the guys on this chat who got fired and who. Who issued a public statement said, I take full responsibility. And then here's his apology. I'm sorry if anyone was offended by what I said. That's not an apology. Every single person on earth knows.
- [62:02]
John Podhoretz
And then he said he wasn't sure whether or not he'd been hacked by the way he sort of added the Joy Reid defense had been hacked, which is like. Are we getting going back to Anthony Weiner claiming that somebody had, you know, put. Put pictures of his own male member in his own text messages, whatever. So, yeah, that's a. That's a fun explanation, but no. The reason that you're outraged, Christine, is that the vice president of the United States said something like, boys, basically, boys will be boys, and chill out. You know, what's really important is that a guy you know, look, there's this guy running for Attorney General.
- [62:49]
Seth Mandel
I want to read what he said because it's important that this is on the record. He said he was on the Charlie Kirk show and he said the reality is that kids do stupid things, especially young boys. They tell edgy, offensive jokes. That's what kids do. And I really don't want us to grow up in a country where a kid telling a stupid joke, telling a very offensive, stupid joke is caused to ruin their lives. No, that is not what happened. Full grown adults were trafficking in racist, sexist, anti Semitic, homophobic statements, thinking it was a joke. Totally assuming that every, the thousand other people on the chat agreed with them. And this has become a currency of a kind of very online right sort, right leaning person. And Vance just placed himself squarely as their champion. And that is unacceptable to me personally. I'm sure people disagree, but I find that unacceptable. He's trying to turn this into right wing cancel culture. It has nothing to do with cancel culture. It has to do with adult responsibility, which this country has too little of these days. Okay, sorry, second rant over.
- [63:47]
John Podhoretz
No, you're right. Absolutely nothing to add.
- [63:53]
Christine Rosen
I'll only add to it that Vance is in a tough position because his buddy Tucker Carlson has a whole lot to do with the reason that these 40 year old kids think it's perfectly normal to sit there and spew that all day.
- [64:14]
John Podhoretz
And of course then we have this, you know, Zionist Jew loving president that they are all in the, who is the, you know, godhead to them. So the cognitive dissonance and he's winning.
- [64:28]
Abe Greenwald
On the very issue.
- [64:29]
Christine Rosen
Like this is like, you know, his crowning achievement has to do with his championing of Israel and the American Israel relationship.
- [64:39]
Abe Greenwald
Yeah, well that's how, that's how you know also that, you know, this is, this is the same sort of, you know, anti Semitism is edgy attitude and not really about Israel and not really about, you know, none of these guys knows what Zionism actually means or anything. That's how you know that this is, you know, I went through my Google News feed this morning and you know, it fed me, feeds me local news too. And it fed me, I'm from New Jersey, so fed me a story about a Freehold High school kids in Freehold, New Jersey who had planned to do a Halloween thing, that one of them was going to dress as Hitler and the rest were going to dress as Holocaust victims or something like that. And it became a whole thing. Like first of all, those are kids in case the Vice president needs to know the difference between a 34 year old and a 13 year old. But, but it's also like none of this is really about Israel's prosecution of a war in Gaza in a place that these people couldn't find on a map. This is, you know, this goes back to what Abe was saying earlier where it's just like you, this is how, you know, it's just about Jews. Because when you, when, when they want to be edgy, it's not like I think Israel is behaving disproportionately. That's not what the group chats say. The group chats say Hitler la ha, lol, whatever. You know, it always comes back to sort of the base, you know, Holocaust jokes and these sorts of things and you know, tweeting people in a gas chamber or, you know, a frog putting a person in a gas chamber, whatever it is. There's a specific formula to the idea of being edgy, you know, in these online, very online communities. And it's not really about Israel and too many people get to use Israel as a cover when, you know, we, you know, that's really the lesson of this, which is that there's a lot of this going on underneath the surface. That on the surface is being portrayed as Israel related.
- [66:36]
Christine Rosen
But it's not, it's probably too much to hope for, but Trump should speak directly to anti Semitism on the right.
- [66:46]
John Podhoretz
Oh, he, yeah, that, that's too much to hope.
- [66:49]
Abe Greenwald
I'm not sure it is.
- [66:50]
Christine Rosen
I think I'm saying it probably is.
- [66:52]
John Podhoretz
Okay. I feel like, I feel like we've, we've gotten more than we could ever hope.
- [66:59]
Christine Rosen
That, that is certainly not, I'm not.
- [67:01]
John Podhoretz
Raising, I'm not raising my ask.
- [67:03]
Christine Rosen
Right.
- [67:04]
Seth Mandel
Well, I do want to, I do think the hypocrisy on the left, of course, you have Kathy Hochul and other people jumping on this as an example, you know, condemning, instantly calling on everyone to condemn everything. And these are the same people who obviously wouldn't condemn very violent rhetoric by someone, you know, the guy running for AG in Virginia and other, you know, figures on the left who've called for the deaths of people on the right. So their hypocrisy is, is to be expected. But I think what, what worries me is that both sides are in this condition now where they can't talk about when things are bad on either side and both. And it's not a, it's not, it's not. And we have plenty of outspoken people on the right whose argument when Something like this surfaces is to say, well, they did it too, you know, so Obama weaponized the irs, and so now Trump has just announced he's going to weaponize the IRS against the other side. And everyone goes, well, what did you expect? That kind of escalation is very bad, is very bad for a free nation to think that this is the way things should operate. Does that mean Trump is the person to put a stop to it? Of course not. But, but celebrating that impulse, celebrating that tendency, it's deeply rooted in human nature, is not something, I think, if you're a sensible person on the right or the left, that you should do.
- [68:16]
John Podhoretz
That's the problem, is that you're making a case for the repression of a deeply human impulse.
- [68:25]
Seth Mandel
I'm a Victorian at heart, so let's just.
- [68:27]
John Podhoretz
I know, but we are not repressing our impulses in America these days.
- [68:32]
Abe Greenwald
In fact, the other thing, I read.
- [68:34]
Seth Mandel
Such weird books because I have, there's.
- [68:37]
Abe Greenwald
A, there's also, there's like this frustrates me, but there's, you know, especially somebody in politics like J.D. vent, there's a, there's a, there's an easy way to draw a line here, which is that, you know, let's say those kids in Freehold aren't doing. First, not, not just that they're kids, but they're not doing political organizing around this type of talk. And a Republican organization is doing political, by its nature, organizing around this type of talk. Right. That's an easy line to draw to say, we're not trying to police everyone's jokes or their private thoughts. What we're saying is the history of the world and politics teaches you that you cannot allow political organizing around these sorts of things, and you cannot make it so that it's. Your chances of getting elected to representative office are higher if you're making anti Semitic jokes or whatever in private. That's the point. You know, people often said to me when the, when the Women's March, when it turned out that, you know, leaders of the Women's March way back in 2016 had these connections to Farrakhan. And, you know, I, we called them out and people said to me, well, you know, a lot of the rappers you listen they to, they like, they like Farrakhan, you know, even say it in their music. And my response was, you know, I'm not actually trying to police people's private relationships with Louis Farrakhan. I can make a decision myself whether I want to be friends with someone who considers Farrakhan some kind of mentor. But I'm not actually looking for anybody with any connection to Farrakhan to oust them from society. What I'm saying is the moment you take on the leadership of a political movement, you have to leave Farrakhan behind. That's the difference. And when you take on the leadership of a political within a party or something, you have to leave this nonsense behind so that this is, does not become the way that Americans can get elected to office and the way that people can be politically successful to, you know, represent their fellow citizens.
- [70:47]
John Podhoretz
Look, Christine said that it's not cancel culture to say that this, this is outside the boundary of what we deem to be acceptable in relation to us. You are perfectly free to say anything you want to in a group chat. We are not obliged to employ you or to have you in positions of authority if you express these views. This is America, it's not Britain. So we're not going to arrest you for a tweet which is now what's happening in Britain, or arrest you for a private email. But you know, we are allowed to, we're allowed to say what it is and what is not, what we are willing to countenance as part of our broader movement. But this is the demonic quality that has been introduced to our culture because of cancel culture, which is to say cancel culture as it began, you know, 15 years ago or something like that, said these completely conventional views about relations between the sexes or what the roles, what, you know, what this long term human social roles of women and men are or whatever that all that. These are now deemed illegal and you're not allowed to say them. And if you say them, you will be kicked out of school or somebody will take, haul you up before a star chamber or something like that. And then that snowballs. So then it's about race, it's about, it's about your choices of sexual partner or, or you know, what, what your attractiveness level is to males or females or how you feel about gender assignment surgery or something like that. More and more things are put under the rubric of things you should not and are not allowed to say. People feel squeezed, they don't know what to do. People have completely acceptable versions of those opinions. Like I do not believe that gender assignment surgery changes someone from one gender to another because gender is written in your DNA, are thrown out of jobs or they are humiliated or whatever it is. And then when the cancel culture movement blows up, as it kind of has in the last 18 months, the problem is that you have suppressed their thoughts and everything else. And in the process of doing that, you have radicalized some of the people who feel silenced into irresponsible and crazy opinions. And you have let loose the idiot of that was silent before you started saying, you can't say anything about this. You are not allowed to say anything. So suddenly the barriers drop and then not only you can now say things that you couldn't say before. And then it's like, oh great, so I can start talking about how Hitler should put all the Jews in ovens. Now they were already saying that.
- [73:55]
Seth Mandel
They were already saying it. Now they feel emboldened to say it publicly. It's not that they suddenly are saying this, right?
- [74:01]
John Podhoretz
Well, I don't know what they were saying or what they weren't saying. I feel like 15 years ago people weren't sort of sitting around before the advent of the, or 20 years ago even, even people who are sort of anti Semitic weren't gathering together in chats and there wasn't Even a Facebook 18 years ago there was no social media of that discord.
- [74:23]
Seth Mandel
And a lot of these other platforms existed. This has been going on for quite some time.
- [74:28]
John Podhoretz
Right? But I'm saying if you, if you live in a culture in which the expectation is that people who say things that, that some star chamber committee decides are out of bounds and you punish people and then you scare other people by what they say. And then as I say, once you, when you pull the plug and you say, okay, enough of this, or you sort of like open the window and say, okay, we're not sealing ourselves off anymore, you've suppressed and pent up a lot of stuff that is just going to start flowing out. And a lot of it is stuff that was directly, you know, in the, you know, in the septic tank and was staying there in septic tank and now it's pouring over everybody's heads. And one of the reasons to object to cancel culture when it started was we are going to reap the whirlwind when this ends. It's my favorite political story of the last 20 years is Mitch McConnell saying to Harry Reid, do not end the filibuster. You are not going to like where this goes if you do this. Do you want to do it for immediate political advantage? You're going to rue the day that you did this because it's opening a Pandora's box in which all political discipline that is represented by this anti majoritarian thing called the filibuster that causes legislation to be more rational is going to go out the window. So even though you're going to help me when I want to, when I want to use it, I don't want you to do it. Don't do it because then I'm going to have to use it and then you're going to come back into power and you're going to use it and then I'm going to use it and there's no end to it. And he was right and Harry Reid was wrong. And so, you know, you open the floodgates and floods happen. That's the problem. Quick, very quick recommendation. I want to recommend a movie I saw last night called Roofman with Channing Tatum and Kirsten Dunst. It is a true story about a, a very benevolent thief who stole money from all of these McDonald's in North Carolina by going through the discovering that there were, there's a way you could sort of cut a hole in the roof and jump through and be there when the crew came on in the morning and you could open the cash register and take out the cash. But he was very kind to them. And then anyway, he ends up, he ends up escaping from prison and hiding in a Toys R Us. It's all true. And then what happens as he's there? Channing Tatum, his first movie in a couple of years is heart rending and dazzling. And Kirsten Dunst is really wonderful, is this woman he gets involved with. And among other things, this movie has one of the kindest and most heartwarming portrayals of just a little church in I think it's Fayetteville. I'm not quite sure where. It's either Mecklenburg or no, it's in Charlotte Mecklenburg county in North Carolina. But just this sort of little church that he somehow gets involved in and the kindness of the people there and what they're up to and this community that he gets in, even though they don't really know who he is and what he's about. It's a lovely, funny, touching and the weirdest thing about it is it's entirely true. And at the end of the movie you get to see the real people and they're sort of interviewed about this guy and what he did and how they feel about him now. So that's Roofman with Channing Tatum now at your mom multiplex. All right, we'll be back tomorrow. For Seth, Abe and Christina, I'm John Pothor. It's Keep the Candle Burning.