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- [00:00]
John Podhoretz
Today's episode of the Commentary Magazine Daily Podcast is brought to you by sapir, the quarterly journal edited by Bret Stephens. Devoted to ideas for a thriving Jewish future, SAPIR is proud to announce the SAPIR Debates, a public debate series on the most consequential issues facing Jewish communities in the U.S. israel and around the world. Presented in partnership with the 92nd Street Y, the superior Debates will be hosted and moderated by Brett Stevenson Stevens and feature world class thinkers. The topic of the inaugural Superior Debate, to be held on the evening of May 15th at the 92nd Street Y here in New York City, will focus on the only slightly controversial question, is Donald Trump good for the Jews? Joining the debate are Jason Greenblatt, Special Envoy to the Middle east and Trump's first term as President, and Rahm Emanuel, former Mayor of Chicago and Chief of Staff to prove President Barack Obama to purchase tickets for the inaugural Sapir debate at the 92nd Street Y on May 15, go to sapirjournal.orgdebates that's s a P I R journal.org debates expect the words some preach and pain, some die of the way of which way it's going. Hope for the best, expect the worst. Welcome to the Commentary Magazine Daily Podcast. Today is Thursday, April 17, 2025. I'm John Pod Horiz, the editor of Commentary Magazine and we have a two hander today. It's just me here with Executive Editor Abe Greenwald.
- [01:49]
Abe Greenwald
Hi Abe, Hi John.
- [01:51]
John Podhoretz
So Abe, you and I we have closed the May issue of Commentary, which should be up today@comMENTARY.org if it is not already. And I think you got to agree with me. We got a treasure trove here for our subscribers who can subscribe right now by going to commentary.org and hitting that subscribe button. Thick issue, 72 pages. We haven't had one in quite a while. It is up as I see on our site, remarkable lead article by Jonathan Foreman, the British veteran British American journalist who was the primary author of the Andrew Roberts Report that you heard about the All Party parliamentary group on UK Israel on what happened on October 7th. His piece the Untold Story of how Israel failed on October 7th is his account and the All Parliamentary Group's account of the intelligence, logistical, conceptual and military failures of Israel to respond when the attack took place and in the months before the attack when signs were growing that something really bad might happen. So that is the Commentary lead article. Very important. I commend it highly to everybody's attention. You can read it again by subscribing commentary.org but that is not the only glory in the issue. We have our own Seth Mandel who has written a piece called the Antisemites in the Conservative Manosphere which details this strange rise in the we're just asking questions people in the world of woke right podcasting that began with this question of whether or not Winston Churchill might actually be the villain rather than the hero of World War II, and then moved on to their flirtations with Israel is at fault in the war in Gaza to 911 trutherism to classic anti.
- [04:08]
Abe Greenwald
Semitic tropes to Hitler wasn't, you know, Hitler's misunderstood.
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John Podhoretz
Yeah, it was. Yeah. You know he really really just didn't know what to do with all the people that he was taking prisoner. So didn't know how to didn't have enough food to feed them really was really the thing. Another remarkable article by Hannah Myers called Trans Criminals the Problem we refused to define. Fact is as she goes into detail both in prisons and and and outside of prisons, the people who collate data on criminal justice are not culling data on how many crimes are committed in what proportion by people who define themselves as trans. It appears to be quite a significant problem, particularly in the world of the incarcerated and for obvious reasons owing to wokeness that data, people do not want to collate that data because it might suggest that something is going on that they do not want to look at. Very original piece. We have Joseph Epstein on how Jewish is Marcel Proust, greatest novelist of the 20th century by many many reckonings born half Jewish and of course the lead character much of his seven volume masterpiece In Search of lost Time is a high born French Jew named Swan. What does this tell us about should he be entered in the canon of great Jewish writers? Leo Lebovitz on Chuck Schumer's book Antisemitism in America, which if you like a good taking of a scalpel and slicing someone to ribbons right in front of your eyes. Liel's piece is for you other glories. Jim Meggs, our tech commentary columnist with a piece on why the court's ruling on Greenpeace's efforts to disrupt the laying of pipeline in 2016 and 2017. This massive judgment against Greenpeace by a jury, why this is so important and why where this comes from and what consequences might take place from it. Matt Continetti on why Mike Johnson has proved to be so unexpectedly adept as speaker of the House. Jonathan Schanzer on gutter and why does everybody bow before this terror supporting country Just riches untold. Go to commentary.org subscribe and read or if you are already a subscriber, I welcome you to your weekend of pleasure, pain, suffering, joy, horror and enlightenment in the pages of the May Commentary or the virtual pages of the May Commentary. Abe yes Story last night New York Times guess what? Israel teed up an attack on Iran. Thought America was going to go for it. Trump then tells Bibi Netanyahu in the Oval Office we're not going for it. There were a lot of hints that this was what the Bibi Trump meeting was about. There have been a lot of hints that the United States was pre positioning assets in and around Iran and in the Middle east to possibly engage in this effort to take out Iran's nuclear programs. With Iran blind and deaf and dumb due to the take the the removal of their air defenses last fall, late summer fall and I'm just gonna rather than go into why I'm disheartened or this magazine has had a 20 year position that Iran's nuclear sites needed to be bombed and that the only way to get rid of Iran's nuclear program was to bomb it. That goes back to dates back to the Bush admin. Second term of the Bush administration. So I'm not going to pretend to want to have a serious argument about whether or not Iran needed to be bombed. That's where we've been. We published hundreds of thousands of words on this subject by now. What is your takeaway from the New York Times story which is very detailed about who was for it, who was against it, what went on in the Oval Office, how, how specific the plans are. So much so that our friend David Makofsky of Ginsa told Jewish Insider that the leak, this, this series of leaks deserves prosecution for revealing the battle plans of an allied government.
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Abe Greenwald
Well, to be honest, that my, my first thought and my last thought after reading it is why was it leaked? Is it leaked as some sort of tactical bid on the US's part in talks with Iran? Is it leaked to in a ridiculous, fruitless, pointless effort to show the Iranians hey, you have an opportunity here to negotiate. We're being nice guys. We're not going to get involved in an Israeli bombing and commando raid on your nuclear facilities. So work with us. If that is the reason behind this, it's even worse than, than the story itself and the fact that there was a leak. I can't hear you.
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John Podhoretz
Sorry everybody, I muted which I never do and so of course I then needed to unmute and I didn't know where the unmute button was because why would I ever mute Because I never stopped talking. Okay, here are the here's the key details from the leak. Initially, at the behest of Mr. Netanyahu, senior Israeli officials updated their American counterparts on a plan that would have combined an Israeli commando raid on underground nuclear sites with a bombing campaign, an effort that the Israelis hoped would involve American aircraft. But Israeli military officials said the commando operation would not be ready until October. Mr. Netanyahu wanted it carried out more quickly. Israeli officials began shifting to a proposal for an extended bombing campaign that would also have required American assistance. Some American officials were at least initially more open to considering the Israeli plans. General Michael E. Kurilla, the head of US Central Command, and Michael Waltz, the National Security advisor. But both discussed how the United States could potentially support an Israeli attack if Mr. Trump backed the plan. With the United States intensifying its war against the Iran backed Houthi militants in Yemen, General Kurilla began moving military equipment to the Middle East. The second aircraft carrier, Carl Vinson, is now in the Arabian Sea, joining the carrier Harry S. Truman. US Also moved to Patriot missile batteries and a terminal high altitude area defense system known as a thaad to the Middle East. Around a half dozen B2 bombers capable of carrying 30,000 pound bombers, bombs essential to destroying Iran's underground nuclear program were dispatched to Diego Garcia, an island base in the Indian Ocean. So we are getting literally the entire plan laid out now. Most of these details in some ways have already been made public. But here's the key. Here's the key. A meeting this month, Trump inside the Trump administration. Some officials were becoming skeptical of the Israeli plan. In a meeting this month, Tulsi Gabbard, Director of National Intelligence, presented a new intelligence assessment that said the buildup of American weaponry could potentially spark a wider conflict with Iran that the United States did not want. Now, I'm going to stop here. We're going to go on with this article. But the thing that we heard about Tulsi Gabbard and her report was not this. It was not that this could spark a wider conflict in the Middle East. It was that Tulsi Gabbard had presented an intelligence finding that Iran's nuclear program was not a threat. So either there were two reports, one said it's not a threat and the other said it could spark a wider war. Or somebody was lying about what Tulsi Gabbard told the President and the administration. And so I don't know which, and maybe we shouldn't know either. Doesn't matter. Tulsi Gabbard, as one could have anticipated, is a voice inside the administration for preventing the United States from engaging in this aggressive effort against Iran. In a range of officials echoed Ms. Gabbard's concerns in the various meetings, Susie Wiles, the White House chief of staff, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, and Vice President J.D. vance all voiced doubts about the attack. Even Mr. Waltz was skeptical that Israel's plan could succeed without substantial American assistance. Now, this is an odd couple of paragraphs. First of all, that you're a hawkish voice on Iran like Mike Waltz does not mean that you think that Israel could go it alone and succeed in destroying Iran's nuclear program. That's the whole point of this conversation, is that Israel can't do it alone. And if we think that there is a national American interest as well as Israel's interest in destroying the Iranian nuclear program, America is going to have to be involved, at least at the logistical level and very likely at the operational level, because of those 30,000 pound bombs on B52 bombers at Diego Garcia. That's what is needed to burrow under the ground and destroy the underground facilities that Iran has. What's more troubling is subsequent paragraphs. In one discussion, Mr. Vance, with support from others, argued that Mr. Trump had a unique opportunity to make a deal with Iran because the Iranians said they were open to indirect talks. So they had a real opportunity to make a deal. And if the talks failed, Mr. Trump could then support an Iranian attack, Mr. Vance said, according to administration officials. So sure, there can be a deal. We already know that. Steve Witkoff, the negotiator, came back and said, hey, I got a deal for you don't have to get rid of your nuclear program. Just return to the enrichment numbers of, you know, there was a deal. It was called the JCPOA struck in between the Obama administration and Iran in 2015. That was a deal. There was a deal. I know Donald Trump called it the worst deal in the history of deals. But you know what? That was a deal. You could go back to it. Trump pulled out of it first term, go back to it. There's a deal. Wahoo. You know, because otherwise you might have to strike Iran if you're going to live up to the things that you've been saying about it. So there's 10 billion things to be said about this. But the question is what it says about the Trump administration's internal discussions about what is going on with American foreign policy. Hey, everybody, vacation season is upon us. 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- [18:03]
Abe Greenwald
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John Podhoretz
The phalanx inside the Trump White House, which clearly is making all policy. You know, Marco Rubio is apparently today in negotiations with Steve Witkoff with Putin on, on Ukraine. But you know, Marco Rubio, as far as I is probably playing solitaire on his computer for all the role that he is playing in American foreign policy. So I hope that he's glad that he left the Senate to be humiliated on a daily basis by third level White House officials who seem to have more sway over what's going on than he does. But phalanx of opinion, obviously we have an ideological divide in the Republican Party. Classic Republican hawkishness. Says we can't let Iran get a nuclear weapon and we can't let Iran have a nuclear program. We side with Israel also, by the way, we sided with Ukraine, but there was enough resistance to that among the Republican rank had filed to make that a controversial position among Republican politicians. Nonetheless, we need a military buildup. We should be backing Israel to the hilt. And Iran is trying to assassinate the president was bad enough that we took out the head of their Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps. Soleimani Trump did that strike in 2020. But there is this apparently relatively global attitude among people inside the White House that the United States needs to not be involved to the extent possible in military conflict on the planet. And the nice way to refer to them is as the restrainers. But I got a question for you, Abe, which is are they, what are they restraining? So are they showing restraint? Because their idea is that Biden and I don't know who else, but whatever, we're too unrestrained in the use of American power. I don't see that with Biden. Biden pulled out of Afghanistan, so I don't know who's restraining who. They don't. They want to confront China, but not really. They want to pull out of Afghan. They want to pull out of the support for Ukraine and support for Ukraine so that the war there can end. And I think the term restrainers, we're going to have to start thinking about whether or not what's.
- [24:43]
Abe Greenwald
Who.
- [24:43]
John Podhoretz
Who they want to restrain now is Israel, not whether they want to restrain us. Because when they say they're restrainers, what they're talking about is restraining the hawks, restraining American neocon psychotics who got us involved in a horrible war. And all we want to do is blow everybody up and destroy everything. What they'd like to do is take Panama and Greenland without firing a shot and then restrain us everywhere else. But I think Trump meets with Netanyahu and says we're not participating in this. And then the question is, okay, what does Bibi take away from that? Does he take away that Israel has to go it alone and has to really decide whether it can do it or is the implicit message, you are not to do this. We're your only friend. We don't think it's wise. Tulsi over here is telling me it's going to make things worse in the Middle east, not better. And, you know, if there's one thing Tulsi Gabbard knows, it's the geopolitics of the Middle east and how not to and weird hair dye patterns. That's what she knows. Pacifist, aligned with Russia. You know, weird paranoid politics. Just great that she's the Director of National Intelligence and is doing exactly as I say, what everybody would have feared she would have done, which is she is using her position to make. Make it, frame everything in an ideological case and then accuse others who have a geopolitical set of ideas that says, you know what, if you're one of your leading enemies is naked before the world, let's take out their strength without their ability to fire back. That's not an ideological position. That's a practical position. They're saying, don't do it because, ooh, and, you know, blah, blah, blah. And I think they don't like Israel. And what they want is to restrain Israel. And I think J.D. vance doesn't like Israel. I think his crew of Tucker Carlson manosphere anti Semite scumbags doesn't like Israel. And this is all about stopping Israel. Stopping Israel, stopping Israel. That's what I really think. In case you were wondering what I.
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Abe Greenwald
Really thought, I agree with you 100% on those parties. And I also just want to say the, this formulation that a strike on Iran could, quote, spark a wider regional war. This has been in use since October 7th, right. Which it was ridiculous, months after October 7th, because Israel was already fighting on seven fronts today. What. What wider war could there be? This is it. I mean, Israel is. Israel is, you know, decimated. Hamas has torn to shreds. Hezbollah, we're daily lobbing bombs on the Houthis. Syria has been toppled. Syria's air defenses have been toppled. So have Iran's and so have Iraq's on the way to Iran. This is the last piece. Like, this is who's coming in after this. You know, this idea of this sparking this wider regional war. The other thing I want to say is that in terms of not liking Israel, I think a lot of this story in the Times, there's a lot of leaking against Israel. I mean, a lot of the story is about the alternative preliminary plans that Israel had up to this point, what they were going to do there was going to be commando operation underground, but that would take months. Netanyahu wanted something to happen faster. So why is all this coming out? That to me is hostile. And you know, if you're going to telegraph or you're going to show Israel's position and strategic thinking up to this moment and at this moment, I think it's very damaging. And if I were Bibi right now, I would be deeply concerned about who was doing what in the Trump administration.
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John Podhoretz
Well, and it may be Ronan Bergman is one of these reporters on the piece, the foremost Israeli investigative reporter who has his source, anti BB sources in the Israeli military and intelligence high command who are also restrainers and do not want, do not want this to happen because they, if Bibi wants X, they all want Y. And so there is, there is the possibility that some of this is coming from the Israeli side. The key to considering why it matters that they're leaking this specifically against Israel is not this story, but again, a series of stories. The story that came out last week about how negotiator Adam Borer had established some kind of a rapport in the first direct talks with, with Hamas that the United States has ever engaged in, only to be rebuffed by a furious Ron Dermer. Bibi's sort of, I don't know what you call him, his Harry Hopkins, his closest advisor and enraged. Enraged and you know, scuttled whatever wondrous efforts Adam Borer might have been making because they ate tea cakes together and talked about how amazing it was that they were sitting together. Hamas, by the way, of course, having rejected yet the latest effort and claiming they don't know where the remaining American hostage, Adon Alexander is. They've lost him. They lost, you know, it's like, haven't you ever lost something? I can't find my keys either. They can't find their most single valuable asset in preventing, preventing an all out war to destroy them. The reason I bring this up is that yesterday it was announced that Adam Borer, far from having humiliated himself and having shown that he should be kept far away from any negotiating table, has had his role as a hostage negotiator expanded by Donald Trump. So Donald Trump now has two lead negotiators, Steve Witkoff and Adam Borer, one of whom is sucking up to gutter and making a heartfelt thanks to Vladimir Putin for the wonderful paintings that he is delivering of Donald Trump and Adam Borer, who was leaking to the New York Times about how mean the Israelis were to him when all he wanted to do was have tea, cake and, and sit with, with people who have mass murdered Americans and Jews and he himself is a Jew and have a fine old time pretending that they're going to make a deal on the hostages. So in the spirit of crushing morosity, let us both say that this is very bad.
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Abe Greenwald
Oh, it's, it's terrible. You know, and there's more, I mean, there's more crushing morosity. I'm reminded also, I mean, if you want to talk about the negotiating with Iran as if it's real because it's Kabuki, you know, it's, as I said, you know, there's, there's never going to be an actual deal to, to retard the Iranians in their efforts to get a nuclear weapon. I mean, you can slow them down, but, but, but not, but they're never going to give up the goal. Starting out negotiations by saying, by announcing, by broadcasting. We are not going to let the, we're not going to let, we're going to, we're going to restrain Israel. For you, it's identical to what Trump did with Russia starting out those negotiations with Russia, saying, we're going to give, we're going to give you what you most want. Right off the bat. Ukraine's not getting NATO membership. They're not going back to pre invasion border, borderlines and so on. This is the great negotiator. Again, all carrots for the bad guys. No stick and there'll be no deal. Yes, go ahead.
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John Podhoretz
It's worse. Look who gets to say it's worse than that. I'm going to say it's worse than that. It's worse than that because Trump arguably got elected in 2024 with a boulder rolling down a hill. That was the reputation, the efficiency and the opinion of the American people, of the Biden administration. That boulder started rolling down The Hill in August 2021 when Biden pulled out of Afghanistan. And the humiliation of the pullout, the 13Americans getting killed at the airport, and the general sense of disgrace that most rational people looking at the world say provided Putin with an implicit green light to invade Ukraine with the understanding that whatever noise and screaming America might or might not do, that we were a paper tiger and that he could take the country that he wanted to take without huge repercussions. I mean, I think he miscalculated. There were huge repercussions, not just here, but, you know, in the worldwide response and sanctions and a tougher fight than he expected to have. But Nonetheless, and who is there all along the way saying, this is a disgrace. This is the worst thing that's ever happened. If I were president, this would never have happened. If I were president, none of. None of these terrible things would happen. All of this would be fine. Don't worry about it was Donald Trump. And Donald Trump is now showing that he has the negotiating acumen in relation to the world of Joe Biden and Barack Obama. So he is trying to end a war in Ukraine by giving the bad guy what he wants, and he is trying to essentially recapitulate to Iran and create some new form of the Iran nuclear deal that he said in 2016, 2017, 2018, was the worst deal that had ever been struck. So, you know what? I wouldn't mind negotiating with him. I don't have anything to negotiate with him over right now. But if I'm. If I'm the world, I understand that, you know, Xi is that the tariffs are hurting people, and it shows. He's such a tough guy and a bully and all of that, that Trump is, you know, like. Like spreading his shadow over everything. But I'm not looking at any of this and thinking, oh, my God, I'm up against, you know, Gary Kasparov, and we're playing. We're playing chess. And who I better like, you know, lean my. You know, lean, you know, give up or, you know, go for a draw because, you know, I'm not beating this guy. Pretty easy to beat this guy. You. You're Iran. You lose all of your defenses, your view, your. Your, you know, your proxies in Lebanon and Gaza are all but fried. The United States is striking the Houthis on a daily basis. So you are kind of. You've lost your external ability to project your power outside your borders, and Israel's destroyed your air defenses, and Trump is coming to you hat in hand, looking for a deal so he doesn't have to drop a bomb on your head.
- [36:56]
Abe Greenwald
And by the way, you know, this is why Bibi wanted to go on a faster timeline than the initial plan, because they have a. Because this window will close. You know, Iran can build its air defenses back. It can get its missile program up and running, which the Israelis also destroyed. So they wanted to take advantage of the most opportune time and God knows what. These fake negotiations, not only is it going to give the Iranians more time, but they may ask for things that will actually help them build up their defenses here. And, you know, Trump getting played or Witkoff getting played may say, yes, the Only it's not even a ray of hope. But the only thing I look back on and think, well, maybe something like this could happen is that during Trump's first administration, Iran was being very provocative and there was an opportunity to hit a bunch of Iranian targets very hard and on the US's part. And the plan was all set to go, and then Trump pulled back at the last second, didn't want to do it, got chicken, and things went on and Iran didn't stop, and then Trump went back and killed Soleimani. So maybe, I mean, you know, there is they. The article alludes to, you know, should Iran, you know, do anything, we will be, you know, they will pay a heavy price or we'll, you know, defend Israel or whatever the language was. So maybe this. Trump will revisit this in a different light at some point, but it's just bad. I'm not surprised at all. I had a bad feeling that this is where it was heading.
- [38:53]
John Podhoretz
The dynamic in American foreign policy and American politics in general would suggest, like a counter response or response, since all responses are counter. A response from the Democratic side or the liberal side. Right. That would say, just as they are responding to the taking of, you know, the, the repatriation of the, of the supposed gang members to El Salvador, whatever. Like Trump says, Trump does X, they say Y, Trump says yes, they say no. One of the reasons that this is so disheartening is that I'm not saying Trump is turning on Israel in no way, shape or form, is refusing to participate essentially in a shooting war with Iran an act of turning on Israel. That would be wrong. Trump is not turning on Israel. And the continuing battles on anti Semitism on the college campuses show that he needs to be seen as a friend of the Jews and a friend of Israel. And it would be extremely wrong to think otherwise. Not of people inside his administration or of influencers outside it, but of him and what is going on there. However, a healthier political system, let's say, or one that follows along standard patterns would say, isn't it time for Democrats to rise up and say, why isn't Trump hitting Iran? They're naked, they're vuh. They're this. It's an easy shot. This. They are, you know, the world's foremost state sponsor of terrorism. They, they paid for Hamas, they paid for Hezbollah, they're paying for the Houthis. They're still disrupting our, Our, you know, forces in, whatever forces we have in Iraq. They are, they are harming the Iraqi government. They are playing games in Syria. Shouldn't we be doing this? And you'll note that there is literally no democratic voice that is opening up a mouth to say anything about this, which is another reason to be disheartened is that this fight is entirely now internal within the right and solely as a result of the right's vanguard in the form of the, you know, manfluencers. We have a world in which there is no counter response. And the voices that one might expect in the House and the Senate who might push back on this news story or whatever are going to be very quiet because they don't believe that any public confrontation with Trump or with the administration will lead to anything but trouble for them and a kind of deepening of the orneriness on, on Trump's part and a strengthening of the hand of the people like, led by J.D. vance, whom they think are, you know, irresponsible and dangerous. So it's left to us or people like us to make this argument. And they're are very few leaders, political leaders who are willing to take up the cudgel to say, what do you mean you're not supporting? What do you mean you have a once in a generation opportunity to get rid of this nuclear program that has bedeviled the world now for 25 years. What do you mean you're not going to take it? This episode is brought to you by Enterprise Mobility. From fleet management to flexible truck rentals to technology solutions, Enterprise Mobility helps businesses find the right mobility solutions so they.
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Abe Greenwald
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John Podhoretz
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Abe Greenwald
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John Podhoretz
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- [43:05]
Abe Greenwald
This episode is brought to you by Shopify. Upgrade your business with Shopify, home of the number one checkout on the planet. Shop pay boosts conversions up to 50%, meaning fewer carts going abandoned and more sales going cha ching. So if you're into growing your business, get a commerce platform that's ready to sell wherever your customers are. Visit shopify.com to upgrade your selling today. I mean, you know, you mentioned Marco Rubio before. It's kind of a sick joke. He's secretary of State in an administration that won't help Israel take out Iran's nuclear program. At a time when Iran has been brought down so low, militarily, economically, in every other way, its allies are gone or suffering. We know, you know, Rubio's sort of history of hawkishness on Iran and he's got to sit here and it's his choosing. He's sitting here and you know, letting Tulsi Gabbard and J.D. vance say no, no, this is, we don't, we don't, we don't want that.
- [44:16]
John Podhoretz
Yeah, well, I mean there is a significant difference between the second Trump term and the first Trump term. Right. The second Trump term, vastly more aggressive, moving on all fronts. Right. And moving domestically and in foreign policy terms. Well, excuse me, not moving policy terms except to kind of upend the Republican, the classic Republican consensus of the last half century or close to half century when Ronald Reagan rose up against detente basically in 75, 76, 77 and moved changed the nature of American foreign policy on the right to a more freedom loving and more substantively supportive of defense spending and all that, but immense amounts of aggression toward the courts. Right. Ignoring Congress or not ignoring Congress but paying no attention, not even looking to Congress or asking Congress to rubber stamp things. And of course these efforts that are being made using executive orders to go at law firms, to go at universities and the like. And what's interesting here is that it turns out that there that the grown ups in the room who were there to kind of hold back Trump from his worst or most ill thought through efforts really aren't present. They're just, they're not there. And he has appointed a cabinet of, and has a White House staff of yes man. He's allowed to do this and he is not doing anything that he said he wasn't going to do. So I'm not saying that, you know, that's we're going to re, he'll have, he'll have the administration he has and the public will have to take the full measure of it when it gets a chance to speak its mind and buy elections and midterm elections and then another presidential election. But there really is no voice inside, as far as we can tell, that is arguing against his most aggressive impulses. In other words, saying except maybe Scott Besant or whatever, but we can't tell on some of the tariffs except saying maybe it is fantastic that you're going at Harvard, maybe drop these three provisions from the demand sheet because they're giving Harvard an out that we don't need to give Harvard. Let's hit them where they are weak, punch them where they're weak and leave these other things to one side. They'll fall part of their own internal inconsistencies. But that's not the way they're doing it. That's not the way they're Handling the courts. That's on the. And so the danger there is that it's all going to fall apart, that all of the legal arguments that they make are going to fall by the wayside. Let's take a quick moment, by the way, to talk about the Harvard case and the big news over yesterday, which is that the administration is looking seriously at revoking Harvard's tax exemption as a nonprofit. This is a way more serious thing than people realize and is actually had they gone there first as opposed to second. No, I know something about this because Commentary is a nonprofit institution. And in 2010 or 2011, like other conservative institutions, we got a letter from the IRS claiming that we had violated our tax exemption and that we needed to prove that we had not done so or it would be removed. So I called our lawyer, called lawyer looking into what to do about this. The reason that we were so accused is that Joe Lieberman had come to give a speech of commentary in 2008. And in the course of this speech, the text of which we published on our website, he endorsed John McCain for president. Commentary is a 501c3 non profit, cannot endorse candidates. Commentary did not endorse John McCain. And. But we published this thing where the text of this speech given at a Commentary event by, by the late Joe Lero and called the lawyer and said, well, obviously this is a First Amendment like they can't take away our tax exempt status because of publish one thing. And our lawyer said, no, actually they, they can. They have almost unlimited discretion to revoke tax exempt status. The head of the IRS has unlimited discretion. In no way, shape or form do you have a right to a tax exemption. A tax exemption is granted you as long as you fulfill certain mandates. One of those mandates is that you don't endorse candidates. So not only don't you have a right to a tax exemption, but they can pull your tax exemption and you have no recourse. There is no finding of law that says that you are granted a tax exemption. It is a gift of the federal government in a funny way. And regulations have been written. If they show you violated the regulations, they can. And Harvard has violated Title 6 without question. It has violated. It even kind of acknowledges that it violated Title 6 in the letter that Alan Garber wrote about how wonderful they'd been to change their policies to protect Jewish students. Harvard's in real trouble if this goes forward because this is how the law works and Harvard is in breach of its. Now, we got out of this by the Way. Since I told the story, my method of getting out of it was to publish, put into, literally print, a million pages of documents. That was the entirety of our website in the year 2008. So publish more than a million words, not a million pages, and send them to this field office of the IRS in Cincinnati, where all of this was coming from, to say, here's discovery. This is our website from 2008. We argue that the sentence in which Joe Lieberman endorsed John McCain functions effectively as a part per million in. In the. As a pollutant, as a part per million. In no other way, shape, or form did we endorse any Republican candidate for anything, or endorse any candidate for anything. And if you can find that in here, then you are welcome to do so. So we are supplying you with every word that we have published, and we never heard from them again. So our argument stood, and we remained okay. And we have never endorsed the candidate then or since. And we hadn't done it then anyway. But it was this beginning of the weaponization of the IRS by the Obama administration. Somebody was hired by a Soros, Jason, to, you know, comb through everybody's site and try to find this. Harvard's in big trouble because unlike viewpoint discrimination, speech, all of that, there is no constitutional protection for nonprofit status. So, I don't know.
- [52:23]
Abe Greenwald
There is always the chance that because this administration is what it is, that they somehow bungle this, though, right?
- [52:33]
John Podhoretz
Well, they may have bungled it already, you see, because they confused it. They bungled the. They bungled the freezing of the. Of the. The funds on the grounds that the requirements to defend against, you know, the rights of Jewish students had been, you know, that that requirement, or, you know, Title 6 had been violated by then demanding things that had nothing to do with Title six, you know, and so therefore kind of muddied the waters there. So, yeah, I mean, in some ways, the bungling has already happened, I guess. Okay, well, with that good news, I think we'll leave it here. All right, thanks for listening. We'll be back tomorrow. It's me and Abe. Keep the camel burning.