Loading summary
Transcript99 lines
- [00:01]
John Podhoretz
This episode is brought to you by Lifelock. The holidays mean more travel, more shopping, more time online, and more personal info in places that could expose you to identity theft. That's why Lifelock monitors millions of data points every second. If your identity is stolen, their US based restoration specialist will fix it, guaranteed, or your money back. Get more holiday fun and less holiday worry with Lifelock. Save up to 40% your first year. Visit lifelock.com podcast terms apply.
- [00:45]
Abe Greenwald
No way of knowing which way it's going. Hope for the best. Expect the worst.
- [00:52]
Matthew Continetti
Hope for the best.
- [00:55]
Abe Greenwald
Welcome to the Commentary Magazine daily podcast. Today is Monday, November 25, 2024. I am John Pod Horitz, the editor of Commentary magazine. With me is always executive editor Abe Greenwald. Hi, Abe.
- [01:08]
Matthew Continetti
Hi, John.
- [01:09]
Abe Greenwald
And Washington Commentary columnist Matthew Continetti. Hi, Matt.
- [01:13]
Unnamed Speaker
Hi, John.
- [01:13]
Abe Greenwald
This is all you're getting today, just us three. We're going to try to entertain you for a while with material that is not all that entertaining. I wanted to start with the horrible story of the murder in the United Arab Emirates of a Chabad rabbi, TSVI Kogan, who is a Moldovan but with joint Israeli citizenship. Early reports say he was actually a member in the Israeli army of the Givati Brigade, which is the same brigade that my nephew alone served in, went to the United Arab Emirates, among other things, ran a kosher grocery store after the Abraham Accords, thawed relations between the two. He seems to have been kidnapped last week by three Uzbekis who somehow got into the uae, killed them, tried to drive away. The Emiratis, have arrested three people. And the reason, aside from the horror of a Jew being kidnapped because he's a Jew and being killed, which is a terrible thing, is that this opens up a potential new front in the they're driving us underground narrative that we have been talking about here for, you know, close to a year, with details similar, not similar in intensity or horror, but but similar in purpose to things that went on in Canada this weekend, by which I mean, if the Chabad Shlichim, those are the members of the Chabad Labavich outreach community who go all over the world, open up these places called Chabad houses, to allow Jews in that area to have a place to go, to have a meal on the Sabbath, to get kosher meat, if that's necess to worship on, to say Kaddish, to do the things you need to do as a religious Jew, These Shlichim are in, I don't know, 120 countries or something like that. They go entirely on their Own. They have to go find real estate. They have to sort of set up shop. Some of them have to learn how to, how to butcher meat to make it kosher in order to serve the community there. And they are unprotected. They are doing this work for the Jewish community in the world. And we had one incident 11 or 12 years ago, tragically in the same family. That is when the Mumbai Chabad rabbi was killed in a terrorist attack I think in 2011. He was the uncle.
- [04:13]
Matthew Continetti
2008. I think.
- [04:14]
Abe Greenwald
Excuse me, 2008. I'm sorry, what? He was the uncle of Zvi. Of the wife of Zvi Kogan, the widow of Zvi Kogan. So this gives you a sense of how tight knit the Shalia emissary missionary community is among the, among the people who are members of Chabad. But also that, you know, if people get the idea that this is something you can do nice and easy, guy walking down the street, you could kill him just to show how much you hate Jews. It's hard to know what to say or how that's going to be.
- [04:51]
Unnamed Speaker
Of course, this kidnapping and murder also occurred in the uae. The location is important because the UAE is an Abraham Accords nation. And so this brutal murder is a test, I think, of the Abraham Accords. Now the UAE ambassador to the United States, Otaiba came out with a statement denouncing what had happened. The UAE apparently very quick to arrest the people there saying were responsible for this attack. But in addition to a human tragedy, to an antisemitic attack exemplifying this global intifada that is now taking place, it's also a test for the Abraham Accords which the incoming administration, I believe will try to strengthen and even potentially down the road, expand.
- [05:47]
Matthew Continetti
Yeah, and we should say that the Uzbekis were believed to have been sent by Iran, which of course is opposed to the Abraham Accords and is an enemy of the Emiratis, which is part of what has driven the Emirates in Israel together. So they have this common enemy in Iran. So neither the Emirates. This is a shock and an embarrassment for them. They don't want this to fester. They don't want a repeat of this. They want to get this wrapped up, solved and punished very badly. Just, you know, to point out the. In the Mumbai attack, the remaining surviving attacker there was hanged. And I wouldn't be terribly surprised to see the murderers here meet a similar fate.
- [06:56]
Abe Greenwald
So we're going two different directions. One here has to do with the larger foreign policy implications of this individual act. Of murder. The relations between Israel and the Emirates have not just been a thaw or this thing where they signed a piece of paper. There has been a kind of joyous coming together of the Israelis and the Emiratis opening kosher restaurants in Dubai supermarkets, Israelis traveling there at least until October 7th, when they got to be a little more hesitant about doing international travel altogether. But, you know, Israelis are flocking there as a. As a new tourist destination, hanging out in Dubai, places like that, being welcomed with open arms. And so this. This wasn't just sort of like a test of the Abraham Accords as a. As a diplomatic, you know, achievement that could be duplicated in other places. There really did seem to be a kind of relief in the region that finally this enmity could be dropped and that there could be relations between Jews and Muslims in the Middle East. In an era of good feeling, that doesn't end, particularly if it wasn't Emiratis who committed the crime, that if the murderers were imported for this very purpose, that does not implicate the Emirates in the act any more than an Iranian being assassinated, American being assassinated on American soil by an Iranian agent. There's at least one case of it, and obviously there have been attempts at others, implicates the United States. And in such acts. My concern has to do with this question of whether or not these adventurous Orthodox Jews who are attempting to provide to the Jewish community a sense of place wherever Jews go, whether this now. Whether there is now a reason for them to be frightened, to be scared for their lives, to be concerned about their own security. And this could be a way of killing off slowly The. As I heard, the shlichim, this emissary program that has been an unalloyed good for the Jewish people around the world and also has provided people in places where hostility toward Jews isn't necessarily sort of like at the top of the agenda, a sense that here are some people who come. They're not interested in converting us. They're not interested in, you know, in interfering with our lives or having anything. They're there. They are their own people helping their own people, and that they are a net benefit to their community.
- [10:04]
Matthew Continetti
Can you say a couple things about that? One is that I've had pretty extensive dealing with Chabad, and I don't think anything would frighten them off from going to these places, establishing these outposts of Jewish life wherever they can. The only way it could potentially be slowly killed off is if other countries were less welcoming for fear of attacks on the point about what they do, overwhelmingly, yes, they are. They exist to get Jews in touch with Jewish life, have access to the things that make Jewish life possible in far flung places, or not so far flung places. But also, if you take Ukraine, for example, just worth pointing this out. Chabad has been incredible in the overall effort in helping out Ukrainians, not just Jews, establishing schools for children whose schools have been bombed, food aid to the front lines, housing people whose homes have been blown up, and so on, raising money and the rest of it. So they've also been an unalloyed good, even outside the Jewish community in some cases.
- [11:26]
Abe Greenwald
Well, let's also talk about what happened in Canada this weekend. There were two major events in Canada this weekend that are chilling beyond words. One, the admittedly incredibly provocative radical journalist Ezra Levant went to a protest in Toronto where Hamas, next, or supporters of Hamas, staged a play, act of the murder, the killing, whatever you want to call it, the assassination of Yaya Sinwar on a street in the middle of a protest where somebody was dressed up as Sinwar in a chair and I guess is garroted. I don't quite know what was going on there. And the Toronto police were there to protect the protesters, to protect them, to protect the people who were staging this repulsive celebration of Hamas and Sinwar. And Ezra Levant, who has an organization called Rebel Radio or something like that, showed up with an iPhone intending to film the proceedings. And you can see this on YouTube. There's a seven minute clip of cops inter, interceding between Ezra Levan, who is about 70 years old and a sort of, you know, little, a little gray haired guy. And all he's saying is, I want to go across the street and film this. And the cops are saying, you're, you're being provocative. You're being, you're trying to, you're, you're, you're harassing, you want to harass them. You want to create an incident. And he's like, no, I want to film what they're doing. So it was filmed for posterity. And then the cops say, you're harassing them. Is your, your intent is to harass them? We're telling you to move on. And Levan says, I don't want to move on. I want to film this. And they arrest him, they handcuff him, they put hand, they put his arms behind his back and handcuff him and walk him off. This is in Toronto, Canada. That's one day, the next day. And I got to read this. I have to find the document. The rabbi of the largest conservative synagogue in Montreal which is called Sha'ar Hashem. His name is Adam Scheier. Here is what he put out on social media. Apparently in Montreal, being Jewish is a provocation. Our family went downtown today to do some shopping and to buy a drink at Second Cup Canada to support their recent quick and principled decision concerning the antisemitic franchise. I don't quite know. This is a backstory we won't get into. While we sipped our drinks, an anti Israel rally flanked by police protection marched up the street shouting, canada, shame. Shame, Israel. I stood silently and filmed the messages of hate that have become so commonplace in our once tranquil city. The police approached me and asked me and my family to leave the area. I asked why we were given this directive as we had not exchanged even one word with a protester. The only thing I am guilty of is shopping in downtown Montreal while wearing a kippah. The policeman explained to me that he was fearful of, quote, a fire starting between the two sides. Apparently my presence is deemed a sufficient provocation for removal while their hateful chants are allowed to continue. So imagine that the leading that the, I don't know, a bishop of the Catholic Church somewhere in America who was in some recognizable, was wearing a big cross around his neck, was told by a policeman that he had to move and go away because he had an identifiable religious symbol on his clothing, while there was an anti Papist rally going on claiming that the Pope was the whore of Rome and that it was the bishop and not the protesters who were the focus of the attention of the authorities. The idea is that the provocation is from the individual person watching rather than the protesters themselves. This is going on in Canada.
- [15:57]
Unnamed Speaker
Your analogy is apt. Because of course the Klan was anti Semitic, anti black and anti Catholic.
- [16:07]
Abe Greenwald
Originally anti Catholic. Yeah, right.
- [16:09]
Unnamed Speaker
Yeah. When we see the new Hamasniks around the Western world, they are the new Klan, masks included. But I also think there's a larger political point here, which is these groups cannot be appeased. Think about the government of Canada, Monsieur Trudeau, their Prime Minister. The same weekend, he announced that he would abide by the ICC's disgusting ruling calling for the arrest of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant. So he is catering to the jackals. And earlier he also suspended some weapons transfers, just as our United States Senator Bernie Sanders is calling for here. But has that done anything to quiet the anti Israel, anti Semitic mobs? No. In fact, it has emboldened them to become even more outrageous, more dangerous, not just to Jews in Canada, but to the very foundations of a liberal democratic society. And so that I think suggests the appropriate response to what we're seeing on the streets. Not to appease the mob, but in fact to crack down on it and to stop this behavior before it gets out of control.
- [17:33]
Abe Greenwald
One of the things that we've discussed since October 7th is the decades long softening of the turf or softening of the ground for antisemitic explosions in the west. Through academic studies, through the spread of identity politics, which seem to suggest that Jews are white and Muslims are not, and therefore Muslims kind of get a step up in the victimization Olympics. Canada has been worse in this regard, far worse than the United States has been. Canada, of course, having a history of balkanizing itself through the lens of identity. First with the idea that Quebec and the Quebecois function as a kind of independent people hood inside this anglophone nation. They should have their own language, they should have their own signage. There should be a kind of preferential option for French and Quebecers in Quebec, as opposed to being a liberal democracy where we don't have that sort of thing. Same thing happening after that in questions of indigeneity and native Canadians. I don't think you call them Native Americans if you're in Canada. So Canada has balkanized itself as a matter of policy. And of course, once that stuff starts happening, the Jews end up inevitably being the target that all the other identity politics groups say, go get them. They don't count. And so they are appropriate targets for our ire.
- [19:27]
Matthew Continetti
And it's also not coincidental that a few years ago Canada was looking to enshrine in law that you had to refer to someone by their preferred pronouns. This is evidence, if any more were needed, that the government there is very used to crumbling before the mob. And it would take a whole lot to reverse that.
- [19:58]
Abe Greenwald
I mean, you know, it gets to the point you wonder. I mean, it's a bizarre thing to say while we've been talking for years, or people are works of literature about this and all that plays about sort of French about French antisemitism, which of course has. Has had brutal, very vicious, brutal, monstrous consequences toward French Jews. The, you know, killing of individual French Jews in absolutely horrifying ways by Muslim radicals and terrorist attacks on French soil against kosher supermarkets and clubs and things like that. And obviously that's not the Canadian situation. But I know a great many Canadians, I know a great many Canadian Jews, and you start feeling like the purpose of this entire thing is to get them to leave. I mean, that's what it feels like, is that they're trying to not only drive Jews underground, which is the larger theme, like don't wear a kippah if you're going to be having a cup of coffee on a street in Montreal when a Hamas protest goes by, but don't be here at all. Now, Jews in Canada, you know, this is a country that has, you know, so deeply benefited culturally in terms of its own cultural standing over the course of the last century by the presence of Jewish immigrants. You know, Saul Bello was a Canadian, you know, half the comedy world, you know, in. In the United States over the last 50 years, you know, came, emerged from, from Canadian jewelry, writers, painters, all of that. And so Canada has only been enriched by its Jewish immigration. And of course, I don't think that's really true necessarily if it's Muslim immigration. And so who's going to leave first? Who's going to become less Canadian by degrees?
- [22:06]
Unnamed Speaker
Can we take a moment, since this is Thanksgiving week, to be thankful for the fact that we are not Canadian and that we are not British and that in 1775, a revolution began that separated the North American colonies from the motherland from England? Because when you look at Canada and the UK today, when you look at the harassment of Jews in both countries, when you look at the suppression of free speech, as Abe referenced in both countries, when you look at the economic, just poor performance economically, the immiseration, a word that was used a lot to describe America incorrectly a decade or so ago, but I think is appropriate to describe what's been happening to Canada and to the UK and to Western Europe as they've embraced the green climate hysteria and clean energy transition scam. It's wonderful to be American. It's wonderful to be American because we have this Constitution, this written document with its amendments and the First Amendment, guarantees no establishment of religion, the free exercise of religion and freedom of speech. And I think those things, in addition to our structure of government, our tradition of regular elections stretching back more than 200 years, those give us a fighting chance to combat this hate. And that the other countries that are kind of our genetic cousins, so to speak, or our parent, in the case of the United Kingdom, they lack. They lack that institutional spine that we.
- [24:00]
Abe Greenwald
Possess here with this Thanksgiving thought in mind. And because of what you were just saying, I've just pulled up because you're right, this goes back to the very founding of the country, right? The Constitution was essentially written in 1789, ratified or written over the course ratified in 1792. Fully in 1790. Famously, George Washington received a letter from the Hebrew congregation in Newport, known as the Toro Synagogue, and replied on the 18th of August in 1790 with this letter, which if many of you know, but if you don't, I'm going to read it now in foot short, but read it now in full to give you a sense of how integrated into the DNA of this country this attitude is. No matter whether by custom there were anti Semitic rules and it was hard for Jews in various places, and things were set against them in instance institutions, and you couldn't get a job in a law firm and all of that. But this is the first president of the United States who had no need, no reason to write the letter that he wrote. And this is the letter that he wrote. Gentlemen, while I receive with much satisfaction your address, replete with expressions of affection and esteem, I rejoice in the opportunity of assuring you that I shall always retain a grateful remembrance of the cordial welcome I experienced in my visit to Newport from all classes of citizens. The reflection on the days of difficulty and danger which are past, meaning the Revolutionary War, is rendered the more sweet from a consciousness that they are succeeded by days of uncommon prosperity and security. If we have wisdom to make the best use of the advantages with which we are now favored, we cannot fail under the just administration of a good government to become a great and happy people. The citizens of the United States of America have a right to applaud themselves for having given to mankind examples of an enlarged and liberal policy, a policy worthy of imitation. All possess alike liberty of conscience and immunities of citizenship. It is now no more that toleration is spoken of as if it was by the indulgence of one class of people that another enjoy the exercise of their inherent natural rights. For happily, the government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance, requires only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens in giving it on all occasions their effectual support. It would be inconsistent with the frankness of my character not to avow that I am pleased with your favorable opinion of my administration and fervent wishes for my felicity. May the children of the stock of Abraham who dwell in this land continue to merit and enjoy the goodwill of the other inhabitants, while everyone shall sit in safety under his own vine and fig tree, and there shall be none to make him afraid. May the father of all mercies scatter light and not darkness in our paths and make Us all in our several vocations, useful here and in his own due time and way, everlastingly happy. George Washington. So that's what we have, that is the foundation on which we stand. And we can see how, lacking this foundation, how the ground under the Jews of the world is shifting like quicksand. I think it's an important thing to remember this week of all weeks. Obviously we must enter the proviso that George Washington was a slaveholder and that the theme of this letter was belied by the realities, by some of the realities of the times in which he lived. That would require, as Lincoln said in his second inaugural, a second just war to purify the nation of this original stain. But that this letter should ever have been written, the first such letter that we know of, in which the leader of a country, not only, but a leader who was elected by his people, should welcome the Jewish people and say that and create the, the idea of pluralism practically with this idea that we shall all sit, as the Prophet said, under our own vine and fig tree, that is our vine and fig tree, as Jews, is the vine and fig tree of the Old Testament.
- [29:04]
Unnamed Speaker
One other observation about the leader, because when, when I, when I read it or when I listen to you read it, and it's worth returning to again and again, it always strikes me, especially just now, the religiosity of the letter, the biblical references, the belief in the Creator, the idea. And of course, George Washington, he's a Christian, he's a member of the Anglican Church. But it's a worldview that's imbued with a biblical understanding of morality, of existence. And it. I just think about how globally we're having this secularization happen, this collapse of organized religion. But it's much more pronounced in places like the UK and Canada. It's still, even though we've had that fastest growing religious category in the United States, the nones, the N o N E s, not the ones who wear habits. It's still a very religious country and it still comes out, I think. And you think about just different bases of support for Israel in the United States. Of course, they're coming from evangelical Christianity and observant people of all faiths. And so that, I think is important to contrast with the cultural developments again in places like Canada, the United Kingdom and Western Europe, where the process of just ridding God from the culture, not forget about politics, from the culture, from everything, from your daily life, is far more advanced. And I think that does make Jews more vulnerable.
- [30:54]
Abe Greenwald
I think it's also one of the reasons that things like the academic efforts with the beginning of intersectionality leading to the publication of the 1619 project, are so evil. And I use the word evil qualifiedly and unqualifiedly, both by which I mean that the nature of the American experiment emerging as it does in part not only from Scottish philosophers and ideas, you know, sort of Enlightenment ideas about liberalism. And note that Washington uses the word liberal in the letter, and he's not talking about Alexandria, Ocasio, Cortez or Richie Torres. He's talking about liberalism as an idea about ideological, personal, whatever diversity that it is in the creation of the Torah. It is the idea in the Torah that basically, though there are kings, though there are prophets, though there are priests, there is a hierarchy that every person on earth has been granted by the Creator free will. And that law is written to safeguard and protect their rights, all kinds of rights, 613 rights, 613 commandments, laws governing transactions on cattle and how to treat women and how to inherit property. And the most revolutionary aspect of this happening whenever it was 1500 years before the birth of Christ, was that every person was subject to the same law. These laws governed the poorest and the wealthiest alike. And there was no distinction to be made between them. And this idea is, was even though, again, Jews had slaves, you know, they had women as chattel, all of that as a fact of life.
- [33:13]
Matthew Continetti
But it's also the idea that went on to free slaves.
- [33:18]
Abe Greenwald
Yes.
- [33:19]
Matthew Continetti
Of all sorts. It's also founded in this very same revolution.
- [33:24]
Abe Greenwald
Yeah. And who and to what authority did the slaves themselves and Martin Luther King and others, to what authority did they. What authority did they evoke in saying that the system that we lived in was unjust? They evoked the Old Testament. That was their. What did they sing? The Negro spirituals that they sang were all based on psalms. And the idea that God had meant all God's children are free. Right. That is the Exodus story.
- [33:58]
Unnamed Speaker
Right?
- [33:58]
Abe Greenwald
Everything. Yeah. So it contained within it, as does the Constitution of the United States, the mechanism by which the injustices, the sort of day to day injustices that could not be overthrown at the time, could over time be chipped away at or overturned because they were contradictions, they were.
- [34:20]
Unnamed Speaker
Theological, or just to defend George Washington a little bit. I think he was very much of the view that because of those ideas, because of those principles, that slavery was on its way out when he died and after the United States had been born. There was the view prevalent among many of the framers of the Constitution that compromises could be made with the institution of slavery because it ultimately would die on the vine.
- [34:52]
Abe Greenwald
Right. And of course, I couldn't.
- [34:53]
Unnamed Speaker
What they didn't anticipate was that technological changes and the expansion of the United States would actually breathe new life into the institution, and it would require the Civil War to end it.
- [35:05]
Abe Greenwald
Right. And even more important than that, the fact that the world of the intersectional 1619 Project Assault on the very underpinnings of the United States is incapable of dealing with the complexities of that, of those facts, which were not all that difficult for people to handle before they came along and intellectualized this in a way, and created this kind of presentist reading of the past, according to which everybody knew what we know about freedom and liberty and how it should be spread to everybody, but that they just didn't care because they hated black people and wanted to enslave them. Similarly, with antisemitism worldwide, there is, I think, this idea among. Among Americans who are inclined toward a kind of, you know, what about ISM relating to Israel and the Palestinians or Jews and Muslims worldwide, to believe somehow that everybody knows that everybody's supposed to be equal. And so if there's a problem, if Muslims have a problem with Jews in Israel or in the Middle east or whatever, since they know that everybody's supposed to be free and they're not free, then Israelis are oppressing Muslims, and Muslims are themselves aware that Jew. It's not fair that Muslims should be looked at as a population that is uniquely hostile to Jews. They're just trying to get their own. And everybody knows that they deserve it and so do Jews. It's all should all be fine. As though. As though we're a school board meeting in Oakland where you get to scream and then somebody else gets to scream at you, as opposed to people who actually want to extirpate an entire people from the face of the earth. It's a huge conceptual problem that people don't take seriously. The threat.
- [37:11]
Unnamed Speaker
Yeah.
- [37:12]
Abe Greenwald
To jewelry.
- [37:13]
Unnamed Speaker
But I also think that, you know, that's a great metaphor. The Oakland City Council meeting for this podcast. Because in this podcast, I get to rant, and then you get to rant, and then Abe chimes in with a very cutting comment. So in a way, what's missing from the Oakland City Council meeting is Abe Greenvald.
- [37:32]
Abe Greenwald
That's really.
- [37:32]
Unnamed Speaker
That's kind of the value. That's the value add that you get at the podcast. Chime in with the cutting comment.
- [37:38]
Matthew Continetti
Okay, so it would be more cutting there. That's that's for sure.
- [37:42]
Abe Greenwald
Yeah, sure.
- [37:45]
John Podhoretz
This episode is brought to you by LifeLock. The holidays mean more travel, more shopping, more time online and more personal info in places that could expose you to identity theft. That's why LifeLock monitors millions of data points every second. If your identity is stolen, their US based restoration specialist will fix it, guaranteed or your money back. Get more holiday fun and less holiday worry with LifeLock. Save up to 40% your first year. Visit LifeLock.com podcast terms apply.
- [38:14]
Abe Greenwald
So can we, can we move on to like, to like, you know, rank punditry, as Jonah Goldberg would say?
- [38:22]
Unnamed Speaker
Obviously got a lot of cabinet selections.
- [38:24]
Abe Greenwald
Trump has filled his. Trump has. He's so disorganized and terrible that he has now filled his entire cabinet within two weeks of his election.
- [38:32]
Unnamed Speaker
Well, we're still waiting for the small businesses administrator once we get and and, and as Playbook points out, Tuts huts this morning, where is the White House Science advisor? He hasn't named the White House Science advisor yet, but those are actually the only two positions at the top level that remain vacant, the Small Business Administrator and the Science Advisor. And then some of the White House economic positions, the Council of Economic Advisors and National Economic Council. In the main though, you're absolutely right. The cabinet's all named.
- [39:08]
Abe Greenwald
And of course, Matt Gaetz is gone and Pam Bondi is in for Matt Gates. And we'll see what happens with Pete Hegseth this week.
- [39:19]
Unnamed Speaker
I have thoughts on Scott Besant.
- [39:22]
Abe Greenwald
I have no thoughts on Scott Besant.
- [39:25]
Unnamed Speaker
Well, he is the treasury nominee.
- [39:27]
Abe Greenwald
Yes, I mean, I'm aware of that. I have no thoughts.
- [39:29]
Unnamed Speaker
I know you're aware.
- [39:31]
Abe Greenwald
I have, I have no thoughts. The one thing I liked hearing about from Scott Besant was that he said let's make America great again and let's make Iran broke again. So I'm all in. I'm all in on Scott Bessette. He also, for that one sentence, he.
- [39:49]
Unnamed Speaker
Also passes the Jeb Bush test. Jeb Bush. Oh, he tweeted over the weekend. Great pick. And besent, interesting. You know, he got his start working for Soros and was in fact part of the originator of the one of the most famous trades in history that was Soros betting against the pound sterling in the 1990s. Made a fortune out of it. But he's since Besent has taken a journey that's put him as an ally of Donald Trump. And to hear him speak, it's very reassuring. He talks about growth, he talks about keeping taxes low, he talks about cutting spending as you say, he wants Iran to be broke, so he's pro sanctions against Iran and maximum pressure. He also embraces Trump's tariffs like the other major economic picks so far, Howard Lutnick as at Commerce, but I think percent because of his incredible background as an investor and also because he has a wide range of figures who were pulling for him. It's, you know, he had Larry Kudlow backing him, but he also had Steve Bannon backing him. So he has a, he has a broad coalition behind him. I think it's going to be a pick that will reassure markets. And, you know, we know that Trump always has an eye on the stock market and always wants, I think, to make moves that boost the market and therefore boost wealth creation in the United States.
- [41:18]
Matthew Continetti
I mean, I just want to say on the point of Trump being so disorganized and, and this, and the swift filling of positions seem to contradict that. The line that we now keep reading about and hearing about is that, well, the incoming administration is dragging its feet on or is just not doing a lot of the bureaucratic work involved in the transition and therefore they don't have access to certain departments and they're not revealing who's funding the transit, the transition. These strike me, I don't know if this is disorganization or tactical on the, on the, on the Trump team.
- [42:07]
Unnamed Speaker
Oh, I think it's purposeful. I don't think Trump wants to do anything to do with kind of the typical way of having a transition.
- [42:17]
Abe Greenwald
I think it's purposeful in two ways. If we could just break them up, one ideological and one tact and one in terms of following the custom, the traditional Washington custom. So Trump does not want, though Lisa Murkowski and others, the Republican senator from Alaska who is going to be his, probably his greatest Republican opposition, should that come to that, wants FBI background checks on all of the Cabinet nominees, which is the way things have been done. Trump does not want the FBI to be doing the background checks because he does not trust the FBI and he does not trust it to leak. If it does background checks. If there is somebody, if, for example, I don't like her, I wish, I hope she's not confirmed. But if the FBI does a background check on Tulsi Gabbard, and Trump wants Tulsi Gabbard, he has no confidence, and he is right to have no confidence that the people who are doing the background checks will not leak what they find out to hostile media sources in order to torpedo the nomination. Said that similarly similar with other things. So the problem then is, well, how do you. There's a process by which background checks are done where you can use the force of law to do the background check, by which, I mean, the FBI comes to you, and you kind of have to answer. When the, you can't say the FBI go away, you sort of have to answer the question. And if he does private ones, then people, you know, they, if they lie to a, you know, if you hire somebody to do one the way you would with a corporation, you know that you can't be, you can't be arrested for perjury if you lie to the background checker. And so there is a purpose to having the force of law or the fear of the law in when someone is asking questions about somebody's loyalties or whatever it is you want to want. So this may be a problem, but you can. I'm sorry. You know, speaking as somebody who does not share the paranoia about the deep state that so many people do, I totally understand the general Trump world refusal to allow the FBI to have some kind of a veto power using. We know it leaks like a sieve. We know it leaked like a sieve against him. We know that it is a compromised organization, as are people in the Justice Department who oversee the FBI, who are still, of course, Biden administration officials. And he is right to be very, very cautious about them.
- [44:59]
Unnamed Speaker
And I think, I think he has a lot of leeway here because all the polls we're getting show that the public approves of the transition so far. We had a CBS poll out this weekend showing Trump with a positive approval rating, showing large numbers of Americans approving of the transition and of Trump's elections, that gives him a lot of leeway. And the idea that Trump was elected on what was clearly a repudiation of the way things have been in Washington for the last four years. And now we're going to get tied up in a process argument about his refusal to sign a memorandum with the, with the government handling the transition. I think is kind of absurd. And I think most people will recognize it, recognize it as such.
- [45:47]
Matthew Continetti
I just want to add to the leeway point. Polls also show the American people largely in favor of his deportation plans.
- [45:55]
Unnamed Speaker
Right? The same polls. Yeah.
- [45:57]
Abe Greenwald
Well, that. That is an important thing we should get to separately.
- [45:59]
Unnamed Speaker
I have a couple more things on the Cabinet.
- [46:01]
Abe Greenwald
Yeah, please. Yeah.
- [46:03]
Unnamed Speaker
So there is a flurry of announcements made on Friday night. I was at the Wizards game. All of a sudden, my phone starts blowing up. He had, like, nine different appointments, you know, and One of them in particular I think is worth commenting on. I spoke about Besant and I really like that pick. But the pick for Secretary of Labor, former U.S. representative Lori Chavez, well, she's not former yet, but she lost. Laurie Chavez De Remer from the state of Oregon is worth commenting on because she is basically the Teamsters choice to be Secretary of Labor. She is very unusual among House Republicans because she co sponsored the PRO act, which is labor ridden legislation meant to make it much easier to unionize. Apparently Sean O'Brien, the Teamsters president who spoke at the Republican convention, had been pushing Chavez De Rimer on Trump. And then when she finally met with him, he was taken by her very quickly and offered her the job. So she would be the most pro institutional labor labor secretary in a Republican administration. I mean, going back at least. Yeah, probably ever. Yeah, probably. Right. Yeah. And that is remarkable. And so if she makes it through the confirmation process, I think this is another bullet point that suggests that what Trump is assembling is a post conservative Cabinet. He's a Republican president. In 2016, he had to make transactions with the conservative movement and that informed his cabinet and also informed his real, his really his first year agenda. In many ways it's clear he didn't make any such transactions in 2024, mainly because he had so transformed the party and parts of the conservative movement that he didn't need to. But with these picks, when you look at RFK Jr. As Secretary of Health and Human Services, pro choice environmentalist, big government guy in charge of hhs, when you look at Tulsi Gabbard as the Director of National Intelligence, a critic of U.S. foreign policy, whose criticisms often are more like Bernie Sanders than Donald Trump's, or at least were before she became a Republican in the past year or so. When you look at Lori Chavez de Rimer, even people who are on the MAGA right are still not quite what you would call conservative movement picks like Elon Musk, for example. Elon is relatively new to the whole politics game. He was never really a William F. Buckley Jr. Conservative. He did tweet out a Milton Friedman meme recently, which I was very excited about.
- [49:01]
Abe Greenwald
Yes. Starring my friend Peter Robinson.
- [49:03]
Unnamed Speaker
Starring, starring our friend Peter Robinson. Yes. And so we have this coming into view now. The first Republican president since Reagan who is not tied to the conservative movement and that includes Trump's first term. So I think that is going to be the subject of great study and inquiry in the months ahead.
- [49:31]
Abe Greenwald
Well, Trump is clearly not unburdened by what is unburdened by what has been. Yes, and what. But what I mean by that is he is creating not a team of rival that, you know, that Doris Kearns Goodwin term. But he's basically saying, okay, this movement or whoever it is that got me elected is kind of ideologically incoherent. You got these MAGA people on the, on the right, on, on foreign policy who don't like interventionism. You know, have it Tulsi, you're them. But on the other hand, you've got Scott Hegseth who was also not, I would say a. I mean, he's, he's, he's somebody who was sort of like a neocon who became a kind of a unilateralist. Let's say you go in at defense and John Radcliffe, you be at CIA. You're kind of like a relatively conventional person on these matters. And it's a ufc. Go have a fight in front of me. We'll see who wins. We'll see who comes out. You can have Lutnick wanting big tariffs. You could have Besent wanting targeted tariffs. Besent has obviously got the whip hand because treasury is a way more important department than Commerce. You guys fight. You have RFK coming in, you know, like hostile to vaccines. You have the appointment of a surgeon general who I assume is his choice is RFK's choice, who is, as they say, a double masker. Is somebody who was like, who was not a free. The COVID protocols are a hoax and should be avoided person coming in as surgeon General. But then you have J. Bhattacharya, who was the way the protocols were set up and how government used its power to be authoritarian toward the American people without any proper medical knowledge, running the cdc. And you have Marty Makary, a doctor from Johns Hopkins, also a skeptic of the way the government has behaved in terms of large scale medical matters. Coming in as head of the fda. And so he's a skeptic, but he's not like an anti vaxxer. You have a kind of vax everybody a thousand times as the surgeon general. You have RFK who wants to ban Froot Loops. There is going to be a big fight inside the Health Administration.
- [52:20]
Unnamed Speaker
Dr. Neshewat. Really? That so pro.
- [52:23]
Abe Greenwald
Yes.
- [52:24]
Unnamed Speaker
Okay.
- [52:25]
Abe Greenwald
But you know, this is because Trump.
- [52:29]
Matthew Continetti
Is not picking these people because of ideology. He likes.
- [52:35]
Abe Greenwald
He.
- [52:35]
Matthew Continetti
There are other qualities to them that he likes, namely that he doesn't think they're going to hamper him.
- [52:41]
Abe Greenwald
Fair enough.
- [52:42]
Unnamed Speaker
I just get a, I get a nice feeling whenever Dr. Nextchiwad is on television and I listen to her and I see that's right. I'm always inclined to agree with her. And I think Trump has the same reaction. And that's why she's going to be the surgeon general.
- [52:56]
Abe Greenwald
But I'm saying the net effect is going to be that to the extent that people represent and think about foreign policy. Right. We have Marco Rubio, who is like the last relative speaking internationalist. We have, as I say, a kind of interventionist unilateralist in Hegseth, if he makes it through. We have an isolationist in Tulsi Gabbard at dni. We have Mike Waltz also, I think.
- [53:28]
Matthew Continetti
Who just stated his support for the Biden administration's loosening up on Ukrainian weapons use restrictions.
- [53:40]
Abe Greenwald
Right. So on the one hand, this is a post conservative, in other words, post conservative, as you say, because the tendrils of the conservative movement which have for 45 years been, there's pro life this, there's pro gun that, there's probably military this, there's pro tax cut that. Right. How do you, how do you fill jobs in order to satisfy these ideological constituencies as opposed to the identity politics, job filling that goes on in Democratic administrations? So we are beyond that. But there is this panoply of views that are on the right that are kind of being represented. Whether or not this is accidental because Trump just likes the way people come about on television, or it is actually representative of the fight on the right that is going to define the next quarter century of that which is not the Democratic or liberal consensus that's going to happen in front of us in real time, both in the House and the Senate and in the administration over the next two years. And I say two years because of course, a lot of this is probably going to come to a screeching halt after the midterm elections, as often happens in the second two years of an administration when you have to start looking forward to the next presidential election and some ambitions of the administration are retarded by the public saying, nana, you went too far, we need more balance, or something like that.
- [55:16]
Unnamed Speaker
I mean, I can. What strikes me is unusual about the Chavez De Rimer pick is that for all the other cabinet posts that you name, I can see those appointments as extensions of Trump's beliefs. Okay? But with de Rimer, it's a extension of the labor union's beliefs. And though Trump, though Trump enjoys the support of union members, his policies have never been totally identical with those advocated by union leadership. And I think he understands actually that Workers benefit from America's loose labor market and ability to switch jobs and ease.
- [56:03]
Abe Greenwald
Yeah, but J.D. vance. But J.D. vance is footsie with the conflict.
- [56:09]
Unnamed Speaker
Trump did too, by having. Trump did too. So my point is this. I would expect more conflict in labor than I would at hhs.
- [56:21]
Abe Greenwald
Right.
- [56:21]
Unnamed Speaker
I think with hhs, the attitude is, you know, think about it this way. Trump thinks that he was screwed over by Fauci and by the public health establishment creating this. He didn't know how to handle the crisis of COVID He deferred to them. Then he would switch and he would start criticizing them. It was a mess. Just like he feels like he was screwed over by the FBI and the CIA and the surveillance and the Russia stories and all that. So he's putting in people that he believes agree with him that these institutions have been somehow corrupted or were definitely in opposition to Trump's and Trump's agenda. But I don't think he really, I mean, like he said to Kennedy, he said, have fun, Bobby, do what you want. The thing with the economy in particular, Trump, as I say, is very much attuned. And if some policies would come out of this Labor Department, if Chavez Dremmer is confirmed, strike him as, whoa, I don't want that. Or his business buddies come by the table at Mar a Lago and say, can you believe what's coming here? Then I think we might have a problem.
- [57:38]
Abe Greenwald
I want to mention one thing because I was listening to the NPR up first show this morning, one of the top podcasts in the country. And if you want to, if you agree with us in general terms, as you listen to this podcast, this up first thing is a very good know your enemy. It's 10 minutes, gives you 10 minutes of the worldview that you don't agree with and what kinds of things obsess it. And so it's helpful in terms of understanding where the other agenda is and what you might want to think about it. And there was a big story about this conference in this climate conference that went on over the weekend, Cops, I guess it's called, and this conference to which we are not a signatory because Trump pulled us out of the. I mean, Biden went back in, Trump is going to pull us out anyway. So there's this climate conference, and here's what it is. So climate change is going to destroy everything and the whole world is going to blow up and be ruined. And until then, what's really important is helping the countries, the poorer countries that are dealing with the consequences of climate change. So Essentially, it is a net transfer of money from the first world to the third World. And the big issue apparently was, would this money come in the form of loans to help them mitigate climate change? I don't know, you know, building dams, I don't know what. I don't know what, you know, or, you know, dealing with. With heat or whatever, or. Or would it come in grants? And so it was decided that it would come in grants and there would be $300 billion a year through some modality for money from the more wealthier countries to go to the poorer countries in the form of grants. So grants is a term for handing people money and just giving it to them and then they spend it. And as Matt says about the sort of the world of the Hamasniks who cannot be pleased, the shift from loans to grants, while in the end loans are often forgiven, is ideologically sort of very important because the idea is it's all our fault. We're going to try to pay for the damages that we're doing, even though that's a big question about whether we're doing any damages. But whatever, whoever is going to pay is doing the damages. And the response was rage on the part of the caucus of people who, from these countries who want more money. $300 billion a year over 10 years is an embarrassment. It's a shame, It's a shanda. It's a disgrace. It's a joke, because there can never be enough. And one reason, once again, complicated thing that Trump ran again, got reelected, all of that. But one reason to look at this as an unalloyed benefit for America and the world is that that nonsense will have. No, no one will get a second's attention in the Trump White House or in the Trump administration for this idea that what the, what America needs to do is take money from itself and from, for, you know, from its military budget or from its own, or if you even believe in, from mitigating the effects of climate change inside the United States and just give it to Zambia. That's not happening and it shouldn't happen. There's no business happening. It's already bad enough that we support the UN that's where that might. The money that we're going to give to do stuff like that can go there and be wasted and burned as some kind of bribe for I don't even know what. But that's the extent of it, at least for the next four years.
- [61:39]
Matthew Continetti
And I also think if he does a halfway decent job in office, whatever that looks like, these Ideas may be it for them in the culture generally for a longer time. I think there was something about his election this time around and the poll, for example, that we haven't really gotten to about public support for deportations. For deportation. There's a sense in which the public is caught on to the big BS narratives.
- [62:18]
Abe Greenwald
Well, so let's spend two minutes on it and then we can, then we can, you know, we can call it a day. So 57% of people say they support Trump's policies on mass deportations. What we're going to hear over the next couple of days, as well as how the question was raised, if you say to people, is it going to be violent? 15 million people, cops are going to seize them. They're going to be there. Are there going to be concentration camps where they're all taken to before as trans shipment points? Now, let's remember that. Who set up the first camps for illegals coming across the border and put them in cages? That was Barack Obama, not Donald Trump. That was 2014 and 2015. And the cages were done because, of course, it was 150,000 degrees on the Rio Grande border. And put them in a room and have it improperly ventilated and it would be horrible. They were, they were detention facilities trying to help people so that they wouldn't overheat and die. Nonetheless, that turned into Trump putting kids in cages, because that's how the propaganda machine works. So there's all this like, oh, how's it going to work? And who's going to. That once you tell people that there are going to be, you know, it's going to be cops and the military or whatever, then they're going to like it a lot less. But I think that is a complete misunderstanding of what message is being sent by this poll, which is, yeah, they screwed it up. They let all these people in. They should go home. We don't know. It's not for us, the American people, to determine how that works. We have to go and work our jobs. And that's why we hire politicians and why we have an executive branch that has 2 million people working for it or 4 million people or whatever insane number of people work for it is. You work it out. We're saying, yes, go ahead, deport whom you have to deport. We are on your side. If you do it badly or you do it in a way that embarrasses us, or you do it in a way that is ugly and disrespects people or treats them like dirt, then we're probably not going to like it very much. So you should probably handle it with delicacy and cleverness.
- [64:25]
Matthew Continetti
And I also think effort, the media's part to drill down on a given Trump policy or proposal to find the outrageous thing in it and then blow it up as this horror that everyone should oppose. There's a lot of fatigue, I think, on the part of the news consumers about this. It's very hard to get them worked up over and over again at this late date.
- [64:54]
Unnamed Speaker
So it's not just fatigue and it's not just this poll. There are plenty of polls for the past several months showing that there's been a flip in public attitudes toward immigration, whether it's support for the deportation program, whether it is support for the wall, whether it is opposition to immigration, both illegal and legal. We're seeing all these shifts in public opinion polling and Trump benefits for that. The mindset of the public on the issue of immigration has changed. And the irony is that it was Joe Biden who did it. It wasn't Donald Trump. Donald Trump has been talking about migration for a decade now. But the flip in public opinion only happened under Joe Biden and because of Joe Biden's policies wherein the people who were scrambling over the border and then applied for asylum and then were processed were then sent all over the country, making the problem, which typically had been confined to the border, a national problem. And that's why people in any community that has faced the new arrivals are suddenly very skeptical at this process continuing in support of, of illegal immigrants, beginning with the dangerous criminals and terrorist threats being sent home.
- [66:18]
Abe Greenwald
And where we will know how this is going where what you need to watch are these Democrats in districts that they won very narrowly. People who replaced Republicans in New York state after the 2022 election surprisingly got five Republican seats in New York State. Elsewhere in the country where there are Democrats in close run places, particularly in Trump states, and if they think that the policies that Trump enacts are bad or that they need to come out against them, as opposed to being very uncomfortable with attacking Trump on them and trying to warn their party not to go there, they are the canary in the coal mine for the net effect of the deportation policies, those are the people to watch. And the Republican Senate, the Democratic senators who are up in 2026, do they want the Democratic Party to shut up, not talk about it, not make a big deal out of it, or, or to actually figure out some way where they can express a little bit of support for enforcement measures, let's say not Deportation, but we can call it enforcement, that kind of thing. If that's where this goes. We are going to be seeing a generational change in American attitudes on this matter. That could be problematic, by the way, could have bad economic consequences in various different ways. But that's of no moment. What Matt, you mentioned about the fact that the deportations became a national issue because the Biden policy was you say to somebody, okay, you're here, where do you want to go? And they'll send you there was of course also exacerbated brilliantly by Greg ABBOTT and Ron DeSantis, really, Greg Abbott, who was like, well, why should this be my problem? Why should this be a Texas only problem? We're going to pay for them to go elsewhere in the country so that this is a national policy. I'm told I can't do anything because immigration is a national responsibility. So let's spread the wealth. Let's have other communities far from the border have to live with the consequences of having large scale immigration into the country, including Springfield, Ohio, places like that, see what comes of it, see how maybe they can integrate, maybe it'll be fine, who knows? But all of the social service benefits, all of the social services consequences and things like that should not be falling solely on the border states because the border states have no role in keeping people in or out. But they get blamed. But Abbott and the governor of Arizona and the governor of New Mexico, they'll all get blamed. So that was, I think, an interesting, it's an interesting political moment as so much of what is gonna go on now is going to be interesting, but not in the chaos way. That's where I think the general kind of conventional wisdom is getting Trump too wrong. It's neither gonna be in a chaos way nor in some he's imposing authoritarian measures way. There's going to be a policy free for all fight going on inside the Republican Party that will have very interesting large scale ramifications for understanding the rest of the 21st century.
- [69:57]
Unnamed Speaker
Yeah, I mean, I think, I think the political class and the Beltway folks where I live and to whom I belong, they're going to treat everything by precisely the measures you just said, John. They're going to continue to treat Trump as this chaos agent and no one's in control and what's happening. And they're going to also play into the interest groups on the left who are saying that Trump is imposing authoritarianism on the United States. However, I think with different. But the difference is now is Trump just has more leeway he enjoys popular support. He won the popular vote. He's coming in with the trifecta. We went through this campaign where the Democrats made two issues central to their campaign, democracy and abortion. Abortion was not decisive. And in some polls, the people who cared most about democracy and its future voted for Trump. So he has now, I think, the public backing in a way he never really enjoyed. The cultural shifts too, we've talked about. And so it's very similar. I'm going to get in trouble with my friends when I say this. It's very similar to Reagan and Reagan's first term. Whereas the Beltway said all the same things about Reagan throughout his first term. He's a warmonger. He's going to cause World War Three. He's an idiot. These people think that ketchup is a vegetable. They think that trees cause pollution. Who are these crazies? And yet Reagan had a sense that he was the vanguard of a movement and had the sympathy of the electorate. And that allowed him to be more successful than many people anticipated.
- [71:32]
Matthew Continetti
Could you say one note of caution here? Trump may give his critics something to work with.
- [71:38]
Unnamed Speaker
Oh, absolutely.
- [71:39]
Matthew Continetti
On the chaos front.
- [71:41]
Abe Greenwald
Oh, he works.
- [71:42]
Unnamed Speaker
Reagan gave his critics plenty to work with, too. We looked at rose colored glasses. Right.
- [71:47]
Matthew Continetti
Just by virtue of what he's going to say.
- [71:50]
Abe Greenwald
He will. And of course, the world gets a vote also. And remember that things happen that come up that define presidencies, that no President, you know, 9, 11 came up and once in a century pandemic. Yeah, yeah. And the once in a century pandemic came up and Ukraine came up. Now, Ukraine, caused by Afghanistan, was avoidable with better policy. So Trump could make a ruinous policy decision that has long term policy consequences that he will have to suffer. But one thing we know is there is no straight line things are going to happen that are unanticipatable and unexpected. And he showed himself unequal to those challenges, to that specific challenge last time. And maybe he'll be better this time or maybe he won't and his presidency will founder as so many others have, in the wake of those unanticipatable mistakes. I want to talk about the culture thing and my commentary recommends for today because Matt mentioned changes in the culture. Well, I'm going to talk to you about a show, a television show that is an example of a change in the culture that is absolutely jaw dropping. And that is Taylor Sheridan's new show, Landman, which has now aired three episodes on Paramount plus. And I think it's also running on the Paramount Network, which you can get on your cable system, stars Billy Bob Thornton. And Demi Moore is in it and Jon Hamm is in it. Anyway, Billy Bob Thornton is a landman. He works for an independent oil company and he is sort of like the hands on guy in the oil fields. And it is about what it's like day to day in Texas in the Permian Basin to run an oil company where working class guys, often out of prison, are doing incredibly dangerous work pumping oil out of the ground. You know, one spark and a well blows up and people get killed. They're sick, they're climbing. It's very dangerous work. And they've got OSHA on their backs, they got the DA on their backs. Whole thing in this show about how in the world of South Texas where all this work is going on, trucks, vehicles, planes are stolen and the insurance companies or the lawyers ask, why didn't you report them stolen? And it's like, well, what happens is they get stolen and then three weeks later they're returned and says, well, what do you mean they're returned? It's like, well, the drug cartels steal the trucks, they drive them across the border, they load them full of drugs, they bring them back and then they abandon them and they give them back to us. And somebody says to Billy Bob Thorne, why don't you report them to the cops? Why don't you report? It's like if I report to the cops, the truck is impounded, takes two years for the trial to come to fruition. Maybe they're found guilty, maybe they're not found guilty. Maybe they find them, maybe they don't find them in those two years. I don't have that truck. I gotta go pay $250,000 for another truck. How does that help me reporting that the truck was stolen? If it's not me and I go to them, then they'll steal somebody else's truck. This happens all. And then someone says, well, why do Exxon and Chevron and others do they accept the trucks being stolen? And he's like, they don't steal Exxon and Chevron's trucks. They know that's too much trouble. They just steal our trucks or wildcatter trucks because they know that the net benefit calculation. So the show has all sorts of fascinating information about this. It's a melodrama, but it is the most right wing television program that has ever made. And the key moment is when Billy Bob Thornton takes a lawyer who has come basically hired by his firm, but is looking for a scapegoat for something terrible that happened. And basically he realizes that she's looking to come up with evidence to blame him, to target him, to get him fired or to get him arrested so that the company can go on doing what it's doing. And he takes her to a windmill farm. There's a giant windmill farm. You know how Trump hates windmills, right? They kill the birds and all that. So Billy Bob Thornton in the middle of this show by Taylor Sheridan delivers a two minute speech about the ludicrousness of the wind farm business that is hilarious and like could have been written by Donald Trump. The amount that the amount of carbon that is expended in building one windmill would take 20 years to be offset by whatever energy that it produces. And therefore. And it only has a 20 year active life before it dies. So the whole project is net nothing. And what do they do with the energy that is produced by the wind farms which they build in order to suck up and brown nose people who want them? They power the oil wells. They provide energy to the nearby oil wells to keep pumping. So that the purpose of the wind farm is to help manage the sucking up of oil from the ground which as he says is in every product on earth. And until we find something that can take the place of oil, that can take the place of oil, we have to have oil anyway. Not because it's didactically right wing about energy production. It's a terrific show. It is fun, it is powerful. Billy Bob Thornton is giving one of the so far in these three episodes one of the great television performances ever given. That's Landman on Paramount plus on the Paramount network. Go see it. It's the best thing Taylor Sheridan has done in years. Particularly as Yellowstone as it is now winding down is producing some of the worst television episodes I have ever seen. In this second half of its fifth season with Kevin Costner dead and they Shelley Sheridan's like, yeah, the hell with it. Let's just figure out how to end this thing as badly as possible. So Landman Paramount plus that's the recommendation. We'll be back tomorrow for Abe and Madam John Pod Horde's Keep the Camelbird.