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- [00:04]
Abe Greenwald
Hope for the best, expect the worst Some preach and pain Some die of thirst the way of knowing which way.
- [00:18]
Jon Podhoretz
It'S going Hope for the best Expect.
- [00:21]
Seth Mandel
The worst Hope for the best.
- [00:25]
Jon Podhoretz
Welcome to the Commentary Magazine daily podcast. Today is Wednesday, July 23rd. I am Jon Podoretz, the editor of Commentary magazine. And we are brought to you today by my sister Rachel's alma mater, St. John's College. Because what kind of education does a free society require? At St. John's College, students study the great books of Western civilization, where they learn to think independently, hear others perspectives and understand the foundations of democratic society. It's an education for citizens, thought leaders, and those who will carry forward the best of the American tradition. Our BA is equivalent to a double major in philosophy and the history of math and science and a double minor in literature and classical studies. It's demanding. It's not for everyone. It might be just right for your child. Learn more@sjc.edu and two gorgeous campuses, one in Annapolis, Maryland and one in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Now we are here to do a podcast. That podcast will include executive editor Abe Greenwald. Hi, Abe.
- [01:41]
Seth Mandel
Hi, John.
- [01:42]
Jon Podhoretz
Senior editor Seth Mandel. Hi, Seth.
- [01:44]
Matthew Continetti
Hi, John.
- [01:45]
Jon Podhoretz
And Washington Commentary columnist Matthew Continetti. Hi, Matt. Hi, John. So we spoke just before we started. And I believe the general rubric of today is a lot of news and as we know from the modern major general in the Pirates of Penzance that includes the square of the hypotenuse. But it is Commentary. We're not doing math. A lot of news rhymes with Hypotenuse. That was W.S. gilbert's linguistic and lyrical genius there. And I'm just vamping because I don't know where to start. So we could start with tariffs. We could start with Trump saying Obama's the traitor. We could start with the negotiations with Gillon Maxwell and the deputy Attorney General as she sits in jail. We could talk about Columbia University actually suspending or expelling 80 students in the first really significant moment of punishment for misbehavior regarding the encampments and the criminal and illegal activity on their own campuses, or the fact that there are buildings blowing up all over Iran. Lot of news.
- [03:03]
Unnamed Speaker
May I start with a PSA with the public service announcement just to give us more time to vamp. We're recording this podcast on the morning of Wednesday, July 23rd. But in the in the evening hours of July 23rd, we will be recording another podcast, including a reader mailbag. So in between people hearing this podcast and the evening of July 23rd. If they want to send in questions for the mailbag episode, I encourage them to do so.
- [03:37]
Jon Podhoretz
You send that to podcast.
- [03:38]
Matthew Continetti
Send in any of your questions on Ozzy Osbourne by tonight.
- [03:42]
Jon Podhoretz
Well, Abe has something to say about Abe has something to say about Ozzy Osbourne, but I do want to say that email address is podcastsofcommentary.org that's podcast commentary.org and yet you'll have until around 7:30pm Eastern to send in those questions. Abe, just to continue vamping, I believe you discovered some exciting news about Ozzy Osbourne, who did die yesterday at the age of 76. And I'm not a fan of the Ozzy Osbourne musical oeuvre and I was kind of horrified at the Ozzy Osbourne reality Show explosion of 20 years ago. But Abe, exciting news about Ozzy Osbourne?
- [04:25]
Seth Mandel
Well, I was, I was a huge Black Sabbath fan, but I, I guessing you're referring to what I. My tweet.
- [04:31]
Jon Podhoretz
Yes.
- [04:32]
Seth Mandel
Yeah. Oh, I kind of. But I actually, I knew this.
- [04:34]
Jon Podhoretz
He both, I didn't.
- [04:36]
Seth Mandel
So he and his wife were very good on Israel and supporters and didn't abide the boycott and you know, would, would play Israel. And so I'm so happy to hear.
- [04:49]
Unnamed Speaker
That because even though I'm not the biggest fan of his music, I, I found that reality show totally entertaining and him and his wife completely charming. I thought it was one of the few reality shows that kind of affirmed family values, even though he's so associated with the occult and death metal, you.
- [05:11]
Seth Mandel
Know, so clearly they were all close. I mean, yeah, they were close.
- [05:16]
Unnamed Speaker
They had a sense of humor and you know, I thought he was very charming.
- [05:20]
Jon Podhoretz
I mean, it was funny the degree to which he was like a kind of walking dead person through this bumbling age. This kind of like sitcom family, right. With the three kids. And then every now and then he would sort of wander in and say, what are you doing? And then kind of wander out while Sharon, his wife, nay, Sharon Levy, I guess which we should probably point out.
- [05:50]
Unnamed Speaker
There you go.
- [05:53]
Jon Podhoretz
Was, you know, the matriarch and ruled the roost. And it did. Of course, it was not only a key moment in the, in the reality TV takeover of pop reality, but also the fact that reality TV had a weird conservative valence to it that who had a more, even though they were very rich, obviously, who had a more bourgeois middle class life existence as seen on MTV than the guy who bit the necks of live chickens on stage 30 years. And the show was really, that's Somebody else.
- [06:31]
Unnamed Speaker
Oh, maybe Alice Cooper. Maybe Alice Cooper did the Bats. Sorry.
- [06:35]
Jon Podhoretz
Also, by the way.
- [06:36]
Matthew Continetti
By the way, just a point.
- [06:38]
Jon Podhoretz
Cooper.
- [06:38]
Unnamed Speaker
Yes, Alice Cooper.
- [06:40]
Matthew Continetti
One of the nicest, most normal, most well adjusted people you will ever meet. I interviewed him earlier in my career and he is so normal and kind and engaging and funny.
- [06:52]
Jon Podhoretz
But the Osborne, except for your chicken. Watch out, chicken. The man is a genocider. It's as the.
- [07:00]
Matthew Continetti
As the grandson of a chicken farmer. I understand.
- [07:04]
Jon Podhoretz
Okay. I understand where you think chickens deserve whatever they get. Yeah.
- [07:09]
Matthew Continetti
What was great about the Osborne show is really. It was Sharon's show. Right. I mean, it was in a very big way. Sharon's coming out as a pop culture figure that was really, I think, surprising to a lot of people and a very interesting development. It was. It was really her show and she's maintained that, you know, Persona. Yeah, in a nice way.
- [07:29]
Unnamed Speaker
I just want to point out, you know, as a journalist, I always think in threes, because you need three examples to write an article. So we have Ozzy Osbourne, good on Israel, family values in the Osbourne, we have Alice Cooper, who we also established, despite the performance. Solid Good Guy. Of course, his film masterpiece in his cameo in the original Wayne's World. And then of course, Gene Simmons, another I Am vets. Yeah, Another outrageous pseudo metal, you know, Kiss rocker. He's also. He's probably the most ideologically conservative of them all. And so there's something about this genre, maybe that we should appreciate and explore, despite its kind of garish reputation, I.
- [08:23]
Jon Podhoretz
Think that is very. That there's a very interesting cultural observation to be made that we could also bring in the HBO Max five and a half hour documentary on Billy Joel. And so it goes, the first half of which aired, is airing this week and the second half will air next. That Billy Joel is a resolutely apolitical or unpolitical figure, except for two songs that he wrote and performed. One is Allentown and the other is Goodnight Saigon. So Billy Joel produced In his lifetime 134 songs on these albums. Probably my favorite performer of the rock and roll era and his great political moment, as far as I can tell, unlike everybody else, you know, he didn't do Farm made and he didn't do this and he didn't do that. But in 1986 or 1987, he went to the Soviet Union and gave a concert in Moscow. And he concluded the concert, as he did many concerts afterward. But I believe this was the first time that he did it. He said, good night, Moscow. And you people don't take any S from anybody. And in some weird way, together with Ronald Reagan's speech at Moscow State University and a couple of other moments, this cultural message that there were Americans who understood and stood with the suffering people who had suffered for so long under communism that there was like a regular guy from Hicksville, Long island, who had their back and who wasn't singing about how he hoped the Russians loved their children too. And here's why there should be a nuclear freeze. Like every other act in the 80s. There is something. There is this counter. Counterculture inside the rock music or pop music or whatever, counterculture that said, all you people with your politics, you're all full of it. You don't know anything about anything. It's just like. It's just performative nonsense. And we know. And maybe this is something that Ozzy and Gene Simmons and Alice Cooper knew. We know performative, like all we are is performative. We're doing things designed to be shocking, to get attention to Epit le Bourgeois in a certain way. So we know when people are full of it. And you guys are all full of it.
- [11:16]
Unnamed Speaker
And we should add that, you know, in its lengthy career, Spinal Tap has never gone political as well. Spinal Tap, which is, you know, they're.
- [11:27]
Jon Podhoretz
Coming back, they're coming back, they're coming back. And they're now on 4K. But yeah, I do think there is this quality to obviously country music and various other things, but there is this quality of, oh, come off it. Like, if we're. And by the way, the Ramones, I believe Joey Ramone ended up very right wing punk rock, which, of course was a reaction to kind of the pretensions of 1970s album Rock and glam rock and, you know, anthem rock and stadium rock. And they were like, no song should be two and a half minutes long and loud. Very loud. You know, like, there is this and that's.
- [12:12]
Unnamed Speaker
What's.
- [12:12]
Matthew Continetti
What was his real name? Jeff Hyman. Jeffrey Hyman, yeah.
- [12:16]
Jon Podhoretz
There's just a lot of. Cut the crap. Another.
- [12:18]
Seth Mandel
Another Jew, Another ended up pretty right wing, too.
- [12:21]
Jon Podhoretz
Yeah, so. And that is itself pretty. Since he was a genuine, like, village, Greenwich Village bohemian.
- [12:28]
Unnamed Speaker
Can I ask you, John, you know, the length of that Billy Joel documentary is pretty intimidating, so I've yet to start it. But is it. Is it worth it?
- [12:38]
Jon Podhoretz
It's really worth it. I would say that it takes its time. What's interesting about the way it works is that it kind of starts with his starting about how he builds his career. And there's a story There that I though I know his work intimately. There's a story about his sort of building up to bands before he became a solo act as a teenager that I didn't really know. So it's pretty interesting in his life on Long Island. But it really opens up when it starts talking about his family. His family life, his marriage and the things that he did that maybe explain why, despite his unprecedented success, he always seemed like a very, very unhappy person.
- [13:30]
Unnamed Speaker
And that's his first marriage.
- [13:32]
Jon Podhoretz
It's his first marriage before Christie Brinkley. Before Christie Brinkley. The marriage to the woman who made his. Basically who figured out how to make him a superstar interesting and who walked away from him because he was. He was in the early 80s, like, basically doing things to try to kill himself with drugs and alcohol and riding motorcycles recklessly. And she basically said, I can't stand here and watch this. I have a son. How she. How she has a son and how they got together is also part of this kind of a. What would you call it? It's a slightly sort of like, depressing, operatic, suburban story of, you know, like an inarticulate guy who doesn't even know how to make a elementary relationship. Something like that. Anyway.
- [14:23]
Seth Mandel
What you mean. You mean the whole. His first marriage, you talk.
- [14:27]
Jon Podhoretz
Yeah, yeah. Because his first marriage, it's not that I want to spoil it, but married. Sorry. Okay. It's like. I mean, it's not spoiling.
- [14:40]
Seth Mandel
Crazy suburban soap opera.
- [14:43]
Jon Podhoretz
Yeah. And the thing is that it's so much later, like, everything that happened that you see in the first part, Art, it's almost half a century later, and everybody's anger has cooled, so they're able to talk about what happened in their lives with a great deal of emotional distance or, you know, without sort of like score settling. And so it's very interesting to hear people talk about difficult or complicated or. Or blasted relationships when all. When. When they don't really. It doesn't have the power to sting them anymore. So they can actually look back and say, well, here's what happened. Here's how we did this, here's how we did that. And not, you know, what's really great about.
- [15:33]
Seth Mandel
I love, you know, the first half of the. The first. The first episode of the documentary. There's a lot of really great things about it, I think. But also the. All the music really tracks with his life. All the albums where. What he was singing about, where he was. Who he was singing about. It's kind of. So it's this. You get both at the Same time you get the life and, and the career and the music and it, and they, they, they dovetail throughout. So it's not.
- [16:02]
Jon Podhoretz
It Also it reminds me though I found it very boring. There's one thing that does remind me of the endless Peter Jackson six hour recut version of the documentary Let it be called Get Back, which was on Disney plus I think, which I found excruciatingly boring for the most part. But Joel has in common with Paul McCartney who praises him on this in this documentary and says that the one song he can think of that he wishes he had written is just the way you are, which I found pretty interesting. Yeah, that there are these moments in the Peter Jackson documentary where you see Paul, literally see Paul McCartney incept the song, get back with a guitar in his hand, frustrated because they're not getting anywhere. And he just sits there and he starts violently strumming this guitar. And out of this moment emerges this song. And looking at Billy Joel playing piano at various moments in this documentary. And of course he was not a lot of people were playing piano as the leads, as solo performers, as pop or rock musicians. But he's a virtuoso and he was a virtuoso as a kid. And he describes how he was able to go see classical concerts and then come home and duplicate what he had heard. Mozart, Bach by ear at his rickety spinet in his house in Hicksville, Long island, and recreate what he had heard. And you see these moments of him just slamming his hands on the piano but this amazing sound coming out of them and you're like, I don't know if the word genius is right, like the word genius is thrown around too much. But when you see somebody that God has clearly gifted with abilities that you really don't possess and that very few people possess and you see it like right in front of you, it is kind of awe inspiring and it has that quality of even if you wouldn't don't particularly like Billy Joel, which I can't understand.
- [18:18]
Unnamed Speaker
How can anyone not like Billy Joel?
- [18:21]
Jon Podhoretz
But even if you didn't, you would have to kind of sit there and go, geez, like how did this happen? You know, where did this, he, where did this come from? This guy otherwise is not particularly articulate. He's not particularly, he seems very in sort of introverted and socially uncomfortable and yet incredibly ambitious, incredibly hard working and just like has some been touched by the angels. So anyway, it's very well worth watching. And so we've now done our, we've Done. Our recommendation in reverse. Now we're 20 minutes into the show. Now we can actually all this news.
- [19:07]
Unnamed Speaker
We have to talk about that we really don't want to talk about.
- [19:11]
Seth Mandel
Hey everyone, this is Abe. Are you a Yo yo dieter? You diet, lose weight, but gain it all back plus a few extra pounds. Then later you lose it and regain it again and again. It's dangerous. Studies show that can increase your risk of heart attack, stroke, type 2 diabetes and other health problems. Breaking free of your yo yo diet pattern is a main reason doctors created Lean. Lean is a supplement, not an injection, and you don't need a prescription. The science behind Lean is impressive. It studied natural ingredients target weight loss in three powerful ways. Lean helps maintain healthy blood sugar. It helps control appetite and cravings. And it helps burn fat by converting fat into energy. Listen, if you're tired of losing weight and gaining it back, if you want to lose meaningful weight at a healthy pace, Lean was created for you. Let me get you started. With 20% off when you enter commentary20@takelean.com that's code commentary20akelean.com hi everyone, I'm Matt.
- [20:19]
Abe Greenwald
Ebert, CEO and founder of Crash Champions. Welcome to Pod Crash. On Pod Crash, we'll dive deep with industry leaders and game changers because we want to uncover their secrets to success. We're going to explore everything from building trust, building a rock solid team to champion blue collar work. And we also want to talk about creating explosive growth in your business. You'll hear actionable advice, real leadership and business lessons along with what's worked for these incredible people throughout their career. We're even going to go in depth into what I call a champions mindset. This is the very philosophy that I use to champion people and take Crash Champions from a single shop to over 650 locations today. And now I want to share that information with you. Watch or listen to pod crash on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [21:12]
Jon Podhoretz
I have two pieces of good news. We could start with the good news.
- [21:15]
Unnamed Speaker
Start with the good news.
- [21:16]
Jon Podhoretz
Columbia expels or suspends 80 students for the protests in May, where they lock down much of the campus, having been given explicit instructions by the university administration on things that they could and could not do, what they could and could not block. They couldn't wear masks. There were various other things. And these 80 students who were who were arrested violated the very clear set of rules that Columbia had laid out. So Columbia's full of this. Oh, we're doing this. We're doing that to do this. We're doing the other thing. And we're very. Talk a little about Harvard in a minute. But the fact that they've pulled the trigger and said that these suspensions or the suspensions will last from one to three years. So if you suspend an undergraduate or a graduate student for three years, that's saying, go find something else to do because you're not going to graduate from here until you're 27 or 31 or something like that. But it is a real thing and in some ways much more important than issuing a paper that says, yes, we're going to abide by the IHRA definition of anti Semitism as we go forward and all of that. That is, don't do this anymore. We have established the precedent in which if you come to our campus beginning in September and screw around, we're throwing you out. So they are doing. They are reestablishing deterrence.
- [22:54]
Unnamed Speaker
Just two comments on the Columbia story. Yeah. You know, I think my publication that I founded, the Washington Free Beacon, edited by Eliana Johnson, has just been, you know, smiles ahead on of everybody on.
- [23:11]
Jon Podhoretz
Columbia and on Harvard as even the former editor.
- [23:15]
Unnamed Speaker
Yeah.
- [23:15]
Jon Podhoretz
Of the New York Times. Right. Joe Abrams and the tormentor of Clarence Thomas.
- [23:20]
Unnamed Speaker
Yes.
- [23:21]
Jon Podhoretz
She observed that last week, published a piece in the Boston Globe saying the Washington Free Beacon is doing the kind of journalism that nobody else in America is doing. It's taking institutions down, which is one of the jobs that journalism is supposed to do is expose corrupt institutions and do something about what they're up to.
- [23:42]
Unnamed Speaker
So the Beacon had this story about the expulsions or suspensions this morning, a couple things. First was pointed out that Columbia has suspended folks for violating the student conduct and the law in the past, only to kind of reverse themselves quietly. So it's worth paying attention to whether these suspensions and punishments hold. The second thing is this announcement should be viewed in the context of the Beacons reporting about a potential settlement between the Trump administration and Columbia University. The Beacon almost exclusively has been reporting about these negotiations and from the point of view that they might want to be wary of any settlement because it might not get to the structural problems at Columbia if the Trump administration and the university simply agree for a few changes and then this $200 million fine, which is what the Beacon has been reporting. So this may be a prelude to a settlement that we should be following as well. And then the final thing is that Colombia's most famous student, unfortunately, Mahmoud Khalil, was in Washington, D.C. yesterday, where he met with Bernie Sanders, which was just wonderful. And then he went on CNN and asked by Pamela Brown if he condemned Hamas. Mahmoud Khalil waxed indignant at even being asked the question, didn't answer the question and instead did what he does best, which is slander and libel the state of Israel. So that's just great, that's just wonderful that he's able to engage in this type of publicity tour, you know, and has now turned himself into yet another progressive cry bully as he uses the mainstream media to spout his lies.
- [25:53]
Matthew Continetti
And one more connection with all that story is Qad. The Columbia University apartheid divest was the organization on campus that became. Because some of the organizations were getting suspended, Qad became a sort of umbrella group for all the horrible people and all the horrible groups. That was Mahmoud Khalil's, that was the organization with which Mahmoud Khalil was affiliated. And at one point presenting himself as the lead negotiator for which was, you know, his, his funny way of, as Matt, you know, says, you know, ducking questions and not being honest. But Qad came out with a statement on Colombia's moves and it's if you want to understand where, you know, Mahmoud Khalil and others like him are coming from, I mean, this is, you know, this is, this is their group. I mean, at one point in the statement, Kuad says Colombia's legal team for the Miller talks is headed by right wing ideologues. Jay Lefkowitz, a Zionist with deep ties to Israel who served in the George W. Bush administration, and Matt Owen, a former law clerk for Antonin Scalia, Neil Gorsuch. In addition to APAC speaker Claire Shipman, Columbia's trustees include Jeh Johnson, who is on the board of directors, Lockheed Martin, blah blah, blah, and a member of the pro Israel lobby with Johnson on the Council of Foreign Relations. So this is where Mahmoud Khalil's come an organization that is saying, you know, well, why did they collapse? They use the word collaborate elsewhere in the statement by the. Why are they collaborating with Stephen Miller? Because they're a bunch of Zionists. And what do we think of the, you know, interim president and you know, the former head of the chair of the, of the trustees. She's an APAC speaker, not President Claire Shipman, not inter, you know, not whatever. APAC speaker Claire Shipman and her fellows who are part of the Zionist lobby on the Council on Foreign Relations. So this, this famous organ. Yes, famous scientist organization. Well, you know, so this conspiracist sort of, you know, tie it all together, everybody's connected. The Zionist lobby sort of thing. It's no different from where he's coming from. This was his organization and this is, this is where they are. All, everybody in this movement are coming from.
- [28:20]
Seth Mandel
This is why I want to say something about the CNN interview and asking Khalil if he renounces Hamas or whatever. This is like when they asked Mamdani if he would renounce globalize the intifada. These are the wrong questions. These are people who are telling you exactly what they feel about Israel, how they feel about Hamas. They have demonstrated that they stand with the people calling to globalize the intifada. Khalil is a Hamas supporter. The question should. So these are, when they ask the question, they're trying to say, come on, we're trying to help you here. Come on. All you have to say is, of course you don't support Hamas. And then we can prove that the whole Trump witch hunt is crazy and awful. But of course they won't do that. Sometimes they'll take them up on the offer if they have particular political aspirations and obligations. But the right question is, so tell us about your support for Hamas. How did you first sort of square the idea of humanitarian liberation for people with the idea of this bloodthirsty, child murdering terrorist organization that, that you've, that you've come to support? Those are the right questions. Not trying to give them these off ramps and these escape routes after they've thoroughly demonstrated who they are.
- [30:04]
Unnamed Speaker
Well, in fact, CNN was almost apologetic for asking the question, as you point out, because after Khalil dodged and waxed indignant, Pamela Brown said, well, we're only asking because, you know, Trump has called you a Hamas supporter. So that's exactly what you're saying, Abe. It's like we want you to be able to confront Trump and to rebut Trump, which of course he didn't do because he is a Hamas supporter.
- [30:35]
Seth Mandel
Yeah, I mean, I mean, the organization that Seth's talking about, they mourned the death of Yahya Sinwar and of others. And, you know, like this, they're all on the record as being exactly what they're accused of being.
- [30:53]
Jon Podhoretz
Someone has record.
- [30:54]
Matthew Continetti
Right, Exactly. I love the way, Abe, that you put that, though, because it reminded me just of that My kids discovered that if you say to Alexa, Alexa Simon says, then whatever you say after Simon says, Alexa will simply repeat. So they like to get Alexa to insult herself by saying, alexa Simon says I'm an idiot, whatever. But that's what, that's what you're describing, that's what it made me think of was the CNN interview was Mahmoud Simon says I don't support Hamas.
- [31:25]
Seth Mandel
Exactly.
- [31:27]
Jon Podhoretz
So someone dug up a group chat from October 8, 2023. The headline on the group chat is Sipa Mina. So Sipa is the, Mina is, Sipa is the international Relations graduate school.
- [31:50]
Unnamed Speaker
Yeah.
- [31:50]
Jon Podhoretz
At Columbia. And MENA is the Middle Eastern Near Eastern department.
- [31:58]
Unnamed Speaker
Yeah. Middle Eastern and North Africa.
- [32:00]
Jon Podhoretz
Middle Eastern and North Africa. So either this is the internal, this is the MENA part of sipa, or it's some separate thing. But, but, so it's not official, but it's basically students or people involved in SIPA and Mina. And this is again the day after the Hamas raid on the kibbutzim and the Gaza envelope. And by the way, at that time on October 8, there were still thousands of Gazans, violent Gazans inside Israel, who were being hunted down. This is a part of the story that has not really been told because it's, but, you know, Israel basically was not pacified after the, after the, you get this idea that the hostages were sort of driven into Gaza and that was the end. And in fact, it took 72 hours for Israel to declare that it was, it was again safe to sort of like go outside your house if you lived 30 miles south of Tel Aviv. And so it was still going on, essentially, this, this, this battle inside Israel was still going on. And so they had this kind of classic chat group dorm room discussion. And somebody, it's not clear who in this chat asks of another person in the chat, I ask you a simple question. Would you support a Mizrahi Jew from Iraq returning to his native homeland and committing violence on those who removed him from his home? So this is a scenario that doesn't really quite fit, but the idea is, okay, you know, Jews were expelled from Iraq and from most Arab lands or all Arab lands after 1948. It's wasn't. They got their houses back and they went back and then they just started killing people who had given their houses back. So the analogy is theoretically to Israel retrocessing Gaza to the, to the Palestinians and disengaging in 2005. And, and Mahmoud Khalil's answer on this group chat is yes, if they don't give them their land back. So Mahmoud Khalil on 8th October, supported 7th October, was a supporter of October 7th. He is therefore a supporter of terrorism and violence against a democratic society. And he should be deported from the United States on the grounds that we have public evidence that Mahmoud Khalil would support violence against civilians were he in a position to do so, if they somehow were not doing things that he thought were in the interest of his desiderata.
- [35:01]
Unnamed Speaker
And one of the most famous Jews in America, Bernie Sanders, snapped a photo of him embracing Makhmi with his, with Sanders arm around Makmiel Khalil's shoulders. And just a disgraceful, disgraceful image of the state of the progressive wing inside the Democratic Party and the Democratic Party at large.
- [35:21]
Matthew Continetti
And the structure of that conversation, by the way, that you mentioned, John, we only have this, the snippet, but it's clearly worded as a follow up. In other words, you who support what Hamas is doing right now as we speak, would you also support it if it were the Jews going back to Iraq? And the answer was yes. So although, you know, we don't have that first part of the conversation, the flow of the conversation is very obviously Mahmoud Khalil having established himself as a defender of what was happening inside Israel.
- [35:57]
Jon Podhoretz
And this is not just theoretical. In other words, we people come here and get visas to come here and he is here on a visa that was retracted and that some judge has now decided should not have been retracted because he's married to an American. Whatever, whatever is the reason that I can't entirely discern. But promises are made on the documents that are signed when people come to the United States as legal visitors, like do you, will you engage in violence? Do you believe in violence? I mean, I don't even know what the questions are because I've never quite, I've never had to go through such a process myself. I am sure that he is in violation of the legal documents that he signed that gave him entry into the United States. And I continue not entirely to understand the, the fact that he is on the loose. That is to say, he was freed from a, from ICE captivity. Why that means he wasn't immediately deported has something to do with some judge's order that we'll see where this goes. But I will note, and not to be too sentimental, but rather than being with his young child about whom we were supposed to cry bitter tears, that he was not permitted to be present with his wife when his first child was delivered after his arrest, and the fact that he was kept in Louisiana and far away from her where she could come and visit him and he could see his baby through the glass and all of that, as far as I can tell, he spends no time with that baby because he is too busy going around politicking. So I don't want to hear about baby Khalil anymore like that. Enough already. That baby is a prop. That baby is largely, probably was a known the, the creation of that child was a political act in and of itself to complicate the very question of whether or not he would be permitted to stay in the United States. And I don't want to hear. I don't want to hear it. I don't want to hear it. And here's something else I just want to tell you before we move on about his the person that he supported. Yahya Sinwar, our friend Amit Segal, in his It's Noon in Israel newsletter, reveals the following Just to give you a sense of what is going on in Israel and in Gaza and how life for Gazans, however difficult it might be, is simply not that difficult for the elite of Gaza. And here is the item. While much of the world condemns plans for Gazans to voluntarily emigrate, Yahya Sinwar's wife has already done so and even remarried. That's according to a scoop by Yadiot Akronotz Einhav Halaby, who quoted a Gazan official claiming that Samer Abu Zamer is now in Turkey with her children. How did she do it? According to the official, she left to the Rafah crossing with another Gazan woman's passport. As for the marriage, she was reportedly set up by none other than Hamas politburo member Fathi Hamad. And Samar is not alone. Israeli security officials told Halabi that both Samar and Muhammad Sinwar's wife. That's her. That's Muhammad Samorz, Yaya Simur's brother Nawa left Gaza before Israel eliminated their husbands. Sinwar wives, says Amit Segal, have adopted a new motto, emigration for me, not for thee. So if you want, I'm just happy.
- [40:00]
Matthew Continetti
That she found someone.
- [40:03]
Jon Podhoretz
Have you noticed, by the way, that's like Trump saying he wishes Gill and.
- [40:07]
Unnamed Speaker
Maxwell well, have you noticed we're back to the the food scare. Yeah, I mean, it's just amazing how it is switched on and off depending on the State of Israel's offensive against Hamas. Now Israel, as we've been talking about, is entering this part of Gaza where it has not been before, it seems, because of concerns the hostages may be located there. And suddenly every single story you read is about starvation in Gaza, lack of nutrition in Gaza, how the Gazans are suffering from malnutrition. As we've been hearing, there was a moment, almost two years, there was a.
- [40:48]
Jon Podhoretz
Moment over the weekend when some Hamas propagandist put out a tweet. And you know, it's like a Hamas because it's got like 10,000 or more followers. So he's not just like an innocent Gazan sitting, you know, crying on the sidewalk, saying things are so bad that we don't even have any bread and we've had to cook our rice with water. How else do you cook? Am I. Did I miss a meeting? Is there some other way to cook rice?
- [41:20]
Matthew Continetti
It's big in Montgomery county too, by the way.
- [41:23]
Jon Podhoretz
How do you.
- [41:24]
Matthew Continetti
It's a big trend.
- [41:25]
Jon Podhoretz
We cook our rice.
- [41:26]
Unnamed Speaker
Cooking rice with water.
- [41:27]
Matthew Continetti
Yeah.
- [41:28]
Jon Podhoretz
I thought you cook rice with water. What do you cook?
- [41:31]
Matthew Continetti
Rice.
- [41:32]
Jon Podhoretz
What do you cook?
- [41:33]
Matthew Continetti
How else would you cook rice?
- [41:34]
Jon Podhoretz
Also, rice is the staple diet of the planet. Not bread, but okay, whatever. It's like rice. So you get a bag of rice and you cook it with water, and that means you're starving. It's the opposite of starving.
- [41:45]
Matthew Continetti
But it's not bottled water, I think, is the point.
- [41:47]
Jon Podhoretz
Oh, that's a good point. It's not. Yes. It's not Evian. That doesn't come from a spring water. Yeah.
- [41:53]
Unnamed Speaker
Should we move to what's the madness in D.C. why not? There's a few stories coming out of Washington in the last 1212 or so hours. First is President Trump has announced that he's made a deal with Japan, one of America's largest trading partners, for a 15% tariff that will be imposed on Japanese imports, as well as some guarantee of foreign direct investment. One thing you've you learn after studying these Trump trade deals is that the promised foreign direct investment never quite reaches the top line figure. But the tariff, the tariff is always there. And in this case, I think the tariff at 15% was welcomed by both sides. And it shows that Trump is making progress in reaching some of these deals ahead of the August, the now August 1 deadline, which could be extended down, down the road as well. And then the bigger story, or at least what everyone is beginning the day talking about, is that President Trump accused former President Barack Obama of, of treason yesterday. You know, just another day in Washington during a press availability with the President of the Philippines, who has a fantastic nickname.
- [43:27]
Jon Podhoretz
They all do. All the Philippine politicians I met in the 80s, I met a guy named Joker Arroyo.
- [43:33]
Unnamed Speaker
This is, He's Joker Bong Bong, isn't he? Yeah, Bong Bong Marcus.
- [43:39]
Jon Podhoretz
Joker Arroyo. It's amazing.
- [43:41]
Unnamed Speaker
Well, I like Bong Bong because it reminds me of Bam Bam.
- [43:44]
Jon Podhoretz
Yeah, of course.
- [43:44]
Unnamed Speaker
From the Flintstones but so we have. Anyway, so Trump and Bong Bong were there together. And Trump said that Obama was behind a treasonous conspiracy to take over the government delegitimized Trump's election in 2016. And this is because last week Tulsi Gabbard declassified this intelligence report, accusing the intelligence community, or more explicitly Obama, of ordering a new set of intelligence assessments after the 2016 election in order to create the illusion that Trump and Russia were in cahoots. So, yes, Russia, Russia, Russia is back, potentially as a way for Trump to avoid talking about Epstein, Epstein, Epstein. Which is the other scandal that is sitting over Washington like a, you know, a high pressure air system right now.
- [44:49]
Donny Deutsch
Hey, this is Donny Deutsch. I host a podcast on Brand that comes twice a week. We give you two for the price of one. One day a week we do our big interviews with our big personalities, some of the biggest names in politics, entertainment, culture and business. And on the second wave, we do what we call our brands of the week. These are the brand brands of the shaping, the zeitgeist, who's up, who's down, and you can really enjoy both of them. So tune in twice a week to On Brand. You can get them anywhere. You get podcasts, Spotify, Apple, anyplace else. We look forward to seeing you and hearing from you.
- [45:21]
Mark Halpern
I'm Mark Halpern. I want to let you know that two Way Tonight, the destination for the best political news and analysis anywhere, is now available as an audio podcast. Each weekday I'll be joined by special guests from the worlds of news, politics and the media, along with members of the two way community for conversations like no other. It's the best way to stay informed at the end of your day or first thing in the morning every weekday. It's a show like no other because we involve the community. We hear from people from around the country, around the world. They're part of a conversation. There is no other platform like this, and I hope you will find it to be not only different than everything else, but more meaningful as you become part of a special community around the program. So listen and follow two Way tonight with Mark Alperin on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or any other major streaming platform.
- [46:08]
Jon Podhoretz
I just would say one thing about this. I in the early going was credulous about the possibility not that Russia had gone in and changed votes. Right? And in fact, nobody says Russia tried to go, including Obama said two weeks before he was left office that there is no evidence and there's no reason to believe that Russia had anything to do with trying to get in and screw around with vote totals and voting machines. What we do know is that Russia hacked Hillary Clinton's emails, and those emails played some role. I mean, nowhere near the role that when Anthony Weiner played and James Comey played in ensuring her defeat in 2016, but that they were. That they were. They were fiddling around with social media and hacking and stuff like that is inarguable. And nobody ever said that Russia had gone in and hack the machines since the middle of 2017 through the end of the Trump first Trump term. We published a series of articles by Eli Lake, who is now mostly. Is still a contributing editor, and it's on the podcast frequently, but now writes mostly for the Free Press, in which we laid out the ways in which the investigation into Trump's supposed possible collusion with Russia was outrageous. Extralegal bullying, used techniques, used offensive techniques, defame people, threw people in jail, wrongly. A lot of people got fired who deserved to be fired from the Justice Department. In the wake of the Justice Department's own investigation by Inspector General Michael Horowitz of bad conduct on the part of senior officials at the FBI and elsewhere, we published seven pieces about. About the malfeasance of the deep state and of the investigation into Trump and how it was politically motivated, even though he was then the president through the special prosecutor's office and all of that. So when I say that, I look at this and I see a nothing burger, the Tulsi Gabbard documents. I come from a place in which I, or Commentary, I think, deserves credit for having been early and hard on how bad this behavior was. And it's not just me saying that. Eli, in a piece in the Free Press yesterday, quotes Andrew C. McCarthy, perhaps, you know, who is not known as a blushing violet like actually called for Obama's impeachment, impeachment on other grounds during.
- [49:29]
Unnamed Speaker
His presidency, and wrote a book called Ball of Collusion about the Russia, about.
- [49:36]
Jon Podhoretz
The, you know, about the, the hoax, the scam. Yeah, but none of these documents that are supposedly new say anything new. And that's fine because you can resurface old controversies and try to make them fresh again, but it goes to intent. So what Trump is saying about Obama and the Obama people is that they knew there was nothing and they pretended there was something, and then they kept pretending and they knew, and therefore what they were doing was perpetuating a fraud. They committed perjury. James Comey and I think, Brennan, according to Tulsi Gabbard perjured themselves in front of the House and should be prosecuted for. For their behavior.
- [50:27]
Unnamed Speaker
That's also. The CIA has referred Comey and Brennan.
- [50:30]
Jon Podhoretz
Yes.
- [50:31]
Unnamed Speaker
For investigation. That happened.
- [50:33]
Jon Podhoretz
Yeah.
- [50:33]
Unnamed Speaker
Days before Gabbard's referral over this latest document.
- [50:40]
Jon Podhoretz
But, John, all of that goes to. Let me just finish the point here, which is all this goes to intent, by which, I mean, if Obama and Susan Rice and various other people in the administration sincerely believed that Trump was an agent of influence of Putin and that they were doing what they could to set up modalities by which that could be exposed while he was president, then they did something wrong, they did something offensive, they did something disgraceful in many ways, but they didn't do something criminal because they believed that it was true. So you can only say that Obama's a traitor if he was trying to take Trump out in some fashion while knowing that Trump was innocent of the charges that Obama was, in effect, privately pursuing, according to him. And I believe they believed it. And I believe they believed it because I believed it. Now, I know I didn't see the intelligence and all of that, but if you'd asked me in September. No, you know, October, November, December, was Trump playing footsie in some fashion with Putin? I kind of thought he was, and I thought he was. I had a theory about it, very simple, which is like, he didn't think he was going to win the presidency, and he thought if you made nice with Putin, Putin, that Putin would let him build a big build, you know, that he could, like, raise a huge amount of money and build some stuff in Moscow under. Under Putin's sufferance, and that that would help the Trump Organization, and then he could then emerge from this presidential bid in profit. Right. Having spent 50 billion of his own money, he could make it back in this way. That was my thinking. I'm not saying I think I was wrong, but I don't think that that presumption or the presumption that something untoward was going on because he was so nice about Putin and because he did surround himself with people who seem to be interested in playing footsie with Putin. So I thought it, Obama thought it, whatever. It doesn't. I was in no position to do anything harmful to him, and Obama was, but I think that that matters. Abe, I'm sorry.
- [53:00]
Seth Mandel
I just want to say this, that I agree with you, that so far from my perspective, this seems to be a nothing burger. But at the same time, I have to say I don't trust my own instincts on this stuff. In the Trump age, Anymore. Because there have been other things that Trump has first touted, unearthed, or, you know, when he started talking about the auto pen, I thought, oh, this looks pretty silly. And there was there, there a lot of there there, I think so I'm, I'm, I'm like waiting, you know, I'm not, I'm not yet. I'm not yet.
- [53:45]
Jon Podhoretz
More documents.
- [53:46]
Unnamed Speaker
Yeah.
- [53:46]
Jon Podhoretz
So.
- [53:46]
Unnamed Speaker
So just to keep the narrative going, after Trump made this accusation, or maybe around the same time, President Obama released a statement through a spokesperson saying that every. This was all false charges from Greg Gabbard and Trump. And as John, you were saying there really was nothing new in these documents. And also pointing out that the Senate Intelligence Committee report on the Russia investigation back in Trump's first term, when national archivist Marco Rubio was on the Intelligence Committee and co authored the report, he holds some other titles too, but said that this was not, you know, inappropriate. So Obama and Trump are now fighting. And in response to Obama's response, DNI Gabbard has said that there will be more documents coming today. Now, just a couple things on this. I do think that there was real wrongdoing in the midst of this Russia investigation at the FBI level for sure. When you think about Comey, Strock, McCabe, their use of the Russia dossier in order to get the FISA court to survey Carter Page and who knows what, who knows who else. Other people as well, using that material, again, which no one anyone could have seen, was ridiculous into the, into the final assessment. Right. So the assessment that came out in January included information from the. Or accusations from the dossier. And then of course, Comey famously waiting in private to tell Trump and Trump Tower that, hey, by the way, this is out there. And then dashing to his limo to memorialize that meeting. So he had some paper trip. There is something they were. They're up to no good. They're all bad people.
- [55:45]
Jon Podhoretz
Yes.
- [55:46]
Unnamed Speaker
Now the question is Obama's role and we really don't know. And I mean, you're right, this kind of sequence of events that's presented in these new documents doesn't necessarily say that Obama was there, you know, directing traffic, so to speak, and telling Comey and McCabe and Strzok to do this. But, you know, maybe there, maybe there's more to come.
- [56:11]
Jon Podhoretz
Like, like Abe are. You and Abe are on the same page. And there's the one thing that I will say that has never been totally explained is National Security Advisor under the. For Obama, Susan Rice did authorize. Right. The wiretapping of her successor.
- [56:31]
Unnamed Speaker
Right.
- [56:31]
Jon Podhoretz
Michael Flynn, on the grounds that she was suspicious that something bad was going on. Or maybe it wasn't of him. It was that they were focusing in on the communications between him and the Russian ambassador in Washington. And if you remember, the conversation that Flynn was having was about how to secure the release of Americans being held if I, if I have this right, being held in Russia and basically saying don't make any moves or don't do X or don't do Y.
- [57:13]
Unnamed Speaker
Right. Until we're in office.
- [57:15]
Jon Podhoretz
Until we're in office. That not, not meaning keep them in jail until we're in office, but don't. We are inclined toward treating you with good favor. Don't do anything that is going to make that hard for us by mistreating the Americans that you are holding captive. And that is. Was part of the assessment that you're talking about, which came out, I believe, on January 4th. And that was leaked.
- [57:46]
Unnamed Speaker
Yes.
- [57:47]
Jon Podhoretz
That, that the, that somebody leaked to.
- [57:50]
Unnamed Speaker
And the dossier, of course, was being circulated at Ben Smith, then at Buzz Feed, famously printed the whole thing.
- [57:57]
Jon Podhoretz
Right.
- [57:58]
Unnamed Speaker
Just one other.
- [57:59]
Jon Podhoretz
What Susan Rice did was completely out of all bounds, according to what we understand as being a legitimate act. She was trying to find dirt about the successor administration. Now, that's what I'm saying is she may have done that in bizarre good faith. That is to say, I got two months, all these people in her head are Russian spies. And I got two months until we leave office and we got to do something or Putin is going to be sitting in the Oval Office.
- [58:39]
Unnamed Speaker
When I hear the words Susan, when I hear the word Susan Rice, good faith does not leap to mind. But I will say something on Obama. Just one irony. Yeah. Is of course, last year the Supreme Court ruled in Trump USA that there are various gradations of executive immunity here. And we're throwing that Trump and Gabbard are throwing out these charges of treason. But it's ironic to me. I think Obama would have a plausible defense that he is telling the IC to create these assessments as part of his official duties, which the Supreme Court would say he's immune for prosecution, but.
- [59:24]
Jon Podhoretz
Then he would have had to be the one to have ordered them. Right. In other words, in other words, that immunity doesn't extend to, say, Susan Rice saying rewrite the assessment.
- [59:35]
Unnamed Speaker
That's my point.
- [59:35]
Jon Podhoretz
Right.
- [59:36]
Unnamed Speaker
So I think, I think it'd be better. I think it would be better. I know why Trump wants to point out and Obama. Right. But I think if you're serious about this, you focus on the people below Obama because there, there might actually be liability. And they are, they do not enjoy the immunity that presidents enjoy, and nor.
- [59:56]
Matthew Continetti
Do they do they get the benefit of the doubt on good faith. You know, in some of these situations. I mean, what I think of when I think of this Russiagate stuff that we're talking about now, I think in some ways of Bridge Gate, which is that, you know, Chris Christie had this, created this atmosphere, right. And, and, and his deputies thought time for some traffic on the George Washington to punish this. You know, this mayor who was not endorsing Christie or whatever, it's not something that Chris Christie was found to have ordered specifically and not something that he ever got in real legal trouble for, but two of his folks did. They. Eventually the conviction, the sentencing was overturned, but they were sentenced to, to prison for it. That's, that's the thing is that I think that there was this atmosphere of, oh, my God, the Russians are coming. And what people did. You could have, you, you, you certainly could have a good faith worry that the Russians were coming in a general sense and then have people use awful judgment and do things they knew were wrong. The Bridge Gate people knew that that was wrong. Right. That's where I think the Susan Rice stuff comes in. I don't think she had any misunderstanding. I think that she knows, you know, John, what, you know, what you said about the, about why Mike Flynn said what he said on that call with the Russians. She also knows why he said what he said. That's sort of my point. There's no way that Susan Rice knows less about the intentions behind the acts that she was then painting as, you know, you know, halfway treasonous or whatever. And that's where I think this comes in, because I don't think even, even if you could prosecute Obama, you can make a very easy case that he was not sitting around going, let's, let's throw everybody in jail. Let's get these guys. There was a general atmosphere of something, something is afoot here. Something is wrong. I smell a rat, you know, and we all felt that way to different extents about different parts of the Trump campaign and the way that people connected with the campaign were behaving. But I think that Susan Rice was in a position to deliberately make mischief, and I'm not inclined to, to believe that she didn't know exactly what she was doing. And I think that she's, she and others use the good faith thing at the atmosphere as cover. But again, in Bridgegate, that didn't work.
- [62:49]
Jon Podhoretz
You know, in my, one of my, I don't know, five favorite movies, Sweet Smell of Success, which is a movie about influence peddling and behind the scenes double dealing and conspiracies in the press to get your way. The vicious and monstrous newspaper columnist JJ Hunsecker, trying to get his. Trying to get his way without having any. His fingerprints on, on. On the thing that he is trying to pull off. Says, my right hand hasn't seen my left hand in 30 years. So. Or Henry II, right? What does Henry II say? Famously, in the course of human history, who will rid me of this meddlesome priest? He doesn't say, hey, you, you know, Duke of Gaunt, you go rid me of Thomas A. Becket. He doesn't say, I am ordering the killing of Thomas Beckett. He says, who will rid me of this Muslim priest? Now I'm going to go off and, you know, go have a giant turkey drumstick. And something should happen. If Obama had a meeting in the Oval Office and they, he said, man, I mean, there's not a lot of time to figure out what's going on between Trump and Russia. Well, I guess I have my next meeting. Does that constitute him organizing a conspiracy against Trump? I guess in some odd way, yeah, that's. So you could say he implicitly did. But we don't even know that that conversation happened, and we never will, by the way.
- [64:22]
Unnamed Speaker
So just some of the documents just broke while we were talking. And one of the points here is that even though the intelligence community believed that Russia was trying to hurt Hillary Clinton, there was dissent over whether Russia wanted to help Trump to boost Trump. And this is kind of understandable because no one believed Trump would win, including Putin. And Putin had had a case against Putin, Hillary, or hatred of Hillary back to when she was Secretary of State, and support for Ukraine and efforts to support the dissident movement in Russia and sanctions. Right. So he definitely wanted to hurt Hillary. The question was, did he want to help Trump? And what we seem to have is that at first the intelligence community believed no, it was more about Hillary, not Trump. And then in January suddenly became, oh, no, he wanted to help Trump because he and Trump are in cahoots. And that that's a shift and it's an important one.
- [65:37]
Jon Podhoretz
Right. So there were two assessments, like the first draft assessment. I think this actually came out before this latest thing. But there was this startlingly illiterate draft assessment which you can read, which you can barely believe somebody actually sent through the system. We seem to think that illiteracy is a hallmark of the Trump administration. But apparently the second Obama term featured people who could not write English properly saying precisely this, which is that we, we, we don't. We. We assess that. That what Russia was trying to do was so chaos to the extent possible that was sometime in October or November. And then in January there was this second assessment. Assessment is it's a low level summary of information. It's not considered authoritative. It's not this, it's not that. It's a kind of write me a memo and don't you. That you don't have to stand by just like what's your opinion apparently. And in that one it says that the intelligence community said that Putin had already had expressed or that the Russians had expressed a clear preference that Donald Trump become president. What happened between that first assessment and the second assessment is probably at the heart of anything that would be seriously considered as part of any effort to say that there was a conspiracy to create so chaos in the Trump administration that was coming by the Obama administration that was leaving, that the sowing chaos wasn't coming from Moscow, it was coming from Obama's Oval Office or Obama people who did actually. Right. Comey goes to Trump, says, I got bad news for you. There's this word out about you and Flynn and all of this. Then goes into his limousine to take contemporaneous notes where he says Trump raged about this and said, everyone's always trying to get me and all of that so that he can have it in hand as these things progress, so that he could then testify to having had a contemporaneous meeting with Trump and what the notes said. And then of course, the first, the acting attorney general quitting in the first week of the Trump administration and going public and all of that stuff. There is a real sense in which people were working to set Trump up to fail and to create the conditions under which he would spend his presidency under a legal cloud that's not necessarily illegal is the problem. Particularly again as it goes to intent. Because if they honestly believe that he was, you know, he was a traitorous monster then as opposed to he's the guy that beat us and we can't stand it and we hate him and let's destroy him. That matters. But how we, how we'll ever, how we'll ever get to the bottom of that, I don't, don't really know. You have to have Comey saying, I know that Trump isn't colluding with Russia, but I'm gonna do this anyway. Like, there's always that conversation that happens in a movie where somebody says, you know, I had to do it. I had to. There was no way to stop him. You know, like go out in that.
- [69:02]
Matthew Continetti
Desert where that Comey was, the forest that Comey was wandering around. And if you dig under the tree that he's facing in that famous Twitter photo, there will be a box.
- [69:13]
Jon Podhoretz
Yeah.
- [69:14]
Unnamed Speaker
So just to close on this, I had a piece of the Free Press the other day on some lessons to take from all the Epstein's shenanigans over the past past couple of weeks. And one of them is, you know, don't over promise and underdeliver. And I think that the Trump administration hasn't learned that lesson with this latest disclosures. Now, this disclosure from Gabbard is a way of getting the Republican base off of the Epstein story, or at least an attempt to get the Republican base to talk about something other than the Epstein story. But it sets up its own huge expectations. If you're saying that Obama committed treason and that it's time for arrests, as Trump said as well in that press availability and either they don't materialize or things don't proceed in a straight line fashion, then you're only going to antagonize your supporters further. And this is a problem because if I were the Trump administration, right now, you're already upset that you're not being able to publicize the one big beautiful bill. But more importantly, you really have to address this issue of affordability. And even though there have been gains made in gas prices and egg prices, the overall inflation rate is within expectations. I look at some of those hamburger numbers and coffee numbers, and that's where I think Trump and his team need to be focusing right now, rather than kind of getting people excited for frog marching the whole Obama crowd.
- [70:58]
Jon Podhoretz
Also, one final point, which is that they have, I believe, uncovered a real scan. Like there is a real scan that is newer, that is fresher, and is arguably vastly more important. I understand that Trump remains haunted by what happened in 2016 and by the impeachment and by Mueller and all of that. And I'm not even going to gainsay that this is something that like sticks in his head and he can't get away from, just like he can't get away from the stolen election line. But what has been revealed about Biden in 2024 is a it is necessary for the future of this republic that we get to the bottom of this and get to the bottom of the idea that there was a possible conspiracy inside the White House to hide from the American people, the fact that the President was not making decisions in the last year of his presidency going forward right up to whom he was pardoning. But not just that, because there were two wars in the world that were being conducted in which his behavior or his administration's behavior was erratic, peculiar, impossible to follow, impossible to understand. And that sets a precedent for future presidents and future White Houses. If you don't make it clear what happened and why it can't happen again, and prepare legislation to deal with making sure that it doesn't happen again, this is all a distraction from that. You're just creating a giant blob, which is Democrats are bad and they're all, they all hate Trump and they all want to get Trump. And that may or may not be true, but it's not what's important now. And as Abe said, the auto pen seemed like narish kite at the start and turns out to maybe be at the heart of a constitutional crisis that we actually did live through and that we didn't know we were living through, though some of us had some intimations about it. And we did on this podcast, call maybe 15 times for somebody to invoke the 25th Amendment against Biden. But, you know, if you start throwing in 2015, 2016, this happened, that happened, then you just, everything gets muddy and there's too much and Congress has ADHD and can't focus on anything classically. And like, we'll, we'll go in 15 different ways and 15 different congressmen will bring up 15 different things, and then you'll never get to the bottom of anything. So.
- [73:46]
Matthew Continetti
Sounds like a case for a special prosecutor.
- [73:51]
Unnamed Speaker
Please. No.
- [73:56]
Jon Podhoretz
Okay, we'll be back tomorrow. Remember, if you are in the Amit of my voice this afternoon and you have some question, a question you might want us to answer on the Commentary mailbag, we will be recording tonight, be distributed on, on Friday. Please do so at Commentary. Excuse me. @podcastcommerce.org and for Matt, Seth and Abe, I'm John Pot. Horace, keep the candle bur.