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- [00:04]
John Podhoretz
Hope for the best Expect the worst.
- [00:11]
Abe Greenwald
Some preach and pain Some die of.
- [00:14]
John Podhoretz
Thirst the way of knowing which way.
- [00:18]
Abe Greenwald
It'S going Hope for the best Expect.
- [00:21]
John Podhoretz
The worst Hope for the best welcome to the Commentary Magazine Daily Podcast. Today is Friday, January 24, 2025. I am John Podwarts, the editor of Commentary magazine, reminding you to sign up for our new daily newsletter featuring the stylings, song stylings and lyrical emoluments of our own Abe Greenwald. Go to commentary.org look at the banner at the top, right in the middle, you'll see the word newsletter. Click on it, you can fill out your name and your email address and it will start appearing in your mailbox around about 4 4:30 every weekday afternoon. So that is Abe Greenwald's Commentary Magazine newsletter along with links to articles of interest and to this podcast. Though you will have already listened to this podcast, so you probably don't need that link. Nonetheless, that is what I am trying to appeal to you to do for our friend, Executive Editor Abe Greenwald. Hi Abe.
- [01:23]
Christine Rosen
Hi John.
- [01:24]
John Podhoretz
We also have with us of course, social commentary columnist Christine Rosen. Hi Christine.
- [01:29]
Chris Stirewalt
Hi John.
- [01:29]
John Podhoretz
And joining us today, host of the Hill Sunday, columnist for the Hill and the Dispatch and an all around polymath.
- [01:41]
Chris Stirewalt
Of politics and my colleague at aei.
- [01:44]
John Podhoretz
My colleague at ae, colleague at aei, Chris Darwold. Hi Chris. Welcome back.
- [01:49]
Abe Greenwald
I'm very happy to be with you lovely people today.
- [01:52]
John Podhoretz
Thank you so much. And I do want to point out that President Trump will be leaving the White House for the first time in his second term to survey disaster damage in North Carolina first of all and then flying to LA to survey the fires. And then tomorrow Saturday will be having a full fledged rally in Las Vegas and here while I always thought it was weird that after he was president he would have rallies, I'm now thinking politically that this is actually very astute for him in the second term because it is a one he is a one term president. Notwithstanding Representative Andy Ogle's resolution seeking of a resolution to give Trump a possible third term as president, your resolution written so specifically that it says you could only have a third term if you've had non consecutive first two terms, thus preventing Barack Obama apparently from taking advantage of a constitutional amendment that would grant.
- [03:05]
Abe Greenwald
Somebody check on Grover Cleveland.
- [03:07]
John Podhoretz
Yeah, I mean it is comical in the extreme, but what I mean to say here is that the Trump rallies and Trump's reminder to Washington and to the media and others that he still has a connection to the electorate that brought him in and that is enthusiastic about him, that that connection is not only negative, or his power is not only negative in the form of bullying and yelling at people on Twitter and X and Truth Social and whatever, but that this connection is real and personal because he's a lame duck. I mean, he's already a lame duck. He's covering his lame duckness with a blurry fire hose of activity. But at some point when we settle into homeostasis, there is going to be this issue with his presidency, which is that it is, it has a finite limit. It's the first presidency that we have seen ever in this regard, including Grover Cleveland's, where, you know, he's gone. On January 20, 2029, he is gone. He'll be gone. And so, you know, at some point the power that he has over the future of the party may be compromised. So he is going to need to keep that in the forefront of people's minds. Chris, do you agree with this analysis or do you just think he needs that? He needs that heroin in his veins.
- [04:34]
Abe Greenwald
I wrote I will continue to make offerings for the Dispatch. And one of or no, my first offering was a piece about James K. Polk. And James K. Polk, who was the most consequential president of certainly between Washington and Lincoln, he changed Washington more. He changed the, he increased the size of the nation by about 50%. He was hugely consequential. And in Robert Mary's wonderful book about James K. Polk, there's this amazing scene. He gets to Washington, he comes back from disgrace. He's lost the governorship of Tennessee twice and wins in a wild dark horse pick for Democrats in 1844. And he returns to Washington and he has told no one of his plans. And he takes the man who's going to be his Navy secretary into his confidence and he says, I'm going to bring in all of that everything, Idaho, Washington, Oregon, California, all of that 550,000 square miles. I'm going to do it all. I'm not just going to annex Texas. I'm going to do it all. And Bancroft was stunned because he hadn't said anything about it. And then Polk gets down to the work of doing it and imposing his will. He did what Jackson couldn't do because he was all intensity and all of that stuff. A very long way of saying Donald Trump likes running for president. I don't have a lot of evidence that he likes being president. Right? He likes the show. He, he likes the theater of it. He likes the television of it. He likes all of that stuff. He likes the rallies he likes the adulation, the work part where you have to make compromises and you have to make people unhappy. Donald Trump does not like to make. This will sound strange, but Donald Trump doesn't like to make people unhappy. He likes making them mad. Right. He likes making them upset, but he doesn't like to make them unhappy. And being president, especially if you want to be an effective one term president, is you're going to make a lot of people unhappy because that's what it means. If you're getting stuff done, I will be curious.
- [07:03]
Chris Stirewalt
I think that's right. And I think the thing to watch in this lame duck term is how, what he does with Vance, because if he wants to cultivate a legacy of MAGA beyond Trump, which I'm not exactly sure, given his ego and vanity, he actually does want to do, but if he did, Vance would be the one. And there was this interesting little clip of a video circulating, I think, taken by Speaker Johnson of the first time J.D. vance saw the Oval Office in person, which was recently just the other day. And it was kind of remarkable because Trump was leading him into, I mean, it will become, I would assume, if J.D. vance runs for president one day, a little snippet in his campaign video. But it was also sort of astonishing because while Trump was, you know, obviously happy to show him around the Oval Office and sort of, you know, liked that J.D. vance was very awestruck by the power that the office represents. There's also that little, this little flash of an expression on Trump's face like, yeah, you know, this is my place.
- [08:02]
John Podhoretz
Take cash, let down that lean and hungry look.
- [08:05]
Chris Stirewalt
Yes. I mean, so there's just this moment, there's just this, this question in my mind because Vance is a very capable guy. He's quite savvy. He could do a lot to help Trump and his legacy and to actually accomplish and do some of the governing that. I think Chris is absolutely right to be skeptical that Trump himself enjoys. But that will require Trump's blessing. And it's not clear he's going to give that in that sense.
- [08:28]
John Podhoretz
I want to point out that obviously there is a political dynamic. So there are.
- [08:31]
Christine Rosen
I'm sorry, can I just say one thing? I'm sorry. My, my mute was on just.
- [08:35]
John Podhoretz
I'm sorry. This, I'm just.
- [08:36]
Christine Rosen
No, no, no, no. It's my fault. To all these points, I also think Trump, and we see evidence of this so far, and I think we can expect it will treat this term in large part as one long victory lap. And that seems to Be a lot of what he's up to here, doing tons of interviews or just exposure to the press, going on trips, having rallies. It's almost a way of extending the campaign into the end zone and saying, see? Told you. He's going to keep his finger in the face of his enemies the entire time.
- [09:20]
John Podhoretz
I just think that in classic terms, being a star, Hollywood star, until the age of Instagram and the constant ability to put yourself before people and the stardom that is represented by politics, there's supposed to be a certain level of mystery. So I've said this many times on the podcast that, you know, if you go back to Ronald Reagan or something, he only spoke three or four times a week at most. Sometimes it was two times a week. It was the idea that you withheld the president so that every time he said something or did something, it was like a hammer blow. It was like a very big moment. Obama really broke that model by doing media, different kinds of media, constantly being on with Zach Galifianakis between two ferns, you know, doing all that stuff. And then Trump completely obliterated it by being immensely present. And thus they're demystifying the presidency in a weird way.
- [10:20]
Christine Rosen
But also, also using unprecedented level of candor at times, as yesterday when he was asked about Elon Musk attacking the new AI panel, the new AI initiative that Trump's putting together. And Trump just said, well, you know, Elon hates people. I hate people, too.
- [10:43]
John Podhoretz
He hates one of these guys. There are three people who made. We don't know who it is. We don't know which one of the three guys who. I was just going to say, you.
- [10:52]
Chris Stirewalt
Can pretty well guess.
- [10:53]
John Podhoretz
It's all, by the way, you know, the right is there. Every. Everybody. A lot of people on the right are just sort of dazzled by what's happened in the last couple of days, particularly as I think a lot of us, as some of us here are, by the sort of the essential to front. Front word assault on affirmative action, on. On, you know, dei, on all of that. And the right seems not to have noticed the unbelievable mercantilism evident in the president having three major industrialists standing there saying, we're all together government. And these three guys, we're going to be advancing AI. I don't want government advanced AI. I may want government limiting AI. I may want government, you know, like keeping a harsh eye on AI and making sure that it doesn't go places that AI shouldn't go. And I certainly want government to keep an eye on what China is doing with AI.
- [11:50]
Abe Greenwald
But this is the. The heart of maga, right? Which is. It's not anti elite, it's anti those elites, right? It's about replacing those elites with our elites. We've got to bring our elites in to replace those people. And those elites who are present can get on board, they can join, but it is all oars pulling in the same direction that we want and against cultural Marxism and against all of that stuff. And how striking was it to see Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg and all of these folks who. I believe that the mistake of eight years ago was the obsession against normalizing Trump and treating Donald Trump like it was a fluke, a cold. The country caught a cold. And, and we're gonna ride it out. We're gonna ride this out. And when he was defeated in 2020, it seemed to confirm that, okay, it was a weird thing that happened. Hillary Clinton was a bad candidate. It was a weird time. And now we're back. His return says no. He is normalized. He won the popular vote. He's returned. And the, the downsides for that, for the, for Trump's critics, are that no one will be there to put a check on him. But I think a lot about Oscar de la Renta these days because as.
- [13:32]
John Podhoretz
Christine, as opposed to previous days, when I know.
- [13:34]
Abe Greenwald
I was going to say as Christine vine for you, as Christine knows, fashion is.
- [13:40]
Chris Stirewalt
Fashion is your beat. It is.
- [13:42]
Abe Greenwald
It's how I live. But. So Oscar de la Renta designed Melania Trump's inauguration attire, including her Spy versus Spy hat.
- [13:54]
John Podhoretz
And.
- [13:55]
Abe Greenwald
Or no, the hat was from some.
- [13:56]
John Podhoretz
Still going with Zorro? Yeah, I'm still going with Zorro.
- [14:00]
Abe Greenwald
The white band. Come on, Mexican people. That's the black crow from Spy vs. Spy because of the white band. Be real. Um, but if you have, if you never had Oscar de la Renta designing your clothes, you can't lose Oscar de la Renta designing your clothes. But if you have Oscar de la Renta and you have all of these people now, you have something to lose. And Donald Trump is obsessed with his legacy. He's obsessed with being liked. He's obsessed. He is all of those things. And he definitely wants to do promises made, promises kept, and tell his supporters that he is there for them and he's going to do all that stuff. But I wonder now that the broader the, the, the elite of the elites and, and in general have acquiesced, okay, this is where we are. This is what we're doing. What leverage does that give those people as a Check on Trump and will it be more effective? Perhaps. Well, you can play this back in 6 months when I'm 100% wrong, but will it be more effective perhaps, than trying to isolate him?
- [15:08]
Chris Stirewalt
Well, Trump's populist Achilles heel and the great irony of his personality is that he's always craved mainstream acceptance by the cultural elite. He sought it his whole life and then when he gets it, he loves to show his own power by pretending to reject it. But he, he really does love it and he wants it. And it's completely understandable given his background and how he grew up and the era in which he grew up. But I do, it's an important question about the cultural reaction to Trump this time around, because I try to follow sort of these cultural stories. How are the fact that all the Trump children were there and some were dressed by well known designers, know there's going to be a boycott, but it never quite materialized in the way that everyone fell into lockstep on the left after 2016. So that leaves. You're right, it actually does deprive him of some leverage and some sort of standing among his own coalition to say, look, we're, they're against us. Look at how much they hate us. You know, I'm here as your vengeance. But it also would perhaps normalize. I mean, I, it's, this is a separate issue from normalizing Trump and his way of governing, but it might normalize our politics in a way, because people, I do, I go back to this sense of everyone's a little exhausted with some of these culture wars. And I think that's why we're seeing all the corporations just absolutely cave in relief when DEI is stripped from the.
- [16:23]
Christine Rosen
Law or like, don't, don't make me.
- [16:24]
Abe Greenwald
Don'T make me get rid of, of this extraordinarily expensive and disruptive program, useless program.
- [16:30]
Chris Stirewalt
Right.
- [16:31]
John Podhoretz
But Christine, you're saying that people are tired of the culture wars. And the only thing now that the, that the left, not, not this acquiescent corporatist world that, that, that joined in the anti Trump movement because they calculated that it was better for their bottom line. It was the classic Trump was better for their bottom line running in 2015, 2016, it was with Les Moonves and Jeff Zucker both said at CBS and at CNN that, man, we're getting great ratings. And then suddenly it's like, oh, no, this guy's president. You know, it'd be better for our bottom line. We're resistors. We're gonna, we're gonna fact Check. We're gonna attack him. We're gonna do all, all, all of that.
- [17:12]
Abe Greenwald
And their people, the people who worked for Meta and the people who worked at cbs. And it was sincere, right? They were totally sincere.
- [17:21]
John Podhoretz
Absolutely. Since now, what's left? Because they are. You know what? That didn't work. And you know what? I, we didn't like. And, and they, and we were nice to them, meaning the people who wanted us to do this. And you know what they did? They came after our jugulars. They, they.
- [17:37]
Chris Stirewalt
Well, and they prompted some very expensive lawsuits. For CNN and elsewhere.
- [17:41]
John Podhoretz
Well, no, but I mean, they, they had meetings and they, they occupied our, you know, we're at the New York Times and we have to deal with people on our staff saying, barry Weiss is going to get me killed. Fights inside cnn, all these places. It's like, we did what you wanted and all it did was stoke your appetite to take us on. It's like the moment in the Crucible, in Arthur Miller's the Crucible, when the girls who have taken over the town of Salem with their cries of, of witchery at one point turn on the judge and say, hey, I think I saw you in the woods. And the judge says, hold it right there, young ladies. Do not go too far. You know, and then they drop it because it was like, the judge is like, don't you know what? Come far, but you're not taking over my job. And they kind of the, the woke resistance sort of tried to do that, and it worked in some places. And now Trump has given them an excuse to take back their own businesses, their own corporate structures, and to enter and to retire this bizarre thing where they, in the pursuit of what was good for America, in their minds, turned out to be internal revolts against them.
- [19:10]
Abe Greenwald
Once the Washington, once Jeff Bezos decided, you know what? I'm keeping Will Lewis, I'm keeping our new publisher.
- [19:19]
John Podhoretz
Publisher, who has been under assault by the internal, by the staff at the Washington Post for a year.
- [19:25]
Abe Greenwald
I won't be Mao Maoed into this. I'm not going to do it. And the Times did it much more gradually, but did it right. They resisted the resistance in their own way. But the Post, the upside, when you think that you're going back to something, you are not prone to break up all the crockery, right? Well, we're going to go back. We're going to get through this little weird period that we're having. It's because of the financial panic. It's because of the pandemic. It's because of these other things. And we're going back to something once you and once everyone accepts. We're not going back. Right. The Mitt Romney Republican Party is not coming back. The Barack Obama Democratic Party is not coming back. We're in a new country. This empowers people to say, you know what, it's my newspaper, it's my company, it's my life. I'm going to do the things that I want to do. People start to think anew and act anew. And I think that's a big upside. Among the upsides of Donald Trump's reaction election is the termination of the belief that there's a before time to go back to instead, there has to be a new future to be made.
- [20:47]
John Podhoretz
Okay, I want to read you guys something because the dynamic is, I'm saying Trump is. It's useful for Trump to continue the front facing electoral PR strategy to go out to have rallies, to have 50,000 people show up at a stadium, to go see him in the states where that will happen because he's going to need external evidence of his power because the structure of Lane Duckery speaks against that. Okay. But there's also a dynamic that, the dynamic is with the Democrats or liberals or some, you know, they're, they're resistors. So as we say, like corporately, all that, there's a kind of, it's not a surrender. It's like a truce flag has been thrown by the tech companies and everybody like that. But of course, there is no truce flag, with the exception of the settlement in the Harvard anti Semitism lawsuit that we can see much in the form of the intellectual left, the resistance left that is going to continue doing what it's doing and then also the attitudes of people like that who reflect them in politics. And I want to read you. It's going to be a little long, but there's a fascinating item in Punchbowl News this morning that indicates, I think, the depths of the crisis that Democrats and liberals are in politically in their own minds, by the way, not in mine, though. I think they are in crisis. But it matters that they think they're in crisis. Judiciary Dems bring in psychologists to help them prep for Trump era.
- [22:31]
Abe Greenwald
Come on, Come on.
- [22:33]
John Podhoretz
Okay. Would you wait, please? Because it gets so much better.
- [22:38]
Chris Stirewalt
It's worse than that.
- [22:39]
John Podhoretz
As House Democrats prepare to go to battle with Republicans in the Trump 2.0 era, Representative Jamie Raskin, D, MD, brought in some unusual voices to speak to Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee. A pair of social psychologists.
- [22:55]
Abe Greenwald
Oh.
- [22:55]
John Podhoretz
During a retreat last week for Judiciary Democrats, Raskin hosted Jim Cohen, a University of Virginia professor of psychology, and Hal Movius, a consultant who specializes in negotiation influence, emotion regulation, leadership and organizational development. Cohen's recent work emphasizes the neural systems supporting social forms of emotion regulation, according to his bio at uva. The purpose of the session, according to multiple attendees, was to counsel Democrats about how to approach conflict and effectively combat what Raskin described as, quote, authoritarian styles of speech, unquote. Another attendee said Judiciary Democrats were also advised to avoid devolving into partisan mudslinging, a more common hallmark of the House Oversight Committee, which Raskin previously led as the top Democrat. Quote, they're social psychologists and they were just talking about communication and authoritarian styles of speech in the Trump age, unquote, Raskin told us when asked about the speakers, quote, we were talking about basically communication styles during the Trump era. The outside the box speaker's choices reflect how Raskin, a constitutional law professor who never met an American Constitution he liked. That's me saying that. And the son of a Marxist who ran the Institute for Policy Studies named Marcus Raskin, a Cuba loving slime bucket, is approaching his new role as the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee. Democrats have been grappling with how to respond to Trump ever since his victory. Trump's first actions as president are putting Democrats messaging plans to the test. And the Judiciary Committee will be the home of some of the most high profile battles over the next two years. Not only does the panel have jurisdiction over immigration, but Speaker Mike Johnson created a new select Subcommittee on the Judiciary panel that will continue the GOP's ongoing investigation into the January 6th attack on the Capitol. Other speakers featured the Judiciary Democrats retreat included Lina Khan, the outgoing commissioner of the Federal Trade Commission, and Maya Wiley, a civil rights attorney. Maya Wiley ran for mayor of New York in 2021 as somebody who was like an MSNBC speaker and is roughly to the left of Stalin. So here's my question to you. Very nice woman, by the way. I like her. But you know, John, putting the punch.
- [25:26]
Chris Stirewalt
In the punchful News Summary.
- [25:29]
John Podhoretz
A little soft. So in the 80s, there was an obsession on the left with how Reagan controlled vocabulary and the left needed to learn how to introduce words and terms into the discourse to seize the high ground from Michael Deaver and Reagan all. And there was a, there's a, there's a linguistics professor at Berkeley named George Lakoff who kept saying, don't use this word, use that word and don't say this, say that. And this is how you get this is how you convince people of thus and such. And why did Trump win? He won because, as the New York Times polling revealed over the weekend, 60% of Americans now want every illegal alien in the country deported. Didn't win because he met, he used fancy words and his infiltration of the language and how he uses rhetoric and his authoritarian terminology. It's because he proposed very direct policy changes to the United States, a place that doesn't seem to be working very well that people responded to. So rather than bringing in an industrial psychologist who helps you with emotion regulation, maybe you need to figure out how to co opt his policies that are popular or at least okay.
- [26:54]
Chris Stirewalt
This is a classic example of even the earnest, and I'm not necessarily including Jamie Raskin in this, but there's a sort of contingent of the earnest left that constantly overthinks defeat and tries to spin it into some to intellectualize their own defeat. And this is a perfect example of this. First of all, it's quaint that they're, they're advising that these academics are advising Democratic politicians not to engage in this practice of mudslinging. I'm like, we have been in the era of full on mud wrestling for at least 10 years, so that's actually sweet that they think we're just flinging mud. But I, it does suggest it's the same thing they did after the Joe Rogan appearance. Right. It's hemming and hawing. It's like, how do they capture the imagination of Americans so well? What are we missing? And as you say, John, they're missing on the policies because they don't actually talk to ordinary people enough. They talk to a sort of class of professionals who tell them what ordinary Americans think. And too many of their elected officials aren't really ordinary themselves enough to have power in the party. I mean, they're listening to people like Nancy Pelosi, not to people who, you know, some of the elected Democratic representatives who like that. Wonderful. I mean, I disagree with her politically, but who's the former auto mechanic who was elected to Congress? She's interesting.
- [28:05]
Abe Greenwald
Marie Lusenkamp Perez.
- [28:07]
Chris Stirewalt
Yes, yes, fascinating. Like, that's who the Democratic Party should be listening to and should have been listening to for the past few years. But they, they're not there yet. So this is a way of intellectualizing and rationalizing their defeat that doesn't place any specific blame on them. It's all outward looking and, and, you know, blaming Trump for his success.
- [28:25]
Tara Palmeri
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- [28:35]
John Podhoretz
You need a crystal ball.
- [28:36]
Tara Palmeri
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- [29:45]
Christine Rosen
And the joke of it is that, you know, they're obsessed with Trump co opting the language. That's their game. This is what the left does. The left changes the language. The left says these, use these words, you'll change these thoughts. All Trump is doing is saying, no.
- [30:04]
Chris Stirewalt
There are two sexes.
- [30:05]
Christine Rosen
Yeah, I'm using the language that we've always been using and they're turning it into some power game.
- [30:13]
John Podhoretz
Fake news was a term that the left used against the right. And Trump corralled it, stole it and took it and said, so Fox was fake news. And then Trump said, no, no, you're all fake news. And he won. Of all the things I can think of, he has occasionally succeeded in the seizure of the rhetorical, populist, leftist rhetoric attack. But mostly Trump is like, it's all on surface. I know they want to think that it's not on the surface that secretly he's a Nazi attempting to bring about a thousand year reign. But I think people have seen and spent enough time with Trump now over the last 10 years to know that he says things like that woman in the hat in Florida is stupid. When Corinne Brown attacked him, she's stupid. She's got a low iq. What an idiot, right? It's not like he has a deep strategy for discrediting Corinne Brown. You know, that's not. He goes in the other direction. Like, could you A little, could you be a little indirect? Could you maybe use euphemisms like, our public life would be a little better if you use some more euphemisms rather than speak. Go like, go like at it, sort of as Abe says, it's like saying, yeah, Elon doesn't like this AI panel because he hates a guy. I hate a guy. We all have people we hate. Just, you know, take it as it comes, all of that. Now you can be amused by this. You cannot be. You can still find Trump a terrible threat, or you can think that this is the most wonderful thing on earth. I noticed, like serious intellectuals on the right, you know, in the same way they, and they've been co opted in every possible way by Trump are now like emailing Elon Musk to demand and Google and Tim Cook and various other people to demand that they change the word on the map from the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America. So you say serious intellectuals.
- [32:29]
Abe Greenwald
Serious.
- [32:30]
John Podhoretz
Okay. So the editor of the New Criterion, would that count as a serious intellectual?
- [32:34]
Abe Greenwald
Apparently not.
- [32:35]
Chris Stirewalt
And they're wrong. They're wrong as a matter of policy because the Associated Press, which also refuses to make the change, points out correctly, they did make the change on the Denali Mount McKinley switch because that is 100% American territory. And he's allowed to say, I'm renaming that mountain because he's the President. He does not control the entire Gulf of Mexico. That is a shared body of water in terms of our sovereignty and Mexico's sovereignty. So he doesn't get to unilaterally change it in the same way. And so I think there's a, there's actually a reasonable explanation as to why you. He can't do that.
- [33:06]
John Podhoretz
I know.
- [33:07]
Abe Greenwald
And, and, and it will become up.
- [33:10]
Chris Stirewalt
On the Gulf of Mexico, I have some cred here.
- [33:12]
Abe Greenwald
And it will become a litmus test for whether or not you can see the emperor's clothes. Right. If you, if you won't say Gulf of America. Right. It will, it will become this shibboleth about. Okay, we know, we know who's who.
- [33:31]
Chris Stirewalt
Like Latinx was for the left.
- [33:33]
Abe Greenwald
Yes.
- [33:34]
Chris Stirewalt
Sorry to interrupt.
- [33:34]
John Podhoretz
Oh, yeah.
- [33:36]
Abe Greenwald
So I think having Republicans for years paid Frank Luntz lots of money to come in and tell them how to say things. Right. And he had a couple notable successes, one being the death tax. Don't call it the inheritance tax, call it the death tax. This is back in the freedom fries era of the Republican Party.
- [34:04]
John Podhoretz
Death tax was 10 years earlier than the freedom fries. But.
- [34:07]
Abe Greenwald
Yes, but the idea of we're going to find a way to repackage things that people don't like and make them like it by branding it differently is old, but you're all very right, which is it's better politically to have products that people actually want rather than convincing them that they're wrong about what they think and beguiling them into doing what they want to do. I suspect that the right obsession, both the left and the right, are obsessed with the names of things. They're obsessed with what we're calling it. Is it this or is it that? What the New York Times polling tells me, what the National Opinion Research center from the University of Chicago tells me, what I see in the survey work is this. Democrats lost more than Republicans won. The verdict of the election was that the Biden Harris administration was a disaster. That's what the voters seem to have said. Donald Trump's personal favorability remains low. He is not. He did not become more popular, particularly when you look at the AP NORC numbers. His approval rating in January of 2021, or is not approval rating, his favorability rating, how people thought about him was like 36% favorable. And when he took the oath this time it was like 41% favorable. So it was better than it was 10 days after he whipped up a mob who went down and smashed in the windows at the Capitol. It was, it's better than that, but like five points better. The dissatisfaction of the American electorate with. When I was a boy, people used to say, what America needs is a good one term president. Right? Did anybody ever hear that? You ever hear anybody say that?
- [36:20]
John Podhoretz
Oh, yeah.
- [36:21]
Abe Greenwald
And what America needs is because that person needs to do things that are unpopular, needs to do things that are hard but are necessary to be done. And Joe Biden, of course, had the chance to be that person. Imagine a world in which Joe Biden knew he wasn't going to run, though given what we've now read and learned, I don't know that this was possible from a cognitive standpoint. But imagine a world in which Joe Biden said to Democrats, you know what? We're enforcing immigration law in this country. You don't like it, I know, but I'm not running for reelection. And we're gonna enforce immigration law. And if Joe Biden had said, we got inflation problems, we're not doing a green New Deal, we did our infrastructure package, we've done all the stimulus, we're gonna stimulate, we, we gotta stop, and they'd have been mad and they would have disliked him and he might have been succeeded by a Democrat. Right. It might have happened for the persuadable voters, for the third of the electorate that decides all the elections, because they're loosely attached, lower propensity voters who decide every quadrennial election. They don't care what you call it. They don't care what its name is. They don't even know what you call it. They don't know about the Gulf of America and they don't know about Latinx and they don't know about Jamie Raskin's social psychologist's narrative. They care. Is it working? Does it work? And I will shut up by saying the lesson of the success of Ronald Reagan's presidency, the most successful president of my lifetime, was that they took a huge gamble in the beginning of their, of the, of the start. They crashed the economy. It was like when, it was like when somebody has arterial fibrillation and they stop the heart and, and to, to get it straightened out. They gave tough medicine. And it worked. If it had not worked, he would not have won in 84. He would not have won 49 states in 84. I have watched Ronald, I've watched Barack Obama, I have watched Donald Trump, I've watched Joe Biden, and now I'm watching Donald Trump again. Believe I have a limited amount of political capital. I have to jam through a bunch of stuff that people that is controversial or people don't like. I've got to jam it through because I'm going to run out of time. The truth is, if it doesn't work, it doesn't matter. It's got to work. It has to actually work. And what Joe Biden did didn't work. And if what Donald Trump does, does work, it won't matter what they call it. If people say gas is cheap, crime is I feel safe. I don't see migrant camp cities around the city where I work and things feel like they're okay, then he'll, then the Republicans will do fine. But if it's a mess, it won't matter what they call it.
- [39:25]
Christine Rosen
But you know, I love your initial point there was so good because Biden could have attempted to Trump proof the country. Instead he Trump baited, right?
- [39:37]
John Podhoretz
Totally.
- [39:38]
Christine Rosen
And that's what he took as his.
- [39:40]
John Podhoretz
Mandate because they didn't mean it. He didn't mean he was gonna be a bridge. He meant, I've been spending my entire life trying to get to this White House and I'm going to stay there playing with my fingernails until you rip me out of it and you Know what? Nancy Pelosi made me quit and she was wrong and I would have won anyway. And now I'm going to go out to California and cry. When I remember that I was president before I sundown, I'm going to cry and I'm going to yell at Jill and I'm going to scream at Hunter. And we're all going to, we're all going to go off into the sunset together with the money that we put in the Cayman Islands.
- [40:15]
Abe Greenwald
That's going to be a fun, just a fun scene post presidency. It's going to be a real delight now.
- [40:22]
John Podhoretz
So it's important to do difficult things that work, and if they work, then your presidency is assured. And if they don't work, they don't work. So Bush's initial response to 911 basically won him a second term three years later. And his handling of Iraq and Katrina and other things meant that the public ended up judging his presidency, though he did serve a full two terms as a failure. But you do popular things and you don't do unpopular. That's a good way to start because it then also helps build the political capital. So I pointed out the New York Times survey that said that 55 to 60% of people now believe in total deportation and all of that. You know what that Same survey said? 41% of those surveyed said that they believed that, that birthright citizenship should end, and 55% opposed it. And Trump nonetheless put out that executive order, whatever ending birthright citizenship.
- [41:26]
Chris Stirewalt
It's already been blocked by a federal, now a judge.
- [41:28]
John Podhoretz
Right, so Reagan appointee. Yes. So a Reagan appointee who is very old by the 84, 85 years old. So, you know, we're still being run by this burntocracy named John C. Koh I Noor Kof Ihr. I don't. His name is spelled Kof I Noor said not only did he block it temporarily, he said this is a blatantly unconstitutional order. Frankly, I have difficulty understanding how any member of the bar would state unequivocally that this is a constitutional order. It just boggles my mind. So it's not like this guy is saying, well, you know, it's going to have to be adjudicated. Send me your briefs. I would like to read your brief. And then the other two part, the other. The Attorneys general of the states will send me their briefs and we'll brief it out and then we'll, we'll have a good argument. He's like, this is unconstitutional. Are you crazy? Why are you wasting my time with this. And not only is he saying it because he's right, but the public is not for this. Well, and this is, and this is where, this is where Trump is doing what you guys are both accusing the Democrats of having done, which is he is powtowing to some intellectual elite on his side, led by the moronic John Eastman, an idiot for many decades in the legal community, coming up with horseshit argumentation. Okay, Based on one senator saying something.
- [43:04]
Abe Greenwald
Get in there and stop him. Get in there and stop.
- [43:07]
Chris Stirewalt
Before you make our explicit rating permanent, John, on, on itunes. But here's the question. Does he expend another moment of his political capital and his resources to pursue an appeal because he said he would.
- [43:23]
John Podhoretz
But let's.
- [43:24]
Chris Stirewalt
They actually do, because if he doesn't, then he's patted on the head. This, I assume, eventually going to be disbarred. John Eastman, because of the insane stuff he did in about the last election, 2020, if he just lets it go and if the court, with the Supreme Court can just eventually refuse to hear this case, then it goes away, which is, as you say, what the public wants. But if he's, if he makes an issue of this, then I think that's politically foolish for him to, to throw this red meat at a, at a part of his coalition. It's never going to leave him anyway. So why, why expend that capital? Why when you're already doing on immigration what the American people want? Why add this, why go this extreme?
- [44:04]
John Podhoretz
He is, though, throwing a lot of chum at the people who are going to be with him no matter what. I mean, that's an interesting aspect of this, which is he didn't have to do the 1500 pardons. He could have commute, he could have done commutations. We could have done it. He could have said, we're doing this on a case by case basis. He decided to throw them the chomp. He decided, you know, he's there, there's those, there's that, there's a couple of other things that he's done that are clearly, you know, the Silk Road guy, right? He, he pardoned the Silk Road guy because he said he would do it and because that appeals to a different element of this libertarian element of his, of his base. And he is allowing the Defense Department, he may not know, it's hard to know, but he is allowing the Defense Department to sort of like put in place all of these isolationists because that's what the Tucker wing wants at the Pentagon. So it's not like he's banking his victory. He is trying to. Whether this is conscious or it's just instinctual. He is trying to ballast it and support it with supports in order to appear as though he is impregnated, first of all, impregnable on his own side, but also that he will have just this wild enthusiasm from the entirety of the right and that that will power him through again. I think more instinct than this is, you know, someone's sitting there providing him with political theory that says this is a way to maintain.
- [45:45]
Chris Stirewalt
Stripping the security. Now also from Pompeo and one of his aides, like the stripping Mike Pompeo.
- [45:52]
John Podhoretz
And John Bolton, all three under active threat of assassination by Iran, have had their security details removed from them. That's the Secret Service security details. I know a little bit about this, but because Michael Mukase, who later became Attorney General, friend of my family's, and in fact had a house at the beach on the same cul de sac as my parents in the 90s, and after he was the judge in the blind shake case that sentenced the Blind Sheikh, there was a fatwa against Mike Mukase, and he had 247 protection for, I don't know, 20 years or something like that. And it is, by the way, not anything that you really want. Like, this is not a privilege. You are essentially being kept prisoner.
- [46:51]
Chris Stirewalt
Yeah, it's not a perk. It's not a perk.
- [46:54]
John Podhoretz
Drive to the grocery store to get, you know, eggs three people will follow you. People come onto your street. Our car was, you know, like, my car would be searched before I could to drop. You know it.
- [47:08]
Abe Greenwald
And.
- [47:08]
John Podhoretz
And. And people follow you and, you know, like, friends of mine who are under this kind of threat, you know, Ben Shapir, like, there are people like, they are. They are living in a very circumscribed way.
- [47:19]
Christine Rosen
But as we know from.
- [47:21]
John Podhoretz
Wants this.
- [47:22]
Christine Rosen
As we know from the Salman Rushdie incident. It's ne. It's necessary in the long term.
- [47:28]
John Podhoretz
I mean, yeah, it was 35 years after. 34 years after Salman Rushdie's fatwa, that he nearly was killed on stage at the chautauqua at Christine's favorite summer retreat, the Chautauqua Institute.
- [47:44]
Chris Stirewalt
I've only been there once.
- [47:45]
Abe Greenwald
You're your favorite. You love it. You love it.
- [47:48]
John Podhoretz
You love a good chautauqua.
- [47:51]
Chris Stirewalt
They are very nice people there, I have to say.
- [47:53]
John Podhoretz
Anyway, so. Yeah, so that's pretty appalling. I mean, it's. It's beyond appalling that. That he's done. I mean, it's not even petty. Doesn't even describe it. I mean, is it like, does he want them killed? Because as Abe says, like, we actually have examples of now, that wasn't Iran planning. That guy wasn't sent by the mullahs to assassin to get Russia.
- [48:18]
Christine Rosen
Do we know that?
- [48:20]
John Podhoretz
I think so. Don't we?
- [48:21]
Christine Rosen
I don't know. I don't think we know anything.
- [48:23]
Chris Stirewalt
I mean, he claims that was his motive.
- [48:25]
John Podhoretz
Was?
- [48:25]
Chris Stirewalt
Yeah.
- [48:26]
John Podhoretz
No, it was his motive. But it's not like somebody is like, you know, called him up and said, everyone.
- [48:33]
Chris Stirewalt
But a fatwa gives everyone the motive. They don't have to be. That is the directive.
- [48:37]
John Podhoretz
Okay. Yeah. The fatwa wasn't lifted, right? That's right. Okay, so he wasn't like a sleeper agent in that sense. He was an intellectual, moral, spiritual, religious sleeper agent, but not an actual triggered sleeper.
- [48:49]
Abe Greenwald
So there's home cooking that you can do to tell your base that you're there, and that's all. And you can do a lot of that with symbolism you can do, send a message. Right. And Trump getting his little table set up there at the Verizon center, whatever it is to say, look, I'm doing it. Right. It's bread and circuses. It's simultaneous bread and circuses. We have marching bands and I'm signing. I'm doing things for you. I'm doing it. You can do a lot of that stuff, but some. Will Pete Hegseth be worth it? As an example, you could find a lot of people who would do the things that Pete Hegseth wants to do at the Pentagon. There's a lot of qualified, eminently qualified people who don't have bad FBI reports, who don't have former spouse problem, don't have that stuff. And you could put them in and they would go do it. Lee Zeldin is going to be a conservative dreamboat at epa, right? Boring old Lee Zeldin who has probably never done anything to embarrass his family ever once in his life. A very nice man. Well, be a conservative dreamboat at the epa. He'll go in and he'll do stuff that will make the environmental left crazy, and he'll probably be very effective in doing it. The new Energy Secretary, you look across the cabinet and you can see if you're conservative or you're right wing. You can see all these people that are probably going to be very effective in doing the work that they're going to do. And then you see people where you say, oh, this was this is to send a message. Picking Pete Hegseth. We're sending a message. We're letting you know that we have disdain for you. You, Susan Collins, you, Lisa Murkowski. We have disdain for you. We have disdain for you, Joni Ernst. We don't care what you think. You're going to eat it. And how many of those do you get? Right? How many of those do you get? You get P takes F. But do those, the people who had to eat it then say, but Tulsi Gabbard, no. At some point you push people to the point that they say no. Now I'm not, now I'm not going to do it. And for Trump to, you know, to go back to where you began. John, the thing about lame duckery is it's an enchantment versus disenchantment cycle. When a president wins re election, the enchantment cycle reaches its, it is restored. We're back. We're here. It's better than ever. It's more than ever. And then the disenchantment cycle begins. Well, actually, now that we're back, he's the deporter in chief. Actually, we're back. The Social Security privatization is crazy. Actually, we're back. So as soon as the bubble gets pierced in a second term, it deflates pretty quickly. And your question, John, was does holding public rallies help Trump keep the bubble inflated? Does the enchantment phase last longer because of the rallies? I think yes, in the sense that if you are a Republican in a state where Trump is going to come and hold a rally and fire people up and speak against you, you've got to think about it. You have to say, but what does it do to Susan Collins? What does it do to Susan Collins? What does it do to Lisa Murkowski? What does it do to the restive ones, to John Curtis and Utah? What does it do to these folks who are liable to be the ones who puncture the bubble? I don't know. I don't know that it really ultimately matters because it will be his own part. Nobody can make you a lame duck except for your own party.
- [52:56]
John Podhoretz
I want to talk about one of the Chris, you are also, I did not mention you were also the co host of the Ink Stain Wretches podcast.
- [53:03]
Abe Greenwald
Many people are saying media, many people are saying it's the very best with, with frequent guest host Christine Rosen.
- [53:12]
John Podhoretz
Yes, and frequent guest host Christine Rosen. So I'm as a media, as a person who spend a weekly, I don't think you got to do this story because I guess you taped yesterday, though it's released today. There is a kind of astounding media story that's worth spending a couple minutes on out of Tara Palmeri's. Oh, yes, Tara Palmeri's very, very good podcast, which is called Somebody's gonna Win. Tara Palmeri, former New York Post colleague of mine, when I was the first.
- [53:46]
Abe Greenwald
Former Washington examiner colleague of mine, former.
- [53:49]
John Podhoretz
Washington examiner colleague was at Politico. Now is it Puck has this podcast and she had on, I believe, your former Dispatch colleague, Mark Caputo.
- [53:59]
Abe Greenwald
No, he was bulwark.
- [54:00]
John Podhoretz
A bulwark. I'm sorry, I did it again. I apologize. Mark Caputo is now.
- [54:06]
Abe Greenwald
That's microaggression.
- [54:07]
John Podhoretz
Yes. Is no longer at the Bulwark. I think he's. I can't remember where he is now.
- [54:11]
Abe Greenwald
Axios.
- [54:13]
John Podhoretz
Okay. They had an exchange about the Hunter Biden laptop story and what it was like to work at POLITICO in 2020. I need to read a little bit of this to you. So they are both. I would describe them both as being non woke people in journalism who are comfortable covering and talking about conservatives without being slanderous.
- [54:44]
Abe Greenwald
Accurate.
- [54:46]
John Podhoretz
Okay. So Puto says, hey, remember when Politico did that terrible, ill fated headline about 51 intelligence agents saying that the Hunter Biden laptop was disinformation or bore the hallmarks of disinformation? Turns out that story was closer to disinformation because the Hunter Biden laptop appeared to be true. And then Palmieri says Facebook also pulled down all stories down about the Hunter Biden laptop. And I think Twitter did at the same time, too. Caputo, right? Correct. They punished the New York Post. That didn't help. I mean, Politico, my former employer and I knew at the time, didn't do itself any favors. I was covering Biden at the time, and I remember coming to my editor and saying, hey, we need to write about the Hunter Biden laptop. And I was told this came from hot on high at Politico. Don't write about the laptop. Don't talk about the laptop. Don't tweet about the laptop. And the only thing Politico wound up writing was that piece that called it disinformation, which charitably could be called misinformation at the least. Palmieri responds. Yeah, I mean, I had a hard time, you know, I wrote some pretty serious reporting on Hunter Biden, which actually ended up getting him prosecuted. The story on the gun, I spent three months on it. I went to the laptop shop. I did all the reporting. In Delaware, I did all of that. But yeah, that story had. It had to be like much. It had to be 100% nailed down. I had everything, you know, the police reports, every like, you know, I'm a solid reporter. But I do wonder if it could have. If it would have been published a little quicker if it was a different type story. And then Caputo says, well, since we're spilling tea about our former employer, I still have a copy of the story on my external hard Drive. In 2019, a rival presidential Democratic campaign of Joe Biden's gave me the tax lien. Their oppo research, the tax lien on Hunter Biden for a period of time that he worked at Burisma. And I wrote what would have been a classic story saying, you know, the former vice president's son was slapped to the big tax lien for the period of time that he worked for this controversial Ukrainian oil concern, which is haunting his father on the campaign trail. That story was killed by the editors and they gave no explanation for that either.
- [57:10]
Abe Greenwald
Politico was purchased by a German concern, Axel Springer, which is.
- [57:21]
Chris Stirewalt
Nice pronunciation.
- [57:22]
Abe Greenwald
Yeah, yeah, it's a super cool company. We are loving it. It's making a party. The. And I forget the name of the giant German who is its CEO.
- [57:35]
John Podhoretz
Matthias.
- [57:36]
Abe Greenwald
Yes, Schrempf Dornbush.
- [57:41]
John Podhoretz
I gotta look it up. It's not Orenbush. Anyway, this was in 2021 that it.
- [57:47]
Abe Greenwald
Was sold to actually the Matthias Daphner Dafner. Yeah, yeah, so.
- [57:55]
John Podhoretz
And he asked me if seven or something. That's why.
- [57:57]
Abe Greenwald
And her DOA is flew the Israel flag outside of their headquarters and has done a lot of things to say to the conventional democratic socialist kind of Germany. No, we're. We're going to, we're going to mix things up. The old Politico was pretty awful, right? The old Politico imagined itself to be this powerful. The tagline at Fox, when I worked at Fox, was always the most powerful name in news. Powerful. You have to power this, power that. I had a fake television show. They said, what are we going to call it? Oh, by the way, can I tell you, I don't know if. Well, I probably shouldn't say it here, but stay tuned. The name of my politics note at the Hill is the greatest thing perhaps I've ever done. Stay tuned. I won't say it here, but stay tuned. Maybe the best. I like a more homey approach to these kinds of things, but in Fox, it always had to be power. Power. It's about power. Politico and everybody in Washington is obsessed with being influential and being powerful and having access and getting the get and doing all of that stuff. And by the end, I read that and I just thought, what a joke. Politico ended up being what a powerless. What a powerless entity to the Democratic Party, toadying. And nobody knows what's going to work, right? Nobody knows how it's all going to play out politically. Right. In politics, we say, well, if we do this, and they'll do that. Nobody knows. We don't know. And I always think about the Calvin Coolidge quote. I have never had a political strategy that I can think of except to try to do the right thing and sometimes succeed. And I am just reminded again and again and again, could Politico save Hunter Biden and Joe Biden? No. Did they know that it would all end in tears? Did they know that by saving Hunter Biden then that they would ruin Joe Biden later? That they would cost. If you think about how it goes, we're going to protect Hunter Biden. It's a sad story about this man struggling with addiction and his father's already lost so much. And we're going to protect Hunter Biden in the end. Here is Hunter Biden whispering in his father's ear, you must stay. You must stay. You must fight. You must remain. You must. Pardon me. You must, you must, you must. How much better off would the Democratic Party have been if Politico would have run Mark Caputo's story and every other bad story about Hunter Biden early on? And either it would have done in Joe Biden's presidential ambitions, but maybe it would have done in Hunter Biden. Maybe it would have gotten. It would have gotten Democrats sooner to the point about Hunter Biden, where they all eventually got. Which is gross. What is wrong with you?
- [61:09]
John Podhoretz
Why are you there something here? Yeah.
- [61:13]
Christine Rosen
What Politico also did Politico in many other places and social media platforms at the time is that they took a huge portion of the people who, when Donald Trump said the. The 2020 election was rigged, who said, oh, that's ridiculous. Of course it's not rigged. After the proliferation of these stories of burying the stories about the Biden family, you had a whole bunch of people who said, well, it was kind of as good as rigged in another way. So Trump's claims no longer offend me in that way.
- [61:52]
John Podhoretz
Right. Okay. I believe so. Two things. One of which is this kind of story that the talking tea on Tara's podcast we need more of, because this is a check now. I granted, it's four or five years later they don't work there anymore and clearly don't have any interest in working there ever again, even though the people that they're attacking are no longer there, I believe. And by the way, to say that Politico failed does not. Is not justified by the fact that actual Springer bought Politico for a billion dollars.
- [62:31]
Abe Greenwald
So much money.
- [62:32]
John Podhoretz
The two founders of Politico, aside from the funder, Robert Albritton, Jim Vande Heyen, whoever the other guy was, I can't remember who it is. Do I have the right people made 100 or $200 million each in the sales, so I think they came out pretty well. Even if Politico didn't cover its head in journalistic glory, they created an entity that made them richer than the dreams of any journalist who ever thought of writing Playbook could ever possibly have imagined. I just looked this up. So the Hunter Biden laptop story came out, I think, on October 21st of 2020. By October 25th of 2020, according to Dave Wasserman, 60 million votes had already been cast in the presidential election because of early voting and the pandemic of which we know, because of the way Republicans were discouraged from voting early, an overwhelming majority of those votes were Democratic votes. So I think that the Biden win election was in, yes, by October 20th. But by the time the laptop story had been done, Biden already had 45 to 50 million votes in the bank.
- [63:54]
Abe Greenwald
And there wasn't anything in the story about Joe Biden.
- [64:00]
John Podhoretz
Well, it could have been, though, if the entire world warmed on the laptop and everybody had done a forensic study of the laptop. A lot of the Tony, you know, a lot of that, you know, the big guy at 10% for the big Guy. All that stuff that was on the laptop could have been out and thrown into the public over those three weeks or two and a half weeks.
- [64:21]
Abe Greenwald
The Hunter Biden laptop story came out long enough before the election that the CEO of Twitter was called to Congress to testify about muting the tweet from the New York Post. Before the election.
- [64:36]
John Podhoretz
Right.
- [64:36]
Abe Greenwald
It was out. The story got more attention. What Twitter tried to do backfired, made it a much bigger story than it would have been. It was well litigated. The outlets like Politico, didn't want to repeat the Anthony Weiner laptop debacle in which James Comey and John McCabe trying to clean up a little, to do a little cleanup before the election was over so that they could say, well, we certainly were Tough on Hillary Clinton too. Dumped Anthony Weiner's laptop, which is a super gross sentence to say in to the public discussion. So here comes another laptop that shows up and it's from a gross person and it's going to have gross stuff on it and it all looks the same. So the mainstream press responded to it in the same way they wish they had responded to the Anthony Weiner laptop, which is, instead of treating it as a big story, they tried to suppress, suppress, suppress and failed to do it.
- [65:47]
John Podhoretz
Look, the simple fact, but, but the point stands that there was this laptop. It had a huge amount of evidence and information on it. The New York Post, Post being the New York Post. My, my friends and you know, been, I've been involved with the New York post now for 30, more than 30 years. Obviously went at the cocaine, you know, the photographs of him with the crack pipe and stuff like that. And there was all, there's tens of thousands of emails there. Had the entire press corps jumped on the laptop, cloned the laptop. You had the Times on it, you had the Washington Post on it, you had AP on it, you had Politico on all this stuff that took a year pull out of the laptop. Could have been pulled out in a week.
- [66:31]
Abe Greenwald
Totally.
- [66:32]
John Podhoretz
I still think it. And some of that would have implicated Joe, certainly his brother. And this weird, this stuff about the big guy, who's the big guy who gets 10% that Hunter complains he has to give 10% to, to his sister in those emails that said, I don't think it would have changed the, the results of the election. But the idea that this does not reveal that the, one of the two most important news organizations in Washington was not putting its finger on the scale to try to get Joe Biden elected is now it's incontrovertible. These two major reporters, their two best reporters said, one said I had to dot I's and cross T's just to get out the story about Hunter Biden's gun. Took me three months to get it out. It could have been out in a day given what I had just to begin with. And the other says they spiked two stories, not one.
- [67:27]
Abe Greenwald
Imagine if it was Donald Trump Jr. Imagine if it was Donald Trump Jr. Yeah, exactly.
- [67:32]
John Podhoretz
So I just think as a, as a story about the, one of the reasons that the mainstream media are sunsetting in the estimation of the public and it's not just the estimation of us and you know, conservatives and all that, but just fair minded people who pay some attention to all of this saying you know, they just. They're not telling you the whole story, and we have no confidence that you're getting the whole story out of anybody anymore.
- [68:00]
Abe Greenwald
We. We have to get to the point where people, am I a mainstream media journalist? Yeah, I guess. I mean, I don't know. The Hill now feels it's pretty. That's a pretty. It's one of the highest traffic websites, blah, blah, blah, blah. I don't know what mainstream means anymore, but I don't think there is a mainstream anymore. I think all media is niche media. I think the New York Times is niche media, and I think establishment media.
- [68:27]
John Podhoretz
Right? Yeah.
- [68:28]
Abe Greenwald
It's not a semantic point. My point is the power, the imagined power that these institutions have is dramatically less than they think it is. It is dramatically less than they think it is. And in the 2020 election, people at Politico saying, well, we have this power. We should use it for good. We should use it judiciously. We should use it against the bad people, and we should use it on behalf of the good people. And we have this role to play. Your duty is to your audience. Your duty is to the country. Your duty is to whatever else but you're not. We have to stop thinking about them or ourselves or however we want to say it. As the gatekeeping phase is over. We're done with the gatekeeping phase. There's no more gatekeeping. It all comes out. Everything comes out eventually. It all leaks out eventually. And narratives can be maintained for brief periods of time, but not very long. Not for very long. And you might as well do what you think is best and try to do it right, because just. You have to just trust that God will see you through and that he has a plan for the universe. And you just have to do. Well, I'll give you. It's real Styrofoal content. I'll give you two Coolidge quotes in the same podcast, which is when you don't know what to do. Do the work that's in front of you. You can't fix all the problems. You can't fix it. Just do it. There's something good that you could do today. Like when you're texting with your friend and he says, hey, can you come on in 30 minutes to our podcast? And you say, and this has implications for my life, I'm going to have to get dressed. I'm going to have to get dressed.
- [70:11]
John Podhoretz
I'm going to have to get.
- [70:13]
Chris Stirewalt
But only from the waist up.
- [70:14]
John Podhoretz
If you're not watching us on YouTube, not only is Chris dressed. He is dressed in a beautiful sharp jacket and he is wearing he, Andy Ferguson and Joseph Epstein, the only three people on earth who can pull off the bow tie. And he is wearing a bow tie. And it's very impressive.
- [70:33]
Abe Greenwald
I had to get dressed for my whole day because I love you people and I was so excited to get to talk to you and now that you're a video product.
- [70:39]
John Podhoretz
Yes.
- [70:39]
Abe Greenwald
I have to. I couldn't come on here grubbing in a sweatshirt and a ball cap on. So this is how much I love the commentary podcast.
- [70:49]
John Podhoretz
Okay, well, listen, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. I other stuff I wanted to talk about, but we were at like an hour and ten minutes here, so. I blame Calvin Coolidge always. Yeah, Calvin Coolidge always went on too long. But I'm bored. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Have a great weekend. Thank you, Chris. For Christine and Abe, I'm John Pacora. It's Keep the Camelbird.