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- [00:04]
Jon Podhoretz
Hope for the best Expect the worst.
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Abe Greenwald
Some preach and pain Some die of thirst the way of knowing which way.
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Jon Podhoretz
It'S going Hope for the best Expect the worst Hope for the best welcome to the Commentary Magazine daily podcast Today. Today is Wednesday, July 16, 2025. I am Jon Pod Horowitz, the editor of Commentary Magazine. Today's podcast is sponsored by St. John's College. Because between the fall of Rome and the European Renaissance, Jewish and Islamic authors stewarded the great works of the west and fostered the rebirth of scientific and political and philosophical inquiry in Europe. Now St. John's College in Santa Fe, New Mexico, offers an opportunity to explore these forgotten masterpieces. While earning a one year Master of Arts in Middle Eastern Classics degree, the only program of its kind. Students will explore questions of divine wisdom, religion and the state and more in this singular program of study at my late sister's alma mater. Learn more at SJC. Edu World Classics. That's S J C for St. John's College. Dot edu slash World Classics. We will not be discussing World Classics. They will be discussing the merely temporal and and immediate. With my colleagues here. Executive editor Abe Greenwald. Hi, Abe.
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Seth Mandel
Hi, John.
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Jon Podhoretz
Senior editor Seth Mandel. Hi, Seth.
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Matthew Continetti
Hi, John.
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Jon Podhoretz
And back after a week off, our Washington Commentary columnist and Director of Domestic Policy Studies at the American Enterprise Institute, Matthew Continetti. Hi, Matt.
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Unnamed Speaker
Hi, John. I've been looking for the Epstein files. I haven't found them this long journey. It took me, oh sure, to the depths of the interior of this country.
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Jon Podhoretz
Well, that, that just means you're in them. So, you know, once you claim that you couldn't find them, that I'm still searching the search, the search continues. Yes. Well, there is an impressive op ed today by Alan Dershowitz, who was Epstein's lawyer, that basically puts this entire thing to rest. Unless you believe that he's just lying where he says, I am not allowed because of the nature of things that were sealed by the courts to say everything that I know. But he says there is no list. There are lists of things and lists of people. None of them is a government of current government official. He goes through the entire litany of every thing that the MAGA conspiracists and others have been saying. Not just maga, I mean also sort of never Trump Michigan at various places. And the left, which has been, I think, has, has been slow on the uptake here to try to make hay out of this because obviously the narrative that they would want to retail is that Trump is suppressing the Epstein Files because he's in them. But somehow it was sort of left for four or five days to MAGA alone to have this internal sort of, you know, paralysis, eating each other battle.
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Unnamed Speaker
It's summer break, so we're all a little slow. Not much is going on. What I find interesting about this story as it's developed is, for the first time I can remember, MAGA media and the mainstream media are on the same side of a question. If you look at other kerfuffles that have been over the years, whether it was the Russia collusion hoax, or whether it was the Hunter laptop and the 51 national security professionals, or whether it was over Covid and Foushee, MAGA media was the skeptic, the incredulous, always saying that the establishment was wrong, that there was no there, there, and mainstream media was pushing these kind of pseudo scandals or just false narratives. In this case, MAGA media, the Tucker Carlson, the Steve Bannons and others, and including now Republican officials like Speaker Mike Johnson, they're pushing for more disclosure. They're pushing for, in some cases, AG Bondi's job. And the mainstream media and the Democrats are also on board because they sense an opportunity to drive a wedge between Trump and his electoral base and also to just troll the president in a period where he had been riding pretty high. So I wonder whether some Trump supporters might get wise to this and begin to realize that continuing this story is not going to end well for anyone.
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Jon Podhoretz
Well, Trump himself fired a very serious warning shot at them yesterday and said, he said it was a sordid case. He said Bondi has been handling it very well. And he said only really bad people, including the fake news, want to keep something like this going. Only really bad people. So Trump has decided that he wants this story dead. And he is making it clear that given, you know, his honey badger status, if you remember, the honey badger don't give a given f. Go at him on this and he is going to come after you. He has now said you are a bad person if you keep talking about this.
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Unnamed Speaker
The problem is every time.
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Jon Podhoretz
That's very powerful code language in Magaland.
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Unnamed Speaker
Well, every time he intervenes, he ends up keeping the story alive.
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Jon Podhoretz
Right.
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Unnamed Speaker
You know, these types of stories typically die because the media either gets distracted or has no more oxygen to fuel the fire. And so the IT administration is in a bind because every time they say something new, they provide more oxygen and there's nothing else going on right now. There's no other story to distract the media's attention. They don't want to talk about the big, beautiful bill. They don't want to talk about the Supreme Court allowing Trump to fire half of the Department of Education employees. Maybe the tariff conversation will displace Epstein, but because it's in this sweet spot of a kind of a conspiracy theory that allows people on the left for once, to get the National Enquirer vote back on their side, it's going to be hard for the administration to extract itself from it.
- [07:38]
Matthew Continetti
Yeah, I mean, look, we all know that Trump wants the story to die, but he's learning the hard way that the Epstein story is not going to kill itself.
- [07:49]
Jon Podhoretz
Okay, that was good. And I thought you were going a different direction. No, he.
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Unnamed Speaker
I think he spent a lot of time on that one. I think he spent a lot of time on that one.
- [07:58]
Jon Podhoretz
But good, good, you know, for good, for good. Liner deserves preparation, careful preparation and excellent delivery. You know, I think I told this joke yesterday, but I'm going to tell it again because it's just so good. You know, the thing about the conspiracy theory is it'll go like this. One of these guys, Alex Jones, will die and go to heaven, though I don't think he's going to heaven. And God says, you can ask me one question. And Alex Jones says, what really happened to Jeffrey Epstein? And God says, he killed himself in his jail cell. And Alex Jones says, wow, this all goes way higher than I thought.
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Unnamed Speaker
Yeah.
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Jon Podhoretz
You know, so. So there is no end. This story cannot end because it's juicy. There remain niggle. There remain nagging questions about very powerful and important people who were involved with Epstein in untoward ways. The head of one of the largest hedge funds in the world. The head of one of the largest clothing companies in the world, and of course, the man who founded Contemporary Personal computing, Bill Gates, whose wife has said that she divorced him because of his relationship.
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Unnamed Speaker
A member of the royal. Of the British royal family, and of.
- [09:32]
Jon Podhoretz
Course, the member of the British royal family who paid, unless told, millions of dollars to the person who has since ended her own life as a result of her, you know, involvement in this entire matter. So it's going to end.
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Seth Mandel
Conspiracy theories never end.
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Jon Podhoretz
Ever.
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Seth Mandel
I mean, they become part of the culture, part of the lore. They get passed down generationally. They get inherited, and they link up with each other.
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Unnamed Speaker
Can I offer a theory about why this story has resurfaced? Other than, of course, the news hook, which was the Justice Department and the FBI coming out and saying that we had reached the conclusion that there was no client list that he wasn't blackmailing anyone. And that, and that he killed himself. He died on his own accord. And that is that. The second hundred days of the Trump administration, which are coming to a close, day 200 is in the first week of August, have been different than the first 100 days of the Trump administration. The first 100 days of the Trump administration were all MAGA on every front. And whether that was Doge, whether that was the war on the universities, whether that was the rattling the cage of NATO and talking and, you know, berating Zelensky and during the argument in the Oval Office, all of these events in the first hundred days really satisfied the MAGA media crowd. The second hundred days have been not as, not as fun for that crowd because it included Operation Midnight Hammer and the remarkable success against the Iranian nuclear program. It included just, just this past Monday. Trump's, in my view, brilliant threading of the needle in supplying new weapons systems to Ukraine, having the weapons go to NATO through purchases of foreign military sales fms, and then having NATO deliver them to Ukraine, in addition to the threat of punishing tariffs on Russia at the end of this 50 day period. And then we had this, we had this Epstein story come out where the people who had spent time saying that there was something there, including Attorney General Bondi early on in the administration where she said, I think, not quite understanding the question that had been posed to her, the, that the list was on her desk, they come out and say, we're moving on, time to move on. This is an issue where a lot of the MAGA base can displace their anger at Trump for these foreign policy betrayals and kind of get into their fun zone of a deep state conspiracy that is shielding the predators from justice.
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Jon Podhoretz
You are bringing up one of my favorite political facts that people always forget, which is that anger and populist anger in particular in American politics is often displaced or knocked over to an issue that does not seem, that seems either tangential to or entirely unrelated to the issue that is causing the real anger. So my favorite example of this, or the most potent example of this is the response to Hurricane Katrina in September of 2005, which was the moment at which the right began to turn on George W. Bush. They agreed with the idea that FEMA had mishandled the hurricane response. They did not like the way Bush talked about the hurricane response, and they really didn't like the speech that he gave in New Orleans about the hurricane response where he said, here we are, I'm from the government and I'm Here to help. Which, of course, famously was something that Ronald Reagan had said were the most frightening words in the English language. I'm from the government and I'm here to help. And the late Mike Gerson, for reasons of his own, decided to flip the script, put that line in the. And then permanently alienate a whole batch of people on the right. And why were they so angry about Katrina, where they were, in fact, being unfair to fema, to Bush, and to the federal response? It was because they were angry about Iraq. They had turned on Iraq, but it was not yet time. And it would not be time for, you know, really until Trump totally flipped the script on Iraq. For them to say, we shouldn't have backed Bush on Iraq, he was wrong. This is terrible. We need to get out of there. So they went hard on Katrina, and then three months later, went really hard on immigration. And it wasn't about either immigration even then or about Katrina. It was about Iraq. And here you have, I think, an example of this. Maga's domination of the brain of the administration has been supplanted to some degree by efforts that are much more conventionally or matters that are much more conventionally Republican. Not only interventionism in the Middle east and in Ukraine, even if at a weird remove, like the weapons sales that you're talking about, but also other sorts of ways of approaching domestic policy, like, for example, the war on the administrative state, which is part of what is going on here with these victories in the Supreme Court. The MAGA angle is, let's get rid of all these federal workers. They suck, and they're all part of the deep state. And the other line is, we need to reinforce, and this is the. We need to reinforce the constitutional structure of the United States. Article two gives the President power over the executive branch. The executive branch has been operating on its own without a lot of control from the leaders of the executive branch. And Congress hasn't been doing its job either. And it's time, if the President wants to assert his authority, to have fewer employees at the Department of Education, to have fewer deploy employees at the Department of State, to. To disempower groups like the Agency for National Development, he has the power to do so. That is much more an American Enterprise Institute issue than it is a MAGA issue, which is we need to destroy the Department of Education because it's liberal. That's actually not. It's a more complicated argument than that. One of the reasons that Trump is prevailing time and time again at the Supreme Court is that this argument is being made on the matter of what is the constitutional authority of the President of the United States and if he asserts it, is he permitted to assert it? While district court judges and others say no, no, no, you're not allowed to fire people at the Department of Education. And they go to the Supreme Court and say really we can't doesn't article to say we can. And the Supreme Court basically says without saying why. And we'll get to that for a minute. Yes, you're right, you can. And that isn't as satisfying as Doge. Right. Which is we're going to take a chainsaw and, and destroy the federal government. That's fun. That's MAGA saying we need to properly balance the rights of the president over the administrative state. Is, is, is literally the phrase administrative state makes people start to fall asleep. Well, I'm sorry, Adam White, but it's true.
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Unnamed Speaker
The one big beautiful bill is part of this as well because it did not cut as much as of course, Elon Musk wanted. There were many members of the House Freedom Caucus who thought that there should be much more cutting of discretionary spending in the one big beautiful bill. But because of the realities of politics and the narrow Republican majority in Congress, what was passed was passed. And so there too, if you're someone who has outsized expectations of what the political process can deliver, you're going to be angry. When we have a bill that keeps taxes low, has some carve outs for different populist groups, but still generates the type of debt building machinery that people have grown so upset about over time, it's a very interesting moment for the administration because they were riding high through July 4th and then in the past week or so, the administration, like always happens, has encountered this sort of turbulence. What I was not expecting was that the turbulence would originate with this scandal that that's been out there for a long time, as Trump has said. I, I find Trump's comments slightly amusing, but, but also perceptive because Trump is perceptive about politics. He's angry, I think, because he wants to use this period to talk about all the things he's doing and to continue to ride the wave of success. Instead, this story has come up and the White House is trying to figure out, well, how can we get out of it the story while preserving our relationship with the base. They haven't figured that out yet. And so the story, I think, will continue at least for another couple of days. Epstein.
- [19:46]
Jon Podhoretz
Hey, everybody. It is summer. It is thrilling to be summer. And it is time for me to talk to you about quints. I am the last person to chase trends. Conservative Jewish magazine editor, Not a trendsetter, not a trend follower. But I am all about stuff that fits, right, feels good and actually lasts. And I keep coming back to Quince. They're lightweight layers and high quality staples have become my everyday essentials. You know this. I've talked about the sweaters. I just bought a whole bunch of lightweight shirts for summer. The kind of stuff you all wear on repeat like breathable flow knit polos. Those are the ones I bought. Crisp cotton shirts, comfortable lightweight pants that somehow work for both weekend hangs and dressed up dinners. And the best part? Everything with quints is half the cost of similar brands. By working with top artisans, cutting out the middlemen, Quince gives you luxury pieces without the markups. And Quince only works with factories that use safe, ethical and responsible manufacturing practices and premium fabrics and finishes. So stick to the staples that last with elevated essentials from quince Go to quince.com commentary for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. That's Q-Y-N-C-E.com commentary to get free shipping and 365 day returns.
- [21:12]
Matthew Continetti
Quint.com commentary Mama Papa, mi cilaquena muy pronto Amazon gasta menos okay, so I.
- [21:32]
Jon Podhoretz
Want to move on to this point about the rebalancing of the Executive branch and and the behavior of the Supreme Court because liberals in the left are going absolutely bat guano crazy over what has been happening. So Friday, Friday afternoon the Supreme Court ruled that the administrator was within stayed a lower court's decision to pause or make it impossible for the administration to lay off workers at the Department of Education. And it stated in a four paragraph ruling agreed to by six of the nine justices that was technical in its application, saying the administration had the right, at least temporarily, to continue doing what it was doing and that the district court had essentially overreached and it could go forward. And Sonia Sotomayor wrote a dissenting opinion which is full of errors, including the error that the federal government has always been involved in education, which as I pointed out Yesterday, in the 1960s the amount of money spent by the federal government on education was $11 million, I think in 1962 or 1963, 11 million. The Department of Education created not in 1878, but in 1978, and very much a species of the modern state in which the Democratic Party decided to create a Department of Government to aid in the unions that supported it and it created just at a moment at which American education went into a vertiginous collapse in terms of American performance and the behavior and the increasingly sort of appalling behavior at American universities towards students and all sorts of other things, a lot of which were the results of the regulations written by the Department of Education. Federally, it's had the exact opposite effect of strengthening American education, has weakened American education. Nonetheless. The whole question is Congress creates the Department of Education, it authorizes spending for the Department of Education. The president may want to challenge how much he actually has to spend, which is an issue called rescission, which I don't want to get into. But certainly he is within his power to decide how many people should work at the Department of Education. It's his department. It's under his administrative authority. Like I run Commentary. At one point we had 15 staffers, now we have five. Like that's under my authority. I suppose you could take me to court and say we need 15 employees. But that's not the way it works. Right. And so this is. It's not comparable precisely, but it is. It's the same principle that the person who runs the thing decides how many people it takes to run the thing. So the so the New York Times this morning has the following news analysis, which is of course an opinion piece on the front page called News Analysis by Adam Liptak. Supreme Court keeps ruling in Trump's favor but but doesn't say why. In a series of terse unsigned orders, the court has often been giving the green light to President Trump's agenda without an explanation. On Monday, in letting Mr. Trump dismantle the Education Department, the majority's unsigned order was a single four sentence paragraph entirely devoted to the procedural mechanics of pausing a lower court's ruling. What the order did not include was any explanation of why the court had ruled as it did. It was an exercise of power, not reason. An exercise of power, not reason, says the New York Times. I mean, my interpretation is that for the six justices who signed this unsigned order, they did it first of all because they are not yet ready to lay out the full argument.
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Unnamed Speaker
It's part of the shadow docket, part.
- [25:40]
Jon Podhoretz
Of the which is they are issues are brought to them in an emergency fashion because of the behavior of lower courts that they are obliged to make decisions about for the good working order of the federal government. But they are not yet ready to lay out or even to have the full discussion with the nine justices on bank of how this should go forward. So they either have to say, okay, we'll Leave it as it is. We'll let this district judge's ruling stand until we decide, or we will let the matter go on until we decide. Either one is an exercise in power. One would be an exercise in power in which you say, I'm not going to exercise my power, though I could. And the other is, no, we're going to let the administration have its head. And maybe when we rule on this, and we'll rule on it in different ways, maybe the minority will win. Maybe we'll say the administration's going too far, There has to be a different system or something like that. We have to act. We have to make a decision, because controversies of this sort have to be resolved.
- [26:53]
Unnamed Speaker
The exercise of power has been the lower court judges, these district court judges, there's 700 of them or so, and they decide that they're going to rule and make policy for the entire nation. That's what the CASA decision was an attempt to address. And district judges are trying to find workarounds against the Supreme Court. So they continue to thwart the administration. So that leaves the court, the nine, in this position where they have to rule very quickly on different injunctions in different courts that are trying to prevent policies from taking place even as the case is making its way through the court system. So, sure, it's an exercise in power, but a completely understandable reaction to the district court's irresponsible exercise of power. And it also raises the question of what is Justice Sotomayor exercising? Because it's not reasonable and it's not power. She's an exercise in error.
- [27:54]
Jon Podhoretz
Right. Okay, so Tom Edsel, who is like Jekyll and Hyde, by which I mean he is a columnist, he has a weekly or bi weekly column in the New York Times, and every other column is fantastic, and then every other column is a work of psychosis. And today is Tom Edsel psychotic? And I say this obviously an overstatement, but I just want to read a little bit from him because it shows where the liberal mindset is on Trump's successful presidency thus far, capitalizing on Democrats weakness. President Trump is winning his battle to undermine democracy in this country, but he has not won the war. A host of factors could blunt his aggression. Recession, debt, recession, debt, corruption, inflation, epidemics, the Epstein files, just to name a few. Much of what Trump has done could be undone if a Democrat is elected president in 2028. But for federal workers, medical and scientific researchers, lawyers and politically active firms, prominent critics of Trump, thousands of whom have felt the sting of arbitrary firings vanished paychecks and retracted grants, criminal increase and threatened bankruptcies. The 2028 election may prove too late to repair the damage. And that's before we even begin to talk about, about the anti immigration crackdown. The brutality of Trump's anti Democratic policies is part of a larger goal, the reflection of an administration determined to transfer trillions of dollars to the wealthy by imposing immense costs on the poor, devastating due process protections for the universities, immigrants and law firms. He has cowed the Supreme Court. He has bypassed Congress. He is using the regulatory power of government to force the media to make humiliating concessions. He has ordered criminal investigations of adversaries. He has fired innumerable government employees who pursued past investigations. And on and on and on. That's very measured. That's a very measured reading. But can I say something?
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Seth Mandel
I think he's right potentially about one part, which is that if you oppose some of these things, it may be too late for you, because particularly I don't know who's going to come after Trump and say, all right, now, let's grow back the government. And if that's what he is sort of in mourning for, I think he's right to mourn.
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Unnamed Speaker
I think they'll find a way. But I was struck by the paragraph in the piece where John, you read it, but he says, you know much what Trump has done can be undone if a Democrat is elected president in 2028. That's true, because a lot of this rides on executive orders. Even though the legislation that's been passed, it will be much harder for the Democrats to reverse. But then it still goes. But for federal workers, medical and scientific researchers, lawyers and politically active firms, prominent critics of Trump. So that's four groups. Researchers, bureaucrats, politically active. Read Democrat lawyers and prominent critics of Trump. That's actually a very small group. And they're all connected in one way, which is they're all representative of the knowledge class. They're all representative of what Charles Murray once called the cognitive elite. They are representative of the winners of the information economy, this massive transition in the American economy toward globalization, toward returns on educational attainment. They are the people who have comprised what code of Villa called the ruling class in the country for about, you know, 40 plus years now. And of course, the Trump movement is pointed at these people like a missile, because the whole reason the Trump movement exists is because the federal workers, medical and scientific researchers, lawyers in politically active firms, and prominent critics of Trump have led the country down a path that 50% of the electorate believes has been ruinous. So I read this analysis as like offhandedly correct in a way because it points to what Trump is trying to achieve, which is this reversal of the knowledge worker grip on American politics and culture. And it is starting to work slightly and slowly.
- [32:27]
Matthew Continetti
Well, and also they, you know, what else are they besides critics of Trump? They tend to be critics of half the country. Right? I mean, this is a, this is one of the reasons that Trump has had support in this is that these institutions have, and industries have been viewed as, you know, guild bullies and, you know, and, and entirely biased. And that goes for, you know, some of the elements of, of the scientific research as well. I mean, people know that you, if you're conservative, you, you can't break into certain industries, right, in certain disciplines and things like that. And so what these knowledge industries have knowledge of is some of the country. But people have been viewing these knowledge industries as not particularly knowledgeable because they, you know, it's, it's like the way Jonah Goldberg used to describe coverage of conservative events as conservatives in the mist. Like it was like a gorillas in the mist sort of thing. It's anthropological. But people feel like they're not part of the discussion. They're not the target, they're not the audience, they're not, you know, they're not the subject. They're not literally not at all. And so that's, that's one of the things I wish that they would come to terms with is that they see the idea of political bias as, you know, oh, that's DEI for conservatives. You want us to hire conservatives or bring conservatives into these intellectual folds just because there aren't any here and not because they have trapped themselves in very narrow minded thinking. And the rest of the country is not going to see the value of very expensive narrow minded thinking.
- [34:23]
Jon Podhoretz
I think more central to this conversation is the idea that a full bore attack on this cognitive elite is itself an attack on democracy. I think you can make an argument, if you are being less vulgar than Edsel is being here, that there are elements of what Trump has done over the last six months that are deeply troubling. The effort to take net television networks with merger issues before the FCC or you know, people who want ABC News or who have people have regulatory issues in front of the FCC and saying to them, give me money or I'm going to be a real problem for you. You don't have to give it to me personally, like you can give it to my library. You can make PSA ads that support conservative causes. But I want you to pay for doing things I don't like. Cbs, abc. Now, you know, this question of Paramount and its merger, that's disturbing. And I, you know, anybody who says it isn't disturbing is full of it. And you can say that, well, it's been going on this way forever. It's just much more, much less vulgar. It's quieter, but it's very disturbing. And if you focused it and said Trump does not care about free, is willing to weaponize the government against people who have a right to exercise free speech, that's an argument I would be willing to concede and say is the, one of the more disturbing aspects of this presidency, along with the question of how it is behaving on matters with business and gutter and elsewhere that seem to be of particular benefit to people in the administration, thus possibly unconstitutionally providing an emolument to Trump and his family. But when you say that his purpose is to transfer trillions of dollars from the poor to the wealthy on the backs of the poor, and that what he is trying to do is destroy democracy by firing federal workers, and when you say that what he is trying to do is destroy America by stuffing medical researchers, that's where you start getting into the, I'm sorry, your argument is self negating and you are embarrassing yourself in the, like, annals of history.
- [37:13]
Unnamed Speaker
And you're also making the case actually for the normalization of the Trump presidency because Tom Edsel was saying the same things about Ronald Reagan. Tom. Tom Edsel.
- [37:24]
Jon Podhoretz
Right, right. His, Tom Edsel's whole book in the.
- [37:27]
Unnamed Speaker
80S was this transfer of wealth that Reagan was somehow enacting through his tax and budget policies from the poor to rich. The rich is based on this, you know, no growth model of the economy that is so common among leftists that they think that there's just one pie and that the pie belongs to the government, the entire pie. And so if you give some pie back to people in form of tax cuts, that's somehow a redistribution of wealth. But I think what you're saying, John, is this is how you diagnosed Trump derangement, derangement syndrome, which is, are there, are there people who are saying that? Is it simply flying off the handle over very typical Republican policies, if that's the case, and it's pretty deranged? Or are you pointing out some of the more problematic aspects of this president so far? And you, you know, you could say that the networks, the investigations of the big law, the deals with them, the investigations of individual critics, I put in the TikTok thing as well. Not complying with the law of TikTok, though it seems like they're trying to work something out there. You could also say that some of his assertions of executive authority on in the tariffs and trade war, that still has to be litigated. Okay, so focus on those. Not this just psychotic reading that typical Republican policies are somehow an attack on democracy.
- [39:09]
Jon Podhoretz
In two matters. I have found myself shocked at my own ignorance in relation to things the government has done that have changed my view over the course of the last seven months. And one of them relates to medical and university research. So if you had asked me, what does the government do that's good, I would say, well, look, you can't argue with the National Institutes of Health, National Institute of Mental Health, okay? Obviously something really bad happened with COVID and with the Eco Health alliance and this text chain that all these guys were on about suppressing the Wuhan gain of function research and their connection to it. That was really bad. It was terrifying. We're still nowhere near getting to the bottom of it, and it needs to be. But medical research in general is a terrific thing and it's really helped. Then I learn in the course of the. Of the one thing that I think Doge did that was of immense help to me me, that universities that administer grants that go to researchers on their campuses, from Johns Hopkins to Harvard to Berkeley to wherever you think, oh, my God, that's really a very forward, wonderful place where great things are happening. Universities take taxpayer dollars. They get a grant for $500 million and the university takes 80% of that money. Doesn't take 15% of that money to administer a grant takes 80%, 70%, 60%. People don't even know what the actual number is, but they take it to pay for the light bulb in the lab and the electricity that pays for the lab and the janitors who cleaned the lab. And of course, you have a building that has all these labs in it and that building and the grants that it produces and the people inside them produce a billion dollars in grants and they're taking hundreds of millions of that for the same janitor. In other words, like, they're taking their taste, as Don Finucci would have said, give me my taste. And they're eating three quarters of the meal. And that is taxpayer money. And that has to stop.
- [41:49]
Unnamed Speaker
And that's. And that's going to. Not just the janitors, it's going to the awful, awful programs that these universities.
- [41:58]
Jon Podhoretz
But the point that janitors are paid for implement by one grant and then 499.
- [42:02]
Unnamed Speaker
The DEI deans are paid for by the others. Yes, this is a backdoor subsidy to the cognitive elite. Paid, paid by taxpayers.
- [42:11]
Matthew Continetti
And money is fungible. Even if you earmark, you know, a certain, certain, for, you know, for certain purposes, money is fungible. What you're doing is you're still, if you give a university half a million dollars in a grant, you're still giving them half a million dollars in a grant that frees half a million dollars up elsewhere or whatever. And this is part of the argument that they, you know, when they say, like, well, you know, anti Semitism is a problem. I agree, anti Semitism is bad. But, you know, you can't punish us for violating Title 6 because then 100 million people will die of cancer. And is that what you want? Is that what you want?
- [42:47]
Jon Podhoretz
Do you want people to die?
- [42:48]
Matthew Continetti
But the point is that like, they, we all know that that's a ridiculous, you know, attempt to hold, you know, emotional hostage.
- [42:57]
Jon Podhoretz
We know that Tom Ansel doesn't know that. And a lot of people, in other words, to believe that Tom Edsel knows that is to think that he is making a bad faith argument out of cynicism. And I actually genuinely don't believe that he is doing that or that people like him are doing that. They are living in a hidebound bubble in which the idea is that spending, government spending that is a transfer from the government to Harvard is good, Harvard is a good. And government giving money to Harvard is good, and Harvard knows how to spend that money better than government. And therefore, who are we to question how Harvard allocates the grant money?
- [43:41]
Unnamed Speaker
Now, the bad faith, the bad faith cynics are the Democrats and others who are making common cause with MAGA media in trolling Trump on the Epstein story. In any other circumstance, they would be saying that, oh, these are QAnon kooks. Yeah. But now they do it simply because they think that there's political gold at the bottom of this pile of rubble.
- [44:07]
Abe Greenwald
Hi, everyone. I'm Matt Evert, 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.
- [45:01]
Matt Evert
Hey, this is Donny Deutsch. I host the 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 brands that are 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.
- [45:34]
Jon Podhoretz
Right, okay, so I, I only bring that up about the medical research because there are five or Sixers now as a result of that. And again, because I'm not Yuval or Levin or you and Matt and your people in your division there and all of that. I don't, you know, pour into the details of the federal government, but my BS detector shoots into the stratosphere when somebody says to me that cuts in USAID are going to kill a million people at least. Well, I've heard much higher figures, but I mean, right? And I'm like, you know what? I don't buy that. And here's one of the reasons I don't buy that. There is this non governmental organization called the Gates foundation, right center of many conspiracy theories about how it puts microchips and vaccines and things like that. The Gates foundation spends a multiple of a million on the things that USAID does. Vaccines in Africa, all kinds of all manner of stuff. It's. No one's impeding its ability to do that, Right. People want the US government to do usa. USAID was a form of soft power, right? Meaning we extend US influence and we get the goodwill of the world because we spend money providing people outside the United States with health benefits and, you know, seed money for little capitalist projects and stuff like that, or even more than that. But it's soft power. Okay, well, the Trump administration, which won election in 2024, pretty much explicitly said to people who care about this matter that it does not believe in soft power. It really doesn't. It doesn't. Philosophically believe that soft power has been much of a help to the United States over time. Meaning we give all this help to people and they're very ungrateful and they're not nice to us, and they talk. And then, you know, ultimately you have the version of soft power that is politically motivated immigration. And here I'm going to go, Dane. Specifically yesterday, the day before yesterday, Ilhan Omar, a refugee brought to the United States as a kid from Somalia in the midst of a civil war, thus having her life saved by the United states, said the U.S. is one of the worst countries in the world. And were it possible, though I do not believe it is, but were it possible to deport her for this, I would be all in favor of that, whether she is an elected official or not, because the sheer ingratitude that that expresses, that she is not even in a position to say, I'm so grateful to have my life here in the United States. And I'm really upset with a lot of the policies the United States pursues, and I want to change those. And that's why I went into politics and government. That's fine. Saying we're one of the worst countries in the world. You know what, one of the worst countries in the world is probably Somalia. Go back, go back there and then tell me that your life in Minneapolis and in Washington makes. Makes this one of the worst countries in the world. That was. That's also a form of soft power. That, that kind of immigration, which we. Which is still refugee status. Right. Which is when you could say you have a reasonable fear either of persecution or being killed, is still on the books and is still a factor in American immigration policy. And if you're going to turn to me in 2025 and say, we really need that, I'm going to say, you know, the single most prominent person in America to have benefited from that specific provision of soft power in the United States is actively working to destroy the United States States. Maybe it's not such a good thing. And therefore, I'm revisiting some of these ideas that I have had. Trump's against soft power. Soft power is not in the Constitution. And so usa. And when you say it's going to kill a million people for the United States to not to spend this money, and then someone in MAGA goes, but you should spend it here. A million people are dying here. I don't know how to argue against that. That the argument against the investment is cheap. Right. The argument is it costs us so little and we can do so much Good that we should do it because it's good. And I kind of buy that. But I'm sorry, if you're going to make this argument about how we are required, we are obliged, or we're evil if we don't do it, then I'm going to put on the MAGA hat and I'm going to start carrying the Gadsden flag around. I'm not going to. I'm not going to storm the Capitol, but I'm not going to be blackmailed emotionally into believing that the United States is obliged to be the world's savior. I think it should be because we are great and we have the greatest system, and we can. And we will help millions of people if we can do it, but that's something for which we should be thanked at the very least.
- [51:04]
Matthew Continetti
But do Democrats believe in soft power, though? This is what I don't get about the debate, because I've heard all my life complaints about how, you know, spreading McDonald's is, you know, spreading the sort of vulgar American food culture, but that's bad for people, right? But I mean, so take the CIA and, you know, every, every book about the same CIA and, and, you know, trying to spread, you know, books in the Soviet union or whatever, Dr. Zhivago and the CIA. You know, all this other stuff. It's always said with a certain amount of, you know, just like incomprehension. And, and so I don't know that. I don't know if it's really the case that, like, I think that this is. This is, I think, a bad faith argument, because all I ever hear about the US Spreading its culture is a kind of neo colonialist, neo imperialist behavior. And I'm not even sure. And I think they're just being opportunistic, taking the, the, the moment now to say, oh, well, what about soft power? When. I don't, I don't think they believe it either.
- [52:16]
Seth Mandel
But what happened is they objected to the Cold War style soft power of the US because it was. It was praising capitalism and democracy and free markets and, and the US Soft power itself, the sort of official the government run type, got completely captured. I mean, when you see the programs that we are funding and the ideas that we are exporting now, it's not about why we're great, and it's not about why socialism or communism is bad. It's about LGBTQ this and anti Israel that. Anti Israel that. Yeah, so they like that. That's the soft power they like.
- [53:10]
Jon Podhoretz
So after the Cold War ended, they and Clinton became president in 1992. Neoliberalism, as people started referring to it slightingly on the part, you know, on the left, did embrace the idea that soft power was good again. As long as they administer it, it's good. As long as it's their control, it's good. As long as Samantha Power is in charge of usaid, that's fine. And even though her entire political life is made by attacking our refusal to do anything about genocides, she's sitting in the Obama administration running foreign aid. Obama is assenting to a genocide in Syria and she says nothing. Cuz guess who gets to run the foreign aid in America? The issue that made her so as long as they, as long as it's their checkbook, right? As long as it's their bailiwick, soft power is fantastic. When it's not their bailiwick, when it's no, we're not going to spend money on promoting abortions overseas. Right. That was the biggest issue in sort of American aid for many, many decades was the Hyde Amendment and. Or this notion that the administrations wrote executive orders saying it's okay to promote abortion outside our borders. And then a Republican come in and say we're not going to do it. And then Democrat come in and say we are going to do it. Like as long as they can do that, they're for it. If they don't get it, then they're against it. And so we're sitting here with Trump is going to kill a million people by, by reducing the amount of personnel that administer usaid. Right? At the moment, we're not even at the point at which we're talking about reducing the amount of money that goes to aid, because that's an issue called rescission.
- [55:11]
Unnamed Speaker
Can I talk about rescissions for a second? Because there's a bill that is going to be voted on in the Senate dealing with rescissions. This is a package that the administration sent up to Congress. It's about $9 billion. It's been lessened somewhat in the Senate, but this would be an actual clawback of funds the Congress would not, would say, no longer spend on these funds. And that would include defunding PBS and npr, defunding a lot of these foreign aid programs and initially pretty severe cuts to the PEP Fund program, which was the program launched by President George W. Bush to combat AIDS in Africa. Over the night overnight, the Senate voted to begin debate on the rescissions package, which the House has already passed. And because of the jockeying to get to 50 votes. So JD Vance could be brought in and get the 51st vote. Moving toward debate, the PEPFAR cuts were greatly reduced. So even there, which has been the, I think, the main calling card of a lot of the critics you're discussing, John, that the cuts are not going to be as tough as people say.
- [56:44]
Jon Podhoretz
So we should quickly explain what rescission is. Sure. So rescission is the act Congress authorizes and appropriates money to be spent. These are two different things, authorization and appropriation. Authorization says we authorize $1 billion to be spent on X, but when it comes down to it, and they actually have to essentially deposit the money into the bank account of the agency that will spend that money, they can appropriate somewhat less. Authorization is a guideline. Appropriation is the actual money. So they could say spend a billion on this, but they actually only deposit 700 million into the bank account. So that money's already been authorized and appropriated until Watergate. The President United States, when he disagreed with a policy or didn't want or there was something going on and Congress had authorized and appropriated money for X, Y or Z would could say, I'm not spending it. I don't want to spend that. I'm going to leave it in the bank account. And when the executive branch fell prey to a very active Democratic Congress that was feeling its oath and deciding that the use of executive power. This is funny, given how much we talk about how Congress is now surrendered to the executive, took the time to pass a law that said, sorry, no rescissions, no rescission is over. You are not. When we authorize appropriate money, you spend it to the penny or you are in violation of the law. And the Supreme Court has, over the course of the last 50 years upheld that law, most recently in dealing with the Trump administration's effort to deal with the DACA and things relating to immigration status, where Trump attempted to use rescission to spend less money on. On how to help people who have this are this weird status status place. And the Supreme Court said, I'm sorry, you can't do that because the money was authorized and appropriated. However, if Congress passes a new law that says it's okay and gives the Trump administration latitude and leeway to do some of this, then we're moving into a new universe. This will be a half century change in the balance of power. Oddly, probably not great in some ways because we want Congress to take more power over spending like we wanted to. We wanted to control spending. And not the precision is that's what. So Trump is Going to Congress and say, let me spend less. That's essentially what he's doing. Give me the tools so that I can spend less. Right.
- [59:43]
Unnamed Speaker
Authorize less spending. And it looks like they're going to be able to do it. It was a very close vote in the senate. It was 5050 and JD Vance broke the tie. And interestingly enough, it was the, it was, of course, Collins and Murkowski, the dynamic duo, voted against this reduction in spending, you know, a pretty, pretty much a staple of fiscal conservatism, which I thought that they supported. And Mitch McConnell. Mitch McConnell, he voted against it on the grounds that, to what you're saying, John, it's unclear how much authority the bill was giving the administration and maybe the administration could even spend less in other places. But McConnell may still vote for the recession on the final passage and then it will have to go to the House. I think what's remarkable about it, you're right, there's a separation of powers aspect, but it's also the, the Congress wants to spend less. And when, when you combine this policy, the first of, I believe, several precision packages that are going to go up to Capitol Hill in the next year with the budget reforms, the Medicaid reforms in the, in the one big beautiful bill, and then of course, the hope for economic growth and the tariff revenue increasing coffers, you do have, I think, a policy mix that's, that is conducive to restoring some type of budget sanity. The idea though, that Republicans would be voting against it, that to me was inane, even if in the case of Collins and Murkowski, not entirely surprising.
- [61:32]
Jon Podhoretz
Can I conclude by mentioning that there was an event yesterday that now has become both distressingly and comfortingly familiar, which is that a bunch of university presidents went before the House to talk about how they were handling matters of anti Semitism, thus giving Elise Stefanik yet another moment to hit it out of the park and set herself up very well for the gubernatorial race at my state of New York next year, which I believe she will probably win going away as she is the Harlem Globetrotters and the sitting governor, Kathy Hochul is the Washington generals where all of these matters are concerned. But there was just this one glorious moment when the president of the University of California at Berkeley said, we do not staff our art. We do not make faculty decisions based on ideological concerns. I believe Berkeley is one of the schools that when a survey was done, 97% of the faculty announced that it was either liberal or leftist. 97%. So the very Fact that these people are being brought before Congress to say things like this, like the head of cuny, the City University of New York here, about two miles from where I'm sitting, saying anti Semitism has no place at this university. And then having, you know, police and others, Randy Fine, the congressman from Florida who was wearing a KPA during the hearing, basically just saying, oh, really? What about this? What this guy said? What about this? Professor said? What about this? Administrator said, what about what? That, what about this? What about that? Leading Elise Stefanik to go into the hallway and say, Kathy Hochul, are you going to fire this guy from City College or the City University of New York, are you going to fire him or are you going to let him sit there? Because if you're going to let him sit there, I'm going to eat you for lunch.
- [63:38]
Unnamed Speaker
This is such an important point, because this is the problem of the monoculture, is that you don't even understand that there's an alternative. You are sitting in the cave and this is this. The same thing happened this morning when I was listening to a report about the resistance package and the reporter said, yes, it was on npr. Said the Trump administration accuses NPR and PBS of political bias, which, which we strenuously deny. Okay, you can deny it. And I understand there's a financial stake here that, that you're concerned about, but.
- [64:18]
Jon Podhoretz
Really, you can't perceive that there's political.
- [64:22]
Unnamed Speaker
Bias in public media. If you can't do that, you are in Plato's cave. You are just seeing the shadows on the wall. And I guess one hope I have some of these policies is, and I'm talking about affirmative action for conservative conservatives here. I'm just talking about, by using that bludgeon, you might wake up some of these people up to the fact that in partisan terms, 50% of the country thinks differently than them. And on ideological terms, it's often 70 plus percent of the country thinks different from them. At least acknowledge that.
- [65:01]
Matthew Continetti
And also, I don't think that, I don't think it's legal to continue funding Elmo after his clear Title 6 violations. That's the other day.
- [65:10]
Jon Podhoretz
Absolutely.
- [65:11]
Matthew Continetti
He had, you have to bring Elmo into compliance first. But also, I thought that this was, this was a great theme of the, of the hearings yesterday where Republicans kept saying, right, the, the, the interactions that you describe is like, we, we don't like anti Semitism is bad. Well, what about this professor saying this? That's bad. What about this professor saying this? That's bad. What about. And the, the Point I thought was not that we need the head of CUNY to denounce each and every single instance. The point was to show the head of CUNY that it doesn't matter what he thinks, that he is useless in this fight. Right. Isn't that ultimately Stefanik's point, which is like you oppose anti Semitism. Great. Look at your school, right? Look at the faculty. Look at the faculty unions. Look at who are pro BDS in some cases, which was another thing that was brought up at the hearing yesterday. The point is that these guys, like, it doesn't matter if you, I mean, it matters if you denounce anti Semitism. Yes. But the point is that you are overseeing institutions that are overflowing with antisemitism. That we can all agree on. The fact that you personally don't like it. Well, you should speak to who's in charge. Like I want to speak to the manager. Says the, you know, chancellor of the City University of New York. It's like either try to do something or admit that you are in no position to change the culture and that, that the case is lost.
- [66:47]
Jon Podhoretz
But we know the answer to that, which is, he's lying. He's lying. He doesn't care. He agrees with them. He doesn't say agrees with them, but he agrees with them. I mean, look, the interim president or the whatever of Georgetown handed a body like came with a sacrifice to show his seriousness at Georgetown, which is that he announced, could have told, said last week or, you know, whenever this happened, he announced that the head of the Mid Eastern studies department, Jonathan A.R. brown, had been removed as head of the department and investigation was being launched because Jonathan Ayre Brown had said it would be really great if somebody hit a US Military base after the United States hit Iran. So he actually called for an attack on the US Military from his perch as the head of the department at Georgetown. Now, he's a very specific case, but that's why I want to mention this. He is, you know, I don't know. He's 50 years old. He's been a figure in Middle Eastern studies from this extreme Arabist, anti Israel perspective since he was a graduate student. And while he is not responsible for the views of his father in law, his father in law is a man named Samuel Aryan who was deported from the United States from. For being a material supporter of Hamas. Deported. He was a professor at a university in Florida. He was found in a court to have been providing and lying to the court about providing material support, fundraising support for Hamas, a terrorist Organization and he was deported. His daughter is married to Jonathan A.R. brown. Now, does that. Should she be held liable? No. But the daughter was in the encampments at Colombia, as was her mother, and they said really horrible anti Semitic things. Layla Al Arian and his wife, whatever her name is, should he be held liable for that? No. But why is he the chairman of the department at Georgetown? Because of his views. He's not there in spite of his. He's not there because he's the world's greatest scholar of modern Islam. And therefore he may have some pretty bad views. But in fact, when it comes to understanding, you know, the hadith or, you know, some whatever, the interplay of, you know, Islam and politics or something like that, his work is unimpeachable. He's there because of who he is, what he thinks and what he represents. And you can remove him, you can do an investigation of him. The fact that he was in power in the first place at Georgetown is the issue.
- [69:55]
Unnamed Speaker
Didn't Anwar Al Awlaki teach at gw?
- [69:59]
Jon Podhoretz
Yes.
- [69:59]
Unnamed Speaker
That's all you need to know.
- [70:01]
Jon Podhoretz
Yeah, I'm just saying that. So there are these moments where it's like, no, no, here, Elise Stefanik, here, eat Jonathan. Here. We're throwing him at you. Look, hey, Squirrel, here's Jonathan Ay R. Brown. It's like, it doesn't matter because they'll just replace Jonathan A.R. brown with Jonathan A.R. brown. His name will be Jonathan A.R. black, but he'll still be the same person with the same views, pushing the same. Because that is what these universities are. And that's why they are corrupted. And it's why one of the many reasons why we should withhold money for medical research from them, because what they're spending it on is Jonathan A.R. brown's faculty assistant and not on curing cancer.
- [70:47]
Matthew Continetti
And the other, the other professor, by the way, involved in the exchange that was the subject of a lot of the exchanges last night about Berkeley is this guy Osama Makdisi. He's a, you know, an Arab history professor or whatever. And you know, he said all these terrible anti Semitic things.
- [71:05]
Jon Podhoretz
And.
- [71:07]
Matthew Continetti
The head of Berkeley said, well, he's a fine scholar, but the more interest. That's what got the headlines. But the more interesting part is who funds Osama Maqdisi's chair in Arab studies or whatever it is, that department at Berkeley, no one knows because it was given, it was a 3 1/2 million dollar Anonymous gift to create that chair.
- [71:34]
Jon Podhoretz
So it's only anonymous guy who says.
- [71:37]
Matthew Continetti
Right I mean, that, look, I'm not saying anonymous gifts are, you know, all assessment, therefore, but my point is that don't we all kind of get what's going on? I mean, like, this is, they're, they're bringing, you know, this is in terms of the transparency of this, don't we deserve a certain degree of transparency for public institutions getting public money that are, you know, at least to know why this stuff is happening at, you know, again, if he's getting, if they're getting public money to do this.
- [72:11]
Jon Podhoretz
So there's three more, three and a half more years of the Trump administration. Republicans are, are in control very, very narrowly in the House and there are pending pieces of legislation to deal with exactly this question as written about now in two successive years in the pages of commentary in our July, August 24, 25 issues by Matt's colleague Danielle Pletka about how to combat the war on Jews and in part all over America, but at the universities, and there are these issues of how foreign money will need to be, needs to be reported, who's going to force that to happen and all of that. And one of the signature accomplishments of a Republican Congress, particularly if it can strengthen its hand next year in the House, which I thought was not really possible. And now I'm not so sure. I don't know because things don't seem to be turning south on the Trump administration economically. For example, though I thought the tariffs would be more painful. We've got a long way to go, so I'm not going to be but, you know, a lot of administrative and changes and legal changes can be made in precisely this issue of whether or not there is foreign influence dominating our cognitive elite, controlling our cognitive elite, or organizing and supporting the structures of our cognitive elite that are making these repugnant and monstrous arguments. And let's see where this goes because, you know, if we can do rescission, we can also do if you give more than $200,000 to something we need to know and you need to report that on a monthly basis to the Department of Education, to somebody who was going to look at that file and say, I don't know, I don't know if that's kosher. And yes, we'll say kosher. So great to have you back, Matt.
- [74:13]
Seth Mandel
John.
- [74:15]
Jon Podhoretz
Yes, yes. I just wanted to acknowledge the passing of a wonderful man, a brilliant scholar and a remarkable political ideological figure in recent American political history. Our friend Saul Stern, who died last week at the age of 89, saw like a classic old line neocon grew up a communist, was a radical in the 1960s working at ramparts magazine and other places, but broke with the left hard over its turn toward anti Zionism and anti Semitism in the late 60s, early 70s, and did yeoman work for many decades in all sorts of interesting places, including education reform and sort of the issue of history of American communism and its effect on, on American intellectual life. And his final contribution to Commentary, I just, I have to look at, I have to look up its actual specific title. He wrote an absolutely remarkable piece for us called it's not the Occupation Stupid. He wrote two pieces in a row, one called the Truth behind the Palestinian Catastrophe and It's not the Occupation Stupid, both of which were extraordinarily learned investigations into the idea of Israel's horrible misbehavior in stealing the Holy Land from Arabs and Palestinians and demonstrating how these arguments were being made even before anything happened, even before there was any kind of change in the makeup of the population of what was mandatory Palestine. And these two pieces, it's not the Occupation Stupid, and the Origin, the Truth behind the Palestinian Catastrophe, are pieces I'm very proud that we published. And so this is our tribute to the late Saul Stern, who led a rich and eventful life before his passing last week. So I will be back tomorrow. So for Matt, Abe and Seth and John Paul Ports, keep the candle bur.