Welcome to the Commentary Magazine Daily Podcast. Today is Thursday, April 24th, 2025. I'm John Podhortz, the editor of Commentary Magazine. With me, as always, Executive Editor Abe Greenwald. Hi, Abe. Hi, John. Senior Editor Seth Vandell. Hi, Seth. Hi, John. And joining us today, a man of many titles, most importantly, Commentary Magazine.
contributing editor, columnist for the New York Times and the editor of Sapir and the host of the upcoming... superior debates at the 92nd street why brett stevens nice to be here um so brett you have a very provocative column And a very amusing column came out yesterday in the paper in the New York Times called The Faceplant Presidency. And I think as we are here on day 94 of the Trump... presidency, we have seen this remarkable combination of an administration coming out of the block.
like Secretariat, charging ahead, getting 31 lengths ahead of every other horse in the Belmont Stakes. and then tripping and rolling over, one leg breaking, then the other leg, then the third leg breaking, like he's like... absolutely got the entire world in a tizzy about everything that he's doing from campus and domestically campuses, immigration, all of this. And then once Liberation Day and Tariff Day came, I think, it was as though...
You know, it's like this is a landmark day in the three months of the Trump presidency where everything just seemed to turn.
on a dime no matter people were saying he was a fascist he was like an institute did the authoritarian regime he was going to cancel the elections he was going to run for eight terms and all of that and they were terrified of him and some people are still terrified of him but you aver in this column that people may be thinking about this in the wrong way because there's something almost comic now about the number of self-inflicted wounds that he has.
inflicted on himself, like all self-inflicted wounds. So before we get started, I have a feeling that a number of our listeners will be more familiar with the name Secretariat than the term face plant. And readers are older than most people. So some of our readers will remember Secretariat's Great, what, 1973 run? Something like that, yeah. But Faceplant, a term of art for... falling on your face, popular with, you know, my kids. So just to clarify that one point.
Look, I think the fiasco actually, the tone of this sort of disastrous early start to the presidency was set by the choice of Matt Gaetz. back in November, a wholly self-inflicted political wound that was difficult to explain, except in terms that were more psychological than political.
Then a series of ill-considered choices for cabinet posts. And then a whole set of... political mistakes culminating in so-called liberation day the tariff day uh but i think culminating mainly and especially for the purposes of uh commentary readers because i think that's when people on the right who had been sort of reluctantly supportive of the president, saw him as the better alternative last year, suddenly realized that this guy was going to create.
major harm, never mind to democracy, liberalism, the fate of the world, but to their stock portfolios. And I think that's when the people really began to sense that this was as you put it, secretariat coming out fast and collapsing on the course. Because, you know, you point out Matt Gaetz, obviously there's RFK and there are Pam Bondi and there are all sorts of weird cabinet choices that are disturbing. And yet he comes out of the block.
moves very fast and very hard on campus anti-Semitism on matters that are of deep importance, not only to us, but to you, takes measures or seems to be moving to take measures. in the form of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of others. to confront these institutions with their horrifying refusal to protect Jewish students and to treat them unequally in a bad way.
And so all of that looked to some of us very promising and heartening. And then there was the full-throated defense of Israel's efforts. against Hamas in Gaza that was such a sea change from the tone that the Biden administration had taken in the final year of its existence. And yet, even there, as Time has proceeded. We have him playing footsie with Iran, dealing with terms on the possible.
Iran deal that are now being parsed Talmudically to say that they are not a repeat of the Obama-Iran deal by some people who were trying to keep themselves, I think, in favor or at least in influence. claiming the latest claim is marco rubio telling barry weiss that no steve whitkoff wasn't talking about how iran should be allowed to and you know should only enrich uranium to
Three and a half percent. And that that would be fine with us, which was the specific term in the Iran deal, but that it shouldn't be allowed to import uranium. Yeah. Which, first of all, I don't understand that it's a distinction without a difference in any case. But why would Iran import uranium when it has centrifuges? can make it itself and where do you import uranium from exactly i was unaware that there was a big export market
Oh, there is actually, but that's another story. Well, but not on the dark web. Yeah, but anyway. Well, I mean, you know, I actually wrote this column back in January, I think even before, possibly before Trump's inauguration. I wrote a column that said, The Israeli right may soon come to regret Donald Trump's election. And I pointed to the fact that he was as likely to cut a terrible deal with the mullahs as he was to.
you know, really put their program out of action. Because Trump has no principles and has no loyalties and has, outside of tariffs, it seems, no really fixed ideas. And, you know, those of us who have been opponents of Trump for a long time saw this. I mean, opponents of his from the old, you know, Reaganite right saw this. Just as I think we saw that what is now seems to be unfolding in Ukraine was...
It's totally predictable. I took a lot of shit from certain friends of mine for my highly reluctant vote for Kamala Harris on the Hamiltonian theory that I'd rather have. someone I can forthrightly oppose in the White House than a character like Trump destroying what I think of as conservatism. And I feel vindicated by that view.
Well, I'm not going to vindicate you, and I'm not going to vindicate you in that view, but I didn't vote for him either, as I've told people. I wrote Tom Cotton in, so I wouldn't have to vote for either, which people may think is a dog. but i live in new york city so you know it's a throwaway boat no matter
How you slice it. Can I say something about the face plant issue? This is what I find, I have to say, that's still fascinating about Trump to me, which is that... I feel like the face plan has not... quite happened and almost never exactly happens. It's like Zeno's paradox. His face gets Closer and closer and closer to the ground without ever hitting it somehow. I'm picturing the Mission Impossible scene with Tom Cruise. Yeah. Okay.
Look, so, yes, you are a forthright anti-Trump person, but here's why I don't think it's fair to accuse you, for example, of Trump derangement syndrome, unlike other people, which is...
We're talking about things that are based in policy here, and that's why the faceplant thing was so resonant to me, which is that the mistakes that he is making and the errors that he is introducing into his own... journey forward as somebody who, for the first time in his public life, was scoring in the polls over 50%, and I mean from 2015 onward. These wounds are all self-inflicted. Democrats are in bad shape. Nobody likes them. The Democrats are polling at 25%, 26%, 27%. There is no figure.
to contest with him. So he's the one who is... face planting, punching himself in the face. Now he gets... help from judges i mean it gets help maybe from judges who go too far or the rhetoric or you know did whatever you know Chris Van Hollen going and having a margarita with a gang member in a jail in El Salvador rather than simply talking about due process.
like somehow elevating this problematic person in jail in El Salvador rather than going at the real issue, which is the lawlessness of the administration's pursuit of these. Illegal aliens. That he gets a little help from. But he hasn't dropped 8% in the polls, and he's not at 40% in the Pew polls because of the Democrats. That's everything that has gone wrong is the result of his own behavior. That's kind of new. I mean, not that presidents are not with him, but. It was never even this bad.
The precipitousness of this. In other words, that he had the country behind him. Yeah. He's frittering it away. I mean, not the whole country. Actually, I mean, I've kind of bent over backwards to try to support him in places or compliment him in the pages of the Times. Getting rid of DEI, the military, and throughout the federal government was, you know, long overdue and a blessing. Getting control over the border as quickly as he has basically through.
essentially not only policy but verbal threats, has been an achievement. I am stretching myself to find areas on which to give him credit. But he is in the process of very rapidly literally destroying the American economy. I'm in touch with people. friends of mine who run small and medium-sized businesses that are heavily reliant, even if not for most of their work, for some of it. on imports from other countrymen, not just China. And these are businesses that run on very, very tight margins.
They're being destroyed. Bonuses are not going to be paid. You know, large numbers of employees are going to be laid off, all in pursuit of a bonkers economic theory discredited sometime in the mid-1930s. You know, there is about Trump yesterday. If you listen to Trump talk about the tariffs on China and how they weren't going to be that bad and it was all going to they were going to get much lower.
And he's not going to fire Jay Powell from the Fed. I mean, he wishes he'd lower interest rate. And he speaks very calmly, you know, very much trying to sound like a... and calm the markets and make people. But it did remind me of the famous rabbinical, the story of the couple that lives in the house that's too small. You know, they come to the rabbi and they're like, we have 10 children. We're in one room. I can't take it. I don't know what to do. And the rabbi says, bring in the cow.
bring the cow into the house and the guy says what are you talking about i don't want the cow in the house this is insane i there's 12 of us living in one room he says bring the cow in the house Goes back a week later, says, now the cow's in the house and the cow is leaving patties everywhere. And they're 11. Now there's 10 people in a cow. And then he says, bring in the chickens. What are you talking about? Bring us in the chickens. And then.
you know, a week later comes and says, our lives are just a nightmare. And then the rabbi says, so take out the cows and the chickens. And then you think of how much better your life is going to be without the cows and the chickens. Then you'll appreciate being in the house without the cows and the chickens. Like Trump is the one who brought the cows and the chickens into the house. in the U.S. economy. Nobody was saying, you know what we really need now is tarot. Let's do it now.
This is it. Not only that, but the one measure that we were taking economically and geopolitically against China And that Congress had passed as a matter of law, he lawlessly suspended, which was the forced sale of TikTok, which was a very serious measure to take against TikTok. our foe and to help ourselves and all of that. And that he, with no legal right to do so, announces a six-month suspension in the sale of TikTok.
You know, I mean, there is a kind of a George Costanza principle at work here, you know, and I almost wish Democrats, including far left Democrats, would start. feverishly arguing for a peace deal with Russia, feverishly arguing for 200% tariffs on... on our friends. You know, go for broke. Demand not only that Denmark hand over Greenland, but immediate, you know, bringing the 82nd Airborne down on new...
And then we might have like, you know, the possibility of good policymaking. What's funny about the half face plant stuff also is that Wall Street is also. bending over backwards to try to give him credit. where you know they can find it and what if if and when that stops happening all the react market reactions are going to be much worse right wall street is like if you if you it when he when he takes a half step back on tariff
Wall Street like jumps. You know, you see these headlines like Wall Street elated at Trump announcement on tariffs. And it's like they're just dying to. buy and to move those numbers. And to reward him, it's almost like, you know, it's like training someone. It's like they're trying to show him, like, you get a piece of candy. Every time you pull back X percent on the tariffs. But that in itself is probably hiding the true damage being done to the economy because people.
who don't follow it, maybe saying like, Well, it's all reversible, right? Because on Monday, if he puts in tariffs, and then on Wednesday, if he says we're pulling back on the tariffs, the market bounces back. And so all of this is like playing with chips or with house money. It's not really as bad as it seems. And I think the wealth that gets destroyed along the way that doesn't come back is hidden by all this bouncing around. You know, it's almost as if the market should just tell him like,
But it's not it's not hidden. And that I think is what's what's important here is that is that he is getting unmistakable signals in every conceivable direction. Right. Not only he cares about polls. He's down in aggregate 7% in the polls from where he was three months ago. That is a big drop in a country as hyper-partisan. and divided as ours is. That means that there is a withdrawal of affect from him by people who voted for him.
That's the hardest thing to take, right? So he's got that. There's no perception. There's no sense. From the White House, I mean, you pointed to what the other day that he seemed pleasant and mild-mannered, that...
He comprehends the hardship that he's causing, or rather he comprehends it and thinks it's all a price worth paying on the long march to autarchy or whatever he's trying to... to you know achieve i mean he's losing farmers he's losing uh small business guys you know who voted for him enthusiastically he's
he's going to lose the core of MAGA at this rate, you know, because ultimately what sustained him through the Biden years was the memory of a strong U.S. economy in the first three and a half years of his. That goes, and he will have, the Republican Party will have the biggest reversal in its history, at least since the 30s. and you could have an extraordinary sea change in the composition of Congress in 18 months' time.
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So, as I say, I think all of the relevant... signals are being sent so seth is saying there's the positive signal which is say one half of a sentence at 12 30 in the afternoon about something that doesn't sound so terrible and then People start buying and the market goes up 300 points and then say something at two that it doesn't sound good. The market goes down. Like that, that is not that that may be a carrot and stick system of some sort, but it has no.
enduring ability to calm people who are getting more and more and more worried. And I'm not here talking about, you know, hedge fund people or people who run, you know, major banks or running or have gigantic stock portfolios like Brett, you're saying. What I'm hearing from and what people I know are hearing is people who just have normal supply chains to deal with the businesses that they run who are already seeing.
crazy disruptions that are hampering their ability to do the things that they do. And that seemed to be done happening to them for no reason. It's not COVID. There isn't a pandemic. It's not that we're at war with China. We're certainly not at war with the unpopulated islands of the South Pacific where we levied 87% tariff.
There's no reason for this to have happened. And he cannot and they cannot explain it. And now we know that like half of the administration sensibly thinks that this was all psychotic. and that they're all trying to talk to Trump while they've got Peter Navarro. It's like, oh, hey, Peter, there's a call for you over in the East Wing. Go take the call. And then someone shut the door and tell him he's got to lower the tariff.
You know, this is and we have three and we have three years and eight months to go yet with this presidency. So where is Susie Wiles in all this? What is why is why isn't she directing traffic? a bit better. Navarro is such a problem. Because she's not. Susie Wiles is a campaign staffer. Now, sometimes campaign staffers can move into the job of White House Chief of Staff.
do a good job the only thing we know about susie wells on policy according to that you know like absolute blockbuster of a story about trump telling the Israelis that he's not going to help with the strike and the leak of the story itself being a way of trying, as you yourself wrote, Seth, trying to destroy the possibility of an Israeli strike on Iran.
is that she was for not striking Iran. That's literally the only thing we know about her in terms of policy in these first 93 days, because nobody talks about her. So where is Susie Wiles? She's Pat Summerall's daughter who runs campaigns in Florida. And now she's the White House chief of staff because she seems to be a Trump whisperer. But if she's playing any role in policy, we have no idea. This is the only first indication of what she thinks.
In the first administration, you had a number of people in senior cabinet positions. They didn't last all that long, but they were prepared to say no to the president. I mean, there's that famous scene. of Gary Cohn literally removing an order to revoke the U.S.-South Korea free trade agreement from the president's desk before he could.
He could sign it. You had John Bolton steering him away from what would have been a disastrous deal with North Korea. There's no one... fulfilling that role in the White House or in the cabinet. because everyone came into this presidency sort of in awe of Trump. and afraid of him, more afraid than they'd ever been before, because the people he selected for senior cabinet positions were absolute nobodies outside of.
the offices that Trump had anointed them with. I mean, no one had really heard of Kash Patel. or Pam Bondi before they came into high office. And so there's no one in the Republican Party who's prepared to say no, or the people who are people on their way out, like Senator McConnell or Lisa Murkowski. That's a real problem for Republicans. There has to be someone in the Republican Party, you know, a Harold Howard Baker or Barry Goldwater who can go to the president and say.
Shut up. Stop doing this. No. you're going to destroy yourself and you're going to destroy the country and you're going to destroy your legacy. There's no one out there. I mean, I think of Marco Rubio now promoting... a Ukrainian quote-unquote peace deal, a surrender deal, which is exactly what he voted to oppose just a couple years ago. I mean, it's stunning, although in his case, maybe not entirely stunning.
But the only thing, in a sense, that gave the establishment Republicans during the first Trump presidency the sort of power to rein him in was that. Trump didn't know how things worked. And so there was a you could come to him and say, no, you can't do that because X, Y and Z. And he doesn't he's not in that position anymore. So even if he had an administration that wasn't made up of yes men or people who genuinely agreed with him, why would he listen to them?
He's been around a billion pro free market businessmen who hate tariffs. He knows he's heard the arguments. He knows he doesn't he thinks he's right. And unless you tell him, and even then maybe, but unless you tell him, no, no, you literally cannot do this. This is not within your power. Why would he listen to someone who would say no to him at this point? Okay, so, you know, there is this, Jonah Goldberg wrote something very good on the invocations by people like...
Even people who are admirable and have done admirable work, even though they are rhetorically maybe extremists like Chris Ruffo, like this idea that's kind of weird, uh, Gramsci envy. The idea that the left figured out in the 1960s that what it needed to do was undergo this long march through the institutions, take over institutions everywhere.
burrow themselves in, replace themselves with people who are like them as other people leave, and they take control of the culture and they take control of the universities and they take control of what came to be known. as the deep state and that what Trump needed to do and Republicans need to do is duplicate.
the gramsci be gramscians on the right and i think that this is a horrible misreading of this moment who really really talked about this much before but One of the reasons that Trump got reelected is that the corruption of Gramsciism became evident to people in the United States in the form of...
you know, sort of the star chambers, the emergency powers asserted by governors and mayors and people like the cdc suspending evictions all of that that people said wait a minute who's running this country what is going on here like i i didn't elect i didn't think that A doctor could tell me I can't evict a tenant who hasn't paid me.
For nine months? What the hell is going on here? Somebody has gotten control of the levers of power, and those hands on those levers of power need to be removed. And now... The activists of the right are simply attempting to duplicate. When the American people, I believe, have been making it clear that they are onto the game of manipulating the levers of power, and the thing to do is to stop manipulating the levers of power. take the levers of power over and shift them to the right.
I could be wrong. They could be wiser than I am. Power is power, and people always will seek to enhance their power. But I don't know. I think the long-term argument that this stuff with... No one wants to be favorably disposed toward Abrego Garcia unless you're a far leftist. But if they are allowed to just throw anybody in jail without due process, that's not good for me or my 17-year-old. who speeds and then gets crosswise of a crazy suburban cop who decides he wants to throw him in jail.
Or say, oh, you have a name with an O at the end. I'm going to call ICE and they'll put you on a plane before we discover you're an American citizen. I think that's common sense on the part of people. They've seen what happens when government asserts too much authority and Trump is asserting too much authority. Yeah, but right now the pushback is not coming from where he needs to hear it. I mean, my writing this column in the New York Times...
I can assure you, has zero influence on the thinking of the president or people in his circle. I'm just a... uh a rhino you know or whatever they want to uh they want to call me it it has to start coming from uh you know it has to start coming from fox news it has to start coming from uh you know, the folks at whatever those, you know, the Federalist or his usual gang of worshippers. But the problem there is that they're not so much a political movement in search of policy goals.
They're a cult that seeks to enhance the status of its leader. I mean, I was so struck, I was so struck, I just have to say, by... I don't know if you read this essay in Politico last week. I forgot when it appeared, I think Sunday. From this guy, John Ulya, who, you know, is a senior aide or was a senior aide to Hegseth. Very, very MAGA guy. I have to confess I'd never heard of him until I read this essay, basically. painting a picture of total dysfunction in Hegseth's Pentagon.
Donald Trump Jr.'s riposte to Ulio was to say, you are exiled from our movement. I think that was just an exceptionally telling... statement in terms of the way in which they think of a what is after all a senior position in the pentagon it's not about you know the defense of the country or something it's you are exiled from our movement this this is like the erdogan movement taking over the the the Turkish civil servants in government.
by degrees in Turkey in the early part of the century. It's not a regular political party. Okay, but the Erdogan, you're using the Erdogan example. So Erdogan was an exceptionally effective politician, right, who had actually learned... Having governed, right, he was the mayor of Istanbul. He knew how to function in the levers of power in a... complicated country with a complicated history toward its own democratic institutions.
And he was exceptionally nimble in using the ones that he wanted and in discarding the others and in taking over the military so he could not. act as a check on him. And I think the faceplant presidency column is particularly telling because Trump is incompetent. Like that is a competent version of Trump.
If such a thing could be imagined, now maybe a competent version of Trump couldn't actually end up getting the presidency in some odd way because that he really would seem like too revolutionary. a figure when going down the road toward the presidency and the public would rear in horror and not say, oh, it's just all an act and he's fun and it's funny.
you know, it's just an insult comedian and all of that, which is, which is that, that game. Um, Hegseth is a perfect example of a faceplant under presidency. That's a full face plant. Yeah. But I mean, he gets this unbelievable opportunity. Yeah. Right. And he, rather than like, oh my God, like I'm running the Department of Defense of the United States.
you know, I, this is, I have been elevated far beyond my station. I better do this with great care. And instead he's like, hey, you want to see my, you want to see my battle plan for the, for Yemen? You know, oh, my brother would really love to see my battle plan for Yemen. It's so cool. Honey, come in here. We're talking about war.
No, but you can see how, but a more rational person would say, I'm being entrusted with this big opportunity, responsibility. I could end up president of the United States for all I know. I don't know. Let me spend some time figuring out how to do this job. Instead, 18 people have been in and out of his near office been in been fired been investigated for leaks he's leaking he's setting up signal channels and so trump puts in these people who are loyal to him
And they're exactly like him, except that he has proved to be unexpectedly competent at getting elected president of the United States, if nothing else. And they are competent at nothing. except being on Fox. Brett, I have a question for you about some things you said. You said earlier that you think... At this rate, Trump could lose the sort of MAGA core, right? Yeah. You also said that the people he needs to hear from... Let me put it this way. He could lose the MAGA...
Penumbra. Right. He'll never lose the Magna Corps. Right. Right. Okay. That's sort of, yeah. That obviates my question, yeah. Yeah, so, I mean, I saw where this was going. I kicked the ball away just as you were about to score a goal. No, I mean, look, I was doing something I rarely do. I was watching CNN the other day. I think it was Jake. My condolences. interviewing these farmers in West Virginia. I mean, you could not ask for a more stereotypical depiction.
79%, right? Trump won West Virginia by 49% or something like that. These are farmers who are dependent on... all kinds of imports for, you know, fertilizer, seed, you know, one thing or another. And they are living at the very margins of making a life for themselves. enthusiastic Trump voters for a variety of reasons, but talking about the destruction of their livelihood. And those are the people I mean. I think there's always going to be a group of MAGA-ites.
who will be with him, you know, for the long march, so to speak, because... With them, they're dealing with a kind of ideological fixity. But then again, they also probably have 401ks and are seeing the destruction of their... financial life for, as John put it, for no reason, for zero reason. There's no external disaster that can explain this. Pure caprice from the White House. And there's also the problem of what happens if an external crisis hits.
Yeah, he's you know, he's he's he's he's troubling trouble before trouble troubles him. Right. But when you're president, eventually trouble troubles you from the outside. And if that happens while he's got all this self-made chaos, the whole thing's going to blow up really quickly. But we should say that he is, as he has been from the beginning, including on the right, He is fortunate in his enemies. And I don't mean you as his enemy. I'm talking about on the political stage.
He is fortunate in his enemies because then he gets Chris Van Hollen having a margarita with Obrego Garcia. He gets people defending Harvard, which, again... Maybe the war on Harvard is stupid or maybe he'll lose it or maybe it's incredibly vulgar or it's, you know, a violation of academic freedom. I am so not interested in any arguments. in favor of why he's being unjustified in this war on Harvard that it's hard for me to.
I do think that if you have a Democratic Party that decides that it's going to stand or fall on whether or not Harvard gets enough money from the federal government. Trump is fortunate in having that set of ideas. And the people who are going to essentially advocate, you know, the Democrats are eventually going to get their act together. You know, there is it's not going to become the AOC party. Why not? Republicans became the Trump party. Why can't it become the AOC party?
Well, you're right. Maybe it will. But something makes me doubt that. I think there is enough of a kind of an abiding intelligence among Democratic-leaning voters that if they... go in that route, they're guaranteeing themselves a J.D. Vance presidency, followed by a Donald Trump Jr. presidency, followed by you know of the laura trump whatever um
And they don't want that. And I think actually what Trump is doing is creating a really good lane for people like Seth Moulton or other centrist Democrats to say, All I'm offering America is a return to normal. All I'm offering is a return to the America that you remember, where there was due process, rule of law.
And you could expect that tomorrow would look pretty much the same as it did yesterday. But all presidencies, all successful candidates for president... do that right if you actually think about it trump oddly enough was offering in 2024 a return to normalcy like i'm not senile we have a senile president and a intellectually challenged vice president who was flipped in with no oversight a kind of you know internal coup to put her in this is not normal you know what else is not normal is like
sending seven prosecutors after one person so that that person can't run the party. Elect me. I'm more normal than they. Now he looks abnormal. Biden said the same thing in 2020. I'm a return to normalcy. You're saying the Democrats don't want to be the AOC party. Was the Biden presidency all that different? from what an AOC presidency would be. particularly in 2024 in relation to Israel and Gaza. I'm not talking about the end of 2023.
through October through December 23 when the Biden administration was supported. I don't know. Would AOC have set arms to Ukraine? I mean, we all agree about how incompetently the Biden administration handled it.
done it i mean no i could say that because that's a that's also a generational thing within the the democratic party why don't we move to ukraine because this is i think a very telling There is something very vague about the way the administration is talking about how it's now – its efforts, its overtures haven't – been successful and it's going to wipe its hands of its peace arrangement right this is again like the tariffs nobody asked him
To negotiate a peace between Russia and Ukraine. Putin didn't ask him. Zelensky didn't ask him. He asserted that he could end the war on day one as part of his campaign strategy in 24. But nobody who has actually got, you know, blood on the ground said, please come in and... And he went in and he's doing whatever the hell it is that he's doing. And now he's mad that he's not getting listened to.
So I don't even except for the fact that we're obviously not going to be sending Ukraine any more arms, which I guess is fundamentally a way of determining what the outcome of the war will be. ukraine's not going to end up it's not going to stop fighting and russia is not going to stop droning and hitting kiev and stuff like that so Who is he appealing to here? No one asked him to do this. Yeah.
That's a good question. Who is he appealing to? Who among his actual core supporters really care one way or the other? Well, there are core supporters who want Russia to win, right? I mean, we know that. There's a Tucker Carlson wing, but I don't think that that is most Republicans. Right. And also, he could accomplish what he's accomplishing by ignoring it from the beginning. Right. The terms of the deal that he's offering Ukraine are essentially the term.
that Putin is offering, right? I keep what I took. And the only thing that stands out is that... Trump isn't asking Ukraine to limit the rebuilding of its armed forces and not putting a ceiling on its self-defense. That was the only other demand that Putin made. But you would get here.
If Trump never got involved at all. Right. I mean, this is basically just him sort of riding the momentum of things as they stand now, like calling timeout, like, all right, here's where the lines are. Everybody stop here. But if he weren't involved at all, you would be in the same exact place. See, I think it's worse than that.
Because I think Putin looks at this, looks at the border battle and things and says, you know, maybe six months ago, I would have been happy to come to the table with Zelensky and say, we just stop now. I'm going to keep what I have. You keep what you have. If Zelensky would have agreed because Ukraine, you know, has lost heart in the war, he's losing too many people. That could end with Trump there.
What incentive does Putin have to stop the war? Ukraine is not going to get more American arms. He feels confident enough to start hitting Kiev. as he did yesterday with drones. And like, maybe he can get 50% of Ukraine before he decides he's... eaten enough of this sovereign country. And Trump will be responsible for that. Trump is the person who will have led him to believe that he has a free hand. On this who is Trump appealing to question.
If Trump had actually made a peace deal, if he had ended the war, he'd be appealing to everyone. The fact that he's failed completely is why it appeals to no one. I think it was doomed to fail. But this came up during the campaign when Trump was asked about Russia. And do you support this side? And, you know, Trump is, I just want it to end. Too many people dying. And that must have pulled well for him or something if he cared. And that was the idea.
Can I tell you a story that the late George Shultz told me in his 90s when he was at the Hoover Institution? And I sat in his office for an hour and a half, and he told me this story about when he was Secretary of Labor in the Nixon administration. which I'd never heard and which I think he wrote about, but is really not a well-known story. There was some kind of a major labor action in New Orleans.
maybe at a port, I don't remember what. But it was damaging and injurious to the American economy as understood, particularly in the middle of the Vietnam War and with all sorts of other troubles. And the idea was that Schultz was going to go and negotiate. And end to this late, you know, it's going to resolve it. And then when he was done.
Nixon would fly down and be present for the peace between the union and whoever it was the union was striking. I'm sorry that I don't remember the specific details. And Schultz was there, and they were on the verge of making a deal, and the deal was struck, and he called the White House and said, get ready for the president to get on Air Force One to come down and we'll have this big victory. And as they were...
The president was like at Andrews, about to take off. And the labor leader said, oh, wait a minute, I'm 0.27 in this arrangement. is bad and i'm unhappy about it and i don't really know how i feel about this and schultz called and said Don't let the plane go back to the White House. The deal is not done. President needs to be nowhere near this. You should only come near this when we finally get the term set and something's happened at the 11th hour.
And he should not be landing in New Orleans. And, you know, nobody knew. It was 1969, so there was no Twitter. So no one knew, oh, the president's gone to Andrews. Like, it wasn't a secret. And I'm sure there was a pool with him, but it was something that they could have contained without anybody knowing about it. And Schultz said, because... You don't involve the president until all the I's are dotted and the T's are crossed. And then he swoops in and takes the credit.
the best way for this to be done. And otherwise, it harms the institution of the presidency. It affects his power, his ability to make other deals later. And that this was the first lesson he learned as an important public official. And he was one of the great public officials of our age. And Trump is the first and last negotiator here. So he has no, he has no, whether he sends Whitcoff or Rubio or whoever, he's got no insulation from the failure.
Every failure of this administration is his failure, as far as I can tell. It's very well observed. Yep. So that's disheartening. And let me ask you, since you brought up Erdogan, and you've written about this and talked about this, that... While this is all happening, things are happening in Europe that are... As though they're four years behind us.
And four years ahead of us in the sense that you have these populist parties that are making, you know, very, very strong showings that are basically saying that the European liberal consensus of the last.
50 years must be shattered if these countries are to be saved from themselves. How seriously do you take this and how much of it do you think... is justifiable, that the populism is actually, in a different way from the United States, justifiable in the sense that the political system in these countries really did not take account of. how the public was feeling about how the elites were. insisting on mass migration and various other things. The revolt against the elites is entirely justifiable.
Unfortunately, the people who are doing the revolting are often revolting. And so that's the nub of the problem, which is that you don't have a kind of a compelling... intellectually coherent and politically popular. reaction to the way in which elite politics were conducted in Europe in the past. 30 plus years.
with I would say Angela Merkel as the emblem of that style of kind of brainless consensual politics that is the proximate cause for the rise of the AFD in Germany, a very, very disturbing set of people. Those of us who care about liberty should be nowhere close to or, you know, other other far right parties in Europe. Now, not all of them are quite the same. I should I should I hasten to point out.
A group like France's rally, it used to be the National Front, now it's the rally, I think. When they do make an effort to... dispose of their anti-Semitic record, we should welcome it, not treat it with... I mean, we should trust but verify, I should say, but we should not treat it with disdain. Not all of these parties are quite the same. I don't think that the... The right in Holland is quite the same as Geert Wilders is not the AFD.
Some of these characters are not only fascistic, but in the traditional sense, but many of them are very sympathetic to Putin. And one of my great worries is that once Putin kind of rolls up the American right as he has with Trump. he's going to similarly take advantage of what happens in Europe.
A lot is going to depend on whether Friedrich Mertz has a successful leadership chance in Germany, but he's hamstrung by the fact that coalition politics in Germany mean that... even when you have a right-of-center prime minister. He has to make deals with leftist coalition partners that are going to damage economic growth. So Europe is really, with the interesting exception of Italy, by the way.
really leaderless and rudderless in a period where I think the continent is maybe, for all intents and purposes, lost. I see no good futures for Europe. And I just came back from Paris two days ago. Can I tell a quick story about Italy? Because I was in Italy at Christmas time. and met people in the Jewish community in Rome. Very interesting political community, actually very small.
35,000 Jews in Rome. The oldest Jewish community in the world, really. Yeah, like the woman that I'm about to tell the anecdote about... Her mother is American, moves to Italy. Her father... Isn't a family that has been in Rome for 22 years, literally, literally since. You know, since the days of the Hasmone, you know, since the Maccabees, basically, they came across the Mediterranean settled.
in in rome and have been there almost uninterruptedly so this is a pretty interesting you know sort of like world and and uh they are as jews are everywhere they are relatively liberal they need a liberal society, liberals who were friendly to Jews and obviously fascists who were not and people on the far right who were not. And so they have a muscle memory about this. And they were terrified of the coming of Georgia Maloney, the current prime minister of Italy. She's a populist nationalist.
everything in the press said she was this you know hard right-wing figure and all that and they were terrified of her coming and then she gets into office and to their absolute astonishment is incredibly friendly toward israel which they did not expect and they did not know and they did not appreciate that the that there would be a connection between her rhetoric about the problem of unrestrained immigration into Italy and the threat to Israel.
from the muslim world and that she would see this connection and therefore as I think is also true of the rally, that there's been an evolution in consciousness about Jews to some extent among some of these people, not that they should be trusted.
but that this was a lesson for very intellectual Italian Jews that... the world is changing and that they and that in a place in which the sole issue that is of concern to them Literally, the sole issue that is concerned to them, which is the treatment of Jews. So people who live, you know, in proximity to the ghetto from which they only emerged 200 years ago, you know, things are changing. And so I thought this was a very interesting...
Because Maloney is different, and Trump is about to go see Maloney, right? Next week or something? No, well, they just saw each other. Right, but he's going to Italy. That's true, for the public. On this trip, and... And so much so, by the way, that this that the person I spoke to is an American citizen and her mother's an American citizen. She's not. But her mother's an American citizen. And so her mother.
had a vote in the 2024 election and she and her siblings were beating on her mother's head to vote for trump because their idea was look at the way you Biden are behaving toward Israel. And we've learned our lesson with Maloney that Maloney is a friend and Trump at least talks friendly. And like the mother agreed after who hated Trump and didn't want to vote for Trump and hadn't voted for him in 16 or 20 agreed she wouldn't vote for Harris.
But she probably couldn't vote for Trump, but that she wouldn't vote for Harris. And they deemed that an interesting victory. That was my that was my European.
conversion experience conversion experience in in rome at the end of at the end of 2024 we we should we shouldn't uh end here without talking a little about about israel you were uh as when i first met you you were the well actually wasn't when i first met you but you were the editor of the jerusalem post you know at the age of 12 and uh and all that and um Sometime around the same age, you became Jeopardy! champion. Yeah, well, there you go.
i was listening to our friend dan senior's podcast and um ari uh shabit is on interesting i haven't heard from ari shabit for a long time if you don't know who he is you'll whatever anyway So RSUV is trying to give a fair, dispassionate summary of the... politics and says some very interesting things he says for the for the right for the left uh Bibi is like Nixon trying to order the security services to spy on his enemy.
And for the right, Ronan Barr, the head of the Shin Bet, whom Bibi is trying to fire. is J. Edgar Hoover and is using his power to enhance his own power and the authority of the Shin Bet and trampling over everybody's civil liberties and should be stopped. And I thought that was a sort of pretty interesting analogy.
Interesting, dispassionate way of looking at things. And then, you know, goes in, 20 minutes in, he's like, but Bibi is basically Erdogan, or what he's trying to do is be a French monarch. It's L'Etat C'est Moi. That's how I really feel. And I was thinking, like, even for people who have the ability to suss out the interesting dynamics in Israeli politics.
BB standing there blotting out the sun for everybody and making it impossible for there to be a rational conversation about things like executive power, executive authority, and what's going on with this war. Where are you on all this?
Well, on the specific question of Barr versus Bibi, with Bibi, I mean, the idea that the secret, essentially the secret service in Israel should be above... elected officials and accountable only to a sympathetic Supreme Court joined in its disdain for the elected prime minister, I think is bonkers. And I think it's a real problem in Israel, which is that the people who claim to speak
have anti-democratic instincts because they believe that they are entitled, essentially, to hold the real levers of power. And I say this as a guy who's written... One column after another, wishing for Bibi not to be the prime minister. I would vastly prefer Naftali Bennett. But on at least two issues, this one and the question of the prosecution of the war in Gaza.
I find myself kind of relieved that Bibi is the prime minister. To me, the more interesting story in Israel was the speech that Bibi gave, I guess, a week ago or so, when he said that this idea that we're going to tell Hamas... that we're withdrawing and get our hostages back. and then say, oh, just kidding, we're going back in, is a fantasy. And he's been absolutely right on this, on the matter of...
cutting off the Philadelphia corridor, now continuing to put military pressure on Hamas. The idea that Israel would have sacrificed as many soldiers as it has. since October 7th in Gaza so that Hamas can then rearm in three years as opposed to two is an insane theory.
Now, finally, by the way, the other story that has my attention is Mahmoud Abbas, a despicable figure on so many counts. But nonetheless, interestingly, Mahmoud Abbas finally publicly insisting that Hamas... surrender the hostages and get out of the business of ruling Gaza, which is obviously something that he should have said on October 8th.
But it's an interesting political signal about the... the effect that a hard line in Gaza is finally having, not only militarily against Hamas, but politically among Palestinians, to start the process of a revolt against their kind of rule. One thing that occurs to me, you mentioned Abbas, who I think is 84 years old. Everybody that we've been talking about here in terms of... I think he is 88. It was 88. Okay. Biden obviously was 82 last year. Putin is in his 70s. BB 76.
We're having all these conversations about these leaders who their enemies say, Putin's already there but their enemies say want to institute dictatorships and like be in power you know are you saying that bb is l'état c'est moi And Trump wants to, you know, like be a dictator to never leave office and all this. They're all so old. Like, is this really, they're consuming? I mean, there's something weird.
I mean, think about sort of the dictators of the 20th century. Like, they were young when they came into power. And they had reason to think that if they could just hold on to power, they could be in power for 50 years. And some of them... Some of them were, you know, I mean, but I'm, you know, how old was Hitler? How old was Mussolini? How old was Stalin? How old was, I mean, Stalin was in power for 30 years, you know, Putin's already been in power for 25 years, and is old.
There's something weird about this conversation because time is not on their side in terms of their own mortality. And maybe everybody is like, we just default to this idea that autocracy and suspension of democracy and liberties. I just think Trump wants to garner as much money and power as he can for a while. back off that's my i don't i don't think he particularly wants to run the world he would like to get his meme coin you know to 20 billion dollars or something
You know, with these guys, it's always like some version of Tennyson's Ulysses, you know. I cannot rest from travel. I will drink life to the leaves, you know. You always think, oh, when I'm 75, I'm going to start caring about my grandchildren and work on my legacy. kind of tie up all the loose ends of life. But my observation of people like Rupert Murdoch, for example, marrying for the
17th time at the age of 95 or something is that these guys never want to get out of the game. There's always another day to live. And so... I don't know what Trump wants. I don't think he knows what he wants. He wants to rule the world and then the galaxy and then become immortal. And fortunately... I really do think that the key thing that happened this week in relation to Trump was this idea that he was going to have this special dinner.
for the people who invested in his bitcoin yeah because that i think if you really want to know where democrats have blown it in for the last eight years He is doing the emoluments now. This is all happening now in front of our very eyes, the actual impeachable and convictable behavior of using the presidency to as a corrupt. institution to enrich yourself and your family.
And that argument has been made almost impossible by... the prop by the persecutions by the by the way he was being pursued by democrats over the last eight years so that now it's like chicken little and and they might have him dead to rights including with some republicans not that they they need 67 republicans to convict him in the senate they need 67 to convict him in the senate obviously and that's a very hard lift but
It's all happening. Also, do how many members of Congress understand what the meme coin thing is? That works in his favor, too. Well, that's true. But it's not just the meme quote. I mean, it's Witkoff and Dutter and all of these. This is all happening. Well, that's why Witkoff was hired.
Because he dealt with Cutter, right? I mean, that was even what got him the job in the first place. It's all out sort of in the open. I like the deal this guy made with the Qataris on real estate in Manhattan. So he's going to come work for me. But then he's not going to hold the Qatari's feet to the fire because he still wants their money. And then who gets a taste of that money? I mean, again, even having these conversations.
These are things I would never say about, I would never have said about any president ever. I'm not like, you know, the American spectator with Clinton or anything like that. But like, Wyckoff makes some deal with gutter. Why isn't he cutting Donald Jr. in on it?
like who that's who they are yeah so i don't know i'm i i keep wondering whether if there is a kind of implosion in the face if the if the face plant leads to an implosion which is a horrible mixed metaphor Well, that might be the answer to the question before about who is he appealing to, which is that no one or himself, because he's not running for office again.
And if you can't figure out what the or who the policies are aimed at, but you can see how he can benefit from being in office, then I think maybe the question answers itself. And maybe in picking J.D. Vance, he did exactly what Kamala Harris, what Biden did in picking Kamala Harris, which is like, oh, impeach me, want him?
I know a lot of people on the right are enjoying J.D. Vance, but I don't... They can enjoy J.D. Vance. He's a very... very frightening figure to me anyway more frightening in many ways than trump a sinister purely opportunistic and shallow character. But skilled, very skilled. I mean, you know, he's had a rise like nobody else pretty much in American life ever, I would say. from a nobody to a best-selling author to a hedge fund guy to a senator to a vice president.
In nine years. Yep. Ten years ago, he was writing under a pseudonym for David Frum's website. Just keep that in mind. Anyway, so Brett Stevens. Thank you so much. It's always a pleasure, John. Joining us. Looking good. Yeah, you're looking good. Like I say, Abe and you guys are, if you're watching on YouTube, you can see that you could do a Brett Abe beard. beard off beard off yeah very attractive scruffy you know that kind of
Scruffy. Seth's got his beard altogether. Seth has the... Well, Seth, you trimmed your beard. If you had seen Seth six months ago... He really was getting into a combination of... the Lubavitcher Rebbe and like Grizzly Adams. Like that's, it was the perfect. My, it was my, my Lithuanian forebears were, you know, I was, I was summoning them. Yeah. It was COVID. It was COVID. And then.
Like, all right, time to be human again. COVID lulled us into this. Well, my own Lithuanian forebears continue to summon me, and we'll do so for some time. Okay, so everybody, you know, if you want... interesting reading on important issues of Jewish life. Go to, is it Sapir Quarterly dot com? It's Sapir Journal dot org. Sapir Journal dot org. And you can get it for free, by the way. You can you can read this magazine free online or get it. It'd be beautifully physically.
present in your hands, some very, very... wonderful stuff in there and i don't say that i say that advisedly because of course you're like you're like you're on my turf here Yeah, we're complimentary. We're not competitors. Fair enough, because you are. Yeah, okay. So, Brett Stevens, Sapir, New York Times. uh superior debates go to 92nd street why or superior to go see the is donald trump good for the jews with jason greenblatt and ron emmanuel
May. Is it May? May 15th. May 15th. Okay. Two days after the State of the World Jewry Address at the 92nd Street by... Dan Senor, by the way. A lot of Jewish action at the 92nd Street block. Yeah, and only 10 days after Cicco de Mayo. Well, these are the two sides of Brexit. yeah character because as you may know as people do not know brett grew up in mexico city and is uh therefore um Have you broken Matzah with Claudia Scheinbaum? That's what I want to know. No, she's not my kind of...
Matzah breaker. She's not much of a matzah breaker, I think. She's not a big fan of Israel either. But it is funny that Mexico does have a Jewish president. That was not on my bingo card. No, well, you know. my life, I will say. There you go. Yeah, okay. Be well. Thanks, and for Seth and Abe, I'm John Podhortz. Keep the candle burning.