Episode 867: Praising Clarence Thomas

will there be an iran deal and how great is clarence thomas we'll discuss all this and more on this edition of the editors i'm rich lowry and i'm joined as always by the right honorable charles cw cook the good neighbor noah rothman and the sage of authenticity woods jim garrity You are, of course, listening to a National View podcast. Our sponsors this episode are Made in Vare and Red Flags Press. More about all of them in due course. If for some reason you're not already following us on a streaming service, by the way, you can find us everywhere from Spotify to Apple Podcasts. And if you like what you hear here, please consider giving us a glowing five-star review wherever you listen to your podcast. If you don't like what you hear here, please forget I said anything. So, Jim Garrity, the Iran thing is completely clear to me from where I sit right now. There's either going to be a deal or not going to be a deal. And the deal is either going to be amazing or incredibly disappointing. You know, for a couple of weeks now, we have just been in this seemingly endless cycle of the president has two major messages. One message is the Iranians have just agreed to something terrific and the strait is open and, you know, happy days are here again. And the other message, when events become clear that that is not the case, it's some version of we're going to destroy you, we're going to destroy your civilization, we're going to hit you harder than you've ever been hit before if you don't do X by a similar deadline. And we just seem to be flipping back and forth between this. Apparently, Vance and Kushner and Witkov are going out to Pakistan to talk with the Iranians again. I don't understand why you'd think things would change very dramatically from this. Because we see, you know, sometimes it feels like our conversations go in these circles. Yes, the U.S. military has performed superlatively. Yes, when we decide to restrict Iranian ships coming into and out of Iranian ports, we can do that. And we are indeed squeezing the finances of the regime pretty severely. With that said, it was just last week that the director of the Pentagon's Defense Intelligence Agency, James Adams III, testifying for the House Armed Services Committee, The sentence that jumped out at me was, quote, Iran retains thousands of missiles and one-way attack UAVs, unmanned aerial vehicles or drones, that can threaten U.S. and partner forces throughout the region despite degradations to its capabilities from both attrition and expenditure, unquote. And also adds that Iran poses a persistent threat to freedom of navigation throughout the Persian Gulf, straight to Hormuz, and Gulf of Oman. That's not great if they still have thousands left. And I don't doubt that we have done, we've driven down that a great deal. I don't doubt that we've bombed a whole bunch of stockpiles and stuff. But unfortunately, even if they have a couple, you know, they can send one at some tanker. They shot at a couple of Indian ships over the last couple of days. That makes people not want to sail through the Strait of Hormuz. That makes people, it makes it very hard for oil to come out of the Persian Gulf. And that freaks out the world energy markets. And that leads to higher gas prices here at home. So the president's messaging has become a real problem. Not, you know, not just for Republicans and their midterm hopes and all that stuff. but for getting a sense of what he says may or may not have anything to do with what's actually going on on the ground. You know, this past weekend, Energy Secretary Chris Wright is on the Sunday shows. And he says it may not be till the end of the year until we get back to $3 a gallon gasoline. And Trump comes out and he says he's totally wrong on that. Guy's price is going to come right down right after the war ends. Well, you know, Trump's been saying the world, the war is almost over for four weeks now. so i i i'm finding it i would really like clarity in our objectives i'd really like to get you know i don't want this all to depend on well the iranians have agreed to do something because the other day trump's gone true social saying the strait of hormuz is open and they're shooting at ships again like why why does he trust these people i it's just getting very frustrating right now so i should apologize to our listeners for our episodes that have been unduly apocalyptic That was right before Trump was threatening to end Iranian civilization. It seems like we were taking out their bridges. Then the episode that was unduly pessimistic right when we'd signed the ceasefire. And then our episode that was unduly optimistic, which was last Friday when Trump had said the Iranians, the Iranians had said, the foreign minister had said the strait was open. And then Trump said they agreed never to close the strait again. Instead, no, it turns out we're basically the same place we were two weeks ago. There wasn't a blockade two weeks ago, but otherwise fragile, ceasefire, a very important term being flouted by the Iranians, which is opening the state straight and preparations for negotiations ongoing. So what is your take on what would be a deal worth having? It seems likely we're going to get a deal here somewhere along the line. And one key tell is when Trump is on Truth Social saying my deal is going to be so much better than the JCPOA, what would make a deal better than the JCPOA? Well, it's been very hard since the ceasefire to assess what our terms are or what their terms are because we've been hearing a lot of rumors from interested parties on both sides of this thing, a lot of which doesn't seem to ultimately reflect what the decision makers on either side actually want or are pursuing. the outlines as far as I can tell from what we want. And the president's inconstancy, you know, to reiterate Jim's point about us being a broken record, the president's inconstancy is really suboptimal. It's not great to have a president in wartime you can't trust. However, he has been really consistent on no domestic enrichment. We hear a lot of rumors and reported statements from people who are reportedly close to the president suggesting that they'll accept some limited enrichment or a sunset provision. And then the president doesn't really seem to entertain those options. What he seems to want is no enrichment, limits on ballistic missile production capabilities beyond what we've already destroyed. The surrender of all enriched nuclear materials, maybe just the highly enriched stuff, the 60% stuff, but I think all enriched nuclear materials are on the table. And an end to the Iranian regime's support for its terrorist proxies. so when we went into these negotiations i thought we were pretty well positioned to exact concessions from the iranian side and i think we were indeed the degree of pliancy from some of our interlocutors in iran has created open fissures in the regime now really extraordinary developments with the irgc asserting its control over the political class up to and including irgc officials through their preferred news outlets attacking the credibility and mental faculties of the regime's own foreign minister. U.S. officials separately have told Axios over the course of the last couple of days that they don't know who speaks for this regime. Quote, we aren't sure who's in charge, and neither do they, meaning they don't know who's in charge either. This freaks everybody out, the prospect that the IRGC is emerging as this prohibitive power center. It freaks a lot of people out who are possessed of the good mullah, bad mullah myth. Oh no, the Iranian regime is even more radical than it was previously, more radical than the one that wages a global terror war against the West, slaughters its own people, and has been constitutionally committed to making a bomb over the course of the last quarter century through radicals and reformers alike? Give me a break. Doesn't register with me. Regime instability is what we want, I remind everybody. And no one, to my knowledge, on the Israeli side or the U.S. side, has disavowed the plan at the outset of this war to transition from high-tempo combat operations to fomenting insurrectionary rebellion inside Iran when the shooting stops. The shooting is not going to stop. The Iranians believe they have us over a barrel in the Strait of Hormuz, a narrative that is aided by the political press in the West. And the whole toll booth strategy seems to be coming apart as anticipated. Tankers with this Greek shipping interest says tankers are getting fake extortion requests, that they're asked to pay people who don't have any control over this thing, that some ships are getting word that they in transit and then that word is rescinded. And then China's coming out after this blockade strategy, which is really scrambling, I think, calculations inside Beijing and Tehran, came out with a pretty rare statement affirming that the straits should be open and not blaming the United States for its closure, not saying Iran should open it exactly. They've picked their side in this war, but not coming out and saying the United States has done a horrible thing here against international law and they need to immediately abandon this posture that they've adopted. Iran does perceive itself to be in the possession of this weapon of geopolitical importance that is tantamount to a bomb and they need to be stripped of it either voluntarily or by force and i i don't think that we're going to evade the resumption of high tempo combat operations at least for a while but the institute for the study of wars fred kagan had a really good point yesterday on on the commentary podcast and when he note in which he noted that there's a certain threat level in contested waterways that shipping interests simply accept the strait of malacca the horn of Africa. These are not threat-free environments. It's just an acceptable level of threat for shipping interests, commercial interests, governments, insurance companies. All of those need to be brought on board to accept a new status quo in the Strait of Hormuz that accepts a certain level of threat, but is neutralized generally by the United States. The United States is going to have to take a lead role, a military role, in reopening the Strait to an acceptable degree. Again, this is going to freak out everybody who doesn't like market gyrations. And the president obviously does not want to return to a high tempo state of warfare, but I don't think he has many choices. And he's totally ignored those inducements. He's not responded to them with anything like the inconstancy that accompanied his approach to tariffs, for example, where he was really freaked out by the market and the Republican reaction to the markets domestically. He seems really committed to getting a deal that's better than the JCPOA. And what we're hearing from the political class is that is available, but the IRGC is reluctant to cave, they're going to be having not to heal. So Noah, is a JCPOA-like deal, whatever it is, is that consistent with ongoing efforts to actively topple the regime through arming the opposition or whatever it might be? Wouldn't the Iranians want guarantees that we're not going to do that? Well, the Iranian regime would. The Iranian regime would. Right, that's what I mean. But there's, you know, the denuclearization, there aren't very many examples of it. In geopolitical history, the collapse of the Soviet Union when Kazakhstan and Ukraine gave up their nuclear weapons. South Africa and Latin America, Brazil and Argentina had nascent nuclear programs. They all gave them up when the threat environment changed. Either the regime itself changed or the threat environment around it changed dramatically. Those two things tend to actually be pretty concomitant. I'm asking if we cut a deal with them and there's presumably some sort of sanctions relief, wouldn't they want to say that you're not arming our opponents or killing our scientists anymore? anymore. In other words, is a JCPOA-like deal consistent with an ongoing active effort to topple the Iranian regime, even if we're not dropping bombs on them? No, certainly not. And that's a good thing. We don't want anything consistent with a JCPOA-like regime. You're supposed to have them over a barrel. We're supposed to say no nuclear enrichment. Sorry, it must be being unclear. Sorry. My question is, if we cut a JCPOA-like deal, Wouldn't the Iranian regime say, you can't actively subvert us, you can't kill our scientists anymore, you can't arm the opposition, whatever you're planning to do as the second phase of toppling our government, you can't do that? Are those two things consistent? Will we be able to maintain an ongoing effort to kill the Iranian regime at the same time we've cut some nuclear deal with them? I don't see why not. These are covert operations. Iran doesn't stop its covert support for terror, Israel is not going to stop its efforts to preserve and secure its citizens and undermine security inside that regime, give up its contacts inside that regime. All of this was going on as we were negotiating the JCPOA. So I don't see that as being something that maybe we'll make assurances to one degree or another, but none of us will observe them. What we have to not do is say, here's a sunset at which point it's okay for you to enrich uranium because we're functionally sanctioning the development of a nuclear device. That's what we have to avoid. That was the biggest problem with the JCPOA, among many other things like ignoring the terrorist proxies, ignoring the missiles, etc. We're not doing any of that. So I don't see the prospects for a new JCPOA coming online as much as we're hearing a lot from people inside the Pentagon and inside this administration who never liked this war, suggesting that we'll be amenable to a JCPOA light. And I just don't hear that from the president. I don't see it in his actions. So, Charlie, you always have the fog of war, but it's enhanced in this instance because you have Trump, who's a constant fog machine, and half the time he's saying things that are true and accurate. Half the time he isn't. It's very difficult to distinguish one from the other very often. And then you have the fracture in the Iranian regime, so you're not sure who's actually speaking for the Iranian regime. So it makes it very difficult to know exactly what's going on. And then I would just throw at you another point, which is, unless it's a war of annihilation, all wars are negotiations, a form of negotiations, right? This goes back to Klaus Witt's wars, politics by another means. But it's just so much more stark with Donald Trump, where the deal making and the pressure and the leverage is so intertwined starkly and publicly with military operations and military threats. yes where to start and how to start without being a broken record i find this impossible for all the reasons you outlined i don't really know what the iranian regime is it used to be that you could say well here is the leader we had a good impression of who else was involved, whether they were in or the out. We don't now. And then on the American side, we have a president who failed to outline his goals or prepare the public at all, who still seems unsure as to his goals, who is negotiating all the time, but in ways that don't make a huge amount of sense to me, and that I suspect may have something to do with trying to manipulate the stock market. That's working, incidentally, if you look at it over the last two weeks. I think today it briefly hit its highest point in American history. Then we have another unknown, which is the American public's appetite for a war in which they don't seem interested or invested. It's not popular, but it's not important. I would say over the last month or so, it has been raised outside of the first couple of days with me by normal people about twice. This is not World War II. And then we have the secondary question there, which is the politics of it ahead of the midterms, and we don't know how it's going to play out and whether Trump will eventually be convinced to cut and run. I've said before, and I'll say again, that to me, the original sin here is the lack of communication, because not only did it lead, I think, to a genuine strategic ambiguity, I'm simply not persuaded by these newspaper reports that said yes they knew exactly what they wanted to do yes they knew the Straits of Hormuz would be closed and so forth but it led to the stalemate that you see now and that is of course not a stalemate caused by military parity But it is a stalemate caused by asymmetric incentives. The Iranians can hold on for as long as they need, unless we marshal our massively superior forces. but if we marshal our massively superior forces we will lose people and then the television will tell those members of the public who aren't especially interested that 10 or 15 or 20 americans are dead and at that point they will be more interested so we don't have infinite time even if we may have essentially infinite resources so it's impossible it's impossible to know we have no clear goal. We have a president who communicates capriciously. We have an Iranian regime that is opaque. And we have a public that is mostly disinterested and grumbly. And this is an odd scenario. Now, in some senses, it's a welcome scenario in that it does underscore the extent to which we're still living in a Pax Americana. This is the sort of thing that happens when you are so overwhelmingly powerful that you are mostly immune from existential warfare. But it doesn't mean it's going to work out for Trump, and it doesn't mean that we're winning in the sense that he and his heart of hearts would like to be able to announce. So I get the impression that this is drifting and that at the moment it feels okay because oil is what $90 a barrel which is tolerable and the markets for reasons I don't fully understand I will confess I wonder if it's AI propping it up I seem to have priced this in. So Jim Garrity exit question to you. Rate Republican prospects in the midterms at this juncture? These are your choices. It's looking apocalyptic. It's looking very bad. It's looking bad. It's looking mediocre. It's looking fantastic. I'm going to say very bad and on a trajectory towards apocalyptic. The losses might be limited by the degree to which, because of gerrymandering, there aren't as many competitive house districts as there used to be. So maybe, you know, in a circumstance where you'd normally lose 40, 50, 60 seats, you know, you'd end up only losing 20, 30, 40 seats, but it's bad And people are really genuinely worried about the Senate and the president approval rating is lousy Approval for the military action against Iran is lousy Economic pessimism is at the all worst which I saw that from the University of Michigan which has been polling on this issue since like the 1940s. And I was like, really? Economic pessimism is worse now than during COVID, than during the Great Recession? So maybe, you know, like, anyway, things are bad. So, and things, yeah. So it put me in the very bad category. Noah Rothman. Very bad, but I will remind listeners that they were very bad before the war. The public turned on Republican governance during the tariff saga over the deportations and the very visible conflicts in Minneapolis, Minnesota, for example. They haven't been helped by the war, but they were certainly bad before then. I only say very bad and not apocalyptic in part because if you look at the polling and it's still pretty early, the generic ballot indicates that Republicans are running ahead of the president's job approval ratings. So some voters might dissociate their dissatisfaction with Trump from Republican governance broadly, but that typically is a muted phenomenon when voters head to the polls in the midterm. Charlie? i think they're very bad i think though that this is in some sense being lost some of the smartest economic analysts and commentators that i know will say you know the economy is not too different than it was in the last two years of joe biden and that's true but I think that's the problem. I think that's exactly the problem. It's good in the sense that it hasn't declined, but Trump, as all politicians do, promised that he would instantly fix everything. And many voters remembered how good the economy was in 2019, and perhaps thought they would be returned to that. So the Republicans' core problem is that the economy has continued to trundle along much as it was before, and they were voting to alter that. So I'll make it unanimous at very bad. Obviously, Republicans are going to lose the House. That's been clear since the beginning. What keeps it from being apocalyptic? Noah mentioned the generic ballot might be also be a reflection of just the democratic numbers still being in the in the toilet the image of the democratic party is very bad but what i think keeps it really from being very bad is prospects of losing the senate have increased but it's still easy to get democrats to 49 i assume susan collins is a survivor but i assume she's going down and in maine this time around. Republicans will definitely lose North Carolina. I don't think they're going to pick off any of the potentially vulnerable Democratic incumbents. But then to get to 51, Democrats really have to win a couple red states. And it's possible on a huge Democratic night, but still, I think it's less likely than more likely. But we shall see. It's certainly not trending in a Great direction. With that, let's go to our first sponsor of this episode, Made In. If you're considering the pros and cons of different cookware brands, you should know that Made In has more of the pros. Pros like Tom Clicio, Brooke Williamson, and many other professional chefs who all trust their cooking to Made In cookware. The fact is, Made In has a longstanding relationship with professional chefs. The company evolved from a 100-year-old kitchen supply business and works with multi-generational craftsmen to make each piece. they make exactly what demanding chefs are looking for, including a wide selection of curated products from carbon steel to stainless clad, plus plateware, glassware, and more. But perhaps the biggest pro is that Made In is sold online and delivered to your door. 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So we had a bit of a segue, Noah, from Jim Garrity, who mentioned the University of Michigan in the prior segment, the University of Michigan poll. We had a big doing regarding the University of Michigan in Michigan over the weekend, Democratic Convention. They have a weird way of selecting Board of Regents. I hadn't heard of this before, but they do it in Michigan. Maybe they do it other places. But a couple seats in the Board of Regents are elected, and there are two incumbent Democrats in these seats, both of whom supported punishing, out of control pro-Hamas demonstrators. And there's this guy named Amir Maklid, who's a lawyer in Dearborn, Michigan, represented pro bono with some of the students. He was running for a board of regents seat, and he defeated the Jewish guy who had been subjected to anti-Semitic vandalism at his office, at his home, and his wife's SUV. These pro-Hamas agitators were very thorough in their vandalism against this guy Jordan. His name is Jordan something. And Amir Makhlid, we don't know the exact count, but everything suggests he just wiped them out. And Makhlid had social media posts praising Hezbollah figures after they were taken out by Israel, praising Soleimani, and showing just how bad he is, retweeting Candace So and saying that the Israelis are demons who lie, cheat, murder, blackmail, all the rest of it, none of that made a difference. It actually did lose him an endorsement, a public sector union endorsement. But otherwise he won. This convention was over the moon for him. And there are Jewish Democrats who reported getting harassed at this convention. What do you make of it? Well, we're just talking about Republican prospects in the Senate. and the degree to which radical Islam has become a wedge issue in Michigan is pretty good for Republicans. If you're Mike Rogers, that's the issue you want to take into the general election with you. It's not just that this guy, Macklid, was pretty obviously pro-Hezbollah in his tweets. He was talking about these people like he was a Hezbollah operative himself. He talked about Hassan Nasrallah security chief Abu Khalil who was neutralized he was quote martyred in an Israeli strike on Tehran may his ascension hot may his ascension rise high and advocating that the Iranian military show no laxity in sacred war against the enemy I mean this stuff is roughly translated from Farsi and it demonstrates the degree to which the democratic party in Michigan has succumbed to this temptation to view Israel as the enemy and by proxy the United States as its ally is an enemy of civilization um Elise Slotkin has been drawn into this by virtue of the Democratic candidate for Michigan Senate by virtue of Abel Abu el-Sayed as another Michigan Senate candidate and his apprehension over celebrating the death of Iranian leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei at the outset of this war. You know, we talked about this previously. He was like, there are a lot of people in Dearborn who are sad today over the death of an avowed American enemy with American blood on his hands. So he was just going to like be very cautious about it. Also, the influence of the left-wing podcaster and Maoist Hassan Piker, who campaigned alongside El Saeed. They, you know, they set out Mallory McMurrow, Democratic candidate, and Elise Slotkin, Democratic, Democratic Senator, and Haley Stevens, a representative who's also seeking this endorsement. They all came out against Hassan Piker in order to hang El Saeed's poor judgment around his neck. Didn't work. It seems like El Saeed has enjoyed a bit of a bump in the polls since he's getting all this attention. Yeah, from what I've seen. It's a pretty close race. It's a very close three-way race. But I don't know where that's going to work out. This is all pretty terrifying from the perspective of those who think Israel is a good American ally, a valuable American ally, and who are deeply apprehensive about anti-Semitic statements that seem to be on the rise. But the polling is clarifying here. We had two recent polls about American sentiments on Israel, one conducted by NBC News, another by Echelon Insights, which is Patrick Ruffini and Kristen Soltis Anderson's firm. And they find that Israel is not as popular nearly as it was, although Echelon found that it's got a net six plus favorability score, which is very different from what Pew Research Center, for example, has found recently or other pollsters have found. nevertheless they identify this as as a partisan situation which makes a lot of sense that it's a thermostatic reaction quote the results indicate president trump's embrace of the jewish state has caused democrats to take an instinctively more negative view a continuation of how politics has generally operated in the trump era and this kind of dovetails with what nbc news found if you're disinclined to believe a gop indicating gop leading pollster they found that if you ask voters if they sympathize with israelis or palestinians it's a 50 50 split on the question with democrats you know more or less opposed two-thirds of democrats opposed to israel and republicans two-thirds pro but gen zers are really driving this thing and gen zers into lean more democratic in part because just about every woman who's in the gen z cohort is radically left-wing now unbelievably left-wing more left-wing than you've ever seen a left-winger and it has become a part of their partisan association with left-wing causes and democratic causes that anathematizing Israel is a big feature of that. And why is that comforting to me? In part because thermostatic reactions observe the laws of political physics. And when Israel is no longer a dominating feature of our politics, and it will be one day when this war ends, then you can anticipate that something like a restoration of the status quo ante, not 100% by any means, but certainly not with the vehemence and intensity that we see younger generations and left-leaning voters litigate this issue. I can see that falling off, but it's never going to return to the way it was. There's an element within the Democratic Party that is deeply hostile to the American project abroad, the preservation of American hegemony and actions in its own defense, particularly when it comes to this conflict and in the Middle East. I don't think that's going to change in the pacific i don't think that changes in europe where we saw a lot of tankies who are very happy with the russian project there um this is a this is a long-lasting ideological conflict in this country between those who believe the united states is legitimate and desirably good force on the world stage that we should want to perpetuate and those who don't and those who want to see it retreat from behind its own shores because it's it's a morally compromised country with suspect objectives abroad. And this is just another feature of a very old battle that is never won or lost. So, Charlie, it's very notable. We've had a lot of right-wing influencers who are very anti-Israel, but it hasn't seemed to have much effect on Republican officeholders, the people who are Republican powers to be at the moment, in part because Donald Trump is just so strongly pro-Israel, as Noah alluded to there. But the Democrats, this has moved candidates. We've seen some Israel haters win. We saw one in a New Jersey special House election to replace Mikey Sherrill late last week. This character in the Michigan Senate race may well win that race. and we had a Bernie Sanders-sponsored resolution to cut off arms sales to Israel that had a lot of support among sitting incumbent Democratic senators just the other day. Incidentally, if El-Sayed does win that primary in Michigan, I think that would be one to watch. You ran through the Senate races from the other side. That is what Republicans have to keep. That would be the one race where I think there would be a possibility Republicans could pick it up, because the candidate they're running, I think, came pretty close last time, and is really a pretty generic Republican. I would wonder about that one. I agree with a lot of what Noah said, but I'm less sanguine about a return to the status quo ante. And in fact, I think that the thermostatic reaction is as interesting on the Republican side. I think that one of the reasons that Republicans have stayed closer to Israel is Trump, but it's also because they don't like the sort of people who don't like Israel. that seems flimsy to me I think that on the left the anti-Israel sentiment is less to do with Trump and more to do with the radical chic ideology that is now dominating the institutional Democratic Party and the progressive movement. This has always been there in the modern era. But in recent years, as we've seen developments such as the 1619 Project and the embrace of critical race theory and a generalized obsession with identity that I loathe, And it was inevitable that you would see that applied to the Middle East. And if you look at Israel stupidly, as I think most of those ideologies do, it's strong, which is bad. it's white at least in the hierarchy of racial types it's backed by the united states which is bad the temptation's just too much if you are of that view then you add in and i don't buy this argument i should say but from the perspective of those who propose it, that it is a settler colonial state. You start accusing it of genocide. And I find it very difficult to see the consequent attitudes changing unless all that stuff goes too. So to me, the question of whether the Democratic Party will reverse course on Israel is inextricable from the question of whether the Democratic Party will reverse course on identity politics and obsession with immutable characteristics, because I think that one has led to the other. The secondary part of this that is far more alarming to me is anti-Semitism. which is distinct from this question. I think sometimes people are a little bit too clever by half when they draw the distinction, but there is a difference between being critical of Israel as a nation, we can be critical of any nation and its actions, and anti-Semitism. There's a lot of crossover between those two things, but they aren't the same thing. and Israel is full of Jews. And if you have come to believe that the Jews are a problem, a whole bunch of people who are influential have. Hassan Piker was mentioned. Well, Hassan Piker was just defended by Ezra Klein, which should show you how broad the tolerance is for that sort of thinking, then maybe you're not actually that interested in what Israel does. You're more interested in what Israel is. So I just see this as being downstream of those two problems. One, the slicing and dicing of everything in the world into these stupid progressive hierarchies, and anti-Semitism. And I would say, for the record, that the second category is one that exists on the right as well. It's not, of course, that everyone who criticizes Israel is an anti-Semite. some of the current criticism of Israel on the right is inextricable from anti-war sentiment the faction that is vocal about this thought that Trump would end all wars and now he's engaged in one and because they don't want to criticize Trump they've decided he must have been tricked into it and the person who's easiest to blame for tricking him into it is Benjamin Netanyahu but there is also some antisemitism on the right and that makes Israel as attractive too so I don't see much actual analysis of foreign policy in this I think that this is a playing out of ideological presuppositions and because I don think those are going to change anytime soon I don think that the disdain for Israel is either Yeah Jim So another way to state what Charlie said there is that if something's happening on campus and becomes a cause among the left on college campuses, eventually that whatever that tendency is, is going to take over the Democratic Party. Now, there's some things that don't stick, like Latinx was so exotic and I had a touch. That didn't work, although there was an attempt to make it work. But if you look at that Echelon Insights poll that Noah mentioned and look at Democrats under 50, don't quote me on the numbers here, but this is the basic picture. Like 43 percent have an unfavorable view of China. 54 percent have an unfavorable view of Iran. And like 62 percent have an unfavorable view of Israel. It's astonishing. Yeah. Back during the previous administration, we had this odd situation in which the traditional dovish party, the Democrats, were more vocally supportive of Ukraine and its resistance to the full-scale Russian invasion. and that the traditionally hawkish party, the Republicans, while there was a mix of views, definitely had this loud, maybe it's a minority, but it was a outspoken, the Tucker Carlson's, the Douglas McGregor's, the folks like, why are we helping Ukraine? And J.D. Vance saying, I don't care what happens about Russia and Ukraine, stuff like that. I always felt like the Democratic support for Ukraine was like a mile wide and an inch deep, that it was sort of a check the box perspective, that this was not something Democrats really felt in their bones and that they were much more, they were angrier, they were not angry at Trump for associating with Putin. They were angry at Putin for associating with Trump, who they considered to be the real root of all evil in this world. Well, here we are, and I don't hear Democrats talking about Ukraine that much. They still probably have the same beliefs, but Harris in like her first 10 or 11 speeches as a Democratic candidate didn't mention that issue at all. You also don't hear Democrats, If you asked them, they'd probably say, oh, yeah, we're opposed to China or we're worried about Chinese aggression or an invasion of Taiwan or something like that. But again, it's not something that seems to get their blood pumping. It's not something that they seem particularly focused on. You could probably find one or two exceptions on Capitol Hill, but it's not front and center in their thinking. Israel is front and center in their thinking. And Israel has become a partisan issue now. Even if you look at traditionally pro-Israel, and I'm going to point out, Jewish potential presidential candidates on the Democratic side, Rahm Emanuel and Josh Shapiro, they go out of their way to emphasize how much they oppose Bibi Netanyahu and how opposed they are to various policies and how they want to stop certain U.S. arms sales or assistance to Israel. That's, you know, like there really isn't a market for being pro-Israel on the Democratic side anymore. Now, what I find just mind-boggling about this is that all of this is ultimately the downstream effects of the October 7th attacks. That, you know, October 7th happened, and I think if you asked Democrats, was that bad, they would say yes. Hassan Piker would say no. And most Democrats would then say, but the way Israel responded was worse. That it was, like, they basically, Israel hit back too hard. There were too many Palestinian casualties. So what they choose to talk about, what they choose to emphasize, what they choose to focus on, by the facts of it, Democrats are much, much more upset about Bibi Netanyahu and the actions of the Israeli defense forces than they are about Hamas, than they are about Hezbollah, or that they are about Iran. um gene kirkpatrick you know had these folks pegged when she said they always blame america first in the end these people are there's very few um malevolent anti-american forces around the world that really get democrats that you know upset because they're not used to taking their own side in a fight they're not comfortable doing that because they associate it with jingoism and militarism and nationalism and, you know, warmongering and, you know, George C. Scott. They'd much rather live in a, you know, the, you know, kumbaya world. And that's just not the way the world works. Next question, you, Noah Rothman. Your guess, if a Democrat wins the White House in 2028, a lot of ifs involved, hypotheticals involved in this question. But your guess is that Democratic president will treat Israel more like apartheid era South Africa or more like a longtime ally that might be irksome to us at times. It very much depends on what the circumstances are in 2028. Like I agree with everything that Jim and Charlie just said. There's just the nature of radical chic is that it's tied to fashion and fashion changes dramatically. Will Benjamin Netanyahu be in charge? in israel in 2028 i don't know donald trump will be on the way out to what degree is his legacy or something that overhangs democratic politics or have they moved on has his his political stature attenuated to such a degree that it's no longer dominating the prefrontal cortex of every democrat in the country i don't know i have no idea um my inclination is something in the middle not necessarily anathematizing the state and its government but also not treating it as though it's America's closest ally as Donald Trump has treated it over the course of this war so something much more ambiguous but certainly not a full embrace and I don't think the American president of whatever party can afford to say to our most capable ally in this most critical part of the planet earth we don't need you anymore Charlie? Oh, I think it will be treated like an irksome ally. I think for a couple of reasons. First, it's just not clean enough. There was a direct comparison between apartheid era South Africa and the Jim Crow South that I think made it particularly egregious. Second, there are a good number of Jewish voters in this country, and most of them still vote for Democrats. And I think that to tell them that Israel is equivalent to apartheid would be a little too much. So I think it will be Erxam ally. And then the South Africa comparison will sort of pop out occasionally in some quarters of the party. But I don't think that would become institutionally normal. Jim Yerdy. I think it's going to be probably comparable to the Biden administration and Saudi Arabia. So I don't know whether you want to score that as irksome ally. It won't be as bad as apartheid era South Africa. But you may recall that in one of their debates of the 2020 cycle, Biden was like, I'm going to turn Saudi Arabia into the pariahs that they are. And there definitely was a whole lot of rhetorical criticism of Saudi Arabia. there was initial cut of military aid to Saudi Arabia that they were using to fight in Yemen because like, hey, when were the Houthis going to become a problem for the United States, right? So like, there'll probably be some symbolic moves. There'll probably be some moves that'll be consequential. But by the end of the Biden administration, they had kind of realized, oh, you know, the US and Saudi Arabia have too many shared interests that we can totally turn these guys into pariahs. So I think year one of a democratic administration will be full of anti-Israel rhetoric and some symbolic moves, and it'll probably soften over the course of the four years. I like that comparison a lot. I think that's completely apt, Jim. Congratulations. One of the best comparisons you've ever made on this podcast. Definitely. There'll be a lot of brave talk about cutting them off and how much we're going to punish them. And then just the gravitational pull of the importance of this alliance will keep them from going all the way. So I'm with you, Jim. With that, let's hear a message from our favorite watch company, Charlie Cook. Well, the favorite watch company is Vare, and we all love it here at the editors. We wear our Vare watches. And Vare has been asking a question now for about 10 years, that question, whether it is still actually possible to make things in America. Vare was founded in Los Angeles back in 2016 with a simple but very ambitious mission to revive the American watch industry. And if you cut to today, you'll see that Vare is proud to be the largest independent watch assembler in the United States. Building watches in California, Arizona, Rhode Island, and Alabama, as well as manufacturing leather straps in Illinois and here in sunny Florida. They are truly amazing watches. I wear mine all the time. During football season, it's my lucky watch. but outside of football season, its waterproof warranty is particularly useful here where it is swimming season most of the time. Vare makes some of the most durable, well-built watches on the market. They use top-grade luxury materials. As I say, they come with a waterproof warranty, and they've earned over 10,000 five-star reviews. What's more, Vare's classic analog approach to timekeeping is not only sophisticated and refined, it's also a welcome departure for people who are tired of getting pinged on their smartwatch all day so if you want to support american craftsmanship but know in a watch that's both rugged and refined check out there you can find them at ver watches.com that's v-a-e-r watches.com so charlie let's stick with you clarence thomas gave a great speech at the university of texas at austin late last week on the declaration of Independence must rank up there with some of the top American orations on the Declaration. I'm not sure it surpasses Calvin Coolidge's historic speech on the Declaration of Independence, but it was quite good and quite moving because there's just such power to Thomas's personal story, which really brings home the truth that he was elucidating in that speech. Yes, and of course his speech included at length quotations from Calvin Coolidge's. So in some sense it built on it. It certainly acknowledged it. I had a couple of takeaways. The first one was the one you adibrated. it is easy to forget, especially for someone like me, who was born in the 1980s in a foreign country, that the claims that are made in the Declaration were not always substantiated, and that this is not an abstraction, but had effects on real people, one of whom was Clarice Thomas. he said I don't know how many times during the speech he returned to it eight, nine, ten times that he had lived under segregation that he had lived during Jim Crow that he hadn't just read about it in a book as I have that it wasn't something that bothered him in theory but it was his childhood. And his grandfather who raised him lived most of his life in that condition. And his great-great-grandfather was a slave. And for Thomas to adore the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution and the American ideal as he does is therefore all the more moving and all the more remarkable and all the more interesting because it's not a rhetorical trick he didn't keep going back to it so that some student could stand up and say oh well you just think no that was his life and he talked very bluntly about being denied the promises. Now, I think what is interesting about Clarence Thomas, and you see this in his jurisprudence as well, and in fact it was a big part of his dissent in Obergefell, is that he bucks the progressive trend of believing that it is important for the government to endorse you. You hear this a great deal now, that American citizens can't or shouldn't be happy unless the government likes them or approves of their conduct. Thomas doesn't believe this. Thomas does think that the Declaration should be upheld, and he does think that the 14th Amendment needs to be respected. But he said over and over again that no one where he grew up believed that their intrinsic worth as human beings in the eyes of God, that's his phrase, was contingent upon the government doing so. In other words, the government may refuse to recognize that African Americans are equal, but that doesn't make them unequal. And that was a big part of his speech that may have been missed by some who aren't familiar with his judicial opinions, but that is important nevertheless. The second thing he said, and I knew when he said it, he's going to be criticized by those who had missed the context. the second thing he said was that progressivism is a threat to the constitution i saw abc news turned this into progressives are a threat to the constitution or rather that clarence thomas had launched a broadside against progressive and the implication there was that thomas had made a speech saying democrats are bad but that's not what he said What he said is that the United States has a clear history, and it is built atop a pair of documents that are prescriptive. The Declaration of Independence makes certain claims, and there he talked about Coolidge, and the Constitution sets in motion certain rules, and that historical progressivism, and he traced this back to Woodrow Wilson and his friends, opposes them. Now, that is not some interpretation. It's not some esoteric academic theory. That is true. If you read the speech, I don't know if the whole thing is available, but having been in the room when it was delivered, I can attest this. He quoted at length Woodrow Wilson explaining why he thought the Constitution was outmoded. And it wasn't just Wilson. The progressive movement presumed that the Constitution was unfit for modern times. We have not become less modern. And Thomas's argument is, first, that that is incorrect, and I agree with him on it. But second, that that ideological framework cannot exist at the same time as the Declaration and the Constitution, because it is openly and intrinsically opposed to it. And I think that was the most important thing that he said, only one of these is going to survive. And he wasn't sure, I think, which one. And he ended with an exhortation to be brave, to stand for what you believe and to defend our system as it exists, which fundamentally requires us to reject Woodrow Wilson and his ideas and his claims and to cherish what we have at 250 years so i thought it was fantastic and the last thing i'll say is it would have been a great speech irrespective but clarence thomas has the most beautiful voice i listened to his audio book a couple of years ago and i was repainting my Garridge. And I just love listening to him talk. He could read anything. And I'd have sat there content. So Jim Garrity, Clarence Thomas, and Thomas Sowell both exemplify what I consider the FU attitude towards segregation and racial discrimination, which is if you hate me, and you think I'm inferior, that's on you. You're completely wrong. You're not going to get me down. and you're the moron. And there's a very moving passage in this speech where Thomas basically said, no matter how people were trying to suppress our family or had discriminated against us, we knew it wasn't true. And it was written right there in the Declaration of Independence. We're made in the image of God. And that was our defense against the attack of the segregationist, psychological, political, material, all the rest of it, and gave us the truth that we could try to move our society toward. Yeah, look, you know, Clarence Thomas makes these kind of speeches, these kinds of remarks, knowing he's going to be called an Uncle Tom by every snot-nosed punk on MSNBC, pardon me, MSNOW, and throughout the entire left and that African-American Democrats will call them every name in the book. You know, it's totally okay to use racially demeaning language if you're from the left to criticize a conservative. At that point, it's totally okay. We'll make one observation that I feel like we hear from Supreme Court justices a lot more often than we used to. And I don't entirely mind this, but it was interesting. I would say even 15 years ago, you would only hear from a Supreme Court justice maybe giving a commencement address at a law school, maybe once in a while some sort of speech, but by and large, they let their opinions do the talking for them. And the interesting thing is I can remember there was a time when Clarence Thomas generally wouldn't speak very much during oral arguments and he kind of let the back and forth go and other justices spoke a great deal more. And Clarence Thomas got a lot of grief for that I remember some other snot punk calling him a lump on a log or something like that So now Clarence Thomas speaks out more He's making his viewpoint very, very clear. He's making his perspective, his philosophy very, very clear. And I think it's a very compelling, clear, and direct one that the founding of this country got a whole lot of things right and that there are a whole bunch of people running around who are convinced that the cause... I've run into people who genuinely believe they have nothing to learn from George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, or any of the founding fathers because they didn't have access to smartphones. There are an enormous amount of people who are utterly convinced they are smarter than anybody who lived before them simply because they have access to modern technology. I have news for you. Having a smartphone does not make you smart. If only it works that way. And so I'm, you know, there's a part of me that wishes we could go back to those good old days of the Supreme Court. I think it had a certain, I don't want to say majesty isn't the right word, a certain mystique to it. The fact that they, you know, spoke through their decisions, they spoke through their opinions and generally were not seen as full spectrum political figures giving speeches and, you know, things like that. I think that ship has sailed, unfortunately. And so if you're going to see the, you know, Justice Ketanji Brown and other folks making these kinds of speeches and making these kind of comments, Sonia Sotomayor, who thankfully apologized for her snide comment about Brett Kavanaugh, then you might as well have the right of center or strict constructionist judges, justices going out and giving speeches and giving their perspective to the public as well. So no, a real emphasis in this speech was not just the preamble of the declaration, which we all know so much about, and honor. It was the end of the declaration where these men who signed it were pledging their sacred honor. And Thomas really emphasized that and how they potentially put their lives at risk by arguably, as he put it, committing an act of treason against the British crown. And then he carried that forward saying, we all need to be similarly devoted to these truths. He talked about when he was in school, they'd go out every morning with the nuns and they'd see the flag raised and pledge allegiance to the flag and then march back into of the classroom and he suggested that's being lost and we have too many people in politics that don't have the requisite courage to defend our system and its truths he's 100 right and this country is so in such desperate need of affirmations of that the american experiment is valuable is vital is a contribution to the sum of human uh prosperity and flourishing this strikes me as one of those moments where the left is protesting too much. I mean, they've gotten a ton of mileage. This is almost a week later, and they've gotten a ton of mileage out of this speech. It's not just ABC News, as Charlie identified. You know, you go to the left-wing press, and it's hysterical. Clarence Thomas can't get American history right, the new republic. Scotus Clarence Thomas goes on unhinged rant, the Daily Beast. Slate. Clarence Thomas gives a speech blaming progressivism for Hitler, it was mostly sad. An alternate, not one, not two, but three headlines. The worst Supreme Justice ever. Thomas's historically illiterate speech gets history wildly wrong. And Clarence Thomas is either delusional or a Republican hack. I don't quite see what's controversial about these remarks if you understand at all Thomas's judicial philosophy. Originalism is the rejection of William Brennan-style living constitutionalism, which has its roots in progressive thought from the turn of the 19th century, turn of the 20th century. It really emphasizes progressive thought, especially when it comes to jurisprudence, emphasizes the cult of expertise to which the Soviets and their fellow travelers were very attracted. It took a dim view of voters and their verdicts. It takes an even dimmer view of the old and the durable. That durability is an obstacle to that which needs to be broken down in favor of the new and the fashionable and the untried because the experts are all on board. It is attracted to the notion that this generation knows a little something more than the generations that came before them, that their perceived prejudices, their biases, their vantage point from history just limits them in ways that we are not constrained by, and we shouldn't observe constraints as a result. It's a very hubristic philosophy, and it's one that conservatives generally object to and don't espouse. I don't find that to be a controversial proposition, but the extent to which progressives reacted to this as though it was just so out of bounds, so beyond the pale, how dare somebody attack your core philosophy like this? Their identities are bound up in their political affiliations, which is part of the problem, isn't it? If you can't divorce yourself and your very identity from your political inclinations, you probably don't have the fullest conception of what life is like. Far too many of us now define ourselves in relation to how we vote every year, every two years, every four years. And that's a really bad way to establish identity for yourself. It's not durable enough and it's not fulfilling enough. And it's the sort of thing that progressives just have a blind side to. But they have a blind side to this too. They just don't see the originalist, the basic originalist premise as being something legitimate. And so they're attacking it as though it's just this mental gesture to which Clarence Thomas alone is inclined. And it's not. This is a broad philosophy that they don't understand and seem to not want to understand. So exit question to you first, Jim Garrity, a non-Secret War exit question, but a doozy. Both the Tennessee Titans and the Washington Commanders, NFL teams with pedestrian uniforms are changing their uniforms. They've unveiled new uniforms that I think are fantastic. The Titans harken back to the Houston Oilers. The Commanders harken back to the early Washington Redskins uniform, not the Redskins face that we're all familiar with, but the arrow that was an earlier iteration of the Redskins helmet. Both look fantastic in my view. Question to you, Jim Garrity. What are the top 10 sports uniforms of all time, including any sports in any era? Okay, first of all, you want 10? Because before we started taping, you said think of five. I said five, yeah. Okay, so you'll be pleased. I'm going to go in pretty much descending order. Number one, you'd be very proud, Rich. Yankees pinstripes. Of course, yeah. Classic, iconic, you know, perfect. The irony is that I feel like Yankees road uniforms are very gray and blah and nondescript. And I think that's kind of a strict – it's kind of – They're still classic. They're still iconic. All right. I'm going to disagree with that. Number two, I'm going to go with the LA Lakers. I think you'd ordinarily say that, like, yellow and purple are kind of garish and don't work well together. But, you know, obviously the tradition of winning have made something that I think when you think of basketball, there's a good chance you think of that. Yeah, it's funny. Uniforms change when the team's winning. Suddenly the uniforms look better. Similarly, I remember watching an ESPN special on college football. They pointed out Oregon, by having no look, has made that their look. And the fact that Oregon pretty much has different uniforms for every game. I got to admit, I just kind of admire the creativity. Obviously, it helps when Nike is just down the road. And I think there's the sheer, and also again, orange and yellow, yellow and green, you might think of as being a weird combination, but they make it work for them. I like about 80% of their uniform variations. I'm going to go, unsurprisingly, number four, I'm going to go tie between the classic 1960s New York Jets uniforms that they brought back and the 1980s uniforms that I grew up with. One was kind of a Kelly green, the other's Hunter green. My number five, I'm just going to say, I think almost every NFL team's uniform from the 1980s was better then than it is now. I love the orange crush of the Denver Broncos. I love it when the Tampa Bay Buccaneers roll out the creamsicle, light orange ones. Oh, yeah, that's great. And by the way, what makes the Tennessee Titans new uniforms look so good is it looks so much like the Houston Oilers. So I feel like somewhere in the 90s, everybody got into this. We're going with black uniforms. We're going with, no offense, Charlie, the teal or aqua or something. And everything just started looking the same. whereas I think in the 80s the NFL looked like a coloring book and it was awesome you always knew exactly what every team was great Jim do you have any other thoughts on uniforms that's that's pretty it's been a lot of time yeah clearly we're gonna we're gonna let Noah recuse himself on this one well I know that everyone would expect me to say this but I do think the Yankees pinstripes probably the greatest uniform in all sports classic i love the gators colors the question i always have is why is it that when the gators wear those colors in florida it looks tropical but when the mets wear them it's kind of the same it doesn't context makes a difference i really like the detroit tigers uniform i like their logo to me it looks almost as if they're a team playing in the 20s i like alabama football i think that crimson is just great you instantly know who's playing when you turn on a game on saturday and then in soccer and it really truly as a former Englishman pains me to say this, but Argentina's soccer uniform is beautiful with the stripes white and pale blue. The English aren't particularly fond of the Argentinians because of the Falklands War, but when you add in our various soccer rivalries over the years, it gets worse. So I'm probably going to be disowned if any of my family listens to this podcast, but that is a great uniform too. So I'm going to put aside the Yankees and the Oilers, put aside the teams in which I have a rooting interest or had a rooting interest. I can say Team USA Hockey, 1980, a simple jersey, a little crude, you know, very kind of blocky, but very patriotic and just worked and lent an extra magic, of course, by what happened in 1980. Then I'm going to say kind of an out-of-the-way choice. I love the Edmonton Oilers uniforms. I think the orange and blue actually work well. I love their logo, and it's a jersey associated with two of the best scorers in NHL history, Wayne Gretzky. You just love oil, Rich. Yeah. He's attracted to Oilers. And Connor McDavid. Then baseball, I'll pick two. The Dodgers and Cardinals, both classic, beautiful, elegant, exactly what baseball uniforms should be. And then the fifth, it's a difficult choice, tempted by the crimson tie. There's a lot to be said for the simplicity of some college uniforms. I also love the Longhorns, but I'm going to go with the Dallas Cowboys. Very simple, strong, very Texas, and very American. With that, let's hear from our final sponsor this episode, Red Flags Press. Red Flags Press is a new educational nonprofit that's created a ton of unique anti-socialist content. They've just released 17 free papers. And also Socialism Says, a small illustrated book that visually summarizes 10 of their detailed articles. All this new content is founded on hundreds of damning quotes from celebrated socialists. It's the flaws of socialism straight from the horse's mouth. Even if you know a good deal about socialism, Red Flag's press materials will surprise you with new facts. New facts that not only show socialism is exceedingly dangerous, but also that is based on misleading marketing and absurd premises. Please check out Red Flags Press and their new anti-socialist materials at redflagspress.com. Flags is plural, has an S at the end there, redflagspress.org. Please check it out. With that, let's hit a few other things before we go. Jim Garrity, you're just in Miami. Yes, Rich, my lighter item for the week is Charlie, as well as Vahakon and all the good folks at the National Review Institute we got to see last week in Miami. First did a Burke to Buckley program. The first time I'd led one of those discussions, really bright, smart folks. We were discussing kind of philosophy and foreign policy and national security. And then on Friday morning, or I guess early afternoon, I got to talk to former Florida Governor Jeb Bush, who is, first of all, in fantastic shape for a guy in his early 70s. And, you know, as sharp as ever, talking about the importance of limited government. Out of nowhere, Jeb Bush starts describing Godzilla memes. seen on the internet. So just a great time and great to see everybody down there. And it's always nice when we get together with National Review folk in the flesh. Noah Rothman, you're heading out. Yeah, very little happening in my world by design. I'm going away for a week beginning tomorrow, back on Friday, May 1st. So yeah, just me and my wife and actually leaving the children behind on this one with my in-laws. Well, they have the capacity to do that. My parents are a little bit beyond dealing with the two young children for that long. Hers are not, fortunately. So we take maximum advantage of that and they house it for us. And so everybody gets a little something out of this. But we get the most of it by going away. So Charlie, you buried the lead when we're talking about Clarence Thomas. You were in the room. I was. I was in the room. I took a trip to Austin, did an event at the University of Texas's law school. And while I was there, I got to attend that Clarence Thomas speech, which was absolutely fantastic. It was packed. It was so packed that the event had an overflow area upstairs. It was very, very popular and very well received. So despite the reviews that Noah read, people of all stripes seem to enjoy it immensely. So I read just a little while ago a new book called How Progress Ends Technology, Innovation, and the Fate of Nations by a guy I hadn't heard of before, Carl Benedict Fry, which is excellent and very illuminating on the sources of national wealth. With that, it's time for our editor's picks. Jim Garrity, what's your pick? Okay. So I am not the only person who writes the Jolt newsletter. Judson Bergen writes the weekend edition of the Jolt. and Judson attracted a lot more attention and some criticism this past weekend when he wrote that Trump is enjoying the Phineas and Ferb presidency. Now he points this out, if you don't have kids and you haven't had kids watching, you know, cartoons, you probably aren't familiar with it. But the gist is that, you know, these kids on summer vacation have these wacky adventures and by the end of every episode, nothing less of it, right? They just move on to the next episode. It used to joke in Star Trek that at the end of every episode, there was a galactic reset button. Unless it was a two-parter, what happened in one episode would not continue to the next one. And Judson walks through and talks about like, remember Venezuela and capturing Maduro, right? Threatening to invade Greenland, everything up in Minnesota, you know, like everything's seen. And he was fighting with the Pope last weekend. Within a week, everything seems to change very quickly. and it does not feel like there's a lasting consequence of one to the other. Let's maybe want to look at the president's approval rating, which is slowly sinking. So like I thought it was a great metaphor. Everybody's like, yeah, it's a kid's show. It's kind of with those legacy of William F. Buckley's. Look, if you watch the show, you get it. You could, whatever you want to say, you call it an etch-a-sketch and the idea that you shake it enough, things are back to a blank slate again. That's the phenomenon Judson was writing about. It was a very sharp observation and I liked a lot. So good job, Judson. Noah, what's your pick? so britney bernstein does a fantastic feature for us it's called forgotten fact checks and her latest is are the 11 dead or missing u.s scientists really connected so this one has captured the minds of conspiracists some of whom are pretty prominent members of congress individuals who have the ear of the president but she noted at least one problem with the notion that there is a vast plot to kill off the u.s nuclear science and space research community quote several of the 11 scientists actually have no ties to nuclear space research or to each other. Some of the accusations when you dive into them are science fictional. And a lot of this is news to me. I haven't paid too much close attention to it, but that's how unfounded theories like this embed themselves in the culture when no one is looking too closely at them, except for those who are favorable to the capital C version of the conspiracy theories. So very good work by Brittany. Check it out. Yeah, you just see the headlines and you think it might be true. Charlie? Phineas and Ferb, by the way, is an absolutely fantastic show. It's my kid's favorite TV show. And I've, by osmosis, watched a lot of episodes. It's absolutely hilarious for grownups as well. So if you have kids and you need a new show, Phineas and Ferb is a good one. But I'm going to pick a piece in the magazine by Audrey Falberg, who sadly has left us. I think this is her swan song piece. It's called, Does the Filibuster Have a Future? I am, as everyone knows, a huge defender of the filibuster. I am co-president of the Filibuster Appreciation Society. There are three of us. But this is a great piece that goes through the threats to the filibuster from the left and from the right as well. And it's typical of Audrey in that it is sober-minded and exhaustive, and we shall miss her. So my pick is by a guy named Roy Eppen on how the scientific consensus supposed that gender affirming care so-called increases, enhances mental health outcomes for people undergoing it is completely false. So that's it for us. You've been listening to a National U podcast. Any rebroadcast, retransmission, or account of this game without the express written permission of National U magazine is strictly prohibited. This podcast has been produced by the incomparable aforementioned Sarah Schutte, who makes it sound better than we deserve. Thank you, Charlie. Thank you, Noah. Thank you, Jim. Thanks to Made in Ver and Red Flags Press. And thanks especially to all of you for listening. We're the editors. We'll see you next time. Music