Bibi is Back
Amir Tibon of Haaretz joins to explain how Netanyahu won again and what his new coalition means for Israel, for US/Israel relations, and possibly, for Ukraine. Also, the shape of American politics after Georgia’s runoff.
Highlights/Lowlights:
Mona’s
Damon’s
https://damonlinker.substack.com/p/germany-foils-a-far-right-coup-plot
Amir’s:
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/04/us/politics/trump-constitution-republicans.html
Linda’s
https://www.persuasion.community/p/the-curriculum-wars-are-based-on
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-63900099
Bill’s
https://globalaffairs.org/research/public-opinion-survey/growing-us-divide-how-long-support-ukraine
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Welcome to Bogue to differ, the Bulwark’s weekly roundtable discussion featuring civil conversation across the political spectrum. We range from center left to center right. I’m Mona Charen, syndicated columnist and policy editor at The Bulwark, and I’m joined by our regulars Bill Galston of the Bookings Institute in the Wall Street Journal, Linda Chavez of The Nishkinen Center, and Damon Linker, who writes the Substack newsletter eyes on the right. Our special guest this week is Amir Tibone, who is a correspondent for the Israeli newspaper, Aritz. And who was for a while the Washington Bureau for Haratts.
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So, Amir, thank you so much for joining us today.
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Hi, Mona. It’s a real pleasure. Thank you for inviting me.
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Oh, great. Alright. Well, there is a lot of news from Israel, and I couldn’t think of anyone better to fill us in on what happened and what this means. So Israel has had, what, how many? Like, four or five elections in the past four or five years?
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I mean, it just seems like there’s more than one a year.
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It’s even worse. It’s it’s five in three and a half years. That’s the official count.
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Oh, okay. Alright. So This time though, people are saying, well, maybe this one is a little more stable. So let’s start there. BB Netanyahu is back.
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And does he have a more stable majority than the other governments that have coming on?
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Definitely. After five election rounds, as we discussed, there is finally a decision. And in this election, the interesting thing that happened, it happened now, you know, more than a month ago, But the coalition negotiation stage in Israel takes a little while. So officially, there still isn’t a unit, anyhow, government, but Probably it’s a matter of days. But the interesting thing about the election is that if you look at the raw votes that were cast or what you in America would have called the popular vote.
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It was actually a tie. Mhmm. About forty nine percent of Israelis voted for parties that oppose Netanyahu’s return to power, and forty nine percent voted for parties that support Netanyahu’s return to power And the rest of the votes went to small fringe parties that are not really relevant for the discussion. But because in Israeli politics, which is a parliamentary system, we have a very important component called the electoral threshold. Basically, a party needs to receive three point twenty five percent of the total votes in order to receive any representation in our senate in our parliament, two left wing parties fell beneath that threshold.
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They failed to win enough votes to enter the knesset. And in the course of doing so, they threw to the trash hundreds of thousands of left wing voters, and that tilted the eventual makeup of the Knesset toward the Pro Netanyahu religious right wing block that after five rounds of an impasse managed to win sixty four seats. Which is in Israel politics a rather stable majority. And right now, what most experts expect is that we will see this new Netanyahu, very right wing, very religious government hold for at least to three years, which in Israeli politics is eternity at this point. Howard
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Bauchner: Yeah. So this threshold requirement I guess you could say it’s sort of an analogue to our electoral college in the sense that it’s kind of anti democratic. Right? Those people who voted for parties that didn’t make a threshold. Their votes don’t count.
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Right?
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It’s true. But on the other hand, Mona, these are the rules of the game, and everybody knew it entering this election especially because it’s the fifth one. And like we said in three and a half years, nobody can claim that they didn’t know the rules. And actually, there was a lot of pressure. Including from my newspaper, from Harritts, which is seen as the voice of a liberal, Israel.
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Yeah. There was a lot of pressure on the party leaders in the center left block in Israel to merge and unite because this is what the other side did and what Netanyahu did so masterfully in this election is that he brought all the smaller elements and parties within his supportive block, including the most far right and the religious extremists and one very small anti a to b t party and all kinds of weird factions and put a lot of pressure on them to unite merge and run together and create new political entities in order to secure every vote and make sure that they all pass the electoral threshold. Whereas on the other side, on the center left, everybody is a unique snowflake. And so, for example, merits and the the labor party, the two oldest Zionist left wing parties in Israel, that really, even the James Webb space telescope would not be able to find any ideological differences between them, they refused to unite because one of them is social democratic, and the other is democratic socialist. And of course, how can that work together?
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And eventually, what happened is the right way secured all the votes, whereas on the center left votes went to the trash, and this is the result that we received.
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Right. Now some people are very worried about this new iteration of Bibi Netanyahu. And I think maybe Damon will speak to this when it’s his turn, but some of these parties that he has allied himself with are pretty nasty. Part of the drama here, it seems to me is that some of the people who have become Netanyahu’s opponents like Naftali Bennet used to be his ally. But Netanyahu seems to have a capacity while he’s brilliant politician and he certainly has his place secure in in the history of Israel as the most elected politician ever, but he also really alienates people.
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People who are close to him even grow to hate him, isn’t that true?
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I think he has a unique place indeed in Israeli history as the person who won most elections. But if he had lost this election, he also would have earned the distinction of being the politician who lost the most elections. And I think that just tells you something about his durability and how many years he’s been around. And it’s true that during those long years, He had twelve years as a prime minister in his previous term, and before that three years in the nineteen nineties, he earned himself a lot of enemies. And most of the people who run against him in this previous election that just happened are people who served with him in previous government see a year lapid, was his finance minister at at one point.
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Nathalie Bennett, who you mentioned worked for him, began his political career as an aid to Nathalie I went later served under him in several governments. A Victor Liberman was his once his political partner and foreign and defense mister, and the list goes on and on. And it’s true that he’s alienated and hurt all of these people and turned them from allies into enemies And yet, he found himself new allies that are more loyal to him, and these are basically the religious forces in Israeli politics. I think the most important thing to know about this new Netanyahu government. This is the first government in Israeli history.
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Where the religious parties have a majority within the governing coalition. If you look back at the history of Israeli politics, the ultra Orthodox parties and we call the religious zionist party, it’s a bit more like modern orthodox used in America if you want to go into a denominational comparisons. But but these parties always had some influence in the government whether the left or the right were in power. Usually, there was some religious party at the table. But they never had a majority within a governing coalition.
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And then if you look at this incoming Netanyahu government, sixty four seats, LIQU has thirty two. The religious parties, all combined together, have thirty two of their own, but within Liqud already today, there are several lawmakers who on issues of religion and state are much more aligned with the religious parties. And so this is going to be a different kind of government than all the previous Netanyahu governments that have served before were you did have some representation for the religious parties and that’s I think totally legitimate. I mean, they are obviously part of the game in Israeli politics and part of the society. But there has never been a government where the secular forces in Israel are a minority.
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This is the first, and it is going to impact and, you know, change the face of the country. Things are going to be different.
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Yeah. Let me ask you one more big question regarding that and then I’ll turn this over to any of my colleagues who want to ask a question or make a comment. And that is, there’s been some speculation that because of this, heavy representation of the religious parties who are, you know, very strict, very adamant about who is a Jew for example, and that this could cause a lot of tension with the American Jewish community, the largest plurality being reform, who under certain rotations of Jewish law wouldn’t even be eligible for the law of return, for example. Their marriages wouldn’t be recognized if they move to Israel, etcetera, etcetera. So those are there are those kinds of religious issues.
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Then there are other political issues where, you know, American Jews are much more secular and liberal than the religious parties. No question this is gonna cause tension in the relationship. But does Netanyahu care? I mean, the biggest supporters of Israel and the ones that he has been carefully cultivating all these years are the religious Christians in America. And does he care if relations with American Jews suffer?
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It’s a great question, Mona. First of all, I think it’s really important for Israel as a country, putting aside Netanyahu for a second, Israel has no substitute in the world to the American Jewish community. And by the way, also American Jews don’t have a different Jewish state than Israel. But obviously, if you look at the world today, there is no country where there is a Jewish community of even one million people outside of Israel except the United States. The largest communities in Europe are in the low hundred of thousands.
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Right? If you look at France or the UK, there is nothing like the American Jewish community, which we assume is around five maybe six million people and is a major force in so many aspects of American life. So the idea that we can just detach ourselves from American Jews as Israelis, I think, is dangerous and delusional. There is really no other Jewish community in the world that is even close to the American Jewish community in terms of its size and importance and we have to take that into consideration. I think that anyhow does understand the risks that come with alienating American Jews And it’s not a coincidence that we saw him, for example, I think it was last week, give a lengthy interview to Barry Weiss on her podcast and do some other media appearances that I think were meant to try to soften the image of this new very extreme government in the eyes of America jews and also the Democratic Party that just had a good midterm election and the Biden administration.
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He does understand the problem here. And I think he realizes that completely basically aligning Israel with the evangelical Christians means that Israel becomes a one party issue in American politics. Evangelical Christians don’t have that much of an influence in the Democratic Party. And so, yeah, you can argue that when republicans are in power, the evangelicals will help promote what is important to Israel. But Israel always tried to enjoy by parties and supporting the United States and to keep good relations with both parties and the American Jews were an important component of the democratic pro Israeli coalition.
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If you give up on that, you basically turn yourself as a country into the foreign policy version of a guns and abortion. And I’m not sure that’s good for Israel, but I think Netanyahu, right now, the biggest change that has happened in my view is that all of the issues of the state and all of the interests of the state are secondary at the moment to his own personal problem, which is the three corruption trials that he’s facing at the Jerusalem District court. And his battle to freeze or cancel or get rid of them in any way And for that, he badly needs the support of the religious parties that are with him in the coalition. And if in return, he needs to give them policies and legislation that will harm the relationship with American Jews, maybe he won’t like it. Maybe he will know deep in his heart that it’s a mistake, but he will do it because he’s in a battle for his own survival at the moment.
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Damon, a couple weeks ago, you made your low light of the week, I think, the rise of it tomar Ben Gebira. I don’t know if you mentioned him, but, you know, these right wing people in Israel who are part of this coalition, did you wanna weigh in on that? Yeah. I do have a question related to that and, yeah,
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whose history and exactly what we can back. So for most of his career, Phoebe’s preference has been to kind of kick the can down the road. To reject proposed changes to the status quo and sort of weight things out. He’s been very divisive politically, but in terms of dealing with other countries and the Palace Stinians or Hezbollah. He’s been cautious and stubborn refusing to make concessions, but also refusing to take decisive actions.
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So in light of that, I wonder really I consider the question of the present moment in Israel is what to the right wing partners in this government really want. Danielle who’s been really generous to them in terms of distribution of portfolios, you know, who gets what ministry and so North to the point that some right wing Israeli press are writing stories about how more Lacutnik regulars don’t know if they’ll even get jobs. So what do you think is gonna happen here? Do the right wing parties just want this prestige and money and to say, hey, we’ve made it. We control arms of the government.
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Or are they actually going to force Netanyahu to take a harder line than he otherwise might, whether it’s about annexation, or the status of Arab Israeli citizens and other issues? So,
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David, that’s I think really the billion dollar question. And I I have to say, how are it? My newspaper has never been much of a Netanyahu fandom area. Probably not his favorite newspaper. But over the years, if you read our national security analyst, some of our top a political writers like Angela Feffer, they have always given Netanyahu credit in the writing for being cautious.
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When it comes to the use of force and to military adventures. And have always highlighted, you know, his kind of preference for the status quo and for caution. And I think that’s that’s true. And my concern about this government is that in the current constellation, we are gonna see a different Netanyahu. First of all, because he himself has changed.
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Some very dramatic things have happened to him in recent years with this indictment and with the experience of losing power and going to the opposition for a year and a half. And this seeing some people already write his political obituaries, and I think he’s coming back right now with more of and messianic mindset of, you know, against all the odds, etcetera. And also, the the government is very different. Right? There is no A Hood Bara, Korea, Irelapied, or CP Livni, or Benny Gantz, or, you know, centrist Israeli politicians that served in previous Netanyahu governments.
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There is no one like that near Netanyahu at the moment. He is basically the most moderate element in his own government. That’s something that has never happened to him before. But regarding the these coalition partners what they want? Will they be bought off with jobs and, you know, accreditations?
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I don’t think that’s the case. There is a book. I don’t think it’s been translated into English, but it was quite popular among the right wing and religious communities in Israel a few years ago. It was published actually by someone who worked with Netanyahu as an adviser for a while. And the headline was, why do you vote right and get left?
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Basically making the argument that over the years, right wing leaders in Israel, including Netanyahu after winning elections with sweeping promises of change, and crushing the Palestinians and ignoring Democratic president in America and changing the nature of the government in Israel and making sure the bureaucracy and the courts don’t interfere. They come into office and they partner with centuries or sometimes even left wing parties. And slowly, they basically decide to keep the status quo. And the argument behind this book, which was again became popular among the right week in Israel, was that this is a problem and that there needs to be changed And I think this government is the biggest test for the religious right wing in Israel. The voters who gave them this majority don’t expect the status quo.
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They really want things to change here. They want these in my opinion, very disturbing plans to weaken the judiciary and to basically take away from the Israeli Supreme Court the ability to conduct judicial review, and they they want to weaken the place of Israel’s basic clothes, right? We don’t have a constitution in this country, but we have several basic clause that play a very important role in protecting and also advancing human and civil rights in Israel. A lot of the things that Israel as a country is so proud to communicate out to the world LGBT rights and progress on women’s rights and equality for minorities. A lot of these things were achieved through interventions of the Israeli Supreme Court over the years with interpretation of the basic laws of Israel.
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And if you take away that you open the door for a different kind of Israel. And this is what the voters of these right wing religious parties expect. The biggest question has to do obviously with liquid because liquid is the biggest party in the in this coalition or even although it has half of the states. And I think many liquid voters are in the same place as the voters of the more religious parties. They want this right wing re religious revolution in Israel.
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But not all of them. There are also liquid voters who I think are disturbed by what they’re seeing right now, for example, with Netanyahu giving a proudly and openly homophobic politician by the name of Adima Oz, control over educational programs in Israel. In the entire Israeli education system or Netanyahu cutting deals with the ultra orthodox parties that will give state funding to ultra orthodox schools that don’t teach kids mathematics, English, and science, basically. Condending them to a life of ignorance and poverty. So if these liquid voters who don’t like the direction of the government will somehow communicate their displeasure, maybe it will make a difference.
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But if that doesn’t happen, I think the religious parties will be the stronger element in this government, and they will drag Netanyahu along with them.
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Okay. Linda Chavez, first of all, just a short comment. I have always considered myself a big baby Netanyahu fan for many, many years. Liked the Likud party and that changed over the last several years and certainly the corruption issue was one of the reasons. But one of the things that I’m concerned about is the declining support for Israel among the progressive Democrats.
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And I think this is in part because many progressive Jews have stopped making Israel a big priority in terms of their policy issues. And so I worry about that. But my question for Amir has to do with what Netanyahu is going to do Vis à vis Ukraine and Putin. He had a very friendly relationship with Putin. I understand the reasons for that.
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I understand understand that what’s going on in Syria, that was a not friendship, but at least a good relationship based on Israel’s need to be secure, vis a vis Syria, but it is I think dangerous. And so I want to ask, do you think that there’s going to be a big shift? Do you think he will in fact support Ukraine, is there any possibility he’ll give Ukraine the iron dome or other defensive weapons that they very desperately need?
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I think that’s another great question. I’ll start by saying something about Netanyahu’s history with Putin, and then I’ll try to address the future, the current policy that Israel is taking regarding Ukraine, which is basically a policy of neutrality. Israel helps Ukraine with humanitarian needs, and we took some Ukrainian injured soldiers to get treatment in Israeli hospitals. And We built a field hospital there, and all of those things are wonderful, and I’m happy that Israel did them. But in essence, our policy is one of neutrality in the war.
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That is not a policy that was born in two thousand twenty two when put in went for Kiev. It’s a policy that Netanyahu started in two thousand and fourteen when Putin went for Crimea and started the proxy war in Eastern Ukraine. And back then Netanyahu took a decision to remain neutral because of the Russian presence in Syria because of the Russian relationship with Iran. Also, I think because of Netanyahu in Obama at the time And, yeah, you’re located and have Thali Bennett with their government of change that ruled Israel for well, officially still is as we record this, but it’s really the last days but the rule leaders for a year and a half, they decided when the big war in Ukraine broke in February this year, to continue Netanyahu’s policy, the fact that they said, we are not going to change the neutrality and An interesting thing to note is that Netanyahu never criticized them for it. Netanyahu as the leader of the opposition, was very effective against Lapides and Bennett.
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And he criticized basically everything they did. They woke up in the morning and got into their car, he had something to say about that. The only issue that he did not criticize them about was Ukraine. He never said that it was wrong for Israel to remain neutral. He never called for Israel to offer more support for Ukraine.
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He was asked about it in an interview at one point before the election, and he said, when I’m prime minister, I will reconsider the policy, but obviously, no commitment there. So that’s regarding the past. Looking into the future, I can see a scenario where maybe Netanyahu looks at the relationship with the Biden administration and the Democrats. And you mentioned the fact that Israel is losing support in the Democratic Party. I still think the Democrats overall are a pro Israeli party, but we’re definitely seeing a shift happening and more criticism and sense of alienation.
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And I agree with you that it has to do also with the situation with American Jews. So maybe Netanyahu looks at that relationship and says, I can’t give them anything on the Palestinian issue because of my coalition. I’m going to make things worse with American Jews because of the religious parties in my coalition again. On Iran, obviously, there is never going to be, I think, an agreement, you know, between the Israeli Wish, which is really for the United States to take care of militarily of the problem and the American priority which is to avoid such a scenario. And maybe tell yourself the one area or maybe I can do something that will improve my relationship with Biden and the Democrats without paying much of a political crisis actually Ukraine.
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None of Netanyahu’s coalition partners will care so much if Israel changes its Ukraine policy. It’s not going to get him in trouble with Buttello’s smart reach. The leader of the religious iconism party or Itamar Benvir, the far right leader in his coalition. They are going to be much angrier if he somehow puts restraints on building in settlements in the occupied territories than if he gives defensive weapons to Ukraine. Of course, there’s the question of does he want to confront Putin?
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Has anything changed about his approach on that front? I have not seen any signs so far of change. As I said, he did not criticize the outgoing government’s neutrality policy. In a sense, it is his own policy from two thousand and fourteen. And he has if you read his book that he published a few months ago, his autobiography, there is some snark and criticism there toward Barack Obama.
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And Bill Clinton and even somewhat of a disagreement with Donald Trump, but not a bad word about Vladimir Putin. He really only writes good things about the relationship that he had with the Russian leader. So I’m a bit skeptical, but I do see the political and foreign policy rationalizations of maybe choosing that issue. Ukraine has somewhere where he can give into American demands without paying a political price at home.
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Okay. Interesting. Bill Galston,
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Well, in the interest of time, I’m going to suppress my question. I just wanted to tell Amir, a, that I’m an admirer of his work b, I come to Jerusalem fairly regularly and I to Israel rather, and I hope to be able to sit down with you as a fellow journalist the next time I’m in Israel, and I will send you an email to that fact.
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Well, thank you for the huge compliment, and I would love to host you went next time you’re in Israel. So thank you so much for that.
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We will now turn to another topic which is domestic politics here in this country, American politics. And Amir, I’m gonna ask you to stick around for this because I know you are very, very well informed about all things American as well as all things Israeli. So we had the runoff election in Georgia in which were not finally achieved a six year term in the United States Senate. This cements for the Democrats’ fifty one seats makes these year a variety of ways for Democrats to control things in the senate. And meanwhile, the only person to announce for president on the Republican side, Trump is having a very, very, very bad series of events, both legal and political So I’m gonna start with you, Damon.
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I invite you to reflect on where we are politically, but also this. We now have had all the votes counted pretty ratchet except for a few races in California, but we know that the Republicans will have four or five seats majority in the House and the Democrats will control the Senate. But there’s been a tremendous amount of commentary that seems to suggest that at least the Democratic Party may be learning the wrong lesson from this midterm. What do you make of that?
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Well, I think it’s probably a little early to know that for sure. I mean, let’s wait, I guess, I would say, until, like, mid January at least, actually, see what they do with the new arrangement. I mean, we’re in the lame duck period sort of holding pattern. So I don’t really know for sure. I think that there’s a way in which the democrats, I think, are planning to sort of step back and let the Republicans hang themselves in the house because they’re now going to be able to launch a million in one investigations of Hunter Biden, and I think the democrats will be quite pleased to let them do that and just sort of stand back and watch it happen and hopefully reap positive consequences in polling and so forth.
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And then, of course, you also have the Trump show ongoing, which you probably asked some of the other panelists about. But as long as Trump keeps sucking up oxygen and doing things like having suarez with Nazis, there’s not much the democrats need to do at all. They can simply kind of stand there, slap jaw with the rest of the American people. And watch it unfold and hope that down the road they get to benefit from it. So the in between period right after you’ve had an midterm election and you’re still waiting for the new congress to come in and business to get wrapped up in the the outgoing congress.
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There’s always a kind of suspended animation, characteristic to that tendency. And it’s, I think, even a little bit more so now, given how narrow we divided we are with each house going in a different direction and the division being quite close and the state of the Republican Party at present, which is so pathological and everything is about speaking to the bleachers and red meat for the most conspiratory on minded in the party creates a real messaging problem for the Republican Party that, again, I think the Democrats are gonna be quite pleased to let continue and hope that it helps them down the road.
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Linda picking up on Damon’s point, I think we’ve seen over the last several weeks since the midterms and now since the runoff. A lot of commentary and a lot of comments from a elite Republicans saying that this is it. We have to get away from Trump. You know, you’ve had editorials in the Wall Street Journal and National Review and so on at Scott Jenning’s who is really a good bellwether. You know, he was a longtime Republican operative who was associated with Mitch McConnell and he’s on TV a lot, and he tweeted on Wednesday morning after the warmock walker.
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Race, quote, Georgia may be remembered as the state that broke Trump once and for all. So he’s saying that, and by the way, he was perfectly happy to carry water for Trump when that was the thing that all the elite Republicans were doing So the elite Republicans have decided this is it. We obviously have to get rid of Trump, but that’s not this positive. The base is what determines what the Republican Party will do. And that’s still very much in question his sway with however many they are in the Republican primaries forty percent, maybe thirty five percent, but that’s enough to to win primaries if they don’t change the rules.
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That’s
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exactly
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right.
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And we’ve seen this movie before. Over and over again, let’s remember all those wonderful patriotic speeches that people like Kevin McCarthy gave after the January six insurrection, but it didn’t last. Now, I do think Trump is weakened. I do think he is in a different position now than he was before. First of all, he’s very isolated.
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He’s down at Mar a Lago. He’s lost the levers power. He’s got lots and lots of problems that he has to deal with, including this week another discovery of more classified documents these uncovered in a storage vault some place in Florida, and they were discovered by his own lawyers who are instructed by a judge, you better make sure that there aren’t more documents there before you would test that there aren’t. So if could change, but I think the problem is that Trumpism, the whole sort of manga crazy ideology, has captured this one third to forty percent of the Republican Party base. And they are not gonna give up on it.
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I mean, it is unloosed to a monster. It’s like doctor Frankenstein, you know, created this creature and then he could not control the creature taking to the village and burning, you know, down and killing people. And I think that’s what we’re seeing in the Republican Party. I don’t know that be contained. And certainly not so long as there are too many people challenging Trump if they decide to and you have a lot of people up there on the stage and his thirty to forty percent is gonna be, as you said, Dispositive.
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So Bill Galston, it looks like reading the tea leaves. Joe Biden is gearing up to announce that he’s running again. He has asked the Democratic Party to change the primary schedule, you know, demoting Iowa, New Hampshire and putting South Carolina first, which certainly makes sense, but it particularly makes sense for Joe Biden who did not do well in Iowa or New Hampshire, but was given new life by mostly African American voters in South Carolina. And apparently, again, this is truly reading tea leaves. But at the Macron State Dinner, apparently, Macron raised glass to twenty twenty four and president and missus Biden enthusiastically toasted to twenty twenty four.
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So what do you think? Looking like he’s gonna run again. And by the way, New Paul’s showing that his standing despite his, you know, the fact that the party did well in the midterms compared to most presidential performances in out years, his standing is still poor, most Americans don’t want him to run again.
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Nor does they want Trump to run
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again? Correct. Oh. And more don’t want Trump. We should make that clear.
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Yeah. But in that respect, the American people are going to go zero for two because I have never doubt that Joe Biden would stand for reelection.
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Really? This
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is a man. Who began running for president in nineteen eighty eight, who seriously thought about getting into the race in two thousand and four until his wife paraded through a meeting of Biden with his top advisors wearing a big placard saying no exclamation point. We we now know that she did that. Suddenly, yes. So but effective.
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Effective is extremely effective. And I have always believed that I think I’ve said on this podcast, that the only two people who could persuade him to stand down were his wife and his sister. Who has functioned effectively as a senior advisor and shadow campaign manager. For a number of cycles now. And that if they got together and said, no, we’re afraid a second term will kill you.
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We’d like to live with you into all of our old ages. Please don’t do it, Joe. He might have gone along with that. But I don’t think they did that. As a matter of fact, Jill seems to be enthusiastic of out a reelection run.
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And he is certainly going to do it. I have zero doubt about that. And I’ll get we’ll all get to find out within sixty days whether I’m right or wrong, but I am pretty sure I’m right. And as many people have said, if he stands for reelection, he will not be seriously challenged. So I don’t know what more I can say.
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Oh. Jackson, you know, except that, you know, the actuarial tables are not in his favor. On the other hand, people who survive for as long in politics as Joe Biden have are not constructed exactly the way the rest of us are. Yeah. And, you know, their ambition and their love of the game.
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Gives them energy, and being president makes you old, but the ambition to remain president can keep you young. We shall
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see. Amir, you’ve had lots of experience in Israeli politics of coalitions and there’s a lot of coalition building in our country too. And certainly, for the first two years of the Biden administration, we watched as the progressives were kind of battling the more centrist Democrats for supremacy. And now with Republicans about to take the gavel in the house, we’re seeing stories which is interesting about the Freedom caucus versus the actually larger share of House Republicans who are not so extremist, like representative Don Bacon from Nebraska who sort of represents this kind of thinking in the Republican Party. And he said, I think we have to flex our muscles a little bit more and say, we’re going to govern America.
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Meaning that the Republican Party needs to be a governing party, not just a bomb throwing party. Do you have any thoughts on the prospects for clipping the wings a little bit of the House Freedom caucus and the other crazies?
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So when it comes to American elections, I, you know, I covered two thousand sixteen, two thousand and eighteen, two thousand and twenty. This time I was watching from here in Israel, you know, with great interest and on election night also have to say I was surprised by the result. I like a lot of people thought the Republicans would have a much stronger election and honestly that’s what I was hearing from my friends in Washington, both Democrats and Republicans, up until really the last hours of election day. I was getting these messages. Yeah.
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And in two thousand and eighteen, I got to cover the rise of these new very left wing Democratic members, you know, that the squad and their allies in the Democratic Party, specifically because they also had a lot to say about Israel. As an and as an Israeli reporter —
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Mhmm. —
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in Washington, that became a huge story small faction in the Democratic Party that was trying to redefine the party’s entire approach to Israel and also on a bunch of other issues And I think it’s clear that in twenty twenty, the Democrats did pay a price for that in some places. For their – the sense that maybe they’ve gone too far to the left on some issues. And that in this election in two thousand twenty two, the opposite happened to the Republicans in the sense that the extremism of the Trump movement kept people away from Republican candidates in many different places. And now it’s gonna be, I think, a major dilemma for them. Right?
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I mean, do do you double down on this despite the results or do you try to redefine the party? Also, you know, another election in America that for me was very interesting to follow. I was already in Israel when it happened, but it was the Virginia election a year ago, where you saw that even in the state where I lived three and a half years when I I was the Washington correspondent for arts. I lived in in Alexandria, which still comes back to me in good dreams really a wonderful place. Yeah.
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But even there, you you know, a certain brand of Republicanism can still win. Then if you have a Republican candidate who is not affiliated with the Trump movement and its extremism, then even and now the facto blue state like Virginia can be a playing field. But when I look at what’s happening at the congressional level and these fights that they’re going to have now within this small majority, I wouldn’t be very optimistic if if I was in the Republican Party about the ability to restrain these forces. And I think that just like the Democrats pay the price for the, you know, the presence of the more extreme voices within their majority. I think for the Republicans, it could be even worse.
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Because of how slim it is and how each member could have so much influence. And that actually is one thing that reminds me a bit of Israeli politics when sometimes you have these very narrow governments where just one or two lawmakers can decide to make a show, to make a circus out of something, and It causes damage to the entire government sometimes, but when you have a small majority, you have to accept them.
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And certainly, this Republican caucus is much more contentious than the Democratic caucus was. I mean, there was no question that Nancy Pelosi example, was gonna be elected speaker even though there were people in the Democratic coalition who had their issues with her, But on the Republican side, you know, Kevin McCarthy, there are four members of the Freedom caucus who’ve already announced that they will not vote for Kevin McCarthy for speaker, and he can’t afford to lose any other votes. That’s it if he doesn’t. I mean, so one more could tip the balance. So, yeah, he’s he’s in a much more
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He’s actually, I think, a bit like BBC Netanyahu. Now, both of them rely on very extreme people. That they probably don’t like personally and don’t agree with on policy issues, but they rely on them for having power. And then maybe they could change some tips about how to govern in that situation.
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That’s right. Okay. I offer this and anybody would like to make observations. We’ve also seen from the Republican sort of these mixed messages. Linda, maybe you want to comment on this because you have people like Comer who’s going to be the chairman of the oversight committee and you have Jim Jordan who’s gonna chair the judiciary committee if you can get your brain wrapped around that.
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And Jim Jordan says that both the DOJ and the FBI are broken. He wants to investigate them for treating the January sixth defendants unfairly, for example. And then, of course, Comer has sworn they’re going to get to the bottom of the most important issue facing America today, which is of course, what was on Hunter Biden’s laptop.
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Yeah. Apparently, nude pictures of Hunter Biden when he was in the throes of the dicks This is something that all of us need to see, and we need to see it immediately. And if we don’t see it, then that’s the end of our democracy. So Look, it would be funny if it were not so dangerous. The fact is addiction is a big problem in the United States.
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Why don’t the Republicans decide to have lots of hearings on the hundred and seven thousand or however many it’s been overdoses that occurred last year largely due to fentanyl. Why don’t they focus on things that really affect their base? And not just throw red meat into some of these ideological crazy conspiracies that seem to permeate the right. I think it’s really dangerous. There are a lot of things that the Republicans could do that would be useful.
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It does not appear that they are interested in doing any
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of
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them. All right, well, we’ll see how this develops over the next several weeks. I would just add that in this lame duck session, again, I have to get up on my on my hobby horse and say, please members of Congress pass the Electoral Account Reform Act. You promised you would do it in the Lane Duck. The clock is ticking, please do this.
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It may not be quite as urgent as it was before now that Trump seems to be weakened, but you never know. And it’s not something to play games with. Alright. With that, let us turn to our highlight or low light of the week. And I’m here, I’m gonna ask you to go first if you have something.
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So for me, actually, it was interesting with with Georgia. To watch Senator Warnoch talk about the Jewish black alliance in in the state historically and also, you know, in in more modern politics. And it played a bigger role obviously two years ago when it was worn out and also running together in the runoff is the two Democrats and winning in that state and then flipping control of the Senate. But he still mentioned it, you know, in after this election, And it’s an interesting issue to discuss. Obviously, we’re hearing a lot about antisemitism these days in the United States and Kanye West.
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And all these controversies and horrific statements. So any political moment where you talk about more optimistic things from the point of view of the Jewish community, I think is a highlight. And obviously, I think on the low side, I I was a bit shocked, you know, to to see your former president talk about this idea of suspending was it the U. S. Constitution.
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Here in Israel, we’re preparing for a big fight over our own constitutional order. We have a constitution, but as I said, we have basic laws. We have a supreme court that has
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the
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ability right now to guarantee them and we’re preparing for major debate about this here in Israel and a big political fight about what will be the constitutional order of the country. And a lot of times in these debates in Israel, people point to the United States from both sides, by the way, the more Pro Nataniao religious right wing side and also the center left will point at the United States as an example and look at what they do, we should learn from them So I really hope you guys don’t suspend the constitution.
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Yeah. We all do. Thank you for that. Alright. Bill Galston.
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I
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have a highlight and a low light. The highlight is very simple. In twenty six years, It’s all mistaken to go from the defensive marriage act to the respect for marriage act. This is one of the most rapid changes of American public opinion on a fundamental question, namely same sex marriage. That I think anybody has ever seen and like the overwhelming majority of Americans, I regard it as movement in the right direction.
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My low light has to do with declining support in the United States for continued aid to Ukraine And when I say within the United States, I mean to say more precisely among Republicans. Just a few days ago, the Chicago Council on Global Affairs came out with what I found to be a truly disturbing survey that indicated sharply declining Republican support for both military aid and economic aid to Ukraine, support among Republicans for maintaining the current level of support for Ukraine is now down to twenty eight percent. And when you mention the possibility that ending the war by forcing the Ukraine to negotiate could lead to lower fuel and gasoline prices sixty one percent of Democrats say don’t do it, sixty three percent of Republicans say, by all means, do it. This is not encouraging. Howard Bauchner:
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Yeah. And just as opinions can change overnight or almost overnight, about same sex marriage. It’s amazing how fast Donald Trump and his acolytes were able to change the Republican party from one that believed in standing up for liberty around the world to one that doesn’t. Linda Chavez, Well, I
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have both the low light and a highlight. I’ll start with the good news first, and that is a very short piece that appeared in persuasion on substack. And the title is the curriculum wars are based on an illusion. Americans are more united on how to teach our history than we think. What the article points to are some opinion polls that show that both progressives and conservatives agree that we should teach both the good and the bad in American history, but they also believe that the declaration of independence in our titution has been a force for good.
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What is interesting is that neither side believes that the other side agrees with it so that you have this anomaly of Republicans thinking that progressives are, I should say, conservative thinking that progressive don’t believe in the in the declaration or the constitution, and you’ve got progressives believing that Republicans don’t wanna teach anything about slavery. So I thought this is a bit of good news and happy to report on it, but there is, I think, a very, very dire bad news story and that was this week, Iran executed the first of what may soon be more public executions by hanging of those who have participated in some of the recent demonstration there was the hanging of a twenty two year old protester that occurred, I believe, a Thursday at dawn. And man’s name was Moshe Shekari, and he was charged with waging a war on God. So I think that is so very sobering. Yeah.
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Thank
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you. Damon Linker?
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My selection is very much a very low, low light. It is an extraordinary story that I actually am a little surprised isn’t getting more attention in this country so far because it’s such an incredible story. That’s the account of Dawn Raid that took place in Germany on Wednesday where about twenty five people were rounded up for questioning some charged with the crime of plotting a coup to overthrow the Democratic government of Germany. The the supreme leader of this conspiracy is a guy named Prince Heinrich the thirteenth of Royce. It’s like something out of a a novel or something.
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He apparently got together with a retired army officer and a member of the alternative for Germany far right party. Woman who’s a judge. And the three of them had contacted people throughout German society to take part in a plant storm parliament to lock up senior members of the government and install this Heinrich guy as a new chancellor of Germany make connections with Russia to get external foreign support for this move. And there were a series of other people involved who were kind of pegged to be the ministers of this new government that would be a restoration of the German Reich. It’s easy to make light of this.
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It sounds so insane, but the really disheartening part of it is the extent to which the ideology that these people affirm something called the Imperial Citizens Movement in Germany takes its influence from QAnon. And its belief in an insidious, deep state controlling the country, as well as a lot of energy from the anti vax movement, which of course has big ties to this country. And then most of all, they were inspired by seeing the insurrectionary attack on the US capital on January sixth. So among the very many other things that you could say about this, and I’ll be talking about them on my substack in my Friday post, where America once prided itself for helping to spread democracy around the world, we now play a leading role in disseminating the political toxins of the antelope right. And the idea that Germany has confronted something like this is quite unnerving to me and I will add as a little additional slowness to this low light.
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Rick Grinnell, the former ambassador to Germany under President Trump, went on news backs in order to spread skepticism about this and he he spread the skepticism by likening the people who are arrested to the January sixth, the insurrectionists who have been treated so unfairly in our country.
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Yeah. Yeah. Amazing. Yeah. It is quite the story, and I would just add one little note, which is people who find the QAnon theories completely crazy and outlandish should just reflect that it comes into focus when you recognize that there is a very ancient anti Semitic calumae about Jews murdering Christian children and using their blood.
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And when you consider the parallels between that and the QAnon can spiritual. It becomes understandable in a certain way, you know, that it’s trading on this very very old and vicious myth. And the fact that it’s surfacing in Germany is, of course, for obvious reasons, more disturbing than
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Whenever you hear the word, right, run the other way.
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Yeah. Oh, but by the way, Damon, did you notice? It’s the second. Right? The one that Yeah.
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There’s some
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dispute about that. That’s, like, not clear. Like, because, of course, Hitler called in the restoration of that, and that was the third Reich. So what what are we restoring
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it?
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Right. But Reich should bad news that way. Yeah. But
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no. It’s a be agreed agreed. Alright. Well, I would like to highlight a Washington Post editorial which is titled the US should not let national emergencies become an emergency, not the greatest headline, but basically the import of this editorial is important And what they were arguing is that the courts are currently considering president Biden’s executive order regarding suspending payments on student loans. And they take this as an opportunity to say, well, first of all, they’re against that.
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But part of the reason they’re against it is that it was based on this very, very broad reading of his powers under the emergency that was declared by president Trump to deal with the COVID epidemic. Now, there are a lot of allegations of power by the executive branch that rely on these assertions of emergency power that really are not good for our democracy. And the editorial calls on the courts to pair it back and also on the Congress to rewrite some of these authorizing bills narrow them, tailor them very specifically, and possibly, you know, I don’t think they mentioned this, but put sunset legislation in there. Some of these emergency powers have been on the books for decades and decades and decades, and they are abused. And frankly, it’s amazing they’re not more abused but they could be by an unscrupulous executive.
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So something to think about, specific hygiene there and kudos to the Washington Post for running this editorial. And with that, I want to thank our guests Amir Tibong from Harrahts, and I want to thank all of our regulars as well as our producer Katie Cooper, and our sound engineer today, Joe Armstrong, and of course, all of our listeners and, you know, you can spread the word by word-of-mouth or by rating and reviewing us, which really does help do that on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen, and we will return next week as every week.
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