Why has he been able to cut through in the way that he has?

Well, the El...

There's a complicated answer to that one, but it's, you know, perhaps a little bit of an intellectual journey on my part.

But anti-Zionism, which is all the rage on the progressive left today, is inexorably bound up with revolutionary socialism.

It has been for the last 50 years.

The idea of anti-Zionism as we've come accustomed with it, the notion that Israel is a neo-colonialist project, a genocidaire, uses famine and rape as weapons of war, these were concocted by the KGB in the 1970s.

All documented.

Yeah.

Why has he been able to cut through in the way that he has?

Well, the El...

It's a complicated answer to that one, but it's, you know, perhaps a little bit of an intellectual journey on my part.

But anti-Zionism, which is all the rage on the progressive left today, is inexorably bound up with revolutionary socialism.

Has been for the last 50 years.

The idea of anti-Zionism as we've come accustomed with it, the notion that Israel is a neo-colonialist project, a genocidaire, uses famine and rape as weapons of war, these were concocted by the KGB in the 1970s.

All documented.

Yeah.

Boy, what do you make of all these protests?

Thank you so much for having me.

Yeah, if France didn't exist, conservatives would have to invent it.

It's a fable that illustrates the culmination of all the policies they oppose and what that looks like.

So what we're seeing in France, I think, is sort of twofold.

First is the ostensible reason for these riots and unrest, which is students are just really upset at the dilapidated conditions in their schools, and they have some serious grievances there.

But for the most part, this is an argument over French budgeting priorities.

A lot of the flags are clearly Hamas flags, Palestinian flags.

Uh, Noah, welcome to Katzen Cosby, and boy, what do you make of all these protests?

Thank you so much for having me.

Yeah, um, i- if, if France didn't exist, conservatives would have to invent it.

To illus- it's a fable that illustrates the culmination of all the policies they oppose and what that looks like.

So what we're seeing in France, I think, is sort of twofold.

First is the ostensible reason for these riots and unrest, which is, uh, students are just really upset at the dilapidated conditions in their schools, and they have some serious grievances there.

But for the most part, this is an argument over French budgeting priorities, and the French state is broke.

A lot of the flags are clearly, uh, Hamas flags, Palestinian flags

And boy, what do you make of all these protests?

Thank you so much for having me.

Yeah, um, i- if, if France didn't exist, conservatives would have to invent it.

To illus- ...

It's a fable that illustrates the culmination of all the policies they oppose and what that looks like.

So what we're seeing in France, I think, is sort of twofold.

First is the ostensible reason for these riots and unrest, which is, uh, students are just really upset at the dilapidated conditions in their schools and they have some serious grievances there.

A lot of the flags are clearly, uh, Hamas flags, Palestinian flags.

What happened to the party?

Well, its voters happened to the party.

The voters get the kind of politics they want, and the progressive left has loomed large over the Democratic Party's nominating process this year, and they have gotten the kind of politicians that they seek, many of whom are very favorable to the progressive agenda, to the DSA agenda, as you say.

But, you know, it's October 7th, the third year anniversary of the October 7th massacre, and I can't help but see in the choices that Democrats have made this year, um, the sort of hostility to the American project, to the Western project that we see on fire in the streets of Paris.

There's an element of restive hostility to, you know, the m- the, again, the miracles into which they were born in that, and sort of a ingratitude for everything they've received.

And the mir- You know, the, the story of Israel over the last three years is, should be the story of the United States.

We still have the kind of civilizational self-preservation instinct that Europe is slowly sacrificing.

Why do you think so?

Just tell us about the case you make in that piece.

Well, you certainly hear less of that than you did at the cessation of high-tempo combat operations in early April.

It's not long after that that the blockade strategy was imposed.

It was briefly lifted when they struck the Memorandum of Understanding in June, but when that collapsed, the blockade was reimposed and threw out.

We heard the foreign policy establishment, folks who contribute to the Atlantic, who write at the Council on Foreign Affairs, et cetera, so forth, describe the blockade as being as powerful an instrument of geopolitical utility as a deployable nuclear weapon.

It was even more effective.

at seeking establishing Iran's position in the region and getting results in the form of concessions from the United States.

How does that change the calculus and the war effort by the Trump administration?

What does he not like fundamentally about the alliance? Is that what's driving all of this?

He's never been especially fond of the NATO alliance.

He continues to retail a lot of fictions about it.

He says that it costs us a ton of money.

The actual maintenance and operation of NATO facilities is minuscule.

He routinely confuses the equivalent of GDP of military spending as the costs associated with NATO.

He sort of goes back and forth with this.

It's really about like, what can you do for me? And when I say, what can you do for me? I mean, what can you do for Donald Trump? He's concerned about his legacy as having expanded the footprint of the United States of America.

I'm all in favor of one of those.

Unfortunately, a lot of people are, which is part of the problem.

That is the story of, an undertold story, of the history of left-wing violence in America in the modern age, beginning at the turn of the last century to now.

Whenever you hear, whenever there's an act of political violence, whether it's on the left or the right, you instantly hear the reaction from the mainstream press and observers in that orbit who say, well, you know, the right, the American right is uniquely violent.

This is an outlier episode.

And it happens consistently to the point where it's become a mantra.

We hear about it after an assassination attempt or a successful assassination of a right-wing figure, when the mobs descend on American cities almost nightly, this act of vandalism or the other.

in a clinical sense.

Okay, in the post-So- so I, now I'm really doing you an injustice, so let's talk, let's go there

Oh, I mean, it's not, there's not a, the doctrine, the grand strategic doctrine had not changed all that r- depreciably from the Kremlin's perspective, and this is something that seriously frustrated my professors at the time because, you know, I would get -- This is 2009, 2010.

This is the reset, height of the reset.

And there would be my professor would, you know, say things like, "Obviously, the invasion of Georgia, 2008, was a response to cowboy hat unilateralism in the White House." Didn't seem that way to me.

Seemed to me like the pursuit of Moscow's grand strategic objectives in the near abroad from time immemorial, from the Czarist days, and I still think that's the case.

Um, and I've been very worried about the prospect of a provocation, a deniable provocation, or even an undeniable provocation designed to impose a die for Danzig moment on the West.

Um, in twen- the, the, the worst that we'd seen took place, I think it was in 2014 in Estonia.

We see no positive [laughs] rays of light for the future.

But it's an incredibly dangerous school of thought, isn't it?

It is, and I suppose it's easier to mock those of us who acknowledge the evidence of our own eyes.

But Ted Cruz is 100% right, and who studied the history of this thing, Ted Cruz is 100% right that there is an emerging red-green alliance in the United States.

The term comes from the Iranian Revolution, the 1979 revolution.

in which after a decade in which the militants and radicals who orbited around communist Cuba evolved into pan-Arab nationalists toward the Palestinian cause, embracing the cause of international anti-Zionism, in part because of the Soviet Union's agitation in that behalf.

I write about this in my book, Blood and Progress, A Century of Left-Wing Violence in America, about the extent to which the Soviet Union inculcated and created incentives around anti-Zionist narratives.

And then eventually those people became straight-up Islamist radicals.

What do you make of that?

But it's an incredibly dangerous school of thought, isn't it?

It is, and I suppose it's easier to mock those of us who acknowledge the evidence of our own eyes.

But Ted Cruz is 100% right, and who studied the history of this thing, Ted Cruz is 100% right that there is an emerging red-green alliance in the United States.

The term comes from the Iranian Revolution, the 1979 revolution.

in which after a decade in which the militants and radicals who orbited around communist Cuba evolved into pan-Arab nationalists toward the Palestinian cause, embracing the cause of international anti-Zionism, in part because of the Soviet Union's agitation in that behalf.

I write about this in my book, Blood and Progress, A Century of Left-Wing Violence in America, about the extent to which the Soviet Union inculcated and created incentives around anti-Zionist narratives.

And then eventually those people became straight-up Islamist radicals.

What do you make of that?

How does that look in the Democrat Party the way it is right now as we see it kind of fracturing in these midterms? What happens in 2027?

A lot of things are happening in 27.

I mean, the stuff that you can expect is the candidates who will compete in the quote unquote invisible primary.

That's the behind the scenes effort to corner donors, to corner influential supporters on the ground, build your networks.

And then when you emerge with a exploratory committee, which means you're actually running for the presidency, you already have all this support lined up and it's prohibitive.

That's the sort of thing that happens behind the scenes.

What's going to happen in front of the cameras next year is going to be very interesting.

Do you think that's hurting him?

Noah, where were you?

I was in bed in my, uh, college.

It was about three months shy of my 20th birthday, going to my undergraduate college, which was about 25 miles west of Manhattan.

And I don't think I've ever told my 9/11 story just 'cause I don't think it's all that interesting.

I had spent that summer, the summer of 2001, attending a New York University program, um, and I was living in Lafayette Street, about two blocks south of Canal Street, in the shadow of the towers, and just about everybody I was working with at the time lived in the Financial District.

So I spent a lot of time in, uh, that part of Manhattan, about a few weeks before 9/11.

And I was awoken by a friend of mine right around the f- the instant the first plane hit.

But do you think that it was inevitable? Was something going to change the world in the direction that Dan adumbrated because the enemy gets a vote?

What know you?

I know about as much as anybody else, but I found it pretty interesting to see the American press begin to devote its attention to events on the ground in Iran.

It's been a long time since we had any focus on the Iranian perspective.

It's all about the United States and how the United States is basically at war with itself from the perspective of the American press.

I was reading this piece on NPR today.

A lot of interesting details when you get past the third, fourth, fifth sections.

I mean, we're talking about like the 28th graph.

of Blood and Progress, do you think the means by which the radical left consumes information in this discordant, chaotic jumble of emotions, profanity, vulgarity, and implied and sometimes explicit threats of violence is the stew from which violence is being brewed?

ourselves enough?

I love that.

And no, we do not.

You know, I'm going to integrate my reaction to that clip with the clip that you just played for Michael Knowles from that DSA activist who said that we need to get rid of the Constitution.

It's a great speech by Antonin Scalia in which he's lecturing Congress over this, I believe.

in which he says, what makes America great? And it is the Constitution, and it is the Bill of Rights.

But it's not just that, he says, because every country has a Bill of Rights.

What do you think?

What do you think, Noah? Is that going to be in a couple of Mike Rogers ads?

That's going to be in a couple of Mike Rogers ads, as well as Bernie Sanders, who had admitted in his 2020 bill for Medicare for all that it consists essentially of nationalizing the health insurance industry.

Everybody loves the idea of getting health care for everybody.

That's great.

But they don't want to lose their insurance.

This is a primary problem with Obamacare.

It was a big selling point for Republicans who oppose that sort of thing.

Try and tell me that it's not.

Maybe there is an electoral component to this as well.

And there will be.

And if Mike Rogers says, listen, we can't have a guy who keeps the company that you keep.

El-Said turns right around and says, well, let's talk about the company you keep.

Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump.

And that's not an ineffective tactic in a swing state in a year where progressives are going to do very well.

It may be quite effective.

What do you what's what do you think?

What?

And it was like, [laughs] maybe Francesca's favorite holiday is Thanksgiving, 'cause now she's doing damage control, which is exactly where you want to be, doing damage control around your denunciation of the universally beloved holiday.

But she's like, "Uh, it's actually my favorite holiday." So I was like, "Well, maybe it is.

Everything's relative, right? She could just hate all holidays.

Ha ha." It's not a joke.

My colleague Jim Geraghty had a fantastic piece where she's going through Francesca Hong's thoughts on holidays, and she hates them all.

She hates July 4th.

But y- this is the ba- this is the snowball rolling downhill.

it.

And we have all the evidence in the world to suggest he won't like it.

He associates, as you said, throughout this campaign with Hassan Piker, a gentleman who cosplays as a cultural revolutionary and seems to mean it.

He has praised Hamas.

He has said America deserves 9-11.

He's advocated violence in the streets against Republicans and landlords and managers.

El-Sayed himself has celebrated the Muslim Brotherhood takeover of Egypt, which is a U.S. State Department terrorist, designated terrorist group.

Should Republicans at least be buoyed slightly by the fact that Mike Rogers is probably the right candidate at the right time for this race?

What's the broad temperature that you take here as August begins? And then we'll dig into some of what you say about the war in your just posted piece.

That's an interesting approach to this question, like a 30,000 foot perspective.

The president seems more imperturbable than I think Republicans would like him to be.

I think they honestly want to see the president respond with some passion to what they regard as an existentially political calamity.

The earth killing media that everyone can see from miles out is bearing down on the Republican Party ahead of November.

And there are plenty of Republicans who have different perspectives on how the GOP can right this ship.

But all of them center on getting the president to focus on and talk more about economic issues and specifically what this Republican Congress has done to shape pocketbook narratives and pocketbook issues that the public is generally concerned about.

Presuming you are the latter, give everybody a little of a summary of what you describe in that piece of the various snippets of really daunting news that have come out into the public square.

What's the broad temperature that you take here as August begins? And then we'll dig into some of what you say about the war in your just posted piece.

That's an interesting approach to this question, like a 30,000 foot perspective.

The president seems more imperturbable than I think Republicans would like him to be.

I think they honestly want to see the president respond with some passion to what they regard as an existentially political calamity.

The earth killing media that everyone can see from miles out is bearing down on the Republican Party ahead of November.

And there are plenty of Republicans who have different perspectives on how the GOP can right this ship.

But all of them center on getting the president to focus on and talk more about economic issues and specifically what this Republican Congress has done to shape pocketbook narratives and pocketbook issues that the public is generally concerned about.

Presuming you are the latter, give everybody a little of a summary of what you describe in that piece of the various snippets of really daunting news that have come out into the public square.

... what is going on? [laughs]

Well, historically, there is, uh, a lot of room for the intellectual left and right, all of whom are populists, to attack, um, capitalism on theological grounds.

And this is based in a preconception of the notion that because the capitalistic enterprise is individualistic, it is therefore hostile to communitarianism and the community, and incompatible in some ways with c- communitarianism and the community, and therefore a moral stain, an abomination.

To which I would respond, um, that the full human...

the full capacity for human flourishing, to realize that which is your, your goals, your highest aspirations, your maximum potential, the only conventions that can do that are those that leave you to your own devices, that provide you with enough agency and enough freedom within a system of ordered liberty so that your liberty ends where another's begins, and that there's enough conventions to enforce that, that that is the only s- situation, the only social covenant we've discovered throughout centuries of human exploration, experimentation.

You know, we've experimented with just about every form of civic organization, of social organization that you could conceive of, and the maximally efficient version for realizing human flourishing, human happiness, and the realization of your goals and your objectives for yourselves and your families is a capitalist system with ordered liberty at the center of it.

Every other alternative requires a certain amount of public coercion in order to get you to live the way you want to live.

I don't know what the historical precedent this is, but what I am curious about is when JD Vance is asked the Sunny Hostin question, "What would you have done differently than President Trump in your last term?" which he will be asked at some point, how does he answer it? And wh- why do you think Trump's approval ratings are as low as they are at this moment?

What's the broad temperature that you take here as August begins? And then we'll dig into some of what you say about the war in your just posted piece.

That's an interesting approach to this question, like a 30,000 foot perspective.

The president seems more imperturbable than I think Republicans would like him to be.

I think they honestly want to see the president respond with some passion to what they regard as an existentially political calamity.

The earth killing meteor that everyone can see from miles out is bearing down on the Republican Party ahead of November.

And there are plenty of Republicans who have different perspectives on how the GOP can right this ship.

But all of them center on getting the president to focus on and talk more about economic issues and specifically what this Republican Congress has done to shape pocketbook narratives and pocketbook issues that the public is generally concerned about.

Presuming you are the latter, give everybody a little of a summary of what you described in that piece of the various snippets of really daunting news that have come out into the public square.

So, Noah, your reaction to our conversation with Jim?

I don't think I can improve on what Jim said.

I share just about every one of his assessments and his caution about the prospect of opening up the targeting, the number of targets to include civilian, purely civilian infrastructure.

Although, as he's noted correctly, it's hard to... separate that which is purely civilian from that which supports defense industries as well as industries that the IRGC generates revenue from and profit from that are civilian, but nevertheless support the regime.

This surprise attack that we saw yesterday, the assessment in Western press is that it is purely aimed at the United States.

I'm not so sure.

I really think there's a domestic audience for this sort of thing, especially in keeping with what we've heard of these reports that the IRGC put the kibosh on this Omani-produced proposal to settle the Strait of Hormuz with some Iranian control, but not nearly as much as they want.

Either way, I think we've got to hammer them and hammer them a lot.