The Commentary Magazine Podcast

Matt Continetti joins us today to talk about the $1.6 billion donation to a new conservative entity to push conservative ideas and how it still doesn’t come near the money liberals spend. We also go into today’s primaries…and the new Game of Thrones show. Give a listen. Source Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today’s podcast takes up the question of what people mean when they refer to “threats to democracy,” Anthony Fauci’s resignation, and what the whole “I don’t want to work no more” movement is all about. Give a listen. Source Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Eli Lake joins us to talk Trump, FBI searches, attorneys general, stupid ideas about classification, and how the media aren’t dealing well with good news from Ukraine. Give a listen. Source Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today's podcast takes up the stunning news that the Centers for Disease Control is going to undergo a complete overhaul. The question is: Is this the right overhaul, or are senior officials just covering themselves because they don't want to be held accountable? Give a listen. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today's podcast was recorded last night—which led to ruminations on friendship, obnoxiousness, principle, conflict, and how these things might help explain the result in Wyoming that saw Liz Cheney lose her primary. Give a listen. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

There are early indications that Republican candidates and campaign committees are languishing in the fundraising department, which could put a damper on their prospects in November. But Donald Trump isn’t. Will he make up the difference and support the candidates he’s endorsed? Also, will we get a reckoning with what we did during the pandemic in 2023? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today's podcast takes up the highly volatile political situation of the past week following the warrant search of Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago and the monstrous attack on Salman Rushdie. Give a listen. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What we know (and what we don’t know) about the warrant that justified the search of Mar-a-Lago. Is Donald Trump being targeted unjustly, or is there something there? Also, Mr. Science himself resurfaces to praise himself, the personification of empiricism and logic. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today's podcast asks whether the people who really decide elections—the ones in the middle—look at partisans and ideologues on both sides and ask whether their visions and descriptions of American life as it is lived day to day are accurate or bonkers. Give a listen. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Biden administration tries to convince you that inflation came in at “0%,” and Donald Trump’s persecution narrative sets the stage for his political comeback. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A fiery podcast today in which we take up the FBI search at Mar-A-Lago and the very real questions it raises about overreach and public distrust in our institutions. Give a listen. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Mark Halperin joins the podcast to talk about the Democratic triumph with its big spending and climate change bill and how it looks like Republican candidates for the Senate (and for gubernatorial mansions) may not be able to capitalize on big liberal spending initiatives and other aspects of the supposed progressive surge this month. Give a listen. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Matt Continetti joins the podcast today to discuss his piece, "The GOP Summer Swoon." Republican nominees for Senate are running behind, Kansas delivered a stunning blow to pro-lifers, and the Democrats are getting legislation through. Has everything changed? Give a listen. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is one for the ages. Meghan McCain joins us to talk about her home state of Arizona and its Republican primary results and then gives us the backstage skinny on why she left "The View," and it's a stunning story. Give a listen. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In John and Christine’s absence, Washington Free Beacon editor-in-chief Eliana Johnson and COMMENTARY contributing editor and “The Reeducation” podcast host Eli Lake join the show to talk about Tuesday's Republican primary elections and Kansas’s decisive rejection of a ballot initiative that would ban abortion. Also, we discuss the strangely apoplectic response to Nancy Pelosi’s stop in Taiwan, al-Qaeda’s new state, and taxpayer-funded crack pipes. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The podcast celebrates the neutralization of al-Qaeda operative Ayman al-Zawahiri, and wonders where the right is on the global war on terrorism these days. Also, the MAGA movement on the march in today’s primaries. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Tech commentary columnist James B. Meigs is back on the show today to talk about how the scientific community’s conduct creates environments where anti-scientific conspiracy theories thrive. Also, the hosts discuss the Democrats’ climate change/inflation bill and the attack on Republicans who voted against the PACT Act. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Matthew Continetti joins the podcast today to discuss the strange surge of stories about how Joe Biden is on the verge of triumph just as inflation is getting worse and we're in a recession (probably). Is any of this rational? Give a listen. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today's podcast takes up the mainstream media carry water for the Biden White House after the sobering news of a second straight quarter of negative economic growth. And what's this? Two gargantuan spending bills just at a time when the Fed is laboring to deal with inflation? Are we taking crazy pills? Give a listen. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today's podcast takes up the absolutely horrible polling for the president this week, showing him at an all-time low for post-war presidents at this stage of their tenures and Democrats openly saying nationally and in New Hampshire that they do not want him to run again. Give a listen. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today's podcast takes up the startling new media tour undertaken by Anthony Fauci and a gobsmacking article in the New York Times that essentially tells everybody to go back to living as though it were Summer 2020. Give a listen. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Eli Lake joins the show today to discuss a crisis of legitimacy among elite institutions that don’t believe you can handle the truth. From the economy, to Covid, to climate change, you must be gently guided to their preferred conclusions. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today's podcast takes up Joe Biden's COVID diagnosis and some of the most appalling moments from the January 6 hearings. Give a listen. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The various manias that have overtaken popular political culture, which we itemize, are beginning to incur backlashes the likes of which we would not have seen two years ago. Is that a response to commercial incentives, or are Americans fed up? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Partisans on both sides of the spectrum are increasingly disinclined to recognize the legitimacy of political outcomes they don’t like. How did this happen? And can it be reversed before it’s too late? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

After a three-show break, the COMMENTARY crew is back to talk about the crisis engulfing the world of progressives, which is to say, the crisis that crises are not causing ordinary people to become crisis-mongers. Call it “crisis fatigue.” Give a listen. Source Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Dan Senor joins the podcast today to talk about the horrible inflation numbers and the meaning of Biden’s Mideast trip to Israel and Saudi Arabia. Then the podcast crew talks about the January 6 hearings. Give a listen. NOTE: We are off Thursday, July 14, Friday, July 15, and Monday, July 18. We’ll be back on Tuesday the 19th with more fun blather. Source Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today’s podcast features Matt Continetti and Jim Meigs talking about Jill Biden’s jaw-dropping gaffe in addressing a “LatinX IncluXion Luncheon” in Texas, Elon Musk’s strange Twitter behavior, and the astounding images of the universe being generated by the Webb Telescope. Give a listen. Source Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The podcast takes up a shocking New York Times poll that finds the president’s approval rating at a catastrophic 33 percent, with nearly two-thirds of Democrats wanting another candidate in 2024. And what’s this about the January 6 committee not bothering to ask Trump’s White House counsel what he might have said on that day? Give a listen. Source Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today’s podcast concerns the killing of former Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe—and takes particular note of a shocking Associated Press piece about him and his death. Is there no decency left anywhere? Also, why the good jobs number is also bad. Give a listen. Source Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Peerless historian and political analyst Andrew Roberts joins the podcast today to give us the skinny on Boris Johnson’s resignation as prime minister of Great Britain—what occasioned it, what Johnson might do now, and who will succeed him. Give a listen. Source Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

For the first time, we have two guests on the podcast—Eli Lake and Eliana Johnson—to talk about the strange emergence all at once of anti-Biden stories in the mainstream media and what they portend. Give a listen. Source Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On the publication day of Noah Rothman’s The Rise of the New Puritans, Matthew Continetti joins the podcast to discuss Noah’s book, the horrible massacre in Highland Park at the July 4th parade, and the troubling news out of Ukraine. Give a listen. Source Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Supreme Court’s final day of a consequential term ended no less consequentially. Legal scholar Adam White joins the podcast once again to break down the Court’s ruling in West Virginia v. Environmental Protection Agency and its sweeping implications for the administrative state. Source Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today’s podcast ranges unusually from the coming release of the last hours of the hit Netflix series Stranger Things—and its welcome embrace of anti-Communism—to the expansion of NATO in the wake of the war in Ukraine and why Joe Biden can’t figure out how to take political advantage of the one thing he’s actually done well. Give a listen. Source Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Cassidy Hutchinson’s bombshell testimony before the January 6 committee contained many new details about Donald Trump’s conduct during the riots. Some of her claims have been disputed. Many others have not yet been even contested. But if the president’s allies don’t want her testimony to stand, someone close to him is going to have to testify. Source Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Adam White, legal scholar extraordinaire, joins us to discuss the impact of the Dobbs abortion decision and why we should credit and take seriously the concurrences by Justices Roberts and Thomas—and what Clarence Thomas’s program as the longest-serving member of the Supreme Court actually is. Give a listen. Source Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today’s podcast features the return of Christine Rosen, who was set to be gone all summer but who has returned early due to popular demand—and helps the rest of us continue to come to grips with the Dobbs decision and how it might affect American society and our elections. Give a listen. Source Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Supreme Court has overturned the precedents in Roe and Casey and sent the issue of abortion back to the states to decide. What comes next? We haven’t the slightest idea. Source Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today’s podcast takes up the historic Supreme Court decision on guns today and asks what it might portend for the American political system in its wake. And we discuss Biden’s latest stupidity. Give a listen. Source Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today’s podcast explores the political ramifications of the gun legislation that seems to have had a bipartisan breakthrough in the Senate, and also considers the horrifying details laid out in yesterday’s hearing on the January 6 riot. Give a listen. Source Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We welcome Dan Senor to today’s podcast to explain the collapse of Israel’s government and how it represents a brilliant new political play by Bibi Netanyahu. Then we talk about our own Noah Rothman’s lead essay in the July-August COMMENTARY, “You Are What You Don’t Eat.” Give a listen. Source Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What the 2024 Republican presidential primary with Donald Trump in the race could look like, and what the Texas GOP tells us about the mood among party activists. Source Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

James Kirchick, author of Secret City: The Hidden History of Gay Washington, joins the podcast today to discuss his book as well as the January 6 Committee’s ongoing hearings and the revolt of the “woke” in the workplace. Source Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

CNN data guru Harry Enten joins the podcast to talk about polls, numbers, and the history of midterms and parties. Give a listen. Source Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today’s podcast takes up the results of last night’s primaries and elections and wonders at the Democratic head-in-the-sand reaction to the way Hispanic voters are moving to the Republican party. Give a listen. Source Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Bahnsen Group’s David Bahnsen joins the podcast today to talk about the bear market, inflation, energy geopolitics, and why we may be overly optimistic about our long-term economic fortunes. Source Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Democrats are attempting to convince voters that inflation is A) everyone else’s fault and B) something that Republicans could do something about if they had a plan. Will it work? Also, Ron DeSantis’ impressive showing at the Jewish Leadership Conference and the January 6 Committee’s unwise decision to set high expectations for their performance. Source Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

American Enterprise Institute Senior Fellow Matthew Continetti joins the program today to break down the January 6 Committee’s first hearing. What did we learn? What did the Committee prove? And what does it matter? Also, what the firing of Washington Post reporter Felicia Sonmez says about the future of “wokeness.”... Source Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The January 6 Committee holds a primetime hearing tonight to make the case for conspiracy. What can we expect to see from the proceedings? Also, the assassination attempt targeting Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh and the need to take the temperature down. Source Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices