music

Welcome to the commentary magazine podcast today's Thursday September 12th, 2019.

I'm John Puthwarts the editor of commentary with me as always senior editor Abe Greenwald

Hi Abe hello John associate editor Noah Rothman. Hello Noah. Hi John and in Washington senior writer Christine Rosen

Hi Christine. Hi John. So guys, do we talk about the debate first? Do we talk about Bolton first?

Well, I mean the debate hasn't really happened yet. So well, it's it won't have happened if it's our second segment either.

We should talk about it like it's already happened. Okay. Well, they're just talking about Bolton. So John Bolton, of course,

resigned. He says resigned. Trump says was fired in another fun example of how nobody gets out of this

administration alive. And except Nicky Haley. Except Nicky Haley. Amazingly enough. We also have the

phenomenon of Ben Sass the Trump critical senator from Nebraska getting an unexpected supportive tweet from Trump.

The other day thus leading never trumpers to say that Ben Sass who has not said anything particularly pro Trump

he just hasn't said much that's anti Trump lately that he sort of sold his soul and that's the end of Ben Sass and he's a terrible person.

Well, he did vote in favor of the emergency declaration which sort of or voted against with condemning the emergency declaration,

which is the emergency declaration. The assumption of emergency authority to build the wall. Oh, he's also frustrating mega people too who still hold a grudge.

And we're very frustrated that there's no intellectual core to mega.

So anyway, apparently, apparently it is no, you know, if you were not, you know, if you were not Max Booth, you're you're quizzling.

So that appears to be the that appears to be the argument being made about about Ben Sass.

Who by the way, never, you know, never frontally was never a frontal critic of of try. It was all sort of what I mean in the last couple of years.

So he wrote books. Right. I'm just saying that, you know, the expectation that somebody is supposed to sort of satisfy a political figure from a conservative state

supposed to satisfy the hungers and yearnings of people who themselves have already declared that, you know, they will never vote for a Republican again.

It's kind of a common. I mean, as LBJ said, you know, you cannot be a statesman unless you're elected.

But at the same time, he used to tweet daily about how he would get up every morning and have an existential crisis about being a member of the Republican party in the age of Trump.

...