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Welcome to the commentary magazine daily podcast. I am John Pudhordz, the editor of commentary with me as all

of you are always senior editor Abe Greenwald. Hi Abe. Hi John. You're writer Christine Rose and

Hi Christine. Hi John. And associate editor Noah Rothman. Hi Noah. Hi John. As everybody

doing today. Super. We got a super and not bad. Pretty well. Pretty well. Okay. So Abe just

texted us about half an hour ago saying the following. Hey this is the most honest statement any

public figure has made on the subject. Quote. I'm not saying anything is perfect. Trump said as he made

one of his forays out of Washington and weeks. And yes, well some people will be affected. Yes, well

some people will be affected badly. Yes, but we have to get our country open and we have to get it

open soon. So you as your contention that this statement by Trump is as you say sort of like is

an honest assessment of the current predicament that we find ourselves in. It's not hopeful. It's

not inspiring, but it has the unique benefit at this moment of looking squarely at the ugly situation

we face, which is that indefinite lockdown will do indefinite damage to the country as a whole

and restarting opening things back up will produce more deaths. And that is precisely the scenario

that everyone avoids talking about and at least he's he's looking at it squarely.

Noah, what's your take? Well, I think I share Abe's assessment of that. I mean, we've essentially

been saying that for quite some time and have been a desire of politicians to say that too. It's

very impolitic, but it is the case and policymakers have to weigh these to competing values and to

competing conditions and do their best to find a balance and it's not going to be a perfect balance

everybody's improvising here and there should be some forbearance. Given to them that said,

I didn't find this interview to be particularly confident in spy. We should say this was from

his interview with ABC's David Muir. Correct. Yesterday in Arizona. He was asked by David Muir

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