Far-left Democrats' disturbing sympathy for alleged cold-blooded killer Luigi Mangione exposed

Added: 2026-05-27

[00:00:00]I want to zoom in on one story that really crystallized this idea in my head about how just okay uh certain elements of the radical left were violence which was uh Luigi Manion.

[00:00:10]>> I think a lot of folks would like to forget the orgy of inhumane and antisocial behavior that broke out following the coldblooded assassination of a healthcare CEO.

[00:00:24]>> As we always have to say at this point, it's quite unclear where things are at right now. We do have the idea that there is peace deal in the next couple days.

[00:00:32]>> Well, it's more of a public relations thing to try to get the nuclear dust as he calls it because he wants a definitive, dramatic, cinematic end to this war.

[00:00:46]That's all coming up in a moment. Really looking forward to bringing you that conversation on this week's episode of the James Bolt Show. But before we get into it, I have to quickly talk about this report from the Axios. AOC takes more steps toward 28-28 run for president. Now points out that just in May rallied voters in Philadelphia for a leftwing congressional candida and competitive primary. She spoken at a rally in Montgomery, Alabama about voting rights and addressed the historic Eenea Baptist Church in Atlanta with Georgia Senator Raphael Waro. She's running for president and you know what?

[00:01:19]Why not? The Democrats have completely lost its seat. They have just about put out an autopsy into the last election that was riddled with typos and provided no actual look into what the chief problem was. Spoiler alert, it's Camala Harris. The face of the party right now is probably Gavin Newsome, who leads a state that people don't want to live in.

[00:01:39]And whose idea of connecting with voters is telling him that they're dumb. I mean, remember this.

[00:01:45]>> I'm like you. I'm no better than you.

[00:01:50]You know, I'm a 960 SAT guy and you know, and I'm not trying to offend anyone, you know, trying to act all there if you got 940, but literally a 960 SAT guy. I cannot you you've never seen me read a speech because I cannot read a speech.

[00:02:14]>> Very relatable to people. But you know what? Go for it. The problem is though to be president you need to be across a fair few things like a lot of things.

[00:02:23]Everyone can do the interview with journalists who want to make you look good. Everyone can do speeches in front of the fans. But what happens to Alexandria Kaziocortez when the topic turns to I don't know foreign policy?

[00:02:35]>> Would and should the US actually commit US troops to defend Taiwan if China were to move? Um, you know, I think that uh this is such a uh you know, I I think that this is a um this is of course a a very long-standing um policy of the United States.

[00:03:04]>> Profound thoughts. But hey, you know what this means? If she runs for president, there is plenty more than where that came from. All right, let's talk to Noah Rothman.

[00:03:16]So much more I want to get into with that with our special guest this week.

[00:03:19]Please welcome Noah Rothman from National Review. Noah, thank you so much.

[00:03:23]>> My pleasure. Thanks for having me.

[00:03:24]>> And I see over your left shoulder there, you've got the new book, Blood and Progress, a century of left-wing violence in America. And I do want to start off there because I think this is such an interesting topic, something I want to speak about a lot. So, if you would listen to, you know, the legacy media class, the political class, it's Donald Trump that's unleashed a wave of violence in America, that the uh right-wing, the alt-right, they're the ones that are pushing the new wave of political violence. Your book argues it's actually the opposite. So, what is the truth?

[00:03:56]>> Well, the truth is that political violence is a reciprocal phenomenon. The those who are attracted to violence feed off one another. They feed off the actions of those who they perceive to be their adversaries which often includes the state and they take inspiration from their allies. So to truthfully write this book I could not ignore one side or the other. In fact that is the premise of the book that I try to argue from the very outset that we won't get our hands around the problem of domestic political extremist violence and terrorism unless we comprehend the full scope and scale of the problem which includes looking at both sides. And too often, very often, we hear about the degree to which the the right, the American right, is the single most urgent and acute threat to American domestic national security. We hear about it after an attempted assassination or successful assassination of a right-wing figure. We hear about it after the assaults on federal law enforcement institutions like ICE and CBP facilities. We hear about it after the attempts on Donald Trump's life. We hear about it when the the violence descends on American major metropolitan areas almost nightly in places like Portland, Oregon and Los Angeles, California. So yeah, the question that this book raises is, should we examine the evidence of our own eyes? That's what Blood and Progress attempts to confront. And I look at the last 125 years or so and I see that we've had successive waves of politically inspired violence on the American left. over the course of the last 125 years or so, the 1910s and 1920s, the 1970s and 1980s, the 2010s and the 2020s, it tends to come in waves and we're experiencing one right now.

[00:05:34]And if you look at them, as some very recent scholarship has, all of whom all the scholars who studied these periods regard them as forgotten. It's a conspicuous uh uh throughine throughout these periods. Um but yeah, if you explore them, you see some predictive and indeed prescriptive elements, which is why I hope readers of Blood and Progress uh do read it with a keen eye towards policyoriented solutions. Um it's not as though I have a panacea solution to the problem of political violence in the United States. It's been with the United States since its inception, but we can model behaviors that we expect to see. We can use what's on the books already to police proactively violent or or delu delusionally inspired groups that uh that menace and threaten and conspire.

[00:06:21]Um we have the tools available to us.

[00:06:23]All we need to do is recognize the scope and scale of this threat.

[00:06:27]>> I want to zoom in on one story that really crystallized this idea in my head about how just okay uh certain elements of the radical left are with violence which was Luigi Manion. So this is the alleged killer of the healthcare CEO. We you know need to say alleged. Everyone deserves a day in court. But uh the thing was that within 10 10 minutes of the story breaking he became a darling for certain figures on the left. Perhaps somewhat to do with the fact he was handsome and people seized on that. But more it was like the idea that uh someone evil had died, a healthcare CEO had died, a member of the enemy had died and whoever they think delivered that justice uh deserve to be celebrated when that is a human being. It's a human being with a family and we you know you objectively can't have a society where people can be scared to walk down the street if someone's going to do social justice on them. But he became a hero.

[00:07:21]What is that all about?

[00:07:23]Yeah, I think a lot of folks would like to forget the orgy of inhumane and antisocial behavior that broke out following the cold-blooded assassination of a healthc care CEO, a health insurance CEO, uh, a father of two who did nothing other than to work in an industry that the left is suspicious of.

[00:07:46]And a lot of people would probably like to forget the extent to which responsible allegedly members of the political class Bernie Sanders, US Senator um uh US Senator uh Chris Murphy, Elizabeth Warren, Congresswoman Alexandria Kaziocortez, all of whom mourned the cold-blooded murder of this man, this innocent man, but who also appended a very pregnant butt onto their uh eulogies for him, rendering everything that came before it prefuncter.

[00:08:16]They would say, "But you have to understand how angry everyone is. But you have to comprehend uh how much hardship the health insurance industry in this country is meeting out." But but but and then you heard and this was a sop to a a a genuine outbreak of sympathy for the killer mostly on the internet, but not exclusive to the internet. His name was cheered on Saturday Night Live. His he was celebrated at concerts. Um his the words that he scratched onto his bullets were put on merchandise that was sold very well. His face was etched onto prayer candles blasphemously. Um there was an element of glee in the bloodletting, this human sacrifice, a sense that perhaps this act of violence would unleash a um a torrent of hostility towards not just the health insurance industry, but in Bernie Sanders words, everything that was broken, which in his estimation was the election system, the banking system, the finance system, the education system, everything is broken.

[00:09:18]Everything needs revolutionary upheaval.

[00:09:20]And that is one of the through lines too when you begin to explore quasy Marxian revolutionary violence coming from the political left is this attachment to revolutionary violence. um the zeal of and the zealatry associated with it, the people power with mass movements in the streets and of course the presumption which is a permission structure, a licensing structure that anything that represents systemic oppression um can be met with violence. You know, however you define that, even if it's very loosely and subjectively defined, once we start to study these features, you see them throughout history and it's a wonder then why they haven't been so thoroughly studied. One of the things that I come up with in my book, Bit of a Deggression, um but one of the reasons why the political left convinces themselves that the right is genuinely more violent than they are.

[00:10:11]Um twofold. One, data sets that purport to make that case, which if you examine the individual cases, they begin to get very suspect and we can go into that.

[00:10:19]But two, which was portentious, was this document that was produced for the Department of Homeland Security in the United States in 2021, which maintained that those who research violent left-wing extremism face a lot of hardship for doing so, social isolation campaigns, reputational damage from their colleagues, the threat of physical force, retaliation, and retribution for the work that they do. to say nothing of the fact that the whole enterprise according to these researchers uh the re the study of leftwing violent extremism is often conducted by people who are members in good standing of the very groups that they're studying. It's a hopelessly subjective enterprise and it's ripe for exploration which is what I do and blood and progress a century of leftwing violence in America.

[00:10:59]>> I want to get into the collectivism and the Marxist thing because I think that's the heart of it but just to stay with Mangioni and to stay with uh the White House correspondents dinner shoot the other day. There's something that I think is slightly different to the 1910s, 1970s, which is how the internet is desensiti, one desensitizing us from violence because there's so much violence on the internet that you do start to think that it's just normal and then two, the siloing effect of it. So, uh you know, obviously America's had problems with siloing and separate separate uh ideas of what America is, but I think the internet sort of builds up that idea that there is us and then there is them. And if you look at the White House correspondents dinner shooter manifesto that got reported, there's all this stuff of like, well, how can I do nothing if there is a rapist pedophile in the White House? How could I do nothing if people are getting killed in camps? And I just think to myself, if you genu, you know, if you genuinely get to that point of thinking that that is all happening, that thinking that uh this is a normal thing to believe, which on the internet it is, a lot of people hold those views, but it can't be shocking that someone is going to take up a uh arms against the president if that idea that he is a rapist pedophile and people are getting murdered is there. So, I just think this violence just comes from this echo chamber of uh Republicans are evil, Trump is the face of evil, the world is coming to an end, and there are going to be very disturbed people who think, "Okay, well, it's my job to stop it."

[00:12:26]>> Yeah. And I don't subscribe to the notion that you as an individual rhetorician or are responsible for the misinterpretation of your words by somebody who's engaged in delusional thinking. You know, there's a certain amount of disordered thinking that you have to engage in if you're going to conclude that some act of vicious violence will be get positive social change. You know, the steps don't line up there. So, you've had a bit of a of an episode and and anybody who's susceptible to that kind of thinking might misinterpret someone's otherwise benile speech. That said, this is a very heightened threat environment.

[00:13:03]Republicans and Democrats alike should be aware of it. They are. They're subject to that threat environment.

[00:13:08]They're fully a breast of it. It it it is affecting the thinking of members of the political class and the elected class to say nothing of civil servants and you should be responsible as a as a speaker. But this that's a very interesting point, James, and it goes both ways. Not just that the the internet desensitizes the radicalized to violent uh thoughts and violent remedies, to political frustrations. Um, but it desensitizes everybody else, too.

[00:13:36]You know, one of the weirdest reactions to that came from CBS News anchor Norah O'Donnell, who confronted the president himself with the ramblings of a madman.

[00:13:45]This man's manifesto. In previous years, his very actions would have retroactively discredited whatever it was he wrote down. But he was lucid, relatively ariodite and very wellver wellverse rather in the kind of talk that is so common place on leftwing forums like blue sky. I guarantee you Nor O'Donnell encounters the claim that the president is a rapist and a criminal and a traitor and a pedophile on a semi-regular basis from people that she knows not to be necessarily following the facts very closely. Not huing to the facts very closely certainly and maybe a bit unhinged. But nevertheless, this is this is entertainment for them. It's sort of the talk that has become so commonplace that she didn't see anything especially wrong with it. Indeed, was surprised that somebody was so radicalized by it that they would act on violent impulses supposedly inspired by them. That too is very revealing of the kind of environment we're in and the pressures that that are on otherwise responsible stakeholders in the system to accept and acclimate themselves to a certain level of domestic political violence. I want to get back into the the Marxist element of all this. And I'm not denying that there are problems on the right as well with uh you know being too comfortable around the idea of political violence. I mean you only need to read the comments under Ben Shapiro's work to figure out what people uh are thinking. But on the on the radical left on the Marxist ideology there is the idea that we're all separated by classes that one class is going to uh take over the other and justice is going to go there. And when you get to that, it robs the individual of the idea of they are responsible for their own actions because they're working in a class. And it diminishes the idea of certain small elements of violence because, well, when you step back and take the full view, this is one class operating against a structure that's set up against them.

[00:15:34]So, of course, there's going to be violence. I mean, you know, you can go to that Stalin quote, uh, you need to break an to make an omelet, you need to break a few eggs. But do you think like in in the inherent idea that everyone is a member of a collective that collectives are working against each other, there is the just the permission from that ideology that violence is an acceptable byproduct, maybe even the engine of one class taking over from another.

[00:16:00]>> Yeah, I think that's a good way to say it. Not only does it that sort of perception flattening individuals out and rendering them this one-dimensional caricature so that you can assign them to the particular group that you want them to represent to be avatars of uh not only does it grease the skids for violence, it helps you it allows you to not see violence where it exists. And I'll give you two examples, both bipartisan examples as it were. Um when both Joe Biden and Donald Trump issued blanket pardons, they did so to groups.

[00:16:31]Um Joe Biden issued a blanket pardon to nonviolent drug offenders. Well, turns out that those non-violent drug offenders aren't all victims of systemic oppression. As a matter of fact, some of them were just nonviolent as a result of plea deal fictions. They pled down their violent charges and therefore had no violent charges on their record when they were granted clemency or pardons.

[00:16:53]Subsequently, the president pardoned a whole lot of very violent people, some of whom had horrible records, some of whom were subsequently involved in violence again and became recidivists shortly after receiving presidential cle. Now, the left would recognize that story in exactly that form in Donald Trump's actions when he pardoned the January 6 protesters. A lot of violent people involved in that, some of them recidivists. They're familiar with that story, but they haven't familiarized themselves with the president that the president was building on, which matters. It matters when the first person does it. It matters that you have these this mirrored image of two political movements that do res reduce individuals down to their essence, strip them of agency, make them uh ships uh just completely uh lost on and a drift on the sea. these currents that they have no capacity to navigate, no way to to uh to navigate themselves. Um that sort of outlook is dehumanizing and those who are inclined towards violence will see that dehumanization as license as a permission structure to do the sorts of things that they're already inclined to talk themselves into. Now they have an authority figure and some indication in their heads at least that their compatriots on their political side, their political allies will look kindly, favorably and encourage that kind of political violence.

[00:18:17]>> You say you don't have a panacea for where this could all uh go, but we are in a place where I mean just last week a gunman shot outside the White House. Uh barely a 24-hour news story. We are so used to the idea that people want to wish violence on Donald Trump. Um the White House correspondents dinner. You know, I I was four days late to the story on this show and it just seemed like I was talking about last week's news when I'm like there was a gunman that was a room away from Donald Trump and it just was so crazy to me. But it it's where we are. So, as you say, America has >> somewhere in that news cycle, we found out that the uh the individual who started the Palisades fire, one of the most uh destructive and deadliest wildfires in California history. It it tore down, you know, dozens of acres in Los Angeles. So, they're still unoccupied. He was inspired by Luigi Manion. He also wanted vengeance against nondescript wealthy people and subsequently committed a horrific act of property destruction and death. I think 12 people were killed in that. And that too just kind of came and went.

[00:19:18]>> And yeah, as you say, it comes and it goes because it's just become so common now that it's hard to I mean, you just think like a couple years ago if something like this happened to Barack Obama or Joe Biden or um you know, even George W. Bush, there'd be some sort of America reckoning with itself that we're getting too far away. But there's something about the Donald Trump in the White House that I think people go, "Ah, you know, it's this violent all the time. It's crazy." But as you point out, America has had situations like this before, the 1910s, 1920s. I mean, political assassinations in the 60s and 70s, MLK, uh, the Kennedy, etc. But America does tend to come back from those things. So, is it going to be the case that there's just going to be one event that is so shocking that America sort of comes to a senses about violence or as you say, are there policy things that can be done to bring things back to the normal?

[00:20:06]>> Well, you know, things I wouldn't want this to us to just sit on our laurels and expect this particular wave of left-wing political violence to just die out on its own. Very well could. Um, but that's not a plan. That's a hope.

[00:20:21]certainly not a strategy. Um there in my research they tend to die out for two competing um influences both of which actually are complimentary at times. Um and the first has to do with law enforcement. Law enforcement absolutely can route these forces make their lives so difficult that their terroristic campaigns are um either too difficult to pull off or their members are disrupted, arrested uh or under surveillance. Um, but the second phenomenon is that their ideological compatriots tire of being on the hook for this sort of thing because the general public abhores violence. I know that's something that is the the people who spend too much time on the internet don't believe, but it's true and it's you can see it in the way in which one of the central arguments of this book is that the the uh reprised refrain that the American right is violent. They're the only they're the most violent. The left isn't really all that violent. It's a myth that the left is violent. You hear that all the time in the wake of left-wing violence. And that's good and desirable because implicit in that accusation is the notion that violence is bad. You should be ashamed of being associated with violence and that the public doesn't like violence. That's great. I can work with that as a social taboo. I like it.

[00:21:40]Um and it's something that we should build upon and and develop and apply universally. Uh it's just making giving the permission structure necessary to establishmentarian Democrats and Republicans alike to look at the violent on their side and conclude that they're not on my side just by virtue of the tactics that you endorse. You are not my political ally and there needs to be some um license given to responsible stakeholders in the system to be able to ex exped just expregate rather um those on their side who are casting their movements in a bad light um and really focus on the degree to which the American people broadly do not look kindly on violent movements. Uh I'm hoping to emphasize all of that with Blood and Progress, a century of left-wing violence in America.

[00:22:29]>> Uh brilliant. I want to move on to Iran now. So, as we always have to say at this point, it's quite unclear where things are at right now. We do have the idea that there is a peace deal in the next couple days. Uh, President Trump, as we're recording now, has just said that the Camp David talks that he's going to have with his cabinet presumably about this peace deal are delayed. There's another meeting at the White House. Iran is certainly saying that there is no peace deal imminent, then they're threatening US forces. Um, I'll start with this. So we have had a situation where every time there's a you know peace deal or a big deal about to be reached, Trump starts tweeting out some well truth socialing out some crazy stuff in an effort to intimidate Iran to come to the negotiating table with a bit more hurry.

[00:23:14]I wonder if the strikes over the weekend are part of that. Is it a case of hey just letting you know things can go down a bit more aggressively if you don't come to the negotiating table? If the true social post I'm working off anymore.

[00:23:28]How close do you think on what you're hearing a deal could be?

[00:23:33]>> I'm I don't have any special insider information. Uh I am waiting on tender hooks with everybody else for the next presidential pronouncement, many of which are self-contradictory or at least contradict the last presidential announcement a couple hours ago. Um the one thing that was interesting about those strikes that's I think clarifying and these were a couple of um strikes on some boats, some swift boats that were laying mines in the straight and one anti-aircraft battery near Bonder Abbas that that fired on US forces that executed those strikes. Um what that tells you one thing is that and this is somehow difficult for for some people to understand the straight of Hormuz is not militarily closed. The Iranians did not deploy the assets that they had in previous decades and no longer possessed due to the 40-day war to militarily close the straight to all traffic, including its own traffic. They were just attempting to lay some of those mines just then and they were blown up in the process. So that tells you one thing, but it's not a comforting fact because that also means that maritime traffic through the straight has been closed off by virtue of the threat or hyper hypothetical threat of retaliatory force from Iran on shipping interests.

[00:24:47]The Iranians have fired off some missiles at some ships. They have laid some minds in the strait, but nothing even remotely approaching what they've done in the past like in 1987 and 1988.

[00:24:57]and certainly nothing that was uh studied in the scenarios over the course of decades leading up to this war. Which is why the straight of Hormuz has become the president's biggest problem. Um it's not the nuclear material. It's not uh it's not the Iranian terror proxies.

[00:25:13]It's the straight of Hormuz which was always going to be their big card and something the United States could clear.

[00:25:18]We've cleared it before militarily in the 80s as I said and sometimes the Iranians muck around in the straight and and there's some uh military action there usually very small scale but the failure to open this up by force and even being bequeafd access to this in that just if they were to be so generous as to and beneficent as to grant us access to the strait it would set an atrocious president. It all but guarantees that other revisionist powers like China would would try the very same gambit which much more efficacy likely and much more competence in for example the strait of Taiwan. Um it would establish uh it would create the conditions in which spheres of influence would naturally arise as corporate and governmental interests made their arrangements with Iran to control which if it was left with control of straight of Hormuz would extort shipping fees whether it calls it a toll or not or environmental protection or what have you. It would extort those nations that depend on that waterway. And who doesn't depend on that waterway? the United States and Israel, both of which seem to be very content to allow the world to work this out for itself. And that whatever that arrangement emerges from that dynamic is not going to be the benefit of American interests. The president has talked himself into a bit of a corner here with regard to this the surrender of nuclear material. I may have some more tolerance than the average American for quote unquote lawnmowing operations where you're just going back in and executing strikes on some very select targets in order to prevent them from gaining too much efficacy, power, competence, support, what have you. Um, but those nuclear the nuclear material such as we understand it is buried. It's very difficult to access the very complicated and expensive refining and enriching equipment that Iran needs to create nuclear weapons has been disabled from what public intelligence suggests. And it would be very difficult for Iran to start a nuclear bomb program again that we wouldn't see from space or that the Israelis wouldn't catch with their extensive penetration network of intelligence assets and agents inside Iran. So I'm less worried about that.

[00:27:28]And even the president said to Sean Hannity the other day, "Well, it's more of a public relations thing to try to get the nuclear dust, as he calls it, because he wants a definitive, dramatic, cinematic end to this war." I don't think he was ever going to get one. I think what he was always going to get was a settlement with something resembling the rump elements of the Iranian regime, after which you move on to the phase that everybody said was coming throughout this war, which is in destabilizing the regime internally. And we're there. The only problem is the straight of Hormuz and the president doesn't seem to have the will necessary to do what needs to be done to reopen that straight. Until he does, he's going to find a very unsatisfying end to this war and a strategic deficit for the United States moving forward. I I I think you've absolutely nailed it there because I think you know I I started off going okay this is a real chance to get rid of a terrible regime one that is a existential threat to the US and Israel as long as it exists threat to the west as well and it just as it went on I was just starting to worry that you know that old taco Trump fear was going to come through that he was going to leave in a way that sort made sure that nothing was really progressed and when you hear that there's a deal imminent.

[00:28:42]When you hear that uh the regime is still there despite all of these shutdowns, despite all of this strangulation that the US has done, I'm starting to worry that Trump is going to take a deal that he can spin as they're so far away from a nuclear project. It's not funny. Uh but the straight of Hormuz is open. But my worry is as long as the nation of Iran is led by someone who thinks that America is the great Satan and Israel is the little Satan and that world peace can be achieved by the removal of the US and Israel. I don't think Iran is ever going to truly abandon a nuclear dream because they that is an inherent nuclear dream within their ideology. That's my fear.

[00:29:21]>> Oh, I don't think so either. But we don't need to trust anyone. Um we it's this is not a matter of trust. It's verify and verify to to paraphrase and to adulterate the Reagan claim. Um, this regime will always regard the United States as a preeminent threat to its stability, to its ideology that has since the the inception of this regime.

[00:29:39]That hostility is mutual. The Iranian regime has killed thousands of Americans. The Iranian officials who are still alive have blood on their hands.

[00:29:47]Many of them met their fates over the course of the 40-day war. Um, but we don't have to trust this regime at all.

[00:29:53]We don't have to have a working relationship with this regime. We can strangle it and isolate it. And the 40-day war has has helped us advance that cause, the degree to which the Gulf States now recognize what the threat in their regime truly is. And whether they're vocal about it or not, that Israel is the region's pre-minent military power. Um, with the exception of the United States, which is the globe's pre-minent military power, but it is basically a regional hegeimon. And those countries that look to their own security and stability will make a very cold and cleareyed decision about who has their interests in mind and who doesn't. And that's good for the United States. That's great for us. Our our interests are advanced by that. Um, and I'm disincclined to say that the war has not been uh a a valuable enterprise in part because of the fact that the United States enjoys so much more freedom of action than Iran. I mean, if you were to if you were to just ask somebody who was being honest, who was a non a good faith actor in this dialogue, which party you would rather be? Would you rather have the freedom of action available to Iran or the freedom of action available to the United States? The answer is obvious.

[00:31:01]>> I think I would rather look out a window like you know just the ability to look at a window.

[00:31:06]>> Right. Precisely. and the degradation of the Iranian nuclear program to say nothing of the decimation of their their air force, their navy, their defense industrial base, their nuclear program, their leadership cadres, all of them have been ground into dust to to varying degrees. And that's good and yes, they will rebuild. It will take quite a lot of time to rebuild. But when the Iranian people come back for this regime, as they will, as they did in 2001, as they did in 20 2009, as they did in 2017, 2018, 2022, 2023, and 2025, and they will again, and when they come, they will face a regime that is far weaker, has far less money to pay its apparatics, and has very a much reduced terror apparatus with which to control and subjugate their population. And that was always part of the plan as we understood it. But the Iranians have managed with this straight of Hormuz gambit to inflict enough political pressure on the Republican party. And that's what it is. Domestic political pressure coming from a Republican party that is focused on a political cycle in November more so than the the generational project that the United States is currently engaged in in the Middle East. And those cross pressures are are are coming to bear on these negotiations. Look, I reserve the right to react to this thing when it happens.

[00:32:26]It hasn't happened yet, James. We have to keep telling ourselves there's no pen to paper here. There's no deal as far as we understand it yet. Although a very could happen very quickly. These things tend to come together quickly when they're when they're being floated like this. So, it is valuable to to say where our objections are and to throw brushback pitches as some Republicans in the Senate are. folks like Lindsey Graham, Ted Cruz, Roger Wicker, who's who's the head of some very very powerful armed Senate Armed uh services committee. Um they're saying this is JCPOA2. This is Barack Obama's nuclear deal, the sequel. We don't want anything to do with that. However, those are the those are the loud ones, voices who are quiet within the party, who don't want to run crosswise of the Republican voters, who are still supportive of the president and therefore supportive of this war. Um they're all still getting very they're getting very nervous looking at the polling. And if the polling or if the gas prices in this country are still at 450 a gallon, approaching $5 a gallon in some places come November, the Republican party will be wiped out. There's just no question about it. So, the president needs a victory as much as Iran needs relief.

[00:33:32]This is a game of chicken and both parties are starting to blink.

[00:33:36]>> I think so. As you say, we don't know what's in the deal yet. It's hard to talk about it too openly until we know what's in there. But I think at the very least we can expect that the headline would be straight up when news is open and the headline would be Iran's nuclear capabilities are shot uh and that's gone. I'm interested to see what the American public reaction is going to be to that. And I I'll make a analogy I've made on the show last week, but in Australia in Victoria I was living in Victoria. The co lockdowns the hardest in the world. And when we got out of them I was expecting it to be an absolute bloodletting of all the politicians that put us there. We were so sick of it. The public was so angry about them. I thought it was going to be on for young and old the second the next election rolled around. And we voted them all back in. Uh we voted Labour back in in Victoria. Queensland had terrible lockdowns. We voted them back in. Uh some politicians, you know, resigned before the voting got really bad, but um certainly, you know, it wasn't the expect it wasn't what I expected. And I think it's because people got so relieved it was over that even though the messenger was the same person that put us there in the first place, we just became so thankful to that messenger that we were happy with them again. And I'm thinking to bring this back to Trump and Iran, are the American public going to go, "Well, hang on. What the hell was all that about?"

[00:34:50]Or are they going to go, "Thank goodness gas prices have come down. Thank goodness the cost of living's come down.

[00:34:54]Thank goodness the straight off moves is open. Trump's done it again." Do you think that possibly could be the effect that it have? It it very well could be.

[00:35:02]I mean, people have a fantastic capability to um compartmentalize trauma and forget and move on. That's an evolutionary feature of the human species and probably a valuable one. Um but something similar happened in the United States, but I don't think it had anything to do with gratitude. Uh in 2021, the United States had off-year elections in gubernatorial races in New Jersey and Virginia, both of which Republicans did very well. Republicans won the governorship in New Jersey, very narrowly lost the governorship, I'm sorry, won the governorship in Virginia, very narrowly lost the governorhip in New Jersey in a race that was much much closer than it was expected to be. And this was taken to be a a signal of things to come for the 2022 midterms.

[00:35:47]Most of which the cross pressures that were coming to bear on Democrats, we my understanding from my analysis was ma mostly COVID related a a reckoning over co policies particularly educational policies in this country and in the United States schools were shuttered for longer than in much of the industrial industrialized world. They were closed early and they stayed closed for longer.

[00:36:11]Particularly in dark blue municipalities, particularly in places where the teachers unions are most powerful and the teachers unions have an in indelible, inextricable link to the Democratic party, which is their um political party that is their patrons.

[00:36:27]And so we expected to have that sort of reckoning in 2022 and we didn't. There was no red wave. It was limited to Florida where there was some profound gratitude for Ronda Santis and how he handled COVID, but that was not apparent throughout the rest of the country. And what it's more likely attributable to is not necessarily that we all moved on, but that the Republican party put up a lot of candidates in statewide races and in some very key congressional races that were just unpalatable to the general electorate. Many of them were Donald Trump's handpicked nominees, folks like Hershel Walker in Georgia, Carrie Lake in Arizona, who had either been rejected by their voters previously in previous election cycles, or were just very outside the mainstream and seemed to bring only the qualification of being differential to and supportive of Donald Trump to the table, not necessarily having the competence to run for office, certainly manage an office while in in elected an elected office.

[00:37:28]So what American voters did was just revote the status quo. Republican voters were energized and enthusiastic, but not enough to overcome Democrats who turned out in significant numbers to blunt the red wave. It Democrats could be doing the very same thing to themselves, too, in some of these contests in the United States. Now, we're getting into Democratic electoral politics. But there are some there are activist movements that are elevating candidates to seats in places like Maine with Graham Platner and Michigan Abdel El Say who if they won their respective primaries might be favored but only by virtue of the fact that Democrats are favored across the board. These candidates will underperform the base level Democratic performance in a very solid Democratic year this year 2026 guaranteed. How much? We don't quite know. Will it be enough to get their Republican candidates who are facing them over the over the the hump and blunt what would otherwise be a very good year for Democrats? It very well could be. And if that's what happens, it would it would, in my view, mirror what the Republican party did to itself in 2022, just nominating candidates who are out of step with their voters.

[00:38:38]>> Uh, one more thing I want to talk about with Iran. So Trump for the last couple years has really prided himself on being the president of peace and how many wars he's been able to stop and uh you know especially with Israel and Palestine that seemed to be something he was really high on. Move over to Venezuela that operation goes off without a hitch.

[00:38:55]It looks incredible. No one's been able to interfere with South American politics in such a bloodless way as Donald Trump has been in the history of the US. And I can kind of point paint a picture for myself that Trump's going around going invincible. Like whatever I want to do to the global world, it's happening. And that is part of what happened in Iran. He thought it would be I'm I'm sure Donald Trump in February thought it would be all over by now and there'd be another regime. But obviously that's not the case. And that's not to say that Iran was a mistake. But I'm I'm curious because America's also, you know, there's a lot of talk around Cuba over the past couple weeks. Uh, not that I expect this one to be military, but Greenland as well. Do you reckon this has shaken Trump's confidence at all about what he could do to the global map uh in the last couple years of his presidency?

[00:39:43]>> It's hard to say. Um, it's hard to say only because we don't know how the Iran war conflict resolves itself yet, right?

[00:39:50]I mean we're that will depend that will influence how the president navigates future for foreign policy conflicts future foreign policy conundrums uh moving forward. So, we can't really speculate, but from our particular vantage that I would not rule out uh a a Maduro style raid to access Rule Castro, who is just indicted in US federal court, although he's a nonogenarian and is hardly a target of the a real acute interest, but nevertheless, demoralizing the regime and convincing it to give up the ghost is part of this administration's grand strategic approach to u ne interacting with Cuba, attempting to isolate it and attempting to get it to engage in economic reforms domestically.

[00:40:44]Uh building its economy out vertically rather than just simply horizontally, which I think in the estimation of of the administration would contribute significantly to its the the regime's dissolution, at least in civility, but most likely dissolution. And that's what we want. We want to There's a certain thinking from my assessment there's a thinking inside this administration from what I'm hearing that the Cuban revolution is a spent force that there's no energy or enthusiasm behind it. That it was a fiction that was generally subsidized by um the the Hugo Chavez regime in Venezuela, maintained by Maduro um and subsidized by the the Chavistas. and in the absence of the chistas and their free subsidized oil that the whole house of cards comes down pretty quickly and we're starting to see the very beginning of something that looks like that. So you could have something that's much more um much more like a collapse that would subsequently subsequently result in the United States coming in by by virtue of invitation to help foster stability and provide humanitarian assistance and what have you. And in that that scenario which is the most optimistic scenario for the Trump administration just Cuba's role in the Cold War simply ends because it basically quits. It's functionally a dissolution of the Soviet Union style ending to that conflict. Now, that may be pie in the sky. There are some indications that they're on the right track and I'm very hopeful about it, but it will the record of what how the Iran war ends and how it's perceived by posterity and those who will shape posterity and we'll have a pretty good idea of that within short order of its the resolution of this conflict. But that will affect how much risk the administration is willing to take on.

[00:42:35]And if it in it suggests that there's any risk at all, if there's an an unsatisfactory end to the straight of Hormuz crisis, which is basically what it is now, uh then I wouldn't expect any proactive, much less kinetic operations by this administration. It will be effectively chasened. If it walks away from Iran with an advantageous narrative where it says, "Listen, we cleared the straight. We work our will. we will there there's no way that they get a nuclear weapon. Done deal. Walk away.

[00:43:05]Then yeah, everything is on the table for Cuba because this president will perceive himself to be the master of the universe. Somebody who's capable of reshaping the geopolitical chessboard at his will and he'll have some evidence in support of that supposition.

[00:43:18]>> I want to move on to another collapsing expired regime which is uh the Democrat autopsy which has just come out. So, uh, this is an incredible document because I just there's some documents, you know, things are off from the first page. This is an incredible example of that because here are literally the first words that you you can read when you access this Democrat. So, for people that don't know about this one, this is a report. Uh, it wasn't going to come out. Now, it has come out about why the Democrats lost the election. It's 192 pages long. I'll give you my fiveword rebuttal after this, but on page one, on page one of this report, it says, "The document reflects the views of the author, not the DNC. The DNC was not provided with the underlying sourcing, interviews, or supporting data for many of the assertions contained herein, and therefore cannot cannot independently verify the claims presented." Now, if that's your first words, why on earth did you release the document?

[00:44:11]>> Yeah, I mean, it's a very embarrassing situation, and it is a document at war with itself. And so yeah, the question is why did they release it? The Democratic National Committee under Ken Martin was facing a ton of criticism from every imaginable faction within the Democratic Party's firmament for not telling them what they wanted to hear.

[00:44:32]And they couldn't be told what they wanted to hear because it's not the truth. So here's the problem that Ken Martin has. Autopsying the Democratic Party's mistakes in 2024 is an over carl Harris's loss was an overdetermined phenomena. So autopsying the Democratic party's mistakes would not make for very good reading. The president of the United States was infirm and his condition was covered up by his allies and his the Democratic Party's supporters in the press. Um the Joe Biden presided over monstrous inflation rates by in injecting into an already overheated economy a ton of stimulus a ton of demandside spending taxpayer funded spending and that overheated the economy. He was not popular. The economy was not popular. Donald Trump's administration was remembered fondly for not having any of those problems with the exception of CO which he didn't really even get a lot of blame for. So, you know, you wouldn't make for a very good reading there. This report does not tackle that because its readers do not want to hear from that. Hear that. What they do want to hear is a lot of comforting fictions about how the establishmentarian wing of this party wasn't bold enough, did not lean into the activist demands enough. in particular the notion that Israel's actions, Israel's defensive actions were so anathema and that Joe Biden had uh recklessly supported um the Israeli defensive war after the October 7th massacre and therefore neutralized young voters enthusiasm, dampened their enthusiasm, gave them no reason to come out and Kla Harris only lost because of the Gaza war. That is one what some activists want to hear.

[00:46:20]Um, others want to hear how the extent to which the the the Democratic party um failed because it had failed to properly invest in socialist policies. It had uh it was chintzy with taxpayer spending which is a laughable a laughable notion.

[00:46:37]Um and it doesn't deal with the immigration wave over which the president presided as well. The open borders that he was he and the activist class were eager to lean into. All of these things would be pretty uh uh reasonable to put into a report. Um but between what the Democratic Party wants to hear and what the Democratic Party is paying to hear, they're not going to get any of it. So Ken Martin shouldn't have released this report at all. He certainly shouldn't have released a report that is arguing with itself over the course of it. Every page there's like citation needed. This makes no sense. This is contradicted by public reporting. So why did he release it at all? I think because he is eager to keep his job. There's no other there's very is very other any other reason to do this other than to say, "Listen, I'm throwing my hands up here. I'm not the problem. You know, there's there's a whole bunch of factionalism within this within this outfit. I'm doing my best to tame it and this is what I'm working with." And to a certain extent, I think for his personal political purposes, it sort of helped because we aren't talking about Ken Martin anymore. Not since that report was released, which he was the focus of the story. Why? Where's the report? What's Ken Martin doing the with this report for 18 months. Now he's not the focus of the report. The report is the focus of the report, which is entirely about the extent to which the Democratic Party is this unwieldy beast with so so much factionalism in it that it is just something that cannot be controlled by mere mortals. that serves Ken Martin's purposes, too, even if it's not to the advantage of the party he supposedly is a a careful steward of.

[00:48:20]>> But so, look, here's the thing. Yes, the Democrat is a factional base. Yes, they're all fighting with each other.

[00:48:25]But you know who stops fighting? Strong leaders. I mean, the Republicans were divided in 20. How many people ran for 2016? Donald Trump destroyed them all and everyone united behind him. I'm sure the Democrats were just as factionalized in 2008 when Obama took over and 1992 when Clinton took over. But when you have a strong >> when you have a strong candidate to build around, everyone shuts the hell up because they want to win.

[00:48:46]>> But it's funny, James, you just mentioned two years where there was an outsider takeover of the party. Barack Obama was an insurgent candidate in 2008 who ousted the establishment.

[00:48:57]>> Bill Clinton was an outsider candidate in 1992 who ousted the establishment. So it's funny the strong leadership cycles that you touched on are those in which there was an outsider takeover of the party. Well, albeit from within the Democratic Party's establishmentarian wings, but certainly not the anointed successor to whatever, you know, the movement was at the time. Um, maybe that tells you a little something about the nature of leadership and how it atrophies over time and grows complacent and comfortable and sometimes needs to be shaken up by outside forces. That's something that I think the populists probably have, right? Because that strong leadership that you're talking about there is just merely the deference that activists within the various factions of the party think they have to observe in order to get in good with a guy who's got the base of the party under their thumb. It's all just transactional. It is purely pragmatic and utilitarian. It's not necessarily falling in love with the guy. Although you could say that about Barack Obama, but there was plenty of opposition to Barack Obama within the Democratic party's establishmentarian wings. they were just afraid that there we get crosswise with their voters. So, there's there's something to be said there. I'm not sure we'll probably make too much of it, but it's nevertheless an interesting phenomenon to point your finger at.

[00:50:12]>> No, I I I think it's the whole thing because uh look, I'll I'll save Democrats, you know, 192 page report.

[00:50:19]Camala Harris was a terrible candidate.

[00:50:21]And to be honest, like this is the most industry plant candidate uh you can possibly think of. This is a someone who was selected to be vice president because it fit Barack H sorry fit Joe Biden's wish for a black woman to run with him. That is why she was selected.

[00:50:34]She becomes vice president. Then there is no vetting process once Biden finally decides to hang up the boots to find a new candidate. So it's Camala Harris by default. Uh no one had a chance to debate it. And that's when you get stuck with someone that no one's ever voted for that no one's ever connected with.

[00:50:50]And if you have a bad candidate like I look policy is important. uh these political debates that I get obsessed with. I love getting obsessed with them and I love thinking about them. But at the end of the day, most voters aren't following day-to-day policy. They're not reading people's things. They are just going which candidate is uh do I connect with more? Which candidate do I like more? That is not Camala Harris. That is Donald Trump. And the longer you had Camala Harris in the chair, the more the less people were connecting with her.

[00:51:17]So, you know, you can write the 192 page report, you can say Israel Gaza, you can say all these things about factionalism.

[00:51:22]thing is you had a candidate that no one connected with and therefore no one voted for and that's the whole report.

[00:51:29]>> It should be the whole report. Again, it would make for light reading and probably a little less analysis than what the Democratic Party is paying all these consultants for, but that's a that is the story. Again, it can be pretty overdetermined. It's not like Kala Harris lost uh but in the in the actual raw vote by a substantial amount. She lost the swing states, but the swing states were decided narrowly. So, you can overread these results and Republicans should be overconerned about that as well. In addition, you know, there's uh a very important history that we need to observe in the extent to which the Republican party, which committed to this very process in the wake of its loss in 2012, in the 2012 presidential race to Barack Obama during his re-election campaign, committed to an autopsy. had a lot of very uh well-intended recommendations there, many of which were thoroughly researched and thoroughly thought through and a game plan was established to pursue them. And Donald Trump came in, smashed all the China, ignored every single recommendation that was made in that report, threaded the needle, and managed to win, even while doing in things that were actually in direct contravention of that report's conclusions, like the notion that the Republican party needs to be much more amendable to comprehensive immigration reform and softer on immigration policies in order to repair its image among, in particular, Hispanic voters, which Donald Trump managed to do with a completely different rhetorical approach and one that was much more in line with what the Republican party's actual voters wanted in terms of policy. So, there's a lesson there and two for Democrats and Democrats could overread the 2024 election results. They probably are to a certain extent. And yeah, if you're going to say that Kla Harris was just that awful of a candidate, I'm not going to disagree with you. I think it's entirely possible that the nation just could not stomach her. And one thing that we should note that this report, the Democratic Party's report gets right, even though it it ruffles some feathers within Joe Biden's camp, which is something that the report's authors were clearly sensitive of, was the degree to which Joe Biden saddled Kla Harris with a bunch of jobs that were never going to serve her political interests well. They made her the border zar. They made her, you know, responsible for getting to the root causes of migration as those those are difficult to comprehend. They made her responsible for tracking down state level election reforms from the Republican right that were supposedly attacks on democracy. All of these were political narratives. The vice president doesn't have any power over state level laws. They just made her the poster child for all these problems that Joe Biden wanted to highlight but had no intention of fixing. And yes, they damaged her brand as a result. Um, it was shortsighted, but it was also insurance for the Biden people so that they wouldn't have somebody coming up on their on their flanks who was more popular than the president. Um, all of these were political calculations. They all backfired on the Democratic party.

[00:54:36]And the Democratic Party deserves credit for at least acknowledging those. The problem is that the acknowledged problems are few far between and really the lowest hanging fruit that you can give them a little pat on the back, but that's about all they deserve.

[00:54:49]>> Uh you talked before about how it's the outsiders that come in and shake things up. And it's interesting you bring that up because Axias reporting it's a couple days ago that if you look at the people that Alexandra Quasiocortez is meeting with and if you look at the speeches that she's giving and the crowds that she's attracting, it kind of seems like a presidential uh race is in front of her. That is an outsider. That is someone that could shake up the Democrats. Uh is that someone that people should be thinking that possibly could be the face of the Democrat party next election cycle?

[00:55:22]Listen, what I've been saying and what I my assumption is right now is that we haven't seen the person who will be the next face of the Democratic party emerge yet from wherever they are. I don't think that they're going to come from the establishmentarian wing of the Democratic party. If you look at Democratic enthusiasm under the hood of these poll numbers, there's very preliminary Democratic Party early polling numbers for the presidential primary in 2028. Enthusiasm is low, name recognition is low. Um the the the race is very much up for grabs and I think there is so much disqu among the Democratic base. you know, they're sort of doing a 2010 style Republican party tea part tea party populist revolt uh on speed on a speedrun mo motion. Um they're going through the anti-establishmentarian revolt, the primaries that they're having, internal fraction, uh fractious internal politics, um factional politics, and that's going to be right for somebody with political talent from outside the political process to exploit if they were if they were to choose to do so.

[00:56:37]Everybody thinks they're Donald Trump.

[00:56:38]Everybody thinks they have the celebrity. They have the rapport. um they can carry a national election just because Donald Trump did it and they have low estimation of Donald Trump and his political skills and that's fine. I want to you if you could replicate his success, go ahead. We'll we'll see you try to pull it off. But there will somebody who who will be who will try to pull it off. Somebody will attempt it and that person I think will enjoy a lot more attention than they think they're going to get. You know, Donald Trump isn't the only person trying to you know make this happen for himself. Stephen A.

[00:57:10]Smith played with this notion. Spencer Pratt, who's more in the Republican lane, nevertheless, is showing how it's done. It is a grassroots campaign that appeals to talks over the heads of traditional media figures. Um, speaks directly to voters. Usually that's on the internet and that online lane is probably going to be the vehicle that they would move, you know, move to the post through. But I don't know. Politics within the Democratic party is so unsettled right now. And there is such anger. There is such vehement hostility towards everyone and everything that represents an institution in this country. There is a revolutionary sentiment on the left which manifests sometimes in violence but more often in destable unstable politics and contempt for those in control of power structures that it's it's hard to imagine Gavin Newsome just placidly getting the nomination after an uneventful primary season. I think the Democrats, Democratic voters are going to make the representatives fight it out for a very long time.

[00:58:11]>> Brilliant. Uh Noah Rothman, I know you got to be somewhere. So, the book Blood in Progress: The Century of Leftwing Violence in America, available now.

[00:58:17]Please go out and buy it. Uh thank you so much for joining us.

[00:58:21]>> Thank you, James. Appreciate it.

[00:58:25]>> Thank you for watching the James Bald show this week. Hope you enjoyed that conversation with Norah Rothman. Please go out and buy that book. And to keep up to date with me and all the other great commentators we have here on Sky News Australia, please subscribe on YouTube now.