Goldberg should have listened to Trump

People who say "from the river to the sea" during Passover aren't playing around

Jonah Goldberg, the once rising star of American conservatism, has settled for a seat as another Republican Strategist on a cable news outlet. Of course he’s not a Republican strategist but someone who actually was important. But in January 2016, he traveled to the Island of Misfit Never Trumpers. They bet that Trump would lose and they would regain control of the party. They bet wrong. His life is still good and he still has his principles, whatever those principles may be on any given day.

He promised me he would never, ever grow up when I responded to a tweet and wrote that eventually he would come around to Trump. Goldberg has stayed true to his word. OK. Life went on for both of us.

Then came Columbia. It’s been a while, but anti-Semitism is back in style. Hello Mudda, Hello Intifada. During Passover, actual Nazis in Keffiyeh protested during the Seder at the home of Chuck Schumer, currently the highest ranking Jew in American politics.

CNN had on the air Goldberg and Lulu Garcia-Navarro, NPR’s former Jerusalem bureau chief. She won Murrow and Peabody awards for her coverage. Her husband is Jewish. The exchange got heated, according to Mediaite.

“I think the antisemitism stuff, particularly Passover, is a big issue, legitimate issue to talk about. It’s a serious issue, and I think there’s a lot of antisemitic stuff going on out there. But when you’re saying you’re Hamas, when you’re praising Hamas, when you’re praising Hezbollah, when you’re saying you’re gonna globalize the intifada —” Goldberg said before fellow commentator Lulu Garcia-Navarro jumped in.

“Excuse me, I’m so sorry. I’m, no, I’m sorry,” Garcia-Navarro said to a surprised Goldberg, who insisted on wrapping up his point.

“I’m going to finish my point, it means you’re pro-terrorist,” he said.

She went on to admonish his quoting the actual words, saying, “They are selective quotes that are being taken off and not from students themselves in the encampments in Columbia that they have said this. There are Jewish students who are actually part of this.”

That NPR training helped her in her place at the talking head table as the Totally Unbiased Reporter.

Goldberg — the author of Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left — now seems stunned that his newfound friends on the left are not gentlemen.

He said, “I’ve spent, I got a lot of scars from calling out horrible standbys on the right over the last ten years. I call out anti-Semitism and bigotry all the time on the right, I don’t hear a lot of that from sort of Squad-adjacent type people calling out this stuff on the left.”

It’s unfair. He played by his rules and the other side isn’t playing by his rules.

Liberals see him for what he is. Weak. Goldberg along with Bill Kristol and John Podhoretz form a trio of sons of Jewish intellectuals who escaped the cattle car of communism for the freedom of conservatism. They saw liberal fascism for what it is, not just a book title. While Kristol’s father died before the rise of Trump, Goldberg’s mother and both parents of Podhoretz supported Trump because he fights — and wins.

Politics is not a parlor game with politeness and powdered wigs, but rather a struggle over power. The more powerful the government, the fiercer the battle. No government in world history has been more powerful. The left is not playing games.

FJB said, “You need to have weapons to take on the government, you need F-15s and maybe some nuclear weapons.”

Biden and his boys are not going to allow an election to stop them. In the war on terrorism, Biden sides with the terrorists. He has nukes and he knows how to use them. And remember the first rule of tyranny is first they go after the Jews. It has been that way for 5,784 years now.

The reason Lucianne Goldberg and the rest supported Trump is he fights. But it is not just that, he fights and wins. That is why the left hates him with an unforgiving passion. He moved the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem and sired the Abraham Accords.

Goldberg should have embraced him then because no matter where he goes in life or what he does, he is always a Jew. And tyrants go after him first. All those Jewish kids fronting for the terrorists are too stupid to realize that. Goldberg knows.

Oh, he will never admit it publicly but there are ways to walk back and make it look like you are walking forward. He’s smart. He could find a way.

Norman Podhoretz could help him find the way.

In a 2021 interview, when support for Trump was at its nadir, Podhoretz told the Wall Street Journal, “I was, to begin with, anti-anti-Trump. I was not crazy about the guy. I had never met him, and still I’ve never met him. But I thought the animosity against him was way out of proportion and, on the right, a big mistake. I went from anti-anti-Trump to pro-Trump. . . . I still think — and it’s been the same fight going on in my lifetime since, I would say, 1965 — I still think there’s only one question: Is America good or bad?”

Culture war?

He said, “We’re in a war, and it’s a war to the death. Now they actually admit it. They used to pretend. Not anymore. ‘Dissent’ was the real patriotism—so being against America meant you were for America, if you remember all that. Now they’re happy to say what they think.”

He also said, “This ‘woke’ business — critical race theory, Black Lives Matter, all of it — is just pure anti-American hatred. And I think [its proponents] would admit that. Which is why I keep saying it’s a war. If you don’t understand that, you don’t know what the hell is going on.”

Trump opposed the Iraq war, although when Howard Stern asked him at the time if he supported it and Trump said, “Yeah, I guess so,” showing all the enthusiasm of taking your wife to the shoe store.

Trump trashed American intelligence agencies, which angered Podhoretz who said the intelligence agencies did not lie when they said Hussein had nukes. They really believed he did in 2003.

But Podhoretz saw a bigger picture than what transpired 18 years previous to the interview.

He told the Journal, “Look, Trump is a type of person . . . there’s a wonderful Yiddish slang word: bulvan. A bully, doesn’t care, crashes through. Trump’s bad side is a necessary accompaniment to his good side.”

Abraham Lincoln once asked General Winfield Scott: "Why is it you were once able to take Mexico City in three months with 5000 men and we have been unable to take Richmond with 100,000 men?"

"I will tell you" said General Scott, "The men who took us to Mexico City are the same men that are keeping us out of Richmond."

That is what we the American people are up against. Our government — our federal agents — are keeping us out.

And what happens in New York does not stay in New York; it spreads around the country and the world.

The lawfare against Trump — frivolous lawsuits and surreal political prosecutions — contrast well with the refusal to stop looters, lock up rioters or imprison those who beat up little old ladies because of the color of their skin.

If Columbia’s sanctioned protest theatrics bother Goldberg, I suggest he stop reading John Podhoretz and re-read John’s father.