Charles Fain Lehman, Rafael Mangual, Jesse Arm, and Tal Fortgang discuss the murder of Israeli embassy aides Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Lynn Milgrim, the DOJ’s investigation into Chicago’s hiring practices, and President Trump’s feud with Bruce Springsteen.
Audio Transcript
Jesse Arm: Elias Rodriguez should face the death penalty. He should do so because of 18 U.S. Code, Section 1116 for the murder of an internationally protected person. Attorney General Bondi, U.S. Attorney for D.C., Jeanine Pirro, I think should prosecute this case to the fullest extent of the law, which in this case would be holding this Islamist accountable for his crimes and putting him to death.
Charles Fain Lehman: Welcome back to the City Journal Podcast. I’m your host Charles Fain Lehman, a fellow at the Manhattan Institute and senior editor of City Journal. Joining me today on the panel, Rafael Mangual, crime specialist at the Manhattan Institute, Jesse Arm, responsible for all things politics at the Manhattan Institute, and Tal Fortgang, all-around legal handyman at the Manhattan Institute. Gentlemen, thank you for joining me. I want to get into last night’s very serious news.
Late in evening, we’re recording this Thursday morning, late in the evening, last night on Wednesday, a gunman opened fire after an American Jewish Committee Young Diplomats reception killing Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Lynn Milgrim. The police have taken into custody 30-year-old Elias Rodriguez of Chicago. Rodriguez reportedly told police he, quote, “did it for Gaza” and chanted “free, free Palestine” as he was taken into custody.
This is, we’ve talked, I think we talked on this podcast a couple of weeks ago, possibly with the same group about the firebombing of Josh Shapiro’s home. This is part of, as I argue in City Journal, a broader trend of both anti-Semitic terrorism and also left-wing terrorism more generally. So I want to get people’s, we’re still learning facts on the ground as we record this, but I want to get people’s quick reactions. What do we make of what’s going on here?
Rafael Mangual: Yeah, I think this is exactly the kind of left-wing terrorism that we’ve been talking about. This is part of the radical left’s brand and it has been for a really long time. Charles, you shared something recently on Twitter about Yale doing this play kind of celebrating a Puerto Rican nationalist terrorist that shot up Congress. We have people in the Weather Underground getting out of prison and then being met with fellowships and faculty positions at Ivy League institutions. The left has a real branding problem here, because part of their brand is increasingly becoming the kind of violent radicalism that they celebrate on college campuses wrapped in keffiyehs, and that ultimately culminates in stuff like this. I mean, this is the logical extension of chants like “free Palestine” and “from the river to the sea.” And we know that the opportunistic left would take advantage of making exactly that same kind of argument if the shoe were on the other foot, if this were radical right-wing violence, which frankly we just don’t see as much of, at least not in the U.S. and at least not today.
Jesse Arm: Yeah, I would pull at the same shoestring there just to kind of say, I think that this is the masked, as Ralph has described them, these are the masked campus, cosplaying Islamists wrapped in their terror rags and chanting for Intifada. And they should now be treated with the same moral disgust, I think, as anyone wearing a Klan hood or a Nazi armband.
Last night we saw exactly why. So this guy Rodriguez murdered two embassy staffers outside the Capitol Jewish Museum. When police arrested him, as Ralph said, he shouted, free Palestine. The couple he killed had just left an event hosted by the American Jewish Committee. Rodriguez thought he was targeting Jews, but at least one of his victims was Christian. If that doesn’t tell you that this is all a threat to Americans of all stripes, I don’t think anything will. It’s not some isolated act of lunacy. Rodriguez was part of this party for socialism and liberation, which is a pro-Hamas anti-American Marxist group backed by malign actors overseas. And these groups are actively spreading domestic terrorism in the name of Palestine.
So this wasn’t the first sign. It was the inevitable consequence, again, as Ralph put it, of a political movement that has spent over 18 months glorifying Hamas, chanting for Intifada, and blaming Jews for the world’s problems. So we, I mean, we on this group, we warned you. We said, “’globalize the Intifada,’ that’s not just rhetorical.” We said that it wasn’t just about Gaza, that it was coming here, but I guess kind of the you, right? The you all of left-wing media and a chunk of increasingly right-wing influencers downplayed it, excused it, kept repeating that it was just speech, just student protest, just passion. And now a young couple is dead on the verge of getting engaged, murdered for being at the wrong place at the wrong time, affiliated with the wrong people in the eyes of a fanatic, convinced he was committing some kind of righteous act.
So this is a cancer. It’s a movement that supports terror. If you’re part of a movement that supports terror, you’ll inevitably commit it. And it’s not just antisemitism, it’s anti-Americanism. So if we don’t crush it now, it’ll keep spreading until every last one of us is a target.
Rafael Mangual: You know, Jesse, you just mentioned that they were on the verge of getting engaged. I was reading a story about this in the New York Times this morning. And, one of the things that really broke my heart in that piece was about 1500 words was a quote from one of the parents who said, you know, they were actually headed to Jerusalem next week, which is, I guess, where they planned to get engaged. And, you know, the father said that he was actually genuinely scared for their safety while they were going to be over there. And it never occurred to him that you know, their actual demise would come to them here on the shores of the United States of America in the capital of the country in a place with one of the highest presences of police and anti-terror, you know, task forces and all. It really just, I think, brings it all home as to just how toxic this movement is.
Tal Fortgang: It’s shameful that the United States can’t provide a safe haven for everyone, that there’s good reason to be looking over your shoulder if you’re in our nation’s capital, particularly if you are observably Jewish or affiliated with Jews. That’s a tragedy and a shame, and I think something that ought to concern all Americans because it’s a reflection of how far we’ve fallen.
One thing all of this is not is surprising. The only thing that’s surprising about two people being murdered at a Jewish and Israeli event in Washington, DC is that it’s taken this long, after groups like the Party for Socialism and Liberation and its affiliate terrorist organizations have been calling for escalation for Gaza for so long, and that’s built upon a media environment that uses firebrand terms that refers to genocide and mass starvation and all kinds of distortions and outright lies to libel the Jewish state. The fact that one crazy person was finally activated to say, “you know what, I’m going to go out and kill the people who are responsible for a genocide.” That to him is something that looks righteous. To the rest of us, it’s recognizable as a despicable, cowardly act of terror. But it was inevitable.
Charles Fain Lehman: He’s not even the first person, right? And we’ve talked about, I talked about earlier the firebombing attempt on Josh Shapiro’s home, this like, you know, another person who was measurably crazy, but I think that, you know, that one wasn’t a murder largely by luck. So, you know, this one maybe will be higher status, although that story disappeared too. I mean, do people expect that this story will disappear in the same way? Or is this going to have staying powers? I mean, we finally admit this is an issue.
Jesse Arm: I hope this story won’t disappear in the same way. But we should turn the conversation now to what happens next. And I think we may actually have some degree of disagreement on this panel because I know some of your views on this topic. But my position is that President Trump’s DOJ should treat this for what it is, a political assassination by a domestic jihadist. Elias Rodriguez should face the death penalty. He should do so because of 18 U.S. Code, Section 1116 for the murder of an internationally protected person. Attorney General Bondi, U.S. Attorney for D.C., Jeanine Pirro, I think should prosecute this case to the fullest extent of the law, which in this case would be holding this Islamist accountable for his crimes and putting him to death.
Rafael Mangual: I mean, I certainly won’t shed a tear for him if he does get put to death. You know, I also think that they’re going to probably more likely pursue hate crime charges here rather than terrorism charges.
I think in part because of how much more complex that kind of prosecution could possibly get. But I do think that you have a very clear-cut hate crime case here. He was clearly motivated by the association of the victims with a protected group and committed violence for that reason. And if he doesn’t get put to death, he will and should spend the rest of his natural life behind bars, where I assume he will be met with exactly the kind of treatment that most beta males like him are met with in prison.
Charles Fain Lehman: I do want to focus on the sort of “what’s to be done?” angle, which I think is right. There’s the penalties associated with the specific offense. There’s also sort of the broader network that informed this guy. You talked to the Party for Socialism and Liberation. They’ve officially disowned any connection to him. They tweeted something about this a little while ago. That said, PSL, as you alluded to, Jesse, is part of a network of far-left activist groups funded by much of the money comes from guy named Neville Roy Singham, who is a China based, America billionaire who works for the CCP. There’s a whole network of this stuff. And I think we would be remiss if we didn’t say, this is an opportunity to start highlighting the people who drove this guy to commit this offense. They are paid actors of foreign governments. That’s got to be part of the story too.
Jesse Arm: Right.
Tal Fortgang: If anything good is going to come of this, and I don’t expect anything good to come of something so terrible, but if anything good does, it will be because the FBI and the DOJ as a whole use this as a lever to look into organizations that fund such people, that train such people. They may not be training them to go murder people, but they are certainly speaking to a generation of radicals in a way that makes them inclined to violence, they’re poisoning our information environment, and they’re not doing so in order to advance our democratic politics through increased, more robust debate. It’s to agitate and to intimidate and to circumvent our democratic process by making support for Israel anathema in our culture, and ultimately leading with the threat of more “escalation,” so-called.
Jesse Arm: It’s also further justification for the good things this administration is already doing, especially with non-citizens who are engaging in this kind of antics and chaos on college campuses around the country. Secretary of State Marco Rubio had to go and sit before Congress over the course of the last two days and answer a bunch of patently stupid questions from Democrats about why he was removing these agitators from the country, who are celebrating barbarism and terrorism aimed at Americans and other Westerners abroad. And he just said, I’m proud to do so and I will continue to do so. I imagine the pushback to him for that from the left will be at least a little bit muted in the last couple of days after this kind of egregious about-face has taken place.
Rafael Mangual: Muted is exactly the right word that I would use to describe the media’s presence throughout this entire thing. I mean, the day after the October 7th attacks, you had people descending on places like Times Square to cheer on what Hamas did, to celebrate it, to say, this is what revolution looks like. You had people, you know, with faculty chairs at universities saying things like, “you know, did you think that, you know, that revolution just meant chanting and tweeting?” So where was the media then? Why weren’t they calling this out for what it was? I think it has to do with a sense of fear. They didn’t want to create the kind of environment that might lead to the Democratic Party losing face in the eyes of the American public. And at the end of the day, I think the Democratic Party has to come to terms with the fact that there is a radical wing under their umbrella that fundamentally believes in this stuff.
Charles Fain Lehman: Yeah, I want to take us out, I want to ask folks, I’ve argued that this is part of a broader pattern and you can connect it to the bombing of Governor Shapiro’s mansion, but you can also connect it to Luigi Mangione, to the Tesla fire bombings, this whole series of radical left-wing terror attacks that have been a problem certainly since the start of this year connected, might suspect, to sort of the left’s approach to the second Trump presidency. So my question is for the group, do we think this trend is going to persist? Or do we think things are going to get worse? How concerned are you about the sort of rising surge in radical left-wing violence? Tal, I’ll get you first.
Tal Fortgang: I think things are going to get worse before they get better. I’m struck by the way in which the fundamental attitude of the left here is it is okay to cause people grievous harm, even to kill them, if in your moral analysis, they are like the wrong kind of person. Right? If you are a Jew living in the sovereign Jewish state, it is not just acceptable to kill you, it’s a good thing to kill you. If you are an Israeli, you’re a colonizer. You’re just in the wrong category of person and violence against you is acceptable. If you are a wealthy health insurance executive, it is a noble and good thing to kill you, having nothing to do with what you personally have done, much less been convicted of in a court of law. Forget process. If you fit in the wrong category of person, “your blood is on your head,” as the Bible says. That fundamental underlying attitude is not going anywhere until it can be addressed squarely. Our mainstream institutions have no ability to talk about it, to talk about a moral crisis in this way, a crisis of moral reasoning. So this is not going anywhere anytime soon.
Charles Fain Lehman: Alright, Ralph, what’s your projection?
Rafael Mangual: Yeah, you know, I think we’re going to see more of this. I think there is a radical wing of the left that has increasingly come to the conclusion that genuine subscription to the ideals of that wing require you to take even the most extreme steps. That’s why places like Yale are celebrating people who shoot up Congress. That’s why people like Bernardine Dohrn get out of prison and get faculty positions at Ivy League institutions like Columbia, which by the way is celebrating and allowing their students to get away with all sorts of nonsense in the name of Hamas support.
I think ultimately this is just something that we’re going to see more. Will we get back to the point where the U.S. was in the 60s and 70s with the radical left domestic terrorism coming from groups like the Weather Underground and the Black Liberation Army? I’m not sure it’ll get that bad, but I do think this is going to be part of our situation moving forward for at least the next few years.
Charles Fain Lehman: Jesse, what’s your projection?
Jesse Arm: This wasn’t just an attack on Jews. It wasn’t just an attack on Israelis. It wasn’t just an attack on the United States. It was an attack on every principle that holds a civilized society together. And if we don’t draw the line here, by speedily and effectively putting to death the Elias Rodriguezes of the world and the Luigi Mangiones of the world, there won’t be any line left to draw.
Charles Fain Lehman: Yeah, I mean, I think I think that’s right, you know, I’ve argued political violence happens because it is rewarded. That’s, you know, I think that was true in sixties and seventies and it’s true today, but you know, the core question is like do we continue to tacitly condone or otherwise endorse this behavior versus full-throatedly condemning it including with the full force of law. I want to leave us there on that story. I’m sure we’ll come back to it.
Let’s turn our attention to our friends in the city of Chicago. We at City Journal love Chicago. We don’t love your mayor. As far as I can tell, you also don’t love your mayor, who has like a -3 percent approval rating at this point. But most recently, Brandon Johnson was caught saying quite publicly, often comments about the highlighting when he saw the value of hiring so many black employees. This has prompted an investigation by the Federal Department of Justice, arguing, I think aptly, that if Brandon Johnson said it was great that he hired so many white employees for their exceptional qualities people would be shocked and alarmed. But I wonder what the group makes of this. You know, this is this is very different I think Johnson could have gotten away with saying this kind of thing five years ago and he can’t anymore Do we think that the tide has turned and do we think you know? Execs like Johnson can get away with this kind of stuff in a way anymore
Jesse Arm: I’ll jump in. Brandon Johnson isn’t just incompetent. He’s the lowest form of unapologetic race hustler in American public life. He’s not governing Chicago on behalf of the 2.7 million people who live there. He’s carving it up along racial lines and treating public employment and contracting as spoils to be handed out to what he literally called “his people.” So there’s no pretense of merit and no apology for the bias. If a white mayor had said anything even vaguely similar, it would dominate headlines for not a week, not a month, but a year. It would call for a national race reckoning. And you can bet your ass he’d be removed from office in about five minutes. So when Johnson does it, the media barely blinks. And we’re some of the only folks talking about it. He’s still mayor. And even as he scrapes the bottom of the barrel with a 6 percent approval rating, and you know what, that’s not a floor. This was before his latest tirade. The fact that he prioritizes skin color over competence might explain why he’s now less popular than the bubonic plague, but now President Trump’s DOJ is stepping in with an investigation into whether his hiring and contracting practices violate civil rights law. And I say it’s about time because obviously they do.
This isn’t just one dumb remark. It’s a governing worldview that would be totally disqualifying in any other context. And we should be clear. This is the most egregious and costly expression of DEI in America today. Not admissions at Harvard, not cringy corporate HR trainings. We’re talking about racial preferences in public contracting, where tens of billions of taxpayer dollars, if not more, are steered to favored firms based on race and connections rather than competence. My view is that it undermines merit, it fuels corruption, and it weakens critical government functions. Everything from infrastructure to disaster relief. And that’s what Brandon Johnson is defending. And it’s why the backlash can’t come soon enough.
Charles Fain Lehman: I’m sitting here waiting for Jesse’s punchline, which is we need to execute Brandon Johnson. Sorry, go ahead, Ralph.
Jesse Arm: God forbid, God forbid.
Rafael Mangual: Yeah, look, I mean, Brandon Johnson said that the benefit of hiring so many black people, in his view, was that they’re so generous. They’re so much more generous. Another way of saying that is that the reason he doesn’t hire as many white people as he might otherwise is because they’re not very generous people. That doesn’t sound so good, but that is the exact logical corollary of what he said. Will he get away with it? In Chicago, probably. You know, is anyone going to seriously try to hold him to account? Will he pay a political price? Yeah, his approval rating is through the floor, but it has nothing to do with, you know, with his views on race, which are very well known before he won office, right? It has to do with the fact that he’s incredibly incompetent, that the city’s falling apart, that he can’t actually govern. Surprise, surprise. You know, but it is nice to know that for the first time in a very long time, you have a DOJ in Washington that is actually keeping an eye out for this stuff. And finally, giving the left a taste of their own medicine. They would never stand for the kind of rhetoric that he just openly expressed without any fear of reprisal, and I think that’s important. Does it signal lasting change? Who knows?
Charles Fain Lehman: Yeah, this is the, you know, and this gets back to a common theme in our conversations: is there a beneficial chilling effect to this basically? And we go back and forth. Do we want that in the university context, do we want the nonprofit context? Here it’s, you know, it’s, government checking government. And it seems like as good small government conservatives, that’s the place where we should be most sympathetic. At least that’s my, you know, that’s my take.
Tal Fortgang: There’s something very funny about the kind of statement that would have earned you unceasing applause just a couple of short years ago, right? Like, look at, you know, how we’re doing reparations through our government operations. Like, that was exactly the kind of thing you were supposed to be doing. It’s exactly what we were supposed to be doing is like tapping into the joy or the, whatever, you know, vague abstract characteristics were supposed to be affiliated with various minority groups, while, you know, white people are obviously Karens and whatever other slurs were popular. But most of all, this just has me remembering the great conservative message of beware of unintended consequences and be careful what you wish for. Because remember when Lori Lightfoot was the was the punching bag of the American right? For every Lori Lightfoot, there’s always a Brandon Johnson. And Chicago, as far as I know, is built upon a platform. So actually, once you get to the floor, you can still go several feet beneath until you get to the malarial swamp. Now, I love Chicago, but this is kind of on brand.
Charles Fain Lehman: Yeah, I mean, think this gets to Jesse’s point, which I think is an important one. And he’s partially alluding to our colleague, our former, sometime panelist Judge Glock’s work on racial preferences in government contracting. But like Chicago is interesting to me in part, and the Johnson comment is interesting to me in part as an example of like, what is government for? Government is for group-specific patronage. And this is like at the core of Chicago’s dysfunction and corruption, right, to Ralph’s point. It’s just like, why is Chicago, Chicago used to be the second city, right? It used to be like a great American metropolis, and now it’s not in great shape, and this is largely because of this kind of systematic government ransacking that is justified under the rubric of, it’s very progressive because we’re giving it to favored groups, which, you know, is pretext for Brandon Johnson. I’m sure Brandon Johnson does not want to benefit the average black person in Chicago as much as he wants to benefit the black people who he happens to like in Chicago
Rafael Mangual: That’s exactly right. I mean, you know, and he’ll actually acknowledge this insofar as he continues to complain about the black community lagging behind in Chicago despite, you know, various efforts. He does that unironically because he doesn’t have the self-awareness to see that he’s actually the one in charge and in a position to help and has failed to do that. You know, but Chicago, I think, is exactly, you know, the kind of illustration of our political problem that is much broader than that one city, right? The question is, how bad do things have to get before actual change comes to pass? The city of Chicago is really testing the limits of that question. We have seen cities like Detroit basically fall into complete and utter failure. Although, you know, that city looks like it’s finally starting to come back and I’d love to see it. But I think Chicago… You know, L.A. took some steps recently, San Francisco took some steps recently, but I think Chicago is in this place where because it’s so long enjoyed that status of second city and because it has the prestige that came along with that, it hasn’t quite come to terms with the fact that it’s not as strong as it thought it was, that it’s incredibly vulnerable and it could be the next Detroit very well in the next few years if it doesn’t get its act together.
Charles Fain Lehman: Yeah, think I want to use that as an opportunity for an exit, which is, Ralph is alluding to this, there have been a couple of sort of major electoral shifts, not necessarily to the right, but to the center and towards, you know, what I think of it as like good governance, moderate politics, where the promise is like, if elected, I will not be a lunatic. That’s Daniel Lurie in San Francisco. That’s where the new mayor of Oakland is trying to pivot. That’s where Karen Bass is desperately trying to pivot, not very successfully.
Jesse Arm: It’s nearly where Chicago could have been had they elected Paul Vallas.
Charles Fain Lehman: Right. Right. Sometime City Journal contributor Paul Vallas, who was the, who narrowly lost against Brandon Johnson. So, I mean, but that’s my question. Johnson’s going to be up for reelection. His popularity is in the proverbial toilet. Do we think Chicago specifically might be willing to make a change this time? They did it with Mayor Daley. They were willing to install sort moderate reformist mayors. Do we think they could do it again? Or is, as Ralph’s suggesting, is Chicago going to be hosed? Tal, what do you think? What’s your projection for the great city of Chicago?
Tal Fortgang: I haven’t seen crime statistics recently, but I would imagine that that will represent the tipping point, especially when crime starts to spill over geographically to some of the more affluent areas on the north side.
Rafael Mangual: It’s already happening.
Tal Fortgang: Right, so then I would expect that there could be a turning point. There has to be a fundamental mind shift, a shift in mindset from valuing a kind of government for what it is or what it represents to what it does. And you allude to this with all the elected officials trying to pivot towards basic competence. For a long time, I think Democrats have cultivated this idea that government ought to represent in sort of an abstract sense, right? Like we need to have certain identities represented so that you can feel like you’re spoken for in politics, as opposed to like people who can reliably clean up the trash, both the garbage that’s on the street and the garbage that’s on the street, if you know what I mean.
People who can do basic government competence. I don’t see that mindset shift happening quite yet, but I’m not on the ground in Chicago and I’m hopeful that maybe there’ll be some grassroots effort to start rethinking politics that way.
Charles Fain Lehman: Jesse, what’s your take? Do think we have a shot at a reformist mayor in Chicago?
Jesse Arm: I’m rooting for Paul Vallas and I’m rooting for people like Rick Caruso out in California. But Democrats on the whole…
Charles Fain Lehman: Is Caruso running for mayor again?
Jesse Arm: Caruso is probably likely to run for governor of California in 2026.
Charles Fain Lehman: For listeners’ context, he ran against Karen Bass. He was sort of the moderate in the L.A. mayor race. Sorry, anyway…
Jesse Arm: And he’s another Democrat cut from kind of the Bloomberg, reformer, “clean up the streets” cloth. My take is this: Democrats aren’t going to stop talking this way until one of them grows a spine and calls it what it is. Once upon a time, sure, Bill Clinton had his Sister Souljah moment, but so far no one in that party has been willing to stand up and say the truth that theirs is the party of racial bigotry now, and until someone addresses that point head on, we’re unlikely to see a course correction. They can talk about abundance all they like.
Rafael Mangual: Yeah, I think we might see something move in the positive direction. And I say that because we already kind of saw signs of that shift in the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office, where Kim Foxx said she wasn’t going to run for reelection. They put up another kind of radical progressive prosecutor who lost to Eileen Burke O’Neill, who ran on a more kind of traditional sort of tough on crime platform. I think the jury’s still out on her performance, but I think a lot of, you know, the success of that office is going to be tied to the decisions that the next Chicago mayor makes. Whether the public, public in Chicago is going to put that together in time, that I think is the open question. And one of the things that could be Chicago’s downfall is that it is situated in a place where it’s surrounded by really pleasant suburbs, both within the state of Illinois and outside the state of Illinois, in Indiana, just over the border. So there are so many options that are very easy for people to take advantage of and still being able to commute into the city of Chicago if they have to do that for work, although that’s becoming increasingly less likely in our society. I think we’re going to have to wait and see, but if the tide doesn’t turn in this next election cycle, then I think a lot of people would be able to reasonably write Chicago off, and that’s real shame because it’s an amazing city.
Charles Fain Lehman: I think they already are, right? Like Ken Griffin leaving Chicago, Citadel leaving Chicago to move to Florida. No, I mean, think that’s right. My source of hope here is just that there have been other big cities, right? San Francisco is the obvious. San Francisco can elect a relative moderate who cares about cleaning up the streets. Anything is possible.
I think it’s likely that Andrew Cuomo is the next mayor because he looks like one of these guys. And the question is who? Jesse’s right. It would be great to have Vallas in there. I think there’s a big question mark on whether the people are going to, you know, the people are going to come out for him. Other than that, apparently Rahm Emanuel’s thinking about another shot at it. You make it, you know, never let a crisis go to waste. So we’ll see how that goes for him.
Rafael Mangual: A crisis he had a hand in creating by the way.
Charles Fain Lehman: Yeah, right, exactly. I’m not sure I’d want him to be my technocratic knight in shining armor. All right, before we go, let’s turn a little bit to the news, the culture. President Donald Trump is in a classic New York-New Jersey feud with Bruce Springsteen. They’ve been going back and forth on social media. The boss criticized the other boss. This is sort of sad to me because there’s something in Springsteen’s music that’s very Trumpian, right? It’s like, it’s about, like, Springsteen’s music is about Trump voters. It’s certainly about New Jersey Trump voters. But this, and I’m going to put Jesse on the spot because he’s actually the one who wanted to talk about this. But so, what are artists that you look to to sort of bridge the cultural divide? Is there anyone anymore that we can agree on or are all stuck like listening to people that hate our politics?
Jesse Arm: I think so. I’m going to point to some good news from I think the world of cultural music, at least for me, from my POV. I don’t know if people saw this, but the All-American Rejects are doing a series of house shows across the Midwest.
Rafael Mangual: Backyard tours. Yeah.
Jesse Arm: So not stadiums, not theaters, but actual backyards, garages, bowling alleys. They’re crowdsourcing stops directly from fans via Instagram and just showing up to play. And I think it’s the coolest thing we’ve seen in music in a long time. They took money out of their own pockets, rented a bus, paid their crew, and kind of hit the road for the love of the game. And as, you know, a 1996 baby, one of those cusp, geriatric Gen Zs or late millennials, I would say this hits a very specific emotional nerve.
Charles Fain Lehman: He’s so young. He’s so young.
Jesse Arm: These were the songs that scored our AIM statuses, our middle school dances, our awkward first heartbreak. So I think it’s more than nostalgia though. It’s joyful, it’s raw, it’s accessible. They’re skipping the L.A. level industry crowd and going where their fans are. I think probably it’s a marketing play for a new album or something like that, but I’m loving it. And yeah, I hope to attend one in a backyard near me sometime soon, hopefully.
Charles Fain Lehman: Tal, what do you think?
Tal Fortgang: That the All-American Reject story warmed my heart also. I got to cover some All-American rejects in college when I was rocking out back in those days.
Charles Fain Lehman: In college? You played music at Princeton?
Tal Fortgang: We’ll dedicate an episode to this in the future. There is a subculture though in that alt-rock world where the All-American rejects were kind of early and kind of on the poppier side. Bands like Shinedown, hugely popular, not necessarily in the places where we live, but hugely popular across the country and across the world. They released an album a couple of years ago that was very critical of woke excess on free speech and ideological conformity, and there are some smaller bands in the same vein that are certainly not taking a right-wing line, but they are reviving the role of the artist as having their finger on the pulse of the culture and being able to critique it without fear or favor. It’s also pretty compelling music. So that’s hopeful.
Charles Fain Lehman: Fair, fair. Ralph, do you think? Anybody? Any artists giving you hope? Including Tal’s band, you can say that one.
Rafael Mangual: Yeah, no, I won’t say that there are any specific artists giving me hope. I mean, you know, anyone who knows me knows I’m like a diehard hip hop fan and, hip hop is not exactly a conservative friendly genre. Sure, yeah. But you know what’s interesting is I can’t listen to a lot of my favorite music when I’m in the car with the kids because of all the curse words, right? So over the last several years, I’ve made a bigger space on my playlist for country music, and I tell you what it’s incredibly uplifting. You know, Zack Brown band. There’s a great song called Chicken Fried, right?
Charles Fain Lehman: Great song.
Rafael Mangual: Great song, and I had it on the car the other day with the kids and my wife, and my wife was saying how you know, she enjoyed the song she’d never heard it before and there’s you know, there’s a part in the song where it kind of, you know, where they pay tribute to the U.S. and to those that fight for our country. And I told her that I watched this, you know, this video of a concert that they did where they actually brought a service member on stage for that part of the song, and he saluted the flag and stood there in a saluted position and showed her the video. When I looked up, I mean, she was teary-eyed. So there is something that’s still wholesome, that we can still connect with. And I think you can find that something in the genre of country music. And as a Brooklyn boy who loves, you know, Notorious B.I.G. and Jay-Z and Lil Wayne and all that stuff, I’m here for it.
Jesse Arm: Yeah, Ralph, I got to say, your wife has never heard Chicken Fried by Zac Brown Band? You guys got to get out of, you guys got to get out of the tri-state area, man. My gosh.
Rafael Mangual: No, she’s from the west side of Chicago, man. She’s a Puerto Rican girl from the west side of Chicago. That was just not the kind of stuff that we grew up with, but it’s a great song. It’s a great song.
Charles Fain Lehman: I’m going to give the last 10 seconds to my favorite cross-cultural, family-friendly, has been doing this for decades, remains popular, never once insisted on being political, just out there for entertainment artists, has to be Weird Al Yankovic, who I think is underrated as a cultural icon and touchstone for the American people.
On that note, that is about all the time that we have. Thank you as always to our panelists. Thank you to our producer Isabella Redjai. Listeners, if you liked this episode or even if you didn’t, please don’t forget to like, comment, subscribe, ring the bell for notifications on YouTube or other platforms wherever you get your podcasts. Please leave us comments and questions. We might eventually even answer some of them if we get enough of them. Until next time, you’ve been listening to the City Journal Podcast. Hope you’ll join us again soon.
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