Tangle - PREVIEW - The Friday Edition: Everything we got right and wrong in 2024.

Episode Date: January 11, 2025

In my small attempt to live my values, I like to dedicate the first Friday edition of every new year to grading some of my previous writing. Here’s our process: About two months ago, I told my team to start looking through our archives and flag instances where we took a strong position on a defining story in the past year. I also sorted through reader criticisms, feedback, and suggestions about articles to revisit.Then, we went back to evaluate that writing and settled on a grade for how we did.We published over 200 newsletters last year, so we don’t grade every single one. Instead, we focused on newsletters covering the biggest stories of 2024 — those that garnered the most public attention and reader feedback.I'm going to share with you key excerpts from my writing, a brief "reflection," and then a grade on the A-to-F scale (that my editors and I have agreed on). A lot of this, obviously, is subjective. So as always, we welcome your feedback.This is a preview of today's special edition that is available in full and ad-free for our premium podcast subscribers. If you'd like to complete this episode and receive Sunday editions, exclusive interviews, bonus content, and more, head over to tanglemedia.supercast.com and sign up for a membership. If you are currently a newsletter subscriber, inquiry with us about how to receive a 33% discount on a podcast subscription! Ad-free podcasts are here!Many listeners have been asking for an ad-free version of this podcast that they could subscribe to — and we finally launched it. You can go to tanglemedia.supercast.com to sign up! You can also give the gift of a Tangle podcast subscription by clicking here.You can subscribe to Tangle by clicking here or drop something in our tip jar by clicking here. Our podcast is written by Isaac Saul and edited and engineered by Jon Lall. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet 75. Our newsletter is edited by Managing Editor Ari Weitzman, Will Kaback, Bailey Saul, Sean Brady, and produced in conjunction with Tangle’s social media manager Magdalena Bokowa, who also created our logo. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From executive producer, Isaac Saul, this is Tangle. Good morning, good afternoon and good evening and welcome to the Tangle podcast, the place we get views from across the political spectrum, some independent thinking and a little bit of my take. I'm your host, Isaac Saul. And on today's episode, we're going to be reviewing the things that we got right and wrong in 2024. So every day in Tangle, in this podcast and in our newsletter, I do my best to present a wide range of views on US politics. And obviously, as you guys know, I give my take, share my own perspective on those topics. I never try to be the authoritative voice on something or pretend that I'm the arbiter of truth. Though obviously, as I'm sure many of you have noticed, sometimes I

do feel strongly about things and I do try to persuade you, our listeners and readers, of a perspective that I have. Of course, if you spend a whole year talking about politics every single day, you're bound to get a lot of things right and a lot of things wrong. But one of the things that I loathe most about the media is just that outlets too often let their pundits fire off hot takes with zero accountability. This is actually one of the reasons I created Tangle in the first place. It's just this lack of accountability I saw in the media space that I think extends beyond the media. It pervades society from the halls of Congress to executives at our biggest corporations.

So in my small attempt to live out my values, I like to dedicate the first Friday edition of every new year to grading some of my previous writing. The process is pretty simple. I ask our editorial team a couple months ago to start going back, looking through our archives, flagging some of the newsletters that, you know, in retrospect touched on the biggest stories of 2024. Then as a team, we go through those. We think about how my writing, my take specifically has aged. And we grade them on a typical American letter grade A being the best, F being the worst. We published over 200 newsletters and podcasts

last year. So we obviously can't grade every single one. Instead, we try and focus on the ones covering the biggest stories of 2024, those that garnered the most public attention and reader feedback. Interestingly enough, for whatever reason, I would say 2024 is maybe my best year yet. Every year, the annual review has revealed many failures and blind spots, and it's always good and healthy for me to look back on those with this healthy mix of A's, B's, C's, D's, and F's. And this year was no exception. We had some letter grades across the board. But on the biggest issues, I was pleasantly surprised to see some of my best grades since we started these reviews. I think there are a few reasons for this. One, we have a growing team, so there's more people criticizing my work, more people internally working

to shape our podcasts and newsletter, many more opinions and views covering all our blind spots. All of that has helped. Number two, I think I'm just growing as a writer and a thinker doing this work now for over five years and that's just a product of experience. And number three, we dedicated an entire edition to three things I got wrong this summer. The Samuel Alito story, the Biden special counsel report, and the Mike Johnson, a speaker of the house report, all of which I'm not going to waste based on rehashing here. And since I got all three of those things wrong, you know, call that a gentleman's curve, I guess.

So today I'm going to share with you key examples from my writing, a brief reflection on them, and then a grade on the A to F scale. At the end of that, I'm also going to revisit my 19 predictions about the future that we published in 2021. So obviously we couldn't fit all the additions we thought we should review in one podcast and I don't want this to drone on forever. So I'm going to try and go through them relatively quickly. So we are going to be releasing this as a newsletter as well that you can find on our website and also a part two to this on our website in written form. If you're interested

in seeing more of our takes laid out and graded, we're going to do some additional ones and kind of a bonus newsletter for those of you who are interested. As always, this full podcast will be available for members only. If you are a free listener listening with ads, you'll get a preview of the show and then you'll be asked to subscribe to listen to the whole thing. So with all that out of the way, let's jump in. All right. First up, we're going to start with the edition we did on Trump

winning the Iowa caucuses. This is one of the first political events of 2024, Trump's dominant victory in January's Iowa caucus. And at the time, there were a lot of people still clinging to the belief that Trump might not be the Republican nominee, believe it or not. At the time, we wrote this, even with Nikki Haley closing the gap, there's little reason to think New Hampshire's primary will be any different nor will any of those that follow. Yes, there's plenty of time between now and the Republican National Convention in July, but just as the networks were ready to call Iowa immediately, we are ready to call the entire race now. We've seen enough. Donald Trump will be the Republican nominee. Reflecting on this, it's funny to

imagine this was something that needed to be said at the time. I'd been writing since August of 2023 that Trump was basically assured to be the nominee you could tell by just looking at the polls. But these first results definitely brought the reality home. I wouldn't change anything about this edition. The views I espouse in it aged quite well. So we're giving ourselves an A. Next up is the ICJ's genocide ruling.

Israel's war in Gaza continues to be one of the most controversial lightning rod issues I've ever spoken about on the air or written about in the newsletter. I cannot possibly sum up my views here. We've published more articles about Israel than any other story in 2024 except the 2024 election. So I'll focus specifically on this debate about Israel and genocide and the International Court of Justice. This is what I said about the genocide ruling. Quote, Israel is not committing genocide in Gaza.

There are several basic reasons I feel this way. Armies that commit genocide don't tend to delay their ground invasions and warn civilians to flee. They don't typically treat the wounded from the other side, even when the wounded were just attacking them. In Israel's case, they also wouldn't put their own soldiers on the front line of a harrowing ground invasion in an urban war when they could just levy an Arab bombardment if all they cared about was killing Palestinians.

Finally, while Israel and Egypt have done far less to allow international aid into Gaza than I'd prefer, militaries committing genocide also don't usually do things like open corridors for aid groups which Israel has done. So reflecting on this, it has been nearly a year since I wrote this piece and the most important thing I need to say right now is that I have a lot more to say about this in the future and I will be expanding on all these thoughts then. At the risk of opening a can of worms I can't close though I do feel like I have to say something right now. My horror at the continuation of the war, now in its 15th month, has really only mounted.

In August I asked Tangle readers and listeners to grapple with what was happening on the ground. As a Zionist, coping with this reality has been harrowing. It breaks my heart to say this. But the years since this edition has provided more evidence that Israel's actions meet the definition of genocide. The enemy, Hamas, is by Israel's own telling greatly diminished and defeated. Yet the bombings continue. Over 300 people have already been killed in the first week of this year, including dozens of children.

Airstrikes across Gaza on Wednesday killed at least 22 people, including one on a tent encampment that killed women and children. While the story is mostly faded to the background here in the US, the lack of aid persists and the displacement and death of Gazans continues. It's not just that my personal feelings are shifting either. Some things have really, really changed. In December, for the first time, Amnesty International declared Israel was committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza. The report is genuinely nauseating. That same month, Human Rights Watch issued a new report detailing emerging evidence of acts of genocide that included depriving the

Gazan population of water. On the last day of 2024, the United Nations Human Rights Office issued a critical report about Israel's destruction of hospitals in Gaza, which again went largely ignored. This week, Ireland joined South Africa's charge of genocide against Israel before the International Court of Justice, citing much of this new evidence that has come to light over the last year. I know a lot of pro-Israel friends, family members, and readers view these organizations as biased against Israel, and there are criticisms of Amnesty International that are very much worth engaging in reading. As you can see from my writing above, I did not agree with the many people who declared

genocide in the early months of this war. But the combined evidence these aid groups, international organizations, and journalists are presenting and have presented over the last year, however biased you think the packaging may be in some places, is honestly just difficult to dispute. In December and January, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz published two devastating reports, including one about IDF soldiers discussing how there were no civilians and the lawless killing of non-combatants that was happening across Gaza, and another detailing a brigade general's bloodlust that has contributed to the deaths of both Gazans

and Israeli soldiers. You get the impression this stuff is systemic. Even Israel's hawkish former defense minister Moshe Yalon is now accusing Benjamin Netanyahu of quote, ethnic cleansing. Many readers and listeners I know are going to hear me say this and you'll write in furiously in response to this reflection or cancel your subscription. I hope you don't do that. I'm happy to hear your feedback. And again, I'm still grappling with and digesting a lot of this and I plan to take time to write

more about this issue and potential solutions with a more appropriate length of space in the future. This is just one hit here in today's podcast. But I operate on evidence and I have pledged to change my mind when new evidence presents itself. The last year has provided plenty, however hard a pill it is for me to swallow, and I continue to implore all of my listeners and readers to grapple with the reality of what is happening on the ground. Once again, all my worst fears are coming true. So for this, we give ourselves the grade of a D. We'll be right back after this quick break. Next up is the Supreme Court deciding to hear Trump's immunity case. This was the landmark Supreme Court case of the year.

And when the Supreme Court decided to take it up, I wrote that I imagine the court will try to address these questions and I think they should. What was clear to me at the time, though, was that even if some of Trump's actions potentially qualify as official duties, most of what he was accused of does not. My best guess here is that the Supreme Court will rule in near unanimous fashion on when and in what

cases a former president is immune from criminal prosecution and will ultimately decide that Trump's actions fall outside the lines they draw. In the end, I suspect the case will be able to move forward. So in some ways, I look back on this positively in the sense that I think the court erred in its ruling and they created a convoluted, nonsensical, and unworkable legal precedent that will damage the presidency long term, and I warned about that at the time. That being said, my suggestion that the Supreme Court would rule in near-unanimous fashion and that its ruling would allow the case to move forward was just completely wrong.

I was way too optimistic about the court's views aligning with my own, and they ultimately broken away. I really did not expect them to. So on this issue, we gave ourselves a D plus. Next up is Iran's attack on Israel. In April, Iran levied a direct attack on Israel for the second time ever. It was a major geopolitical moment and one a lot of commentators thought was going to spark World War Three. Here's what I wrote in my take when we covered it. Quote, things are not getting better they are getting worse but that isn't all on Israel either. Iran plays a major role in much of the

violence, terrorism, and instability across the Middle East. The last thing I want to do is portray Iran as victims here. They are not. If anything they are the main aggressor. They almost certainly helped organize the October 7 attacks and have been destabilizing this region for decades. It is more than disheartening to watch some Westerners cheer on Iran, a regime that brutalizes, oppresses and starves its own people in the name of a global jihad. It is not only one of the most wealthy, powerful and organized enemies of Israel, but of the

United States, too. That it has come out of the shadows with a direct attack on Israel like this marks a major turning point and one that should make the entire world nervous. So reflecting on this, my view has not changed much. I stand by basically every sentence and the framing about Iran I put forward. At a time when other outlets were whispering about World War Three, I'm glad we weren't taking this serious escalation and bombastically overblowing it. My biggest miss though is just my belief that this attack signaled how much worse things have gotten and all my allusions to a major conflict breaking out. In fact, what has happened since is

that Israel's military advantage in the region has improved with a weakened Hezbollah the fall of the Assad regime and Iran either unable or unwilling to inflict real damage on Israel at this moment. The cost, as I note in my thoughts on the genocide in Gaza, has been incalculable. But there's a reason many Israelis are celebrating these recent developments. They have made it clear the regional power is shifting toward Israel. So a lot of this writing held up. I give myself a grade of a B. Next up is Biden's new asylum rules. One of the biggest stories in 2024 was immigration. In June, after record setting rates of border encounters with migrants crossing into the US illegally,

President Biden issued an executive order to shut down all asylum requests at the southern border when the seven-day average of daily encounters topped 2,500 a day. He'd go on to roll out more restrictions on asylum border enforcement in the following months. Here's what I wrote at the time. We were in a really bizarre situation. Biden just spent months telling voters that without the immigration bill voted down in the House earlier this year, there was nothing more he could do to address the migrant crisis at the border. Now his administration is championing precisely the kind of action he could have taken over a year ago to address the border crisis, proving that there are things he could have done

to address the border. But also, and this is where it just gets bizarre, this action is probably going to be struck down by the courts, which will prove Biden's original point that he needs Congress to do anything really meaningful on the border. So I feel good about everything I wrote except one point, that the rules were never struck down by federal courts. While some of Biden's asylum rules did face legal uncertainty, they've mostly stayed intact. In fact, in September, he toughened the asylum rules we are covering here. So yes, this action undermined Biden's insistence there was nothing he could do on the border crisis without Congress.

And I bet if he could go back, he may have implemented these rules sooner. And get this, in November, illegal border crossings dropped to a four-year low. So we missed the big thing about whether these rules would hold up to court scrutiny. In November, illegal border crossings dropped to a four-year low. We missed the big thing about whether these rules would hold up to court scrutiny, but most everything else we said was pretty on point. We're giving ourselves here a B minus. Next up is our issue on the latest economic signals, which came out in June. Of all the topics we covered in the last two years, the ones that came up the most were

the Israel-Gaza war, immigration, and the Russia-Ukraine war, the 2024 election, and inflation. The economy is always a roller coaster, but in May of 2024, the Bureau of Labor Statistics said that the inflation rates have remained the same on a month-to-month basis for the first time since July of 2022. I said this at the time. When the May CPI came out yesterday, a friend texted me, quote, Biden should be talking about this 24 seven.

But I disagreed. Maintaining a debatably acceptable inflation benchmark is just not good enough reason for Biden to ask for an undecided voter support. I will say this though, we have covered inflation over 20 times now in the Tangled Newsletter, one of the most recurring topics ever. We've provided a lot of very negative updates and a handful of good ones,

but this latest report is probably the most positive update of them all. So reflecting on this, this is another bit of analysis that I'm still feeling really good about. In my election post-mortem, one of the big points I hammered was that the Biden administration didn't do a good enough job speaking to voters' feelings.

The affordability crisis was a core issue and telling voters that inflation rates were nearing normal wasn't ever going to be enough to ease the stress of the last few years of rising prices. As it turned out though, this report did augur good things to come and today inflation is slowly turning to an afterthought. I probably could have said more at the time about how Biden messaged all this to voters,

but overall I'm happy with how this aged. So we're giving ourselves an A. We'll be right back after this quick break. Next up is the Hunter Biden trial. We were all over this story as it happened, which I'm proud of, but my take less so. Here's what I wrote in June. Here's one more similarity between this case and Trump's. I really do not know what will happen if Hunter gets convicted.

I have a hard time imagining him going to jail as part of his sentence. And I also think it is incredibly unlikely and would be very unwise for President Biden to get involved in any way, like by trying to pardon him. What I do think though, is that the odds of Hunter getting convicted in this trial are strong.

And then just as the 2024 campaign comes into its final weeks, he will have to take the stand in his trial over unpaid taxes. For the president, it's a headache that will not go away anytime soon, and for Hunter, it is genuine legal peril. All right, so the obvious thing here to say is that my supposition that Biden wouldn't actually pardon his son was one of the biggest misses I had all year. Of course, at the time, I thought Biden would be running for reelection, not sitting on the sidelines against his will. But still, I was wrong. And I owned it and explained it once became obvious I was wrong. I was right that Hunter was going to get convicted and that this was a headache for Biden that wasn't going anywhere, so it wasn't a total whiff. But the big story, the read of the room that mattered most about whether Biden was going

to pardon him, I missed. So we're giving ourselves a D minus here. Next up was the question of whether President Biden should drop out. It was funny to look back on this writing and remember how controversial it was. But in July, roughly 10 days after the Biden Trump debate, here's why I said that Democrats should replace Biden. Is it risky? Of course. But Democrats' opponent is Donald Trump, a historically weak candidate with low

approval ratings and several toxic positions that alienate more than half the country. So why not reset the race? A lot of voters haven't even tuned in yet. And the ones who have will understand why Democrats are pivoting and may even draw in a lot of voters who are planning to sit out. After the debate, I thought Biden was still more likely than not to stay in the race. After seeing a sustained alarm, I started to change my mind. Now with inter-party challenges mounting, I'm increasingly confident

Biden will exit the race. Donors are beginning to revolt and leaders in the house who typically stay in line are turning on it. Reports indicate the pressure campaign is pushing for a decision by the end of the week." End quote. So reflecting on this one, as I say in the introduction, last year was really a uniquely good year for my analysis.

And in this take, I again would not change a word. I think Harris did better in the election than Biden could have. And I think Biden's public appearance and persona through election day actually dragged her down. Trump and his team were rightly apoplectic after Biden dropped out, since they knew Harris was at the advantage. And accusing Democrats of cheating by replacing their weak candidate with a stronger one was the Trumpian response. Harris lost, obviously, for many reasons, but I still think

Biden made the right choice, as did the Democratic Party and its voters who insisted on change. Here, we're giving ourselves an A. Next up was the Trump assassination attempt. So outside of the election result, this was probably the biggest story of the year. And right after the assassination attempt, this is what I wrote. I said, it's worth remembering that violent actors often have motivations we cannot even begin to fathom. Partisans on the right would like the shooter to be a diehard progressive to prove their worst fears about the left true. Partisans on the right would like the shooter to be a diehard progressive to prove their worst fears about the left true. Partisans on the left would like him to be a

MAGA Trumper so they can indulge themselves in deranged conspiracies that the shooting was staged for Trump's political game or a symbol of the unhinged people Trump has drawn into the fore. Few of us remember that the man who attempted to kill Ronald Reagan did so because he wanted to impress actress Jodie Foster, yet we all prefer to jump to conclusions in the first minutes of an incredibly complex event like this. Again, reflecting on this, I feel really good about our coverage. I spread blame around but put it mostly on the shooter. I suggested it would galvanize Trump's base.

I celebrated the fact the former president survived. On top of my typical analysis, I also broke from punditry and pleaded with people to please step back from the dark abyss. Months later, the excerpt above and the thrust of my writing has held up really well. The shooter's motives are still unknown despite so many people trying to Hey everybody, this is John, executive producer for Tangle. We hope you enjoyed this preview of our latest Friday edition. If you are not currently a newsletter subscriber or a premium podcast subscriber and you are enjoying this content and would like to finish it, you can go to readtangle.com to sign up for a newsletter subscription,

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the rest of the crew. This is John Law signing off. Have a fantastic weekend y'all. Peace. Our podcast is written by me, Isaac Saul and edited and engineered by John Law. The script is edited by our managing editor, Ari Weitzman, Will K. Back, Bailey Saul and Sean Brady. The logo for our podcast was designed by Magdalena Bokova, who is also our social media manager. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet 75. And if you're looking for more from Tangle, please go to reettangle.com and check out our website. you