Overview
- His son, John Podhoretz, said he died Tuesday night "peacefully and without pain" at age 95.
- No official cause was immediately released, though some outlets reported his son told The New York Times the death followed complications of pneumonia.
- Podhoretz led Commentary from 1960 to 1995, turning it into a central forum for conservative arguments and publishing path-setting essays by figures such as Daniel Patrick Moynihan and Jeane Kirkpatrick.
- He received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2004 and was a prolific man of letters, publishing 145 pieces in Commentary and authoring a dozen books.
- Born in Brooklyn in 1930 and educated at Columbia and Cambridge, he later backed Donald Trump and is survived by children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren; his wife, Midge Decter, died in 2022.