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Bretzky
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Pastor Rob McCoy
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Eli Lake
Foreign.
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Josh Hammer
I'm Josh Hammer and this is the Josh Hammer Show. Well, it is an action packed day here on the show. We have Pastor Rob McCoy that was Charlie Kirk's spiritual mentor and pastor for decades. Pastor Rob joins us today to discuss the true legacy, not the legacy that you have heard from certain provocateurs when it comes to the late great Charlie Kirk. Also, Eli Lake joins us later in the show to talk about what is happening and perhaps what is not happening on the ground in the Middle east when it comes to the this standoff between the Trump administration and the Islamic Republic of Iran. Pass to Ron McCauley and Eli Lake later on in today's show. But for now, we begin with this. So King Charles of the UK Is wrapping up his visit to the United States. He was at the White House and at the Congress yesterday. I want to get to that in just a moment here because there actually is a lot to unpack when it comes to this visit. It was, it was typically portrayed by the media as just a purely symbolic affair. I think there's a little more substance going on here than the people making this out to be pure symbolism are giving credit for. But I want to open by talking about a monumental decision. And yes, it actually really is a monumental decision that happened at the U.S. supreme Court this morning. So the way that the U.S. supreme Court works is you don't actually know when they're going to give a certain case. Truthfully, you have no idea. You can do all sorts of these counting games. You can look at a given month of oral argument, the month of October, November, December. Oh, what justice wrote a majority opinion? Oh, that justice is left there. So he's probably going to be in the majority here. And you could do all these parlor tricks. But the long and short of it is we actually have no idea. So we had heard that they were set to release some opinions this morning and they actually released two opinions, both of which are huge victories for a conservative, one of which is arguably an even bigger victory here. And this was the Voting Rights act case. So this is a case out of the state of Louisiana, Louisiana versus Kalai. And it is a really, really, really crucial case. So the Voting Rights act of 1965 was one of the hallmark pieces of legislation civil rights movement. You had the Civil Rights act of 1964 and then you had the Voting Rights act of one year after that, one year later. And as the name would imply, the intention of this law was to protect, secure, and arguably even expand voting in America, especially in the context of trying to abolish Jim Crow and all of that. Now, the Voting Rights act is a legally controversial piece of legislation because parts of it are of dubious constitutionality. As you know from being a longtime listener viewer of the show, it is frequently the case that Congress gets a little ahead of its skis when trying to legislate a law. And they don't always do so in a way, especially when the moment or the cultural moment specifically is really calling for it. Congress doesn't always pause to think through the legal nuances. So in the context of the birthright citizenship conversation, and we have Professor Epstein on yesterday's show for a deep dive on that one there, recall that what they're really trying to do was trying to codify the Civil Rights act of 1866 with the 14th amendment ratified two years later. So this notion that something that passes, whether it's called the Civil Rights act or the Voting Rights act, the notion that Congress didn't really fully think it through when it comes to the constitutionality, is frankly a tale as old as the republic. So we've had litigation on this in the past. In 2013, actually during the Obama administration, there was a huge case when it came to Section 5 of the Voting Rights act, the so called coverage formula. That was a case called Shelby county versus Holder. My goodness, I remember it like it was yesterday. I can't believe that was 13 years ago. The current litigation out of Louisiana has to do with redistricting and specifically it has to do with Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. Now, Section 2 is one of the most controversial measures of this civil rights movement era law. And it's a very convoluted statute. And in fact, in today's majority opinion, Sam Alito spends a lot of time trying to decipher actually what Congress actually meant by this. In short, what General 2. What Section 2, excuse me, what it actually does is it prohibits state and local governments from imposing any rule that, quote, results in the denial or abridgment of the right of any citizen to vote on account of race or color. So basically says that if you are a state government, you cannot abridge anyone's right to vote on the basis of race or color. Here is the problem. The problem is that for decades, for decades, until literally today, until Sam Alito led a six justice majority in a six three court to essentially state that this is no good, very bad, you can't do this. For decades, decades, people have taken what I just read, which is this prohibition that states and localities cannot abridge the right to vote on the basis of race. And they've said, oh, so I know what we're going to do. We're going to draw a lot of maps. We're going to draw our redistricting lines, we're actually going to draw our congressional maps to account for race to make sure that in some very white, some very conservative states, some southern states, whether it's Georgia, Alabama, et cetera, there we're gonna make sure there's at least one or two majority minority districts. We're gonna gerrymander these majority black districts there. And therefore, therefore these legislators said we are going to uphold the Voting Rights act and specifically Section two, there is a glaring problem which that they are, they are explicitly taking into account race. You see the paradox. You see the irony. They are taking into account race in trying ironically to uphold a provision of a statute, the Voting Rights act, that explicitly denies the ability to take into account race. So this went unchallenged for essentially decades again until today. Sam Alito says that you actually cannot do this. You cannot do this any longer. And specifically what he says is that Section 2 of the Voting Rights act was designed to enforce the Constitution, not collide with it. Unfortunately, lower courts have sometimes applied this Court's Section 2 precedents in a way that forces states to engage in the very race based discrimination that the Constitution forbids. So when you try to discriminate on the basis of race, you get in constitutional law land what lawyers refer to as strict scrutiny, which is the highest form of judicial scrutiny. It's all made up. This is not actually in the Constitution. But we have tests, for better or for worse, that the Court has devised. And in order to actually discriminate the base of race, you have to meet the absolute highest threshold. The Court has made extremely clear in recent years, especially including the Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard case. That's the affirmative action case in 2023, where the court finally overturned the last vestiges of actual state sanctioned racism, which was so called affirmative Action. So in that Harvard case, the Court said, no, the Equal Protection Clause, the Fourth Amendment absolutely forbids us from taking into account race for something like this. So today in the Louisiana case, Alito basically says that that is correct and that you cannot poss. Interpret and act upon section 2 of the Voting Rights act in a manner that would run up against the Equal Protection Clause. Because it actually just makes no sense. Like, like it literally just makes no sense. As you think about it, if you have a constitutional provision and you have a statute, you're not actually going to be able to prioritize the statute over the Constitution. And they don't actually end up gutting Section two of the Voting Rights Act. Clarence Thomas and Justice Gorsuch would in fact have the Court do that. That is the concurring opinion that they signed onto. They basically said that Section two was, was never intended, that Section two was actually never intended in the first place at all here to have to do really with any of this when it comes to redistricting, that this is all just a total mess and that we don't frankly want anything to do with this. But Alito basically keeps Section 2 of the Voting Rights act, but he, he really, really, really dumbs it down. And the result is that he effectively, effectively achieves results that literally in principle, Thomas and Gorsuch would have, which is that he makes the test for trying to carve out these race based districts so, so, so, so high that it essentially makes it impossible. And the, the beauty of actually not gutting it in its entirety is that it actually gives then conservative lawyers, conservative nonprofit law firms, things like America First Legal, which Stephen Miller founded, and all sorts of other conservative law firms, these plaintiff side law firms, it gives them then the ability to go on the offensive and to look at states like red states like Alabama and say, guess what? Your majority, minority, black majority district in the black belts, which is that very patch of fertile soil in south central Alabama, you can go ahead and say this actually runs afoul now of this new Supreme Court precedent, because you guys explicitly created, you explicitly created a black majority district there. And now we know that you can't do that. What about Hank Johnson, for instance, the congressman over in Georgia, Jim Clyburn in South Carolina, A lot of these majority minority districts, these states are gonna have to redraw their maps because they're gonna get completely sued if they don't. So it's an absolute beauty, frankly, of an opinion from Justice Sam Alito. Again, in principle, in principle, in theory, the concurring opinion of Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch, I believe is correct. But this is really vintage Sam Alito. Again, we had Molly Hemingway on the show last week. She has a brand new book on Sam. We talked a lot then about that. Alito is the more incrementalist Burkean, like the Edmund Burke style conservative on the court. Clarence Thomas is the most principled, the most ardently originalist. Alito is the guy who takes principle and then rightly orders it to prudence. And I think that's what he did here in this opinion. So your big takeaways from this case today, and there's a lot, there's a lot to take away is that Louisiana, which again is a state issue here, they can redistrict without worrying about considering race, because considering race in this case is actually going to be unconstitutional. And the states across the country, as I noted, whether it's Alabama, Georgia or elsewhere there, they're going to have to figure out how their maps can withstand legal challenge. Now, if they have any districts that explicitly include race, which is a lot of them, frankly. Again, a lot of like Jim Clyburn, Hank Johnson, a lot of these Southern states have a lot of these districts like that. And also right here in Florida today, Ron DeSantis is presiding over a special session of the Florida Legislature, a special session that will go on until this Friday, where we expect Ron DeSantis new map, which will try to rewrite, right, the Florida delegation to be a 24 to 4 likely Republican majority of the 20th seats there that Matt's probably going to pass the Florida Legislature this week. And what happens here is that it looks like the Supreme Court is essentially in advance, in advance is giving the constitutional thumbs up to Ron DeSantis and Florida Republicans to go ahead and gerrymander in this fashion. Because the argument on the other side, what Florida Democrats have been arguing against Ron DeSantis and is they've essentially been saying that you're getting rid of these majority minority districts, these places where you try to gerrymander to have a black majority district in places like North Florida and the Panhandle and other places like that. But what the court is now saying here is that entire enterprise actually is unconstitutional. It can't actually do anything. So it's a tremendous victory, actually. Tremendous victory. It's going to have lasting repercussions there really, all across the country. And it's going to take many years, frankly, to kind of work this out real quick. Another major victory for conservatives at the Supreme Court today. So this was A case out of New Jersey, essentially, there was a pro life crisis pregnancy center that had a subpoena from New Jersey. They were essentially trying to get their donor lists. And the pregnancy center says, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, First Amendment rights, buddy, you can't do this there. Long story short, without getting into the details there, the pregnancy center ends up being vindicated. And this, the mere fact of asking to see the donor list ends up being, the court says, a First Amendment violation. A lot of precedents. And that's going back to the NAACP from the late 1950s. There's straightforward case, big victory nonetheless for the pregnancy center. Liberals are very much in tears from what the Supreme Court did today. Folks, deal with us through a quick commercial break. We're going to come back right on the other side for a very, very important conversation with Pastor Rob McCoy, Charlie Kirk's pastor. You won't want to miss this. Stay with us. We'll be right back with Rob McCoy. So last October, the Josh Hammer show formally partnered with Salem Media. And we said when we did so at that time that we intended this show to be our attempt in part to continue the legacy of the late, great Charlie Kirk. And we mean that seriously. And one small, very small way of doing so is that we want to bring on now a mutual friend of Charlie's of mine, and that's Pastor Rob McCoy. Pastor Rob McCoy was Charlie's pastor Charlie's spiritual mentor for the the majority, frankly, of Charlie's life. Pastor Rob is also a very good man. He's a former co chair of Turning Point USA's faith division and he joins us. So, Rob, it's great to see you. I want to just dive right in here. Ever since Charlie was tragically killed last September, there has been a concerted effort to rewrite and to redefine his legacy. And I've been extremely outspoken and pushed back against this. I know that you have been as well. There are folks who are trying to paint him as something other than what he was. But the Charlie Kirk that I got to know in the final couple of years of his life that you knew for far longer than I did, was a Charlie Kirk who believed that this ecumenical biblical alliance between the original people of the book, the Jewish people, and of course, the great gentile offshoot that of Christendom, this built the west, and the west cannot survive without both of these components here, that is how Charlie saw it. Right. And I'm sure that's how you see it as well.
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Pastor Rob McCoy
Yeah, from my experience with Charlie, that was the case you know, we would both look at Ezekiel 37, where Israel would be a political nation first and then a spiritual nation second in relation to our eschatology and our Christian belief. But even Old Testament wise Charlie always held to the realization, as do I, that the Jews are God's chosen people. We have a heritage that the decalogue, the Ten Commandments, which is the foundation of all Western civilization, was given to the Jews. And God has an everlasting covenant with them. And that everlasting covenant is not replaced by the church because they make the claim that. That all the kings of Israel were apostate. Well, every denomination in Christendom has been apostate at one point or another. This deals with the character of God, that if he has an everlasting covenant to the Jewish people, he keeps his covenant, not just to them, but to us as well. So we're linked. You guys are the root, and we're grafted in. And that's how it works.
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Josh Hammer
You know, I actually just started reading Charlie's posthumous book on the Sabbath on Shabbat. I literally just started this, actually about a week or two ago, a little late to the game. It came out this past December. And right there in opening first chapter, there's the Hebrew language. In the first chapter, he's citing the Torah, the first five books of Moses. There he's talking about the Jewish prayers. Shakarit, our morning pair, Maariv, our evening prayer. I mean, this is a man who turned his phone off when we religious Jews turn our phone off from Friday night to Saturday night. I mean. I mean, he was. The notion that he was becoming an enemy, turning on the Jewish people, turning on the Jewish state of Israel, it's just totally nonsensical. So where do you think this is coming from, Rob? Where is this effort? We can name names here. A lot of the names have been named on the show countless the past there. But there's obviously this effort of people trying to rewrite his legacy, ultimately trying to really rewrite the Jews out of the story of America. And ultimately, I think that that is an attack on America, frankly, itself. Where do you think this is coming from and how can we go about combating this?
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Pastor Rob McCoy
Well, I think it comes from critical race theory and diversity, equity and inclusion that the United States has been exposed to in the previous administration and this and currently with Trump trying to remove it. And as a result, you take white heterosexual males, you put them at the bottom of the totem pole, and so, you know, then you get a reaction which is ethno nationalism and they look around for somebody else to pick on when they're at the bottom of the totem pole. And so they look and they pick the 15 million Jews worldwide and they place six degrees of separation to blame a Jew for anything. And it's, they just regurgitate all of these lies that have been in Western and Eastern Europe for years and it never is affected in the 250 year history of America. And I'd add that 30% of the electorate are evangelical Christians and 70% of the Republican Party are evangelical Christians. In our 250 year history, we've never been divided over Israel or the Jews. Now granted, Israel wasn't around 250 as a nation 250 years ago, but we've never been divided like Europe has been where we bring up all of these lies such as Christ killer and grinding up children and all the ridiculous stupidity has never been an issue in America until recently. And it's a result of what we call integralism, where they're coming in and regurgitating all these lies and dividing the country over 15 million people and wanting to blame them for everything while we're not seeing the greatest danger, which is what Charlie pointed out at the last pastors gathering in Tarania, California resort. He said, you know, he's pivoting and he wants to go after the great enemy, which is Islam. Two billion Muslims, 50 nations, 80% Muslim or more, their indigenous people are all under Sharia law and have been decimated. But instead of looking at that, we pick on the seven and a half million Jews in the only democracy in the 1040 window and just regurgitate these lies. That's kind of the picture that I've been seeing and it's kind of sad, it's lazy. Academically, Charlie would condemn it, but he's gone. And so folks who want to get clicks, this is great bait. Let's pick on 15 million people that have been the target through centuries. And it's tragic. And Josh, I'm sorry, I really am. My heart burdens for the fact that the Evangelical Church in America is participating in this garbage.
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Josh Hammer
I certainly appreciate it. Again folks, we're chatting with Pastor Rob McCoy, who is Charlie Kirk's former spiritual mentor for the better part of Charlie's life. I'm not entirely sure exactly what you have to apologize for, Rob. To be clear, you have been just an amazing advocate, frankly, for Jewish Christian relations, for US Israel relations and so forth that. And Charlie is no longer with us, but the fight goes on very much in his name. And I've been trying to do my best. I know that you've been trying to do your best. And that's frankly all we can do. You know, one thing that I find interesting, Rob, because the book that I actually just finished before starting Charlie's new book is I read this amazing more of an academic book in 2018 on the history of Christian Zionism in America. We actually recently interviewed the author of that book, Samuel Goldman, right here on the Josh Hammer show, and he explains how Christian Zionism, as you already indicated, this notion that the fates of America and the land of Israel, the people of Israel, that these fates are intertwined, this goes back a very, very, very long way. And there's this attempt now from Tucker Carlson, others to say that this is a form of Christian heresy, that it's a specific strand of dispensationalism that arose with William Nelson Darby and that it has no history in the broader American canon of the Protestant church. I don't think that's how you view it. I don't think that's how Charlie Kirk viewed it. I frankly view you guys as having the same Christianity as George Washington and John Adams and the American founders, frankly, I imagine you probably see it the same way, way we do, you know,
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Pastor Rob McCoy
and, and I'm 61, Josh. So this isn't, this is, this isn't the first time around for me when I became a Christian in college, all of the same stuff that Tucker is regurgitating was, was there then, and, and I would have to go and, and investigate it and go deeper into a study of it to realize it's just not true. The whole Darby thing is not true. None of it is true. And, and you, you, you get, you get slammed with all these accusations. Then you go back and you look at, and you go, wait a minute, they're just regurgitating this stuff. And that's Tucker. He's doing stuff. And speaking of stuff, he doesn't fully know or understand, or maybe he does, but there's an ulterior motive. I don't know. But you think about it, there's a lot of money to be had in being anti Semitic. You get a lot of clicks and a lot of views because it's driven by hate and it's driven by truly an anti Semitic hatred for a group of people. And, and there's money to be had in that. And the first thing that when you defend, in my case, when I defend the Jewish people, the first accusation is I get money from Bibi Netanyahu or Israel. And you want to show receipts, I've got them. I have never taken a dime from you, anyone in Israel. Anytime I've ever been to Israel, I've paid my own way. There's no money that I've received from anyone ever, ever in relation to Israel. This is a conviction of my heart and a belief that the scriptures are clear in regards to the Jewish people being God's chosen people. And that's the bottom line. There's no replacement theology. It doesn't work that way. And we want to debate that anytime, Tucker. I'm willing.
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Josh Hammer
Listen, I would love to host that debate right here on the Josh Hammer Show. I have a sneaky suspicion, Rob, that Tucker will not take me up my offer. But here you go, Tucker, if you're listening by chance, we would love to have that debate right here on the show, folks. Unfortunately, we're out of time. I would love to continue this conversation another time. Pastor Rob McCoy was Charlie Kirk spiritual mentor and pastor. He is a very good man, as you've heard. Pastor Rob, thank you for all you're doing. God bless you, my friend. Stop by again soon if you will.
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Pastor Rob McCoy
God bless you too, Josh. Thanks, man.
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Josh Hammer
Folks, stay with us through a short commercial break. We'll be right back with more on the other side. Welcome back so much to Empath during that conversation with Pastor Rob McCoy. We'll have to have Rob back on sooner rather than later to continue to flesh this out and trying to combat this information operation, trying to tear Jews and Christians apart. A worthy, worthy effort, a fight that, dare I say, Charlie Kirk would have himself personally approved of quite strongly. So as I mentioned at the outset, King Charles of the UK King Charles III has been in the United States. He had a busy day around the nation's capital yesterday. He was welcomed by President Trump for a late morning ceremony at the White House. And in the afternoon he spent speaking to a joint session of Congress, only the second British monarch ever since the nation's founding actually to be given that distinction. His mother, Queen Elizabeth II, had that distinction during the George H.W. bush presidency back in the early 1990s. So King Charles III spoke before a joint session of Congress and then he ends up wrapping up concluding his evening with a white tie dinner. The most formal possible dinner at the White House, I believe was actually the first white tie dinner, if not mistaken, at the White House since George W. Bush hosted Queen Elizabeth and the royal family back in the early 2000s. So a very, very busy day for the British royal family in the American Capital of Washington, D.C. yesterday we talked a little bit about this on yesterday's show. Donald Trump spoke quite movingly about American British relations in his morning remarks at the White House. And he spoke a lot about the shared heritage and the shared red, white and blue colors of our flags and what we have given the world. He had this amazing, hilarious joke, a joke that only Trump can do, about how his mother looking down from heaven, smiling at how King Charles, who she thought was so cute as a little boy, how now Charles is up there with her son with President Donald Trump. That is to say there. And that ultimately is where I think I come down on this issue when it comes to American British relations. But I say that with a pause and with a caveat because it actually is a little more complicated. So, for instance, King Charles, when he actually spoke to Congress, essay. King Charles is a man of the left. He is absolutely a man of the left, much like his current prime minister, Keir Starmer. At various points throughout his speech to Congress, he had completely gratuitous asides and it was a 25 to 30 minute speech, give or take. He had some completely gratuitous asides when it came to the melting polar ice caps and the climate change hysteria and the greeny radicalism and all that. Just some total red meat, frankly, for the far left. He also had, I thought, what was a subtler digit, which is actually a dig about the separation of powers, which had Democrats really, really riling up. They burst out of their chairs for this one. Let's go ahead and watch this from King Charles talking about separation of powers yesterday at the U.S. congress.
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Narrator/Announcer
Roots go even further back in history. The U.S. supreme Court Historical Society has calculated that Magna Carta is cited in at least 160 Supreme Court court cases since 1789, not least as the foundation of the principle that executive power is subject to checks and balances.
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Josh Hammer
Okay, so you see what he's saying there. Wink, wink. It's really not that subtle. He's talking about checking executive power with checks and balances while you are the invited guest of the executive. Now, it happens to be historically true. Magna Carta going back to King John does lay the foundations for the Anglo American tradition of separation of powers. He's not wrong on that. He's not. I mean, frankly, it goes back even further than Magna Carta. It actually really goes back to the Bible and the Roman law. But hold that aside for now. He's not wrong on the point he's trying to make there. But it really is a choice to choose to deliver that message at that time in that setting. You know, frankly, for the Democrats, it's morbidly hilarious, actually. They leapt out of their seat to clap like a bunch of dumb seals. Apparently they love the King of England, despite the fact that they held a no Kings rally just two or three weeks ago. I'm not sure how they square the circle, but I guess they have managed a way to square it in their mind at least. Ultimately, the future of the American British relationship is really up to the Brits more than is up, up to the United States for the very simple reason that we have changed much less than they have changed. America is still different in some ways. Certainly. We've had a lot, a lot of immigration. We are overall a less church going, a less religious country, unfortunately, than we were 50 or 100 years ago. But overall, overall, America is still on a similar trajectory than we were on, call it 50 or 100 years ago, going back to the FDR, Churchill alliance, the Reagan Thatcher Alliance, 1980s, et cetera, et cetera. It is Britain that has moved. It is the British government and the British people that have moved. It is Britain that has decided to attack free speech. It is, it is Britain that has decided to completely override its cities and its towns with Pakistanis who are engaging in all sorts of horrific child rape gangs as we've been covering a little bit on the show, really a tragedy going back two and a half decades, actually, as the Tories and Nigel Farage's reform UK are finally starting to expose there. So it's really the Brits who have to decide whether or not they actually care about this alliance moving forward. And if they care about it, they probably should start acting on it. But in any event, it was interesting nonetheless to see who applauded and who did not when it came to King Charles yesterday. As I said, Democrats fancy themselves not being a fan of kings here on the home front with the whole no kings schtick. They happen to love kings quite a bit when it comes to foreign kings. First, I want to talk to you a little bit about this Jim Comey indictment as well. 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So, so Balance Nature has this patented technology, their Whole Health System, which bundles their fruits and veggies with fiber and spice, gives you 47 whole food ingredients in one simple routine. It's a supplement to your diet. It will not replace your diet, but it will definitely boost it. I've been taking it. Trust me, I feel better. So go ahead and check out Balance of Nature. You can go to balanceofnature.com you can also save over 30% when you subscribe there. Check out their whole health system today. Our sponsor today, folks, is Balance of nature@balanceofnature.com so Jim Comey has now also been indicted for a second time. He's been indicted a second time because of this 8, 6, 4, 7 seashells that happens on the beaches, I believe the Outer Banks of North Carolina at some point over the past couple of years. And it's a little tardy to be bringing in this indictment. So I'm not entirely sure exactly why it took this long to get the grand jury to indict on these charges, specifically what's happening here. And Todd Blanch, the acting Attorney General, had a press conference at the DOJ where he said that the grand jury in the Eastern District of North Carolina returned the indictment for two counts. Count one against Jim Comey is knowingly and willingly making a threat to take the life of or inflict bodily harm upon the President, United States. Count two is essentially just transmitting that through a wire, which in this case was Instagram, because he posted it on Instagram, which is a wire for purposes of American law. Now, recall that Jim Comey was indicted once already and it didn't go particularly very far. Now there you have the issue of Lindsey Halligan, who the court incorrectly, in my opinion, held was not a legitimate U.S. attorney at that time or acting U.S. attorney there. Will this one go any, any further? Well, Jim Comey says that he's innocent. Let's go ahead and actually listen to Jim Comey explained after this second assignment just yesterday.
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Jim Comey
Well, they're back this time about a picture of seashells on a North Carolina beach a year ago. And this won't be the end of it. But nothing has changed with me. I'm still innocent, I'm still not afraid. And I still believe in the independent federal judiciary. So let's go. But it's really important that all of us remember this is not who we are as a country. This is not how the Department of Justice is supposed to be. And the good news is we get closer every day to restoring those values. Keep the faith.
- [31:00]
Josh Hammer
So the notion that 8647 just magically appeared on the beach is ludicrous. This man was director of the f freaking bi. He obviously knows what 86 is shorthand for. He obviously, obviously, much like Ms. Now, much like Hakeem Jeffries, Maxim, Warfare, Ted Lieu, all these other idiots was trying to rile up the far left. Now, that doesn't mean that Jim Comey is going to go to jail. I'll be honest with you. I do not think that this prosecution is going to go very far. You have to get into subjective intent and all sorts of things like that there. I don't think it's actually going to land in any conviction, but I have no issue with the DOJ trying at all. By the way, they also actually indicted just on Tuesday, David Morens, who was a former assistant to Anthony Fauci. He's been charged with one count of conspiracy, two counts of destruction, alteration, falsification, records, all of this when it comes to concealing records about the origin of COVID 19. So the Trump administration is now really going at it there. I love it. As you know from listening to the show, folks, we believe strongly here that when it comes to lawfare, the only way out is through. I'm not saying they're going to end up in jail, but I do appreciate giving it the old college try, folks, one final commercial breakthrough. We'll be right back on the OTHER side with Eli Lake for an Iran update. Welcome back. So what an action packed day here on the Josh Hammer show and we are going to close out our show with another timely conversation. Our next guest is Eli Lake. You know Eli Lake. He's been a guest previously here on the Josh Hammer Show. He's a columnist for the Free Press, also the host of Breaking History, which is a new history podcast from the Free Press. And Eli Lake joins us now. So, Eli, welcome back to the program. If we have time later on, we'll try to tap into the this new Jim Comey indictment which we were talking about earlier on the show. But I want to begin and primarily focus on the issue of Iran, which is something of a matter of subject matter expertise for you. And the main question, Eli, that I have is a very simple one, which is, what the heck is actually happening right now? What is the current status of what seems to be this Mexican standoff of sorts between the Trump administration and the Iranian regime? To the extent that the Iranian regime even is a coherent entity at this time, which it really isn't there. So what is actually happening here? And the obvious corollary to that is what can we expect or knocks back when it comes to the possible resumption of kinetic activity in the next, call it week, two weeks, three weeks, whatever the case may be.
- [33:26]
Eli Lake
Well, I mean, the first thing to note is that there's a double blockade. Obviously. The Iranians are threatening vessels to go through the Strait of Hormuz. There was a period of the first, I'd say four weeks of the war where people thought, aha, that's the Iranian trump card. Trump's been outsmarted. Not the case because Trump is now blockading Iran. And so Iran cannot export its oil. And the big thing that everybody's watching, and I don't know if it's gonna happen in a few days or a few weeks. I'm not an expert on oil infrastructure, but at a certain point, and it's fairly soon, the Iranians are gonna start losing the oil because they have to constantly pump and then export this stuff, refine it and everything like that. So if they can't get it out of the well, at a certain point, they're basically like, they run the risk of over flooding their wells and they run the risk of not just losing the revenue from that oil, but they could be ruining their infrastructure as well. So this puts a tremendous amount of pressure on the regime. It's possible that the people in charge right now, which we largely think it's this Ahmed Vahidi, who is the replacement leader of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. He holds the real power, though there still is this sort of committee of five, which includes the vice president, the president, sorry, the president, the speaker of the parliament and some others. It's a mistake, as you know, to say hardliners and moderates in Iran, but there's like hardliners and ultra hardliners, however you want to say. So we largely think that FAHITI is the real power in the country. My information, which is reporting on what US Intelligence believes is that Mojtaba Khamenei the Supreme leader, the son of the last supreme leader. He's alive, he's cogent, he's not making day to day decisions. And he has suffered from a grievous injury where he is, I think, disfigured in his face. And that's one of the reasons why he hasn't been heard from or seen. We haven't heard a recording. There are other reports that are sort of out there that might be sort of reflecting in Israeli assessment he may be dead, he may be incapacitated. But my understanding is that people have met with him and this is talking to my US sources and that he has authorized this committee of five, if you will, to run the country on the day to day basis. That's very similar, by the way, an arrangement that his father had with the late Ali Larajani, who was the secretary of the National Security Council in Iran. So at this point, before he was
- [35:58]
Josh Hammer
taken out, in the very early days of operation.
- [36:00]
Eli Lake
Yeah, he was taken out very. Exactly. So, you know, at this point it's like you have to deal with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. What we know about Vahidi is that he was against what Ayatollah Khomeini, the founder of the Islamic Republic of Iran, what he called the poison chalice, which is he had to drink poison to end the Iran Iraq war. Vahidi was one of the generals who was counseling him to keep fighting the Iran Iraq war, which was devastating to Iran. So that gives us a sense of kind of his mindset. But the other thing about Iran is that the regime is also fracturing. And what I've been told is that it's not clear that Vahidi speaks for the entire Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, which is sort of like the equivalent of the nomenclator or the KGB at the height of the Soviet Union, which is that they're bigger than just an intelligence service. They kind of own and run everything. You know, they're responsible, some say, for more than half of the Iranian economy. So there are different power centers within the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. And the way they understand Vahidi is he's like the most powerful chieftain in this organization that is already running Iran. So there might be others who might have other views. Usually in a situation like this, when a kind of mafia like organization, which I think is the best descriptor of Iran or their regime is facing kinetic economic pressure and all this other stuff, and not to mention there still is the wildcard of the Iranian people, I wouldn't be surprised if you started seeing the factions going after other factions and that usually kind of happens just like we saw, think of it like the Colombo wars with Glacosa Nostra or something like that. So that's a real possibility that we could see. But basically what I think is going to start happening is that once you start seeing the pressure from the blockade coming in and they don't have the revenue, then how are they going to pay the foot soldiers? How are they going to pay the soldiers? How are they going to keep the lights on?
- [38:03]
Josh Hammer
How There's a bunch of things if in Operation Economic Fury, as Secretary Bess calls it. If this actually really could bring the Iranians to the true brink when it comes to the economy. I guess, Eli, what I'm getting at is I'm a little skeptical because I feel like I've heard the story before. I feel like I've heard how the Iranian currency has a 4 or 5, 6 digit inflation, how it's this. Is that there? Now, to be clear, obviously their economy is overwhelmingly dependent on the oil and natural gas exports. Really, the oil exports above all.
- [38:31]
Eli Lake
Yeah.
- [38:31]
Josh Hammer
And if the blockade is successful, then you have to tap the wells. We explained on yesterday's show, okay, that that all sounds great, but that still brings us then to the next point, which is is there anyone to actually make a deal with? And it seems like the answer is no. Right.
- [38:44]
Eli Lake
Well, the argument would be that eventually Vahiti looks like he's gonna say no, but his position may be tenuous if he continues to say no. We' what I consider to be credible reports from Iran International, which does have sources inside of Iran that say that the President has been presented with information from the governor of Iran's central bank, which says it's going to take us 12 years to rebuild the damage that was done in this war. We're facing hyper, hyperinflation of more than 100%. I mean, there's a lot of problems that they've got coming up. And that's one of the reasons why somebody like the President of Iran, which has to deal with, you know, the mundane and serious problems of a failed economy, has been pushing for more negotiations and a softer line. It's one of the reasons why when the speaker of the Parliament, Gali Baf and the foreign minister were leading the delegation a few weeks ago in Islamabad, for the Iranians, that's, I think they generally were pretty close to like a nuclear deal that would give them some economic relief. And that's what we're talking about now. Now my view is a little different. I mean, my personal view is that the most important thing is to open the Strait of Hormuz. You cannot leave the conflict with the Iranians in charge of this choke point for the world economy. I don't think it's as disastrous if we end the war with that, with them in charge for a bit because I think that it's a depreciating asset. There'll be other routes that will be explored and there's a huge built in interest for all the Gulf states, Europe, China and everybody else to make sure that the Iranians are not extorting the rest of the planet. But that said, if that's the main thing, because I don't even think, listen, if you can't, it would be nice to get a nuclear deal and to find out the status of the nearly thousand pounds of 60% enriched uranium that's trapped under Isfahan right now. It would be nice to get them to sign a piece of paper saying that they'll never enrich uranium or something like that. To me that's less important because their program is destroyed at this point. And so even if they wanted to enrich uranium, even they wanted to excavate the 60% HCU uranium from under, you know, their facilities, they don't have any, they don't have any plants to enrich it. They don't have this. They're not making centrifuges anymore. It's like their nuclear program is.
- [41:05]
Josh Hammer
So basically 60% is the last step until you get to 90%, which is,
- [41:08]
Eli Lake
yeah, they still have to enrich it again.
- [41:10]
Josh Hammer
Warhead.
- [41:10]
Pastor Rob McCoy
Right, right.
- [41:11]
Eli Lake
And they're, they had facilities where they were, were for weaponization. They had all kinds of things that don't exist anymore for them. So even if they, even if we don't get an agreement on the nuclear, I'm like, okay, fine, as long as the Strait of Hormuz is out of their hands, as long as they are so weakened. And then at that point, I think we would be in phase two, or sometimes call it phase three, which is the Mossad is then helping the Iranian people. And it'll take a few months, clearly, at least you'll see people power. And this really extraordinary possibility, which we saw a little preview of in the early part of the war where the Israelis are controlling armed drones and there are other things the Israelis can do
- [41:50]
Josh Hammer
to try to helps these demonstrations go on for weeks. It's probably going to go on for months. God willing, it's not going to go on for years, unfortunately. We're out of time left to bring you on to continue this conversation. But make sure to watch this. It is a very fluid situation. Is a connect situation there. We always appreciate Eli Lake stopping by to join us. He's on X at Eli Lake also, folks. Have a great rest of your evening. Josh Hammer signing off for now. We'll be right back. As always, tomorrow.