← The Josh Hammer Show
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A bromance in Beijing between the two most powerful men in the world, Donald Trump and Xi Jinping. But could the ever thorny issue of Taiwan be the thing that undoes this budding possible bromance? I'm Josh Hammer, and this is the Josh Hammer Show. Well, the eyes of the world and certainly the eyes of all of us here in the United States are unique on Beijing, China, halfway around the world this week, as Donald Trump flies to Beijing to meet with Xi Jinping, who is the most powerful ruler of the People's Republic of China and the Chinese Communist Party since its founder, Mao Zedong, many decades ago. Donald Trump has been talking about all the issues there in China with Xi Jinping. China rolled out both the literal and proverbial red carpet for the 45th and 47th President of the United States there. And by all accounts, Donald Trump seems to be having just a grand old time telling the camera that China is beautiful. And he toured some significant sites, culturally and religiously significant sites with Xi Jinping there in China. There. Donald Trump talking about everything from Chinese restaurants, actually, to the Chinese people's love of basketball and blue jeans. Let's go ahead and watch those.
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Say just as many Chinese now love basketball and blue jeans, Chinese restaurants in America today outnumber the five largest fast food chains in the United States all combined. That's a pretty big statement.
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It actually went even further than that, actually. Donald Trump told Xi Jinping that you are a great leader. I'm not so sure I agree, but here was the president of the United
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States, you're a great leader. I say it to everybody. You're a great leader. Sometimes people don't like me saying it, but I say it anyway because it's true. I only say the truth. From the beginning, our citizens have shared a deep sense of mutual respect. Founding father Benjamin Franklin published the sayings of Confucius in his colonial newspaper. And today sculpture, recognizing that ancient Chinese sage, is carved into the face of the United States Supreme Court very proudly.
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So this, unfortunately, is on the one hand, it's Donald Trump at his worst. He does seem to have this habit of praising some of the world's worst tyrants, whether it's Vladimir Putin. Trump famously met with Kim Jong Un in Singapore during his first term in office there. And now he is heaping praise on Xi Jinping. Xi Jinping is a monster. We should not mince words about Xi Jinping. Xi Jinping is a man who was overseeing a soft genocide of the Uyghur Muslims out in Xinjiang province. Xi Jinping is a man who is blatantly violating the 50 year deal that the Chinese government signed with the British government for the handover of Hong Kong back in the late 1990s, by which China nominally purportedly agreed to have this two different systems framework in place for a 50 year duration whereby Hong Kong could get by with a more freer way of life. More generally, Hong Kong is being gobbled up in real time, unfortunately by China. By the way, on yesterday's show we mentioned how Jimmy Lai, the publisher, formerly the publisher of the largest newspaper in Hong Kong, the Apple Daily, he is rotting in a Hong Kong communist run prison at this time for violating Beijing's authoritarian, oppressive national Security law. So Xi Jinping, very far from a good guy, by the way. China does all sorts of other terrible things there when it comes to forced organ transplants, things like that. We had Jan Yekeliuk of the Epoch Times, who has a brand new book on this. We had Jan on the show to discuss that maybe just about a month ago or so. China is a human rights catac and more relevant even than that is a national security catastrophe for the United States. And the issue of Iran has certainly come up over the course of the summit between Donald Trump and Xi Jinping. We on the show anticipated that because China has been a major, major patron of Iran over the course of this conflict. And frankly, over the course of decades now, China has been responsible for arming Iran. Yes, when Iran shot at the USS Abraham Lincoln in late March, those were Chinese supplied cruise missiles. Furthermore, there is a rail line that goes from Tehran all the way eastwards towards western China. As part of China's sprawling Belt and Road Initiative, China is responsible for setting up shadow banking and teapots, refineries, these kind of sketchy refineries, to try to allow Iran to export their heavily sanctioned crude oil and petroleum there. And Iran did come up in conversation there, for what it's worth. Xi Jinping apparently telling Donald Trump all the right things. Xi Jinping apparently telling Donald Trump that, yes, we want to see the 300 Hormuz open. Yes, Iran cannot get a nuclear weapon there. Yes, this, yes, that. The problem is actually doing it. There's a big difference between actually telling Donald Trump and the United States and for that matter, the world, one thing on the one hand versus actually doing it there. So is China actually going to lift a finger? Will they lift a single finger when it comes to trying to exert diplomatic pressure on their client states, on the Iranian regime, or what remains of the Iranian regime after epic fury, will they do anything whatsoever to try to cajole Iran to the negotiating table and to actually work with us in earnest? They seem to not be doing that. On the contrary. Actually, by all that we can tell, Iran seems to continue to believe that it actually has the upper hand when it comes to trying to negotiate some sort of off ramp that would allow the regime to stay in place. They're not good, not good, not good, very bad. And unfortunately, China is doing absolutely nothing to further American end goals right now in Iran or frankly in the entire broader Middle east for the matter. But the big issue, the big issue of all and one where I just don't know how it's going to shape up when it comes to the American national interest is the issue of Taiwan. And I've got a lot to say on that issue. More on that in just a moment. But for now, folks, want to tell you about the sponsor of today's show, which is Angel Studios. You know, people have been asking questions about the origins of COVID 19 for years. Heck, we actually just had a congressional hearing yesterday, actually where there was a CIA whistleblower trying to to blow the COVID on an alleged government cover up when it comes to the origins of COVID 19. And many of us still have tons and tons of questions as to all the various errors that went into the catastrophic government response. And really, there's one man at the top of that, and that of course, is Dr. Anthony Fauci, who was given a lifelong pardon from Joe Biden on his way out the door. Thank you, Dr. Fauci is now streaming at Angel Studios. This documentary is not a partisan attack piece. It's an investigative documentary that examines public health, scientific accountability and the possibility of one of the biggest cover ups in modern history. Again, similar to what you heard on Capitol Hill just yesterday, the documentary has whistleblower interviews, intelligence experts and thousands of pages of documents. And the film challenges viewers who think deeper about the narratives that we were told. So if you care about truth, transparency and asking hard questions, you are going to want to Stream. Thank you, Dr. Fauci on angel and join the conversation. You can become an Angel Guild member today@angel.com hammer. Our sponsor of today's show is Angel Studios. So by all accounts, Taiwan was the big issue thus far in this Donald Trump Xi Jinping summit. And that hardly was surprising because Taiwan is an issue that Xi Jinping and the Chinese Communist Party care a lot, a lot, a lot about. Now you likely know where Taiwan is, but in case you don't it is an island that sits roughly 50 to 60 miles off of mainland China. The Chinese Communist Party's official stance essentially, since the People's Republic of China was formed in 1948-1949 following a very bloody civil war with the Republic of China, which was the Nationalist government based in Taiwan. The Chinese Communist Party stance ever since the late 1940s and Mao Zedong's time has been that Taiwan, properly speaking, historically speaking, culturally, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, is part of China proper. The response on the other side, the response from the Taiwanese perspective is that, no, it's actually not part of China proper, is that Taiwan has never actually been part of Communist China. And historically speaking, the Taiwanese perspective is actually broadly speaking and largely speaking, correct. There was really only a period of 200 years, historically speaking, give or take, that Taiwan was ruled by a ruling dynasty in China. It was the Qing Dynasty that annexed Taiwan from 1683 until the until the late 19th century. But even then, when the Qing Dynasty China for millennia or thousands of years was ruled by these various dynasties, even when the Qing Dynasty actually ruled Taiwan there, there were all sorts of rebellions there. It was never full imperial style rule. Then ultimately they made Taiwan its own Province in 1887, and in 1895 the Japanese took over. They called it Formosa. So the Japanese actually ruled Taiwan in the lead up to World War II, when Imperial Japan was going absolutely nuts and doing terrible things in the world stage there. So it was part of, for a half century, from 1895 to 1945, then you had the end of World War II, the Chinese Civil war between the Communists and the Nationalists there, the Communists win the civil war. And ever since then, ever since Communist China became independent there, Taiwan has never been part of it. Never ever, ever since day one has Taiwan been part of Communist China. Never. They have always had this dream that Taiwan should be, quote, unquote, reincorporated there. But historically speaking, what do they actually mean there? Do they mean reincorporated in Qing Dynasty like fashion? Well, for that, why shouldn't Japan get in on the action? Heck, they have a more recent claim actually, when it comes to the fact that they ruled over it during 50 years. Now you might counter and reasonably so, that Japan ruled over a lot of places when they were going absolutely crazy, essentially invading everywhere in the Indo Pacific there. And fair enough, but the broader point is this. Taiwanese independence is a vital, vital thing for the United States and for the West. Now for decades, decades, the American formal policy, when it comes to Taiwan is typically referred to as strategic ambiguity. This is the nomenclature, the phraseology from the State Department, from Foggy Bottom, from our diplomats, from our bureaucrats, from all the folks in the policy making community there. They call it strategic ambiguity. What it basically means is that we are not going to tell you whether or not the United States will actually go to war to defend Taiwan. But concurrent with that, for years and years and years, mostly speaking for decades, actually, the United States has had relations with Taiwan. Not formal relations. There's no formal embassy from Taiwan in the United States. There is a consulate. I know that because I've actually been to it, actually, many years ago when I was a Judiciary Committee law clerk, when I was in law school for Senator Mike Lee of Utah, our staff was actually honored at the Taiwanese consulate. Senator Lee was and I presume still is a strong friend of the Taiwanese. Typically you have folks who are very hawkish on China, people like Tom Khan of Arkansas, people who generally are laissez faire, free market oriented in their economic approach there, who are typically much friendlier to Taiwan as opposed to the authoritarian Marxist Leninist regime there in Beijing. So we don't have a formal embassy with Taiwan, but we have very chummy relations there. And we definitely have been engaged in all sorts of, at times, pretty high profile arms sales as well, up to and including things like the F35 platform. China hates that. And apparently over the past couple of days in this summit, Xi Jinping essentially led with the issue of Taiwan there. He basically said that this will be a deal breaker and that it could be a really, really, really bad thing. It's a not so thinly veiled threat to Trump. He said this could be a clash or an outright terrible conflict if you decide to go ahead and make a move to defend Taiwan there. So a really big threat from Xi. What does that mean? And what should the American response be? Well, we've got a lot more to say on that after a short break, folks. This is the Josh Hamish Show. We'll be right back after this. Welcome back. So what Xi Jinping has basically told Donald Trump in Beijing over the past couple of days is great relationship, Mr. President, I love getting along with you. I love when the United States and China are operating on the same page there. But don't you dare, don't you dare threaten it by making a move on Taiwan or else it's kind of a Sicilian Mafia style threat. Great relationship there. Would be a shame to lose it, wouldn't it? Well, first of all, it's Actually, really not a great relationship. China spies on us every which way you can possibly spy on us. There was just a mayor in Los Angeles County, California just this week that pled guilty to being a foreign agent on behalf of the Chinese Communist Party. Just over the past few years, there have been Chinese agents who have been arrested for engaging in the transportation and the manufacturing of biochemicals and bioweapons. And everywhere from Fresno, California, the California Central Valley, all the way to the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor there. China is a country that flies military equipped spy balloons across the North American continent, from Alaska down to the South Carolina coast. They are a country that spies on us through algorithms and social media, through platforms like TikTok. They spread their propaganda all across American universities through things like the horribly misnamed Confucius Institutes. And on and on and on we go. So the notion that things are going just fine with China is completely, completely ludicrous there. But again, Taiwan really is the number one big sticky point. And Taiwan is vital for a few reasons. The number one most obvious reason, most obvious reason here is that Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, which is based in Taipei, which is the capital of the, again, broadly autonomous, effectively de facto autonomous nation of Taiwan, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. Is probably the single most important chip maker in the world. It's them or Nvidia, right? But the Taiwanese punch way, way, way above their, their market share or their relative proportionality to the world stage. They punch way above that when it comes to what kind of super advanced chips they produce and everything from your iPhone to your computer to warplanes, everything that goes around there, there is a decent likelihood that there was a Taiwanese ship in them. And you might say that, wow, what were American policymakers thinking when they decided to allow this island 50 miles off the shore of our greatest civilizational threat to control the chips that go in American F35 warplanes, for instance, there. What are we thinking there and how does this make sense? Well, frankly, it's a very good question. And whenever I think about this, I get actually really angry. I get personally livid at the ways that previous generations of bipartisan elites sold the American people out, sold us out. Not just when it comes to our industrial base, not just when it comes to our supply chains. Although China has been a massive, massive hindrance, a massive, destructive, catastrophic presence when it comes to supply chains and manufacturing, they definitely have been that there. But when it comes specifically to the issue of semiconductors, there, I think often to this line from Michael Bossick, who was a George H.W. bush era white House economist who famously shrugged his shoulders amidst this era of neoliberalism and globalism run amok when the World Trade Organization was ascendant there and free trade absolutism and exports to your heart's content there. This is the name of the game. And the Bush administration's economic adviser Bostic says, computer chips, potato chips, what's the difference? You want to know the difference? World War Three wouldn't potentially start over the price or availability or supply demand of potato chips. It just might when it comes to computer chips. So that is the number one most obvious clear reason why not letting Taiwan fall into enemy hands matters. Now, the popular rumor, and it is purely a rumor, there is absolutely no way to verify this, the popular rumor is that Taiwan's semiconductor manufacturing company, that their headquarters is actually rigged and wiretapped and set to self detonate in the event of a full scale People's Liberation Army Chinese military invasion of Taiwan. That's just a rumor. We have no idea if it's true there. But that is the alleged extent to which the Taiwanese do not want all of that know how and all of those trade secrets and as well as the outright productive capacity to actually fall into enemy hands. So that is one obvious reason there. But more broadly speaking, there is of course a geostrategic reason as well to care about Taiwan and it is this. Taiwan is the first domino potentially to fall when it comes to China's broader century long vision to take the entire Indo Pacific and by extension really the world, and to sinoform it, to recreate it into the image of the Chinese Communist Party. China has been involved in all sorts of island disputes for years and years and years. It's not just with Taiwan. They've been involved with all sorts of disputed islands, standoffs with the Philippines, with Japan perhaps most notably above all there. They're constantly getting into skirmishes in the South China Sea and the East China Sea. They are waiting to take a more aggressive action. And the fear is that Taiwan would really be the first shoe to drop here and that if China and that if Taiwan were to fall, then maybe, God forbid, you know, they could start gobbling up more of Southeast Asia, the Philippines potentially go to war with Japan, again, who the heck knows? The idea here is that you don't want that to happen. You don't want that to happen there because again, China acts in a way that is demonstrably contrary to American interests in every theater of the world. By the way, China was super cozy with the Maduro regime in Venezuela, super cozy. They're super cozy with Cuba, a deeply hostile regime just 90 miles off our shores here in Florida. China is known actually to have spying facilities in Cuba where they try to listen in, like literally listen in to what we're saying here in South Florida. It's a well known thing that China does there. China is deeply, deeply complicit in arming the Russians in the Russia Ukrainian war. Xi Jinping appears alongside Vladimir Putin all the time. Again, he's been arming the Iranians. They are super close with North Korea. They're allied with every bad actor on the world. So pardon me for being an intense skeptic of this notion that that all is fine and dandy with China. To be clear, I would love nothing more than for the Chinese Communist Party to reform itself and to stop acting in such a demonstrably hostile way, in such a horrifically authoritarian way, stopping their counterfeiting and laundering of currency, their pilfering, their stealing of trade secrets, all of it, all the terrible things they do. But I don't see that happening. I simply don't see that happening. And on the issue in Taiwan in particular, it is imperative, absolutely imperative, that President Trump and this administration and this nation, United States, stand strong. Now, would the United States ultimately risk it all? Would we actually risk going to war, God forbid, God forbid, against China if the People's Liberation army, the Chinese military, actually invades full scale? It's a legitimate question. I think back, actually, this was, gosh, this was four and a half, almost five years ago now at the NATCON 2 conference in Orlando, Florida in 2021. At the time, I was speaking at the conference, but I went into a session where I was a bystander and I watched this absolutely fascinating debate between Michael Pillsbury of the Hudson Institute versus Michael Anton, who's been in and out of the administration. He's also affiliated with the Claremont Institute. And they were debating, actually this question is whether or not the US Would go to war to defend Taiwan. Pillsbury said yes. Anton said no. I'm closer towards the Anton viewpoint that ultimately, God forbid, if China invades there, it is not truly worth World War 3. Again, there's actually a lot of military strategists, arguably the majority of them actually depends on what sample size you're looking at that predict that in a full scale civilizational clash in the western Pacific, that China actually would defeat the United States. So you don't really want to risk that, do you? But that is all the more reason to defend Taiwan. Now and to prevent that from happening again, the key thing that we emphasized in yesterday's show is that the United States has more leverage on China than China has on the United States. Yes, the United States is definitely dependent on China when it comes to things like rare earth minerals, when it comes to some forms of technology, more generally speaking, when it comes to the fact that they have a billion and a half people and that is a gargantuan place for consumption for American companies there, cheap labor, the supply chains, every company from Apple and Foxconn all the way to the Walt Disney Company and on, on, on. I get it. But China is also way more dependent on us. Again. Apparently, Xi actually agreed with Trump here that he would actually purchase more American crude oil and become less dependent on Iranian oil. I will believe that when I see it. Donald Trump has a lot, a lot of cards to play here. And I continue to believe in this Selena Zito notion that you take Donald Trump seriously, but not literally. So that's why I don't freak out when Donald Trump says terrible things like he said about Xi Jinping. This is kind of just Trump being Trump. You take it seriously again, but not literally. But the real, real, real decision will come if, God forbid, slash, when China invades Taiwan. That's going to be a tough thing to do, a tough thing to defend that island, which is why we must do every single thing we can to prevent that potentially world altering catastrophic event from happening. Folks, a quick break. We'll be right back with more after this. Welcome back. So Iran, definitely one of the issues that came up and is coming up in this Donald Trump Xi Jinping summit this week. The latest out of Iran, by the way, is that Iran apparently seized a ship in Emirati waters. So we actually learned over the past few days that the UAE and allegedly Saudi Arabia, although it's a little hard to get full confirmation on that, but the UAE has apparently launched strikes. We just learned that apparently it happened actually a little while ago. But it just came to light that they've actually, they became the first Sunni Arab state to actually launch strikes at the Shiite supremacist Iranian regime there, allegedly joined by Saudi Arabia. But anyway, this morning Iran apparently seize a ship in Emirati waters. So that is obviously not good. India also says that an Indian flagged ship was attacked off of the coast of Oman by Iranian force there. So the situation in the Strait of Hormuz and around there continues to be really, really bad. Which again raises the question that we're still tracking here as to what is going to happen there in this very bizarre. That's not a ceasefire, it's not a war. What is this situation going on there? What we have called for on the show all week is that this summit in Beijing really would have been the perfect to send a clear, unmistakable message to reinitiate hostilities against Iran while on Chinese soil. That really would have been the move potentially it still could be in the limited hours that remain, I suppose we will see there another thing that came to light yesterday which is really quite fascinating. So the Israeli government is saying that Bibi Netanyahu made a secret visit to the UAE to actually meet with the presidents of the uae, a man who is commonly known as mbz, Mohammed bin Zayed, not to be confused with Mohammed bin Salman, the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia. So this secret meeting apparently happened in late March, about a month give or take, into epic fury. As we've noted on the show, it's really the UAE more than any other country that has been the, really been the big recipient, the number one recipient of incoming Iranian fire, more so than any other country out there, including, including Israel itself actually for, for that matter. And the fact that that this happens apparently in secret shows I think how, how much the region, it shows how strong the Abraham Accords are and it shows how much the region is really coalescing around this anti Iranian posture. Now, for what it's worth, the Emiratis are denying it. They're saying that this meme did not happen there, which I interpret it as just classic Arab cultural squirreliness. These people just are oftentimes way too cowardly to say publicly what they do privately. We see this all the time when it comes to Mohammed bin Salman's apparent lobbying of Donald Trump to start the war with Iran, to continue the war with Iran there. They will never say it publicly there. So if the Israelis are saying it when it comes to Netanyahu visiting the uae, I find that really, really, really hard to believe they would make it up. There's a lot more reason to believe that the UAE would try to tamp it down there. So a very encouraging sign certainly when it comes to the future of the region after the Iran war is over. Qatar, notably at some point over this conflict, also kicked the Iranian diplomatic delegation out of their embassy in Doha. So it'll be interesting to see whether or not, whether or not Qatar is actually really ending their duplicitous two faced ways, whether or not they actually really are prepared to enter the Abraham Accords structure, whether formally or informally and really trying to normalize, make peace with Israel and by extension to become part of the broader, the broader constellation of non terror supporting Western nations because again, Qatar has been, has been the number one sponsor of the Muslim Brotherhood and Sunni Islamic Jihad for many, many, many years. So speaking of Israel, we talked on yesterday's show, not just about this really difficult to read, just, just absolutely barbaric new report that is out by this civil commission on the sexual violence committed on October 7, 2023. You can go ahead and check out the full report for yourself if you have the stomach for it. It's 300 pages. There is a handy executive summary which is also hard to read, but it might just be sufficient for your purposes there. And we also noted how a day before this report came out, there was a truly, truly appalling column that came out in the paper of Record of the New York Times by Nicholas Kristof, a decades long columnist there at the Gray lady who has had a checkered career of all sorts of retractions and corrections there. And he came out with quite a doozy on Monday with a column titled the Silence that Meets Palestinian Rape where he alleges in kind of a reverse, a moral inversion or reversal of sorts there. And quite conveniently it was one day before this report came out, culminating in a two year investigation of the Hamas violence. So trying to get ahead of the news cycle. Well, Nicholas Kristoff publishes this repulsive column quoting Hamas affiliated sources and alleging, alleging that there was a culture of systemic sexual abuse and rape in Israeli prisons. The most scurrilous, scandalous claim of all was this notion that the Israel, that their prison guards were training dogs, rape dogs to try to, to try to rape the Palestinian Arab inmates there. By the way, there was a very long history of anti Semitic conspiracy theories that involve animals. I saw a recent one out of Gaza where they said that the Israelis were training the rats to poison the water supply in Gaza. No, Occam's Razor would suggest that the water in Gaza is maybe not sanitary because it's Gaza and because Hamas doesn't really know how to govern a place. They're just a terrorist organization there. So I'm sure that the sanitation system, the sewage system, the plumbing is probably all third world. And Gaza there, there are no poisoned, no rat poisoning, Jewish, Jewish rats in Gaza and there's certainly no, no mass raping dogs, God forbid, in prisons there. So I say all that as a reminder because today we have news that the state of Israel as a country is apparently suing or is Very close to suing the New York Times in what would be a massive, massive defamation lawsuit. So there's somewhat mixed information on this, so bear with me. So the Israeli Foreign Ministry put out this morning a statement saying, quote, following the publication by Nicholas Kristof in the New York Times of one of the most hideous and distort lies ever published against the state of Israel in the modern press, which also received the backing of the newspaper, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Foreign Minister Gideon Tsar have instructed the initiation of a defamation lawsuit against the New York Times. So the, the Foreign Affairs Ministry is saying that this is it, that this, that this defamation lawsuit was actually happening there. Netanyahu, that the whole government have signed off on it. Now, slightly different language. In a post that came out about an hour later from the Prime Minister himself, from Netanyahu, he said, quote, today I instructed my, my legal advisors to consider the harshest legal action against the New York Times and Nicholas Kristof. They defamed the soldiers of Israel and perpetuated a blood libel against about rape, trying to create a false symmetry between the genocide terrorists of Hamas and Israel's valiant soldiers. So he's saying he instructed his legal advisors to consider defamation. And as Eugene Kantarevich, who is an Israeli legal expert, noted, the word here that's doing the work is consider. He says that Israel has made no decision to sue, and I expect its lawyers will inform the Prime Minister of the extreme difficulties of a sovereign defamation case. Reports Eugene Kantari. So it's a little unclear, it's frankly a little sloppy, that the messaging is not entirely on the same page. But the upshot is that this is really, really rare, like, really rare to see a foreign country potentially sue in its capacity as a country, let alone to do so against a newspaper, a media outlet in a different country that is also your closest ally on the world stage. And I say all that because it shows, frankly, not how far off the rails Israel has gone. It shows how far off the rails the New York Times has gone. The notion that the paper of record, that the paper that famously says all the news is fit to print the most famous paper in America, perhaps even the world. The notion that this kind of thing could pass. Gosh, how many sets of eyes, I mean, seriously, how many eyes had to actually see this, from the editors to the assistants? And to think that this is okay to publish this. I mean, think about the mentality, think about the groupthink that has to happen in a newsroom where you're kind of just nodding like, uh huh, oh yeah, rape dogs. Oh yeah, totally makes sense. And this is what happens, one, when homogenous groupthink goes to this just extreme place, and two is what happens when you have this, this subtle and insidious merging, this great convergence of the social media space to the digital streamer space, people like Hasan Piker with the ostensibly mainstream media. Once upon a time in the media there were institutional guardrails, but in today's environment, those guardrails have totally blurred. Sometimes that's really good. That means that you can kind of just get a camera and talk and you can possibly make it and get a substack and just write and possibly get a big subscriber base. But the old guardrails also served a purpose there. It kept out some unmitigated trash and filth. And as the guardrails have collapsed, some of the old substantive editorial lines have collapsed as well between the streamer social media space and the mainstream space. So the Times has always been a terrible newspaper, but this really never would have been published as recently, I think as probably five, 10 years ago. And I think that says a lot about the Times, also says a lot about where we're at, frankly, when it comes to the broader media space. Folks, one final break. We'll be right back with some closing thoughts after this. Welcome back. Just a final code. A brief note to conclude our conversation about this outrageous New York Times scandal. I think back often to the Tom Cotton op ed in 2020. In June 2020, Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas published an op ed sent in the troops there, about calling in the National Guard, calling on Trump to invoke the Insurrection act, to call in the National Guard to quell what was then the incipient nascent George Floyd riots that eventually took over, frankly, the entire country from sea to shining sea that whole horrible summer. At the time, polling showed that that was a very popular, perhaps even majority issue among the American public. But the Times SOFA had to have an all staff walkout. They had a gargantuan editor's note, a multiple paragraph editor's note affixed to the OP ed. I believe it's still there today. In fact, it's the longest editor's note I've ever seen in an OP ed. And as a former OP editor myself, I've read quite a few. Ultimately, you had numerous people who were either fired from the New York Times or resigned. The OP editor, James Bennett, most prominently Bari Weiss and many others as well. There has not been a morsel of similar reflection after this. Nicholas Kristof column, nothing. On the contrary. Every indication we have is that the Times is doubling down. They are very much defending this there. So frankly I would love to see nothing more then to see the New York Times get dragged to court over this there. We will see ultimately if it happens there. Speaking of the Jews, by the way, just one additional note on that. So a really unfortunate incident happens at a bar in Washington, D.C. earlier this week, which if I stopped there would really not be particularly interesting because this sort of stuff happens at bars in D.C. i guess every night. Haven't lived in D.C. in a while. But what happened here was that the son of Rand Paul in the senator from Kentucky, So William Paul, who has been in and out of Capitol Hill offices, in and out of conservative libertarian organizations there in D.C. there, apparently he's got a bit of a drinking problem. So he apparently was belligerently, violently drunk at a popular watering hole near Capitol Hill called the Tune Inn. And he saw Congressman Mike Lawlor of New York, who is a former guest here on the show, and he just accosted him in the most outrageous way possible and basically said that you people will be responsible if Thomas Massie loses his primary in Kentucky next Tuesday. And Law was like, who are my people? And William Paul says the Jews. And Law was like, I'm an Irish Catholic. And the conversation just goes way, way downhill from there. It was just an outrageous diatribe where apparently William Paul says, quote, I hate Jews and I hate gay people and I don't care if they die. So apparently Mike Lawer said that's pretty vile and disgusting in response. And at some point in the conversation, William Paul actually says, apparently to Congressman Lawler, he says, you have to watch more Tucker Carlson because that's what they're talking about there. You know, this is why we talk about this stuff here on the show. Because what starts in these extreme environments, not just on social media, but also on the platforms of some of these podcasters who have lost their everlasting minds, people like Candace Owens, people like Tuck Carlson, people like people like Megyn Kelly, this stuff ends up making it into the real world. Now, for what's worth, William Paul did go on X and say that I apologize, I have a drinking problem and I want to fix it. Well, okay. I mean, it seems to me that the drinking problem, frankly, was that the alcohol just removed the inhibitions and just kind of let him say what is clearly on his mind. By the way, his grandfather, Ron Paul has long been accused of maybe not personally being anti semite but at least dabbling in those circles, your mileage may vary as to whether he actually literally is that. I'm not going to kind of issue a personal judgment on that there. You can do your own research and arrive at your own conclusion. But it seems to me that that is William Paul's problem, that he's been etiologically intoxicated by Candace and Tucker, not necessarily his drinking problem. Although I do find it quite humorous that he says he has a drinking problem. But his his handle on X is at tasty brew 1776. So buddy, if you're bending the elbow and hitting the watering hole a little too often there, you might want to begin by changing your social media handle. Maybe tasty salad 2026 would be better than tasty brew 1776. Frankly, looking at William Paul, he's got some LBs to lose too. So Tasty Salad probably is not a bad idea for Paul the Younger, we might say. I want to talk a little bit more here as well about a topic that we very, very, very briefly touched on at the end yesterday, and I want to spend a little more time talking about today as well. So Kevin Warsh was confirmed yesterday as the next chair of the Federal Reserve. He was confirmed, or I should say he was reconfirmed to the Fed's Board of Governors two days ago. And yesterday the Senate, as expected, held the formal confirmation vote, by the way, the closest confirmation vote in U.S. history for the chair of the Federal Reserve. Typically, this was not a particularly partisan vote. Alan Greenspan actually was confirmed in 2000 unanimously. There were literally no dissenting votes. So much like Article 3, the judiciary, much like any number of other of other picks, the Fed is now one of the many, many, many, many, many politicized institutions there in Washington D.C. the big question facing Kevin Warsh as he begins his his chairmanship and as Jerome Powell now goes away from the chairmanship and will remain on the Board of Governors. By the way, that's not normally how it works. Typically when you're chair, you go off and you go become an economist again at some fancy university, mit, Harvard, Princeton, or something like that. No, Powell apparently loves D.C. so much that he's actually staying on the board, which is a little odd, but okay, it is what it is. Regardless, the big challenge that is going to face Kevin Warsh now that he begins his chairmanship, there is not necessarily this whole debate over the quote unquote independence of the central bank, although that is what the media love to talk about there. The big debate is whether or Not Warsh is going to stick to his principles when it comes to his actual view on interest rates and inflation, or if he's going to agree with Trump pushing for lower rates. If that is indeed what Donald Trump wants to push for, it's not entirely clear exactly how much he will continue to do that in an election year. So the way the monetary policy basically works, and you are likely familiar with this, if you follow this at all, is that when the Fed raises interest rates, and to be clear, the Fed really only raises or only controls directly the federal funds rate, which is the overnight interest rate at which banks can lend to each other. When they raise the federal funds rate, that typically has the effect of then affecting the broader yield curve. And interest rates, typically speaking, will, will go up, which will have the effect, traditionally speaking, usually speaking, at least, of slowing inflation, among other reasons. Because if you raise interest rates, you will incentivize more people to invest as opposed to spending there, and there will be less money, the money supply will go down. Kevin Warsh is traditionally what Fed people, what Federal Reserve watchers call an inflation hawk, meaning that he is ideologically oriented towards higher interest rates and lower inflation. Now the opposite of that would be inflation doves, those who typically like lower interest rates and typically don't care about slightly higher inflation. If, if it helps increase gdp, if it helps increase jobs productivity there this is the perceived trade off, the extent to which is it's an, it's an actual trade off between lower inflation and growth or jobs there. The actual perceived trade off is debatable. Many, many years ago there was an economic model called the Phillips Curve which posited there was a direct negative correlation between inflation and unemployment. They basically said that higher inflation lower unemployment and vice versa. But that has been subject to much analytical challenge over the years. My own 2 cents on this is pretty straightforward. Ever since the Federal Reserve came into existence with the Federal Reserve act during the Woodrow Wilson administration, the Fed has been subject to what people refer to as a dual mandate whereby they are tasked with two things. One is keeping inflation and price stability at a reasonable level. Typically The Fed targets 2% inflation. They don't target zero because you want to have flexibility there for somewhat arcane, in the weeds reasons. But they typically target 2%. So that is goal number one. The Fed wants to maintain price stability. Goal number two is they want to support robust employment and employment growth. I have always been a skeptic of the Fed's dual mandate. It seems to me that the Fed should probably have a single mandate just for price stability. That is the most important thing that a central bank exists to do. There are all sorts of other ways that the bank can get cute when it comes to trying to incentivize growth. Quantitative easing, known as QE was the big one during the Ben Bernanke era. In particular there where the Fed basically bought up a ton of assets there, whether it was mortgage backed securities and government bonds, sovereign debt there, basically trying to inject more money supply by bloating the Fed's balance sheet. Not a fan of that stuff. The Fed exists to keep prices stable and just this week we had a pretty uncomfortable inflation report showed 3.8% annualized reading largely due to the straight of Hormuz crisis and the price of oil, but still still the highest reading in three years. So Kevin Warsh, I hope that you stick to your guns here and recall that the number one goal of a central bank is to keep prices stable and keep inflation low. And frankly, politically speaking, I'm sure Donald Trump understands nothing will bed we're down to Republicans electoral success this fall frankly than that. Folks, have a great rest of your evening. Josh Hemmer signing off. We'll be right back. As always, tomorrow.