← The Josh Hammer Show
Loading summary
Transcript9 lines
- [00:00]
A
Whether it's slots or live dealers, Spinquest.com has the fun and action you're looking for with Spinquest exclusives. Blackjack, roulette, baccarat and even live dice. With craps and bubble craps. The games never stop so you don't have to. And right now, new users get $30 coin packs for just 10 bucks. Play now@Spinquest.com SpinQuest is a free to play social casino void where prohibited. Visit spinquest.com for more details. Foreign. I'm Josh Hammer, and this is the Josh Hammer Show. Well, wishing my fellow Jews a happy Passover. Wishing our Christian friends well, of course, a blessed Holy week as we gear up towards Good Friday and this Easter Sunday weekend. No shortage of things happening in the news before we take some time off for the holidays. There is the Artemis space launch. What is the symbolism of America going back to the moon? There is the continued debate over Operation Epic Fury. Donald Trump addressing the nation today as to what is happening in the Middle East. We will assess what is likely to be the outcome of this speech and the fallout of that speech over the next few news cycles heading into this holiday weekend into next week. Tiger woods now admitting that he has a problem and will seek treatment. We will revisit that much later in the show. But for now, we are going to open with this, the big topic of the day, which the theme of the today's show is a massive, massive argument early today at the United States Supreme Court. I listened to much of this oral argument, so you did not have to. This is an argument that is styled as Trump versus Barbara. I've been tracking it since its very early days in Federal District Court. It is a challenge to the constitutionality of one of Donald Trump's most high profile, indeed contentious day one executive orders, namely his executive order attempting to eliminate all automatic constitutionally secured birthright citizenship for the children of illegal aliens and the children of those who are only here on a temporary legal basis. In other words, those who are, to use the legal nomenclature, are sojourners, not those who are here on a green card on a path to current residents, those who are on a tourist visa or something much of much lesser time duration such as that. Now, I've been fascinated by this issue for a very, very long time. So I want to start by just laying out some of the legal background of this issue and I will give you my own take on this issue and to not to bury the lead. I think Donald Trump is emphatically correct, actually in this, which is a minority opinion, or at least historically has been a minority opinion. Not just in legal world more generally, but even within originalist, right of center legal worlds. This is a minority opinion. I happen to think that it is genuinely correct. I've been studying this issue since my earliest days of law school. Been arguing against many classmates, frankly, for a very long time. I want to walk you through the actual arguments, then we'll get back to today's oral argument at the Supreme Court. I will unpack some of that for you, talk about some of the policy issues, and we will go from there. So we start, as does any legal argument, we start with the text of the actual clause. This debate hinges upon, among other sources, the actual text of the 14th Amendment itself. The 14th Amendment was ratified in 1868. It was ratified three years after the surrender of General Lee to General Grant at Appomattox Courthouse in Virginia. And the intent above all of the 14th Amendment was twofold. One, it was to make sure that blacks were treated the exact same as whites. Period, full stop, end of story. And two, the goal was to constitutionalize was to constitutionalize the statute that was passed by Congress two years prior, the Civil Rights act of 1866, a beneficial piece of legislation that attempted to secure rights for freedmen for freed blacks, but unfortunately met a lot of constitutional challenges. They were trying to constitutionalize this statute essentially after the fact. Both of those reasons for the Amendment are going to come here into play momentarily. So bear that in mind as I read to you the actual text of the relevant clause of the Fourth Amendment, which is Fourth Amendment Section 1, Clause 1, otherwise known as the Citizenship Clause, which reads as follows, quote, all persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside. So a lot to unpack there. But the very first thing that you should know is that the reason that the drafters led with this is because again, the goal above all here was to make sure that black people were treated the same way as white people, that they were going to be full fledged citizens of the United States. Specifically, the purpose of the Citizenship Clause was to overturn the most wrong headed, morally and legally monstrous decision in the entire history of the U.S. supreme Court, the 1858 horrific case of Dred Scott. And in the Dred Scott case from a decade prior, the Court infamously held that black people were not and could never be citizens of the United States. So the Citizenship clause in the Fourth Amendment was intended to overrule that. Now, the relevant debate here in terms of constitutionally required birthright citizenship for children of legal aliens or children of sojourners, legal aliens who are here on a short term basis essentially hinges on the phrase subject to the jurisdiction thereof. Because we recognize here that you have to be born here in order to enter this conversation. That is why we have so called anchor babies, people that are here illegally. That's why we have birth tourism, this cottage industry that is now to the tune of billions of dollars there. So the relevant clause here is not that a person has to be born or naturalized in the United States, but actually subject to the jurisdiction. And that raised the question then, as does subject to this jurisdiction mean, on the one hand, meanly, that you can be arrested and tried for a crime, that you are subject to the civil and criminal jurisdiction of the geographic entity, the sovereign entity in which you find yourself, whether legally or illegally? Or is there something quite a bit more going on than that? Is there more, shall we say, a more complete jurisdiction that entails things such as the sovereign's acceptance of your allegiance, a full, complete political allegiance? Well, we're gonna get to that actually in just a second here. Before we do, I wanted to tell you a little bit about one of our sponsors for today's show, which is a wonderful organization called Angel Studios. Look, I recently joined the Angel Guild myself and I actually watched their excellent recent documentary, the Death of Recess. I was not necessarily expecting this, but it was just a truly fantastic documentary. Let me tell you folks, I come from a long line of teachers. My great grandmother, grandmother, mother were all teachers. And I heard endlessly from my mother about the depravity of the teachers union, how they would prioritize themselves over the needs of children. Their parents, meanwhile, are being pushed out. Kids are being pulled into all sorts of ideological battles, a lot of it being pushed by teachers unions like the NEA itself. Need something as basic as recess, movement, freedom, childhood, it's all disappearing, frankly, from within our grasp, within our eyes. And exactly why platforms like Angel Studios matter, because they're willing to tell stories that others won't. So again, I watched this documentary, folks. You should go ahead and check that yourself. Go to angel.com hammer to join the Angel Guild and watch Death of Recess right now. If you care about kids, this is essential viewing. Again, that is angel.com hammer so take us back then to the debate I mentioned earlier that is impossible to understand the 14th Amendment without understanding the statute that was ratified two years prior. This actually was talked a lot about during the oral argument just this morning. The statute was the Civil Rights act of 1866. And the intent, which no one really disputes, of the amendment was simply to constitutionalize this statute. Now, the citizenship clause of the Civil Rights act of 1866 was using slightly different language, but it is clearer language, I would argue, and gets us to the exact same principle. And the Civil Rights act of 1866 says that anyone who is born in the United States and not subject to any foreign power is a citizen of the jurisdiction wherein they preside. Now, the reason that the language was changed slightly is because they wanted to make absolutely sure that the children of Indian tribes who had allegiance to the Indian tribes were not automatically, by sheer dint of constitutional force, granted United States citizenship. Crucial to this understanding is the fact that Indian children were not automatically granted citizenship and not via the Constitution, via statutes. In fact, Congress passed the Indian Citizenship act in 1924. 1924, 56 years after the Fourth Amendment was ratified. It was passed during the Calvin Coolidge presidency. That was the first time that the children of American Indians were automatically granted citizenship. And indeed, that is the argument here. The argument is that a lot of this actually is up to Congress. It's actually up to the political branches. Not all of this was constitutionalized by this language. Now, the drafters of the 14th Amendment happened to be pretty clear on this as well, so there's no shortage of supporting quotations on this. There's actually been a beevy of scholarship on this just for the past year or so after this executive order was signed by President Trump into law. Many of it was cited this morning by the extremely capable Solicitor General of the United States, John Sauer, who was just extraordinary, I thought, in his comments this morning. For instance, Congressman James Wilson, who was the House Judiciary Committee chairman back during this time, was a leading drafter of the actual text of the Fourth Amendment. He famously said that the amendment was establishing no new right and declaring no new principle. In other words, it was just trying to constitutionalize the Civil Rights act from two years prior, which said that you can't be subject to any foreign power. Similarly, Senator Jacob Howard, who was the lead single, lead author of the actual language that made it into the 14th Amendment's citizenship clause. Jacob Howard described as simply declaratory of what I regard as the law of the land already. In other words, I barely need to say this, but rather we're saying it in the Constitution to make sure the statute is constitutionalized. And there's just, again, it goes on and on and on. The chairman of the U.S. senate Judiciary Committee, Lyman Trumbull similarly said that subject to the jurisdiction, in the words of the Fourth Amendment, citizenship clause means subject to the United States complete jurisdiction, which means not owing allegiance to anybody else. And this was indeed the understanding for the first few decades after the ratification of the 14th Amendment. So the very first time that this ever came up in debate was in a case just a few years later called the slaughterhouse cases of 1973. It was not the crux of the issue. It was what lawyers called dicta. It came up in the background. It was not the actual holding or was not the question presented for the Court to decide. But it is nonetheless worth noting, albeit in non bina dicta, that the justice in question who wrote the opinion, Justice Samuel Miller, wrote that the citizenship clause in Fourth Amendment, quote, intended to exclude from its operation children of citizens or subjects of foreign states born within the United States. So the very first time this clause came up, the justice in question says that subjects of foreign states born in the US this doesn't cover them. That clearly applies to illegal aliens today. No question whatsoever about that. Very clearly. Also in 1884 and in a case that John Sauer talked about this morning at the Supreme Court, this case called Elk vs. Wilkins, at the time, Justice Horace Gray held that, quote, subject to the jurisdiction in the meaning of the Fourth Amendment means, quote, not merely subject in some respect or degree to the jurisdiction of the United States, but completely subject, completely subject to their political jurisdiction and owing them direct and immediate allegiance. That's crucial language there. Direct and immediate allegiance. Again, the children of legal aliens and the, and the children of legal aliens who are short term visitors here on a temporary visa clearly do not owe some sort of allegiance to the United States. This stuff has been buried by much of legal academia. They want you to think that the amendment is unambiguous. It clearly grants citizenship to children legals, but we're here to tell you that understanding is mistaken. Whether or not Trump's going to win on this is another question. But he is right, frankly.
- [12:23]
B
When you manage procurement for multiple facilities, every order matters. But when it's for a hospital system, they matter even more. Grainger gets it and knows there's no time for managing multiple suppliers and no room for shipping delays. That's why Grainger offers millions of products in fast, dependable delivery, so you can keep your facility stocked, safe and running smoothly. Call 1-800-granger. Click granger.com or just stop by Granger for the ones who get it done.
- [12:58]
A
So we're, we're continuing Our unpacking of the birthright citizenship, constitutional legal and political debate. Now, I was explaining in the opening part of our show how the amendment's language was attempting to constitutionalize a statute passed two years prior in the 1860s and, and how for the first few decades it went uncontested that this clause in the Constitution had nothing whatsoever to do with anyone who was here illegally or frankly, anyone here who is here in any capacity other than a permanent capacity. Now, the rubber started to meet the road a little bit in a case called Wong Kim Ark that the court decided in 1898. So in the Wong Kim Ark case of 1898, the fact pattern here is very relevant. Horace Gray, who was the justice in question, who had just written the Elk v. Wilkins case 14 years prior, that's where he said that there's complete total allegiance there. He does something of an inexplicable 180 where he. He does hold here that the child in question, who was the children of legal Chinese aliens, he said that this child is automatically accorded US Citizenship. But first of all, it's inexplicable that he did this reversal in 14 years. That's not consistent. And frankly, Justice John Marshall Harlan, who was the sole dissenter in the separate but equal case Plessy versus Ferguson, he was actually the lead dissenter. Also in Wong Kim Arc, he pointed out that Horace Gray was acting an intellect inconsistent fashion into dissent. Hold that aside. Even taking the Wong Kim Ark majority opinion at face value, what the court emphasized over and over and over again was that the reason that it held this way was because Wong Kim Ark's parents, these Chinese nationals, had domicile. They were permanently domiciled. If you control F on this opinion, you'll see the word domicile come up over and over and over again. So they were here on what was the functional late 19th century equivalent of a green card. They were here trying to establish full residence. Wong Kim Arc does not stand for the proposition that the ACLU's attorney, Cecilia Wong unpersuasively said this morning that it stands for. It does not stand for the notion that the children of illegal aliens are automatically afforded birthright citizenship. That is a fundamental misunderstanding of this case in 1898. Wong Kim Ark. The court has never, ever, ever clearly ruled ever as to whether or not the children of illegal aliens or the children of those here on a short term sojourner basis are automatically afforded citizenship. The liberals like to point to an opinion of 1982 called Plyler vs Doe, which deals with a totally different fact pattern. There's a case out of Texas that was assessing whether or not the children of illegal aliens have a right to go to public taxpayer funded schools. Unfortunately, they said the answer is yes. And in the court's opinion, one of the court's iconic late 20th century liberals, man by the name of Justice William Brennan drops a footnote speaking of non binding law. This is just pure dicta. It's pure, just intellectual musing here. And he regurgitates onto his paper that he says, oh, Wong Kim Ark settled the question as to whether or not the children of illegals here born here are entitled to citizenship. But no, dude, it actually didn't. And you saying as much in a non binding footnote 84 years later doesn't change the fact that that the Horace Gray opinion, Juan Kim Mark had nothing to do, nothing to do with the children of legal aliens. So this is a case of first impression, as lawyers call because it is a bespoke constitutional issue that the court has actually never definitively ruled on. Now they have touched on it in ancillary fashion. They have never clearly definitively ruled on it. The Donald Trump executive war in question, as I said at the outset, is attempting to say that the Constitution does not require require birthright citizenship for children of legal aliens or children of temporary sojourners, those who are here on a short term basis. Rather, the implicit argument that the administration is making is that all of this can and should be left up to we the people acting through our elect representatives, meaning in the Congress. It's a pretty persuasive argument where the constitutional text is not silent, we the people make decisions. Where it is silent, we make decisions. That's what happened. As I mentioned earlier again in the Indian Citizenship act of 1924, we decided to statutorily codify Congress, added additional layers of guaranteed citizenship. Congress can do that. If Congress wanted to legislate tomorrow that the children of people here on a tourist visa, student visa, whatever, are citizens, they can do that. You can even argue that's good policy. I'm not sure if it is, but you can make the argument. You can make the same argument for the children of illegal aliens. Congress can legislate that too, but they haven't. Instead, the ACLU and all the liberal NGOs are relying on the 14th Amendment. And the 14th Amendment is not a persuasive point to make this argument. Whether or not it's actually going to matter in terms of trying to prognosticate a vote and what it means for Donald Trump's political fortunes. That's a whole nother conversation. We'll get to that conversation momentarily. But if not, folks, just a quick word from our other sponsor for today's show, which is Balance of Nature. You know, we talk a lot on this show about getting back to basics, faith, family foundations that actually work. Nutrition should be the same way. When you look at labels say it's obvious we've overcomplicated. If you want to be more mindful of what you eat and how you supplement, look to nature. When you eat whole foods, you're getting their phytonutrients, natural compounds your body uses to adjust, repair and respond every single day. Balance of Nature takes real fruits and vegetables and puts them through a tailored vacuum cold process that stabilizes that phytonutrition. Their whole health system bundles their fruits and veggies with fiber and spice, giving you 47 whole food ingredients and their phytonutrients in simple routine. And their brand new freeze dried snacks go through a similar process. So even your snacks can actually support your body. Whole food Phytonutrition plus Balance of Nature helps you fight the good fights. Save over 30% when you subscribe@ balanceofnature.com Join hundreds of thousands of customers in one simple routine that's changing the world. Check it out folks@balanceofnature.com now is any of this actually going to matter? Well, that is the million dollar question. There are precisely two justice on the US Supreme Court who I think I can pretty reliably count on to rule in favor of the Trump administration's argument. Those two justices are Clarence Thomas and Sam Alito. If I'm being candid. I'm just trying to count votes. I think any vote beyond that is extremely dicey and is just totally something that cannot be counted on. Neil Gorsuch has had some aggressively pro American Indian opinions. Let's recall that the debate here at the origins of this Amendment, passed in 1868, ratified back then, had to do with Indian tribes. That might implicate some of Gorsuch's, shall we say, idiosyncratic sensitivities. He had questions, frankly, that were all over the place. He asked some very challenging questions of John Sauer also has some challenging questions of the somewhat dim witted ACLU attorney Cecilia Wong, who thought gave a very unpersuasive performance. John Roberts, the very mercurial swing justice, asks some questions that could militate potentially in both directions. Here there is the intriguing possibility of maybe, maybe there's a compromise here of sorts. Roberts loves these bizarre bespoke compromises. Maybe he might try to craft some sort of narrow five justice coalition that, and I'm just speculating here, based on what I heard this morning, that maybe, maybe, maybe holds that the Constitution protects birthright citizenship for the children of illegals because maybe they intend to by coming here illegally to establish domicility, but the children of people hearing a student visa don't. It's an intellectually muddled argument, but it's the kind of thing that I could see a guy like John Roberts trying to gather together a five justice coalition. Certainly none of the liberal justice, the three liberal ladies, Kagan, Somi, Oren, Jackson, they are not going to join the Trump majority at all. Zero chance. End of story. I think Kavanaugh is probably the likeliest of the Republican nominal injustice to join Sam Alito and Clarence Thomas. I hope that I am wrong in my pessimism here. I genuinely hope that the votes are there. When I first started looking into this issue back in my first days of law school, I also thought this was a close question. And in fact, the man that I clerked for, Judge James C. Ho on the Fifth Circuit, one of, if not the single greatest appellate court judge of the country and God willing, a future Supreme Court justice, he disagrees with what I've said here. Judge Ho wrote a piece of legal scholarship years ago arguing essentially that if you're born here, you are a citizen. And that means a lot to me that a man this smart and this well researched would say and argued out there. But over the years, I looked into this more and more closely. I did become convinced that the drafters of this, of this amendment in no way whatsoever, would have looked at today's immigration morass, at our current quagmire and say that if you were born here, if you are, if you are, you come in the ninth month of pregnancy as a Chinese tourist on a visa and you pop out a baby at a birthing ward, or if you're a vulnerable woman your eighth month and you're shipped across the border by the Sinaloa cartel or some other cartel there, and you pop out a baby on the other side of the Rio Grande, and you guys, it's unfathomable to me, unfathomable that that is possibly, possibly what was meant. And that understanding of what I just said is bolstered, bolstered by much of the, of the originalist evidence in this particular case. I hope that it goes the right way. But I would try to brace ourselves with the possibility that it will not go the right way. And it'll be very interesting to see how Donald Trump reacts to that. Trump is actually at the courthouse this morning there very rare, frankly, for a president to show up at oral argument there. He cares a lot about this, as he should, because our sovereignty is implicated. This is the most important thing we have as a nation is our sovereignty is implicated by this question. The justices really, really, really ought to read their history, read John Sauer's brief again and do the right thing. The stakes are really, really high. Whether they will actually do so, of course, is another question. And you'll have to forgive me for being somewhat pessimistic about that. Folks, stay with us through another commercial break. We'll be right back with more on the other side.
- [22:58]
C
Here's something most people don't know. When Warren Buffett was just 13 years old, he didn't put his money into a savings account while other kids were earning next to nothing at local banks, Buffett put $114 into a little known investment. Today, that $114 would be worth over 15 million. And it wasn't a risky trade. It wasn't even insider knowledge. It was an account that's been around since 1888. And over the last 25 years, it's averaged 29% a year. That's what happens when your money is allowed to compound. Compare that to today's savings accounts paying less than half a percent while inflation quietly eats away at your buying power. Buffett understood early banks are great businesses, just not for savers. If you'd like to see what some investors call the 29% account, go now to secretaccount29.com that's secretaccount the numbers29.com secretaccount29.com.
- [24:02]
A
Welcome back. Final thoughts on the birthright citizenship matter. Even if Donald Trump loses at the Supreme Court, which again, unfortunately, I predict he is likely to do, although the justices are actually doing it intellectually honestly. Inquiry, he should not, he should emphatically win. But even if he does lose, that does not mean that Donald Trump's election year, midterm election, immigration agenda is derailed in the slightest. On the contrary, the American people, despite what you hear, the American people, according to the polls that we see here on the show, continue to broadly support Donald Trump's immigration agenda. Now, the specific details of XYZ ICE standoff against XYZ left wing lunatic who is there trying to obstruct justice? Well, those headlines and that media fallout might change depending on the vicissitudes of a given news cycle. But the overall polling when it comes to trying to deport criminal aliens above all, is overwhelmingly on the side of the Trump administration. And Donald Trump, Tom Holman, Mark Wayne Mullen, they really should plow full speed ahead when it comes to immigration heading into this election year. No doubt about that. Speaking of issues that are slightly more contentious with the American public at large, though, there is the issue of the war against Iran. Donald Trump giving a national address today, really for the first time, offering what we have called for him to do here on the show of offering one of these solemn national addresses, talking about what is happening with Iran, what we can expect with Iran. My prediction and my understanding is that Donald Trump is announcing that we are in the final stages and that this is the beginning of the end and that this war will potentially be wrapping up fairly soon, that we are engaged in negotiations with the new regime over, over in Iran. And this is, this is a new regime change of sorts. And I expect that basically just to be a lot of happy talk, to be honest with you. And my prediction as to what exactly this is really getting at, if we're trying to read between the lines here, is as follows. Donald Trump is a man who cares a lot about the markets. He's a man who's made a lot of money in the markets. He's been very successful at playing the markets, been very successful at investing leading companies, et cetera, et cetera. He pays very, very close attention to the markets, as he says repeatedly, you know, that he has looked askance at best and in worried fashion at worst at the rise of oil. Over the past month, according to aaa, the average national gas price of gasoline at the pump has risen by over a dollar per gallon from somewhere in the 290ish range before operation Epic theory and now, according to at least a recent survey that I saw, it is now just over $4. That is a serious change. So Trump is all but assuredly trying to tamp down the skittishness of Wall street and the investor class more generally, perhaps trying to even stabilize the price of oil. Although admittedly the United States has something of mixed incentive, shall we say, when it comes to the price of oil. Certainly the regnant party, the majority party, that being the Republican party, the party of Donald Trump, they don't want to see prices get out of hand in election year, especially in election year where there are affordability concerns and inflation costly, where all these issues are very much rising to the forefront. So that militates certainly against rising oil prices. Rather, I just say that because there is a, there is an alternative competing incentive and interest here. And the competing incentive is that America is now the number one net exporter of oil and natural gas in the entire world and that does potentially militate in favor of higher prices. I'm not saying that that is what Trump's trying to do or anything like that there, but it's just interesting to think about how these incentives tend to kind of work potentially actually at loggerheads against one another. Nonetheless, my understanding, my reading, that Donald Trump is trying to, to quell Wall street anxiety and generally trying to restore us to something of an equilibrium or a short term stasis. My prediction is as follows. This Friday is Good Friday and the markets will be closed accordingly. I would think that Donald Trump is trying to stabilize and tamp down market freak outs, market fervor in the short term, meaning over the next 24 to 36 hours and potentially as early as Thursday night overnight in Tehran or Friday morning or some, some combination there on maybe Friday, Saturday, whatever will be there. I would actually anticipate the United States at that point then trying to escalate in the short term in the interest of a mid to long term offering. There's also data points that lead me to predict this. On the one hand, perhaps most importantly, there is a new aircraft carrier strike group that is now heading towards the Middle east. It's the USS George H.W. bush. It literally just left Norfolk, Virginia where there's a major naval presence just over the past couple days. It's now, it's going to take weeks. These things take a long time. This whole strike group, it's essentially a floating military in one unit. Thank God America kicks butt. We have a bunch of these and it's going to take a long time to get all the way to the Middle East. Why would you send that if you were just trying to wrap up hostilities in the next few days? It just makes no sense. And in fact, actually thousands more Marines just arrived in the Middle east over the past few days. And we know from leaks inside the Pentagon elsewhere that the Pentagon, the war planners have been tasked with drawing up various options and presenting them on a menu of options to Donald Trump, many, perhaps even most of which involve some sort of short term escalatory measure. Now, for what it's worth, Donald Trump went on Truth Social earlier today and just obliterated, just obliterated Iran. He's essentially calling BS on those who say that he is winding down this operation. He said on Truth Social, quote, iran's new regime president, much less radicalized and far more intelligent than his predecessors, has just asked the United States of America for a ceasefire. We will consider when the Strait of Hormuz is open, free and clear. Until then, we are blasting Iran into oblivion, or as they say, back to the Stone Age. I mean, does that sound like the kind of guy who is trying to wind down this operation, this operation that Donald Trump a few weeks ago said that he was just having so much fun, frankly doing? I mean, again, this is a guy who has had the mullahs number for nearly five decades. The guy who went on national TV during the hostage crisis, during the Jimmy Carter presidency and blasted Jimmy Carter, tore him a new rear end over the fact that there were American hostages, dozens of them, languishing for 444 days at the American Embassy in Tehran. Trump has been so consistent on this issue. As I said in my CPAC speech in Texas last week, he has been arguably more consistent on the issue of Iran than literally any issue over the decades other than tariffs themselves. I actually think that that is probably an accurate statement. So it doesn't make a whole lot of sense that he would take this opportunity and just take an off ramp right now. I don't buy it. I do not buy, and I do not think it's going to happen. You know, we had Rebecca Heinrich of Hudson street on the show earlier this week as well. And I said to Rebecca, I said, you know what, Rebecca, the messaging again, I support this war for sure, but messaging hasn't been quite directly on point. I would have liked to have a little more clarity. And Rebecca, to her credit, raised a very good point, which was that Trump is a master of information operations himself. He loves, loves, loves throwing the enemy off. Indeed, he did so here. When it came to the fact that Khamenei, the ayatollah, apparently felt okay going out in public prior to his fatal meeting there on February 28, among other reasons, because Trump had just met publicly and smiled and shook hands with Tucker Carlson at the White House. All this was an elaborate ploy in hindsight, to throw off the mullahs, frankly, as we predicted right here on the show. So I do not think that this is the end of hostilities. Clearly, at some point, those end of hostilities are going to have to come. There is no doubt about that whatsoever. But I do not think, frankly, that now is exactly that time. The goals simply have not quite been achieved yet. The goal of this operation as Hexith has said repeatedly, Dan Cain, Trump, to a slight lesser extent, but he has nonetheless made this clear enough, at least at this point as well, is he has said that the goal of Operation Epic Fury of this military operation is to neutralize the Islamic Republic of Iran as a threat to the United States and our interests. Now, he is also indicating that he wants the Europeans rightfully to start to take up a greater share of the burden for doing exactly that. More on that, actually, in just a few minutes. But he is nonetheless making pretty clear that this thing's not going to stop unless and until the United States feels like we've achieved our objectives. Pete Hegseth has said that meeting with the soldiers, Pete Hegseth paid a surprise visit to the troops in the region over the weekend. Instead, what he heard over and over and over again was, Mr. Secretary, our only request, our only request is to finish the job. You do not start an operation like this unless you intend to finish it on its own terms. Exactly what those terms consist of is where statesmanship and prudence and judgment and all the things that we elect commanders in chief to do, that's where that factors in. Personally, I feel pretty good about the fact that Donald Trump knows what he's doing when it comes to this issue. And I do not think for a second that we are now beginning the winding down of operations. I think we're in beginning of trying to wind down Wall street jitters. But if I had to guess, Thursday night, Friday morning, things will start to look a lot more fiery in Iran. We'll see, frankly, if I'm right. So Trump definitely indicating when it comes to Iran that the Europeans should start to take up more of the burden. He definitely wants Europeans to get more involved when it comes to this operation to try to open the crucial Strait of Hormuz, to have free passage for oil tankers, commercial vessels, etc. And there definitely is this rift that is becoming pretty wide, this yawning chasm between the United States and our European allies when it comes to the NATO alliance. Donald Trump essentially saying that NATO could look a lot different when this is all said and done unless NATO steps up its freaking game here in the short term. Marco Rubio actually went on the Hannity program on Fox News said something very, very similar from his vantage point. The secretary of State, go ahead and watch this from Marco Rubio.
- [34:46]
D
Hundreds of billions of dollars over the years, trillions of dollars. And all these American forces stationed in the region, if we can only use in our time of need, we're not going to be allowed to use those bases. So I think there's no doubt, unfortunately, after this conflict is concluded, we are going to have to re examine that relationship. We're going to have to re examine the value of NATO and that alliance for our country. Ultimately that's a decision for the President to make and he'll have to make it. We're going to finish the job here. As I said, we're very, very close to achieving our objectives on all of these things that I've outlined. But I do think unfortunately we are going to have to reexamine whether or not this alliance that has served this country well for a while is still serving that purpose or has it now become a one way street where America is simply in a position to defend Europe, but when we need the help of our allies, they're going to deny us basing rights and they're going to deny us overflight. I think these are very legitimate questions that we need to be asking. And this is going to have to be very careful, carefully examined after this
- [35:42]
A
conflict is over, as they should. So the more specifics are that Spain, which is led by a left wing kook, Spain has outright denied the United States use of any airspace. France under Emmanuel Macron, who at one point France seemed like maybe they were going to help us, maybe open the Strait of Hormuz. Now they're backing away from that. France now is saying that oh yeah, the US we totally use our airspace, but not when it comes to planes flying to the region. So you can use your airspace to fly to like Germany or Africa or whatever, but you can't use it to fly the Middle East. You can't use it to actually assist Israel or the Sunni Arab states when it comes to the prosecution of this war against the Iranian regime. I mean a fat lot that does. Again, this is one of our long standing issues here on the show is what is an ally in the 21st century. NATO is an organization that quite literally outlived its raison d'. Etre. Its reason for existing was at least the containment, ideally the defeat of the Soviet Union. That goal was achieved decades ago when I was in diapers. So what exactly is the goal of this organization today? And this is how you get mission creeped. This is how you get things like the Human Rights Campaign, which is a pro same sex marriage organization. Then after they got that constitutionalized in the absolute atrocity of the SCOS case called a berger fell in 2015, after that, then the HRC moves on to the transgender issue. It's just mission creep. Moving, moving targets, moving the goalposts. That's essentially what NATO's done. But ironically, I couldn't even tell you what the targets. I literally could not tell you at this point. All I see when I look at NATO is US Taxpayer dollars, frustration, vexation from Donald Trump and a bunch of freaking European freeloaders and moochers. That's all I see. If there's more to see, I'm totally game. But in this 21st century, in this century that is retrenching, is pulling back from the globalist era and is now returning to more of a, of a nationalist posture, America is better suited making bilateral trilateral security arrangements with crucial allies, allies that will go into battle with us if need be, just like Israel has over the past month. That is what an ally looks like. France telling you you came and use our airspace to go fight your war. How is that an ally and why are we subsidizing it? It's just total stinking garbage. And frankly, I have just had enough of it. I really hope that Rubio's right that America's NATO posture will be thoroughly, thoroughly re examined after this war. Frankly, all options, really all options, including the complete winding down NATO should be on the table. Speaking of things that should be wound down, an absolute lunatic in Rhode island, man by the name of David Morales, who is some sort of elected official there in the in the province Rhode island area was going viral on social media for an outrageous reason, which is that there is a mural. There is a mural for Irina Zarutska there in the city of Providence, Rhode island and he's not having it. He wants the artist to paint over this mural and saying this mural does not reflect our values. Yeah, he actually really did say that. Let's go ahead and watch this clip from David Morales there in Providence, Rhode Island. Ultimately, we want to make sure that every community member that calls Providence home feels safe. And we can both agree that this
- [39:13]
D
mural behind us does not reflect Providence's
- [39:16]
A
values, nor does it reflect the creativity that we want to see in our. Okay, so he is the state representative is what he is there in Providence. In this past September, he announced his intention to run for mayor of Providence. So he's an aspiring mayor currently in the state legislature there in Providence. Dude. What exactly does not reflect your values? This woman was killed brutally murdered brutally by a man with a 15 crime long rap sheet who never in a million years should have been on the streets. She was a Ukrainian refugee. The left aren't they pro refugee refugee and scare quotes usually most people are not bonafide refugees under American refugee and asylum law under our statutes. Is the left aggressively pro Ukraine because Orange man bad and Orange man is a Manchurian candidate, a Putin puppet, etc. Weren't they the ones who were all in for the Slava Ukraine yellow and blue flag crowd is not your crowd, dear Morales. So what? Why does it not reflect our values? We can't honor the victims of horrific crime. Why? Doesn't fit your narrative. How does it not fit your narrative? Are we pro murder? Are you pro stabbing people to death? Are you pro letting out people with 15 crime long violent property, crime ridden rap sheets into America's streets from the kill People like Arnaz Zaruska just despicable stuff. I mean how do you square that circle, Zapi? How do you square that circle? When it comes to saying that you're pro quote unquote refugee, you're maybe even pro Ukraine and you don't want a mural of Irina Zarutska make it make sense. As with so much of the modern left, none of this ultimately adds up. All of it is just one gigantic act of virtue signaling and performative outrage. And it just really stinks. Finally, I want to return us to the way we ended yesterday's show for a bit of an update. We talked a little bit about the tragic fall of Tiger Woods, a man who was my absolute hero when it came to professional sports. Man who was the reason that I took up a golf club. Like so many others in my generation, Tiger has had a checkered personal life now for two decades or more. There's been a lot written spoken on this subject. Among these are numerous car crashes. Most recently was a car crash just this past Friday here in South Florida on Jupiter island in Palm Beach County. They called it a dui. We are now learning that it wasn't necessarily that he was drunk on alcohol, but rather he was on an excessive amount of painkillers, hydrocodone. He might have had some alcohol too, to be clear, although his breathalyzer did show a 0.00. So perhaps not. Tiger woods, for what it's worth, has now said that he is going to step away from golf to to seek treatment. In a statement posted on social media, he said, quote, I know and understand the seriousness of the situation I find myself in today. I am stepping away for a period of time to seek treatment and focus on my health. This is necessary in order for me to prioritize my well being and work toward lasting recovery. I committed to taking the time needed to return a healthier, stronger and more focused place, both personally and professionally, etc. Etc. Etc. Folks, tonight is the beginning of the holiday of Passover on the Jewish calendar. Therefore, I will be offline tomorrow and Friday. We, of course, will have some shows for you. We hope that you enjoy them. And this Sunday marks Easter for all of our Christian friends there as well. This Friday, Good Friday. This Sunday is Easter. There are lots of common themes of these two holidays. We'll elaborate on it a little bit on this Friday show, actually, with guest judge Roy Altman. But the theme really is redemption. That's the theme that is the common denominator of Passover and Easter. These are redemption narratives, redemption stories, personal redemption, personal salvation, national redemption, national salvation. It's a very, very auspicious time for Tiger Woods, I think, to be announcing this. Tiger is an icon to so many of us, and I really hope that he takes account of his life and gets his life in order. For all of you out there, this is a really good time of the year to take account of your life, too. How can you improve? Where can you make improvements? Above all, strive towards something greater, something higher, more transcendental, because you, too, like all of us, can be redeemed. Folks, wishing you a happy Passover. Echad Sameach, Josh Hammersani off for now. We'll be right back, of course, with another program tomorrow.