← The Josh Hammer Show
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I'm Josh Hammer and this is the JOSH Hammer Show. Welcome back. Happy Monday. Hope that you had a great weekend. It was certainly an action packed weekend out there, certainly in the world of news and politics, which will be the point of focus for today's show. Also a very ash packed weekend when it comes to the world of sports. You have the Kentucky Derby, the first female trainer of a horse for those who care about such things. Not necessarily our forte here, checking upon the chromosomal structure of an equine trainer. But if that's your thing, then it was a very exciting derby up in Louisville this past Saturday. Big sports weekend down here. Actually in South Florida, where I live, you had the Formula One, Miami Grand Prix, all sorts of people flying in. You had Lionel Messi and all sorts of dignitaries who were here. Donald Trump actually was also in South Florida. He was at his signature golf course, Trump Doral, just outside Miami, where on a personal note, I was very happy to see my hometown hero, actually Cameron Young, a man who learned to play golf at my hometown country club, Sweetie country club. He actually won with Donald Trump there watching the tournament over the weekend. So a big, big weekend. Lots of fun stuff happening there. But we don't have much more time to talk about that because there is so much happening in the news. And we're going to ahead and dive right in. President Trump taking this morning to announce Project Freedom. Project Freedom is here. When it comes to the Middle east, when it comes to the Persian Gulf and above all when it comes to the Strait of Hormuz, what exactly is Project Freedom? Well, reports Axios, Barack Ravid and various other porters, Mark Caputo and others there at Axios, Donald Trump is fed up. He is fed up, as we said that he would be. We predict that right here on the show we said that Donald Trump is not going to let this stalemate, this Mexican standoff in the Middle East. He's not gonna let this go on forever. Why is he not? Because Donald Trump understands who Iran is. He understands what Iran represents. He's not going to let them just drag this on and on. So Axio's reporting just over the past 24 to 36 hours that Donald Trump indeed had had enough. He was sick of this intermission essentially where there is no war. But on the other hand, there's really actually no stalemate. There's no ceasefire either. Again, we've covered that on the show. There's in theory a quote, unquote, ceasefire. Indeed. What the administration, their formal legal position last week, their reason to Congress that they stipulated that they were in compliance with the war Powers Resolution 1973, a law normally purports to require the President to only engage in offensive military hostilities for 60 days absent congressional authorization. The administration took the legal position that formal military hostilities had, quote, unquote, been terminated. But on the show we said that's not really true. It might be legally technically true if you want to do the little fine print thing, but on the ground in the region, it's not actually true because the US Navy is engaging in a full blockade still against Iran, against all of Iran's ports. And historically speaking, that is a casus belli, that is an act of war. War. Iran, for their matter, they are still blocking the straight or Hormuz. So over the past 24, 36 hours, Donald Trump maybe was his inspiration watching Cameron Young win the PGA tournament at Doral. But at some point he just said, you know what? I had enough, enough, enough already. So we're back to this. So Project Freedom is the result of Donald Trump throwing his hands and saying that he has had enough. So what exactly is Project Freedom? Project Freedom is essentially an effort where the US Military and above all, the Navy obviously is going to lead an effort to guide to essentially act as a mass convoy, as a mass, a mass military maritime escort to get a lot of these ships through this 21 mile wide bottleneck that has kept much of the energy markets hostage for two months, give or take. These are not just oil tankers, by the way. There are plenty of oil tankers that are sitting north of the Strait of Hormuz. So that would be towards Kuwait and towards Iraq there. There are plenty of tankers there that have been sitting for weeks and weeks and months and months, which frankly is also a humanitarian crisis, because you're gonna run out of clothes and run out of food and run out of basic stuff. If you're on a boat for that long, you didn't plan to probably be on a boat for that long. There's also passenger ships, there are cruise ships. It's a major, major waterway there. So Trump is essentially dictating that the American military is going to go in there and is going to help solve this problem by acting as an escort to get these boats out of harm's way, ultimately to freedom via the Strait of Hormuz, out into the Arabian Sea and ultimately, I suppose, out into the Indian Ocean. Scott Besson actually was on Fox News just this morning talking about what is happening, what directly precipitated this moment. And he actually is calling on a very interesting country to help out here with Scott Bessens earlier today on Fox News. Attacks from Iran has closed the strait.
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We are reopening it.
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So I would urge the Chinese to join us in supporting this international operation. You know, there are things moving through the Union that China and Russia have blocked.
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So, you know, if they want to be good global citizens, join at the UN when this.
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Okay. So love the idea, love calling on China because China, as we say in the show all the time, is our first, second, third, fourth and fifth largest problem. China is the massive civilizational century long threat to the American Republic and the American way of life this century that the Soviet Union was in the last century. Realistically speaking, not gonna happen because China and Iran are essentially tied to hip. In fact, the only reason frankly that Iran's economy has likely been able to sustain itself this long with this full scale blockade, with this full scale military operation is because China is actually actively abetting Iran on an economic and financial and banking level a lot more than meets the eye. There was actually a very fascinating new report up at the Hudson Institute. One of the right of center DC Foreign policy think tanks talked about this very close Sino Iranian connection when it comes to the fact that China is building out all sorts of elaborate shadow banking and all sorts of threats. They're reaching out to third party, third country intermediaries through which to process Iranian financial transactions for oil exports that would otherwise be heavily sanctioned and or outright banned. So anyway, love the idea of what Besson is saying. They're probably not going to happen. In the meantime, the Straits is currently in a bit of a fiasco because Iran is not necessarily going to take Project Freedom from President Trump. They're not going to take it just sitting down. So earlier today the uae, the United Arab Emirates, which has really taken the brunt, they have been taking more missiles drones than any country in the region, literally, bar none since this, since this war started. A lot of the media coverage here tends to focus on Israel because Israel's America's closest ally in the region. Israel's obviously gotten hit as well, but the UAE has actually taken more missiles and drones than anyone and they've had both of their major airports, Abu Dhabi and Dubai, have been directly hit from Iranian missiles. So earlier today, the UAE Ministry of Defense reporting that four cruise missiles were launched from Iran towards Emirati airspace. Three were successfully intercepted. One fell into the sea. There are alarms, there are reports of all sorts of flight cancellations. So this thing is here and what does that actually mean? We'll get to that in just a second. But for now, folks, I want to tell you a quick word about our sponsor for today's show, which is Angel Studios. You know, I recently joined the Angel Guild and I watched their brand new documentary Death of Recess. And I got to tell you, I was not expecting this. It was really, really powerful, gripping stuff. It's a story about how the teachers unions have not just done a number, but they have fundamentally co opted and indeed they have perverted and distorted the entire nature of the elementary school and the middle school and indeed high school classroom experience. Even something as basic and rudimentary as recess is now up for grabs. Because this is what happens when you have an ideological cabal that is there ultimately not to help children, not to help educate, but to pursue their own parochial interests. Trust me, folks, I come from a lineage of teachers. My mother, grandmother and great grandmother were actually all teachers. I used to hear my mother complain about this all the time. I have many memories of such conversations. Anyway, this is what happens in general when institutions protect themselves instead of children. Frankly, it's exactly why platforms like Angel Studios are so important. These are the kind of stories that you will not hear out in the traditional Hollywood studios. So folks, go ahead to angel.com hammer to join the Angel Guild and watch Death of Recess right now. Again, folks, that's angel.com hammer to join the Angel Guild and watch Death of Recess right now. If you care about kids, this is really essential viewing. Our sponsor for today's show is Angel Studios. So where do we go from here then? If it looks like this is the resumption of conventional military hostilities? Well, the first question is, is this actually the resumption of conventional military hostilities? And we don't really know because this thing is a very fluid sit. It is very much a moving target. Here is our big take, though. Our big take on this show, which if you listen or watch every day will not be a surprise. Our take is the following Two things can be true at once. On the one hand, the United States has achieved tremendous, tremendous gains. Tremendous gains since the commencement of Operation Epic Fury, which took the form of the target assassination of ali Khamenei on February 28th earlier this year. Those gains have resulted in the effective obliteration of Iran's navy and the effective obliteration of Iran's air force. Tremendous damage to their nuclear facilities, tremendous damage to their missiles, to their missile launch sites, to their economy. And basically every way you can harm a country, we have successfully managed to harm them. That is absolutely true. On the other hand. On the other hand, it is simply a truism. It is simply a truism that the job is actually not yet done. How do I know that? Well, because there are four criteria. We discussed them here on the show. There are four criteria by which we can assess whether or not Operation Epic Fury is actually complete. And as of now, it is not complete at this time. First and foremost, this is the first goal by which we can assess that the operation will be done. First and foremost, Iran must fully and verifiably end its financing and arming of terrorist proxies all throughout the Middle East. That's Hezbollah, that's Hamas, that's the Houthis, all the various, mostly Shiite, including some Sunni Islamic radical jihadists all throughout the region. Iran is the number one bankroll and funder of all such terrible actors. That has to end. Second, and this takes us back to Project Freedom, announced by President Trump just this morning. Second, the Strid of Hormuz must be permanently open to free maritime transit. You cannot have this tin pot malacracy, this terrorist clericy that is going to keep crucial international waterway shut or to only allow boats and vessels to pass on some sort of ransom fee. A ransom fee to the world's number one state sponsored terrorism. You can't have that. It's absurd. So again, this is a bare bare minimum requirement for this operation being over. Third, Iran must dismantle or turn over its offensive drones and ballistic missiles. We have done tremendous work on that front thus far. We have taken out a lot of their missiles, a lot of their missile launch sites, but there are a lot that remain. Unless and until that is done, I think it is premature to say that Epic Fury is complete. Otherwise they can continue to take the European continent hostage. They have shown throughout this war they can launch missiles up to two and a half thousand miles away. Fourth, and perhaps most importantly, Iran actually has to surrender every, every ounce of 60% enriched uranium, of which they have, we estimate, roughly half a ton, roughly a thousand pounds. That's A lot. That is a lot. And that has to go because unless and until that is somehow, somehow ferreted out of Iran, who knows what could happen when they get more nuclear scientists, when they get more infrastructure there, you're essentially just kicking the can down the road. And the whole point of this operation, Mr. President, was to not kick the can down the road. The good news, I think President Trump knows that. And we're going to continue to unpack it on today's show, folks, too. We'll be right back with much more on the other side. Welcome back. So to recap, our four criteria for assessing that Operation Epic Fury has been completed on its own terms. And again, those terms are, we've said since day one, the neutralization of Iran as a threat to the United States and to American interests. That's the goal. Here are the four criteria that we can assess that goal. Again, just to briefly recap. One, Iran must end its financing and arming of terrorist proxies throughout the region. Two, the 300 Hormuz must be permanently open to free maritime transit. Three, Iran must dismantle or turn over its offensive drones and ballistic missiles. And four, perhaps most crucially, for the long term, Iran must surrender every ounce of enriched uranium, at least, at least those that are enriched to 60%, which is the level just before 90%. And 90% is the nuclear warhead type level, the fundamental goal here. And again, Trump understands this totally. He totally gets it. The fundamental problem here is that these are bad faith actors. There is a Sharia law concept known as Taqiyyah. We've mentioned it before. Taqiyyah is essentially a sharia carte blanche. It is a Sharia law permission slip. And it's a permission slip today that is taken up more frequently by, I don't really know why, to be honest, but it's taken up more frequently by Iran and various other Shiite supremacists relative to Sunni radicals. But it is a Sharia permission slip to essentially dissimulate and to conceal your true motives, translation, to lie, to essentially lie to quote unquote, infidels, meaning Westerners, Christians and Jews, etc. To lie to us about what you are actually doing in the name of your true goal, which is civilizational jihad or building nuclear weapons or trying to bring about the apocalypse and 72 virgins. Whatever you're trying to do there, Iran embodies the shriyad concept of Taqiyyah more than any group of radical Muslims on the face of the earth, which is a fancy way of saying that they are liars. They have been lying through their teeth for years. They've been lying through their teeth for decades. You cannot trust these people as far as you can throw them. Which is why for decades you had the iaea, the International Atomic Energy association that would go in there and they would say, ah, they're not really complying fully when it comes to nuclear facilities. But we can actually access all the relevant points there. They're not being transparent. We suspect something's up there. This is one of the biggest reasons that so many conservatives back in 2015 said to Barack Obama and John Kerry, what the heck are you guys doing? Why are you trying to negotiate this? What became the jcpoa, the Iran nuclear deal? Why are you doing this? Even if you're not a hawk on the topic of Iran there, why ink any deal that you know the counterparty is just not going to abide? And to an extent, certainly this is a, this is a longer problem when it comes to jihad, when it comes to radical Islam in general. It's not like you can trust Hamas. And they're not Shiite, they're Sunnis. But at a regime state sponsorship level, this is a real, real, real problem when it comes to Iran. Again, they've been doing this for decades. They've been sowing discord for decades. Actually, Mike Pence, who is not necessarily the one who was held in highest esteem by President Trump these days or necessarily held in the highest esteem by much of maga world, he actually said this very well to his great credit. Here was Mike Pence talking about this very topic on Fox News.
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Iran is the leading state sponsor of terrorism in the world. For five decades, they've claimed American lives. They've, they've threatened America's interest in the region and of course waged a relentless war against our cherished ally Israel. And look, Republicans and Democrats know that on Capitol Hill. And that's why this is one of those moments where I just don't think you can be thinking politics on this. You know, we got three full battle groups, aircraft carriers in the region, we got the, the strongest military in the history of the world. The President appears to be poised to exhaust the diplomatic outcome here. But at the end of the day, I think, I think people know that we've got to finish the job and winning this fight.
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So it's well said the job must be finished. And I'm not questioning whether or not Donald Trump understands that he has a very delicate political task ahead of him here. Gas prices are rising. That's undeniable. People see it, people feel it. Administration is definitely having a rough patch in the polls. A poll just this past weekend, or perhaps was on Friday, showed that Donald Trump has a 38% approval rating. I believe that was the Washington Post Ipsos poll, if I'm not mistaken. And that's not great. And the American people understandably, totally understandably want to focus on domestic issues. The point, though, is that the most powerful country in the world can walk and chew gum at the same time. And there is no purpose in spending this much money and this much political and economic and diplomatic capital unless you are actually going to finish the job on the job's own terms. And that is why we talk so much about what the actual job is, frankly, on its own terms. By the way, a somewhat related note, I saw that the White House is trying to host a meeting one week from today. So that'll be next Monday, May 11, between Benjamin Netanyahu, who of course is the prime minister of Israel, along with the president of Lebanon, who is Joseph Ayoun. So we've reported how there have been some meetings, at least two of note, over the past month, give or take, between the Israelis and the Lebanese, which are the first time that those two countries have met face to face in roughly 30 years, which is a really, really long time. And it's very encouraging that this is happening in the first place. It's very, very encouraging that Netanyahu and Ayoun, who was a Maronite Christian Lebanon is historically a roughly 3, 33 country, 1 3rd, 1 3rd, 13 3rd roughly 1 3rd Christian, roughly 1 3rd, Shiite Muslim, roughly 1 3rd Sunni Muslim. It's very complicated. But those religious divides are essentially part of their constitution. You have certain offices that can only go to certain groups there. The issue with Lebanon is that Lebanon is today essentially a fake country because Hezbollah really calls the shots. Hezbollah is a Shiite Muslim jihadist organization and really just a proxy of Iran. The big update here and the fact that these Israeli Lebanese talks are apparently happening is because Iran is losing Lebanon as an outpost. They are. Hezbollah still exists, but they are are diminishing in clout seemingly by the day. And if the Lebanese government commits in earnest, which is a massive question, huge caveat there, like deep pause. Let's see if it happens. But if they actually commit in earnest to trying to root out Hezbollah, that's not just a victory for the people of Lebanon first and foremost. It is a huge victory for the region and a massive, massive loss to Iran. So we're Gonna have to go ahead and actually see whether that happens there. But keep your eye on that for now. Potentially next Monday, a massive meeting at the White House between Netanyahu and Ayoun of the countries of Israel and Lebanon respectively. Shifting gears to the American conversation. We spent a lot of time on last week's show talking about this landmark case at the United States Supreme Court when it comes to congressional redistricting. This is the case of Louisiana vs. Kai, if I'm pronouncing the name correctly and is a case dealing with the Voting Rights act of 1965. We're not gonna talk about the whole thing. Go back and listen to last week's show if you are so inclined there. Long story short, they basically say that racial gerrymandering is presumptively illegal because it violates the 14th amendment. Notwithstanding how some people have been trying to implement the Voting Rights act for some decades now. And the direct upshot of that, the direct direct upshot is that Louisiana, which was the plaintiff case in the actual Supreme Court case, they have to redraw their maps, which is why you had Jeff Landry, the governor immediately say they're going to push back their imminently forthcoming congressional primaries that are going to happen in just about two to three weeks or so to give a special session of the legislature enough time to draw new congressional maps to make sure that there are no so called majority minority districts, AKA artificially black majority districts where there shouldn't be. That they did so because they thought they were compliant with the law and but it turns out that they weren't. They actually were violating the 14th Amendment. Anyway, the update for you is not that Louisiana is pushing back. We reported that on last week's show. The update for you today is that there are more Southern states. And again, this is mostly, this is mostly a Southern phenomenon. There's a lot of these Southern states that have a majority white population but a sizable black population. And obviously for historical reasons, the south was the one that was engaging in horrific Jim Crow practices there. So they have been getting all sorts of special treatment when it comes to the Voting Rights act, that is to say the American south for many decades. But if these majority minority districts are done, so then you're gonna look at a lot of Southern states that have to redraw their maps because frankly, governors and lawmakers in the Southern states of both parties, that's how they've been interpreting the Voting Rights act for decades now. So the update for you is that two of these states, Alabama and Tennessee, have announced that they are calling special sessions of the legislature to redraw the congressional maps, to essentially try to comply with the Louisiana Supreme Court case, to actually say that these majority minority districts cannot exist. So we have this clip for you, I think we played on last week's show of Congressman Sewell of Alabama, who was just apoplectic about the Louisiana decision of the Supreme Court. Why? Because she's about to lose her job. That's literally the reason. Because she is artificially elected in one of these concocted majority majority minority districts in the black belt of Alabama. So a lot of this is just so cynical, as always, frankly, by many of the left wing Democrats there. This is playing out in real time and it's going to be a fun one to watch, folks. Another quick commercial break. Josh Hammer here. We'll be right back. So the registering process is a moving target because every state holds their primaries at a different date. Federal elections are unified. We have the one election in November, probably not as unified as it should be. That's why we have early voting, which is nonsensical. It really ought to be, in my opinion, should be just a federal clear federal law or perhaps if necessary, a constitutional amendment saying that this is election day and this is the only day. Heck, compromise. Let's compromise with the liberals. Have a constitutional amendment, call it a national election day. And in exchange for that, in exchange for no early voting other than dire circumstances, other than active service, military abroad, other than people who are just totally bedridden hospitals, you will always have dispensations from a general rule. But my proposal for years now has been this. Call it a constitutional amendment. Let's just formalize it in the most formal way possible there, Call it one election day, the presumption. Again, there are exceptions. The presumption is no early voting period. And then the flip side of that, to give the liberals a bit of a carrot and not just a stick, is, you name it, a national holiday. Everyone's got off work. National holiday, hooray. So what's your excuse? If it's a national holiday, what is your excuse for not getting your butt over to the polls? Not sure exists. Again, unless you're seriously, seriously ill and you're bedridden, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Anyway, point is, federal election, general election is November. That's fairly standard early voting now standing. But these state elections, these state primaries tend to be a moving target. The earliest ones are in March, meaning that they've already happened. So the Texas primary would happen. The latest Ones go all the way through August. Here in Florida, we have a very late primary all the way into August. So the effects of the Louisiana decision are going to be on a state by state basis. Louisiana, which is parts of the case. The reason that the court ruled now, as they did, was to give Louisiana enough time to actually follow the order and to redraw their maps in advance of their primary. Now, a lot of folks are coming really hard after Brian Kemp, the Republican governor of Georgia. And Brian Kemp. Your mileage may vary. He's generally fine. He's not affirmatively bad or anything. He's a little weaker than some of his colleagues. I wouldn't exactly say that he's a fire breather or anything like that. There was a generally socially conservative, generally pro business, pro free market kind of governor. There's nothing inherently wrong with him there. He's getting a lot of crap from certain people on my social media feed from certain people in Georgia, a lot of conservative activists in Georgia. He's getting a lot of crap right now for saying that he's not going to push back Georgia's primary, which is also in May, similar to Louisiana's. Here's the problem. The problem is that early voting has already started in Georgia. That's the problem. The governor does not have the authority to just delay a primary election once early voting has started. The issue is that early voting goes on as long as it does. Early voting is a mess. It is so, so, so terrible. I hate early voting with such a fiery passion. And if you have a problem, if you're a listener, a viewer watching in Georgia, your issue should be with the early voting statute. Your issue should not be with Brian Kemp, who I'm telling you does not actually have the legal authority to go ahead and unilaterally postpone this election once the early voting period has already started. By the way, Louisiana is also a named party to the suit. Therefore they are required. Alabama and Tennessee, the other states there, they have upcoming primaries. They have plenty of time. Similar to here in Florida. We had a special session up in Tallahassee just last week. DeSantis called that session. We now have a 24 to 4 map, not a 20 to 8 map. Again, it's a very state by state thing. The upshot, though, the upshot is that the effects of this, and again, Alabama and Tennessee are the two latest. The effects of this are going to be a huge boon, a huge boon for Republicans as we, as we get closer to the midterm elections this November, because you're gonna See the end of these majority minority districts, those seats add up. You're looking at potentially two new Republican seats in Louisiana, at least one in Alabama, one in Tennessee. You might be able to get rid of Jim Clyburn seat in South Carolina, Hank Johnson in Georgia. Well, again, Georgia's a little more complicated, as I just explained, but it's going to be a boon. It's going to be a boon. The effects of this redistricting. Frankly, it's entirely possible that this Supreme Court decision just saved Mike Johnson's speaker gavel come January 2027. In fact, if I had to place a wager right now, very hard to say because we are a few months away. And who knows, it could be a wave election where Democrats, God forbid, Democrats could definitely win 15, 20, 25 seats in the House. And that would be enough if it's that big of a wave to take over the gavel regardless of redistricting. But if reducing goes the way that I think it will, summing up all these various states there, I think Democrats probably could have a smaller wave election, something like a five to ten seat pickup, and probably still lose out on the gavel. So again, the devil's always in the details there. But for now, just bear in mind that this is really redounding and is really playing out to Republicans interests, not just when it comes to the effects of the Louisiana Supreme Court case there, but also just when it comes out to a lot of these other cases in general. So for instance, here in Florida, Florida decided to redistrict prior to the Supreme Court case. DeSantis is just awesome. That's basically what happened there. And Virginia, we had Ken Cuccinelli in the show last Thursday. He explains how the Supreme Court, Virginia, in his estimation as a former attorney general of the Old Dominion, he explained how the Supreme Court Virginia is likely likely to declare that the Virginia referendum is illegal because of all the various procedural irregularities there. So Virginia's attempts to grab four Democrat seats, this Abigail Spamberger paragraph, that's likely actually going to fail. Again, it's a little early to celebrate there, but it's entirely possible. So bear that in mind there. In any event, as I said, Mike Johnson is a very, very happy man if no one else. He's actually from Louisiana, so he has a lot of reason to celebrate there given that his state just won a big court case. But he himself is now likely to hold the speaker's gavel come January of 2027. So another huge domestic issue that is in the news and I Want to spend some time with this? This will take up definitely a decent chunk of the reindeer of today's show is Spirit Airlines going under. We covered it briefly on Friday. Spirit Airlines is actually a local company where I live in South Florida. They are headquartered in Broward County. Their home airport is Fort Lauderdale International Airport. I know exactly where Spirit Airlines is headquartered. Was headquartered, I guess technically in the past tense now. It's really not terribly far from where I live and from where many other people that you know who live in South Florida live. They had the iconic yellow planes. Spirit Airlines was a poorly managed company, and it was not just poorly managed due to the fact that they had all these crazy customers and these infamous Instagram videos. And trust me, they were infamous. I have been on five or fewer Spirit Airlines flights in my life. It's not exactly a pleasurable experience, to be honest with you. It was always a wildly entertaining experience standing at the ticket counter. But that's not actually why they were poorly managed. They were poorly managed just because they were literally poorly managed and they had multiple bankruptcies over the past few years. A lot of folks on the left are now saying that Spirit Airlines went under because of Donald Trump's war. If you want to get super conspiratorial because of Israel's war, because of just the war in general, the leftist claim against Iran, this is garbage. This is flaming, stinking garbage at that. As I just said, Spirit Airlines has declared bankruptcy numerous times just over the past few years. This happened before those multiple bankruptcy declarations happened before the war against Iran, before whatever fact there may or may not have been when it comes to rising jet fuel prices. Here's the catch. The catch is that Spirit Airlines had an escape hatch. They had it all planned out. They had an escape hatch whereby they were going to merge with JetBlue. Maybe. Maybe you've used JetBlue, maybe you haven't. I happen to actually personally be a big fan of JetBlue. I think some of their delays are a little worse, frankly, than other airlines, at least in my anecdotal experience. But the overall experience is very pleasant. Solid customer service, just generally favorable amenities. I happen to like JetBlue. So JetBlue and Spirit were trying to merge in 2024, and the Biden DOJ at the time said no. Merrick Garland was the Attorney General and Jonathan Cantor was the head of the antitrust division at doj. And they said no because they were essentially following the advice of Lina Khan. Lina Khan was the head of the Biden era ftc the Federal Trade Commission. So antitrust is complicated. Antitrust is divided between the DOJ's antitrust division. That's when you actually prosecute cases. Then for the more civil enforcement cases, then you have the ftc, which is this FDR new deal era agency called the Federal Trade Commission. It's currently headed by a wonderful lawyer by the name of Andrew Ferguson. Lina Khan is an ultra progressive who essentially operates under a big is bad theory of antitrust. Therefore, she saw this proposed merger between two fairly minor players in the airline industry and recommended to Kantor and Garland that they sue. They sued, the merger was blocked and the result, fast forward two years. Espirit Airlines is done and 17,000Americans are out of a job. Much more on this is a very, very important topic. You're not gonna get the full story elsewhere, but we will give it to you right here after a short commercial break. Stay with us. Welcome back. So Lita Khan, who was this hyper progressive, she basically was a well known law student. Yeah, really? She was a well known law student at Yale Law School and she published this law review article which I've read. I don't think it's necessarily as great as some people say it is, but okay. It was called Amazon's Antitrust Paradox. And what she was doing, Lena Khan, she was a law student, was she was making a play on a very, very, very famous article written decades ago by Bob Bork, a famous antitrust scholar turned into a failed Supreme Court nominee. Ronald Reagan nominated Bob Bork to the Supreme Court in 1987. That is when Ted Kennedy and Joe Biden tag teamed to Bork. Bob Bork. Yes. Look up Bork in the dictionary. B O R K has been turned into a verb in the modern Oxford or Merriam Webster dictionary. Basically means to spread the most slanderous, slanderous things imaginable about a fellow human being to discredit and harm the reputation. So Bob Bork was borked and failed to make it to the to the U.S. supreme Court. Which by the way is the reason that we have the modern era of highly contentious combative judicial nominations that we have today. It's literally due to Kennedy and Biden borking Bob Bork. That was 87 one year prior. 1986 was actually Anthony Scalia. So Reagan had nominees back to back years, 86 nominated nominees, Anthony Scalia. Scalia gets confirmed by a voice vote 98 to 0. Next year Bob Borick only gets 40 something votes, nearly 60 votes in opposition due to the slanderous campaign against misinformation from Ted Kennedy and Joe Biden. Anyway, I digress. Before he was Ronald Reagan's failed Supreme Court nominee, Bob Bork was a very prominent antitrust scholar. He was primarily affiliated well with multiple institutions. Among them the law school that I attended, University of Chicago Law School. The University of Chicago Law School was the home of the law and economics movement which developed a different way of approaching questions of antitrust and frankly legal analysis in general, trying to imbue it with a more economic perspective. So Bob Bork wrote a very famous article decades ago called the Antitrust Paradox. And in it he developed what is known as the consumer welfare standard which is one way by which you assess whether or not a merger is competitive or anti competitive. The upshot, the upshot of the consumer welfare standard as proposed by Bob Bork. By the way, the standard was very quickly adopted like literally within like a year or two. It's shockingly shocking. It was literally adopted into the Supreme Court's jurisprudence. They actually said that the two relevant antitrust statutes, so the Sherman act of the 1890s and the Clayton act of decade and a half two decades later, that this is actually the correct way they said to interpret and enforce these statutes is using what Bob Bork called the consumer welfare standard. Consumer welfare standard basically says that a merger should be let through if it is efficient from an allocation of resource perspective. And here's the most important part, and whether or not it has a positive effect for prices for consumers. In other words, it does not have a cost increasing effect. There are a few problems with the consumer welfare standard to be sure. The main problem is that in the era of big tech, price minimization is not the only thing that we ought to care about when it comes to how to handle a proposed merger or acquisition. Think about things like Facebook, Meta, Instagram, TikTok, Twitter under the ancient regime of Jack Dorsey. Think about all the various other non price factors, ideology, censorship, dissemination of wokeism there, trying to censor narratives on vaccines or masks or 2020 election or this or that there. So what I have argued for years is that the consumer welfare standard is in theory fine, but you should one, Congress should pass a law to codify it so it's not just this judge made doctrine. And when you codify it, explain that consumer welfare is determined by other factors, not just price, but things like ideological suffocation or above all preserving a diversity of viewpoints. Because ideological diversity is the bread and butter. It is the mother's milk of a healthy and flourishing polity and body. Politicians. There's actually a bill proposed a few years ago by Mike Lee and Chuck Wressley that would do exactly that. Codify the standard, but expand the definition above just price minimization. That takes us back to Lina Khan. So in Lina Khan's Yale Law Journal article, the one, the one that went gangbusters on the left and started what is known as the new Brandeis movement of antitrust analysis, she basically said not only is the consumer welfare standard garbage insofar as it focuses only on price minimization, she said, but it's not worth saving at all. In fact, we should just ditch it in its entirety and adopt what again is now known as this neo Brandeisian approach to antitrust, which basically says big is bad. Which is a very fancy way of saying that if you have a merger and it makes the company bigger, it's bad and it should be opposed. Suffice to say this is a dramatically over simplistic view of antitrust. At the time of this proposed merger between JetBlue and Spirit, Spirit was on the brink of death. Already. You're talking about combining two airlines that are not even in the top four in the airline industry. You have the so called big four airlines of American Airlines, United Airlines, Delta Airlines and Southwest Airlines. JetBlue is at best, depending on the year, at best. They are the fifth player most years. I think they're actually even below Alaska. So JetBlue is probably at best sixth in most years. Spirit is somewhere below that. They were along with Allegiant and various other minor budget options. Frontier Airlines, which is based at Denver, Colorado there. What exactly are you worried about? Lina Khan and Jonathan Cantor? What was the professed concern here? What was the concern exactly? In an industry like this, in theory, it makes Sense to allow JetBlue to better compete with the big guys when it comes to basic economics concepts, Econ 101 things like economies of scale, trying to provide a better experience for customers. So this is a very roundabout way of saying that we are here because of what the Joe Biden DOJ did, because what Merrick Garland did and what Jonathan Cantor and Jonathan Cantor actually did some good things. By the way, I'm not necessarily picking on Jonathan Cantor. He was the antitrust division head under Joe Biden. He kept up the Trump administration's lawsuits actually against Google, for instance, there. So Kantor did some good stuff in the big tech front for sure, but he was still overzealous. And this was an act of zealotry in prosecuting the JetBlue Spirit merger. And again, they did so because of the intellectual fezization of Lina Khan, a woman younger than I was, than I am, who was shockingly young when she was made the chair of the ftc. Unfortunately, you have a lot of folks on the right who take the antitrust populism too far. Again, I am populist enough to say that price should not be the only concern. We should care about ideology, viewpoint, diversity, etc. The ultra, ultra, ultra populous. I've heard JD Vance say that he is a big fan of Lina Khan. I've heard Josh Hawley say it there. This is wrong. Neobrandeisianism. Big is bad is a garbage view of antitrust. The old school price minimization is all that matters view is also wrong. There is a middle ground here and frankly, if the middle ground have been followed again, 70, 17,000Americans would not be out of a job today when it comes to Spirit Airlines going under. Sean Duffy was on Fox News talking about how this actually really is the end of Spirit Airlines. Here with Sean Duffy again.
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B
The president did a great job trying to see is there a pathway where we can bail this out? Does it make sense to keep this airline afloat? We don't have a half a billion dollars laying around to bail out an airline. But in the end, what I love about this story is that you didn't see the other airlines try to gouge passengers. You haven't seen chaos in airport reports. President Trump has thought through how this should be navigated. I reached out to the CEOs. You had all the big carriers offer discount tickets to, to passengers to get to their destinations. They offered jump seats and open seats to the, to the, to the, to the crew, which is airlines. But I would add this. Did any of these airlines or did you re approach JetBlue about maybe trying to do this deal again or because they got beat down once, they're not going to try it again. I called them all. I talked to all the CEOs and the problem is there was nothing left like their airplanes released. I mean, there's really not a lot of value left. It had been leveraged so far. There was nothing left to buy.
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A
And that's where we're at. And now the American consumers have been deprived of another airline. To be clear, the Trump administration was emphatically correct to not bail out Spirit Airlines. There was no, no compelling national security case to bail them out. The point is, the point is we didn't have to get here in the first place. Again, I don't personally like Spirit Airlines. I tried my hardest to not fly it, even though they were a local airline to me here in South Florida. But the point is not about my personal proclivities or predilections or preferences. The point is that this was economically unnecessary. It was a self inflicted wound yet again from the Biden doj folks. Have a great rest of your evening. Josh Hammer signing off. We'll be back as always tomorrow.