Leftist Political Violence: An Existential Threat to the Republic

Summary

Podcast Summary: "Leftist Political Violence: An Existential Threat to the Republic"

The Josh Hammer Show – April 27, 2026
Host: Josh Hammer

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Episode Overview

In this incisive solo episode, Josh Hammer examines what he argues is an escalating crisis of leftist political violence in the United States and its existential threat to the republic, especially as the country approaches its 250th anniversary. Drawing on recent events, including an attempted assassination at the White House Correspondents' Dinner, Hammer contends that political violence is overwhelmingly a problem of the left, provides historical and statistical context, dissects elite and media reactions, and reflects on the broader implications for American self-government.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

The Republic at a Crossroads: 250 Years and Political Violence

• Hammer opens by recalling Benjamin Franklin’s warning: “A republic, ma’am, if you can keep it” (02:04).
• He frames political violence—not foreign threats—as America’s greatest existential danger as it nears its semiquincentennial (02:16).
• Cites Abraham Lincoln’s Lyceum Address: “If America is ever going to be destroyed, it will have to happen from within” (03:09).
• Identifies a “lethal, years-long, arguably decades-long trend” of political violence “coming from one side of the political aisle” (03:28), specifically the left.

The DC Assassination Attempt: Details and Immediate Fallout

• Details the incident at the 2026 White House Correspondents' Dinner:
  • Cole Thomas Allen, a 31-year-old Californian, opened fire, injuring a Secret Service agent (who was protected by body armor) (04:26, 05:43).
  • Allen self-identified as a “friendly family federal assassin” and left a manifesto explicitly targeting Trump (05:57, 06:32).
  • Hammer criticizes the Secret Service perimeter: “The fact that you could just walk right into this hotel is just utterly astounding” (05:34).

Media and Political Reactions: Denial, Deflection, and Euphemism

• Criticizes the mainstream media and Democratic leaders like Barack Obama for feigning ignorance about Allen’s motives (04:39), likening it to Obama’s “we don’t know the true motive” trope post-Islamist attacks (04:49).
• Calls out House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries, who both condemned the attack while previously advocating “maximum warfare” against Trump (09:26).
  • Quote: Jeffries: “We are in an era of maximum warfare everywhere, all the time.” (09:39)
  • Hammer: “Maybe you shouldn’t have called for maximum warfare. Maximum warfare? Oh man, who could possibly misinterpret maximum warfare?” (09:58)

Patterns and Precedent: Is This “Both Sides”?

• Thoroughly rejects “both sides” narratives, detailing a string of leftist attacks or assassination attempts going back to 2012 and beyond (13:18, 17:54):
  • Trump: Multiple plots, from 2016’s gun grab, 2017’s attempted limo flip, 2020’s poisoning attempt, 2024 Iranian-linked plot, and February 2026’s Mar-a-Lago breach (13:34, 14:34).
  • Non-Trump victims: The killings of conservative figure Charlie Kirk, Luigi Mangione (CEO targeted for ‘social justice’ motives), and attempted murder of Justice Brett Kavanaugh (15:07, 16:11, 17:11).
  • Mass shootings: Floyd Lee Corkins at the Family Research Council (2012), James Hodgkinson at the Congressional baseball practice (2017), trans-identified school shooters (16:09, 16:46, 17:54).

The Role of Elite and Social Media

• Blue Sky (left-wing social platform) is described as “a hotbed of fetishized assassination porn... a haven for domestic terrorism, domestic violence” (06:07, 28:23).
• Lambastes on-air rhetoric by left-leaning media figures encouraging or normalizing violence.
  • Quote: On Jimmy Kimmel’s joke about Melania Trump as an “expectant widow”: “Not funny dude, like deeply, deeply, deeply unfunny... Is this what you want to talk about?” (26:09, 27:07)
• Singles out leftist podcaster Hasan Piker as “a deeply murderous darling of their entire podcast ecosystem... Has a long, sordid history of calling for open political violence in this country” (18:38, 19:10).

Polls, Academia, and the “Assassination Culture”

• Cites polls indicating that:
  • 25% of “very liberal” Americans believe political violence is sometimes justified, versus 3% of “very conservative” (20:23, 20:44).
  • 30–35% of Harvard students say political violence can be justified (20:59).
  • 56% of self-identified left-wingers in one study said murdering Trump could be justified (24:54).
• Argues America’s elite institutions are producing “an assassination culture that is increasingly ubiquitous on the left” (22:19).
  • “America's most prestigious universities are not necessarily producing people who will cure cancer. They're... producing political assassins and would-be political assassins…” (22:00)
  • Higher education: Americans with PhDs are twice as likely as the general public to support political violence (22:16, 24:00).

The Asymmetry of Condemnation

• Points out that when a right-wing attacker strikes, condemnation is universal; when it’s a left-wing actor, “you have people like the 44th president, Barack Obama, who say, I don't know the true motive, impossible to say” (29:40, 30:01).
• Asserts that the fundamental difference is the left’s refusal or inability to police its own, lacking any voice with “gravitas” to credibly tell its side to stop (32:58, 33:16).
• Suggests only Barack Obama could fill this role, but “he’s obviously not going to do it” (33:16).

The Threat to Self-Governance

• Hammer expounds on the founding American ideal: “A people cannot be free, a people cannot be self governing when they put down their words, their pens, their keyboards, and instead they take up knives and firearms...” (31:33, 32:09).
• “The only way this country endures is if we recover this sense of speaking to our fellow citizens, debating in good faith, and settling our differences… at the ballot box.” (32:13, 32:24)
• Urges the left to “look itself in the mirror before it is too late and pull their own side back from a potentially fatal or catastrophic brink” (32:40).

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Timestamps for Key Segments

| Timestamp | Segment | |-----------|---------| | 00:36 | Opening: America’s 250th Anniversary, Founding Values | | 02:16 | Political violence as existential threat | | 03:34 | DC Assassination Attempt Recap | | 06:02 | Manifesto and Blue Sky Social Media | | 07:04 | History of attempts on Trump’s life | | 12:54 | “Condemn all sides” – Hammer’s Rebuttal | | 13:18 | Series of attacks/attempts against Trump | | 15:07 | Attacks on conservative figures beyond Trump | | 17:54 | School and church shootings by left-wing shooters | | 18:14 | Violent left-wing rhetoric and “globalize the intifada” | | 19:00 | Critique of Hasan Piker and online culture | | 20:23 | Polls showing asymmetry of support for violence | | 22:00 | Universities as breeding grounds for violence | | 24:54 | 56% of left-wing respondents justify Trump’s murder | | 26:00 | Jimmy Kimmel’s “expectant widow” joke | | 27:24 | Image of Erica Kirk, widow of slain Charlie Kirk | | 28:23 | Blue Sky as “assassination porn” hub | | 29:33 | Asymmetry in public responses/condemnation | | 31:30 | Founding ideals and threat to self-governance | | 32:40 | Call for the left to self-police | | 33:16 | The need for a leftist voice with credibility | | 34:04 | Secret Service failures, security recommendations | | 35:08 | Proposal for a White House East Wing ballroom | | 36:54 | News segment: Congressional redistricting updates |

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “There is no greater existential threat to the American republic than political violence.” (Hammer, 02:16)
• “If America is ever going to be destroyed, it will have to happen from within.” (Abraham Lincoln, as cited by Hammer 03:09)
• “A republic, ma’am, if you can keep it.” (Benjamin Franklin anecdote, 02:04)
• “Blue Sky is a haven for domestic terrorism, domestic violence.” (Hammer, 06:07)
• “This is just the third consecutive year... an assassination attempt on Donald Trump.” (Hammer, 07:04)
• “Political violence is wrong, period. No matter who it is coming from. I feel almost infantile or juvenile having to actually say that... this is almost exclusively a left-wing political phenomenon.” (Hammer, 12:51–13:18)
• “The notion that political violence is equally spread across the spectrum is garbage, is flaming, flaming hot garbage, and you should not agree with it for a second.” (Hammer, 18:00)
• “America's most elite institutions of higher education seem to have a galling, galling political violence problem – more perhaps than any other.” (Hammer, 21:08)
• “Hammer: ‘When you do have a freakish right-wing figure who... engages in an act of political violence, it is condemned across the spectrum. When it happens on the left, you have people like... Barack Obama, who say I don’t know the true motive.’” (29:33–29:40)
• “A people cannot be free... when they put down their words, their pens, their keyboards, and instead they take up knives and firearms and rockets and other forms of weapons.” (Hammer, 31:30–32:09)
• On leftist self-correction: “Is there such thing, frankly, as a figure on the left who has the gravitas, who has the credibility... that could actually sit down, look in the camera and say, stop, this is wrong? I’m not sure that person exists.” (32:58)

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Closing Thoughts

Hammer concludes that America’s ability to “keep the republic” depends on a collective recommitment to civil self-governance and open, lawful debate—an ideal he accuses the left of having dangerously abandoned in favor of apologia and even advocacy for violence. He calls for honest appraisal, institutional reform (including better security protocols and a proposed White House ballroom), and, above all, moral clarity on the left to stem what he considers a life-or-death crisis for the nation.

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For listeners who missed this episode, this summary encapsulates Josh Hammer’s central arguments, evidence, and urgent warnings on the trajectory of American civil society in the face of politically motivated violence from the left.

Transcript

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[Josh Hammer]

I'm Josh Hammer and this is the Josh hammer show. This July 4th, the nation will celebrate its 250th anniversary.

[Josh Hammer (continued commentary)]

It will be a quarter of a

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millennium since Thomas Jefferson penned those immortal words in the Declaration that we hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal. Donald Trump will throw a party like none other this July 4th in the nation's capital.

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It is a time that is worth

[Josh Hammer]

thinking about what makes this country great.

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But before even getting to what makes

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this country great, a theme that we will hit on this show repeatedly as we approach the anniversary this July, it

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is worth thinking at first about what

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America is in its most basic rudimentary

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form in the and that takes us

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to one of our favorite anecdotes here

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on the show, which is the story out of Philadelphia in 1787.

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The failures at that point of the Articles of Confederation were clear and unmistakable.

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The wise men met in Philadelphia during

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that sweltering summer to try to create a new charter of self governance.

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Upon finishing their work late that summer,

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Benjamin Franklin exited the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia.

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At the time, he saw, among others, a Philadelphia socialite, a woman who was known for hosting parties and salons by the name of Elizabeth willing Powell and Mrs. Powell said, Dr. Franklin, what have you wise men given us?

[Josh Hammer]

And Benjamin Franklin said, a republic, ma',

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am, if you can keep well, as

[Josh Hammer]

we barrel towards the nation's 250th anniversary,

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at this point, I think it is

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safe to say that there is no greater existential threat to the American republic than political violence.

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We talk on this show a lot

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about our foreign threats. The war with Iran is still continuing.

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The Chinese Communist Party, for what it's worth, is as far as I see it, this nation's first, second, third, fourth and fifth largest foreign threats.

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If there is going to be any

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foreign actor that could prevent this 21st

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century from being an American century, much like it was the Soviet threat in the 20th century, it is the Chinese

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Communist threat this century. At the same time, we have always known, as Abraham Lincoln famously said in

[Josh Hammer]

his lyceum address of 1838. When he spoke at the tender age of 20 to 29 years old, Lincoln

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famously said that if America is ever

[Josh Hammer]

going to be destroyed, it will have to happen from within.

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And that takes us to yet the latest instantiation of what is now an unmistakable, clear and unambiguous years long, arguably decades long trend, a trend of lethal,

[Josh Hammer]

lethal political violence coming, I might add,

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from one side of the political aisle.

[Josh Hammer]

It happened yet again this Saturday evening. I was just coming back online from the Jewish Sabbath, which ended very shortly before my phone started going berserk based on what was happening in Washington D.C. so every year you have the White House Correspondent's Dinner. It is referred to by the whole Beltway crowd as nerd prom.

[Josh Hammer (continued commentary)]

This was a nerd prom, or was

[Josh Hammer]

supposed to be a nerd prom like none other, at least in the era of Donald Trump. Because for the very first time, Donald Trump was actually set to attend, and indeed he did attend the White House Correspondents Dinner, but it was disrupted very shortly after it began by shots being fired. And the individual in this case, who was in federal court in the nation's capital earlier today to face some of his federal charges, we will see if additional state charges, or I guess in this case, municipal charges will be brought as well.

[Josh Hammer (continued commentary)]

He is a 31 year old from

[Josh Hammer]

California by the name of Cole Thomas Allen. Now, the media are pretending like they do not know what motivated Mr. Allen to take what appears to have been a train, actually a very convolute train ride from California to Chicago to D.C.

[Josh Hammer (continued commentary)]

the media are pretending that they don't actually know what motivated Cole Thomas Allen. Barack Obama actually is doing the whole, we don't know the whole true motive

[Josh Hammer]

thing, much as he did after all sorts of horrific Islamist terror attacks all throughout the world, the Fort Hood massacre here in the United States and so forth. With all due respect to the nation's

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44th president, you might say that we don't know the motive of 9, 11

[Josh Hammer]

or October 7, 2023.

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And you might actually be a little

[Josh Hammer]

more serious than not knowing the motive of this particular individual trying to take Donald Trump's life. So he goes into the White House Correspondent's Dinner, he opens fire at a security checkpoint, which by the way, is the first glaring, glaring massive red flag here. How the heck did the States Secret Service not have a security perimeter going

[Josh Hammer (continued commentary)]

at least one or two blocks? The fact that you could just walk right into this hotel is just utterly astounding, utterly astounding with guns there.

[Josh Hammer]

And he Actually got a shot off. He actually hit one Secret Service agent in the chest. Thank God he was wearing a bulletproof vest. That agent is at, is at the hotel and he's recovering just fine. This individual, Cole Thomas Allen, referred to himself in a family group chat as

[Josh Hammer (continued commentary)]

a, quote, friendly family federal assassin. He was all over Blue Sky.

[Josh Hammer]

Blue sky is the left wing social media platform that is essentially just a

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hotbed of fetishized assassination porn.

[Josh Hammer]

Blue sky is a haven for domestic terrorism, domestic violence. At this point, what we actually have to do when it comes to potentially regulating things like, like Blue sky, there is, I think, a very interesting conversation, perhaps for another day. The individual in this case left behind a manifesto that, contra Barack Obama, reveals all that he planned to do in clearest terms possible.

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He says, quote, I am no longer

[Josh Hammer]

willing to permit a pedophile, rapist and traitor to coat my hands with his crimes. He's referring, of course, to Donald Trump, who is not a pedophile, who is not a rapist, and is certainly not a traitor. This is the common left wing view of the nation's 45th and 40 and 47th president. Again, he was retweeting a lot of this stuff, sharing a lot of it on Blue sky there. So if you were really kind of getting in there and trying to monitor this guy, if he was on your radar, you, you perhaps might have seen this coming. But for now, this is just the

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third consecutive year, actually.

[Josh Hammer]

The third consecutive year, 2024. Well, two in 2024, then one 2026, so the third in about two years. An insassist attempt on Donald Trump's life. Of course, everyone we now know is safe there. And they're saying that the White House Correspondent's Dinner is actually going to resume and that they will reconvene it within the next 30 days here. But the big story again, folks, is

[Josh Hammer (continued commentary)]

can this country actually endure, can this

[Josh Hammer]

country endure in the long run if this spate wing violence actually continues? And we're going to talk about that for most of today's show. But before we go on, I do want to share a quick word from our sponsor for today's show, which is Angel Studios. You know, I recently joined the Angel Guild myself when I checked out their new documentary, Death of Recess. It's about the education experience, especially in the childhood classroom, and how the teachers unions have totally co op this. You know, folks, I didn't really expect necessarily that this documentary would be quite as powerful as it was, but I am deeply, deeply pleased that I checked out Death of Recess. It is a powerful, powerful tale about how the NEA and other major national teachers unions have just totally co opted the childhood elementary school experience, including, frankly, something as rudimentary and prosaic as recess itself. Trust me, I come from a line of teacher, my mother, grandmother, great grandmother, aunt, they actually were all teachers. This documentary from Angel Studios, Death of Recess, is fundamentally a story about control, about control and ideological indoctrination. Ultimately, it shows why studios like Angel Studios are deeply, deeply important because the this is not the kind of thing that you would see from those typical run the mill Hollywood studios out in California detail about how institutions ultimately are all about self preservation, frankly. And in this case, that has the horrific side effects of undermining the very real needs of our children. So go to angel.com hammer to join the Angel Guild and watch Death of Recess right now if you care about kids. Trust me, folks, this is essential viewing angel.com Hammer Angel Studios is our sponsor for today's show. So predictably, the media reactions over the past couple of days have been one of a few things. They have been trying to just sh, shush it and wave it away and

[Josh Hammer (continued commentary)]

say that we condemn violence on all

[Josh Hammer]

sides, which is really not particularly actually convincing in the slightest. Actually, Hakeem Jeffries of all people has now been talking about how he condemns, how he condemns political violence. He was doing the whole Sunday talk show thing. They're talking about how, how he's ready to condemn all this violence.

[Josh Hammer (continued commentary)]

Dude, you literally just last week, Hakeem

[Josh Hammer]

Jeffries, the leader of the House Democrats,

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was just speaking a week ago about how it's time for maximum warfare against Donald Trump.

[Josh Hammer]

Let's go ahead and play this clip.

[Hakeem Jeffries]

Actually, we are in an era of maximum warfare everywhere, all the time.

[Josh Hammer (continued commentary)]

Okay, so does that sound like a

[Josh Hammer]

pro peace sort of thing? Again, Jeffries was all over the Sunday

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talk shows on Sunday saying, well, I

[Josh Hammer]

condemn violence on all sides.

[Josh Hammer (continued commentary)]

Well, maybe you shouldn't have called for maximum warfare. Maximum warfare? Oh man, who could possibly misinterpret maximum warfare? It's the same way that the Democrats for years and years and years and maybe they paused for like 24 hours after Thomas Matthew Crooks almost assassinated with

[Josh Hammer]

came within centimeters of killing Donald Trump

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in Butler, Pennsylvania in July 24. Maybe they stopped like a day or two.

[Josh Hammer]

Then they were back at it again.

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Then there was Ryan Routh, who was hiding in the bushes at Trump West

[Josh Hammer]

Palm Beach International Golf Course just a

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few months later on the precipice of the election there. So they Pause for a few hours

[Josh Hammer]

after these things happen and they go right back to where they were. And where were they?

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Donald Trump's a fascist.

[Josh Hammer]

He's a Nazi, he's a communist, he's

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Stalin, he's Hitler, he's this, he's that. He is an existential threat to the Constitution, to democracy. Actually, last I checked, the true existential threat to our democracy, as the Ms. Now crowd loves to refer to it. The actual existential threat comes from people who would attempt with their own hands to mow down and to murder the man who secured both the electoral college vote and the popular vote.

[Josh Hammer]

Kind of ironic how you purport to care about our democracy while simultaneously just

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ginning up, ginning up all the passions that lead crazy freaking people to try to do crazy freaking things, ultimately culminating in the attempted, or in the case

[Josh Hammer]

of my friend Charlie Kirk and others, the all two real assassinations of people on the political right.

[Josh Hammer (continued commentary)]

We saw this when it came to Luigi Mangione. That was less than two years ago.

[Josh Hammer]

He took down the United Healthcare CEO

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because he was really, really ticked off

[Josh Hammer]

at private health care.

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What do you see? You saw the left start this horrific dystopian spate of naming their babies Luigi after this killer, a cold blood assassin. There was something deeply, deeply, deeply wrong with the current leftist psyche.

[Josh Hammer]

I want to spend some time here on today's show getting into that more. This is going to be a thing that's not going to go away. Unfortunately, it is a big, big, big freaking problem.

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[Josh Hammer (continued commentary)]

So I am sick to my stomach

[Josh Hammer]

at this we condemn all size notion

[Josh Hammer (continued commentary)]

to state the obvious. Political violence is wrong, period. No matter who it is coming from. I feel almost infantile or juvenile having to actually say that because it's burying the lead, frankly, that this is almost exclusively a left wing political phenomenon.

[Josh Hammer]

Let's start just with Donald Trump himself. So Axios, of all publications Google funded, Axios actually had an interesting short little article talking not just about Thomas Matthew Crooks in Butler, Pennsylvania and Ryan Routh

[Josh Hammer (continued commentary)]

in West Palm Beach, Florida, but laying

[Josh Hammer]

out just the series of lesser attempts on Donald Trump's life, of course, the most recent just being two days ago Saturday evening in Washington D.C. from Cole Thomas Allen. So this, this story begins, according to Axios, is telling the tale at least as far back as June 2016, where you had a 20 year old British national who had a Trump campaign rally, tried to grab a police officer's gun, later telling agents they tried to kill Trump. September 2017, a man stole a forklift in North Dakota and aimed at the presidential motorcade trying to flip Trump's limousine and kill Trump. September 2020, a dual French Canadian citizen mailed Trump a letter containing a deadly ingredient if you sniff it. July 2024, we've covered this on the show. A Pakistani national was arrested. He was ultimately convicted of trying to assassinate Trump on behalf of the IRG Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. That's Iran's extraterritorial terrorist organization group. That man is actually currently sitting in a federal jail right now in New York City pending sentencing.

[Josh Hammer (continued commentary)]

And then just a few months ago,

[Josh Hammer]

in February of this year, you might recall that Secret Service killed a 21 year old who breached the security perimeter at Mar A Lago in Palm Beach, Florida, carrying a shotgun. This is a guy who actually drove down, I believe, from the state of North Carolina. So it's been happening against Trump for a very, very, very long time.

[Josh Hammer (continued commentary)]

But more generally speaking, it's not just about Trump, is it? I mentioned Luigi Mangione, someone who decided to kill the CEO of a private healthcare company because he had had some allegedly unfortunate incidents when it came to

[Josh Hammer]

private health insurance and therefore thought it

[Josh Hammer (continued commentary)]

was a great victory for social justice to murder a man who was a husband and a father. I mentioned in brief, the assassination of my friend Charlie Kirk, the age of 31 years old, also husband, also father, by a transgender ideologue who had a furry fetish.

[Josh Hammer]

And no, contra all the garbage conspiracy

[Josh Hammer (continued commentary)]

theories, this was the quintessential act of

[Josh Hammer]

left wing political violence.

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You can go back even further in 2012.

[Josh Hammer]

Speaking of the Southern Poverty Law center, they were in the news last week, the Southern Poverty Law Center. They've called me a hateful person.

[Josh Hammer (continued commentary)]

But they have this whole Hate Watch

[Josh Hammer]

thing where they smear a lot of

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mainstream conservative organizations as hateful organizations.

[Josh Hammer]

They actually put Charlie's own Turning Point USA on their Hate Watch matrix fairly shortly, about a year or two prior to his untimely and tragic assassination.

[Josh Hammer (continued commentary)]

So back in 2012, a shooter by

[Josh Hammer]

the name of Floyd Lee Corkins actually drove into Washington D.C. from Virginia and tried to shoot up the Family Research Council, a socially conservative organization there headed up by Tony Perkins. They do great work.

[Josh Hammer (continued commentary)]

Corkins tried to kill everyone at the FRC because he had been told by

[Josh Hammer]

the Southern Poverty Law center that the FRC was a hate group.

[Josh Hammer (continued commentary)]

Just a few Years later, in 2017, in June of that year, a left wing MSNBC aficionado by the name of James Hodgkinson drove to the Republican Congressional baseball team's practice field.

[Josh Hammer]

You will recall he shot up a lot of people, most tragically including Steve

[Josh Hammer (continued commentary)]

Scalise, who suffered near fatal wounds. Thank God no one actually was killed there. He was a Bernie Bro, an MSNBC die hard viewer. In June 2022, after the leak of

[Josh Hammer]

the Dobbs abortion opinion, which is what we discussed just last week with Molly Hemingway with her new book alito. So in June 2022, after the leak

[Josh Hammer (continued commentary)]

of the Dobbs case, you had a

[Josh Hammer]

man by the name of Nicholas Rosky,

[Josh Hammer (continued commentary)]

a man, by the way, who now in current litigation, following this, this whole

[Josh Hammer]

horrific attempted assassination, is now identifying as transgender, Apparently, Rosky is now identifying as a woman, actually in current litigation.

[Josh Hammer (continued commentary)]

Make of that what you will.

[Josh Hammer]

And we actually make a lot of it.

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Rosky flew from California to Maryland, which

[Josh Hammer]

is where Brett Kavanaugh is. Kavanaugh is part of the Dobbs majority. And Rosky had a gun, a zip tie, a burglary kit was trying to

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break into Kavanaugh's home and to kill the justice.

[Josh Hammer]

Speaking of transgender violence, you had the shooting of the Covenant School, the Christian school in Nashville, Tennessee, by a transgender individual. The shooting at the Church of Minnesota last year, transgender individual.

[Josh Hammer (continued commentary)]

On and on and on and on we go. The notion that political violence is equally

[Josh Hammer]

spread across the spectrum is garbage, is

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flaming, flaming hot garbage, and you should

[Josh Hammer]

not agree with it for a second.

[Josh Hammer (continued commentary)]

Some of their slogans actually even give away the game. The entire slogan of so called globalize the intifada.

[Josh Hammer]

Well, when you had a Marxist from

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Chicago who murdered two staffers of the

[Josh Hammer]

Israeli embassy in Washington, D.C. last May,

[Josh Hammer (continued commentary)]

that was what globalizing intifada looks like in action. They have murderous sayings. They have murderous euphemisms. They have a deeply murderous darling of their entire podcast ecosystem, this utter piece

[Josh Hammer]

of garbage by the name of Hasan Piker, a man that we have discussed on this show numerous times of late.

[Josh Hammer (continued commentary)]

The same Hasan Piker who infamously said

[Josh Hammer]

that America deserved 9, 11.

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The same Assam Piker who says that

[Josh Hammer]

the collapse of the Soviet Union was

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one of the greatest catastrophes of the 20th century.

[Josh Hammer]

The same Hasan Piker, who says that

[Josh Hammer (continued commentary)]

he would take Hamas over Israel a

[Josh Hammer]

thousand times out of a thousand.

[Josh Hammer (continued commentary)]

The same Hassan Piker who has called for the murder of my senator here

[Josh Hammer]

in Florida, Rick Scott, who has called for the murder, yes, of Donald Trump

[Josh Hammer (continued commentary)]

himself, and who has a long and long and long sordid history of calling for open political violence in this country. What did you guys think was going to happen? Hasan Piker, by the way, is not, is not some far out there figure anymore. Maybe he was actually in the Overton

[Josh Hammer]

window of the Democratic Party circa 2015, 2016.

[Josh Hammer (continued commentary)]

Not anymore. this point, Democratic Party is hard at sometimes to view as anything other than

[Josh Hammer]

a domestic terrorist organization, or at least a domestic terrorist breeding ground.

[Josh Hammer (continued commentary)]

How else can you make any sense at all of people who not long

[Josh Hammer]

ago would have viewed themselves and considered themselves as so called moderates?

[Josh Hammer (continued commentary)]

People like Ro Kahana, the Democratic congressman

[Josh Hammer]

from the Silicon Valley area, someone who has had all sorts of meetings with the CEOs, the big tech titans there,

[Josh Hammer (continued commentary)]

A guy who once talked a little

[Josh Hammer]

bit about capitalism and free markets.

[Josh Hammer (continued commentary)]

How can you then explain that guy now saying that he has no compunction, no qualms about appearing with Hasan Piker, an actual communist, an actual communist revolutionary. The data on this don't lie.

[Josh Hammer]

25% of liberal people, according to a poll that I was just Viewing this morning, 25% of self described very liberal people, according to a recent poll, say that political violence can, quote, sometimes be justified. Among very conservative people, it's 3%.

[Josh Hammer (continued commentary)]

So it's over eight times as more

[Josh Hammer]

prevalent a sentiment on the far left than the far right. And by the way, on the far right, it's obviously horrendous, horrific and wrong. You should not ever, ever, ever believe these things. But the point is, on the far left, it is eight times more pervasive than on the far right.

[Josh Hammer (continued commentary)]

I remember a poll just last summer

[Josh Hammer]

I saw where the percentage of students at Harvard University, arguably our single most famous institution, the percentage of Harvard students who said the political violence can ever

[Josh Hammer (continued commentary)]

be justified is between 30 and 35%, roughly a third, for that matter. America's most elite institutions of higher education seem to have a galling, galling political violence problem, more perhaps than any other. How can we ignore the fact that Luigi Mangione himself was a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, an Ivy League school. This guy Cole, Thomas Allen, the lunatic

[Josh Hammer]

who took multiple guns into the Washington Hilton and tried to kill Trump or some others per his manifesto, some others

[Josh Hammer (continued commentary)]

in Trump's cabinet, he was a graduate of Caltech, the California Institute of Technology. Now he was a black man, maybe the affirmative action DEI, whatever. Caltech and UPenn every single year are two of the top 10 top 15 universities in America. So America's most prestigious universities are not

[Josh Hammer]

necessarily producing people who will cure cancer. They're not necessarily producing people who will

[Josh Hammer (continued commentary)]

win Nobel prizes or get world peace

[Josh Hammer]

or this or that.

[Josh Hammer (continued commentary)]

Maybe they're doing a little bit of that. But increasingly it seems to us that they are really producing political assassins and

[Josh Hammer]

would be political assassins for that matter. Rob Henderson of the Manhattan Suit also cites another poll showing that Americans with graduate degrees so PhDs that are twice as likely to support political violence than the rest of Americans. Higher education is more brain rot and is producing an assassination culture that is increasingly ubiquitous on the left. It is a horrific, horrific scourge. We'll talk a little bit more about that and how to possibly, possibly tamp these flames down.

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[Josh Hammer]

So we're still talking about just this latest instance of an attempted assassination against Donald Trump. This latest instance of attempted left wing political violence. Frankly, not even attempted. Again, he shot a Secret Service agent in the chest. Thank God the the guy was wearing what seems to be a very effective bulletproof vest and he is recovering just fine. Could have been obviously so, so so much worse.

[Josh Hammer (continued commentary)]

But this again, if you take one

[Josh Hammer]

thing away from today's show, this notion

[Josh Hammer (continued commentary)]

that this is an all sides problem is garbage. It is flaming, stinking, blatant, demonstrable, empirically

[Josh Hammer]

verified garbage and you should not believe

[Josh Hammer (continued commentary)]

it for a second. It is an increasingly elite left wing problem. Again, before the break, I was talking

[Josh Hammer]

about how Rob Henderson, who is an excellent, excellent essayist, author and thinker over at the Manhattan Institute, Rob, was citing this new study showing that the percentage of those with PhDs, the most advanced degrees, think political violence can be justified roughly twice as often as the rest of Americans. I was talking about how just last summer there was this Harvard poll, roughly one third of Harvard students say political violence can sometimes be justified. Roughly 25% of those on the furthest left of the political spectrum in general think that political violence can sometimes be justified. Yet another poll that I recently saw courtesy of one of our favorite organizations on the show, ncri, the network Contagion Research Institute. They do tremendous work based out of New Jersey. NCRI had a study over the past couple of years as well showing get this, this study is actually from April 2025. According to NCRI, 56% of self identified

[Josh Hammer (continued commentary)]

left wing respondents, 56% of them over

[Josh Hammer]

half justified murdering Donald Trump said that this actually can be justified.

[Josh Hammer (continued commentary)]

I mean the mind just wants to explode. How is this real? And by the way, it's not just this little Hamas loving Chinese Communist party

[Josh Hammer]

loving Soviet Union during dog killing or at least dog fetishizing killing scum Hasan Piker.

[Josh Hammer (continued commentary)]

It's also the quote unquote more reputable members of the left wing media ecosystem. Jimmy Kimmel is getting it really hard

[Josh Hammer]

today and frankly could not happen to a more deserving target. Melania Trump is actually coming out really hard earlier today against Jimmy Kimmel, the epically failed and profoundly unfunny late night television host. And Jimmy Kimmel is getting it really

[Josh Hammer (continued commentary)]

bad because just a few days prior

[Josh Hammer]

to Cole Thomas Allen trying to shoot up the White House Correspondent's Dinner, Jimmy

[Josh Hammer (continued commentary)]

Kimmel was talking about how Melania Trump looks like an expectant widow. Go ahead and play this.

[Hakeem Jeffries]

Our first lady Melania is here. Look at Melania, so beautiful. Mrs. Trump, you have a glow like an expectant widow.

[Josh Hammer (continued commentary)]

Not funny dude, like deeply, deeply, deeply unfunny.

[Josh Hammer]

And abc, what are you doing exactly? ABC owned by the Walt Disney Company.

[Josh Hammer (continued commentary)]

What is the Walt Disney Company doing leaving this guy on the air? Remember there was a whole back and

[Josh Hammer]

forth about Jimmy Kimmel last year when it came to Brendan Carr of the fcc, who is the excellent chairman of the fcc. Jimmy Kimmel was briefly polled for a little time there after the assassination of Charlie Kirk. He cried and whined and played the victim card. ABC put him back on.

[Josh Hammer (continued commentary)]

Why? Like literally why? I'm not saying that he doesn't have

[Josh Hammer]

the first Amendment right to speak his garbage.

[Josh Hammer (continued commentary)]

This actually has nothing to do with

[Josh Hammer]

the Constitution at all and has to

[Josh Hammer (continued commentary)]

do with clicks and views and more than that, basic freaking decency. Hold aside that Jimmy Kimmel's ratings are garbage.

[Josh Hammer]

Hold aside the fact that he earns way more money than his profoundly mediocre late night career would otherwise merit on the actual merits themselves.

[Josh Hammer (continued commentary)]

But just think about the tenor of the country. Is this what you want to talk about? We just ran through that whole list

[Josh Hammer]

of all the assassination attempts on Donald

[Josh Hammer (continued commentary)]

Trump's life and this dude is joking about Melania Trump as an expectant widow. Well, another one of the horrific, horrific

[Josh Hammer]

images from this past Saturday evening, one that personally I will have stuck my mind for a very long time, in fact might be my number one mental image takeaway of this past Saturday evening is this image of Charlie's own widow, Erica. Erica Kirk, a widow who has been put through the wringer and persecuted by some of the worst people in the world.

[Josh Hammer (continued commentary)]

People like Candace Owens, about which Exodus

[Josh Hammer]

chapters 22, 23 have quite a bit to say about that. You can read that for yourself there. But I would not want to tempt God when it comes to persecuting and tormenting the widow. But there was this, there was this image, this video this past Saturday evening of Erica Kirk just crying hysterically saying, I just want to go home. Get me out of here.

[Josh Hammer (continued commentary)]

Ah, it's just so awful. It all just stinks.

[Josh Hammer]

It is all just so awful.

[Josh Hammer (continued commentary)]

And again, these people brought the Barack Obama's world, the pretending like we don't actually know what's going on here. It's freaking garbage. The guy was an adamant, zealous leftist.

[Josh Hammer]

Go ahead and check out his Blue sky account. Blue sky again, this assassination porn of

[Josh Hammer (continued commentary)]

a left wing social media account, as

[Josh Hammer]

Trump actually correctly pointed out to Norah O' Donnell on 60 Minutes on Sunday evening.

[Josh Hammer (continued commentary)]

Actually this individual was an attendee of things like these no Kings Day. So these no Kings Day protests. Yes.

[Josh Hammer]

Are producing would be assassins. Here was Donald Trump on with Norah O' Donnell on CBS's 60 Minutes program.

[Norah O'Donnell]

Well, he had a lot of anti Christian rhetoric. He had. He was part of a group called the Wide Awakes. He had attended a no Kings protest in California.

[Donald Trump]

No kings.

[Norah O'Donnell]

What did security tell you about what

[Donald Trump]

may have been his motives? The reason you have people like that is you have people doing no kings. I'm not a king. What I am. If I was a king, I wouldn't be dealing with you.

[Josh Hammer (continued commentary)]

So these lefty protests are producing would be assassins. What does it say about the state

[Josh Hammer]

of the country and what does it say about how we can possibly move on from here?

[Josh Hammer (continued commentary)]

The problem when it comes to left

[Josh Hammer]

wing political violence, as we've explained to you, when it comes to the history going back to 2012, Floyd Lee Corkins, 2017, James Hodgkinson, on and on and on to Donald Trump and Charlie Kirk and much, much more, this is a left wing problem.

[Josh Hammer (continued commentary)]

It is a lie that all sides are equally complicit in this.

[Josh Hammer]

The difference, by the way, is very easy to spot.

[Josh Hammer (continued commentary)]

When you do have a freakish right wing figure who attempts to engage in

[Josh Hammer]

or actually engages in an act of

[Josh Hammer (continued commentary)]

political violence, it is condemned across the spectrum. When it happens on the left, you

[Josh Hammer]

have people like the 44th president, Barack Obama, who say, I don't know, the

[Josh Hammer (continued commentary)]

true motive, impossible to say. Or you have this utter bozo Jamie Raskin say, what rhetoric, what rhetoric?

[Josh Hammer]

He was Jimmy Raskin on cnn.

[Norah O'Donnell]

And you have, as many of your fellow Democrats have used some heated rhetoric against the president. And do you think twice about that when something like this happens?

[Hakeem Jeffries]

But what rhetoric do you have in mind?

[Norah O'Donnell]

Just talking about some of the. The fact that he, you know, is terrible for this country and so on and so forth. I understand that that's your democratic right, but overall, yeah.

[Hakeem Jeffries]

Do you have a responsibility problem with Donald Trump at all? I mean, I talk about the policies of this administration, the authoritarianism like we saw on display in Minneapolis.

[Josh Hammer]

Authoritarianism.

[Josh Hammer (continued commentary)]

There you go. I mean, you're saying what rhetoric? And then you're literally calling him a tyrant, a Hitler, Stalin, a communist, a fascist, this, that, what if America is to be pulled back from the brink again, we will come back to where

[Josh Hammer]

we started this show today.

[Josh Hammer (continued commentary)]

This July 4th is the quarter millennium celebration of the founding of the greatest nation in the history of mankind. There is no threat greater than this. The pre melted Constitution very clearly speaks of we the people. Those three words indicate that this country

[Josh Hammer]

is founded upon consent of the governed,

[Josh Hammer (continued commentary)]

is the basis of republican self governance in the first place. But a people cannot be free. A people cannot be self governing when they put down their words, their pens, their keyboards, and instead they take up knives and firearms and rockets and other forms of weapons. When you put down the spoken and written word for the physical or the lethal weapon, you are essentially giving up

[Josh Hammer]

your right to engage in republican self governance.

[Josh Hammer (continued commentary)]

The only way this country endures is if we recover this sense of speaking

[Josh Hammer]

to our fellow citizens, debating in good faith and settling our differences in things

[Josh Hammer (continued commentary)]

like videos and op EDS and essays and books and ultimately, of course at the ballot box, which is where it's really, ultimately settled. In any republican form of government, we're not on a good trajectory. The left needs to look itself in

[Josh Hammer]

the mirror before it is too late and pull their own side back from a potentially fatal or catastrophic brink.

[Josh Hammer (continued commentary)]

Now, is that figure on the left here, is there such thing, frankly, as

[Josh Hammer]

a figure on the left who has the gravitas, who has the credibility across the entire left wing spectrum that could

[Josh Hammer (continued commentary)]

actually sit down, look in the camera and say, stop, this is wrong. I'm not sure that person exists. Frankly, the closest to that person who

[Josh Hammer]

has credibility to this day, across all the left, from the far left to the very, very, very, very few remaining quote unquote moderates, the closest person I have in mind would be Barack Hussein Obama himself. The problem is that Barack Obama, as we've discussed on the show, already has done the whole what's the true motive? Thing. So he's obviously not going to do it. But it's one of those issues, folks,

[Josh Hammer (continued commentary)]

that we on the right, there's only so much we can do. We call out our own side, fine. But this is a left wing problem and the left alone can clean up the fact that they are unwilling and unable to do so. Unfortunately though, that has the spillover effect

[Josh Hammer]

of threatening American Republican self governance for all of us.

[Josh Hammer (continued commentary)]

By the way, don't forget that all this is happening while There is a

[Josh Hammer]

73 and a half day now ongoing DHS partial government shutdown.

[Josh Hammer (continued commentary)]

You would think that a time like

[Josh Hammer]

this, where America is at war with Iran, where there are more assassination attempts on the President of the United States,

[Josh Hammer (continued commentary)]

you would probably like to think that maybe, maybe, just maybe, Democrats would be willing to finally come and fund the

[Josh Hammer]

Department of Homeland Security.

[Josh Hammer (continued commentary)]

Unfortunately, you'd be wrong because they have

[Josh Hammer]

shown no inclination to do that thus far. So bear that in mind all sorts of other glaring questions, as we said towards beginning of today's show, about the Secret Service. What the heck were they doing? What the heck were they doing here? How the heck do you not have

[Josh Hammer (continued commentary)]

a perimeter block two blocks there?

[Josh Hammer]

I know the hotel very well. I've walked by it a million times. There should be an extremely big security perimeter.

[Josh Hammer (continued commentary)]

I have never served in law enforcement and even I know that the notion

[Josh Hammer]

that you could get close to this building, a building that had the President,

[Josh Hammer (continued commentary)]

the Vice president, all sorts of cabinet officials, other dignitaries, that you could get in there with multiple guns is insane.

[Josh Hammer]

And also raises the additional point as

[Josh Hammer (continued commentary)]

to why Donald Trump's proposed East Wing White House ballroom is so deeply, deeply, deeply important. Because there you can actually have a profoundly secured perimeter.

[Josh Hammer]

Trust me, I was just at the White House most recently in December for

[Josh Hammer (continued commentary)]

the Hanukkah ceremony and security was quite intense, as it should be. So there's another reason why this East Wing ballroom absolutely should happen. Just over the past few days, this

[Josh Hammer]

garbage older judge in D.C. judge Leone,

[Josh Hammer (continued commentary)]

trying to block the East Wing ballroom.

[Josh Hammer]

As if Article 3 has anything to say about what is clearly a quintessential Article 2 presidential power issue. It's a whole separation of powers, insanity, frankly.

[Josh Hammer (continued commentary)]

But it raises the need for this ballroom.

[Josh Hammer]

Many Republicans are now hopping on this point. It's a very important one. I saw Tim Sheehy, who was the excellent public keep your eye on Tim Sheehy, the excellent rising star senator out from Big sky country out of Montana, Tim Sheehy saying that this week he will introduce and seek unanimous consent for legislation providing express approval for construction of a presidential ballroom. So good for Senator Sheehy, Senator John Fetterman, who remains one of the, one of the only Democrats who has not lost his mind, ironically, a man who got substantially smarter after having a stroke, which he had on the campaign trail a few years ago. John Fetterman saying that after witnessing what happened Saturday evening at the Washington Hilton, he's calling on fellow Democrats, quote, drop the tds, so drop the Trump derangement syndrome and build the White House ballroom for events exactly like these. So good for John Fetterman, frankly, though, not good for most of his fellow Democrats. We will see what happens from there. But if nothing else, nothing else, Secret

[Josh Hammer (continued commentary)]

Service has to drastically, drastically finally, finally

[Josh Hammer]

change their protocols going forward.

[Josh Hammer (continued commentary)]

It's insane that this happening and insane

[Josh Hammer]

do that and build this East Wing ballroom in the White House. So there are other things happening in the news. I know we spent most of today's show on this crucial topic and rightfully so, because it is one of truly, truly, truly existential importance for the endurance of the American Republic past its 250th anniversary anniversary into God willing, the next quarter of millennium as well. But there is a lot else happening in the news. So redistricting is actually very much, very much back in the news. Just this morning, the US Supreme Court lifted what a lower three judge district court panel had done to temporarily stop the redistricting efforts of Greg Abbott and Texas Republicans. So Texas is one of these states that kicked off this latest fairly rare, actually, fairly rare back and forth of

[Josh Hammer (continued commentary)]

mid decade, of mid decade redistricting.

[Josh Hammer]

Typically you redistrict closer to the decennial census every 10 years. The next census is coming up in 2030. Texas, upon Donald Trump urging Greg Abbott to do so, was one of the states that really started this, this whole back and forth. And the Supreme Court correctly, correctly ruling that there is no legal issue here because as we've explained on the show, these questions are fundamentally political questions for which there is really no justiciable Article 3, federal, legal or judicial issue. You did have the three libs, Sotomayor, Kagan and Jackson, who dissented from the Supreme Court's summary reversal. Not surprising. These people are just pure outcome oriented jurists there. They don't really care that these are political questions at their, at their core. They are just trying to really muck things up, frankly, for all of us. Texas is going to be able to get ahead with its redistricting, which is a really, really big deal, especially as Republicans try to keep the House come next January, January 2027. This is all happening in the context of the fact that California is redistricting. The crap, frankly, out of their heavily Democratic congressional delegation and also most recently the efforts in Virginia, which we just covered over the past week or so.

[Josh Hammer (continued commentary)]

But as we explained, the litigation of Virginia continues.

[Josh Hammer]

So the people of Virginia voted by a pretty narrow margin, about three points, 51.5 to 48 and a half points. They voted to redistrict Virginia to essentially give it a 10 to 1 Democrat majority in the 11 member congressional delegation.

[Josh Hammer (continued commentary)]

But as we explained to you on

[Josh Hammer]

the show, there are all sorts of very, very thorny constitutional issues, not federal constitutional issues, but constitutional issues when it comes to the Commonwealth of Virginia's state constitution, when it comes to the procedural irregularities, let's call them that Democrats allegedly and seems to us likely and really did not in fact follow when it comes to trying to actually get this referendum before the voters. So oral argument actually happened today, a totally packed day when it comes not just to the fallout of D.C. this weekend, but also to all these nationwide redistricting fights. So the Virginia Supreme Court had arguments literally this morning as part of this ongoing litigation as to the state constitutionality of the referendum efforts. And what I saw, a stimulus, I saw was that the Attorney General of Virginia. So that would be Jay Jones, the guy who fetishized about killing his political opponents, that absolute lunatic. So the Attorney General of Virginia was arguing before the Virginia Supreme Court and he said as part of this oral argument that those who vote early are, quote, not participating in an election, which is quite a statement. And that doesn't really pass the laugh test, frankly, I'm told. I wasn't able to actually listen to the oral argument, but I'm told that there were numerous skeptical justices there. So there's a real chance actually that this Virginia referendum actually does not go ahead and actually does not really take effect. We will update that for you in the coming days and coming weeks ahead there.

[Josh Hammer (continued commentary)]

But it would be way, way, way

[Josh Hammer]

too early, certainly for new members to try to run in these other districts there. Essentially, it's on pause right now and there's a decent chance that it's ultimately reversed and thrown out, which would be an amazing result if, as it seems to us, that the procedures were not properly followed in the first place. Finally, when it comes to redistricting, Governor Ron DeSantis, as we explained on the show, Florida has this new special legislative session this week. So it begins in earnest tomorrow on Tuesday. We'll go through this Friday up in Tallahassee, the state's capital. So for the first time this morning, Ron DeSantis unveiled what we predicted, what most people predicted would be his big issue for this special legislative session, which is his attempt to also redistrict Florida. So under this new map, under this new map, Florida, which has 28 congressional seats, according to the latest numbers, they're probably going to gain even more seats, frankly, when it comes to the 2030 census because of these broader population trends where you have these cold, terrible, overly taxed socialist communists, awful blue states losing people and these warm, tax friendly, business friendly states like Florida, Tennessee, Texas, Arizona, et cetera, that are gaining people. So of the 28 current seats that Florida has, according to Ron DeSantis new map, there were only four blue seats. So it would be a 24 to 4 Republican margin, which is pretty freaking amazing. It's hard to envision how any map can possibly, possibly pass any kind of muster that is greater than that. We will see ultimately if that passes, frankly, if DeSantis actually has the votes in the special session this week. So to paraphrase Mark Twain, the rumors of Republican loss of the House in January, so this November at the election, then next January, the rumors of the demise of Speaker Mike Johnson in favor of Minority Leader Mike Johnson, the rumors of his titular and professional demise might be premature, might be overstated. The redistricting fight is very much playing out in real time Again, Democrats could take one on the chin in Virginia there. It's going to be a close fight all the way till November. And we will be with you, of course, on this show, updating you on all these issues and more through November. That is our job. We hope that you enjoy when we do our job, folks, have a great rest of your evening. Josh Hammer signing off for now. We'll be right back. As always, tomorrow.