← The Josh Hammer Show
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- [00:01]
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- [00:30]
Josh Hammer
The United States continues to fight jihadists abroad, but what if the terrorist threat is increasingly not just abroad, but on our back door? Heck, it's actually among us. It is here. How do we uproot it? What do we do about it? That's the big question we addressed on today's show. I'm Josh Hatmer, and this is the Josh Hatmer show. So Marco Rubio is having quite a week. He commenced or announced his war on the ICC on the International Criminal Court with an op ed in the Wall Street Journal. We had Professor Gene Kontorowicz talk about that earlier this week on the show. The International Criminal Court is a rogues gallery of an institution based in the Hague, the Netherlands, which does not have jurisdiction over any country that does not sign the Rome Statute to bring it into a system. Notably, the United States is among them. We have never acceded to the icc. We never signed the Rome Statute. Therefore, the can well go ahead and go where the sun don't shine. That's what Marco Rubio is now trying to do. He's trying to bring in other nations to commence a full scale war to essentially try to eradicate the icc. But he also was active today as well, talking about a different kind of threat to the American homeland, to the American people and to the American way of life. And this was the threat of terrorism here on the home front. So we're going to get back into the Iran war. The Iran war is not going anywhere.
- [01:56]
Will Chamberlain
Really.
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Josh Hammer
It's not. President Trump will be addressing that, among other topics today in his speech to the American people. But it's one thing to focus on terrorists abroad. It's another thing to try to grapple with the fact that we are facing a huge terrorist problem here on the home front. Left wing terrorists are certainly a problem, but there are jihadis very much within our midst as well. So let's begin here. Marco Rubio was speaking this morning in a presentation to his colleagues, his underlings at the U.S. state Department. And here he was talking about how jihad's attacks are down, but it still is definitely a problem here on the home front here with Secretary Rubio.
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Marco Rubio
Jihadist attacks and plots in the United States are down by two thirds since ISIS peak. The number of people killed by jihadist terrorism in Europe dropped by roughly 97% from the year 2015 to the year 2024. In other words, to a very great extent our counterterrorism strategy has worked. The threat has not disappeared. Of course it will continue to exist, particularly so long as we tolerate immigration systems that imports these threats directly into our respective homelands. But this threat has been severely diminished. The world looks very different today because of it.
- [03:13]
Josh Hammer
And this notion that immigration plays a huge role in domestic jihadism, domestic terrorism, it should be obvious. The fact that it is not obvious to many people is. Well, it says a lot about those people and nothing about the axiomatic self evident point. I think back frequently to the 911 Commission, the Commission that came in a few years after the horrific Al Qaeda attacks of September 11, 2001. I think about the 911 Commission because they said that one of the clearest, most obvious things that Congress should bear in mind when it legislates in the area of immigration policy is that those who are not here cannot commit terrorist attacks against the American people. Think about the pilots on 911 itself, the Saudi nationals, Egyptian nationals, all the foreign nationals. Did they traverse through a cartel network across the Rio Grande Ghett here across the Mexican border? No, they were here for the overwhelming part on expired visas. Why were they granted visas in the first place? Well, it should be, should be obvious they should not be granted those visas. These are the kind of things that Rubio is getting at here when it comes to how immigration and jihadism go very much hand in hand. But the core of Rubio's address this morning to his colleagues at the USA Department as the backdrop that you see behind him as he's speaking makes clear is it is not just about jihadist terrorism. Rather, the threat right now is very, very much about the resurgence, the recrudescence, if you will, of a distinctly leftist type of political terrorism. Here was Mark Rubio speaking this morning about the summer of love of 2020, Antifa George Floyd and all of the horrific leftist political terrorism and political violence since then. Here was Secretary Rubio.
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Marco Rubio
So many people in positions of power have repeatedly dismissed acts of violence and even terrorism as legitimate forms of political expression, so long as they served a left wing cause. It is why during those George Floyd, so called George Floyd riots In the summer of 2020, as criminals and extremists burned and looted their way through America's great cities and nearly brought the country to its knees, city governments all across the country simply refused to prosecute the people conducting these acts of violence and terror. It is the reason for the now infamous image, maybe you all recall this, of a news anchor from a very prominent agency, a news anchor standing in the neighborhood consumed in flames. Meanwhile, the cryon on the bottom read that the protests were mostly peaceful. This was something worse than a double standard. Left wing violence was not just excused, it was treated as sacrosanct. A protected class unto itself. That era has to end.
- [06:07]
Josh Hammer
I think the funniest thing of that clip is that Rubio won't even name cnn, a certain prominent outlet. He won't even talk about this leftist bias addled media outlet. I just find that in a personal note very, very funny. But it's obviously correct. The Democratic Party and their backers, their supporters, the activist interest groups, they don't just condone this level of anarchy. They are often fanning the flames of it. Think about how Kamala Harris, around the time that she was being tapped by Joe Biden to be his vice presidential running mate, she said that she had donated or was in the process of donating for the the GoFundMe, the bailout fund for various Black Lives Matter insurrectionists who were arrested over the course of the summer of not so Love, after the death of the great martyr of our time, St. George Floyd, back in Minnesota in 20 and to this day you have Soros prosecutors in far too many of the nation's largest cities that say that we're not going to prosecute you, that say if you commit larceny theft up to call it $999, we're not going to prosecute you. Well, what message does that send? It says free game, free lunch in the Walmart, in the supermarket, wherever you want to go, up to X amount in this case, in this hypothetical $999. So the whole thing is awful. Leftists are creating an atmosphere of anarchy and indeed of political violence itself. More on that in just a second. For now, folks, I want to tell you a quick word about our sponsor for today's show, which is Angel Studios. You know, we spend a lot of time talking about what's gone wrong in modern culture, modern media, and frankly, the way American history is often distorted. And that's why I'm so generally excited about this brand new film that is now available everywhere courtesy of Angel Studios Young Washington. Young Washington is a wonderful film. I saw it back in May prior to its public release. And what makes this film different is that it actually respects the audience and respects the truth. This is the story of George Washington before he became the indispensable man, before the presidency, before victory. A young man shaped by hardship, failure and the unmistakable hand of providence guiding his path. And let's be honest, Hollywood almost never tells stories like this anymore. Young Washington is the big patriotic summer blockbuster that you have been waiting. So if you want to see it, you go ahead and check it out. But you really should join the Angel Guild for just $15 a month, folks. Go to angel.com hammer you'll get free tickets to Young WatchGen streaming access and you should go ahead to angel.com hammer join the Angel Guild $15 a month. Check out the new film Young Watch Gen. Angel Studios is our sponsor for today's show. So it's not just the two tier system of prosecution that has been proliferating and pervading the United States and really taking us to an ever lower low ever since the summer of 2020. Now you have the exaltation, the fetishization of political violence. You have these mini trends of these horrific, horrific human beings who are naming their children Luigi after a murderer, Luigi Mangione, who murdered Brian Thompson, the former healthcare CEO for United Healthcare. You have folks who are cheering on people like Tyler Robinson who murdered our friend Charlie Kirk. This is absolutely appalling, horrific stuff. This is the 250th year of the United States of America. One of our favorite quotes from the founding era is what Benjamin Franklin famously said when he exited the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia. He said to Elizabeth Powell, the local socialite, he said that what the great men the convention gave was a republic if you can keep it, two tier prosecution and above all, political violence. Not a good way to keep the republic. In fact, that is how republics die. Lincoln, in his lyceum address in 1838 in Springfield, Illinois famously said that the death of America, if it happens tragically, God forbid, will not happen from abroad. It won't happen from the jihadists or abroad. Al Qaeda can take down the Twin Towers. They will not kill America. Ultimately, what will kill us is the rot from within, turning on ourselves from within and glorifying violence and ultimately settling our differences. Not through the pen, not through the keyboard, not through word of mouth, not through colloquy, not through pamphleteering, any of the above, but through the sword and the bullet. That's how republic side But Rubio actually was not done there. He was talking about communism as well. Recall that Marc Rubio is the son of refugees from Cuba. This is a man who knows a thing or two about the recrudescence of communism on the activist left and within, frankly, the activism grassroots of the Democratic Party. So here was Marco Rubo speaking this morning as well at the Department of State about the threat of communism.
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Marco Rubio
It is the opposite. One of the criticisms you sometimes hear of communism, for example, is that it sounds good in theory, but it never works in practice. That's actually not true. Communism does not sound good in theory. The world it envisions for all of us is small, flat, gray, leveled of all exception, drained of all that is good and noble in the human soul. The world it envisions is a world without courage. A world without creativity or ambition. A world without heroes or glory or great causes to strive towards, without a world without miracles, without myths, without men who rise above the rest to do incredible and extraordinary things. And the world communism envisions is a world without God. For these architects of revolutionary violence, the towering achievement of our civilization, for them it's an unbearable humiliation. A reminder of what they cannot do and a reminder of what they cannot be. So they choose instead to destroy.
- [11:49]
Josh Hammer
The left has had this love affair with violence for a long time. The origins of modern leftism during the French Revolution are with the guillotine. Robespierre fundamentally thought that he could change man. Ultimately, he only changed his own beheading. The left has loved violence as a means to an end. That's what Saul Alinsky told us, isn't it? That the ends always justify the means. This is not incidental to their ideology. This is why Justice Clarence Thomas said in a speech in Texas in April that American constitutionalism or progressivism, choose one. They are mutually incompatible. You cannot have both. You cannot have it both ways. Personally, I am grateful to our Secretary of State, who knows a thing or two about these threats, for speaking up. God willing, the rest of the American people, and above all, those who are still able and willing to save the Democratic Party, God willing, they will listen as well. Folks are going to go to a quick break. We'll be right back with more on the other side.
- [12:44]
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- [13:15]
Josh Hammer
Welcome back. So the United States striking Iran for the fifth straight day that happened on Wednesday. So Centcom U.S. central Command putting out on X on Wednesday. The U.S. forces, quote, launched operations for a second wave of strikes today. Iran. These strikes are targeting Iranian military capabilities used to threaten vessels freely transiting through the Strait of Hormuz international Waterway. As we discussed with Lee Smith on yesterday's show, a lot of the current iteration of the Iran operation is centered around the Strait of Hormuz because that is a sine qua non. That is a necessary condition in order to have any resolution to any of the other myriad issues that currently are weighing on the United States as we think about what we want out of this Iran operation. In other words, you have to get the Strait of Hormuz issue right before you do anything else. That's the lowest rung. That is the lowest common denominator. There is no conversation to be had about Iran's ballistic missile threat or their nuclear threat. Perhaps above all, there's no conversation to be had about any of that unless we get this strait actually open. A lot of folks say Donald Trump closed the strait with this war. That's what they say. It's not true. If you go back to the pre February 28th, pre epic fury status quo ante, what was happening in December, January, February, the strait was absolutely still subject to Iranian piracy from the irgc, from Iran's conventional military. And guess what? They were doing it with no small degree of frequency. So getting the strait issue right is a bare, bare minimum. Now, there have been conversations, reports Barack Ravid at Axios, who is very, very well sourced within this administration for reasons that kind of baffle me because he is not particularly Trump's sympathetic journalist. But Barack Ravid reporting at Axios that Trump held a Situation Room meeting a couple days ago on Tuesday where he was, quote, discussing a massive offensive in Iran that will be wider in scope than the current strikes around the shoot of Hormuz. It appears, says Brockavi, that Trump is willing to escalate the war to cause enough damage that the regime will open the strait and accept Trump' nuclear demands. Well, we will see where, where this goes. We, we, we still are awaiting some sort of, of definitive clarity when it comes to the commander in chief as to what are the actual goals in the, in this operation. It has been my contention since day one that the president owed this to the American people. May maybe we'll get it with this primetime address today. I suppose we, we, we, we will see. But I would personally like to see a clear annunciation. Here is goal number one. Here is goal two, three, four, etc. And here's what we're going to do in order to achieve those goals. But as we all said in the show this week, you only get so many bites at the apple before you look like someone who ends up just crying wolf. Clearly, the MOU is done. So what it says about J.D. vance, well, we'll get to that in just a moment. But the MOU at this point is dunzo. Ceasefire. Dunzo. It's war again. Whether you love it or hate it or somewhere in the middle, it's war again. And now that it's war again for seemingly the second time, by the way, that's not just me. That is the formal Trump administration legal argument. So on July 10, less than a week ago, the president and his administration sent a formal letter to Congress initiating the 60 day clock under the War Powers Resolution, saying that there was a lack of war. Now we're back in a war of footings. That's actually their own legal argument that the war went away because there was a ceasefire. Now the war is back. But how many times can the war die and then come back before you start to lose credibility, before you start to lose your edge and your deterrence? So hopefully we really do end up finishing this job. By the way, a lot of these tensions that have been flaring up when it comes to the alleged ostensible role of our Israeli allies when it comes to this war, the propagandists, along the anti Semites, of course, as you know, say that the Jews, the Israelis, et cetera, insert your Jewish euphemism of choice, that they bamboozled, they duped, they walked President Trump into this conflict. The notion is deeply insulting, frankly, to the president of the United States. The notion that he does not make up his mind on these issues. There was an interesting vote in the US House yesterday introduced by one of the leading, shall we say, theorists of this conspiracy. That is Thomas Massie, who, praise be to God, will be out of a congressional seat come January 2027. Thomas Massie losing to former Navy SEAL Ed Gal Ryan in the closely watched primary a couple months ago in Kentucky's 4th congressional district. So Massey introduced a resolution to cut off all aid to Israel, period, full stop, end of story. He ends up being the only Republican, literally the only one to vote against this. Interestingly, half of House Democrats end up supporting this measure. More than half of those who showed up, a little under half the total because many didn't show or just voted president. But a lot of them, the total was 314 to 104. Again, 103. There's 104 votes against came from Democrats plus Thomas Massie. The interesting thing to note there is that if you look at who voted yes to vote no, the 16 most vulnerable house Democrats this fall, according to Cook Political Report, those who are in lean Republican districts, toss up or are very, very subtly favored. Out of those 16, only two voted to cut off all eight. 14 voted against him. Meaning that for those who are in a tight race, who are not in a crazy far left district in Brooklyn or San Francisco, whatever, they still see anti Israel as a losing political issue. That's a very interesting thing to bear in mind, I think. And on that note, we had the Vice President of the United States, J.D. vance, who is continuing his podcast tour of sorts right now, which ostensibly, it seems, is partially timed to his new book out about his religious journey. Ostensibly, it seems, is tied a little bit to his diplomacy that seems now to be deader than the dodo bird when it comes to his trying to secure this MOU that the President himself, the vice President's boss says is dead. And J.D. vance went to Austin, Texas to film an episode with Joe Rogan on the Joe Rogan Experience. Now, we're not gonna play the whole show for you, obviously, but there were some, shall we say, notable soundbites from the Vice President of the United States. He talked at one point about how Jeffrey Epstein was deeply connected to members of both American intelligence and Israeli intelligence. There is no clear evidence of this that I am aware of. This is a theory that's put out there by people who spend way too much time online and way too much time, particularly in some darker corners of the Internet, not entirely sure what vice president is feeding this. He also said, though, he also said that the efforts to show skepticism of his MoU, the Iran MoU, that it was all seemingly all orchestrated by the Israelis themselves. So let's go ahead and play this. Let me go ahead and unpack it. On the other side, here was Vice President Vance on the Joe Rogan Experience.
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J.D. Vance
But I definitely think you have seen this very discreet, extremely well funded campaign to try to derail the negotiation and try to derail the deal. And you know, there was again, there's this Time article that came out yesterday, a Friend sent it to me. It's, like, worth reading because it lists a bunch of people who have quite literally been paid by a former Trump campaign person who was himself paid by certain elements within the Israeli government. And those people are attacking me viciously for quite literally trying to accomplish the negotiation objective that the president set for the country. So what is their position?
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Marco Rubio
Like they're attacking you how?
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J.D. Vance
Oh, it's social media posts. It's, you know, they're leaking to reporters. They're attacking me obsessively, saying that we should not be negotiating with Iran. We should just keep the military campaign going indefinitely. And that is their explicit position. And coming after me saying that, you know, people have come after me and said that I'm influenced by Qatar, that I'm influenced by foreign governments, that, you know, I take my marching orders from Tucker Carlson and.
- [21:24]
Josh Hammer
Okay, so he's talking there about Brad Parscale, who works for Salem Media, which is our distribution partner here on the Josh Hammer Show. It's pretty loathsome stuff, frankly, accusing anyone of having bad faith in being duped by foreign actors or on the dole of foreign actors for showing skepticism of a deal that looked a lot like the Barack Obama nuclear deal. Actually, many blessers oppose it because, well, frankly, the MOU was awful and it totally stank. On the actual intelligence point, though Tom Cotton knows a thing or two about intelligence. Longstanding member of intelligence and Armed Services panels in the US Senate, Tom Cotton was on Fox News this morning directly addressing the intelligence point raised there by J.D. vance.
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Will Chamberlain
No, Dana, I'm not aware of any
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Josh Hammer
intelligence about a secret influence operation to try to change American public opinion on
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Will Chamberlain
negotiating under the memorandum of understanding.
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Josh Hammer
To the extent American public opinion has changed, I suspect it's because of what Donald Trump says, that Iran's leaders are revolutionary fanatics. They're scum, they're sick, they're evil.
- [22:28]
Will Chamberlain
And last week they started randomly shooting up ships and their neighbors. Again, these are not people that are serious about making a deal. They've never been serious about making a
- [22:36]
Josh Hammer
deal, and they haven't been. They have been for 47 years. The Vice president has just learned this the hard way. President Trump should consider the possibility that it looks like the vice president continues to be undermining his own plan of action when it comes to Iran. Is the vice president actually doing that intentionally or is it just happenstance? Inadvertently? I don't know. But they have to be on the same page. And ultimately, it's the commander in chief who calls the shots. It's Not a great look. And frankly, the notion that many of us were skeptical of the mlu, whatever our religious background, Jew, Christian, whatever, notion that a conservative who cried foul on a deal that looked a lot like the Barack Obama nuclear the notion that that act of crying foul simply meant that you were bought off and paid for is, frankly, utterly insane. And I find that nothing less than despicable. Folks, we're gonna have to go to a quick break now that we're gonna bring on my colleague Wilt Chamberlain to unpack all this. Much more on the other side. Stay with us. We're gonna bring on Wilt Cham. Welcome back. So, making his comically overdue first time appearance on the Josh Hammershot today is my good friend and colleague, Will Chamberlain. Will Chamberlain is my colleague at the Oracle 3 project where he is also senior counsel. He's also the vice president of External affairs at the Edmund Burke Foundation. You can follow him on X Will Chamberlain, where he gives his takes in prolific fashion. And Will joins us now. Will, there's a lot I want to get to in not so much time, so let's kind of just go right off the top. I want to begin with Todd Blanche. We talked a lot on yesterday's show about the case for Todd Blanche. We had Eric Weston, the Solicitor General of Iowa, come on to offer his thoughts from, from flyover country, so to speak, from red state America. We are big supporters of Todd Blanche at the Article 3 project. I think you and I individually are big supporters of him. What is the basic argument as to why Donald Trump has made a home run pick here for top Lynch?
- [24:23]
Will Chamberlain
Well, because actually the Department of Justice has been killing it. You know, people may be thinking things are going slowly, but we're winning cases left and right. At the Supreme Court, we've got like a 92% win rate. Crime is down massively across the country. Blanche has just been unbelievably aggressive on the immigration front. On lawfare, he's been a really, really, really good deputy attorney general and we'd want to keep that going, honestly. And I think as lawyers, we sort of, it's, you know, people expect like instant results, but just everybody, you know, who maybe is skeptical of Blanche should just recognize that the DOJ is not the Department of War. There are constraints on prosecutors, on how they have to conduct their affairs, how they have to prosecute people, how they have to dot every I and cross every T, because if they don't, then judges will throw out their cases. It's not like the Department of War we can just bomb people. So I think knowing what we know, I don't know where the Department of Justice really, you know, especially Blanche personally, could have done a lot better. I think, you know, the best critique of Bondi was sort of her kind of poor communications in relation to the Epstein stuff. But that didn't touch on Blanche. I thought he's done a great job on that and any number of other things.
- [25:30]
Josh Hammer
Yeah. And he did a great job at his confirmation hearing. I thought there was a possibility for maybe some feathers ruffled when it came to Josh Hawley perhaps asking tough questions on Maven Prestone. That seemed not to happen. John Cornyn was asking a slightly odd line of questioning, but I find it hard to believe that Cornyn will ultimately fall in line. Is there a world in which you think one or more Republican senators could actually not vote for Blanche, or do you think that they will all rally in favor of his nomination?
- [25:53]
Will Chamberlain
I think they'll have to all rally for him. I mean, they already voted for him before. I think the only objection they had was to the weaponization fund, which is defunct. And their arguments, you know, the Democrats arguments like, well, why wouldn't you submit a declaration of that effect? Well, there's a precedent that we don't let our cabinet members be forced to say things under oath to district court judges. We just don't do that like lower level attorneys do that. So I don't know what the problem would be, especially for people who already voted for Blanche. And I mean, if they're gonna pick a fight over a consent decree that doesn't make sense to enter into because we would get tossed on if a pristine. If they're gonna pick a fight over a weaponization fund that's dead like this. This is not the kind of thing that really will stand up to any kind of scrutiny. And I think John Thune and others will be able to push back against it.
- [26:37]
Josh Hammer
Wilt Chamberlain is, among other things, my colleague at the Oracle 3 project. You can check us out at oracle3project.org, follow Will onxillchamberlain Will, speaking of a different area of law enforcement, it's not just doj, it's also dhs. Markway Mullen seems to be in something of a bit of an implicit hot seat of sorts. So earlier this week, following a series of of deaths of illegal aliens from encounters with ICE agents, one in Texas, one in Maine, Markway Mullen came out and said that we should not be doing traffic stops when it comes to ice. Trying to, trying to get illegal aliens ultimately out of this country. And then President Trump came over the top pretty quickly after and said, no, actually, we are going to continue this. This was wrong. That seems to be a pretty, pretty firm rebuke of Secretary Mullen, who is very new into this job. It was just a few months ago that he replaced Kristi Noem. Is Mark Wayne Mullen short on time at dhs, you think?
- [27:29]
Will Chamberlain
I don't think so, honestly. I mean, I think, I mean, my suspicion, especially because you got to think about the transition from Mark Wayne from the Kristi Noem, Corey Lewandowski world was I suspect they wanted them, you know, Homan, too, all of them wanted them to do a more effective job, more quietly. So I think that perhaps Mark Wayne was thinking along the lines of, oh, we're making news again. I need to put a stop to this quickly and get a handle on it before it blows out of control. But his impulse in this instinct, in this instance was wrong. I mean, obviously we need to be doing these sort of stops. So I think, you know, President Trump, like, I mean, he didn't call him out by name, but he was like, no, we're. You need to keep doing those vehicle stops. And I think it's sort of a good reminder. I think it'll just help Mark Wayne do his job. I think, you know, I, I think that people have gotten on him. I think this, this was a bad communications moment and a bad instinct. But he seems like a guy who is not stubborn and will quickly understand, like, oh, actually, this is, this is the way things are going now.
- [28:24]
Josh Hammer
There's a huge amount of debate in general as to the political salience and the political benefits or lack thereof of the immigration issue for Republicans this November. I'm of the opinion here on the show, we are of the opinion that immigration continues to be a winning issue for Republicans. I think there are a lot of consultants who think that it is not that it continues to be a losing issue. Maybe the reality is actually somewhere in the middle. I'm not entirely sure. How do you see the politics of immigration going into this November election?
- [28:50]
Will Chamberlain
I mean, I think the politics of immigration are generally good for Republicans. I mean, President Trump ran on mass deportation and won a majority. I think most people like that idea. They don't. That said, most people, you know, even the Rogans of the world who are suddenly, like, on board with deportation, get kind of skittish about some stuff. And so you, you don't want to. I think that may have been the mistake. You don't want to rub it in their face, I think would be the way to think about it. Like, we don't want to rub the actual facts of immigration enforcement in people's faces. I think that'll, that'll alienate them somewhat. And I'm, and I'm sympathetic, too, to Susan Collins.
- [29:19]
Josh Hammer
Right.
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Will Chamberlain
We really want Susan Collins to keep that seat in Maine. And her judgment was, you know, the fact that this happened in Maine, she, like, she didn't want to be a big thing. And I'm sure she made a phone call to her former colleague Mark Wayne Mullen about this. But we can't, you know, you don't want to sacrifice the whole agenda on this fact. And one of the things I actually think should probably happen, honestly, like DHS should get on top of, even though we didn't we were going to make it as part of the reconciliation deal, which is body cameras. We should just put up body cameras on our ICE officers, because every time there's a video, it's almost always showing ICE officers acting reasonably and the perps acting unreasonably. And so the more video footage of that, the better.
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Josh Hammer
And this administration is running and operating. They are governing as the most transparent administration, really, in American history. When it comes to JFK files, Martin Luther King files, the UFO files. I mean, everything is transparency. So, but so body cams, it seems to me, fit very nicely into this overall ambiance, this recurring theme of transparency. Well, in our main title, I want to switch gears a little bit. So earlier in the show, we talked a little bit. You mentioned Joe Rogan. We talked a little bit about Vice President Vance on Joe Rogan yesterday. The Iran war continues to be a very hot topic. And it's difficult at times, will, to know, to try to make, try to suss out exactly what is happening, frankly, when it comes to the powers that be and what our goals are and how we are operating on those goals. There's also just this huge poop show, for lack of better term, when it comes to these tensions flaring up in various parts of the MAGA coalition. You and I have both been supporters of this operation. Neither of us really have wavered. What is going on here? Does the administration know what they're doing when it comes to this war, and how is that affecting the peripheral effects of the MAG coalition here on the home front?
- [31:00]
Will Chamberlain
I think they do. I think whatever the merits of the MoU at the time, clearly President Trump didn't see it as some really firm, overwhelming commitment, as he just demonstrated by Canceling the MOU and relaunching hostilities. So I think the fact that we're all bickering over it is sort of a big internal coalition mistake. We're all on the same team. If we're not. Tucker, where he's placed himself outside the tent and is furious about the whole decision to go to war in the first place. Like, this is all intra coalition bickering. And it's bickering over something that's a dead. A dead agreement anyway. So I don't. I think at the outset it's kind of silly. I think. I think JD and Brucewicz are being quite silly by saying that, like, the opposition to the MoU is rooted in like an Israeli influence operation. Like, maybe you can find one or two people who were who for that. Whom. That's true. But the bulk of the pro Israel advocates just thought it was weird and a bad deal at the time. And I mean, if you look at, you look back at why there's good reasons. At the same time, Randy Fine is like calling for Bruise's firing and won't vote for a rule. I think that's stupid too. Like, don't give ultimatums to the president about his team as a House member. And I think maybe he's mad about Bruise throwing lobbying accusations. This is all very stupid. And the bigger point is I feel like this is all sort of proxy skirmishing over the future. Vance Rubio spat for succession in the gop. And I think that's also futile and stupid because President Trump will pick his successor, period. Right. Like whatever jockeying everybody does now, like when President Trump says, I endorse JD Vance, JD Vance will be the nominee. If President Trump says, I endorse Marco Rubio, Marco Rubio will be the nominee. So I feel like of all the things to be fighting over internally right now in the run up to the midterms, this is just totally counterproductive and a waste of time, honestly. And I say that as somebody who is more sympathetic on this issue to the views of pro Israel and of the people who are pro Israel, people who are hawkish on Iran. I consider myself very hawkish on Iran. I think that. And the more I read about Iran, the more hawkish I get about it. I read stories about the hostage crisis and I feel like I'm reading history is just rhyming over and over again. You should do Jimmy Carter talking about how restrained he was being and why he wasn't getting credit for restraint. This is literally words out of his own mouth. So. But that said, I think take the volume down. That would be my general thesis. We're bickering over a debt agreement. That's not a productive use of any.
- [33:16]
Josh Hammer
Keep the volume down and focus on the real enemy. Because as I said at the outset of today's show, Marco Rubio giving this tremendous presentation at State this morning, how the real enemy is the Communist left here on the Home Fund. Great stuff as always from Wilt Chamberlain, folks. Follow him on Xill Chamberlain, my colleague at the Article3project, Article3project.org will first time on the show, hopefully not the last time. See you again soon, my friend.
- [33:35]
Will Chamberlain
Absolutely.
- [33:36]
Josh Hammer
Folks, I'm going to go to a quick break. We'll be right back with more on the other side. Welcome back. So final notes on the JD Vance Joe Rogan conversation, which we were just talking about with my colleague Will Chamberlain. Final note on that. It is notable that there are a lot of foreign influence operations happening in American politics. That's nothing new, by the way. That's been that's happened for decades and decades, decades, arguably centuries, arguably, going back really to American founding. But those influence operations are not coming necessarily from where you think they're coming. This hyper obsessive focus on the tiny country of Israel, in the vice president's telling, with his ally on the outside, Alex Brucewitz, coming after Salem Media again, which distributes this show, and its chief strategic officer, Brad Parscale, for taking a FARA contract in a totally independent capacity not related to Salem Media. Let me just say that head on. By the way, the notion that anyone, that anyone within the Salem family of shows takes marching orders on what to say about the issue of USS relations is insane. It is a lie, it is untrue, and frankly, it's disgusting. The folks who have been hosts on Salem for years, decades, share a certain basic worldview in common. That worldview is a pro Western civilization, anti barbarism, pro biblical inheritance worldview that's naturally going to lead you to support an ally like Israel and to oppose jihadist enemies like Iran. It's not rocket science how a lot of Salem hosts perhaps end up at a similar conclusion on this particular issue, but how this talking point went from the Tucker Carlson show and laundered all the way to the Vice President's conversation with Broken is frankly just baffling and wild. Again, there actually are influencer operations happening when it comes to foreign governments, but those operations are happening from places like Qatar, places like Russia. Candace Owens was just in Russia at an Alexander Dugan and Jason conference just a Few weeks ago, maybe, maybe, maybe the folks who are obsessing over allegedly nefarious Israeli influence, American politics, maybe, maybe, maybe they should look at actual influence happening from places like Qatar, Russia and oh, by the way, the big Dog itself. Yeah, that would be China, because China does it like none other. Need to remind you of Confucius Institutes, TikTok, back when the CCP controlled it. And on and on and on we go. Anyway, there are some other things I want to get to on today's show before we run out of time as well. Kathy Hochul in New York State became the first governor, the first governor to sign a full scale statewide moratorium on new data centers in the Empire State. Donald Trump, by the way, very opposed this. He came out through social and said, quote, one of the biggest driving forces in the future for jobs are data centers. They are big, strong, bold and money machines for the state in which they are built. Governor Kathy Hochul, for political reasons has terminated all data centers being built or to be built in New York State. So data, the data center issue is becoming a very hot one. It's really become a political football within the American right. It's dividing a lot of conservatives, a lot of Republicans, a lot, a lot more populous Republicans have come out swinging against, against data centers. Whether it comes to the land that they acquire or the energy that they consume, the water they consume, when it comes to prices for the electrical grid. There were definitely some reasonable concerns when it comes to the data center issue, for sure. I guess I would just say this. I have a lot of issues with AI. The data center issue specifically is not the number one thing that comes to mind. Now I say that because data centers are already here. If you're listening, watching this show, you're doing so presumably through the power of the Internet. The entirety of the Internet architecture is housed in the cloud. Where do you think the cloud is actually physically based? Oh yeah, that's in these data centers. For instance, aws, Amazon Web Services, which is Amazon's cloud component of the company, the largest web hosting cloud provider in the country based on market share, if I'm not mistaken. How is AWS powered data centers? So the whole AI thing is, strikes me as a little bit of a red herring. Yes, it will definitely increase data centers, but that, but that, that problem is already here. So it's one just of degree, not necessarily of, of yes or no binary choice in the first place. There are clearly other problems with AI. I am personally very concerned about the job loss aspect of AI. I know a Lot of friends, a lot of lawyers, frankly, who work in contract law, commercial litigation, insurance, real estate law, who genuinely think they will be just totally out of a job in the not so distant future. It's not just the law, the legal profession, a lot of other industries as well. So I definitely have populist concerns for sure, when it comes to job loss. And maybe above all, I think my single biggest concern when it comes to AI is the topic of ethics. We had Attorney General James Uthmeyer on the show just a few weeks ago. The Attorney General came back here on the show. So he commenced a lawsuit in early June, I believe it was June 1, against OpenAI and Sam Altman, where he alleged that ChatGPT is giving out all sorts of information to children, above all, vulnerable children, that it should not be giving out. For instance, what if you type into an AI interface? How do I cut myself? How do I harm myself? God forbid, how do I get a gun to try to commit harm to others or to myself? How do I sharpen the knife? Where would I aim the knife in order to inflict the most damage? You see where I'm going with this? There are real, real ethical concerns with AI, and right now, we're in the very early days of this technology. It's the wild, wild West. The notion that we should just go about this unimpeded, that there should be a regulation moratorium, is crazy. We obviously need prudent regulations on the AI industry. All technology ultimately must be harnessed and channeled towards that which is good for we, the people, for human flourishing above all. Really, as Aristotle would have put it, that's what we're here for. We're here for justice, human flourishing, and the common good. We're not here to pad the bottom line of Sam Altman or Elon Musk or anyone. We're here to help people, to build better human beings, moral creatures with faculties of reason. So, yes, technology must be regulated, whether that's pornography, adult websites, whether it's social media in general, or certainly whether it's AI. So these are the kind of concerns that really animate me. I would say more so than the data center issue, but I hear the skeptics on data centers. I again just choose to focus a little bit more on some of the other aspects of the AI problem. But for now, major state, New York State, massive, massive state, fourth largest state in the country based on population. New York State has now banned data centers. And whatever you may think about that in the merits, it's probably going to have an effect if nothing else on New Yorkers when it comes to employment. Because as Trump's, Trump's right, they definitely are going to be a major employer moving forward. Finally, an excellent new op ed came out this morning at the Federalist from frequent Josh Hymer show guests Rachel Bovard. This op ed is titled the Conservative Legal Movement Needs to Raise Its Standards. This is one of Rachel's postmortem analyses when it comes to the Trump vs Barbara case, the birthright citizenship case, the case where John Roberts, Amy Coney Barrett sided with the court's liberals to hold that this notion that you had all mass citizenship for popping a child on American soil, whether you are a birth tourist, whether you are an illegal alien or whatever, that this is guaranteed. She's calling for a thorough reassessment of the conservative legal movement. And Rachel could not possibly be more right Drum that I've been beating personally for a very, very, very long time now. There have been far, far, far too many high profile betrayals when it comes to the right's own judicial nominees. Part of the problem is simply judicial selection. You're not doing a good enough job but trying to find the most principled, most discerning, overall, most, most unapologetically conservative constitutional judges. Part of it is just that, nothing more, nothing less. Part of it is also, though, methodological. So Rachel has this quote from Justice Sam Alito. It's a great quote. Justice Same Alito wrote recently, quote, a conscientious judge has no choice but to do what the law requires. But we do not have an asinine or idiotic constitution. So an originalist judge should not cavalierly or happily embrace results that defy common sense. I absolutely love this. Common sense is a very, very, very underrated, underappreciated virtue. An underappreciated trait when it comes to politics and certainly when it comes to judging. If you think that your quote unquote principle is arriving at a conclusion whereby nine month pregnant Chinese birth tourists come here on a visa, stay at a five star hotel, pop out a baby and they get automatic citizenship, maybe, just maybe, consider the possibility utilizing that thing called common sense. Maybe consider the possibility that you might have analytically gone astray at some point over the course of your reasoning and your analysis. It's an old school sentiment, common sense, but frankly, we need a lot more of it in our law, in our politics, in our homes, in our communities and in our day to day lives. Folks, we're gonna have to leave it right there. You have a great rest of your evening. Josh Hammer signing off. You'll be right back, as always, tomorrow.