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- [00:00]
Advertisement Voice
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- [00:30]
Josh Hammer
When you go woke, as they say, you go broke. Now we have yet another example. The CEO of Cracker Barrel is out barely a year into her radical redesign of the family friendly Southern restaurant. But are we winning the war on woke for the long term and more generally, what can we do to lock in all those gains? We'll get into that and much more. I'm Josh Hammer and this is the Josh Hammer Show. So last year, Cracker Barrel, which if you have haven't been to it, and you should because it is an iconic American restaurant chain, they are a Southern based restaurant chain. They are known for, well, their literal Cracker Barrel, eponymous as the name of the restaurant chain would imply, they have that little fun peg game for all the children. And it's decked out as an old country store. It's really mostly affiliated culturally with the American South. It definitely has a spot when it comes to Americana and American lore more generally. So last year they brought in a CEO fresh off of her education at Harvard Business School and trying to do all the things that they teach you in Cambridge, Mass. When it comes to trying to put on your consultant's cap and trying to think what would be good, what would be good to appease and what would be popular with the faculty lounge at Harvard Business School. Not necessarily thinking about the fact that, well, it's a Cracker Barrel, okay? It's not an, it's not an Ivy League MBA program. It's a freaking Cracker Barrel. So they ditched the actual Cracker Barrel. They totally change the logo, and they started to redesign the actual restaurants themselves, or at least they rhetorically announced that they were planning to do so, to essentially take it out of this old vintage mid 20th century Southern kind of cultural aura. And before they even got those plans off the works, the stock price started to precipitously tumble. We covered it at great length on the show at the time last year. The broader context for this is interesting. We'll get to that in just a moment. At greater length. This comes on the heels of the Bud Light flop With the Dylan Mulvaney transgender ad a few years ago, Target having the so called tuck friendly transgender clothing items and so many other examples to count. But the big news for you this week is that the CEO here, Julie Fels Messino, is stepping down just one year after the absolutely disastrous rebrand. They ditched her Harvard Business School inspired consultant class rebrand, but it didn't do enough to actually recover the stock price. The stock price actually never recovered. And to this day, Cracker Barrel is still trading below what it was trading on before this wretched woman, Julie Felsmasino was brought in to oversee this, this company. So without further ado, let's go ahead and play this clip. This is a report from ABC's Good Morning America on how Julie Fels Messino is out after one year as CEO of Cracker Barrel.
- [03:15]
Julie Messino
Honestly, the feedback's been overwhelmingly positive that people like what we're doing. I'll give you another sound bite. I actually happened to be in Orlando last week with all of our managers. We bring them together once every other year. And the number one question that I got asked, Michael, was how can I get a remodel? When can I get a remodel? How do I get on the list? Oh, really? So because the feedback and the buzz is so good, not only from our customers, but from our team members, they want to work in a, in a wonderful restaurant. So we're doing everything for our guests and our team members.
- [03:45]
Josh Hammer
Julie Messino is wonderful to have you here.
- [03:47]
Julie Messino
Pleasure to be here.
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Josh Hammer
Thank you again answering those questions for all the Cracker Barrel fans out there is a lot of, a lot of great changes.
- [03:53]
Julie Messino
Thank you so much.
- [03:54]
Josh Hammer
All right.
- [03:54]
Julie Messino
Thank you.
- [03:55]
Josh Hammer
Robin, can I get in writing that
- [03:56]
Donald Trump
the peg game is going to stay okay?
- [03:59]
Julie Messino
So are the rocking chairs, fireplace, vint, vintage decor. It's all there.
- [04:03]
Narrator/Announcer
All right.
- [04:04]
Julie Messino
Okay.
- [04:04]
Josh Hammer
Because that would be a deal breaker. Okay. So you see there and those who can actually see, you can actually see the logo. That, that was Messina when she was announced as a new CEO last year. And she was like, ah, the people are loving these changes. But no, the people actually spoke up. And the people, turns out, freaking hated Julie Messino's envision changes, which is why Julie Messino is now out. The most telling thing about the entire Cracker Barrel rebrand was the following. If you go back to when she actually announced it, this Ivy League graduate actually went to New York City to announce this new policy for the National Restaurant Train. Ask yourself, how many Cracker Barrel restaurants are in New York City? After all this is not Knoxville, Tennessee or Birmingham, Alabama, or a place of that. This is New York freaking City. How many Cracker Barrels are in New York City? If you're going to announce a total rebrand for a restaurant chain that has a really loyal fan base, first, the first step might be to actually go to where the customers are. You think? I guess they didn't teach you that one in Harvard Business School, Ms. Messina. But anyway, she announces in New York City, where, to answer my own rhetorical question, the number of Cracker Barrel restaurants is precisely zero. There is not a single Cracker Barrel restaurant in New York City. Unbelievable. So this thing was absolutely doomed from the start. Hopefully the new CEO doesn't actually hate his customers. So the new CEO of Cracker Barrel is going to meet a man by the name of David Dinos. The chairman of the board of Cracker Barrel, Carl Berquist, put out a statement on Monday saying, quote, following a robust and thoughtful search process, we are pleased to welcome David Dino as Cracker Barrel's next CEO. He brings decades of experience across the restaurant and retail industries. Blah, blah, blah, a lot of corporate fodder. But we need to hope that this guy doesn't hate his customers. Because fundamentally, folks, when you hate your customers, you are not going to be a good place when it comes to the retail business. Who in the world could have possibly seen this one coming? It's just utterly remarkable that we've been having this conversation. There is another story that's happening also that we have not discussed here on this program yet either, and that involves Sophie Cunningham. So I don't really know anything whatsoever about women's basketball. I don't particularly care about women's athletics in general. I'd say women's tennis is maybe the only women's sport that I've actually enjoyed watching over the years. And even nowadays, I don't particularly care because women's tennis is totally dominated by a bunch of Eastern Europeans who I barely know their names. It was a little more fun back when Americans were dominating it. But anyway, I digress. Sophie Cunningham is a guard for the Indiana Fever in the wnba, which is laughably irrelevant despite the fact that people are trying to make this league relevant. But Sophie Cunningham is being branded as a MAGA Barbie and various other ridiculous slurs coming out there from the woke adel brained leftist sports media. Why, you might ask? Well, because Sophie Cunningham had the temerity, the chutzpah to come out and actually say that women's sports, including her own sport, of women's basketball should be for. Wait for it. Women. As in you actually have to have the chromosomal structure to compete with the gals. You can't go ahead and chop off Mr. Winky, wink down below the waist and get some estrogen injections and ditch the mustache and all the above and then call yourself a woman. No, you can't do that, says Sophie Cunningham. And for this she has just been torn and feathered by all of the usual suspects. Interestingly, Sophie Cunningham sang in some public statements, statements since this quote, unquote controversy started, that her politics actually are very much down the middle. She says that there are some issues where she aligns more with the left, more where she aligns more with the rights. And who can falter? Because this, after all, is an 80 to 20 issue. The polling reliably shows that the issue of transgender athletes is an 8020 issue. We just had a great ruling on this case, lest you forget, out of the United States Supreme Court, where the court said that Title 9, the statute does not preclude, does not prevent a state, in that case, Idaho and West Virginia, from segregating the basis of biological sex, women's and men's sport. After all, that was the entire raison d', etre, the entire purpose of Title 9 in the first place. The next possible thing for the courts to do would be to enshrine this as a matter of law under the equal protection clause of the Fourth Amendment. We're not there yet, but the cultural conversation is very much happening in the background. Cunningham has been tarred and fed by the left. She has been feeded and lauded by her various backers on the transgender skeptical side of civilizational sanity, people like the renowned author J.K. rowling over in the UK but she's really, at its core, just speaking common sense. These are issues that we are winning on when it comes to the woke culture war. And I want to talk a little bit more about just how we're doing and strategies to possibly lock in our gains, as well as how real the actual threat is from the other side. We'll do that in just a second, but I do want to tell you about our sponsor, today's show. Our sponsor is Angel Studios. We're living in a moment when conviction is too often treated as a liability and silence is rewarded over speaking the truth. That's one reason Charlie Kirk, American Martyr, is such an important documentary. At its core. This isn't a political story. It's the story of a man whose faith shaped his public life, whose courage came from his convictions and whose legacy challenges all of us to think more deeply about what it means to live faithfully. Charlie was a personal friend of mine and we spoke about these issues all the time. He believed that faith was something that you would not simply take with you to the house of worship, synagogue or church over the weekend. Rather, it would affect everything that you do on a day to day basis. And it certainly informs how we should engage with culture around us and how we should do so with conviction, humility and overall, a sense of purpose. Charlie Kirk's life raises a question every believer should wrestle with, namely, when our values are tested, will we stand firm? If you believe stories like this matter, you should go to angel.com/join the Angel Guild and watch Charlie Kirk, American Martyr and help bring more stories of faith, courage and conviction to audiences all around the world. Angel.com/join the Angel Guild Check out Charlie Kirk, American Martyr. You won't regret it. Angel Studios is a sponsor for today's show. So on pretty much every woke issue we seem to be winning. We have the upper hand when it comes to the culture. We have the upper hands when it comes to the polling. When it comes to all the relevant things by which you might assess and have a metric that one is winning or losing on immigration is slightly more complicated. But fundamentally when you ask questions as to deportation of criminal aliens and things like that, we are on the correct side. We on the side of sanity, we on the broader cultural and Americanist right more generally, the question is how do we actually lock in those gains? The problem with the federal government today is that the vast majority of pseudo quasi lawmaking, as this informed audience undoubtedly knows, is done simply via the stroke of a pen. It is done with executive orders. And I'm not trying to diminish the importance of executive orders. Trump has had a number of transformative executive orders, including his January 20, 2025 executive order on DEI, one of the most dynamic executive orders that I've ever seen in my adult lifetime. Essentially saying that so called dei, AKA the discrimination on basis of race actually violates the Civil Rights act of 1964, which it obviously and transparently does. However, in order to lock this stuff in, you need law. You need law and you need court rulings. The problem with executive order is that it is simply just a double edged sword. It is very, very easy to overturn executive orders that you don't like. President Trump did that a lot when it came to President Biden, correctly so and admirably so. But the next president in 2028. If it indeed is an ideological hostile, if God forbid, it is a Kamala Harris or a Gavin Newsom or oh, I truly shudder at that, an AOC or a Jasmine Crockett. The problem is they can just undo so much of these Trump executive orders. So we actually need Congress to act, which is one of the many reasons, along with the Safe America act, to be that Majority Leader John Thune is currently the single largest thorn in the side of conservatives in Washington, D.C. today. Really, his reluctance to actually act is hindering us every which way. It's not just save America, we need these, these woke issues codified into law when it comes to esg, so called environmental, social and governance in investing and all the various other woke maladies. Get this stuff codified in law and do so before Trump is out of power. Who the heck knows what's going to happen in the final two years? Who knows what will happen in 2028? Lock in those gains now. Because if we don't lock those in now, unfortunately, in 2028 and beyond, it really could be anyone's game. Folks are going to go to a quick commercial break. We'll be right back. Much more on the other side.
- [12:48]
Narrator/Announcer
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- [14:04]
Josh Hammer
welcome back. So Anthony Fauci is testifying this week in the United States Congress, and boy, is it going to be a bombshell hearing on Capitol Hill tomorrow. In fact, it's actually it's already been a bombshell week of headlines for Anthony Fauci and not for the better. Why is that? Well, because Senator Rand Paul, who is Anthony Fauci's single biggest enemy in the United States Senate, Rand Paul is literally licking his chops, getting ready to go up mano a mano versus Anthony Fauci. That's going to be some must watch C span viewing, dare I say tomorrow on Capitol Hill. We'll be sure to analyze it for you after it happens. But the reason that Fauci's already been in the news, because Rand Paul and his staff were able to divulge a lot of contents from Anthony Fauci's internal notes, internal memoranda, AKA his diary over the course of COVID So large swaths of the Anthony Fauci diary are now public and there's a lot to get to when it comes to the Anthony Fauci diary. Rand Paul, among other things that he has put out here, putting on his X feed on a Monday saying, quote, Dr. Fauci's own diary shows he knew the lab leak theory was credible from the very first first weeks of the pandemic. Ten of 12 scientists on his call believed deliberate insertion was possible. He wrote that the wet market theory was never the real source. Then he spent the next two years telling the American people the opposite and smearing anyone who disagreed. As a conspiracy theorist, that is the definition, Rand Paul says of a cover up. And so it is. So it absolutely is. There is very little in the way of possibly contradicting what Senator Paul said there in that statement. There's a lot else to get to in this diary as well. Frankly, it's difficult to know even where we begin. We're not going to attempt to cover it all on today's show. The overall picture that one gets from viewing the Rand Paul exposed Anthony Fauci diary is that of a public image obsessed government bureaucrat. Fauci repeatedly saying how, oh, the media loves me on the media. I'm the darling of the media. I can do no wrong in the eyes of the media. Abc, NBC, cbs, they all love me. I'm the king. I'm King Fauci. I'm paraphrasing, but you get the idea. Over and over and over again in his private text messages, his emails, et cetera and all his private communications, he is just celebrating the fact that the leftist media love this dude. But he also has a really thin ego because there's other parts of the Anthony Fauci diary that show that he is lashing out at various of his critics. For instance, my good friend Steve Dace of Blaze Media, who was a vociferous critic, to his great credit, Steve's credit, of Fauci since essentially day one. Steve, actually, and his producer, Todd Urzman, wrote a whole book about this. Fauci is complaining about their book. He's complaining about Steve calling, calling him misinformed and this and that. So he actually had a very thin skin. That's not how a government bureaucrat is supposed to respond, especially one who is given this much incredible power, the de facto power in an emergency setting, to advise the president. And there was a period there at the beginning of the pandemic where Trump basically just bend over backwards to Fauci, unfortunately, one of the reasons that he lost the election, in my judgment, in 2020, so Fauci could tell the president anything when it came to the lockdown, social distancing, masking, vaccinations, all the above. And he couldn't listen to any outside criticism because he thought that he was better than you. At a deeper, more profound level. This is actually one of the core problems with the modern Wilsonian administrative state, is it not? These bureaucrats, these people that were put there to be the, quote, unquote, experts, to be our superiors, to be our betters, all this intellectually downstream of the dramatic political philosophy. People like Hegel who said that the people can't be trusted. The people are a bunch of rubes. They need elites. They need people to rule them, people who are smarter, who are better informed. Fauci was the quintessential American bureaucrat unleashed, really. That's who he was. And again, I just can't wait to see him get utterly grilled tomorrow on Capitol Hill. It's gonna be must watch television. Donald Trump called in this morning to Fox and Friends, and among the things that he. That he was asked about during his interview was he was asked actually about these new Anthony Fauci diary revelations. Here's what President Trump had to say about Anthony Fauci. Let's go ahead and play that clip.
- [18:33]
Donald Trump
Well, yeah, because he wanted to close everything down and I didn't. Absolutely. But given what, you know, taken his advice, the whole country would have been closed down. And much of the country was open because I didn't close it down. What I did do, though, is with Operation Warp Speed is we got things done that nobody's ever seen in terms of all of the gear necessary. And we learned that the cupboards were bare. You know, when I took over, we had none of this. We didn't have the ventilators. I know. We didn't have anything. We ended up becoming the number one ventilator producer, and we were supplying ventilators to other countries by the time we got going. And we did a great job. No, but I was. I was not a believer because he said, everybody has to wear a mask. Then he said, don't wear a mask. You remember, it was a whole thing. Wear them, don't wear them. I said, what are you doing? You keep. He started off saying, don't wear them. Then he said, wear them. Then he said, don't wear them. And I lost a lot of respect for him during the period of time, but I inherited him. He's been there since the 1980s. I mean, he was a guy that was there that I inherited. And with time, I didn't mind him. I didn't find him to be bad, you know, personally, as a. As a person. But I didn't agree with what he was saying or what he was doing. And when Biden came in, he inherited him, and he gave him a tremendously high position, and then he gave him a pardon.
- [19:52]
Josh Hammer
And we'll get to that part in just a minute. But I think that Trump is downplaying a little bit for being very candid here. He's downplaying a little bit the extent to which Trump was very warm towards Fauci at the beginning of the pandemic that lasted for, well, at least for a few months. Based on my recollection of that particularly terrible year, the year of 2020, it's true that Donald Trump did ultimately sour a little bit more on Anthony Fauci, but it was too little, too late by then, and the election had broadly been lost due to America's botched response to the COVID pandemic. Anthony Fauci, to the extent that he. That he was able to sleep at all, but every waking moment of his life at that time. As America buckled down for its biggest pandemic response in about 100 years, since the Spanish flu of the. Of the early 20th century, every waking moment at that time for Fauci, she'd been dedicated to trying to figure out what was the best policy for K95 masking the best policy for social distancing. What is the actual mortality rate when it comes to COVID 19? Is it really just the same thing as influenza? Is it actually more deadly than influenza? Oh, wait. Does it actually really just affect those who have all sorts of comorbidities or preconditions or the elderly or the vulnerable when it comes to those who have a lung condition. Those are the kind of things that should have been keeping Anthony Fauci up at night. But the diary shows someone who. Yeah, that's there. But also he's covering up the lab leak. And on the other hand, he's obsessed with his ego. Obsessed. Now, I mentioned Joe Biden because Joe Biden did issue Anthony Fauci a sweeping pardon on his way out the door. One of the numerous loathsome, we might say, pardons for Biden on his way out the door. He's essentially Biden, the entirety of the Biden crime family as well. Rand Paul was sure to note, and correctly, he was sure to note, that if Fauci perjures himself tomorrow before the Senate, that's going to be a new crime. And so it is. We'll see how that goes. But Joe Biden is in the news as well this week. It's actually not really just for Anthony Fauci. Joe Biden is also in the news because there are new documents that have just been released, new release audio recordings of Joe Biden speaking to his Ghostwriter back in 2017, those same tapes that have made a lot of noise over the past few years. So new tapes released From Joe Biden's 2017 conversation with his ghostwriter Mark Zwanitzer, as part of ongoing litigation between the Heritage foundation and the Biden era doj, carried over into the Trump DOJ as a part of the ongoing settlement there is that we see new recordings from Biden in 2017. And at one point in these recordings, Joe Biden can be heard telling his ghostwriter in February 2017. So just a month after he left the Obama White House, he says, quote, I just found all the classified stuff downstairs. What? Now, recall that we ultimately saw physically that Biden had a lot of classified documents at the globalist boondoggle known as the Penn Biden Global center for Whatever studies in Washington, D.C. so ultimately, that was confirmed. But what a nugget to just drop, oh, hey, I found the class myself downstairs. You didn't return it. And then meanwhile, you prosecuted Donald Trump for it for allegedly doing the exact same thing. You raided your chief political rival's home and tried to put him in jail under the Espionage Act, a ridiculous World War I statute, for allegedly doing the same thing that you just admitted to your ghostwriter to do. What? What? So much to unpack here. We're gonna have to go to a quick commercial break. We're gonna get into this and so much more on the other side. It's a busy day, folks. You know, this will be right back with that and more.
- [23:48]
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Josh Hammer
Welcome back. So the first thing to know going back to before the break, we talk about Biden and his ghostwriter and the glaring hypocrisy. So that is the first thing to note. The first thing to note here is that the hypocrisy is simply off the charts unfathomable hypocrisy that Biden was bragging to the extent that he had not gone senile yet in 2017, he was bragging to his ghostwriter that he just stumbled upon the classified documents in his own home, presumably in Delaware. And then just a few years later, he's having his FBI, his defacto Gestapo, knock down the private residence of his chief political rival and then trying to prosecute him under the Espionage Act, a ridiculous law from World War I that most constitutional scholars think is constitutionally suspect or dubious, trying to throw Trump in jail on those grounds. So the hypocrisy is the first thing to note. But I want to try to tie these strands together. You have Anthony Fauci, COVID 19, one of the greatest scandals in American history, really. America's response to COVID 19 was an inversion, frankly, of the American founding, an inversion of empiricism, an inversion of so many things that we take seriously. A full on trusting in the capital s science trademark sign, a full on trusting of the Hegelian bureaucratic administrative elites. It was such a telling moment. The Patriots of 1776 never in a million years would have reacted that way. And that says a lot about how far America has fallen. Unfortunately, Fauci is the guy for whom we don't have accountability. Joe Biden's preemptive pardon on his way out the door is an attempt to preclude justice for Fauci. Of course, again, if he perjures himself tomorrow, you can get indictments or potentially you can get some sort of enterprising red state local prosecutor, a DA in some red county who could find some crime that was committed in that jurisdiction. So there's ways to skin a cat here. But the point is that we still don't have any kind of justice or accountability for Covid, do we?
- [26:59]
Donald Trump
Really?
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Josh Hammer
At all. Nothing. Absolutely nothing. It's shocking, frankly. It's absolutely shocking. On the other hand, getting us back to Joe Biden and his glaring hypocrisy, especially when it comes to the lawfare and the classified docs case against Trump, same thing. We don't have any justice or accountability. Nothing. Now, one of the reasons that I have been so supportive of Todd Blanche as Trump's new Attorney General is I think that Todd is better positioned than anyone to pursue and hopefully, God willing, get us justice for the lawfare. I'm not going to confidently predict and guarantee you that it's going to happen because it depends on 20 factors. The judge, the jury, the grand jury. There's too many variables here, but he's well positioned to pursue it. But it hasn't happened yet. There are multiple problems here. One is, first and foremost you have to have justice when things go wrong, otherwise they will just go wrong again. This is a basic, rudimentary and hopefully self evident and obvious point. You need justice to prevent something bad from happening again. But even more than that, there is the retributive moral argument that bad acts necessitate some sort of restitution or punishment. Another common sense thing, very much part of the biblical worldview. It's all over the Bible that when there was a wrong committed, there has to be some sort of restitution. It's been a foundational law of Western civilization for thousands and thousands of years. I for one would like to see some sort of restitution, some sort of penalty meted out for those who have committed such grievous wrongs. That is very much the case when it comes to Anthony Fauci and Covid and it's very much the case as well when it comes to the anti Trump lawfare committed by the Democrat lawfare complex under the auspices of Merrick Garland. And so called special counsel Jack Smith and above all President Joe Biden, who we now know courtesy of this Heritage foundation lawsuit, was doing the exact same freaking thing that a few years later he would turn around and prosecute his chief political rival for it is Stalinist on stilts. It's disgusting and we absolutely need justice for it. So lots more to get to in so little time. So we're gonna have to move on. So Lindsey Graham is being laid to rest today. So his body was laying in state at the rotunda at Capitol Hill. It was pretty moving ceremony this morning. A lot of these senators essentially forming a line, going and paying their final respects to their late colleague John Thune, who I'm obviously not a big fan of, was about as emotional as you can expect, I guess, for Jon Thune, which is not very emotional, but emotional ish, I guess. Let's say The Vice President, J.D. vance was there. Bibi Netanyahu, the prime Minister of Israel. He's in town meeting with Trump. He was there at that funeral. Lindsey Graham was, among many things, was a staunch supporter of us's relationship. Donald Trump was on fox's Friends this morning, as we already said. And this kept a conversation. So here was Donald Trump talking about the funeral for Senator Lindsey Graham. This is Donald Trump this morning on FOX Friends.
- [30:08]
Donald Trump
Well, he was a great guy. He was a great politician, actually. People don't understand. He really was. He was able to bring people together. If I needed a Democrat, he could usually produce that Democrat if I had to have him in an emergency. He was a great politician and a great gentleman. And I got along. You know, we started off a little bit on the rough side because he was campaigning in 2016 for the presidency. And we started a little bit rough, but then it got closer and closer and really ended up being a great friendship. And it's very hard. He's like, he really became like a member of the family in a sense. And he was just somebody that was very special. You don't have people like that.
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Josh Hammer
We said this on the show when Lindsey Graham passed away. But what Trump says there about him being a talented politician is undoubtedly accurate. Lindsey Graham survived what should have been his ideological expiration date a long time ago. So Lindsey Graham is really the last of the formidable Bush era Republicans, along I suppose, with John Thune and John Cornyn. But Lindsey Graham was really the archetype. He was really the personification of that, along with his now fellow Late friends John McCain and Joe Lieberman, who technically was not a Republican, but similar stripe you get the idea. So he was very talented politician. He really was. A lot of conservatives for a long time wanted to primary Lindsay Graham in South Carolina, yours truly among them. There were many efforts mounted. None of them were ultimately successful. So he was a very, very talented politician, if nothing else. And may his memory be a blessing, really. Lindsey Graham would love him or hate him. And I did not agree with him on every issue. Certainly he was far to my left when it comes to the issue of immigration. He was too ultra interventionist even for my foreign policy likings. I come from more of a nationalist, realist foreign policy camp. Lindsey Graham is a, is an itch scratching, hyper interventionist. Donald Trump joking that Lindsay never saw a war that he didn't want to get involved with. That's a little tongue in cheek, but it's more or less kind of sort of accurate. So I didn't agree with Lindsay on everything, but certainly he was a force overall for good when it came to such enduring goods as the Western civilizational inheritance. When it comes to standing for unborn human life, Lindsey Graham was a staunch defender of the unborn child in the womb. When it came to getting great Judges in Article 3 throughout the federal judiciary, he really was a tremendous, tremendous force for good. He also was a tremendous force for good when it came to the US Israel relationship. And as I mentioned, Netanyahu was actually at this funeral. He's meeting for Trump, Trump, say, for the eighth time, I believe, just in this second term, which is a lot. Things are getting a little testy at times, it seems, between Trump and Netanyahu. So back on Fox and Friends, Trump was asked about Netanyahu, who, it was reported, brought the Pickaxe Mountain file to Trump's desk this morning, talking about the new potential site for more US Indoor Israeli bombing when it comes to the Iran nuclear program. And Trump did not respond necessarily favorably to that. So here was Trump this morning again on Fox and Friends.
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Donald Trump
Well, I don't need Bibi to tell me that. Bibi's telling me that because he wants me to stay involved. I mean, I don't necessarily. We have the finest because of Space Force. We have the greatest cameras in the world focused. We know exactly what's going on. But no, I heard Bibi announce that. I said, why don't you just tell it to me? Why do you have to announce it to the world? I know exactly what's going on at Pickax. It's not a big problem. We took out their nuclear sites and we'll have to take out Pickaxe. If we don't make a deal, we don't make a deal. We'll take it out very easily.
- [33:45]
Josh Hammer
So Pickaxe is the last remaining major nuclear enrichment facility that has not been hit in some capacity by the US and or Israeli militaries. The US did severe damage to Ford out East Fahan and one other major facility last June during Operation Midnight Hammer. Pickaxe Mountain still remains. Unfortunately, at this point, I have to conclude by saying that no one really takes Trump's threats at this point super seriously, saying that we're going to go back to this massive bombing, including of a nuclear facility under the mountain, buried after this back and forth for months now. I'm not sure does anyone take this seriously? It comes across, I hate to say it, as a lot of bark and limited bite. Not no bite, but limited bite. How that plays out on the world stage, especially when it comes to the Russia, Ukraine theater, China, Taiwan, elsewhere, is a question that we remain unsure of the answer for. But there is an easier way to do this. And that, Mr. President, is still to finish the freaking job. Folks are going to go to one final break. We'll be right back with more on the other side.
- [34:46]
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- [35:49]
Josh Hammer
Welcome back. So Benjamin Netanyahu, not the only foreign leader in D.C. today, not the only foreign leader meeting with Trump today. Actually a jam packed day in the Oval Office because Netanyahu met with Trump prior, prior to, I believe it was prior or just after the Lindsey Graham funeral. And then later on today, Donald Trump met with Volodymyr Zelensky, the head of Ukraine. So two countries that had been involved in wars for some years now, their leaders were in D.C. to meet with President Trump today. Now, the timing for the Zelenskyy conversation with Trump is actually fascinating because we haven't really discussed this yet on the show. Laura Loomer, who is one of the most well known MAGA enforcers, you might say, I know Laura, in a personal capacity. Laura Loomer just got back from Ukraine. Laura Loomer was, was over there. She interviewed Zelensky. She also went to the, one of the largest synagogues in Ukraine and she was posting all these photos and videos. And it's fascinating because Laura Loomer for, for some years now has been, has been a skeptic of the war in Ukraine. And she basically said that Ukraine are a bunch of Nazis talking a lot of about the, the Azov Brigades, which is this branch of the, of the Ukrainian military that has a logo that looks suspiciously like the ss, the assassination squad from the Nazis. And it's true, going back to World War II, if you want to go back that far, that Ukraine was among the most Nazi infested parts of all of Europe. Ukrainians, most Jews will tell you, were among the most brutal in the entire war. The anecdotal thing that a lot of Jews hear is that Ukrainians and the Lithuanians, if anything, were the most savage and most brutal of anyone there on the European continent during the Nazi occupation. So Laura went to Ukraine to try to change her perspective and she came back and essentially she was fully converted when it came to the Ukrainian cause singing their praises. How will that affect Donald Trump? Trump has been for years a little bit all over the map. Some days he's more pro Zelensky, some days he's more pro Putin. Our stance here on the show is essentially as follows. Vladimir Putin is a horrible human being. He is a thug and he is a tyrant. And he opposes the American national interest in every which way, really. Zelenskyy claims he has intelligence that he apparently showed Trump today showing that Russia was providing Iran with intelligence as to where American military bases were. It's entirely possible that Putin has American blood on his hands. When it comes to the recent deaths, maybe Russia provided that intelligence. Russia definitely works to destabilize our elections. They work to destabilize our alliances. They're a bad actor in every way that a bad actor can be a bad actor. When it comes to China, their great power there in the Eurasian, broader continental landmass, they're awful. That does not mean that Zelensky is a particularly great guy. Ukraine is a wildly corrupt country and I have no particular love for Zelensky. On the other hand, what I've said since day one, this conflict, is that it is better if Ukraine wins. In other words, if Ukraine remains a sovereign country, that is a better outcome for the United States than if Russia just gobbles it up or if they just take it as a de facto annexation, essentially govern it as a province, which is very similar to the relationship between Russia and Belarus today. Belarus is technically nominally independent, but it's really just Russia. So Alexander Lukashenko, the dictator in Belarus, is really just a puppet of the Kremlin. So interesting times. And it's very, it'll be very interesting to see how Trump's views of Zelensky and Ukraine will be shaped by Laura Loomer. Trump loves Laura Loomer. This is a very well known thing. Trump loves Laura Loomer. Apparently Laura is actually going to be at the White House in the next week or two to personally brief Donald Trump based on what she saw over in Ukraine. It's been reported by Politico and elsewhere that folks in the White House have paid very close attention to Laura Loomer's trip over to Ukraine when she came away with a very favorable pro Ukraine perspective. It's worth noting that one of the reasons I think Laura has warmed a little to the Ukrainian side and perhaps me to an extent as well, is not because Ukraine is so great, not because lens is so great. It's because Russia is just such a force for bad. And I think it's not been fully clear just how much of a force for anti Americanism they have been until just the past year or two. And let me clarify, for decades, decades, obviously we were in a cold war with the Russians, the Russians never stopping anti American. But the details of their infiltration of parts of the American rights I think have really only started to become fully exposed over the past couple of years. Alexander Dugin, who is the Rasputin for Putin, he is the talking head, kind of the quote unquote, intellectual people here actually care in some circles what this horribly anti American scoundrel has to say. Tucker Carlson, Candace Owens, these people listen to Alexander Dugan. Dugan has like a whole network of followers in the most idiotic parts of the so called right, the anti American, anti Western quote unquote, right. Dugan wants America to be dead, to collapse so that Russia takes over like as much as possible. That's his Explicit worldview. He says that very openly. So it's not that I'm pro Ukraine, and I don't even think it's that Laura Loomer is like, aggressively pro Ukraine, the greatest country ever. No, it's that Russia, Russia sucks. Russia is bad. Maybe, maybe, maybe there was a window for us to get closer to Russia in the post Berlin Wall years. If we had played our hand differently when it comes to NATO expansion, maybe. I've been speculating that for years. It's entirely possible. The point is that ship is sailed. There's no putting that genie back in a bottle. There's no going back and saying, NATO, don't go into Estonia and Latvia. No, ship totally sailed. And what's done is done. We can only chart our path forward from here. And our path forward, I think, means rooting for Ukrainian survival. At this point. I don't even know, frankly, what a possible end to that war looks like. I actually have no freaking clue. It is just an absolute mess. An absolute. A total mess with no end in sight. I barely even can conceive of what an end to this war would look like. It's very difficult, if not impossible, to think of what a viable off ramp would entail for the parties involved here. I hope it ends sooner than later because the death toll is just awful. Hundreds, hundreds of thousands of men combined. Ukraine, Russian dead. The country of Ukraine will take decades to recover, if ever, from this war. It's awful, awful, awful. I pray it ends. I just unfortunately do not know how that happens. I just don't. I hope that I'm wrong. Finally, I want to conclude with something a bit different. We've barely touched on the Mitch McConnell story. We talked about, about maybe one episode. Mitch McConnell has been MIA for about a month and a half now. And by mia, I mean that he has not been seen in the Capitol. He has not been casting any votes. He apparently is not responding to emails or anything. A couple of people have said that they have talked with him on the phone, including our colleague of Salem media, Scott Jennings, who's known Mitch McConnell through Kentucky circles for years now. And I'm obviously not casting any doubt on that. I think that's. I'm sure that happened, but it's a little suspicious, isn't it? A couple weeks ago, you had a Republican congressman from Indiana, Marlon Stutzman, who actually went on television and said that he didn't even know whether Mitch McConnell was alive. A sitting congressman from Mitch McConnell's own political party didn't know whether the dude is alive. Mitch McConnell put out this video of him reading a newspaper in the hospital and says, you know, he's fine, just recovering. And then on Monday, we got this update. Breaking news tweets out fox news. Mitch McConnell is discharged from the hospital but is not cleared to leave the rehab facility. So what is going on here? He's now at the rehab facility. Well, he's well into his 80s. Typically, rehab is a very difficult thing to do when you are at that age. Listen, the people of Kentucky deserve a senator who is transparent about how he is doing and how he is serving the public. So Andy Beshear, a man for whom we have no love whatsoever, he is the governor of Kentucky and he is a Democrat and a rather partisan one at that. He has a new letter to Mitch McConnell where he says, quote, I am calling on you to directly and verbally address the people of Kentucky and provide proof of your capacity to serve or resign. Important events are happening in the country right now during your absence, et cetera, et cetera. I don't often say Andy Bashir is right, but Andy Bashir looks quite right to me on this one. I guess I would just say it. He is right. If you are serving the public, you need to tell your constituents how you're doing. Do you have a pulse? And most relevant and practical, when are you going to make it back to your job? When will you be joining committees and actually casting roll call votes on the floor? These things matter. They matter not just for Kentuckians, they matter for Americans, for John Thune who's trying to get a majority to pass various bills. I mean, where is Mitch McConnell? If he can get through November and make it back, fine. But we need to know. We need to know. And on that, again, I don't say that very often, but Andy Bashir is fundamentally right. Where is Mitch McConnell? Can he serve Kentucky? I think it's an open question and that should be very troubling to all of us that it is in fact such an open question. Folks, have a great rest of your evening. Josh Hammer signing off and we'll be right back.
- [45:42]
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