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- [00:00]
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- [00:30]
Josh Hammer
Donald Trump unveiling brand new information about the extent to which China has tried to subvert our election integrity. Trump making a huge push yet again for the Save America Act. Meanwhile, on the other hand, Democrats are trying to burn the system down. Trump wants security. Democrats, well, they just want anarchy. I'm Josh Hammer and this is the Josh Hammer show. So much more on Trump's address to the nation in just a little bit, a very hard push for the Save America Act. Is it actually going to happen? Is John Thune going to make this happen for the president and frankly for election integrity and really for we the people in general? We'll get to that in just a second. But you might have missed it because I don't think we talked about here on the show yet. The dsa, the Democratic Socialists of America came out with a brand new platform earlier this week. So the DSA is all the rage in the Democratic Party and, well, for pretty good reason because socialism is all the rage. And the DSA we has been around technically for over 40 years, since the early 1980s. They're having a moment. They've been having a moment really, at least since 2016 with Bernie Sanders is near knocking off Hillary Clinton. And then you had AOC and Ilhan Omar and the first wave of DSA or DSA adjacent congresspeople elected to the Congress in the 2018 midterm elections. But they're really, really, really having a moment now with their poster boy of all poster boys, Zoramdani, who, God help us, is the mayor of the nation's largest city. And Mamdani is now the keymaker in New York City, as we saw in the recent primaries where three of his DSA endorsed or DSA at minimum, adjacent DSA sympathetic nominees knocked off incumbents and or thousand favorites in various primaries in New York City, including folks like Darieliza Avila Chevalier, a true, true Marxist, anti Western civilization radical who marched in Times Square on October 8, 2023 to support quote, unquote, Palestinian rights, which really means she was supporting a US Designated foreign terrorist organization and the DSA more generally is taking over this party. Graham Plattner, who just very reluctantly bowed out of the Senate race in Maine after winning the nomination. Well, he was a DDSA guy. The DSA is winning Congressional primaries, not just on the coast. They actually just won a major primary out in Colorado. All the momentum in the Democratic side of the aisle is with the dsa. And there is very, very little, if anything, that the party establishment can do when it comes to Chuck Schumer, Hakeem Jeffries and so on to actually stop this. They are very close to parallel. So what does this actual new platform say? Well, their new platform calls for, among other things, eliminating the United States Senate, abolishing ICE in its entirety. Okay. They've been saying that for a while now. The explicit call to abolish the Senate is a relatively new one. Here's what they have on their website. They advocate for healthcare for all. So socialized medicine. Okay, that's nothing new. Housing for all. They call housing a human right. Okay? What could possibly go wrong when it comes to the housing market, when it comes to supply and demand and price mechanisms? They want to end mass incarceration and policing, police immunity, feminism for all. I don't even know what that means exactly. The Green New Deal has been part of their platform when it comes to foreign policy. End the US War machine, free Palestine, abolish aish, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. But they want to, in the Congress, abolish the Senate. They want to abolish the Electoral College. What do they propose instead of that? Well, they actually want to expand the House. They say the DSA said we want to expand the House of Representatives, implement proportional representation and rank choice voting. So of course they want ranked choice voting. Ranked choice voting is all the rage in progressive circles and in some very niche, boutique libertarian circles, mostly just liberal left wing circles, rank voting is garbage. Ranked voting is not a good way to decide elections. America, historically, we have done first past the post as our method of deciding elections. And that is the way that it should remain. But more generally speaking, I think we should just drill down a little bit here on this call to abolish the Senate and to abolish the Electoral College and. And maybe, just maybe, oh yeah, to also pat the Supreme Court, to add Puerto rico and Washington D.C. estates, all of this stuff, which would have the effect of subverting the Constitution and subverting those things called norms. Yes. How many times have we heard. How many times since Orange Man Donald Trump first came down the Gilded Escalator at Trump Tower in the summer of 2015 to announce his presidential run. The first one. How many times have we heard, oh, he is a huge threat to. To norms, to democratic norms, Republican norms, constitutional norms, norms this, norms that. You think that. Everyone is named Norman, Norman. They're obsessed with the idea of norms. Oh, Trump is violating the quote, unquote, independence of the Justice Department, which by the way, is constitutionally illiterate. There is no independence. They are subordinate to the president. That's the entire point of the executive branch. One person alone wields executive power. Oh, but Donald Trump is running roughshod over the judiciary. Never mind that it was Barack Hussein Obama who in 2012, in the lead up to the Supreme Court deciding the Obamacare decision, NFIV vs. Sebelius, it was Barack Obama who infamously said from a Rose Garden White House address that he didn't think the Supreme Court would take the unprecedented step. Unprecedented. Of overturning a duly enacted bill and legislation, which in that case was Obamacare. Which raises the obvious question as to whether or not Barack Obama, who lectured for 10 years at the University of Chicago Law School, whether or not he's actually familiar with Marbury vs Madison, the seminal 1803 case that established judicial review. That's neither here nor there for present purposes. The irony is rich. The irony is that the Orange man, the fascist Republicans, are burning down the system. They are burning down norms, they are violating the separation of powers. They are vitiating federalism and this and that. Because the way he tweets. Oh, the tweets. Meanwhile, they're calling to abolish a house of the legislature. And this is the heart and soul of the Democratic Party. All the polling indicates this, the Gallup, Pew polling, all the major pollsters indicate socialism is ascended. Socialism is not a plurality. It is a majority belief, a majority belief within self described Democrats. Socialism is way more popular than capitalism. You had Jared Polis, the governor in Colorado, one of the last few remaining kind of sort of moderates in the party, who earlier this week was saying that socialism would be really bad for Colorado. And he's right. It would be really bad everywhere, actually, not just Colorado. But he's not going to stop it because this is who they are. Now there's a primary going on in Michigan. It was a three way primary. You had the more centrist candidate, ish dropouts. Now you have the more established and picked Haley Stevens, a congresswoman trying to represent Michigan in the Senate, running against a true DSA Islamist radical, a true Much like Mamdani, a singular encapsulation of the noxious, toxic, parasitic Red Green alliance, this alliance of Marxists and Islamists who take down the West. I speak, of course, about Abdul El Saeed. And here was Joyless Joy Reid, who was booed, of course, off of Ms. Now for being overly anti American, anti Semitic. I don't even know that was possible at Ms. Now, but Jury managed to prove us all wrong. She's got her own show. You probably should not listen to it or watch because it stinks, but nonetheless, here was Joyless Jorid talking about how Abdul El Sayed wants to defund ICE and abolish the police. And this and then all this other crap there. This is DSI boyfriend. Here was Joelist Jor Reid talking about Abdul Said, you've been asked multiple times about defunding the police. But of course, as a senator, you would have nothing to do with local police, but you would be dealing with federal police. So would you vote to fund ICE any further, or do you think they should be defunded? ICE needs to be abolished. ICE is not about law enforcement.
- [08:52]
Max Meiseles
ICE is about normalizing paramilitary force on our streets. And the faster we understand that ICE sits in contraposition to the Constitution itself, the faster we actually get about to being smart about the way that we do immigration. ICE is not that ICE needs to be abolished.
- [09:07]
Josh Hammer
So just so we get a sense, first of all, as to who Abdel Abdul El Sayed is, this is a man who did not condemn the death of Ali Khamenei, the. The leader of the world's number one jihadist state, who has been trying to assassinate our president and many other Americans for 47 years. Now, Abdul Al Sai did not condemn Khamenei because he said to do so would be to offend some of his constituents, AKA Little Hezbollah, which is otherwise known as Dearborn, Michigan. So this is the dude who's calling to abolish ice, by the way, as a matter of law enforcement. He's literally wrong. He says ICE is not law enforcement. Yes, actually it is. It quite literally is. You know how I know that? It's in the freaking name ice. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. What does it mean? They're there to enforce immigration law. What these radicals actually want is for there not to be immigration law, for there not to be borderers at all. And as we already said, they don't want there to be the U.S. senate either, because they think that the U.S. senate is a relic of a patriarchal white supremacist era that, well, didn't really exist. That's a more complicated topic. But for now, let's drill down on the radicalism here. So here was Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, who was asked whether she agrees with the DSA calling to abolish the Senate. And she couldn't quite bring herself to say that she disagrees. Here was AOC on Fox News. The DSA co chair suggested that part of the platform may be abolishing the Senate. What are your views there? I mean, again, I'm not running for any larger office presently. That is, of course, a constitutional question and I think that that's a constitutional question. You support the Senate, right, though.
- [10:56]
Aura Advertiser
Pardon?
- [10:57]
Josh Hammer
You support the institution of the Senate itself, right? As part of the Constitution. We've all got our complaints. I don't support the filibuster. I don't support elements of this institution that we know, you know, were founded on.
- [11:10]
Max Meiseles
On.
- [11:12]
Josh Hammer
On Jim Crow. Ah, yes, because the filibuster was founded on Jim Crow. It's amazing how they managed to just to conveniently retcon and rewrite history like this, isn't it? AOC is going to run for president at some point in her lifetime. It may not be in 2028, although it may be in 2028. And she cannot bring herself to oppose abolishing the Senate. Kamala Harris just a couple months ago went on a viral podcast where she said in a clip that really made the rounds that she would be open to having a conversation about abolishing the Senate. The Electoral College. This is where they're at. They are anarchists. They are the logical Successors to the 19th, early 20th century American anarchist movement. They are going to burn it down. If they get power, that is all the more reason why they cannot and should not ever be trusted with the levers of power. You want to incrementally reform the system? Fine. Fantastic. That's why we have an amendment process. There's a big, big difference between prudential incremental prophylactic reform on the one hand and burning it all down on the latter. The latter is for Robespierre. That's for the Marxists and the leftists. That's for the dsa and in many cases, if not most cases. Now that's for this modern version of the Democratic Party, folks.
- [12:38]
Aura Advertiser
From Yahoo.
- [12:39]
Josh Hammer
To a quick break on this. I will talk about Donald Trump's speech to the nation. We'll be right back with more after this.
- [12:43]
Aura Advertiser
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- [13:14]
Josh Hammer
Welcome back. So Democrats want anarchy. What do Republicans want? What does President Trump want, perhaps more specifically? Well, he made that very, very clear in a nationally televised address on Thursday evening. We didn't know exactly what was going to come in this address. I thought perhaps personally that there might be some talk about the war in Iran, but we knew that it was going to be primarily about election integrity. Turned out that was actually the entirety of the speech. So President Trump unveiling, unveiling the extent for the first time, declassifying lots of documents that we had not previously had access to. About the extent to which China has acquired the voter files for hundreds of thousands of Americans unveiling how there are simultaneously hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens who are currently registered to vote as voters in American elections today. About the extent to which China has tried to subvert and to undermine and to meddle and tamper with our elections. A lot of information unveiled in this address to the nation on Thursday evening. Here was President Trump talking about the role that China has played in trying to sow discord in our elections in 2018, 2020, 20, 22 and beyond.
- [14:22]
Donald J. Trump
But it gets even worse. Raw intelligence obtained by the FBI in 2020, yet buried by rogue bureaucrats, stated that China's activities even included an attempt to manufacture illegal ballots for Joe Biden. Documents show that during this period, dozens of significant CIA and NSA reports about China's election targeting were kept out of the presidential briefing. These were briefings I would get almost every day. Everything was kept out that was of importance. One email among intelligence analysts admitted that they had, quote, deliberately massaged the presidential daily briefing to withhold information regarding Chinese activities related to the election. Another official inside the FBI wrote that she was running, quote, a shadow government, unquote, to keep intelligence about China's election meddling from becoming known and to keep it away from the honorable press. Other officials who witnessed such efforts perceive the motivations to be blatantly political.
- [15:35]
Josh Hammer
And here was more from the address on Thursday evening from President Donald J.
- [15:38]
Donald J. Trump
Trump together, Democrats, Republicans, Independents, everybody. And it should not be a partisan issue. It should cause to unite us, not to divide us. This should be a cause we should be united, not divided. In light of the brand new and irrefutable information I have revealed tonight, my administration is in the process of notifying the states whose election data was compromised by the People's Republic of China and many others. We will be working closely to mitigate any harm, and we're taking swift action to ensure that sensitive voter data is better protected so we can never be bought, we can never be hacked, and we can never watch a stolen election again.
- [16:28]
Josh Hammer
So it's actually fascinating, Trump saying he stole an election again, but he didn't actually drone on about the 2020 election. I think a lot of folks thought that he would try to bring up claims about voter fraud in Michigan and Georgia and the various other controversies from 2020 Arizona. I think a lot of folks thought that that would be part of this address, but he really steered clear of that. And the reason that he steered clear of that is because this is a very serious speech. I think a lot of folks thought that this would be Trump just unhinged ranting about 2020 and ballots and this and that. That. That's really not what this is. This is a president who was in a midterm election battle declassifying evidence, all ultimately trying to get us towards a major policy push for the Save America act, trying to secure the American franchise and secure America's election. But just real brief, before we get to that, a little bit more. From what we learned last night, the focus on China kind of surprised me. I thought this would be mostly about illegal aliens voting in elections, and there definitely was some of that. As I said, we now know that there are hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens combined on the voter rolls in America, which is outrageous. We know that blue states take a very long time to clear their voter rolls. We have ample evidence for believing that motor voter laws in blue states like California have contributed to the expansion of legal aliens on the rolls. And actually, at times, voting in elections, oftentimes outright abetted by Democratic leadership, people like Zorm Donna and people like Karen Bass in Los Angeles. But the folks in China definitely caught me a little bit, a little bit off guard. Donald Trump saying that China carried out, quote, what is believed to be the largest compromise of election data in history of 220 million US voter files snapped up, acquired by the Chinese Communist Party. That includes names, addresses, phone numbers, political party preferences, and other sensitive data. Wild stuff, frankly. And it does call into question a lot, frankly, about the extent to which we do have secure elections, the extent to which our own data is Secure more generally speaking, from the Chinese Communist Party, which is America's number one geopolitical foe, this entry. So immediately in response to this, Mark Wade Mullen, the Secretary of Homeland Security who's having a bit of a rough week, we discussed this a little bit on Thursday's show with Will Chamberlain. Mark Wade Mullen, who had a bit of a knee jerk reaction to these ice shootings in Maine and Texas and he decided to call off ice traffic stats. Trump then came over the top and said, that's actually dumb. We're not going to throw this bone. We're not going to capitulate to the open borders left. We actually are going to keep on doing the traffic stops. After all, it's a very prophylactic crime fighting tool. So Marco and Mullen having a bit of a rough week. So he came out around the same time that this speech's text was getting finalized and he said that DHS is going to now be working with the states to more thoroughly try to clean their voter rolls. So he says that DHS found thousands of non citizens on voter rolls in California and three other states and that they are going to be now applying increased pressure on the states like California to clean up those roles. Hopefully we go ahead and see a lot more of where that came from. One question that this focus on China raises that I was thinking about as watching the spe a lot of talk on China, China, China. And that's good. I'm a China hawk. I hate China. I think China is the number 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 biggest threat to America of the century. As we say often on the show. I can't freaking stand the Chinese Communist Party. They stand for evil and tyranny and they oppose us and want to subjugate and ultimately undermine and overthrow the American way of life and the American civilizational inheritance. No doubt about that. The question though is if you're going to devote this much time to to reeling against China in a national address, what are we going to do on China? How are we actually going to punish China? So that's one thing that I did not hear a whole lot about, that I would very much like to hear more about. This administration has been a little all over the map on the question of China. Trump's instincts are definitely, definitely, definitely anti Chinese Communist Party. No doubt about that. But on the other hand, they were very accommodating in the early days of this administration when it came to TikTok. On the other hand, they did allow for Nvidia to export some of our most advanced AI chips, some of our most advanced AI semiconductors to, you guessed it, China. Elon Musk himself, who was very involved with Doge and still very friendly with the administration, at least to an extent, very cozy with China. So are we serious about getting tough on China? I think the answer really should be yes. I would personally be curious to see what kind of details will be forthcoming on that front. But the big push last night from the president was on the Save America Act. That was how he concluded his speech. This is a bill that Trump considers to be his number one legislative priority. And seriously, who can possibly disagree with the Save America Act? Really, who in the right mind can disagree? Voter ID to vote, show your citizen to register for an election. The polling on this is overwhelming. This is not a 5050 issue. And yet Chuck Schumer doubling down, saying it's dead on arrival in the Senate. Well, as the case may be, the House Budget Committee just on Thursday on the House side advanced a new budget blueprint for Republicans that they claim is a filibuster proof bill that will actually pass the muster of the Senate parliamentarian, getting it to the abstruse nuances of parliamentary procedure and actually be deemed filibuster proof. So the House Budget Committee says that this will pass the parliamentarian test known as the birdbath, if you want kind of the inside baseball beltway lingo nomenclature. This is a bill focused on defense funding, farm aid and the Save America Act. So hopefully that thing actually makes it over to the Senate. And hopefully John Thune actually acts. That's the key part here. The majority leaders got to act. You know, we just heard AOC talking about the filibuster or relative Jim Crow. If Democrats take the Senate, does anyone doubt for a second they would abolish the filibuster? Really? Does anyone doubt that for a second? The notion that we should keep the filibuster is predicated upon mutual respect for the institution. They want to abolish the institution for God's sake. So I say try to get this done in a filibuster proof way. Apparently House Budget Committee has a new bill that they claim will pass the birdbath will actually pass the Senate Parliamentarian procedure. But if need truly be. If need truly be. And this Chinese data is all accurate, which I'm sure it is. Yes, yes, this is something we should absolutely consider and likely just abolish filibuster in its entirety to do. Democrats, after all, will do it as soon as they retake power. Folks are going to Go to a quick break. Much more on the inside when we come back.
- [23:16]
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- [24:16]
Josh Hammer
So plenty happening on the global front as well. It is not just domestic news and we are still tracking very closely the situation with Iran. We have a great guest joining us today to talk about it. Today's guest is Max Meiseless. He's a research fellow at FDD foundation for Defense of Democracies, formerly worked at the US treasury, all around expert in illicit finance and terror finance. So, Max, welcome to the show. We really apprec you joining. I want to drill down a little bit on the question of sanctions, sanctions relief and just the broader question of the Iranian regime's coffers. So we are clearly now back in a war footing, obviously, as the images and the videos that we see. However, there was a ceasefire called back on April 8th and more recently we began this MoU negotiation period, about a month, give or take a go, with Iran. And there was media relief when it came to oil. Max, I've seen some estimates showing that at minimum $5 billion of money immediately flowed into the coffers of the regime from the lifting of sanctions on the oil. Can you just survey the landscape here? What kind of actual money has the regime already benefited from? Lifting of oil sanctions, lifting of frozen assets overseas and so forth.
- [25:29]
Max Meiseles
Yeah, it's good to be with you, Josh. It's hard to say exactly how much the regime may have benefited in terms of actually repatriated funds. Right. So money moving from accounts abroad over to the regime for to use and purchase Maybe dual use goods, materials for rearmament and the like. And so the reason why this is particularly difficult is because, well, one, the price of oil is fluctuating. Right. And so Iran's still offering discounts in a market where there's a very limited buyer pool. We don't have good insight into the actual price that purchasers of Iranian oil during this period of sanctions relief were ultimately paying. But frankly, the bigger question, I think, is that because of the terms of the authorization that the United States provided and later quickly revoked authorizing the sale of Iranian petroleum products, crude and petrochemical products, is that the terms of the license were not clear as to whether funds could be repatriated back to Iran for sales that essentially began prior to the authorization, but then would have been effectuated through delivery during the course of that authorization period. So it could be $5 billion, it could be more, frankly, we don't know. And that was one of the big problems with the way that the sanctions relief was provide because the Treasury Department was not going to get the level of insight that we should expect from our government in providing sanctions relief to Iran.
- [26:53]
Josh Hammer
You can follow Max on Xmeislish. Max, I'm trying to figure out here what we can do about this because there's been. It's been a little schizophrenic, honestly. That's the word that we use here on the show. It's been a little back and forth. It's at times been quite difficult to try to discern exactly what this administration's approach is to the question of the conflict in Iran more broadly, not just when it comes to terror financing, not just when it comes to oil, but frankly, the whole thing when it comes to the actual goals as operation. But sticking with this theme here of sanctions relief, of the frozen assets, what can we do now even if we can't actually pinpoint the degree or the exact amount of the dollars that have been flowing back into the Mullah's coffers, at least since the MOU started. These things take time to unwind, if I understand correctly. So is there anything now that we're back in a war footing that we can do to try to bankrupt these guys asap once again?
- [27:51]
Donald J. Trump
Yeah.
- [27:51]
Max Meiseles
The interesting thing is that when it comes to oil sales, it's not like you buy a barrel of oil today and then you receive the funds, you know, the same day as part of that sale. And so there's billions of dollars worth of Iranian oil that are out on the water right now. The Trump administration could move to interdict some of those shipments and prevent payments out into the future months. As it relates to money that Iran is seeking to collect now from oil sales, there's a lot that we could do. Right. So the Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control, where I used to work, which administers U.S. sanctions, can do what it's beginning to do more of right now. Right. Which is issuing new sanctions targeting enablers of the Iranian regime. And so that's in the form of individual designations of individuals and entities that act as exchange houses, opaque intermediaries. But I think that what we need to see from the administration is something that goes a little bit further. How do we actually target the jurisdictional level enablers of Iranian sanctions evasion? And in my view, the way to do that is to actually target, for instance, the UAE and Hong Kong as jurisdictions of primary money laundering concern. The reason for this is that through various Treasury Department reporting over the years, we know that those jurisdictions, among others, are really the hubs for Iranian sanctions evasion. And there are tools that the Treasury Department can actually use that go beyond individual designations. We can actually apply a jurisdictional level determination that might require US Banks that have these correspondent relationships with banks abroad, so they can deal in US Dollars where we could require enhanced due diligence for certain types of transactions that match the typology of Iranian sanctions evasion. And we have yet to see that from the. From the administration. It's something that we've done in other domains, tackling the challenge of North Korean proliferation, some elements of crypto abuse in other contexts. Right now, I think that the pressure that we seek to impose on Iran can only really be done if we go beyond the individuals and entities that are actually doing the sanctions evasion and trying to broaden that net and go after reform in the regulatory environment in jurisdictions abroad.
- [30:13]
Josh Hammer
Well, why haven't we done that? I mean, to me, it seems fairly obvious, frankly, that we would use every tool at our disposal. Is there a reason that we have not sought that course of action in your mind?
- [30:23]
Max Meiseles
You know, there's diplomatic consequences of taking measures like this. The UAE is certainly a partner to the United States in fighting Iran, countering some elements of illicit finance. But it is a huge sanctions evasion jurisdiction of concern. And this is not just in the context of Iran, but also within the context of general money laundering and illicit finance. Dubai is a particular point of concern. And so there's some contest between influences of power hubs of power within the uae, with some interests actually benefiting from these illicit financial flows coming in, whereas others are threatened by that. And then with respect to Hong Kong, this could create a diplomatic crisis involving China. But in my view, I think that there are calibrated measures that we can take. And so the way that we would do this is by utilizing Section 311 of the USA Patriot act, which gives a list based approach for the administration to go from relatively harmless, though still impactful measures, which would be enhanced due diligence and record keeping and reporting requirements for US Correspondent banks that deal with these banks abroad that are facilitating Iranian sanctions evasion all the way to the most extreme, which would actually be cutting off those foreign banks from US Correspondent bank access. I think that we could actually have a combination of that right with the uae, which is trying to make itself a valuable partner to the United States. Maybe all we do is actually implement Section 3311 measure, which calls for enhanced reporting and record keeping, some enhanced due diligence. And then when it comes to Hong Kong and banks in China, one bank that comes to mind is bank of Kunlun, which the United States moved, which added to a sanctions list back in 2012. We cut off that correspondent bank access. But then we need to have a different approach there because the bank wasn't dealing in dollars very much at all. And so what we should do is add it to the SDN list, the specifically Designated Nationals list. And that would put upward pressure on bank of Kunlun's ownership, which is China National Petroleum Corporation, one of the largest gas and oil and gas companies in the world, to ultimately divest their holdings in that firm. Now, the Trump administration might feel like it's not worth it to push China in this regard, but in my view, I think that the only way that we can actually tackle Iranian sanctions evasion is by going after these jurisdictions, calling them out for what they're doing, and then looking to partners like in the UAE that might have more of an interest in actually helping the United States and benefiting from a push that provides regulatory cover for them to make reforms. And then there's more coercive actions that we could take against banks in China and Hong Kong, where the government is not seeking to cooperate.
- [33:12]
Josh Hammer
You know, we were talking earlier in the show, Max, about the President's speech, about how about how China has been undermining our elections. Frankly, it seems to me that if you're going to try to take punitive action on China, this would be a very good reason actually to try to do that. Seemingly the geopolitics of it all across the Geopolitical chessboard seem to line up. I have just about 30 seconds left. But real quick, how long has the UAE been doing this? Because the UAE does portray itself as a very pro Western country in many ways there. But how long have they been involved in this Iranian sanctions invasion?
- [33:43]
Max Meiseles
Oh, we're talking years, decades. I mean, the UAE has been a major hub for illicit financial flows for decades. Decades. It's a major trade zone. It actually has these free trade zones where regulatory barriers are brought down. So it's easier to incorporate companies, it's easier to shell companies with lack of beneficial ownership. And so there's a lot of regulatory reform that the UAE would need to do to actually tackle this problem. But the question is, how do they do that while maintaining their profile as a leader for international trade and finance?
- [34:16]
Josh Hammer
Yeah, no, it's a lot of duplicity in the Arab world, which I'm sure will not be any new news to the listeners and viewers of the show. Matt, unfortunately we are out of time. Great information to have you back in time, folks. Follow Max on Xmeisalich. He's research fellow at fdd. Max, we appreciate your time and your expertise. Have a great weekend. Good sir.
- [34:32]
Max Meiseles
Thank you folks.
- [34:33]
Josh Hammer
If not to a quick break, we'll be right back with more after this.
- [34:36]
Aura Advertiser
In 2025, Americans lost more than $21 billion to fraud and identity theft. That's why so many people are turning to Aura. Aura helps protect your identity with fraud alerts, dark web monitoring and up to $5 million in identity theft protection. And if you become a victim, Aura's 24. 7 US based support team is there to help. Don't wait until your identity is stolen. Start your free trial today@aura.com safe that's
- [35:03]
Josh Hammer
ara.com safe great stuff there from Max Meiselish. Really detailed information when it comes to some of the tools at our disposal, some of which we're using, some of which we're not using when it comes to cracking down on Iranian regime financing, money laundering and all the various aiders and abettors across the world. Interesting to hear him focus, I thought, on Dubai, on the uae, which many ways is the most pro Western, pro America country of all the Arab countries in the region. But unfortunately, as is so often the case when it comes to the Arab world, there is no short shortage of duplicitousness and essentially trying to feed both sides of these divides and speaking at both sides of their mouth at the same time. Meanwhile, the war with Iran on the kinetic front, on the non economic front, on the actual milit fund continues apace. So over the past day or so, the United States has struck various bridges and collapsed a tower at a key port on the Gulf coast of Iran. So the campaign is very much continuing. Iran continues to engage in reprisals. So just over the past day or so, Qatar, Kuwait and Jordan have come under Iranian fire. US Military assets in Bahrain and Oman apparently also coming under fire. A Syrian source says that Iran actually came close to attacking a US Base in Syria as well. So if it sounds like deja vu, that's probably because it actually is deja vu. It's been going on for a long time now. It's a very, very fluid situation. Personally, I was hoping for a little bit more on this or really anything on this in the president's address Thursday evening. I continue to think that one of those national addresses on this topic, the topic of the war is very much called for. The Save America act is an absolutely commonsensible bill. I find it baffling, baffling that it's become the political football that it is. And as I said earlier in the show, we absolutely should consider up to and including abolishing the filibuster in the Senate if need be, to get this thing passed. No one denies the importance of that. On the other hand, when it comes to the Iran war, because, yes, we can walk and chew gum at the same time, this is an important topic as well. And the American people really do deserve a very, very straightforward explanation as to where we are at, what we are doing, what we seek to accomplish and how we are going to get there. I don't see how any of these are possibly unrelated to the other. In fact, they are all mutually compatible. They all will help Republicans maintain both houses of Congress come next January. I continue to hold out, hopefully hope that that speech from the president will be coming. But for now, I guess we would just have to see what happens over the weekend. Now, speaking of legislative priorities, I briefly touched on something earlier this week that I wanna spend a little bit more time on now. So Senator Jim Banks of Indiana, who was one of my personal favorite legislatures on Capitol Hill in the current Congress, has this new bill that takes this argument that, well, yours truly actually helped get out there in op Ed. Com a couple weeks ago responding to the birthright citizenship atrocity in the Trump vs Barbara case. What I wrote in my op ed column and what Senator Banks put into a proposed bill is that one way to essentially overturn but at least to deeply water down, undermine the court. Terrific decision would be to take Congress's authority to establish a uniform rule of naturalization, which is their unambiguous authority under Article I section of the Constitution, to take the that and to say that we are, we are interpreting illegal aliens and so called birth tourists as invaders because it is uncontested, is well established under all the relevant precedents. But the children of invaders do not get birthright citizenship. This, if message properly is absolutely a winning issue for the American people. The American people, many of many of them don't understand, don't have any conception of so called birth tourism. But if you explain to the mean American, if you just take the mean American and you say, do you think that Mahmoud from Iraq or Zhang from China should just be able to show up here nine months pregnant, go to a five star resort, pop out a baby and get a US passport, does that strike you as logical? Does that strike you as a good thing? Does that strike you as enhancing the value of American citizenship or diminishing the value of American citizenship? So much of politics is in how you communicate and how you sell policy ideas. The birthright topic, when you poll, it is oftentimes a 50, 50 thumbs up, thumbs down sort of thing thing. But that's often because it's not messaged properly when you explain what this actually entails. And Justice Alito in his Supreme Court dissent in the case really got into some of these details when it comes to birth tourism. When you explain what this looks like something that I saw that I've seen in PR, by the way, when my wife was pregnant the first time and I went with her to the OB gyn, I saw this. You literally see the people there who don't speak English who are here to give birth. It's an absolute atrocity when you explain it properly. This is a winning issue for the right. Immigration in general, I continue to think is a winning issue for the right. You have the consulting class that is freaking out over immigration. Oh my God, the traffic stops. That's why Markway Mullen prematurely called a stop on those stops before President Trump then came over the top and said, actually we're keep on doing this. But it's a winning issue for Republicans. And by the way, speaking of midterm elections more generally, I'm not sure if you realize just how lopsided the finances currently are. So an incredible scoop from Axios. On Thursday, officers at the dnc, the Democratic National Committee, were asked to sign an NDA non disclosure agreement about how crappy the finances are. The coffers are at the DNC and DNCHQ. So the DNC has nearly $15 million cash on hand. But get this, they are $18 million in debt. So they're underwater. So 15 million cash on hand, 8 million debt, the RNC, 125 million cash in hand, zero debt. A lot of folks say, Josh, you sound very optimistic about the midterm because I kind of am. I think there's a very real chance Republicans maintain both houses come January. Why do I think that? Well, this is one of them. The campaign finances are overwhelmingly on Republican side. In addition to the fact that they had a huge Supreme Court victory go their way when it came to trying to free up more campaign finance ability of the party to coordinate candidates directly. That was one of the final cases decided in the term as well, one of those six to three, quote, unquote ideological decisions. And what's more, let's not forget that there was massive redistricting. Republicans pick up, give or take, 15 seats, give or take, just on redistricting because they won that battle. They won it bigly, actually. Texas, Florida, major red states, redistricting, Voting Rights act, case out of Louisiana. Republicans won that battle. So, yes, I think Republicans, if I had to guess, probably will hold both houses. My confidence level, not super high, but I think there's a very decent chance they walk away from this thing come next January, still in control in the Senate and still in control of the House. I guess we'll see. But personally, I'm not sure I realized quite how bad the DNC coffers were. I knew that the RNC had way more cash on hand, but 18 million in debt, 50 million cash on hand, making employees sign NDAs, not a good luck. Not a good luck, as they say when it comes to the current state of the Democratic National Committee. So I want to end by just briefly touching on this week's tour portion. So we are now beginning the final of the five books of Moses, the Book of Deuteronomy. Hard to believe, frankly. So we do the whole annual reading. It goes from usually it's October to October. So it's kind of hard to believe that here we are in July and we are already beginning the final book. But that's what we're doing. So the book of Deuteronomy begins with quote, these are the words which Moses spoke to all Israel on that side of the Jordan, in the desert, in the plain opposite the Red Sea, between Paran and Tophel and Levan and Hazeroth and Dizah. And the commentators asked the question, this is a whole book of the Torah. It's a final book of the Torah. It's Deuteronomy. Why does it begin with. These are the words which Moses spoke.
- [44:08]
Max Meiseles
Not.
- [44:08]
Josh Hammer
There's inherently wrong with that phrasing. But the commentators ask, that's new. So in the first four books, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, we never saw this formulation. Why now? And Rashi, who is one of the great medieval Jewish commentators, answers with the fallen. He says that if you remember, remember the very first task that God came to Moses to ask, said, you're going to free your people from bondage in Egypt. If you remember Moses. Objection. He said, I am not a man of words. Remember that. From the earliest chapters of Exodus. He said, my tongue is tied. Basically, I don't speak well. So now we are back in Deuteronomy. They're on the edge of the Jordan, about to cross in the promised land. And Moses, these are the words. You get it? So it was once his flaw. He couldn't speak. Now his words are eternal. And the message is just that what you think might be a shortcoming is not actually a shortcoming. It's just in your head. If you think hard enough, pray hard enough and act hard enough, you can overcome all of your own perceived shortcomings yourselves. Folks, have a great weekend. We'll see what happens in the Iran complex and more. And we'll be right back as always, on Monday. We'll see you that.
- [45:25]
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- [46:12]
Donald J. Trump
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