← The Josh Hammer Show
Loading summary
Transcript5 lines
- [00:00]
A
When you manage procurement for multiple facilities, every order matters. But when it's for a hospital system, they matter even more. Grainger gets it and knows there's no time for managing multiple suppliers and no room for shipping delays. That's why Grainger offers millions of products in fast, dependable delivery, so you can keep your facility stocked, safe and running smoothly. Call 1-800-GRAINGER Click grainger.com or just stop by Ranger for the ones who get it done.
- [00:30]
B
Donald Trump lands in Beijing for a much anticipated and much viewed summit with Xi Jinping of China. What can we expect and how will we know whether or not this summit is a success from an American perspective? I'm Josh Hammer and this is the Josh Hammer show. So earlier this morning, at least American time, it is late in the evening when it happened over in China, Donald Trump's Air Force One touchdown over in Beijing. And this is the, this is the meeting thus far of Donald Trump's second term in office. He has hosted many dignitaries, many of them at the White House. He famously met with Vladimir Putin actually over in Alaska. And then the following Monday, there were all the leaders of Britain and France and Germany, all the major European powers that went to the White House there. Trump has met with the leaders of India, Japan, you name it. But this really above all is the most anticipated bilateral leader to leader, mano a mano showdown, slash, sit down, frankly, of Donald Trump's entire second term in office. China is the country that I think about a lot. China is the country that we talk about a lot on this show for fairly obvious reasons. Once upon a time, American leaders thought that China was going to be a great ally of the United States. In fact, along the, along the time, around the time of the tech boom of the 1990s.com bubble, at the time that Silicon Valley was exploding and China was starting to emerge the because of some of the quasi market reforms of Shang Jiao Ping, who actually implemented some quasi market reforms there. While China was ascendant, while the dot com boom was happening, both parties basically fell in love with the idea of China as a mass consumption base for American products, for American industry there. And this notion that China should be fully connected, should be fully part of the broader community of nations around the world. This mentality really took hold among leaders of both parties. Call it the era of good feelings, but really the era, frankly, of myopia is how we would better describe it here on the show. All this then in turn led to China's ascension to the wto, to the World Trade organization ultimately attaining most Favored Nation status, which it has had for some time with the United States. In hindsight, this looks a lot, frankly like giving the Chinese the rope with which we, the United States, hang ourselves. This reality was not fully crystallized, I think, and was not really intuited by a lot of Americans until what happened during the early days of the COVID 19 pandemic, or the scam Demic, if you will. Actually, a fascinating hearing on Capitol Hill just this morning, actually a CIA whistleblower talking about the possible origins of COVID 19, which is still debated to this day. Of course. In any event, it was those early days of COVID 19 that really, I think, shined a spotlight for many of us. To the extent to which we in the United States have made ourselves, through the shortsighted myopic decisions of our bipartisan elites, we have made ourselves overly reliant on China and their consumers and their economy and their supply chains. Donald Trump really is the first man who has made any meaningful effort whatsoever to try to change any of that. Going back to his first term in office. He was the first president, the first president since Richard Nixon's famous visit to visit Chairman Mao Zedong in Beijing back in the early 1970s. Trump was the first president in four and a half decades to take meaningful efforts to try to extricate the United States from this mutual economic bear hug, this toxic relationship whereby American corporations are reliant on the, on China, whereby American corporations are reliant on, on Chinese consumers and cheap labor and supply chains there. All of this then giving China tremendous leverage when it comes to things like medical equipment and pharmaceuticals. Again, we saw that during COVID 19. When it comes to things like rare earth minerals, perhaps even most importantly and most at the forefront of this current summit over in Beij. China has a lot of leverage over the United States, but. But the United States actually has a lot of leverage over China as well. In fact, I would argue the United States currently has more leverage over China. And when it comes to a lot of the doomsdayers there, this, I believe, is where many of these of the doomsdayers actually are wrong. One of these doomsdayers is Chuck Schumer, who is the leader of the Democrats in the United States Senate there. Chuck Schumer, who basically says whatever he can these days to try to remain politically relevant and salient within his own party there. He's trying to fend off a left wing primary challenge in 2028 from Alexandria, Ocasio Cortez, Chuck Schumer says that Donald Trump is going to sell out the United States to Communist China. Here was Chuck Schumer. There's an old saying that only Nixon could go to China, but soon they'll say only Trump could sell out to China. Xi Jinping has Donald Trump salivating at the prospect of a trillion dollar Chinese investments in America that would threaten America's supply chains, threaten economic independence, threaten national security. So it's totally impossible, completely impossible to take this man seriously. He has been one of the leading figures in the pro China wing of what has in recent decades been the most overtly pro China political party, that being the Democratic Party. Let's recall that it was due to Joe Biden in the late Dian Feinstein more than anyone else. That was how China ascended to the World Trade Organization and got most favored nation status there. So what in the world is Chuck Schumer talking about? In his first term in office, Trump was the first president to actually put some sort of real meaningful tariffs on China, a policy that he has doubled down on in his second term. At some point last year, following the April tariff rollout, Liberation Day, as they called it at the Rose Garden, the White House in the months that followed, our punitive tariffs on China got as high as 145%. Now, there was something of a tariff off ramp there when Trump and Xi Jinping last met. They last met roughly six months ago, give or take over in South Korea at a summit in late October there. So the two countries are in something of a, of a trade detente for now. Are they in a foreign policy detente when it comes to Iran, when it comes to Taiwan? How about AI, how about fentanyl? There's so much going, there's so much riding on this particular meeting and the results of it, which we'll find out over the next few days there. And I wanted to talk about all of that on today's show. But for now, folks, just a brief word from our sponsor for today's show, which is balance of nature. You know, look, I try to eat a very well rounded diet on a day to day basis there. I typically do. I typically eat fairly healthy there. I'm big on fruits and veggies, big on protein, not so big on the carbs, not so big on the sugars. But look, we're all human. We're all working super long and super hard. At least if you were like me, you're doing both of those things there. We don't necessarily always have the time that we need in order to get all of the nutrients that we have on a day to day basis. That is why I take Balance of Nature supplements. I've been taking them for some months now and I feel like a million bucks. And trust me folks, these ingredients are all absolutely top notch. In fact, my wife who is a total rfk maha mom, she is as au natural as they get. She has looked at the ingredients in these balancing nature supplements and said Josh, I totally approve there. I give you two thumbs up. You can go ahead and do this and trust me, I've been taking them. I feel great. Balanced nature supplements support your diet and support a lifestyle of eating whole foods. All these products from Balance of Nature are lab tested. There are no binders, fillers or flow agents. They use a custom process where the whole foods are dried using a tailored vacuum cold process and then powdered and packaged. You get 47 ingredients of fruits, vegetables, spice and fiber in the whole health system. Go to balanceofnature.com and use the discount code HAMMER to get a 10% discount today when it comes to the whole health system or the fiber and spices or fruits and veggies supplements. Again, that's balanceofnature.com, use discount code Hamm and Bounce. Nature is a sponsor for today's show. So what are some of the ways that we can begin to assess as to whether or not this summit is actually going to go? Well, a part of it, of course, depends on actually what we're going to focus on in the first place. So for instance, there were some former National Security Council, some former NSC officials that were on Fox News previewing suggesting that this summit will likely focus on trade more than anything else. Let's go ahead and play this clip as well.
- [08:38]
C
The president wants to make this mostly about trade. He is focused on the economy. It's a passion of his. So I think he'll try and make some suggestions to the Chinese about how they might reform their system and at a minimum, push them to make greater purchases of agricultural products from the United States. But let's not, let's not be mistaken here. The Iran war is going to dominate the subtext of this entire visit. I don't think China is going to stick their neck out on our behalf. I hope the president can press them just like you said in the graphics before about with their support for military equipment and components that go to the Chinese. Maybe we get a little cooperation with them behind the scenes to urge the Iranians to meaningfully compromise. But I don't think they're going to give us anything on the order of what we want due to their alliance with other adversaries that don't appreciate a Western led world.
- [09:40]
B
So trade will be big on the agenda. Iran will definitely be big on the agenda. There is really no doubt about that. China is one of Iran's leading, leading allies on the world stage. China has been helpful in getting Iran a lot of their petroleum exports since the conflict started. There's actually a rail network. This is part of China's sprawling Belt and Road initiative that extends from Iran eastward. And Iran has been the number one purchaser of sanctions Iranian crude ever since hostilities began. They've been helping Iran set up money laundering, third party offshore financial intermediaries there they are involved in all of this there. They're actually providing outright weapons to, to Iran. In fact, just in late March, when the USS Abraham Lincoln actually took in incoming cruise missile fire, those were Chinese supplied missiles. So Donald Trump has a very evil man to look at when he stares down Xi Jinping when it comes to what China does to the United States, when it comes to the fact that they fly spy balloons all across the continent, when it comes to the fact that they literally have foreign agents serving as mayors. On yesterday's show we noted how the mayor of Arcadia, California, a town in Los Angeles county, has been federally charged. Indeed, she actually pled guilty to acting as an illegal agent on behalf of the prc, on behalf of the People's Republic of China there. China is an evil actor. Any possible which way you can slice it? And that's actually not even getting into the human rights aspect here. So China to this day continues to massively discriminate. Discriminate would be frankly a polite word. Some people refer to it as a genocide against the Uyghur Muslims out in Xinjiang province, the westernmost province there in China. Way, way, way out in the central part of the Asian continent there. Also Jimmy Lai, we actually had Jimmy Lai's son as a guest on this show maybe about a month or so ago. Jimmy Lai is expected to be on the agenda at this summit as well. Jimmy Lai, foreign publisher of the, of the Apple Daily, which at the time I believe was the single largest newspaper in all of Hong Kong. Jimmy Lai has been imprisoned unjustly under Hong Kong's new authoritarian National Security Law, a law that was passed because Hong Kong is now being gobbled up by the Communist Party. For many, many years, China had this, this two system regime in place whereby Hong Kong could be a little freer, a little more liberal, a little more laissez faire than the Communist Party would otherwise dictate out of Beijing. That is no more. Hong Kong is being swallowed up in real time and Jimmy Lai is a horrific victim of this there. So that will come up on the agenda as well. There's so much going on here and we've only begin to scratch the surface. So we're going to come back after a quick commercial break for much more when it comes to this Donald Trump Xi Jinping summit. Also, also later on the show, October 7, a scathing evil new report. We got the details later on. Stay with us. We'll be right back. Welcome back. So again, there's this narrative that the optics of this might not be good. Some people are saying there Donald Trump is flying to China to meet Xi Jinping on Chinese soil. It is worth noting that Xi Jinping did come to the United States, admittedly it was during the Biden administration, but he did come to San Francisco at least, and the California coast just a few years ago. This summit was actually a long time planned, a long time in the making. It was supposed to happen initially, actually in late March. It was postponed due to the Iran war. And again, the Iran war is very, very much part of what is happening here in the background. That along with trade and AI and fentanyl. And there's so many issues to come up here. To reiterate what we have called for here, we believe here on the show that the number one biggest power move, the biggest power move that Donald Trump could possibly make, could possibly make when it comes to what he's doing on Chinese oil this week is to restart Operation Epic Fury against Iran in earnestness. That would send a clear and unmistakable message to Iran and above all, a clear and unmistakable message to China. China has had its eyes on Taiwan ever since the formation of the modern communist state in the late 1940s. They've been trying to quote, unquote, reunify. It's a somewhat tangentious, loaded term, reunify, but it's what they use. They've been trying to gobble up or reunify, whatever you want to call it, Taiwan for decades and decades and decades. Taiwan, which is a tiny nation, nonetheless punches well above its weight when it comes to some of the most advanced chips in the world. Frankly, if Taiwan were to be swallowed up by China, it actually would be a national security issue, not necessarily because of the size of the island or anything like that there, but on computer chip grounds alone, because Taiwanese chips power in no small part everything from your iPhone to the most advanced fighter planes in the world, the F35s, all that there. Which by the way, I might add, shines a spotlight on just how utterly myopic. Again, to get back to this myopia, how myopic and suicidal the laissez faire fundamentalist trade policy was by which we brought China in to the World Trade Organization and by which we have just been exporting willy nilly there there's an infamous line. A George H.W. bush economic advisor had this infamous line years ago where he basically said he was summing up the administration's view on free trade absolutism on nafta, what was emerging in its earliest forms as NAFTA, and all the various globalist trade boondoggles. And the George H.W. bush administration economists famously shrugged his shoulders and said, eh, computer chips, potato chips, what's the difference? Well, I'll tell you what the difference is. The difference is that you wouldn't potentially go to war over potato chips. You actually might go to war over computer chips because those potentially are the stakes when it if it comes to China actually gobbling up Taiwan. Anyway, hold that aside for now. But the point is that there's just so much on this gender there. So what are some of the ways we can possibly start to assess if this summit is actually going to go well? Well, Gordon Chang is a name that you are likely familiar with. He is a presence all across conservative media. When it comes to his commentary on China, Gordon is a good man. He used to be a regular columnist for me, actually, back when I was the op editor at Newsweek. And Gordon has a new op ed at USA Today this morning with many shrewd observations here, talking about how China, for all of their power, for all of their dominance and things like rare earth minerals there, they simply just still don't have the leverage that the United States has there. And Donald Trump simply must keep this in mind as he visits Xi Jinping in Beijing there. So here's just an excerpt from you from Gorencheng's OPA this morning at USA Today. Quote, when it comes to Iran, for instance, Trump can strike the regime's capabilities directly. Among the most significant targets is a rail link that Iran has to China. Tehran has reportedly been using this to send crude oil eastward and US Air power could sever it quickly. He could also impose a no fly zone to block Chinese transports from replenishing Iran's munitions stockpiles. Such moves would send Xi a clear message Trump is not intimidated. Beyond Iran, Trump has a broad range of pressure points to exploit. From artificial intelligence and fentanyl to Taiwan and human rights, the United States remains far more powerful than China overall. And Washington has no shortage of strategic options for increasing pressure on Beijing. Consider trade. China is more export dependent today than it has been in decades because the Communist Party, for political reasons, has failed to build a consumer driven economy. Beijing needs foreign consumers and the United States alone accounts for roughly 30% of global consumption. Xi therefore badly needs continued access to the US Market, which Trump, despite recent tariff setbacks in the courts, can still restrict through multiple avenues. He can also tighten controls on advanced microchips, which overwhelmingly come from US Firms such as Nvidia and amd. Now, the tiniest, tiniest, tiniest, tiniest kernel of truth to those comments that Chuck Schumer was getting at earlier and it really is tiny, is the one thing that Trump has done in China which I really do not agree with and the polls show that most Americans do not agree with it either, is he did loosen the restrictions on the exporting from American firms of the most advanced computer chips to China of the most advanced AI chips from firms like Nvidia. Those restrictions were largely lifted a handful of months ago, five, six months ago, give or take there. It would be another power move for Donald Trump to basically, to Xi Jinping's face say those days are over. We're now going to restrict, prudentially restrict our firms again from selling you guys the most advanced chips in the world. Another power move, the ultimate power move, as we've noted, would be for Donald Trump to restart epic fury against Iran in its earnestness there. This would send the best possible sentinel and we hope that it happens there. We mentioned Jimmy Lai as well. It would be another power move for Donald Trump to take kind of a Ronald Reagan esque, moralistic humanitarian stance on behalf of Jimmy Lai. Zoom out a little bit and recall that part of the broader century long civilizational clash. Context for this is that there is this big question which we hit on the show all the time as to whether or not this 21st century is going to be an American century or a Chinese century. It's the exact same way, frankly, that the 20th century was a big question as to whether it would be an American century or a Soviet or a Russian century there. And if you're going to have it be an American century, this would be a moment, wouldn't it? This would be a key moment to stand for things like basic decency when it comes to the freedom of the press, when it comes to free publication of ideas there. This is where Jimmy Lai and his Apple daily newspaper come into play. So things like that should absolutely be on the table. I sincerely hope that Donald Trump threatens to bring back crippling punitive tariffs, especially if China does not abide when it comes to, to things like fentanyl, which they are arguably the number one most complicit party when it comes to the fentanyl scourge, the chemical warfare that has been waged against the United States for years and years and years now. A form of chemical warfare that I take extremely seriously and extremely personally, actually, because I had a cousin a few years ago who tragically overdosed and died due to fentanyl likely supplied from China. To the extent that Xi Jinping has any morsel of humanity remaining, any morsel, if he's not going to be, if he's not a true, true, true Vladimir Putin esque, cold blooded thug of all thugs. If there's any humanity left in Xi Jinping, Donald Trump should appeal to that. He should appeal to that. When it comes to the Uyghur Muslims over in Xinjiang province, he should appeal to that. When it comes to the plight of Jimmy Lai in Hong Kong, he should appeal to that. Certainly time and time again, really across all of these issues there. But above all, the number one thing is the American national interest. That is what Donald Trump will be defending here, even more so than humanitarian concerns. When it comes to things like the economy, when it comes to things like national security, when it comes to things like Iran, when it comes to things like foreign policy, we want China to be less aggressive in assisting America's various enemies on the world stage. We don't want China helping out Iran. Listen, if Trump wants to try to try to encourage Xi Jinping, try to entice him, say, oh, you should try to talk to your Iranian clients, to your patrons here and try to get them to agree to our terms to end this conflict there or else we will have crippling tariffs. That'd be great. You want to try that? Great. I don't think it's going to work. I don't think it's going to work. Carrots only go so far when it comes to Xi Jinping and the Chinese. Frankly, you ultimately really just need a lot more in the way of sticks. So again, there are a lot of critics of this summit who are looking at this and are saying that this is Donald Trump capitulating. This is the United States capitulating. When it comes to the United States physically going halfway around the world to China, I'm not so sure I see it that way. But the easiest way to prove the critics wrong, the number one easiest way to prove the critics wrong in this respect would be to go there and to insist on a very, very hard negotiating line on all of these issues. Fentanyl AI, the spy balloons, the Iranian quagmire, Taiwan, all of it, JIMMY Lai, all of it. You insist on a very, very, very hard line and you say unless you bend the knee, unless you comply to us or else. And again, the cherry on top, of course, will be restarting epic fury against Iran in its earnestness. We'll see how it goes. And we, of course, will have a lot to say about it, undoubtedly. On the other side. Folks, a quick commercial break. Stay with us. We'll be right back with more after this. Welcome back. So as monumentally important as the Donald Trump Xi Jinping summit in China is, there is, of course, other stuff happening in and one of the other big stories that we are closely tracking was the release of a report just yesterday on Tuesday from a group that is the civil commission on October 7, crimes by Hamas against women and children. So this is a very specific group that was founded shortly after the the unfathomable HAMAS program of October 7, 2023, was founded shortly after that. And this this commission exists to essentially shine a spotlight on the mass rape and the sexual violence above all, that was perpetrated on that day. The exact nature of the sexual violence has been an often debated topic actually ever since October 7, 2023, happened. You have a lot of deniers who said that this didn't actually happen there. A lot of them actually then turn the tables and then they say in turn that actually is Israel that has been engaged in horrific sexual violence against Palestine Arabs, including a horrific blood libel, conveniently one day prior to the release of this report over at the paper of record, the New York Times. More on that just in a moment there. But for now, I want to talk a little bit more about this report. So this report was a very, very long time in the making. And the report came out again on Tuesday. The full report runs almost 300 pages. You can you can go ahead and check out online the executive summary findings if you don't have the stomach, frankly, for the full 300 pages. And there's evidence, there's direct testimony there. This is really kind of incontrovertible. No one denies this. Frankly, A lot of what happened on this particular day was actually sponsored and encouraged by Hamas and by the Palestinian Arab authorities themselves there. So just some highlights is a very odd word to use here, but here are some of the key takeaways. Let's call it from this horrific report so Hamas and its collaborators use sexual and gender based violence deliberately and systematically as an inherent part of a wider strategy of the October 7th attack, primarily targeting women and hostages, while minors were also subjected to grave forms of such violence and abuse. Hamas and his collaborators use sexual torture to maximize pain and suffering. Victims endured brutal acts including burning, mutilation, rape, restraining forced objects into genitalia. Hamas and his collaborators inflicted sexual violence in multiple locations employing recurring patterns of abuse. The civil commission identified at least 13 different types of abuse across multiple sites, including gang rape, sexual torture, deliberate shootings to genital areas in the head, killings and executions, post mortem sexual abuse and desecration of bodies, public parading of nude women and children, abduction of mothers and children, all sorts of just other barbaric acts. Hamas and his collaborators committed what the report refers to as kinocide, kinocidal sexual and gender based acts where they deliberately perpetrated sexual violence against family members, including a case in which family members were coerced into performing sexual acts on one another. Again, it's hard to even say some of this stuff. Hamas and his collaborators made strategic use of videos, digital and social media to exert and intensify harm and to per and to perpetuate, glorify and amplify the atrocities they committed, including sexualized content made for public display. Hamas's collaborators systematically stage, produce and disseminate videos of hostages during captivity. And on and on and on we go. It is really just unfathomable, unfathomable, unfathomable stuff as as Buck Sexton, who is a well known radio host and a recent guest here on the Josh Hammer show talk about his new book is a real life friend, an IRL friend, as they say. What we know from this latest released evidence, Buck Sexton writes on X on Tuesday evening, is that no credible person says these are fake and these, these are allegations or these are reports, I should say, of quote, Palestinians doing the most sadistic, grotesque things imaginable, raping corpses while they are mutilating and murdering them, lighting genitals on fire, shooting out the eyes and genitals of helpless victims, forcing husbands to watch as their wives and children are raped and murdered. And Palestinians did this on the orders of their elected government with months of planning to do exactly what they did. Continues Buck Sexton, quote, it wasn't spontaneous. The monstrous cruelty, the sexual degradation was the point they knew October 7th wasn't going to win a war or gain any territory. It was just an orgy of Jew hate and violence. The Palestinians were mass murdering child rapist terrorists who did all this and were gleeful about it. They made phone calls boasting to their family members. Indeed they did, indeed they did. Now to try to get out ahead of this cycle, the New York Times and what can only be described as one of the greatest anti Semitic blood libels in, in modern, in modern history. Nicholas Kristof, a truly, truly execrable columnist who has a 25 to 30 year columnist career of retractions in journalistic, complete journalistic malpractice. He released an utterly egregious column conveniently just one day ahead of this report that came out there, this was on Monday there and the column was titled quote, the silence that means the Rape of Palestinians. And it was allegedly about alleged practice by Israeli prison guards against Arab inmates in Israeli prisons there. And the article has no reliable on record sources like literally none. There are a bunch of people who are anonymous who are quoted there and these are oftentimes Hamas niks, people who fundamentally cannot be taken at the word or anything there. The only name sources are people like Sami Sai, a Palestinian Arab activist who publicly celebrated October 7th. The most ludicrous of all these suggestions was a suggestion. I can't believe that this actually got printed in the paper record of the New York Times was a suggestion that Israel trains dogs, trains dogs to rape Palestinian Arabs. A claim that is all but assuredly literally not possible, say all of the medical experts and all of the trauma experts and the veterinarians, the Canaan experts there. It's utterly insane that this filth actually got published in the New York Times. Look, I am old enough to remember when Tom Cotton wrote an op ed titled Send in the troops in the early days of the summer of love of 2020, after the the death of St. George Floyd or martyr and after the early stages of the Black Lives Matter antifa riots that summer had commenced, they published as the New York Times publishes op ed Send in the Troops by Tom Cotton and tell me how Donald Trump should indeed invoke the Insurrection act to send in national troops and to restore order. And that prompted a literal staff walkout from the New York Times. A completely staff wide walkout, ultimately culminating in the resignations and or the firings of multiple New York Times staffers. And also the longest, the single longest editor's note that I've ever seen affixed to an op ed and As a former op editor, I pay attention quite closely actually to such matters. They have never taken down the editor's notes to this day. So all that happened when the Times published a very reasonable take from a sitting United States Senator calling for a policy option that was supported at the time, based on contemporaneous polling by at least half, not more than half, of the American population. And now, now, now they are publishing a literal blood libel, an actual true blood libel about how Israel's training rape dogs. This is part of a long standing conspiracy mentality that involves the Israelis and animals. There's another, another conspiracy going on that Israel is training the rats in Gaza to poison Arab water there. No, it's because people don't have sound sanitation. That's why. Because Hamas doesn't know how to govern a place. It's a terrorist group. That's why you have sewage everywhere and you don't have sound sanitation. It's not that the Israelis are poisoning the water with the rats. This stuff doesn't pass the laugh test. And again, some of it somehow managed to actually get into the paper of record in the New York Times, which I still can't believe happened. Like, I literally just still can't believe that this happened. Look, much of this is a basic IQ test. It's a basic IQ test. If you fall for this stuff, you are a stupid person. If you fall for Nicholas Kristof style lies, you are a dumb, dumb person. This is a basic IQ test. It's a basic clarity test. That is why George Gilder many years ago wrote his book called the Israel Test. Because this stuff is ultimately just a proxy. Do you care about truth or do you subscribe to lies? Do you care about what is right versus what is wrong, about what is just versus what is unjust? Everything involving the Jews, whether it's the Jewish people or the Jewish state, it ends up being a moral proxy, ends up being a moral heuristic for how we can tell whether or not you are fundamentally a decent person and whether or not a society is fundamentally just. A very basic heuristic, a very basic test as to whether a society is just is how it treats its Jews. It's one of the reasons, frankly, why America has been so blessed and one of the reasons why I fear that this rise in anti Semitism has very little to do Jews and could, God willing, or God forbid, I should say, have something to do with the future of the United States if we ended up truly turning on the Jews. But for now, just an astounding report and God willing, there will be accountability when it comes to this there. But for now, I'm really grateful for the Civil Commission for shining this necessary spotlight there on these horrific sexual crimes of October 7th, folks. One final commercial break. We'll be right back with some closing thoughts after this. Welcome back. So just a quick coda, a quick postscript, if you will, on this horrific conversation about the Civil Commission report on the evil, evil atrocities committed by Hamas on October 7, 2023. And the quick postscript is this. Imagine, imagine, imagine from our perspective here in the United States, if this were to happen against the United States on that scale, roughly 1200 people were murdered on October 7th. Israel is a tiny country, though. Israel is a country of roughly nine and a half to 10 million people. So if you want to control for size, there you are looking at an equivalent pogrom of the murder of somewhere between, call it 47 to 50,000Americans. Can you imagine if this level of sadism, of pure, unmitigated evil actually happened in, let's call it Texas or Arizona? Can you imagine if that were to happen? Can you imagine what the American response would be if the Sinaloa cartel or some other cartel went ahead and did this? We would go in guns fully freaking blazing, we would blow the everlasting crap out of these people, and we wouldn't think two seconds about it. What was Israel supposed to do exactly? Just take this sitting down, try to sort it out with the terrorists at the negotiating table? Are you out of your minds? Frankly, the only thought that I have about the war in Gaza that ensued after October 7th based on this report, is, if anything, how restrained Israel's reaction was. They barely did anything for a few weeks. It took a few weeks for the tanks to start rolling in. And the whole time they were going above and beyond dropping the leaflets, going door to door, putting their own young men and women in direct harm's way, sacrificing their lives at times tragically, in the name of trying to appease the unappeasable names, of trying to appease the liberal humanitarian international law overlords at the ICJ and the ICC and the United nations and all these various other globalist boondoggles. Really? That's what you're calling, quote, unquote, genocide? People should read this report, or they should at least read the executive summary. If you have take us back to our earlier conversation about Xi Jinping and Jimmy Lai and the softer genocide of the Uyghur Muslims out in Xinjiang province. If you are a fundamentally decent human being with even a morsel, even a morsel of integrity in your body, then really, really, really, you ought to be able to look at this and say this is evil and there has to be accountability for that evil, whatever that accountability entails, military or otherwise. And frankly, I think it's actually only a matter of time, if I had to guess, before the war in Gaza picks up again because Hamas making clear that they are not going to listen to the Donald Trump border peace. They are not laying down their weapons. They are not going anywhere. And Israel will probably have to do the job at some point. So I want to move on, talk about some other topics before we run out of time for today's show. So the redistricting fallout is continuing a little bit, a delectable, delectable development out of the state of Tennessee. So Cameron Sexton, who is the speaker of the House in Tennessee, we covered what was happening in Tennessee on the show last week. Tennessee is one of the southern states that's been affected by the Louisiana decision, the voting rights decision of the Supreme Court. Tennessee is redistricting their own congressional maps to give Republicans a likely full sweep of all of their congressional seats. By the way, they're, they're likely the only southern state to actually do that. Just overnight. It looks like Louisiana is going to create a 6 to 1 map for Republicans, not a 70 map. Alabama looks like they'll just, they're doing the same thing, a 6 to 1 Republican map, not a 70 map. South Carolina yesterday also rejected a full sweep there. Looks like Jim Clyburn, the longtime Democratic cane maker there in the Palmetto State, looks like he will be politically safe for a while. Unbelievable. What are you guys doing? In what world is this acceptable? Have you not learned anything about how the left operates, that you're just going here and just trying to throw them breadcrumbs? Speaking of appeasing the unappeasable, frankly, I hope that Donald Trump gives the Hoosier state treatment, gives the Indiana treatment to a lot of these feckless Republican rhinos. And the state legislatures in Louisiana, South Carolina and Alabama. It's not too late, though, for some of these states to change course. Anyway, Tennessee has been the only state thus far in the south to actually try to go for the full month. He tried to go for the full Republican sweep of the congressional map with the Voting Rights act redistricting. And this prompted Democrats to freak out. They were burning, setting fires in the state legislature there. They were complaining about a lot of stuff there. A total mess in The Tennessee Capitol last Thursday in particular. So Cameron Sexton, the Tennessee speaker of the House, sent this letter to Karen Camper, who is the leader of the Democrats there in the Tennessee House, and saying in this letter that all Democrats are being removed from all standing committees and some committees in the House as a result of their behavior during the debate. Folks, this is how you exercise power. This is how you exercise power, is doing exactly this. So real, real credit to Cameron Sexton, the Speaker of the House there in Tennessee for doing, for doing this. And as Sean Davis the Federalist knows, this is a great note to Republicans in charge in D.C. whether that's Mike Johnson or John Thune or in the White House for what to do when Democrats start acting out of line. Another fascinating note actually out of Illinois. So I've frequently mentioned Illinois on this show as an example of Democrats gone wild, as an example of what Democrat gerrymandering looks like there. Frankly, Illinois was one of the most gerrymandered states in the country and has been that way for decades and decades and decades on end. And above all, really, it's really maps like Illinois that I think have galvanized Republicans in order to engage in this fairly rare, historically rare, at least mid decade redistricting battle. I think it was maps like Illinois that James Blair, the White House Deputy Chief of Staff was looking at that really commenced him and urged him, instigated him to be the quarterback on this battle, a battle the Republicans are winning mightily and handily anyway. Out in Illinois, the public interest law firm known as pilf, PILF Public Interest Legal foundation, which primarily litigates in the area of election integrity and things that there says that they filed the first lawsuit following the recent Louisiana case challenging the, the, the Illinois maps and they, they are alleging in particular that when, when the Illinois government signed into place its new maps in 2021, when Governor Pritzker signed into these maps there, he added, quote, the Illinois Voting Rights act of 2011 ensures redistricting plans are crafted in a way that preserves clusters of minority voters if they are of size or cohesion, to exert collective electoral power. The maps sign into law today meet those requirements to adequately, adequately preserve minority representation and reflect the diversity of our state. I wonder why they're getting sued because the Louisiana case and Supreme Court, they literally said you can't do this, you can't redistrict because of race. So what a delight it would be to see Illinois's maps go down on the very rationale that the court just ruled on. There and in the Louisiana Supreme Court case there, I'm not entirely convinced that this litigation will be successful at an immediate and immediate time. It's going to depend on the district courts there. In Illinois, it's going to depend on the panels on the, on the court of appeals. And that's always a luck of the draw type type thing. But we shall see. And it's really exciting, frankly, that this is happening in the first place. Also, by the way, the Missouri Supreme Court, speaking of states of Midwest, the neighboring states of Illinois, the Missouri Supreme Court has, has smacked down, they have ended rebuked a legal challenge to their own redistricting. So long story short, Missouri is now set to have a 7 to 1 Republican over Democrat map for, for 2026. This is all after a law that was passed by Missouri last year when it comes to redistricting. So Republicans are definitely going to win redistricting. As we've covered on the show many times now, the only question is whether or not it ultimately will matter. Finally, just a quick note for you that Kevin Warsh is going to be confirmed as chair of the Federal Reserve. It will either be today or it will be tomorrow, probably at the latest there he was already confirmed to the Fed's board of governors. That happened on Tuesday. Kevin Warsh is going to have an interesting decision to make here because the recent annualized Inflation data of 3.8% is the highest reading in three years. Warsh made his name as something of an inflation hawk. Donald Trump's instincts are that of a lower interest rate kind of guy. He is more dovish on the issue of inflation. There's this would be a big test for Kevin Warsh and frankly, I think the Kevin Warsh instincts probably in this one should prevail over that of President Trump. Inflation is the number one goal of the nation's central bank period. Other factors are relevant. Inflation is the number one task. When you have inflation higher than wage growth, real people suffer. And I hope after Ken Warshall confirmed, we'll hit this again on the show. I'm sure sooner rather than later. I really, really hope. Above all, he focuses on pairing inflation and preserving wage integrity. Kevin wars, though, for now, though, good luck on your forthcoming confirmation to the Federal Reserve chairmanship, folks. Have a great rest of your evening. Josh Hammer signing off for now. We'll be right back. Tomorrow.
- [42:28]
A
When you manage procurement for multiple facilities, every order matters. But when it's for a hospital system, they matter even more. Grainger gets it and knows there's no time for managing multiple suppliers and no room for shipping delays. That's why Grainger offers millions of products in fast, dependable delivery so you can keep your facility stocked, safe and running smoothly. Call 1-800-GRAINGER click granger.com or just stop by Granger for the ones who get it done.