← The Josh Hammer Show
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Well, they're coming hot and heavy now from the U.S. supreme Court. We are in the final stretch of the season and there were some massive wins for Donald Trump and for conservatives this morning at the court. Will it be enough to forestall what seems like inevitable loss next week in birthright citizenship? I'm Josh Hammer and this is the Josh Hammer Show. So this is the time of the year where court watchers like myself are just free, frantically logging on around 10:00am Eastern Time and just hitting the refresh button on repeat, trying to figure out what cases are coming out of the U.S. supreme Court. No, I'm actually not exaggerating. That literally is how it works. So the court does not announce in advance as to what opinions will be released on a given day. It is all based on a somewhat anachronistic process whereby you have a lot of bloggers who are in there and they go to their live blogs. Oftentimes SCOTUS blog is a popular one despite its historical left leaning bias. That is still one of the go to blogs for such endeavors and they'll say, oh, they're bringing out one or two or three physical boxes of opinions. That's actually how it works, like a physical box of an actual written opinion. That's how you start to surmise, oh, today could actually be a short day. Three, four opinions. Maybe it's going to be five opinions. Long story short, we entered today with 12 opinions to be decided and there was some chatter this morning that we might get up to 6, up to half of the remain 12. My guess, I've been around the block a time or two. My guess was that we'd only get three, three or four. And sure enough, we ended up getting four cases. By my count, three of them I believe are politically salient and relevant for what we discuss here on the show day in and day out. So there were two massive immigration wins for President Trump and the administration. I want to get to that in just a minute. I do want to lead. You just Briefly, with a notable win as well on a Second Amendment issue. So this is a case out of Hawaii. This case is Walford vs Lopez, and it comes out of the states of Hawaii. And essentially what happened in this case was that Hawaii had a truly, truly draconian law, one of the absolute worst laws. Hawaii is a very, very, very blue state. Absolutely horrific when it comes to your right to keep and bear arms. They have a long standing law that prohibits even those who have a concealed carry license. So like me, I've had one for 10 years now or even longer. I'm perhaps you do too in the audience. So Hawaii has a law that prohibited concealed carry permit holders from taking their handguns on any private property. So that could be a restaurant, a bar, a home, whatever the case may be. You can't do that unless you have the express authorization of that property owner. So this would essentially criminalize most acts of actually bearing arms under the text of the Second Amendment. So long story short, what the Court says is that this law fails is that this is unconstitutional under the Second Amendment because it falls within the plain text, writes Justice Sam Alito. 46. 3 Court, this falls in the plain text of the Amendment. So the law is facially at face value, it is unconstitutional. It's a pretty straightforward application, frankly, of the Court's marquee opinion that came out four years ago in a case out of New York City called Bruin. That was a case for which Clarence Thomas wrote the majority opinion. In the Bruin case, the Court for the very first time said that it's not just the right to keep arms that is constitutionally relevant. That's what the Court decided back in 2008 in the D.C. versus Heller case and then applied to the states two years later in the City of Chicago versus McDonald case. No, the court wrote four years ago in the Bruen case, this also applies to the language of having the right to carry a handgun for self defense outside of the home. After all, the relevant language in the Second Amendment says that the right to keep and bear arms, not just keep them, but to bear arms. Bruen case four years ago was the first time the Court actually started to get into the weeds of this. And in Hawaii they're saying this applies to this Hawaii law in question. Pretty straightforward application. I'm not entirely sure what grounds the liberal ladies have to dissent other than just trying to overturn Bruen in its entirety. The unfortunate problem for them is that the Second Amendment actually means what it says. The text is there for a reason. There's what these liberals actually want to do is they want to actually just gut and remove the Second Amendment in its entirety. In fact, the intellectually honest liberals out there take that stance explicitly that they want to just repeal the Second Amendment with a new amendment to the Constitution. Now, there was one just absolutely delectable line here from Sam Alito, who is one of my favorite justice on the Supreme Court. There was this case in 2024 out of Hawaii. It was actually a state supreme court case, memory serves, where the Hawaii Supreme Court referenced the spirit of Aloha. And they did this to try to justify their draconian laws pertaining to, well, in this case, restrictive gun ownership and gun carrying rights. So in an amazing line Sam Alito writes on page 18 of his Wolford versus Lopez majority painting this morning, he writes, quote, the Second Amendment cannot give way to the spirit of Aloha in Hawaii any more than it can yield to the spirit of the Big Apple. That's the Bruin case or the Windy city. That's the McDonald case. So just some really just delightful, just sticking on the knife and twisting it from Sam Alito, one of the conservative titans in the court when it comes to these draconian blue state laws. But that was not the only victory for conservatives this morning at the court. There were two massive immigration victories as well. So the first that I want to touch on was a case involving asylum. So both of these are victories for the administration. They both involve policies that have been started in this case under Secretary Mullen and in the previous case Under Secretary Noem. Well, I guess they both started technically Undersecretary Noem, but they've been carried over by Secretary Mullen. So this first case involves asylum. And the relevant legal question here is, do you have to physically be in the United States in order to actually submit an application for asylum if you are an alien crossing the border? Or do you have, is it sufficient to file that application? Do you have a statutory right to file that application if you're across the border in Mexico? This is part of the broader conversation about the remain in Mexico policy. So in the context of remain in Mexico, which goes all the way back to the first Trump administration, this notion that you remain there and that we're not going to alight across the border, we're not going to do this Obama era binary catch and release garbage where you release into the interior, typically you will abscond, not even show up to your court hearing. So the administration has this paradigm whereby you stay in Mexico. So the legal question is, can you then file an asylum application from Mexico. And the answer says Justice Same Alito. In another one of these similar six or three opinions, the answer is no. Alito writes on page one of his majority opinion, quote, this case presents a straightforward question whether an alien who seeks to enter the United States, Mexico, arrives in the United States when he or she is still in Mexico. Unbelievably, the ninth Circuit below, the very liberal California based ninth Circuit, said that the answer is yes. But Alito writes, quote, that is wrong in ordinary speech. So in plain speech, no one would say that a person arrives in a place, for example, a house, a city or a country before the person actually enters that place. This is English language 101. You could literally take a middle schooler, a high schooler, if you, if you would like, and ask them what is the plain meaning of the word arrive. And you will arrive at the conclusion, no pun intended, you will arrive at the conclusion. That arrive means what six justices this morning said that it means. The only question, frankly that I have is how you could have three justices who disagree with this. So this gets back to the original Immigration Nationality act of 1952, otherwise known as the INA, which is still the relevant legal statute pertaining to most immigration laws and disputes in this country to this day. This is one of the most straightforward exercises in statutory interpretation that you will ever find, frankly, in a Supreme Court opinion. Another just gem from Alito. Just, just drilling home this point. Alito writes, quote, the running back. He's talking about football here, the running, and not the World cup football you see on tv, which we call soccer, obviously, like actual American football. He says the running back, quote, does not arrive in the end zone and six points do not go up on the scoreboard when he's tackled at the one yard line by the defense. So another one of these very subtle, just sticking in the knife and twisting it, this notion that a linebacker tackling the running back at the one yard line is the equivalent of CBP apprehending an illegal alien shore the border. It's just another just wonderful analogy. But Alito was actually not done. There's another great day for one of our great American heroes, Justice Sam Alito. And there was another immigration victory as well, this time pertaining to TPS, Temporary Protected Status. So TPS goes back to the year 1990 in the George H.W. bush administration. It was passed originally. It was implemented to give those who are here on a short term visa, AKA not on a green card, something less than that, to give them temporary relief if there is A legitimate humanitarian disaster that prevents them from going back to the country. So for some of these Central American countries, for instance, what if there was a horrific earthquake or a hurricane and conditions do not apply? So you get temporary. The key word in TPS is temporary. It is temporary. Unfortunately, a lot of folks who have been given tps, including some Haitians and Syrians, which are the two relevant actors here, that the Trump administration was trying to withdraw the status from, they've been here for years, if not decades, because they just abused and continued to get granted TPS there. So the relevant question here is whether or not the administration can just pull TPS status for certain Syrians and Haitians or whether or not they can challenge that in a court of law. Do they have any kind of claim in a federal Article 3 court to challenge the revocation of their TPS status? And in another very clear statutory interpretation outcome, the Alito led majority says that the answer is no, because the relevant statute in question, the actual law says, quote, that there shall be no judicial review of any determination with respect to the termination of tps. Translation, the courts can't get involved. It is nonjudicial. There is no claim here. Why? Because as we've been saying for a year and a half on this show, ever since this judicial insurrection started against the administration focused above all on the issue of immigration. These immigration decisions in general are not justiciable by courts. If Congress wants to affirmatively add an element of Article 3 federal court review, they can do so. They have the power to do so. After all, Congress has an Article 1, Section 8 ability to prescribe a uniform rule of naturalization, and they can legislate in this area. But the baseline default rule is that when it comes to immigration enforcement and removal proceedings, there is no right to get into federal court again. Congress can legislate above that. But absent that, as a TPS statute confirms, there is no judicial review. That is the baseline rule and is very clearly the explicit rule when it comes to TPS as well. Now, all this is coming in the context of what we believe to be a likely, unfortunately massive loss on the birthright citizenship case, Barbara versus Trump, which will be now decided. We know next week, because next week is the final week of the term. So we're going to lose. I hate to say it, but we are going to lose on that case. Do not get your hopes up. You will be drastically let down if you think that we're going to win. We are going to lose. And by we, I just mean conservatives, originalists, people who are sane on the issue, who understand law and history and reason and logic and policy, and we're going to lose. Now, bear in mind that these are meaningful wins. Your mileage may vary as to just how much these wins will forestall that inevitable pain. But keep that in back of your mind because again, we're going to lose, folks. But today, today, if nothing else, today, out of Hawaii and at the southern border is a good reason to celebrate from the United States Supreme Court. We're going to go to a quick commercial break, folks. We'll be right back with more.
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Welcome back. There's a lot else to get to. I want to talk about the socialism that is happening in New York, the actual literal socialism, frankly, it might even be communism. I want to talk about that. But for now, I want to just put a final note on our conversation about the birthright case next week. So the votes are not there, as I've been saying since day one when it comes to Donald Trump's executive order trying to water down the fiction, the fable of constitutionally guaranteed birthright citizenship for the children of legal aliens. I've been explaining this since day one. I'm sure we'll cover this at great length again next week when the court issues its ruling. The question, though, is will Trump lash out in unprecedented fashion? Will he threaten to pack the U.S. supreme Court? Will he do lots of things that he has thus far resisted from doing? And part of the context for that is, I do believe, are these two very real victories for Donald Trump in an immigration context on asylum and on TPS this morning at the court? Will that lessen? Will that assuage his inevitable frustrations when the court rules? Likely in lopsided fashion, seven to two, give or take against him on birthright citizenship? I don't know the answer because I don't know what Trump thinks on day to day basis. I don't know what goes on in his mind before he puts a post on Truth Social. You probably don't either. So we're all just speculating. I'm just saying, make a mental note for now that there's a possibility at least that his anger next week is going to be slightly, slightly assuaged by these two very real wins today on TPS and Asylum. I think it probably won't be, to be clear, but I think there's a possibility at least that it will. Well, speaking of anger flaring, we saw a lot of anger flaring this week in New York City from the voters of New York City, where socialism is the theme of the day. It is the victorious ideology of the dead. Zormadani is now clearly the new kingmaker of New York City. He has eclipsed Alexandria Ocasio Cortez as the leader of New York City and perhaps even New York State Democrats. To the extent that Kathy Hochul the Governor, or Tish James the Attorney General, or heaven forbid, Chuck Schumer, who is somewhat of a barnacle of a bygone era in Democratic politics, to the extent that any of them thought that they had a claim when it comes to being the pinnacle, the ground zero of Democratic politics in the Empire State, that is done so. That is completely, utterly done so. Zurmadani is the king of New York City and to no small extent of New York State. At least a dozen candidates who were endorsed by the New York State chapter of the DSA of the Democratic Socialist America, they were victorious this past Tuesday night. Many, perhaps even most of them were outright endorsed by Yzor Mamdani. The two big takeaways are Dara Liza Avila Chevalier, who knocked off the multi term incumbent, a Hispanic representative who was previously an illegal alien. He became the first former illegal alien granted amnesty who became a Congressman. This dude was the chairman, Congressman Espalat of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus. And now he's done. He has been defeated by a Columbia University apartheid and divest activist who just hates America. I really actually don't even know how else to say it. This woman like genuinely drippingly just actually truly hates America. As Wilfred Riley, who was a Kentucky based university professor and a conservative intellectual as he put it on social media on Wednesday evening, looking at some of this woman's quotes, Chevalier, the our soon to be congresswoman out of Harlem I believe is a district. This woman is quite literally a complete effing nut if you look at what she has done. She I'm talking here about Darlisa Avila Chevalier, one of Madamny's three endorsed Socialists in New York City who won on Tuesday. At least from the US Congressional perspective. He won other races in the state legislature anyway. Avila Chevalier, according To Wilfri Riley has called for the following quote. She has called for abolishing police, prisons and borders. She has retweeted posts saying, yes, literally abolish the border and all deportation is wrong. She has called the US A quote, complete effing disgrace, referred to the US as occupied Native American land. She has joked about wiping her dirty hands on the American flag. She has written favorably about communism. She wrote, seize the means of production. She's called for nationalizing utilities, pharmaceutical companies and seizing all properties from landlords. She has called Joe Biden a rapist and a war criminal, said that she wouldn't vote for him. She said f. Kamala Harris. She has criticized Bernie Sanders and AOC for being too pro Israel. Bernie Sanders. I mean, the mind just reels. She wrote that black and Arab men fetishize ugly colonizer women. I actually don't even know what to make of that last part that's just so utterly out there. The mind reels as to what to possibly say about it. She actually was just on Ms. Now. She went on Ms. Now to do something of a victory lap. MSNow is what they're calling MSNBC these days. Not really sure how that rebranding is going. It seems to me like one of the worst rebrandings in the history of rebrandings. But anyway, she went on the velshi show on Ms. Now, and the interviewer, Mr. Velshi, asked her, quote, how do you respond to allegations that you're a communist? Her answer is quite telling. Darieliza Avila Chevalier says, quote, for far too long, this reactive conversation of what we should be afraid of has prevented us from being able to have a politics Democrats can identify with. Do you see what's going on here? She's a Colombia person. Remember? She was one of the starters, the leaders of the Gaza encampment at Columbia, the one that turned violent, where they broke windows, took a janitor hostage at Hamilton Hall. All that happening in the spring of 2024. This is a woman, I'm trying to say, who is not stupid. She comes from Colombia, which once upon a time was a reputable university. She's no dummy. She has a functioning iq. And that makes her different from a Jasmine Crockett. That makes her different from an Alexandria Ocasio Cortez. She's not stupid. She's putting a new intellectual face on a new generation of communism. This is really, really, really dangerous stuff. This stuff absolutely, absolutely can indeed. It already is. Taking over the Democratic Party, and make no doubt about that. The Democratic leadership is Absolutely melting down. They're not doing it publicly, they're hiding a little bit. But if you look at some of the interviews that have happened on Capitol Hill, a lot of these reporters that sit the microphone in your face. Nancy Pelosi, what do you think of this? Hakeem Jeffries, what do you think? You can tell just from the body language they're not happy. The voters of New York City do what they want. Translation, we will be out of power soon. They're all dinosaurs anyway. Pelosi dinosaur, Schumer dinosaur, and generation is dunzo. The notion of a Democrat who believes in something like a free market principle, who believes that supply and demand can actually get you a price and that price should not be set from a means of production, central planning, Politburo, similar to what they had in Moscow in the 50s and 60s, similar to what they had during the Mao Zedong era in Beijing. The notion that price actually determines scarcity and resources. No, these people are socialists. Like actual literal socialists. For a long time I think Republicans joked that their opposition were socialists, but they said that because they believed in things like a more generous Scandinavian, Danish, Swedish, Norwegian style welfare state. That may or may not be good policy. I happen to not think it's particularly great policy, at least at a federal level. That doesn't make you a socialist. A socialist is someone who actually opposes any semblance of the free market, who believes in control and command and control the means of production and full on redistribution of wealth and sharing. I'm blurred the lines a little bit here between socialism and communism, but you get the idea. That is actually where these people are. There can be no doubt about that at this point. That is who Zoe Mamdani is. That is who. The woman who's already being called dac. She's not aoc, she's dac. That is who she is too. That's also who Brad Lander is. Brad Lander is the one who knocked off Dan Goldman in a Jew on Jew intra Jew congressional race where Lander got basically twice the amount of votes as Goldman. And Goldman was subject to a bit of anti Semitism just this past weekend from this coffee shop that refunded his coffee purchase for being, quote unquote, too pro Israel. Which is hilarious because he's not particularly pro Israel. Well, there were some folks who were not necessarily having that actually. So let's go ahead actually and play this clip of a female protester who was just criticizing the Poetic Coffee Shop for banning Goldman. This is courtesy of Fox News. I mean it was ridiculous.
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You know how many times I see
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all different religions come shop in a kosher supermarket.
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Nobody's throwing them out.
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We're not telling them to leave or refund them. This is America.
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You can't do that. It's ridiculous.
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What's going on over here?
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That's how it started in Nazi Germany.
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Okay, so first of all, you gotta love the accent, right? This woman is clearly of pie and for New York City. I know a lot of people in my life who sound like that. I'm personally thankful I'm not one of them. But in any event, you got to love it. For what it's worth, I see that too when I go to kosher supermarkets here in Florida or elsewhere. I actually oftentimes see Muslim individuals shopping in kosher supermarkets. Why? Because the certification for Muslim meats, halal is actually a little less rigorous than kosher. So if it's kosher, it's definitely halal, but if it's halal, it's not definitely kosher. So the translation for that is that a lot of Muslims can get their meat from kosher butcheries, and there's no issue there when it comes to their own religion to Sharia and so forth there. So I do see this all the time there. But we are now at a point where banning you or discriminating you from public life because you're Jewish, because you support Israel is increasing, becoming the price of entry to enter into the sphere for the Democratic Party. That is bad, that is immoral. And also, by the way, it is blatantly illegal. More on that, hopefully to come very soon. We'll be right back, folks, after a short break. Stay with us.
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Welcome back. So the silver lining for whatever Republicans may think is happening on their side of the island, there was a tough inflation number that came out just this morning. Unfortunately, we will bring on Steve Moore tomorrow to unpack that and much more to make sure to stay tuned for Steve Moore coming on the show on Friday. But the silver lining, no matter what the price of oil may be, and by the way, oil has actually come down quite a bit already. Trump has not seen that decline when it comes to gas prices, which is why he is now threatening to have the DOJ investigate the oil companies for price gouging, which is kind of interesting, a bit of a page out of the Biden playbook. But he's probably just issuing a threat that will not come to fruition. But in any event, whatever Republicans may or may not think by the price of oil, gasoline, inflation more generally, all you have to do is look at the other side. Democratic Party is captured by a bunch of crazy individuals, by a bunch of socialists, a bunch of anti white racists, bunch of people who are actually saying they want to burn America to the ground. And they have a generational clash on the Democratic side that Republicans simply do not have. So Peter Welch, the he's not even a moderate. He's a senator from Vermont. He's Bernie Sanders, colleague from Vermont. Dude would not be considered a moderate in any stretch, but he's kind of an old white dude. So an old white dude in today's Democratic Party makes you de facto something of a moderate. He was approached just over the past day or so about what he thinks about some of these absolutely bad crap, insane statements from people like Darieliza Avila Chevalier, people like Claire Valdez, people like Brad Lander, Mamdani's triumvirate of socialists who will be entering Congress come January 2027. And Peter Welch, Vermont basically, you know what? Look, I don't really agree, but I don't really agree with the whole, with everything that comes out of my colleague's mouths. So they're trying to downplay it, but you see how uncomfortable they are. Look, the right has a lot of divides, no doubt about them. There was this whole podcast information operation coming from the Tucker Carlson led wing of the broader right. And it's awful. But whatever divides we may or may not have on the right when it comes to that, when it comes to things like Iran, when it comes to any number of other policy positions. Whatever those divides may or may not be, they utterly pale in comparison to the divides happening on the left. If you're like me and you eat, live and breathe in a conservative ecosystem and most of your friends, most of your colleagues, your spouse, your family, if most people in your life are on the right, it's easy to not see that. It's easy to not see just how divided the other side actually is. And it's not just how divided they are. It's how out of touch their base is with the American people at large. Most Democrats actually tell pollsters they believe in socialism over capitalism. That may be changing, but that is not anywhere close to a majority issue for the American people at large. It simply is not any number of other issues where they are wildly out of touch as well. On the issue of transgenderism, for instance, they are not even close to where the American people are. Not even close. These are 80, 20 issues, by the way, on the issue of transgenderism, I cannot help but note that I saw this headline that came out of London, courtesy of Reuters. So today, earlier today in London, in Parliament, British lawmakers are publishing drafts conversion practices, its new bill for England and Wales that would ban so called conversion therapies and the offenders who carry out these chemical castrations, these genital mutilations, these horrific procedures that are utterly barbaric but are sometimes referred to euphemistically as transgender medicine. According to this new bill that is being drafted over in Parliament in London, offenders carrying out such practices in England and Wales could face an unlimited fine and or up to five years in prison. So we're at this very weird point in time where the uk which is typically to the left of the United States, the Labor Party there is typically to the left of the Democratic Party. Now we're at this very weird place where in some of these truly, truly, truly culture war issues and transgenderism has won them. These people in the dsa, the Justice Democrats, the truly truly radical Mamdani Avila Chevalier fringe, they are way, way, way, way, way, way beyond anything that's happening across the pond, over in the uk, over in Scandinavia and anything like that. So this will continue to pay dividends as a silver lining for Republicans this fall. Now an interesting thing that I like to touch upon on this show is to just contextualize where all this came from. So a lot of folks say when the Democratic Party start to go truly this radical and I think it would be very easy, albeit a little facile, to just start are telling of the tale in the year 2020. Now, 2020 was definitely a pivotal year. That was the death of St. George Floyd, our great racial reckoning martyr. And no doubt about that, the summer of love of 2020 was a lot of the incipient to where the Democratic Party got you today. That's how you saw the explosion of popularity of all these race hucksters, people like Ta, Nehisi Coates, people like Ibram X Kennedy and all that sort. And then they took it to the. To the next level after October 7, where the whole Gaza thing became their. Their. Their. Their cause du jour, their cause celeb of the moment, replacing to an extent the racial issue. And the racial issue had actually replaced the MeToo issue back during the Harvey Weinstein era and all the above. But you really ought to go back further and you should, you should recognize that the actual moment that this all started and the actual beginning of the complete evisceration of the Clinton era Democratic Party was the primary victory of Barack Obama over Hillary Clinton in 2008. That is when it started when Barack Obama knocked off the establishment Hillary Clinton in 2008. That is when the old Democratic Party died. Now it gets a little more complicated because if Hillary had actually beaten Trump in 2016, which she of course didn't, and I still get no shortage of joy over the fact that she didn't. But if she had, the story would have gotten a little more complicated. But she lost. And therefore when Obama beat her in 08, that was really the turning point there. Obama's whole mirage of hope and change, his whole mirage of not seeing a brown America and a white America or a red America and a blue America. That was his 2004 convention speech that launched him into stardom that ultimately resulted in his running for president just four years after he was elected to the U.S. senate. That was all a lie. Barack Obama was the divider in Chief. He was 1000% the divider in chief. He was the one who was there who was trying to divvy us up. He's the one who famously said after the Trayvon Martin sin that if he had a son, his son would look like Trayvon Martin. He's the one who rubbed it in the face of Paul Ryan and Eric Cantor in the context of passing the stimulus package and Dodd Frank and the health care law, all that happening in the first couple years of his administration, who looked down at Cantor and Ryan when they were leading Republicans in the House and said, guess what, guys? I won, you lost, therefore suck it up and you're going to bow to my unadulterated will. He's the one who said, I have a pen, I have a phone. I don't really care what Congress says. He's the one who came out in favor of the Rainbow Jihad while the rainbow Jihad was still not a popular issue for the forces of leftism and secularism in America. He's the one who repudiated his nominal, through his teeth, lying, 2008 stance about marriage being between one man and one woman. He repudiated all of that in 2012. Actually, Biden got a little bit ahead of him and came out. So Obama was the predecessor to all of this. And that's why I couldn't help but laugh a little bit when I saw that Michelle Obama went on the People Magazine podcast and was talking a little bit about the brand new opening of her hubby's new presidential library in south side Chicago. This chronically late, overdue and way, way over budget presidential library there. And Michelle Obama was saying that the hope and joy that people felt during our administration had to do with the character of this leader. Give me a freaking break. Well, here is Michelle Obama on the People Magazine podcast.
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The symbolism of his presidency wasn't just about race. It was also about the way you show up as a leader. You know, it's not just the color of our leaders, but the character of our leaders and how they show up in the world and the responsibility that they take to use their platforms in a mature, wise way? I think that what Barack offered this country was a mature president, was a highly intelligent president, was a selfless president.
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A selfless president. Does a selfless president threaten Congress and say that he just has a pen and a phone? Does a selfless president accumulate more power to the executive branch of any president, at least since Lyndon Johnson, arguably since fdr? Does a selfless president stay in the spotlight the way that Barack Obama has done? Does a selfless president physically stay in Washington, D.C. as Barack Obama has done with his fancy home in Kalorama, just a stone's throw from the White House? Does a selfless president lead a de facto third term with Joe Biden? The answer is no. Barack Obama, in many ways, folks, is the original fountain, the original source of so much that plagues the Democratic Party today. This will continue to be the silver lining for Republicans is how radical this monster that first emerged during the Obama era has sprouted into today. Watch for it to get even worse, unfortunately, I think from here. One final break, folks. We'll be right back with some Closing thoughts after this. Welcome back. And we are still tracking the ongoing Iran deal negotiations that are still happening over in Lucerne in Switzerland at this bougie mountaintop resort. The fascinating thing that's happening is there's this bizarre optic. I think it's more than I think it's actually a quasi reality of these two tier simultaneously operating negotiations and acts of diplomacy that are happening by American foreign leaders at the same time. So let me unpack that. What I mean is that on the one hand, you have J.D. vance, flocked by his two flunkies, Steve Woodcliff and Jared Kushner, who are seemingly trying to give away as much as they can to Iran and trying to get a deal, any deal, at all costs, even if that deal does not result in any tangible wins for the administration, even if it is barely distinguishable at all from the 2015 Barack Obama JCPOA. Speaking of Barack Obama, again, all that's happening in Switzerland, on the other hand, at the exact same time, don't look down, but Marco Rubio has actually reassert himself. Rubio was MIA for a while there. A lot of folks I saw on X were saying, where is Marco Rubio? Where is the secretary of State during the course of this whole war, this whole negotiation? Where is this? And Rubio this week has been over in the Gulf. So he's been over in the uae, he's been over in Kuwait, he's been over in Bahrain, trying to shore up U.S. relations when it comes to our traditional Sunni Gulf allies in the region. In other words, Marco Rubio is trying to preserve, it seems, the Abraham Accords achievement. Abraham Accords were these great peace deals that were orchestrated by Donald Trump and Bibi Netanyahu in 2020. They were the first normalization agreements between Israel and Arab countries since the Jordan peace two and a half decades prior to that, UAE and Bahrain and Morocco were the three main countries involved. And the essential purpose of the Abraham Accords was to have this Iran containment alliance. When it comes to countries of disparate interests and demographies and religions, meaning Israel and these moderate Arab countries, the goal is to bring them together for a common cause, which is the Iran containment cause. Now, I say all that because the prime minister of Qatar, Al Thani, who, if you believe this new book from Maggie Haberman and Swan, if you believe their reporting, what you see is that the prime minister, Qatar Al Thani, is even closer than we realize to Witkoff and Kushner and by, I guess by extension, J.D. vance. Now, there was a, an image that came out of Switzerland a few days ago. And this is not scooped by Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan. This was just public available, was tweeted, actually by a lot of folks. This image of Al Thani, the Prime Minister of Qatar, this terrifying state, peering over the shoulder of Kushner sitting next to JD Vance as Vance is working on an Anahila Packer laptop, typing some notes for his deal. So Qatar is very chummy. They're, they're one of the key players here in this Swiss diplomacy. Qatar is the world's number one funder of the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas and Al Jazeera. But what could possibly go wrong? So I say all that because what I saw yesterday, which is fascinating, is that the Financial Times is reporting that the Qatari Prime Minister Al Thani has announced that, quote, regional states are negotiating a new security agreement with Iran, shifting away from, from the U.S. protection framework. This is the antithesis of the Abraham Accords. In fact, as Ron DeSantis, our governor here in Florida, posted, quote, this would represent the anti Abraham Accords approach. The Abraham Accords approach is to bring together Israel and the moderate Sunni Arab states under the auspices of U.S. leadership and diplomacy to contain and confront Iran. This other idea from Al Thani, the Prime minister of one of the nation's leading sponsor, terror, Qatar, is trying to get a, quote, new security agreement with Iran whereby the US And Israel have nothing to do with this. What would that even mean? I actually have no idea. So you see a lot of this Swiss diplomacy that is going into this anti Israel, anti Abraham Accords direction. In many ways, it's actually directly contrary to Donald Trump's first term foreign policy. That's the irony. A lot of what's happening with this Vance Wyckoff Kushner negotiation looks very, very radically different from what America First MAGA looked like in Donald Trump's first term and frankly looked like to no small extent for the first year, year plus of the second term. And then on the other hand, you have Rubio who's going to Bahrain ueku a and saying, no, we're still here. So do you see what I'm getting at? It looks like Vance is leading this implicit Abraham Accords rebuke in Switzerland at the same time during the same week. Well, where Rubio, his likely 2020 arrival is going to the Sunni Gulf states to shore up that broader Abraham Accords paradigm. It's an absolutely fascinating development. But Rubio did not stop there. Actually. He was asked as part of the traveling pool with him about how the Iran negotiations are going as well. And Rubio talked among other things about the Strait of Hormuz being opened. And here's what he had to say on that particular point.
- [39:59]
E
Well, no, I think they'll be against it. I think the whole world will be against any mechanism that charges money to use an international waterway. It's that simple. The President has already said it. That's not going to happen. When we mean open the straits, we mean open the straits free in international waterways. So we'll express that tomorrow. I am certain that not only will every country in the Gulf region be supportive, probably with the exception of Iran, but all the GCC members will be supportive. But the whole world will be supportive. I know of no country on the planet that supports tolling or a fee for the use of the straits. That's just not, that's not going to happen. The President has been abundantly clear.
- [40:33]
B
Rubio has also asked whether he has any concerns about whether the GCC, the Gulf Cooperation Council, which is Bahrain, Bahrain, UAE, Qatar, Saudi, etc. Whether he has any concerns that they are planning to meet with Oman in Iran in order to adjust this new mechanism with Iranians. Here's what he had to say about that.
- [40:50]
E
Look, obviously anytime you enter into a negotiation, it's a process of give and take. This is a temporary measure. It's for 60 days and as a result we expect them to live up to the commitments they made in Switzerland. If they don't live up to those commitments, the President has a lot of options at his disposal, including. I'm not saying he's going to do it, I'm saying including reversing these sanctions. They made very straight up commitments in Switzerland and the President has been very clear they need to keep those commitments. If they do, we'll keep forward. If not, the President will have options at his disposal for what to do about it. Let's hope they keep those commitments.
- [41:22]
B
The context for this is that we know, and it's really not a well kept secret that Rubio opposes the mou. He is dead opposed to this. We believe, and we are pretty confident in that belief. It's been leaked. This flies in the face of all the Rubio has stood for for a decade and a half, at least when it comes to his views on the Iranian regime and elsewhere. Unfortunately, these sanctions they talking about might be harder to put back into place. Once the genie's out of the bottle. We'll see what happens. But for now, I think it's very, very, very interesting to see these two likely 2020 arrivals. Vance and Rubio taking very, very different approaches to the region. Just this week on a simultaneous one track, two track thing. It's absolutely fascinating stuff. Finally, Donald Trump kicked off America to 50. Last night there was a whole campaign style rally on the National Mall. I watched it, all sorts of theatrics and the flag of military flyover. Really, really, really great stuff. And I love this. I just love red blood American pages. I love it. Lee Greenwood, God bless the usa. I mean, how do you not love this stuff? I am such a sucker, a SAP for good old fashioned red, white and blue stars and stripes pages. And I have been for my entire life. So that has not changed and nor will it likely ever change, God willing, for a very, very long time. But the speech that really stood out to me last night on the Mall was one from Trump's Transportation Secretary, Secretary Duffy. And Sean Duffy spoke quite movingly about how you need to focus on things in your life that really matter. It really stuck with me. I think you should watch as well. Here was Sean Duffy on the National Mall just last night.
- [43:02]
F
You know, speaking of families, modern culture has told our young people that they shouldn't look for love, they shouldn't have a family, they shouldn't have kids. Instead, focus on their education, focus on their careers, focus on their bank accounts, have a free Saturday morning and go get a venti latte with your friends at Starbucks. That will give them joy is what Coltra has told them. This is the dumbest advice that they could ever get. What fills the human heart? What gives us purpose? We should look for love, get married and have lots of kids.
- [43:44]
B
Honestly, I'm not sure I could say it any better than that. That is what fills the human heart is marriage and family and kids and faith. God. It's not necessarily politics, folks. Politics is important. We believe politics is important, otherwise we would not talk about it every single day. These things are important, but they are not the most important things of your life. Conservatives once upon a time understood that intuitively. I worry that's slipping in certain elements there. That's why I think it was really, really important to see a cabinet member from this administration say it in no uncertain terms. Last night, as Charlie Kirk, my late friend, would have said, do what you can to make your wife happy. Do what you can to make your children happy. Do what you can above all, to make God happy. That's how you should think about your life. That's how you should live each and every day of your life for the rest of your life. God willing. Amen, folks. Have a great rest of your evening. Josh Hammer signing off for now. We'll be right back.
- [44:42]
A
As always.