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- [00:00]
Dave Rubin
Foreign guys, we have a rare Friday sit down for you. Yes, it's true. I'm Dave Rubin, this is the Rubin Report.
- [00:14]
Josh Hammer
And joining me is a co Florida man, the host of the Josh Hammer show, the senior editor at large at Newsweek, and the author of the new.
- [00:24]
Dave Rubin
Book Israel and Civilization, the Fate of the Jewish Nation and the Destiny of the West. Josh Hammer, welcome back to the Rubin Report.
- [00:32]
Josh Hammer
Dave, you're a dear friend. I appreciate the opportunity once again to converse with you.
- [00:36]
Dave Rubin
Josh, don't butter me up. But first, let's start because I was glancing at the COVID here, and every single person from the COVID of the book to the back of the book is a Rubin Report refugee. We've got Mark Levin on the front, Senator Ted Cruz, Ben Shapiro, Glenn Beck, Governor Ron DeSantis, Dana Loesch, Yoram Hazoni, and Liz Wheeler. So you basically wrote this book using just old clips of my show, I.
- [00:58]
Josh Hammer
Assume, Dave, it's almost as if you're gonna appreciate this book when you start to dive into it. It's almost as if this book written for you and your audience.
- [01:05]
Dave Rubin
I can probably retire after this. All right. Actually, before we get into Israel and the Jews, I would almost rather talk about anything, actually, besides that, I feel like we talk about Jews a lot. It's probably not a great time or good things happening to the Jews. But we will talk about that in just a sec. But I wanna talk about something else for a second. Cause you're also a lawyer and there's been a bit of an interesting thing happening as it relates to Trump and these deportations. And now a lower circuit court basically trying to reverse the deportations, trying to literally turn a plane back from El Salvador. I have seen a lot of people I respect on our side of the aisle having different takes on this. Mark Levin got into it with Hugh Hewitt. So good people who I respect, I respect you as a lawyer, what do you make of this? Are we in a constitutional crisis? What do we do? And then we will discuss that.
- [01:52]
Josh Hammer
All right, so we are in a legal crisis, but it's not the legal crisis that the Trump opponents think that we're in. I mean, to listen to them, you would think that Trump is a tyrant, he's a dictator, he's ignoring courts here. He's invoking this dusty 18th cent alien enemies act to, to imize the, the incoming Hitlerite Fourth Reich or whatever they.
- [02:14]
Dave Rubin
No, as Tom Homan pointed out, the Constitution's also old. So.
- [02:17]
Josh Hammer
Yes, yes, exactly. Yeah, the Constitution, exactly. Quite old. So look, the real question Here from, from a legal perspective is, are these judges acting in line with the judicial power of which the Constitution speaks? Okay, so Article one, Article two, Article three. Article three establishes the federal courts there. The very first clause is the vesting clause of the this. The judicial power is the phrase that is used to describe the actual, well, judicial power. So what does it mean? What does it not mean? There has been a misconception in America for a very long time that the judicial power encompasses the ability of any judge, from a lone judge up to and including the Supreme Court, to basically bring an entire program, an entire government, if need be, to halt. That is actually not what the judicial power means.
- [03:05]
Dave Rubin
So that's sort of what the judges are trying to do right now. You've got a lower district court saying, oh, I'm not on board the, these deportations, I can put a stop to it.
- [03:13]
Josh Hammer
Correct.
- [03:14]
Dave Rubin
Because I'm a separate and equal branch.
- [03:16]
Josh Hammer
Correct?
- [03:16]
Dave Rubin
Yeah.
- [03:16]
Josh Hammer
And they're calling it sometimes a so called temporary restraining order. Sometimes it's a preliminary injunction, sometimes it's a nationwide injunction. It's all getting at the same idea, which is that one little puny judge sitting in his chambers in Seattle, Hawaii, here in Florida, Maine, whatever, can just stop an entire government program there. But in actuality, what the judicial power does, literally going back we want to, to Marbury vs Madison, the 1803 case that established judicial review. It applies to the part, to the suit. So the actual judicial power is a judge issues a judgment that binds the litigants to the suit. The notion that you can ever of.
- [03:52]
Dave Rubin
The case that he's presiding over, like.
- [03:54]
Josh Hammer
Dude, here you're plaintiff, dude, here you're defended. I'm issuing a judgment in my fancy robe and my old wig that they used to wear back in the day. They still wear that, I think over in London in the uk, the old barrister wigs. So I issue my judgment. You're bound, you're bound. Beyond that, no one is actually strictly bound. By the way, the number one person in American history who most understood this actually is my hero in American history, Abraham Lincoln. After the Dred Scott case of 1857, the worst case in Supreme Court history held black people are not citizens, they can never be citizens. Lincoln in his Lincoln Douglas debates next year, basically said, I'm not going to follow this as it pertains to anyone other than Dred Scott. And then when he was president, he literally just completely ignored it. He defied Dred Scott. He issued passports to blacks in western territories in direct defiance of the ruling There because he understood that the judicial power just bound Mr. Dred Scott in that case there. So ultimately, Dave, the way that this has to end, SCOTUS has to take a case where they rule once and for all that the notion that a judge can, can issue what lawyers would call injunctive relief, an injunction, a temporary restraining order. They have to rule that doing this on a national level is completely unconstitutional.
- [05:04]
Dave Rubin
You can't do that because basically you'd be completely unable to govern if that was the case. Because in essence, any sitting judge could do anything as it relates to anything to kind of dumb it down for you.
- [05:15]
Josh Hammer
So it would basically turn Republican self governance into black robe tyranny. I mean, it would turn it into juristocracy, into rule by judges here. And look, it depends how far you and I want to go down the rabbit hole here. Part of this goes back to a somewhat obscure 1958 case called Cooper vs. Aaron, which was the very first time that the Supreme Court said that we are the law of the land. Even a bear 54 majority. That's not how it works. All three branches have the legitimate duty, not just the right, but the actual duty obligation to faithfully interpret the concep Constitution and apply it as pertains to their own legitimate powers. This is actually the, the beauty of the separation of powers. When, when Madison said in Federalist 51, ambition must counteract ambition. This is actually what it was talking about.
- [06:00]
Dave Rubin
Do you have any fear that if this works its way up to the Supreme Court that they would go the wrong way on it, so to speak?
- [06:06]
Josh Hammer
Dave, I am always terrified of Chief Justice John Roberts and Amy Coney. I mean, I probably could have stopped it. Always terrified in general. But I mean I'm totally always terrified of this Supreme Court. I mean, ever since I was a law student, I've always been a consistent pessimist about all things judicial branch related, to be honest with you. But honestly, on a bread and butter separation of powers case like this, I'm less pessimistic than most. I think that they actually would rule the right way.
- [06:30]
Dave Rubin
Right. Unless they just suddenly feel that they're like drunk with power and it's like, boy, we could in essence legislate from the bench which then. Then we're. Then we're in a genuine constitutional crisis, right?
- [06:42]
Josh Hammer
Yes. Look, I such thing as a constitutional crisis does. It does happen, right? But the judiciary does not want to play this out. I mean, Hamilton writes in federal 78 that they're the least dangerous branch because they depend upon the efficacy of the executive branch, even for the enforcement of their own judgments. That's literally true. I mean, people don't think about this. I mean, how do you literally enforce a judgment? Well, you actually get U.S. marshals to do it. But U.S. marshals who do they actually.
- [07:09]
Dave Rubin
Work for the President.
- [07:10]
Josh Hammer
Yeah, they're in the doj.
- [07:11]
Dave Rubin
Yeah.
- [07:11]
Josh Hammer
Like the US Marshals literally work for Pam Bondi. Right. So like, you know, like a month ago, whatever, this judge in Rhode Island, Judge McConnell, he's threatening to hold Trump administration officials in criminal contempt unless they do XYZ thing. And my response was, okay, let's literally play this out. I mean, how is this gonna work in practice? You're gonna hold someone in criminal contempt while the U.S. marshal just might not enforce the order. Worst case scenario, you hold someone in contempt, well, then Trump just pardons him. So one way or the other, the judiciary is not gonna win this battle.
- [07:41]
Dave Rubin
So just one more thing on this and then we can move on. Which would be. So if we were really trying to steel, man. The other argument here, the other argument, you think it basically just bo down to this sort of discrepancy between the lower court and the higher court. Right. Is that, is that like the simplest way of saying so?
- [07:57]
Josh Hammer
That's part of it. The other part here as pertains to this thing that Mark Levin and Hugh. Hugh were talking about, this Judge Boasberg, trendy Aragua thing, you know, the plains were literally not even here in the U.S. so I mean, even, even just conceding for the sake of argument that so called nationwide injunctions are a thing, which they're not.
- [08:14]
Dave Rubin
Right.
- [08:14]
Josh Hammer
But, but even, even conceding that for the sake of argument, as lawyers do, you can't bind someone who's over international waters. So even on the basic facts in this case, it just doesn't pass any kind of muster here. At some point, Donald Trump really had an imperative to stand up to one of these lawless punks. And that really is what they are, is they are lawless punks. I mean, this Judge Boseberg seems like he's got a daughter working for some kind of left wing ngo. I mean, it's a similar story for all of them, honestly. So at some point he had to stand up there.
- [08:45]
Dave Rubin
I said one more. But let me give you one more bonus on this, which is, would you be worried at some point? And I'm with you on this, and I understand the legal rationalization. Would you be worried at some point that if Trump goes after enough judges that it does disintegrate the judicial branch at some level that judges will be afraid to ever go against the president and something like that. I mean, I guess you could argue the complete reverse right now that that's what they're assaulting him for.
- [09:13]
Josh Hammer
Right. So it goes both ways. Right. So the judiciary is kind of the ones who, I think, who are putting their own credibility at risk. You know, there's actually a wonderful line on this. So Anthony Scalia had a dissent back in 2015, and he had this blistering dissent. And the final paragraph of this dissenting opinion is he says, with every instance that we go with overstepping our legitimate boundaries. I'm paraphrasing, David. It's a close paraphrase. With every decision that we go with overstepping our legitimate boundaries and exposing our own hubris, we get ever closer to being. Being reminded of our own impotence. And that's the key word, impotence. That's kind of what I was saying a few minutes ago, is that they're not going to win this. Now, here is where I will throw you a bum. The instance that I personally actually start to get worried is if there is a Supreme Court judgment that binds, let's say, Donald Trump, because he could be a name party. Trump versus Hawaii was a case from the first term. If there's an actual party named Trump, and then Trump basically sticks to middle fingers, that's a problem.
- [10:12]
Dave Rubin
There's a problem.
- [10:13]
Josh Hammer
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- [10:58]
Dave Rubin
And the best part.
- [10:59]
Josh Hammer
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- [11:20]
Dave Rubin
All right, I think we should probably put a pin in it there, and we'll see how some of it shakes out. It's a damn shame that this episode is not sponsored by BlueChew, because you just said impotence and really would have been perfect. Okay, let's move on. I started by saying that it's kind of better. I think it's better for America and Jews and Israel and free people in general when people are not talking about Jews. Because when things are basically okay for the Jews, it's pretty much okay for everybody. When things go sideways for the Jews, it's usually bad pretty much for everybody. I think that's largely what this book is about. I know you've been working on this for years, and this is something that you care about very deeply. What was the original idea of why you even wanted to write about this book? Did you start writing this before October 7th?
- [12:06]
Josh Hammer
After.
- [12:07]
Dave Rubin
It was. After October 7th. So was that really, like, the thing that was like, I have to write something about this? Because you were seeing the sort of hysterical reaction?
- [12:14]
Josh Hammer
Yeah. You know, Dave, I've been a writer for a long time. I mean, you and I, I think, first met when I was working for the Daily Wire. I was. I was a writer for them. So I've been a writer for a long time. I write a weekly syndicated column. I mean, we. You and I just did the whole law thing. I've written legal scholarship. Right. So I've done everything in writing that you can do other than write a book. So I wanted to write a book. So. So I started initially outlining a totally different book back in the summer of 2023. Kind of like a. Kind of like a more standard kind of like, I'm a young conservative guy. Here's my idea as to, like, where we are and where we should go. I'm not dismissing that. I mean, for all I know, that could be. That could be my next book. So I don't want to kind of bite off the hand that might feed me. But October 7th did happen, and I chose to write this not just because of October 7th, but because of the reaction to October 7th. I mean, Dave, you and I are good friends, as this audience probably knows. And I remember your show here on the Ruby report on October 9th to the Monday afterwards. I remember watching it vividly. I mean, I felt you in that moment there we were in such pain, not just because of the seven, but because within hours, within hours, people are trying to blame the victim. They're trying to blame it on the Jews. I mean, the world had this moment here where you had this opportunity where the Holy Land, the Jewish people, a strong American ally, has just suffered its worst slaughter since literally, Hitler and the Nazis on the one hand. And then on the other hand, you have this medieval Islamist death cult trying to take us back to the seventh century. And the world could have said, you know what? I'm gonna side with the former, not the latter. But literally within hours, the 33 Harvard groups or whatever, it was there. The cacophony was real and it was deafening. And it was beyond disturbing. I mean, like, jaw dropping to the floor. So it was really the reaction to the seventh that I said, okay, someone here has to defend not just the state of Israel, but someone, frankly, just has to defend the Jewish people. Someone has to defend just really just the west, because the Jewish people help build the west, as I argue in this book.
- [14:12]
Dave Rubin
Yeah, so make that argument a little bit. And while you do that, we'll have. I'm gonna put up a map of the Middle east, because I always think it's. You know, people focus on Israel so much, and it's the size of Jersey, barely eight miles wide. It's unfathomably small, and there's this endless focus on it. And yet it is influential, and Jewish people, obvious, are influential. So what is that connection there or what is that thing?
- [14:38]
Josh Hammer
So we talk a lot about how Western civilization is at a crossroads, Right? We can go one way, we can go the other. We're at an inflection point. All these kind of buzzwords often come up in conversation. I totally agree with that. I totally agree. But again, because I'm a lawyer, I like to define terms. So what is the West? I mean, what is Western civilization here? We're defending the west against the barbarians. But. But what are we defending? Who are we defending there? So in the book, I argue that Western civilization effectively begins with the Bible, really with God's revelation in the book of Exodus to Moses and the Israelites, the Ten Commandments and Mount Sinai there. I think a lot of people would start the modern West a little later with the Greeks and the Romans and Aristotle and all that. But I think it's a total misreading of history. I mean, when you look at the American founding, when you look at Europe and the English common law, I mean, they cared about the Greeks and Romans, they cared a lot about the Bible. Yeah, I mean, the Liberty Bell in Philadelphia has a quote from the book of Leviticus. And I mean, you shall proclaim liberty throughout the land and to all the inhabitants thereof. Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin famously wanted the national seal of the United States to be Moses parting the Red Sea. I mean, heck, even a century and a half before that, you know, when William Bradford was on the Mayflower sailing across the Atlantic, William Bradford actually spoke about a thousand words of Hebrew because he was tutored by a scholar back in England on the Hebrew Bible and all that. And when he got to Plymouth Colony, they actually briefly discussed even just ditching the English language and speaking Hebrew because they were so enamored by the Hebrew Bible and Hebrew scripture. So this is really deeply ingrained in the American conscience there. And just part of bringing that back to the surface really is what I'm trying to do here as well. The Jewish state of Israel is kind of just the geopolitical outpost of this same dynamic there. Just as he who wishes to destroy the west first goes after the Jewish people, he who seeks to destroy, let's call it the nation state. The nation state order will first go after Israel for multiple reasons. It happens to be the Jew of the nations. But even more than that, I argue in the book, Israel is actually the world's first nation state. I mean, when King David unites the tribes in Jerusalem there, that's a nation state. They had no extraterritorial ambitions there, frankly. Actually biblical Israel was a nation state in contrast to the Roman Empire empire, which was more of an imperial model. So if you want to defend the modern nation state system, and I'm a national, if you like the nation state, if you oppose the Soros globalist Klaus Schwab agenda, you know, it makes a lot of sense to defend the state of Israel on nation state nationalist grounds there. By the way. That's one of the reasons why Israel is so targeted at the United Nations. Another reason is of course just good old fashioned Jew hatred. But there's a, there's a lot here. But the point, Dave, your question is here, there and everywhere. If you have civilizational ambitions to crush a big swath of the west, then you always start with the Jews, always.
- [17:32]
Dave Rubin
So, okay, so what if you give me the three sentence. So what is the west specifically? Individual rights, liberty. Like, give me like the. Let's posit both those ideas. So one is the West.
- [17:42]
Josh Hammer
All right, so it is, to an extent, kind of the classic Straussian formulation of Athens and Jerusalem, reason and revelation. But I make a hard case in the book that of those two, revelation is actually little more important. I think a lot of people kind of overdo it with the reason thing there. The problem is that unaided reason, I mean, if you just sit there and close your eyes and you're, you know, you're, you're, you're, you're trying to kind of think about, you know, what is reasonable. I mean, I mean, this can go off the rails very, very quickly.
- [18:10]
Dave Rubin
As Elon tweeted at Sam Harris before he left Twitter, you can mindfully meditate your mind into mush or something.
- [18:17]
Josh Hammer
Exactly, yeah. Look, I mean, Dave, I keep at my desk at all times a rock that a rabbi gave me from the crematorium of Auschwitz, which is like a little intense, but it kind of. It grounds me every day. The Nazis thought they were acting reasonable. Germany was a very advanced society. It was one of the most philosophically, culturally, musically advanced societies in the world. I mean, they thought they were acting with reason there. So you have to tether it to something there. And that tethering, I think, really does go all the way back to the Ten Commandments. So, yes, the west is this balancing of individualism with the common good, with nationalism, for sure, there. But even something as basic as nation state versus empire, that's all there as well. I mean, frankly, going back literally to the book of Genesis, the collapse of the Tower of Babel is actually the first rejection of empire in favor of the nation state. So there's so much rich political philosophy, morality, ethics. Dave. Something as simple and prosaic as the Golden Rule. You know, treat others as you'd like to be treated. Well, where's that coming from? It's actually coming from Leviticus, chapter 19. I mean, treat the stranger as your fellow. So it's just. It's just so much that we take for granted is all Right. In their honesty.
- [19:28]
Dave Rubin
Right, so you don't think it just magically appeared out of the Enlightenment?
- [19:31]
Josh Hammer
Exactly.
- [19:32]
Dave Rubin
Seemingly. A lot of more liberal thinkers seem to think. Okay, all right. So that's broadly what the west is now. This is a civilizational battle. So what's over here? It's ogres. It's whatever they had in. Who are they fighting in Game of Thrones, it's somebody coming at the wall or something.
- [19:48]
Josh Hammer
I'm actually not a Game of Thrones. Probably should be.
- [19:51]
Dave Rubin
There's always somebody, and they got bad teeth and they're Attacking the wall. It's those guys. So what's going on over here?
- [19:55]
Josh Hammer
All right, so I pick out three forces in particular. You have wokeism, Islamism and global neoliberalism. Now that's probably not an exhaustive list. I mean we could probably kind of have a more complicated taxonomy and devise new categories. But to dumb it down, those are the three broad buckets.
- [20:11]
Dave Rubin
I should have just said Democrats. We get it, okay.
- [20:14]
Josh Hammer
It's true. Honestly, these days, tragically, it truly is true. So Wokeism and Islamism are pretty self explanatory. I have a whole chapter in the book about the threat from the woke DEI antisemitism as well as some of this kind of more neo Nietzschean nihilist anti Semitism that's in that chapter as well. Islamism, self explanatory.
- [20:34]
Dave Rubin
Okay, why don't you explain what the second one is? I think most people get like Jews are thought of as successful, so you're thrown out of the DEI calculator. That's the first one. What's the nihilist version of that?
- [20:42]
Josh Hammer
So I'm thinking here of some of these online synonymous people like Bronze Age pervert. A few years ago he kind of fell off the map a little bit, but he was big. I mean even the Tate brothers, that's a very kind of current example. Right. The Tates to me are kind of trying to do a lot of. Of old pagan ideas that are very anti biblical. This notion that the top thing to value is brute strength and manliness and you can spread your seed for as far as it goes there. I mean this is very anti Judeo Christian, very anti Jewish, anti Christian, anti biblical. This is old pagan stuff there. And we've seen this new paganism creep up over and over again by the way. I mean, frankly, kind of the whole gender ideology thing, I mean the notion of, of gender affirming care for children there, this, it's kind of a resuscitation of this old paganism as well. So the lines do blur a little bit there.
- [21:32]
Dave Rubin
Right? Do you blame the rise in that. The sort of Tate version of this, smacking a 15 year old and then being a hero to the conservatives. Do you blame that on wokeism? Like it was going to sort of be a natural reaction of oh, you know, you can't be a man, a man is a woman. Well, eventually they're just going to be like this rubber band reaction and men are going to be like sort of the worst version of men or the, the pagan version of men.
- [21:53]
Josh Hammer
That's probably part of it. I mean, part of it is also like the war on men and that people like Matt Walsh talk a lot about. He's totally right. I mean, when you tell men that they are terrible and evil and toxic, then eventually you're going to want to just burst out and show, I'm not. I can lift a lot of weights here. I'm strong. I mean, so part of it is definitely that part of it. I mean, not, not to sound like a crotch of the old crank, but I guess I will for a sec. I mean, part of it, I think genuinely is the decline of the influence of, of the Bible and religion here. Because if you, if you have that strong foundation here in, in the schools, in private sector there, you just. You wouldn't necessarily end up at a place like Andrew Tate there. So. So that's the, that's the wokeism and kind of like the woke. Right. I. I don't like the term woke. Right. But for purposes today, I guess we'll call it the woke. Right. Okay. So then there's Islamism, which is sublime. Or even. That's Hamas. October 7th. That, you know, that's the best. That's the Bourbon street massacre that happened just two and a half months ago. As if Americans needed another reminder that.
- [22:48]
Dave Rubin
14 people killed basically on New Year's Day. Nobo talks about it.
- [22:51]
Josh Hammer
No one talks about it.
- [22:52]
Dave Rubin
It's in the United States.
- [22:52]
Josh Hammer
No, I mean, that was just two and a half months ago. It's insane, honestly. And then you have global neoliberalism, which is kind of what I'm talking about here. It's basically John Lennon's song Imagine playing out on a global chessboard. I mean, in the book I call the homogenizing imperative. Seeking to make everyone the same, to eradicate all the various distinctions that make us normal. You know, who we worship, how we worship, just generally kind of familial congregation or the tribal things that really kind of make humans humans in the first place, including by the nation state itself. That's really the ultimate goal there. So. So those are, those are our enemies. And the point, Dave, is that Jews and Christians who share a biblical inheritance, we have the exact same enemies as, as you and I understand, they always start with the Saturday people. Yeah, but their, their, their goal was always the Sunday people. So. So Karl Marx is actually a good example. So Karl Marx in the 1840s, he has his infamously anti Semitic essay called on the Jewish Question. He wrote it a few years years before the Communist Manifesto. His thoughts on the Jews are very clear. He himself was Jewish. He was kind of one of the world's most foremost self hating Jews of the 19th century. But his final goal was not the Jews. He's quite explicit that his final goal is to overthrow all of Western capitalism, all of Western Christendom, that which the Christian civilization has admirably built there. But he understands that you start with the original people of the book, the people that are called by Isaiah to be a light unto the nations. You start with them and then you can launch from there to a much bigger target.
- [24:20]
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- [25:08]
Dave Rubin
So is that really what the focus on Israel is? Which is that this is. I keep saying to people post October 7th, I I'm Jewish, I happen to care about Israel. I think you've laid out plenty of reasons why people who aren't Jewish should care about Israel. But me, it's like the number one, if you reason that if you were a Christian, you should care about Israel. Putting aside all of the religious stuff is if they take out Israel, they.
- [25:29]
Josh Hammer
Kill every last Jew.
- [25:30]
Dave Rubin
Guess who's next, right? And that really I don't want to make that argument. It's not a fun argument to make but like it's fairly obvious they're not going to be like, okay, we're wrapping it up, right?
- [25:42]
Josh Hammer
Well Hamas is pretty clear about this too. I mean Dave anti Semites in history, one thing I give them credit for, they're actually shockingly clear about what they believe. I mean Karl Marx works laid all out there on the Jewish question. Hitler, I mean he had a whole book on this Mein Kahn, the people had just done the reading, so to speak there, right? So similarly hamas in the 1987 charter, which you can find publicly available. It's. They're not hiding the ball there. They're very clear. They want to kill all the Jews. They want to kill people like, like you and me. They also want to kill all.
- [26:11]
Dave Rubin
They even want to kill Glenn Greenwald. I mean, he's out there simping for them all day long. They want to kill him.
- [26:15]
Josh Hammer
Honestly, in my heart of hearts, I suspect they would probably spare Glenn Greenwald if I had to guess.
- [26:21]
Dave Rubin
Well, till he's not useful.
- [26:23]
Josh Hammer
Yeah, right. But they also want to kill all so called infidels. Yeah, so all Christians, frankly, most Muslims who don't subscribe to their own fanatical version of Islam as well. So they're not hiding the ball there at all whatsoever. So, yes, Israel as a state, just like the children of Israel, the Jewish people. The state of Israel is always the canary in the coal mine. Always, always, always. But the state of Israel did. Dave, I have a whole chapter in this book making basically the, let's call it the maga America first realist case for US Israel relations. This is, I think, a very crucial point because there are a lot of people these days, you and I both see them out there trying to say, oh, Israel, that's an old Bush administration issue. It's an old neocon issue. And I've been criticizing neoconservatism longer than these punks have known what the word neoconservatism even means there before the frog.
- [27:12]
Dave Rubin
Meme ever came out.
- [27:14]
Josh Hammer
I mean, I have always been a, a hard headed realist. I mean, to me, I look around the world at every geopolitical issue and I say, what is in the US national interests? And then based on my answer to that, what, if anything, should we do about it? So as a realist, I look at the geopolitical map and I say, well, America's number one threat this century is clearly China, the Chinese Communist Party, no doubt about that whatsoever. And I agree that America can and should strategically redeploy a lot of resources and assets into the Indo Pacific, especially as the Taiwan threat heats up. The relevant question then, from a kind of grand strategy, geopolitical chessboard perspective, is how can America best safeguard its very real interests in this very volatile part of the world, the Middle east, this uniquely jihad ridden part of the world. How can we do that while moving resources to the Far East? The obvious answer is you embolden your allies on the ground to take care of the region, to secure it and patrol it in a way that redounds to both of your interests. Interests as the case may be, Israel has consistently demonstrated that we Americans and they Israelis, have effectively the exact same interests in the region. I'll give you just one very brief example there. So last summer, Dave, you're a film guy. So my favorite film of all time is the Godfather. So I love the Michael Corleone baptism scene at the end there.
- [28:34]
Dave Rubin
Pretty good. It's pretty good, yeah.
- [28:36]
Josh Hammer
I mean Godfather 2 technically, but Godfather 1 is my second favorite anyway, so there's this amazing Michael Corleone Baptist scene there. So Israel went on kind of a Michael Corleone Baptist scene, revenge on our enemies killing spree last summer. And it ends, it culminates with the assassination of Hassan Nasrallah. Well, I guess Sigma was after that. But it partially culminates with Nasrallah cowardly hiding his bunker in Beirut. Before they got Nasrallah, they took out two high ranking Hezbollah jihadis by the name of Fouad Shakur and Ibrahim Akhil. Fouad Shakur and Ibrahim Akhil are the men responsible for respectively, the 1983 Beirut barracks bombings that slaughtered 240 plus Americans and the 1983 U.S. embassy bombing in Beirut. Those two men, men had a five and seven million dollars U.S. state Department bounty on their head respectively. Nothing happened for four decades. Israel finishes the job. So people were like, oh, what, what does the US get out of US Israel relations? Well, you get a dead Ibrahim Akil, you get a dead Fujikor, and as if that's not good enough, you get a dead Hassan Nasral on top of that.
- [29:38]
Dave Rubin
Right. But dead bad people aside, there's a lot of other things that they get that I think maybe aren't explained properly. What do you think about, about that?
- [29:45]
Josh Hammer
Of course, look, I mean, Israel's often referred to as the second Silicon Valley there. I mean, there's so much, technologically speaking, when it comes to military sharing there, I mean, Iron Dome of course, which is a brilliant and an incredible piece of military technology that is an Israeli innovation there, intelligence. I mean, we rely more on Mossad than probably any other country other than the so called five eyes countries, uk, New Zealand, Australia and so forth there. So we rely very heavily on them for that there. And more generally speaking, you know, especially as things are now heating up with the Houthis in the Red Sea there. You know, Trump has said that he's gonna step up on the Houthis, and that's all well and good, I think. I mean, they've come after American ships, so America clearly has a demonstrated interest there. But even if we were to pull out of the region if we were to basically to say to the idf, you guys take care of the business here. Again, we can trust them to do what is best, not just for themselves, but in a way that redounds to both of our interests as well.
- [30:44]
Dave Rubin
Do you think it's possible that in this civilizational war that some of the countries in the west will survive and some will not? Like, to me it's obvious America is righting the ship right now. And I think partially because of the first amendment, definitely because of the second amendment, also because of the way we've done the melting pot for so long and put such a premium on freedom and were born in revolution. I think we have much better machinery and like, you know, granular stuff to get through this civilizational battle. I think Israel has it for cultural reasons and maybe being small in this case actually does help them and military where then I look, you know, I was just in Britain and it's like it's a freaking disaster and everyone's, everyone's whispering about it. France has it, Germany has it, Belgium has it, Holland has it, et cetera, et cetera. Do you sense that this civilization like that we're going to just lose some countries and some will survive? Like what do you think the map actually looks like as it relates to?
- [31:39]
Josh Hammer
I mean I am utterly terrified about the future of Europe. Completely terrified. Dave. I lived in Europe. I, I, I, I did a semester living in, in London in the uk. I traveled all throughout there. I mean London has like a very special place in my heart. But I've not been in like 15 years now.
- [31:54]
Dave Rubin
It ain't the same.
- [31:56]
Josh Hammer
Yeah, exactly. And like, honestly I'm, I'm terrified to go back because of, I, I feel like all my memories will frankly just be ruined by, by what I see today. They've done it to themselves. I mean, I mean they've totally 1000% done it to themselves because partially of this homogenizing, all human beings are as interchangeable as widgets or pencils or whatnot. This logic that you can just import foreign cultures and just substitute them for your own. So I'm terrified about Europe. I mean the entire kind of European Union Eurozone experiment is basically one continental wide experiment in globalism. It's not exactly going particularly well by any metric, including just European Central bank monetary policy. I mean whoever thought, whoever thought it was a good idea for Germany and Italy to be on the exact same currency clearly knows nothing about economics. I mean like none of it, just, none of it makes Sense whatsoever. So I'm totally terrified about, about the future of Europe. I could totally see a world in which some nation states survive through this inflection point that we've identified and some kind of get subsumed into various types of blobs. I mean, is there a, is there a day where France and Germany could cease to be France and Germany and just become Europe? Like, like, like literally kind of finer distinction? I think it's totally plausible.
- [33:15]
Dave Rubin
I mean, I think it'd be closer, that they'd become closer to Saudi Arabia or something and just broad Europe. That. That's the real problem.
- [33:21]
Josh Hammer
Yeah, no, totally. And I, I've seen it for myself. I mean, you know, my wife and I went to a wedding, it was actually wedding between two Israelis. So it was an Israeli couple got married less than a week after October 7th in Lake Como in Italy, of all places there. And very emotional wedding, as you can imagine, imagine. But we spent time in Lake Coma, went down to Milan there and my God, I mean, that's my, that's my first time back in Italy in, I don't know, five, six, seven years, whatever there. Holy moly. I, I mean, you barely recognize the place. I mean, it's absolutely nuts there. So that, that could easily happen in our lifetime. That could easily happen in a lifetime where you start seeing, for instance, and I'm gonna get called a, you know, a fear monger here, but I think it happens to be true. I mean you could, you could literally start seeing some legislators in some of these European Parliaments, start introducing Sharia legislation sooner ra later.
- [34:09]
Dave Rubin
Yeah, I think that was getting close to that. I think Ireland could be heading that way, which is the craziest of all of them. Like there's so, so how much of this is just a numbers game? That there's just an awful lot of these people, they're reproducing like crazy. Like it just is. And, and sort of more successful liberal, I mean, in the good sense of liberal minded people don't reproduce as much. You have maybe 1.7 babies. They have eight babies. We got a problem there. The number one name in the UK right now is Muhammad, by the way, the number one name in Israel is Muhammad because they name most of their kids. The 20% population name most of their kids Mohammed. And obviously there's a lot of Israeli names, but even that, that says something like there's a numbers portion here. That's tough.
- [34:53]
Josh Hammer
So Israeli Jews though have a birth rate of around 3. Sometimes I see it even higher than 3. And contrary to what a lot of people say, it's actually not just due to the very religious people. Even secular Israel families have well over two children per household, based on most studies I've seen there. So. So something is actually different in the state of Israel when it comes to this as well. There's no magic formula for trying to convince people to have children there, but I think general rule above all, when people are happy and they are confident about the future, that's when you want to start dating, getting married, having children there. Unfortunately, the west, more broadly speaking, certainly the United States, we're not very happy people anymore. We've kind of forgotten what it's like to be happy in many respects. I mean, all the polling on this. Are you. Are you optimistic about the future? Are you happy? Are you depressed there? Does your life have meaning? I mean, it's all terrible and, like, I don't want to give out black pills there, but the point is, like, it can be better.
- [35:50]
Dave Rubin
Yeah. You know my take on all of this, because we're texting a lot with a couple of friends, and I'm always trying to give the white pill version of everything, like, things will get better. That's the story of humanity. And I know you're a loser. Little more on the skeptical side of that, let's say. But it seems to me that one thing that I find interesting right now is that there's obviously so many good things happening with this Trump presidency. It's crazy. It's happening really fast, and that's why people are freaking out. But to see a portion of people on the right that are, like, hysterical about a million things, I'm like, guys, you got the president you want. There's so many good things happening. We're closing the border. We're deporting. But I think some people are just afraid of actual success and some. Some sense. And maybe that's what the west is largely afraid of, for sure.
- [36:32]
Josh Hammer
Look, I mean, the Trump administration has been a smashing success as far as I'm concerned. I mean, look, a couple of, like, things that I could, like, maybe criticize when being. If I'm feeling very persistent.
- [36:43]
Dave Rubin
What would even be if you were really trying?
- [36:45]
Josh Hammer
If I were really trying. I don't like the TikTok stuff. I. I'm like a ban tik tok. Because to me, it's not just about China. It's also about. It's, like, really bad for kids. Like, there's. There's like, a mental health portion here, too. It's not just a National security, China concern. But that's like. That's all right.
- [37:01]
Dave Rubin
I was just trying to get something out.
- [37:02]
Josh Hammer
All right, you don't like TikTok, but that's really nitpicky. Okay.
- [37:05]
Dave Rubin
Strike me as a big tiktoker.
- [37:06]
Josh Hammer
Yeah, I believe it or not, I've actually never done it. Now my mother in law by the way is a huge tick tocker. So she will be devastated.
- [37:11]
Dave Rubin
That's why you don't.
- [37:11]
Josh Hammer
She will be devastated if TikTok actually, actually goes away there. But the point, Dave, is that there, there are ways that Americans can increase their happiness. And look, I'm not going to pretend like, like I'm a happiness expert or a welfare expert it there, but one of the implicit arguments throughout this book is that for Jews and Christians alike, you know, one way to find meaning and happiness is to engage with and rediscover your tradition. I mean I can personally speak to this. Right. I mean I grew up very secular. Very secular. I've only become religious over the past few years there. I'm not saying everyone has to do what I've done, obviously, but like just a personal example. I mean I genuinely do find more value in me meaning when I feel that I'm living a lifestyle in accord with it, with a certain direction and ultimately serving a certain being here. And you know, that's coincided with getting married and having kids and you got.
- [38:06]
Dave Rubin
Married, you're punching way above your pay grade over there. Everybody loves sheer and you have a new baby girl. So yeah, you're living it.
- [38:12]
Josh Hammer
So what do you think?
- [38:13]
Dave Rubin
Moving away from sort of like the broad strokes of the west in this fight. Israel at the moment, they are in an existential war. It seems like some of it's gotten a bit better as basically Hezbollah has been taken. The north will kind of calm down, but they're still hostages. There's going to be a problem in Judea and Samaria at some point. It's bubbling a little bit like what does the end of this if, if there's day after, what does it actually look like? Like how do you get to the other side of the civilizational.
- [38:42]
Josh Hammer
Sure. So let's, let's be honest here, the Middle east is, is, is not going to be stable maybe, maybe ever, as long as Islam is Islam. But at a bare minimum, minimum, until the Iranian regime goes, and to be clear, Josh Hammer is not calling to Send in the 101st Airborne START bombing Tehran.
- [39:00]
Dave Rubin
That's not my stance. The clip they're gonna go for.
- [39:03]
Josh Hammer
No, that's not my stance, though. It's never been my stance. In fact, I have a very similar stance, frankly to what Trump did the first time around, which is you do this whole crippling sanctions, maximum pressure campaign, try to get the people to just uprise and throw off this horrific cancer, this horrific regime. There's. But unless and until that regime goes, I'm not sure there's ever going to be true stability in any of these hotspots. You're talking about whether it's Judea and Samaria, where there's all these Iran funded militia groups, whether it's Lebanon, where you still have a trace of Hezbollah. Yes, they're not nearly as strong as they were recently. The Houthis in Yemen, it really does all come back to Iran. So, so, so that's part of the answer here. Now, when it comes to Gaza in particular, there, Israel genuinely has to finish this job against Hamas for at least two reasons that I can identify. The simpler reason is that Donald Trump is basically telling them, finish a job. He's talking about unleashing the gates of hell there. The ceasefire is clearly off now. So Bibi has, and that's Prime Minister Netanyahu. He has full blown permission to go in there. The problem is that if he doesn't finish the job from this perspective, Donald Trump's a leader, I think, who abhors weakness and respects strength. So if he's telling you to do something, you better do it. Especially if he thinks that it's in America's interest, which, oh, by the way, obliterating Hamas totally is. So he has no choice, Netanyahu, from that perspective. The other reason that he has no choice is because at the onset of this war, Israel announced two very clear war aims. They said, we're bringing the hostages home and we're going to destroy Hamas. Now there are some hostages left, but they've made admirable progress on that front. But Hamas is still there. We saw that with these hostage exchanges there and the lingua franca, the language of the Middle east is strength. If you don't show that you are going to actually kick some butt and to actually fulfill your word and your VAT house, you lose all credibility, you lose all deterrent there. So they actually, genuinely have to finish this job in Gaza. I don't know how long it's going to take. Right.
- [40:58]
Dave Rubin
So is the inherent problem, though, if you're trying to save those remaining, it's about 22 people, I think, including an American who's still at least one American who's Still down there, that that could become, could basically be in direct conflict with what Trump laid out, which I agree with, which is open the gates of hell and these people have to leave. The Gazans have to leave, go to Somalia, go to Egypt, go to, I don't even care where they go. But that, that's in conflict perhaps with saving those 22 people and that, I think that's really why this is dragged on.
- [41:27]
Josh Hammer
All right, so I'm going to sound like a heartless and callous bastard, but I'll say it anyway. I actually think that Israel messed up at the beginning by announcing these two war aims as being on the same footing. Look, if I had a loved one down there, of course I would be at the parliament every day pleading to do whatever you can, but trying to think clear eyed and sober for a second here. It does seem to me that one of these two aims, meaning the eradication of Hamas is, is pretty clearly more important actually than the other. I hate to think of them as being in tension at loggerheads, but no.
- [41:58]
Dave Rubin
It'S a horrible, like, it's just, it's.
- [42:01]
Josh Hammer
Awful, it's been awful for a year and a half now. But to the extent that they are intentioned there, I, you really do have to prioritize actually getting, actually getting Hamas out. Now Judean Samaria is more complicated question. Right? You mentioned, mentioned that earlier. Yeah, I care a lot about Jane Samaria. I, I, I care a lot about that. I mean that's, that's the, that, that's the actual heartland. I mean frankly going back to where the Bible was based. I mean the Bible was not in Tel Aviv. The Bible was in towns like Jericho. I mean like really throughout the hills of Judea and Samaria. Right. Jesus of, Jesus of Judea. I mean he was, Jesus was, it was a Jew from, from, from Judea. You know, he was not this Kafiya clad Hamasnik that these leftist propagandists portray him as or anything like that there. I'm very eager to see what Donald Trump says about Judea and Samaria. That's kind of one of my big questions at this moment that we're talking is is he going to take the same approach to J and Samaria that he took to Gaza? I don't know the answer. I think it's entirely possible. What I definitely know is that the old Oslo Accord style, quote unquote, two state solution for Jane Samaria has obviously been a demonstrable failure. And there's anyone, if there was anyone in America who was well, equal equipped to change the paradigm on that issue. It certainly is. Donald Trump.
- [43:11]
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- [43:21]
Dave Rubin
Or just relaxing at home.
- [43:23]
Josh Hammer
Want to enjoy it on the big screen? No problem. Rumble is also available on Apple TV, Roku, Amazon Fire TV, LG Smart TVs and Samsung TV apps, giving you the power of Rumble at your fingertips. Rumble is the platform that gives you the freedom to watch what you want when you want. Download the Rumble app today and make sure to search and follow my channels to receive live notifications.
- [43:45]
Dave Rubin
All right, so let's say, well, in some sense does. Okay, so the Israel portion is removed, meaning Israel does finish the job, or it's this protracted thing that kind of never ends. Something like that. Where does that leave the rest of the west in terms of the signaling? I suppose, like if they can't finish Hamas or they can't get the hostages out, I think what actually it portends for the rest of us in America and across Europe is something unbelievably horrific because we have these people in our borders now. We know it.
- [44:14]
Josh Hammer
If, if Israel can, cannot finish a job against Hamas, then it's unclear to me whether a Western nation state will ever be able to win a defensive war against a, against an enemy again. I mean, that, that, that basically is what this comes down to. I mean, I mean, Israel is basically trying to teach the west how to fight an actual war. The west is not full. I mean, certainly we, certainly we in the United States States have not fought a true war against a true existential enemy to his fruition until World War II. Right? And that is what total war looks like. I mean, the carpet bombing of Dresden, I mean, you know, the people talk about Israel committing genocide in Gaza there. I mean, guys, go back and look at, at Dresden, go back and look at Hiroshima, okay? I mean that, that's what total war looks like. That's not what, that's not what's happening in Gaza for the, for the past year, year and a half. But unless Israel can, can, can finish a job and basically teach the west all over again how to actually win a war. It's not obvious to me that, I mean, let's, let's play this out. I mean, God forbid, God forbid if, if South Texas or the Sonoran Desert, Arizona had an October 7th style event from the Sinaloa cartel or Jalisco or one of These horrific drug cartels operating there in northern Mexico there.
- [45:28]
Dave Rubin
We'd bomb Canada.
- [45:30]
Josh Hammer
Yeah, right. With the current guy. No, you're probably right, honestly. At least as long as Trudeau's Liberal Party is still in charge there. But would America actually have the fortitude to go back in Pancho Villa style and actually go take out the cartels? I don't know. Honestly, I don't know. So, part of Israel, I think, under Trump.
- [45:50]
Dave Rubin
The answer is yes. The question is, what would we do to protect our hostages and things of that nature? I think in terms of just blowing shit up in Mexico. Yeah, we would do it without even thinking twice.
- [45:59]
Josh Hammer
No, I, I think, and I think you're right about that, to be clear there. But, you know, again, to kind of tie this transit conversation together, one might argue that part of the whole like Isaiah light into the nations thing there is teaching the world how to do certain things there. So if Israel can kind of again, remind the world how to deal with a situation like this there, one might say it's morally incumbent upon them to do so from that perspective as well. That's, that's a little bit of a stretch when it comes to the analogy there, but I genuinely do worry about it. Look, to your point as the fact that we are now filled with subversive actors. I mean, that, that, sadly, that's just demonstrably true. I mean, I mean, the Bourbon street guy was radicalized in a mosque in Houston, Texas, there. It's horrible stuff. I mean, I've been to Michigan multiple times in recent months. I mean, I've driven through Dearborn. I mean, it's pretty terrifying, honestly.
- [46:47]
Dave Rubin
So, and how long do you think a society can hold like that? How long can a Western society that's trying to hold up to the ideals that you mentioned at the, the top can have? Okay, I don't like Elon Musk because he's doing something with Doge, so I'm going to blow up a Tesla Charger station. Or I don't like Donald Trump because he seems to like Israel, so I'm going to occupy Colombia. Like, how long do you think that sort of thing can hold? I don't think it can hold much longer, actually.
- [47:13]
Josh Hammer
So my argument in the book, and just kind of in general, is that you have to affirmatively stand for something. So values neutrality is here, there, everywhere, none option. I mean, this is the whole, this is the whole national conservatism argument, right, is that you actually have to put forward a concrete vision as to what you stand for, because when you, when you do the whole liberalism marketplace of ideas thing and you say, oh, all ideas are created equal, you know, whether it's Sharia law or whether it's, whether it's Thomas Jefferson's declaration, I mean when you really do the whole marketplace of ideas, let the chips fall where they may thing, I mean people are going to go to the vision that has some sort of moral argumentation even, even if it's an immoral vision.
- [47:56]
Dave Rubin
Right?
- [47:56]
Josh Hammer
I mean we see that actually the.
- [47:57]
Dave Rubin
Liberals usually get beheaded is what you're trying to say.
- [47:59]
Josh Hammer
Yeah, exactly. I mean we see that actually in the Israeli Palestinian conflict, frankly for years and years, the so called pro Israel side would just say two states, two states, we just want peace. I mean that's not a substantive argument there. That's a purely kind of relativistic procedural argument. On the other side, the bad people, the students of justice in Palestine, their side, they're putting forward a moral vision. Now it happens to be grossly impossible. Moral right, but it's a moral vision rooted in kind of colonialism and oppression. All this DEI neo Marxist garbage there. So values neutral proceduralism is never ever, ever going to get the better, I think of a substantive vision there. So here on the home front, when you're dealing with folks like the Hezbollah apologists in Dearborn, I mean one of my solutions to that is that all hands on deck, including but not limited to the actual government itself, has to put forward a vision here. This is kind of the whole notion of kind of re imbuing the public square with geo Christian morality and Bible inscription on that. I mean, I'm not sure what the alternative is. I mean we've basically been trying this whole values neutrality thing since World War II. I mean America has been one way or the other kind of a left liberal or a right liberal experiment for going on six, seven, eight decades now. It's not working. It's literally not working. Immigration is obviously a core piece of this puzzle too. But the point is a lot of these folks are citizens. A lot of these folks are actually already. You can't deport them. Denaturalizing citizenship is an extraordinarily difficult and in some ways problematic process. So we're probably not going to start doing that en masse for better or for worse. So you have to do something. And I think that trying to take a stand from the government on down and saying that we are this while respecting first Amendment and everything there, but we stand for this. This is what it means to be an American today. That would be a strong start, I.
- [49:45]
Dave Rubin
Think, and it seems like that's starting to happen. I mean, Rubio, I think, has been particularly good at this. Right. So. So if this civilizational battle does not go completely sideways, what do you think America and the Western world look like in five years? Maybe this is what the last few pages of the book are about. But I just got my copyright. You walked in.
- [50:05]
Josh Hammer
So I am an optimist. I mean, Dave, you mentioned some of these group chats that you and I are in together, and you're kind of the big whitefill guy.
- [50:14]
Dave Rubin
I'm just always trying to make sure not everybody's killing themselves.
- [50:17]
Josh Hammer
Yeah, I'm like a white gray pill guy. I mean, I'm somewhere in the murky middle. I'm definitely not a black tall guy. I do remain optimistic. I really do remain optimistic because most Americans fundamentally, in their core, are very, very, very good people. I mean, we chat offline about this. I mean, the number of examples of just, just salt of the earth people that are standing for truth and righteousness, I mean, in the Israel issue, have come out in favor of a people that they don't know, of a tiny country they don't know because they just recognize that it is the right thing to do. That's absolutely inspiring. And, you know, even the younger generation, there's a lot of people who get very upset about how. How out of touch the younger generation is. I mean, even when it comes to the 2024 election, though, I mean, the. The 18 to 29 demographic was basically a statistical margin of error between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris there. I mean, to be clear, there's some work to be done there on, like, the Middle east stuff, but. But they're not as crazy as people make it out to be. The future is actually overall in large, largely decent hands from what I can tell there. I mean, as long as TikTok doesn't get off the prowl. Right. But I do remain pretty optimistic overall about the future there. And the United States still remains the bastion of Western civilization. We are the indispensable cog there. We have very strong leadership. I happen to love what Donald Trump is doing there. We'll see what happens in 2028 there. It's going to be an interesting primary at that time there. But as long as this general trajectory continues there and you have to issue strong executive orders and pass strong laws, Donald Trump obviously does not. He does. He does not shy away from the bold stuff. So his. So. So for, for example, his anti Dei Executive order. Literally one of the most transformative executive orders I've seen in my entire life. I mean, essentially, largely winning the culture war overnight without firing a shot. I mean, between that and some of the transgender stuff there, I mean, that is. That's how you gotta play ball. That's how you gotta. That's how you play ball on all.
- [52:12]
Dave Rubin
Of these issues until a judge jumps in and tries to stop you. And then we.
- [52:15]
Josh Hammer
Yeah, and then we're back to where we started this conversation, obviously.
- [52:18]
Dave Rubin
Josh, I am told that the book, which just came out like a couple days ago, we're posting this on a Friday, so it came out like three days ago, has already sold out the first run, but the people can buy the book and it will appear sometime. Do we know when? If they buy it right now? Do we know how long it's going to take to get the book?
- [52:36]
Josh Hammer
Yeah, so we actually sold out on Amazon literally the morning of publication day, which is not bad.
- [52:41]
Dave Rubin
Not bad.
- [52:41]
Josh Hammer
Which is both a great thing and a frustrating thing. But no, I mean, seriously, I mean, like, you know, thank you to everyone who's bought it. So we're. It is being replenished on Amazon right now. So if you buy it on Amazon, it should get here, God willing, this coming week. So not a particularly long delay. It's also available on Barnes and Noble Books, a Million and all other vendors.
- [52:58]
Dave Rubin
And what are the chances that the New York Times, which is a far left rag on the wrong side of all of these issues, will put you on the bestseller list? I did note that Don't Burn this Country should have been number one by sales. They did not put me on there at all. What do you think? I mean, you've got a lot of scary words in here. Israel, they don't like that word civilization. Jewish, they don't like that word nation. Civilization. Hammer.
- [53:21]
Josh Hammer
It's a lot, Dave, based on the fact that.
- [53:24]
Dave Rubin
Let's take a gentleman's bet. Gentleman's bet. Think you. I'll take. What. What side of the bet do you want? Are you gonna be. You gonna get on the list or not?
- [53:31]
Josh Hammer
I'm gonna go on a limb and say that I'm gonna make it, Dave, but only because they're not gonna watch this episode. If they watched the episode and they saw that I was with major thought criminal Dave Ruben, I honestly might be screwed.
- [53:41]
Dave Rubin
Good luck. We're all counting on you.
- [53:43]
Josh Hammer
Appreciate it.