Ep 710 ｜ Trump 2024？ & The Disrespect for Marriage Act ｜ Guest： Josh Hammer
Episode Stats
Length
1 hour and 1 minute
Words per Minute
196.63681
Summary
Well, Trump is running in 2024. What do we think about this? Also, the Senate moves to redefine marriage at the expense of religious liberty and the future of our country. Also, what really happened in the midterms? Was it abortion, Trump, culture wars that turned the red wave into the trickle? We will be analyzing all of this and more with our friend Josh Hammer from Newsweek.
Transcript
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Well, Trump is running in 2024. It is official. What do we think about this? Also, the Senate
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moves to redefine marriage at the expense of religious liberty and the future of our country.
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Also, what really happened in the midterms? Was it abortion, Trump, culture wars that turned the
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wave into the trickle? We will be analyzing all of this and more with our friend Josh Hammer from
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Newsweek. This episode is brought to you by our friends at Good Ranchers. Go to goodranchers.com
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slash Allie. That's goodranchers.com slash Allie.
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Okay, Josh, before we talk about 2024, I just want to hear your take on 2022. Obviously, as we've heard
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over and over again, the red wave, the red tsunami did not really materialize. I've already talked
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about that. You've already talked about that. But from your perspective, what exactly happened?
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Because there's a lot of different competing analysis from the right about what really kind
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of caused us to not have the outcomes that we thought we would have.
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So I've kind of taken all of the above approach to answering this question. And, you know,
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we're barely a week removed from the 2022 midterm elections. And it was devastating. I mean, there's
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no reason to try to, you know, try to make a turd sandwich taste any better than it should taste. I
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mean, this is a very devastating, extremely frustrating midterm. And, you know, one number
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that I always come back to, Allie, and I'm still trying to kind of wrap my head around this fully,
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Republicans actually won the national straight up popular vote for U.S. Congress by about four and a
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half points, 51.5 to 47 percent. That simply did not end up translating. So that number right there
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should give Republicans at least a modicum of solace. It should give them at least a modicum
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of solace that the brand is not quite that that toxic. But obviously, race by race and playing the
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sheer numbers game that ended up not really translating. And there's a lot of blame to go
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around. And there's really no reason why I think we need to kind of pin that blame in any one particular
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party. So kind of just trying to go through all the parties, I guess that should be blamed for this.
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One obvious thing is that the Republican Party has a monumental fundraising disadvantage. And many
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of us are kind of sounding the alarm on this for months and months. Blake Masters was getting
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destroyed on the airwaves out in Arizona, Herschel Walker in Georgia. Really, every possible kind of
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close contest you looked at this cycle for Senate, for Governor Manchin, things of that nature,
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Republicans were just getting destroyed. So the RNC clearly is failing, frankly. It's just straight
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of failing. We should just say that when it comes to the fundraising game, the NRSC,
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the U.S. House wing of the NRCC is clearly failing in that respect as well. You know,
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Senate Leadership Fund with Mitch McConnell, you know, query whether they were picking all the
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right fights. I mean, Mitch McConnell is dumping a lot of money to boost Lisa Murkowski, who, to my
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knowledge, is not even a registered Republican. Perhaps that money should have been better allocated to
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races like Adam Laxalt in Nevada, Blake Masters in Arizona, Dr. Oz perhaps in Pennsylvania,
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places like that. And, you know, one other thing that we can't ignore, obviously, is the elephant
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in the room. And I suspect that you and I are going to get there a little later in this conversation,
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which, of course, is President Trump himself. It seems to me like President Trump did not do the
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Republican Party any favors whatsoever in this election. We should probably just be pretty
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explicit about that and say it like that. Many of his endorsed candidates ran considerably further
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behind other candidates. And, you know, there are some competing data points, to be sure. Joe Odea in
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Colorado, who was very anti-Trump, he got demolished. So, again, I'm not trying to pin all the blame on
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President Trump by any means whatsoever. But at least when you kind of get to certain candidates,
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like Doug Mastriano is a good example, running statewide in Pennsylvania, just got utterly
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destroyed by Josh Shapiro. Mastriano was always, frankly, a terrible fit for that particular electorate,
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but he was Trump-endorsed. Even Don Baldock, who, I'll be honest with you, I thought might actually
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pull it off at the end in New Hampshire against Maggie Hassan. He lost by a massive margin. That's a Trump
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endorsement. That query whether it could have gone the other direction there. And, you know,
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Republicans lost the independent vote, Ali. And that is a really, really sobering thing with
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historically low approval ratings for President Joe Biden. You know, that first presidential term,
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the midterm election, the opposition party really should always make gains, let alone when you have
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40-year high inflation and an economy that as recently as a month or two ago is formally in a
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recession. So, you know, if we're turning off independence by that margin and then the unmarried women
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kind of element, you add into this, losing unmarried women by like 38 percent or whatever
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it was there, there's a lot of blame to go around here. But I think those are kind of the broader
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buckets, I guess, of where I would start at least to pinpoint the problem.
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Yeah. I mean, it's hard for me to understand how President Biden could have such low approval
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ratings. Crime is up in many of these cities. Obviously, as you said, inflation at an all-time high.
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Just the past couple of years of just draconian policies that have hurt people's lives and
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livelihoods, looking at how our education system has been run by the teachers unions who then are
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part of the Democratic Party. It's really hard for me to understand how independents could look at
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those policies and how, especially in every major city in the United States, have only led to
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destruction. You can't look at a city that's been run by Democrats for any amount of time and see any
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improvements. You only see negative outcomes. It's hard for me to understand how independents
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could break for Democrats in this midterm election, considering all of those things.
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And some people's theory is that we just had bad candidates. It's candidate quality. A lot of people
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are pinning it exclusively on Donald Trump. I just don't know. I don't know if that's true.
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One of the toughest losses for me was Blake Masters. Had him on the show about a year ago,
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and I was like, yeah, I really like him. I like him. I like J.D. Vance. They're different. They're
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interesting to me. I kind of like this new crop of Republicans that I think is more appealing maybe
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to young voters. And yeah, I read something in the New York Times. So, you know, take that for what
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it was. Also, this was from someone who works for Mitch McConnell. Take that for what it was.
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They said that the reason that they were not funding Blake Masters campaign, but instead,
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they were directing more funds to people like J.D. Vance was because Blake Masters in the focus
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groups had the worst scores that they had ever seen any candidate have in a focus group. Now,
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that to me, it's hard for me to believe. But then I ask myself, okay, is he like a commentator's
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candidate? Is he the candidate of people like you and me who are really online? Or do we have a
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disconnect from what the non-online people are thinking? I think apparently so if we're losing
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independence and we're losing a lot of the people who just are not voting for the candidates that we
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It's a heck of a question. I mean, it's one of the million dollar questions that I think folks like
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you and I should be grappling with and our peers in this industry, in this talking head space.
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Look, I mean, I guess like full disclosure, I mean, I guess I've said this publicly. I mean,
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you know, I've gotten to know Blake a little bit. I mean, I got dinner with him last February in
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Arizona and I had a nice chat with him. And I do think very highly of him on a personal level.
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Having said that, I have a lot of friends in Arizona, actually. And what I heard from the ground
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from even very right wing friends in Arizona was that the Masters campaign, besides just being
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totally outspent, I mean, just utterly demolished on the airways by Mark Kelly, who had the power of
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incumbency. He has this kind of personal story where he's the astronaut. His wife, Gabby Giffords,
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was shot famously a decade ago or so. So he has a very personal story that tends to resonate with
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the media in Arizona. And despite his kind of pro Joe Biden voting record, even holding all of that
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aside, the Masters campaign, it seems to me from from the outside, probably could have done a few
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things basically better. And what I've heard anecdotally from some friends throughout the state,
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you know, Blake, who's obviously he's an he's an Arizona native. He was born and raised in Tucson,
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but he's kind of a Peter Thiel, Silicon Valley guy spent a lot of time out in the Bay Area,
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Stanford Law School, all that stuff. He didn't really necessarily take his back home his back,
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you might say his back to his roots, Arizona approach to the campaign trail and to kind of
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put like a very fine point on that. I heard anecdotes from some folks who would say that
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he might kind of walk into a room full of ranchers who are wearing cowboy hats and cowboy boots wearing
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kind of like a T-shirt and like tech bro sneakers, which is the kind of thing that like,
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I personally don't mind. You know, living here, living here in Florida, I've become kind of like
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a sneakers guy myself. But I mean, you know, if you're running for statewide office in the state
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of Arizona, you've got to at least play the part. And you know, some of that really matters. I mean,
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something like that, like really kind of local retail politician stuff actually really matters. But
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I think the basic thrust, the basic thrust of the past two, three years of the so-called
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new right movement, the national conservatism movement, of which I'm very much a part,
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the basic argument that kind of laissez-faire dogmatism, free trade absolutism, that a lot
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of these policies are not the future of the Republican Party. I think that totally sticks.
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I mean, I think I see no reason looking at the data here to necessarily move away from any of what we
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have said from the past few years. You know, the abortion issue, which is a huge issue on a substantive
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policy perspective for both you and I, Ali, that is a thorny issue. And we're going to have to have
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some like very serious kind of candid kind of within the pro-life family discussions about the
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best path forward for that. But looking at the results in Kentucky, Kansas, now two very kind of
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red state data points over the past few months, you know, we probably should stop putting kind of
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straight abortion bans, constitutional referenda on the ballot before the people at a bare minimum.
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We should probably be focusing more within state legislatures trying to pass actual policy as
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opposed to kind of putting it before the people. I mean, at least kind of small stuff like that.
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But there is really a there's a lot of blame to go around here. And the one thing that we haven't
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discussed yet is obviously one of the other elephants in the room here and what I see a lot
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of people thankfully talking about, but we really cannot talk about it enough because it is that that
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that important is the extent to which the Republican Party is just getting demolished when it comes to
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the mail-in vote, vote by mail, absentee balloting, ballot harvesting regime. And unfortunately, that
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is the current paradigm that we live in. What the left and the Democratic Party have done is they have
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seized upon kind of the once a century COVID stuff from 2020 that sorted summer of the lockdowns and
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the George Floyd riots and all that and all the mail-in voting that became kind of the new normal.
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And they have now made that exactly the new normal. And in the long run, Republicans have to
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ultimately do away with that because it kind of defeats the purpose of an election. It really
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kind of undermines sovereignty in many kind of crucial and important ways there. But at least
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in the short term, we would be foolish to unilaterally abandon that game. And, you know,
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as I saw Christina Pouchard tweet on Monday morning, she I think it was she noted that California
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Republicans in certain districts there in the Los Angeles and Orange County area at least seem to
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have actually used ballot harvesting to their advantage to get elected. So there's at least some element of
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that those Republicans must be better on as well.
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I want to talk a little bit more about that specifically in the state of Arizona and what
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you think went on there and some of the claims about what went on there. But I want to hit the
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abortion point quickly because I want to make sure that people understand you're not saying to do away
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with the abortion conversation or that Republican candidates shouldn't talk about abortion. You're
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talking about a difference between the effectiveness of a measure like the amendments that we saw in
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several states trying to protect the rights of unborn children versus legislation that is passed by the
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representatives and the state senators that you elect. That is probably more of an effective thing to do.
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And I would agree, because if you look at the state of Texas, even the state of Florida, to a lesser
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extent, passed abortion legislation. And obviously, Ron DeSantis won. Obviously, Greg Abbott won. If you
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look at the state of Georgia, same thing. Heartbeat bill and Governor Kemp won. And so this is not such a
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polarizing issue. I mean, DeWine in Ohio also won after passing pro-life legislation. So this is not an
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issue I think that Republicans need to run away from. I don't think it's impossible for a Republican in
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most states to sign a bill into law that protects the life of unborn children and then get reelected.
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It is a little bit more difficult, I do think, as you said, to put a ballot measure before people,
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because, I mean, you are just going to have so much propaganda from Planned Parenthood and elsewhere,
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you know, giving people misinformation about what it actually stands for. So I still think abortion can
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be a winning issue. I certainly I mean, I'm just glad I'm not a politician. If it weren't a winning
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issue, I still wouldn't be able to not talk about it because I think it's that fundamental. But I agree
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that there are obviously like we've got to do a better job of messaging or campaigning on it. And I
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don't know exactly what that looks like, because I happen to think we have a lot of pro-lifers on
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our side who do a really, really good job. I mean, maybe we're just outspent. I'm not sure.
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Well, we do have a lot of pro-lifers on our side who do a good job. And I'll kind of name one
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example of that. I think she's a mutual friend of ours, who's Lila Rose of Live Action. So back in
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early August, I flew out to Jackson Hole, Wyoming. I was participating in kind of a state lawmaker summit
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for Live Action. There was kind of 50 strategically taken state lawmakers, basically trying to kind of hear
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from various panels, a couple of which I participated on, about what to do in this
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post-Dobbs world. And one thing that Lila Rose and Live Action do so well on the pro-life advocacy side
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is they have these videos. They talk about what actually happens during the course of an abortion.
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They actually break it down to human biology, to embryology. At six weeks, the unborn child has XYZ,
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physical, biological, verifiable traits. You know, at 12 weeks, you know, you'd have to like literally
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strip off fingers and arms, things of that nature, right? Very graphic things. And I guess it kind of
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gets to the broader point here is that pro-lifers have to actually make the pro-life argument. They
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can't just talk. They can't just kind of make this kind of blanket assertion.
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Abortion is bad. Yeah. Yeah. You can't just say abortion is bad. You can't just say life begins
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at conception. Both those two things are true, by the way. But you have to actually make the argument
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to get in there in the weeds there. And that is what I'm still waiting for. A lot of our most
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articulate advocates, you know, folks like Josh Hawley. I mean, it would be really nice if we had
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some of these incredibly bright pro-lifers really kind of get in there and start leading with some
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of these hard hitting, biologically grounded arguments. You know, I think someone who actually
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does a good job, Senator Lankford from Oklahoma, like he is one of the most consistently and
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unapologetically, I would say, pro-life advocates. And I appreciate that. And he does it in a way that I
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think is compelling. But I agree with you. I mean, like Republicans do in so many ways, whether it's about
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marriage or whether it's about abortion, they run away from the substance of it. Like they will
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get on the most fringe part of the issue and will say, well, it's really about religious liberty when
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it comes to marriage or it's really about not wanting taxpayers to fund it when it comes to
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abortion. Well, no, it is about the fact that abortion kills a human being and human beings should
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have human rights and they should be protected in that way. And then, of course, I want to talk a
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little bit about the so-called Respect for Marriage Act in just a little bit. But I do see Republicans
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are just scared. But I think that if you look at the state of Florida, if you look at a lot of the
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wins that we did have, that really Republicans should not be running away from the so-called
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culture war issues, what are really moral issues. Actually, I would say in a lot of cases,
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the culture war wins elections. You're talking about a purple state, what was a purple state in
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Florida being completely transformed by someone who was primarily, I think, a culture warrior.
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Obviously, he did other great things too. But he was one of the only, it is probably one of the only
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Republicans willing to go against the LGBTQ lobby. And he won. So I don't know. What do you think
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about that? What do you think about the whole Republican instinct to retreat from the culture
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wars? Actually, before I let you answer that, there's one thing that I just remembered that
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I wanted to say, because I'm not sure that I agree with it. So you can lump this in with your
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answer to that question. So two people that I respect a lot, that I get a lot of information
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from, that I really like. Jack Posobiec, Charlie Kirk. One of the things that they said was maybe one of
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the reasons why we did so poorly in the midterms was because Lindsey Graham put forward that ban
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on abortion after 15 weeks. And I just don't think I agree with that. I think a lot of people didn't
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even know that that happened. And secondly, I'm not sure if that's how we should be thinking
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about abortion legislation. I think, I mean, I'm not like an unconditional defender of Lindsey Graham,
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but he probably put it forward thinking, oh, this will show how radical Democrats are on abortion,
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that they won't even restrict abortion when the baby we know is capable of feeling pain. So I don't
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really want to blame Lindsey Graham for putting forward what we should consider an improvement on
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current legislation when it comes to abortion. I don't know. You can tell me what you make of all of
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that. Yes, I'll take the latter first and then go back to Florida and DeSantis and all of that.
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So when it comes to the Lindsey Graham legislation, I was kind of a mixed thoughts on it. I don't
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recall particularly strongly tweeting one way or the other or arguing against it. Obviously,
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the ideal policy is that, you know, and frankly, I've argued that this is the proper interpretation
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of the 14th Amendment's equal protection clause. The ideal policy is ultimately a full-on national
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abortion ban, and we should not mince words in saying that. You know, the analogs between
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the abortion issue and the slavery issue are myriad. I mean, they both involve kind of the
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willful deprivation of humanity, of human beings. They both involve doctrinal constitutional issues
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of so-called substantive due process. The parallels are remarkable. And, you know, just as Abraham Lincoln
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famously said that this country cannot long survive half free and half slave, so too can America
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ultimately in the long term not survive where unborn children are free to live in some states and will
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be snuffed out of the womb in other states. So that very clearly is the long-term goal.
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You know, the only thing that we're talking about here on this show and this kind of post-2022
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midterm elections conversations that many of us are having is how slowly we need to kind of plod to
00:19:02.340
move forward. And, you know, it's worth bearing in mind, obviously, that Roe versus Wade tragically,
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of course, took 49 years to be overturned. And these victories are not ultimately won overnight.
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On the specific merits of Lindsey Graham's 15-week abortion ban, one thing that's worth noting is
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that Marco Rubio, who actually was one of the most vocal, perhaps the single most vocal proponents,
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kind of the co-sponsor of Lindsey Graham's 15-week national abortion ban bill, he demolished Val
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Demings here in Florida, won statewide by 16 points. Val Demings, I think they only had one debate in
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her, one debate against Senator Rubio, really tried to pin him down on the abortion issue. And the voters of
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Florida clearly were just simply not having it. I think I saw some polling out of Arizona that kind of
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indicated that Blake Masters' abortion polling specifically, that Arizonans felt more comfortable
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with him as their candidate, given the fact that this 15-week ban was going to be the party norm.
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But, you know, to go back to what we were just saying about kind of pro-lifers have to make the argument,
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here's what I would like to hear pro-lifers say, Republicans say, when it comes to the 15-week issue.
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They should say that 15 weeks is literally still a longer gestational period than the abortion regime
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in no less secular a country than France. France literally has a 12-week abortion cap. All those
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European countries are typically in the 12 to 15-week range. America, at least in the Roe era,
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is a legitimate outlier or was a legitimate outlier up there with China, North Korea, Vietnam, Cuba,
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the worst of the worst human rights offenders there. So these are the kind of arguments talking
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about kind of fetal heartbeat, kind of what happens to the unborn child, comparing to kind
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of other countries around the world. These are the kind of arguments that I really just think
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pro-lifers need to make a little more often. I didn't really hear any of that when it got to
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the 15-week ban. But all that to say that I don't think that that issue particular or that specific
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legislation, I should say, particularly hurt Republicans. I just don't really buy that,
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Yeah. And Florida just went from 24 weeks to 15 weeks. It's still 15 weeks in the state of Florida,
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right? It is 15 weeks right now. We'll see what the legislature does when they get back
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into session. I'm cautiously optimistic, especially now that Florida has super majorities,
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actually, Republican super majorities in both houses. I'm cautiously optimistic that we'll get
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a better law, but we'll see. And, you know, on the question of Florida, which was the other part
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of your question there, Ali, I agree with the framing of your question. I wrote multiple columns
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over the past year or so, one in the aftermath of Glenn Youngkin's victory in Virginia,
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one kind of in the midst of Ron DeSantis' fight against the Walt Disney Company,
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basically saying that Republicans, you know, seize upon the so-called culture war issues and
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cruise to victory. And what's interesting, actually, Ali, this is a point that I have
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that I've seen very few talking heads on our side make, actually. If you look at the issues
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that Republicans actually ran on in the 2022 midterms to the extent they ran on issues at all,
00:21:48.920
it really was not the culture war issues at all, was it? I mean, there was a little bit about
00:21:52.620
abortion. They were really kind of just shooing that away. There was a lot of talk about the
00:21:56.580
economy, jobs, inflation, things like that, crime, I guess, to the extent that that's a cultural issue.
00:22:03.060
But you really didn't hear a whole lot about the threat of wokeism in general. Young was the one
00:22:08.260
candidate this past cycle who talked about the threat of wokeism, we'll fight the woke on the
00:22:12.320
beach, we'll fight the woke here. Well, that was Ron DeSantis, the guy who just won the once purple,
00:22:16.940
now bright red state of Florida by 20 points. So I totally agree with the framing of your
00:22:21.780
question. If there's one policy issue that I think we would most closely associate with
00:22:25.920
Governor DeSantis, it is the COVID issue. But even the COVID issue itself, holding aside all of his
00:22:30.380
various culture war fights against Disney, critical race theory, LGBT, all of that, even COVID was,
00:22:36.760
and I guess to a lesser extent, kind of remains somewhat of a culture war issue. It's not simply
00:22:41.080
an individual liberty issue. The key insight about COVID since day one was that the ruling class,
00:22:47.040
kind of the uniparty neoliberal elites in both parties seized upon the vaccine mandates,
00:22:52.060
the passports, the COVID lockdowns, all of that, to kind of enact a de facto class war of sorts against
00:22:57.560
deplorables, against the people who have to work in person, who have to go to their jobs if they
00:23:02.060
were kind of crap out of luck, if they even had jobs at that point. You know, the laptop class,
00:23:06.300
the professional managerial class never had an issue with COVID. They could just work from home from
00:23:10.200
the get-go. So I think Governor DeSantis realized from the get-go, along with a handful of other
00:23:15.180
shrewd politicians throughout the country, that COVID was also kind of a culture war issue to an
00:23:20.420
extent there. And that was why he was so passionate, actually, about using state power in Florida
00:23:25.320
to override even private sector companies that would implement these COVID vaccine mandates,
00:23:30.740
because he understood that that was an extension of this anti-kind of deplorable,
00:23:37.720
Yes, yes. And obviously, you and I are on the same page there. There was some debate within
00:23:42.340
conservatism when the whole Disney showdown went down about whether or not the state should use
00:23:48.180
its power to kind of go against corporation. Obviously, you and I agree that that is within
00:23:54.980
the purview of the state. And actually, it's really, they're really the only people or the only entity
00:24:01.180
that can. And I don't know what a Republican's or a conservative's role is, if it is not, to protect
00:24:08.860
the rights of its people against all kinds of institutions that seek to infringe upon them.
00:24:25.840
All right, speaking of culture wars, Trump, last night, announced his presidency, hit all kinds of
00:24:33.540
culture war buttons. Let's play a quick clip of him saying that he is running in 2024.
00:24:42.180
In order to make America great and glorious again, I am tonight announcing my candidacy for
00:24:53.860
All right, Josh, I am having deja vu, not just not just in the announcement, but also just in the
00:25:01.780
conversations that are happening on Twitter. I'm like, Oh, my gosh, we are talking about the exact
00:25:06.320
same things and the exact same way that we were in 2015 and 2016. I mean, what's your thought on this?
00:25:13.720
Well, Ali, I'll be very candid with you. I did not watch this at all last night. Actually, I do. I do.
00:25:19.420
I do live here in Florida. I was actually at the Florida Panthers versus Washington Capitals hockey
00:25:23.020
game with a friend. So I was kind of following on Twitter a little bit. I saw some clips this morning.
00:25:28.020
What I heard from any number of friends who did watch it is that the former president really just
00:25:33.340
didn't look or feel particularly inspired, that he was kind of, you know, he was reading off a
00:25:39.080
script, he was reading off a teleprompter, that he was kind of trying to, like, recapture some of
00:25:43.100
the old magic, but it didn't necessarily feel like it was fully there. Ivanka and Jared, obviously,
00:25:48.120
were not there. I heard that Don Jr. actually was not there, which is really interesting in and of
00:25:52.440
itself. I'm not entirely sure what to make of that. And, you know, what I heard from some friends,
00:25:57.060
even actually who were there at Mar-a-Lago, who texted me was that there were many in the crowd,
00:26:01.880
actually, who seemed like they were getting bored, that the speech tended to kind of drone on and on
00:26:05.900
a little bit. What another friend texted me this morning was that she kind of compared this
00:26:10.140
announcement to the Tom Brady presidential announcement. You know, it's like coming back
00:26:14.020
for one more year, trying to put the band back together a little bit. Look, I personally, at this
00:26:19.080
point, have no small dose of Trump fatigue. And I say that as someone who thinks that Donald Trump was
00:26:24.780
the greatest president of my lifetime, and it's not a particularly close call. And I would gladly,
00:26:29.360
I would gladly pull the lever for him in 2024 if he ends up being the Republican presidential nominee.
00:26:35.500
But right now, especially in the aftermath of the bloodbath that was the 2022 midterms with the
00:26:42.160
Georgia Senate race still on the line here, I mean, we should look at the serious possibility that
00:26:47.220
Donald Trump could be indirectly responsible for costing Republicans not one, not two, but potentially
00:26:53.220
three U.S. Senate races just in the state of Georgia, as far as kind of his timing and his
00:26:58.360
various antics are concerned, going back to January 21, of course, and now this upcoming
00:27:04.680
runoff between Hershel Walker and Raphael Warnock. So I'm not sure what else there is to say about it.
00:27:10.260
I mean, based on what I read about his speech last night, as far as the bucket of issues are
00:27:14.660
concerned, it seems to be kind of a focus on many ways and kind of the 2016 issues, a large focus
00:27:20.020
on immigration, build the wall. And to be clear, I'm a staunch border hawk. I've never understood
00:27:24.840
the argument that there should not be a wall. It's really just common sense to me. I totally
00:27:27.740
support that. But there's been a lot of new issues that have emerged onto the scene since then. I
00:27:31.700
mean, was he talking about critical race theory? Was he talking about woe capital? Was he talking
00:27:35.300
about kind of ESG and the threat that that poses? I didn't really hear any of that, to be honest
00:27:39.660
with you, or at least what I read when I was reading my recap articles this morning. So I don't know,
00:27:44.540
but I definitely have Trump fatigue right now to an extent. And I suspect that I'm not the only one
00:27:49.200
out there who has it. Yeah, he did talk a little bit about CRT. One thing that I did, I did like that
00:27:57.460
I saw that he said I saw it on Twitter afterwards, because I like you not watching this live. He said
00:28:04.660
that he would put and we're going to play the clip he would put not just drug dealers in jail,
00:28:10.540
but he would actually give them the death penalty. So here he is making his case for that.
00:28:16.400
But we're going to be asking everyone who sells drugs, gets caught selling drugs,
00:28:21.600
to receive the death penalty for their heinous acts, because it's the only way.
00:28:30.960
Okay, so this to me kind of reminds me of when he first started talking about building the wall,
00:28:37.180
and not allowing certain people in from certain Muslim majority countries. When he first started
00:28:44.240
saying that, everyone was like, are you kidding me? That's so racist and xenophobic. And then
00:28:49.340
when it came to the wall thing, a lot of people kind of started seeing the logic in that and that it
00:28:54.460
made a lot of sense. And I think initially, when people hear that drug dealers should get the death
00:28:59.260
penalty, they kind of shrink back and say, oh, no, I don't like that. But then when you think about it,
00:29:04.120
okay, we're not talking about weed dealers. But if you're talking about someone who has been
00:29:08.840
dealing fentanyl, who is responsible, especially like these kingpin drug dealers responsible for
00:29:14.440
the deaths of thousands of people, especially like accidental overdoses when it comes to fentanyl
00:29:20.820
and things like that. I mean, I actually don't really know what the argument is against the death
00:29:25.880
penalty. And that's one thing I kind of like about Donald Trump is that he's willing to say things
00:29:30.420
like this that I have not heard, at least recently, any Republican say, I don't know,
00:29:36.580
I mean, I will be the first to say that I'm an enthusiastic supporter of the death penalty
00:29:40.040
for drug dealers. So I mean, you know, Ali, if I can kind of just open up to your listeners and
00:29:44.940
your viewers on a personal level, one of my cousins with whom I was very close about five years
00:29:50.600
by now, December 2017, tragically overdosed from fentanyl. And, you know, I have any number of
00:29:56.600
stories from friends, tragically, who have similar tales to tell. And, you know, you bet that I would
00:30:01.900
prefer that for a modicum of justice, that the person who killed, who killed my cousin,
00:30:10.160
be executed. So this is exactly the kind of policy that I for years have thought is the kind of thing
00:30:15.500
that Republicans should run on. But, you know, it's worth noting that as President of the United
00:30:19.240
States, you know, President Trump passed two major pieces of legislation into law. There was a 2017
00:30:24.420
tax cut, and there was a 2018 First Step Act. Well, the First Step Act, which is really kind
00:30:30.300
of the brainchild of Jared and Ivanka, and to a lesser extent, maybe Kanye West and Kim Kardashian,
00:30:36.220
this was a jailbreak. I mean, this is kind of an anti-law and order bill. In fact,
00:30:40.520
there were very few people, actually, in kind of the conservative commentary who came out of post
00:30:44.420
this. It passed the U.S. Senate by a margin of 88 to 12, actually. President Trump signed them into
00:30:48.960
law. I was one of those handful of people that said this is a very bad idea. Some of your Blaze TV
00:30:54.200
colleagues, I remember, folks like Daniel Horowitz and, if I recall, Steve Dace were big critics of
00:30:58.420
this legislation. So, you know, at least prior to the very bloody summer of George Floyd in 2020,
00:31:05.040
where he kind of took a slightly different tone, Trump's presidency didn't necessarily reflect this,
00:31:10.540
did not necessarily reflect this extremely tough kind of law and order sentiment that, you know,
00:31:14.620
I and others have been pushing for many, many, many years now. But I agree with you that Trump,
00:31:20.500
in many ways, has this unique ability to say things that may seem kind of superficially to be
00:31:26.220
kind of outray or outlandish. But if you actually think about it a little more, really do have a lot
00:31:31.060
of heft and a lot of kind of gravitas going for them. And I guess more generally speaking, you know,
00:31:37.400
the issue with President Trump never was necessarily the actual things that he was talking about. I mean,
00:31:43.160
in many ways, his approach to immigration, his approach to China. I mean, he was more transformative
00:31:47.520
on China than any president since Richard Nixon went to visit Chairman Mao in the early 1970s.
00:31:52.500
He fundamentally reset the U.S.-China relationship, and I would argue for the better. He obviously
00:31:57.920
was an incredibly dynamic president when it comes to the Middle East. I mean, a once-a-generation
00:32:02.040
peacemaker. Who would have thought President Trump peacemaker? Well, he literally proved that to be the
00:32:05.980
case. So there's so much to applaud in general, really, about the various kind of policy initiatives
00:32:11.100
that I think he stood for. And as we saw in that clip right there, in many ways that he is still
00:32:15.440
kind of pushing. Rather, the criticism, I guess, is twofold, at least that I can immediately think
00:32:21.780
of. One is, can he actually execute on this? And that's kind of why I mentioned the First Step Act.
00:32:26.620
You know, when it comes to President Trump, there were a lot of criticisms about his personnel
00:32:30.300
decisions. He oftentimes was not hiring the best people. He oftentimes was not firing the worst
00:32:34.580
people. He oftentimes was letting people such as, you know, Kanye West on the First Step Act have way
00:32:40.060
more influence over policy than they probably should have had. And I have no indication that he is
00:32:45.180
necessarily learned any of these lessons from his last go-around. And I guess the other criticism
00:32:50.380
of President Trump and kind of directly implicating his potential ability to actually execute these
00:32:55.680
policies, to actually implement this vision, the other bucket of criticism is, can he actually get
00:33:02.140
over? Can he get over the 2020 election? And, you know, I have publicly said many times, I have used the
00:33:07.820
word stolen. I've referred to the 2020 election as stolen when you combine all the dubiously legal mail-in
00:33:14.040
ballot in initiatives in states like North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and so forth. When you talk about
00:33:18.380
kind of the New York Post, Hunter Biden story, the one in six Joe Biden voters saying they would have
00:33:23.520
voted for Trump if they'd known that. If you combine all of these issues above, I have no problem
00:33:27.680
referring to the election as stolen when the actual margin was 40,000 votes trickled across four very
00:33:32.240
key states. But here's the key point. Can Trump actually learn from that and then chart a path
00:33:38.880
forward to implement kind of the relevant kind of election-related reforms that we were talking about a
00:33:43.080
little earlier to actually prevent this from happening again, rather than just kind of beating
00:33:47.880
the drums about stolen election, Brad Raffensperger in Georgia and all of that. And I have very little
00:33:53.260
in the way of evidence that he has learned those relevant lessons in a way that would allow him to
00:33:57.420
implement even those kind of election-related measures as well. Yeah. And one thing that I
00:34:03.220
that I think proves your point that he either can't get over that or just can't get over himself
00:34:08.960
is his reaction to the reelection of Ron DeSantis. Everyone talking about Ron DeSantis being the
00:34:16.740
2024 pick for Republicans, I think, probably rubbed Trump the wrong way because he sees himself as a
00:34:25.460
shoo-in. He sees himself as the Republican Party that he trans which he did transform the Republican
00:34:30.640
Party in a lot of way, a lot of ways. But I think he overestimates the cohesiveness of the Republican
00:34:37.340
Party behind him and just how important he is now. So he released these statements, multiple
00:34:42.820
statements, very strange statements on Truth Social about Ron DeSantis, basically how he made
00:34:48.980
Ron DeSantis. Also made comments about Casey DeSantis really being the one who runs his campaign,
00:34:55.460
saying he said previously that there were some things that he would reveal about Ron DeSantis
00:35:01.580
if he runs. There was a Trump lawyer. We played it on this show last week who said, you know,
00:35:07.480
it would basically be career suicide for Ron DeSantis to to run. And then also Trump said some
00:35:14.760
weird things about Glenn Youngkin. What? That was one of the weirdest things I've ever seen where he
00:35:19.240
separated Youngkin's last name, Youngkin, and said sounds Chinese. What? What are you doing, dude?
00:35:26.260
What are you doing? So I do wonder if his kind of calm demeanor last night, which a lot of people saw
00:35:32.900
as uninspired and boring, was his attempt to be disciplined, his attempt to reel it in and to say,
00:35:42.680
oh, OK, people like Ron DeSantis because he they you know, he pushes good policies, wages the culture
00:35:48.620
war, but isn't quite as bombastic and unpredictable as Trump is. Maybe that was Trump trying to say, oh,
00:35:54.040
you know what? I can be like that, too. I can take off my downsides, whatever it is.
00:35:59.280
But I don't know. I mean, what do you think about this fight? And this is kind of what brings me back
00:36:03.900
to 2015, 2016, because I already have people I really haven't said anything about it. Definitely
00:36:09.100
not before the election, because I actually thought that, you know, I don't I didn't want to do anything
00:36:14.040
that could even potentially hurt DeSantis. And I just felt like pitting them against each other.
00:36:18.200
That's just not helpful before DeSantis' election. But I haven't really said anything about it at all.
00:36:25.580
And yet I'm getting messages in in my Instagram inbox from people saying, why haven't you overtly
00:36:32.040
supported President Trump yet? Why haven't you said anything about this? You know, I always knew that
00:36:37.280
you were a closet anti-Trumper, whatever it is. This is the MAGA movement. This is America first.
00:36:43.240
And they're already kind of saying, OK, here's the system on this side, which now includes like
00:36:49.300
national review. And then here's Trump over here. Trump is our underdog yet again. We have to support
00:36:55.220
him. And people saying DeSantis is a part of the establishment. I'm like, oh, my gosh, I am so not
00:37:00.040
ready for this conversation yet. I'm just not ready for it. What do you think?
00:37:05.340
Well, I mean, I have a lot of thoughts about all of that, I guess, is where I would start.
00:37:09.820
Um, so look, I mean, this effort to paint Ron DeSantis as some sort of kind of like rhino
00:37:16.380
establishment lackey. I mean, it's it's laughable on its face. I mean, when he when he was in U.S.
00:37:22.220
Congress, he joined the House Freedom Caucus on day one. He was always one of the most conservative
00:37:27.020
members in Congress. You know, if I remember correctly, he was actually even kind of an early
00:37:32.260
advocate for winding down the Afghanistan operation. There have been some questions raised about his
00:37:36.560
foreign policy bona fides. Is he actually just going to be kind of an old school gun toting
00:37:40.460
Lindsey Graham, John McCain style neocon? Well, I mean, if I remember correctly, that's actually
00:37:44.660
really not actually where he comes down to foreign policy, which I think is actually quite encouraging.
00:37:49.000
And, you know, more generally speaking, I mean, the Disney fight is so indicative. I mean,
00:37:53.740
would a Chamber of Commerce corporate tax cut fetishizing style, you know, supply side Republican
00:38:01.020
ever take on one of the largest employers in the state? Never, never in a million years. Are you
00:38:06.180
kidding me? I mean, it's ludicrous on his face. So this effort is going to fail. Now, having said
00:38:12.780
that, having said that, Ali, I am a little concerned, if I'm being candid with you, about
00:38:17.980
the extent to which you see a lot of establishment forces, Wall Street Journal, National Review,
00:38:23.720
AEI, think tank types, some folks like that that are rallying to DeSantis' side in what they
00:38:29.580
perceive to be this mano a mano Trump versus DeSantis matchup. In fact, I'm probably going to write
00:38:33.680
my column this week actually trying to kind of push back against that and basically say,
00:38:38.500
no, you guys are not going to co-opt Governor DeSantis for your kind of, you know, outmoded
00:38:44.120
supply side corporate Chamber of Commerce vision, because that's not who he is. That is not the
00:38:48.020
politician who he is. And I think for a lot of kind of kind of culture war centric, you know,
00:38:53.700
new right, NatCon, whatever you want to call us, style conservatives, we have to kind of get out in
00:38:58.660
front of that before that ball kind of gets a little, you know, further downfield. A friend
00:39:03.860
of mine who works at one of those kind of more establishment leaning conservative organizations,
00:39:08.800
but who himself, I think, is more kind of new right leaning. He actually texted me last night
00:39:13.100
and he said, DeSantis has to do something soon that will piss off National Review and the American
00:39:18.900
Enterprise Institute again. He should pick another Disney fight. Maybe it'll be the transgender issue.
00:39:23.440
I'm not sure. But this effort to kind of paint Governor DeSantis as an establishment chamber of
00:39:28.540
commerce rhino lackey, I mean, it's not going to take hold. It is just absurd on its face there.
00:39:35.060
And I guess the other thing that's worth pointing out here is Trump indisputably started a movement.
00:39:40.960
He indisputably started the America First movement, kind of this more populist oriented
00:39:45.680
strand of conservatism, you know, national sovereignty, immigration, trade realism, all the above,
00:39:51.860
right? I mean, kind of a rebuke of moralistic foreign policy interventionism. And effectively,
00:39:57.120
all of those policies, I think, were for the better. I mean, I really do think that
00:40:01.180
American conservatism substantively is now in a better place because of Trump. That doesn't
00:40:07.240
necessarily mean that Trump is necessarily that it doesn't necessarily mean that he is the best
00:40:12.140
person to take it home from here. So he was an earthquake. He was a wrecking ball. He exposed a lot
00:40:17.720
of sclerosis. He exposed a lot of intellectual rot. That doesn't necessarily mean because of some of
00:40:24.160
the reasons that we've already talked about on the show that he is the best person to build. He was
00:40:28.680
amazing at destroying and exposing rot. But we have to start building here. And part of what you have to
00:40:34.500
do to build, I would submit, is to actually advocate and articulate a positive, affirmative vision
00:40:41.180
of governance and what it means to live as a sovereign person living in a free state and
00:40:46.200
ultimately a free country. And I think that's actually what Governor Sanchez has really done
00:40:49.940
here in Florida. And in so doing, he has transformed this state into a red state. The Hispanic vote in
00:40:55.420
Florida went for him by a massive margin. He won Miami-Dade County, 70 plus percent Hispanic County
00:41:04.060
First time a Republican had won the woman's vote, I think in, what, 20 years? So there's that too. And
00:41:11.500
if we're worried, as we said earlier about losing independence, I mean, maybe it's, I understand what
00:41:17.480
you're saying about not wanting to be seen as the establishment candidate, and he is not. But these
00:41:23.540
organizations that are establishment supporting him might make people think that he is. I understand
00:41:28.620
what you're saying about wanting to piss them off. But at the same time, there are a lot of
00:41:32.860
independents that take their cues from the Wall Street Journal, and who do read NRO, and who would
00:41:39.480
probably be persuaded that waging the culture wars the way that Ron DeSantis does is actually a good
00:41:46.500
thing. So I'm not so sure that, yeah, maybe to you and me, who were anti-establishment in a lot of
00:41:53.600
ways, but we have to remember, you and I are very online. And we like, you know, things that are very
00:41:59.700
online. And our normal friends just aren't thinking the same way. They're not reading the
00:42:05.720
same things. And so I don't think it's so bad, at least in my opinion, that he does have some
00:42:11.700
advocates in those arenas. We'll see. We'll see. It'll be an interesting thing to watch play out.
00:42:17.920
Oh, also, another huge benefit. Another huge benefit is that we would greatly appreciate,
00:42:34.820
I think, as a country and benefit from having a president who is under 80 years old. Like,
00:42:40.700
is that so much to ask? I mean, he's under 50 years old. I think he's 40 something. I think that
00:42:45.820
that is a very normal and good age to run for president, not trying to be rude or anything.
00:42:51.720
But I mean, there are fewer and fewer things that you can do well, the older that you get.
00:42:56.600
That's just true for all of us. I think that Trump is a very young age, however old he is,
00:43:02.240
80, whatever. I mean, he's way younger, I think, mentally than Joe Biden is. But still,
00:43:08.340
can't we get someone who is, you know, not part of the silent generation? I don't know. That's just
00:43:12.940
my opinion. Yeah, I mean, when can America finally move on from the boomers? I mean,
00:43:18.240
the boomers have frankly done a lot of damage to America. They've done some good things as well.
00:43:21.900
But, you know, Helen Andrews of the American Conservative has a whole book that she wrote
00:43:26.120
over the past year or so. Yeah, good. Ellen's wonderful. So, yeah, I mean, you know, her book
00:43:31.120
speaks for itself. I mean, the boomers have done a lot of harm. But nonetheless, America is still a
00:43:35.660
gerontocracy at this point. It is a country governed by old people who happen to be boomers,
00:43:40.920
whether it's Chuck Schumer, whether it's Mitch McConnell, whether it's Joe Biden,
00:43:44.540
whether it's Donald Trump. Joe Biden, by the way, is not a baby boomer. I was just looking this up.
00:43:49.220
He's not a baby boomer. He is actually a part of the silent generation. He is only six years older
00:43:54.080
than my grandmother, who died a couple of years ago. And even Donald Trump, he is right on the cusp.
00:44:00.480
I think baby boomer actually starts in 1946. And that is when he was born. So we're not even talking
00:44:06.500
about baby boomers. We are talking literally about the people who were born right after the Great
00:44:10.300
Depression, which nothing wrong with it. Nothing wrong with that. We love that generation.
00:44:16.020
But yeah, there are benefits to youth. Well, the silent generation in many ways is actually one
00:44:21.320
of the great American generations. Those are the folks who stormed the beaches of Normandy. I mean,
00:44:25.700
those were kind of the true heroes, obviously. Right. Well, that was the greatest generation.
00:44:29.240
So there's the there's greatest generation, silent generation, baby boomers. But still silent
00:44:33.380
generation, still one of the greatest because they were raised in large part by the greatest
00:44:38.380
generation. And so, like, yes, some of the greatest Americans, they tend to be more conservative.
00:44:44.060
That's great. But man, when you're thinking about like what we need, as you said, to build the future,
00:44:52.580
No, totally. I mean, I mean, by sheer dint of being a younger family and the DeSantis is are a younger
00:45:00.440
family. I think Governor DeSantis just recently turned 43 or 44. I think 44, if I'm not mistaken.
00:45:05.740
His wife, Casey, I think is like right around the age of 40. You actually wouldn't shock me if she's
00:45:10.640
39. Even they have three kids that are aged like one, three and five or maybe they're two, four and six,
00:45:16.520
something like that. So they are a very young family. And, you know, I think I think Governor DeSantis and
00:45:22.300
the First Lady of Florida, Casey, they very much do have their kind of thumb on the pulse of the issues
00:45:26.740
that are resonating. That's kind of what I was saying earlier. I mean, I'm happy to hear that Trump
00:45:30.600
mentioned critical race theory. But I mean, like, what about woke capital? I mean, the metastasis of
00:45:35.480
private sector America, whether it's big tech, whether it's the Fortune 500, Silicon Valley,
00:45:40.880
Hollywood, I mean, the transformation of the private sector from a one time ally of the American
00:45:46.700
right to an effective enemy of the American right is one of the most important issues of our time.
00:45:51.960
And it kind of gets to kind of this this fusing of state and corporate power, this public private
00:45:56.860
sector fusion that I think only kind of a more kind of muscular, frankly, authoritative brand of
00:46:02.160
conservatism is capable possibly of breaking that dynamic up. This is the kind of thing that you I
00:46:07.640
think you have to have your thumb on the pulse of what is happening to be able to see it. And again,
00:46:12.540
at least here in Florida, I'm literally all those issues that I just mentioned, whether it's the big
00:46:16.620
big tech issue, Florida has passed an effective law, whether it's the woke capital issue,
00:46:21.000
Florida has passed an excellent law called the Stop Woke Act. So really, just wherever you look,
00:46:26.320
you know, I think Governor Zantis has it. And that's due in no small part of the fact that that he is
00:46:31.580
younger. And there's no, you know, there's no harm in saying that a country that in many ways,
00:46:37.720
this is our country, the United States, in many ways, seems to be pretty decadent, that potentially
00:46:42.200
seems to be starting kind of a Rome-esque decline, lest I sound a little too black-pibbled at the
00:46:47.840
moment. You know, we really need some youthful energy to kind of steer this ship in the right
00:46:53.760
direction to turn this thing around here. And doubling down on kind of the personalities of
00:46:59.480
the past, let alone those who are kind of very preoccupied with kind of fighting literally
00:47:04.340
yesterday's war or last year's war, doesn't necessarily strike me as the best path forward.
00:47:09.220
Yeah. All right. There's a couple more things that I just want to get your thoughts on.
00:47:12.840
So up for a vote soon is the Respect for Marriage Act so-called in the Senate, past the House. And
00:47:21.140
they're saying that this is just basically solidifying, codifying Obergefell. Obviously,
00:47:26.840
it goes past that, just like codifying Roe v. Wade would. Alliance Defending Freedom says this,
00:47:32.840
the Respect for Marriage Act threatens religious freedom in the institution of marriage in multiple
00:47:36.940
ways. It further embeds a false definition of marriage in the American legal fabric. Of course,
00:47:41.840
that's the most important, in my opinion, the definition of marriage between a man and a woman
00:47:45.780
is pre-civilizational. It opens the door to federal recognition of polygamist relationships. It
00:47:52.100
jeopardizes the tax-exempt status of nonprofits that exercise their belief that marriage is the union of
00:47:57.180
one man and one woman. It endangers faith-based social service organizations by threatening litigation
00:48:03.560
and liability risk if they follow their views on marriage when working with the government.
00:48:08.960
Now, there has to be 60 votes. So there needs to be 10 Republicans that vote in favor of bringing
00:48:13.900
it to the floor. And then it will actually be voted on and decided whether it will be sent to Joe
00:48:20.280
Biden. What do you think? You think there will be 10 Republicans that vote in favor of bringing this
00:48:25.600
Well, let me first stipulate that this is a very bad law. And what you read from ADF is accurate. In fact,
00:48:33.800
just before I joined you for this recording, Ali, I was watching a video that the Heritage Foundation put out
00:48:39.140
from my friend Rabbi Yaakov Mencken, who's I think the managing director is his title, of an Orthodox Jewish
00:48:44.620
organization called Coalition for Jewish Values, where Rabbi Mencken kind of explains, even from a Jewish
00:48:49.520
perspective, why this bill is so profoundly harmful. Obviously, from a Christian perspective, it is profoundly
00:48:54.260
harmful as well. And, you know, one key point to make, and you just got at this, Ali, is this isn't
00:49:01.080
just about religious liberty. I mean, that is a massive, massive, massive concern. But by bestowing
00:49:06.760
an imprimatur of legitimacy upon this legislation, any Republican who is complicit in it will also be
00:49:13.280
stamping his or her seal of approval to codifying under U.S. law an erroneous definition of what marriage
00:49:20.700
actually is, a definition of marriage that is directly contrary to the tenets of biblical
00:49:25.060
Judaism or biblical Christianity, and frankly, is directly inimical to any concept of marriage that
00:49:30.760
anyone in human civilization would have conceived of prior to roughly 15, 20 years ago. So it is a very
00:49:37.260
bad law. What you said about kind of a cause of action and kind of opening the floodgates of litigation
00:49:41.920
is absolutely true as well. And I really hope that it will be defeated. As far as the votes are
00:49:47.460
concerned, you know, look, I mean, we're coming, we're, we're now by definition in a lame duck
00:49:51.460
Congress. You have a new Congress coming in come January. Lame duck Congresses are famously hard
00:49:56.220
to predict. The incentive structures are not necessarily aligned properly. You know, well,
00:50:00.340
you have folks like Rob Portman and Pat Toomey. I guess Rob Portman was, was, was always going to
00:50:04.400
support this. You know, it's going to be close. I mean, I think you'll probably get, I can literally
00:50:09.380
thinking out loud here, I can literally think at least five to seven Republicans were going to join.
00:50:14.000
Will they get the full 10? I guess I'm cautiously optimistic that they will not, but we've obviously
00:50:20.340
been let down before. So, um, it's going to be a close call, but if I had to make a prediction on
00:50:25.020
your show, I predict that they probably will fall just short. Man, I don't want to seem blackfilled
00:50:39.940
either. And I mean, I guess I'm not because I'm always going to be a hopeful person. And especially
00:50:44.760
as a Christian, there's a doctrine or an idea that we say that our citizenship is ultimately in heaven.
00:50:50.640
And of course we believe that Jesus is King ultimately. And so there is hope outside of
00:50:56.500
politics, but because I care about the country in which I've been placed, I care about the state of
00:51:02.480
it. I care. I have an interest in preserving marriage in the family as someone who wants my country
00:51:07.200
to survive and thrive. And you cannot, you cannot survive and thrive without the family as the
00:51:12.720
building block. And if you redefine family outside of what is the natural nuclear family, it
00:51:19.960
disintegrates. It causes chaos, especially when you're talking about opening up the door to
00:51:24.720
polygamous marriage and marriage so-called. Um, I know a lot of people say, Oh, you know,
00:51:30.060
that's a slippery slope. That'll never happen. I don't even think that you can logically call
00:51:34.260
anything a slippery slope. We were not only right about what would happen after Obergefell was
00:51:41.540
decided by the Supreme court, but we actually underestimated what would become normal as a
00:51:48.760
consequence of the sexual revolution that has been sanctioned in the United States. I don't think
00:51:53.660
anyone would have ever had the imagination in 2015 to talk about drag queen story hour. And here we are.
00:51:59.320
So, I mean, we already know it's going to open up the door to polygamy. No one ever seems to ask the
00:52:03.720
question, well, where do children fall in all of this? It's always about adults' wishes and our
00:52:09.700
desires. And I guess the state just doesn't think that they have an interest in protecting the family
00:52:15.060
and children. And that is not only to our shame, but also to our intense detriment. And we will
00:52:19.760
continue to see the chickens come home to roost for years and years to come.
00:52:23.920
I mean, we're already seeing the polygamy issue to an extent, right? I mean, there was a,
00:52:27.500
there was a court in New York state. I can't remember if it was in New York city. It's,
00:52:31.080
I think it was in New York state. I think it was in the Bronx, if I recall that, that gratuitously
00:52:35.520
and superfluously started opining on the legitimacy of polyamorous or however you pronounce that word,
00:52:41.380
polyamorous, whatever it is. I, I, I, on these, you know, three or four party, whatever relationships.
00:52:46.340
I mean, we're, we're in all, you know, the, the, the more recent thing, even since kind of the slow,
00:52:51.300
but steady onset of the polygamy discussion, the more recent thing is kind of the mainstreaming of
00:52:56.980
what they call it, uh, MAPs, minor attracted person, which, you know, once upon a time would
00:53:02.140
just been called the pedophile. Um, like that is like the, that's the newest thing. We're starting
00:53:06.400
to see large swaths of the cultural left, you know, uh, the intersectionality, LGBTQ lobby or
00:53:12.620
whatever, talk about kind of, um, the, you know, the inherent human dignity of minor attracted people,
00:53:17.620
which is just disgusting. I mean, like, let's just call it what it is. That is awful, awful,
00:53:22.940
awful stuff. You know, a friend of mine, Gladden Pappin, um, uh, very, uh, theologically
00:53:28.720
conservative, uh, Catholic friend of mine, he, he has jokingly referred to the so-called slippery
00:53:33.080
slope fallacy as the, the ironclad rule of the slippery slope with like a little trademark symbol,
00:53:38.500
because it never fails. I mean, basically everything that social conservatives have said
00:53:42.740
time and time again, since the fifties, sixties, virtually all of it has come true. And, you know,
00:53:47.800
Ross do that actually the New York times columnist, he had a very, very, very good
00:53:52.580
blog post about this years ago. It was back when I was in law school. I think it was in the year
00:53:56.680
2015. It was kind of as the Supreme court was building up to the Obergefell litigation,
00:54:00.740
potentially right after that, but it was right around there. If I recall correctly, the title
00:54:04.740
of his blog post was the wild ideas of social conservatives. And he, he does exactly what I just
00:54:10.280
did. He goes back to the 1960s and basically shows that time and time again, when the cultural
00:54:14.820
left, when elites, when elite institutions dismiss cultural conservatives, social conservatives as
00:54:20.240
talking about the slippery slope time and time again, it comes true. And they're, they're
00:54:24.980
increasingly just out in the open about it, whether it's the polygamy thing, whether it's the minor
00:54:28.800
attracted persons thing there. So, uh, you know, all that's to say that I, I strongly agree with you
00:54:34.120
there, but you know, one thing that I would like to see at least some elected Republicans do some of
00:54:40.260
the conservative think tanks to their credit, you know, ADF heritage folks have that stuff to their
00:54:43.700
credit, what they, they are doing, but it'll be nice to see at least one Republican when this bill gets
00:54:48.340
up there, um, on the floor for debate, whatever to actually make a speech about what the definition
00:54:54.420
of marriage is. I mean, wouldn't, wouldn't that be nice? It kind of gets to what we were saying
00:54:57.780
earlier on the pro-life pro-life issue. You have to make the arguments. You, you, you can't just
00:55:02.580
hand wave it away. And this is why I very gently pushed back against kind of this over-focus on
00:55:07.300
religious liberty, which is obviously important there. But to an extent, religious liberty is almost
00:55:11.560
like a dodge from the actual debate, which is what is the definition of a marriage here? Right?
00:55:15.940
So we have at least one person, hopefully in the Senate Republican caucus who can get on the floor
00:55:20.820
and actually make that case. Honestly, I would be shocked if we did. I would actually kind of be
00:55:27.240
surprised if there were a senator who was willing to go out there and defend marriage substantively.
00:55:34.320
I mean, if we had more senators doing that, then this probably wouldn't be a debate, but
00:55:39.540
Republicans love to retreat. And so, I mean, maybe, maybe you're right. Maybe you're right. We'll see
00:55:45.400
what happens on that. Obviously, I don't believe that the government has the authority to redefine
00:55:50.320
something that is pre-America, pre-civilizational. You can call it marriage, but it is essentially,
00:55:56.200
definitionally not. All right. One thing, one last thing I just want to get your thoughts on,
00:56:00.880
because I wanted to make sure that we covered it today. So have you been following this whole
00:56:06.280
Poland missile, Russia, Ukraine, Poland was hit apparently by a missile. We initially thought it
00:56:14.720
was Russia. Zelensky, president of Ukraine, came out and said, yeah, see, look, Russia is attacking
00:56:20.500
NATO ally Poland. Please send us more stuff. But apparently, it was Ukrainian missile that hit Poland,
00:56:29.580
not on purpose, but trying to defend itself against Russia. And so it seems like more and more people
00:56:36.600
are realizing, hmm, maybe Zelensky isn't like this hero that we should be lionizing. And I don't know,
00:56:44.280
what do you think about this? Ali, there are a few issues over the past year that I think I've
00:56:49.960
pissed more people off on than on the Ukraine issue. Because basically, since day one, I have
00:56:54.460
been saying, let's slow down here, let's pause, let's actually look soberly at the parties here,
00:56:59.520
and let's most important, from an American perspective, figure out what the U.S. national
00:57:03.200
interest is in this particular conflict. I wrote numerous columns back in March and June,
00:57:09.060
basically kind of questioning the all-out absolutist Zelensky narrative. I had a piece
00:57:13.340
about a month ago or so saying that the U.S. needs to shift course immediately when it comes to
00:57:19.100
Ukraine. And just last week, actually, my friend Jonathan McBrunitsky and I co-authored a piece for
00:57:24.320
The Federalist saying that Vladimir Zelensky is no Jewish hero because, you know, as a traditional Jew,
00:57:30.400
it frankly pisses me off to no end that this guy gets there and tries to play the Jew card when it
00:57:35.000
comes to shaming Israel, to provide them extra munitions. And so Zelensky, since day one, has
00:57:40.180
struck me as a profoundly cynical figure. And, you know, I should stipulate that when it comes to
00:57:44.780
his perspective, from a Ukrainian national perspective, it makes all the sense in the world
00:57:50.540
to play fast and loose with the facts, to try to draw in NATO. I mean, he has a vested interest in
00:57:55.880
drawing NATO into this conflict. It makes all the sense in the world, and it didn't take a genius to
00:57:59.980
see that coming since day one there. And none of this is to say that Vladimir Putin is a bad guy.
00:58:04.300
His invasion since day one was unjustified. The West probably could have avoided it if they were
00:58:08.920
a little more shrewd when it comes to NATO and the EU. He isn't a bad guy.
00:58:12.800
Sorry. Thank you for that. No, I think you might have said that. I just wanted to clarify because
00:58:16.820
it like almost sounded like is and I knew you said or meant isn't. So just wanted to clarify.
00:58:23.040
No, no. I mean, I mean, I mean, Vladimir Putin is a thug. I mean, we should be very clear about that.
00:58:27.400
I mean, Vladimir Putin is not a is not a good person. He obviously does not have the American
00:58:30.980
national interest at heart here. But the point that I have made over and over and over again
00:58:35.520
is that not every conflict can be easily reducible to a World War Two paradigm where you have all out
00:58:42.580
absolutist genocidal Nazi evil on one side and all out absolutist red, white and blue rah rah American
00:58:49.000
patriotism on the other. Not every conflict is 100 percent evil versus 100 percent good. It is possible
00:58:55.220
that there are some conflicts that are actually quite complicated and a little more nuanced and more to
00:58:59.580
the point where the U.S. national interest in the conflict is not necessarily as clear as it should
00:59:05.680
be. So, you know, it seems to me like Vladimir Zelensky has yet again gotten caught with his pants
00:59:11.100
down. And if you look at the polls of Republicans who tell pollsters that we're doing too much to
00:59:16.460
support Ukraine, that number has shot up over the past few months, as I think more Republicans kind
00:59:21.760
of sober up to that fact as well. And I'm happy to see that. You know, I think that some folks
00:59:27.660
probably are going to probably try to rush through some sort of lame duck massive aid package to
00:59:33.500
Ukraine in this lame duck Congress. You know, I hope that Republicans try to try their best to slow
00:59:38.360
that down. We, you know, we'll see what happens. Mitch McConnell is very much a part of kind of
00:59:43.840
Zelensky absolutist school of thought, you might say. But, you know, it does appear to be the case that
00:59:50.820
that this tragedy that happened on the Polish-Ukrainian border was due to a Ukrainian missile
00:59:56.160
effectively misfiring. It seems like NATO has now said that the president of Poland, Duda, has now
01:00:02.100
said that. So hopefully people can just calm down a little bit at this point. And, you know, for the
01:00:07.020
love of God, I just hope that this conflict ends sooner rather than later for not just the U.S.
01:00:11.300
national interest, but also for Ukrainians and Russians themselves.
01:00:14.080
Yeah, I was glad to hear that it wasn't Russia because people were already talking about World War
01:00:18.260
three, which they've been talking about for a while. Not that it's a good thing at all that
01:00:22.120
Poland was hit. I think two people died, which is tragic. But obviously, if it had been intentional
01:00:28.080
by Russia, I mean, who knows what U.S. response would have been. So, wow, there's a lot more to
01:00:33.320
talk about. There are a few other questions that I have, but I think that's all we have time for
01:00:36.820
today. And as always, I appreciate your insight. And just a reminder for everyone where they can
01:00:43.740
Yeah, anytime, Mally. Thanks for having me. So I run the Newsweek op-ed section. So you can go to
01:00:49.080
newsweek.com slash opinion for our daily output of op-eds. I'm on Twitter at Josh underscore Hammer.
01:00:55.600
And, you know, you can go ahead and subscribe to my show, which is just called The Josh Hammer Show
01:00:59.760
on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.
01:01:02.880
Awesome. Thanks so much, Josh. I really appreciate it.