Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - Ep 710 ｜ Trump 2024？ & The Disrespect for Marriage Act ｜ Guest： Josh Hammer

00:00:00.000 Well, Trump is running in 2024. It is official. What do we think about this? Also, the Senate

00:00:06.980 moves to redefine marriage at the expense of religious liberty and the future of our country.

00:00:13.280 Also, what really happened in the midterms? Was it abortion, Trump, culture wars that turned the

00:00:18.820 wave into the trickle? We will be analyzing all of this and more with our friend Josh Hammer from

00:00:26.440 Newsweek. This episode is brought to you by our friends at Good Ranchers. Go to goodranchers.com

00:00:32.520 slash Allie. That's goodranchers.com slash Allie.

00:00:45.500 Okay, Josh, before we talk about 2024, I just want to hear your take on 2022. Obviously, as we've heard

00:00:53.380 over and over again, the red wave, the red tsunami did not really materialize. I've already talked

00:00:59.420 about that. You've already talked about that. But from your perspective, what exactly happened?

00:01:04.600 Because there's a lot of different competing analysis from the right about what really kind

00:01:10.920 of caused us to not have the outcomes that we thought we would have.

00:01:15.740 So I've kind of taken all of the above approach to answering this question. And, you know,

00:01:21.560 we're barely a week removed from the 2022 midterm elections. And it was devastating. I mean, there's

00:01:26.100 no reason to try to, you know, try to make a turd sandwich taste any better than it should taste. I

00:01:30.780 mean, this is a very devastating, extremely frustrating midterm. And, you know, one number

00:01:35.620 that I always come back to, Allie, and I'm still trying to kind of wrap my head around this fully,

00:01:39.900 Republicans actually won the national straight up popular vote for U.S. Congress by about four and a

00:01:46.980 half points, 51.5 to 47 percent. That simply did not end up translating. So that number right there

00:01:53.400 should give Republicans at least a modicum of solace. It should give them at least a modicum

00:01:57.640 of solace that the brand is not quite that that toxic. But obviously, race by race and playing the

00:02:03.020 sheer numbers game that ended up not really translating. And there's a lot of blame to go

00:02:07.080 around. And there's really no reason why I think we need to kind of pin that blame in any one particular

00:02:10.560 party. So kind of just trying to go through all the parties, I guess that should be blamed for this.

00:02:14.780 One obvious thing is that the Republican Party has a monumental fundraising disadvantage. And many

00:02:21.080 of us are kind of sounding the alarm on this for months and months. Blake Masters was getting

00:02:24.840 destroyed on the airwaves out in Arizona, Herschel Walker in Georgia. Really, every possible kind of

00:02:30.540 close contest you looked at this cycle for Senate, for Governor Manchin, things of that nature,

00:02:36.260 Republicans were just getting destroyed. So the RNC clearly is failing, frankly. It's just straight

00:02:41.640 of failing. We should just say that when it comes to the fundraising game, the NRSC,

00:02:45.780 the U.S. House wing of the NRCC is clearly failing in that respect as well. You know,

00:02:51.200 Senate Leadership Fund with Mitch McConnell, you know, query whether they were picking all the

00:02:56.000 right fights. I mean, Mitch McConnell is dumping a lot of money to boost Lisa Murkowski, who, to my

00:03:00.200 knowledge, is not even a registered Republican. Perhaps that money should have been better allocated to

00:03:04.560 races like Adam Laxalt in Nevada, Blake Masters in Arizona, Dr. Oz perhaps in Pennsylvania,

00:03:10.080 places like that. And, you know, one other thing that we can't ignore, obviously, is the elephant

00:03:15.220 in the room. And I suspect that you and I are going to get there a little later in this conversation,

00:03:18.460 which, of course, is President Trump himself. It seems to me like President Trump did not do the

00:03:23.640 Republican Party any favors whatsoever in this election. We should probably just be pretty

00:03:27.480 explicit about that and say it like that. Many of his endorsed candidates ran considerably further

00:03:32.440 behind other candidates. And, you know, there are some competing data points, to be sure. Joe Odea in

00:03:37.280 Colorado, who was very anti-Trump, he got demolished. So, again, I'm not trying to pin all the blame on

00:03:43.700 President Trump by any means whatsoever. But at least when you kind of get to certain candidates,

00:03:47.240 like Doug Mastriano is a good example, running statewide in Pennsylvania, just got utterly

00:03:51.420 destroyed by Josh Shapiro. Mastriano was always, frankly, a terrible fit for that particular electorate,

00:03:57.400 but he was Trump-endorsed. Even Don Baldock, who, I'll be honest with you, I thought might actually

00:04:01.600 pull it off at the end in New Hampshire against Maggie Hassan. He lost by a massive margin. That's a Trump

00:04:06.400 endorsement. That query whether it could have gone the other direction there. And, you know,

00:04:10.440 Republicans lost the independent vote, Ali. And that is a really, really sobering thing with

00:04:15.500 historically low approval ratings for President Joe Biden. You know, that first presidential term,

00:04:20.220 the midterm election, the opposition party really should always make gains, let alone when you have

00:04:24.840 40-year high inflation and an economy that as recently as a month or two ago is formally in a

00:04:29.240 recession. So, you know, if we're turning off independence by that margin and then the unmarried women 1.00

00:04:35.780 kind of element, you add into this, losing unmarried women by like 38 percent or whatever

00:04:39.860 it was there, there's a lot of blame to go around here. But I think those are kind of the broader

00:04:44.360 buckets, I guess, of where I would start at least to pinpoint the problem.

00:04:47.720 Yeah. I mean, it's hard for me to understand how President Biden could have such low approval

00:04:52.780 ratings. Crime is up in many of these cities. Obviously, as you said, inflation at an all-time high.

00:04:59.080 Just the past couple of years of just draconian policies that have hurt people's lives and

00:05:04.780 livelihoods, looking at how our education system has been run by the teachers unions who then are

00:05:09.760 part of the Democratic Party. It's really hard for me to understand how independents could look at

00:05:15.720 those policies and how, especially in every major city in the United States, have only led to

00:05:21.320 destruction. You can't look at a city that's been run by Democrats for any amount of time and see any

00:05:25.960 improvements. You only see negative outcomes. It's hard for me to understand how independents 0.81

00:05:31.580 could break for Democrats in this midterm election, considering all of those things.

00:05:37.040 And some people's theory is that we just had bad candidates. It's candidate quality. A lot of people

00:05:42.680 are pinning it exclusively on Donald Trump. I just don't know. I don't know if that's true.

00:05:48.540 One of the toughest losses for me was Blake Masters. Had him on the show about a year ago,

00:05:53.140 and I was like, yeah, I really like him. I like him. I like J.D. Vance. They're different. They're

00:05:57.560 interesting to me. I kind of like this new crop of Republicans that I think is more appealing maybe

00:06:03.320 to young voters. And yeah, I read something in the New York Times. So, you know, take that for what

00:06:09.580 it was. Also, this was from someone who works for Mitch McConnell. Take that for what it was.

00:06:14.240 They said that the reason that they were not funding Blake Masters campaign, but instead,

00:06:19.160 they were directing more funds to people like J.D. Vance was because Blake Masters in the focus

00:06:25.220 groups had the worst scores that they had ever seen any candidate have in a focus group. Now,

00:06:32.280 that to me, it's hard for me to believe. But then I ask myself, okay, is he like a commentator's

00:06:39.840 candidate? Is he the candidate of people like you and me who are really online? Or do we have a

00:06:46.000 disconnect from what the non-online people are thinking? I think apparently so if we're losing

00:06:52.500 independence and we're losing a lot of the people who just are not voting for the candidates that we

00:06:56.600 think are awesome.

00:06:59.220 It's a heck of a question. I mean, it's one of the million dollar questions that I think folks like

00:07:02.400 you and I should be grappling with and our peers in this industry, in this talking head space.

00:07:07.280 Look, I mean, I guess like full disclosure, I mean, I guess I've said this publicly. I mean,

00:07:12.420 you know, I've gotten to know Blake a little bit. I mean, I got dinner with him last February in

00:07:15.660 Arizona and I had a nice chat with him. And I do think very highly of him on a personal level.

00:07:21.480 Having said that, I have a lot of friends in Arizona, actually. And what I heard from the ground

00:07:26.200 from even very right wing friends in Arizona was that the Masters campaign, besides just being

00:07:31.220 totally outspent, I mean, just utterly demolished on the airways by Mark Kelly, who had the power of

00:07:35.720 incumbency. He has this kind of personal story where he's the astronaut. His wife, Gabby Giffords,

00:07:40.120 was shot famously a decade ago or so. So he has a very personal story that tends to resonate with

00:07:45.220 the media in Arizona. And despite his kind of pro Joe Biden voting record, even holding all of that

00:07:49.640 aside, the Masters campaign, it seems to me from from the outside, probably could have done a few

00:07:54.840 things basically better. And what I've heard anecdotally from some friends throughout the state,

00:08:00.040 you know, Blake, who's obviously he's an he's an Arizona native. He was born and raised in Tucson,

00:08:03.880 but he's kind of a Peter Thiel, Silicon Valley guy spent a lot of time out in the Bay Area,

00:08:08.020 Stanford Law School, all that stuff. He didn't really necessarily take his back home his back,

00:08:15.180 you might say his back to his roots, Arizona approach to the campaign trail and to kind of

00:08:20.200 put like a very fine point on that. I heard anecdotes from some folks who would say that

00:08:24.480 he might kind of walk into a room full of ranchers who are wearing cowboy hats and cowboy boots wearing

00:08:28.920 kind of like a T-shirt and like tech bro sneakers, which is the kind of thing that like,

00:08:33.060 I personally don't mind. You know, living here, living here in Florida, I've become kind of like

00:08:37.680 a sneakers guy myself. But I mean, you know, if you're running for statewide office in the state

00:08:42.040 of Arizona, you've got to at least play the part. And you know, some of that really matters. I mean,

00:08:45.820 something like that, like really kind of local retail politician stuff actually really matters. But

00:08:50.260 I think the basic thrust, the basic thrust of the past two, three years of the so-called

00:08:55.720 new right movement, the national conservatism movement, of which I'm very much a part,

00:08:59.700 the basic argument that kind of laissez-faire dogmatism, free trade absolutism, that a lot

00:09:05.380 of these policies are not the future of the Republican Party. I think that totally sticks.

00:09:10.620 I mean, I think I see no reason looking at the data here to necessarily move away from any of what we

00:09:16.000 have said from the past few years. You know, the abortion issue, which is a huge issue on a substantive

00:09:21.300 policy perspective for both you and I, Ali, that is a thorny issue. And we're going to have to have

00:09:27.340 some like very serious kind of candid kind of within the pro-life family discussions about the

00:09:31.260 best path forward for that. But looking at the results in Kentucky, Kansas, now two very kind of

00:09:36.800 red state data points over the past few months, you know, we probably should stop putting kind of

00:09:41.060 straight abortion bans, constitutional referenda on the ballot before the people at a bare minimum.

00:09:46.120 We should probably be focusing more within state legislatures trying to pass actual policy as

00:09:51.160 opposed to kind of putting it before the people. I mean, at least kind of small stuff like that.

00:09:55.160 But there is really a there's a lot of blame to go around here. And the one thing that we haven't

00:10:00.040 discussed yet is obviously one of the other elephants in the room here and what I see a lot

00:10:04.900 of people thankfully talking about, but we really cannot talk about it enough because it is that that

00:10:10.080 that important is the extent to which the Republican Party is just getting demolished when it comes to

00:10:16.120 the mail-in vote, vote by mail, absentee balloting, ballot harvesting regime. And unfortunately, that

00:10:22.840 is the current paradigm that we live in. What the left and the Democratic Party have done is they have

00:10:27.140 seized upon kind of the once a century COVID stuff from 2020 that sorted summer of the lockdowns and

00:10:33.500 the George Floyd riots and all that and all the mail-in voting that became kind of the new normal.

00:10:37.580 And they have now made that exactly the new normal. And in the long run, Republicans have to

00:10:43.480 ultimately do away with that because it kind of defeats the purpose of an election. It really

00:10:47.940 kind of undermines sovereignty in many kind of crucial and important ways there. But at least

00:10:52.200 in the short term, we would be foolish to unilaterally abandon that game. And, you know,

00:10:57.380 as I saw Christina Pouchard tweet on Monday morning, she I think it was she noted that California

00:11:02.600 Republicans in certain districts there in the Los Angeles and Orange County area at least seem to

00:11:06.900 have actually used ballot harvesting to their advantage to get elected. So there's at least some element of

00:11:11.800 that those Republicans must be better on as well.

00:11:24.700 I want to talk a little bit more about that specifically in the state of Arizona and what

00:11:28.520 you think went on there and some of the claims about what went on there. But I want to hit the

00:11:32.260 abortion point quickly because I want to make sure that people understand you're not saying to do away

00:11:38.460 with the abortion conversation or that Republican candidates shouldn't talk about abortion. You're

00:11:43.040 talking about a difference between the effectiveness of a measure like the amendments that we saw in

00:11:49.560 several states trying to protect the rights of unborn children versus legislation that is passed by the

00:11:55.840 representatives and the state senators that you elect. That is probably more of an effective thing to do.

00:12:03.220 And I would agree, because if you look at the state of Texas, even the state of Florida, to a lesser

00:12:07.500 extent, passed abortion legislation. And obviously, Ron DeSantis won. Obviously, Greg Abbott won. If you

00:12:14.620 look at the state of Georgia, same thing. Heartbeat bill and Governor Kemp won. And so this is not such a

00:12:22.540 polarizing issue. I mean, DeWine in Ohio also won after passing pro-life legislation. So this is not an

00:12:30.600 issue I think that Republicans need to run away from. I don't think it's impossible for a Republican in

00:12:36.300 most states to sign a bill into law that protects the life of unborn children and then get reelected.

00:12:42.760 It is a little bit more difficult, I do think, as you said, to put a ballot measure before people,

00:12:48.020 because, I mean, you are just going to have so much propaganda from Planned Parenthood and elsewhere,

00:12:54.660 you know, giving people misinformation about what it actually stands for. So I still think abortion can 0.92

00:13:02.820 be a winning issue. I certainly I mean, I'm just glad I'm not a politician. If it weren't a winning

00:13:08.460 issue, I still wouldn't be able to not talk about it because I think it's that fundamental. But I agree

00:13:15.660 that there are obviously like we've got to do a better job of messaging or campaigning on it. And I

00:13:23.120 don't know exactly what that looks like, because I happen to think we have a lot of pro-lifers on

00:13:27.580 our side who do a really, really good job. I mean, maybe we're just outspent. I'm not sure.

00:13:33.280 Well, we do have a lot of pro-lifers on our side who do a good job. And I'll kind of name one

00:13:36.960 example of that. I think she's a mutual friend of ours, who's Lila Rose of Live Action. So back in

00:13:41.120 early August, I flew out to Jackson Hole, Wyoming. I was participating in kind of a state lawmaker summit

00:13:47.040 for Live Action. There was kind of 50 strategically taken state lawmakers, basically trying to kind of hear

00:13:51.700 from various panels, a couple of which I participated on, about what to do in this

00:13:55.040 post-Dobbs world. And one thing that Lila Rose and Live Action do so well on the pro-life advocacy side

00:14:01.240 is they have these videos. They talk about what actually happens during the course of an abortion.

00:14:06.520 They actually break it down to human biology, to embryology. At six weeks, the unborn child has XYZ,

00:14:12.960 physical, biological, verifiable traits. You know, at 12 weeks, you know, you'd have to like literally

00:14:18.160 strip off fingers and arms, things of that nature, right? Very graphic things. And I guess it kind of

00:14:23.460 gets to the broader point here is that pro-lifers have to actually make the pro-life argument. They

00:14:29.140 can't just talk. They can't just kind of make this kind of blanket assertion.

00:14:33.080 Abortion is bad. Yeah. Yeah. You can't just say abortion is bad. You can't just say life begins

00:14:37.480 at conception. Both those two things are true, by the way. But you have to actually make the argument

00:14:41.780 to get in there in the weeds there. And that is what I'm still waiting for. A lot of our most

00:14:46.020 articulate advocates, you know, folks like Josh Hawley. I mean, it would be really nice if we had

00:14:50.120 some of these incredibly bright pro-lifers really kind of get in there and start leading with some

00:14:53.540 of these hard hitting, biologically grounded arguments. You know, I think someone who actually

00:14:58.060 does a good job, Senator Lankford from Oklahoma, like he is one of the most consistently and

00:15:04.220 unapologetically, I would say, pro-life advocates. And I appreciate that. And he does it in a way that I

00:15:09.620 think is compelling. But I agree with you. I mean, like Republicans do in so many ways, whether it's about

00:15:15.460 marriage or whether it's about abortion, they run away from the substance of it. Like they will 0.95

00:15:21.540 get on the most fringe part of the issue and will say, well, it's really about religious liberty when

00:15:28.520 it comes to marriage or it's really about not wanting taxpayers to fund it when it comes to

00:15:32.760 abortion. Well, no, it is about the fact that abortion kills a human being and human beings should 0.93

00:15:39.300 have human rights and they should be protected in that way. And then, of course, I want to talk a

00:15:43.800 little bit about the so-called Respect for Marriage Act in just a little bit. But I do see Republicans

00:15:49.160 are just scared. But I think that if you look at the state of Florida, if you look at a lot of the

00:15:54.700 wins that we did have, that really Republicans should not be running away from the so-called

00:16:02.620 culture war issues, what are really moral issues. Actually, I would say in a lot of cases,

00:16:08.580 the culture war wins elections. You're talking about a purple state, what was a purple state in

00:16:14.980 Florida being completely transformed by someone who was primarily, I think, a culture warrior.

00:16:20.600 Obviously, he did other great things too. But he was one of the only, it is probably one of the only

00:16:26.560 Republicans willing to go against the LGBTQ lobby. And he won. So I don't know. What do you think 0.53

00:16:33.520 about that? What do you think about the whole Republican instinct to retreat from the culture

00:16:38.740 wars? Actually, before I let you answer that, there's one thing that I just remembered that

00:16:41.940 I wanted to say, because I'm not sure that I agree with it. So you can lump this in with your

00:16:45.880 answer to that question. So two people that I respect a lot, that I get a lot of information

00:16:51.440 from, that I really like. Jack Posobiec, Charlie Kirk. One of the things that they said was maybe one of

00:16:57.780 the reasons why we did so poorly in the midterms was because Lindsey Graham put forward that ban 1.00

00:17:02.900 on abortion after 15 weeks. And I just don't think I agree with that. I think a lot of people didn't

00:17:10.100 even know that that happened. And secondly, I'm not sure if that's how we should be thinking

00:17:15.520 about abortion legislation. I think, I mean, I'm not like an unconditional defender of Lindsey Graham,

00:17:22.320 but he probably put it forward thinking, oh, this will show how radical Democrats are on abortion,

00:17:30.760 that they won't even restrict abortion when the baby we know is capable of feeling pain. So I don't

00:17:38.740 really want to blame Lindsey Graham for putting forward what we should consider an improvement on 1.00

00:17:45.140 current legislation when it comes to abortion. I don't know. You can tell me what you make of all of

00:17:49.860 that. Yes, I'll take the latter first and then go back to Florida and DeSantis and all of that.

00:17:54.740 So when it comes to the Lindsey Graham legislation, I was kind of a mixed thoughts on it. I don't

00:17:59.360 recall particularly strongly tweeting one way or the other or arguing against it. Obviously,

00:18:03.880 the ideal policy is that, you know, and frankly, I've argued that this is the proper interpretation

00:18:09.460 of the 14th Amendment's equal protection clause. The ideal policy is ultimately a full-on national 0.77

00:18:15.660 abortion ban, and we should not mince words in saying that. You know, the analogs between

00:18:19.800 the abortion issue and the slavery issue are myriad. I mean, they both involve kind of the

00:18:24.920 willful deprivation of humanity, of human beings. They both involve doctrinal constitutional issues

00:18:31.500 of so-called substantive due process. The parallels are remarkable. And, you know, just as Abraham Lincoln

00:18:35.860 famously said that this country cannot long survive half free and half slave, so too can America

00:18:40.940 ultimately in the long term not survive where unborn children are free to live in some states and will 1.00

00:18:47.200 be snuffed out of the womb in other states. So that very clearly is the long-term goal.

00:18:52.360 You know, the only thing that we're talking about here on this show and this kind of post-2022

00:18:56.740 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,

00:19:06.740 of course, took 49 years to be overturned. And these victories are not ultimately won overnight.

00:19:11.060 On the specific merits of Lindsey Graham's 15-week abortion ban, one thing that's worth noting is

00:19:16.500 that Marco Rubio, who actually was one of the most vocal, perhaps the single most vocal proponents,

00:19:22.160 kind of the co-sponsor of Lindsey Graham's 15-week national abortion ban bill, he demolished Val

00:19:26.980 Demings here in Florida, won statewide by 16 points. Val Demings, I think they only had one debate in

00:19:32.040 her, one debate against Senator Rubio, really tried to pin him down on the abortion issue. And the voters of 0.91

00:19:38.220 Florida clearly were just simply not having it. I think I saw some polling out of Arizona that kind of

00:19:43.400 indicated that Blake Masters' abortion polling specifically, that Arizonans felt more comfortable

00:19:48.660 with him as their candidate, given the fact that this 15-week ban was going to be the party norm.

00:19:54.460 But, you know, to go back to what we were just saying about kind of pro-lifers have to make the argument,

00:19:58.000 here's what I would like to hear pro-lifers say, Republicans say, when it comes to the 15-week issue.

00:20:03.540 They should say that 15 weeks is literally still a longer gestational period than the abortion regime

00:20:10.300 in no less secular a country than France. France literally has a 12-week abortion cap. All those 0.64

00:20:16.500 European countries are typically in the 12 to 15-week range. America, at least in the Roe era, 0.65

00:20:21.520 is a legitimate outlier or was a legitimate outlier up there with China, North Korea, Vietnam, Cuba,

00:20:28.400 the worst of the worst human rights offenders there. So these are the kind of arguments talking

00:20:32.860 about kind of fetal heartbeat, kind of what happens to the unborn child, comparing to kind

00:20:37.520 of other countries around the world. These are the kind of arguments that I really just think

00:20:41.180 pro-lifers need to make a little more often. I didn't really hear any of that when it got to

00:20:44.480 the 15-week ban. But all that to say that I don't think that that issue particular or that specific

00:20:49.180 legislation, I should say, particularly hurt Republicans. I just don't really buy that,

00:20:52.300 to be honest with you.

00:20:53.420 Yeah. And Florida just went from 24 weeks to 15 weeks. It's still 15 weeks in the state of Florida,

00:20:59.140 right? It is 15 weeks right now. We'll see what the legislature does when they get back

00:21:03.920 into session. I'm cautiously optimistic, especially now that Florida has super majorities,

00:21:08.240 actually, Republican super majorities in both houses. I'm cautiously optimistic that we'll get

00:21:11.920 a better law, but we'll see. And, you know, on the question of Florida, which was the other part

00:21:16.720 of your question there, Ali, I agree with the framing of your question. I wrote multiple columns

00:21:21.880 over the past year or so, one in the aftermath of Glenn Youngkin's victory in Virginia,

00:21:25.760 one kind of in the midst of Ron DeSantis' fight against the Walt Disney Company,

00:21:29.820 basically saying that Republicans, you know, seize upon the so-called culture war issues and

00:21:34.700 cruise to victory. And what's interesting, actually, Ali, this is a point that I have

00:21:38.560 that I've seen very few talking heads on our side make, actually. If you look at the issues

00:21:43.340 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,

00:23:35.200 pro-ruling class culture war element.

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

00:24:48.080 President of the United States.

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, 0.60

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,

00:29:35.200 what do you think about it?

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, 0.99

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 1.00

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 0.96

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 0.98

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. 1.00

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 0.86

00:40:55.420 Florida went for him by a massive margin. He won Miami-Dade County, 70 plus percent Hispanic County

00:41:01.120 by double digit margins here. I mean,

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, 1.00

00:43:18.240 the boomers have frankly done a lot of damage to America. They've done some good things as well. 1.00

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 1.00

00:43:35.660 gerontocracy at this point. It is a country governed by old people who happen to be boomers, 1.00

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 0.87

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 0.99

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 1.00

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,

00:44:49.740 I do think that youth can help.

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 1.00

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 0.85

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

00:48:25.140 to the floor?

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 1.00

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 0.99

00:57:35.000 comes to shaming Israel, to provide them extra munitions. And so Zelensky, since day one, has 0.77

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. 0.97

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 0.65

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 0.80

00:59:33.500 Ukraine in this lame duck Congress. You know, I hope that Republicans try to try their best to slow 0.80

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

01:00:42.200 find you, how they can follow you.

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.

01:01:05.760 Anytime, Mally. Thank you.

Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - November 16, 2022

Ep 710 ｜ Trump 2024？ & The Disrespect for Marriage Act ｜ Guest： Josh Hammer

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