On this episode of The Charlie Kirk Show, host Andrew Colvin is joined by Blake Neff and Josh Hammer to discuss the Biden pardons and whether or not they are fake or not. Then we bring in Josh Hammer, author of the new book, Israel and Civility, to talk about some of the stickiest issues of Israel.
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00:02:32.000Blake, why don't you set the stage, and I'll see if we can get the right clip here.
00:02:36.000Yeah, so this dropped last night, I think after midnight Eastern time.
00:02:40.000So this has been building up for a few weeks.
00:02:43.000You know, people in the right-wing media have been talking about this, but I think it was something linked with Heritage did a review of Biden's executive orders or his pardons, and they noticed all of the signatures are completely identical.
00:02:55.000He clearly signed them with an auto pen.
00:03:02.000The thought some people have had is Biden is signing all of these with an auto pen because he's totally out of it.
00:03:10.000So people are actually just signing things in Biden's name while he's not aware of it.
00:03:16.000And this led some people to follow up by saying then if Biden wasn't aware this was happening, it's invalid.
00:03:22.000And I didn't give too much thought to it, but one person who did is President Trump, who last night came out.
00:03:29.000And said he's declaring Biden's pardons to be null and void on the grounds of Autopen.
00:03:36.000And as a result, for example, he suggested he could investigate the people on the January 6th committee.
00:03:44.000My personal guess is this won't legally hold up because there are constitutional mechanisms for a president who is incapable.
00:03:55.000You can invoke, I think it's the 25th Amendment, and you can say, Well, he's incapable, so the vice president is assuming the power of acting president, or the cabinet is to declare this.
00:04:07.000And Congress can also act through—they have the power of impeachment, for that matter.
00:04:11.000So if the cabinet and the vice president are basically colluding to say the president is fine, I don't think there's a lot of room for the next president to come in and say, actually, he wasn't fine, and it's null.
00:04:39.000But it'll be certainly another showdown for the courts to litigate.
00:04:44.000And like I said, I'm kind of glad if we're going to have a big showdown with the courts that we're having it over the Trendy Aragua thing rather than this.
00:05:12.000But I think, to your point, I mean, it's not like Joe Biden is, you know, is...
00:05:18.000Passed on or something, you know, or incoherent at this point.
00:05:21.000He can simply say, listen, this was my will.
00:05:25.000You know, I wanted these pardons to be executed.
00:05:29.000And, you know, I tend to agree with you that looking forward, I get the desire of the base to go after these people, to simply say, there is no pardon available.
00:05:40.000We're going to take these people out well-deservingly.
00:06:02.000The fact that the president of the United States didn't take the time to actually sign the legal documents, the binding documents of this country and was using Autopen is...
00:06:12.000Massively disgraceful and disrespectful to the office.
00:06:17.000Beyond that, I don't know if it's on steady legal footing.
00:06:27.000We have thousands of murderers that Biden and his incompetence, he's always grossly incompetent, but that Biden and his people and his probably auto pet, it looked like we had an auto pet for a president and we would have been better off if we had probably.
00:06:44.000But it looks to me like, you know, that's a big subject.
00:08:03.000He went and he just pardoned his son in a flagrantly corrupt manner to make sure he couldn't be held accountable for stuff that we basically all know he did that was incredibly corrupt and criminal.
00:08:17.000But I think this is kind of grasping at something that wouldn't ultimately be productive.
00:08:24.000The best revenge is to govern well and...
00:08:28.000Anytime we spend on basically trying to re-litigate the January 6th committee when we already won the election, we already pardoned the people who were persecuted by that committee, the need to go all the way and like, oh no, it's not over until Liz Cheney is a defendant in court on a criminal charge.
00:08:49.000No, that has way more potential to go wrong than it has potential to go right.
00:08:55.000And it's just better to make Liz Cheney angry because we haven't started a war for four years.
00:09:00.000Make Liz Cheney angry because we disassembled the intelligence, espionage, domestic surveillance state.
00:10:28.000No, but I understand why he wants to pick it, and I understand why people are excited about it, because there was so much injustice done and perpetrated against the American people, and so much of it is still very offensive to them and very offensive to me, and so I understand it.
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00:11:28.000That is 1-800-4-RELIEF. 1-800-4-RELIEF. I'm joined now by Josh Hammer, who is the senior editor-at-large of Newsweek, host of The Josh Hammer Show, and also author of the new book, Israel and Civilization.
00:13:02.000And so I wanted to talk to you about this today because I think it brings up a lot of questions about what role does Israel play in our foreign policy?
00:13:10.000If you are not Jewish, how should you think about Israel?
00:13:14.000It has become dramatically more controversial.
00:13:18.000Post-October 7th, which I find somewhat appalling, actually.
00:13:22.000But I think there's valid questions to bring up.
00:13:25.000But in that subhead specifically, Josh, you tie the fate of the Jewish nation, Israel, to the destiny of the West.
00:13:36.000So, Andrew, let me take the foreign policy part first, and then we'll kind of go back to the latter part there.
00:13:41.000So the foreign policy part, and I'm really happy that we're talking here on this show because, you know, Charlie's amazing audience is exactly who I want to understand this message here.
00:13:50.000We're talking here about foreign policy realism.
00:13:52.000I, like you, Andrew, I'm a MAGA America First foreign policy realist.
00:13:56.000I have been criticizing neoconservatives for longer than I think most people have even known what the word neoconservative means here.
00:14:03.000I am a genuine national interest foreign policy realist who views every single foreign policy issue around the world through a essentially...
00:14:10.000Fairly singular lens as to whether or not involvement in this fear redounds to the American national interest.
00:14:17.000I actually have an entire chapter in this book making the MAGA America First foreign policy realist case for close-knit U.S.-Israel relations.
00:14:25.000Frankly, it's not a particularly difficult case to make because Donald Trump literally did it over the entire course of his first term.
00:14:31.000His entire first term was just a one grand extensive example as to the realist MAGA America First case.
00:14:44.000We absolutely do have to reprioritize resources towards the Indo-Pacific.
00:15:03.000The relevant question, Andrew, is how do we do that while simultaneously safeguarding our interests in the region?
00:15:11.000You saw Donald Trump just this weekend, actually, in his lengthy post on Truth Social, talk about, for instance, the importance of the Red Sea, which is a core international waterway here.
00:15:21.000And he says that America should start bombing the crap basically out of the Houthis there.
00:15:26.000But the point is that America is always going to have various interests in this particular part of the world when it comes to oil and natural gas, when it comes to radical Islamic Jihad.
00:15:35.000We just saw the Bourbon Street Massacre.
00:15:37.000Tragically, on New Year's Day, just two and a half months ago.
00:15:40.000So the question then, the question, Andrew, is how can we make sure that America's interests are secured in the Middle East while simultaneously allowing us to...
00:15:50.000Ourselves prioritize on the Indo-Pacific.
00:15:52.000And the solution is to embolden our like-minded allies in the region to patrol this region essentially on our behalf.
00:16:00.000That was the whole purpose of the Abraham Accords.
00:16:02.000That's why I mentioned the Trump foreign policy from the first term.
00:16:05.000This idea that you will embolden Israel, that you will strengthen U.S.-Israel ties, bring Israel into these peace accords with, in that case, the UAE, Bahrain, Morocco, and Sudan, and then essentially pass them the baton and say, okay, You know, you guys do your thing because your enemies are our enemies there.
00:16:22.000When you're knocking off this jihad or that jihad, you're basically doing both of us a favor there.
00:16:27.000And last year, there were actually some very important, concrete examples of this.
00:16:30.000This is actually in Chapter 6 of my book there.
00:16:33.000There were a few months, Andrew, last year where Israel kind of went on this Michael Corleone kind of godfather-esque, you know, revenge killing spree.
00:16:41.000And among the leading jihadists that they killed there, they basically took off the entirety of the Hezbollah leadership up to and including Hassan Nasrallah, the longstanding leader itself.
00:16:49.000But before they got Nasrallah, they knocked off two individuals who I like to mention.
00:16:53.000One guy named Fuad Shakur, the other named Ibrahim Akil.
00:16:57.000Why do I mention these two guys by name?
00:16:59.000They were the ones who were responsible for the 1983 Beirut-Lebanon bombings of the U.S. Marine barracks and the U.S. Embassy.
00:17:06.000In fact, the U.S. State Department had a $5 and $7 million bounty on those two jihadis' head.
00:17:12.000For over four decades, until Israel literally did the job for us there.
00:17:16.000So this notion that America does not in any way benefit here, this notion that we don't have the same enemies, it's ludicrous.
00:17:23.000We have exactly the same enemies there.
00:17:25.000And this is frankly a realist way to focus our resources on the Far East while essentially securing our interest in the region.
00:17:33.000So it's a perfect fit for a foreign policy realism.
00:17:35.000This notion that Israel is kind of this antiquated Bush administration, neoconservative issue, it's total nonsense.
00:17:41.000Frankly, actually, a lot of the neocons aren't actually even particularly stalwart supporters of the state of Israel there because they're obsessed with the idea of nation-building.
00:17:50.000They're obsessed with the idea of trying to democratize, and they oftentimes get too involved in trying to carve out a brand-new Palestinian Arab state and all the same failed experiments that ultimately met their...
00:18:03.000Their ruination in Baghdad, Iraq, and so forth there.
00:18:06.000So it's actually the neoconservatives, frankly, who are oftentimes not great supporters there.
00:18:10.000I happen to think that U.S.-Israelitians are a perfect fit for a foreign policy, realist, MAGA, America first paradigm approach there.
00:18:18.000But the broader book, and pardon my filibuster there, but the broader book, Andrew, is making this fundamental case that Jews and Christians also have to be lockstep, arms to arms, linking arms, shoulder to shoulder here.
00:18:31.000We say that Western civilization is at a crossroads.
00:18:45.000But to me, when we say the West, we're really talking above all about the Bible.
00:18:49.000We're talking above all about the Judeo-Christian heritage.
00:18:52.000I argue going back all the way to God's revelation to Moses and the Israelites at Mount Sinai, so much of what we take for granted today.
00:19:00.000In our constitutional structure, in our day-to-day lives, in our law, in our morals, in our ethics there, it all goes back, actually, to what we Jews call the Torah, what Christians call the Old Testament.
00:19:12.000And I really painstakingly kind of explain this in the chapters and all throughout there.
00:19:17.000But the point, Andrew, is that unless we in the West, Jews and Christians, shoulder-to-shoulder, linking arms in lockstep accord here, unless we double down on our biblical heritage, I do not think that we are going to be adequately equipped.
00:19:32.000to destroy us, which I identify as wokeism, Islamism, and global neoliberalism.
00:19:41.000You want to defeat the wokes, defeat the radicalismists, you got to stand on something.
00:19:44.000That's something, Andrew, that's something is the Bible.
00:19:46.000Josh, I actually think one of the strongest points that you can make in defense of your thesis is the approach that President Trump took to the Middle East and specifically to Israel in his first term.
00:19:58.000And what we saw from that is that we had an outbreak of peace for once in that region, and it quickly fell apart without strong American leadership.
00:20:07.000But I think when America waffles on Israel, we embolden Israel's enemies, which are also our enemies.
00:20:14.000And that is one of the strongest sort of practical...
00:20:17.000Foreign policy positions that you can assert in this space without making it about some abstract, you know, moral good this way.
00:20:26.000But it really comes down to the fact that peace is good for the economy, right?
00:20:32.000It's good, you know, we talk about the Houthis right now.
00:20:35.000There's a great clip from Marco Rubio that I'm actually going to play, where he's just talking about the importance of that trade lane, which is super important to American interest.
00:20:43.000Let's go ahead and play that Cut 75. Well, first of all, the problem here is that this is a very important shipping lane, and in the last year and a half, the last 18 months, the Houthis have struck or attacked 174 naval vessels of the United States, attacking the U.S. Navy directly 174 times, and 145 times they've attacked commercial shipping.
00:21:02.000So we basically have a band of pirates, you know, with guided precision anti-ship weaponry.
00:21:08.000And if the exacting atoll system and one of the most important shipping lanes in the world, that's just not sustainable.
00:21:13.000We are not going to have these people controlling which ships can go through and which ones cannot.
00:21:18.000And so your question is, how long will this go on?
00:21:20.000It will go on until they no longer have the capability to do that.
00:21:25.000Josh, this is an example of the moral clarity of the Trump administration by contrast of this waffling of Joe Biden.
00:21:32.000Joe Biden did support Israel, but he was sort of...
00:21:36.000We were funding Hamas at the same time, and we were emboldening Iran and the enemies of the West.
00:21:43.000And this is the last point I'll make, and then I'm going to throw back to you, is that if you are an American who is frustrated with our support of Israel, never forget that the same Islamist forces that want to destroy Israel want to also destroy America.
00:22:59.000Andrew, he told me that growing up in his K-12 and his education there, their equivalent of saying the Pledge of Allegiance every day, like we in the United States do, their equivalent to Iran is they basically say, I solemnly vow to do all that I can to help destroy the little Satan of Israel and the great Satan of America.
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00:25:18.000If you look at foreign countries' approval ratings of the United States, the state of Israel, Israelis as a whole, have an extraordinarily high approval rating of the United States, certainly of President Trump.
00:25:32.000President Trump, as you can imagine, because he's so pro-Israel, is a wildly, wildly popular figure.
00:25:37.000In Israel, they literally named a town after him, Andrew, called Trump Heights in the Golan Heights.
00:25:43.000I know because I've been there because I've literally driven by and took a photo of it just for the memories there.
00:25:48.000He's an extraordinarily popular figure there.
00:25:51.000Here in the United States, it's complicated for a few reasons.
00:25:56.000There is – I guess I'll explain it this way.
00:26:00.000The problem, Andrew, you're a Christian.
00:26:05.000Politics is very often downstream of religion, okay?
00:26:08.000And when you have a strong biblically-based worldview, you're more likely than not going to end up with a conservative political worldview.
00:26:18.000That is why evangelical Christians, traditionalists, Catholics, Orthodox Jews—I mean, Orthodox Jews— Vote for Trump at like an 80-20, 85-15 rate.
00:26:52.000The notion that you would find essentially anyone here where I go to synagogue in South Florida, you would be hard-pressed to find virtually anyone who voted for Kamala Harris.
00:27:02.000The problem is that demographically across the United States there, tragically, tragically, most Jews, the statistical majority of them, are not Orthodox, are not religious there, do not observe all the various commandments of Jewish law there.
00:27:17.000And it's because of the secularization of large swaths of American Jewry, of the American Jewish people, that is why so many of them vote for left.
00:27:28.000I mean, I have a lot of audiences here.
00:27:29.000I really want to reach young Christians.
00:27:31.000I want Christians to fall in love with the Bible, with the Old Testament again, with everything from Genesis through Psalms and Proverbs and all that.
00:27:51.000I mean, you know, the Jews are called, Andrew, to be a light unto the nations in the book of Isaiah there.
00:27:56.000And the way that we are called to be a light unto the nations is to actually lead by trying to be holy, by trying to be moral, by actually observing God's law, the law of Moses, and so forth there.
00:28:07.000So we have a very unique role to play in kind of the grand scheme of things there.
00:28:11.000And I really make, and at times probably aggressive, borderline acerbic arguments to my more secular, inclined Jewish brethren, basically saying, like, you guys really ought to strongly consider doing this for real the same way that I made a...
00:28:26.000Conscientious decision at some point that I was going to start doing it for real as well here.
00:28:30.000So God willing, as the religious demographics here in the United States change, the political results will change too.
00:28:36.000The good news, Andrew, is that statistically the demographics are on the side of Orthodox Jews because Orthodox Jews are actually marrying fellow Jews.
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00:30:25.000I really wanted to ask you a question specifically because you and I were texting back and forth when this, when this news sort of happened originally.
00:31:02.000All right, so I finished drafting the book, Andrew, this past October.
00:31:05.000So before the 2024 election, I mean, well before Donald Trump shocked the world with his comments about how the U.S. will take over Gaza.
00:31:11.000So none of that is addressed in the book.
00:31:13.000I do talk in the book certainly about the need to finish the job against Hamas, a U.S.-recognized foreign terrorist organization, an organization that slaughtered and raped and beheaded and took hostage many American citizens as well, by the way.
00:31:27.000There are some people who kind of pump their chest and say, America first.
00:31:31.000But, like, Americans were literally slaughtered.
00:31:34.000Americans were literally taken hostage.
00:31:36.000I mean, October 7th, even on its own America terms, was the single largest American hostage crisis since Tehran in 1979 under President Jimmy Carter there.
00:31:48.000And the question right now is, frankly, whether or not Prime Minister Netanyahu gets the message and acts on it because President Trump admirably has been crystal clear.
00:31:58.000There will be hell to pay and this and this there.
00:32:01.000So the question, frankly, is really what Israel do.
00:32:03.000The ball is, frankly, in Israel's court when it comes to eradicating Hamas.
00:32:06.000In terms of what the actual future and the long-term settlement of Gaza ought to be, look, Andrew, in my heart of hearts, I would prefer that Israel take it over.
00:32:17.000I'm not enamored with the idea of the United States having a permanent presence there, frankly.
00:32:27.000I fundamentally get a little skittish when it comes to the idea of America as kind of having an ever-increasing global footprint around the world.
00:32:50.000But unfortunately, Andrew, something does have to happen to the Arabs there in order for Israel to take it over there.
00:32:56.000And that's kind of where this other part of Donald Trump's plan comes in there.
00:33:00.000You've got to try to put massive sticks and carrots diplomacy on Jordan, on Egypt, and trying to get them to bring in lots of these Arabs there.
00:33:08.000I think pragmatically, realistically, the most likely thing that's going to happen in Gaza, if we interpret Donald Trump's stance as an opening bid, the most likely stance, Andrew, is...
00:33:18.000Probably you'll have the Saudis, the Emiratis, the Bahrainis, these various other wealthy Sunni Arab states that go in with some sort of consortium.
00:33:26.000They can build up the infrastructure fairly closely there.
00:33:29.000The U.S. will be involved in some capacity to make sure these Arabs are not putting in a bunch of, you know, crypto-jihadis to basically make Hamas rise again there.
00:33:37.000But that's my guess as to what it actually looks like.
00:33:44.000I've got a limited amount of time here, and I'm going to change my second and final question.
00:33:50.000Charlie goes on campuses, and now about a third of the questions is about Israel.
00:33:54.000I mean, the younger generation is obsessed with Israel.
00:33:58.000And honestly, it's a lot of negativity towards Israel.
00:34:01.000And one of the common things that they say about Israel is that they are – essentially it's an open-air apartheid state that they have been abusing their Arab neighbors.
00:34:10.000I just want to give you two and a half minutes here to react to those accusations against Israel.
00:34:55.000This was actually the original two-state solution.
00:34:58.000So quite literally, anyone who's literate with history could tell you that Jordan, about 100 years ago, was actually the so-called Palestinian state.
00:35:30.000And under an international law principle known as Utiposididis Eurus, it is a commonly accepted international law maxim.
00:35:37.000This is how it works with the breakup of Yugoslavia.
00:35:39.000This is how it works in many African countries.
00:35:41.000When a new sovereign state is formed, it actually assumes the inherited borders of the previous existing sovereign entity in that particular sliver of the world.
00:35:49.000So when Israel was founded in May of 1948, it actually assumed the full borders of mandatory Palestine, aka included Judea and Samaria and Gaza.
00:35:57.000So there's no illegal occupation going on here under international law.
00:36:01.000Your political mileage may vary as to what you think is the best solution.
00:36:04.000But the best solution, again, From an American national interest, emotionally detached perspective, is to embolden our ally.
00:36:11.000Because our allies won who's taken out our enemies.
00:36:13.000They're the ones who are hunting down the jihadis.
00:36:16.000What is in the American national interest of trying to carve out yet another Muslim terrorist state, let alone one in the heart of the Holy Land that could, God forbid, have custody over Jewish and Christian holy sites?