Speaker 1: Ask not what your country can do for you, ask
Speaker 1: what you can do for your country.
Speaker 2: Mister garbach offf tear down this wall.
Speaker 1: It's the Ricochet Podcast. Well, I'm James Lylyx with Charles C. W.
Speaker 1: Cook and Stephen Hayward. Today we talked to Josh Hammer
Speaker 1: about rising anti Semitism the right. So let's have ourselves
Speaker 1: a podcast. This is not how an adult grieves the
Speaker 1: murder of somebody called a friend. This is how a
Speaker 1: four year old morn's a goldfish.
Speaker 3: Okay, Jimmy Kimmel is not a talented person. He had
Speaker 3: very bad ratings and they should have fired him a
Speaker 3: long time ago. So you know you can call that
Speaker 3: free speech or not. He was fired for lack of talent.
Speaker 1: Welcome everybody, It's the Ricochet Podcast, number seven hundred and
Speaker 1: fifty eight. I'm James Lylyx in Minneapolis, overcast a tumnal beautiful,
Speaker 1: Charles C. W. Cook in Florida, Stephen Hayward. We presume
Speaker 1: in California, and gentlemen, the days of Joan Embry shown
Speaker 1: up and bringing a marmoset who peas on Johnny Carson's
Speaker 1: coat is those days are gone, and the talk show
Speaker 1: is gone. And frankly, I don't care what Kevin Stoleber
Speaker 1: or Kimmy Jimmel say, because they're babbling to the bubble,
Speaker 1: and if the market wants to take care of them,
Speaker 1: then the market will. But what we have now is
Speaker 1: something that sort of has the taint, the faint with
Speaker 1: of a government leaning, shall we say, And you could say, no,
Speaker 1: simply a business proposition, but the prospect of a merger
Speaker 1: concentrates in a man's mind wonderfully, Samuel Johnson said, And
Speaker 1: so it may not have been a strictly business decision
Speaker 1: after all. So I'm sort of quasi uncomfortable about a
Speaker 1: lot of this.
Speaker 2: But what say you, Well, it seems to me the
Speaker 2: Trump administration made two unforced airrs this week, probably more
Speaker 2: than two. But on these particular issues. You at first
Speaker 2: Pam Bondi coming out saying we're going to prosecute hate speech,
Speaker 2: and you know, this was idiotic, and she tried to
Speaker 2: walk it back a little and say she only meant incitement.
Speaker 2: But that's not new. And although part of me thinks
Speaker 2: that this is their genius move to make the left
Speaker 2: come out and say no, no hate speech is protected
Speaker 2: under the First Amendment, which you know, it's sort of
Speaker 2: like when Trump made the Democrats come out against policing
Speaker 2: crime here a few weeks ago with the National Guarden Washington,
Speaker 2: but then the other one that is more worrying. And
Speaker 2: I think here Charlie and I, Charlie Cook and I
Speaker 2: are in heated agreement, or certainly the National editors I
Speaker 2: read that it was a mistake for the FCC to
Speaker 2: throw its way around. Yeah, and so I think the
Speaker 2: marketplace would have dictated this decision anyway. I think the
Speaker 2: Sinclair and what's the other independent stations that said we're
Speaker 2: going to dump the show would have reached that same point.
Speaker 2: And I'll bet ABC was looking for its own reason
Speaker 2: to pull the plug on Kimmel because his ratings were
Speaker 2: worse Colbert's and has to be losing an equal amount
Speaker 2: of money. And the right remedy, of course, is to
Speaker 2: abolish the FCC. And who knows, you know, you might
Speaker 2: just get enough Democrats to vote for doing that if
Speaker 2: it was proposed by Republicans, if they have the wit
Speaker 2: to do it.
Speaker 4: Charlie, Well, as I joked on the editor's podcast, I'm
Speaker 4: very pleased that we are as a country now or
Speaker 4: in violent agreement, that there's no such thing as hate speech,
Speaker 4: that it's fine for private companies to refuse service if
Speaker 4: they don't want to be implicated by the speech of
Speaker 4: their customers, And that the FCC should at no point
Speaker 4: interfere in the free marketplace of ideas. Because these are
Speaker 4: three propositions that I've been writing about for fifteen years,
Speaker 4: and usually the critiques that I get come from the left. Now,
Speaker 4: that doesn't in any way excuse what Pam Bondi said
Speaker 4: last Monday, and it doesn't in any way excuse what
Speaker 4: Brendan Carr said. I disagree profamily with both of those claims,
Speaker 4: but I am a little bit perplexed to see the
Speaker 4: left jumping around and screaming in support of the proposition
Speaker 4: that there is something intrinsically corrupt or liberal about the
Speaker 4: FCC making demands in return for issuing licenses. Is this
Speaker 4: a new position? I hope it is. I hope we'll
Speaker 4: get out of Congress a bipartisan law that abolishes the FCC, which,
Speaker 4: by the way, is possible. I've seen some people try
Speaker 4: to actually this one, but it is possible. It was
Speaker 4: possible in nineteen thirty four, when the communications Act was written.
Speaker 4: It was possible in the nineteen sixties when the Kennedy
Speaker 4: administration was going after conservatives on the radio, and it
Speaker 4: is definitely possible now in an age in which the
Speaker 4: Internet and satellite and cable predominate, and in which the
Speaker 4: only reason the FCC has any control over ABC whatsoever
Speaker 4: is that a very small part of ABC is delivered
Speaker 4: via the airwaves. And this is the weird thing, isn't it.
Speaker 4: Most people do not consume ABC over the airwaves, but
Speaker 4: because some do, it has full control in the areas
Speaker 4: over which it has control over ABC, whereas it has
Speaker 4: no control whatsoever over say, Netflix, because nobody gets Netflix
Speaker 4: over the air. The fact if this wasn't revisited already
Speaker 4: is bizarre to me now I think it should be.
Speaker 4: That's not to excuse Brendan Carr, who has done a
Speaker 4: complete one, A two and everything he ever said until
Speaker 4: about eight months ago. It's not to say it isn't
Speaker 4: worrying to see what he said. I'm slightly skeptical that's
Speaker 4: actually what did this, but it still matters that he
Speaker 4: said it. But this is the moment we have unity
Speaker 4: on the core question. We have the left feeling of
Speaker 4: grieved because they may have been targeted by the right.
Speaker 4: We have the right that has for years said the
Speaker 4: FCC is two powerful, let's do something about it.
Speaker 2: Well.
Speaker 1: The good thing is, of course, is that wait that
Speaker 1: now that we're all agreement on these bedrock principles, this
Speaker 1: is an agreement that will last forever. Fun there is
Speaker 1: a fundamental realization the lightning has flashed and engraved in
Speaker 1: the minds of both these true principles from which they
Speaker 1: will never stray. The idea that the other side would
Speaker 1: get in power and instantly abandon those things that made
Speaker 1: them angry a few years ago, it was preposterous to me.
Speaker 1: But anyway, Stephen, you were going to.
Speaker 2: Say, Well, if I was in the mode of dialogue
Speaker 2: like Charlie Kirk, I would like to have a line
Speaker 2: of liberals to whom I would ask, what does the
Speaker 2: FCC actually do and why is it important to keep it?
Speaker 2: And I'll bet they couldn't give you answers to either
Speaker 2: one of those questions, but I'm sure there will be
Speaker 2: a residual of them, at least to say, oh, we
Speaker 2: can't get rid of a great new deal agency. It's
Speaker 2: from the new or something like that.
Speaker 1: Right I mean when I first got into radio, the
Speaker 1: fairness doctrine was still in a friend and that resulted
Speaker 1: in some of the most boring programming you'll every year
Speaker 1: in your life, you know, at one o'clock in the morning,
Speaker 1: when they have to slap something on to be fair.
Speaker 1: And that was abolished. And everybody said that that was
Speaker 1: the absolute death of everything, and it wasn't. It was
Speaker 1: sort of the net neutrality of its day. But I
Speaker 1: wouldn't doubt that actually there would be some attempt to
Speaker 1: codify and regulate, you know, to bring the left has
Speaker 1: been the morning to bring back the fairness doctrine since forever,
Speaker 1: mainly because of Russia, Limbaugh. Now that AM radio doesn't
Speaker 1: have the power and reach that it did, they don't
Speaker 1: seem to be so many cries for it. But yes,
Speaker 1: so we're in a tent for tat war and the
Speaker 1: idea that there's here's what here's what I find interesting.
Speaker 1: Nobody is calling for a truce here. Nobody's saying, wait
Speaker 1: a minute, this is getting out of hand. Let's all
Speaker 1: step back, let's all over the temperature. Because there's just
Speaker 1: so much built up resentment about cancel culture that nobody,
Speaker 1: everybody simply wants to give the horses their rain. Nobody
Speaker 1: wishes to go back because it would be self defeating.
Speaker 1: It would give the other side a win. And frankly,
Speaker 1: there are a lot of scores to settle. That is
Speaker 1: not a good political environment. But it's what we were
Speaker 1: warning about. It's what we got because norms, precious norms,
Speaker 1: were shredded and fed to the wind right Or do
Speaker 1: you think that there's eventually going to be some you know,
Speaker 1: some tiring on the right. You know what, We've gone
Speaker 1: too far. We've got a kindergarten teachers fired in Montana
Speaker 1: for saying that Charlie Kirk was a Nanzi. I think
Speaker 1: that's we've gone too far. I don't. I don't. I
Speaker 1: don't think so. I don't see any desire for abatement
Speaker 1: on the right at all.
Speaker 2: Well, no, and I also think that look that the
Speaker 2: left likes every instrument of power it can grab.
Speaker 3: You.
Speaker 2: Charlie mentioned that back in the Kennedy years, the FCC
Speaker 2: was leveraged to squeeze out conservative radio programming. The other
Speaker 2: thing the FCC has done over the years is press
Speaker 2: the diversity racket.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: They going back to the nineties, they were pressuring radio
Speaker 2: stations to add minorities to their board of directors and
Speaker 2: so forth. They're going to be very low thinking of
Speaker 2: those kinds of ways of leveraging all the federal agencies,
Speaker 2: but especially in the broadcast area. But I want to
Speaker 2: think about the fairness doctrine, right, James. I've always have
Speaker 2: to patiently instruct people who say, you know, Fox News
Speaker 2: couldn't get away with what they do if we had
Speaker 2: the fairnest doctrine, and I remind them that it only
Speaker 2: applied to broadcast media. And then even if you brought
Speaker 2: back a fairness doctrine, it would not apply to Fox
Speaker 2: News or any other cable channel CNM, MSNBC. And moreover,
Speaker 2: I'll bet even the existing Supreme Court that upheld the
Speaker 2: fairness doctrine I think in nineteen sixty eight or nineteen
Speaker 2: sixty nine, would not do so today because it was very,
Speaker 2: very circumstantial on the scarcity of the airwaves. That was
Speaker 2: really the level of the decision, and that today is
Speaker 2: rendered completely obsolete for all the obvious reasons already mentioned.
Speaker 1: Well, Charles, are you are you worried that this administration
Speaker 1: might have set up something called Oh, I don't know
Speaker 1: the Disinformation Governance Board. Look because they did not this one.
Speaker 1: But they did. But they did, and it lasted about
Speaker 1: six months or so. But we had two.
Speaker 4: Supreme Court cases in the last term that dealt with
Speaker 4: this question of jaw boning. The first one went nowhere
Speaker 4: for lack of standing justice alitot a really good descent.
Speaker 4: The second one was nine to nothing. There is no
Speaker 4: doubt that the federal government is unable to do via
Speaker 4: pressure on private organizations what it could not do directly.
Speaker 4: Brendan Carr cross that line, whether or not he actually
Speaker 4: did anything. He crossed that line by suggesting that he
Speaker 4: wanted to. But if you read the first decision, which
Speaker 4: was conveniently swept aside by the standing holding and thereby
Speaker 4: taken out of the left's peripheral vision, the details are
Speaker 4: absolutely chilling. It runs through years and year's worth of
Speaker 4: Biden administration pressure on private social media entities. And the
Speaker 4: fact that the Court concluded that the connection between the
Speaker 4: speech and the harms was too tenuous to yield a
Speaker 4: ruling doesn't make what is in there as fact that
Speaker 4: all members of the court acknowledge any different. So I'm
Speaker 4: with you on this. It's why I started by joking
Speaker 4: that we're now united. The notion that this is a
Speaker 4: conservative invention is preposterous. That doesn't mean we should do it.
Speaker 4: It doesn't make it okay. But I'm a little annoyed.
Speaker 4: And it's why, although I've said I'm bothered by it,
Speaker 4: I'm not going to go to the mats on this
Speaker 4: one and write twelve pieces on it because I'm a
Speaker 4: little annoyed to watch the what's the word opportunism. I mean,
Speaker 4: We've had people in the last twenty four hours saying
Speaker 4: that this is the worst thing that has ever happened
Speaker 4: to American free speech. We've had people saying, I think
Speaker 4: Eric Swalwell, that this is exactly what the Nazis did
Speaker 4: in nineteen thirty four. We've had people suggesting that this
Speaker 4: represents a wholesale betrayal of principle that has essentially reversed
Speaker 4: the positions of the two parties on free speech. And
Speaker 4: I'm sorry. I will happily condemn Brendan Karr for his words.
Speaker 4: I will happily say the SEC shouldn't do this, and
Speaker 4: I'll happily said it shouldn't exist. But I'm just not
Speaker 4: indulging that nonsense. You guys can go to hell with that.
Speaker 1: No, that's I mean Jasis overshadowed in its terrible impact
Speaker 1: on the nation, any of the riots that burned down
Speaker 1: sections of American cities, and in this case, the deplatforming,
Speaker 1: if you will, of Jimmy Kimmel is worse than anything
Speaker 1: that happened on the Twitter files or kicking Trump off Twitter,
Speaker 1: or firing actors for beliefs. You know, when was the
Speaker 1: last time he saw James Wood movie? He had to
Speaker 1: be about three movies every year. None of that stuff
Speaker 1: actually really happened, and if it did, it was good.
Speaker 1: That's part of it. The amnesia is part of it. Now,
Speaker 1: it's interesting some people have pointed out that the FCC
Speaker 1: regulations actually do give them power because they prohibit quote
Speaker 1: broadcast hoaxes and the intentional distortion of news. And you think, well,
Speaker 1: obviously that's not being applied very often. There are conditions
Speaker 1: that have to be met, knowledge of falsity, foreseeable public harm,
Speaker 1: and direct public arm. So one could make the point
Speaker 1: that somebody could listen to what Kimmel said and say, yeah,
Speaker 1: it was a right wing Nick Fuent's groper type, who
Speaker 1: I'm going to go out and shoot one of those,
Speaker 1: in which case you could make the point that the
Speaker 1: FCC might have irrationale for dabbling. But I agree with you, Charlie.
Speaker 1: I agree with this statement was made. The chilling effect
Speaker 1: is there. But again, where have these people been when
Speaker 1: what was done to Twitter? What was done to Twitter,
Speaker 1: what was done to Facebook? You've got Zuckberg saying, oh,
Speaker 1: they came to us and said, you can't. You got
Speaker 1: to shut this down. That's to me in the face
Speaker 1: of a much greater problem. The efficacy the virus is,
Speaker 1: the origins of them, the impact that was having on
Speaker 1: the lockdowns in the economy. I mean, we were the
Speaker 1: idea that you could have a full and frank discussion
Speaker 1: about those things. Forget about it. Forget about it. As
Speaker 1: long as we're talking about things in the past, let's
Speaker 1: talk about an organization that was formed by the Communist
Speaker 1: Party in Germany during the thirties and the Bimar Republic,
Speaker 1: the anti fascist the Antifa. Well, they got the same flag.
Speaker 1: Now we're going to declare Antifa to be a terrorist organization.
Speaker 1: And of course many people have said that anti is
Speaker 1: an idea. You can't stop an idea. I actually think
Speaker 1: they're kind of a loosely organized organization with lots of
Speaker 1: little local cells and a general overriding set of principles. Hell,
Speaker 1: if they got a logo, they're an organization. Well.
Speaker 2: Look, I was on campus at Berkeley on February five,
Speaker 2: twenty seventeen, for the Milo Unapolis riot, and I was
Speaker 2: up on a grassy knoll. I want to say a
Speaker 2: conspiracy right by sprout plaza and warnings was quite obvious
Speaker 2: to me, is you could see the Antifa folks infiltrating
Speaker 2: from every direction, you know, dressed in black, carrying pipes, backpacks,
Speaker 2: masked up with walkie talkies, so they were in communication
Speaker 2: with one another. Right, there's already a whole student protest
Speaker 2: and people yelling no hate speech on Berkeley, you know,
Speaker 2: from bullhorns and stuff. But the NPIFA people came in
Speaker 2: and immediately started, you know, tipping over the generator for
Speaker 2: the lights, starting a fire and things of that kind.
Speaker 2: And then it's spilled out into a riot into the streets,
Speaker 2: among which you know a lot of students eagerly participated.
Speaker 2: But the point is is that that was an organized effort,
Speaker 2: coordinated and I'm sure they're using all of the various
Speaker 2: Internet tools for you know, the message was at snapchat
Speaker 2: where the messages disappear after ten seconds or something like that.
Speaker 2: And you know, we have a history of this. You know,
Speaker 2: the FBI rolled up a lot of the Weather Underground
Speaker 2: and the militant chapters of the SDS fifty years ago
Speaker 2: made some mistakes, of course they always do, but we
Speaker 2: have and of course, you know Hoover infiltrated the Communist
Speaker 2: Party what seventy eighty years ago to make sure that
Speaker 2: well make sure, you know, suppress conspiratorial and violent designs
Speaker 2: and so forth. So you know there's precedent for this,
Speaker 2: and I'm completely down with it myself.
Speaker 1: Well, Charlie, the difference may be here, whereas the student
Speaker 1: you know, the Weather in the Underground and SDS were
Speaker 1: self formed and had their own tight little ideologies and
Speaker 1: robbed banks to get along what we have here or
Speaker 1: organizations that may or may not they may be funded
Speaker 1: by NGOs themselves, backed by secretive you know, cats, stroking bond,
Speaker 1: villain billionaire somewhere, and that the intent here is to
Speaker 1: go after the organizations that give them money. Now there's
Speaker 1: a variety of cutouts through which it flows, but we
Speaker 1: saw that they were investigating. I think it's armed queers
Speaker 1: of of Salt Lake City, and the person in charge
Speaker 1: of that is you know, pictures of her him on
Speaker 1: stage with Elizabeth Warren ties to Utah NGOs that get
Speaker 1: awards from the UN, which again it always makes you
Speaker 1: sound like a conspiracy nutcases tied to the UN. You know,
Speaker 1: I regard the UN as a generally inefficacious, wordless organization
Speaker 1: exception of a few things. But still there it is.
Speaker 1: There's the whole ngo thing, there's the whole little red
Speaker 1: red lines of yarn on between thumbtacks on the on
Speaker 1: the big board. And if they go after the donors
Speaker 1: for this, it may be hard to prove, but it's
Speaker 1: a new tack.
Speaker 4: This is all going to be in the execution.
Speaker 5: And I think, oh, I'm not saying you shoot them, no, no,
Speaker 5: But I think it's an important distinction because I agree
Speaker 5: with you, and I've seen a lot of people say,
Speaker 5: but what if this happened, wouldn't that be bad?
Speaker 4: And the answer is yes. If the government started going
Speaker 4: after people for political donations or speech, that would be bad.
Speaker 4: If the government started going after people who were assembling
Speaker 4: and petitioning the government, that would be bad, but all
Speaker 4: that has been announced thus far is that there will
Speaker 4: be an investigation. I don't think there's anything wrong with that.
Speaker 4: And in fact, if you look back to the last
Speaker 4: time we had widespread political violence in the United States,
Speaker 4: which was especially the period between the late sixties and
Speaker 4: early seventies, we had three thousand bombings in three years.
Speaker 4: We did stop that by going after the people who
Speaker 4: did it and their networks. I'm not saying they're identical networks.
Speaker 4: Perhaps there's nothing I yes, you know, it can be
Speaker 4: a real squish on this stuff, but I don't have
Speaker 4: a problem with investigating it.
Speaker 1: So we will see. And now we bring to the
Speaker 1: podcast Josh Hammer, political accommodat or attorney, columnist, senior editor
Speaker 1: at large for news Week, host of The Josh Hammer Show,
Speaker 1: and he serves as senior counsel for the article three projects,
Speaker 1: the author of Israel and Civilization, published earlier this year. Josh, welcome,
Speaker 1: It's a pleasure things for having well last week and
Speaker 1: a half or so. Oh boy, it' said a deep
Speaker 1: effect on all conservatives, and it doesn't always have to
Speaker 1: do with how much they knew Charlie. I think before
Speaker 1: his assassination I think there were two groups. There were
Speaker 1: people sort of knew him out there as a planet
Speaker 1: circuit in the firmament, a star, and there are others
Speaker 1: who had were deeply immersed in what he was doing
Speaker 1: and what he was saying. And since his murder, a
Speaker 1: lot of us have been going back to what he
Speaker 1: said and reacquainting ourselves with him or getting, you know,
Speaker 1: a look for the first time at the nature of
Speaker 1: his debate, in the nature of his arguments. But you
Speaker 1: were there a lot earlier than that, If you could
Speaker 1: tell us how you got to know the late Charlie Kirk.
Speaker 6: Sure, So I first got to know Charlie when I
Speaker 6: was the opinion editor in Newsweek. I still work in
Speaker 6: Newsweek in a slightly different capacity, but I ran the
Speaker 6: op ed page there for about three years. When I
Speaker 6: took over at Charlie was one of our conservative columnists,
Speaker 6: so he that's kind of how I got to know him.
Speaker 6: I got to know his executive producer on The Charlie
Speaker 6: Kirk Show, Andrew Colvitt, as well, because Andrew was my
Speaker 6: main intermediary for the columns that Charlie was writing there.
Speaker 6: And you know, we kind of struck up a natural
Speaker 6: affinity for one another. I spoke at a handful of
Speaker 6: Turning Point USA conferences over the years, not a ton.
Speaker 6: I wasn't a regular every conference, but you know, I
Speaker 6: did a handful. It was really only over the past
Speaker 6: year year and a half, I'd say they'll be starting
Speaker 6: to get considerably closer. Charlie was very concerned about growing
Speaker 6: anti Semitism and pockets of the American right. He was
Speaker 6: very concerned about rising anti Israel Zeltry. For lack of
Speaker 6: bear description there, Charlie was very concerned also about maintaining
Speaker 6: an ecumenical Jewish Christian alliance, and he formed this group
Speaker 6: chat for me and a couple others they trusted there.
Speaker 6: He called us his brain trust for essentially for these
Speaker 6: issues for Israel, for Jewish Christian relations, for nothing less
Speaker 6: than trying to kind of forge a battle plan, for
Speaker 6: trying to keep this coalition together, for saving American by
Speaker 6: extension Western civilization. So we ended up chatting essentially every
Speaker 6: day in this chat and elsewhere over the past year
Speaker 6: year and a half.
Speaker 7: We ended up.
Speaker 6: Chatting on a zoom call less than twenty four hours
Speaker 6: before his tragic assassination. We're talking about strategizing for all
Speaker 6: the anti Israel questions that he anticipated on his upcoming
Speaker 6: campus tour, and we're kind of just going issue by issue.
Speaker 7: How do you explain it there?
Speaker 6: So we did become pretty pretty pretty close, especially as
Speaker 6: I became more religious in my Jewish observance. He is
Speaker 6: a Charlie's Christianity. He was a very Hebrew Bible centric Christianity.
Speaker 6: He was very much a Christianity of the American founding.
Speaker 6: He was kind of like a John Adams Alexander Hamilton
Speaker 6: Christian let's say it.
Speaker 7: So he I mean he literally kept his.
Speaker 6: Version of the Jewish shabbatak turning his phone off Friday
Speaker 6: Saturday night. So he had a natural affinity I think
Speaker 6: for for authentic you know, Torah based Judaism, for for
Speaker 6: people like me who were coming to embrace that. And
Speaker 6: we kind of struck up a natural court with one another.
Speaker 6: And we've we've lost a true titan, We've lost a
Speaker 6: genuine five star general in our civilizational clash between as
Speaker 6: I call it, the forces of civilizational saxanity and the
Speaker 6: forces of civilizational arson. And it is an irreplaceable void
Speaker 6: that will not be filled anytime soon.
Speaker 1: I agree, I was listening to a little back and
Speaker 1: forth he did on campus with somebody who wanted to
Speaker 1: question his Christian nationalism, and Charlie was making a distinction
Speaker 1: between being a Christian and a nationalist, and they got
Speaker 1: into this heavy conversation that involved a lot of Greek
Speaker 1: and scripture quoting, which came very naturally to him, very easy,
Speaker 1: and it was fascinating conversation, and it was it was.
Speaker 1: It was not a yelling, screaming argument, and the intellectual
Speaker 1: tenor of it was above what you expect on ninety
Speaker 1: nine percent of your campus interactions. When I first was
Speaker 1: encountered him years ago, I thought that basically what I
Speaker 1: getting from the guy was a genial, standard, factile recitation
Speaker 1: of basic Christian or basic conservative ideas. And I've watched
Speaker 1: as the man matured intellectually into something quite different and
Speaker 1: quite impressive. And the fact that we've lost somebody who
Speaker 1: wanted to build and none to build the bridge, but
Speaker 1: to reinforce it and make sure that it can withstand
Speaker 1: the strains of the bad people trumping over it. The
Speaker 1: loss of that is keen. And that goes to something
Speaker 1: that you wrote in a newsweek this week. But I'm
Speaker 1: going to back off for a second and let Stephen
Speaker 1: and Charlie ask you a question.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, John, is Steve Hayward out in California, And
Speaker 2: I did, in fact want to turn to your news
Speaker 2: week call him out today, which raises a broad question
Speaker 2: in a particular form. And then there's second related question
Speaker 2: that's contained in your headline about worrying about grifters perhaps
Speaker 2: undermining turning point as it goes forward. By the way,
Speaker 2: I'm with James. I wasn't much impressed with Charlie when
Speaker 2: he first burst on the scene, but is a teenager still,
Speaker 2: and it's been one of the thrilling things to see
Speaker 2: his increasing capaciousness and capacity and confidence and you realize
Speaker 2: that he is turning point. I mean, he made this thing,
Speaker 2: and I'll come.
Speaker 1: Back to that.
Speaker 2: But something that's been bothering me for quite a while
Speaker 2: now is at the center of your column today, and
Speaker 2: it's the rising, startling, alarming anti semitism among a precinct
Speaker 2: of young people on the right. I picked up this
Speaker 2: for a while and it's very disturbing. And you notice that,
Speaker 2: in particular, even before Charlie's killing, you had people trying
Speaker 2: to influence him, trying spreading when I think it is disinformation.
Speaker 2: Your account of how what Cannice always saying about, you know,
Speaker 2: Israel trying to bribe him or something is just preposterous,
Speaker 2: and I think you debunk that well. But what do
Speaker 2: we make of this. I'm sure you're tracking this too,
Speaker 2: and you know what needs to be done about this.
Speaker 6: It's pretty bad. I'm not going to sugarcoat it's Steve,
Speaker 6: it's a it's it's not good. And Charlie was very
Speaker 6: much of the opinion that it is not good either.
Speaker 6: He has all these viral clips that people can find
Speaker 6: easily and youtubeer social media of him calling it a
Speaker 6: mind virus, the notion that this tiny population is somehow
Speaker 6: responsible for your personal woes or societal woes, and he
Speaker 6: was a I mean, it's kind of crazy, but no
Speaker 6: one Steve did more than this young evangelical Christian to
Speaker 6: defend the Jewish people and really defend Jewish scripture. I
Speaker 6: mean he was asked like the Talmwud. I mean it's
Speaker 6: I mean, we literally message about this. He was asking
Speaker 6: me questions about like the Talmood, and not that I'm
Speaker 6: a Talmudig expert. I'm not even ordained Rabbi, I mean
Speaker 6: like it. But the notion that Charlie Kirk was put
Speaker 6: in this position of being like the number one on
Speaker 6: canvas defender of the Jewish people and the Talmwood is
Speaker 6: is patently insane, frankly, and it says a lot about
Speaker 6: where we are now. No sorry, go ahead, And he
Speaker 6: really cared about pushing back against this now part of
Speaker 6: the way that he did so, I think people can
Speaker 6: can disagree with some of these specific ways that he did.
Speaker 4: So.
Speaker 6: For instance, I disagreed with Turning Points decision to continue
Speaker 6: to platform Tucker Carlson at these two Nationals Summit conference
Speaker 6: in July, the one where I did where I debated
Speaker 6: Dave Smith on the Israel issue that Charlie moderated debate.
Speaker 6: I don't like that Tucker Carlson is still platformed at
Speaker 6: Turning Point USA. I don't work for Turning Point USA.
Speaker 6: I'm just I was just a friend of Charlie's and
Speaker 6: a friend of Andrew's and a friend of the organizations.
Speaker 6: But you don't have to agree with everything that they did.
Speaker 6: But I think what Charlie was fundamentally trying to do
Speaker 6: Steve because he saw himself properly properly as kind of
Speaker 6: the conservative voice for younger millennials, and really gen Z
Speaker 6: above all, which which he was He absolutely unequivocally was that,
Speaker 6: and he was trying the best he could to not
Speaker 6: kind of throw a blunt object and like knock over
Speaker 6: the head and say you're wrong, this is the right answer.
Speaker 6: He was trying to kind of gently lead young people
Speaker 6: to the right answer. For instance, if you look at
Speaker 6: a lot of his political rhetoric over the past year
Speaker 6: and a half, he started talking a lot about Islam
Speaker 6: and the threat and then threat the thread of radical Islam,
Speaker 6: talking a lot about dear or in Michigan, Islamic immigration
Speaker 6: to America. He made this like a really really recurring
Speaker 6: late motif. He had this great YouTuber named Appo State
Speaker 6: Prophet former guests in My show. He had him speak
Speaker 6: at the conference in July that I spoke at. And
Speaker 6: I think that, to be clear, he was doing this
Speaker 6: partially as an intrinsic matter, but I think strategically he
Speaker 6: also saw radical Islam has one of the issues that
Speaker 6: could make young Republicans, you know, naturally sympathize more with
Speaker 6: Jewish people with Jewish agel. So he kind of did
Speaker 6: have this tragedy there. He knew that he that if
Speaker 6: he kind of, you know, went full Mark Levin, and
Speaker 6: Mark's a friendly Claire, I am not not upporting him
Speaker 6: at all at all in the slightest Marx a legend.
Speaker 7: But I knew.
Speaker 6: I think Charlie knew that if he went full Mark Levin,
Speaker 6: so to speak, then he would lose credibility with these peoples.
Speaker 7: He was trying to kind of finagle.
Speaker 6: And again people can disagree with how he went about
Speaker 6: it there, but fundamentally, his heart really was in the
Speaker 6: right place. And I know that because his Christian theology
Speaker 6: was in the right place. As his pastor Rob McCoy
Speaker 6: has now been publicly saying, Charlie again, as I said,
Speaker 6: was kind of the American founder's version of a Protestant Christian.
Speaker 6: He was genuinely of the belief that's per the Book
Speaker 6: of Genesis, the Land of Israel was giving to the
Speaker 6: Jewish people. He thought that anti Semitism was a horrific
Speaker 6: mind virus, that it was incompatible not just with human decency,
Speaker 6: but with what with Christianity properly construed as well, And
Speaker 6: he was very concerned about this. Now it's a real problem.
Speaker 6: We have it on hands. I don't pretend to have
Speaker 6: all the answers. I think we first have to con
Speaker 6: just call a spade a spade, can't I mean, in
Speaker 6: a sane, rational country, Canvas Owens would be in a
Speaker 6: mental assylum at this point. That is that is my
Speaker 6: that's my actual, unfiltered belief. The stuff she's saying is
Speaker 6: so so unhinged that she would have been probably involuntarily
Speaker 6: committed a while ago.
Speaker 7: The most dangerous of them.
Speaker 6: All is Tucker Carlson, because Tucker is smarter than Canvas
Speaker 6: and says a lot of the same stuff in a
Speaker 6: in a slightly toned down manner, but it's pretty easy
Speaker 6: to see what he's trying to ultimately do here.
Speaker 2: Is like Pat Buchanan that way.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I would argue even more in City Is, frankly
Speaker 6: than Pat Buchanan. I might now publicly stated stance is
Speaker 6: that Tucker Carlson is the most dangerous Anthey senline in
Speaker 6: the history of America. I think that he makes Father
Speaker 6: Kauflin and Henry Fork looked like child's play.
Speaker 7: Frankly.
Speaker 6: So it's a real problem, And I don't pretend exactly
Speaker 6: what's know what to know what to do about it. There,
Speaker 6: I guess the final thing I will say, I don't
Speaker 6: want to kind of fill a buster here. The polling
Speaker 6: on younger conservatives younger Republicans is not as blackpill dire
Speaker 6: as some people make it out to be.
Speaker 4: So.
Speaker 6: For instance, even at the Turning Point USA conference that
Speaker 6: I debated Dave Smith at a few months ago in July,
Speaker 6: that actually ends up being Charlie's final Turning Point Conference
Speaker 6: event on stage was he the moderate debate by David Smith,
Speaker 6: which is pretty crazy to think about. But they did
Speaker 6: a push poll of all the conference attendees and the
Speaker 6: poll showed that still seventy three percent of attendees called
Speaker 6: themselves pro Israel. Now we can quibble and say maybe
Speaker 6: that would have been ninety percent ten years ago, and
Speaker 6: perhaps it would have been, but that's still something that
Speaker 6: can be worked with, right, And you know, the polling
Speaker 6: does show overall that that gen Z Republicans are are
Speaker 6: less sympathetic towards towards Israel, maybe a little less gung
Speaker 6: ho about Jewish Christian relations than sixty five and not
Speaker 6: Republicans there, but they're considerably better on those issues than
Speaker 6: gen Z leftists in liberals, So there's something to work
Speaker 6: with still, and Charlie understood that.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So no, I mean my restatement of what you
Speaker 2: and James just said is that Charlie was an Old
Speaker 2: Testament Christian, which is a compliment by the way. So
Speaker 2: at Shift gears up for a moment. Another worry I have,
Speaker 2: and then I'm going to turn you over to Charlie Cook.
Speaker 2: Is I'm old enough to remember, well, not firsthand, but
Speaker 2: but I remember Yeah and the sixties Young Americans for Freedom.
Speaker 2: I'm Stanton Evans, who wrote the Sharing Statements, was one
Speaker 2: of my mentors and one big and at first I thought, well, TPUSA.
Speaker 2: It reminds me a little bit of the second Coming
Speaker 2: of Yeah with this difference. Yeah fell into a lot
Speaker 2: of infighting and factionalism fairly early on in the sixties,
Speaker 2: in part because it never had a singular leader of
Speaker 2: the kind of charisma and personality and organizational capacity as
Speaker 2: Charlie Kirk. So you can see where I'm going with this.
Speaker 2: The worry is is that the absence of someone of
Speaker 2: Charlie's compelling and capacious abilities and personality, I just worry
Speaker 2: about the future of the organization and quite aside from
Speaker 2: the anti Semitism problem, which is very you know, very important,
Speaker 2: there's just the basic organizational difficulties of succession. And I
Speaker 2: don't know, do you have any thoughts on that. Is
Speaker 2: this on the mind of you and other friends of
Speaker 2: the place.
Speaker 6: Sure, So first of all, you know, yeah, still exists obviously,
Speaker 6: and you know, I still do speeches for them. Actually
Speaker 6: I spoke at the at the at the Reagan Ranch
Speaker 6: Center in Santa Barbara this pass in March when my
Speaker 6: book came out for you know, that's what. Yeah, it's
Speaker 6: been very good to me as well. And they're very
Speaker 6: much still alive in kicking. But you know, Turning Point
Speaker 6: did really change the game fundamentally in a way for
Speaker 6: young campus activists in a way that I'm not sure
Speaker 6: any private organization did.
Speaker 7: And and that's all.
Speaker 6: That's all the Charlie's credit, by the way, I mean,
Speaker 6: he formed this thing when he was literally in high school.
Speaker 6: It's a it's it's absolutely tremendous. It's truly extraordinary what
Speaker 6: he was able to build. And you're asking the right questions.
Speaker 6: I don't pretend to have all the answers they've they've
Speaker 6: they've already named his his his grieving widow Erica as
Speaker 6: the CEO and chairman. And look, I don't know Erica
Speaker 6: personally is super well. I do know that she is
Speaker 6: extraordinarily strong because I think the whole world saw last
Speaker 6: Friday and her incredible, incredible eulogy, I mean, one of
Speaker 6: the most impressive or work performances I've seen maybe in
Speaker 6: my entire life. Frankly, so, she she's definitely very strong.
Speaker 6: She definitely shares as far as I can tell him,
Speaker 6: as far as I'm aware of, virtually all the political
Speaker 6: convictions and so forth that Charlie Kirk held held dear
Speaker 6: and there's really no one better to carry on the
Speaker 6: torch than her.
Speaker 7: That that's actually what Charlie wanted.
Speaker 6: And I mean to the extent that he talked about
Speaker 6: his successor, which I don't think was a whole lot
Speaker 6: because he was such a young man, But the extent
Speaker 6: that he ever talks about that, that is certainly what
Speaker 6: he wanted to happen. I think the one thing to
Speaker 6: bear in mind is that, you know, Charlie was kind
Speaker 6: of like in some ways, he wore a lot of happen.
Speaker 7: In some ways, he was kind.
Speaker 6: Of a younger man's Jordan Peterson, Right, Jordan Peterson has
Speaker 6: this whole kind of kind of make your bed, you know,
Speaker 6: fix your own life.
Speaker 7: Well, Charlie started turning point is.
Speaker 6: Kind of like an anti socialism, anti big government organization.
Speaker 6: But as he got older, as he married, as a kids,
Speaker 6: he started to be clear. He cared about economic issues still,
Speaker 6: but he started to focus on different issues. He started
Speaker 6: to really focus on kind of this more social cultural outreach.
Speaker 6: I mean, looking at like these young disaffected men in
Speaker 6: the Millennial and gen Z crop and saying, here's how
Speaker 6: you can make your life better.
Speaker 7: You know that girl that you that you.
Speaker 6: Have your eye on, ask her on the date, maybe
Speaker 6: ask for her hands in marriage, maybe try to start
Speaker 6: a family, maybe go to church on Sunday. I mean,
Speaker 6: he really started taking up those issues really come appealing
Speaker 6: to young men. So that's kind of one natural thought
Speaker 6: is will his wife be able to do the same
Speaker 6: for young men? Not necessarily, but hopefully she can have
Speaker 6: an effect when it comes to young women who are
Speaker 6: who are about the most liberal demographic in America, Right,
Speaker 6: so you know that would be pretty something.
Speaker 7: That would be something as well.
Speaker 6: I don't really know, see she will actually be able
Speaker 6: to do these kind of campus by campus events. I mean,
Speaker 6: after all, she's now a single mother, they have two
Speaker 6: young children, so you know, a lot of logistical details
Speaker 6: to figure out there. But they've now gotten somewhere between
Speaker 6: sixty and seventy thousand new chapter applications for college and
Speaker 6: high school, which is just astonishing. I think I think
Speaker 6: there were fewer than five thousand when Charlie was assassinated,
Speaker 6: So you know, they've gotten what twelve times as many
Speaker 6: as they already had more than that potentially. It's so
Speaker 6: the organization is going to go on without question, but
Speaker 6: there are definitely some major details to film.
Speaker 4: Hey, Josh, Charles Cook Cat, I have a much broader
Speaker 4: question for you. I don't understand why this rise in
Speaker 4: anti Semitism has happened. I've been astonished and appalled by it,
Speaker 4: and I often tell people that I first learned about
Speaker 4: the Holocaust when I was about seven. I had a
Speaker 4: friend at my school, Daniel Goldhell, who told me about it,
Speaker 4: and I didn't believe him. And the reason I didn't
Speaker 4: believe him was not because I thought he was lying,
Speaker 4: but because why would anyone do that?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 4: It's such an insane thing that happened and why it
Speaker 4: was my friend. I mean, you just think, well, what
Speaker 4: are you talking about? And you learn that it happened,
Speaker 4: and when October seventh happened, it had just not occurred
Speaker 4: to me for a single second that the response would
Speaker 4: be in America. How it has been, Like I watched
Speaker 4: what happened in the year after and subsequently, and I
Speaker 4: just was surprised by it. I thought, I suppose that
Speaker 4: we were maybe immune from that. So what Charlie Kirk
Speaker 4: was dealing with and what we're seeing from the likes
Speaker 4: of Tucker and cand Serns is surprising to me. And
Speaker 4: I just wonder if you have any insight into how
Speaker 4: this has come back in twenty twenty five.
Speaker 6: Yeah, it's a very good question, and it's one that
Speaker 6: I've been thinking a lot about over the past couple
Speaker 6: of years. There's a few things going on here that
Speaker 6: I can try to connect the dots for so on
Speaker 6: a simpler kind of level of politics and foreign policy, Charles,
Speaker 6: I think you've seen an entire generation of younger conservatives
Speaker 6: who have kind of grown up in the Milu where
Speaker 6: they have seen and they've been told, they've experienced a
Speaker 6: lot of the failures of the post nine to eleven
Speaker 6: American foreign policy. And I share many of those concerns,
Speaker 6: many of those cristives, not all of them, but I
Speaker 6: definitely share a lot of them. And it's kind of
Speaker 6: become something of accepted truth, even though I don't think
Speaker 6: it's particularly true, to be honest with you, but a
Speaker 6: lot of people have accepted this notion that the only
Speaker 6: reason that America has gone involved in the sands of
Speaker 6: Iraq or the mountains of Afghanistan is due to our
Speaker 6: alliance with Israel, which in some ways kind of is
Speaker 6: the old Pap Buchanan argument back from the nineteen nineties.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 6: Whatever America argument, by the way, may or may not
Speaker 6: have had. What I've been arguing is that the Abraham
Speaker 6: Accord singularly disproved it, because it singularly shows that if
Speaker 6: you strengthen your lines with Israel there you actually get
Speaker 6: better alliances with other Arab countries and namely the non
Speaker 6: is One's Auric countries. But that's neither here nor there.
Speaker 6: That narrative is really kind of set foot. I hear
Speaker 6: that when I debate people like Dave Smith there that
Speaker 6: the only reason that America is involved in these wars
Speaker 6: is because of Israel's you know, folks like Steve benn
Speaker 6: have been kind of resus contained that sentiment in recent
Speaker 6: months and so forth and so forth as well. I
Speaker 6: think the more interesting sociological question getting out of the
Speaker 6: realm with strict foreign policy is what I see happening
Speaker 6: is just a complete sustained breakdown in the American people's
Speaker 6: ability to trust basically anything, but especially trust institutions and
Speaker 6: elites and accepted narratives. More generally speaking, I would probably
Speaker 6: start this going back with Russia Gates, which I think
Speaker 6: is a legitimate scandal, everything that happened with Roshergate back
Speaker 6: in twenty sixteen, twenty seventeen. You can kind of take
Speaker 6: that through the two plus years of the Molar probe,
Speaker 6: through the twenty twenty election with the New York Post
Speaker 6: Hunter Biden story and the collusion between big tech and
Speaker 6: the intelligence community. There, all the way through the COVID lockdowns,
Speaker 6: which cause a precipitous declined trust in public authority and
Speaker 6: medical authority in particular. There all the way to the
Speaker 6: fact that Democrats essentially ran a mental patient for president
Speaker 6: after the world saw that he was clearly you know,
Speaker 6: out to you know, the nursing home at that point,
Speaker 6: to the fact that that the regime empower prosecuted the
Speaker 6: form president. So a lot of things happen a fairly
Speaker 6: short interval that I think, and the public polling bears
Speaker 6: this out, that really cause American people to genuinely lose
Speaker 6: kind of the ability to trust anything. And when you
Speaker 6: lose the ability to trust anything whatsoever, you're going to
Speaker 6: start falling down the rabbit hole of being unable to
Speaker 6: distinguish between fact and fiction, between truth and lies. And
Speaker 6: typically speaking, when I kind of survey the history of
Speaker 6: the Jewish people, the Jewish people are generally better off
Speaker 6: when people are able to discern truth from lies, fat
Speaker 6: from fiction, when people are able to kind of have
Speaker 6: a society based on skill and merit and things like that,
Speaker 6: the kind of things that built America. When societies fall
Speaker 6: down these rabbit holes, being unable to distinguish false narratives
Speaker 6: from fast truth from lies, there is typically the Jewish
Speaker 6: people that bear the brunt of that, certainly first, if
Speaker 6: not exclusively, right, So that's I think the sociological element there,
Speaker 6: and I think that's probably responsible for most of it.
Speaker 7: The final thing, which is part of the equation.
Speaker 6: I think Charlie actually was of this opinion as well,
Speaker 6: for whatever it's worth, was that gen Z, if you
Speaker 6: look at the data, have a lot of unique economic issues.
Speaker 6: They're becoming the age of which gen Z is, and
Speaker 6: I think millennials as well, the age which they become
Speaker 6: a first time property owner is notably higher than Gen
Speaker 6: X and boomers. The way to which they get married,
Speaker 6: basically the year at which they all these various life
Speaker 6: goals is considerably higher. And that's another element here too, right,
Speaker 6: because when you throw economic resentment, economic frustration there, you know,
Speaker 6: typically historically speaking, again, there's one group that oftentimes gets
Speaker 6: blamed and institute.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I agree, But and these are atmospheric zeitgeisty things.
Speaker 1: I think there are some other specific things that have
Speaker 1: caused it, this twofold one. You have so many students
Speaker 1: that are going through college and come out with a rote, lazy, unexamined,
Speaker 1: progressive view of the world that instantly casts about for
Speaker 1: oppressor and oppressed, for colonialism and the rest of it,
Speaker 1: a template into which they can plug these little words
Speaker 1: that they think they know means so much. And they
Speaker 1: look at Israel, and they look at the Palestinians, and
Speaker 1: of course their whole worldview tells them to sympathize with
Speaker 1: the poor Palestinians who have been, you know, so dreadfully
Speaker 1: abused since forty seven. And there's no way to shake
Speaker 1: them about that because it's it's ideological and it's religious.
Speaker 1: And the second is that you have empty young men
Speaker 1: who have in both of these have to do with
Speaker 1: a post religious world in which people are no longer
Speaker 1: operating with the sort of religious mentality being believed or
Speaker 1: devoutly believed or not so devoutly believed, but in a
Speaker 1: post religious society where empty young men are casting about
Speaker 1: for meaning and fall prey to the seductions of these
Speaker 1: dark caves, where the people who are pushing out this
Speaker 1: anti Semitic tripe are either you know, this is sort
Speaker 1: of the grim guys who'd sit around and bitch about
Speaker 1: the liberty, or people who have their bone reasons certainly
Speaker 1: not based in religion, and just give these guys something
Speaker 1: to believe in which they can use as their identity,
Speaker 1: because nobody loves it more when you know something that
Speaker 1: everybody else doesn't. And part of the latter I think,
Speaker 1: and this may sound like conspiracy nonsense. But is bots?
Speaker 1: Is other countries just having their way and sitting back
Speaker 1: and calculing and laughing because they've they've released any number
Speaker 1: of trolls and bots who feed this stuff. And that's
Speaker 1: what I see in my feet recent accounts, blue checked,
Speaker 1: strange name do Sturmer, pictures of Jews as their profile picture,
Speaker 1: and everything is juju juju ju. That's not organic. I
Speaker 1: don't think some of it is, but but there's a
Speaker 1: tremendous amount of it. I think that is outside agitator
Speaker 1: is trying to have their way and it's working.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 6: Look, I don't know exactly the extent of bots on X.
Speaker 6: I will note that if we go back and look
Speaker 6: at you on must public statements, it seems to me
Speaker 6: at least I recall that one of his professed reasons
Speaker 6: for being interested in purchasing Twitter in the first place
Speaker 6: was to clean it up from bots, and I'm not
Speaker 6: tellingly sure that he's done that. I think would be
Speaker 6: a very polite way of saying it. There's been a
Speaker 6: general kind of lack of transparency in the X algorithms
Speaker 6: in general, which you know, I would have I definitely
Speaker 6: would have liked to have seen a little bit more
Speaker 6: in that in that respect. Look, there's definitely there's definitely
Speaker 6: an element of for money here, right. I mean we
Speaker 6: know that Kat is the number one spender when it
Speaker 6: comes to American hygadriccasion. They have been since nine to eleven,
Speaker 6: like literally more than the UK, France, Russia, China, Saudi,
Speaker 6: any other actor. It's this tiny you know, Hamas Mali coddling,
Speaker 6: you know Al Jazeera hosting country Katar. I think that's
Speaker 6: only a small part of the equation here, to be
Speaker 6: honest with you, I mean, higher right corruption in general
Speaker 6: is definitely a huge problem, don't get me wrong. But
Speaker 6: we've had a state of higher right corruption for many decades,
Speaker 6: going back at least as far. I mean when did
Speaker 6: Buckley write got a man Yelle with nineteen nineteen fifty one? Right, So,
Speaker 6: I mean it's been going on a very very long time.
Speaker 6: I mean the rise of the Frankfurt School in the
Speaker 6: nineteen sixties, and you know, this kind of cultural rise
Speaker 6: of of any Semitism, especially increasingly ascendant on the right,
Speaker 6: is a fairly recent ish phenomenon. So I don't think
Speaker 6: that's necessarily totally totally explanatory for that there. But you know,
Speaker 6: definitely I would like more transparency when it comes to X.
Speaker 6: I would like a social media experience that is free
Speaker 6: of bots.
Speaker 7: You know, I would.
Speaker 6: I would definitely highly much prefer that, But I'm not sure.
Speaker 6: That's kind of the biggest issue going on here.
Speaker 1: Honestly, going to the funeral, I.
Speaker 6: Would very much like to, but the timing is is
Speaker 6: just a little toit difficult. It's I keep Shabbat and
Speaker 6: the Jewish to have at the end, sorry night, and
Speaker 6: then the Jewish New Ye Russia Jonna starts Monday night,
Speaker 6: so it's just I live in Florida, so flying cross country,
Speaker 6: it's a really it's kind of logistically very difficult.
Speaker 1: Fortunate all right, Well, next year in Phoenix. Josh Hammer,
Speaker 1: thank you so much for joining us today. It's been
Speaker 1: a great conversation. You can read this stuff at News
Speaker 1: Weekend elsewhere, and we hope to speak to you soon
Speaker 1: and we hope that our reasons for doing so will
Speaker 1: be happy, joyous and good for the future of mankind.
Speaker 1: So thank you, and we'll talk to you later.
Speaker 7: Thank you, guys, I appreciate it.
Speaker 1: So before we go, a couple more things, Yeah, Charlie
Speaker 1: You're absolutely right. The the rise on the right of
Speaker 1: the of anti Semitism is one of those baffling and
Speaker 1: absolutely nauseating developments, and we need to well not to
Speaker 1: go all Barney Fife on you. We need to nip
Speaker 1: it in the butt. Even though it's not budding anymore,
Speaker 1: it's actually sprouting branches and night shade. One of Josh's
Speaker 1: pieces is about how this absolutely you know, this could
Speaker 1: crack the Maga movement, which I think is a bit overstated,
Speaker 1: but Headline's got a headline. I don't think you're going
Speaker 1: to see Fuentes and Candice Owens picking up huge amounts
Speaker 1: of support. But there's going to be a noisy graper
Speaker 1: fraction and we got to do to it what Buckley
Speaker 1: did to the Birchers, says me elsewhere in the world.
Speaker 1: Trump announced that he had a chat with Gee about
Speaker 1: tick tock and this is the thing that's been grinding
Speaker 1: its way through the system and the process for I
Speaker 1: don't know how long, with deadlines being put off and
Speaker 1: the rest of it, but selling TikTok assets to American investors,
Speaker 1: and I'm very curious if there will be, if so,
Speaker 1: a change in the code under the hood, Charlie, you're
Speaker 1: you're a tech guy. Do you think that's likely or
Speaker 1: do you think they'll say, hey, hey, broke, don't fix it.
Speaker 4: I don't like this at all. I think it's difficult
Speaker 4: to interrogate the technical questions without knowing what the plan is.
Speaker 4: And the plan I've looked into this, as far as
Speaker 4: I can, is vague. The law here has not been
Speaker 4: followed from the start. Trump has delayed this. I believe
Speaker 4: four times there was room within the statue to delay
Speaker 4: at once when certain conditions were met. Those conditions weren't met,
Speaker 4: but there was provision for a delay. The last three
Speaker 4: are just flagrantly lawless. We're now talking about an eighty
Speaker 4: twenty split and perhaps the maintenance of the existing algorithm
Speaker 4: in a different form or maybe not.
Speaker 1: I don't know.
Speaker 4: What I do know is that although I understand the
Speaker 4: political worries that the Trump administration has here, this is
Speaker 4: not a very strong America First policy that I'm seeing
Speaker 4: on TikTok. The TikTok algorithm is designed to feed information
Speaker 4: to the Chinese Communist Party and to disrupt the United States. Now,
Speaker 4: there's not much we can do about the second part
Speaker 4: within an American owned company. If I owned TikTok, the
Speaker 4: government can't stop me poisoning children's minds. But the Chinese
Speaker 4: Communist Part is a foreign agent, so I don't know
Speaker 4: what it means when it is reported that there would
Speaker 4: be consequences. I don't know what it means when it
Speaker 4: is said that the algorithm might remain the same but
Speaker 4: in American hands, or that it would I don't know, James.
Speaker 4: I don't think that anyone knows. And that's why, because
Speaker 4: I don't trust the Chinese Communist Party. I think that
Speaker 4: we should see a full divestment and full American ownership,
Speaker 4: and then we don't have to worry about whether or
Speaker 4: not there are pressures behind the scenes. And I'll finished
Speaker 4: by saying, one of the reasons that underscores this belief
Speaker 4: for me is that, again without reference to the statute,
Speaker 4: the Trump administration has started using the TikTok question in
Speaker 4: its negotiations with China. We saw this last week. The
Speaker 4: Trump administration said, in effect, well, I hope we have
Speaker 4: a good meeting with China. It's become intermingled with issues
Speaker 4: of foreign policy and of trade and of diplomacy. Now,
Speaker 4: if that can be the case when its sale is
Speaker 4: being debated. Isn't that likely to be the case going forward?
Speaker 4: If China retains twenty percent of TikTok, isn't this always
Speaker 4: going to be on the table? And if it's always
Speaker 4: going to be on the table, then aren't we likely, legitimately,
Speaker 4: if you look at the imperatives of foreign policy, to
Speaker 4: start using it as a bargaining tool. And if we
Speaker 4: use it as a bargaining tool, are we going to
Speaker 4: give some stuff away? So I have a problem with
Speaker 4: that because the statute's very clear the Communist Party of
Speaker 4: China is not supposed to own the social media network.
Speaker 4: But I also have a problem with it as an
Speaker 4: American because I just don't want us to be giving
Speaker 4: this to China in exchange for other things. I want
Speaker 4: China out of this business in America.
Speaker 2: I was afraid for a moment we weren't going to
Speaker 2: get the earth shattering kaboom from Charles that I was expecting.
Speaker 2: But he finally got to that point by the end,
Speaker 2: So I'm happy and satisfied.
Speaker 1: Here.
Speaker 2: Can I have one more sort of loose end about
Speaker 2: Charlie Kirk for a minute with Charles Cook, I have
Speaker 2: had a few people say to me from time to
Speaker 2: time they get you Charles Cook confused with Charlie Kirk.
Speaker 1: Have you ever had that? Have you?
Speaker 4: Okay, and not in the sense that people come up
Speaker 4: to me and say, are you Charlie Kirk, But from
Speaker 4: time to time, if I get booked to speak somewhere,
Speaker 4: someone who wasn't involved in the initial booking will email
Speaker 4: me and mistake me for Charlie Kirk. Or I've had
Speaker 4: people on the phone because of the way I say
Speaker 4: the word with my accent, and he was murdered, people
Speaker 4: have mistakenly said his name instead of mine because they're
Speaker 4: so similar. I totally understand that. By the way, that's
Speaker 4: a normal thing to do when you're used to saying
Speaker 4: another name, then you say one that's almost identical. So yeah,
Speaker 4: that has happened from time to time, but no one
Speaker 4: has ever mistaken me for the guy. We were very
Speaker 4: different in other ways.
Speaker 2: Right, Well, I didn't know if you might be getting
Speaker 2: some you know, I don't know, threatening messages.
Speaker 1: Maybe I don't know, thankfully not yet. Cook the surname
Speaker 1: would derived from Cook, right chef, That's what I believe,
Speaker 1: and Kirk is probably from church. So you're the caterer
Speaker 1: to Charlie's events.
Speaker 4: That's right, that's right. No, I haven't got any threats,
Speaker 4: which is a good thing. I can't imagine what he
Speaker 4: dealt with here. It was one hundred times more famous
Speaker 4: and influential than I am, and I get my fair
Speaker 4: share of horrible emails, so he must have been really
Speaker 4: zen and to have dealt with it.
Speaker 1: You know, I got an email the other day from
Speaker 1: somebody who was upset up on my National Review. Call him,
Speaker 1: and it had to do with global warming and some
Speaker 1: offhand commit comments that I'd made and what really bothered him, well,
Speaker 1: lots of things bothered him, but it was like this guy,
Speaker 1: this Lilacs, this Jimmy Lyles, he knows the truth. So
Speaker 1: he's lying in this piece about these things. And the
Speaker 1: idea that I shared his baseline assumptions and his predicates
Speaker 1: and his conclusions and all the rest of it was
Speaker 1: just a given because the very fact that I could
Speaker 1: put two words together meant that I wasn't stupid, and
Speaker 1: any intelligent person knows the global warming is happening because
Speaker 1: of us. Therefore I was lying. And I find that
Speaker 1: to be fascinating. Actually, that sort of assumption of bad intention. No,
Speaker 1: I actually believe that I actually do, which some people
Speaker 1: find hard to take. And I imagine that a lot
Speaker 1: of your mail, Charlie probably accuses you and Steven as
Speaker 1: well as being a grifter and somebody who you just
Speaker 1: can't see you can possibly believe this stuff. No, absolutely,
Speaker 1: and unfortunately I do. Well, we'll see what happens with this.
Speaker 1: We'll see what happens with TikTok if there are fewer
Speaker 1: videos in my Twitter feed that consist of somebody being
Speaker 1: beaten with a tire ironmen whilst the lady chirps, nothing
Speaker 1: beats a jet blue vacation or a jetto vacation. What
Speaker 1: is it? I'll be a happy man. Have you noticed that,
Speaker 1: by the way, have you noticed how nothing beats a
Speaker 1: jettuvication getaway or something like that is being super imposed
Speaker 1: on all just like sixty percent of the videos that
Speaker 1: you that come to you from TikTok.
Speaker 4: It's a night for the marketing director of that company.
Speaker 4: Whatever it is.
Speaker 1: It is it is, but it's one of those Internet
Speaker 1: things that you see it, you recognize it, you note
Speaker 1: the pattern, you file it away, you learn to mute,
Speaker 1: and your brain has already moved on after three or
Speaker 1: four days of this. But the vast majority of people
Speaker 1: out there are completely unaware, if they're not on TikTok themselves,
Speaker 1: are unaware that this is a thing. And you find
Speaker 1: that with the stuff that was on the bullets the
Speaker 1: guy used to kill Charlie. You find that when you
Speaker 1: see these arrows that he used, which referenced the Helldiver
Speaker 1: game or maybe don't know, maybe they don't team. There's
Speaker 1: this whole language and there's this whole meme culture that is,
Speaker 1: you know, if you're not steeped in this stuff, you
Speaker 1: are unaware of the depth then off on the depravity
Speaker 1: of some of these subjects.
Speaker 4: And you know what was odd about that? I assume
Speaker 4: you both read the text messages that were released as
Speaker 4: part of the charging documents. You mean, the touching ones,
Speaker 4: the everyone's reaction to them insane. They're not fake and
Speaker 4: they're not touching. But there's a line in there where
Speaker 4: the shooter says to his lover, hey, do you remember
Speaker 4: a few weeks ago and I was carving things on bullets?
Speaker 4: And he's like, oh, yeah that yeah, uh huh, I
Speaker 4: mean what And it struck me that maybe if you
Speaker 4: live in a household where one of you is wearing
Speaker 4: a virtual reality head set for one hundred and eleven
Speaker 4: days a year and the other one is furry that
Speaker 4: carving things on bullets is almost the bourgeois choice. But
Speaker 4: what an insane thing to say, and then have the
Speaker 4: other person go, oh, yeah, yeah, that was the day
Speaker 4: where you just sat at the kitchen table and did
Speaker 4: the bullet cut.
Speaker 1: What mm hmm. Well, we'll see if the case develops
Speaker 1: and as more documentary. But yeah, I remember seeing a
Speaker 1: tweet from some of you who said I ran those
Speaker 1: texts through AI, and AI said it was fake. Well
Speaker 1: I certainly would know then, going from its vast scraping
Speaker 1: of other tender messages from other shooters and the rest
Speaker 1: of it. Well, gentlemen, grim times and grim subjects. But
Speaker 1: we've had our moments, and we invite everybody to go
Speaker 1: to Ricochet and sign up. Now the fantasy football is done,
Speaker 1: right Charles.
Speaker 4: It is done in the sense that you can't sign
Speaker 4: up for it anymore.
Speaker 1: Yes, thank you, John, Charles Daily. It is done. And
Speaker 1: so that's all.
Speaker 4: Just wanted to be clear. It wasn't like for one week,
Speaker 4: you know, Week one fantacy football and then we're outtall right.
Speaker 1: You could go to Ricochet and participate in things like
Speaker 1: that and sign up for the member feed, which will
Speaker 1: introduce you to an entirely community. And I write there
Speaker 1: I've written a couple of pieces for the last few
Speaker 1: weeks that are not for general public consumption, just because
Speaker 1: I want to give something back to the Ricochet community
Speaker 1: that I loved so dearly. Let's see oh yes, five
Speaker 1: star Apple podcast review. If you could get that to us,
Speaker 1: that would be great. You may use it as an
Speaker 1: opportunity to learn the intricacies of iOS twenty six on
Speaker 1: your phone, learn how to do a review. You'll feel
Speaker 1: like you've accomplished something, and you'll help people find this show.
Speaker 1: We thank everybody for listening. We think Josh Ammer or
Speaker 1: a guest. We thank Charles, and we thank Stewart, and
Speaker 1: we'll see everybody in the comments at Ricochet. What version
Speaker 1: is it now, Charlie.
Speaker 4: That's it. I had it had my fingertips last week
Speaker 4: because I just pushed one of the updates. But I've
Speaker 4: been traveling this week. So it's a series of numbers
Speaker 4: that begins with four four.
Speaker 1: Points A point.
Speaker 2: It's a point A approaching being an irrational number like pie.
Speaker 1: I think I was just I was just Stephen. What
Speaker 1: I was going to do was I was going to
Speaker 1: quote the number pie, and I was going to have
Speaker 1: them fade me out as I kept going. And now
Speaker 1: that bit is dead, thank you. That was rob long
Speaker 1: quality joke stepping on and I say that with I
Speaker 1: say that with love. We'll see all at Ricochet and
Speaker 1: we'll see you next week. Bye bye,