The Truth with Lisa BootheThe Truth with Lisa Boothe: Judicial Insurrection: Are Judges Waging War on the Trump Administration with Josh Hammer
In this episode, Lisa and Josh Hammer, author of the new book "Israel and Civilization," discuss the legal and political conflicts involving the Trump administration and the judiciary. They focus on the unprecedented number of judicial injunctions against Trump, which Hammer describes as "judicial insurrection." They also explore the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, specifically in the Mahmoud Khalil case, and the broader implications for Western civilization. Hammer emphasizes the importance of U.S.-Israel relations and advocates for a return to biblical values to counter contemporary threats. The Truth with Lisa Boothe is part of the Clay Travis & Buck Sexton Podcast Network - new episodes debut every Tuesday & Thursday.
Check out Josh Hammer's NEW Book HERE
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So today we're unpacking this seismic clash between the Trump administration, the judiciary, and the broader stakes for Western civilization. We're going to do that with my friend Josh Hammer. He's the host of The Josh Hammer Show and America on Trial and is the author of the new book Israel and Civilization, The Fate of the Jewish Nation and the Destiny of the West. He is also a lawyer, so we're going to ask him about the federal courts that have issued over twenty injunctions already. Is this judicial pushback unprecedented? And what does it say about the court's rule. Today we'll dig into the Alien Enemies Act of seventeen ninety eight, dusted off for only the fourth time in history. We'll ask Josh about the Mackmoud Khalil case. His team is saying it's free speech, the government says it's a national security issue. Who's right? Plus, with a conservative Supreme Court looming, will these lower court blocks hold or are we barreling toward a defining showdown? All of that with Josh Hammer, And lastly, we're going to discuss his new book, where he argues that the fate of the West Hinges on Israel security and a realist US foreign policy. Stay tuned for my friend Josh Hammer. Well, Josh Hammer, it's great to have you on the show, my friend. I feel like you've had an epic a couple of years here, you got married, you had a little girl, baby girl, and then now your book is crushing it and already sold out on Amazon. So it's been a pretty pretty epic couple of years for you, Lisa.
Praise to the big guy upstairs. That's really all I can say. But life light, life is pretty good, my friend, and it's certainly always good to join you as well.
Well, you're a great guy, and so I'm very happy for you, and I'm looking forward to getting in the book. But first we'll get into well, I mean, I guess it may make sense, right, I mean, the left is try to stop Trump in pretty much every aspect, whether it be impeachments or trying to kick him off the ballot, or trying to rome in jail, or trying to assassinate them. And now they're trying to stop them in the courts. You know, I guess how unusual is it for federal courts to issue over twenty injunctions this early in administration, and kind of what does that say about the judiciari's rule right now?
Okay, So it does often seem that there are two sets of rules as a so it's gonna sound confusing, but as a general rule, there are there. There are now two sets of rules. There is one set of rules that applies to Donald Trump, and there's one set of rules that applies to everyone else. So, for instance, when Donald Trump was president the first time around to Lisa, from twenty seventeen to twenty twenty one, by my count, there were somewhere between sixty five and seventy so called nationwide injunctions, these district court judges purporting to apply their rulings in various cases, not just as it applied to the parties to the suit or frankly, not even just as it applied to their specific geographical district their jurisdiction, but to the entire country. So again that numbers between sixty five and seventy. The first forty four presidents combined, literally combined, did not have that many so called nation wind in junctions applied against them. So right off the bats, some things just stand out that again, Donald Trump is a unique figure, and he is uniquely reviled by lower court judicial activists. Frankly, Lisa, I have actually used the term myself judicial insurrection. I think that is more accurate to describe what we have seen here since January twenty is, since Donald Trump got into power, and these judges, whether they're calling it a so called temporary restraining order, whether they're calling it a so called preliminary injunction, in a nationwide junction, or universal injunction, the language changes, but the upshot is the same, which is that you are seeing lower court political activists who happened to be wearing judicial robes, who are just trying to shut down as much of the trumpdministration as they possibly can. That is exactly what is going on here, and it's one of the reasons why Lisa, from my own platform and in my own capacity, been shouting from the rooftops, yelling as hard as I can that what has to happen here. Above all, there are a lot of important cases that scotas Is gonna have to hear. Birthright citizenship is an important case. There's a lot going on, But the number one most important case that Scotis really has to fast track, and the Trump is Slister General's office and the dj really ought to help them do it. Is Scotas is going to have to rule asap that these so called nationwide injunctions are totally unconstitutional because they are way beyond the scope of the judicial power of which Article three of the Constitutions speaks.
So it is unusual what we are watching.
It does continue a broader post World War two trend, if you want to go back that far. There was an obscure case in nineteen fifty eight. Not to nerd out too much, but there wasn't an obscure case ninety fifty eight called Cooper versus Aaron, which was the first time that the US Supreme Court ever said that we are the final law of the land. Prior to that, that's not how it worked. All three branches would interpret the Constitution for themselves. So this gives rise to modern quote unquote judicial supremacy. So that's been going on since nineteen fifty eight, but these so called nationwide junctions are even more recent than that. Frankly, and all this is completely contrary to the way the Constitution is supposed to work, and it really has to come to an end asap.
And so what do you think? Well, first of all, feel free to nerd out on here. If you can't do it here, where can you do it? And I guess where do you? So? I guess what would that ruling look like from the Supreme Court? And what do you think that would allow President Trump to do? Because you know right now between you know, sort of seeing the bureaucracy and action under President Trump in the last term, and then you know the deep state, and then with these judges, it's like what powers does the presidency even still have? Right like like they're they've neutered him or they're trying to neuter him. So I guess, you know where where does this all go?
The acting Slster General in the United States is a very sharp lawyer the name of Sarah Harris. The incoming full time Slesster General, god willing he'll be confirmed soon because he's a fantastic lawyer, is John Souer, the former Slister General of the Great State of Missouri. And they are the ones who can do a lot of work here and directly teeing up this question that I'm getting at here, which is to rule on the constitutionality of all these so called nation wine junctions. Clarence Thomas actually presciently, we might say, actually alluded to this in his concurring opinion back in the very important twenty eighteen case Trump versus Hawaii. So Trump versus Hawaii was the so called travel ban case. You know, frankly, at Lisa, I'm not in love with the term travel ban, but that's what the media used, so I guess let's just roll with it for now. So the so called travel ban case basically goes to the Supreme Court and the question is does the President of the United States have the authority to declare that essentially whatever classes of aliens that he wants to choose to say that cannot end to the country. Can he do that? And the answer by a five four majority of the court is yes.
It.
Frankly, it's astonishing them that it wasn't nine to zero because the law is extraordinarily clear under the Immigration Nationality Act. But regardless, in a concurring in Pani and Clarence Thomas says again quite pressially, that what we really have to do here is get to the issue of these so called nationwide in junctions, because if we just kick the can down the road on this, then these lower court judges are going to keep on doing this and doing this and doing this, and eventually our hand is going to be forced. And here we are seven years later and Scotus has not ruled, so they just it's going to end up as being a straightforward constitutional interpretation as to what the judicial power in Article three, Section one, Clause one of the Constitution says. It says that the juditial power shall be vested in one Supreme Court and as many lower courts as Congress may from time to time established. So it's actually only it's interesting, it's only the Supreme Court that is actually constitutionally required. Every other lower court simply exists at the pure discretion of Congress. They can actually abolish any other lower court they want to at any time. And that's actually another interesting point here that I think is worth making is that ideally, if our separation of powers is working.
The way it should, we wouldn't even have to wait for the.
Supreme Court to rule, because Congress could actually just legislate in this area. If Congress wanted to abolish so called Nation one injunctions tomorrow, they could totally do that. The House Jeshary Committee and j just Share Committee. They could they could get working on that legislation asap. Congress has the ability to define what remedies federal courts can and cannot use. So again, that's assuming a healthy Congress, a healthy separation of power, something that we have not had at least since the rise of the administrative state a century ago. But the Court would be well positioned, nonetheless, to rule here, and frankly, it's just very it's very overdue to do so. And if they did so, then that would have the effect of saying that these lower court district court judges, they have to limit their rulings to the parties to the suit. They can't pretend to shut down an entire program, they can't pretend to direct that all that all possible grants from us AI D and the State Department, for instance, have to go out. No, your ruling would only apply to whatever left wing NGO, for instance, happened to bring suit at that time. I'm holding aside here, obviously, the the substantive question as to whether any particular suit is correct. I'm just talking about the scope of the ruling to whom it would apply to. But that's that's how it would play out in theory. And I also I applaud Donald Trump. I applaud him for what he did to Judge Boseburg in Washington, d C. In this Alien Enemies Acts case with Trend Dierra Agua, because it's it's it's taken the so called nation Wine and Johnson thing.
And then going even further than that, what.
Judge Boseberg did is he said, Okay, my ruling is not just going to apply to the name party to this suit. My ruling is not just going to apply to the entire United States, the entire country when it comes to enforcing the Alien Enemies Act. Heck, now I'm going to do this throughout the war because those planes were literally over international waters. I mean, this is nuts, This is absolutely nuts. And at some point you kind of have to say enough is enough. And I'm really, really, really pleased that Donald Trump said enough is enough in that particular instance and kept the planes going to Naibu, Kelly and El Salvador. But at this point, Lisa, at this point, the judges are acting like bullies. They are acting like a bunch of bullies in a school yard playground. And the way to deal with the bully is not to cower in the corner and to just get beat up mercilessly. At some point you got to stand up. You have to get in your tippy toes, stare down the bully in the face and start throwing some punches and bloody up some noses. So that can be done legislatively, it can be done via executive executive action. But there's all sorts of tools that Congress and the executive branch can do. And I look forward to seeing that all play up.
You know, I guess a lot of us are wondering, you know what that back and forth will end up looking like. You know, who is the authority and that fight? You know what tools do judges have to try to enforce their You know what does the executive branch do in response? You know, I guess kind of play that fight out for us.
Sure, so the judicial branch a Article three has extremely limited tools at its discretion to enforce its own rulings. In fact, this is actually a direct line from one of the most famous Federalist papers, Alexander Hamilton, writing in Federalist number seventy eight, he says that the juiciary is the least dangerous branch because it has neither force nor will, but merely judgment and depends upon the efficacy of the executive branch even for the enforcement of its own rulings. So he's literally saying, I mean, you guys do not have the ability even to enforce your own judgments. I mean, I mean, let's think literally if we want to actually go there, like, who literally is responsible for enforcing federal courts judgments? The answer is that it's the US Marshals. But who do the US Marshals actually work for?
Are they?
Are they cabin within Article three? Is their paycheck cut from the United States Judiciary? No, the US Marshals are actually part of the Department of Justice. They're actually part of Article two. So that's kind of what Hamilton's getting at in Federalist number seventy eight there. Now, look, I'm not saying that willy nilly people should just simply be defying court orders. On the contrary, I do think that where there is a legitimate lawsuit, if there's a legitimate litigation and there is standing and all that, and there's a plaintiff and there's a defendant, then in that case, a court's judgment ought to bind the plaintiff and the defendant. What I'm saying is that beyond that, for any other similarly situated person, it's not strictly speaking binding. It should only be thought of as persuasive authority.
That's kind. That's actually why a judicial.
Opinion is called an opinion in the first place, because it's supposed to have persuasive heft. You're supposed to be persuading your fellow citizens, your fellow judges, your fellow litigants, that the opinion ought to be followed in similar like mind data cases. As far as a tool is, Congress has, for instance, when it comes to dealing with and out of control fedle juiciary.
There there's really no shortage of tools.
Certainly, judicial impeachment is one that's that's getting a lot of attention over this past week, and rightfully so, I've been yelling about about those.
Two thirds in Yeah, so you need two thirds in Congress sent in the center rather which yeah, you're not going to That would be very.
Tough, correct, I mean, realistically speaking, is not going to happen, but it could be a good shot across the bow. Nonetheless, just to get a majority in the House and get this impeachment trials started in the Senate. But you're not literally going to get impeached, It's true, unless something miraculous happens. But I'm not holding out my hope for that. Other things that you could do, You could nact legislation to strip certain federal judges of jurisdiction. You could say you are not allowed to hear a case that involves this type of law or this type of case. There You frankly could abolish an entire court. I mean, Congress create all the lower courts, going back to the Judiciary Act of seventeen eighty nine, one of the first statutes Congress ever passed, so that which can be created by Congress can necessarily be destroyed by Congress.
So you can do that if you want too.
You also can do all sorts of kind of fun really like symbolic but punitive stuff if you really want to kind of stick the knife in and twist it, so to speak. So I mean, one example of that would be, I mean, Congress could mandate that federal judges no longer used taxpayer dollars to dry clean their robes, which sounds like a very stupid and silly thing to say, But it's like a symbolic fu if you get what I'm saying there. If you really want to take this to its logical conclusion and go all the way up to the United States Supreme Court, you know, the Supreme Court was actually housed in the basement of the US Capitol for most of American history. They didn't get their own building across the street from the Capitol until one hundred years or less ago. I think it was even less than a hundred years ago in the early twentieth century when they finally got their own building. But there's something symbolic to be said for that. I mean, these guys were literally in the basement of the Capitol because they're the least dangerous branch. So if Congress really wanted to get creative here and send a message in this case the Chief Justice John Roberts, who frankly seems like he needs a bit of a message, you literally could pass legislation turning the current U A Supreme Court into a museum or something like that, whatever you want to use it to, and then reconvert the basement of the US Capital into the functional courtroom for the US Supreme Court. I'm not saying that they should do that. I'm just saying that if you really want to go there, you frankly could.
And how does that play out in public perception? You know? Does this you know? I mean because some seed judges as sort of guardians of the law. Obviously, others are looking at it as overreaching.
You know.
The President Trump's critics argue he's a dictator. I guess, you know, how does this all play out politically for him? Then?
Well, I think the way it plays out politically is in line with the un are lying substance of the issues. What I mean by that is, let's take this Boseberg standoff involving Trump's invocation of the Alien Enemies Act to deport trendiar Agua, rapist murderers, gang bangers, mean, the worst of the worst.
These people who took over.
The condominium in All Colorado just awful, awful, awful people. I mean, basically the Western Hemisphere version of Hamas and Hesbala. I mean, just just awful, awful, awful people.
There.
The American people support deporting trendyar Agua. Okay, the American people are not with They are not with the Democratic Party. They are not with the left, they are not with Judge Boseburger or any of them when it comes to the underlying substantive issue there. So you know, I think these procedural things matter. I'm a lawyer. I think that they matter. But I think the American people ultimately care properly as they should about the underlying substance of the matter. So where they see Donald Trump fighting on the correct side of an eighty twenty issue, and you know, whether we should deport people like Machoun Khalil and Trendy or Agua is probably a ninety five to five issue, or at least a ninety ten issue. I mean, it's definitely more than agy twenty. I think when you get that there, and Trump is basically making various moves to enforce that agenda, I think it pretty much only has political upside, very little in the way of downside.
Yeah, well, I mean, you know, if they have the perception of defending you know, venezuela and gangs, that might not be the best look. You could argue, We've got more with Josh. But first, when a woman experiences an unplanned pregnancy, she often feels alone and afraid. So many times, her first response is to seek out an abortion, but because of the generosity of listeners like you, that search me leader to a Preborn Network clinic where she'll choose life, not just for her baby, but for herself. Preborn offers God's love and compassion to hurting women and then provides a free ultra sound to introduce them to the life growing inside of them. This combination brings is the ultimate miracle of life to life, which is why Preborn sees an average of two hundred baby saved every day. Now meet some courageous woman who chose life. Mattie was in a tough situation as she wasn't sure who the father was, But after receiving counseling, prayer, and a free ultrasound at Preborn Network Clinic, everything changed. Mattie discovered she had twins and found the strength she needed to choose life. Her sorrows turned to joy. Your tax deductible donation of twenty eight dollars sponsors one ultrasound. How many babies can you save? Please donate your best gift today. Just style pound two fifty and say the keyword baby. That's pound two fifty baby. Or go to preborn dot com slash booth. That's preborn dot com slash booth boo tchg sponsored by Preborn. You had mentioned the Khalil case, obviously, his team says that his speech has protected. The government says that it's a security issue. I guess where's the legal line between free expression and also deportable conduct.
Immigration law and constitutional law makes a real heavy distinction, a heavy distinction between citizen and non citizen, frankly, even as it applies to the Bill of Rights. And it's confusing because the way that every Bill of right is enforced versus non citizens is not the same, and the First Amendment is indeed slightly different. But I mean, let's just take the Second Amendment to use a very clear and obvious example. If you are a US citizen, you can walk into Walmart or wherever you get your wherever you get your firearms tomorrow, and you can you can purchase basically whatever you want as long as you pass background check and do all those other nice teas. That's that's not the way it works if you are an alien, if you are here on a student visa. Frankly, if if you're even a legal permanent resident on a so called green card, you can't just walk in to a gun store. If you are an alien, legal or obviously illegal, you can just walk into a gun store and purchase a five. So there are very clear distinctions between citizen nonsenisen. Another clear distinction is also when it comes to due process. So I was talking about the Streme Court. One of the great Supreme Court justices of the past century is made by the name of Justice Robert Jackson. He was the chief prosecutor at the Nuremberg Trials, which was the prosecution of the Nazi war criminals. He also was nicknamed in his time the Great Dissenter because of, among other things, his dissenting opinion in the Kooramatsu case, that was the Japanese internment case during the FDR presidency, when as an act during wartime in World War Two, FDR basically sends all the Japanese Americans to these internment camps. It's considered to be one of the worst opinions in US Supreme Court history. And just as Robert Jackson dissented on due process clause grounds. Well, I say all that for context, because was Robert Jackson nine years after the Kormatsu case, in a case called shaughnessy that he said that due process does not give any alien ad the right to immigrate to this country, and once you are here, it does not give you any due process rights to be free from deportation against the will of the sovereign.
Which means we the people, because we the people are sovereign in the country.
So what that means is that you have no due process right if you are an alien. Okay, anything that Congress chooses to enact into law, any statutory protections that they put into place in the Immigration Nationality Act and that gets us into the immigration courts, all of that is simply done out of Congress's own generosity, of their own beneficence. You might say, they're not required to do so, you have no fundamental due process right against deportation. So makmu Khalil, I think the case against him on deportation grounds is fairly straightforward, which is that we mistakenly let in him, this clear and obvious jihad sympathizer, This guy who belongs to a group. He's a spokesman for a group calling for not just the killing of the Jews, but also just the annihilation of Western civilization. A guy who clearly should not ever been let into this country on any visa, and we the people have said enough, we're pulling your card. There, there's also a statutory hook, because even the Immigration Nationality Act explicitly says above and beyond what I just said, it says that if you are a supporter of a US recognized FTO, a foreign terrorist organization, then you cannot get a visa. And if it turns out that you lied on your visa paperwork by saying that you're not a supporter checking that box, and then it turns out that you are actually a supporter, then your visa can and should be revoked. So that's that's pretty clearly what happened here as well. So I view the case against Khalil as legally speaking, pretty straightforward. Policy speaking, I think it's clearly obviously the correct thing to do. Frankly, I hope to see a lot more of it as well.
Well. I do think the initial reaction to the Brown professor who was sent back to Lebanon was hilarious and then they're like, oh, yeah, well, you know, she attended the funeral of Hesbala leader, Like exactly, what the hell have someone like this in America attending the funeral of terror leaders. And I want to move on to your book, but real quick before you do so, you had mentioned Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts, you know, weighing in and that statement from him about you know, more than two centuries it has been established that impeachment is not appropriate response to do disagreement, Wait, response to disagree. Promise they can read an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision. Why did he weigh in and is that appropriate?
It's beyond then appropriate.
Roberts is completely and utterly out of line here. Unfortunately, I'm not surprised because he's done this before. So back during Donald Trump's first administration, Trump made some offhand comment, I can't remember the context, to be honest with you, about how there are Republican judges and Democrat judges, and then Roberts issued a statement saying, oh, no, he's an It's not true. We're all non part is in there. And I mean literally, I guess he's right because judges don't run for office wearing an R or a D banner. But I mean, in practice, we all know that what Don Trump was saying was obviously correct. So he's done this before, and this time it's actually even worse because he's not correcting what he perceives to be a misperception. He's actually just wrong. I mean, he's literally wrong in this case. As to what impeachment in this case, judicial impeachment is and what it is not. Judicial impeachment is not a far fetched, crazy thing. In fact, the Constitution explicitly countenances it. It explicitly holds it out as a possibility. The language and Article three says that judges shall sit during good behavior, which means that they have life tenure as long as they demonstrate good behavior. And what is good behavior, Well, we actually know from some other legal scholarship and the work of lawyers and historians that that phrase has basically the same meaning as high crimes and misdemeanors, which is the presidential Article two impeachment criteria. And then you go back and say, okay, well, what is high crimes and misdemeanors? Well, thankfully, we actually pretty much know the answer to that as well. Alexander Hamilton has his Federalist paper in Federalist number sixty five where he defines high crimes misdemeanors as referring to an abuse of the public trust. So by syllogism here, then we can say that the criteria for both presidential and judicial impeachment is an abuse of the public trust. That's not a legal standard, okay, That is a political standard. That is a standard that requires prudence and statesmanship and the various things that politicians do. It's been that way literally since the origins of the Republic. One of the first acts of digital impeachment was the impeachment of his Preme Court justice by the name of Samuel Chase. Most of the story think that that was a partisan act. It was part of the partisan ranker in the nation's first party system between the Federalist Party of John Adams and John Jay and Alexander Hamilton on the one hand, versus the Jeffersonian Madisonian Party the Democratic Republicans, And maybe it was nat to Parsonship. The point is that it is a political exercise. So for John Roberts to come in here and criticize politicians talking about what is quintessentially a political act is absurd. And the grand irony of Elisa is that, ironically, in saying what he has said, one could plausibly argue if you were trying to be a little too clever by half, that Roberts has himself actually done an impeachable offense.
All right, well, let's ship to well, I mean, it's this is all going to be fascinating to continue to watch with all this back and forth, and then hopefully it doesn't impact President Trump from getting some big things done in a short period of time that he's got. But I want to talk about your book, which is killing it. I mean, it's already out on Amazon, right.
Yeah, we actually sold that on publication Data itself, which is not so although it's being rapidly replenished. So don't hesitate to order on Amazon if your own Clinton.
But that is amazing, so tell me. Okay, So the book is Israel and Civilization, the Fate of the Jewish Nation and the Destiny of the West. And you argue that the fate of Western civilization is dependent upon the security and thriving of the Jewish people and the Jewish state of Israel. Walk us through that, and walk us through your thesis.
Sure so, as you correctly note, the important thing to know about the title of the book, Israel and Civilization is that Israel in the title has a double meaning. It's referring, yes, for sure, to the capital s state of Israel, the modern post nineteen forty eight state, but it's very much, arguably even more so, referring to the nation of Israel, the children of Israel, in other words, the Jewish people. And the argument in Lisa is essentially as follows. You know, we talk a lot about Western civilization, and we say that the West is at a crossroads. We can go one direction or the other direction there. But as we just discussed, you know, for twenty five minutes or whatnot. I'm a lawyer and I like to define terms. So what is this West? What is this Western civilization that we're speaking of? Well, I argue in the book that Western civilization is largely synonymous with the Biblical tradition, with the Bible, and with the Jeo Christian tradition. That I stretch all the way back, at least as far back as God's first revelation of his word to Moses and the Israelites at Mount Sinai, and in some of the earlier chapters of this book, I painstakingly attempt to demonstrate that everything from the English common law, to the US Constitution, to the American Founding, and really just so much of the everyday norms and ethical considerations that we take for grant him all ultimately go back to the Hebrew Bible. So the relevant question that then, Lisa, is if you if you care about the West, and if the West is as I argue, largely synonymous with with the biblical tradition there, I mean, I mean, how can the West possibly survive if you're just going to forsake the origin of it all? I mean, I mean, you're basically just sawing off the tree. You're you're, you're you're cutting off your nose to spite your face. Incidentally, this is something that the American Founders. You know, we talked a lot about the Federals papers and in this in this show, so that you know, the the American Founders understood this completely to a t. So, just to give a couple of examples, Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin, they actually wanted the National Seal of the United States to be Moses parting the Red Sea. Abraham Lincoln fast forwarding, you know, five six decades later, when not there, Abraham Lincoln famously spoke of Americans as an almost chosen people using this covenantal language found found in the Hebrew Bible, and just on and on and on. You see this play out to me, I mean, Alexander Hamilton actually has this incredible, incredible quote where he says, quote, the state and progress of the Jews from their earliest history to the present time has been so entirely out of the ordinary course of human affairs. Is it not then a fair conclusion that the cause also is an extraordinary one, In other words, that it is the effect of some great providential plan. He's basically saying that one of his reasons to know that God exists is that the Jewish people are still alive, unlike every other nation that existed when they were first formed back in Biblical times. There so this idea that America has forged on Biblical precepts, that the original people of the book have a real role to play here. It is deeply, deeply ingrained in who we are. Just one final example, it's literally there on the liberty bell in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It's a quote from the Book of Leviticus on the outside, THO shall proclaim liberty throughout the land and to all the inhabitants thereof. So you know, people who oppose the West more broadly understand this too, So it actually cuts in both directions. So you know, anti Semites throughout history, they've never actually truly been interested in the Jews. They're always interested in something much greater and more profound than that. So Karl Marx is actually one of my favorite examples here. I mean, Carl Marx is typically associated with communism, and rightfully so. But a few years before he wrote the Communist Manifesto, he had this infamously anti Semitic essay called on the Jewish Question, where he made very clear his dripping disdain for the Jews. But that's not actually what Karl Marx wanted, deep in his very dark heart to achieve, right, I mean, what Carl Marx wanted to achieve was nothing less than the entire overthrowing of Western capitalism and Western Christendom, western Christian civilization. So whether you're trying to defend the West against the barbarians, you have to understand that it's the Saturday people first, the Jews first, and then the Sunday people the Christians next, And then if you're trying to destroy Western civilization. It's the same thing in reverse. You start with the Saturday people, then you go to the Sunday people in that. You know, this is a reason, for instance, why the transnational institutions like the Nine Nations, they all start with the Jewish State of Israel.
But they're not going to stop there, Lisa.
They obviously ultimately want to go after the nation state as a concept and whole, including but hardly limited to the United States itself.
Well, and we've seeing this play out on college campuses and universities across the country of You know, yes, of course they hate the Jews, but you know, they also just hate America and everything we stand for. I guess, what does it mean about where we are as a society today that you feel the need to defend the fate of the Jewish people and defend why it's important to have a secure and thriving Jewish people and Jewish State of Israel.
Great question, and it says nothing good about where we're at. Frankly that I felt the need to write this book, Lisa, if I'm being very honest with you, this was not the original book that I was planning on writing. Actually, so back in. You know, I've been a writer for years. I read a weekly sits.
So you're beautiful. Yeah, you're very talented.
I appreciate that, thank you. So.
But I've written god knows about the op eds columns, law review articles. I've done basically anything everything other than writing a book. So at some point I finally said, Okay, it's time to write a book, and I started drafting the outline for a totally totally different book that had nothing to do necessarily with the Jews, Israel, foreign policy, any of this stuff. And then October seventh happens, and I didn't necessarily write the book in response to October seventh. Rather, I wrote it in response to the reaction to October seventh. So that's actually a lot of the first chapter of the book, as I kind of talk about the just disgusting things, like utterly disgusting things that have been said and done, including within seemingly hours minutes of October seventh itself. I mean, I remember when there were thirty two or thirty three Harvard student groups that immediately ganged up to jointly sign a letter within hours of Jewish women Holocaustterviyers being slaughtered Jewish babies being butchered. The Harvard students from their dorm rooms in Cambridge, Massachusetts said, oh no, it's actually Israel that's to blame for their own beheadings, for their own babies being.
Cooked in ovens.
There.
It's actually the Jews who are to blame there. And we saw this on and on and on. There was a Hesbalah banner unveiled at Princeton University, the number one ranked university in the country. There we saw Jews forcibly excluded from campuses in UCLA. Columbia is beyond accesspool. It's otherworldly in terms of how bad it is there. So it was really in response to that that I said, Okay, you know, this whole thing really is starting to go off the rails, and it is time that the Jewish people, and frankly just Judaism itself needs a defense.
But it's not. This book is not just the defense of the Jewish people. These I want to be very clear about that.
The book is really fundamentally calling for a Biblical restoration.
That is above all the core message of the book.
It's calling it's calling on Jews and Christians alike to actually fall in love with the Bible and with scripture again, and because we face the exact same threats. So in this book, I identify at least three hegemonic threats that seek to destroy all of us. I call them Wokism, Islamism, and global neoliberalism. The latter is is globalism. I mean it's the UN and it's the World Economic Forum. It's this, it's this homogenizing imperative to stamp out all of our differences and to basically turn us into one big blob. So I think Jews and Christians oppose all of these forces. We face the exact same enemies. We have a dramatically shared inheritance. We are the two religions of the Bible. And the point is, if you want to be fortified, if you want to have the courage, the fortitude, and the and and just the spine, frankly, to actually ward off these three threats and ultimately launch a counter offensive, to to really kind of turn back the tide, and and and and and to and to prevail in this grand clash, then you have to stand for something. I mean, value neutrality is never an option. You got to put a forward, an actual vision. You have you got to stand for something. So my argument is that that's something is the Bible itself is our biblical inheritance.
We've got to take a quick break. More With Josh on the other side, it seemed like for a while, at least after the first Trump administration, that you know, this radical Islamic terrorism was on the run, and that we had conquered it, and that you know, we had won. And then you know, we saw it under the Biden administration. Give rise is weakness. What do you think kind of having a new sheriff in the town will mean for the Middle East? Israel? And then also, you know, reconquering this radical Islamic extremism that has seemed to reared its head again.
Well, I think it's first worth noting that this resurgent Islamism is not limited to the Middle I mean, we obviously see it all throughout Europe. It seems like every other day there is a driver of Syrian or Algerian or some other type of origin like that in Germany who's plowing himself into pedestrians. You know, it's funny least to how these cars just drive themselves into people, right, I mean, as if there's no human involved there. I mean literally, these media headlines these days, it's like car plows over citizens. Okay, well, I mean who's driving the car anyway. Europe is just a total cesspoo when it comes to this. But even here in the US, I mean people, I mean, when's last time you've heard anyone mention the fact that on New Year's Day morning, at three am on Bourbon Street in New Orleans, Louisiana, what fourteen fifteen people were slaughtered and there were dozens more injured. I mean, I haven't heard that story mentioned in at least two months. I mean, people just totally forgot about it. But that was a radical Muslim who was radicalized at a radical mosque in Houston, Texas. So you know, unfortunately, this is not an actual tract issue. Anyone who pays attention to what the imams are saying in places like Dearborn, Michigan. These these people are openly praising hesbala that they are talking about, how Hassana's Rawa, that decades long head of of Hesbala is A is a grand martyr. I mean it's here like like we are surrounded in some ways by monsters. We and we we tragically have done this of our own volition. So that's that's part of it. That that's that's that's part of it for sure. But part of it also is understanding that the tip of the sphere of all this is is indeed the Jewish State of Israel. I mean, they are, they are the actual ones who are there on the ground in a way that you know that we in in Florida, for instance, aren't necessarily on the ground there when it comes to trying to turn back the tide against these horrific actors. And one thing that that that I do in the Booklese is I have a whole chapter making the case for US Israel relations on explicitly Maga America first foreign policy wheel esques. Because I genuinely am a foreign policy realist, I view every foreign policy decision through the lens of the US national interest. And among the things that I argue in that chapter is I explain how a lot of people ask, oh, my god, the uscives Israel so much money, what does the US get out of it? And there are some very obvious answers here. So for instance, last summer, over the course of a few months, Israel went on this call three or four month Grand Michael Corleoni and the Godfather as killing spree where they kind of just mowed down a lot of their enemies, and the Hassan Asrawa assassination was one of the culminations of that, when he was cowardly hiding in his bunker in Beyroot, Lebanon. But prior to that, Israel, the Ideaf took out two very high ranking hesbology Haatis by the name of Fuad Shakor and Ibraheim Akhiel. And who are Shakor and Akhiel? Well, they are the men responsible for, respectively, the nineteen eighty three US Marine barrack bombing in Baby Rout, Lebanon, that slaughter over twenty forty US Marines, and then Akiel was one who was responsible for the US embassy bombing in Beirut that same year, which killed sixty to seventy. The USA Department has actually had five and seven million dollars bounties on those two terrors head for over four decades and nothing happened until Israel literally just took them out last summer. So again we have the exact same enemies here and one way that America's interest in the region can be enhanced while simultaneously allowing us to focus on our own biggest threat, this entry, which is pretty clearly.
In my opinion, in China.
The way to do that is you embolden your allies in the ground who share your interests to patrol and secure the region in a way there were downs to both of your interests. Donald Trump totally gets this. It's this precise logic that led to the Abraham Accords peace deal the first time around, and I think it's the exact same logic that we're seeing play out in his early second term as well.
I also think the way that Israel has sort of prosecuted this campaign against Hamas in such an effective way a sort of you know, I guess, makes people a little bit more willing to like give aid and to help out, you know, because they're winning, and you know, they're they're the you know, the end goal seems to be in sight, right, you know. Whereas if you compare that to what's going on in Ukraine, it's, you know, just we're just sort of like endlessly giving them money with no en insight and no clear object you know. So so I think sort of just the sort of the nature of the fight is obviously a lot different. You know, how how much does it matter to have a president because we've got President Trump now, and you know, obviously he's taking Columbia University to task for you know, their role in anti Semitism and allowing it to foster on campus and just the way they've handled everything and some of these people they've employed, and just you know, all of it right, and so you've got a guy saying, look, anti Semitism is wrong, we don't want terrorists in the country. If you're here on a green carter a visa and you hate him America, like you're out, you know. And then you compare that to what we saw under the Biden administration, where like he was so desperate to win over Muslim voters that like he was so tepid and his response to everything, it didn't really go out and condemn what was happening. And how much does it matter just to have like the guy taught being like, these are our values as a country and this is what the United States stands on. Now.
Oh, I think it makes a world of difference. I think it makes an absolutely massive difference. Look, I mean, in today's day and age, the president is really the tribune of the people. I mean that the president is the one who is the single indispensable figure in the federal government. And we can debate whether or not that's the way that it was supposed to be. And you know, this debate was actually had at the founding Frankly, I mean you had the Jeffersonians, who are more favorable towards congressional power. Then you had the Hamiltonians, who are more pro executive power. So that's a very old debate. But regardless of the debate, the empirical obvious reality is that the president is the single most important figure and.
He sets a tone.
I mean he sets a tone both substantively and rhetorically. So when you have a president of the United States who's out there speaking of hamas has baalah Aran, who ths just the radical Islamic cancer, the way that Donald Trump is talking about him, then I mean that that goes a really really, really really long way. So for instance, right now, when it comes to Gaza, I think the ball is very clearly in Benjamin Nintennah Who's court, because Donald Truv has all but said to Prime Minister Natanya who dude, go in and finish the job. I mean, he hasn't said it literally that explicitly, but he's all but said it. He's talked about how the gates of hell are going to open, there will be hell to pay. I mean, he's used very, very fiery rhetoric here. And the thing from Nta Yahuo's perspective that I hope, indeed I pray that he understands is that Donald Trump is a leader who abhorrors weakness and respects strength. So when he tells you to do something you really ought to do it or else, you're gonna start looking very weak in his eyes. And that that weakness, in turn is what we'll we'll we'll cause Donald Trump to to to make him lose respect for you. Actually, so I I I hope Lisa, that that this time is finally the time that Israel finishes the job. I'm cautiously optimistic that it will be. As far as the time frame on that that, I just have no idea. Now, it's worth pointing out that regardless of what the resolution ends up being in Gaza, and again, I hope and pray that it ends with Moss fully being eradicated. There's not going to be full scale stability in the Middle East anytime soon. I wish, I wish that there were, that there would be, but the the reality is that as long as the Iranian regime that is currently there is in power, there's going to be instability in the region because that that that is a cancerous regime, that that funds all sorts of of jihad, not just throughout the region when it comes to the Houthis, when it comes to hasbalah Hamas and over and over again, but frankly, Iran funds a lot of this all throughout the world as well. So at some point that regime is going to have to go. I'm not saying that the United States should get involved militarily. I've never said that, because it's not my stance. I do think that the Trump campaign had it basically correct the first time when it comes to this maximum pressure campaign when it comes to crippling sanctions and just trying to kind of choke them off and kind of get the people to topple their own regime there. That seems to be basically the game plan this time around as well, and I'm certainly hardened by that.
And then before we go. What do you hope people take away from.
Your book, Lisa, I want, above all.
Multiple things, I would say, on a very short term, kind of practical political level, I want a lot of younger people, younger conservatives, maybe above all, younger Christians who might be kind of tempted to go the way of Candice Owans and various other online provideurs. I hope that they remember that there's nothing that's quote unquote neocon or quote unquote Bush administration about the Israel issue. I hear a lot of young people these days just just dismissing US Israel relations out of him because they say, it's like your grandfather's issue. It's a Bush administration issue, it's a Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld issue. And again that's just simply not true. I mean, Donald Trump is the most pro Israel president of American history, and he's not a Neocon. He is a hard headed Jacksonian realist because he understands that the realist case for USS relations is overwhelming. Frankly, it's actually a much stronger case than making the same case on explicitly moralistic neocon terms. So it's probably honestly strong, but in both cases, but the real's case is honestly even stronger. So I hope that that message resonates. I have a whole chapter on it. It's chapter seven in the book. The broader, kind of more abstract philosophical message is I really, really hope that Jews and Christians alike are are inspired by my strong, repeated urge to re engage with scripture and to basically just try to fall in love with our biblical inheritance again, because this country, America, really was founded as an ecumenical, biblical country. It was founded on biblical precepts. Many of the great men in our country's history understood this, just as Joseph's story, he was one of the greatest conservative justice on the on screen court in the nineteenth century, famously said that America adapted the English common law at our founding.
We adopted it.
And then he also said that Christianity itself was actually part of the English common law. So the great jurists, the great statesmen have understood that the Bible and the two Biblical religions are are inextricable from what this country is. So I'm really hoping, I mean my ideal hope of hopes. Lisa I'm not saying that one book can possibly accomplish this, but my ideal hope of hopes is to possibly try to spark some sort of biblical restoration. I I think back, you know, I was very lucky. My first TV hit on this book was with Mark Levin this past Sunday on his Fox News show. And what Mark said in talking about the book, because Mark wrote an extraordinarily generous, generous blurb for this book, but what he said on air on his Fox show is that if enough people read this book, then there's going to be a renaissance in this country.
And that's very kind of Mark.
Obviously, but that really is my heart of hearts, you know that that's my dream come true, is that enough Jews and Christians alike here and that we actually have a biblical restoration, a biblical renaissance there that, truly, Lisa, I think would actually, genuinely, honest to God, make America and by extension, the entire West great again.
Well, I am proud of my friend Israel and civilization. The fate of the Jewish nation and the destiny of the West is out everywhere you can go get books, and Amazon's replenishing so you can buy it there too. But very proud of my friend and I'm so glad that this is a success, and i hope that that success just continues to grow.
Thanks so much, Lisa, is so great to chat with you.
That was Josh Hammer, author of Israel and Civilization, The Fate of the Jewish Nation, and the Destiny of the West. We appreciate him taking the time to come on the show. Appreciate you guys at home for listening every Tuesday and Thursday, but you can listen throughout the week until next time.
