Moving the Midterm Needle

year twenty twenty six. Just earlier today, a Venezuelan tanker putting on a false Russian flag trying to escape the naval blockade They're off Venezuela, and the United States military, not wasting any time, not mincing any words, they promptly went ahead and boarded and apprehended the vessel. So tensions

continued to play out. When it comes to Venezuela. The big question there in that particular country still is Delus Rodriguez, this socialist communist loombag who was Nicholas Muduro's former vice preser. Is she going to be up for doing anything other than just running this poor, grieving country into the ground, much as her two predecessors, Hugo Chavez and Nicholas Muro have been doing for decades. So that is what is

going on in Venezuela. By the way, the polding on the Venezuela Operation Operation Absolute Resolve somewhat mixed at this time. I don't particularly buy much into that, but for what it's worth, Trump has very very strong Republican support within

his own flank when it comes to what the administration did. Again, all this talk of all this foreign policy debate, there you have the hardcore Lindbergh Ron Paul isolationist wing that is ready to cry anything whatsoever when it comes to intervention. Even Megan Kelly, even Megan Kelly on her show on Monday, was saying how she is lukewarm at best on this. But in terms of actual Republicans, in terms of the elected official class, they are very very, very very much

behind President Trump. For instance, here Senator Rick Scott of my state of Florida on Fox Business.

overrun Afghanistan, things like that. I submit to you that when it comes to the Western Hemisphere, when it comes to Latin America, things fundamentally actually are quite a bit different because it is quite literally on our doorstep, and we do have a greater interest in a country like Venezuela and not being used as a launching pad literally and proverbially, as the case may be, for America's arch geopolitical enemies, for Russia, Iran, and for China. There were

Hesbola money launching operations, Iranian military facilities. That was all happening in Venezuela, in our own hemisphere backyard. During the presidential tenures of Chavez and Nicholas Maduro. So is it gonna be the beginning of all these totalitarian dominoes falling throughout the Western hemisphere? Is the Castro regime in Cuba going to be next? Certainly Center Scott's of Florida would hope, so that'll be very popular here in Florida, where I

live as well. I'm not totally sure, but at a bare minimum, what's happening in Venezuela augurs positively for these United States. Meanwhile, I mentioned Iran, and the protests in Iran are really just frankly going to the next level. Some of these images, some of these videos are utterly astonishing. They are taking over parts of cities, they are taking

over parts of town squares. At this point, this is probably the largest scale uprising against the Iranian regime, probably since the regime came to power in nineteen seventy nine, in the very tail end of the Jimmy Carter presidency. You could talk about the two thousand and nine Green Revolution,

which Barack Obama famously failed to support. But these images that were images and videos that we're seeing now from Iran, which is very much part of this axis of totalitarian thuggery along with their allies in North Korea, China, Russia and formerly Venezuela. I guess now we shall see. Look, Iran is a complicated country. Persian culture goes back many millennia.

It's very proud country, very proud civilization. In fact, the exiled Shah, the exiled crown Prince putting out a very fascinating video in the Farsi language calling for exiled Persians to pray for what happens, and teasing that there might actually be some sort of special announcement actually coming sooner

rather than later. So you take that, you combine it with what the British newspaper The Times of London has been reporting, which is that the Supreme Leader or the Ayatollah Khamene apparently allegedly has an escape patch planned to grab his twenty person inner circle and then high tail it to Moscow to pull a Boscher alssade, and then ultimately live out the rest of his probably fairly few and limited years there under the protective embrace of lamyr Putin.

If you put two and two together, you're looking at a potentially potentially very serious situation in Iran. Now, it's not like the United States is going to be directly involved in getting in sending in one hundred first airborne or likely even getting to the point where they are trying to vet and select individual dissident individual protesters, things

like that. But certainly, when you look at Venezuela, when you look at Iran, when you look at some of the other pieces of the geopolitical chessboard, the fact that Russia and China and America's various other foes seem to be very much on the defensive. This has been nothing short of his historic, a truly historic first year for

his Secretary of States, Mark or Rubio. In fact, Chris van Holland, one of the biggest adults of the generally doult Field Senate Democratic Caucus, Chris van Holland was actually just on CNN where he was talking about Marca Rubio as mister Maga. Go ahead and watch this.

And we saw the proof of that again in their National Security Strategy document from a couple of weeks ago, where they essentially through American principles overboard, and in its place they've put this gunboat, you know, New Monroe doctrine, where the United States, by you know, stint of its military power can just go do what it wants throughout Latin America. That story doesn't end well for people in Latin America, nor for Americans.

over the target. But the twenty twenty six midterms this fall are not necessarily going to be contested solely or perhaps even predominantly, on the terrain of foreign policy. Look, foreign policy is definitely important. I care about it quite

a bit. I think that many American voters care about it quite a bit, especially above all when it comes to situations and countries like Venezuela, given the fact that it's in our hemisphere, given the fact that they are complicit in shipping drugs right through our southern border, given

the energy interests and other interests as well. But overall, the twenty twenty six mid terms of this November, which now are getting really really close, they will be contested primarily on domestic issues, on issues like immigration, on issues like crime, on issues like healthcare, and on issues like the economy. Eve all in our guest will join us just a few minutes here to break down some of the angles and some of the train on which this

midterm election will will be contested. But our working theory here on the Josh Hammer Show is that Jimmy Carvill did indeed have it right. Back in nine ninety two, back when he was running the Bill Clinton presidential campaign, Carvill famously said that it's the economy stupid. Now, Carville himself may ironically be quite stupid these days, and some of the things that he has said, but his quip from thirty four ish years ago has largely held up.

It indeed still is the economy stupid? What exactly are Republicans going to do when it comes to healthcare, when it comes to affordability, when it comes to inflation. Is there going to be another government shutdown coming at the end of this month? Both sides are talking like there's going to be a viable off ramp coming up here

and we're not looking at another shutdown. Recalled that the shutdown from just a few months ago ends up being the longest shutdown in the entire history of the United States. No one wants to repeat that debacle. How is that going to unfold? There's a lot of questions. Meanwhile, there was a tragic passing, a terrible, terrible passing at just the tender age of sixty five, just yesterday of Congressman

Doug LaMalfa of California. Congressman Jim Baird, also in the Republican Caucus, is now recovering from a serious car accident. There is a jungle primary special election coming up for Marjorie Taylor Green seat in northwest Georgia. Meanwhile, Thomas Massey is basically a vote for her King Jefferys and House Democrats. So Mike Johnson's margin in the House to do anything

this year any of this is shockingly, shockingly small. And by the way, don't think for a second, don't think for a second that if Democrats don't retake the House this November, that they will not move immediately, literally immediately to impeachment. For instance, here was Congressman Jason Crow talking about this very topic on CNN.

tools that Congress can use. I am not holding my breath, but a Democratic controlled Senate and I'm sorry, Republican controlled Senate and ablic Republican controlled House, Jim Jordan or others are going to move and do anything on an initiated impeachment proceeding right now, which is why the midterms are so important.

and that led to dontrmp's first impeachment. That's what will happen. The rest of Danton's presidency will be gone unless Republicans keep the House. Now, look, you can have your equipmals with Republican party. Lord knows, I have many, many of my own objections, many of my own quibbles. But for the midterms this fall, but again will be primarily contested on domestic issues. The key point is this, who'se hands?

Whose hands should the House remain in. On the one hand, you have a shot at reforming social Security, at helping healthcare, helping affordability. On the other hand, all you're gonna get is impeachment theater. I know it's way, I'll be voting. We'll be right back after the break with Evan Levin

of AI and National Affairs. Welcome back. So there's really no one that we'd rather bring on to talk about all things midterm elections related, as well as the broader conversation that you may or may not have been paying attention to as to what the heck is going on on the American rite at this time. That man is you've All Levin. Y've all Levin is a very smart fellow.

I highly recommend that you check out all of his work, all of his writings, but for present purposes, you've all is a senior fellow as well as the director of Social, Cultural and Constitutional Studies at AEI, the American Enterprise Institute. He's also the editor of National Affairs, one of the most air udite journals on the American rights. I'm honored to have been published there a number of years ago.

Now probably overdue for another submission at some point, but in any event, you've all thanks so much for joining the Josh Hammer Show. We really do appreciate it.

the foremost Obama era critics of Obamacare. You've done a lot of the intellectual legwork putting forth alternatives to Obamacare, and we're currently in the midst of this continued fight as to the extension of Obamacare subsidies. Potentially there's going to be even another brinksmanship shut down fight in Congress

later this month. I keep on hearing from sources on Capitol Hill, including unlimited to congressmen themselves, the Republicans are working on a healthcare plan or some sort of alternative. What is that? Perhaps more accurately, you've all, what should it be?

gotten themselves out of that thicket. Democrats have solved it by advancing ideas that don't make sense economically, and Obamacare is one of those. It drove costs up and not down, exacerbated the problems rather than addressing them, and here we are, so many years later, essentially still stuck with its consequences.

The ideas that Republicans advance on this front tend to be ways of making the health system more market oriented, allowing more of a consumer market to form around purchasing insurance, and so that means allowing people to have more choice, allowing people to exercise more consumer power to face real prices.

At the center of that for a long time have been ideas like health savings accounts, and ways of enabling people to enter consumer markets with some subsidies that they can chew how to use, rather than have those markets replaced by government systems like Obamacare or like Medicaid. In a way, the debate we're having is very much a

traditional left right debate now. But I would say the problem with it is that it's driven by a short term problem, which is the temporary extension of the Obamacare subsidies, which it's really important to stress was a COVID era emergency measure. It was intended to last for one year to begin with, and then ultimately extended for another three years. Republicans the whole time, we're saying this is a trap, We're going to end up having to renew this forever.

The Democrats said, no, we're not, and here we are. We're going to have to renew it forever. That short term problem is a significant political problem for Republicans because really for two reasons. One, it drove up enormously the number of people in the Obamacare exchanges from about eleven million to almost twice that now at twenty one to

twenty two million people. And secondly, the changing electorate of the Republican Party, the fact that Republicans really are more of a working class coalition now means that a lot more Republican voters depend on these subsidies than was the case during the Obamacare debates, and so Republicans have to take this seriously, have to have something to offer on this front, and they've been stuck in a tough place, getting dragged around by the Democrats in this debate.

conversation is not limited to healthcare. I think back to the off off year elections a couple months ago and now in New York City, in Virginia, New Jersey, and pretty much all of the exit pollsters that I saw were unanimously reporting that the number one, two, three, four issues for American people in those jurisdictions was inflation, cost of living, affordability. Healthcare is a big part of this. Housing certainly is a big part of this as well.

What should the administry and their allies in Congress, and I think also crucially their allies in the States. What are some concrete things that you think that they should be working on and addressing in these next few months as we start to get ready for the midterms this fall.

Those are three areas where a lot of middle class families face costs that are exorbitant, unreasonable, and unconnected to the quality of what they're buying in ways that it is possible for public policy to help with. And the way in which it could help, first of all is by recognizing the ways in which public policy is causing

the problem. And I think that's fundamentally about the Democrats' basic approach to social policy, which is to restrict supply subsidizing demand, and so you set strict rules about what's allowed to be sold, and then you give people the money to buy the things they're being allowed to buy, and the incentives that kind of system creates as an incentive for higher and higher costs and lower and lower quality.

That's what's happening in every regulated sector, and it's very much the case in healthcare, and so the solutions look like deregulating supply while allowing consumer pressures to drive demand, so giving people more options and the real power to make choices. This is a problem in healthcare. It's not a simple matter. Healthcare is a complicated market. What you're buying is something you need in an emergency, when your

kid is sick, when your elderly parents need care. This is not a simple choice, and we shouldn't pretend it is. But that's why what's sold in that market is insurance more than care in the moment, and it's important to give people real options, to let them make choices among genuinely distinct and different options in healthcare we've really seen. I mean, this is this is essentially what Obamacare is.

It restricts supply, It says you're only allowed to sell these three kinds of products, and then it subsidizes demand. It says, whatever this cost, the government will pay for it. Well, what's going to happen in that kind of market is insurers have a reason to increase prices rather than reduce costs, and so over and over, that's what we've seen, and Republicans know in the abstract what the solution looks like, but they've never really had the nerve to propose a

major reform along these lines. John McCain did it to his great credit in two thousand and eight, and it was used to undermine his presidential campaign. Republicans have been afraid of it ever since, and so when they have to, when they're pressed, like right now, you hear them talking about, you know, various kinds of consumer measures. It's not their priority. It's not what they do most of the time, and I think we're seeing the effects of that.

our first break. We'll hold you over until the next segment, but for now, on a related topic, speaking of affordability, it seems to me that our seemingly annual trillion dollar plus deficits are not necessarily helping the matter when it comes to the pinch that the federal government find itself in, and all then the secondary tertiary effects when it comes to inflation, federal Reserve Monetary policy twenty twenty six, this is the first year that a US Senator could be

elected that will then face reelection twenty thirty two, which is the year that some say Social Security actually is looking to go bankrupt. So it's kind of a long winded way of teeing up this question for you, which is is there any chance that we see something when it comes to entitlements here or is that just ever a pipe dream?

a bipartisan coalition, it's in the other direction. There's now very broad agreement that we should basically do nothing about this enormous oncoming train. I do think it's connected to the healthcare debate. The biggest entitlement challenge is Medicare, much more than Social Security. It's growing more quickly, and you know that's an area where the kinds of reforms you need are again to allow people to use some consumer power to reduce costs. Republicans have had these ideas. They

know really how to solve this problem. Paul Ryan was advancing this fourteen years ago, and he was right. The fact is if we had done that, then we would be in a much better place on this front.

are totally out to lunch on. I myself have some national's populous instincts on some of these economic topics, but frankly, when it comes to the notion of intilent reform, it seems to me to be pretty pretty black and white. These things are going bankrupt, and they're going to go bankrupt probably in our lifetimes.

an enormous burden on younger generations. And they can be means tested, they can be reconceived in ways that would even better address the problem of poverty in old age, which has not been solved by sober security, but do so in a way that poses less of a burden. Look, we're a wealthy society. We can afford to help older Americans stay out of poverty, but we're doing it in a very profoundly foolish way. And the idea that politics means you can never change that, I think is just

something that we have to get beyond. It's not true.

So I imagine at times that you've found yourself as I've found myself as well, sometimes kind of wanting to pull your hair out when it comes to some of the extreme rhetoric that we hear in certain parts of what is typically the very online parts of the so called right, but increasingly it seems is starting to seep out into the moment as well. I kind of want to just turn over to you a pretty broad question.

Much to your great credit, you're actually not on social media, and to be clear that that is much to your benefit, and those of us who are on social media are suffering on a daily basis. But you've been in this game for some time now. You're really quite formidable during the Tea party days, the Obama era and so forth. There, how do you assess the current state of the right. I mean, I mean, maybe for those of us who are so online, is easy to kind of get lost

in the weeds a little bit. But do you think that there is is ultimately sufficient intellectual heft and policy seriousness that can get us through this very difficult moment that we're often in.

And there's no hope to win. However much we might be worried about the terrible things the left wants to do, we can't hope to succeed unless we offer that kind of vision. And for conservatives in particular, that vision begins from what we love in American life, not what we hate.

It has to start by what we're trying to defend, but what we're trying to conserve, and that's always a powerful way to speak to people, because what we mean by that is we want to conserve the preconditions for flourishing life, for family, for religion, for community, for real education, for meaningful work. That's what conservatives are for. That's what

we want to conserve. When we become too obsessed with what's dangerous about the left, and it is dangerous, but when all we have to say to the public is what we're against, what we're opposed to, and especially when in doing that we fall into these kinds of dangerous internal squabbles where frankly, we just take the margins much too seriously and we imagine that the fringes of the left and the right are really what matter in political life. We lose sight of what we're trying to achieve and

of how we might be able to achieve it. And so I think conservatives need to reconnect with the purpose of a conservative movement in a free society, which is to sustain the preconditions for that free society, to preserve what's necessary for us to be able to be a

free people. Right now, frankly, we're not doing a good enough job of that, and that means that we do have to reconnect with those core objectives, with those core principles, remind ourselves of them, as you have to do in every generation, and we can't expect the younger generation on the right to do this on its own. There has to be a reconnection with those foundations that reach us to everybody.

Staying on this note of trying to reimbue and reconnect those who are somewhat lost from the great titans of this American experiment, there, what are one or two nuggets of wisdom from the Federals papers, or perhaps if you would like, from other sources as well, whether it's Lincoln or elsewhere, But a couple of nuggets of wisdom, perhaps above all, on prudence and statesmanship for a moment like the current American rights pass.

you have, and fighting over what needs to be the direction of our society. That does start by seeing our fellow Americans as part of one society, and they can be hard when we're divided as we are, but it has to begin from that sense that when we talk about America, we're talking about us. The constitution. The first ward of the Constitution is we, not they, and that means that our politics requires us to be in constant

engagement with people we don't agree with. And the way in which that engagement can become practical for us is by letting the structures, the systems we've got in place work and force us into negotiation. Ultimately, politics in a free society is negotiation. The reason for that is the basic principle of the Declaration of Independence. Because we're all created equal, we can't have a politics of coercion in this country. We can only have a politics of negotiation.

And that's a demanding kind of politics. That means you've got to be willing to engage with people you don't agree with. It means you've got to be willing to build coalitions, to make some concessions in order to make some gains. I think not enough of us approach politics, but that practical prudential mindset. Now we think it's more pure to say, well, only accept everything we want. But that's not more pure. That's stupid. That's a way to lose. That's not a way to engage in a stronger kind

of politics. And ultimately, I think to cover the knack for coalition building, the sense that I could win this guy over, I do need to offer him something, but in return for that, I can get something that matters to me. That's what it takes for the politics of a free society to function. And I think over and over that's the core insight that we can draw out of the American political tradition. It's not a failure to engage in a politics of bargaining. That's actually what politics

is all about. And that doesn't mean compromising your principles. It means achieving something practical in the world in the name of those principles. I think seeing that we have in a sense confused strength and weakness. We think strong as weak and weak as strong. We think it's strong to stand outside and say these people are all failing. I don't want any part of it, when in fact it's strong to stand inside and drive the process in a direction that achieved something for what you care about.

dollars of taxes raised. I think I think it was only John Huntsman of Utah raise his hands. I mean that's that's not prudential. That is ideology, and frankly, our current politics, as you correctly note, could use a lot less zealous ideology and a lot more prudence and statesmanship. So one final time, folks, you've all live in as a senior fellow at AEI and the editor of National Affairs. Check them out at National Affairs dot com. All you

are a wonderful, wonderful scholar on the right. I thank you mosted by the Josh Hammers Show. We really do appreciate it.

our conversation with Yvlllevin here momentarily in related news. Today, January seventh is the one year anniversary of the Pacific Palisades Fire. You might have forgotten about the Pacific palis Ads Fire. You might have forgotten about the fact that much of the initial reporting and the internal investigations and the assessments as to what the heck went so egregiously catastrophically wrong much those conclusions seemingly have been memory hold,

they've actually gone away. You might have forgotten about all of the DEI controversy there in the Los Angeles County Fire Department, in terms of who the fire chief was, where the protocol was fired, and this and that. Frankly, I think back as well to the Maui, Hawaii fire. That fire was in twenty twenty three. It was two

and a half years ago. Now have we got accountability for either of these horrific conflagrations that burned up countless homes and killed tragically thousands, yes, thousands, of innocent Americans. This is now part of a long, long and very

sad trail of unfortunate events. When it comes to lack of political accountability for lack of justice, I personally start this trail at least as far back as the Russia Gates hoax, the Russia collusion delusion, the hoax back in twenty fifteen, this notion that Donald Trump was a Manchurian

candid running on behalf of Lammer Putin. Let's not forget about the Steele dossier, This bought and paid for dossier by the Hillary Clinton campaign, laundered through the shady political consulting firm Fusion GPS with the hoity toity white shoe

law firm Perkins Koolie. They're paying for it all long, and how that dossier did make its way into the infamous January twenty seventeen presidential Transition era Intelligence Community assessment, therefore justifying the spying on the campaign leading to the Crossfire Hurricane investigation, the Molar probe, and all and all that ended up engulfing half of the first Trump term. I think a lot as well about the infamous year

of twenty twenty COVID nineteen. Are you kidding me? There's been no accountability whatsoever for all that this nation, frankly the world endured when it came to the lockdowns of the COVID nineteen era. We will not know the full cost of many of these children who went an entire year or more of their lives not going to school, whose social skills, whose elementary education was retarded, was set backwards. We're not going to know the full cause of this.

For years, perhaps even decades. Have we faced any accountability whatsoever when it comes to that. Have we faced any accountability whatsoever when it comes to to the Hunter Biden laptop, and the FBI and the Deep States, all of them working in collusion with big Tech. The laptop comes out there a month before the election, in October of twenty twenty. The very next day, you have this infamous letter the

fifty one Deep State spooks. You have Brandon Clapper and the rest of the whole clown brigade linking arms with Jack Dorsey formerly of Twitter, and Zuckerberg and all the rest of them, and saying that this is Russian misinformation. Therefore, you can't even share the link on social media. I am are trying to DM that link to send a direct mess on Twitter. You could even DM it. How

we face any accountability whatsoever for that? How we face any accountability whatsoever for the myriad, the myriad scandals of the horrific presidency known as the Joe Biden tenure, arguably the worst four presidential years in history, at least in my book. In my ranking of this, the Biden presidency

ranks below even the Jimmy Carter presidency. How about the facts, most obviously, that the Democrats had a mental patient running the country, someone who was not even aware of the executive orders, of the clemencies, of the pardons, of the commutations, of the bills, of anything that he was doing. Dude probably didn't even know what day of the week it was. You could ask him on a Wednesday, what day the weekn is? Oh, I don't know some day Indian Why

he wasn't there? This is not an ageous thing. People get old. I have old grandparents. We all do. But in no world whatsoever was that man fit to run the nation in that particular state. Have we gotten any accountability? Do we even know who for large swaths of those four years was actually running the country on an effective data basis? I have my own thoughts on that. I'm not sure we know the answer. In fact, I'm pretty

sure we don't know. How about the lawfair Attorney General Merrior Garland and by the way, Thank god, Raric Garland did not end up on the United States Supreme Court. Recall that that was who Barack Obama nominated after Anthony Scalia passed away in February twenty sixteen. In one of the great all time Senate procedural maneuvers, Mitch McConnell and Shuck Grassley linking arms to block Merrick Garland from even

getting a hearing on the Santurtiary Committee. Thank goodness that that wildly, wildly zealous partisan did not end up on the United States Supreme Court, but as Attorney General and Joe Biden, Merrick Garlands presided over the most egregious use

of lawfair in this nation's history. So called Special Counsel Jack Smith, so called because he's actually not a legitimate special council as Clarence Thomas correctly deduced, and is concurring opinion to the Trump versus the United States Presidential Communiy case a year and a half ago at the High Court. But regardless, so called special Council Jack Smith attempting with

Merrick Garland. They are cheering him along, as was the President himself, Joe Biden, when he actually was able to pay attention and be convenident of what was happening before him. They were all cheering on the prosecution and attempted bankruptcy and incarceration of the then former and also as a casement be then future President of the United States Donald J. Trump. Folks, we have never seen this level of vindictiveness, of petty

vindictedness in our nation's history. How Jacksmith has not already had charges filed against him, as my colleague got the Article three project Mike Davis has been clamoring for for years. Correctly, so, there's at least one charge that stands out eighteen US Code Chapter two forty one for a conspiracy to deprive your fellow American citizen of his or her constitutional rights.

That is exactly but Jack Smith working hands in glove with Fannie Wills in Fulton County, Georgia, with Alvin Bragg in Manhattan, and with Tis James in Albany, New York. That's what all of them did together. I wait patiently for eighteen US Code Chapter two forty one to be invoked and ideally for Jacksmith to be prosecuted on those grounds. Folks. Zooming off for a second here, whether it's the one year anniversary of this horrific confagation in the Pacific Palisades

in Los Angeles County. Whether it's the Maui fire, whether it's Russia Gates, whether it's COVID nineteen, whether it's the twenty twenty election in general, but especially the whole Hunter Biden laptop and the Deep State spook letter dismissing its rush disinformation. We don't have accountability. We don't. A free republic can only long endure to take us back to

where conversation is a promise due with evol evant. A free republic can only endure when there is some notion of understanding your fellow Americans, as indeed your fellow Americans, that we have more in common with them than we do not in common with them. That means that at least to some extent, we have to consume and process

the same information. We cannot be incredibly deeply euremically siloed in our own silos where we consume different information we process information, then we deduce wildly differing, perhaps even irreconcilable conclusions as to what to do for the country. In other words, we have to have some level of baseline

trust in institutions, in narratives, and so forth. The corporate press has done more work than we could possibly elaborate on this show to discrete itself and the ability of American people to take the core press at their word. But this is our very difficult, arduous task, is to try to get some justice for the great gas lightings of the American people that we have endured now for

years and years. Only with some kind of juice, only with some kind of accountability, can we begin to trust the ruling class again, to trust media elites, to trust elites in both the public and the private sector. And only then by it once again having some baseline level of trust in elites and some baseline level of acceptance, can we work together in this quid pro quo style negotiation or the deal style negotiation that you've all lived in was so correctly describing as being one of the

great inherited inheritances of the American political tradition. There is really really a lot of work to go to get us back to that there. But we need accountability. The American people are thirsting, they are thirsting for accountability. I don't pretend that's going to happen tomorrow. I don't pretend it's going to happen after that. But you want to shut up the conspiracist kooks. You want to get this nation back to work in a meaningful, earnest sense. Accountability

and justice, folks, that's what we need. I was always hoping you enjoyed today's episode of The Josh Hammers Show. Make sure to subscribe to our show everywhere to get your podcasts, and watch it every evening on the Sale New Channel until tomorrow. I'm Josh him