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