The Eric Metaxas Show - Josh Hammer

Episode Date: January 30, 2024

Newsweek Editor Josh Hammer weighs in on the escalation with Iran.

Folks, welcome to the Eric Metaxus show, sponsored by Legacy Precious Metals. There's never been a better time to invest in precious metals. Visit legacy pm investments.com. That's legacy pm investments.com. Welcome to the Eric Metaxas show. Have you heard that some people have a nose for news? Well, Eric has a nose for everything. That's why this is called the show about everything. Now welcome your host, who definitely passes the smell test. Eric Mott, Texas. Yousa, yousa, yousa.

It's Monday. Hey, Chris. Hey. It's Monday. Is this hump day? I've lost track. After today, man, it's all downhill. Yeah.

So look, we have a lot of... We have a lot going on. So let me start... I'm going to start fast talking. First of all, folks, in a moment... Yes, sir. We're talking to Josh Hammer about... this is so gruesome.

It's not gruesome that three Americans died. That's tragic and sad. But gruesome is what we're facing as a nation with a lack of leadership would be putting it mildly, with an evil madman, ostensibly president of the United States, and three American soldiers killed by Iranians. So we're going to be talking to Josh Hammer, a political commentator about how Iranian-backed militia has killed three Americans and what this means for America.

So that's coming up in just a moment. In Hour 2, we're going to get crazy with either Peachy Keenan or John Smirak, we're going to see. And whoever we don't get for Hour 2 today, we will be tomorrow. But those are two of the most entertaining people I could ever talk to. Looking forward to that. Man, we've just got so much coming up. I'm speaking to a Holocaust survivor this week, a 91-year-old Holocaust survivor. But the big headline in our lives at this point is that on February 8th,

letter to the American Church, The Movie, the documentary film, is launching. Now, folks, people often say, hey, Eric, what can I do? I'm going to be straight up with you. What you can do is you can go to, uh, you can go to, uh, Epic TV, and you can pre-order tickets so that you can see it when it comes out on February 8th. That's number one. Another thing you can do is go to Letter to the American Church.com and sign up your church for a free screening. Folks, did I mention that it's free?

Why are we doing this? We're doing this because this is not a film we did to make money. We'd like to make our money back. That would be nice. Yeah, so we can do other stuff. But this is to get the word out. This is to get the word out. So if you're across the street from a woke church you don't like, sign them up too.

No, we're not kidding. Yeah, we're not kidding. Sign them up for a free screening because there are people that are on the fence. And as I've been saying more and more, the devil owns the fence. Do not be fooled. Part of what I talk about in Letter to the American Church, the book and in the documentary, is that many Christians, good Christians, have carved out this kind of third space in the middle where they're kind of neutral, that I want to be political.

I'm here to tell you that's not biblical. And if it's not biblical, it's from the pit of hell, right? It's not like sort of not biblical. When something is not biblical, you're serving the devil without knowing it. So the good German pastors and churches in the 1930s, they didn't know most of them what would happen because of their silence and their inaction and they're taking this preposterous, strained, you know, third way.

They had no idea, but now we know what happened. And it's why I am getting the word out by God's grace. By the grace of God, I should say, the Lord is getting the word out. He called me to write the book, Letter to the American Church, and he's called people to make the documentary film. It is spectacular. We've seen it. It's really tremendous.

So anybody who sees it will, you won't be bored. Let me tell you that. You've got to go to letter to the Americanchurch.com. Letter to the Americanchurch.com. So, you know, we went out to, I should say you actually went out to Hollywood. My flight was canceled, but everything was in hand to film it. And so there were people that worked on other films, you know, studio films that, you know, kind of came out and did this. Another word, it's a little bit in secret.

It's very well done. Yeah, it's really well done. It's made by Hollywood professionals. In fact, we were at a media thing, a private media thing in Tennessee this weekend. And we met in person, the gentleman who works for all these studios who colorized the film. Oh, yes, he colorized. had been looking at your face for weeks, literally. Right, well, because I was very,

I was, I was pickly pale in the way they filmed it, maybe looked pale, and I said, aren't you going to give me some color? And they said, oh yeah, you know, in post, like every, all the color, da, da, da, da, da, so he says, actually his wife said, my husband's the guy that colorized you. Yeah. And I was like, what? Yeah. And then,

like an old 1920s black and white film. Willie Robertson was there, Mr. Duck Dynasty. Yeah, yeah. And he was in on the conversation, and he said, they colored you up. They colored you up. That's like from the film in the film, Oh, Brother,

where art, that is you, they're going to love you up. They loved me up. They colored you up. Anyway, the point is, the film looks visually spectacular. Right. Like, it's not just fantastic colors. Like it had been a, if it was a mediocre film, they would have not bothered, right?

They would have just, you know, you get what you get and you don't get upset. Correct. That's right. You know, if you had bad sushi that morning, you're going to look a little green in the whole. So, so let me say, this also. I've said this many times on the program when people say, Eric, what can I do?

One thing you can do, I'm asking you sincerely, please go to Ericmetaxis.com, sign up for my newsletter because there's information we share there that we really can't share or don't share on the radio program. And we need your help. To get the word out about this film, letter to the American Church, we really need your help. So when people say, hey, what can I do? you can help us get the message out. It's a message that God gave me for his purposes, not for my purposes, not from my career. God forbid.

This is about God's purposes. And in America, waking up the church in America, you can be a part of that, folks. Let me be clear. You're supposed to be a part of that. Let me be clear. God has called you to be a part of that. If you say, I'm a Christian,

then you are the American church and God wants to use you to wake up those who are still sleeping because this is a crucial hour. I don't need to tell you when we have the possibility of World War III. We have an infinite number of strangers pouring across our southern border. And these aren't all sweet families, right? Like, I think if you're paying any attention, you understand that there are dark forces looking to exploit the weakness, the malfeasance of the Biden administration.

And it is a scary thing. And so the church needs to wake up. So please go to ericmetaxis.com. Please sign up for the newsletter. I say this very sincerely, please sign up for that, sign your friends up, because there's all kinds of information there that we want to get to you. And the other reason why we know this film is important is because it wasn't easy to make. There was a lot of sort of opposition along the way, and the number of hoops we sort of had to jump through to kind of birth this baby, so to speak, was, you know, we won't go into all the details. But it was not an easy process.

So the fact that it's out there and something we can share with everybody is really exciting and important. Absolutely. Absolutely. And I'm just doing a ton of media. to get the word out, all kinds of programs, you know, just to tell the world that there's a documentary film coming out February 8th. And we really do need to get the word out because, again, I didn't write this book for fun because I just thought it would be fun. I wrote this book because I felt God called me to get this message out to his people. And so it is crucial. So before, yeah. And I was going to say in terms of the metaxis media footprint, you know, this is the first of a few

things that we hope to make in the coming months and years. Speaking of Texas Media Footprint, Socrates in the cityplus.com, there is so much that's going to be on there. I just want to ask people again and say, what can I do? Go to Socrates and the city plus.com. It's five bucks a month. Please sign up. We need everybody to see what we're doing. There's new shows on there. I'm not going to talk about it right now. But really, really exciting interviews I've already done. They're only available at Socrates and City Plus.com. All of the events we do will be live streamed at Socrates and City Plus.

Socrates Plus.com live stream. So if you want to watch it live stream, you can't sign up. You can't pay for it. The only way to do it is to be a member of Socrates Plus. Drink the Kool-Aid and join. And I'm telling you, we got an event in Seattle coming up in a couple of weeks. We got an event February 29th, James O'Keefe. We've got an event in April.

Very excited. So, but if you want to watch them, watch them with your friends, you've got to be signed up for Socrates Plus. So go to Socrates in the cityplus. Finally, I went to a concert in New York City, downtown, Lower East Side Avenue A. It's kind of scary. Like some kind of hipster. Yes. And it was our friend Joseph Arthur, who's been on the program. We got to get him back on here. He's writing songs that, you know, they're about God. He's a Christian. But it's kind of like rock songs. It's not like Christian music. It's just like rock music. You know, it's kind of if Lou Reed or Bob Dylan became a Christian, which Bob Dylan did. It's that kind of stuff. Some of it is so beautiful and powerful. I said, I cannot wait until the album comes out. So we're going to get him on here. Anyway, folks, we needed to go to Ericmataxis.com, sign up for the newsletter. Would you do that? Please and thank you. For more than 10 years, Patriot Mobile has been America's only Christian conservative wireless providers standing behind their values and their exceptional service. They're an example of putting the cause ahead of profits, and it's why I am proud to

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Go to patriotmobile.com slash metaxus or call 972 Patriot and use promo code Friday 76. Again, get a free smartphone with promo code Friday 76. This is a limited time offer. Join me, make the switch today. Patriotmobile.com slash metaxis or call 972 Patriot. Legacy precious metals has a revolutionary new online platform that allows you to invest in real gold and silver online. In a few easy steps, you can open an account online. select your medals of choice and choose to have them stored in a vault or ship to your door.

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Josh Hammer, welcome. Thanks so much for having me. I really appreciate it. Well, I got to say it's great to talk to you, but the subject is a tough one. Three Americans were killed by Iranian-backed militia. It's a staggering thing to say. Young men killed by our enemies. Give us for people.

who haven't really heard about this. Tell us exactly what happened and who are the people that killed these Americans. So it is a terrible story, Eric, I wish we were talking for the first time under happier circumstances, but, you know, alas, that is what it is.

I mean, this is the Biden administration, this is the Biden foreign policy, this tragically is their legacy. So since October 7th, since the Hamas Pagram, the Hamas Holocaust, where you had up to 1,400 slain there in southern Israel,

Iran-backed militias have been firing indiscriminately at U.S. bases across the Middle East, particularly in Syria and Iraq. Last I checked, that number has been estimated now to be around 150 separate attacks. Now, that is actually not even including, Eric, all of the nonsense involving the Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen, which is a whole separate issue pertaining to the piracy and the commandeering of commercial ships there. and the fact that these thugs, these literal slave-owning Islamist thugs, have essentially shut down one of the most important waterways for global commerce. Holding all that aside, there have been 150 different attacks in Syria and Iraq. And unfortunately, Eric, it was only a matter of time. It was only a matter of time absent some sort of heavy-handed deterrent response,

which this administration has been woefully loath to do. Short of that, it was only a matter of time until there were actual casualties. It actually was just over a month ago. It was in late December around Christmas where there was another attack on a U.S. base and a U.S. Army soldier was left in a coma. In fact, he actually just woke up from that coma within the past week or so. So there had been very other close life-endangering calls, and now you have an Iran-back militia operating in northern Iraq,

roughly affiliated with a Shiite extremist group called Katayyib Hezbollah. No direct relation to Hezbollah. ball in Lebanon, but they're all related. They're all part of the same Iranian network of terrorist proxy groups. And like you said, you have tragically three dead Americans, at least 34 more injured. This is a U.S. Army base in the far northeast extreme corner of the country of Jordan. It is a strategic base because it's very close to both Iraq and Syria. It was very useful for the Trump administration when they were prosecuting their war against ISIS. And it looks like Iran has struck a very dangerous and indeed lethal blow to that. So what does? What is the United States? So what

is the point? In other words, is Iran trying to go to us into a war? I mean, that's my guess, that they are evil. They're satanically inspired maniacs. And they don't want peace. They don't want peace in Israel. They want war. They are kind of like end time. Proponents of, you know, Armageddon, let's bring it on. That seems to me their foreign policy. What am I missing? I don't think you're missing much. You know, there is this conceit by some in the foreign policy community that Iran can be treated as a rational actor on the world stage. You know, this is kind of getting back to the idea of mutually assured destruction versus the Soviet Union back during the Cold War. You know, the Soviets were atheists. They were not fanatical Islamists. And the

mainstream of U.S. foreign policy at that time and thought that you could trust the Kremlin to engage in some sort of sober analytical game theory that would prevent school. Of course. They don't think that they're going to go to be greeted by 70 virgins at the Kremlin. They were, or at least rational, but we are dealing with, like, really religious fanatics. And I'm just going to cut to the chase, satanically inspired religious fanatics, evil, cruel, slave-owning, wicked people. And so they, in a sense, have nothing to lose. They want to die. And so when you're dealing with them, if you're the Biden administration, which is naive would be the really sweet term,

you don't understand what you're dealing with. But then, of course, we've got Hawks like Lindsay Graham, who I think that they would enjoy World War III almost as much as the Mullahs. So where do you think this goes? Yeah, so, Eric, I totally agree with you. I mean, the U.S. has been essentially at war with Iran since the Islamic Revolution in 1979.

We don't call it a war, but we've essentially been a war with them. I mean, from the Beirut barracks in Lebanon in the 1980s to the bombing in Argentina. and Buenos Aires in the 1990s. Iran was involved with 9-11, as has been shown time and time again. Now we see what's happening in the Red Sea, the Army. We have been in a perpetual state of conflict with Iran for 45 years now. It hasn't exploded into a direct U.S. Air Force dropping bombs inside of Iran place, but we have been at war with this horrific fanatical Islamist regime. Now, as far as what the Biden administration can do from here, I also don't want to see World War III. I do not support Congress declaring war against Iran tomorrow.

You know, I saw the tweet from Lindsey Graham. You know, Lindsey Graham has never seen a foreign conflict that he doesn't like. He has never seen a foreign country that he doesn't think the United States military should be used as some sort of United Nations peacekeeping brigade to try to spread Manassonian or Jeffersonian democracy. I mean, you know, people should have been sobered by the lessons of Afghanistan and Iraq. Having said that, Eric, at the same time, given the fact that the United States currently has armed men and women serving all around the world, and we can have an academic conversation about whether people in Jordan, Syria, whether they should be called home, the fact is when you are having people there, salute the flag and serve your country and defend our way of life, you have to defend them. There is literally no other way out. So I think it would be irresponsible for the United States Armed Forces to start sending tanks into Iran to start bombing Tehran. That's not what I'm calling for. I do not want to see that. But you have to strike these militias.

You have to strike Hezbollah. You have to strike the Houthi rebels. You have to at least strike all the various tentacles of the Iranian sphere of Islamist fanatical influence. You can stop short of actual military action inside Iran's borders. But there is a lot short of that that you can do. Well, I mean, it is fascinating to me because this is what projecting weakness does. And this is why we have to get Trump back in the White House. because if you do not have that deterrence up front,

if you don't have a Reagan or a Trump projecting strength, you invite this stuff. And then once this happens, then you're already behind the eight ball and you've got to figure out, okay, now we've got to do something, but what do we do? What's too much? And we'd rather not be here.

And so to me, that's what's so fascinating, is that you have a kind of, we're seeing played out this year, an election year, what is the result of Biden? I always say Biden, quote, unquote, because I don't know who is behind the puppet that is Joe Biden, the husk, the corpse of the living dead, this guy, Joe Biden. And we all know he's not doing this. We know that there's a team around him of competent, wicked people. he's incompetent and wicked, different kind of wickedness.

But this is basically where we find ourselves under Obama and now under Biden. I mean, that to me is really the issue here, is that we're dealing here in Ukraine, potentially in Taiwan. We're dealing with projecting American weakness, projecting confusion, and inviting our enemies. And obviously, anywhere else on our southern border. order as well. Yeah, and there's a huge distinction to be drawn. I agree with everything you said, but there's a huge distinction to be drawn between prudently projecting strength and therefore deterring your enemies versus trying to democratize countries and civilizations and cultures that will never be democratized. So for, you know, for instance, there's a huge difference between

strategically placing aircraft carriers in the Red Sea and around there to prevent these fanatical slave-holding thugs like the Houthis from doing X, Y, Z things versus trying to, you to start up a new Democratic legislature in Kabul, Afghanistan, for 20 years. Those are not the same thing. Okay, so we have to, yes, I want to be clear, so my audience is tracking. There are people neocons, George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Lynn Cheney, Lindsay Graham, down the line. These people are not about prudentially projecting American strength to prevent World War III.

they seem to naively believe that if women in hijabes and burkas have purple on the end of their finger, democracy has sprouted in Afghanistan. They don't seem to understand the way, they don't seem to understand the founder's vision of what it is to have a republic and to have that kind of stuff. So they have this foolish idea, which Bush said in his second inaugural, I'll never forget it, that we seem to be able to very easily spread, quote, unquote, democracy around the globe. But it's democracy light. It's not actual democracy. It's a foolish way of, in a sense, being at war with everyone around the world because you seem to naively believe that you can spread American style. I mean, let me be clear because we're going to go to break.

We want to spread genuine American style. democracy around the world. We want people to have the freedoms that we do, but we have to be prudent. We have to be wise about what that actually takes. And the neocons seem to be naive about it. Anyway, we'll be right back. We're talking to Josh Hammer. We're talking about how Iranian-backed militia has killed three Americans. It's a horror. We need to understand what's going on. We'll be right back. Tell me why Relief Factor is so. successful at lowering or eliminating pain. I'm often asked that question just the other night. I was asked that question. Well, the owners of Relief Factor tell me they believe our bodies were

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Welcome back, folks. I'm talking to Josh Hammer, Newsweek podcaster, syndicated weekly radio show, editor at large for Newsweek. Josh, so I was just trying to kind of frame this for people because it is confusing. There was a time, you know, when the second Iraq war happened, when most conservatives, myself included, kind of thought, yes, this is what we need to do. We were, you know, pro-Bush. And in more recent years with the advent of Donald Trump, I think a lot of us have

woken up and said, wait a minute, we really bought something that we ought not to have bought. It was a naive view of American strength, of our ability to, you know, bring democracy to tribal societies that are still living in the Middle Ages. It was naive. It was foolhardy. It was arrogant. and it failed.

And so here we are. So where are we right now? In other words, under Trump, it seems to me, we were doing extremely well. He crushed ISIS, which Obama didn't seem to be able to do. But now we're kind of back where we were under Obama. It seems that way to me, at least. Tell me what I'm getting right or wrong on that assessment. I think what you just said is totally right, Eric.

the Biden administration is best understood as the third Obama term, the same actors who were back in Obama, they're back right again, people from Robert Malley to went to Wendy Sherman, the lead negotiators of the JCPOA, the Iran nuclear deal back in 2015. And, you know, that really, from a 35,000-foot altitude perspective, Eric, that really is actually what is going on here, is you had starting with the Obama administration and continuing now in Biden, which again is just the third Obama term, they have tried to re-orchestrate and realign the middle. East to be basically the exact opposite of what it was under both political parties for the past 50, 60 years. So traditionally speaking, pre-Obama, both Republicans and Democrats, understood that America's allies in the Middle East were Israel and the more moderate Sunni Arab states, countries like Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Bahrain, and so forth.

Then the Obama administration comes in there. They flip it all on its head and they start making nice with the Iranians and start making nice with the Muslim Brotherhood of which Hamas is simply the palace. Palestinian Arab offshoot. And that's what you see to this day. Now, it's really remarkable to an extent that the Iranian regime, which has been the recipient of so much bending over in generosity from both Obama and Biden, it says all you need to know about the Iranians, that they can't even stop bombing indiscriminately U.S. air bases given that. You know, anyone who's even remotely rational would have just taken those carricks and just shut up and sit back and go build

your illicit, hegemonic, possibly Holocaust-inducing nuclear weapon. But they can't even control themselves to do that because, as you said earlier, they really fundamentally are fanatical. This is a zealous, zealous regime. It fundamentally is evil. Again, I am not necessarily calling for regime change tomorrow in Iran, but at some point you do have to just state the obvious, which is that the world would be a better place if that regime ultimately were to go. Donald Trump definitely understood that he was, you know, he was not as doveish as many of his so-called America First boosters think that he was. He took out Qasem Soleimani, of course, in January. 2020. He put missile defense in central and Eastern Europe and Czech Republic, Poland, places like that.

He actually was fairly hawkish when it came to Russia, which I would argue was one of the reasons why Vladimir Putin never invaded Ukraine under his watch. So there's this whole kind of revisionist history of the Trump presidency. He was obviously not a neo-conservative president. He was not George W. Bush. But he did believe in peace through strength. And the Trump doctrine was a strong foreign policy doctrine that this country would benefit immensely from returning to the White House. Well, this is what's so interesting to me is that he was not an isolationist. You know, people think there's a choice between being a hawkish idiot, a foolhardy hawkish neocon idiot, like George W. Bush or Lindsey Graham or Nikki Haley, and being an isolationist. Trump was not an

isolationist. Putting America first means you don't do foolhardy things. It means that sometimes you have to be prudent and you have to deal with. evil and you have to figure out how do we contain it, how do we minimize its effects. And Iran is the perfect example of that. Like, of course, you wish you could wave a magic wand or send a couple of missiles and Iran is gone and, you know, a thousand Ben Franklin's bloom where the mullahs once were. But that doesn't happen. And so you have to have some kind of wisdom about how to deal with that. It seems that we have the opposite of that with the Obama-Biden administration. In other words, you have people. And imagine that

Kamala Harris is the vice president. Just imagine, ladies and gentlemen, what we're talking about, just a brew of incompetence that really is the handmaiden of evil. Because these folks not only don't have wisdom about how to deal with this, but they have, I don't know, I want your take on this, Josh. To give Iran what Obama gave Iran, the Obama nuclear deal, to give Iran, to give Iran, to give Iran what the Biden administration gave Iran very recently. It's a staggering thing. Is it wrong to believe that the billions given to Iran by Joe Biden and his administration opened the door to the sadistic atrocities of October 7th in Israel? Is there any connection there? Oh, yeah. Of course, there's a very strong connection there. Look, I think what you saw on October 7th,

So if you actually look at the rifles, if you actually look at these small arms that the Hamas militants were wielding, you know, traditionally speaking, back during the Cold War when the Palestinians were essentially kind of the cat's paw of the Soviets, I mean, it was the Kremlin who essentially invented the entire idea of Palestinian nationalism and brought Yasser Arafat out of exile in Tunisia. That was all a Soviet operation. Back then, the Palestinian militants held AK-47 Soviet-style rifles. If you look after October 7th, many were actually holding American arms. Now, the question is, where do those arms come from? Some of them presumably came from the money that we have given to Iran. Some certainly came as well from the arms that we left behind in Afghanistan. So it's a dastardly combination of those two things. But it's damning on the American taxpayer either way.

Hang on one second. I want to pick up right there, folks, talking to Josh Hammer. Don't go wait. Mike Lindell and MyPillow employees want to thank my listeners for all your continued support. To thank you, they're having an overstock clearance sale right now for the best prices ever when you use promo code Eric and you get free shipping for the entire order. Get 50% off the MyPillow 2.0 and the brand new flannel sheets that just arrived and won't last long. Get six-pack towel sets for only 2998 and take advantage of the free shipping on larger items like mattresses and mattress toppers 100% made in the U.S. USA on sale for as low as 9999.

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You can call 800-9783057. 800-9783057. 057 use promo code Eric this is Dennis Prager I am excited to announce the all new Pragertopia plus you can listen to my show whenever it's convenient for you all commercial free and all on demand now with Prager Plus search topics guests and segments all the way back to 2010 and now a truly exciting new benefit my monthly online video get together for Prager Topia plus members only this is where for an hour each month, Pragerotopia Plus members get an exclusive chance to ask me anything.

That's right, anything. It's on video. I'll be talking to you and answering your questions. We may even have a special guest every now and then. I've never done this. Submit your questions for me at pragatopia.com. This is only available to Prageropia Plus members. This is our chance to connect like never before. or go to Prigotopia.com or click the banner at Dennisprager.com. Welcome back, folks. I'm talking to Josh Hammer, who's coming to us from Miami, Florida. He's at Newsweek editor at large for Newsweek. All right, Josh, so you were just spelling out, you know, how the Biden administration giving money to Iran, I mean, it's a level of naivete to the point of wickedness, if it is naivete, I don't know what's going on.

And I don't know why Obama seemed to have a love affair with the Iranian regime. It's bizarre to me. It seems to be beyond naivete. Liberal naivetee toward evil is one thing. This seems to go past that to be somehow deliberately anti-American, anti-West. I can't figure it out. But you're agreeing with that. You're saying that it opened the door to what happened on October 7th.

Obviously, for all the money that we gave Iran, they are now killing Americans. They just killed three Americans. What is it about the Obama mindset? And I say Obama, because I get the people behind Biden are Obama's people. What is it about their mindset that they give your average American, your patriotic American, the impression that they're pro-Iran somehow? It goes past wanting to play nice with evil. It seems like somehow they want to see America.

I can't help but get that impression. Yeah, I don't think it's just an impression. I think that that is emphatically accurate. I mean, you heard Barack Obama on the campaign stump back in 2008, back in 2012. He was saying how America was not exceptional, how American exceptionalism is kind of this old foggy thing that we tell our children is not true. We all remember about Jeremiah Wright and what he said in that infamous church and things like that there.

So, you know, this is a man who was steeped in anti-American, anti-Western ideology. And in many ways, he is a creature of a very far-left academy, a higher education edifice that loathes Western civilization, that believes that Western civilization of which America is, of course, the most shining example. They believe that it is just one big experiment, not in ordered liberty, at the founding fathers would have said it, but instead they would say that it is one big experiment in colonialism and oppression and racism and all this stuff that we have seen metastasized in recent years in the form of the Black Lives Matter Antifa riots in 2020. the current wokeism. I mean, all these things ultimately do relate to one another. Frankly, Eric, I actually think that the current situation of the southern border in Texas also relates to this

as well. I think that Secretary Majorke is and President Biden, or again, whoever is actually calling the shots for Joe Biden because he's merely the puppet at this point, they are operating under the exact same mentality there, where they're trying to open the borders as a way, I think, at least to expiate their sins, to atone for America's sins because America is too rich, it's too white, it's too much of a colonialist, it's this, that. So I think that the grand flirtation with the Iranian regime, which by any account is one of the two most evil regimes on the planet, along with North Korea, those are probably the top two. It's a sordid way of thinking about it, but those probably are the top two. I think that there's no other way of thinking about trying to embole our allies in the region other than evil. I have long said that the JCPOA, the Iran nuclear deal, was not an act of rational policy where they simply miscalculated. I actually do think that it was an act of willful evil. Now, not every policy is like that. You can disagree on tax cuts, whatever.

But at a certain point, I fully agree with you that it does cross the thresholds from just being naive to actually being evil. And there's no other way to view this level of multiple administration, Democratic Party, capitulations to the Iranian regime other than evil. Well, it's interesting to me because this is where, to my mind, the only explanation is a spiritual one, where you're talking about evil. You're not talking about different views. You're not talking about different tax rates. You're talking about actual evil. And how does evil operate? Again, it's not an abstract thing.

There is something about... You just mentioned, you know, sort of this American guilt, expiation for American guilt. The devil, and folks, if you don't believe the devil exists, let me simply say, unfortunately he does. We can talk about that another time. But playing off of people's misplaced guilt is classic. because people feel like, oh, I'm a good person. I feel guilty about being American or white or male or whatever it is.

They feel like somehow that's good. I'm here to tell you it's actually bad. And the devil, the forces of evil, whatever you need to tell yourself so that you can feel sophisticated plays on that. So it's a mixture of many things. What's happening at the southern border, what happens in Iran, part of it is playing off of the misplaced guilt of, Westerners, Americans, whatever it is. Then, of course, you have really, really cynical stuff. I mean, the idea that, you know, somebody's making money off of these deals. For the neocons, they love, you know, to grease the skids of the war machine. There's money in it for them.

There's money in it for Nikki Haley. So for her, it's not, you know, American guilt. It's money, the illusion that we're projecting American strength when it's kind of a foolish way of projecting strength that's going to invite greater trouble. So it's really like a devil's brew, Josh, of many different factors. And I think that's why people get confused by it. I mean, you know, when you think about Angela Merkel inviting in the Muslim hordes, why? Because of German guilt for the Holocaust. So think about this, folks. Because of German guilt for the racism of the Nazi times, for the tribalist racism of the Nazi times, they thought, well, here's what we'll do. We'll invite in all of these strangers to expiate our guilt. Ironically, they invite people who share

the views of the Nazis about Jews or about the West. So there's tremendous irony. And, you know, the Bible says we're supposed to be wise as serpents and innocent of doves. The wise as serpents part, this is complicated stuff. When we're talking about evil, when we're talking about a southern border that's just been wide open. So, Josh, we're at a very strange time. We're at a very strange I guess is my way of summing it up because it's not it's not simple we're not dealing with the soviets no you're not and we're fundamentally not dealing in all respects with rational actors again I think that there are many different types of policy disagreements where we can have a rational sober conversation I'm happy to I'm happy to have an amicable policy infused conversation with

with a liberal cohort when it comes to tax rates or tax credits or things of that nature there But when you're talking about foreign policy on this level, when you're talking about what clearly appears to be a willful, willful desire to actively undermine the United States's own national interests, our own integrity, our own borders, our own sovereignty, all the above, it's very difficult to look at the other party and the other leaders and conclude anything other than you are dealing with evil and that our side, therefore, must win if we are to perpetuate this grand experiment in order of liberty. and I have many criticisms of my own side. I had many criticisms of the leaders, of the movements, the figures involved there. But at a certain point, you kind of have to come home and conclude that there is only one path forward right now. And, you know, certainly, Eric, I hope that Donald Trump does win this November. Well, Josh Hammer, a joy to have you on the program. Folks, please go to letter to the Americanchurch.com because we're living in very serious times.

We need your help. The American Church needs to wake up. letter to the American church.com. Check it out. Hey there, folks. Welcome back. I want to mention Socrates Plus. Now, I think I said this yesterday, but this is, it's a new digital streaming platform that we have launched. Socrates in the city plus.com. Socrates in the city plus.com. If you want to see anything in the future of Socrates in the city, you have to be a member of Socrates Plus. So it's like $5 a month.

If you do it for the year, you get two months free. But we've got a lot of upcoming events, and all the live streams will be unavailable unless you're a member of Socrates Plus. If you're member of Socrates Plus, it's free. So the live stream that, you know, that was set up in the last year or so, which was a new feature. That cost was what, $10? Something like that? Well, yeah, we would charge $10. And by the way, that was insanely cheap.

Right. Right. So. But that's no longer available unless you now have to be a member of Socrates Plus to watch the Socrates events. And we got a lot of Socrates events coming up. And I want to mention February 8th in Seattle. We have a Socrates event. I can't believe it's coming up so quick. February 8th in Seattle, Socrates and the city event with John West. We're talking C.S. Lewis, Scientism. Very, very excited to have John West. He's the head of the Discovery Institute. Institute and the Discovery Institute, they're the greatest. Half of my Socrates guests come from the Discovery Institute. They've been on this program. But that event is happening in Seattle. Now, by the way, if you're in the Seattle area or it can get there, you want to be there in person. It's very, very special to be there in person.

But most people can't get there. And if you want to watch it live, you have to go to Socrates and CityPlus.com and sign up. So I want to be very clear that we're shifting things now. Yeah. So we're getting with the time. To act, right, to access most of the content. And we have filmed an entire season already of Socrates in the studio. Yeah. And those are basically Socrates and the city conversations without the audience of 250 people. We just aired, well, we put them all out, but some of you know the guests that we have in this first season. We have Andrew Claven.

We have Margarita Mooney talking about beauty, wonderful, wonderful conversation. Arcus, Hadley Arcus, again, one of the greatest legal minds ever. I mean, he's a genius. He taught at Amherst for 50 years, but also very delightful and fun to talk to. So we had a conversation about natural law. You get a real education, frankly. Socrates and the city is about the life of the mind. So I guess I say this to people, and I might as well say it here, when people ask me,

what's Socrates and City? What is this stuff? A big part of it is the life of the mind that, you know, you graduate college and you want to continue to be living in the world of ideas and, you know, thinking and exploring truth. And that's what Socrates Plus will enable you to do because we're going to have way more. We used to just, you know, do an event now and again. But we've now filmed an entire season of Socrates in the studio. So you got Socrates in the city events.

So you got Socrates in the studio events. And then we have a number of other programs. When you go to Socrates Plus, you'll see the other programs. The one that I'm most excited about is a gentleman's guide. Yeah. It's going to freak you out, people. Yeah, it's sort of like, you know, the old Anthony Bourdain show, but it's you. It's way better than Anthony Borgaine.

And it's more, the subject matter is about, you know, being a gentleman and how to do that. Something like that. I don't know if I'm buying that. Well, you know, something like that. Well, it's terrific. All right. Socrates and City Plus.com, check it out. sign up, sign your kids up.

A letter to the Americanchurch.com, letter to the American church.com. We need your help in getting the word out. It is exciting. Free screenings available for churches only. It's terrific.