President Biden was clearly a senile empty suit. But what does that mean for the final actions of his presidency? Late Sunday night, President Trump announced that Biden's pardons don't count because they were simply issued by Autopen-wielding staffers without his control. Will Trump's take hold up in court? Blake and Andrew react, and then Josh Hammer makes the case for why a strong alliance with Israel is a part of America-first politics. Watch ad-free on members.charliekirk.com! Get new merch on charliekirkstore.com!Support the show: http://www.charliekirk.com/supportSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Hey everybody, Andrew Colvin in for Charlie Kirk and the Charlie Kirk Show team.
Charlie's out today, so I'm anchoring alongside Blake Neff.
We have a really robust discussion about Autopen.
Is it real?
Should we pursue it?
Are the pardons of President Biden, Nolan Void, so much more?
We don't know the question, but it's a fascinating discussion.
Then we bring in Josh Hammer, who is the author of a new book, Israel and Civilization.
We dive into some of the stickiest.
Hardest to understand issues of Israel.
And you're going to get educated in this interview.
Josh knows this topic inside and out.
Great guest.
Great conversation.
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Here we go.
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Andrew Colbert in for the one and only Charlie Kirk, who is out.
He's a little under the weather, but I'm being told he's on the mend.
It's myself, who I'm always honored to be with all of you, and Blake Neff, who's in studio.
Blake, on my list are egg prices, hooties, and terrorists, reciprocal.
So those are things I want to get to.
You pick which one of those, or maybe surprise you with another one.
I mean, should we talk about the Biden auto pen thing?
We've totally not talked about it.
Okay, we can talk about the Biden auto pen thing.
I'm sure we've got a clip of this.
Blake, why don't you set the stage, and I'll see if we can get the right clip here.
Yeah, so this dropped last night, I think after midnight Eastern time.
So this has been building up for a few weeks.
People in the right-wing media have been talking about this, but I think it was something linked with Heritage did a review of Biden's executive orders or his pardons, and they noticed all of the signatures are completely identical.
He clearly signed them with an auto pen.
And the follow-up...
The thought some people have had is Biden is signing all of these with an auto pen because he's totally out of it.
So people are actually just signing things in Biden's name while he's not aware of it.
And this led some people to follow up by saying then if Biden wasn't aware this was happening, it's invalid.
And I didn't give too much thought to it, but one person who did is President Trump, who last night came out.
And said he's declaring Biden's pardons to be null and void on the grounds of Autopen.
And as a result, for example, he suggested he could investigate the people on the January 6th committee.
My personal guess is this won't legally hold up because there are constitutional mechanisms for a president who is incapable.
You can invoke, I think it's the 25th Amendment, and you can say, Well, he's incapable, so the vice president is assuming the power of acting president, or the cabinet is to declare this.
And Congress can also act through—they have the power of impeachment, for that matter.
So if the cabinet and the vice president are basically colluding to say the president is fine, I don't think there's a lot of room for the next president to come in and say, actually, he wasn't fine, and it's null.
Also, Biden's still around.
He clearly, even though he's in bad decay, he's still capable of speaking.
He did deliver a farewell address.
I imagine he could show up in any court and say, yeah, I approved all of these things.
They weren't exactly done in secret.
But it'll be certainly another showdown for the courts to litigate.
And like I said, I'm kind of glad if we're going to have a big showdown with the courts that we're having it over the Trendy Aragua thing rather than this.
Yeah, I tend to agree with you.
I mean, I know that the MAGA base is excited about this Autopen thing because, you know, who's on that list?
It's Adam Schiff.
It's Adam Kinzinger.
Two of the worst Adams ever, by the way.
Can we just all agree on that?
It's Dr. Anthony Fauci.
It's Hunter Biden.
But I think, to your point, I mean, it's not like Joe Biden is, you know, is...
Passed on or something, you know, or incoherent at this point.
He can simply say, listen, this was my will.
You know, I wanted these pardons to be executed.
And, you know, I tend to agree with you that looking forward, I get the desire of the base to go after these people, to simply say, there is no pardon available.
We're going to take these people out well-deservingly.
But I think it's shaky legal grounds.
I just want to set everybody's expectations.
It's not that I don't understand where people are coming from and sort of the inherent excitement about this.
And it is disrespectful.
I think Trump had a clip here where he basically said, you know, this is disrespectful to the office, first of all.
And I totally agree with that.
The fact that the president of the United States didn't take the time to actually sign the legal documents, the binding documents of this country and was using Autopen is...
Massively disgraceful and disrespectful to the office.
Beyond that, I don't know if it's on steady legal footing.
Let's go ahead and play Cut 79. This is Trump talking about it.
We have thousands of murderers that Biden and his incompetence, he's always grossly incompetent, but that Biden and his people and his probably auto pet, it looked like we had an auto pet for a president.
And we would have been better off if we had, probably.
But it looks to me like, you know, that's a big subject.
I'm sure you won't ask about that.
But the whole subject of Ornopet, did he know what he was doing?
Did he authorize it?
Or is this somebody in an office, maybe a radical left lunatic, just signing whatever that person was?
That's not what it's all about.
I never use it.
I mean, we may use it as an example to send some young person a letter.
It's nice.
You know, we get thousands and thousands of letters and letters of support for young people, for people that aren't feeling well, et cetera.
But to sign pardons and all of the things that he signed with an autopad is disgraceful.
Yeah, and he's basically saying they're null and void, and Trump...
Then later goes on to say, it's not my decision.
That would be up to the court.
But I would say that they're null and void because I'm sure Biden didn't have any idea what was taking place.
You know, with so many battles on the horizon, I tend to agree with you that it's probably not.
The number one fight that I would pick right now, Blake.
Yeah, exactly.
It's understandable.
The Biden administration was awful.
We all hated it.
There's a lot of grievances against it.
And there's a lot of bitterness over...
It was very ugly.
He went and he just pardoned his son in a flagrantly corrupt manner to make sure he couldn't be held accountable for stuff that we basically all know he did that was incredibly corrupt and criminal.
That stinks.
But I think this is kind of grasping at something that wouldn't ultimately be productive.
The best revenge is to govern well and...
Anytime we spend on basically trying to re-litigate the January 6th committee when we already won the election, we already pardoned the people who were persecuted by that committee, the need to go all the way and like, oh no, it's not over until Liz Cheney is a defendant in court on a criminal charge.
No, that has way more potential to go wrong than it has potential to go right.
And it's just better to make Liz Cheney angry because we haven't started a war for four years.
Make Liz Cheney angry because we disassembled the intelligence, espionage, domestic surveillance state.
Make him mad for that reason.
Let me counter it with just one thought here, though.
And to the base's credit, you know, I don't think it is about revenge.
I think it's about accountability on some level.
And I think this comes from a good place with the base.
Maybe this is a rabbit trail that gets us distracted.
But, you know, Trump has proved that he can, you know, to use the leftist favorite expression, walk and chew gum at the same time.
Let's just go after all of this at the same time.
Add it to the mix, you know, because the fact that we were forced to endure this charade.
of a presidency where he was obviously in cognitive decline.
He had Sundowner syndrome.
That's my theory, that he was basically good between a very narrow window after a certain time.
We saw this in the debate, which ultimately led to the downfall of his candidacy to run for a second term.
You know, it's like we have to restore law and order.
We have to restore a sense of dignity in the office of the presidency.
We have to You know, the legitimacy of a cognitive, in-charge executive.
And so I understand the desire to look back and say, hey, these things weren't right.
And if we don't address them and we sweep them under the rug, that's not good either.
I agree with you.
Is it my favorite fight?
No, but I understand why he wants to pick it, and I understand why people are excited about it, because there was so much injustice done and perpetrated against the American people, and so much of it is still very offensive to them and very offensive to me, and so I understand it.
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I'm joined now by Josh Hammer, who is the senior editor-at-large of Newsweek, host of The Josh Hammer Show, and also author of the new book, Israel and Civilization.
Josh, welcome to the show.
Congratulations on your new book.
As somebody who's been...
In and around books.
I've not written one myself, but been in and around them and helped Charlie with his books, launching them.
It is no small task, and so congratulations.
It's just an accomplishment to get it done.
Second of all, to have one of such import with your book on Israel, which is at the top of a lot of people's minds these days, obviously.
So congratulations, my friend, and welcome to the show.
Andrew, I really appreciate that.
It is a lot of work.
It's the kind of thing that I said I wanted to do for years.
It took me a lot of time to finally kind of get my butt and start moving towards the finish line there.
But once it started, it was kind of just free-flowing.
It was a lot of fun to write this book.
And, you know, God willing, Andrew, it's going to be successful.
It's actually number three on Amazon.com right now for literally all the books.
So it's off to a very strong start, actually.
So we'll see where it is at this time next week or so.
But we're off to a great start.
Well, congrats.
That's fantastic, Josh.
So Israel and civilization, the fate of the Jewish nation and the destiny of the West.
I see what you did there, Josh.
And I actually happen to agree with that.
Now, I am not Jewish.
I am a proud American first, American, red-blooded, homegrown.
This is my country.
I love Israel.
And so I wanted to talk to you about this today because I think it brings up a lot of questions about what role does Israel play in our foreign policy?
If you are not Jewish, how should you think about Israel?
It has become dramatically more controversial.
Post-October 7th, which I find somewhat appalling, actually.
But I think there's valid questions to bring up.
But in that subhead specifically, Josh, you tie the fate of the Jewish nation, Israel, to the destiny of the West.
Why do you tie those two together?
What is the thesis statement there?
All right.
So, Andrew, let me take the foreign policy part first, and then we'll kind of go back to the latter part there.
So the foreign policy part, and I'm really happy that we're talking here on this show because, you know, Charlie's amazing audience is exactly who I want to understand this message here.
We're talking here about foreign policy realism.
I, like you, Andrew, I'm a MAGA America First foreign policy realist.
I have been criticizing neoconservatives for longer than I think most people have even known what the word neoconservative means here.
I am a genuine national interest foreign policy realist who views every single foreign policy issue around the world through a essentially...
Fairly singular lens as to whether or not involvement in this fear redounds to the American national interest.
I actually have an entire chapter in this book making the MAGA America First foreign policy realist case for close-knit U.S.-Israel relations.
Frankly, it's not a particularly difficult case to make because Donald Trump literally did it over the entire course of his first term.
His entire first term was just a one grand extensive example as to the realist MAGA America First case.
We absolutely do have to reprioritize resources towards the Indo-Pacific.
The relevant question, Andrew, is how do we do that while simultaneously safeguarding our interests in the region?
You saw Donald Trump just this weekend, actually, in this lengthy post on Truth Social, talk about, for instance, the importance of the Red Sea, which is a core intervention.
We just saw the Bourbon Street Massacre.
Tragically, on New Year's Day, just two and a half months ago.
So the question then, the question, Andrew, is how can we make sure that America's interests are secured in the Middle East while simultaneously allowing us to...
ourselves prioritize on the Indo-Pacific.
And the solution is to embolden our like-minded allies in the region to patrol this region essentially on our behalf.
That was the whole purpose of the Abraham Accords.
That's why I mentioned the Trump foreign policy from the first term.
This idea that you will embolden Israel, that you will strengthen U.S.-Israel ties, bring Israel into these peace accords with, in that case, the UAE, Bahrain, Morocco, and Sudan, and then essentially pass them the baton and say, okay, You know, you guys do your thing because your enemies are our enemies there.
When you're knocking off this jihad or that jihad, you're basically doing both of us a favor there.
And last year, there were actually some very important, concrete examples of this.
This is actually in Chapter 6 of my book there.
So, for instance...
There were a few months, Andrew, last year where Israel kind of went on this Michael Corleone kind of godfather-esque, you know, revenge killing spree.
And among the leading jihadists that they killed there, they basically took off the entirety of the Hezbollah leadership up to and including Hassan Nasrallah, the longstanding leader itself.
But before they got Nasrallah, they knocked off two individuals who I like to mention.
One guy named Fuad Shakur, the other named Ibrahim Akil.
Why do I mention these two guys by name?
They were the ones who were responsible for the 1983 Beirut-Lebanon bombings of the U.S. Marine barracks and the U.S. Embassy.
In fact, the U.S. State Department had a $5 and $7 million bounty on those two jihadis' head.
For over four decades, until Israel literally did the job for us there.
So this notion that America does not in any way benefit here, this notion that we don't have the same enemies, it's ludicrous.
We have exactly the same enemies there.
And this is, frankly, a realist way to focus our resources on the Far East while essentially securing our interest in the region.
So it's a perfect fit for a foreign policy realism.
This notion that Israel is kind of this antiquated Bush administration, neoconservative issue, it's total nonsense.
Frankly, actually, a lot of the neocons aren't actually even particularly stalwart supporters of the state of Israel there because they're obsessed with the idea of nation-building.
They're obsessed with the idea of trying to democratize, and they oftentimes get too involved in trying to carve out a brand-new Palestinian Arab state and all the same failed experiments that ultimately met their...
Their ruination in Baghdad, Iraq, and so forth there.
So it's actually the neoconservatives, frankly, who are oftentimes not great supporters there.
I happen to think that U.S.-Israelitians are a perfect fit for a foreign policy, realist, MAGA, America first paradigm approach there.
But the broader book, and pardon my filibuster there, but the broader book, Andrew, is making this fundamental case that Jews and Christians also have to be lockstep, arms to arms, linking arms, shoulder to shoulder here.
We say that Western civilization is at a crossroads.
We're at an inflection point.
And I totally agree with that.
But I'm also a lawyer, Andrew, and I like to define terms.
What is the West?
Well, I mean, you know, we kind of sort of know.
You know, it's Jerusalem.
It's Athens there.
But to me, when we say the West, we're really talking above all about the Bible.
We're talking above all about the Judeo-Christian heritage.
I argue going back all the way to God's revelation to Moses and the Israelites at Mount Sinai, so much of what we take for granted today.
In our constitutional structure, in our day-to-day lives, in our law, in our morals, in our ethics there, it all goes back, actually, to what we Jews call the Torah, what Christians call the Old Testament.
So much of it is in there, there.
And I really painstakingly kind of explain this in the chapters and all throughout there.
But the point, Andrew, is that unless we in the West, Jews and Christians, shoulder-to-shoulder, linking arms in lockstep accord here, unless we double down on our biblical heritage, I do not think that we are going to be adequately equipped.
Josh, I actually think one of the strongest...
points that you can make in defense of your thesis is the approach that President Trump took to the Middle East and specifically to Israel in his first term.
And what we saw from that is that we had an outbreak of peace for once in that region, and it quickly fell apart without strong American leadership.
But I think when America waffles on Israel, we emboldened
And that is one of the strongest sort of practical Foreign policy positions that you can assert in this space without making it about some abstract, you know, moral good this way.
But it really comes down to the fact that peace is good for the economy, right?
It's good for oil prices.
It's good, you know, we talk about the Houthis right now.
There's a great clip from Marco Rubio that I'm actually going to play, where he's just talking about the importance of that trade lane, which is super important to American interest.
Let's go ahead and play that Cut 75. Well, first of all, the problem here is that this is a very important shipping lane, and in the last year and a half, the last 18 months, the Houthis have struck or attacked 174 naval vessels of the United States, attacking the U.S. Navy directly 174 times,
and 145 times they've attacked commercial shipping.
So we basically have a band of pirates, you know, with guided precision anti-ship weaponry.
And if the exacting atoll system and one of the most important shipping lanes in the world, that's just not sustainable.
We are not going to have these people controlling which ships can go through and which ones cannot.
And so your question is, how long will this go on?
It will go on until they no longer have the capability to do that.
Josh, this is an example of the moral clarity of the Trump administration by contrast of this waffling of Joe Biden.
Joe Biden did support Israel, but he was sort of...
It was mixed signals.
We were funding Hamas at the same time, and we were emboldening Iran and the enemies of the West.
And this is the last point I'll make, and then I'm going to throw back to you, is that if you are an American who is frustrated with our support of Israel, never forget that the same Islamist forces that want to destroy Israel want to also destroy America.
They want to destroy the West.
They want to...
They want to subdue us.
They want to subjugate us.
And they will do it over the long term.
They'll do it by slowly coming in and then demanding more rights, having more children.
You're seeing this in certain neighborhoods of the United Kingdom, all over Europe.
So whether or not you even buy into these larger civilizational arguments, if you just simply understand that radical Islamism is...
Out to get the West and to subdue all of us, not just Israel.
I think that's another piece that is important to realize when you talk about foreign policy realism.
One minute, Josh, your reaction.
Yeah, look, I'll give you just one example that really kind of drives this point home.
So I was giving a talk in Washington, D.C. this past summer to a generally younger audience.
I kind of noticed this guy who was dressed a little funny standing in the back who was like...
Very vigorously nodding along to what I had to say.
So he approaches me afterwards.
He's from Iran.
He grew up in Tehran there.
Andrew, he told me that growing up in his K-12 and his education there, their equivalent of saying the Pledge of Allegiance every day, like we in the United States do, their equivalent to Iran is they basically say, I solemnly vow to do all that I can to help destroy the little Satan of Israel and the great Satan of America.
They actually believe this stuff.
I remember, Josh.
Yeah, go ahead.
No, I'm just saying, I mean, like, they actually genuinely believe this stuff.
I mean, like, they really are out to get all of us.
Hamas, Houthis, Hezbollah, but not hiding in Andrew at all.
No, I totally agree.
We see it all the time when I visit college campuses.
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Josh, this is a question that perplexes a lot of Americans and actually kind of frustrates the whole Israel discussion.
Jews in Israel are actually pretty pro-Trump, especially the more religious ones.
Jews as a country are pretty favorable towards America, but Jews in America tend to vote left still.
Are we seeing movement on that front?
Are we seeing Jews in America get behind MAGA, get behind conservatives, get behind President Trump more?
Are we still stuck in like 70-30 or whatever it was?
You know, it's been historically stuck at this overwhelming majority for Democrats.
Great question.
Lots went back on that, actually.
So you're totally right.
If you look at foreign countries' approval ratings of the United States, the state of Israel, Israelis as a whole, have an extraordinarily high approval rating of the United States, certainly of President Trump.
President Trump, as you can imagine, because he's so pro-Israel, is a wildly, wildly popular figure.
In Israel, they literally named a town after him, Andrew, called Trump Heights in the Golan Heights.
I know because I've been there because I've literally driven by and took a photo of it just for the memories there.
He's an extraordinarily popular figure there.
Here in the United States, it's complicated for a few reasons.
I guess I'll explain it this way.
The problem, Andrew, you're a Christian.
Politics is very often downstream of religion, okay?
And when you have a strong biblically-based worldview, you're more likely than not going to end up with a conservative political worldview.
That is why evangelical Christians, traditionalists, Catholics, Orthodox Jews—I mean, Orthodox Jews— Vote for Trump at like an 80-20, 85-15 rate.
I mean, so-called ultra-Orthodox Jews, a.k.a.
Haredi Jews, it's literally like 95 to 5. I mean, it's beyond overwhelming margins.
They vote in blocks, too.
They tell each other how to vote.
I mean, you see this in neighborhoods in New York, and I'm jealous of it.
I love the unanimity of it.
Yeah, I mean, I'm religious.
I go to Orthodox services there.
The notion that you would find essentially anyone here where I go to synagogue in South Florida, you would be hard-pressed to find virtually anyone who voted for Kamala Harris.
It's totally not a thing, honestly.
The problem is that demographically across the United States there, tragically, tragically, most Jews, the statistical majority of them, are not Orthodox, are not religious there, do not observe all the various commandments of Jewish law there.
And it's because of the secularization of large swaths of American Jewry, of the American Jewish people, that is why so many of them vote for left.
So one of the audiences...
For my book, Andrew.
I mean, I have a lot of audiences here.
I really want to reach young Christians.
I want Christians to fall in love with the Bible, with the Old Testament again, with everything from Genesis through Psalms and Proverbs and all that.
All that's in there.
But I also have a special message to my fellow Jews as well because I actually grew up quite secular.
I have not become religious until the past few years or so there.
And part of my message is actually, like, I did it.
You can do it too.
I mean, you know, the Jews are called, Andrew, to be a light unto the nations in the book of Isaiah there.
And the way that we are called to be a light unto the nations is to actually lead by trying to be holy, by trying to be moral, by actually observing God's law, the law of Moses, and so forth there.
So we have a very unique role to play in kind of the grand scheme of things there.
And I really make, and at times probably aggressive, borderline acerbic arguments to my more secular, inclined Jewish brethren, basically saying, like, you guys really ought to strongly consider doing this for real the same way that I made a...
Conscientious decision at some point that I was going to start doing it for real as well here.
So God willing, as the religious demographics here in the United States change, the political results will change too.
The good news, Andrew, is that statistically the demographics are on the side of Orthodox Jews because Orthodox Jews are actually marrying fellow Jews.
They're having a lot of children.
They're having large families.
Reform Jews are typically marrying out.
They're not really having children because they're just secular like other seculars.
Josh, we're seeing the same dynamic with Christians.
I mean, people of faith are getting married more often.
They're having more children.
Me and my wife, we have three kids.
Across my friend group, it's all the Christians that are getting married having kids.
It's going to be unclear how this plays out in 20, 30 years, but certainly we have a chance to outbreed these people.
I mean, I think that's a totally valid...
I mean, if the Muslims are putting that strategy in place, like...
People of faith and Christians and Jews, faithful Christians and Jews should be doing the exact same thing.
100% agree with that.
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I really wanted to ask you a question specifically because you and I were texting back and forth when this news sort of happened originally.
And it's gone back and forth.
I'm not sure where we stand, but the issue of Gaza.
Do you address that in your book?
And if you don't, what do you make of it?
And then I want to ask you one follow-up question about Israeli judicial activism because it plays into the news cycle now.
But Gaza specifically, what do you make of it?
What do you think needs to happen?
What's the humane thing?
What's the politically expedient thing to do?
Your take, Josh.
All right, so I finished drafting the book, Andrew, this past October.
So before the 2024 election, I mean, well before Donald Trump shocked the world with his comments about how the U.S. will take over Gaza.
So none of that is addressed in the book.
I do talk in the book certainly about the need to finish the job against Hamas, a U.S.-recognized foreign terrorist organization, an organization that slaughtered and raped and beheaded and took hostage many American citizens as well, by the way.
You know, it's funny, Andrew.
There are some people who kind of pump their chest and say, America first.
But, like, Americans were literally slaughtered.
Americans were literally taken hostage.
I mean, October 7th, even on its own America terms, was the single largest American hostage crisis since Tehran in 1979 under President Jimmy Carter there.
So Hamas has to go.
And the question right now is, frankly, whether or not Prime Minister Netanyahu gets the message and acts on it because President Trump admirably has been crystal clear.
He has been above and beyond.
Do what you have to do.
There will be hell to pay and this and this there.
So the question, frankly, is really what Israel do.
The ball is, frankly, in Israel's court when it comes to eradicating Hamas.
In terms of what the actual future and the long-term settlement of Gaza ought to be, look, Andrew, in my heart of hearts, I would prefer that Israel take it over.
I'm not enamored with the idea of the United States having a permanent presence there, frankly.
It's not my instinct because...
I'm not an imperialist.
I'm a nationalist.
I fundamentally get a little skittish when it comes to the idea of America as kind of having an ever-increasing global footprint around the world.
I'm open to the idea, okay?
I'm not totally opposed to it.
I would like to hear a little more details as to exactly what President Trump has in mind.
He obviously is an outside-the-box thinker, and I'm very open and willing to be persuaded here.
In my heart of hearts, I do think it's best...
In theory, if Israel takes it over.
But unfortunately, Andrew, something does have to happen to the Arabs there in order for Israel to take it over there.
And that's kind of where this other part of Donald Trump's plan comes in there.
You've got to try to put massive sticks and carrots diplomacy on Jordan, on Egypt, and trying to get them to bring in lots of these Arabs there.
I think pragmatically, realistically, the most likely thing that's going to happen in Gaza, if we interpret Donald Trump's stance as an opening bid, the most likely stance, Andrew, is...
Probably you'll have the Saudis, the Emiratis, the Bahrainis, these various other wealthy Sunni Arab states that go in with some sort of consortium.
These are very wealthy countries.
They can build up the infrastructure fairly closely there.
The U.S. will be involved in some capacity to make sure these Arabs are not putting in a bunch of, you know, crypto-jihadis to basically make Hamas rise again there.
But that's my guess as to what it actually looks like.
Fair enough.
I like that idea.
I like that idea, Josh.
Now, I'm actually going to...
I've got a limited amount of time here, and I'm going to change my second and final question.
Charlie goes on campuses, and now about a third of the questions is about Israel.
I mean, the younger generation is obsessed with Israel.
And honestly, it's a lot of negativity towards Israel.
And one of the common things that they say about Israel is that they are – essentially it's an open-air apartheid state that they have been abusing their Arab neighbors.
I just want to give you two and a half minutes here to react to those accusations against Israel.
And I know you're an American.
You're not an Israel apologist.
But what would you say to that?
Sure.
So the notion that Israel is an illegal occupier, Andrew, is just legally incorrect.
And I guess I will just take 30 to 60 seconds to explain the international law here.
So the international law is basically as follows.
So the modern Middle East is carved up after World War I. That's when you get the British mandate for Palestine.
The British mandate for Palestine consisted of two parts.
You had the mandate for the Emirates of Transjordan.
That became Jordan.
Then you had mandatory Palestine.
That was the land of Israel.
And the mandate for Palestine actually included Judea and Samaria, a.k.a.
the West Bank.
This was actually the original two-state solution.
So quite literally, anyone who's literate with history could tell you that Jordan, about 100 years ago, was actually the so-called Palestinian state.
So what happened then was...
In 1948, Israeli War of Independence happens, and the Jews had previously accepted a smaller two-state solution.
The Arabs had rejected it.
They decided to invade Israel the next day.
You have a series of temporary armistice lines there.
These are not final settlement lines.
These are armistice lines.
And yes, it's true that Jay and Samaria was not part of that, but it was simply an armistice.
So there was no final settlement.
And under an international law principle known as Utiposididis Eurus, it is a commonly accepted international law maxim.
This is how it works with the breakup of Yugoslavia.
This is how it works in many African countries.
When a new sovereign state is formed, it actually assumes the inherited borders of the previous existing sovereign entity in that particular sliver of the world.
So when Israel was founded in May of 1948, it actually assumed the full borders of mandatory Palestine, aka included Judea and Samaria and Gaza.
So there's no illegal occupation going on here under international law.
Your political mileage may vary as to what you think is the best solution.
But the best solution, again, From an American national interest, emotionally detached perspective, is to embolden our ally.
Because our allies won who's taken out our enemies.
They're the ones who are hunting down the jihadis.
They're trying to kill us both.
What is in the American national interest of trying to carve out yet another Muslim terrorist state, let alone one in the heart of the Holy Land that could, God forbid, have custody over Jewish and Christian holy sites?
It's absolutely nuts.
It makes no sense whatsoever.
There is no, no, no American national interest.
That's zero, zero, zero.
So they're not an occupier under international law.
There is no compelling political case whatsoever to carve out yet another state.
Donald Trump, to his great credit, totally understands this, Andrew.
You know, this rise of the...
Sorry to interject here.
I just want to state one final thing here as well.
And Josh, great book.
A great job on the book.
Congratulations.
You're one of the most articulate defenders of this stuff, and you know the issues inside and out.
And I would just say, you know, there was essentially a two-state solution in place before October 7th and see how that worked out.
And remember that Israel...
Gave land for peace, and that peace has proven futile, unfortunately.
And so something does have to take place.
Hamas has proven that they are incapable of governing that area, at least in a peaceful, responsible way.
I don't know what's going to happen.
There's a lot of people there and it's a complicated solution.
I like your consortium idea.
Perhaps that's the right way forward.
But Josh, once again, congratulations.
And we'll have to have you on again soon to talk about it because it ain't going anywhere.
