Josh Hammer, senior editor-at-large at Newsweek and the host of the Josh Hammer Show and America on Trial, spoke with Rabbi Pesach Wolicki, as part of the Arutz Sheva and Israel365 US Election Coverage of the US election.
Josh Hammer feels that this is a very special evening here in the United States, “I'm still kind of pinching myself. I can't actually believe that this really is the timeline that we are living through right now. Just a remarkable thorough repudiation of the failed policies of the Biden-Harris administration, of the failed ideology of the radical left, when it comes to everything from cultural rots to economic catastrophe. Fundamentally what I think it represents, really kind of boiling it down to its core here, is the American people have voted to end the madness and to restore a semblance of normalcy and sanity. It really is less of a traditional right versus left matchup, the way that I have preferred to phrase it and frame is in the way that I think the American people viewed it, between the radical and the sane. There is one party that wants biological males to be in school girls bathrooms and locker rooms and there was one party that says ‘no that's just crazy.’ There was one party out there that says that we can just flood God knows how many illegal aliens into this country, unvetted, who knows what kind of foreign terrorist ties they have, and there was another ticket out there, the Trump-Vance, that says ‘you know what, no that's actually crazy, and we're not just we're not going to do this.’”
Hammer says that, “Fundamentally, this is a repudiation of this idea that America is on one track, that will continue its elevation towards greater progressivism. It's kind of the Barack Obama mentality from 2008, that history is a one-way arc and it bends towards progressivism. The American people have rejected that, because leftism is fundamentally irreconcilable with America's DNA and it really is just morning in America again. Ronald Reagan would have said, 'It's a tremendous victory and it's a great day.' I truly do hope though that Republicans and Conservatives do understand the historical moment they have been given, when it comes to Republican control of the White House, when it comes to a commanding control of the US Senate, the US House, Supreme Court. This is full dominance and these opportunities don't come along every year. So my message to my friends in Washington is ‘eyes on the prize guys, day in and day out over these next four years. Let's make sure that we actually get some tangible stuff done for the American people.’”
“From a legal perspective,” Hammer says that, “of the four criminal prosecutions against Donald Trump, two are happening at the federal level and two are happening at the state or local level. At a federal level, it is fairly straightforward. Jack Smith is the special counsel, who has been appointed, probably illegally, but nonetheless he thinks that he is the special counsel nominated by Merrick Garland, our attorney general. Jack Smith’s investigations and prosecutions will be done come January 2025. There is really no doubt that the President of the United States and his attorney general can fire a special counsel. Period, full stop. End of story. There is very little doubt about that. So the Washington DC, case, involving January 6 2021 in the 2020 election, as well as the case here in Florida where I live, pertaining to the classified documents dispute at Mar A-Lago, are going to die come January 2025. Jack Smith really ought to do the correct and honorable thing and just quit right now, just give it up, because he's going to be “dunzo” formally about two to two and a half months from now.”
He adds that, “the two state level issues are a little more complicated, because there is not an inherent structural ability under our system of federalism for the President of the United States to simply dismiss a prosecution at a state or local level. There are a couple things here that are worth saying. One, there is a constitutional argument, we're in uncharted waters here. I think it goes without saying we've never been in a situation like this, where we have someone who has been found guilty by a Stalinist-sham jury trial back in May in New York City of these purported crimes become a president. None of this has happened, so we're very much kind of legally and politically trying to figure it out in real time. But there is a constitutional argument that the executive power of Article two of the Constitution prohibits a president from being incapacitated, from actually being behind bars. After all the Constitution presumes that you're going to have an executive who is physically capable of actually being able to implement the constitutional duty with which the framers vested Article 2 of the constitution. So, that's a very fancy legal way of saying that I think that there is an interesting constitutional argument, that the idea that you could put a sitting president under house arrest or imprisonment at a state level, is just totally constitutional verboden. Period, full stop. End of story.”
Hammer says that, “the more interesting thing to me is even if this legal argument does not fly, what do Democrats in these jurisdictions actually do, because Juan Merchan, who was the judge in this hush money case, the Stormy Daniels case in New York City, the one where they found him guilty on 34, still as of today vaguely defined, largely undefined, counts. What is he actually going to going to do in light of last night's results, when it comes to the sentencing. So I never actually thought that he was going to do the dirty deed, so to speak, and actually sentence Donald Trump to prison. I always thought that some sort of little slap-on-the-wrist-house-arrest was actually more likely. I feel pretty good about that at this particular point there. If he actually wants to do the unthinkable and try to sentence a president-elect of the United States to prison, we have something close to a constitutional crisis on our hands. Again, I may be naïve, but I have to think that there is some little modicum of common sense deep in the bowels of the judicial chambers in New York City to suggest that that's probably not going to happen, and God forbid if they do it, there is this constitutional argument on the back burner as well.”
Hammer has spoken extensively about Israel and the antisemitism on the left, Israel as a hot topic during the elections, and the difference between the Trump campaign versus the Biden and Harris administration. He feels that Israel “definitely was an issue, but probably not the number one issue for most Americans. The horrific seven-front war that Israel is currently fighting, when it comes to the head of the snake Iran and all the various Iran-backed proxies throughout the region, I mean that is emblematic of a world in a state of utter chaos. While foreign policy typically takes a backseat to domestic policy for most American voters, American voters also don't want a world that is in chaos, where America's enemies are running rough-shot over our closest allies in the world, such as the state of Israel. When Donald Trump was President for four years, people said that he was a mad man, the world was actually very stable. If the people on the Nobel Peace Prize committee were not radical Trump derangement syndrome lefties, Donald Trump would have actually have got the Nobel Peace Prize for the Abraham Accords, if absolutely nothing else.”
Hammer concludes that, “the world was a generally sane and stable place, so I think that overarching theme of stability was absolutely on the minds of many American voters, when it comes to economic stability, when it comes to foreign policy, global stability, for sure. We are still pouring through the data, but it looks like Donald Trump is set to get the highest percentage of the Jewish vote in a long time, probably even higher, based on the data that I've seen, than Ronald Reagan in 1980. That is music to my ears. I was predicting that he would get right around 40%, which is the number that Ronald Reagan got back in 1980. I still patiently await for the day when my fellow American Jews kind of just sober up and actually start giving the party that does not hate them an outright majority of their vote, but you know for certain structural demographic trends, such as the larger families, the more traditional orthodox families here in the United States, I actually do think that American Jews are set to become a Republican majority voting block. I would hate to pin a number on it but probably within the next 15 years at the absolute most, possibly sooner than that, it is certainly a trend line that is very much heading in the correct direction.”