(upbeat rock music) - This is the Josh Hammer Show. - Sometimes I just can't escape the nagging feeling that I am losing touch with reality or what purports to be reality is actually losing touch with reality itself. Let me explain what I mean by that. This past Sunday, we had a second attempted assassination. Of the 45th president of the United States, someone who in just a few months' time could be back in that vaunted office in the White House. And we're just pretending like this is normal. Other than a few intrepid reporters, other than a few outlets, people have already forgotten about this. You know, worse than forgetting about this, even worse than that, you've seen so many in the Democrat media complex, the revolving door between the Washington Press Corps and the Democrat establishment that are just doubling down. Doubling down in their calling Donald Trump a so-called threat to democracy, the exact rhetoric that Ryan Routh, the second would be assassin repeatedly, repeatedly spewed from his social media accounts. Clearly, he believed that. But you know what, I am sick. I am sick of this talking point that all sides need to calm down. I actually agree with it in the abstract. I am cool. In fact, I actually support all of us taking a step back. Some deep breaths here. Go to church, go to synagogue. Remember that politics is not your entire life. Okay, I like that. I'm very fond of referencing Abraham Lincoln's second inaugural address, which concludes with those stirring lines, with malice for none, with charity for all. Dude was barely over a month before his tragic assassination dealing with the ultimate international conflict in the Republic's history. A conflict in which hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of thousands were slain, brother fighting brother, cousin fighting cousin, unspeakable stuff. So yes, I yearn to see statesmen like Lincoln reemerge. I'm not holding my breath for it, but that is my ideal scenario. But I am sick back in the real world not dealing with the ideal scenario, dealing with where we are, not where we ought to be. I am sick of this notion that both sides of our political divide are equally to blame for where we are right now in this country. I am sick of this notion that both sides are equally to blame when it comes to jinning up hysteria, hysteria building up towards murderous political violence to try to kill and assassinate their political opponents. Let's just briefly walk through the past decade, decade and a half of history briefly. August 2012, a left-wing MSNBC aficionado named Floyd Lee Corkins, who volunteered at a local LGBT community center in the Washington, D.C. area. He went in to the Family Research Council, the headquarters of the socially conservative organization, the FRC, planning to shoot it up. He was carrying Chick-fil-A sandwiches with him, which he planned to stuff into his dead victim's mouth. 'Cause back then, the whole controversy was that Chick-fil-A is a homophobic organization. Floyd Lee Corkins ultimately cited the Southern Poverty Law Center for his misbegotten proposition that the FRC is a, quote, anti-gay organization. That led him to try and shoot it up. Five years later, in 2017, another left-wing MSNBC aficionado, James Hodgkinson, who was a former 2016 Bernie Sanders presidential campaign volunteer. He armed himself with a rifle, a handgun and drove out to Alexandria, Virginia, in hopes of assassinating the Republican team practicing for the Congressional baseball game. He severely wounded, severely wounded, Steve Scalise, who was then-house majority whip. Thank God Steve Scalise survived that after multiple blood transfusions, multiple surgeries. Five others were also injured. Just a few weeks before he's shooting Hodgkinson wrote on his Facebook feed, quote, "Trump is a traitor. "Trump has destroyed our democracy. "It's time to destroy Trump and company." In June, 2022, following the leak of the Dobbs abortion opinion at the US Supreme Court, Nicholas Rosky, a young Californian, flew cross-country to Washington, DC. He grabbed a handgun, zip ties, a tactical knife, hammer screwdriver, crowbar, duct tape, other burglary tools. He went straight to the Chevy Chase Maryland home of Justice Brett Kavanaugh around 1 a.m. local time with plans to burglar himself into Kavanaugh's home, tie him up and assassinate him. Thank God he turned himself into police at the last minute, but as he had written in a private chat, just before he flew cross-country with his murderous plan, quote, "I'm gonna stop Roe v. Wade from being overturned." I could go on and on here, but this notion that both sides are equally culpable when it comes to actually violent, actually murderous, attempts to take out the opposition. It is just not true. And I'm sick of playing this game. Let's go ahead and listen to what Congressman Mike Lawler of New York had to say about this. - I think everybody needs to tone it down. Calling him a threat to democracy is ridiculous. Our democracy will endure as it has for 248 years. We're going to be fine, no matter who wins the election. But I think to continue to do that, and by the way, at the same time, gaslight the nation for an entire year about Joe Biden's cognitive abilities, and then undermine 14.6 million democratic primary voters and throw him out and install Kamala Harris. You can't really talk about threats to democracy when you do things like that. - Yeah, so the so-called party of democracy does not get to play that card. When they are cooing their own nominee, mid-summer and forcibly installing, as their new nominee, someone who did not go through a primary process and someone who, oh, by the way, dropped out of the race well before the first votes were cast in the Iowa caucus back in the 2019-2020 cycle. The only reason that Kamala Harris even ended up on that ticket in the first place, if you want to go back to that, was because of this sleazy deal that Joe Biden inked with the South Carolina Kingmaker, Congressman Jim Clyburn after Biden finished in fifth in the New Hampshire primary. Basically said, Jim, if you endorse me in South Carolina, I'll pick a woman of color, sleazy stuff. That's the only reason that Kamala got in the ticket in the first place. She didn't get a single vote. How is it that the so-called party of democracy, furthermore, is the one that is actively prosecuting their political opponent? Literally, out in the open. Try to throw them in jail. They're not hiding it. Jack Smith, the Democrat law fair complex hit man, openly and unapologetically trying to put Donald Trump in prison. By the way, on some ludicrous legal theories, such as invoking the Espionage Act in the Mar-a-Lago class by documents case. How is it that the so-called party of democracy is the party that, going back to this past year, 2023 in Colorado, they tried to remove him from the ballot. Can you think of anything more quintessentially undemocratic than removing your opposition from the freaking ballot? All the left-wing talk about our democracy only makes sense and it can only be understood as not actually having anything to do with democracy itself. After all, if they cared about democracy, they would support the Dobbs decision that overturned Roe versus Wade. After all, that decision simply redemocretized that issue from the false veneer of a fabricated constitutional right from 1973. But more generally speaking, a shocking poll from this past week, 28% of Democrats say that America would be better off if Trump actually were assassinated and then another 24% said that they were unsure. That adds up to a majority of Democrats who either support or are in they are agnostic. They support or agnostic on Trump's assassination. That is not okay. And the more that MSNBC, Rachel Maddow, all the usual suspects there, Joy Reid, Joy Behar, and the view, the more that all of these clowns just continue to double down on this false, disingenuous, and yes, violence inciting talking point, the more that they double down on this, the more that I think myself and any other reasonable observer out there is going to have to be forced to conclude that they agree with the 28% of Democrats, that they agree with the greater than one quarter of Democrats who openly tell pollsters they want Trump dead. That is actually what's going on right now. Maybe it's too much to ask that they change course, but it is disgusting. It is disgusting where we are and there is one side that is to blame for a current predicament. (upbeat music) - There's more to imagine when you listen. So let your imagination soar with Audible. Audible has audio titles from every genre that will inspire you to imagine new worlds, possibilities, and ways of thinking. As an Audible member, you get to choose one title a month to keep from their entire catalog. Enjoy an exciting reawakening of a beloved classic with the Audible Original David Copperfield by Charles Dickens, produced by Academy Award-winning director Sam Mendez, starring Shudi Gatwa, Helena Bonham Carter, and Theo James. This adaptation breathes new life into a familiar tale. New members can try Audible free for 30 days. Visit Audible.com/imagine or text Imagine to 500-500. That's Audible.com/imagine or text Imagine to 500-500. (upbeat music) - Crazy stuff in Lebanon and Syria. This past week, exploding pagers and walkie talkies. A story truly out of spying. Looks like these devices that Mossad, the Israeli espionage agency, was able to actually explode on Hezbollah operatives. Looks like these devices have some vague Taiwanese origin and then it was laundered through Hungary. There was a shell company and a two-private residence on the outskirts of Budapest. Crazy stuff. You know, for those of you who are familiar with Fouda, which is a Netflix show, it's essentially Israel's version of 24. If you remember, Keith Russell and then Jack Bauer, it's basically the Israeli counter-terror show. The creator and head writer of Fouda took to social media after these exploding beepers started going off and literally tweeted, he said, "This is crazier than anything that I could possibly come up with for the show." And you had four to 5,000 at least Hezbollah operatives who were severely injured by the exploding devices, likely more because this operation actually carried out over the course of a few days. You had beepers, you had walkie talkies, you even had solar panels on the top of some houses that went kaboom. Now, it wasn't that there were a massive number of casualties per se, but you definitely did have a number of eunuchs of people who lost their manliness down below. You know, so-called gender affirming care, courtesy of Mossad, I guess you might say. And a lot of people seem to be upset about this operation. A lot of the usual suspects saying, "Oh, this is terrorism, oh, this is..." I mean, where have you morons been? Ever since October 7th, coming up on the year now, Hezbollah, which is the Iranian proxy, the Shiite militia organization that effectively runs Lebanon at this point. The notion that there is a difference between the Lebanese government and Hezbollah is increasingly false. There is no difference, it is a distinction without a difference. They have been firing missiles, drones, rockets on a daily basis into Northern Israel. There are roughly 60 to 80,000 Israelis who have been displaced from their homes there in Northern Israel for roughly a year now. And that, of course, is Hezbollah's goal with these 8,000 estimated missiles, drones, rockets that they have fired in over the course of the past year. That is their goal. It is a war of attrition for them to make the Israelis retrench and just go further and further back down to the Tel Aviv-Jerusalem corridor in the center, whereby from there, with their Iranian patrons, they hope, God forbid, one day that nuclear weapons could then finish the job from there. That is the goal. So ultimately, I mean, these folks, whether it's the usual suspects on the left, the Chank Uyghurs of the world, or the morons on the faux-right people like Candace Owens, I mean, you're letting your Jew hatred slip here. The complaint that a lot of people have had, and it is an erroneous complaint. But the complaint that many have had about the way that Israel has waged its war in Gaza is that they say that there are too many civilians dying. Well, as John Spencer, who is the head of urban warfare studies at West Point, has explained many, many times, including right for us at Newsweek, he has actually crunched the numbers and the ratio of civilian to combat in deaths in Gaza is actually the best ratio that he has ever crunched the numbers for in the history of urban warfare. And this is a guy who was on the ground in Mosul, Iraq, during the US-led counter uncertainty against ISIS in 2016, 2017. The numbers from his perspective, by the IDF, are far better, actually, than even the US military did back in Mosul. So it's an erroneous talking point, but even conceding the talking point. I mean, can you literally get any more precise for actually targeting jihadist terrorist enemies than an actual exploding electronic device on a person? It's not possible. It literally is not possible. So a brilliant tactical move by the Mossad, which desperately needed a win, coming up on the security failures of October 7th, the one-year anniversary of that, desperately needed a win, desperately needed a morale boost for the Israeli people. Most recently, you've seen Israeli warplanes now flying over Beirut. And specifically, on Friday, Hezbollah's top military commander, Ibrahim Akil, has been targeted, and apparently, we believe killed in southern Lebanon. This terrorist, Ibrahim Akil, has been wanted by the FBI for four decades. He was the mastermind of the 1983 Beirut barracks bombing, in which 240-plus Americans died. The FBI has had a $7 million bounty on his head. This follows on the presumed Israeli assassination of another Hezbollah arch-terrorist, Fuad Shakur, back in late July, another man who was intimately involved with the 1983 Beirut barracks bombing. He had a $5 million FBI bounty on his head. You know, there are a lot of people that ask, what does the US get out of the US-Israel relationship, the military, the diplomacy, the trade of this? I would submit to you that the assassinations of Ibrahim Akil and Fuad Shakur are about as clear proof as you will ever receive, that this relationship is beneficial to the US national interests and to US national security. My God, I mean, how much more of an obvious example could you possibly get? More generally speaking, though, this war of the North has been building up for arguably decades, but at a bare minimum since October 7th. It's going to start to get uglier. The bombing of arch-terrorist in Beirut is picking up. The question that you have to ask yourself, which is the exact same question that you have to ask yourself when it comes to Gaza. Who is to blame for this situation? Hezbollah was the one who started raining down thousands and thousands of rockets on October 7th. Hezbollah is an Iranian terrorist organization with massive American blood on his hands. This war, unfortunately, is not going to tamp down anytime soon. It ultimately will probably never tamp down until the head of the snake, that is the terrorist Iranian regime, is decapitated. But in the interim, make sure when you see the headlines and the images and the videos that are about to come out full throttle, keep on asking yourself, who is to blame here and who is not to blame? There is a very, very morally clear answer to those questions. - This is the Josh Hammer Show. - Hey, Prime Members. Have you heard? You can listen to your favorite podcast, "Add Free." Good news. With Amazon Music, you have access to the largest catalog of ad-free top podcasts included with your Prime membership. To start listening, download the Amazon Music App for free or go to amazon.com/addfreepodcast. That's amazon.com/addfreepodcast to catch up on the latest episodes without the ads. - You know that feeling when your favorite brand really gets you? Deliver that feeling to your customers every time. Memorable moments like these are key to building your business and your brand. Clavio turns your customer data into real-time connections across AI-powered email, SMS and more, making every moment count. So you can continue to build smarter, more meaningful relationships with your customers. Build smarter digital relationships with your customers and make every moment count with Clavio. Learn more at klaviyo.com/bfcm. (upbeat music) - In the aftermath of Mitt Romney's defeat to Barack Obama in the 2012 presidential election, Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal famously called on the Republican Party to quote, "Stop being the stupid party." This quote has always stuck with me. Even if Bobby Jindal has faded somewhat into obscurity, he's no longer on the national or political stage, but this was a powerful way to phrase what Republicans' problem all too often is. Part of it is just basic candidate selection. Part of it is rhetoric. Part of it is the terrain on which Republicans fight their fights. There's this great quote that I like to quote fairly often from the ancient Chinese military strategist, Sun Tzu, who famously said that a battle is won before it is fought and is won by choosing the terrain on which it is fought. Part of the Bobby Jindal's stupid party is just not knowing the terrain on which a battle should be fought or should be fighting on the outright wrong terrain. And then you have the problem of the candidates. Go back to the 2022 midterms. Herschel Walker in Georgia, really? Really? I mean, I love football, okay? I'm a big concert football fan. I get the appeal of Herschel Walker for Georgia Bulldogs fans. I obviously get that. But Dude had a checkered pass to put him mildly. I mean, he had more baggage than a Boeing 737. And that kinda leads us now to this Mark Robinson or a deal in North Carolina. Mark Robinson is the lieutenant governor of the state of North Carolina. He is the Republican gubernatorial candidate. He has been losing this race essentially forever. Even prior to the news over the past few days, he was down by typically double digits in the polls to his Democratic opponent. North Carolina is at this point, a true purple state. There is an overwhelming Republican majority in the legislature, but they have a Democratic governor. Donald Trump is certainly a slight favorite. To win the state at a presidential level this November, but it looks like Mark Robinson is likely gonna lose. And it looks like that even prior to what we learned over the past few days. So specifically, what did we learn over the past few days? So Mark Robinson, reverent Mark Robinson, I probably should add, is someone who talks a very loud and aggressive game about culture war, socially conservative issues. Now, not only do I not have any problem with that, I am a culture warrior to my core, I love that. There are some that have long said that Republicans ought to run away from some of these issues. No, not my stance. Has never been my stance and never will be my stance. I did not like the fact that the Republican platform in Milwaukee in July took out a national abortion ban for the first time in four decades. I did not like the fact that they removed support for one man, one woman, biblical traditional marriage. I didn't like that. So I could not possibly be more on board with fiery social conservatives. The thing is, you can't be an utter and complete moron. Lacking any self awareness whatsoever in how you go about it. So CNN has dragged up that Mark Robinson was apparently a porn pornography loving freak. I don't really know how else to say it. And I look, I'm not judging anyone, obviously, who in their teenage years, whatever, never pulled up a lascivious image. But Mark Robinson, apparently, well into his adult life was an active participant on pornography forums, specifically a website called Nude Africa, where he was, he referred to himself as a perv. He openly confided that he liked transgender porn. This coming from the guy who is now a social conservative cultural crusader, the Reverend. I mean, this is someone who, additionally, was so anti-Brock Obama that he said that he would prefer Hitler to Barack Obama. I mean, it kind of makes you, I mean, Mark Robinson is a very black man. I mean, it kind of makes you think back to that infamous Dave Chappelle's kid, way back in the old Dave Chappelle show, when Chappelle was a blind KKK member, didn't know that he was himself black. That's kind of what it brings you back to. Robinson actually said that he self-identified as a black Nazi, that slavery is not bad, and that he would like to own some slaves himself. Look, this is not going to actually end the, or alter the trajectory of this race. Mark Robinson was losing this race prior to all of this surfacing, and he is still going to lose it. The problem is that this was the easiest thing in the freaking world to see coming. Now, Trump went ahead and endorsed Robinson, the primary, he's a popular lieutenant governor with the base, because he says a lot of fiery stuff from the pulpit, but it was not a particularly well-kept secret that he had somewhere in his background, some Hitler Nazi adjacent stuff. I had not heard about the sex stuff. I can't say I'm shocked, but I had not heard about that. By the way, as an aside, what a disservice, what a tremendous blow to the social conservative cause, where our cause attains purported spokesman, purported statesman like this, who have this sort of kinky BS in their history. I mean, my God, I mean, you literally cannot script it any better for the left. Apparently, a lot of the sex stuff was actually known in the Republican primary. The thinking by the Oppo researchers, his opponents in the primary, the thinking that they did not divulge it, was that Trump was gonna endorse anyway, it was a foregone conclusion, and that therefore, you might as well just keep your powder dry, better to not try to sink the nominee in the general election. That was the thinking, apparently, back in the Democratic, Republican gubernatorial primary. But more generally, can we just not nominate idiots? I wrote a column just about a year ago. Partially on this topic, here is in part what I wrote. Quote, "There has been much discussion "in the political and chattering classes in recent years, "as the GOP has embraced a more nationalist and populist hue, "about the imperative of more aggressively wielding "political power to undo the decades "of leftist institutional capture "and to restore a modicum of civilizational sanity. "I and many other national conservatives, "post-liberals and new-right fellow travelers, "have written countless words, "urging the right to know what time it is in America "and get more comfortable with a more robust conception of power. "But a necessary precondition of wielding power, "no matter how one intends to do so, "is to attain it in the first place." And there, therein lies the rub. You have to win the freakin' election, folks. You know, I am all on board for the national conservative, national populist rethinking that's happening on the right. Some people taking it quite a bit too far in some cases when it comes to specific policy. We can have those debates another time, but the general trajectory is correct. But you're not going to actually implement any of your agenda if you just nominate idiots. Idiots and morons, people who are a disgrace, are a shame to your cause. Can we just stop nominating morons? I don't understand how this is possibly a difficult question, it's nuts. Hopefully, there will be some ticket splitting in North Carolina if Robinson, as presumed, goes down in flames. Hopefully Trump can pull it out. By the way, Dido carry Lake out in Arizona. She's almost assuredly headed towards a big fat loss out there. I hope Trump can pull it out in Arizona. But for God's sake, guys, you want to get into office, you want to wheel power, you want to sculpt an agenda, an agenda which I am generally supportive of on the right, obviously. Let's do a better job of vetting our political candidates, the same way that you have to vet judicial nominees for the courts. Let's vet our people before these massive endorsements come in from Mar-a-Lago in places like that. There is so much that we could be doing better. And at a time like this, with the Republic in the condition that it is in, these stakes couldn't be higher. It is not time we have no patience for these sort of self-inflicted wounds like nominated Mark Robinson in North Carolina. (upbeat music) It's hammer time. - Another victory for Robbie Starbuck, the Tennessee-based activist, was quickly becoming a hammer time segment favorite. His latest victim, slash the latest company that has come to see the light, you might alternatively phrase it, is Stanley, Black, and Decker. So specifically, Robbie Starbuck reached out to Stanley, Black, and Decker, the well-known tools company, to let them know that he was planning to expose many of their various work policies and DEI and all the usual nonsense. And specifically, in response to that mere threat, they actually preemptively changed course. Stanley, Black, and Decker went ahead and ended its participation in the human rights campaign corporate equality index system. They dismantled their entire DEI departments. They ended DEI-based training programs. They're not gonna be donating anymore to specifically divisive events. And on and on it goes. So another win for Robbie Starbuck, who is quickly establishing himself as a Chris Rufo-like conservative activist, getting a lot of scalps in a very short period of time. Thus far, Robbie Starbuck has also taken some nice scalps and gotten companies such as Tractor Supply, John Deere, Harley Davidson, Loes Ford, Coors, Molson Coors. I mean, they've all been changing course due to one activist and his team in Tennessee. So kudos to you Robbie Starbuck. Please do go ahead and keep up the good work. We will continue to cover your exploits here on hammer time. And Idaho Coffee Shop has an owner awarded $4 million after being booted off campus. So the story here is you have a one by the name of Sarah Jo Fently. She's the owner of Big City Coffee. She filed a $10 million tort claim against Boise State University and the president and the vice president for equity initiatives and the various administrators. Her contract for her on-campus coffee facility in 2021 was severed. It was terminated due to the fact that she was displaying a thin blue line flag, the pro police flag commonly known as the thin blue line flag. Well, she's been awarded $4 million. So good for her. This is, of course, a righteous victory. Specifically, it was $3 million in damages and another million dollars in punitive damages. For those less familiar with the legal lease, punitive damages are records give out when they really want to send a message actually. So it's those restorative damages that really kind of bring you back to even. And then the punitive damage on top is just to send a prophylactic message to an organization or an individual not to do this sort of activity again. Put another way when the court is giving out this kind of damage. They are sending a very clear and unmistakable message to Boise State University and all the other would-be woke universities out there. You can't do this. If you're going to contract with someone to have an on-campus coffee shop or a bookshop or a restaurant who cares, then you cannot then start discriminating on the basis of the viewpoint express by the shopkeeper. The other story here that is unfortunate but must be covered, my God, this is Idaho. I mean, one of the most conservative right-wing states in the country. I mean, Donald Trump or Republicans are routinely winning Idaho by 20 to 30 points. I mean, this is not a close call. And even here, even here, you have a flagship public university like a Boise State that is openly discriminating against politically conservative right-of-center shopkeepers on campus. Really nasty stuff. Keep it coming, folks. So this past week was Constitution Day. September 17th is Constitution Day. And unfortunately, yet again, we have constitutional confusion on Constitution Day. Americans continue to struggle with basic civic knowledge. So the University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg Public Policy Center has been doing these polls about civics. Basically, every year around this time, they had a massive online poll of nearly 1,600 adults and the UPenn Annenberg Public Policy Center found that only 39% of Americans knew that the First Amendment protects freedom of religion. Only 29% know that it guarantees freedom of the press. The percentage of Americans who can name all three branches of government, who can name even a majority, at least five of the nine US Supreme Court justices. All these percentages are shockingly and appallingly low. You know, I was actually out in Austin, Texas this past week. I was speaking of the University of Texas School of Law had a debate on a big tech related topic. And this topic of our crisis in civics actually came up in the Q&A with the students there. Look, there is no panacea. There is no one size fits all when it comes to our debilitating civics woes in this country. But again, just like the education issue that we were just talking about with public universities, this has to start from the grassroots case by case, belly up. There was no other way to do it. I mean, people talk about how our adults, how people stepping foot onto a college campus at the age of 18, how they're all stupid and know nothing. And that's partially true. But it's only partially true because they've been indoctrinated. You know, part of it is actually intentional. It's not just that they're not being taught. Basic civics anymore in elementary school, middle school, and high school is that they're not doing it for an overarching ideological reason. And that overarching ideological reason is that these people that are designing these curricula, that are shielding their vulnerable, impressionally young students from basic civic knowledge and basic constitutional literacy, they're doing this in service of the ultimate nefarious goal, of undermining our constitutional order and ultimately undermining this nation. I really have no other conclusion to draw about that. But for now, unfortunately, our crisis of civics only continues. Lots of we can do at the elementary school level, middle school level, high school level. You know, there's a final note on this. There's also a role here for adult education. PragerU is very good at this. PragerU, and we need more PragerU-like institutes, more PragerU-like media to get out there and to start educating adults with these quick, flashy videos. Yes, here are the branches of government. Here's what they do. You know, let's make schoolhouse rock great again. I don't know how many of the audience even remember schoolhouse rock. It was probably phasing out around the time that I first watched in middle school. I'm just a bill on Capitol Hill, all those old videos. We desperately need another injection of that into our increasingly civics adult body politic. After Woke Star Wars release, Ubisoft stock has hit a nine year low. So Ubisoft is the company behind the massively successful Assassin's Creed and Far Cry series, but they've been having a rough go of it after a new Star Wars video game that is rife with identity politics has been released. Specifically, this game is called Star Wars Outlaws and Ubisoft stock value took a massive nosedive. It reached a nine year low, a nine year low after a 13% drop. This is exactly how you do it, folks. You know, one of our label teams here in Hammer Time is you have to use your power as a consumer. You have to use your power as an investor, as someone who is buying and selling stocks, as someone who is giving business to certain companies. You have to use your power as a consumer. The only way, it really is the only way through. I think back to the Chick-fil-A instance, the Chick-fil-A boycotts are in the whole same-sex marriage debate from over a decade ago. Now, we didn't write the rules. They did. It's time for us to play ball, though. And good for the people here who are selling stock of Ubisoft, kind of pains me, by the way, as a lifelong Star Wars fan. I have very fond memories as a child of going to theaters to watch the re-release of episodes four through six and then going to watch the less than stellar episodes one through three. Not fun. Watching Star Wars go down this rabbit hole, but unfortunately, I guess it is what it is such is life. US Navy is launching its first gender neutral submarine. Yes, this is actually a real headline. So the USS New Jersey, a Virginia-class fast-attack submarine, is designed from the belly up to accommodate both male and female crew members. And this is the first officially, officially-designated gender neutral submarine that is now in use by the US Navy. Because surely, at a time like this, where Lammer Putin is marching all around Ukraine, where Xi Jinping is invading Japanese airspace, is engaging in violent confrontations with the Filipinos and dispute islands with the Philippines, surely at a time like this, to say nothing in the Middle East, surely right now is the time to start whipping out gender neutral submarines. I mean, when do we actually learn our lesson? This is classic quintessential, late republic style stuff. Is that not what this is? I mean, the fall of the Roman Empire had many, many different factors, but decadence and falling into just a gross refusal to actually take oneself seriously anymore and to think that this whole operation was on autopilot. That was part of it. I mean, does America still take itself seriously? Does the American military still take itself seriously? The goal of the United States military ought to be very, very straightforward. It ought to be to hunt down and kill the enemy in the least costly, most militarily efficient way possible. That is it. Who gives a, you know what, whether it is men, women, people with blonde hair, brown hair, who gives a crap? Who cares? This is nothing less than your national security that is at issue here. But yes, they've been politicizing the military for God knows how long now. Barack Obama started with the repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell, Mark, White Rage, Millie, and all of the ridiculous books that he was assigning back when he was chairman of the joint chiefs. He was literally assigning e-brom X, tend the anti-racist nonsense to active service troops in the various armed forces. Do not let them politicize the military. If Trump gets back into office in January, 2025, this is one of his most important tasks actually. It's an under-discussed task, but is one of the most important. Do you politicize the military? Get young men of all political stripes. Eager, eager to join the military again. If you fail to do that, if you fail to reinstall a sense of patriotism, duty and honor into young American men, in particular to rejoin the military and to be willing to give it all up, to lay their lives in line for this country, if you fail to do that, then this country ceases to be a first-rate power and rapidly, rapidly goes down the ever-approaching rabbit hole of becoming a full-fledged banana republic. This is the Josh Hammer Show.
