Today on the show we have Josh Hammer. He's a leading conservative commentator, attorney, and author. He's senior editor-at-large at Newsweek, host of The Josh Hammer Show, which everyone should listen to, and author of the must-read Israel and Civilization: The Fate of the Jewish Nation and the Destiny of the West.
He was very close friends with Charlie Kirk, and at TPUSA’s Student Action Summit, Charlie personally tapped him to take the stage in a high-stakes Israel debate. In this interview, we remembered Charlie—what he believed about Israel, how he built Jewish-Christian alliances, and how his legacy is now being contested. We also discuss how the so-called woke right, including Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens, have been weaponizing Charlie's death to push narratives that turn America against Israel.
WHAT WE DISCUSSED
• Josh Hammer reflects on his friendship with Charlie Kirk and the impact of his assassination
• How figures like Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens are exploiting Charlie’s death to push anti-Israel narratives
• The collapse of trust in institutions fueling conspiracy theories and antisemitism on the right
• Josh’s book Israel and Civilization and why he argues the Bible is the foundation of Western civilization
• The growing threat to the Christian-Jewish alliance and why preserving it is critical for America’s future.
Ryan Sheridan is a Missouri nurse practitioner and entrepreneur, running for Congress on the MAHA agenda.
His campaign is championing transparency in food and medicine, decentralization of healthcare, and fiscal responsibility, positioning him as a conservative alternative to failed bureaucratic systems.
WHAT WE DISCUSSED
Tevi Troy served as Deputy Secretary of Health and Human Services under President George W. Bush and was one of the administration’s top domestic policy advisors.
He played a key role in shaping health and homeland security policy during a critical era. He’s now a presidential historian and senior fellow at the Bipartisan Policy Center, and the author of Fight House and other books on politics, media, and the presidency.
WHAT WE DISCUSSED
Park MacDougald is a senior writer for Tablet magazine’s newsletter, The Scroll, and a fellow at the Manhattan Institute. Recently named a Robert Novak Fellow, his work focuses on exposing information operations and the financial and political networks that manufacture narratives to shape public debate.
WHAT WE DISCUSSED
Eric Lipton is an investigative reporter for The New York Times and a multiple Pulitzer Prize winner. His work specializes in dissecting the hidden influence of money and lobbying on American government, revealing how powerful interests shape policy far from public view.
WHAT WE DISCUSSED
Brian Nosek, a pioneering psychologist and professor at the University of Virginia, shook the scientific establishment in 2015 when his Reproducibility Project revealed that only 36% of published psychology studies could be successfully replicated—exposing a crisis at the heart of scientific research.
As co-founder of the Center for Open Science, Nosek has built an organization dedicated to increasing transparency and accountability in scientific practice. His work challenges the academic incentive structure that rewards publishing novel, positive results over methodological rigor and accurate findings, pushing researchers to focus on career advancement rather than discovering truth.
WHAT WE DISCUSSED
Rikki Schlott is a journalist at the New York Post, a fellow at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, and co-author of The Canceling of the American Mind. As a Gen Z voice in the national conversation on free speech, she’s become a sharp critic of academic orthodoxy and cancel culture.
Schlott also hosts two podcasts—Lost Debate and We Never Had This Conversation—where she challenges dominant narratives and explores the generational divide over expression, politics, and power.
We discussed:
Frannie Block, a reporter at The Free Press, writes about how money, power, and ideology shape the narratives espoused by the media, elite institutions, and governments — both foreign and domestic. Our conversation focuses on her recent article “How Qatar Bought America.”
Block has become one of the leading figures in uncovering efforts by the tiny nation of Qatar to influence significant sectors of American life, from K-12 education, to universities and think tanks — and even the highest levels of government.
Her reporting reveals how Qatar uses its vast financial resources in a soft power campaign to shape American politics and soften its image to the American public — while supporting Islamism and jihadism — to position itself as one of the world’s major brokers of diplomatic negotiations.
What we discussed:
Heather Mac Donald, a bestselling author and senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, is renowned for her incisive critiques of the Black Lives Matter movement and the media's role in constructing misleading narratives around police brutality.
Her influential reporting during the 2020 riots captured national attention, exposing how anti-police rhetoric—propelled by inaccurate and sensationalized media coverage—intensified violence and endangered American cities.
Grounded in rigorous data analysis, Mac Donald has persistently challenged dominant perspectives on race, crime, and policing, arguing that widespread claims of systemic police brutality against Black Americans are not supported by empirical evidence.
WHAT WE DISCUSSED
Israel Ganz is the Governor of the Binyamin Regional Council, which oversees the largest Israeli-controlled area in Judea and Samaria — otherwise known as the West Bank.
A long-time advocate for Jewish life and security in Judea and Samaria, Ganz plays a major role in shaping Israeli policy on settlements and advocates for advancing Israeli sovereignty over the entire contested region.
As tensions escalate and Iran and its proxies grow more desperate, protecting Israeli communities will become even more critical. And while some in the US push for a two-state solution, Gantz believes a Palestinian state in Judea and Samaria would inevitably endanger Israeli lives.
What was discussed:
Xaviaer DuRousseau is a former BLM activist turned conservative commentator and the host of Respectfully, Xaviaer at PragerU. In this conversation, he breaks down how parts of the right are drifting into dangerous territory, how Gen Z is changing the political game, and why the Israel conversation has gone completely off the rails—especially since October 7.
What we discussed:
Rob Henderson is a writer and scholar best known for coining the term luxury beliefs—ideas held and promoted by elites that often harm the working class. A U.S. Air Force veteran and Yale graduate, Rob’s path from foster care to the Ivy League gives him a unique lens on class, culture, and identity in modern America.
We get into:
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Curt Mills is the very influential Executive Director of The American Conservative, where he helps shape the national conversation on foreign policy and the future of the American right.
A seasoned journalist and political commentator, Mills has reported extensively on Washington’s power players, the GOP realignment, and America’s role in the world. His work—featured across major outlets from Fox News to NPR—offers an anti-interventionist perspective that challenges the bipartisan foreign policy consensus.
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The progressive movement that dominated the Democratic Party beginning in the Obama era is rapidly losing ground.
Ideas that once seemed politically unchallengeable on the left — from defunding police to abolishing fossil fuels — have hit a wall of public rejection by the voters.
So, as the Democratic Party’s progressive momentum fades, some of its top thinkers are trying to regain stability by returning to the political center.
I spoke to Ruy Teixeira, a seasoned political scientist and commentator whose ideas on elections carry real weight. Many of the party’s top leaders listen to him. He’s also the founder of the excellent, thought-provoking The Liberal Patriot.
I spoke with Jim Hanson, chief editor at the Middle East Forum. As a former US Army Special Forces operator, he’s worked in counterterrorism and foreign defense missions in over two dozen countries.
