The Josh Hammer Report

Josh Hammer

Newsweek Opinion Editor And Host,
"The Josh Hammer Show"

This week, my column defended Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis' written statement on the Russia-Ukraine war last week to Fox News primetime host Tucker Carlson, which ignited quite a firestorm of controversy and assorted "hot takes." I argued that DeSantis was emphatically correct to refer to the present state of the fighting, primarily in eastern Ukraine's Donbas region and Crimea, as a "territorial dispute" between competing Slavic nations that does not directly implicate the U.S. national interest. As my column has consistently argued since Russian kingpin Vladimir Putin first invaded Ukraine last February, the U.S. national interest is not synonymous with the Ukrainian national interest in this conflict. (There is a sizable Venn diagram overlap between those national interests, to be sure.) But whereas the Ukrainian national interest in this conflict is to retain every square foot of disputed territory, the U.S. national interest is first and foremost for a durable, secure, and equitable peace. Ron DeSantis' call for measured prudence is thus exactly right.

I've been on the road almost nonstop (see below) since the last time this newsletter hit your inbox, so I have not had time yet to record a new episode of my Newsweek podcast. But refresh your podcast feeds over the next few hours, as a brand-new episode of "The Josh Hammer Show" is about to drop featuring guest Max Eden of the American Enterprise Institute. Max and I go deep on issues pertaining to education, parental rights, and woke indoctrination. You don't want to miss this one.

In terms of media appearances over the past week, I recorded a short CenterClip recording defending Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis's prudent comments on the Russia-Ukraine conflict, joined Newsmax's "National Report" to discuss the City of San Francisco's misguided call for slavery reparations, joined "The Jenna Ellis Show" to discuss the bogus arguments that a sitting governor can somehow "do something" to stop a criminal indictment in another state, and (as usual) co-hosted the Edmund Burke Foundation's most recent episode of the "NatCon Squad" podcast.

Regarding public appearances, I returned last Friday from my small, off-record event in Washington, D.C., and then flew out again Sunday evening to Texas, where I had Federalist Society speaking engagements in San Antonio and Austin. I won't have another public event for a few weeks, when I'll be in Nashville.

Our highlighted right-leaning Newsweek op-eds this week include selections from Matthew G. Whitaker, Mike Davis, Scott W. Atlas, Itamar Ben Gvir, and Max Eden.

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Ron DeSantis Joins the Fight for Sanity Against the Foreign Policy Blob

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis' (R-FL) written statement to Tucker Carlson heard around the world earlier this week on the Russia-Ukraine war has caused nothing short of a full-scale meltdown from the arrogant, consistently wrong-thinking, military-industrial complex-addled band of bipartisan dunderheads who collectively comprise the American ruling class's foreign policy "blob." The reality is that the governor, also a likely 2024 presidential candidate, should wear the blob's dripping scorn as a badge of honor.

These "blobsters," oftentimes think tank and punditry Boomers or Gen X-ers who came of political age during the Cold War, typically suffer from a first principles-level delusion about whether America's triumphalist post-Cold War unipolar moment still exists (it does not). Accordingly, blobsters know one modus operandi only: more intervention and more escalation. Abba Eban once famously said, in the context of ever-elusive Israeli-Palestinian peace, that "the Arabs never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity"; for the blobsters who have been seething this week at the fact both presumptive frontrunners for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination now oppose their agenda in Ukraine, we might say they never miss an opportunity to intervene further and blow up (or screw up) more things abroad.

The blob's post-Cold War track record of supported foreign interventions is positively abysmal; Iraq is now an Iranian satrapy, Afghanistan is now run by the Taliban, and Libya, over a decade post-Samantha Power/Hillary Clinton-led intervention, is still riven by a jihadist civil war. In most vocational settings, a track record of such obvious repeated failures gets you fired, and perhaps blacklisted; for Beltway blobsters, such prognostications can merit a promotion, at least when Boeing or Northrop Grumman has something to say about it.

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