The Josh Hammer Report

Josh Hammer

Newsweek Senior Editor-at-Large And Host,
"The Josh Hammer Show"

Welcome back! I hope everyone had an enjoyable and meaningful Memorial Day weekend. In case you missed it, I changed roles last week at Newsweek from opinion editor to senior editor-at-large. But fear not: This newsletter is not going anywhere.

This week, my column made a pithy (and hopefully compelling) argument for why Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL), who finally launched his much-anticipated presidential campaign last week, should be the 2024 Republican nominee for president of the United States. I explained why I, among so many others, personally moved to Florida during the COVID-19 pandemic due in no small part to DeSantis' leadership during that sad chapter of recent American history. Furthermore, DeSantis has evinced a greater understanding than any other contemporary American elected official of the all-encompassing threat of the woke ideology and has demonstrated a mastery of wielding the levers of political power to do that which is now called for at this seemingly late stage of the American republic: bolstering the forces of civilizational sanity and punishing the forces of civilizational arson within the confines of the rule of law.

This week, I was joined on my podcast by Jenna Ellis, a former 2020 election lawyer for former President Donald Trump and now a popular radio and podcast host. Jenna and I discussed DeSantis' campaign launch and why she, a former inner-circle Trump legal advisor, has now physically uprooted to Florida and decided to embrace Ron DeSantis' "Florida Blueprint" vision for national renewal. Our podcast conversation has already gotten a fair bit of attention; for example, former high-ranking Trump DOJ attorney Jeff Clark responded to the episode in a lengthy tweet thread. You can listen on Apple, Spotify, or here.

In terms of media appearances over the past week, I have done a few CenterClip audio op-eds on various pressing topics, joined Bob Frantz on 1420 WHK Cleveland to discuss the need to release the manifesto of the Nashville school shooter (also the topic of a recent column of mine), joined the San Diego-based Andrea Kaye Show (with guest-host Justin Hart) to discuss the launch of Ron DeSantis' presidential campaign, joined "John Bachman Now" on Newsmax to discuss the same (the Daily Caller even wrote an article about that feisty on-air debate with Trump campaign surrogate Karoline Leavitt), joined Fred Pawle on ADH TV Australia to discuss various issues in U.S. politics, did the same with Rita Panahi of Sky News Australia, joined the St. Louis-based "Mark Reardon Show" to discuss DeSantis' nascent presidential campaign, and (as always) co-hosted the latest production of the Edmund Burke Foundation's "NatCon Squad" podcast.

Programming note: Be sure to tune in tomorrow evening (Thursday, June 1) at approximately 8:20 PM EDT to The Mark Levin Show on Westwood One syndicated radio across the country. Unless they cancel on me (which seems possible), I am finally set to debate Levin at that time.

Our highlighted right-leaning Newsweek op-eds this week include selections from Jon Schweppe, Jonathan Tobin, Max Eden, John Yoo and Robert Delahunty, and Ken Cuccinelli.

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The Case for Ron DeSantis

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis' much-anticipated 2024 presidential campaign is finally here. DeSantis is, by any empirical metric or otherwise reasonable estimation, the only person with a viable chance of defeating former President Donald Trump for the Republican presidential nomination. What follows is a straightforward affirmative case for DeSantis' candidacy, written from the perspective of someone who moved to the Sunshine State during the COVID-19 pandemic due in no small part to his courage, independent judgment, and dynamic leadership during that most woeful chapter of recent American history.

President Ronald Reagan famously said, "the nine most terrifying words in the English language are, 'I'm from the government, and I'm here to help.'" That was an accurate assessment at the time Reagan said it, when America was drowning in punitive taxation and draconian regulation. In the year 2023, by contrast, overweening government is certainly still a threat, but the single all-encompassing threat facing the American people is the metastasis of the woke ideology, which spreads like a cancer and is weaponized by the out-of-touch ruling class elites who populate all the major institutions of our political and civic life.

There is no elected official in America who better understands this reality and—even more important—who has wielded political power to repeatedly fight back against it than Ron DeSantis. Whether it is anti-Americanist critical race theory or gender ideology indoctrination in the elementary school classroom, the university faculty lounge, or the corporate boardroom, DeSantis has taken decisive measures to defend civilizational sanity and curtail or outright proscribe the dissemination of wokeism's corrosive tenets.

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