The Josh Hammer Report

Josh Hammer

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

Ryan Routh, the second would-be assassin of former President Donald Trump, has now been charged with three federal offenses: owning a firearm as a formerly convicted felon, owning a firearm with an obliterated serial number, and (as of yesterday) attempting to assassinate a former president of the United States. If Routh gets anything less than life in prison, that would be a tremendous miscarriage of justice. Enough is enough. It's time for the American justice system to send a clear message: the political violence in this country needs to STOP.

But both sides of our fractious political divide are not equally culpable here. Ever since Floyd Lee Corkins, a LGBT activist, tried to shoot up the socially conservative Family Research Council in Washington, D.C. in 2012, political violence in America has overwhelmingly come from the Left—and against the Right. I explained in my recent column and in a recent "Josh Hammer Show" episode.

Meanwhile, we are now barely over a month from a monumental presidential election—and many of the nation's most important swing states have already begun casting votes. It's anyone's race, but I continue to think Donald Trump is more likely than not to prevail.

Pollsters have almost assuredly not corrected the sizable methodological errors that threw them off in both 2016 and 2020; they are still over-sampling liberal senior citizens, as my friend Ryan Girdusky has been discussing, and there is still a "shy Trump voter" stigma preventing many swing voters who are likely to cast a ballot for Trump from being honest with pollsters. Trump is in pretty good shape in the big four Sun Belt swing states—Nevada, Arizona, Georgia, and North Carolina—as the high-quality recent New York Times/Siena College poll showed. That leaves the big three Rust Belt swing states: Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin. It's time for Donald Trump and J.D. Vance to go all-in on Pennsylvania, I argued in another recent "Josh Hammer" episode.

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Our highlighted Newsweek op-eds from the past week includes selections from Ofir Akunis, Jonathan Conricus, Enes Kanter Freedom, Lee Habeeb, and William E. Trachman.

Enjoy the rest of your week!

Spotlight

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Why Are the Nutjobs Trying to Kill Political Opponents All Left-Wingers?

In August 2012, a left-wing MSNBC afficionado named Floyd Lee Corkins armed himself with a handgun and extra magazines. He drove to the Washington, D.C., headquarters of the socially conservative Family Research Council, planning to shoot it up. Corkins, who later cited the Southern Poverty Law Center for the proposition that the FRC is an "anti-gay" organization, was also carrying 15 Chick-fil-A sandwiches, which he hoped to stuff in his dead victims' mouths. Corkins, who served as a volunteer at a local LGBT community center, was stopped by an unarmed security guard.

In June 2017, a left-wing MSNBC afficionado named James Hodgkinson armed himself with a rifle and handgun. He drove to Alexandria, Virginia, in hopes of assassinating the Republican team practicing for the annual Congressional Baseball Game. He severely wounded then-House Majority Whip Steve Scalise, who thankfully survived after receiving multiple blood transfusions and surgeries. Five others were also injured. Hodgkinson was a 2016 Bernie Sanders presidential campaign volunteer who, in a Facebook post three weeks before the shooting, wrote: "Trump is a Traitor. Trump Has Destroyed Our Democracy. It's Time to Destroy Trump & Co."

In June 2022, a young Californian named Nicholas Roske flew to the nation's capital. Roske attained a handgun, zip ties, a tactical knife, a hammer, a screwdriver, a crowbar, duct tape, and other burglary tools. At 1:38 a.m. local time, about a half hour after a taxi dropped him off in front of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh's Chevy Chase, Maryland, home, Roske had second thoughts and called 911. After his arrest, Roske told police he was angered by the leaked draft opinion in the Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization abortion case. Roske had written in a private chat: "Im gonna stop roe v wade from being overturned."

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