Candace & Tucker's Blitzkrieg on Charlie Kirk's Legacy with Josh Hammer

_THE INTERVIEW_

Ari: Josh, thank you so much for joining us today. I want to start out by saying that it has been an incredibly hard week for everyone in the conservative movement.

Looking back, since I started Upward News, this has probably been one of the hardest weeks to report on — probably right there with October 7.

Josh: Yeah.

Ari: I know that you were very close to Charlie. You guys talked on an almost daily basis about really important political issues.

You were right there at the last Turning Point event, talking about Israel. I want to ask you, how have you been doing with the whole thing?

Josh: Yeah, I appreciate it. Uh, it's been really hard. It's been genuinely really hard. I spoke with him less than 24 hours before it happened.

We were literally going over what to anticipate on the campus tour — specifically on the Israel question — because he told me numerous times that since October 7, roughly half of the questions he gets — crazy enough—are on the war in Gaza, on US relations in general.

Because this mind virus has just gone so out of control, especially among America's youth. And he was turning to people like me for counsel, for advice on how to approach this. But yeah, more generally speaking, I’ve known Charlie for years. We had gotten considerably closer, I would say, over the past year, year and a half, give or take.

And it is just a monumental loss. It's the highest-profile political assassination in this country since RFK and MLK in 1968. I never thought that that would happen to someone that I considered a personal friend. And it's been emotionally quite tough.

I spoke at a conference last Friday out in Las Vegas for the David Horowitz Freedom Center. That's actually one of the organizations where Charlie kind of first got his start—and we were all memorializing him and paying tribute to him in our speeches there.

When I was recording my own radio show for The Josh Hammer Show, I actually broke down crying, which is the first time that's ever happened since I started this show.

And it really is the saddest I've personally felt, the most distraught I've felt, since October 7. Your analogy is apt. But having said all that, we are adults—we are men. And Charlie Kirk was very much a man among boys himself.

And the very last thing, Ari, he would have ever, ever, ever wanted is for folks to take too long to grieve and to mourn and therefore to sideline themselves from the battle of ideas and ultimately the contest to protect and preserve the United States of America and, by extension, Western civilization, about which he was so passionate.

So we soldier on. It's not easy, but we do the best we can.

Ari: That's right, and I've been incredibly impressed with so many people in the conservative movement and in the political world that, I guess, right in the beginning, took their time to mourn and to understand what happened, and then they went right back in there to kind of defend the values that Charlie was fighting for.

One of the things you mentioned was that Charlie said that, like, half of the questions were about Israel, and I think it's crazy that after Charlie was killed, like, half of the conversation we're talking about is still about Israel, and now it's pertaining to Charlie, and we can't even really talk about the ramifications of what happened to America.

And now we again have to go out there and argue about what actually happened with Charlie—was Israel behind the murder? It's pretty insane.

And the way that I see it is there are these two things that are unfolding. One is, like, everyone is rushing to try to define exactly what Charlie believed in, because he's now a martyr and they want to bootstrap their own cause—this is the Tucker Carlsons and the Candace Owenses, all of them.

And the second thing is they're bringing all these things up to make this tie. And some of ’em won't say it explicitly, but they're trying to make it seem like Israel was somehow involved in this whole thing.

How do we deal with a political environment—specifically on the right—where some of the biggest voices, I mean, it's hard to deny the fact that Tucker has such a huge microphone, right along there with Candace Owens? How do we deal with what's going on right now on the right after this?

Josh: Yeah. Look, I've been saying for a while, Ari, that—I mean, you named Tucker. Tucker, to me, is the single most dangerous anti-Semite in the entire history of the United States. I think that he, frankly, makes Father Coughlin, Henry Ford—people like that—child's play, simply ’cause of just the sprawling nature of his platform.

And it's palpably insane. It is palpably insane in a situation like this. The American right, the conservative movement — I would phrase it: the forces for civilizational sanity over the forces of civilizational arson.

We lost a titan. We lost a five-star general in our cold civil war. And we lost a five-star general in this domestic conflict — this cold, but now, tragically at times, I guess hot, conflict.

We lost him to a radicalized left-wing lunatic: someone who was completely indoctrinated on the university campus.

He was frequenting Discord, Reddit, all the usual threads where you'd expect—someone who was living with a transgender roommate, someone who had a furry fetish. I mean, this guy was off the reservation, far left.

And instead of having a conversation about how to end this kind of radicalized left-wing political violence — the same political violence that we've seen going back at least as far as when Floyd Lee Corkins tried to shoot the Family Research Council in 2012; James Hodgkinson, the Republican baseball team in 2017; Nicholas Roske trying to assassinate Brett Kavanaugh in 2022; the assassination attempt on Brett Kavanaugh; the murder of the two Israeli embassy staffers from a “Free Palestine” communist lunatic from Chicago—

There are so many examples now. But this is the highest-profile, of course. And instead of continuing that conversation and actually focusing on how to break up Antifa and left-wing domestic terrorist networks on the radical activist left and preventing a Weather Underground–esque resurgence of left-wing political violence—

Instead of all that… I mean, frankly, let me step back. What we really should be doing is giving our friend the honor of a proper burial. None of this conversation is, frankly, particularly appropriate right now.

But to the extent that we're having any of this conversation, we should be focusing on what I just said—on the threat of the radical, Weather Underground–esque domestic terrorist left.

The notion that we are now sitting here and even having to push back against the Candaces and Tuckers of the world — and Marjorie Taylor Greene — that Israel was somehow to blame? Ari, the Chief Sephardic Rabbi of Israel, Rabbi David Yosef, literally put out a beautiful statement about Charlie Kirk, of blessed memory. It was a very touching statement.

There were literally towns in Israel—Netanya, a very well-known suburb north of Tel Aviv—the mayor there has announced that they are dedicating a public park in his honor. I don't think I've met a single Jewish American, a single rabbi, who is in any state other than mourning over this, because Charlie Kirk was so well known, he was so well established.

To be clear, on a lot of issues, he was a champion of unborn children in the womb and of secure borders. He cared about a lot. But he was very much known, certainly, as a stalwart defender of the Jewish–Christian alliance, to say nothing of the West, of which the State of Israel has a major role to play.

I know this firsthand because we talked about this all the time. So it's just so insane I don't even know where to start. Right? But I guess I'll just say this: if Charlie Kirk—okay, if Charlie Kirk, someone who made his bones in some ways as a staunch pro-Israel advocate, someone who literally kept the Jewish Sabbath—turned his phone off from Friday night to Saturday night—

I mean, just engaging for a second, then I'll stop there, since I don't like to engage in this madness: how stupid would Mossad have to be to go after Charlie Kirk—an amazing defender of Israel—and not all the other lunatics from the far left to the far right who have been voicing anti-Israel, antisemitic insanity for years and years now?

It doesn't even pass the basic laugh test. It's so insanely stupid. But it's a sad indication of where we're at.

Ari: It's really scary to see how many people are buying into that. I mean, it makes zero sense at all. And I don't understand how — not even how unthinking people have to be to believe it, just even a bit. And to your point about how the Jewish world has been mourning Charlie — I mean, Charlie knew this.

Charlie knew that Jews loved him. Jews who supported Israel loved him. The Orthodox Jewish community loved him. I was in Israel over the summer with Pastor Rob McCoy — I know you know him personally, well, Charlie's pastor — and I was telling him how, like, in the past year, it went from, like, you know, I work in politics, people know that, and around here I would never get any questions about Charlie Kirk, ever.

And then all of a sudden, people start asking me about Charlie all the time, and they love him. And I told Pastor Rob, like, you know, the Orthodox Jewish community in America is just in love with Charlie. They talk about him all the time. And he was like, “Charlie would love to hear that. Let's send him a video. Let's show him that.” And so Charlie knew all of this stuff. He knew he had these fans.

And so for all of these people who are just trying to define it as the complete opposite, it's pretty insane. And then another thing is, right after this happened, we started posting on Instagram.

That's where all of our information goes out first. And I'm looking at all these comments, and it's these young people, and they're flooding it with these connections—like “Israel did it,” all these conspiracy things—before any information is out at all.

How do we deal with, I don't know, so many people going off the deep end in terms of these conspiracy theories that really—I don't know where they're getting it at all.

Josh: Look, this is a very difficult question to answer. I don't pretend to have all the answers for how to make people stop believing palpably silly things. I mean, human beings have believed palpably silly things going all the way back to when Abraham, back in the Book of Genesis, was engaging in intellectual warfare against the idolaters, right?

Idolatry then, or various other forms of falsity and fake beliefs and false notions now—this has been a pattern throughout the entire course of human history. I can identify, I guess, a few trends.

I think the number one trend that comes to mind—there's a lot of reasons, I think, why antisemitism and antisemitic conspiratorial sentiment in general has been on the rise from the far, uh, radical left to the Candace–Tucker right.

I think the number one thing that comes to mind, especially when it comes to the right—because that's really my battle, honestly. There's only so much I can do when it comes to trying to sort the left's own house. I primarily choose to focus on my own house, which is the conservative movement. I'm a pretty public-facing conservative.

So when I think about the causes for rising antisemitic conspiracy theories, especially within the broader right-of-center fold, there are a few things that come to mind—and there's really one above all: there's been a precipitous decline in trust.

There's been a precipitous decline in the ability of the American people, especially conservatives, to just trust anything that they are told at any time, especially when it comes to institutions and elites.

And this has been much remarked upon. My basic reading of the case is that you can draw a more or less straight line from Russiagate — I think that was actually really the beginning in earnest of a lot of this menace — from Russiagate during the 2016 election into 2017, to the 2020 COVID lockdowns, which caused people to lose a tremendous amount of trust when it comes to public health and authority institutions in general; to the 2020 election in general.

I'm not gonna get into the “was it stolen” debate, but there were definitely things that went a little, shall we say, suspect—especially when it comes to The New York Post and the Hunter Biden story, the Big Tech collusion with the deep state, things like that.

So that was another major marker. How about the fact that we just saw what the Democratic Party did in general when it comes to running a mental patient for president and having him in office for a few years, while simultaneously that same administration was trying to prosecute the former — and now current — President of the United States.

So there are a lot of things that, as a whole, have made people on the right say, “Hmm, I just don't buy the narrative. I just don't buy that.” And, you know, typically when people just don't buy anything—when they don't believe necessarily anything they're told—that historically doesn't really end well for the Jews.

Because the Jewish people, Judaism, the Jewish state of Israel, the Jews thrive when there is meritocracy. The Jews thrive when there is truth. The Jews thrive when people are able to achieve things on their own merits, for their own skills. And ultimately, we are engaged in the battle of ideas when it comes to truth.

But when there is such a precipitous decline in the ability of people to perceive truth and to accept truth, that, I think, oftentimes will redound negatively for the Jewish people.

So if I were to try to paint a picture for how to bring ourselves back from the brink, I think some way of trying to restore confidence and trust in elites and public institutions would be a very good way to start turning that ship around. Easier said than done, to put it mildly. That's a pretty monumental task. But that's basically how I see it.

Ari: I totally agree, and I think it's worth noting that right now, this current moment that we're in—I mean, just weeks ago, everyone was debating what was happening with the Epstein files, and I think that was probably one of the largest moments where our own base lost trust in what the administration was saying.

And so to have all that happen so quickly — I guess it's not so surprising, the way that people are kind of looking at this and doubting it and diving into these conspiracies.

I want to ask you about your book, Israel and Civilization, which has gotten so well received in the political world. I think it's incredibly timely too—writing it at this exact moment. What were your goals and ambitions that got you to write the book? What were you trying to accomplish?

Josh: Yeah, sure. So I wrote the book, Ari, not in response to October 7, but in response to the response to October 7. There was — let's call it — a two- to three-week period at the most.

I mean, really there was like a one- or two-week period where the world should have seen, with very clear eyes, that there was this horrific Nazi-esque pogrom—the butchering of Holocaust survivors, the mass raping and pillaging of young women, babies in ovens—all the horrific stuff that we don't really need to dwell upon at great length here.

The world had an opportunity to see this at the hands of a seventh-century-aspiring Islamist jihadist death cult on the one hand; and they could have seen the free and flourishing, very first-world state of Israel — the birthplace of the Bible, in many ways the birthplace of Western civilization — on the other.

They could have seen this very stark moral, strategic, and literal dichotomy, and they could have said, “You know what, I'm gonna side with the latter. I'm gonna reject the former and side with the latter.” But there were a lot of people who were very confused, weren't there? There were a lot of people who were just deeply, deeply confused about who to side with.

There was that infamous Harvard letter—I think it was 33 Harvard student groups—where they basically said that the Jews are themselves solely responsible for their own butchery and their own slaughter. By the way, that's what the Qatari Foreign Ministry said in their official statement as well.

So much for Qatar trying to broker a peace deal; they kind of showed their cards very early on. A lot of people don't actually remember that.

So I wrote my book in response to that, basically trying to — not trying to necessarily develop any new ideas. I'm very much of the opinion, as it says in Kohelet, that there is nothing new under the sun. I'm not trying to propose anything new or particularly super innovative.

I'm really just trying to remind people of basic truths and first principles and doing what little I can to try to put Humpty Dumpty back together again.

So, the book essentially begins as a disquisition on what constitutes Western civilization. Like, literally, what is it? And I make a case that the Bible is really the foremost undergird of that which we call today Western civilization. I'm not saying that there is no role for a Greco-Roman–style reason.

I think that Aristotle, Cicero—they're all great; they have a role to play. But if you're really looking for what is the heart and soul, what is the core of Western civilization—and certainly the Anglo-American tradition and the American founding—it really is the Bible, and in many ways the Hebrew Bible.

I mean, there's a reason that the Book of Leviticus is inscribed on the Liberty Bell in Philadelphia. There's a reason why Abraham Lincoln, two months prior to the shots being fired at Fort Sumter in South Carolina, referred to Americans as an “almost chosen people.”

The story of the Hebrew Bible — what Christians call the Old Testament — comes up over and over and over again, literally going back as far as the sailing of the Mayflower in 1620, when the Pilgrims on the Mayflower deliberately, conscientiously saw themselves as new Israelites crossing their version of the Red Sea, fleeing their version of Pharaoh in Egypt. And on and on and on.

As far as who I've been trying to reach with this message, it's a pretty conservative book. If folks on the left want to give it a read, by all means, I obviously welcome that. I would say that the book has two primary audiences.

Above all, my number one audience, Ari, are Christian conservatives, really trying to dive directly into this fight that you and I were just having, and trying to make an appeal to millennial and Gen Z Christian conservative activists—frankly, exactly the kind of folks who would come to a Turning Point USA conference. Folks like that.

To try and remind them that their own faith, Christianity—as Charlie Kirk fully understood, by the way; he fully got this—rests on the Hebrew Bible, ultimately going back to God's revelation to Moses and the Israelites standing there at Mount Sinai in the Book of Exodus. And the book walks through how our day-to-day morality, our ethics, our legal code, our constitutional norms—so much of this is predicated on the Hebrew Bible.

So that's probably my number one audience for the book, and I've gotten a pretty favorable reception, based on what I can tell, in those circles. And I would say my secondary audience—still important, to be clear—are my fellow Jews.

There's a whole chapter — the second to last chapter — called “The Maccabean Imperative,” which is basically my cri de cœur, my appeal to my fellow Jews to seize the mantle of trying to be a modern-day Maccabee in all that you possibly can be — which entails everything from literally learning how to own and operate firearms to, above all, actually doing the commandments, doing the mitzvot, living a Torah-based Jewish life.

And, you know, the book at times, Ari, is quite personal. I grew up in a very assimilated environment. I was really not religious at all for most of my life. I was never an atheist, but I was never particularly observant in my Judaism.

That's something that happened well into my twenties, into early thirties, frankly. So in many ways, the book is actually just my baal teshuva story—trying to inspire other Jews to be a modern-day Maccabee, which, in many ways, entails, as I said, actually doing the mitzvot and trying to lead a Torah-based life, because only then can the Jewish people actually fulfill the Book of Isaiah, chapter 2—as it says—to be a genuine light unto the nations.

Ari: One of the repeated themes in the book — and the things that you focus on, the things that Charlie focused on — is this Christian-Jewish alliance and showing that we're really working toward the same exact thing here.

Now that we have this rupture on the right, we have this growing antisemitism—do you think that this Christian-Jewish alliance is under threat? How do you look at the current state of that relationship in America?

Josh: It is unambiguously under threat. Of course it is. I mean, that's exactly what Candace Owens and Tucker Carlson are trying to do, right? That's literally what they are trying to do.

That's what Curt Mills is trying to do — he's a lesser figure here, you know. Ari, I spoke at the National Conservatism Conference in Washington, DC, a few weeks ago, and, you know, Curt Mills is kind of a lesser-known figure here. He's quite unctuous and quite awful.

I'm not gonna say who I heard this from, but he apparently was getting a little sloppy at the hotel bar there, and he—this is the guy who's the editor-in-chief of The American Conservative, which is a Pat Buchanan–founded publication, a vociferous critic of Israel.

And when Curt Mills, apparently, I heard from my friends who overheard him, was getting a little sloppy with his drinks, he confided to his friends that he was there with them at the bar that his foremost goal — his foremost goal — in this second Trump administration is to break evangelical Christians from the Jewish people and Israel.

That is his number one goal. The editor-in-chief of a publication called The American Conservative. His number one goal is not, apparently, trying to, oh, I don't know, increase wages, increase incomes, increase jobs, reshore manufacturing supply chains, secure the border, deter communist China, and the fentanyl overdose crisis — all of these things that you think they should focus on. No.

He actually—on his own words, so says my source (whom I will not name) who overheard him — his own stipulated, professed goal is to break the Jews and the Christians.

I mean, how diabolical, satanic, and evil is this, right? But it's very difficult to conclude that someone like Tucker Carlson — who is orders of magnitude bigger than Curt Mills — that this is not his number one goal as well.

If you look at the common denominator of virtually all the things that Tucker Carlson is saying—whether he is bringing on guests who routinely accuse Israel of genocide or apartheid; whether he's bringing on guests who are willing to rewrite World War II and cast Winston Churchill as the single greatest villain of World War II, and say, “Hmm, maybe we actually should have sided with Adolf Hitler” —

And then, in a recent episode of the Tucker Carlson Show, this one really made me … I was totally flabbergasted — he had on a pastor, and he confessed to the pastor that he just read the Old Testament — the Hebrew Bible — for the first time last year, which is an astounding thing to confess for someone who calls himself a big Christian. I mean, that's nuts.

That's literally three-quarters of your Bible, dude, you just didn't read until last year. I mean, how old is Tucker — in his fifties? Sixties? I don't even know. And he said that he was shocked and horrified by the murder and the violence and the “genocide.”

So this is all part of an insidious — still very fringe — theological argument from folks like Tucker Carlson, from folks like this awful guy who calls himself a Christian online called Joel Webbon, and they're basically trying to advance a theological interpretation that has no room for the Jewish people or the Hebrew Bible — the Old Testament — which, by the way, is actually a form of Christian heresy called Marcionism. But I digress.

Anyway, the point is that this is clearly happening, okay? And we should not mince words and say that it is not happening. So again, what I'm trying to do on a daily basis — through books like Israel and Civilization, through my show, my writing, basically all that I do in a public output — is try to keep this alliance together and try to remind our Christian friends and allies that we share, as you said, so much more in common.

Again, roughly 7 percent of the Christian Bible is the Hebrew Bible. Charlie understood this. Charlie quoted the Book of Psalms, Proverbs, and Genesis just as often as he quoted books from the New Testament. He got this.

And certainly the American Founders got this. In many ways, Charlie Kirk’s Christianity was actually the exact same Christianity as the American Founders — Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, John Adams, and George Washington.

And it's a frustrating thing, Ari, insofar as it is not the role of Jews to tell Christians how to interpret their Scripture, the same way that it is not the role of Christians to tell Jews how to interpret the Talmud — things like that.

But the stakes are really high. The stakes are really, really high here, and we just have to basically work with our allies and hope that this alliance continues, because it is — it's really even not just about the Jews; it really is actually about America.

I mean, when you forsake the Jews, you're forsaking everything. I mean, what country has turned on its Jewish population, going back to time immemorial to the Bible itself — what country has ever turned on the Jewish population and been better off for it?

There's literally not a single example I can think of. So the rise in antisemitism is terrible and terrifying, certainly as a Jewish American. But it is equally terrifying, I would say, just as an American, full stop.

Ari: You'll appreciate this, but I was recently watching different clips of Charlie and trying to do some reporting on things he said, exactly. And I think I noticed in his personal home office where we recorded some videos, behind him he had, like, on display, the Old Testament or the Torah — but with the commentary of the Lubavitcher Rebbe.

So Charlie had definitely done his homework and looked at the different interpretations of all of these things, which is just a really cool thing to know about the kind of person that he was.

I want to end this interview with a personal question. For context, I started Upward News because I saw the mainstream media was just doing a horrific job reporting what was happening in America with social issues here.

There was never a point where I said I wanna build Upward News so I can talk about antisemitism and I can talk about Israel. If anything, that was the last thing I wanted to do. I don't like when things get personal — it makes it really hard to report on. And ever since October 7, I find we're covering antisemitism and Israel almost every day.

And I was just thinking about it—how exhausting it has been. I mean, it's definitely necessary to talk about it, but it's just… I recall exactly when that moment happened where everything that we report on is all of a sudden really, really personal and really scary.

And my question for you is: have you felt that too? Has it been tiring? Did you ever expect that you would be talking about these issues as much as we all are now?

Josh: Yeah. “Exhausting” is the word that we're all saying to one another, isn't it? I have had countless other Jewish writers, podcasters, show hosts, and commentators who have actually used essentially that exact word to me. And it is exhausting. It definitely is exhausting at times.

When I first started blogging, back in law school and getting into the media space more generally speaking — because I'm a lawyer by background, as you know—but I didn't necessarily anticipate focusing as much as I do now on the Israel issue, on antisemitism.

I still talk about all the issues, of course, and I talk about the Constitution, separation of powers, judicial activism — all that — a lot. But yeah, I didn't necessarily expect it to take up as much of my time as it is right now.

But, you know, to talk about Scripture again—we named our first child Esther. She was born last December, so she's just over nine months old. She's the cutest thing in the world. And there's so much good stuff in Megillat Esther, in the Book of Esther.

It's what Jews traditionally read over the Purim holiday every spring. In fact, for those who want more information, I cannot more strongly recommend—in the strongest possible terms—my good friend and Edmund Burke Foundation colleague Yoram’s book from 2016 called God and Politics in Esther.

His best-known book is probably The Virtue of Nationalism, but I actually just read his book on the Book of Esther for the first time. My mind was blown. It is an extraordinary, extraordinary interpretation of not just the Book of Esther, but the Bible in general.

Arguably the single most—I'll take it back to your question—but arguably the single most well-known line, I would say, from Megillah is Esther 4:14, which says—and this is Mordechai speaking to Esther after the decree for annihilation of the Jews has been issued by the evil Haman—Mordechai says to Esther, “Who knows whether you have attained royalty for such a time as this”—whether you are in a position of power for a time like this.

And I think about Esther 4:14 a lot. I'm not comparing myself to Esther; I'm not comparing you to Esther, or Dennis Prager, or Ben Shapiro, Mark Levin, or any given Jew who is in the media/commentary space.

But there is something to be said that, for those of us who are given some sort of platform — who happen to be Jewish, or perhaps Christians who, like Charlie Kirk, recognize the vital importance of the Hebrew Bible and the Jewish people—it really is incumbent upon us to fight back in moments like this.

So it's not necessarily what I scripted for myself, Ari, but it kind of is what it is. May there be happier times ahead. I guess I'll end on an optimistic note. I will say this: I'm of the opinion that a lot of this public sentiment when it comes to Israel — and I certainly pray and, to an extent, anticipate that when it comes to Jewish people more generally — I think a lot of this will revert to relative normalcy, to the status quo ante, after the war in Gaza is over.

The war in Gaza has been a PR nightmare for Israel. That's not to say that they are not acting righteously or correctly — they, of course, are — but it has been an unmitigated PR disaster. There's very little doubt about that in my mind. And I think when those images, those headlines go away, a lot of this will actually go back to a relative state of stasis.

And, frankly, I think that's actually going to happen sooner than a lot of people realize. So that's my optimistic note to end on. But in the meantime, you know, I just try to think about Esther 4:14.