Zelenskyy caves to Trump after media meltdown — what really went down
A tense meeting in the Oval Office between President Trump, Vice President Vance, and Ukrainian President Zelenskyy has Americans divided yet again — some claiming Zelenskyy was disrespectful and some claiming that Trump and Vance were.
Of course, the mainstream media is leaning toward the latter, but Allie Beth Stuckey of “Relatable” and Newsweek senior editor at large Josh Hammer believe that if Americans want the truth, they should turn off the news and watch the whole video.
“I don’t think that Donald Trump and JD Vance did anything wrong whatsoever," Hammer tells Stuckey. "In fact, if you go back and actually watch the whole tape, which I would encourage the viewers to do, what you'll see is roughly for the first half hour, it's Trump himself who repeatedly is trying to steer the conversation back towards a place of mutual productiveness."
“‘Let’s try to get this mineral rights sharing arrangement done, let’s trying to get the framework to ultimately bring in Russia and Putin there and try to end this horrific conflict there,'" he explains, mimicking Trump.
“And it is Zelenskyy who decides to basically try to renegotiate the previously, largely agreed to mineral rights deal in real time by trying to change the terms and say that economic security in the form of this mineral deal is not good enough, but we actually need NATO alliance-style hard military, physical security,” he adds.
While leftists have made it clear they believe Trump and Vance were to blame for the confrontation, it was Zelenskyy who took to social media to publicly apologize and thank President Trump for what he’s done thus far.
“President Trump kind of echoed those sentiments, obviously not apologizing in any way, but saying, ‘We still want peace too; we’re still ready to sign a deal; we want to move forward as well,’” Stuckey comments, asking, “Would you say that Trump decidedly won this round, or is it yet to be seen?”
“I’m not sure that anyone won or lost. I mean, I think that the country of Ukraine lost, because they were failed by their leader, who should have gone in there and agreed to this deal that was in the Ukrainian national interest,” Hammer says.
However, Hammer does believe that Vance and Trump have been “absolutely vindicated.”
“Because Zelenskyy behaved, frankly, like a clown. Like a totally unserious politician, like an ignoramus, a buffoon, someone who just has no business whatsoever trying to make peace,” Hammer explains. “Which, again, leads me to my conclusion that he really ought to resign.”
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Biden's case to BLOCK Tennessee's child sex-change ban EXPLAINED
The Supreme Court spent last week hearing arguments over a Tennessee law that bans doctors from providing transgender puberty blockers or hormone treatments to minors. It’s a logical law that protects against the mutilation of children, but of course, the left is upset that kids won’t be given what it euphemistically calls “gender affirming care.”
Despite being a state-level case, the Biden administration has intervened, apparently deciding that this will be the battle that concludes its disastrous term.
Josh Hammer, senior editor at large for Newsweek, joins Jill Savage and Blaze News editor in chief Matthew Peterson on “Blaze News Tonight” to discuss the situation.
“Does the Biden administration actually have grounds right now to intervene in a state policy like this?” Jill asks.
Hammer explains that the Department of Justice filed what is called a writ of certiorari — a legal document that requires the Supreme Court to review a lower court’s decision, granted four SCOTUS judges agree to hear the case.
“This case is styled U.S. vs. Skrmetti, which means that the United States is the lead plaintiff here,” Hammer says. “That actually has a very concrete, practical application when it comes to Donald Trump and JD Vance and Pam Bondi, assuming that she's going to be the AG pick come January 20.”
“They can move to withdraw this case, and specifically, they should make a motion to ... dismiss it as ‘improvidently granted,’” meaning that SCOTUS should never have accepted the case for review in the first place, he adds. “There's no reason why the United States should be in the procedural posture of suing Tennessee for a common sensical, civilizationally sound law.”
However, even if the Trump administration moves to “dig this case” and motion is denied, Hammer predicts the outcome will still be favorable.
“I was pretty happy with the way this argument went,” he says.
Peterson, who also watched the hearing, says that “the discrepancy between the two sides” was “astounding.”
“On the one side, you have the ACLU lawyer claiming that less than 1% of minors who undergo this surgery have regrets, and then you have Tennessee and the attorney general saying, ‘No, no, actually 85% desists from transition,”’ he recounts. “You really do have two sides talking in completely different universes.”
Hammer agrees: “What you saw at SCOTUS on Wednesday, I think, are two diametrically opposed conceptions of the human person. You saw two diametrically opposed conceptions of anthropology — of what it means to be human in the first place.”
“On the one hand, you have the ACLU left-wing argument, which is that human life is basically a pick-your-own adventure. ... On the other hand, you have the old-fashioned view — the view of Genesis 1:27: ‘Male and female, God created them,”’ he adds.
Because of the radically opposed viewpoints, “Neutrality here is just not an option.”
“You actually have to put a thumb on the scale from both a political perspective and indeed from a judicial and a jurisprudential perspective here. At some point, you actually have to say that the moral heart of the issue in this particular case dictates that there is male and female and that we are not going to arbitrarily concoct some sort of pseudo classification based on alleged ‘transgender status,’” says Hammer. “I am hopeful that in the majority opinion, or at least in one of the concurrences there, that we will get some morally forthright language.”
To hear more on the case, including Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson likening transgender surgeries on minors to interracial marriage, watch the clip above.
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Mayor Eric Adams ‘spoke out fiercely’ against border crisis— now he's INDICTED for $10 million in bribes
Mayor Eric Adams is innocent until proven guilty in a court of law, but he’s historically become the first sitting mayor in the history of New York to be indicted for committing crimes.
The indictment alleges that Mayor Adams took $10 million in illegal donations and bribes. The U.S. Attorney's Office claims that he sought and accepted gifts and contributions from wealthy foreign business people — including a Turkish government official.
Adams is pushing back against the allegations and arguing that he’s being targeted for speaking out against the Biden administration.
“It is now my belief that the federal government intends to charge me with crimes. If so, these charges would be entirely false, based on lies. But they would not be surprising. I always knew that if I stood my ground for all of you, that I would be a target, and a target I became,” Adams said in a statement following the allegations.
“For months, leaks and rumors have been aimed at me in an attempt to undermine my credibility and paint me as guilty. Just this past week, they searched the home of our new police commissioner looking for documents from 20 years ago. Just one week after he joined my administration,” he continued.
Jill Savage of “Blaze News Tonight” notes that what he’s referring to is likely when Adams “spoke out fiercely against the Biden-Harris border crisis” and said it was “destroying New York City.”
Host of “The Josh Hammer Show” Josh Hammer tells Savage and Matthew Peterson that he believes Adams is in “deep doo-doo.”
“He’s going to have to face a choice as to whether to try to slog this out or resign,” Hammer says, adding, “So far, it seems like he’s going to fight it.”
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Conservatives launch 'Jews Against Soros' to repudiate the notion that opposing the leftist megadonor is anti-Semitic
Newsweek senior editor-at-large Josh Hammer and Missouri attorney general candidate Will Scharf have launched Jews Against Soros in a bid to push back against the false narrative that opposing wealthy left-wing megadonor George Soros amounts to anti-Semitism.
"We are Jews who have had enough of George Soros and his malign, leftist influence on American politics. We are Jews who are also sick and tired of the left accusing anyone who criticizes Soros of being antisemitic," jewsagainstsoros.com declares. "There is nothing antisemitic about condemning George Soros. There is nothing antisemitic about identifying the many ways that George Soros and his network of organizations fund the radical left. Leftism isn't Judaism, and being anti-leftist is not the same as being Antisemitic. Period. It's time for Jews all over America to stand up against George Soros."
A message atop the webpage proclaims, "IT'S NOT ANTISEMITIC ... HE'S JUST THE WORST."
Soros, who is known for shelling out beaucoup bucks to advance a leftist agenda, is the founder of the Open Societies Foundation.
"Born in Hungary in 1930, he lived through the Nazi occupation of 1944–1945, which resulted in the murder of over 500,000 Hungarian Jews," the foundation's website states. "His own Jewish family survived by securing false identity papers, concealing their backgrounds, and helping others do the same."
Elon Musk has said that Soros reminds him of the comic book character Magneto, claiming that "Soros hates humanity" and "wants to erode the very fabric of civilization."
"Attacking Soros for his influence on American politics, to say nothing of his nefarious agenda in Israel itself, isn't antisemitic. It is simply a fact that Soros funds a huge proportion of the radical left in this country. And he must be stopped," a press release about Jews Against Soros states.
\u201cThere is nothing antisemitic about opposing George Soros. \n\nToday, we (@willscharf and @josh_hammer) are launching Jews Against Soros, a new grassroots coalition of Jews who oppose George Soros\u2019s radical left-wing agenda. \n\nFind out more at https://t.co/Du1cnTmJzx\u201d— JewsAgainstSoros (@JewsAgainstSoros) 1685543511
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Joe Rogan has nothing but rage for this industry lying to Americans
Dave Rubin discussed Joe Rogan’s recent take on the deterioration of journalism with independent journalist Ashley Rindsberg and Newsweek’s Josh Hammer on "The Rubin Report" this week.
“The internet today allows [independent journalists] to thrive because these mainstream media corporations are so corrupt. They’re so obviously indebted to the companies that pay for their advertising,” said Rogan on his podcast.
“I don’t consider myself a journalist. … I just tell people what I think … but I suppose this has become a type of journalism because mainstream media’s ‘journalism’ has become so negligent,” Rubin said.
There is no doubt that the mainstream media has created a void in the space of journalism. People are seeking out truth themselves and are becoming less likely to trust the talking heads on their televisions. Thus, independent journalists on sites like Substack are gaining popularity.
“Is the problem with that that we end up with everyone just siphoning off to their own whatever-they-agree-with and then no one can really fact-check it?” Rubin asked.
“With these big corporate structures … you've got no idea what are the corporate incentives, the shareholders pushing for some storyline, the government getting involved. There’s so much interference at these big organizations that it totally negates all that careful oversight and structure that they’ve built,” said Rindsberg.
There is a revival of investigative journalism on sites such as Substack, where writers are finding accountability from peers rather than editors.
Watch the full video here:
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Chris Rufo leaves Marc Lamont Hill SPEECHLESS with perfect response to racist question
On “The Rubin Report,” BlazeTV host Dave Rubin sat down for a "roundtable" discussion with Manhattan Institute senior fellow Christopher Rufo, Claremont Institute associate editor Spencer Klavan, and Newsweek opinion editor Josh Hammer about how the left tries to reduce people to racial or other "metaphysical" categories in order to pit them against each other and fuel "eternal conflict."
Dave brought up Rufo's interview with former CNN contributor Marc Lamont Hill last year, in which the black TV host repeatedly tried to bait his white guest into making racist generalizations. Rufo argued against categorizing people based on racial identity, saying we should judge each other as individuals regardless of race. Obviously unsatisfied with his guest's refusal to take the bait, Hill repeatedly asked Rufo to "name something you like about being white."
A video clip from the interview began with Hill demanding, "Name something positive that you like about being white."
"There [are] a lot of documents that are floating around public schools that say things like timeliness, showing up on time, is a white supremacist value or a white-dominant value. Things like rationality, things like the enlightenment, things like objectivity — these are very strange things to be ascribed to a racial identity. My view is that these actually should be ascribed to every individual human being, every individual human being regardless of whatever racial category we impose on them," Rufo answered.
"That doesn't answer the question though," Hill interrupted. "You're making strawmen about things that are ascribed to whiteness, that you think are wrongfully ascribed to whiteness. I'm saying if whiteness isn't a negative thing and there's something that you actually, and that whiteness actually shouldn't be constructed as all negative, name something ... that you believe is positive about being white."
"Again, I don't buy into the framework that the world can be reduced into these metaphysical categories of whiteness and blackness. I think that's wrong. I think we should look at people as individuals. I think we should celebrate different people's accomplishments ... I think of myself as an individual human being with my own capabilities, and I would hope that we could both judge each other as individuals and come to common values on that basis," said Rufo.
After a moment of stunned silence, Hill conceded, "Fair enough."
Rufo told Dave that reducing people into categories and pitting them against one another is "how the world has worked for most of its history" and that "it's actually a magical thing that we've been able to transcend it as much as we have."
"I think we still have a way to go," he added. "We need to kind of depolarize and rise above some of these divisions in this country. But I think we can do it, and I think that we have done it and we shouldn't let people like Mark Lamont Hill drag us back down. Whoever you are, if you are black, white, Asian, Latino, straight, or gay, let's treat each other equally and respectfully and give each other a sense of dignity as individuals. Because what we learned in the 20th century, just like the centuries before, is that when you provide people with totalizing identity categories, things can get very ugly and very destructive in a very quick manner."
Watch the video clip below to catch more of the conversation. Can't watch? Download the podcast here.
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