What the Hell Is Going On

Latest Episodes:

ICYMI: WTH is Going On with Kicking Trump Off the Ballot? John Yoo Explains Dec 28, 2023

Show notes

Happy holidays from the WTH team. In case you missed it, we are re-upping one of our best pods of the year with John Yoo, to explain why kicking candidates off the ballot (looking at you, Colorado) is undemocratic...

Is it correct that election officials can disqualify Trump based on the 14th Amendment? Was it really necessary or strategic to begin impeachment proceedings against Biden now? Is our Republic unraveling? This is precisely why Marc and Dany called on Biden to pardon Trump. This is why Abraham Lincoln said that a compass that points true north is only useful if one also knows the terrain we traverse.

Download the transcript here.

WTH Happens After the Israel-Hamas War? Elliott Abrams Explains Dec 21, 2023

Show notes

Nearly three months into the Israel-Hamas war, we’re back with Elliott Abrams for an update on what the hell is going on, and more importantly, where to go from here. The military objectives – what Israel must do in order to secure its people – are one level, but as the conflict continues, there are deeper issues that will take time and clarity to address. How do we deradicalize both the Palestinian population in support of Hamas? What about Hezbollah? Iran? And how can we help Israeli security when we are struggling Hamas supporters here at home? Why is the United States so loath to defend itself in the Red Sea? And why are there hundreds – hundreds—of Biden administration employees virtue-signaling their personal disagreement with the policy of the President of the United States?

Elliott Abrams is a senior fellow for Middle Eastern studies at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) in Washington, DC. He served as deputy assistant to the president and deputy national security advisor in the administration of President George W. Bush, where he supervised U.S. policy in the Middle East for the White House, and as Special Representative for Iran and Venezuela in the administration of Donald Trump.

Download the transcript here.

Check out Elliott Abrams' recent piece here.

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WTH Have All the Democrats Gone? With Ruy Teixeira Dec 14, 2023

Show notes

In 2002, Ruy Teixeira co-authored The Emerging Democratic Majority. Now, two decades later, his new book is out – Where Have All the Democrats Gone? So what happened to the Democratic Party in those intervening years? A couple of major factors stand out. First, the Democrats have bled working-class voters – once the party’s base. This means that your average Democrat today is not a UAW union worker, but probably a middle to upper-class post-grad student at Harvard. Or Colombia. Or U Penn. Second, the party’s mission has been captured by extreme versions of wokeism, making progressivism synonymous with total agreement with the far Left. And while the Dems’ recent winning streak is attributable to the specific alchemy of special and off-year elections – in 2024, it will be a much bigger challenge to see how coastal elites and college grads sustain the party.

Ruy Teixeira is a nonresident senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), where he focuses on the transformation of party coalitions and the future of American electoral politics. Before joining AEI, he was a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress from 2003 to 2022. He coedits “The Liberal Patriot” blog. His new book is Where Have All the Democrats Gone? The Soul of the Party in the Age of Extremes (Henry Holt & Company).

Download the transcript here.

Check out Ruy Teixeira's new book here.

Check out the Liberal Patriot Substack here.

Subscribe to the WTH substack here.

WTH is Ukraine Aid’s Best-Kept Secret? Most of The Money Stays in the U.S. John Ferrari Explains Dec 07, 2023

Show notes

The best-kept secret about aid to Ukraine? 90% of the money the US allocates for military aid is spent here at home. The money goes right to American defense companies that employ American workers to produce the weapons systems that Ukraine is using to fight Russia. Not only that: the money is revitalizing decayed production lines, bringing back institutional knowledge about weapons manufacturing to the fore, and pushing the American defense sector to innovate and modernize old weapons systems. But this is all being done begrudgingly by the Pentagon and painfully slowly by the Biden admin, and with zero support from several loud voices in the GOP. At a time when the US is facing three major threat environments – Russia-Ukraine, Hamas-Israel, and a future China-Taiwan – why is Congress so confused about the need to rebuild America’s defenses? Why aren’t Congressmen pushing harder for more jobs in their own districts for their own constituents, instead of prioritizing their own isolationist agenda? Bonus: read Marc’s piece in the Washington Post laying out the argument, and the data, for Ukraine aid benefiting the American worker.

John Ferrari is a nonresident senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), where his work focuses on the defense budget, defense reform and acquisition, and the US military. Over his 32-year US Army career, Major General Ferrari, who is now retired, served as the director of program analysis and evaluation, the commanding general of the White Sands Missile Range, a deputy commander for programs at the NATO Training Mission in Afghanistan, and a strategic planner for the Combined Joint Task Force Seven in Iraq during Operation Iraqi Freedom. Major General Ferrari has also worked as a branch chief for contingency operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the US Department of Defense and as a program examiner at the Office of Management and Budget at the White House.

Download the transcript here.

WTH is the UN so anti-Israel and anti-American? Brett Schaefer Explains Nov 30, 2023

Show notes

Why is the United Nations siding with Hamas in its war on Israel? An exaggeration? Nope. The examples are endless. The United Nations Relief Works Agency (UNRWA), devoted to the question of Palestinian refugees in name, but de facto a front for Hamas; leadership on the UN Security Council and Human Rights Council from China and Iran, setting the anti-Israel agenda; UN employees teaching antisemitic propaganda, promoting Hamas on their personal social media accounts, and blocking condemnation of terrorism. What’s more, all this is paid for, in large part, by the American taxpayer. It’s time to reform the United Nations, or, absent the necessary changes, to cut off their cash.

Brett D. Schaefer is the Jay Kingham Senior Research Fellow in International Regulatory Affairs at Heritage’s Margaret Thatcher Center for Freedom. From 2019 to 2021, Schaefer was appointed by the U.N. General Assembly to serve on the Committee on Contributions, which advises the General Assembly on the scale of assessments for the apportionment of the expenses of the United Nations among member states. He worked at the Pentagon as an assistant for International Criminal Court policy from March 2003 to March 2004.

Download the transcript here.

Read Dany's National Review piece here.

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WTH: Tik Tok, Osama bin Laden, and Hamas. Rep. Mike Gallagher Explains Nov 22, 2023

Show notes

Since the events of October 7, the Chinese Communist Party has been spreading virulent antisemitic memes in the U.S. via its favorite information warfare tool: Tik Tok. We have had episodes on Tik Tok before, but the urgency of this issue has reached a fever pitch, culminating with the celebration of Osama bin Laden’s “Letter to America” on the app last week. Tik Tok is pervasive – around a third of young adults use it for news – and it is incredibly effective. It is not just the propaganda that is convincing young Americans to hate America and ally themselves with bin Laden, Iran, and antisemites everywhere. And it is not even the losses on Xi Jinping’s “smokeless battlefield.” It is the question of the easy control of young American hearts and minds – which apparently march to the TikTok algorithm’s orders – and the consequent control the Chinese Communist Party has over American opinions and American politics. Bonus: There are also transgenic mice.

Congressman Mike Gallagher has represented Wisconsin’s 8th District in the U.S. House of Representatives since 2017. In the 118th Congress, Representative Gallagher serves as Chairman of the Select Committee on the Strategic Competition Between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party, as Chairman of the House Armed Services Subcommittee on Cyber, Information Technologies, and Innovation, and on the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.

Download the transcript here.

WTH Do Antisemitism and Critical Race Theory Have in Common? Professor David Bernstein Explains Nov 16, 2023

Show notes

What do Critical Race Theory and antisemitism have in common? A lot, actually, from the roots of each movement, to the ideology, to the way they are weaponized by the left today. The overarching philosophy linking these movements together is a Manichean ordering of peoples into groups of oppressed or oppressor – usually, but not always, based on the color of one’s skin. Indeed, it is no mistake that in the aftermath of WWII, Jews sought to categorize themselves as white, a move that has now fed the bizarre oppressor/colonizer trope so popular on the left. First Jews weren’t white enough for the white supremacists, but now are too white for the CRT crowd. Not to mention the shifting ideological assaults on Jewish groups, once accused of being communists now accused of being capitalists. Yes, donors are pulling out of universities that harbor pro-terrorist groups; yes, the support of Hamas the past few weeks has been a PR disaster for wokeism. But it will take a lot more than that to root out the antisemitic and real race-based discrimination that has gripped America.

David E. Bernstein holds a University Professorship chair at the Antonin Scalia Law School, where he has been teaching since 1995. He has also been a visiting professor at the University of Michigan, Georgetown University, William & Mary, Brooklyn Law School, the University of Turin, and Hebrew University. Professor Bernstein teaches Constitutional Law, Evidence, and Products Liability. His most recent book is Classified, The Untold Story of Racial Classification in America.

Download the transcript here.

WTH is Iran Up To in Israel and Gaza? Ken Pollack Explains Nov 09, 2023

Show notes

It is unclear whether Iran chose the exact date and time of the Hamas attacks, but the detail is irrelevant. The Islamic Republic of Iran has funded, coordinated, trained, and armed Hamas and other proxies for years. Should Israel not definitively succeed in eliminating Hamas, Iran will learn a critical lesson: its strategy works. What does Iran want from this war? Eventually, hegemonic control of the Middle East; in the meantime, derailing normalization between Israel and the Arab states, eliminating any moderate Palestinian political players, and total control of the revitalized Palestinian question in the region. Iran’s influence isn’t limited to its proxies in the Middle East either – it has an unprecedented strategic alliance with Russia and a growing partnership with the People’s Republic of China. So, why the international equivocation on Iran? Sanctions are needed, tightening the loopholes for Iranian financing of terrorist proxies is needed… Iran must pay a price for fomenting this war.

Kenneth M. Pollack is a senior fellow at AEI, where he works on Middle Eastern political-military affairs, focusing in particular on Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and the Gulf countries. Before joining AEI, Dr. Pollack was affiliated with the Brookings Institution, where he was a senior fellow at the Saban Center for Middle East Policy. Before that, he was the center’s director and director of research. Dr. Pollack served twice at the National Security Council, first as director for Near East and South Asian affairs and then as director for Persian Gulf affairs. He began his career as a Persian Gulf military analyst at the CIA, where he was the principal author of the CIA’s classified postmortem on Iraqi strategy and military operations during the Persian Gulf War.

Download the transcript here.

WTH is Going On with the Explosion of Antisemitism on the Left? Ruth Wisse Explains Oct 31, 2023

Show notes

There are Charlottesvilles happening every day in America. This time, they’re everywhere, driven by an explosion of antisemitism. And these Charlottesvilles are happening at Harvard, Columbia, and Stanford among other elite havens of academe. This is not the alt-right, fringe antisemitism of years past. The modern version has taken on the flavor of the leftist elite: it equates Zionism with racism; it coalesces the extreme aspects of BLM, feminism, and other groups against a common enemy; it is pro-nothing and entirely anti. The Nazi movement had its roots in professors, Nobel Prize winners – this too, is finding roots in elitist bodies who can intellectualize their way around the pernicious evil of the Hamas attacks. The only way to stand up to a culture of hate? Intolerance of it, and imposing consequences on those who profess it.

Ruth Wisse is the Martin Peretz Professor of Yiddish Literature and Comparative Literature Emerita at Harvard University. She immigrated to Canada from Romania in 1940 and is a preeminent scholar of Yiddish and American culture, literature, and politics. She is the author of several books, including her memoir Free as a Jew.

Download the transcript here.

WTH is Wrong with Congress? Rep. Fitzpatrick Explains Oct 25, 2023

Show notes

It has been over 20 days since the House of Representatives ousted, and then successively failed to re-elect, a speaker of the House. The dysfunction could not be coming at a worse time: war in Europe, war in the Middle East, rising danger in the Pacific. Budgets are not getting passed, much less additional aid packages for Ukraine and Israel. The House cannot even convene to condemn the Hamas terrorists – what the hell is wrong with our country? One infuriating piece of information from our podcast today: a large portion of representatives voting against aid to Ukraine are “voting no, hoping yes,” an indication that partisanship has truly eroded the very fabric and efficacy of government. America desperately needs intellectual consistency, good-faith politics, and honesty. How can we right this sinking ship?

Congressman Brian Fitzpatrick represents Pennsylvania’s first district. In the 118th Congress, Congressman Fitzpatrick sits on the Ways and Means Committee and House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. In addition, he co-chairs the bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus and Congressional Ukraine Caucus, while also serving on the Bipartisan Addiction and Mental Health Task Force and NATO Parliamentary Assembly. Prior to serving Congress, he was an FBI Special Agent and a Federal Prosecutor.

Download the transcript here.

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