Hawk Podcasts

A new CBS poll showing Democrats favor socialism over capitalism by a wide margin, and the definitions people keep collapsing into each other. Todd Blanche spoke at a political rally on Long Island Friday and appeared to endorse Bruce Blakeman. Attorneys general do not do this. The reaction was immediate and bipartisan, from Mark Elias and Chuck Todd to Joe Walsh, John Harwood, Greg Nunziata, and...

The penalties are the part that stands out. A single gram can carry jail time and a state felony, which means losing firearm rights permanently in Texas. Larger quantities scale up fast. Products bought legally weeks ago are now contraband. Seven years of legal sales built a multibillion dollar industry with real employees and real customers across both parties. Rogan's argument is that those peop...

The natural immunity framing from the COVID years carried the same premise underneath: strong enough to get through it and you live, and if not, that is simply how it goes. Applied to a country where most people accumulate two or three chronic conditions with age, that is a policy with a serious body count. Measles is already back at levels not seen in decades. Bouie's closing point is the one tha...

Hawk adds the comparison Honig gestured at. The civil case against Trump, his sons, and the Trump Organization turned on proven intent to defraud lenders over a decade. The half billion dollar judgment was later thrown out, but the fraud finding stands. Signing what a mortgage broker puts in front of you is not that. There is also the setting. This ran alongside a Long Island rally where Todd Blan...

His argument on precedent is the interesting part. Republicans subpoenaed Hunter Biden, Bill Clinton, and Hillary Clinton, which he reads as settling the question of whether presidential family members and former first ladies can be called. He says there is no question they want to talk to her, and that if she wants justice for survivors she should work with them. That reading rests on her own Apr...

Her husband, who mentors PhD students at the Chicago School, was picked up on April 9th when he failed to collect their son from school. The next morning her car was surrounded and she watched her son, a California resident since pre-K who speaks only English, be handcuffed. They were moved to Texas overnight. Her husband went to the South Texas facility at Pearsall, alone. She was told that in th...

Kinzinger's concern matches Hawk's. Not whether it would be legal, since the Constitution gives the president no role in elections and states and counties run them, but whether courts could move fast enough if it happened days before voting, and what enforcement would look like after an order issued. The political picture explains the temptation. Approval at record lows, a wide primary turnout gap...

The question Reiner raises is disclosure rather than diagnosis. What the White House releases about an 80 year old president does not match what is visible in daily footage, and the public has no reliable way to check. Hawk's comparison is to the last two years of Joe Biden's term, when people around him managed his schedule and limited his exposure, and to Ronald Reagan's final years in office. T...

The list Seder reads out is the point. A war with Iran, an economy squeezing people at the register, an Attorney General installed to serve one man, and reporters asking Dr. Abdul El-Sayed about a streamer instead. Kristen Welker asking candidates whether Israel has a right to exist, when the parallel question about Palestine in 1948 never gets asked at all. Hawk's read on the timeline: before Apr...

Meanwhile his campaign against James Talarico runs almost entirely on ads about medical transition and children, while he trails in the polling. Second, Michigan Republican Lisa McClain went on Fox and attributed a claim about COVID vaccines and first trimester miscarriage rates to the New England Journal of Medicine. The journal published no such finding. Third, Fox host Sandra Smith cannot work...

Hawk holds that against the rest of the picture. Gas prices at an August high, groceries up sharply, a one bedroom in San Francisco averaging 4,000 dollars a month, and Maggie Haberman's reporting that a large share of the president's attention is going to White House renovations. Approval sits around 32 percent. Hawk's frustration is not reserved for one side: with less than 90 days to the midter...

Pair that with Jon Stewart's interview of John Fetterman, where Stewart calmly walked him to the admission that support for Israel is the line. Agreement on nearly everything else does not matter if a Democrat breaks on that one. Meanwhile Zohran Mamdani ran on affordability and taxing the rich and won. That is the pattern across these races, and it keeps getting explained as anything other than c...

The constitutional answer is straightforward. Article I gives Congress limited authority over federal elections, which states and county officials actually administer. Article II gives the president none. The political picture explains the interest. Nate Silver's model has Democrats around 85 percent to take the House and better than even odds in the Senate. Trump's approval is at record lows and...

The timing is the story. Legal historian Holly Brewer's read is that the document was written while Blanche was still acting AG and kept from the senators voting on him, Republicans included. Amanda Carpenter put it simply: a new Attorney General and a new immunity. Chuck Todd's point is that the memo's existence is an admission the White House expects subpoenas aimed at the private parties who di...

The underlying science has not moved. There is no link between vaccines and autism. That question has been studied for decades across millions of children in multiple countries, and autism has a substantial genetic component. Spreading the schedule out is not a neutral change. It means more office visits, more billing, more needle sticks per child, and protection arriving later than it should, aga...

This started in April, when Piker appeared at a campaign event with Dr. Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan and El-Sayed climbed in the polls. Third Way then organized a denunciation with members of Congress. Zohran Mamdani ran on free buses, cheaper housing, childcare, groceries, and taxing the rich, and most New York Democrats still would not endorse him. Hawk connects that to Kirsten Gillibrand's langua...

The record backs the frustration. Roe was never codified when Democrats had the chance. Medicare for All has been a talking point for 25 years. The federal minimum wage is still 7.25 an hour, under 15,000 dollars a year. Six or seven Democrats reliably cross over on defense authorization and funding bills, and then Chuck Schumer writes a letter. Nicolle Wallace made the point that stuck with Hawk:...

On Monday morning's War Room, Navarro's complaint was that Jeanine Pirro has not fired John Crabb, the Justice Department prosecutor who handled both cases. Bannon pushed back, because he likes Pirro. Hawk's observation is that Crabb remains employed in good standing, which says something about how much pull Navarro actually has. Then there is the older footage. Navarro sat with Ari Melber on MSNB...

The second one borrows from 1964. The original Daisy ad ran exactly once, cast Barry Goldwater as a threat to American children, and closed with Lyndon Johnson's line about loving each other or dying. Johnson won in a landslide and the spot became the most famous attack ad in American political history. In the remake, the girl picking daisies is regenerated with AI and placed on an operating table...

The framework paired Hamas disarmament with an Israeli withdrawal from Gaza. Hawk's read is that the withdrawal was never happening, because the objective has been the land. Then there is the history. For nearly a decade Netanyahu's government permitted Qatari cash to flow into Gaza, delivered by hand on monthly trips. Netanyahu defended it as buying quiet. Critics and intelligence assessments say...

Then there is the commentary. John Heilemann gave a long stretch of Impolitic to Hasan Piker rather than to the money in the race, with Ben Wikler as his guest. Hawk's response is simple: Piker is not on the ballot and El-Sayed is the nominee. The money is the actual story. AIPAC spent heavily to get Stevens through the primary and has signaled it will spend against El-Sayed in the general, on beh...

Then there are the nominees. Hawk turns to Senate Judiciary confirmation hearings, where Cory Booker and Richard Blumenthal keep asking a question none of them will touch: who won the 2020 election. There is a legal wrinkle worth noting. The question as phrased lets a witness pivot to the Electoral College and the congressional certification. Asking who won the popular vote in 2020 would close tha...

Several respected polls, Quinnipiac and AP among them, now put Trump's approval rating in the low thirties, with one at 30 percent. Some of those figures sit below where he was after January 6th. He is an anchor on Republican candidates while endorsing people like Ken Paxton. Shawn Ryan and Megyn Kelly have both gone public with their disillusionment over the second term, the self enrichment, the...

Hawk lays out why the executive branch has no constitutional role in running state or federal elections, why only a handful of red states have handed over raw voter data, and why no blue state and no court is going to force that information out. There is also the collapse of the reflecting pool prosecutions. Janine Pirro dismissed the criminal vandalism charges after admitting there was no evidenc...

The news is a lawsuit. New Mexico Attorney General Raul Torrez, who says the property sits in his jurisdiction and that he has received little cooperation from the DOJ under Todd Blanche, appeared on Jake Tapper's program and has now sued Blanche, the Department of Justice, and the administration, demanding unredacted files, documents, and witness statements related to the ranch. Hawk notes the es...