Think Twice with Jonathan Tobin

In this week’s episode of Top Story, JNS editor-in-chief Jonathan Tobin speaks with Newsweek opinion editor Josh Hammer about the war in Ukraine. While both condemn Russia’s illegal and brutal aggression, they note the widespread acceptance of the notion that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is a defender of democracy and freedom even though his government is actually engaging in repression...

In this week’s episode of “Top Story,” JNS editor-in-chief Jonathan Tobin speaks with former Deputy Secretary of Health and Human Services Tevi Troy about the failures of the public health bureaucracy during the Covid pandemic as well as the damage done to children by school closures that were supported and extended by teachers’ unions. Troy also notes that states where people valued “liberty” and...

Few still oppose gay marriage. But if the state can force even creative artists to celebrate it, no one’s rights to religious liberty are safe. Listen to full story here!

In this week’s episode of “Top Story,” JNS editor-in-chief Jonathan Tobin speaks with legal expert and author Thane Rosenbaum about how best to defend free speech while also pushing back against the mainstreaming of antisemites. Tobin and Rosenbaum talk about the need to rein in Big Tech Internet companies and social media platforms to prevent them from using their unprecedented monopoly power to...

In this week’s episode of Top Story, JNS editor-in-chief Jonathan Tobin speaks with critic, historian and novelist Michael Walsh, the editor of the new book “Against the Great Reset: 8 Theses Contra The New World Order.” It discusses the efforts of the World Economic Forum and the Davos set that attends the group’s influential annual conference to reshape society to conform to the dictates of woke...

In this week’s episode of “Top Story,” JNS editor-in-chief Jonathan Tobin speaks with columnist Ruthie Blum about the fallout from both the Israeli election and the American midterm elections. Blum says Israel is ready for a shift in policy on dealing with terrorism and crime as well as judicial reform from a new government led by Benjamin Netanyahu. The two argue that a main challenge for Netanya...

JNS editor-in-chief Jonathan Tobin speaks with journalist Heather Robinson to break down the midterm election results with particular emphasis on races in New York and Pennsylvania that she covered for JNS. The two analyze the failure of the GOP to do as well as expected in the midterms. Robinson discusses how the abortion issue may have influenced the votes of Jewish women as well as other factor...

JNS editor-in-chief Jonathan Tobin and JNS columnist/author Ruthie Blum discuss the Israeli election results and what they mean for the future of Israel.

JNS editor-in-chief Jonathan Tobin speaks with former White House press secretary Ari Fleischer, author of a new book on media bias about how a partisan and untrustworthy press is not only destroying journalism but driving Americans further apart. Tobin and Fleischer discuss how a biased mainstream legacy media is dominated by liberals who think alike and have lost interest in objective reporting....

JNS editor-in-chief Jonathan Tobin speaks about the mainstreaming of anti-Semitism on both ends of the political spectrum. He singled out the way popular podcaster Joe Rogan gave a platform to BDS advocate Roger Waters and Fox News Channel’s Tucker Carlson gave an hour of his program to Kanye West, an open anti-Semite as examples of how tropes of Jew-hatred are being showcased as legitimate discou...

In this week’s episode of “Top Story,” JNS editor-in-chief Jonathan Tobin speaks with Foundation for Defense of Democracies senior fellow Behnam Ben Taleblu about the fallout from the protests against the Iranian theocratic government’s despotic rule and the ongoing efforts of the Biden administration to reach a nuclear deal with the regime. Tobin and Taleblu both discuss how the lip service being...

JNS Editor-in-chief Jonathan Tobin speaks with Zionist Rabbinic Coalition Founder Rabbi Stuart Weinblatt. The two speak about the troubling shift in the American rabbinate. Weinblatt warns that there are rabbis who are afraid to speak out in favor of Israel. He then explains that just as rabbinical seminaries would not admit a racist, a homophobe or a misogynist, they should not accept anyone who...

In this week’s episode of Top Story, JNS editor-in-chief Jonathan Tobin speaks with LegalInsurrecution.com’s William Jacobson about the Anti-Defamation League’s betrayal of its mission by including critical race theory teachings in the curricula it distributes in schools as part of its anti-hate programs. These toxic ideas are linked to anti-Semitism and hatred for Israel. They discussed how the A...

In this week’s episode of Top Story, JNS editor-in-chief Jonathan Tobin speaks with Rabbi Aryeh Lightstone, who served in the Trump administration helping to bring about the Abraham Accords and the author of a new memoir about his experiences. They discussed the fate of the Abraham Accords under a disinterested Biden administration and the threat of a new Iran nuclear deal. “My concern isn't wheth...

JNS editor-in-chief Jonathan Tobin speaks with columnist and author David Harsanyi about unjust Biden administration policies that hurt the working class and help the well-off and the rise of anti-Semitism on the left. Harsanyi called President Joe Biden’s student loan bailout “Robin Hood in reverse.” He also said that Jewish groups' embrace of such unjust policies showed that they are “the same a...

In this week’s episode, JNS editor-in-chief Jonathan Tobin speaks with veteran Supreme Court litigator Nathan Lewin about the court’s recent decisions defending religious freedom. According to Tobin, liberal Jewish groups are opposing the court’s stand due to partisan politics and their fear of allowing faith in the public square. Lewin decried the willingness of Jewish groups to prioritize libera...

In this week’s episode of “Top Story,” JNS Editor-in-chief Jonathan Tobin speaks with Matthew Continetti, author of “The Right: The Hundred Year War for American Conservatism.”The two discuss the history of conservatism, as well as the way the rise of former President Donald Trump and his populist approach to politics can be traced to trends that were part of the debate between the various strands...

The notion that Jews are manipulating U.S. foreign policy against American interests is false but also the product of ignorance, explains Walter Russell Mead, the author of The Arc of a Covenant: The United Israel and the Fate of the Jewish People. He joins JNS editor-in-chief Jonathan Tobin this week to discuss how misperceptions of Jewish power are both an anti-Semitic trope and a misplaced beli...

In this week’s episode, JNS editor-in-chief Jonathan Tobin speaks with Batya Ungar-Sargon, author of “ad News: How Woke Media is Undermining Democracy.” The two discuss how the shift away from objectivity to open left-wing bias on the part of the mainstream media is motivated not just by ideology but also by a desire for profit. Ungar-Sargon explained that the embrace of toxic leftist theories abo...

In this week’s episode JNS editor-in-chief Jonathan Tobin discusses how former President Donald Trump’s firing of the foreign policy establishment and disdain for the failed policies of his predecessors was the factor that made the breakthrough to the Abraham Accords possible. According to Tobin, though those experts disdained Trump, his achievements were too important for President Biden to overt...

In this week’s episode of “Top Story,” guest host Melanie Phillips discusses the challenges of the Reform movement with guest Rabbi Cary Kozberg. According to the rabbi, the Reform movement hijacks words like God and Torah to push its political progressive agenda with little traditional or contextual backing. “Words like God, Torah, Israel, commandment may be used,” he says. “But as far as I'm con...

In this week's "Top Story," guest host Melanie Phillips meets with former U.S. Ambassador to Israel David Friedman to discuss U.S. President Joe Biden’s arrival in the Middle East. During the discussion, Friedman offers his own version of what Biden should have told Israel and Saudi Arabia and what needs to be done to attain further peace in the region. Other topics of discussion include:- Economi...

In this week’s episode, JNS editor-in-chief Jonathan Tobin discusses both recent Supreme Court cases defending religious liberty and the need to “separate the state from the new secular woke religion on race, sex and gender.” According to Tobin, this set of beliefs that is rooted in Marxism and being brought into the schools is nothing less than a secular state religion that seeks to silence disse...

In this week’s episode, JNS editor-in-chief discusses the debate among conservatives over how to respond to woke Marxist cultural indoctrination and whether Yoram Hazony’s new book on Conservatism provides the answer needed to defend both liberty and Western civilization. He’s joined by Hazony who warns that “woke Neo-Marxism” is carrying out a ”perpetual revolution indefinitely until it simply de...

In this week’s episode, JNS editor-in-chief Jonathan Tobin discusses how to cancel culture is spreading from college campuses to the rest of society, including journalism and even football. He’s joined by University of Pennsylvania law professor Amy Wax who discusses efforts to cancel her for her statements supporting Western bourgeois values and opposing multiculturalism and affirmative action. S...