July 29, 2025 • 7 mins
Hamas is getting the finger pointed at them for the issues in Gaza. Rich breaks down Hamas's Strategy, how they are rejecting a Ceasefire, and the Propaganda they are focusing on.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Now let's talk to Rich Lowry, editor in chief of
National Review. He's with us every Tuesday at this time. Rich,
we were talking to Jordana Miller a while ago from Jerusalem,
and you know, the interesting thing is that she said
pretty much the same thing you said. And before we
get into your answer, I want you to hear a
(00:20):
talk back because a lot of people are with you.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
This is so incredibly frustrating. Everybody's to blame, but Hummas.
They're the ones that are doing all the problems. They're
the ones that are attacked. They're the ones that are
holding stuff back. Why is everybody gotta be blamed that
except the actual people who are doing it. They're holding hostages.
(00:43):
What else do you need? They are the problem, not Yahoo,
not Trump, not anybody else. It's them, Rich.
Speaker 1 (00:52):
They must have read your column.
Speaker 3 (00:55):
Yeah, I think it's a pretty obvious point myself. If
Famas were a decent lod authority, they just cared about
the welfare of people in Gaza and wanted to feed them,
there'd be no problem. There'd be no war, there'd be
no hostages being held, there'd be Hamas, wouldn't be stealing
food and reselling it on the black market, which is
the reason why Israel cut off food shipments for about
(01:15):
three months there at the first part of the year,
because Hamas was using it to fund its terrorist operation
and its fighters. Now Israel has been trying to get
food aid into Gaza since then, but it's difficult because
the UN won't cooperate with this agency that Israel set up,
and Hamas is doing everything it can to obstruct this agency.
Speaker 4 (01:36):
So clearly things aren't working.
Speaker 3 (01:37):
No one wants to see kids starving, so Israel's going
to have to change its approach. But it's a really
frustrating situation. At the end of the day, is Amasa's fault,
not Israel's.
Speaker 1 (01:48):
No, and it's amazing that that happened. It seems to
me there's this knee jerk reaction where people, they may
not admit this to themselves, but people want to blame Israel.
Is amazing that they're being blamed almost every week for something,
some atrocity when this all started on one of the
worst atrocities in modern history October seventh.
Speaker 3 (02:11):
Yeah, and you'd also think this is the only conflict
in the world, This is the only place where people
are suffering in the entire world when it's got. You know,
Syria can kill druze and it barely makes a ripple.
People are starving in northern Nigeria.
Speaker 4 (02:25):
I think it is from a civil war. No one
pays any attention.
Speaker 3 (02:29):
It's whatever comes back to Israel and an effort at
least on the part of some people to blame the Jews.
It accounts for a lot of the attention this gets.
But look, no one wants the humanitarian crisis.
Speaker 4 (02:41):
You'd be better if they're no war.
Speaker 3 (02:42):
It'd be better for a masts signed on a ceasefire,
reasonable ceasefire deal. But that's not going to happen. In
Israel's taking responsibility for feeding the population, so it's going
to have to do a better job of it.
Speaker 1 (02:53):
Hey, I want to talk about the last segment. I
was talking about the fact that the Democrats and Jerome
Pow by the way, all were saying, oh my god,
it's these tariffs. It's going to be doom and gloom.
Prices are going to go sky high, in their favorite word,
there's going to be chaos, you know, people fighting on
the screens for supplies, and exactly the opposite happened. This
(03:14):
EU deal is a huge deal. But none of the
doom and gloom that was promised is good. It has happened,
or it seems it's going to happen.
Speaker 4 (03:24):
Yes, I think there are a couple of things to
say about this.
Speaker 2 (03:26):
One.
Speaker 4 (03:27):
Trump is Europe's daddy. It's just unbelievable.
Speaker 3 (03:30):
You got them to commit to five percent spending on defense,
and now this deal that is lopsided in favor of US,
which they just took because we have so much leverage
over them, and Trump is the first US president, I think,
to fully realize how much leverage.
Speaker 4 (03:45):
We have and then to use it.
Speaker 2 (03:48):
Now.
Speaker 3 (03:48):
I was one of those very worried about Liberation Day,
and I think if we had actually followed through on
Liberation Day, it would have been a huge problem. But
Trump realized quickly that it was a mistake, pushed aside
the advisor that had told him to do this, Peter
Navarro foremost among them.
Speaker 4 (04:04):
Puts Scott Bessen.
Speaker 3 (04:05):
The Treasury secretary in charge, is a very responsible and
competent guy.
Speaker 4 (04:10):
And we've gotten these deals.
Speaker 2 (04:11):
Now.
Speaker 3 (04:11):
I'm a free trader, I don't I'm not a huge
fan of these deals, but I think they're better than
the alternative, and certainly on Trump's terms, they're just huge victories,
huge victories for him.
Speaker 1 (04:21):
Yeah, how much money? Now, when you put together all
of the deals he's set up in just a few months,
it seems to be incredible. How much money are we
going to be bringing into America? Not only because the
tariff deals, but because the investments that he's been able
to get, especially from Dubai and Saudi Arabia.
Speaker 4 (04:42):
Yeah, so there are a lot of big numbers there.
Speaker 3 (04:44):
We'll see, you know that the big numbers might not
materialize over time, but but there'll certainly be more than
there would have been.
Speaker 4 (04:50):
Otherwise, which is a good thing. So, and he loves it.
Speaker 3 (04:55):
He just loves loves these big deals. He's a little
bit like a governor.
Speaker 2 (04:58):
You know.
Speaker 3 (04:58):
Governor's competes to land big big corporations. So are you
going to do big projects in their in their states?
And he's sort of like the governor for America. That's
how he thinks about his roles to land these big
investment deals.
Speaker 2 (05:10):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (05:10):
I don't know if he's brilliant or lucky, but everything
every single time team seems to turn his way afterward
being told time and time again, how awful things are
going to be it all seems to turn his way.
Speaker 3 (05:22):
Yeah, he is a good negotiator, and I have to say,
you know, I don't always like his methods, but like
if you look at the NATO spending deal, he never
would have gotten that if it weren't for his methods, right,
if he wasn't saying, well.
Speaker 4 (05:35):
Maybe NATO isn't so important.
Speaker 3 (05:36):
Well, maybe I'll just let Russia invade NATO countries that
don't spend enough and all that. That scares the crap
out of them and gets them to come around and say, okay,
you know, considering the alternative, it's better just to spend
five percent of our GDP on defense. So this is
a method of operating Trump has used throughout his you know,
adult life for four decades or now or whatever it is,
and it's it's worked on the international stage in many
(05:58):
respects too.
Speaker 1 (05:59):
One of one of the reasons I like the stories
we're talking about so much is we didn't talk about
Epstein at all. Today it seems like the story is
still there, it's still going to pop its head up again.
But man, did it dominate the news Like I didn't
see coming. And I know that Trump administration didn't see
this coming.
Speaker 3 (06:18):
Yeah, it seems to me a little bit of like
a summer thing, you know that the news cycle is
relatively sparse, and you try to make some big thing
that when real things happened later in the year will
fall away.
Speaker 4 (06:31):
But we'll see.
Speaker 3 (06:32):
I just think I considered it a conspiracy theory that
Trump did something, committed terrible crimes with Epstein and is
trying to cover it up. I mean, this case has
been out there for twenty years now, all sorts of
victims of suit, all sorts of people. We had the
Julane Maxwell case, which was long and public, and I
just don't think there's anything there except for he was
(06:53):
friends with them up until two thousand and four, and
then he had nothing else to do with them.
Speaker 4 (06:57):
So the blockbuster New York Times.
Speaker 3 (06:59):
Story about the letter or alleged birthday letter, it was
in two thousand and three before he cut him off.
Speaker 4 (07:05):
Yeah, he was chumming with him. We all knew that before.
So I'm not sure what the huge deal here is.
Speaker 1 (07:10):
Yeah, except it's not going to go away, and I
think it's going to come back after the recess because
now you have a lot of Republicans taking ground in
this and so yeah, I don't think it's going to
go away, unfortunately, but I'm with you. Rich Lowry, editor
in chief of the National Review. He's with us every
Tuesday at this time. Good to talk to you, Rich,
Thanks for having me talk soing
Now let's talk to Rich Lowry, editor in chief of
National Review. He's with us every Tuesday at this time. Rich,
we were talking to Jordana Miller a while ago from Jerusalem,
and you know, the interesting thing is that she said
pretty much the same thing you said. And before we
get into your answer, I want you to hear a
(00:20):
talk back because a lot of people are with you.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
This is so incredibly frustrating. Everybody's to blame, but Hummas.
They're the ones that are doing all the problems. They're
the ones that are attacked. They're the ones that are
holding stuff back. Why is everybody gotta be blamed that
except the actual people who are doing it. They're holding hostages.
(00:43):
What else do you need? They are the problem, not Yahoo,
not Trump, not anybody else. It's them, Rich.
Speaker 1 (00:52):
They must have read your column.
Speaker 3 (00:55):
Yeah, I think it's a pretty obvious point myself. If
Famas were a decent lod authority, they just cared about
the welfare of people in Gaza and wanted to feed them,
there'd be no problem. There'd be no war, there'd be
no hostages being held, there'd be Hamas, wouldn't be stealing
food and reselling it on the black market, which is
the reason why Israel cut off food shipments for about
(01:15):
three months there at the first part of the year,
because Hamas was using it to fund its terrorist operation
and its fighters. Now Israel has been trying to get
food aid into Gaza since then, but it's difficult because
the UN won't cooperate with this agency that Israel set up,
and Hamas is doing everything it can to obstruct this agency.
Speaker 4 (01:36):
So clearly things aren't working.
Speaker 3 (01:37):
No one wants to see kids starving, so Israel's going
to have to change its approach. But it's a really
frustrating situation. At the end of the day, is Amasa's fault,
not Israel's.
Speaker 1 (01:48):
No, and it's amazing that that happened. It seems to
me there's this knee jerk reaction where people, they may
not admit this to themselves, but people want to blame Israel.
Is amazing that they're being blamed almost every week for something,
some atrocity when this all started on one of the
worst atrocities in modern history October seventh.
Speaker 3 (02:11):
Yeah, and you'd also think this is the only conflict
in the world, This is the only place where people
are suffering in the entire world when it's got. You know,
Syria can kill druze and it barely makes a ripple.
People are starving in northern Nigeria.
Speaker 4 (02:25):
I think it is from a civil war. No one
pays any attention.
Speaker 3 (02:29):
It's whatever comes back to Israel and an effort at
least on the part of some people to blame the Jews.
It accounts for a lot of the attention this gets.
But look, no one wants the humanitarian crisis.
Speaker 4 (02:41):
You'd be better if they're no war.
Speaker 3 (02:42):
It'd be better for a masts signed on a ceasefire,
reasonable ceasefire deal. But that's not going to happen. In
Israel's taking responsibility for feeding the population, so it's going
to have to do a better job of it.
Speaker 1 (02:53):
Hey, I want to talk about the last segment. I
was talking about the fact that the Democrats and Jerome
Pow by the way, all were saying, oh my god,
it's these tariffs. It's going to be doom and gloom.
Prices are going to go sky high, in their favorite word,
there's going to be chaos, you know, people fighting on
the screens for supplies, and exactly the opposite happened. This
(03:14):
EU deal is a huge deal. But none of the
doom and gloom that was promised is good. It has happened,
or it seems it's going to happen.
Speaker 4 (03:24):
Yes, I think there are a couple of things to
say about this.
Speaker 2 (03:26):
One.
Speaker 4 (03:27):
Trump is Europe's daddy. It's just unbelievable.
Speaker 3 (03:30):
You got them to commit to five percent spending on defense,
and now this deal that is lopsided in favor of US,
which they just took because we have so much leverage
over them, and Trump is the first US president, I think,
to fully realize how much leverage.
Speaker 4 (03:45):
We have and then to use it.
Speaker 2 (03:48):
Now.
Speaker 3 (03:48):
I was one of those very worried about Liberation Day,
and I think if we had actually followed through on
Liberation Day, it would have been a huge problem. But
Trump realized quickly that it was a mistake, pushed aside
the advisor that had told him to do this, Peter
Navarro foremost among them.
Speaker 4 (04:04):
Puts Scott Bessen.
Speaker 3 (04:05):
The Treasury secretary in charge, is a very responsible and
competent guy.
Speaker 4 (04:10):
And we've gotten these deals.
Speaker 2 (04:11):
Now.
Speaker 3 (04:11):
I'm a free trader, I don't I'm not a huge
fan of these deals, but I think they're better than
the alternative, and certainly on Trump's terms, they're just huge victories,
huge victories for him.
Speaker 1 (04:21):
Yeah, how much money? Now, when you put together all
of the deals he's set up in just a few months,
it seems to be incredible. How much money are we
going to be bringing into America? Not only because the
tariff deals, but because the investments that he's been able
to get, especially from Dubai and Saudi Arabia.
Speaker 4 (04:42):
Yeah, so there are a lot of big numbers there.
Speaker 3 (04:44):
We'll see, you know that the big numbers might not
materialize over time, but but there'll certainly be more than
there would have been.
Speaker 4 (04:50):
Otherwise, which is a good thing. So, and he loves it.
Speaker 3 (04:55):
He just loves loves these big deals. He's a little
bit like a governor.
Speaker 2 (04:58):
You know.
Speaker 3 (04:58):
Governor's competes to land big big corporations. So are you
going to do big projects in their in their states?
And he's sort of like the governor for America. That's
how he thinks about his roles to land these big
investment deals.
Speaker 2 (05:10):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (05:10):
I don't know if he's brilliant or lucky, but everything
every single time team seems to turn his way afterward
being told time and time again, how awful things are
going to be it all seems to turn his way.
Speaker 3 (05:22):
Yeah, he is a good negotiator, and I have to say,
you know, I don't always like his methods, but like
if you look at the NATO spending deal, he never
would have gotten that if it weren't for his methods, right,
if he wasn't saying, well.
Speaker 4 (05:35):
Maybe NATO isn't so important.
Speaker 3 (05:36):
Well, maybe I'll just let Russia invade NATO countries that
don't spend enough and all that. That scares the crap
out of them and gets them to come around and say, okay,
you know, considering the alternative, it's better just to spend
five percent of our GDP on defense. So this is
a method of operating Trump has used throughout his you know,
adult life for four decades or now or whatever it is,
and it's it's worked on the international stage in many
(05:58):
respects too.
Speaker 1 (05:59):
One of one of the reasons I like the stories
we're talking about so much is we didn't talk about
Epstein at all. Today it seems like the story is
still there, it's still going to pop its head up again.
But man, did it dominate the news Like I didn't
see coming. And I know that Trump administration didn't see
this coming.
Speaker 3 (06:18):
Yeah, it seems to me a little bit of like
a summer thing, you know that the news cycle is
relatively sparse, and you try to make some big thing
that when real things happened later in the year will
fall away.
Speaker 4 (06:31):
But we'll see.
Speaker 3 (06:32):
I just think I considered it a conspiracy theory that
Trump did something, committed terrible crimes with Epstein and is
trying to cover it up. I mean, this case has
been out there for twenty years now, all sorts of
victims of suit, all sorts of people. We had the
Julane Maxwell case, which was long and public, and I
just don't think there's anything there except for he was
(06:53):
friends with them up until two thousand and four, and
then he had nothing else to do with them.
Speaker 4 (06:57):
So the blockbuster New York Times.
Speaker 3 (06:59):
Story about the letter or alleged birthday letter, it was
in two thousand and three before he cut him off.
Speaker 4 (07:05):
Yeah, he was chumming with him. We all knew that before.
So I'm not sure what the huge deal here is.
Speaker 1 (07:10):
Yeah, except it's not going to go away, and I
think it's going to come back after the recess because
now you have a lot of Republicans taking ground in
this and so yeah, I don't think it's going to
go away, unfortunately, but I'm with you. Rich Lowry, editor
in chief of the National Review. He's with us every
Tuesday at this time. Good to talk to you, Rich,
Thanks for having me talk soing
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