Charlie Kirk hosts comedian Dave Smith and attorney Josh Hammer at a Turning Point event this weekend to debate U.S. policy toward Israel. “I would say I think that American foreign policy for my entire life has been insane – like criminally insane,” Dave Smith said. “We’ve launched war after war. We’ve talked about peace through strength the whole time, but all we’ve gotten is permanent militarism and forever wars against countries that pose no threat to us.” “And a huge part of the reason why we’ve embarked on this is because the neoconservatives hijacked our foreign policy. They were in power after 9/11. And the neoconservatives, as everybody who’s followed it knows, were joined at the hip with the Likud Party. That’s just a fact. They all admitted in their own words.” “Neoconservative has kind of become a pejorative for war hawks these days – and don’t get me wrong, I support that. Keep calling them neocons. But the actual self-identified neoconservatives aren’t really in power anymore. But Benjamin Netanyahu is still in power in Israel. And the Likud Party is still pushing for this,” Smith said. “So yes, there is tremendous influence by Israel in our government. That doesn’t mean I’m subscribing to some crazy conspiracy or telling you to hate Jewish people. I’m Jewish. I’m just saying they have influence. They’ve used it in a very negative way.” Josh Hammer replied: “I want to kind of dumb things down a little bit here. I see a lot of people wearing 47 hats. I voted for President Trump multiple times. I love our president. You guys love our president, right? You love President Trump?” “Dave Smith is calling Donald Trump a war criminal who should spend his life in prison. You should be livid at that. I am livid at that as a Trump supporter,” Hammer said. “And so, according to my interlocutor, Donald Trump is not just engaging in wars on behalf of foreign governments – he is also covering up the world’s giant pedophilic child sex trafficking ring. Allegedly, I presume, on behalf of a foreign government as well. So I’m disgusted, frankly, that this man is on stage. But I’ll end it at that.” “Some of you may have seen some of my other debates – every single time I come up here to debate issues, they come up here to debate me and my character. It’s all they have. Every single time. Because they can’t actually take on any of the arguments,” Smith said. “Yeah, I’d be curious if Dave Smith also believes in the tooth fairy and pink unicorns. I mean, what lie does Dave Smith not believe, frankly?” Hammer said. About the revent conlfict with Iran, Smith said: “I do think there’s something really sick and poisoning about this – that our country has become so addicted to war, that if we launch a war and you go, ‘Well hey, it wasn’t a complete catastrophe. I mean, a million people didn’t die in this one like in Iraq or hundreds of thousands didn’t die in this one like in Afghanistan or Libya or Syria,’ – okay, look. People died in this war, okay? There were both Iranian civilians and Israeli civilians who died in this war. It was a terrible thing for them and their families. This was a catastrophe. And my point is that the war never needed to be launched to begin with.” “What Josh is saying is the lowest IQ argument that anyone can make. I was warning that there’s a risk of a catastrophe. And he’s saying, you’re stupid because there wasn’t a catastrophe,” Smith said. “This is on the level of playing Russian roulette, and if the bullet doesn’t go off, you go, see, dummy? You were warning it could go bad. That doesn’t prove anything.” “There are multiple reasons why Israel is an ally,” Hammer said. “First and foremost – I think most people in this room are believers of some stripe. I am Jewish. Most of you are probably Christians – and God bless you for that.” “Point two is just the Islamist deterrent point,” he said.
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