Josh Hammer on the Civil War Inside the GOP
Last month, our publisher, Henri Mattila, was joined by Newsweek's senior editor-at-large, Josh Hammer. During the conversation, the lawyer-turned-pundit shares his characteristically pointed views on a range of topics, especially on the escalating feud over the future of the Republican Party.
If a time traveler had told me five years ago the following two facts about 2026, I don't know which one of these would have been more unbelievable: that Bari Weiss is the editor-in-chief of CBS News or that the GOP is in the midst of a civil war.
Josh Hammer, whom I interviewed in February, has played a unique part in both of these developments.
I first learned about Hammer back in 2020 when he broke a barrier many of us thought was impregnable. At the time, liberal ideas and their spokespeople had an iron grip over practically all of mainstream news, so the idea that a Trump-supporting former contributor to the Daily Wire would become the opinion editor of Newsweek felt like a glitch in the Matrix. As someone who co-founded this magazine to stand against the groupthink perpetuated by the echo chambers of mainstream media, I was thrilled to hear that a respectable outlet had made a gesture toward viewpoint diversity.
The way I see it, Hammer joining Newsweek was one of the first dominoes to fall that made the marriage between Weiss and CBS possible.
More recently, Hammer has emerged as a key figure in the contentious realignment underway within the Grand Old Party. At the center of the conflict is the iconoclastic Tucker Carlson, a veteran journalist who has used his substantial podcast megaphone to challenge the GOP's close and arguably accommodating relationship with Israel. Despite individuals such as Senator Ted Cruz and Ben Shapiro catching most of the ire from the Carlson wing, Hammer has not survived unscathed due to his unapologetic support for—more or less—maintaining the Republican Party's status quo.
Timeless reading in a fleeting world.
