Latest / The Hugh Hewitt Show: Highly Concentrated / Is the world, Israel, the U.S. and American Jews better or worse off than 3 years ago?

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Is the world, Israel, the U.S. and American Jews better or worse off than 3 years ago? · The Hugh Hewitt Show: Highly Concentrated

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  Speaker 1: Welcome to today's podcast sponsored by Hillsdale College.
• 0:03
  Speaker 2: All things Hillsdale at hillsdale.edu.
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: I encourage you to take advantage of the many free
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  Speaker 1: online courses there. And of course, to listen to the
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: Hillsdale Dialogues, all of them at hueforhillsdale.com or just Google Apple, iTunes,
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: and Hillsdale.
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  Speaker 2: Morning glory and even grace America.
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  Speaker 1: I'm Hugh Hewitt. Big show coming up. Senator Cotton after
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  Speaker 1: the break. Eli Lake next hour. I've got Aviv Reddick-Gore
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  Speaker 1: in hour number three. Victorina Mattis is coming along. But
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  Speaker 1: I begin with Garrity the Indispensable because we're talking about depravity.
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  Speaker 1: So I had to call on Jim. Jim Garrity, of course,
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  Speaker 1: senior writer at the National Review, columnist for the Washington Post,
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  Speaker 1: host of the Three Martini Lunch podcast, frequent contributor to
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  Speaker 1: the Editor's Podcast. Jim, the depravity at Cornell, I don't
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  Speaker 1: want to get into the specifics. I've listened to the editors.
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  Speaker 1: People can get into it. Is that depravity the same
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  Speaker 1: sort of depravity as we see with the people celebrating
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  Speaker 1: the third anniversary of 10-7 on the Hamas side, or
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  Speaker 1: is it a different kind of depravity?
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  Speaker 3: That is a good question, Hugh, and that is not
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  Speaker 3: the one I expected you to start with. I expected
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  Speaker 3: you to say the kind of depravity you find amongst
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  Speaker 3: New York Jets fans.
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  Speaker 1: Well, no, because we're going to beat you, and then
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  Speaker 1: you'll be– I don't want to be kicking you when
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  Speaker 1: you're down.
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  Speaker 2: We're going to beat you on Sunday.
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  Speaker 3: Well, I was expecting some trash talk. But depravity, does
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  Speaker 3: your quarterback have anything to say on that?
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  Speaker 2: Touche.
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  Speaker 3: My gut instinct is that there are two different varieties,
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  Speaker 3: but maybe it all comes down to what do you value, right?
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  Speaker 3: What is important to you? What do you believe should
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  Speaker 3: be cared about? I don't know if a crime was
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  Speaker 3: committed by the Cornell seven. I think the descriptions of
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  Speaker 3: their behavior are really heinous and.
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  Speaker 4: Unacceptable and appalling.
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  Speaker 2: Depraved.
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  Speaker 3: And we used to have a category for things that
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  Speaker 3: were not illegal, were not a crime, did not necessarily
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  Speaker 3: belong in a courtroom, but did belong in the sort
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  Speaker 3: of thing where you heard about some, Oh my God,
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  Speaker 3: that guy did that. Oh, I don't, you know, you
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  Speaker 3: don't want to associate with people who did really terrible things.
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  Speaker 3: We will see how this all shakes out. The 10-7 stuff. One,
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  Speaker 3: there was a phenomenal amount of sexual violence directed at
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  Speaker 3: Israeli women and children, and men for that matter, by
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  Speaker 3: Hamas during that.
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  Speaker 4: That has just been hand-waved away.
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  Speaker 3: It's very inconvenient to the people who call themselves pro-Palestinian.
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  Speaker 3: They are de facto pro-Hamas in a whole bunch of this.
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  Speaker 3: It's appropriate we're talking on October 8th, Hugh, because I remember...
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  Speaker 3: Times Square, all across the country, there were a lot
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  Speaker 3: of people who were out in the streets, effectively preemptively protesting.
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  Speaker 4: Any response that Israel was going to do.
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  Speaker 3: So that same sense of not seeing something that you
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  Speaker 3: would recoil from. There was some Muslim student group that
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  Speaker 3: used the little hang glider wheeled thing that they were
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  Speaker 3: using to fly in over the fence and attack people
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  Speaker 3: and stuff. There were people who objectively looked at the
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  Speaker 3: events of October 7th, three years ago, and said, yeah,
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  Speaker 3: that's awesome.
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  Speaker 4: We need more of that. We need to stand up
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  Speaker 4: against the Zionist oppressor, blah, blah.
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  Speaker 3: Blah, blah. So in that sense, that inability to tell
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  Speaker 3: right from wrong, that inability to tell this is something
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  Speaker 3: that is valued and worth protecting and not doing that
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  Speaker 3: and seeing everything entirely through will to power.
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  Speaker 4: What can I do?
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  Speaker 3: What can I get away with? I guess that's the
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  Speaker 3: common thread that ties those two stories.
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  Speaker 5: Together, Hugh.
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  Speaker 1: So the most over-quoted founder is probably John Adams saying
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  Speaker 1: our Constitution is made for a rectitudinous people or a
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  Speaker 1: moral people.
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  Speaker 2: I can't quite remember it.
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  Speaker 1: Does the catastrophic failure of moral education in America lead
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  Speaker 1: to both results, cheerleading 10-6, 10-7, and depravity in the
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  Speaker 1: frat house in Cornell?
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  Speaker 3: That is an intriguing line of thought. I thought you
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  Speaker 3: were going to go with the quote that apparently did
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  Speaker 3: not come from de Tocqueville, but everybody keeps quoting and including.
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  Speaker 4: Alexis de Tocqueville.
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  Speaker 3: America is great because America is good, or some variation
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  Speaker 3: of that. And here's the thing. Our system of government, self-government,
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  Speaker 3: kind of assumes that, A, you're going to be fairly rational,
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  Speaker 3: that you're going to be able to balance your own
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  Speaker 3: self-interest with Impulse control. Impulse control. Seeing the consequences of
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  Speaker 3: your actions. Delayed gratification.
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  Speaker 2: Delayed gratification is a big one.
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  Speaker 6: Yeah.
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  Speaker 3: You won't fall for every snake oil salesman who comes
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  Speaker 3: down the pike. And there are days where you see people.
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  Speaker 3: I have noticed, Hugh, over the years that you talk
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  Speaker 3: to men on the street in interviews, focus groups.
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  Speaker 4: There are people who say, well.
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  Speaker 3: Why do you trust this politician and not that one?
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  Speaker 3: Particularly when you know that the second one is every
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  Speaker 3: bit as dishonest or proven dishonest.
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  Speaker 4: And they say, look, I can spot a liar. Hugh,
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  Speaker 4: I want to.
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  Speaker 3: Grab these people and I want to shake them in
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  Speaker 3: and say, I know you have a Milli Vanilli record
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  Speaker 3: in your attic somewhere. I know that you were absolutely–
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  Speaker 3: that author on Oprah who made up the whole thing,
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  Speaker 3: you love Stephen Glass's journalism.
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  Speaker 2: You thought Hitler kept a diary.
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  Speaker 3: Don't tell me you could spot a good liar. If
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  Speaker 3: liars were easy to spot, no one would fall for scams.
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  Speaker 3: No one would fall for bad deals. No one would
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  Speaker 3: ever get conned. No one would ever say, I really
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  Speaker 3: thought she liked that stripper. I thought she really liked
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  Speaker 3: me personally. Young women would never say, I thought he
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  Speaker 3: was going to call me.
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  Speaker 4: In the morning.
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  Speaker 6: We get fooled all.
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  Speaker 3: The time because it's very hard to separate what you
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  Speaker 3: want to see from what you actually see. This is
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  Speaker 3: a real challenge in life. Orwell has said, seeing in
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  Speaker 3: front of one's nose is a constant struggle. We're always
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  Speaker 3: tempted to see what we want to see. I kind
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  Speaker 3: of wonder if that skill has eroded over time. Blame
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  Speaker 3: social media, blame mass media, blame the schools, blame family breakdown.
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  Speaker 3: There's no shortage of suspects. But you do look at
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  Speaker 3: the decisions of, like, the Los Angeles mayor's race, right?
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  Speaker 3: I'm not saying Spencer Pratt is a saint, but at
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  Speaker 3: least he would have been an option.
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  Speaker 4: He seemed to be mad about the right things.
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  Speaker 1: Well, Jim, I'm going to make this very, very personal
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  Speaker 1: in that I've got a couple of decades on you,
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  Speaker 1: but you just sent kids to college, and mine have
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  Speaker 1: been out of college since the early.
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  Speaker 2: Aughts, the early 12s. 13.
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  Speaker 1: I never thought I'd have to give them any guidance
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  Speaker 1: on avoiding a polyamory and threesomes and foursomes. I just never,
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  Speaker 1: it never occurred to me that I should say to
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  Speaker 1: my boys, by the way, this is.
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  Speaker 2: A bad idea. Has it occurred to you that you
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  Speaker 2: need to tell your boys that?
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  Speaker 5: No.
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  Speaker 3: So this, yeah, this is exactly the turn. I want
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  Speaker 3: to expect this conversation to take you. We've had the talk.
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  Speaker 3: I'm not going to get into whether polyamory was part
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  Speaker 3: of it. Look, you know, you, you, you do your best.
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  Speaker 3: You have 18 years of access to your kid and
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  Speaker 3: you know, the, the, uh, older parent listeners in your
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  Speaker 3: audience are going to know goes.
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  Speaker 4: By like that.
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  Speaker 3: You think one moment you got spit up on your shirt.
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  Speaker 3: You probably, Hugh, we've been doing this so long. You
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  Speaker 3: probably remember my guys crying and screaming. And so it
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  Speaker 3: goes by remarkably quick, but you have that time to
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  Speaker 3: try to be a good role model, to try to
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  Speaker 3: show them what a good, marriage works and mrs garrity
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  Speaker 3: is available for a second opinion um you try to
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  Speaker 3: you know you try to let your kid make mistakes
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  Speaker 3: and then learn from those mistakes and that i've noticed
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  Speaker 3: over the years gets to be really hard this is
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  Speaker 3: because the helicopter parenting phenomenon of course you want your
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  Speaker 3: kids to to you want to help your kids not
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  Speaker 3: make the same mistakes as you and yet how often
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  Speaker 3: in life do we find ourselves like the the mistakes
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  Speaker 3: are what we learn from the most.
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  Speaker 1: But do you think the parents of the boys at
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  Speaker 1: Cornell are good parents?
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  Speaker 2: I have no way of knowing. I wouldn't be surprised
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  Speaker 2: if they were great parents. I just think that.
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  Speaker 4: I know too many....
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  Speaker 3: It's a tough judgment call because I know folks who
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  Speaker 3: feel like they did the right thing every step of
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  Speaker 3: the way and something went wrong somewhere, whether it was
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  Speaker 3: a bad influence, fell with the bad crowd, or I
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  Speaker 3: don't want to get into the idea of a kid
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  Speaker 3: being a bad seed or something like that. And also,
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  Speaker 3: how many people do we know who grew up with
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  Speaker 3: really less than ideal subpar parenting environments. One parent's got
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  Speaker 3: in the picture, one parent's got drinking problem, drug problems,
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  Speaker 3: stuff like that. And people end up turning out to
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  Speaker 3: be terrific people.
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  Speaker 4: So is parenting a big part of the deal? Indisputably.
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  Speaker 3: I also don't know how, whether like in the end,
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  Speaker 3: these are kids who are above 18. They're capable of making.
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  Speaker 4: Their own decisions. They're adults in the eyes of the law.
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  Speaker 3: And at that point, I think we've got to judge
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  Speaker 3: them for what their actions, not on necessarily the, how
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  Speaker 3: they were raised.
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  Speaker 1: Well, when next you come back, give some thought to
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  Speaker 1: whether or not the moral center has collapsed in America.
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  Speaker 1: Not that we're going to fall into the decline of
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  Speaker 1: the West, stuff like that, but just basic things that
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  Speaker 1: we took for granted once are no longer, that people
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  Speaker 1: could gather and applaud 10-7 yesterday really stunned me, as
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  Speaker 1: did this Cornell thing. But I'm glad we've got Garrity
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  Speaker 1: to talk about it. Follow him on X at Jim Garrity.
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  Speaker 1: Read them in National Review. Read them in the Washington
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  Speaker 1: Post as well. Welcome back, America. I'm Hugh Hewitt. Senator
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  Speaker 1: Tom Cotton is from the great state of Arkansas. He
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  Speaker 1: joins me now. Senator, welcome back. I appreciate your taking
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  Speaker 1: time from the campaign trail. If I'm correct, this is
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  Speaker 1: your fifth campaign. Twice for the House, this is the
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  Speaker 1: third time for the Senate. Am I right about that, Senator?
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  Speaker 2: Not quite, Hugh.
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  Speaker 5: Fourth once for the House, third time for the Senate.
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  Speaker 2: Okay, okay.
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  Speaker 1: So tell me, has the Democrat Party changed significantly in
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  Speaker 1: the years that you've been running for office?
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  Speaker 5: Oh, Hugh, you came again to describe how radical the
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  Speaker 5: Democratic Party has become. I mean, we can go back
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  Speaker 5: a little bit further, Hugh, to Bill Clinton's presidency. I mean,
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  Speaker 5: you and I thought Bill Clinton was too liberal, but...
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  Speaker 5: I mean, he would be excommunicated from today's Democratic Party,
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  Speaker 5: saying that we should make abortion safe, legal, and rare,
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  Speaker 5: or that we should mend, not end, affirmative action, or
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  Speaker 5: that the best welfare program is a job. Again, these
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  Speaker 5: are all things that would have you excommunicated from the
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  Speaker 5: Democratic Party and come in fifth in a Democratic primary.
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  Speaker 5: These Democrats now are for open borders, abolishing ICE, defunding
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  Speaker 5: the police, emptying prisons. And he was not just In
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  Speaker 5: places like New York City, even in Arkansas, my liberal
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  Speaker 5: opponent is the most liberal nominee the Democrats have ever had.
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  Speaker 5: So the far-left takeover of the Democratic Party is complete,
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  Speaker 5: and it's accelerating.
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  Speaker 2: Your opponent isn't a liberal. She's a radical.
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  Speaker 1: She wants to import illegal immigrants to take the jobs
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  Speaker 1: of people working on the farms in Arkansas. How's that
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  Speaker 1: gone over, by the way, in Arkansas?
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  Speaker 5: Well, not so well for her, Hugh. Again, just a
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  Speaker 5: couple weeks ago, she said that that illegal aliens are
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  Speaker 5: such great people that she'd trade one of them for
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  Speaker 5: five hardworking Arkansans. Again, that's far more radical than just
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  Speaker 5: what you heard from Joe Biden. Remember, Joe Biden once
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  Speaker 5: said that illegal aliens are just as patriotic as American citizens.
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  Speaker 5: But that implies a one-to-one ratio, Hugh. My opponent apparently
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  Speaker 5: thinks it's a five-to-one ratio. Yeah.
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  Speaker 1: Well, let me go north and bring up Abdul El-Sayed.
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  Speaker 1: I really can't imagine you serving in the same body
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  Speaker 1: with him, but it might happen. Here's Abdul El-Sayed at
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  Speaker 1: a University of Chicago Institute of Politics program sometime after 2016.
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  Speaker 1: Not sure of the date, but it's after President Obama
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  Speaker 1: had left office.
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  Speaker 2: Cut number two.
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  Speaker 7: We are going to continue to make the same mistakes
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  Speaker 7: of the past eight years under Barack Obama.
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  Speaker 8: We are not better.
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  Speaker 2: Just say this.
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  Speaker 8: We are not as a country better off. Eight years after.
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  Speaker 9: Obama was elected in 2008 than we were when he
• 12:17
  Speaker 9: was elected.
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  Speaker 7: And I say this as somebody who loves him deeply.
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  Speaker 8: Look at where we are right now.
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  Speaker 7: We are debating how we beat the most dangerous president
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  Speaker 7: in our country. I appreciate the fact that we don't
• 12:27
  Speaker 7: give him credit for what he did for the economy
• 12:29
  Speaker 7: in the short term. But the structure of the economy
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  Speaker 7: did not change under Barack Obama.
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  Speaker 1: He's sitting with Senator Heidi Heitkamp, Senator Cotton, your old colleague.
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  Speaker 1: And she's looking so shocked because he's saying that Obama failed.
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  Speaker 1: But I think that's consistent with his worldview. Anyone who
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: didn't go full Marxism failed.
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  Speaker 5: Well, first off, let me say that, like you, I
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  Speaker 5: think I agree with him for once that Barack Obama
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  Speaker 5: did not leave the country better off after eight years.
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  Speaker 5: I think we just have slightly different reasons for saying so.
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  Speaker 5: It's telling that Abdul El-Sayed was saying that ten years ago,
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  Speaker 5: of course, he and the Democratic Party have radicalized even
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  Speaker 5: further now because Remember, with Barack Obama, police made some
• 13:15
  Speaker 5: noises or nods towards the vast kind of center-right, moderate-to-conservative
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  Speaker 5: majority in the country. In 2008, he said that we
• 13:25
  Speaker 5: should secure our border. We should stop illegal immigration. We
• 13:28
  Speaker 5: shouldn't give driver's licenses to illegals. He did not try
• 13:32
  Speaker 5: in his first term, which is to say before he
• 13:34
  Speaker 5: faced the electorate again, to pass significant amnesty legislation. He
• 13:40
  Speaker 5: was opposed to gay marriage, at least nominally, until Joe
• 13:44
  Speaker 5: Biden forced his hand in the summer of 2012 during
• 13:48
  Speaker 5: his reelection. So as late as the end of the
• 13:54
  Speaker 5: first term of the Obama presidency, Barack Obama still understood
• 13:58
  Speaker 5: that this country was not a socialist nation. It would
• 14:00
  Speaker 5: never accept a socialist government. The Democrats now have cast
• 14:04
  Speaker 5: all caution to the wind. They're just letting their true
• 14:06
  Speaker 5: colors fly. That's one reason why I think people like
• 14:09
  Speaker 5: Abdul El-Sayed are going to lose their election, or Troy
• 14:11
  Speaker 5: Jackson in Maine. All these Democrats are singing from the
• 14:14
  Speaker 5: same socialist hymn book, and that's not where the American
• 14:17
  Speaker 5: electorate is.
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: Maybe Peggy Flanagan in Minnesota as well. That's probably the
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: reach for Team Republican. But let me ask you about yesterday.
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  Speaker 1: It was the third anniversary of the massacre of 1,200 Israelis.
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: Kidnapping of 250, wounding of 5,000. The invasion of Israel
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: occurred three years ago yesterday. There were celebrations around the
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: United States for Hamas yesterday, and the mayor of New York,
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: Comrade Mamdani, put out a statement that just repulsed everyone
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: who is familiar with moral equivalents of the sort that
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: used to dominate the Soviet Union versus the United States debate.
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: Are you surprised at how far off the beaten track
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: the Democrats have become with regard to Israel?
• 15:04
  Speaker 5: Well, Hugh, unfortunately, it's not just Israel. It's the Jewish
• 15:07
  Speaker 5: people as a whole, given the rampant anti-Semitism we've seen
• 15:11
  Speaker 5: from Democrats in this election. For instance, people like El-Sayed
• 15:15
  Speaker 5: or like Troy Jackson openly repudiating their fellow American citizens
• 15:20
  Speaker 5: who happen to be Jewish and want to participate in
• 15:24
  Speaker 5: the political process or who excuse and defend the rampant
• 15:28
  Speaker 5: anti-Semitism you saw on America's campuses. But let's be crystal
• 15:31
  Speaker 5: clear here. Those Hamas terrorists that carried out the October
• 15:38
  Speaker 5: 7th atrocities were depraved savages. And anyone who celebrates them
• 15:45
  Speaker 5: or even excuses or apologizes for them are also depraved.
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  Speaker 1: I agree with that, and I wish that the rest
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: of the country would have that kind of moral clarity
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: about that, but apparently it's slipping away. Let me close
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  Speaker 1: by asking a couple of campaign-specific questions, Senator.
• 16:03
  Speaker 2: Mr.
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: Tallarico in Texas is MIA. Is there any buzz among
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: the candidates what's happened to him?
• 16:09
  Speaker 2: I don't know, Hugh.
• 16:12
  Speaker 5: Someone needs to put out an all-points bulletin for the
• 16:14
  Speaker 5: Texas Rangers tracking down. It's very true. It's very true.
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  Speaker 5: He's been off the campaign trail now for almost two weeks.
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  Speaker 5: Nobody's seen the hide nor hair of him. I mean, again,
• 16:25
  Speaker 5: that's unusual. I guess his campaign said today he had
• 16:27
  Speaker 5: the flu. It must be one hell of a flu
• 16:30
  Speaker 5: to knock you out for more than two or three days.
• 16:32
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a bigger flu than I've ever had.
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: And then finally, I don't know if you saw Senator Collins'
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: debate with Troy Jackson. It was like watching the Ginsu
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: Knives ad. Poor Troy Jackson was left up in little
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: checkered squares. Did you see it?
• 16:48
  Speaker 5: I saw several of the highlights skew, and of course,
• 16:52
  Speaker 5: no greater senator for the state of Maine than Susan Collins.
• 16:56
  Speaker 5: She's one of my truly esteemed colleagues. I have every
• 17:00
  Speaker 5: confidence that she's going to once again handily beat Troy Jackson.
• 17:04
  Speaker 5: He's just another feckless socialist. He has the same socialist
• 17:09
  Speaker 5: views as the first radical they nominated up there. Not
• 17:12
  Speaker 5: a lick of difference between them, except maybe he doesn't
• 17:14
  Speaker 5: have a Nazi tattoo.
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: I think that is it. Senator Tom Cotton, always good
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: to talk to you. Thank you, Senator, for joining me.
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: Back to the campaign trail with him. He works as
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: hard as anybody does in the Arkansas cycle, as does
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: John Houston in Ohio, as does Johnson in New Hampshire,
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: Susan Collins up in Maine. We've got Ken Paxton is
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: going to win in Texas. I think the numbers have
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: closed up there nicely, although the Tallarico story is just weird.
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: And there's never been as radical a candidate as Abdul El-Sayed.
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: I mean, it's far off of the mainstream in my history,
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: in my adult life. But never have I seen a
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: candidate vanish for 14 days from the campaign trail. Weird, weird,
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: weird stuff with weird James Tallarico. Stay tuned.
• 18:11
  Speaker 2: Welcome back, America.
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: I'm going to ask you to indulge one of my
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: favorite things I am going to the International Churchill Society
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: gathering in Philadelphia a week after this weekend. Adam Howard
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: is the executive director of that society. Adam joins us now.
• 18:28
  Speaker 2: Adam, why are we doing Philadelphia? Is it 250th related?
• 18:33
  Speaker 10: Just happens to be the 250th anniversary of the United States,
• 18:37
  Speaker 10: and we couldn't think of a better place to have
• 18:38
  Speaker 10: it and celebrate Churchill in America.
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: Well, talk to me a little bit about the Churchill
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: Society and the focus on Churchill America. He's a half American,
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: of course, and most of my audience.
• 18:49
  Speaker 2: Will know that.
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: But what's the focus going to be of this gathering?
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: Because it's an old organization with a lot.
• 18:56
  Speaker 2: Of people in it.
• 18:58
  Speaker 4: Absolutely.
• 18:59
  Speaker 10: So when we look at Winston Churchill, and as you mentioned,
• 19:03
  Speaker 10: some Americans realize that he is half American. His mother,
• 19:06
  Speaker 10: Jenny Jerome, from New York originally, But even more than
• 19:09
  Speaker 10: that is the fact that Winston Churchill spent a lot
• 19:11
  Speaker 10: of time in America. Some of his mentors from his youth,
• 19:15
  Speaker 10: like Burke Cochran, who he met back in 1895 when
• 19:18
  Speaker 10: he first came to the United States, became really influential
• 19:21
  Speaker 10: on his oratory, his views on the world. And then
• 19:24
  Speaker 10: he became friends with others like Bernard Baruch. And then later,
• 19:26
  Speaker 10: of course, his relationship with Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower.
• 19:31
  Speaker 10: So as much as he's a British statesman, He is
• 19:34
  Speaker 10: so much a part of the United States and such
• 19:36
  Speaker 10: an important part of 20th century U.S.
• 19:38
  Speaker 2: History.
• 19:39
  Speaker 10: And then, of course, President Kennedy bestowed upon him the
• 19:41
  Speaker 10: first ever honorary citizenship back in 1963 so that he
• 19:45
  Speaker 10: became a U.S.
• 19:46
  Speaker 2: Citizen.
• 19:47
  Speaker 1: So, Adam, tell people about the Society. how they might
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: investigate it. It would be good for the country if
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: they knew more about Churchill. That's just my blanket statement.
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: The more you know about Churchill, the better off you are.
• 20:01
  Speaker 10: I am absolutely with you, Hugh. And yes, the International
• 20:03
  Speaker 10: Churchill Society is an organization that has been around for
• 20:07
  Speaker 10: decades now. It started back in 1968, and it is
• 20:11
  Speaker 10: committed to preserving the memory of Winston Churchill, but also
• 20:15
  Speaker 10: ensuring that the next generation receives the education of who
• 20:18
  Speaker 10: he was, what he was about, the courage, the conviction,
• 20:21
  Speaker 10: the resilience, the adaptability, all those things that made him
• 20:25
  Speaker 10: who he was and why he's become so memorable today.
• 20:28
  Speaker 10: is something that we want to pass on. So if
• 20:30
  Speaker 10: you go to winstonchurchill.org, you can sign up to be
• 20:33
  Speaker 10: a member. I have next to me here issues of
• 20:35
  Speaker 10: Finest Hour Magazine, which comes to those who become members.
• 20:38
  Speaker 2: Dr.
• 20:39
  Speaker 10: Larry Arnn in the past has published with Finest Hour,
• 20:42
  Speaker 10: and it provides also information not only on Churchill, but
• 20:45
  Speaker 10: it also gives information about our organization. And we also
• 20:50
  Speaker 10: have a newsletter that also features our local events for
• 20:53
  Speaker 10: those who do become members of so that they learn
• 20:55
  Speaker 10: not only about this conference, but other events and other
• 20:57
  Speaker 10: programming that we do, again, to preserve that legacy of
• 21:01
  Speaker 10: Winston Churchill and ensure the next generation learns about him.
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: This conference is next week, winstonchurchill.org, for information about it.
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: But Adam, I'm interested in you. How do you end
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: up being the executive director of the Churchill Society?
• 21:17
  Speaker 10: Well, it goes way back to when I was a student.
• 21:19
  Speaker 10: I just majored in history in college. I wasn't sure
• 21:22
  Speaker 10: if I could make a career doing it.
• 21:24
  Speaker 4: But it worked out.
• 21:25
  Speaker 10: That after I finished my PhD, I didn't realize that
• 21:28
  Speaker 10: the U.S. government hired historians. So I spent the next
• 21:31
  Speaker 10: 22 years working at the U.S. Department of State in
• 21:33
  Speaker 10: the history office there. And then I spent the last
• 21:36
  Speaker 10: seven of those years as the.
• 21:37
  Speaker 4: Chief historian for the State Department.
• 21:39
  Speaker 10: Turns out the government, every agency, hires at least one historian.
• 21:44
  Speaker 10: And I'm very proud. pleased with that because it shows
• 21:46
  Speaker 10: a commitment to making sure that the records of those institutions,
• 21:50
  Speaker 10: those agencies are preserved. And it also was an opportunity
• 21:53
  Speaker 10: for me to provide historical context to policymakers so that
• 21:56
  Speaker 10: they could learn more about how to make better informed
• 22:00
  Speaker 10: decisions when it came to U.S.
• 22:01
  Speaker 4: Foreign policy.
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: And what is the mission of the International Churchill Society?
• 22:10
  Speaker 10: So our goal is to not only preserve the memory
• 22:13
  Speaker 10: of Winston Churchill, but to ensure that the next generation
• 22:16
  Speaker 10: understands the important legacy that he provides. And there's so
• 22:20
  Speaker 10: many elements that are relevant today from his experiences, whether
• 22:25
  Speaker 10: it be the resilience after the times he had to
• 22:28
  Speaker 10: get up off the floor from things that he failed at,
• 22:30
  Speaker 10: then the successes and how he learned how to bring
• 22:33
  Speaker 10: those successes to a larger scale of policy, whether it
• 22:36
  Speaker 10: be in Britain or beyond in terms of the United
• 22:40
  Speaker 10: States and the special relationships, And we want to continue
• 22:43
  Speaker 10: the conversations of learning that come from that example and
• 22:46
  Speaker 10: from that impact and ensure that everyone, but especially the
• 22:48
  Speaker 10: next generation, has that legacy in mind.
• 22:52
  Speaker 2: And we got a minute, Adam.
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: Is it growing faster in some parts of the world
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: than it is in others?
• 22:59
  Speaker 10: We actually have chapters.
• 23:00
  Speaker 4: Around the world.
• 23:02
  Speaker 10: We have multiple chapters in Europe and it has been
• 23:04
  Speaker 10: growing in Europe where we have new chapters coming in,
• 23:07
  Speaker 10: including three just in the last year. But we also
• 23:09
  Speaker 10: have a chapter now in Brazil. And then, of course,
• 23:12
  Speaker 10: Canada and the United States is where we have the
• 23:14
  Speaker 10: majority of them. But we're always looking to expand further.
• 23:17
  Speaker 10: And we're always keen to find those who appreciate his legacy,
• 23:20
  Speaker 10: no matter where they are.
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: So I encourage everyone, go to WinstonChurchill.org. Maybe we'll see
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: you in Philadelphia next week.
• 23:28
  Speaker 6: Dr.
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: Larry Arnn and I will be there. But the International
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: Churchill Society gathering in Philadelphia on our 250th anniversary is
• 23:36
  Speaker 1: and no better person to celebrate than the last century's
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: greatest man, Winston Churchill.
• 23:41
  Speaker 2: Thank you, Adam Howard. I'll be right back, America. Stay tuned.
• 23:46
  Speaker 2: Welcome back, America. I'm Hugh Hewitt.
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: Philip Balboni is the founder, editor-in-chief of GlobalPost.com. He joins
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: me monthly as we throw a spotlight on some part
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: of the world that is not normally covered. And today
• 23:59
  Speaker 1: we're going back to the future. We're talking about the Falklands.
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: And when you sent this to me, Philip, I couldn't
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: believe it. because I'd missed it entirely, the Falkland Islands,
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: and the illustration, if you're looking at the Salem News Channel,
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: is right out of the Global Post today. Why is
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: this back in the headlines, Philip Balboni?
• 24:16
  Speaker 6: Well, Hugh, one of my favorite old sayings is that
• 24:19
  Speaker 6: geography is destiny, and that certainly applies to the Falkland Islands.
• 24:24
  Speaker 6: It's another great lesson, if we needed another one, that
• 24:29
  Speaker 6: old grievances can arise anew, and including in very unexpected places. So,
• 24:35
  Speaker 6: Just a little background for listeners and viewers. So the
• 24:38
  Speaker 6: Falklands are two main islands about the size of Connecticut.
• 24:42
  Speaker 6: You can see that in the map that you have up.
• 24:47
  Speaker 6: They're located in the South Atlantic, very cold body of water. It's,
• 24:52
  Speaker 6: you know, farther down on that map is Antarctica. So
• 24:59
  Speaker 6: these islands have about 4,000 people. They're windswept and mountainous.
• 25:05
  Speaker 6: And the people who live there depend on fishing. But still,
• 25:10
  Speaker 6: these islands were fought over in a real war in
• 25:14
  Speaker 6: 1982 between Great Britain and Argentina. Argentina invaded. Almost a
• 25:20
  Speaker 6: thousand people, military from the UK and Argentina lost their
• 25:25
  Speaker 6: lives in the war. Argentina surrendered. And that issue has
• 25:29
  Speaker 6: basically gone to sleep now for 40 plus years. But
• 25:33
  Speaker 6: now tensions are heating up again. So why is this
• 25:38
  Speaker 6: happening now? This too, Hugh, is going to be not
• 25:42
  Speaker 6: a surprise to you. The issue is oil.
• 25:46
  Speaker 2: Of course.
• 25:46
  Speaker 6: Oil, very important commodity nowadays. So there's been a recent
• 25:53
  Speaker 6: discovery called the Sea Lion Project that's located about 180
• 25:57
  Speaker 6: miles north of the Falkland Islands coast. but still in
• 26:02
  Speaker 6: their economic zone. And this field contains almost 1 billion
• 26:09
  Speaker 6: barrels of recoverable oil.
• 26:11
  Speaker 2: Wow.
• 26:14
  Speaker 6: Yeah, for comparison's sake, that is equivalent to the North
• 26:17
  Speaker 6: Sea oil fields that have been producing oil for the
• 26:22
  Speaker 6: UK for a couple of generations, I believe. So the
• 26:28
  Speaker 6: project is operated by an Israeli company, base company, with
• 26:34
  Speaker 6: a British partner. It's expected to generate $ 4 billion for
• 26:39
  Speaker 6: the Falkland Islands. And with 4,000 people, that's pretty compelling math.
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: That's a lot better than the dividend Alaskans get every
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: year from their oil and natural gas exploration.
• 26:52
  Speaker 6: Exactly.
• 26:53
  Speaker 2: But Argentina wants it back.
• 26:58
  Speaker 6: And they contest the sovereignty, and they are making serious
• 27:04
  Speaker 6: noises now over this oil project.
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: Now, Philip Balboni, in 84 or 83, when this happened,
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: the war, Margaret Thatcher sent the Royal Navy, and there
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: was a lot of Royal Navy to send and a
• 27:19
  Speaker 1: lot of Royal Navy Marines to send, and they humped
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: over the one island, and there was a British ship
• 27:25
  Speaker 1: that was sunk with loss of life because of an
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: Exocet missile. Maybe it was towed back. It was, it
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: was a big deal. The United Kingdom doesn't have that anymore. If,
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: if Argentina puts people on there, that's over, isn't it?
• 27:39
  Speaker 6: Well, I don't know. It could be that they, they
• 27:43
  Speaker 6: still maintain about a thousand, uh, troops on the island.
• 27:48
  Speaker 6: That would be Royal Marines. That would be, uh, some ships, um,
• 27:52
  Speaker 6: probably not big ones. Uh, I'm sure. And, um, Air
• 27:56
  Speaker 6: Force capabilities. So they do have something there, but a
• 27:59
  Speaker 6: thousand is not many. Argentina is a good-sized country, 47
• 28:05
  Speaker 6: million people. They still certainly have a military. Would they
• 28:10
  Speaker 6: ever go to that length? You know, I'm not sure.
• 28:14
  Speaker 6: Another reason why this is important geopolitically is that Argentinian
• 28:21
  Speaker 6: President Javier Millay is up for re-election next year. This
• 28:26
  Speaker 6: issue is universally popular in Argentina across all the political lines.
• 28:33
  Speaker 6: So he's using the Falklands to kind of gin up
• 28:37
  Speaker 6: support for himself in advance of those elections.
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: Well, you know, the Sovereign Wealth Fund of Norway is enormous.
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: They're going to reopen the North Sea to production because
• 28:47
  Speaker 1: of the wealth that is not being used there is enormous.
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: Someday California is going to go off the coast and
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: bail itself out by using the the resources that are
• 28:56
  Speaker 1: off the California coast. But I thought when we would
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: be talking, we'd be talking about Brazil flipping from Lula
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: back to a Bolsonaro, but instead you're.
• 29:06
  Speaker 2: On the other side.
• 29:06
  Speaker 6: We could do that. We could talk about that.
• 29:09
  Speaker 2: Who do you think is going to win this weekend?
• 29:13
  Speaker 6: I would say Bolsonaro. Yeah, I would say so. He
• 29:17
  Speaker 6: won the first round with about maybe three points difference, 47,
• 29:22
  Speaker 6: 45 and change, something like that. But the smaller parties
• 29:27
  Speaker 6: are mostly right wing parties, and they are likely to
• 29:31
  Speaker 6: support him. So it would take a larger turnout on
• 29:35
  Speaker 6: the left for Lula to win. prevail. But he is not,
• 29:42
  Speaker 6: he's 80, but he's not Joe Biden 80, okay, if
• 29:47
  Speaker 6: you forgive me. He's still very vigorous. He's a hard campaigner.
• 29:52
  Speaker 6: You can't rule him out.
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: Well, this is one reason why you've got to be
• 29:58
  Speaker 1: reading the Global Post every day, globalpost.com. Philip, again, let's
• 30:02
  Speaker 1: remind people, students can get Global Post for free, a
• 30:06
  Speaker 1: daily deep dive into stories around the world, homeschoolers, educators, teachers.
• 30:11
  Speaker 1: Are you still running the special deal for listeners to
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: The Hugh Hewitt Show?
• 30:16
  Speaker 2: Yes, we are.
• 30:16
  Speaker 6: 50% off of our modest $ 46 annual subscription. So if
• 30:23
  Speaker 6: you're a Hugh Hewitt fan, listener or viewer, you only
• 30:26
  Speaker 6: pay $ 23.
• 30:28
  Speaker 2: Hugh Hewitt.
• 30:29
  Speaker 1: It's globalpost.com slash H.
• 30:34
  Speaker 2: Hugh Hewitt. H.
• 30:35
  Speaker 6: Hewitt? Yes.
• 30:37
  Speaker 11: Yes.
• 30:37
  Speaker 2: All right. Globalpost.com slash H.
• 30:40
  Speaker 6: Hewitt.
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: But what I really want people to know is that
• 30:43
  Speaker 1: you're a teacher and you're teaching social studies or American
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: history or international affairs. All of your students can get
• 30:49
  Speaker 1: the Global Post. You can spend 20 minutes a day
• 30:52
  Speaker 1: doing this and they'll be so much better off come
• 30:55
  Speaker 1: time for college or the AP than.
• 30:57
  Speaker 2: Had they not read it. Philip Balboni, always a pleasure,
• 31:00
  Speaker 2: my friend.
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: GlobalPost.com slash hhewitt for the special deal, or go to
• 31:05
  Speaker 1: the toolbar at the top if you're a student or
• 31:08
  Speaker 1: a teacher, and it will be free to you next month.
• 31:10
  Speaker 1: We'll find out if it's Lula or Javier's son.
• 31:14
  Speaker 2: Stay tuned. I'll be right back, America, on The Hugh
• 31:16
  Speaker 2: Hewitt Show. Good morning, Gloria, and evening, Grace, America.
• 31:20
  Speaker 1: Welcome to Hour 2 of today's program. Coming up next hour,
• 31:23
  Speaker 1: Aviv Reddy-Gore joins me as we continue to talk about
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: three years and a day after the invasion of Israel
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: by Hamas and the massacre that followed and the kidnappings
• 31:33
  Speaker 1: that followed. I'm gathering up various reactions. Eli Lake is,
• 31:36
  Speaker 1: of course, correspondent for the Free Press. He's the host
• 31:39
  Speaker 1: of the Breaking History podcast, regular guest on this program.
• 31:43
  Speaker 1: First big question, I'll ask Aviv this as well, Eli.
• 31:48
  Speaker 1: It's four questions.
• 31:49
  Speaker 2: Is the world, is Israel.
• 31:51
  Speaker 1: Is the United States and our Jews in America better
• 31:54
  Speaker 1: off today than they were three years and two days ago?
• 31:59
  Speaker 12: Say Israel is better off. The world will see. I
• 32:04
  Speaker 12: think American Jews are not as well off. And I
• 32:07
  Speaker 12: think America is beginning to be better off. I mean,
• 32:10
  Speaker 12: I think that we have to understand that Israel was
• 32:13
  Speaker 12: in a vice grip, strategically speaking, before October 7th. And
• 32:20
  Speaker 12: since then, you know, the IDF under the leadership of
• 32:25
  Speaker 12: Benjamin Netanyahu has dispatched the leadership of Hezbollah, the leadership
• 32:31
  Speaker 12: of Iran, although Iran still, the regime still stands. You know,
• 32:37
  Speaker 12: it's the pressure on Hezbollah made it possible for the
• 32:40
  Speaker 12: Turks to come in and assist for the ouster of
• 32:43
  Speaker 12: Bashar al-Assad. The leadership of Hamas is gone, although they
• 32:49
  Speaker 12: still have control of, I guess, 40 percent of Gaza still. And,
• 32:54
  Speaker 12: you know, it's undetermined whether they'll disarm. So Israel is
• 32:59
  Speaker 12: in a much better strategic position because of hard facts
• 33:03
  Speaker 12: on the ground. I think that there is another element
• 33:07
  Speaker 12: to this, which we've covered in this program many times
• 33:10
  Speaker 12: and you've talked about, which is there's an information war.
• 33:12
  Speaker 12: And in the information war, Israel has lost badly. And
• 33:18
  Speaker 12: that is something that, you know, is kind of driven
• 33:23
  Speaker 12: by this red-green alliance, which we've talked about.
• 33:27
  Speaker 2: And I think it is.
• 33:28
  Speaker 12: Particularly dangerous to American Jews. Dealing kind of in American
• 33:35
  Speaker 12: civil society and the amount of opprobrium that is directed
• 33:39
  Speaker 12: at Israel and is increasingly being directed at Jews is
• 33:43
  Speaker 12: a bad thing. But I think that Israel is in
• 33:45
  Speaker 12: a much better strategic position.
• 33:47
  Speaker 1: Okay, what happened in the last three years is Pandora's
• 33:51
  Speaker 1: box has been opened. We've got an Islamist mayor in
• 33:55
  Speaker 1: New York, and I say that considering exactly what Islamist means.
• 33:59
  Speaker 2: I think he's anti-Semitic.
• 34:01
  Speaker 1: We've got a radical running, El-Sayed, for the United States Senate,
• 34:05
  Speaker 1: who I think is a genuine menace. And I know
• 34:07
  Speaker 1: you wrote about, because I read your statement on Mayor
• 34:10
  Speaker 1: Mamdani's statement yesterday, is this peak... Islamist in American society,
• 34:16
  Speaker 1: or is it going to get worse?
• 34:20
  Speaker 12: I would phrase it slightly differently with Mamdani. I mean,
• 34:22
  Speaker 12: I think Mamdani is kind of a third worldist. He
• 34:25
  Speaker 12: is a self-described socialist. And he and his coalition are,
• 34:31
  Speaker 12: at the very least, we could say, tolerant of people
• 34:33
  Speaker 12: who believe in political Islam. And there is a difference
• 34:37
  Speaker 12: between a true believer versus somebody who is willing to
• 34:41
  Speaker 12: kind of form a coalition with that crowd. Um, although I,
• 34:45
  Speaker 12: I'm not, I, on the other hand, I understand how
• 34:48
  Speaker 12: you would come to your conclusion that no, indeed he
• 34:50
  Speaker 12: is a, he is an Islamist. Um, I do think
• 34:54
  Speaker 12: that in a sense, we've never really seen, I mean,
• 34:58
  Speaker 12: you know, the council on American Islamic relations, which was
• 35:02
  Speaker 12: started in many ways as sort of ties to the
• 35:04
  Speaker 12: Muslim brotherhood and is the unindicted co-conspirator, conspirator in the
• 35:09
  Speaker 12: Holy land foundation case from, um, like 20 years ago. Um,
• 35:14
  Speaker 12: You know, CARE, that organization on a national level, has
• 35:17
  Speaker 12: partnered at times with the FBI. And so, you know,
• 35:20
  Speaker 12: it waxes and wanes. On the other hand, we've never
• 35:24
  Speaker 12: had kind of mainstream political leaders that have been willing
• 35:27
  Speaker 12: to align in many ways with people who are just
• 35:30
  Speaker 12: unadulterated Islamists. I mean, the fact that Mamdani campaigned for
• 35:36
  Speaker 12: mayor with one of the character witnesses for the blind sheikh,
• 35:42
  Speaker 12: in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. The fact that
• 35:47
  Speaker 12: there's a district in New Jersey that actually elected another
• 35:49
  Speaker 12: person who testified as a character witness for the blind sheik.
• 35:56
  Speaker 12: You know, the fact that Daria-Liza Al-Savaliyeh was kind of
• 35:59
  Speaker 12: plucked from obscurity by Mamdani and is now going to
• 36:02
  Speaker 12: be a U.S. member of Congress, barring a miracle in November.
• 36:08
  Speaker 12: This is somewhat new that you seem to have this momentum,
• 36:12
  Speaker 12: at least for people who are at this point kind
• 36:16
  Speaker 12: of aligned or perfectly willing to sort of understand that
• 36:19
  Speaker 12: Hamas is the good guys in the conflict with Israel.
• 36:22
  Speaker 2: Yeah, if El-Sayed wins in Michigan, we'll have crossed a Rubicon.
• 36:26
  Speaker 1: Let me play for you Leland Bittert, a very mainstream guy,
• 36:29
  Speaker 1: News Nation anchor, talking with Abdu'l-Sayed yesterday, cut number three.
• 36:36
  Speaker 10: Israel, you seem to think Israel was a bigger threat
• 36:39
  Speaker 10: than Iran to the United States.
• 36:40
  Speaker 2: Do you agree?
• 36:42
  Speaker 9: Well, look, at the end of the day, our job
• 36:44
  Speaker 9: is to address our issues diplomatically. But, you know, right
• 36:48
  Speaker 9: now we are in the war in Iran in part
• 36:50
  Speaker 9: because of the advocacy of the Israeli prime minister.
• 36:53
  Speaker 2: There's no disagreement on that.
• 36:54
  Speaker 9: He came to the situation room and advocated for the war.
• 36:58
  Speaker 9: And we're now paying, what, $ 1, 600 for it?
• 37:02
  Speaker 4: Our gas, our groceries aren't affordable.
• 37:04
  Speaker 9: And that's on top of the billions in tax dollars
• 37:06
  Speaker 9: that we spend sending our money over there.
• 37:09
  Speaker 2: Now, how we think about a.
• 37:10
  Speaker 13: Threat, that's... You're going to be a senator.
• 37:12
  Speaker 4: What do you view as the biggest threat?
• 37:14
  Speaker 9: I've been more than extremely clear about this. I don't
• 37:17
  Speaker 9: want our tax dollars being used to subsidize war abroad.
• 37:19
  Speaker 8: I don't want our tax dollars.
• 37:20
  Speaker 9: Being used to fund unconditionally foreign militaries. I think it's
• 37:24
  Speaker 9: important that we be the first among equals to enforce
• 37:28
  Speaker 9: international law against... Any and every country, that breaks it.
• 37:31
  Speaker 9: So this sort of hypothetical, who's a bigger threat, is
• 37:33
  Speaker 9: a dumb question.
• 37:34
  Speaker 2: I'm sorry.
• 37:35
  Speaker 9: But the big question is, what is the public policy?
• 37:39
  Speaker 11: We can shake hands again for one second.
• 37:41
  Speaker 2: But what is the public policy we really want? You
• 37:43
  Speaker 2: know what I mean? What is it that we want
• 37:44
  Speaker 2: in the world?
• 37:45
  Speaker 8: We want a world with less war.
• 37:46
  Speaker 9: We want a world where our money is spent to
• 37:49
  Speaker 9: build our schools here rather than to fund war and
• 37:52
  Speaker 9: apartheid and genocide abroad. We want a world where all
• 37:56
  Speaker 9: kids get to live their best, most dignified life and
• 37:59
  Speaker 9: you know, when you think about our current public policy,
• 38:02
  Speaker 9: whether it's a war in Iran we shouldn't be fighting
• 38:04
  Speaker 9: or it's subsidizing foreign military, that does not seem to
• 38:06
  Speaker 9: me to be in the best interest of kids, all kids.
• 38:10
  Speaker 1: What do you make of that, Eli? I have my
• 38:13
  Speaker 1: strong reaction, but what do you think of it?
• 38:15
  Speaker 12: Well, I use the phrase from Amdani that he's a
• 38:18
  Speaker 12: smiling wolf masquerading as a sheep, but Al-Said is very
• 38:22
  Speaker 12: much in that category. He was somewhat equivocating, but what was,
• 38:28
  Speaker 12: you know, if what he was really saying was that
• 38:30
  Speaker 12: Israel and Iran, at the very least, are on the
• 38:32
  Speaker 12: same moral playing field, which is a lunatic, crazy thing
• 38:35
  Speaker 12: to say. And what he was also saying was that
• 38:38
  Speaker 12: part of the harm of Israel or the threat from
• 38:42
  Speaker 12: Israel is that its prime minister influenced the decision to
• 38:47
  Speaker 12: go to war. That was President Donald Trump's decision to
• 38:50
  Speaker 12: go to war. And if El-Said cannot understand that there
• 38:55
  Speaker 12: are strong national security reasons as to why we would
• 38:58
  Speaker 12: want to make sure that this regime in Iran, which
• 39:03
  Speaker 12: is the leading sponsor of terrorism in the world in
• 39:06
  Speaker 12: many ways, like the Henry Ford of Islamic terrorism, shouldn't
• 39:10
  Speaker 12: have a nuclear weapon, then there's something deeply wrong with
• 39:16
  Speaker 12: his kind of moral judgment at that point. I mean,
• 39:18
  Speaker 12: that's just, it's extraordinary. He can't understand that that being
• 39:21
  Speaker 12: in America's interest. Now, it's fine to debate Are the
• 39:25
  Speaker 12: costs worth it? Some people would say maybe Midnight Hammer.
• 39:30
  Speaker 12: was worth it, but this war was. I mean, you
• 39:31
  Speaker 12: and I disagree on this, but that's fine. But what
• 39:36
  Speaker 12: he was basically saying was that Israel is as much
• 39:40
  Speaker 12: of an outlaw as Iran.
• 39:41
  Speaker 2: That's just nuts.
• 39:43
  Speaker 12: And but he managed to sort of say in a
• 39:45
  Speaker 12: way that makes him sound quite reasonable. And sadly, I
• 39:48
  Speaker 12: do think that he's speaking for a majority of the
• 39:49
  Speaker 12: Democratic Party right now. My hope is that Americans kind
• 39:53
  Speaker 12: of begin to come to their senses on this and
• 39:55
  Speaker 12: understand that if that is your view, Israel is a
• 39:58
  Speaker 12: canary in the coal mine. If you think Israel is
• 40:01
  Speaker 12: an outlaw state akin to Iran, then deep down you're anti-American,
• 40:05
  Speaker 12: in my view, because Israel and America are allies and
• 40:08
  Speaker 12: Israel and America are similar in that respect. And Israel
• 40:10
  Speaker 12: and America, most importantly, share the same enemies, Hugh. You
• 40:13
  Speaker 12: and I understand this. We've read The Looming Tower. We
• 40:16
  Speaker 12: know what the ideology that animates Hamas and animates al-Qaeda is.
• 40:20
  Speaker 2: And he doesn't. I throw up my hands when I
• 40:23
  Speaker 2: see that kind of video.
• 40:25
  Speaker 12: He either does, or maybe he's on the wrong side
• 40:27
  Speaker 12: of it.
• 40:28
  Speaker 2: I mean, that's the question we have to keep asking ourselves.
• 40:31
  Speaker 1: That's why I say he's at least an apologist for Islamism,
• 40:35
  Speaker 1: and probably worse. Eli Lake, thank you. Read Eli at
• 40:38
  Speaker 1: the Free Press. Listen to Breaking History. Follow him on
• 40:41
  Speaker 1: X at Eli Lake. Thank you, Eli.
• 40:47
  Speaker 2: Welcome back, America.
• 40:48
  Speaker 1: That's the Rolling Stones, Street Fighting Man. And that came
• 40:51
  Speaker 1: up in this week's Getting Hammered podcast with Mary Katherine Hammond,
• 40:55
  Speaker 1: Victor Reno Mattis. Vic, I did not know you were
• 40:58
  Speaker 1: a Stones man until you threw out that casual reference.
• 41:01
  Speaker 1: Are you a Stones over Beatles guy?
• 41:05
  Speaker 13: You know, I toggle back and forth because I'm not
• 41:08
  Speaker 13: a boomer. I think I'm allowed to have a position
• 41:10
  Speaker 13: that goes back and forth, Hugh. I mean, there's great
• 41:13
  Speaker 13: genius on both sides. Rolling Stones, obviously, a lot more blues-heavy.
• 41:19
  Speaker 13: They did things that the Beatles could not do, and
• 41:21
  Speaker 13: the Beatles were ingenious, obviously, in their own way. I
• 41:24
  Speaker 13: always think about what Paul McCartney supposedly said once, which
• 41:27
  Speaker 13: was when asked about the Rolling Stones— Oh, yeah, they're
• 41:30
  Speaker 13: a good blues cover band. That didn't go over well
• 41:32
  Speaker 13: with the Rolling Stones, but they're great in their own right.
• 41:36
  Speaker 1: You sound like Abdul El-Sayed answering a question about Gaza.
• 41:40
  Speaker 1: I mean, that was the great boomer divide there. You
• 41:43
  Speaker 1: just sidestepped it. All right, I want to go to
• 41:45
  Speaker 1: this episode. I love getting hammered, as I've often said.
• 41:49
  Speaker 1: I think it's a fine podcast. But in this episode,
• 41:52
  Speaker 1: we cover King Leopold, Travago, Scott Bakula, Taster's Choice, the
• 41:58
  Speaker 1: fact that you played Risk, the fact that you broke.
• 42:01
  Speaker 2: Into the world of real work with German.
• 42:03
  Speaker 1: Intelligence news to me, the IRGC, I had never heard
• 42:07
  Speaker 1: of Vincent adult man before. And, um, Democrats generally, how
• 42:11
  Speaker 1: do you cover so much stuff in 45 minutes?
• 42:15
  Speaker 13: Well, I get a lot of practice by going on
• 42:17
  Speaker 13: another podcast called the Hugh Hewitt show, where you don't
• 42:19
  Speaker 13: know what you're going to be asking. You have to
• 42:21
  Speaker 13: be on your toes 24 seven. Uh, that's what, uh,
• 42:24
  Speaker 13: our friend Matt Continetti told me once. And, uh, No,
• 42:27
  Speaker 13: with Mary Catherine, you know, I'm reading the paper.
• 42:30
  Speaker 8: I try every day.
• 42:31
  Speaker 13: And some of it helps when you have a more
• 42:34
  Speaker 13: international background. So I think that's more of my area
• 42:37
  Speaker 13: of expertise generally. And hers, of course, is more domestic.
• 42:40
  Speaker 13: And together, I think it works.
• 42:42
  Speaker 1: Now, you guys talked about playing risk. I grew up
• 42:45
  Speaker 1: playing risk. And then I taught both of my boys
• 42:47
  Speaker 1: to play risk until they were the oldest one was 12.
• 42:51
  Speaker 1: Because up until that time, I could convince the youngest
• 42:53
  Speaker 1: one to always ally with me to destroy the middle one,
• 42:56
  Speaker 1: and then I would destroy the youngest one.
• 42:58
  Speaker 2: So I never lost. Which was your favorite continent, Vic?
• 43:03
  Speaker 13: You know, it's not bad to start in Australia, or
• 43:06
  Speaker 13: it's not bad to start in South America. Then you
• 43:09
  Speaker 13: get a toehold in Mexico and West Africa, and you
• 43:11
  Speaker 13: can expand from there.
• 43:12
  Speaker 8: You never want to start in Europe. That's insane.
• 43:15
  Speaker 2: It's insane. Don't go to Europe.
• 43:18
  Speaker 1: But we do know where Eric Cook's is, and we
• 43:20
  Speaker 1: do know where the Kamchatka Peninsula is as a result
• 43:23
  Speaker 1: of this. But I was reassured by your plague epidemiology lesson.
• 43:28
  Speaker 1: Let me then go to Vic and Taster's Choice. I
• 43:32
  Speaker 1: have no memory of this. Dwayne and Adam remembered it immediately.
• 43:37
  Speaker 1: So what were you watching that I wasn't watching?
• 43:41
  Speaker 2: It's a 12-part commercial series, Vic.
• 43:44
  Speaker 13: I do have Taster's Choice.
• 43:45
  Speaker 2: That's right.
• 43:46
  Speaker 13: You have to remember, Hugh, you know, a lot of
• 43:48
  Speaker 13: good kids and smart kids, they grew up reading books.
• 43:51
  Speaker 13: I watched a lot of TV from, I don't know,
• 43:53
  Speaker 13: around the age of four or five. And I'm talking
• 43:56
  Speaker 13: about not just the golden age of television, which were,
• 43:58
  Speaker 13: you know, shows from the 50s and 60s, you know,
• 44:01
  Speaker 13: already on syndication. I would watch talk shows. I watched
• 44:05
  Speaker 13: the Merv Griffin show. I mean, call me crazy. And
• 44:08
  Speaker 13: the Dinah Shore show. I love talk shows during the day.
• 44:12
  Speaker 13: And then, of course, Johnny Carson at night. So somewhere
• 44:16
  Speaker 13: in the mix of that, you would see those Taster's
• 44:19
  Speaker 13: Choice commercials.
• 44:20
  Speaker 8: And I just thought they were very cute and oddly compelling.
• 44:24
  Speaker 1: And then you bring up Trivago and a fellow. We
• 44:28
  Speaker 1: have the fellow who you were trying to remember from Trivago.
• 44:32
  Speaker 1: His name is Tim, I believe, Williams. See him there
• 44:36
  Speaker 1: on the Salem News Channel if you're watching. He's the
• 44:38
  Speaker 1: guy on the left. Why do you remember him? I
• 44:41
  Speaker 1: don't remember anything about Zhivago.
• 44:45
  Speaker 13: Because he came across as a sort of middling TV
• 44:50
  Speaker 13: or movie star, yet you hadn't seen him anywhere except.
• 44:52
  Speaker 2: For this commercial.
• 44:53
  Speaker 13: And so when I did a little bit of a
• 44:55
  Speaker 13: deeper dive, you realize that.
• 44:56
  Speaker 8: He was appearing on TV shows in Germany. So again,
• 44:59
  Speaker 8: that ties into my other interests.
• 45:01
  Speaker 13: And in fact, I think it was a show that
• 45:03
  Speaker 13: I had semi-regularly followed from time to time when I'm
• 45:07
  Speaker 13: over there.
• 45:08
  Speaker 8: So I thought, oh, this is really interesting.
• 45:10
  Speaker 13: And a listener to Getting Hammered points out that the
• 45:13
  Speaker 13: guy who succeeded him, who is an older gentleman with
• 45:16
  Speaker 13: big chompers, is apparently a professional soccer league coach or manager,
• 45:22
  Speaker 13: I should say, in Europe.
• 45:23
  Speaker 8: But I don't really follow soccer that well, so I'm
• 45:27
  Speaker 8: at a loss for his name. But apparently he's a
• 45:29
  Speaker 8: big deal.
• 45:30
  Speaker 1: I'm going to have to start standing up on my
• 45:32
  Speaker 1: Trivago ads because I was way behind.
• 45:34
  Speaker 2: Now let's get serious.
• 45:36
  Speaker 1: Uh, how do you know that Manfred Z isn't Manfred
• 45:38
  Speaker 1: D and now fill in the audience as to why
• 45:40
  Speaker 1: that matters?
• 45:41
  Speaker 4: Uh, okay. Yes.
• 45:43
  Speaker 13: Uh, we're talking about this massive German spy scandal, 2000,
• 45:47
  Speaker 13: at least 2000 pages of documents, I think, uh, that
• 45:51
  Speaker 13: were discovered on flash drives, uh, at the home of
• 45:54
  Speaker 13: August Hunter, who is the former head of the BND,
• 45:58
  Speaker 13: the German intelligence, the Bundesnachrichtendienst. And he had left, I
• 46:02
  Speaker 13: think around 2010. Um, The German police were conducting an
• 46:08
  Speaker 13: investigation not related to that, and somehow in the midst
• 46:12
  Speaker 13: of it came across this information on the flash drives.
• 46:15
  Speaker 8: And, of course, he had help.
• 46:17
  Speaker 13: The head of the BND had help through his chief
• 46:20
  Speaker 13: of staff, who we only.
• 46:21
  Speaker 8: Know, again, as Manfred D.
• 46:24
  Speaker 13: And I worked for a different Manfred, a really good fellow.
• 46:27
  Speaker 6: How do we know that?
• 46:28
  Speaker 8: An honorable fellow.
• 46:29
  Speaker 2: How do we know?
• 46:30
  Speaker 1: Because Manfred Z might just be Manfred D, but you
• 46:35
  Speaker 1: don't know Manfred Z's middle name.
• 46:36
  Speaker 2: It might be, you know, Deutschland, Deutschland, Uber Ali. How
• 46:39
  Speaker 2: do you know? No, that is true.
• 46:41
  Speaker 8: Well, I'll give you one little funny trivia.
• 46:45
  Speaker 13: My former boss, he had prior to my working with him,
• 46:48
  Speaker 13: he worked for another German company called MBB.
• 46:51
  Speaker 8: And for the longest time, I just thought, you know,
• 46:53
  Speaker 8: it's just another acronym.
• 46:55
  Speaker 13: And I looked into it, and the MBB stood for Messerschmitt, Bolkow,
• 46:58
  Speaker 13: and Blum.
• 46:58
  Speaker 8: Oh, my gosh. But, you know, everything's fine now.
• 47:05
  Speaker 2: What did you do for German intelligence?
• 47:08
  Speaker 13: Well, no, this was a defense consulting firm, but it
• 47:11
  Speaker 13: was connected to, you know, high-level stuff, I would say.
• 47:14
  Speaker 13: And I was an analyst for them. And, you know,
• 47:16
  Speaker 13: I spoke German, and I could do some translations there.
• 47:18
  Speaker 13: I wasn't their best employee.
• 47:20
  Speaker 2: And I, when did you learn German?
• 47:21
  Speaker 8: Uh, I learned it in high school and in college.
• 47:25
  Speaker 13: And I studied a year at the university of Vienna, uh,
• 47:28
  Speaker 13: as a, as a regular.
• 47:29
  Speaker 2: Nobody learns German, nobody, only Germans, no German. It's too hard.
• 47:37
  Speaker 2: It's good.
• 47:38
  Speaker 13: It's quite, it's quite easy. It's, it's very logical, uh,
• 47:41
  Speaker 13: as they say. And I, I took it cause everybody
• 47:43
  Speaker 13: else was taking Spanish. So I wanted to do something
• 47:45
  Speaker 13: different and I thought it sounded cool. And, uh, And
• 47:48
  Speaker 13: any time I get it, I've covered three or four
• 47:51
  Speaker 13: elections in Germany when I was at the Weekly Standard.
• 47:54
  Speaker 8: So I follow these things.
• 47:56
  Speaker 13: And, again, the spy scandal is a very big deal
• 47:58
  Speaker 13: because either he's helping.
• 48:00
  Speaker 8: The Russians or the Iranians.
• 48:02
  Speaker 1: Is the AFD like Maloney? In other words, oh, fascist
• 48:07
  Speaker 1: but not really fascist. It's just what left-wing media wants
• 48:10
  Speaker 1: to call them. Or is it really fascist?
• 48:13
  Speaker 13: Well, they still have some unsavory elements, Hugh, elements that
• 48:16
  Speaker 13: are anti-American, anti-Israel and pro-Russian.
• 48:20
  Speaker 8: That's not good.
• 48:22
  Speaker 13: On the other hand, I think it is the AFD
• 48:25
  Speaker 13: could be what Maloney's party is. And I've mentioned this
• 48:28
  Speaker 13: on a previous episode of Getting Hammered, which is when
• 48:32
  Speaker 13: the German Green Party used to have some fantastical notions
• 48:35
  Speaker 13: of what they would do when they were in power.
• 48:37
  Speaker 13: And once they actually entered into power, they totally moderated
• 48:40
  Speaker 13: on a lot of positions, including under Foreign Minister Yashka
• 48:44
  Speaker 13: Fischer overseeing the deployment of German troops to the Balkans,
• 48:48
  Speaker 13: which they could have never pondered, you know, not long ago.
• 48:53
  Speaker 13: And there they were, because this is what the reality necessitated.
• 48:56
  Speaker 8: I think that the AFD would make similar changes. It's populist.
• 49:00
  Speaker 13: They've got a lot of work to do, but there
• 49:01
  Speaker 13: are a lot of angry Germans out there unhappy with
• 49:03
  Speaker 13: the border.
• 49:05
  Speaker 1: I just, I really have no idea what to think
• 49:08
  Speaker 1: about economist worldview labels of parties because they got Maloney
• 49:13
  Speaker 1: so wrong, and I think they're getting the rally for
• 49:16
  Speaker 1: France all wrong as well. Vic Mattis, following up. Mattis
• 49:20
  Speaker 1: on X, listen to Getting Hammered, read The Free Beacon
• 49:23
  Speaker 1: on the weekends. We're at the Arts and Culture Editor,
• 49:26
  Speaker 1: and stay tuned to The Hugh Hewitt Show.
• 49:27
  Speaker 2: Thank you, Vic. I'll be right back. Welcome back, America.
• 49:31
  Speaker 1: If I'm right, my next guest will be talking to
• 49:34
  Speaker 1: you about politics 50 years after I've gone to my reward.
• 49:37
  Speaker 1: Riley Owen is running for Congress in Utah in the
• 49:41
  Speaker 1: first district of Utah.
• 49:43
  Speaker 2: He is 27 years old.
• 49:44
  Speaker 1: We're going to overlook the fact that he went to
• 49:46
  Speaker 1: Princeton and Oxford and focus in on the fact that
• 49:49
  Speaker 1: he was in government once. What were you doing in
• 49:52
  Speaker 1: government and where, Riley?
• 49:55
  Speaker 14: Yeah, I started my time in government. I was actually
• 49:57
  Speaker 14: in the White House doing trade and manufacturing policy. So
• 50:00
  Speaker 14: helping America build things again and shore up our national
• 50:02
  Speaker 14: security from an industrial perspective.
• 50:05
  Speaker 1: So you've decided to run for Congress. Your website is
• 50:09
  Speaker 1: Utah Riley, U-T-A-H-R-I-L-E-Y. Smart people tell me you can win
• 50:14
  Speaker 1: this seat. How what's the margin Republican district Democrat wise?
• 50:21
  Speaker 14: Yeah, people throw around different numbers, but the race that
• 50:24
  Speaker 14: I look at in the last cycle, if you look
• 50:26
  Speaker 14: at the governor's race and you combine the write-in with
• 50:28
  Speaker 14: the current Republican governor, Spencer Cox, Republicans only lost this
• 50:32
  Speaker 14: seat by three, three and a half points. That's a
• 50:34
  Speaker 14: swing seat. And so there's no incumbent running. I'm running
• 50:38
  Speaker 14: against someone who's been active in politics here in Utah
• 50:41
  Speaker 14: on the Democrat side. But I think Utahns are unique
• 50:44
  Speaker 14: in the sense that they want results, not rhetoric. So
• 50:46
  Speaker 14: if someone shows competence in a plan, Utah voters reward that.
• 50:50
  Speaker 1: Now, Riley, does anyone say you're too young or is
• 50:55
  Speaker 1: it mostly Bravo, get in early and build some seniority
• 50:58
  Speaker 1: and do stuff for Utah?
• 51:01
  Speaker 14: Some people do say that. The Constitution puts the floor
• 51:05
  Speaker 14: at 25. I just turned 28 a few weeks ago.
• 51:08
  Speaker 14: But what I say to them is it's not the
• 51:10
  Speaker 14: years and the life, it's the life and the years.
• 51:13
  Speaker 14: And I've packed a lot of time and interesting opportunities.
• 51:15
  Speaker 14: People have invested in me and taken risks, but That's
• 51:18
  Speaker 14: included my time in the Navy Reserve as an intelligence officer,
• 51:21
  Speaker 14: time serving in the White House, or helping build a
• 51:24
  Speaker 14: defense technology startup going in and out of Ukraine at
• 51:27
  Speaker 14: the cutting edge of AI-enabled drones. So all these experiences
• 51:30
  Speaker 14: give me a unique vantage point from government, the military,
• 51:33
  Speaker 14: and the private sector that I think a lot of
• 51:35
  Speaker 14: politicians are missing when they just go to Washington and
• 51:38
  Speaker 14: they spend decades there and forget what it's like to
• 51:40
  Speaker 14: be in industry or serve in the military. And I'm
• 51:44
  Speaker 14: a young person myself. I'm Out of school in the
• 51:46
  Speaker 14: last few years, I'm a renter. I'm at the cutting
• 51:50
  Speaker 14: edge of a lot of these problems because I'm experiencing
• 51:52
  Speaker 14: it myself. And as my fiance and I look at
• 51:54
  Speaker 14: each other, we're asking ourselves a lot of the same
• 51:56
  Speaker 14: questions that a lot of Americans are asking. How will
• 51:59
  Speaker 14: we put food on the table? How will we afford
• 52:01
  Speaker 14: a home? What's next for us?
• 52:04
  Speaker 1: Most interesting part of your background, which is very impressive.
• 52:07
  Speaker 1: You are a Navy intel officer. You're in the reserves currently.
• 52:10
  Speaker 1: Are you a captain right now?
• 52:13
  Speaker 2: No, I'm a lieutenant commander. You're a lieutenant, junior grade?
• 52:19
  Speaker 8: Yes, sir.
• 52:19
  Speaker 14: Almost three years in.
• 52:21
  Speaker 2: Good for you. And have you had to deploy overseas yet?
• 52:25
  Speaker 4: I've not yet deployed.
• 52:26
  Speaker 14: So finishing up the intelligence qualification and getting my pin at.
• 52:30
  Speaker 4: The end of the year, hopefully.
• 52:32
  Speaker 1: I think the fact that you've got intel in your
• 52:34
  Speaker 1: background puts you ahead about 440 members of the 535
• 52:37
  Speaker 1: serving in Congress. What's your basic pitch here? Riley Owen,
• 52:44
  Speaker 1: to the people of Utah's 1st District, why you?
• 52:49
  Speaker 14: I ask them if they're happy with how things have
• 52:51
  Speaker 14: been going in the last decades, and rarely do I
• 52:54
  Speaker 14: get a resounding yes. What that tells me is we
• 52:57
  Speaker 14: need new faces and fresh leadership with fresh ideas. I'm
• 53:01
  Speaker 14: one of the first Gen Z conservative congressional nominees in
• 53:03
  Speaker 14: the country, and so that gives me a unique vantage
• 53:06
  Speaker 14: point when we're talking about AI or the impact of
• 53:09
  Speaker 14: social media, I was the first generation to have that
• 53:12
  Speaker 14: impact my childhood and change the way that friends interacted
• 53:15
  Speaker 14: with each other, the way students are taught. Now the
• 53:17
  Speaker 14: way we're fighting wars and businesses are structuring themselves. So
• 53:21
  Speaker 14: that newness, that fresh idea, I think that's a huge
• 53:25
  Speaker 14: advantage compared to someone who's gotten caught in habits and
• 53:29
  Speaker 14: routines and isn't bringing new and novel ways to solve
• 53:33
  Speaker 14: problems from a conservative perspective.
• 53:36
  Speaker 2: Raleigh, how do you get your information? On what do
• 53:39
  Speaker 2: you rely?
• 53:41
  Speaker 14: Yeah, I'm a policy wonk at heart. I like reading
• 53:44
  Speaker 14: position papers and there's think tank publications. I'll read the
• 53:48
  Speaker 14: Wall Street Journal, NPR, Reuters. I'm a foreign policy guy
• 53:52
  Speaker 14: at heart. I try and read both sides. I'll listen
• 53:55
  Speaker 14: to CBS, CNN at times. I'm running in a district
• 54:01
  Speaker 14: that's leaning blue. I want to understand the way people think.
• 54:04
  Speaker 14: And I grew up in Los Angeles. I was at
• 54:06
  Speaker 14: Princeton and Oxford. I spent two years in Denmark. I'm
• 54:09
  Speaker 14: really familiar with the way that Democrats and progressives think,
• 54:12
  Speaker 14: but I'm a conservative. But I think that exposure makes
• 54:15
  Speaker 14: me a better leader, a better representative, and hopefully a
• 54:18
  Speaker 14: better policymaker and legislator.
• 54:21
  Speaker 2: Penultimate question. Which high school in L.A.
• 54:24
  Speaker 14: La Cunada High School. So you and I actually met
• 54:27
  Speaker 14: about a decade ago.
• 54:28
  Speaker 2: I had just graduated.
• 54:29
  Speaker 4: I was off to Princeton.
• 54:31
  Speaker 14: And Robert O'Brien invited me to listen to you and
• 54:33
  Speaker 14: Pete Wilson, Governor Wilson, talk. And the next day you
• 54:36
  Speaker 14: went on air and you said, the only good thing
• 54:38
  Speaker 14: to come out of Princeton was George Shultz. So I've
• 54:40
  Speaker 14: been spending the last decade to try and change that statement.
• 54:43
  Speaker 2: Well, I hope you are the second tiger to do that.
• 54:46
  Speaker 1: Actually, Carol Platt-Lebow went there as well, who runs the
• 54:48
  Speaker 1: Yankee Institute.
• 54:50
  Speaker 2: People, go to UtahRiley.com.
• 54:54
  Speaker 1: He probably needs money because it's a district with a
• 54:57
  Speaker 1: big media market in it. Help him out because we
• 55:00
  Speaker 1: need bright, young, smart, committed conservatives. like Riley Owen, utahriley.com.
• 55:07
  Speaker 1: Thank you, Riley. Don't go anywhere, America. I'll be right back.
• 55:11
  Speaker 15: Abdul Saeed has clearly condemned the October 7th terrorist attack,
• 55:16
  Speaker 15: and we can't let that kind of Islamophobia go unanswered.
• 55:19
  Speaker 15: Just because he's Muslim American doesn't mean in any way
• 55:23
  Speaker 15: that he's a Hamas sympathizer. I've been proud to endorse him.
• 55:26
  Speaker 15: The Democratic Party's behind him, and he's going.
• 55:29
  Speaker 6: To win that seat.
• 55:30
  Speaker 2: Welcome back, America. I'm Hugh Hewitt.
• 55:32
  Speaker 1: That was Congressman Ro Khanna telling us that Abdul El-Sayed
• 55:36
  Speaker 1: is not a Hamas sympathizer. Typically, if you're declaring what
• 55:40
  Speaker 1: you're not, you're losing. I'm joined by Josh.
• 55:43
  Speaker 2: Kroschauer, editor-in-chief of Jewish Insider. Josh, have you.
• 55:46
  Speaker 1: Seen the clip, which is at the top of my ex-feed,
• 55:49
  Speaker 1: of Abdul El-Sayed turning and walking away from a reporter
• 55:53
  Speaker 1: who asked why he did not issue a statement marking
• 55:56
  Speaker 1: the third anniversary of October 7th? He looked disgusted and
• 55:59
  Speaker 1: walked away. How do you react to that?
• 56:03
  Speaker 16: Yeah, I don't believe in coincidences in politics. Now, maybe
• 56:08
  Speaker 16: he's following the maxim. If you don't have anything good
• 56:10
  Speaker 16: to say, don't say anything at all. We saw yesterday
• 56:13
  Speaker 16: what happened when Zoran Mamdani, the virulently anti-Israel New York
• 56:18
  Speaker 16: City mayor, put out a pro forma acknowledgement of the
• 56:22
  Speaker 16: 10-7 terror attack and then spent most of his comments
• 56:25
  Speaker 16: attacking Israel and blaming them, blaming the victim for what
• 56:28
  Speaker 16: happened on 10-7. So maybe better not say anything at
• 56:32
  Speaker 16: all than to hear what he actually believes. But yeah,
• 56:34
  Speaker 16: we have enough body of evidence. We know about his
• 56:37
  Speaker 16: close ties to Hassan Piker, who's an extremist, anti-American, anti-Semitic
• 56:42
  Speaker 16: social streamer. He campaigned with him five times during the primary,
• 56:46
  Speaker 16: now is not condemning him, just avoiding the question entirely
• 56:50
  Speaker 16: now that he's a general election candidate. And look, there's
• 56:53
  Speaker 16: a whole track record, including the comments he made about
• 56:55
  Speaker 16: the terrorist attack on the Temple Israel synagogue that he
• 56:59
  Speaker 16: said hurt people, hurt people, you know, again, blaming the victim.
• 57:03
  Speaker 16: And now in that case, he did have to apologize.
• 57:06
  Speaker 16: It was so politically damaging. But this is a, you know,
• 57:09
  Speaker 16: I always say, follow, follow the track record, follow what
• 57:12
  Speaker 16: the comments that they've made over their, their history in politics.
• 57:16
  Speaker 2: Don't follow the spin.
• 57:18
  Speaker 16: And with El-Sayed, there's plenty of evidence that he is,
• 57:21
  Speaker 16: has a hard time condemning extremist Islamist regimes like Iran
• 57:26
  Speaker 16: and has an easy time condemning a democracy like Israel.
• 57:29
  Speaker 2: So, Josh, what do you think of my theory?
• 57:32
  Speaker 1: Which is, he's so far upside down. He knows he's
• 57:36
  Speaker 1: going to lose. So he is not going to compromise
• 57:39
  Speaker 1: his radical bona fides by saying anything at all non-negative
• 57:46
  Speaker 1: about Israel. In other words, he knows he's lost. He's
• 57:49
  Speaker 1: setting himself up to be, I don't know, the nationwide
• 57:52
  Speaker 1: candidate for CARE executive director.
• 57:58
  Speaker 14: Well.
• 57:58
  Speaker 16: he is a very confident, maybe arrogant is the right
• 58:02
  Speaker 16: word candidate to the point that I don't know if
• 58:04
  Speaker 16: he's got to see the CNN reporting, which I thought
• 58:06
  Speaker 16: was very instructive yesterday, that this is a guy who's
• 58:09
  Speaker 16: pretty much tied in the polls and he acts like
• 58:11
  Speaker 16: he's up by seven points. And I, he, I, you know,
• 58:14
  Speaker 16: all the reporting I've seen indicates he thinks he's, he's running,
• 58:17
  Speaker 16: he's leading a movement, an anti-Israel and anti-Semitic movement in my,
• 58:21
  Speaker 16: my estimation, but one that wants to change the democratic party,
• 58:25
  Speaker 16: just like Zoran Mamdani, uh, had a big impact in
• 58:28
  Speaker 16: changing the direction of the Democratic Party when he won
• 58:30
  Speaker 16: in New York City, more than actually winning the Senate seat.
• 58:34
  Speaker 16: He's not doing the types of things that a normal
• 58:36
  Speaker 16: Democrat would if he wanted to win a swing state
• 58:39
  Speaker 16: and put that race away. That's the reason why the polls,
• 58:41
  Speaker 16: almost all of them, are showing that race within a
• 58:43
  Speaker 16: statistical tie, even though the environment is tough for Republicans
• 58:48
  Speaker 16: in Michigan and other swing states.
• 58:50
  Speaker 1: He doesn't stop digging the hole with the black community,
• 58:52
  Speaker 1: number one. But let me ask you a broader question.
• 58:55
  Speaker 1: If you take just four Democrats, El Saeed in Michigan,
• 58:59
  Speaker 1: Tallarico in Texas, Peggy Flanagan in Minnesota, and Troy Jackson
• 59:03
  Speaker 1: in Maine. That's like the cast of The Office minus Jim,
• 59:08
  Speaker 1: the normal guy. So why did they, why has this
• 59:11
  Speaker 1: happened all at once? They've just gone so, and Sherrod
• 59:14
  Speaker 1: Brown is sort of their moderate, and he's a radical
• 59:18
  Speaker 1: lefty who's infirm. What happened to them?
• 59:22
  Speaker 8: Well, it's interesting.
• 59:23
  Speaker 2: Candidates matter.
• 59:23
  Speaker 16: I actually have a column coming out about just, people
• 59:26
  Speaker 16: forget that candidate quality makes a big difference, especially in
• 59:28
  Speaker 16: Senate races. The three M's, I would focus on the
• 59:30
  Speaker 16: three M's, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota. Those races are unusually close.
• 59:35
  Speaker 16: And I think there was a Charlie Cook column today
• 59:38
  Speaker 16: that suggested that Susan Collins is pulling ahead in the
• 59:42
  Speaker 16: state of Maine, which is the bluest state on the
• 59:44
  Speaker 16: battleground map. So the fact that Maine may be tilting
• 59:47
  Speaker 16: towards Susan Collins, the Republican, while you have other red
• 59:50
  Speaker 16: states that are competitive, that are much, much more conservative,
• 59:53
  Speaker 16: tells you that candidates do matter, that if you have
• 59:55
  Speaker 16: El-Sayed in Michigan, he's going to underperform badly to the
• 59:58
  Speaker 16: normal Democrat. Susan Collins, putting that, she knows how to
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 16: win tough races. Peggy Flanagan, I actually had to look
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 16: at the polling queue. I was stunned that Peggy Flanagan,
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 16: who's a very progressive left-wing lieutenant governor, who has also
• 1:00:11
  Speaker 16: been dogged by the welfare fraud scandal in Minnesota, she's
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 16: barely up. All the polls, even the Even the more,
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 16: you know, liberal leaning ones show her within the margin
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 16: of error against Michelle Tafoya. I still think it's hard
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 16: to see how, you know, it's a challenging environment for
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 16: someone like Tafoya. But she's run a great campaign and
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 16: you have a very ideologically driven progressive in Flanagan.
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 2: Candidates matter.
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 16: You're going to cost if this was, you know, if
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 16: Trump's approval rating was a few points higher, those races
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 16: probably would lean Republican given given the weakness of the
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 16: Democratic candidates.
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 2: Now, I want to finish with Ohio.
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 1: I think John Huston's going to win in the end,
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 1: but Sherrod Brown's a familiar name, even if he is
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 1: infirm and aging.
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 2: He's been around forever.
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 1: The Jewish vote matters a lot in Ohio. Columbus, Cleveland, Cincinnati,
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 1: large Jewish American votes. Are they breaking away from the
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 1: Democratic Party as one would expect self-interested Jewish Americans to do?
• 1:01:09
  Speaker 16: So I haven't seen any polling and I haven't been
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 16: on the ground in Ohio, even though I have family
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 16: out there.
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 8: Look, my suspicion is that you probably are.
• 1:01:18
  Speaker 16: Seeing some small inroads given the direct for Jewish voters
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 16: towards the Republicans, given that you've just seen the party
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 16: as a whole just go off the deep end and
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 16: a whole lot of issues relating to.
• 1:01:27
  Speaker 8: anti-Semitism in Israel.
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 16: I think it does benefit the Democrats to have a
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 16: familiar face like Sherrod Brown, even though he is quite liberal.
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 16: He has not been seen as part of that, even
• 1:01:37
  Speaker 16: though he is liberal. It was not part of that
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 16: new wave, the AOC wave of Democrats. He's an older,
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 16: more familiar face. So I would say that probably helps
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 16: Democrats on the margins as well. But look, I mean,
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 16: in a close race, the Jewish vote actually could make
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 16: a big difference in Ohio, but that's one of the
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 16: races where I don't, I would argue Israel and issues
• 1:01:57
  Speaker 16: relating to anti-Semitism haven't played quite as significant a role
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 16: as compared to Maine or Michigan or a few of
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 16: the other battlegrounds.
• 1:02:03
  Speaker 1: But if it's close, we'll see. And then finally, if
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 1: Al-Said loses, does he run for president anyway? Do you
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 1: think he thinks he's that important to the country?
• 1:02:13
  Speaker 8: Look, I think, who knows?
• 1:02:17
  Speaker 16: I mean, I certainly think he'll be mentioned as a
• 1:02:19
  Speaker 16: possible leader of the kind of Islamist faction of the party.
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 16: I think what's more risky, though, is he's going to
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 16: want to change the direction of the Democratic Party. He's
• 1:02:28
  Speaker 16: going to want to play the role of, like, blocking
• 1:02:30
  Speaker 16: pro-Israel legislation. One senator can do a whole lot of damage,
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 16: unlike a House member, unlike a mayor.
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 4: So he would have a big party.
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 1: It will be a nightmare for the country and for
• 1:02:42
  Speaker 1: the Democrats if El-Sayed wins, but let's hope the people
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 1: of Michigan are paying attention. Josh Kroschauer from Jewish Insider,
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 1: thank you. Follow Josh on X at Josh Kroschauer. Follow
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 1: me in the next segment.
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 2: And I'll be ready. We're coming up next hour. Don't
• 1:02:56
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• 1:02:59
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  Speaker 2: Morning, morning, evening, Grace America. I'm Hugh Hewitt.
• 1:06:26
  Speaker 1: Continuing to look back three years ago to the day
• 1:06:29
  Speaker 1: after Israel was invaded by Hamas and Hamas conducted the
• 1:06:33
  Speaker 1: massacre of 1,200, wounded 5,000, carried off 250 in captivity,
• 1:06:38
  Speaker 1: and launched what is now a three-year-long war that is
• 1:06:42
  Speaker 1: still underway. I'm joined by Haviv Redig-Gore. one of the
• 1:06:46
  Speaker 1: leading public intellectuals in Israel. Haviv has got a great podcast,
• 1:06:51
  Speaker 1: Ask Haviv Anything. Got a great Substack, havivrediger.substack.com. He has
• 1:06:56
  Speaker 1: a Patreon community. It's the only one I belong to,
• 1:06:59
  Speaker 1: and he is the Middle East correspondent for the Free Press. Haviv,
• 1:07:03
  Speaker 1: thank you for coming back on the day after the
• 1:07:06
  Speaker 1: third anniversary. Before I get into that, I have two
• 1:07:09
  Speaker 1: very specific questions. The first is, is there a consensus
• 1:07:14
  Speaker 1: in Israel Hebrew-Israeli media about the imminence of a return
• 1:07:18
  Speaker 1: to major combat operations with Iran?
• 1:07:23
  Speaker 11: No, I think that the expectation that I am seeing
• 1:07:27
  Speaker 11: is that nothing will happen before the election. Netanyahu has
• 1:07:30
  Speaker 11: been warning that our enemies are looking to escalate before
• 1:07:34
  Speaker 11: the election. You know, our enemies are always looking to
• 1:07:38
  Speaker 11: escalate if they have an opportunity and an advantage. It's
• 1:07:40
  Speaker 11: not like the Ayatollahs, you know, don't escalate if they
• 1:07:43
  Speaker 11: think they could win. But It's treated mostly, including by
• 1:07:46
  Speaker 11: right-wing press, as a campaign discussion. And it's, you know,
• 1:07:50
  Speaker 11: trying to remind Israelis he's a wartime prime minister, etc.
• 1:07:54
  Speaker 11: So I don't think there's that expectation that will happen imminently.
• 1:07:57
  Speaker 11: I should just say I don't know the internal secret planning.
• 1:08:01
  Speaker 11: And obviously you want to catch them by surprise. So
• 1:08:04
  Speaker 11: that's not a guarantee that it isn't going to happen.
• 1:08:06
  Speaker 11: But that's not being talked about as far as I
• 1:08:08
  Speaker 11: can tell.
• 1:08:09
  Speaker 1: Okay, it's in Reuters in the United States that Trump
• 1:08:12
  Speaker 1: has ordered up a couple of presidential options that would
• 1:08:15
  Speaker 1: do that. We'll follow that. I was just wondering if
• 1:08:18
  Speaker 1: it made it into your drinking water. Second observation after
• 1:08:22
  Speaker 1: the three-year look-backs yesterday, many people compared 10-7 to 9-11. But,
• 1:08:28
  Speaker 1: in fact, I've always kind of compartmented 9-11 as being
• 1:08:31
  Speaker 1: the actions of 19 people and a rat tail of
• 1:08:34
  Speaker 1: a couple of hundred. 10-7 was 6,000 people came over
• 1:08:39
  Speaker 1: at once. Has that sunk into the world yet that
• 1:08:43
  Speaker 1: 6,000 people were engaged in that massacre?
• 1:08:47
  Speaker 11: It's a difference in scale, but it's a difference in
• 1:08:49
  Speaker 11: scale because Israel's close, whereas America is far away. 9-11
• 1:08:54
  Speaker 11: was a function of an idea. And that idea, you know,
• 1:08:58
  Speaker 11: it's not most of the Muslim world, but a small
• 1:09:02
  Speaker 11: minority of the Muslim world is many, many, many millions
• 1:09:05
  Speaker 11: of people. And the idea has to do with Islam
• 1:09:09
  Speaker 11: and its weakness and how it comes back and a
• 1:09:11
  Speaker 11: kind of pietistic revolution against the kings and the dictators,
• 1:09:15
  Speaker 11: especially in the Arab world. A lot of things happened.
• 1:09:18
  Speaker 11: Bin Laden hoped that America would launch a great war
• 1:09:22
  Speaker 11: against Islam, a crusader war in his mind, and Islam
• 1:09:25
  Speaker 11: would unite and rise up in history and restore itself.
• 1:09:29
  Speaker 11: It was a part of a larger Muslim conversation about
• 1:09:33
  Speaker 11: what's happening in Islam today. And so 9-11 was very
• 1:09:37
  Speaker 11: big in the Muslim world as well. It wasn't 19 people.
• 1:09:41
  Speaker 11: They saw themselves and many, many people in the Muslim world, again,
• 1:09:44
  Speaker 11: no majorities, but many, nevertheless saw them as representatives, as
• 1:09:50
  Speaker 11: the spearhead of something big and profound. In that sense,
• 1:09:53
  Speaker 11: October 7 was that very thing as well. Hamas, unlike
• 1:09:59
  Speaker 11: some other Palestinian ideological factions, movements, historical movements, Hamas belongs
• 1:10:06
  Speaker 11: to the part of Palestinian politics that for a hundred
• 1:10:09
  Speaker 11: years saw the Palestinian story and the clash with the
• 1:10:12
  Speaker 11: Jews as as primarily about redeeming Islam, as primarily about
• 1:10:17
  Speaker 11: Islamic honor and Islamic shame. And therefore, there is no
• 1:10:20
  Speaker 11: cost too great to pay for the redemption of Islam.
• 1:10:24
  Speaker 11: They're not susceptible to any argument that this would be
• 1:10:28
  Speaker 11: worse for Gaza, that there's a better future if you
• 1:10:31
  Speaker 11: accept the Israelis and build trade relations. They're not susceptible
• 1:10:36
  Speaker 11: to those arguments because they have a fundamentally religious vision.
• 1:10:39
  Speaker 11: I think October 7 and 9-11, when you understand the
• 1:10:42
  Speaker 11: ideas in which they're embedded and that drove them, are
• 1:10:45
  Speaker 11: actually remarkably similar. Hamas has grown out of the Muslim
• 1:10:49
  Speaker 11: Brotherhood of Egypt, just as Saeed Qutb, who is the
• 1:10:52
  Speaker 11: spiritual inspiration for Al-Qaeda, grew out of the Muslim Brotherhood
• 1:10:56
  Speaker 11: of Egypt. So there is a very close, deep relationship there.
• 1:10:59
  Speaker 2: All right.
• 1:11:01
  Speaker 1: Now, I listened to the commentary podcast, which included Dan
• 1:11:05
  Speaker 1: Senor from 10-8, three years ago, And Dan had just
• 1:11:10
  Speaker 1: talked to you. And I judge from what I heard
• 1:11:14
  Speaker 1: of their rebroadcast, I don't recall what you said to Dan,
• 1:11:18
  Speaker 1: that they were unprepared for what the world would bring
• 1:11:21
  Speaker 1: in the next three years, which is this tidal wave
• 1:11:23
  Speaker 1: of anti-Semitism. Did that thought even occur to you, that
• 1:11:26
  Speaker 1: Sinoir might be actually winning by unleashing this tidal wave?
• 1:11:34
  Speaker 11: Sinoir expected.
• 1:11:37
  Speaker 11: We know this because we know he wrote this to people.
• 1:11:40
  Speaker 11: Sinoir expected an Israeli retaliation. He describes at one point
• 1:11:46
  Speaker 11: an Israeli nuclear attack on Gaza that would unify the
• 1:11:51
  Speaker 11: resistance front, the Mukawama front, the Iranian regime, the Hezbollah, Hamas,
• 1:11:56
  Speaker 11: the Houthis, and some more Sunni groups who would come
• 1:12:00
  Speaker 11: in on Hamas' side. He expected what happened, I think,
• 1:12:05
  Speaker 11: to large parts of the Western left to happen to
• 1:12:08
  Speaker 11: large parts of the Muslim world and the Arab world. Ironically,
• 1:12:13
  Speaker 11: it happened a lot less in the Arab world than
• 1:12:15
  Speaker 11: in the Western left. I think Hamas was very pleasantly
• 1:12:19
  Speaker 11: surprised about that. There wasn't a sense among Israelis, I
• 1:12:25
  Speaker 11: certainly didn't realize, the depth to which very radical... you know,
• 1:12:32
  Speaker 11: third worldist, you know, anti-Western ideas that position Israel as
• 1:12:38
  Speaker 11: the sort of Western avatar of the West, that if
• 1:12:40
  Speaker 11: you stand against, you are cleansed of the sins of
• 1:12:43
  Speaker 11: the West. The depth to which these academic ideas, marginal ideas,
• 1:12:48
  Speaker 11: you know, very, very academic ideas had penetrated the mainstream,
• 1:12:53
  Speaker 11: especially among the young in America, especially on TikTok and
• 1:12:57
  Speaker 11: social media. I think Hamas was pleasantly surprised by that,
• 1:13:01
  Speaker 11: and Israelis were surprised, but unpleasantly, by that radicalization and mobilization.
• 1:13:08
  Speaker 1: Are you horrified that people held celebratory remembrances yesterday in
• 1:13:13
  Speaker 1: the United States? I mean, cheering what Hamas did three
• 1:13:17
  Speaker 1: years and a day ago. Did that shock you? Are
• 1:13:19
  Speaker 1: you surprised by that?
• 1:13:23
  Speaker 11: You know, there's a Yiddish word, tafles, which means... essential,
• 1:13:27
  Speaker 11: get to the point, be blunt. Your young people over
• 1:13:35
  Speaker 11: there in the West have lost their story because your
• 1:13:40
  Speaker 11: sense-making institutions no longer believe in the Western story, in
• 1:13:44
  Speaker 11: the American story, in the British story, in the French story.
• 1:13:47
  Speaker 11: And when your young people are taught that their only
• 1:13:50
  Speaker 11: job is to deconstruct stories, and if you're older than 30,
• 1:13:54
  Speaker 11: you're probably an idiot a befuddled idiot locked into some
• 1:13:58
  Speaker 11: crazy supremacist idiocy, and there is no true story, there
• 1:14:03
  Speaker 11: is no reason and no meaning to a community, to
• 1:14:08
  Speaker 11: a shared polity, then they go looking for other meanings
• 1:14:11
  Speaker 11: and other stories. And they will land on whatever is
• 1:14:17
  Speaker 11: most exciting. They will land on whatever is most preposterous.
• 1:14:21
  Speaker 11: They will land on whatever is most violent and most
• 1:14:24
  Speaker 11: mobilizing and most thrilling and And they will do that
• 1:14:27
  Speaker 11: because that is how the attention economy works. That's what
• 1:14:31
  Speaker 11: gets clicks. And they live not in real world, real
• 1:14:34
  Speaker 11: space where you touch people. They live on TikTok. And
• 1:14:37
  Speaker 11: so you have a generation of young people over there.
• 1:14:41
  Speaker 11: I'm going to get emails. I apologize. I'm just going
• 1:14:44
  Speaker 11: to say what I think is happening from my limited perspective.
• 1:14:47
  Speaker 11: You have a generation of young people over there being
• 1:14:50
  Speaker 11: fed not the American story, not the Western story of
• 1:14:54
  Speaker 11: any kind, but In fact, the most crazy, radical, click-baity
• 1:14:58
  Speaker 11: version of reality. And those young people are thrilling to
• 1:15:03
  Speaker 11: violence and thrilling to meaning and thrilling to sacrifice and
• 1:15:08
  Speaker 11: thrilling to all things that if a society can't give
• 1:15:10
  Speaker 11: them in healthy ways, they're going to find it in
• 1:15:12
  Speaker 11: unhealthy ways. The fact that you have quite a few
• 1:15:15
  Speaker 11: people celebrating a massacre, you can think that a war
• 1:15:19
  Speaker 11: is terrible and a massacre that launches it is also terrible.
• 1:15:23
  Speaker 11: That seems like the healthy thing to think. But to
• 1:15:26
  Speaker 11: thrill at the idea of a massacre is not my problem.
• 1:15:31
  Speaker 11: It's your problem over there. I mean, these kids are
• 1:15:35
  Speaker 11: America's future. They're not Israel's future. So I think they
• 1:15:40
  Speaker 11: are exactly what they look like. They're young people, so
• 1:15:43
  Speaker 11: radicalized online and so empty of any sense of their
• 1:15:46
  Speaker 11: own story and their own history and their shared polity
• 1:15:48
  Speaker 11: in America that they're thrilling to the craziest stuff they
• 1:15:51
  Speaker 11: found online. And I don't take them seriously. I think
• 1:15:54
  Speaker 11: they're lost children who have not had the parenting, the
• 1:15:59
  Speaker 11: socialization into their own society's meaningful story that gives them
• 1:16:05
  Speaker 11: a place in the world.
• 1:16:08
  Speaker 1: But lost children grow up and they vote. It's a
• 1:16:12
  Speaker 1: pretty alarming situation as you lay it out. And I
• 1:16:14
  Speaker 1: got another question on the other side of the break
• 1:16:16
  Speaker 1: that ties into this because it is, I think you
• 1:16:19
  Speaker 1: accurately diagnosed it right there. And It's very troubling for
• 1:16:23
  Speaker 1: anyone in the West to take a look at what
• 1:16:25
  Speaker 1: happened in Paris in the last week or in the
• 1:16:27
  Speaker 1: United States on the third anniversary. But I'll be right
• 1:16:31
  Speaker 1: back with Haviv Reddick-Gore. I remind you, he's the Middle
• 1:16:34
  Speaker 1: East correspondent for the Free Press, which you ought to
• 1:16:36
  Speaker 1: subscribe to. He has a Patreon community, which is the
• 1:16:38
  Speaker 1: only one I belong to, Haviv Reddick-Gore. His podcast is
• 1:16:43
  Speaker 1: Ask Haviv Anything in his Substack, HavivReddick-Gore.substack.com.
• 1:16:49
  Speaker 2: I'll be right back, America. Stay tuned. Welcome back.
• 1:16:55
  Speaker 1: I'm Hugh Hewitt with Haviv Reddy Gore. You can follow
• 1:16:58
  Speaker 1: Haviv at his Patreon community. You can read him in
• 1:17:00
  Speaker 1: the free press. You can listen to his podcast. Ask
• 1:17:04
  Speaker 1: Haviv anything or get his sub stack. Haviv, connected to
• 1:17:07
  Speaker 1: the last question I asked you, does Israel have incidents
• 1:17:11
  Speaker 1: like the United States is now going through the Cornell 7?
• 1:17:15
  Speaker 1: Does that happen in Israel the way it happens in
• 1:17:19
  Speaker 1: the United States at fairly regular occurrences, some depraved party
• 1:17:24
  Speaker 1: gets out of control and there are, he said, she said, issues?
• 1:17:30
  Speaker 11: There are, so just, it's a great question. What I know,
• 1:17:36
  Speaker 11: and I'm no expert on this specific social problem, this
• 1:17:40
  Speaker 11: specific issue, is that generally rates of sexual violence happen
• 1:17:47
  Speaker 11: relatively at similar levels across extremely diverse societies and including
• 1:17:52
  Speaker 11: religious versus secular, including Western versus Eastern, as far as
• 1:17:56
  Speaker 11: they can tell. And there's very huge gaps in reporting.
• 1:17:58
  Speaker 11: I mean, if you look at the actual data, Israel
• 1:18:01
  Speaker 11: has way more rape than any Arab country. And that's
• 1:18:05
  Speaker 11: not because there's no rape in Arab countries. That's because
• 1:18:07
  Speaker 11: there's no reporting in Arab countries.
• 1:18:09
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 1:18:10
  Speaker 11: Um, and, and in Israel, there is a very serious
• 1:18:12
  Speaker 11: professional modern style, you know, academically clear, you know, kind
• 1:18:16
  Speaker 11: of scientifically, in other words, consistent reporting. Um, So generally
• 1:18:23
  Speaker 11: the question is yes. I mean, these kinds of problems
• 1:18:26
  Speaker 11: exist in America. They exist in Israel. I think that
• 1:18:32
  Speaker 11: the deeper question of the Cornell 7, as I understand it,
• 1:18:35
  Speaker 11: is the different narratives. And a woman who thought she
• 1:18:39
  Speaker 11: was not experiencing a sexual assault and then realized because
• 1:18:42
  Speaker 11: a little bit of the socialization questions that she was,
• 1:18:45
  Speaker 11: and people are racing to say, well, that's how it works.
• 1:18:47
  Speaker 11: You know, you only realize necessarily after. And a lot
• 1:18:50
  Speaker 11: of this is your own narrative of what happened to you.
• 1:18:54
  Speaker 11: You know, these are huge and profound questions that I
• 1:18:56
  Speaker 11: don't have a good say on. I'll just say there
• 1:18:58
  Speaker 11: were cases of Israeli college students engaging in these kinds
• 1:19:02
  Speaker 11: of questions and they became public news and major news.
• 1:19:05
  Speaker 11: Nothing recent, but about 20 years ago, there was a
• 1:19:07
  Speaker 11: very famous case and a rock song written about the
• 1:19:12
  Speaker 11: fact that the boys got exonerated in a court because
• 1:19:16
  Speaker 11: there wasn't enough evidence, but the general belief is they
• 1:19:18
  Speaker 11: were guilty, and there's literally a popular song in Israeli
• 1:19:22
  Speaker 11: pop music taking the side of the girl, of the victim. So, yes,
• 1:19:27
  Speaker 11: these are phenomena that happen everywhere.
• 1:19:29
  Speaker 1: The reason I ask, Khabib, is because what you said
• 1:19:32
  Speaker 1: about our young people are the lost boys. It's a
• 1:19:37
  Speaker 1: not uncommon occurrence to run into something that most people
• 1:19:40
  Speaker 1: would simply say is depraved behavior, especially at an elite
• 1:19:44
  Speaker 1: institution like Cornell.
• 1:19:45
  Speaker 2: That's an Ivy.
• 1:19:46
  Speaker 1: So depraved behavior, no matter who's at fault or who
• 1:19:50
  Speaker 1: gave consent or didn't give consent, is alarming if it
• 1:19:53
  Speaker 1: happens among elites. And do you think depraved behavior, or
• 1:19:57
  Speaker 1: you could do school shootings too. I mean, I'm just,
• 1:20:01
  Speaker 1: my theory is Israel doesn't have time for depravity because
• 1:20:04
  Speaker 1: your life is on the line all the time. What
• 1:20:07
  Speaker 1: do you make of my theory?
• 1:20:10
  Speaker 11: There is in Israel a lot more marriage, a lot
• 1:20:13
  Speaker 11: more monogamy, a lot more. OK, this is really unfair
• 1:20:18
  Speaker 11: to pose to me because I think, you know, the
• 1:20:20
  Speaker 11: culture I live in is is way better than every
• 1:20:22
  Speaker 11: other culture, because that's what everybody thinks when they live
• 1:20:25
  Speaker 11: in a culture and are used to it. But I
• 1:20:26
  Speaker 11: got it. I got to just say it. And some
• 1:20:28
  Speaker 11: of the data bears this out that Israelis have stronger
• 1:20:33
  Speaker 11: marriages and and marry younger women. And so a lot
• 1:20:37
  Speaker 11: of the Tinder culture that produces some of the data
• 1:20:40
  Speaker 11: on unpleasant sexual experiences, on a lower desire to actually
• 1:20:46
  Speaker 11: couple and marry in many Western countries, not just the
• 1:20:50
  Speaker 11: United States, a lot of that is much, much better
• 1:20:53
  Speaker 11: in Israel because it's a more conservative society, including secular
• 1:20:57
  Speaker 11: left-wing Israelis. They tend to be more secular. We know,
• 1:21:00
  Speaker 11: for example, they have more kids than any other developed nation.
• 1:21:04
  Speaker 11: Secular left-wing Israelis, not just you know, the religious. So yes,
• 1:21:07
  Speaker 11: I think we're much healthier on a lot of those questions. But,
• 1:21:11
  Speaker 11: you know, the scale of how, first of all, we
• 1:21:13
  Speaker 11: have no school shootings. That's not a phenomenon that has
• 1:21:15
  Speaker 11: ever existed in Israel. And we're a very well-armed society.
• 1:21:19
  Speaker 11: There's a solidarity there that I think compensates for a
• 1:21:23
  Speaker 11: lot of the loneliness that is endemic in many Western
• 1:21:26
  Speaker 11: societies that we don't see in Israeli society. And there's
• 1:21:29
  Speaker 11: good research on this. American young people are I said
• 1:21:36
  Speaker 11: things very flippantly, but the data really is a little scary.
• 1:21:40
  Speaker 11: It's not flippant. And it's all American data. You have
• 1:21:42
  Speaker 11: YouGov polls and Pew polls of American young people where
• 1:21:45
  Speaker 11: they ask them about political violence, for example. And 40%, 50%,
• 1:21:51
  Speaker 11: depending on how you frame the question, will support political violence.
• 1:21:55
  Speaker 11: And they're radicalizing in that way on TikTok. And so
• 1:21:58
  Speaker 11: this is a real black hole. You said they grow
• 1:22:01
  Speaker 11: up and vote.
• 1:22:03
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 1:22:03
  Speaker 11: As you say, right, that's the problem, you will have
• 1:22:06
  Speaker 11: a future of people much less connected to hard realities,
• 1:22:10
  Speaker 11: much less risk taking American kids are marrying less, they're
• 1:22:14
  Speaker 11: having fewer kids, they're taking, you know, founding companies, risky
• 1:22:20
  Speaker 11: issues of like founding companies are happening less in certain
• 1:22:22
  Speaker 11: parts of American society. Measure by measure by measure, this
• 1:22:27
  Speaker 11: generation is in real trouble. And I don't know that
• 1:22:30
  Speaker 11: the American conversation, the public conversation is really dealing with it.
• 1:22:33
  Speaker 11: And That's how I read this screaming in support of
• 1:22:36
  Speaker 11: October 7. If you support October 7, you're not opposed
• 1:22:40
  Speaker 11: to the Gaza war. You just took sides on who
• 1:22:44
  Speaker 11: should die. You're not a moral person who doesn't like
• 1:22:47
  Speaker 11: human rights violations.
• 1:22:50
  Speaker 2: You're right over the target. It's all connected.
• 1:22:54
  Speaker 1: Let me ask you now about a book that came
• 1:22:56
  Speaker 1: out probably before you were born, Amos Oz in the
• 1:22:59
  Speaker 1: Land of Israel. one of the most impactful books on me.
• 1:23:02
  Speaker 1: There's a chapter in there, I think it's an argument
• 1:23:04
  Speaker 1: on life and death, A, where he talks to a
• 1:23:07
  Speaker 1: settler who's very grim, who just says, in the end,
• 1:23:11
  Speaker 1: there's going to be blood feuds between Israeli Jews and
• 1:23:16
  Speaker 1: Israeli Arabs forever. Is that grimness growing after 10-7?
• 1:23:21
  Speaker 17: That sense of things we unfortunately have Very good polling
• 1:23:30
  Speaker 17: on this question.
• 1:23:34
  Speaker 11: I know it's three years to October 7, and so
• 1:23:36
  Speaker 11: every conversation is grim, but that sense of things is
• 1:23:41
  Speaker 11: almost universal among Israeli Jews. It's almost universal among Palestinians.
• 1:23:47
  Speaker 11: I mean, it is 90% on both sides. People who
• 1:23:50
  Speaker 11: say it with horror, people who say it with determination
• 1:23:53
  Speaker 11: to win. It doesn't matter if you're on the far right,
• 1:23:55
  Speaker 11: far left, anywhere in between. Um, the vast majority think
• 1:23:59
  Speaker 11: that peace is not possible. Coexistence is not on offer. Uh,
• 1:24:04
  Speaker 11: obviously it's because of the other side. Um, if you
• 1:24:08
  Speaker 11: ask me who I think it is, I will tell
• 1:24:10
  Speaker 11: you it is mostly the other side. Then I have all,
• 1:24:12
  Speaker 11: you know, decades of explanations for it. But nevertheless, we
• 1:24:16
  Speaker 11: know from the polls that both sides will say roughly that. And, um, and,
• 1:24:21
  Speaker 11: you know, uh, Avinathan Ol was one of the hostages, um,
• 1:24:26
  Speaker 11: who was emaciated and tortured in Hamas custody. And he
• 1:24:29
  Speaker 11: came out of Gaza and he gave an interview recently
• 1:24:32
  Speaker 11: before the third anniversary. And he's a former Seyret Matkal guy,
• 1:24:37
  Speaker 11: you know, commando, very serious guy. He tried to escape.
• 1:24:39
  Speaker 11: He was an extraordinary guy. And he said a few things. One,
• 1:24:46
  Speaker 11: he said, you know, he supported the tougher war rather than,
• 1:24:50
  Speaker 11: you know, even if it cost a hostage, because you
• 1:24:52
  Speaker 11: can't let Hamas get away with taking it. He said
• 1:24:55
  Speaker 11: a few things that the right very much liked, and
• 1:24:56
  Speaker 11: then he said something that the left very much liked.
• 1:24:59
  Speaker 11: He said, I tell Arabs, including, he's describing a conversation
• 1:25:03
  Speaker 11: with one of his Hamas captors, and he said, I'm
• 1:25:06
  Speaker 11: going to be here in a hundred years, and you're
• 1:25:08
  Speaker 11: going to be here in a hundred years, and the
• 1:25:10
  Speaker 11: question before us is what we want to happen in
• 1:25:12
  Speaker 11: those hundred years.
• 1:25:14
  Speaker 2: Huh.
• 1:25:15
  Speaker 1: All right, I'll be right back with Aviv Reddick-Gore. Follow
• 1:25:17
  Speaker 1: him on X at Aviv Reddick-Gore, at Patreon, Substack by
• 1:25:21
  Speaker 1: the same name, and his podcast is Ask Haviv Anything.
• 1:25:25
  Speaker 1: He writes for the Free Press. Stay tuned.
• 1:25:36
  Speaker 2: Welcome back, America.
• 1:25:37
  Speaker 1: I'm Hugh Hewitt with Haviv Reti-Gore. Follow Haviv on Exit Haviv, Reti-Gore,
• 1:25:42
  Speaker 1: and you'll find his Patreon, his Substack, his Free Press
• 1:25:44
  Speaker 1: links there as well.
• 1:25:46
  Speaker 2: Haviv is the world... This is four questions. Is the world...
• 1:25:52
  Speaker 2: Is Israel.
• 1:25:53
  Speaker 1: Is the United States and our Jews in the United
• 1:25:56
  Speaker 1: States better off today than they were three years and
• 1:25:59
  Speaker 1: two days ago?
• 1:26:02
  Speaker 11: It is my view that on balance, Israel is better off.
• 1:26:07
  Speaker 11: There are tremendous weaknesses and challenges and things that have
• 1:26:12
  Speaker 11: gotten much worse. They all pale in comparison to the
• 1:26:17
  Speaker 11: scale of danger we faced from the enemies we have
• 1:26:20
  Speaker 11: pushed back, not yet defeated, They're still there. They're willing
• 1:26:24
  Speaker 11: to sacrifice their entire societies to destroy us because there's
• 1:26:27
  Speaker 11: a grand religious vision at work here. But nevertheless, Iran
• 1:26:31
  Speaker 11: is far less able to threaten Israel. Hezbollah is certainly
• 1:26:34
  Speaker 11: far less able and Hamas is far less able. Israel
• 1:26:37
  Speaker 11: is safer from a threat that is big and real
• 1:26:40
  Speaker 11: and would only have gotten worse. People don't remember that
• 1:26:43
  Speaker 11: Hezbollah had an arsenal of 200,000 missiles and rockets and
• 1:26:47
  Speaker 11: that Israel is a very small country. That is enough
• 1:26:50
  Speaker 11: to set pretty much every Israeli city on fire. And
• 1:26:53
  Speaker 11: that is no longer the case. And so the danger
• 1:26:56
  Speaker 11: that we have managed to demolish, to push back, to remove,
• 1:27:01
  Speaker 11: puts us in a better position. We have done it
• 1:27:04
  Speaker 11: at terrible cost to Israel's international standing. I'm leaving aside
• 1:27:08
  Speaker 11: the grand moral questions because they're not part of your question,
• 1:27:10
  Speaker 11: but they're obviously relevant of the other side of the
• 1:27:13
  Speaker 11: Gazan suffering primarily, but obviously of everything else. But we have...
• 1:27:20
  Speaker 11: I think partly because this government has handled itself very poorly,
• 1:27:25
  Speaker 11: crashed in Israel's international standing. But if I had to
• 1:27:29
  Speaker 11: exchange Israel's situation today for Israel's diplomatic situation today, for
• 1:27:33
  Speaker 11: Israel's security situation today, after October 7, I would have
• 1:27:38
  Speaker 11: taken that deal without minimizing any of the dangers and
• 1:27:41
  Speaker 11: any of the collapse. I think American Jews are in
• 1:27:46
  Speaker 11: a worse situation, an endemic situation. latent anti-Semitism that was
• 1:27:52
  Speaker 11: marginal is moving into the mainstream. I know some of
• 1:27:56
  Speaker 11: the people watching us are saying, no, it's not. It
• 1:27:58
  Speaker 11: really is criticism of Israel because you're not looking at
• 1:28:01
  Speaker 11: the polls of young people. It is happening in a
• 1:28:03
  Speaker 11: significant way among young people and it is about Jews.
• 1:28:06
  Speaker 11: Anti-Semitism is becoming more and more mainstream on the right,
• 1:28:10
  Speaker 11: on the left. There are forces making it so.
• 1:28:12
  Speaker 4: It is useful.
• 1:28:13
  Speaker 11: If you look at Mayor Mamdani in New York with
• 1:28:16
  Speaker 11: all of his promises, all the DSA promises, Very few
• 1:28:19
  Speaker 11: of those promises he can actually fulfill, but going after
• 1:28:23
  Speaker 11: Israel is very cheap.
• 1:28:25
  Speaker 1: Did you read his statement yesterday, Habib, on the third anniversary?
• 1:28:29
  Speaker 2: Did you read the Mamdani statement?
• 1:28:31
  Speaker 4: I did.
• 1:28:32
  Speaker 2: What did you think of it?
• 1:28:33
  Speaker 11: The point of his statement was to talk not about
• 1:28:35
  Speaker 11: October 7th, but about Gaza. And the point of all
• 1:28:37
  Speaker 11: the DSA candidates and the point of all the progressive
• 1:28:40
  Speaker 11: candidates that I saw, or a lot of them, obviously
• 1:28:43
  Speaker 11: not some of them who really are more centrist, but
• 1:28:47
  Speaker 11: is to say just enough about October 7th so you
• 1:28:50
  Speaker 11: can only talk about Gaza. The problem with that is
• 1:28:54
  Speaker 11: that it is wind in the sails of the people
• 1:28:56
  Speaker 11: who think October 7 is justified, and that's what he
• 1:28:59
  Speaker 11: was trying to do. He was trying to say, yes,
• 1:29:03
  Speaker 11: October 7 is terrible, but also October 7 is not
• 1:29:06
  Speaker 11: the story, not even on October 7. Incidentally, he commemorates
• 1:29:12
  Speaker 11: Nakba Day on Israel's Independence Day. In other words, the
• 1:29:15
  Speaker 11: last living Jews in the Eastern Hemisphere founding their self-determination,
• 1:29:18
  Speaker 11: their state, their country, and a country that could have
• 1:29:21
  Speaker 11: been split down the middle, and the places where there's
• 1:29:24
  Speaker 11: an occupation were held by Jordan and Egypt and not
• 1:29:27
  Speaker 11: given to the Palestinians, annexed by Jordan at that period,
• 1:29:31
  Speaker 11: and there could have been a Palestinian state established then.
• 1:29:34
  Speaker 11: That founding of Jewish self-determination that finally emptied out the
• 1:29:38
  Speaker 11: displaced persons camps in Europe when America wasn't taking them
• 1:29:41
  Speaker 11: in and nobody was taking them in, and the complete
• 1:29:43
  Speaker 11: emptying out almost entirely of the Muslim world of its
• 1:29:46
  Speaker 11: Jews into that place, the last living Jews of the
• 1:29:48
  Speaker 11: Eastern Hemisphere, he thinks should be the Nakba Day, the
• 1:29:51
  Speaker 11: point of his message on October 7, the point of
• 1:29:54
  Speaker 11: his refusal just to recognize the legitimacy of Jewish self-determination
• 1:29:58
  Speaker 11: in the Eastern Hemisphere where they didn't have the option
• 1:30:00
  Speaker 11: to become Americans. The point is to deny the Jews
• 1:30:04
  Speaker 11: any piece and element of their story. They don't get
• 1:30:07
  Speaker 11: to be victims. They don't get to be heroes. They
• 1:30:09
  Speaker 11: don't get to have meaning. They don't get to have
• 1:30:10
  Speaker 11: an arc. They don't get to have a human experience
• 1:30:13
  Speaker 11: that if you want to challenge them, you have to
• 1:30:14
  Speaker 11: actually know something about. They get nothing. There is only
• 1:30:18
  Speaker 11: the Palestinian Arab Muslim experience. And that was the point
• 1:30:21
  Speaker 11: of his October 7 message and of his Nakba Day
• 1:30:23
  Speaker 11: commemoration on May 15.
• 1:30:26
  Speaker 2: So 30 seconds of it.
• 1:30:27
  Speaker 1: When you look at Abdul El-Sayed, I look up there
• 1:30:30
  Speaker 1: and I see he's Muslim Brotherhood light, maybe not even
• 1:30:33
  Speaker 1: so light, and he's a menace in the United States Senate.
• 1:30:36
  Speaker 1: I think he's a real threat to the way that
• 1:30:38
  Speaker 1: we do democracy.
• 1:30:39
  Speaker 2: What do you see? And like I said, we have
• 1:30:41
  Speaker 2: 30 seconds of the break.
• 1:30:44
  Speaker 11: I think this whole generation, this second generation American Muslims
• 1:30:49
  Speaker 11: who are very politically engaged are very interesting and very
• 1:30:52
  Speaker 11: mysterious to me. I don't understand them. He's deeply American
• 1:30:56
  Speaker 11: but thrilling to this Arab identity and revolutionary Arab identity.
• 1:31:01
  Speaker 11: And so there's something weird happening there that needs to
• 1:31:04
  Speaker 11: really be studied. I think he's radicalized because he wants
• 1:31:08
  Speaker 11: that story of Arab identity because he's born in America
• 1:31:11
  Speaker 11: and doesn't have it. And that's true of Mamdani who
• 1:31:14
  Speaker 11: comes in from overseas, but nevertheless, it's a whole generation
• 1:31:17
  Speaker 11: of young American Muslims today.
• 1:31:20
  Speaker 2: We'll come back to that. I'll be right back with Habib.
• 1:31:22
  Speaker 2: Stay tuned. Welcome back, America. I'm Hugh Hewitt.
• 1:31:25
  Speaker 1: My last segment with Habib Reddy-Gore today, three years and
• 1:31:29
  Speaker 1: a day after the invasion and massacre of Israel by
• 1:31:32
  Speaker 1: Hamas from Gaza.
• 1:31:34
  Speaker 2: Habib, this is sort.
• 1:31:35
  Speaker 1: Of a strange question, but I think you'll understand it.
• 1:31:37
  Speaker 1: I think of you personally, and I've only talked to
• 1:31:39
  Speaker 1: you via this medium before, as somewhat soft-hearted and big-brained.
• 1:31:44
  Speaker 1: But I am wondering, are you personally harder than you
• 1:31:48
  Speaker 1: were three years ago? And is your very wonderful wife online, Rachel,
• 1:31:54
  Speaker 1: is she harder? And are your children harder? And by
• 1:31:57
  Speaker 1: that I mean grim-faced, teeth-set, we-aren't-going-anywhere harder.
• 1:32:08
  Speaker 6: Um.
• 1:32:10
  Speaker 11: I think we're Americans after Pearl Harbor. We're not harder
• 1:32:14
  Speaker 11: in the sense that the purpose of a society, the
• 1:32:17
  Speaker 11: purpose of a country, the purpose of a government is
• 1:32:21
  Speaker 11: to make our children's lives better. If the Arab world
• 1:32:24
  Speaker 11: can give me that olive branch that gives me 100
• 1:32:27
  Speaker 11: years of peace and happiness and prosperity, I take it fully, immediately, joyfully.
• 1:32:32
  Speaker 11: I dance the jig in the street for it. As
• 1:32:36
  Speaker 11: long as what is offered, parts of the Arab world
• 1:32:39
  Speaker 11: have done that, by the way. And you see the
• 1:32:41
  Speaker 11: Israeli responses. It's deep and heartfelt and complete, you know,
• 1:32:46
  Speaker 11: alliance and loyalty. But as long as the world around
• 1:32:53
  Speaker 11: us keeps producing, and the world around us is very diverse.
• 1:32:56
  Speaker 11: It's not everybody, obviously. But you know, it doesn't really
• 1:32:58
  Speaker 11: matter the people who are sitting out the issue, right?
• 1:33:00
  Speaker 11: If I face five different terror organizations and a massive
• 1:33:05
  Speaker 11: regime with a population nine times my population and a
• 1:33:08
  Speaker 11: quarter of the world's oil, and it is set against
• 1:33:11
  Speaker 11: me and demands to destroy me as its foundational ideology.
• 1:33:14
  Speaker 11: Iran established Quds Day as a national holiday with a
• 1:33:18
  Speaker 11: military march through the streets. It has no border with Israel.
• 1:33:21
  Speaker 11: It has no reason to obsess about Israel. It's certainly
• 1:33:24
  Speaker 11: not doing it for Palestinian rights. It doesn't even give
• 1:33:26
  Speaker 11: Iranians rights. This is a religious ideology that needs my
• 1:33:30
  Speaker 11: extermination to validate and redeem Islam. And as long as
• 1:33:34
  Speaker 11: that is the enemy, I will fight them and I
• 1:33:36
  Speaker 11: will fight them to the bitter end. And hopefully the
• 1:33:40
  Speaker 11: Iranian people will bring down this terroristic regime that has
• 1:33:43
  Speaker 11: kept them back and kept them down for 47 years.
• 1:33:46
  Speaker 11: But if they don't, I have to fight these people
• 1:33:48
  Speaker 11: until they are dead and gone. Hamas has to die.
• 1:33:54
  Speaker 11: For the first time in my life, I support a
• 1:33:56
  Speaker 11: death penalty and it is only for those specific kinds
• 1:33:59
  Speaker 11: of organizations that demand a genocide of my people publicly
• 1:34:02
  Speaker 11: and explicitly. And I say that because they take hostages
• 1:34:07
  Speaker 11: to release their people in prisons, and so we can't
• 1:34:10
  Speaker 11: hold their people in prisons. And I say that because
• 1:34:12
  Speaker 11: the prisoners that we released in a hostage exchange back
• 1:34:16
  Speaker 11: in 2011 with Gilad Shalit built October 7 to take
• 1:34:20
  Speaker 11: hundreds of hostages and bring on this very war that
• 1:34:24
  Speaker 11: would unite the Mukawama Front and go to a war
• 1:34:27
  Speaker 11: that they thought would ultimately destroy my people. They have
• 1:34:30
  Speaker 11: to die. Now, I would never have said things like,
• 1:34:33
  Speaker 11: they have to die. The Hamas organization has to die.
• 1:34:36
  Speaker 11: And that's on the battlefield, and it's true of a
• 1:34:39
  Speaker 11: death penalty within Israel. I would never have supported that
• 1:34:42
  Speaker 11: until October 7. But they're undeterrable, and they have clarified
• 1:34:46
  Speaker 11: that point. And it doesn't even matter to them that
• 1:34:48
  Speaker 11: their own people will suffer terribly. They genuinely don't care
• 1:34:52
  Speaker 11: about their people's suffering. Their people's suffering is proof of
• 1:34:54
  Speaker 11: their piety in their ideological system. And so they're undeterrable,
• 1:34:59
  Speaker 11: just like incidentally, not just like, but there are parallels
• 1:35:02
  Speaker 11: here to Imperial Japan, run by the extremists toward the
• 1:35:06
  Speaker 11: end of World War II. At the end of the day,
• 1:35:09
  Speaker 11: they have to be brought down. If that's hard, then yes,
• 1:35:12
  Speaker 11: I've become hard.
• 1:35:13
  Speaker 2: So let me close with this question. I think Iran
• 1:35:16
  Speaker 2: is on the ropes.
• 1:35:17
  Speaker 1: I would not be surprised if it collapses, provided that
• 1:35:20
  Speaker 1: President Trump keeps the embargo and the blockade in place.
• 1:35:23
  Speaker 1: And there may be a couple more rounds of, quote,
• 1:35:26
  Speaker 1: kinetic conflict or not, but there are They're cut off
• 1:35:29
  Speaker 1: from oxygen, which is imports and exports. I think they're
• 1:35:33
  Speaker 1: going to collapse. If that happens, are you an optimist
• 1:35:38
  Speaker 1: about how the region can change?
• 1:35:43
  Speaker 11: If Iran is ruled by people who care more about
• 1:35:47
  Speaker 11: Iran than about grand ideological wars, you know what protesters
• 1:35:52
  Speaker 11: were shouting against the Iranian president, the Iranian regime representatives
• 1:35:56
  Speaker 11: shooting at them, the various militias and IRGC forces killing
• 1:36:01
  Speaker 11: the tens of thousands of Iranian protesters back in January.
• 1:36:04
  Speaker 11: They were shouting, no to Yemen, no to Gaza, no
• 1:36:07
  Speaker 11: to Lebanon, yes for Iran. In other words, they were shouting,
• 1:36:10
  Speaker 11: we support, we want to rebuild our own Iran. Anything
• 1:36:15
  Speaker 11: that replaces this regime that just cares about Iran. This
• 1:36:18
  Speaker 11: is a country with a nominal GDP per capita of Haiti.
• 1:36:22
  Speaker 11: even though it sits on the world's third largest gas
• 1:36:24
  Speaker 11: reserve and fourth largest oil reserve. The regime is doing
• 1:36:27
  Speaker 11: that to its people. It is preferring its insane religious war.
• 1:36:31
  Speaker 11: All Iran needs to get up and become one of
• 1:36:33
  Speaker 11: the wealthiest countries in the world with the brainpower of
• 1:36:35
  Speaker 11: an Israel and the extraction money of a Saudi Arabia
• 1:36:40
  Speaker 11: is literally to be ruled by any two-bit worst possible
• 1:36:44
  Speaker 11: Western political party. In other words, you just have to
• 1:36:46
  Speaker 11: be ruled by somebody that basically kind of wants to
• 1:36:49
  Speaker 11: run the country even badly.
• 1:36:51
  Speaker 2: If only they want to steal. If that's the only
• 1:36:53
  Speaker 2: thing they want to do is steal, that's fine.
• 1:36:57
  Speaker 11: That would already be enough. A South American corrupt regime
• 1:37:01
  Speaker 11: on the likes of Venezuela, probably not Venezuela, but everything
• 1:37:04
  Speaker 11: less bad than Venezuela, Iran would be this flourishing success story.
• 1:37:08
  Speaker 11: And so if, you know, I said back in February
• 1:37:11
  Speaker 11: before the war began, before Trump's major, the war with
• 1:37:15
  Speaker 11: Israel had already happened, a couple of rounds, etc. But
• 1:37:17
  Speaker 11: before Trump's major beginning of offensive operations, I said back then,
• 1:37:22
  Speaker 11: including on your show, they're not going to be brought
• 1:37:25
  Speaker 11: down by missiles. This is going to take a lot
• 1:37:28
  Speaker 11: because they're built to suffer trauma. You decapitate this regime,
• 1:37:31
  Speaker 11: they'll think of them as martyrs and fill their shoes immediately.
• 1:37:35
  Speaker 11: You can't bring them down with bombs. You can bring
• 1:37:37
  Speaker 11: them down by making it untenable for them to run
• 1:37:40
  Speaker 11: their patronage economy. It's important to remember the IRGC owns 50%
• 1:37:45
  Speaker 11: of Iran's GDP. The Bonyads, the foundations run by the
• 1:37:48
  Speaker 11: Supreme Leader's office, own another 20% of Iran's GDP. Those
• 1:37:52
  Speaker 11: are rough figures, estimates of think tanks, but they're probably
• 1:37:55
  Speaker 11: pretty accurate. This is a country totally robbed by their
• 1:37:59
  Speaker 11: feudal overlords. And if you break that economy, you break
• 1:38:03
  Speaker 11: the IRGC. And this was part of the conversation about what,
• 1:38:07
  Speaker 11: so to speak, Trump was doing wrong. Now, Trump did
• 1:38:10
  Speaker 11: a lot right on this question of how you bring
• 1:38:13
  Speaker 11: down this regime, but missed that element. Hormuz forced a
• 1:38:16
  Speaker 11: rethink in the White House, and what they landed on,
• 1:38:19
  Speaker 11: I think, was exactly the right policy that had been
• 1:38:22
  Speaker 11: missing from day one. They landed on it fairly quickly,
• 1:38:25
  Speaker 11: and that's been the policy for the last few months,
• 1:38:27
  Speaker 11: and the Iranian regime is now on its back. feet,
• 1:38:30
  Speaker 11: desperately worried about what's going to happen domestically, about the
• 1:38:33
  Speaker 11: protests renewing. And pretty much in America's palm, just it
• 1:38:39
  Speaker 11: has to last a while. They have a lot of
• 1:38:42
  Speaker 11: life left in them. It can't be something you end
• 1:38:44
  Speaker 11: before the midterms. It has to last a while. And
• 1:38:47
  Speaker 11: I think, yes, it'll succeed.
• 1:38:48
  Speaker 2: It's not going to end before the midterm. If any,
• 1:38:50
  Speaker 2: it'll accelerate.
• 1:38:51
  Speaker 1: Haviv Reddy-Gore, it is always good to catch up with you.
• 1:38:54
  Speaker 1: Thank you for the extra dollop of time today. Follow
• 1:38:57
  Speaker 1: Haviv on X at Haviv Reddy-Gore. Join his Patreon community.
• 1:39:01
  Speaker 2: It's really wonderful.
• 1:39:03
  Speaker 1: Listen to his podcast, Ask Haviv Anything, and read him
• 1:39:06
  Speaker 1: in the free press.
• 1:39:07
  Speaker 2: Thank you, Haviv. I'll be right back.