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The Big Weekend Pod · The Hugh Hewitt Show: Highly Concentrated

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Speaker 1: Welcome to today's podcast sponsored by Hillsdale College, All Things
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Speaker 1: Hillsdale Hillsdale dot ed or I encourage you to take
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Speaker 1: advantage of the many free online courses there, and of
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Speaker 1: course I'll listen to the Hillsdale dialogues, all of them
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Speaker 1: at Q for Hillsdale dot com or just Google, Apple
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Speaker 1: iTunes and Hillsdale Run and Glaura and even Grace America.
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Speaker 1: Welcome the Big Weekend Pod, and a big one it is, indeed,
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Speaker 1: John Ellis, Matt Continetti, Ben dominic Eli Lake, and Daniel Silva,
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Speaker 1: New York Times number one best selling author of the
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Speaker 1: Gabriel Lawn series. He's back with his new summertime blockbuster, Ransom.
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Speaker 1: That's the dessert, after we cover the serious stuff, the
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Speaker 1: escalation of the war, big escalation in the war on
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Speaker 1: Thursday night, carrying over into the weekend and reviewing the
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Speaker 1: President's speech with John Ellis and Eli Lake and Matt
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Speaker 1: Contenetti and Ben Dominicic, and then of course Dan Silva
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Speaker 1: and I will talk at length about Ransom. So settle
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Speaker 1: back and enjoy your workout, because this is a real special,
1:01
Speaker 1: big Weekend Pod, and I hope you enjoy it. I'm
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Speaker 1: he Hewett, Stay Tuned, Glory and even Great America. A
1:07
Speaker 1: lot coming up on this. Prior of the Hilltale Dialogue,
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Speaker 1: author Danny Silva is back talk to me about his
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Speaker 1: brand new book Ransom, Matt Conney, Ben Dominic Eli Lake,
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Speaker 1: And of course we begin, if we do most fridays,
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Speaker 1: with John Ellis, founder and editor in chief of News Items. John,
1:23
Speaker 1: the price of oil is at eighty two dollars a
1:26
Speaker 1: bail right now, you are of the opinion China holds
1:29
Speaker 1: the key to whether it stays there. Can you explain why?
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Speaker 2: Well, as we know, the US and Israel attacked Iran.
1:37
Speaker 2: Iran shut down the Strait of horm Mooz, shutting down
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Speaker 2: the straight of the of horr Moves cut you know,
1:44
Speaker 2: cut off essentially twenty percent of the world's energy supply.
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Speaker 2: And so everybody assumed that the price of oil would
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Speaker 2: go to one twenty one fifty eight, two hundred, depending
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Speaker 2: on who you talk to. Well, it turned out it didn't.
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Speaker 2: It's now in the eighties. It's likely to go lower.
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Speaker 2: And the reason for that is that China has dramatically
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Speaker 2: reduced its imports from the Middle East. And when I
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Speaker 2: say dramatically, by almost half they've gone into reserves, which
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Speaker 2: they have apparently bountiful amounts, and they have plugged into
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Speaker 2: their solar plants which are enormous. And so the price
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Speaker 2: of oil, which everybody thought would go up, has actually
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Speaker 2: been relatively stable. Some people think experts think that it
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Speaker 2: could go down into the mid seventies, maybe even as
2:36
Speaker 2: low as sixty five if China continues to not import
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Speaker 2: the amounts of oil and gas that it was importing before,
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Speaker 2: which would obviously have some terrific knock on effects lower
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Speaker 2: inflation and perhaps even lower federal interest rates. So it's
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Speaker 2: one of those weird things where what do you make
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Speaker 2: of the iron situation?
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Speaker 1: I'm looking at a live feed of the American airlift
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Speaker 1: to the Middle East right now, and it's an air bridge,
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Speaker 1: it's fueler supply, fueler supply. I think it's going to
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Speaker 1: go big over the weekend. What do you think? I
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Speaker 1: think so?
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Speaker 2: I think you know, you can tell by how close
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Speaker 2: US forces are to the Gulf, I mean to the
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Speaker 2: Strait essentially, or to Iran. And if more and more
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Speaker 2: assets as they're called, are closer and closer, then it's
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Speaker 2: likely that you know it's going to go bigger soon.
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Speaker 2: On the other hand, I'm I've long been of the
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Speaker 2: view that the way to win the war is to say, Okay,
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Speaker 2: we've successfully completed phase one. Phase two is blockade and
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Speaker 2: even tighter sanctions. The Iranian economy will collapse, and so
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Speaker 2: we just have to be patient. I think that would
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Speaker 2: be the best course. But you know, I'm not the president,
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Speaker 2: so it doesn't.
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Speaker 1: Really I'm a hybrid between Long drun or I would
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Speaker 1: take out the dual use electricity plants just to make
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Speaker 1: it harder on the IRGC and everything. And if there
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Speaker 1: are like keybridge to Bondara bas like he did last night,
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Speaker 1: that can get blown up. But then I would do it,
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Speaker 1: you suggest, because it's going to be an internal revolution.
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Speaker 1: Eli Lake's coming up after you. He's pointed out the
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Speaker 1: history of regime collapse is usually internal, not external. It
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Speaker 1: does happen sometimes with external forces, but it's usually internal.
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Speaker 1: Let me turn to the spooky stuff you sent me,
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Speaker 1: the AI exo self. This is not for me. I'm
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Speaker 1: a boomer. You're a boomer, But you also make the
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Speaker 1: argument the Exo self is going to be like a
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Speaker 1: second skin the youngs were before long tell us about it.
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Speaker 2: Well, I think people are familiar probably with metaglasses, which
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Speaker 2: you wear, and it connects you to the internet and
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Speaker 2: you can take pictures with those glasses and so on
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Speaker 2: and so forth. The next iteration of that is essentially
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Speaker 2: artificial intelligence in your pocket, and that is always on
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Speaker 2: following everything you do. You can talk to it as
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Speaker 2: you go along throughout the day. It can take notes
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Speaker 2: for you, it can do agentry for you and get
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Speaker 2: you a plane ticket or call somebody you need to call.
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Speaker 2: When you go to sleep, it'll monitor you sleep. And
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Speaker 2: the thought is is a man named Kevin Kelly, who's
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Speaker 2: the founder of Wired magazine, who wrote a terrific column
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Speaker 2: about this in which you said, eventually, the next generation,
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Speaker 2: not our generation here, but the next generation. I guess
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Speaker 2: generations will grow very comfortable with this because they'll have
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Speaker 2: the world's intelligence in their pocket that will tell them
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Speaker 2: how they're doing, tell them what they need to know,
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Speaker 2: tell them where they need to be. And it's totally
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Speaker 2: scary because it's a second self in a sense, because
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Speaker 2: it gets to know you as you talk to it,
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Speaker 2: as you talk to others. It records everywhere you go.
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Speaker 2: And people say, well, that's impossible, but actually, given where
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Speaker 2: metaglasses is right now, and you know it's not at
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Speaker 2: all unthinkable to see mister Kelly's vision realized in the
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Speaker 2: next three, four or five years.
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Speaker 1: John, I can tell from the bookshelf behind you you
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Speaker 1: are a reader. And I assume you grew up reading
6:23
Speaker 1: history and great thrillers like Daniel Selda's thrillers and Lend
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Speaker 1: Dayton's thrillers and Lacret and that was your summer reading.
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Speaker 1: But you had to do your history, et cetera. I'm
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Speaker 1: afraid the new AI and the new online era will
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Speaker 1: not be readers in the way that you and I
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Speaker 1: were readers. Does that cross your mind? What happens when
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Speaker 1: you basically raise a generation of people don't read compulsively
6:46
Speaker 1: because of boredom.
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Speaker 2: I'm concerned about that. I mean, how you process information.
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Speaker 2: It's been in studies show that if you write it
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Speaker 2: manually on a piece of paper, you process the information
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Speaker 2: better than if you type it on a keyboard. Now
7:04
Speaker 2: we're going we're getting rid of that. We've gotten rid
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Speaker 2: of the you know, penmanship, and now we're going to
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Speaker 2: get rid of the keyboard. It's all going to be voice.
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Speaker 2: And that's you know, you're going to have people who
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Speaker 2: are listening to podcasts, who are listening to you know,
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Speaker 2: Instagram feeds and so on and so forth. But I
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Speaker 2: think for authors it's going to be a fallow period.
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Speaker 3: Let's put that.
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Speaker 1: And for people who actually are informed by history, let's
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Speaker 1: talk about the AI data centers though that would power
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Speaker 1: the etso self and all this revolution. Who's winning this war?
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Speaker 1: Because both the right and the left are angry about it,
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Speaker 1: But I think the left is angrier.
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Speaker 2: Well, I think that what's happened in these democratic primaries.
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Speaker 2: I think it's one of the sort of secret sauces
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Speaker 2: that the left has deployed is opposition to data centers
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Speaker 2: to sort of the symbol of big text power. But
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Speaker 2: in the case of the left wing of the Democratic Party,
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Speaker 2: they've also been specifically critical of big tech, and they've
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Speaker 2: been specifically critical of the you know, the power of
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Speaker 2: AI making people ordinary people, so to speak, uh, you know, powerless,
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Speaker 2: And this is you know, we saw it with Kathy
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Speaker 2: Hochel banning for one year development of any data centers
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Speaker 2: in New York State. She didn't do that because she
8:34
Speaker 2: thinks it's the right thing to do. She did that
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Speaker 2: because the left is rising in New York State. As
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Speaker 2: you know, Mandani being the being the sort of primary
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Speaker 2: example of that.
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Speaker 1: The one that's most interesting to me.
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Speaker 2: Is Francesca Francesca hang, excuse me, who is the left
8:53
Speaker 2: wing candidate for governor in Wisconsin is the primary upcoming there.
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Speaker 2: She has used the data center slash big tech issue
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Speaker 2: to her advantage, and it's quite possible she'll win the nomination.
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Speaker 1: John Ellis, the fracking issue ten to fifteen years ago
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Speaker 1: was glowing down to by the left, and they convinced
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Speaker 1: the American middle for a while that fracking was bad
9:19
Speaker 1: for you, until the American middle figured out, we like
9:23
Speaker 1: natural gas, we like our house is heated at the
9:25
Speaker 1: old prices, and we want the oil price to be down.
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Speaker 1: Do you think that the campaigning and data set as
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Speaker 1: an AI is similar to the data the campaign against
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Speaker 1: fracking of a ten fifteen years ago, and it will
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Speaker 1: eventually turn when productivity is measured and people understand we
9:43
Speaker 1: really need this. You know, I can tell you a story.
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Speaker 2: My son in law is in the alternative energy space
9:51
Speaker 2: and they are developing a solar plant, if you will,
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Speaker 2: in Hood County, Texas, which is west I think of Elpaso.
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Speaker 2: I think Quitt County, Texas was eighty two percent Trump,
10:05
Speaker 2: and so he's coming down from you know, alternative energy.
10:08
Speaker 2: He's thinking, these people, aren't you know, they're not going
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Speaker 2: to like me. They're not going to like the idea.
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Speaker 2: They couldn't he said, they couldn't have cared less about
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Speaker 2: his solar plant. They were fine with that. What really
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Speaker 2: had them riled up was the building of a data
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Speaker 2: center in Hood County. And so I think what's unusual
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Speaker 2: about about this issue is that it unites the right
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Speaker 2: and the left, and so it's a different kettle of fish.
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Speaker 2: And I think, you know, I think people are really
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Speaker 2: concerned about enormous power being transferred to a very very
10:42
Speaker 2: small group of people. So I don't mean real power
10:45
Speaker 2: energy the grid. You mean the grid, No, I'm talking
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Speaker 2: about real power like you know, if you if you yeah,
10:53
Speaker 2: or just power. If you control the most important technology
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Speaker 2: arguably in the history of mankind. And they're aren't that
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Speaker 2: many of you. You have the most money, you have,
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Speaker 2: the most juice, you have, you know, On and on
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Speaker 2: it goes. And people in Hood County, Texas or Brattleboro,
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Speaker 2: Vermont are of a similar opinion.
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Speaker 1: That this is not a good idea.
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Speaker 2: I mean, you can unite Bannon with whoever the left
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Speaker 2: wing strategist is on this issue.
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Speaker 1: Wow, I have to let that settle a little bit.
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Speaker 1: Hassan Piper and Steve Bannon wouldn't have thought about that.
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Speaker 1: John ellis editor, founder of News Items, which I begin
11:33
Speaker 1: my day with, and you want to as well, the
11:35
Speaker 1: substack that condensers and organizes all the world's news overnight
11:40
Speaker 1: so you don't have to read all everything in order
11:42
Speaker 1: to understand what matters. Most news items from John ellis
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Speaker 1: Thank you, John. I'll be right back with Eli La.
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Speaker 1: Welcome back America. Eli Lake is the pre press correspondent
11:55
Speaker 1: who's also the host of Breaking History. Eli. I am
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Speaker 1: looking at the live feet of the the US Air
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Speaker 1: Force airlift to the Middle East. It is ongoing, continuous
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Speaker 1: and busy. What do you think is happening. I don't know,
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Speaker 1: but I would imagine I have something to do with Iran.
12:11
Speaker 1: Seems like the President is hinted, at least in his
12:16
Speaker 1: you know speech last night that you said, you know,
12:19
Speaker 1: wait and see something about it.
12:20
Speaker 4: He mentioned it.
12:21
Speaker 5: He kind of said, well, well, and we'll see more
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Speaker 5: in Iran soon. So I don't know, you know, well,
12:25
Speaker 5: we'll have to wait and see.
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Speaker 1: John Ellis just speculated the best way to finish this
12:31
Speaker 1: war is to deliver a big blow and then just
12:34
Speaker 1: keep the blockade in place and see what happens. What
12:37
Speaker 1: do you think of that theory?
12:40
Speaker 5: Well, you know, my view is that if if Trump,
12:44
Speaker 5: if Trump, it's really Israel in America. If the result
12:48
Speaker 5: of the two wars is that we've taken away the
12:50
Speaker 5: Iranian nuclear program and we haven't suffered a global recession
12:56
Speaker 5: and there you know, hasn't been other kind of cat
13:00
Speaker 5: traffic effects of that, then that's overall going to be
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Speaker 5: a you know, then that's a that's a win.
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Speaker 4: It doesn't.
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Speaker 5: It's not a win in the conditions that we may
13:11
Speaker 5: have hoped initially with the initial decapitation strikes and getting
13:15
Speaker 5: rid of promenade. It did not end up in toppling
13:18
Speaker 5: the regime, but I think the regime is much weaker
13:21
Speaker 5: and it doesn't have a nuclear blackmail, and then over time,
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Speaker 5: hopefully the slow process of you know, military naval escorts
13:32
Speaker 5: of ships in the straight up form moves close to
13:35
Speaker 5: the Oman side will hopefully you know, mitigate the the
13:41
Speaker 5: blackmail of the of the regime when it comes to
13:43
Speaker 5: the straight offem Mousa.
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Speaker 1: I want to switch to two men who would be
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Speaker 1: president Ambassador Ram Emmanuel Kilmer may or Chicago, former chief
13:50
Speaker 1: of staff to the President, and jade E Vance, the
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Speaker 1: Vice President. Ram Emmanuel gave a speech last week in
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Speaker 1: Tel Aviv that was very specific in his criticism to Israel.
14:00
Speaker 1: The Evans gave it three hour interview that I've not
14:02
Speaker 1: yet listened to. I've read many accounts of some of
14:04
Speaker 1: them conflicting. I assume you're up to speed on both.
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Speaker 1: How do the two men compare in their approach to Israel,
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Speaker 1: if at all?
14:12
Speaker 6: It's a good question.
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Speaker 5: I mean, I want to start with Ram Emmanuel, who
14:15
Speaker 5: you had a great interview with. I thought on the
14:18
Speaker 5: show this week and I disagreed with his speech. I
14:24
Speaker 5: still come I think he's coming from a place of
14:27
Speaker 5: what he's what he calls tough love, but I think
14:31
Speaker 5: he misdiagnoses the problem in that. What he's saying is
14:35
Speaker 5: is that if Israel can show a path to a
14:38
Speaker 5: two state solution and you know, meet halfway some of
14:45
Speaker 5: you know, it's critics, then you will find that then
14:48
Speaker 5: Israel will find that it's isolation in elements and pockets
14:52
Speaker 5: of the West will diminish and go away.
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Speaker 4: I think he's wrong.
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Speaker 5: I think what the problem is is that we've all
15:00
Speaker 5: already seen it in the UK Labor Party, the Democratic
15:03
Speaker 5: Party right now is in the process of, at the
15:06
Speaker 5: very least forming a coalition with people whose views are
15:10
Speaker 5: basically Prohamas, that are anti Western, anti American and anti
15:16
Speaker 5: Israel and don't believe that the Jewish state has a
15:18
Speaker 5: right to exist. And if you form a kind of
15:24
Speaker 5: how do I put it, if you form a coalition
15:26
Speaker 5: with a group like that, because of their illiberalism, because
15:31
Speaker 5: they are not committed to our values, they will ultimately
15:35
Speaker 5: end up eating their you know, the children of the revolution,
15:39
Speaker 5: or they will ultimately end up prevailing by any means necessary.
15:42
Speaker 5: We saw a preview of that this week on the
15:46
Speaker 5: podcast known as drop Site News, where Rocanna, who has
15:50
Speaker 5: you know, recently kind of reinvented himself to pander to
15:54
Speaker 5: this crowd, was you know, repeatedly asked in a kind
15:58
Speaker 5: of struggle session by one of the interviewers, Jeremy Scale,
16:01
Speaker 5: whether you know Palestinians had a right to attack Israeli
16:05
Speaker 5: soldiers and it kind of why can't they do October seventh,
16:09
Speaker 5: where they attacked these military bases and it was insane,
16:12
Speaker 5: you know. To to Kna's credit, I'm not a fan.
16:16
Speaker 5: He didn't take the bait. But the point is is
16:19
Speaker 5: that that's where it's headed. So I just think that
16:22
Speaker 5: that rama Manuel is kind of going to Israel, beating
16:26
Speaker 5: up on Israel in, you know, and his argument is like, hey,
16:31
Speaker 5: you got to do some of these things and that'll
16:33
Speaker 5: be the way out of your isolation. And my point
16:36
Speaker 5: is is that it's not going to make a difference
16:38
Speaker 5: if you have center left parties aligning themselves with these
16:44
Speaker 5: hard leftists.
16:45
Speaker 4: Now, in the case of JD.
16:46
Speaker 5: Vance, my issue with him was more about he kind
16:51
Speaker 5: of implied that he, you know, there might be some things,
16:54
Speaker 5: there might be files that connect Jeffrey Epstein to the
16:57
Speaker 5: CIA and the Mozad, but you know, the probably destroyed a.
17:00
Speaker 1: Long time ago.
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Speaker 5: That is pouring gasoline on conspiracy theory. You're the vice president,
17:08
Speaker 5: you need to be responsible when you're asked about that.
17:10
Speaker 5: I also think that his theory that you know themou
17:15
Speaker 5: that he that he was negotiating with the Iranians was
17:18
Speaker 5: somehow sabotaged by harsh criticism inside the United States among
17:24
Speaker 5: you know, pro Israel supporters of Trump is risible. It
17:29
Speaker 5: was sabotaged because the Iranians are who they've always been,
17:33
Speaker 5: which are you know, a bunch of terrorists who lie.
17:37
Speaker 4: So you know, that was disappointing.
17:39
Speaker 5: But you know the bottom line is that I made
17:42
Speaker 5: this case on the commentary podcast. Jd Vance is not
17:46
Speaker 5: somebody who I think hates Israel or once you know it,
17:50
Speaker 5: sort of wants to see its destruction, or is overly concerned,
17:53
Speaker 5: is convinced that is what's become a monstrosity. Jd Vance
17:56
Speaker 5: wants a grown up relationship between the United States and Israel.
18:00
Speaker 4: I do too.
18:01
Speaker 5: By the way, I'm in favor of ending the military
18:03
Speaker 5: aid in the military subsidy at this point, So that
18:07
Speaker 5: strikes me, as you know, fairly reasonable. And he's been
18:11
Speaker 5: pretty consistent. If you go back to twenty twenty four
18:13
Speaker 5: and you listen his speech at the Quincy Institute, what
18:17
Speaker 5: you find is as a politician who is making the
18:21
Speaker 5: argument that Israel is a valuable ally because it can
18:24
Speaker 5: defend itself and defend American interests. So on that point,
18:28
Speaker 5: I will just sort of say I think he's okay.
18:32
Speaker 5: I do have a lot of other problems right now
18:34
Speaker 5: with Jade Vance in this world, and you know, chief
18:36
Speaker 5: among them would be you know, he still is I
18:39
Speaker 5: think an ally and won't denounce Tucker Carlson, who I
18:43
Speaker 5: really do think is like launched into orbit.
18:47
Speaker 1: You will let me ask you out there, low on
18:49
Speaker 1: time here, Yeah, and it might go into the break.
18:52
Speaker 1: I've interviewed the Vice present a lot when he was
18:54
Speaker 1: running for Senate in the Senate and a couple of
18:57
Speaker 1: times since to be been Vice president nominated. He's always
19:01
Speaker 1: been Israel is its own country. It needs to do
19:04
Speaker 1: what it needs to do to protect it security, kind
19:06
Speaker 1: of a grown up attitude. I think both Ram Emmanuel
19:09
Speaker 1: and jd Vance are playing the first inning of the
19:11
Speaker 1: long game in the question for the nomination by going
19:15
Speaker 1: to their left or to their right in the case
19:18
Speaker 1: of Vance, so Ram Emanuel went to the left. Vance went
19:21
Speaker 1: to the right just to kind of touch base before
19:24
Speaker 1: you go back to the center right and the center left.
19:27
Speaker 1: Are they doing the same thing for their respective parties?
19:30
Speaker 1: And I haven't heard the Vance interview. I'm just trusting
19:32
Speaker 1: your assertion there.
19:36
Speaker 5: My concern really about Dvance is less to do with
19:38
Speaker 5: what he says about the US Israel relationship, And it's
19:41
Speaker 5: much more to do with the fact that he seems
19:43
Speaker 5: to be in a position if you want to say
19:46
Speaker 5: he's tacking to his right right now or trying to
19:48
Speaker 5: keep shore up his base of not offending a bunch
19:51
Speaker 5: of anti Semitic conspiracy theory, you know, nonsense people. My
19:58
Speaker 5: view is that those people, just like I don't think
20:00
Speaker 5: I'm glad that that Buckley ultimately led the chart to
20:03
Speaker 5: get the Burchers out of the party. Well, we have
20:05
Speaker 5: a Bircher problem in twenty twenty six on the right,
20:08
Speaker 5: and jd Vance at this point has shown me that
20:12
Speaker 5: he doesn't want to offend him.
20:13
Speaker 1: Doesn't mean he's one of them, because.
20:14
Speaker 4: I don't think he is.
20:16
Speaker 5: Rob Emmanuel's problem is that he doesn't understand how insipid
20:20
Speaker 5: and terrible the new left popular socialists are that are
20:24
Speaker 5: trying to enter the Democratic Party.
20:29
Speaker 1: Think longer on that, Eli, because I think it's the
20:31
Speaker 1: same problem for both guys. But you're smarter than I am,
20:35
Speaker 1: so I'll wait to read what you write in the
20:36
Speaker 1: Free prom or say I'm breaking history is a wonderful podcast.
20:39
Speaker 1: ELI like fall him on. Actually, ELI like thank you
20:42
Speaker 1: I'll be right back in America. What continetti, I'm a
20:44
Speaker 1: little bit high.
20:47
Speaker 4: The loring. I ain't saying action never took a troll
20:54
Speaker 4: on me for what is work.
21:00
Speaker 1: I can finally we going back America. I'm Hugh Hewittt.
21:03
Speaker 1: Matt Contenenny is my guest head of Domestic Policy Studies
21:07
Speaker 1: at the American Enterprises Too calmnist for the Wall Street Journal.
21:10
Speaker 1: And this is my now new feature for the young,
21:13
Speaker 1: the young members of my show New and Rising Stars.
21:17
Speaker 1: I just want to see if Matt is hip. Do
21:19
Speaker 1: you know who this is? Matt Connetty.
21:23
Speaker 4: No, I'm not young, and I am not hip. It's
21:27
Speaker 4: mattis now lumineers.
21:29
Speaker 1: It's Max McNown and he's a big deal among the young.
21:33
Speaker 1: So I'm glad to hear I'm not the only guy
21:35
Speaker 1: emotional music deal that was.
21:36
Speaker 7: I was so I mean, I don't know, kind of
21:39
Speaker 7: depressing intro. I'm so geared up to talk about the
21:42
Speaker 7: news of the week and now I might, you know,
21:44
Speaker 7: have to sippolaate or something.
21:46
Speaker 4: And because I'm a.
21:47
Speaker 1: Little bit dumb, but I'm a lot more free. That's
21:49
Speaker 1: kind of like the world. Uh, let's go to Iran
21:52
Speaker 1: Matt Conney. I have just read Rebecca Heinrich's estimate that
21:56
Speaker 1: if there's a ground force, it won't be for long,
21:59
Speaker 1: but there might be ad for it. I listened to
22:01
Speaker 1: Posish speech last night. I was kind of disappointed he
22:03
Speaker 1: didn't do more on Iran, but he said stay tuned,
22:06
Speaker 1: and the real time air bridge visuals are amazing. Everything
22:12
Speaker 1: is going to the Middle East Bass. What do you
22:14
Speaker 1: think is going to happen.
22:15
Speaker 7: Next Well, I think the President is preparing to escalate
22:21
Speaker 7: the conflict, and I think what we've seen you in
22:23
Speaker 7: the past week is a gradual escalation, and not only
22:28
Speaker 7: a return to combat operations, the resumption of the blockade
22:32
Speaker 7: on Iranian ports, but now also targeting dual use infrastructure
22:38
Speaker 7: in Iran, which of course we've been talking about on
22:40
Speaker 7: this program for months, but taking out some of those bridges,
22:43
Speaker 7: taking out some of those economic facilities, transportation hubs, all
22:49
Speaker 7: part of an effort to seriously degrade and eventually deny
22:56
Speaker 7: Iranians the ability to shut down the Straight of Hormuz.
23:00
Speaker 7: So I'd say the preparations we're seeing taking place right now,
23:04
Speaker 7: or providing the President options to continue that effort in
23:08
Speaker 7: the coming.
23:09
Speaker 1: Week Congressman Hargen from North Carolina told me earlier this week,
23:13
Speaker 1: we cannot take Karj Island as I've been proposed, because
23:17
Speaker 1: it's lower than the high ground from which the Iranians
23:22
Speaker 1: could fire onto it. I was unaware of that basic fact,
23:25
Speaker 1: but he's a Special Forces veteran. Were you aware of
23:28
Speaker 1: that fact?
23:30
Speaker 7: Well, I suppose I was aware that a lot of
23:32
Speaker 7: that coastal topography, as you can see on the map,
23:35
Speaker 7: is elevated, and it's a mountainous part of Iran, which
23:39
Speaker 7: is in general with kind of a mountainous country than
23:42
Speaker 7: large country, but the plenty of mountains there, and so
23:46
Speaker 7: you see the drone and missile teams that have been
23:49
Speaker 7: harassing the shipping in the Strait of Hermus are able
23:52
Speaker 7: to kind of operate within these elevated conditions, kind of
23:55
Speaker 7: sneak in and out and fire at shipping.
23:59
Speaker 1: You know.
23:59
Speaker 7: I think one point Congress and Harrogan made that stuck
24:02
Speaker 7: with me was this idea of boots on the ground
24:05
Speaker 7: and how an operation to siege carg Island would be
24:08
Speaker 7: different than our incredible rescue operation of the two downed
24:13
Speaker 7: airmen earlier in Operation Epic theory, this would be an
24:17
Speaker 7: operation where we would seize and hold ground Iranian territory,
24:22
Speaker 7: and that of course would mean that our soldiers would
24:24
Speaker 7: be the targets of drone and missile attacks. And so
24:27
Speaker 7: if we're going to pursue that policy, I think every
24:30
Speaker 7: effort needs to be made to prepare for how the
24:34
Speaker 7: Iranians would attempt to retaliate an attempt to harm our soldiers.
24:38
Speaker 7: I think that's one reason why President Trump, of course,
24:40
Speaker 7: has always been very reluctant to put boots on the
24:44
Speaker 7: ground unless he knows that the mission is defined, that
24:48
Speaker 7: there's a time set, and that the objectives can be achieved.
24:53
Speaker 1: The opportunity for other ground troops. Do you think our
24:58
Speaker 1: Arab colleagues, Israeli forces, but UA, which is deployed with
25:03
Speaker 1: US to Afghanistan, deployed with US to Iraq, you think
25:06
Speaker 1: that the UA and other Arab troops might be involved
25:10
Speaker 1: in such an incursion where necessary.
25:14
Speaker 7: I'd be very skeptical of that idea, Hugh, mainly because
25:19
Speaker 7: our golf allies have participated in some extent in retaliating
25:25
Speaker 7: against Iran, because of course Iran has been striking at
25:28
Speaker 7: them since the very beginning of the open conflict earlier
25:32
Speaker 7: this year.
25:33
Speaker 4: But I don't say I'm not sure they've been at
25:35
Speaker 4: the forefront.
25:36
Speaker 7: Let's say certainly not anywhere near where Israel was during
25:41
Speaker 7: the first phase of Operation Epic Fury, Operation Roaring Lion
25:45
Speaker 7: for the Israelis. So I'd be surprised if we saw
25:50
Speaker 7: a deployment of golf military assets in any in any
25:56
Speaker 7: ground operation, just as you know I begin I'd be
25:59
Speaker 7: a little bit surprised if there were a major ground
26:02
Speaker 7: operation in the coming weeks.
26:04
Speaker 1: I'll be right back with Matt Contney during the break
26:06
Speaker 1: talk about the President's speech on Thursday night, Don't go anywhere.
26:09
Speaker 1: He'll be back after the break to talk about Ram
26:11
Speaker 1: Emmanuel and Vice President Advance. Both men gave speeches. They
26:15
Speaker 1: were different, but they were the same. One gave a speech,
26:18
Speaker 1: one gave an interview. I want to be specific. Don't
26:20
Speaker 1: go anywhere. I'll be right back on the huge deal
26:22
Speaker 1: of show. I'm back now with Matt conten Any of
26:24
Speaker 1: the Wall Street Journal and AEI. Matt. I stayed up
26:27
Speaker 1: later than I wanted to. I do Fox and Friends
26:29
Speaker 1: first this morning in the five o'clock hours, so I
26:31
Speaker 1: didn't really want to stay up to watch the President's
26:33
Speaker 1: speech and thankfully it was only twenty seven minutes, and
26:36
Speaker 1: I said, I stayed up for that. I got the
26:39
Speaker 1: documents down this morning. What'd you make of it? And
26:41
Speaker 1: the DOCUMENTCY released which were heavily redacted, I mean very
26:44
Speaker 1: heavily redacted.
26:47
Speaker 7: But it was a very interesting speech that the President
26:49
Speaker 7: gave Hugh. I like the fact that he wants to
26:52
Speaker 7: give more of these addresses. I think it's a setting
26:55
Speaker 7: we don't usually see him in. I thought the subject
26:58
Speaker 7: to the speech was very much defined. You know it
27:02
Speaker 7: previously in the week we had heard it would be
27:04
Speaker 7: a potpourri or a shmorgasboard. But he wanted to talk
27:07
Speaker 7: about election integrity. He wanted to talk about the Save
27:10
Speaker 7: America Act. And I really think that's what this speech
27:12
Speaker 7: was about, marshaling some new evidence, some new disclosures to
27:17
Speaker 7: say that our election system is vulnerable. It's vulnerable to
27:21
Speaker 7: outside influence, it is leaky, it is not very efficient,
27:26
Speaker 7: for sure, especially when you think of states like California
27:29
Speaker 7: or New York, and we need to be.
27:31
Speaker 4: Addressed and there.
27:33
Speaker 7: I think that the message on the Save America Act
27:36
Speaker 7: is useful for a couple reasons. Politically, One is it
27:40
Speaker 7: is a defined agenda item, and it's critical for President Trump.
27:45
Speaker 4: Two, it's something that the.
27:47
Speaker 7: Base of the Republican Party cares passionately about. And right now,
27:52
Speaker 7: the big I think challenge facing Republicans ahead of midterm
27:56
Speaker 7: is a lack of enthusiasm for the election, kind of
27:59
Speaker 7: a complacency. People are more or less happy with President
28:02
Speaker 7: Trump's tenure in office if you're a Republican, so they
28:06
Speaker 7: need an additional reason to go to the polls. And
28:08
Speaker 7: so what I see in this speech is President Trump
28:10
Speaker 7: giving his voters a reason to go to the polls,
28:14
Speaker 7: to advocate for the Save America Act and to put
28:16
Speaker 7: on pressure on the Senate to pass it.
28:20
Speaker 1: You know, the reveal to me because I did get
28:22
Speaker 1: the first document down on the chicoms They've got two
28:25
Speaker 1: hundred million American voter files. That means they know name, address,
28:30
Speaker 1: and residents. That's very unnerving. Don't you find that to
28:34
Speaker 1: be very unnerving? Oh?
28:37
Speaker 4: Incredibly.
28:38
Speaker 7: I mean the Chinese penetration of American systems of identification,
28:43
Speaker 7: whether it's a voter role, remember the OPM hack many
28:47
Speaker 7: years back, where they just they seized all the information
28:49
Speaker 7: of government employees. Over decades, China, we now know, of course,
28:55
Speaker 7: if you look at the mayor in southern California who
28:59
Speaker 7: was revealed to be a China spy.
29:01
Speaker 4: China has penetrated.
29:02
Speaker 7: Our society, and so I think it's totally legitimate for
29:04
Speaker 7: the President to raise this issue. We have to be
29:07
Speaker 7: concerned about it, and we have to take steps to
29:10
Speaker 7: secure our voting process. And then we also have to
29:14
Speaker 7: look at the voter ID point, which is something he's
29:17
Speaker 7: stressed in, which is part of the Save America Act
29:20
Speaker 7: that is extremely popular, initiative voter ID. It's common sensical
29:25
Speaker 7: we take ID everywhere. Everyone has an ID. Obviously there
29:28
Speaker 7: are a few exceptions that can be addressed, but you know,
29:31
Speaker 7: hard cases don't make fruit law. Right, people like the
29:35
Speaker 7: idea of voter ID. And again, that's an issue that
29:38
Speaker 7: President Trump knows his voters respond to, and something we
29:41
Speaker 7: see at work in last night's speech.
29:44
Speaker 1: And he sucker punched a lot of the left that
29:46
Speaker 1: thought he was going to relitigate twenty twenty and he
29:48
Speaker 1: did not, except for a couple of cues here and there,
29:50
Speaker 1: he really didn't. I mean, right back with Matt Cotton
29:53
Speaker 1: and he stay tuned America. The Jack wasn't so busy.
30:08
Speaker 1: Welcome back America. I'm playing happy Jack with Matt Connelly.
30:11
Speaker 1: Didn't like my downer music the last time edried it.
30:14
Speaker 1: Do you like happy Jack?
30:16
Speaker 4: Matt?
30:17
Speaker 1: Oh?
30:17
Speaker 4: Of course? How can I not love smiling? Here is
30:20
Speaker 4: get into our next segment.
30:22
Speaker 1: Let me put for for you two exhibits. Ambassador, former
30:26
Speaker 1: mayor of Chicago, former chief of staff to the President
30:29
Speaker 1: of the United States, former member of Congress from Emmanuel
30:31
Speaker 1: goes to Israel gives a speech. I discussed it with him.
30:35
Speaker 1: This week. Vice President Vance flies to California does a
30:38
Speaker 1: three hour interview with Joe Rogan, which I have not
30:41
Speaker 1: listened to, and I'm leary of clips because of AI
30:43
Speaker 1: and editing. But maybe you know more about it than
30:46
Speaker 1: I do. I think they were doing the same thing,
30:49
Speaker 1: which is playing to a part of their party that
30:51
Speaker 1: they perceive a need to at least be on talking
30:55
Speaker 1: terms with as they quest for the presidency. What did
30:57
Speaker 1: you make of both and how do you compare each?
31:01
Speaker 6: All?
31:02
Speaker 1: Right?
31:02
Speaker 7: Well, just to start with Emmanuel, I mean their ram
31:05
Speaker 7: Emmanuel's speech, of course, was based on partisan reasons. Ramamanuel's
31:11
Speaker 7: thinking of running for president in twenty twenty eight, and
31:14
Speaker 7: his party has taken a sharp turn against the state
31:17
Speaker 7: of Israel. We saw that just in the House this week,
31:19
Speaker 7: where over one hundred House Democrats voted to cut off
31:22
Speaker 7: aid to Israel. You know, ten years ago the number
31:24
Speaker 7: would be zero. Now it's one hundred and three, and
31:27
Speaker 7: you can just see there. The Democrats are becoming an
31:30
Speaker 7: anti Israel party. Ram Emanuel knows it. In his speech
31:33
Speaker 7: in Israel, Emmanuel made three claims Hugh that I truly
31:36
Speaker 7: disagree with. One is the idea that Israel is isolated.
31:40
Speaker 7: Israel is not isolated at all. It accounts among his
31:44
Speaker 7: allies the most powerful democracy in the world, the United States,
31:47
Speaker 7: and the most populous.
31:48
Speaker 4: Democracy in the world, India.
31:51
Speaker 7: Another claim Emmanuel made was that you know, for too long,
31:53
Speaker 7: he says, American support for Israel has been unqualified.
31:57
Speaker 4: We've done whatever Israel wants.
31:59
Speaker 7: And my response to him there is look in the mirror,
32:02
Speaker 7: mister ambassador, because you worked for three presidents Clinton, Obama
32:07
Speaker 7: and Biden whose support was not unqualified at all. I mean,
32:11
Speaker 7: who did in fact that, in Obama's case, did everything
32:14
Speaker 7: he could to create daylight between the United States and Israel.
32:17
Speaker 4: And then the third idea.
32:19
Speaker 7: He had is this idea for a twenty three state solution,
32:23
Speaker 7: the idea that rather than try to have a two
32:25
Speaker 7: state solution between Israel and a potential Palestinian state, the
32:30
Speaker 7: settlement of the Israeli Palestinian dispute should be submerged within
32:35
Speaker 7: a settlement between Israel and the Arab League. But that
32:38
Speaker 7: is just an evasion in my view, because at the
32:41
Speaker 7: end of the day, the obstacle to peace in the
32:43
Speaker 7: Middle East is not Israel. The obstacle to peace in
32:47
Speaker 7: the Middle East is Palestinian denihilism, Palestinian denial of Israel's
32:54
Speaker 7: right to exist. That is what has prevented every single
32:58
Speaker 7: peace agreement from bearing fruit. And until the Palestinians change
33:02
Speaker 7: their attitude toward Israel and accept Israel's right to exist
33:06
Speaker 7: as a Jewish state, you will not have any peace.
33:09
Speaker 7: So that is rama Manuel a speech that he is
33:12
Speaker 7: delivering to an anti Israel party, but I think that
33:15
Speaker 7: was riddled with errors. For Vice President Vance and his
33:19
Speaker 7: interview with Joe Rogan, I'm not sure actually what the
33:22
Speaker 7: party aspect of it is. Hugh, I have to tell you,
33:25
Speaker 7: because as the Democratic Party is turning against Israel, the
33:29
Speaker 7: Republican Party is not in fact, the Republican Party is
33:32
Speaker 7: driving out the anti Israel members. And just look at
33:35
Speaker 7: that resolution I mentioned. It was sponsored by Thomas Massey,
33:38
Speaker 7: a Republican lser. But who is just Republican loser who
33:42
Speaker 7: just lost his seat to a primary challenge sponsored by
33:45
Speaker 7: President Trump. So who is the audience that that Joe
33:50
Speaker 7: Rogan represents and that jd.
33:52
Speaker 4: Vance is catering to with his comments.
33:56
Speaker 7: It's not Republicans, but it is part of the Trump coalition.
34:02
Speaker 7: It is kind of the newer elements of the Trump
34:04
Speaker 7: coalition that were very important to Trump's victory in twenty
34:08
Speaker 7: twenty four. What they're called low propensity voters. They're not
34:12
Speaker 7: necessarily attached to the party structure, they did not like
34:16
Speaker 7: the way things were going under Biden, and they were
34:19
Speaker 7: part of Trump's winning coalition in twenty twenty four. And
34:23
Speaker 7: I think they're what the Vice president is concerned about
34:27
Speaker 7: is keeping those voters in a potential twenty twenty eight coalition.
34:32
Speaker 7: At the same time, I think some of the claims
34:34
Speaker 7: he made we're also ill founded.
34:38
Speaker 1: Is it possible? I argued with rom Emmanuel, there are
34:42
Speaker 1: factual errors in his speech. The United States was not
34:45
Speaker 1: around nineteen forty eight. Ike was actually very hard on them.
34:48
Speaker 1: In nineteen fifty six, we were absent in sixty seven.
34:51
Speaker 1: Nixon came in and saved Israel in seventy three, and
34:53
Speaker 1: that's when the modern rule. So I was just wrong
34:55
Speaker 1: on fact. Is it possible? Jd Vance is playing to
34:59
Speaker 1: an esthetic Paul's among younger voters, which is it doesn't
35:02
Speaker 1: really matter what you say, but it matters where you
35:04
Speaker 1: say it, and that in the course of saying it,
35:07
Speaker 1: you demonstrate that you're a real person who hasn't been
35:09
Speaker 1: fabricated in an industrial sized turnout politicians assembly line.
35:16
Speaker 7: Well, I think there's absolutely a part of that. I
35:18
Speaker 7: think about the Joe Rogan experience. It's an incredibly successful
35:22
Speaker 7: and popular podcast. Itself became an issue in the twenty
35:26
Speaker 7: twenty four campaign when President Trump sat for a three
35:29
Speaker 7: hour interview and Kamala Harris would not appear right because
35:33
Speaker 7: she didn't want to have to talk for that long.
35:36
Speaker 4: She wouldn't have been able to.
35:37
Speaker 7: So jd Vance is showing that he can be like
35:40
Speaker 7: President Trump again, trying to maintain the winning coalition from
35:44
Speaker 7: twenty twenty four in these coming years ahead of twenty
35:48
Speaker 7: twenty eight, and then you also raise a good point
35:50
Speaker 7: with the younger generation. I mean, there's no question that
35:53
Speaker 7: the two parties are now polarized on the question of Israel.
35:59
Speaker 7: Younger voters, though as a whole they are it seems
36:03
Speaker 7: to me to become our becoming as a whole more
36:07
Speaker 7: skeptical of the US Israeli alliance. There's clearly rising anti
36:12
Speaker 7: Semitism among this generation.
36:14
Speaker 4: So if you want to kind.
36:15
Speaker 7: Of keep them in the coalition as well, you might
36:18
Speaker 7: be saying statements that you know that there's Israel, Israel's
36:21
Speaker 7: involved in an influenced campaign to undermine the mo OU
36:25
Speaker 7: when there's no real evidence of that. There are people
36:29
Speaker 7: who had criticisms of the MU and people who saw
36:31
Speaker 7: a ran for what it was. They were the ones
36:33
Speaker 7: who were saying that this MoU wuldn't work, and guess.
36:36
Speaker 4: What, it didn't.
36:39
Speaker 7: But you might if you might want to say, look,
36:41
Speaker 7: this is we don't need to have a stronger relationship
36:45
Speaker 7: with Israel as we have had in the past. If
36:47
Speaker 7: you want to kind of make sure that you have
36:50
Speaker 7: connections and inroads to these to these younger voters.
36:54
Speaker 1: I think that's very very sharp. Matt Continey and I
36:57
Speaker 1: look forward to listening to yesterday's comment podcast, on which
37:01
Speaker 1: I assume you were but I couldn't listen to it yesterday,
37:03
Speaker 1: and reading your Wall Street Journal expressions call him from today,
37:06
Speaker 1: which again I'm behind today because of a variety of reasons,
37:08
Speaker 1: but I appreciate the time as always. Follow Matt on
37:11
Speaker 1: exit Continetti, read him in the Wall Street Journal, hear
37:14
Speaker 1: him on the Thursday episode of the Commentary podcast, and
37:18
Speaker 1: Fridays and Tuesdays when we're lucky here on the New
37:20
Speaker 1: Hewitt Show. I may miss you next week. Matt. By
37:22
Speaker 1: the way, I've got to go to Florida and we'll
37:25
Speaker 1: be guest hosts both of your days next week. Don't
37:28
Speaker 1: go anywhere, America.
37:29
Speaker 4: I ain't saying that you never too. Console on me.
37:35
Speaker 1: Welcome back America, Morning, Glory, and even Grace. I'm Hugh HEWITTT.
37:39
Speaker 1: And that is this week's quiz for Ben Dominant's opinion
37:42
Speaker 1: editor at The Daily Wire, Fox News contributor host of
37:45
Speaker 1: the Big Ben Podcast, trying to test and see if
37:48
Speaker 1: he actually knows any about new music. Ben, you know
37:51
Speaker 1: that is a lot.
37:54
Speaker 3: That is that it's mac something, isn't.
37:58
Speaker 4: It It is?
37:59
Speaker 1: Oh, that's a half point Max mcgowon mcdown all right.
38:03
Speaker 3: Sorry, said there's not a lot of musicians neared Max.
38:07
Speaker 1: You know, Matt Connanny didn't even play. He didn't even
38:11
Speaker 1: try and get in on the game. So you're much
38:13
Speaker 1: that's probably because of your wife, right, she's the country person. Right.
38:17
Speaker 3: Actually, you'd be surprised by by by my playlist. I would,
38:21
Speaker 3: I would thank you, Hewitt. But yes, I've I've heard
38:25
Speaker 3: this and and I can't always name, you know, the
38:29
Speaker 3: country song if you kind of you need to listen
38:31
Speaker 3: for a little bit to get something. But I did that.
38:33
Speaker 3: This one has come across my radar. So yes, all right, so.
38:37
Speaker 1: I got this is cultural. We'll get the politics. I
38:40
Speaker 1: can't remember the names of actresses who are under forty,
38:44
Speaker 1: you know, I just they're gone and there they come,
38:46
Speaker 1: like in the Lioness that we're watching it now and
38:48
Speaker 1: the Fetching Missus. Hewett knows who every one of the
38:51
Speaker 1: young stars are, and I have no idea.
38:54
Speaker 4: Do you.
38:57
Speaker 3: Lionis is So it's that is actually one of the
39:01
Speaker 3: rare entries in the Taylor Sheridan cinematic universe. I should
39:07
Speaker 3: say that I am that I have not actually watched
39:09
Speaker 3: I know Kidmond's in it. But other than that, no,
39:14
Speaker 3: Nicole Kidman, isn't it.
39:15
Speaker 1: She's fabulous, as is everyone in the first two episodes
39:19
Speaker 1: Grab You. But okay, so I'm glad, or at least
39:22
Speaker 1: for one. For one, let's get to the serial.
39:24
Speaker 3: I'll tell you. I'll tell you the thing. The thing
39:25
Speaker 3: that is true about this though, is that what's amazing
39:29
Speaker 3: to me is that there are actresses that you know
39:33
Speaker 3: when you're my age, exclusively from trailers for movies that
39:37
Speaker 3: you never see like I think I think a good
39:40
Speaker 3: example of that. I mean, I've actually seen a lot
39:42
Speaker 3: of movies with her because I think she's a good actress.
39:44
Speaker 3: But Margaret Qually is somebody who I think, you know,
39:46
Speaker 3: I was having a conversation with the other day. I
39:48
Speaker 3: was like, how many actual movies have you seen with
39:50
Speaker 3: her in it? And they were like, uh, she's in
39:53
Speaker 3: the Tarantina one for that I've met.
39:55
Speaker 1: You're a millennial though, right, You're you and your spouse
39:58
Speaker 1: are millennials.
39:59
Speaker 3: Truly millennial?
40:00
Speaker 1: Yes? Yeah, and so what's that? What I got to
40:03
Speaker 1: ask the other day is who are going to be
40:05
Speaker 1: the opinion makers among the next generation? Now? I know
40:07
Speaker 1: gen X pretty well I know the millennials pretty well.
40:09
Speaker 1: I don't know that anyone's risen to the top in
40:11
Speaker 1: gen Z, has anyone.
40:14
Speaker 3: The only people who've risen to the top in gen Z,
40:17
Speaker 3: I would argue to this point, have been video creators
40:21
Speaker 3: and influencers, and some of those I think have been
40:25
Speaker 3: quite you know, creative and an innovative. Nick Sureley would
40:28
Speaker 3: be a good example of that. There are people. I
40:32
Speaker 3: think the people who are going to rise to the
40:33
Speaker 3: top are the people who are already demonstrating a capacity
40:36
Speaker 3: for doing something more than offering opinions. Namely they're doing
40:40
Speaker 3: reported opinions and the like, or they're digging into things.
40:44
Speaker 3: But look, it is it's it's a it's a it's
40:47
Speaker 3: a generation, a zoomer generation that I am. You know,
40:51
Speaker 3: we have multiple staffers now staffers, not just interns, who
40:54
Speaker 3: were born after nine to eleven, and and I sit
40:57
Speaker 3: down with them on regular occasion to do what we
41:00
Speaker 3: call nineties lunch, and we talked through various things that happened,
41:04
Speaker 3: you know, before they were born, basically that led up
41:06
Speaker 3: to the world that they were in. And they'd say
41:08
Speaker 3: all sorts of interesting things. For instance, you know, one
41:10
Speaker 3: of them last week was saying, I had no idea
41:13
Speaker 3: that Bill Clinton was so charming, and indeed he was,
41:15
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, gaps to fill there.
41:20
Speaker 1: Okay, you work among a very young demo, and so
41:23
Speaker 1: I'll ask the same question I asked of John Ellis.
41:25
Speaker 1: John is always on Salem News Channel with his books
41:28
Speaker 1: behind him. And when John and I are bout Boomers
41:31
Speaker 1: and we're growing up, there's like three networks and they're
41:34
Speaker 1: usually running bad stuff. So you read and you read,
41:37
Speaker 1: and you read and you read. You read comic books,
41:39
Speaker 1: and then you read thrillers and you read Ludlam and
41:40
Speaker 1: then you read history. And all you did was read, read, read, read, read.
41:44
Speaker 1: That's going away, Ben, Nobody reads the way that the
41:48
Speaker 1: boomers read because we had nothing else to do. What's
41:52
Speaker 1: that going to do to the political talent in America?
41:55
Speaker 3: This is the thing that I think is going to
41:57
Speaker 3: happen from that. And I actually can use a again
42:00
Speaker 3: my own fellow junior staffers, who are who are you know?
42:04
Speaker 3: Obviously if you come and work for the Daily Wire
42:07
Speaker 3: or something like that, you are someone who has the
42:08
Speaker 3: ambition to work you know potentially in the media political
42:11
Speaker 3: field that the thing that is marked about them is
42:15
Speaker 3: they are always asking me for book recommendations. I've given
42:17
Speaker 3: books to each of our younger staff good in the office.
42:21
Speaker 3: Uh and and they're different books, you know, based on
42:23
Speaker 3: there In fact, this might amuse you. I gave the
42:28
Speaker 3: John Pudortz's book, Uh, Hell of a Ride about the
42:32
Speaker 3: Bush Campaign to somebody to the other day. I gave
42:34
Speaker 3: a copy of Primary Colors to somebody the other day.
42:37
Speaker 1: Oh, very good, Joe Klein.
42:38
Speaker 3: Yeah, so you know, it's not you're not just I
42:41
Speaker 3: think you have to ease them into, you know, the
42:43
Speaker 3: point where they're reading Orienti Flacci, or they're you know,
42:46
Speaker 3: or they're going back and you know, so what was
42:48
Speaker 3: this Christopher Hitchins guy about or something like that.
42:51
Speaker 1: Well, I read deeply in British history. I mean, I
42:53
Speaker 1: know British history, and I'm just I'm finishing a new
42:56
Speaker 1: book on Oliver Cromwell and Charles Second because it's something
43:01
Speaker 1: I grew up with. It became a passion because it
43:03
Speaker 1: was kind of interesting and weird. I don't think anybody
43:07
Speaker 1: does that anymore.
43:08
Speaker 6: Do they?
43:09
Speaker 3: You know, I think it takes a while for people
43:11
Speaker 3: to get into that. One of our younger staffers, I
43:13
Speaker 3: think that this would be of interest to you is
43:16
Speaker 3: actually someone who basically wants to read every book that's
43:19
Speaker 3: about Richard Nixon and right now is you know, I've
43:23
Speaker 3: given him a couple and I think that you know,
43:25
Speaker 3: he's he's very you know, he's fascinated by a certain
43:28
Speaker 3: period in history. I think that this is going to
43:31
Speaker 3: be the differentiator going forward. If you are a zoomer
43:35
Speaker 3: who manages to still take time to actually read books,
43:39
Speaker 3: to not just live on the Internet, to not just
43:41
Speaker 3: live in the world of Instagram reels and TikTok and
43:44
Speaker 3: x and everything else, that is going to be the
43:47
Speaker 3: thing that separates you from other people because you will
43:50
Speaker 3: have the capacity for not just you know, historical knowledge,
43:53
Speaker 3: but I think deep thought about the differences between those things.
43:58
Speaker 3: You're completely right by the way. When I was growing up,
44:00
Speaker 3: my family didn't have cable, you know, we didn't you know,
44:03
Speaker 3: we had the limited networks, and so you know, I
44:06
Speaker 3: literally worked at the local library and I would take
44:08
Speaker 3: the time at the end of the day to you know,
44:10
Speaker 3: take all of a stack of books and that kind
44:12
Speaker 3: of thing. That's it's a it was a mark then
44:16
Speaker 3: of just sort of starting early today, I think it's
44:18
Speaker 3: a mark of standing out within a generation that yeatistically
44:22
Speaker 3: is just not reading books the way that they ought to.
44:24
Speaker 1: It will be an enormous advantage. And by the way,
44:26
Speaker 1: I hope you tell that young staffer. Although it's not
44:29
Speaker 1: much loved by Nixon people, Nixon Agonisties by Gary Wills
44:33
Speaker 1: is a left wingers view of Richard Nixon, which is wrong,
44:37
Speaker 1: but it's good and it's good to have that kind
44:39
Speaker 1: of a I spent last week and at Lacasa Pacific
44:43
Speaker 1: a one hundredth anniversary celebration, so I was deep into
44:47
Speaker 1: Nixon world last weekend. So I'm glad to hear that
44:50
Speaker 1: you've got one set in my way. If they ever
44:52
Speaker 1: wanted to be a guest on The Uwitt Show, we'll
44:54
Speaker 1: talk about that.
44:55
Speaker 3: Absolutely.
44:55
Speaker 1: No, let's get to the Let get to the news.
44:57
Speaker 1: There is an airlift. I'm watching the live stream tracking
45:02
Speaker 1: the United States Air Force airlip. It's massive. Ben. What
45:05
Speaker 1: do you think we're going to do over the weekend
45:07
Speaker 1: in Irun?
45:10
Speaker 3: You know, Hugh, I'm reluctant to guess, only because I
45:13
Speaker 3: feel like I've been wrong on your program so many
45:16
Speaker 3: times when I thought the President was going to lean
45:18
Speaker 3: so hard into them but I still think that that
45:21
Speaker 3: is the case right now. I think he's fed up,
45:24
Speaker 3: he is set up with this situation. And you know, look,
45:28
Speaker 3: I think and we can talk a little bit about
45:31
Speaker 3: what the Vice President did when he went on Joe
45:32
Speaker 3: Rogan this week, but the MLU is in the past.
45:35
Speaker 3: It's in the rear view mirror. It was a punt
45:37
Speaker 3: that that potentially had some kind of squeaky way that
45:40
Speaker 3: it might have worked. A lot of us who were skeptical,
45:43
Speaker 3: I think we're proven right by the actions of the
45:45
Speaker 3: Iranians since then, and there is just no defending it anymore.
45:49
Speaker 3: And there's there's just nothing. I mean, look, I heard
45:51
Speaker 3: the words from from Tom I heard the quotes from
45:54
Speaker 3: Tom Cotton about this, and I agree with them. You know,
45:57
Speaker 3: it's just not it is not a situation that is
46:00
Speaker 3: in any way stable. We have to, you know. And
46:02
Speaker 3: then this is something that I think I appreciate it
46:04
Speaker 3: from Cotton because I think it's important to redefine the
46:08
Speaker 3: nature of what victory looks like right now for voters
46:12
Speaker 3: and people who are listening and people you know who
46:16
Speaker 3: basically kind of tuned this out at some point and
46:19
Speaker 3: then and have this vague idea that we are losing,
46:22
Speaker 3: which we are not. But also, you know, we aren't
46:26
Speaker 3: winning like we haven't been. You know, we've accomplished great things,
46:29
Speaker 3: but but what does victory look like? And I think
46:31
Speaker 3: that that's something that Republicans need to understand. They should
46:33
Speaker 3: be defining and then saying here's what we need to
46:36
Speaker 3: do to achieve this. This is the goal that we have.
46:38
Speaker 3: And that gets rid of the accusation from both right
46:42
Speaker 3: and left that this is going to be some you know,
46:45
Speaker 3: forever war situation, boots on the ground in a ran situation.
46:49
Speaker 3: That is not you know, what we're trying to do here,
46:51
Speaker 3: and that's not something that is part of you know,
46:55
Speaker 3: the president's overall approach to foreign policy. It's never been
46:57
Speaker 3: part of it. And so instead, I think it's important
47:00
Speaker 3: to say, look, this is our definition of what victory
47:03
Speaker 3: looks like. We think we're going to have to take
47:04
Speaker 3: these additional steps in order to achieve it. It is achievable,
47:07
Speaker 3: and we're going to do it.
47:08
Speaker 1: I hope he does that. I wish he had done
47:10
Speaker 1: it last night. During the break, we're going to talk
47:12
Speaker 1: about two speech or a speech and an interview Ron
47:15
Speaker 1: Emmanuel and JD. Vance because they were both talking to
47:19
Speaker 1: perceived political groups of influence within their party, I think,
47:23
Speaker 1: but we'll compare and contrast. But in the meantime, Senator
47:25
Speaker 1: Cotton said, we need to destroy their military ability to
47:29
Speaker 1: project for us, and that includes threatening the straight down
47:32
Speaker 1: me and regime change could mean the collapse follows. But
47:35
Speaker 1: that's doable, Ben, thirty seconds of the break, don't you
47:37
Speaker 1: think that's doable.
47:38
Speaker 3: It is doable, and it's by doing the things that
47:41
Speaker 3: we haven't done yet, which we've target, which we've talked
47:43
Speaker 3: about before, the targets that we have not hit and
47:47
Speaker 3: decided not to hit because of you know, frankly, I
47:50
Speaker 3: think there was this window where they were trying to
47:51
Speaker 3: get a deal done. Now that's over and so now
47:54
Speaker 3: you got to hit it.
47:55
Speaker 1: We'll be right back with Ben during the break and
47:57
Speaker 1: after the break, don't go anywre America. But I'm back
48:00
Speaker 1: with Ben Dominic now. Ben, I have not seen the
48:02
Speaker 1: Vice President's interview with Joe Rogan, and I refuse to
48:05
Speaker 1: watch clips because they can be manipulated. So I'm going
48:07
Speaker 1: to have to make the time.
48:08
Speaker 3: I guess, Yeah, I would encourage you to do so.
48:11
Speaker 3: And yes again whenever The danger by the way of
48:13
Speaker 3: going on Joe Rogan, and this has to drive political
48:16
Speaker 3: consultants crazy, is that you end up talking for two
48:19
Speaker 3: and a half three hours, and that can be completely
48:21
Speaker 3: manipulated or taken out of context in ways that are
48:24
Speaker 3: completely unfair to the person being here.
48:26
Speaker 1: That's why I won't watch the clips because I don't
48:28
Speaker 1: even know if they're real, much less in context. But
48:31
Speaker 1: we have these two parallel events. Rama Manuel ambassador of Japan,
48:35
Speaker 1: Mayor of Chicago, chief of staff to President Obama, powerful
48:38
Speaker 1: member of Congress, the Emmanuel family is powerful in many ways.
48:42
Speaker 1: He goes to Israel, gives a speech blasting BB and
48:44
Speaker 1: Israel and warning them. Jade Evance goes on Joe Rogan
48:48
Speaker 1: and I don't know what he does yet, but I've
48:50
Speaker 1: seen stories that allege he's done a lot of things
48:53
Speaker 1: on the How do you compare those two presentations? And
48:57
Speaker 1: we're going to go into the next segment as well,
48:58
Speaker 1: so take your time.
49:01
Speaker 8: You know.
49:01
Speaker 3: The thing that I'll focus on the road interview first,
49:04
Speaker 3: just because it seems to me that the Vice president
49:08
Speaker 3: is trying to achieve something with this interview, that he's
49:14
Speaker 3: trying to achieve multiple goals, he's trying to humanize himself,
49:16
Speaker 3: which I think he does quite well. But I think
49:19
Speaker 3: he's also trying to reshape the narrative around this MLU
49:24
Speaker 3: and the people who were criticizing him over it, because
49:27
Speaker 3: I think he views this, you know, correctly, as being
49:31
Speaker 3: his first major sojourn into foreign policy where he really
49:36
Speaker 3: owned something within the administration or was viewed as it's
49:40
Speaker 3: leading champion, and it didn't work out, and so now
49:43
Speaker 3: he's trying to, I think, you know, reframe this thing.
49:46
Speaker 3: The thing that bothered me, I think it was You
49:49
Speaker 3: can pick different things out about it, but I still
49:52
Speaker 3: think it is disingenuous to sort of paint this as
49:54
Speaker 3: being a deal that went bad because of any actions
49:57
Speaker 3: on the part of Israel or people who support Israel
50:00
Speaker 3: or those who you know, view US as having a
50:02
Speaker 3: close alliance with Israel. I did think it was it
50:05
Speaker 3: was funny that he did something that a lot of
50:07
Speaker 3: people who I think are in the kind of moderate
50:09
Speaker 3: can't do when they're talking about foreign policy, which he said,
50:12
Speaker 3: you know, why can't we just have a relationship with Israel,
50:15
Speaker 3: which is like our relationship with England and France. Number one,
50:18
Speaker 3: have you checked our relationship with England and France free
50:21
Speaker 3: because it's not actually that good. In fact, I would
50:24
Speaker 3: put Japan, South Korea, you know.
50:26
Speaker 1: Oh boy, yeah, yes, there are a number of nations
50:31
Speaker 1: I would say before we get to ten Downing Street.
50:34
Speaker 3: So I look, you know, we can we can discuss that.
50:39
Speaker 3: Set that aside. But look, I think that the mistake
50:42
Speaker 3: that the vice president is kind of making here is
50:45
Speaker 3: one that says that he's kind of trying to appeal
50:47
Speaker 3: to the same people over and over. And those are
50:50
Speaker 3: the people who listen to these who listen to these
50:53
Speaker 3: podcasts primarily. And I think that the vice president has
50:56
Speaker 3: the capacity, he's shown it before, to adapt and to
51:00
Speaker 3: reach across lines that he couldn't have crossed. He said
51:02
Speaker 3: all sorts of terrible things about Trump even after he
51:05
Speaker 3: was first elected president, and he ended up as his
51:07
Speaker 3: vice president. This is a guy who has canny knowledge
51:10
Speaker 3: about politics. You don't get to you know, you don't
51:12
Speaker 3: get to that point without having it. I think that
51:14
Speaker 3: he is operating here though with an attitude that it's
51:17
Speaker 3: just a little bit too online. And so I wrote
51:19
Speaker 3: a piece this week at The Daily Wire. The trend
51:21
Speaker 3: right now for for millennial parents is to give their
51:24
Speaker 3: kids a nineties summer, to send them outside a ton more,
51:27
Speaker 3: you know, get rid of screens, you know, less and
51:30
Speaker 3: less time with content that's been made since the nineties,
51:33
Speaker 3: and let them have more freedom. I think the Vice
51:36
Speaker 3: president needs a break from being online all interesting.
51:39
Speaker 1: We'll come back to come back online just a moment,
51:42
Speaker 1: stand by Ben, Welcome back America. Not happy music, happy
51:54
Speaker 1: Jack for Ben Dominic. Making sure that he knows, we
51:57
Speaker 1: know he likes the who. We'll give him some old
51:59
Speaker 1: stuff Ben. When Jad goes on Joe Rogan, I think
52:04
Speaker 1: he's making an aesthetic. I haven't even read it yet
52:06
Speaker 1: or seen it. I think he's just making a statement
52:09
Speaker 1: that I can do Joe Rogan to the youngs. Do
52:12
Speaker 1: you think that's part of it.
52:13
Speaker 3: I think it's a major part of it. He's basically saying, Hey,
52:16
Speaker 3: the flex here is I have the capacity to sit
52:19
Speaker 3: down and speak intelligently about all these different topics with
52:23
Speaker 3: the guy who basically, you know. My favorite comparison of
52:28
Speaker 3: the Rogan is that he interviews somebody as if he
52:31
Speaker 3: is like a Mongol warlord from the steps. He's just
52:36
Speaker 3: no conception. You know, mothers, why tree is so tall
52:42
Speaker 3: explains Joe. You know that kind of thing, which is
52:45
Speaker 3: which is actually I think a talent to a certain degree.
52:50
Speaker 3: It's it's something that uh, you know, I think if
52:52
Speaker 3: we still had it, uh you know, would would.
52:54
Speaker 1: I hear there are a lizard people under the trees?
52:57
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly exactly so. But the other thing
53:00
Speaker 3: that I think he's doing there is, you know, he's
53:03
Speaker 3: sending a I think he's trying to send a message
53:06
Speaker 3: about sort of how he will be different than this
53:09
Speaker 3: current Trump administration. That's the part of this that I
53:12
Speaker 3: don't like, because I feel like he's almost he's just
53:16
Speaker 3: jumped ahead. He's acting as if he's the candidate, as
53:19
Speaker 3: if he's potentially, you know, just like I'm the foregone
53:22
Speaker 3: conclusion of the nominee, and I'm telling you the kind
53:25
Speaker 3: of very very dangerous I would have, and that is
53:28
Speaker 3: very very dangerous.
53:29
Speaker 1: You got that blank on your left. It's not left wing,
53:32
Speaker 1: it's a left flank of the right wing. And that's
53:35
Speaker 1: that's open. Give me at least two minutes on ram
53:38
Speaker 1: Emanuel Ben because I think that was a watermark, a
53:42
Speaker 1: high water mark of anti Israel sentiment in the Democratic Party.
53:45
Speaker 1: When you get the Mayor of Israel. Rama Manuel's father
53:48
Speaker 1: fought in the War of Liberation in nineteen forty eight
53:50
Speaker 1: to save the State of Israel. To get him to
53:53
Speaker 1: basically hammer baby, but he's really hamming all, hammering all
53:57
Speaker 1: because then it's not going to be different. Isisinkott's not
53:59
Speaker 1: going to be different. They're not going to withdraw them
54:01
Speaker 1: the West Bank. So he's just beating them up with
54:04
Speaker 1: all of them.
54:05
Speaker 3: No, And I think that you're correct about this, and
54:07
Speaker 3: it really the sadness about this to me is that
54:12
Speaker 3: I really do believe that Israel is very close and
54:15
Speaker 3: we've seen it happen with with domestic issues in the past, Hugh,
54:20
Speaker 3: when it came to the you know, the NRA, and
54:23
Speaker 3: when it came to the pro life issue. There were
54:26
Speaker 3: there have been points in our lifetimes when that was
54:29
Speaker 3: something that was a bipartisan issue where you could get
54:32
Speaker 3: people on board, you could get people from the other
54:34
Speaker 3: side to come across. I truly feel like this that
54:38
Speaker 3: Israel has unfortunately ended up in a space despite all
54:42
Speaker 3: the efforts that the people who have funded different candidates
54:45
Speaker 3: and tried to work, you know, have tried to do,
54:48
Speaker 3: you know, within American domestic politics, they are becoming a
54:51
Speaker 3: monopartisan issue, and that is a dangerous place to be
54:55
Speaker 3: as a country, regardless of what that country is like,
54:58
Speaker 3: and particularly when it comes to Israel. So look, I
55:02
Speaker 3: am depressed by what I am seeing. I hope that
55:05
Speaker 3: there's going to be some pushback against it. We will
55:08
Speaker 3: see what comes out in terms of the remaining primaries,
55:12
Speaker 3: especially Michigan. But I think that one of the things
55:15
Speaker 3: that we can take away from the last essentially a
55:18
Speaker 3: couple of years that have followed October seventh, is that
55:22
Speaker 3: the shift that has happened among young people in America
55:25
Speaker 3: and therefore more sizeable among the Democrats than the Republicans,
55:29
Speaker 3: has turned Israel into a monopartisan issue where even people
55:33
Speaker 3: who have supported it in the past have have frankly
55:38
Speaker 3: a slowing willingness to say anything publicly. They try to
55:41
Speaker 3: keep their heads down. And you saw that vote, I
55:43
Speaker 3: mean play out in the House when it came to
55:45
Speaker 3: Thomas Matthew's proposal, The idea that you would have one
55:49
Speaker 3: hundred plus Democrats, you know, going along with that. You know,
55:52
Speaker 3: it just it boggles the mind of the way that
55:55
Speaker 3: they used.
55:55
Speaker 1: To be deeply troubling as it's our most important strategic
55:58
Speaker 1: ally got nothing to do with religious tradition, nothing to
56:01
Speaker 1: do with anything else. We need them. They project power
56:04
Speaker 1: and they have the will to do so, and they're
56:06
Speaker 1: on our team. Ben Dominich from The Daily Wire Fox
56:09
Speaker 1: News contributor the Big Ben Podcast, Thank you, my friend
56:12
Speaker 1: fallow them on x at b Dominich. My friends, you've
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Speaker 1: the hands and feed of Christ, bring hope, relief, God's
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Speaker 1: love to families who've lost so much. I'm you, Hewitt,
58:33
Speaker 1: and I thank you. Welcome back America. I'm so pleased
58:38
Speaker 1: to welcome back author Daniel Silva, whose brand new bestseller
58:42
Speaker 1: Ransom is fabulous. And I gon't emphasized how I often
58:47
Speaker 1: compliment Daniel Silva about his books. This one is great.
58:51
Speaker 1: Daniel Silva, welcome back. I was trying to think of
58:54
Speaker 1: how to describe this to people, and I'm going to
58:57
Speaker 1: say it's a counter save counter surveillance escapade like the
59:01
Speaker 1: Lisbon Game, only for a reader. Because the misdirection is
59:06
Speaker 1: wild in this one. So have you heard that from
59:08
Speaker 1: other Silva addicts?
59:11
Speaker 8: Uh?
59:12
Speaker 6: You know.
59:12
Speaker 8: I actually last evening I was doing an event in
59:15
Speaker 8: suburban Philadelphia and one of the audience members was questioning
59:20
Speaker 8: me about the complexity of the of the plot and
59:24
Speaker 8: how it sort of seemed to effortlessly tie together in
59:27
Speaker 8: the end, and how did I do that given the
59:30
Speaker 8: fact that I don't outline my books to begin with,
59:33
Speaker 8: And it was interesting trying to explain it. But yeah,
59:37
Speaker 8: it's a it's a It is a fast paced, uh
59:42
Speaker 8: summer read.
59:43
Speaker 6: It's really entertaining.
59:45
Speaker 8: It's part kidnap drama, it is part global thriller, uh.
59:49
Speaker 8: And it does deal with one of the most you know,
59:52
Speaker 8: serious challenges facing.
59:53
Speaker 6: The West right now.
59:54
Speaker 8: We all know that Russia is waiting a warf conquest
59:58
Speaker 8: in Ukraine, but it's less well known is that Russia
1:00:00
Speaker 8: is engaged in a years long campaign of sabotage and
1:00:04
Speaker 8: subversion against the countries of Western Europe, and one of
1:00:08
Speaker 8: their most effective weapons in their arsenals right now are drones.
1:00:14
Speaker 1: So I want people to understand Daniel Silva knows the
1:00:17
Speaker 1: GRU which is the old military intelligence KGB, being the
1:00:22
Speaker 1: equivalent of the CIA and the military intelligence being like
1:00:24
Speaker 1: our Defense Intelligence agency, and the GRU as you describe it,
1:00:28
Speaker 1: Daniel Silva is the brute the brute force operation and
1:00:33
Speaker 1: they're not subtle. And MI I six doesn't like them,
1:00:37
Speaker 1: or at least the folks out at the cottage don't
1:00:39
Speaker 1: like them as much as they like the KGB.
1:00:43
Speaker 6: I wouldn't say that they like the KGB, you know,
1:00:46
Speaker 6: the KGB is. The SVR is the equivalent of the CIA. Now.
1:00:52
Speaker 6: During Soviet times it was almost.
1:00:55
Speaker 8: Its own separate state in a way, and it had
1:00:58
Speaker 8: border functions, internal secuit ccurity functions, had I forget how
1:01:02
Speaker 8: many directorates there were of the old of the old KGV.
1:01:06
Speaker 8: But now the new SVR is the foreign intelligence operator.
1:01:10
Speaker 8: By the way, it does its fair share of wet
1:01:14
Speaker 8: work and other special operations. But the GRU, specifically Unit
1:01:19
Speaker 8: two nine five of the gr U, is really a sledgehammered.
1:01:24
Speaker 8: It has one mission, and that is to destroy liberal
1:01:28
Speaker 8: democracy as we know it. Vlaimir Putin views the very
1:01:33
Speaker 8: existence of democratic I'm saying small L, small D liberal
1:01:38
Speaker 8: democratic regime countries in the West as an existential threat
1:01:42
Speaker 8: to Russia, and he is trying to do everything possible
1:01:47
Speaker 8: to undermine and subvert them and destroy them, destroy NATO.
1:01:53
Speaker 8: And in the short term though, he's trying to punish
1:01:56
Speaker 8: the countries that have provided aid and sustenance to Ukraine.
1:02:03
Speaker 8: And I tell you a top at the top of
1:02:05
Speaker 8: his list, Britain is always there, but the country of Denmark.
1:02:10
Speaker 8: He has a special loathing for Denmark. I thought that
1:02:14
Speaker 8: Denmark crazy.
1:02:15
Speaker 1: That came I did the capabilities of our Western European allies.
1:02:20
Speaker 1: During the longer part of this what you'll play in
1:02:22
Speaker 1: two weeks. I'll put on the podcast immediately. For Silva
1:02:24
Speaker 1: addicts who want to get a teaser, then go get
1:02:26
Speaker 1: Ransom and read it. You can get the podcast today
1:02:29
Speaker 1: and then after I'm back next week. The week after
1:02:31
Speaker 1: we'll play the rest of this interview. But I want
1:02:34
Speaker 1: to read you from your pastoring Act quote page two fourteen.
1:02:37
Speaker 1: Remember you must never, under any circumstances despair, to hope
1:02:41
Speaker 1: and do act. These are our duties in misfortune. How
1:02:44
Speaker 1: long have you been waiting to use that? In a
1:02:46
Speaker 1: Gabrael Alan novel?
1:02:49
Speaker 6: You know it appeared in it.
1:02:51
Speaker 8: It was the epigraph actually for the collector. Yes, and
1:02:54
Speaker 8: I reprised it. I reprised it in this circumstance to you.
1:03:01
Speaker 6: You know that the I don't. I don't want to give.
1:03:04
Speaker 8: Too much away, but it's the character named Alice Winter
1:03:07
Speaker 8: is a very important character in this novel, and I
1:03:10
Speaker 8: wanted to you know, she comes across as as someone
1:03:14
Speaker 8: who's just sort of interested in being rich and a
1:03:17
Speaker 8: social media influencer. And then but actually when we get
1:03:22
Speaker 8: to know her a little better, she's a highly intelligent person.
1:03:25
Speaker 8: And she used that quote, so I repriased it for
1:03:29
Speaker 8: fans of that previous book, and I.
1:03:31
Speaker 1: Want people to look forward to you. I'm not going
1:03:33
Speaker 1: to tell you much about the character, but there is Oscar,
1:03:36
Speaker 1: and Oscar sort of like the new Goat that you
1:03:39
Speaker 1: know from all the gabriel Al novels. So Oscar is
1:03:42
Speaker 1: there for a little bit of fun. I want to
1:03:45
Speaker 1: know though in the short segment we have to it
1:03:48
Speaker 1: a half minutes left. Is Proteus real? I've asked you
1:03:51
Speaker 1: that before, but I can't remember what your answer is.
1:03:54
Speaker 1: That's a way to happen on your phone.
1:03:57
Speaker 6: Yes, it is real.
1:03:58
Speaker 8: I gave it a different name, uh and a different company, but.
1:04:04
Speaker 6: Yes, the way it's used is.
1:04:09
Speaker 8: A little different. But you know, look malware, which is
1:04:13
Speaker 8: what it is. It's very very common now. You know,
1:04:16
Speaker 8: we can't live without our phones, but if it were
1:04:19
Speaker 8: up to me, I would I would not have one anymore.
1:04:22
Speaker 6: These things they.
1:04:23
Speaker 8: Have our life on them, and it's so easy to
1:04:27
Speaker 8: turn it into just a little spy that follows you around.
1:04:31
Speaker 8: To trust me, Everyone in China their their phones are
1:04:34
Speaker 8: hacked by the government, and so you know that capability
1:04:40
Speaker 8: does exist to turn your phone into a full time
1:04:42
Speaker 8: surveillance device. So you're using the microphone to listen, you're
1:04:46
Speaker 8: using the camera to watch, You're reading text messages, you're
1:04:49
Speaker 8: reading emails, You're you're monitoring browsing, you're looking at location data.
1:04:55
Speaker 8: You know, it's it's a it's a stunning amount of
1:04:58
Speaker 8: information that we carry around in our pocket.
1:05:00
Speaker 6: It about ourselves.
1:05:01
Speaker 1: It is. In fact, you get so much tradecraft from ransom,
1:05:04
Speaker 1: especially new info on gate analysis, new info on surveillance techniques.
1:05:09
Speaker 1: Yet to read it, just to make yourself prepared. But
1:05:11
Speaker 1: it's a fabulous thriller. When I come back after breaking,
1:05:14
Speaker 1: I'll put it on the weekend pod. I'll play it
1:05:16
Speaker 1: in a week from now. We're going to get more
1:05:17
Speaker 1: deeper into the plot without giving anything away, But I
1:05:19
Speaker 1: want to tell the audience there is one perfect way
1:05:22
Speaker 1: to do this book. Get the hardcover and then indulge
1:05:26
Speaker 1: yourself and also get the audiobook. So I read the
1:05:29
Speaker 1: first three quarters in hard copy and then I got
1:05:32
Speaker 1: the audio book, and I've slowed myself down. I was
1:05:35
Speaker 1: obliged to slow myself down, and it's much better that
1:05:38
Speaker 1: way to read the thriller? To me, has anyone else
1:05:42
Speaker 1: done that? Daniel Silva? We got one minute. Did anyone
1:05:44
Speaker 1: do it that way?
1:05:46
Speaker 6: I am?
1:05:46
Speaker 8: I am ever surprised to return to last night. Someone
1:05:53
Speaker 8: tells me that every year they do the print version
1:05:57
Speaker 8: and the audio version.
1:05:58
Speaker 6: I'm very lucky to have an extraordinary actor who does
1:06:01
Speaker 6: the work on the books. And yes, so you're not alone.
1:06:05
Speaker 1: I'm so glad. But it does work that way. You
1:06:07
Speaker 1: don't go too fast, you enjoy it. And this one
1:06:10
Speaker 1: is so riveting. Daniel Silva is Ransom everywhere, Number one
1:06:14
Speaker 1: New York Times bestseller. Almost certainly keep listening to podcast
1:06:18
Speaker 1: or come back in two weeks and I'll play the
1:06:20
Speaker 1: rest of my interview with Daniel Silva. Stay tuned. I
1:06:23
Speaker 1: am back now with Daniel Silva, author of the brand
1:06:25
Speaker 1: new bestseller Ransom. I think it's his twenty fifth Gabriel
1:06:29
Speaker 1: Alon novel. I was describing it to the Fetching missus
1:06:33
Speaker 1: Hewett last night as a mix between a college reunion
1:06:37
Speaker 1: and a funeral for a loved one, So that the
1:06:39
Speaker 1: funeral for the loved one you see some friends you
1:06:41
Speaker 1: only see like ones every twenty years, and then the
1:06:44
Speaker 1: college reunion you see them every five years. You're best friends.
1:06:46
Speaker 1: And then there's some characters you don't want to see.
1:06:49
Speaker 1: So a lot of people are back, some people are missing,
1:06:52
Speaker 1: some people are back. I'm not gonna give anything away,
1:06:54
Speaker 1: but when, since you don't write with an outline, do
1:06:57
Speaker 1: at least begin with the number of characters you want
1:06:59
Speaker 1: to bring back for this episode.
1:07:05
Speaker 8: I don't want to correct the host that if you
1:07:08
Speaker 8: could believe it, it's the twenty sixth Gabriel Na. Oh
1:07:11
Speaker 8: my gosh, I know, I know, and it's my twenty night.
1:07:15
Speaker 8: So next year is a huge milestone here for me.
1:07:19
Speaker 8: Look I I I I have said this many many times.
1:07:24
Speaker 8: I shall say it again. I have tried to outline
1:07:27
Speaker 8: a book. It never doesn't work for me. The finished
1:07:31
Speaker 8: product never looks the way the way I outlined it.
1:07:33
Speaker 8: So I always thought it was a waste of time.
1:07:36
Speaker 8: And what really happens is that I tend to think
1:07:39
Speaker 8: of my first draft as actually a very long, detailed outline,
1:07:44
Speaker 8: and then I turned that that that that first, that
1:07:48
Speaker 8: first draft, into a second draft and ultimately a third
1:07:51
Speaker 8: and fourth draft, And that's that's how I do it.
1:07:55
Speaker 8: But I do think in this book, I'd say that
1:07:59
Speaker 8: I saw at least one hundred pages before I started writing.
1:08:03
Speaker 6: I didn't start with absolutely nothing.
1:08:05
Speaker 8: But by the time I finished the writing, finished the
1:08:09
Speaker 8: first chapter, I had it all figured out. I knew
1:08:11
Speaker 8: what the twist was going to be at the end.
1:08:14
Speaker 8: So I figured this one out a little earlier than
1:08:18
Speaker 8: I sometimes do. Sometimes I like to just go for
1:08:21
Speaker 8: a ride with Gabriel and experience things through his point
1:08:27
Speaker 8: of view and work it out with him.
1:08:30
Speaker 1: I'll tell you, though, it's been game, and we're not
1:08:33
Speaker 1: going to tell people what the losen of the game
1:08:34
Speaker 1: is with its references. It's like a World Cup summer
1:08:38
Speaker 1: book because it's got own gold and it's got a
1:08:40
Speaker 1: regulation play and the Lisban game. Was that on your
1:08:43
Speaker 1: mind when you were doing this, No, it wasn't.
1:08:47
Speaker 6: But they are European characters.
1:08:50
Speaker 8: British characters, and so I did borrow some football terminology.
1:08:54
Speaker 8: I think own gold did get in there in regulation
1:08:57
Speaker 8: play got into it, but that was written law before
1:09:01
Speaker 8: the World Cup.
1:09:02
Speaker 1: Office. Okay, well it's nicely time I.
1:09:04
Speaker 6: Did borrow some SERMs.
1:09:06
Speaker 1: I do want to talk about something that we can discuss.
1:09:09
Speaker 1: Because it's an actual episode from history. We won't tell
1:09:12
Speaker 1: how it fits in. I had completely forgotten about the
1:09:15
Speaker 1: IRA mortar attack on Number ten Downing in nineteen ninety one.
1:09:20
Speaker 1: When John I had it had gone from my head,
1:09:22
Speaker 1: Daniel Silva, because you know, you sleep on one side
1:09:25
Speaker 1: long enough and everything drains out. How did was that
1:09:28
Speaker 1: on your mind when you sat down or did that
1:09:30
Speaker 1: come in the course of the Just something to educate
1:09:33
Speaker 1: the readers about.
1:09:35
Speaker 8: No, no, I mean I wanted to without giving too
1:09:40
Speaker 8: much away, you know this that aspect of the plot
1:09:46
Speaker 8: was inspired by a series of real life events last autumn.
1:09:51
Speaker 8: You will remember that that Copenhagen Airport was shut down
1:09:56
Speaker 8: for several hours by a drones form its last September.
1:10:01
Speaker 8: They had to close the airport for six hours or so.
1:10:05
Speaker 8: It resulted in a spillover of travel disruptions all across
1:10:09
Speaker 8: the continent. But in the days that followed there were
1:10:13
Speaker 8: drones swarms at other civilian airports and at Danish military bases.
1:10:18
Speaker 8: Danish Prime Minister was so alarmed by this situation that
1:10:21
Speaker 8: she came this close to calling up the reserves. They
1:10:25
Speaker 8: never excused Russia flat out, but if you listen to
1:10:28
Speaker 8: their statements, it's clear that they believe and they know
1:10:32
Speaker 8: that Russia was behind it. And what what's interesting was
1:10:35
Speaker 8: that there was this previously scheduled emergency summit that was
1:10:39
Speaker 8: supposed to take place in Copenhagen just a couple of
1:10:42
Speaker 8: days after this, and the Danish intelligence service was so
1:10:46
Speaker 8: alarmed that the Russians were going to try to attack
1:10:49
Speaker 8: the summit with drone that they closed the airspace. They
1:10:53
Speaker 8: laid their hands on every drone kit at signal jammer
1:10:56
Speaker 8: anti drone kit, I should say a signal jammer they
1:10:59
Speaker 8: could lay their hand to try to protect that meeting.
1:11:02
Speaker 8: And that was the inspiration for the plot. And the
1:11:07
Speaker 8: very important meeting that takes place in my novel takes
1:11:10
Speaker 8: place at number ten, and I wanted to remind people
1:11:13
Speaker 8: that Number ten had been attacked before. John Major is
1:11:18
Speaker 8: a dear friend and a longtime reader oh, and I
1:11:23
Speaker 8: slid a conference in there. Yes, he got back to
1:11:29
Speaker 8: me just a couple of days ago, and so he
1:11:32
Speaker 8: was there and he you know, he's in the cabinet
1:11:36
Speaker 8: room with his entire cabinet when that when that mortar hit,
1:11:41
Speaker 8: I mean, and windows blew out and everyone is diving
1:11:44
Speaker 8: under the table.
1:11:45
Speaker 6: And he.
1:11:47
Speaker 8: Reacted with such extraordinary calm in that moment, and I
1:11:53
Speaker 8: wanted to sort of pay tribute to him. But yeah,
1:11:56
Speaker 8: that's a real incident, and I referenced it for very
1:12:00
Speaker 8: specific reason.
1:12:01
Speaker 1: I wish that we had British prime ministers anywhere near
1:12:06
Speaker 1: like the British prime ministers you invent for your book,
1:12:08
Speaker 1: and like mister Major. In fact, you even got a
1:12:11
Speaker 1: wonderful complement of Margaret Margaret Thatcher in here. She has
1:12:15
Speaker 1: a touch of missus Thatcher. She scares me more than
1:12:17
Speaker 1: mister Thatcher. About a different European leader, and we won't
1:12:20
Speaker 1: say which country, but it's an invented European leader. I thought.
1:12:25
Speaker 1: The only thing we disagree about Daniel Silva about Russia
1:12:28
Speaker 1: because they're a menace, is that the breach in between
1:12:33
Speaker 1: America and NATA is real. But I think it's because
1:12:38
Speaker 1: they took their holiday from history longer than we did.
1:12:41
Speaker 1: I polled all the defense spending GDP numbers. Jeremy down
1:12:45
Speaker 1: to two point four percent. France is at below that.
1:12:50
Speaker 1: Finland's at two point nine percent. That's pretty good, the
1:12:52
Speaker 1: Netherlands at two point six percent. Great Britain's at two
1:12:55
Speaker 1: point three percent. They couldn't even get a destroyer to
1:12:58
Speaker 1: the c of Omni was the Persian golf. They got
1:13:02
Speaker 1: to get more serious about this because Putin's a killer.
1:13:07
Speaker 6: They are serious about this.
1:13:08
Speaker 8: If you I can't remember which chapter.
1:13:12
Speaker 6: It is, but you know, gosh, I'm gonna let that ring.
1:13:18
Speaker 8: Okay, But Graham Seymour is working on a document that
1:13:24
Speaker 8: he's about to deliver to the Joint Intelligence Committee, which
1:13:28
Speaker 8: is overseers of the British intelligence community, and he's telling
1:13:32
Speaker 8: them we will be at Russia in the very near future.
1:13:36
Speaker 8: And I put that in the book, and I debated
1:13:40
Speaker 8: it until the very end.
1:13:41
Speaker 6: I said, I'm leaving it in there.
1:13:42
Speaker 8: And I don't know if you'd noticed a piece in
1:13:44
Speaker 8: this in the Times of London last weekend that they've
1:13:48
Speaker 8: now European intelligence services and political leaders are in agreement.
1:13:53
Speaker 8: It'll probably be will be in a shooting war by
1:13:55
Speaker 8: twenty thirty, Mark Ruta, the NATO General Secretary. If you
1:14:02
Speaker 8: read the quote at the end of the book talking
1:14:03
Speaker 8: about how this war is going to be, you know,
1:14:06
Speaker 8: along the lines of the ones that our grandsparents lived through,
1:14:09
Speaker 8: they are very.
1:14:11
Speaker 6: They are convinced.
1:14:12
Speaker 8: As soon as Putin is done in whatever fashion in Ukraine,
1:14:17
Speaker 8: his economy is a war economy. He can't make a
1:14:19
Speaker 8: transition back to a peacetime economy. There he is. He's
1:14:23
Speaker 8: going to continue with the wartime economy. He's going to
1:14:27
Speaker 8: rebuild his military and probably go straight for Estonia, and
1:14:31
Speaker 8: then then we're in the shooting war. And then what happens.
1:14:35
Speaker 8: Are we going to let him take it? Are we
1:14:37
Speaker 8: going to react? Are we going to be in a
1:14:40
Speaker 8: full fledged war? And will the United States be a
1:14:42
Speaker 8: part of that war? Interesting questions.
1:14:44
Speaker 1: I don't think we will let them take it. I
1:14:46
Speaker 1: believe that Poland, with its four point three percent GDP
1:14:49
Speaker 1: and Ukrainian technology, Lithuania is at four percent, be at
1:14:53
Speaker 1: three point seven, Estonia at three point four. I know,
1:14:56
Speaker 1: I just met with someone out in California, just came
1:14:59
Speaker 1: back from Latin, where our ambassador is at least Argiros.
1:15:04
Speaker 1: They're ready, I mean they're getting ready for this. And
1:15:07
Speaker 1: Poland may be the most prepared. Well, Finland is the
1:15:09
Speaker 1: most prepared NATO ally, so the Nordic country. The countries
1:15:14
Speaker 1: on the front line are ready, and Ukraine is invented
1:15:17
Speaker 1: left the right.
1:15:19
Speaker 8: That's the key word front, the frontline countries. And the
1:15:23
Speaker 8: other thing that you said is Poland and and I
1:15:27
Speaker 8: think the Poles could probably beat the Russians practically single handedly.
1:15:30
Speaker 6: If all the all that. I was.
1:15:34
Speaker 8: Discussing this very issue with one of my advisors who
1:15:38
Speaker 8: helped me with the with the drone technology on this book.
1:15:41
Speaker 8: There's no way that the Russians are going to beat
1:15:45
Speaker 8: to leave the United States out of it. The European
1:15:49
Speaker 8: powers can handle them on their own right now. They
1:15:52
Speaker 8: are rearming. Yes, Brittain is lagging behind. They have the
1:15:55
Speaker 8: terrible economic situation, the politics are in disarrayed. But the
1:15:58
Speaker 8: frontline countries are ready to go and they're not gonna
1:16:03
Speaker 8: They're not going to.
1:16:04
Speaker 6: Be taken over by the Russians.
1:16:07
Speaker 8: That the question is will it stay will it stay conventional?
1:16:11
Speaker 6: What are your thoughts on that.
1:16:12
Speaker 1: I don't think Putin is so stupid. He has children,
1:16:17
Speaker 1: I always take some solos in the fact that they're
1:16:20
Speaker 1: atheists and they have children as opposed to Iranians who
1:16:23
Speaker 1: are millennial as twelve vers, and they don't really care
1:16:27
Speaker 1: if the world blows up and everyone else. The atheists
1:16:30
Speaker 1: that have children, all they have is the country to
1:16:33
Speaker 1: go forward. But it's the theocrat fanatics and Iran I
1:16:36
Speaker 1: worry about. I want to go back, though, to a
1:16:38
Speaker 1: couple of fun things in this book. Well, another World
1:16:42
Speaker 1: Cup reference or football reference in the European style. D
1:16:46
Speaker 1: I Peel gets to play in the Premier League. I
1:16:49
Speaker 1: was so happy to see him back, and I nurse
1:16:52
Speaker 1: in the back of my mind, you're going to start
1:16:55
Speaker 1: another series with d I Peel that can be made
1:16:58
Speaker 1: into a BBC series that goes for you know, a
1:17:01
Speaker 1: season at a time, like Shetland, which somebody watches in
1:17:04
Speaker 1: the Silva household, right, either you or Jamie watch Shetland
1:17:08
Speaker 1: because it's in the book.
1:17:10
Speaker 6: We watch it side by side.
1:17:12
Speaker 8: We're Shetland addicts and I had to put a round bok.
1:17:17
Speaker 1: I thought it was great, so are we. And I
1:17:19
Speaker 1: also liked the fact a frequent guest on the program
1:17:22
Speaker 1: over the here has been Peter Baker. The only thing
1:17:24
Speaker 1: I found even slightly unbelievable that anyone in the Trump
1:17:28
Speaker 1: White House would leak to Peter Baker much less maybe
1:17:31
Speaker 1: they do. He's a fine reporter and he's never played
1:17:34
Speaker 1: a partisan game in his life, but his wife plays
1:17:37
Speaker 1: a partisan game. And so it's a it's an interesting
1:17:41
Speaker 1: bit of did Peter call you yet?
1:17:46
Speaker 8: Yes, Peter and are very good friends, very good friends.
1:17:49
Speaker 8: And I don't do that often. I don't name people
1:17:53
Speaker 8: by name. But I wanted to give a tip of
1:17:58
Speaker 8: the hat to Peter, so I let him break the
1:17:59
Speaker 8: news that there's going to be an important summit at
1:18:02
Speaker 8: Downing Street, that that the British were hoping to keep
1:18:05
Speaker 8: quiet for a couple more days.
1:18:08
Speaker 1: Well, let me ask you about And I learned things
1:18:10
Speaker 1: every time you write a book. A mountain set in Switzerland,
1:18:15
Speaker 1: inhabited by the or Off dragon, inhabited by the deathless
1:18:18
Speaker 1: soul of Pancha's pilot I have never heard of that
1:18:21
Speaker 1: in my life. Where did you find that? That's a
1:18:23
Speaker 1: legend in Christian myth? Where did that come from?
1:18:27
Speaker 8: Yeah, it's it's Pilatus, It's named for him. It's right
1:18:32
Speaker 8: near Interlockin. I wrote a biography of a speculative biography
1:18:40
Speaker 8: of of.
1:18:42
Speaker 6: Punches Pilots in the in.
1:18:43
Speaker 8: A book called The Order, And I did think I
1:18:46
Speaker 8: did reference that Pilotis in that. So you know, in
1:18:52
Speaker 8: early Christian literature, you know, Pilot was described as as
1:19:00
Speaker 8: as his deathless soul, that he for his eternal punishment
1:19:05
Speaker 8: was that he sort of wandered the woods of Europe,
1:19:11
Speaker 8: you know, you know, mortally grieving guilt, guilt written for
1:19:21
Speaker 8: what had happened.
1:19:23
Speaker 1: Jacob Marleyva books provided and so.
1:19:28
Speaker 8: But then one legend is that he inhabited he lived
1:19:31
Speaker 8: up up on the top of Mount Pilazzis up there,
1:19:34
Speaker 8: and people used to claim that they would see him
1:19:36
Speaker 8: sitting on a rock weeping in this this sort of
1:19:40
Speaker 8: sulfas spring up there. Anyway, that's Mount Pilazzis. Next time,
1:19:44
Speaker 8: next time you're interlock and it's right there.
1:19:48
Speaker 1: Well, where do you get your mountaineering, As I recall,
1:19:51
Speaker 1: you're not yourself a mountaineering I'm not. I've clibed one
1:19:54
Speaker 1: fourteen thousand foot peak and I called it Quitch Mount
1:19:57
Speaker 1: Sherman in Colorado's that's too hard. Where do you learn
1:20:01
Speaker 1: your mountaineering stuff? Because that that figures.
1:20:03
Speaker 6: In the well.
1:20:06
Speaker 8: Christopher Keller is a world class mountaineer, and that's been
1:20:09
Speaker 8: referenced in his character from the beginning. Uh And so
1:20:13
Speaker 8: you know, I I try to find, you know, first
1:20:16
Speaker 8: person accounts by by mountaineers of specific climbs, and so
1:20:22
Speaker 8: Christopher lived for many years. Of course, of course it
1:20:24
Speaker 8: actually has some serious mountains on it. And so you know,
1:20:29
Speaker 8: I approach it like any other aspect of the book.
1:20:31
Speaker 6: I try to I try to get it right.
1:20:33
Speaker 8: And some someday I'm going to write a book with
1:20:35
Speaker 8: Christopher that uh uh, maybe steal a little bit of
1:20:39
Speaker 8: the Igres section and write Nearing Thriller was one.
1:20:43
Speaker 1: Of my earliest weathers. It's really one of the.
1:20:46
Speaker 8: Greatest fabulous of all time. He was fabulous. He was
1:20:50
Speaker 8: just an extraordinary writer. Travallion to let me.
1:20:54
Speaker 1: Go then to a sapling Harry Wilson, now Daniel Silva
1:20:59
Speaker 1: doesn't introduce people by accident. They come back and people
1:21:03
Speaker 1: will be like I say, it's a college reunion or
1:21:06
Speaker 1: a family funeral. Harry Wilson shows up. He's not around
1:21:09
Speaker 1: very much. But you don't do that, do you. You don't
1:21:12
Speaker 1: introduce people for no reason. I mean, we've got the
1:21:14
Speaker 1: factotum for Graham Seymour. You mentioned Graham Seymours in the book,
1:21:18
Speaker 1: so I'll go with that fact totem. We've got the
1:21:20
Speaker 1: people at the cottage again, silver readers will know, maybe
1:21:23
Speaker 1: they'll remember what I'm talking about there. It's wonderful. It's
1:21:27
Speaker 1: comfortable to find these people. But when you bring someone
1:21:29
Speaker 1: in like dipl he shows up. Oh he was a
1:21:32
Speaker 1: kid ten books ago or twenty books ago and now.
1:21:36
Speaker 6: Twenty five books ago.
1:21:38
Speaker 1: Was he in the first book, the second book?
1:21:40
Speaker 6: First book? First? Okay, first, So he's.
1:21:43
Speaker 1: Back, and he's getting older, and he's got skills. Now
1:21:47
Speaker 1: we've got Harry. Do we expect Harry back?
1:21:51
Speaker 6: I think so.
1:21:52
Speaker 8: You know, I just needed I needed to move the characters,
1:21:57
Speaker 8: and I I hate throwaway lines.
1:22:01
Speaker 6: I hate throwaway scenes. I always try to make each scene.
1:22:05
Speaker 8: A little special, in in in some way, And so
1:22:10
Speaker 8: I created a tiny little character and created some interaction
1:22:15
Speaker 8: between the Sapling and the legends to try to just
1:22:19
Speaker 8: bring him into into sharper relief.
1:22:21
Speaker 6: I can't imagine we won't see Harry. His name is
1:22:24
Speaker 6: too good to.
1:22:25
Speaker 1: Let exactly there, and Mary Ala Cruse is too competent.
1:22:29
Speaker 1: We won't even tell people where mary Ala Cruz is,
1:22:32
Speaker 1: but she's too competent to let her disappear. Is that?
1:22:37
Speaker 1: Is that a good expectation on my part? You know?
1:22:41
Speaker 8: I when I was writing those scenes, I actually thought, boy,
1:22:46
Speaker 8: I would like to carry this character with Gabriel a
1:22:50
Speaker 8: little longer. And in the end I had to let
1:22:54
Speaker 8: her fall by the wayside as the as the second
1:22:56
Speaker 8: act began.
1:22:58
Speaker 6: But I just I just love that character. And again
1:23:01
Speaker 6: I just did a couple of little things with her.
1:23:05
Speaker 8: You know, her hand was all swollen and scraped, and
1:23:08
Speaker 8: it turns out that she's a real badass, and that
1:23:12
Speaker 8: there's a couple of lines of dialogue when she and
1:23:15
Speaker 8: Gabriel are driving that are to be some of the
1:23:18
Speaker 8: funniest things that.
1:23:20
Speaker 6: He's ever said. They were great together.
1:23:22
Speaker 1: It's a great thing. But I appreciate that you go
1:23:27
Speaker 1: you're aware of what happens in resort places, because I
1:23:31
Speaker 1: live not far from one, and they have Romanian seasonal staff,
1:23:38
Speaker 1: and I do not know where they go. I don't
1:23:41
Speaker 1: know where they live, and what you describe I have
1:23:44
Speaker 1: never experienced. But it made perfect sense to me. Have
1:23:47
Speaker 1: you been to such a place?
1:23:51
Speaker 6: Sure?
1:23:51
Speaker 8: I mean, you can't you can't not go to be
1:23:54
Speaker 8: in such a place in places like the south of France,
1:23:57
Speaker 8: where you know, you see like dormitory like settings if
1:24:03
Speaker 8: they're lucky. But in this case, and this has been
1:24:05
Speaker 8: well publicized, you know, beat this population. I'm going to
1:24:10
Speaker 8: get it wrong, but it goes from a tiny little
1:24:12
Speaker 8: bit in the winter and then all of a sudden
1:24:14
Speaker 8: it explodes. And I've had the situation. It's happening on
1:24:20
Speaker 8: Nantucket for example. You know, essential services workers in Nantucket
1:24:25
Speaker 8: can't afford to live there. Uh so they are commuting
1:24:29
Speaker 8: by the ferry every single day. And and I'm so
1:24:33
Speaker 8: sorry about that phone. I'm in a hotel room and
1:24:37
Speaker 8: I always wanted to to point that out and said,
1:24:42
Speaker 8: there's a character that we find in a in a
1:24:46
Speaker 8: homeless in camp.
1:24:47
Speaker 6: But they're all workers.
1:24:49
Speaker 8: They're all working their fingers to the bone, but they
1:24:52
Speaker 8: can't afford to live in the place where they work.
1:24:55
Speaker 8: It's impossible, and it's a it's a very special scene.
1:24:59
Speaker 1: Now I want I turned to some of the technology
1:25:01
Speaker 1: you introduce us to, and there's a lot of drones,
1:25:04
Speaker 1: which I'm going to come back to because I believe
1:25:06
Speaker 1: you are correct, and in fact, someone else who is
1:25:09
Speaker 1: an actual real spy told me a long time ago
1:25:12
Speaker 1: that in twenty five years, no one will live in
1:25:13
Speaker 1: the White House because the President of the United States
1:25:17
Speaker 1: can't be in a known location because of drug technology.
1:25:21
Speaker 1: And that shadow falls across your book. And it's true
1:25:26
Speaker 1: to you what Ukraine is doing because of necessity. They
1:25:31
Speaker 1: were outside of Putin's villa by about one hundred miles
1:25:34
Speaker 1: when they sunk a part of the Russian fleet this
1:25:38
Speaker 1: last week in the Sea of Azov. So it's really
1:25:41
Speaker 1: not that much of a stretch to threaten everyone and
1:25:44
Speaker 1: everything in the world, is it.
1:25:47
Speaker 8: No, I can't remember the exact phrase that I used,
1:25:50
Speaker 8: but no political leader is going to be safe. You
1:25:55
Speaker 8: won't be able to go out and sit in the
1:25:56
Speaker 8: back garden of Number ten down the street, because the
1:25:58
Speaker 8: drone could come over anytime, killed you.
1:26:02
Speaker 6: The south lawn of the White House. I mean that.
1:26:04
Speaker 8: I know that, you know President Obama like to go
1:26:07
Speaker 8: out out there and play play basketball with his friends.
1:26:09
Speaker 6: Forget about that.
1:26:12
Speaker 8: And and the anti drone kits are you know, only
1:26:16
Speaker 8: so effective. You know I didn't use a tether drone
1:26:21
Speaker 8: in in in my climactic finish here, but I mean it.
1:26:27
Speaker 8: You know you know about tether drones. They have a
1:26:29
Speaker 8: tiny little filament of five rock the cable. You could
1:26:32
Speaker 8: have several kilometers of it. You're not going to block
1:26:35
Speaker 8: a signal there, and that drone is going to find
1:26:39
Speaker 8: its target. It could it could be a drone that
1:26:41
Speaker 8: that drops an ordinance, or or it can be a
1:26:45
Speaker 8: kamikaze drone like I had in this book. We are
1:26:50
Speaker 8: the Pandora's box. Analogy is overused, but I shall use
1:26:54
Speaker 8: it again. We have opened Pandora's Box. And I don't
1:26:58
Speaker 8: think the world is ever going to be the same again.
1:27:00
Speaker 8: And there I think you're right. I think we're going
1:27:02
Speaker 8: to come to a place of the very near future
1:27:05
Speaker 8: where our political leaders at very senior government officials have
1:27:09
Speaker 8: to stay, their whereabouts have.
1:27:12
Speaker 6: To be unknown. They won't be able to move around,
1:27:15
Speaker 6: and they can't walk around in public.
1:27:17
Speaker 1: Did you note that this is not in Ransom because
1:27:20
Speaker 1: it's not set in the Middle East. Saronic is the
1:27:24
Speaker 1: new drone boat maker for America, and America sent three
1:27:29
Speaker 1: drones into Bondarabas last week to blow up a submarine
1:27:33
Speaker 1: into submarine pens. Did that? Did you catch that? Daniel Sylvia,
1:27:36
Speaker 1: you're on book Tour for Ransom. So I'm not sure
1:27:38
Speaker 1: you're catching everything that's going on in the war, but
1:27:41
Speaker 1: there's a lot that's going on in the war.
1:27:44
Speaker 6: There is, it's it's most of it is not really great.
1:27:52
Speaker 8: And this you know, how we got into this war
1:27:57
Speaker 8: in the first place, and it's so unprepared for the
1:28:02
Speaker 8: possibility that that the Iranians were going to expand the war.
1:28:05
Speaker 8: I don't understand how we made that mistake, but it's
1:28:10
Speaker 8: something that I encountered actually talking to Israeli politicians.
1:28:16
Speaker 6: And.
1:28:17
Speaker 8: You know, they had this this thought that they they've
1:28:21
Speaker 8: reached this conclusion that we could hit the Iranians really,
1:28:24
Speaker 8: really hard and that they wouldn't respond, And it's to me,
1:28:28
Speaker 8: it always seemed delusional. And I could tell you that
1:28:31
Speaker 8: that people in Mossad, who who you know, worked the
1:28:36
Speaker 8: Iran file, they did not think that. But I think
1:28:39
Speaker 8: that you know, elements of Lecud and the Israeli right,
1:28:45
Speaker 8: you know, somehow convinced themselves that the Iranians would not
1:28:50
Speaker 8: target that their golf neighbors and would not shut down
1:28:53
Speaker 8: international commerce.
1:28:54
Speaker 6: But that's exactly what happened.
1:28:56
Speaker 1: Yeah, are you surprised? We talked and seven but we
1:29:00
Speaker 1: haven't talked since the Iran War began, and I'm a
1:29:05
Speaker 1: little bit stunned that Hesbelah was able to For example,
1:29:09
Speaker 1: under the Crusader canceled castle three miles from the Israeli border,
1:29:13
Speaker 1: they were able to create a mile of granite tunnel
1:29:16
Speaker 1: and the Israelis and the American didn't know it was there.
1:29:20
Speaker 1: And they've got these tunnels. In Gaza, it's sand, you
1:29:23
Speaker 1: can dig through sand, but in Lebanon it's just granite.
1:29:27
Speaker 1: And they have been doing that and we haven't been
1:29:30
Speaker 1: able to see him from the sky and Israel and
1:29:33
Speaker 1: been able to penetrate Hasbilah to know that it's there.
1:29:36
Speaker 1: Are you surprised by that?
1:29:38
Speaker 8: No, No, this is a serious, serious organization.
1:29:44
Speaker 6: You know they've been around now.
1:29:46
Speaker 8: Since the eighty We sort of came to know them
1:29:50
Speaker 8: after the Berlin excuse me, that Beirut Barrack's bombing when
1:29:56
Speaker 8: they killed two hundred and forty.
1:29:57
Speaker 6: One of our marines.
1:29:59
Speaker 8: I think that that explosion that went off was the
1:30:01
Speaker 8: single largest explosion on planet Earth since World War Two.
1:30:06
Speaker 8: It was an extraordinary device that they assembled and delivered
1:30:10
Speaker 8: to the target. You know, this is a serious organization
1:30:15
Speaker 8: with incredible weaponry, and you know they should not be underestimated.
1:30:21
Speaker 6: But no, Look, it's probably easier for them to tunnel.
1:30:26
Speaker 8: You know, they have to worry about collapses the way
1:30:28
Speaker 8: they have, you know, all of the tunnels and guys
1:30:30
Speaker 8: that have to be reinforced all the time. They can
1:30:32
Speaker 8: go into into solid rock and hide their stuff.
1:30:36
Speaker 1: I want to go back to one more bit of technology,
1:30:39
Speaker 1: deep fakes. Uh. The week we're taping this, the vice
1:30:43
Speaker 1: president gave a three hour interview with Joe Rogan, which
1:30:45
Speaker 1: I have not watched it. I've never seen a Rogan interview,
1:30:48
Speaker 1: and I don't know that I can deal with a
1:30:50
Speaker 1: three hour interview by anyone of anyone. But he had
1:30:53
Speaker 1: a three interview.
1:30:54
Speaker 8: We are we not doing three hours now?
1:30:56
Speaker 6: No, are not doing a three hours.
1:30:58
Speaker 1: We do forty minutes. And that's you usually at the time.
1:31:01
Speaker 1: Normally you're making it at one program in July fourth,
1:31:03
Speaker 1: but logistics didn't work this year, and we'll just play
1:31:06
Speaker 1: it out. But the vice president goes on. So I
1:31:08
Speaker 1: see a bunch of clips online. I don't believe any
1:31:11
Speaker 1: of them, Danny, do you until I watched the original?
1:31:15
Speaker 1: That's like water stamped. I'm not going to believe it.
1:31:19
Speaker 8: Wow, So that's where you are already, you're questioning it's interesting.
1:31:24
Speaker 6: Yep, that's where we are. And these things are very.
1:31:29
Speaker 8: Very good, and it is only a matter of time
1:31:33
Speaker 8: before we have a situation where, I mean, you don't
1:31:37
Speaker 8: have to go and stage a fake propaganda movie anymore.
1:31:41
Speaker 6: You just sit at a computer and do it.
1:31:44
Speaker 8: And you know we're going to have Estonians killing Russians
1:31:49
Speaker 8: or something that some sort of provocation for the for
1:31:52
Speaker 8: the invasion that's going to happen in the near future,
1:31:57
Speaker 8: the drones, deep fakes. A.
1:32:01
Speaker 6: Life's getting interesting, isn't it.
1:32:03
Speaker 1: I'm glad that I'm going to retire into and a
1:32:05
Speaker 1: half years. Daniel Silva, I helpe. You never do because
1:32:08
Speaker 1: I want in my retirement. But I want to know,
1:32:10
Speaker 1: are you worried about it? I don't think AI can
1:32:13
Speaker 1: do Gabriel Lan novels. I don't think an AI machine
1:32:16
Speaker 1: can produce a ransom novel, do you No?
1:32:20
Speaker 6: No, I do not. But they can produce they.
1:32:26
Speaker 8: I mean a couple of writers have acknowledged that they're
1:32:29
Speaker 8: using AI to produce their books or portions of their books.
1:32:34
Speaker 8: It's not something that I'm it's too much fun. I
1:32:39
Speaker 8: don't know why you would use AI to write your
1:32:43
Speaker 8: book for you, that's it just seems ridiculous. But it's
1:32:46
Speaker 8: inevitable that that a fully AI novel, this is going
1:32:52
Speaker 8: to enter the bloodstream of American publishing at some point
1:32:56
Speaker 8: in the near future, just like we have, you know,
1:32:58
Speaker 8: full AI music, fake AI bands that are popping up
1:33:02
Speaker 8: on Spotify and Apple Music.
1:33:04
Speaker 6: It's just inevitable, I think.
1:33:06
Speaker 1: So I want to I have asked you this question
1:33:08
Speaker 1: probably every year since we've started doing this, which is
1:33:11
Speaker 1: probably twenty years now. We may have started seven or
1:33:14
Speaker 1: eight years into the series and devoted a full show
1:33:17
Speaker 1: to the first seven or eight books, and so I
1:33:19
Speaker 1: wanted to keep the question current. Alon ought to be
1:33:25
Speaker 1: a television series like Fauda. I learned yesterday from an
1:33:30
Speaker 1: Israeli blogger who interviewed me that Fouda is about ready
1:33:34
Speaker 1: to release and they are dealing with ten to seven
1:33:37
Speaker 1: in the first two episodes. But you don't have to
1:33:38
Speaker 1: watch them, and you can still watch the series, and
1:33:41
Speaker 1: they've made that known to the Israeli public. And I
1:33:44
Speaker 1: won't watch it because I wouldn't watch the film.
1:33:46
Speaker 4: Did you watch the film?
1:33:46
Speaker 1: By the way, did you watch the Israeli government approved
1:33:49
Speaker 1: forty five minute film of ten to seven. No, no,
1:33:53
Speaker 1: I'm not did not.
1:33:55
Speaker 8: I didn't know it existed. What is the forty five
1:33:57
Speaker 8: minute When.
1:33:58
Speaker 1: They want to BRIEFE got by me. Yeah, when they
1:34:01
Speaker 1: want to brief foreign journalists who doubt what happened on
1:34:05
Speaker 1: ten to seven, they have a forty five a minute
1:34:10
Speaker 1: version of what Hamas filmed that day. It's all Hamas footage.
1:34:13
Speaker 8: So it's not yes, okay, that that I know about. Okay,
1:34:17
Speaker 8: I do know about that. Yeah, And so I have
1:34:20
Speaker 8: never watched it.
1:34:21
Speaker 4: So is this ever?
1:34:23
Speaker 1: Is Alan ever coming to the little or the big screen? Ever?
1:34:29
Speaker 6: I don't know. You know, I had, I had what
1:34:32
Speaker 6: I thought was a perfect deal a few years ago.
1:34:36
Speaker 8: And you know, look, it's more common for something to
1:34:39
Speaker 8: be optioned and not made than it is for it
1:34:41
Speaker 8: to be optioned and made. So I've sold the book
1:34:46
Speaker 8: the series four five times. I think it just have
1:34:50
Speaker 8: never been able to get across the finish line. Right now,
1:34:52
Speaker 8: I retain the rights. And you know, there are conversations
1:34:57
Speaker 8: that are happening, you know, regularly, some serious, uh, some
1:35:03
Speaker 8: not so serious, and we shall see. I am at
1:35:07
Speaker 8: this stage more than comfortable to let him exist on
1:35:13
Speaker 8: the page. You know, there's no Lucas Davenport series either
1:35:19
Speaker 8: on television. A great character by my colleague John Stanford.
1:35:23
Speaker 8: You know, it is what it is, and I think
1:35:25
Speaker 8: that right now, in the current political situation, I'm not
1:35:31
Speaker 8: sure the time is right for a Gabriel Lout series.
1:35:35
Speaker 1: Well, the Slow Horses series has become such a magnificent
1:35:39
Speaker 1: hit that everybody waits, and the Lioness has come out
1:35:43
Speaker 1: and fouta I mentioned. I just think it's such a natural.
1:35:46
Speaker 1: Let me close this way. You just mentioned another great
1:35:49
Speaker 1: thriller writer. You're the you. I think you hold the
1:35:52
Speaker 1: title right now. You're like, I'll leave. Someone's going to
1:35:54
Speaker 1: knock you out someday, but not yet. And Ransom will
1:35:57
Speaker 1: sell more than any other thriller this summer, so no
1:35:59
Speaker 1: one's going to knock up for at least in a year.
1:36:01
Speaker 1: Do you ever gather at a place like Wilton's, with
1:36:05
Speaker 1: the way the art world gathers at Wilton do the
1:36:08
Speaker 1: thriller writers at the top of the game ever gathered
1:36:11
Speaker 1: together just to relax?
1:36:14
Speaker 6: Uh?
1:36:15
Speaker 8: You know, we bumped into each other now and again.
1:36:21
Speaker 8: I had a wonderful evening. I guess it's my second
1:36:25
Speaker 8: night of tour. My friend Amore Tolls interviewed me at
1:36:29
Speaker 8: the strands, So there's two writers who got together into
1:36:33
Speaker 8: Wilton's like setting and talked about our work. It's just
1:36:37
Speaker 8: there were three hundred people watching us do it. So
1:36:41
Speaker 8: you know our schedules, you know, don't don't really allow it.
1:36:46
Speaker 8: Everyone's on deadline, I tell you all. And frankly, all
1:36:51
Speaker 8: of my writer friends are of the non fiction variety.
1:36:54
Speaker 8: The aforementioned Peter Baker, Bob Woodward is a dear friend,
1:37:00
Speaker 8: you know. Shane Harris is a dear friend. All of
1:37:04
Speaker 8: my friends are what I like to describe as real writers.
1:37:07
Speaker 8: You know, I'm the guy who just making the stuff up.
1:37:10
Speaker 1: You're just making a real journalists happy because it's something
1:37:14
Speaker 1: in the summer. Daniel Silva, there's a book tour underway.
1:37:17
Speaker 1: I appreciate the time in the middle of it. It's
1:37:18
Speaker 1: over at danielsilvabooks dot com. You can find out where
1:37:22
Speaker 1: Daniel is going to be if you want to go
1:37:23
Speaker 1: and get a copy of Ransom. Sign congratulations on another
1:37:27
Speaker 1: number one New York Times bestseller and keep the streak
1:37:30
Speaker 1: going for as long as I'm alive. I want to
1:37:32
Speaker 1: keep reading this in the summertime. Daniel, my best to
1:37:35
Speaker 1: your wonderful wife and safety and success on your tour.
1:37:40
Speaker 1: Thank you for joining me today.
1:37:41
Speaker 6: Thank you so much.
1:37:42
Speaker 1: Thank you, Bet