Latest / The Hugh Hewitt Show: Highly Concentrated / Day 3 of War in Iran

Transcript

Day 3 of War in Iran · The Hugh Hewitt Show: Highly Concentrated

0:00
Speaker 1: Welcome to today's podcast sponsored by Hillsdale College, All Things
0:03
Speaker 1: Hillsdale at Hillsdale dot ed or I encourage you to
0:06
Speaker 1: take advantage of the many free online courses there and
0:08
Speaker 1: of course a listener to the Hillsdale Dialogue, all of
0:11
Speaker 1: them at Hugh for Hillsdale dot com or just Google, Apple,
0:14
Speaker 1: iTunes and Hillsdale.
0:17
Speaker 2: A very good day to you all. It is Wednesday,
0:20
Speaker 2: the fourth of March, and we join you from Texas.
0:22
Speaker 2: Hugh is out today and the talk show gods are smiling.
0:26
Speaker 2: There are all kinds of things going on around the world. Obviously,
0:29
Speaker 2: I think you know why they call it the Department
0:31
Speaker 2: of War, now, don't you. Defense was lovely, Defense is
0:35
Speaker 2: part of the gig. But when it's time for war,
0:37
Speaker 2: you need a Department of War, and boy do we
0:39
Speaker 2: have one. So we're going to talk about various trouble
0:42
Speaker 2: spots around the world, talk about various conflicts, including one
0:46
Speaker 2: of the ones that we may be about to have
0:48
Speaker 2: right here in my state of Texas. Listen, We've got
0:50
Speaker 2: all kinds of things going on, a big slate of guests,
0:53
Speaker 2: all kinds of people to talk to. We stand in
0:55
Speaker 2: this war effort at a critical juncture. It's always a
0:59
Speaker 2: critical juncture. But what we have right now is people
1:04
Speaker 2: in a media culture and people in Democrat culture, which
1:08
Speaker 2: may be an oxymoron, who actively want America to fail.
1:12
Speaker 2: And what exactly are we to make of that? What
1:15
Speaker 2: exactly what I've reflected with people about this, I've thought
1:20
Speaker 2: about it in my own mind. What do I want
1:23
Speaker 2: of the Democrat Party? When a Republican president and the
1:27
Speaker 2: military that is at his command as commander in chief,
1:30
Speaker 2: when they are going about an operation that they disagree with,
1:33
Speaker 2: they are completely entitled to their disagreement. Their free speech rights,
1:37
Speaker 2: their First Amendment rights give them the latitude to speak
1:41
Speaker 2: up about that. But just because you can do something
1:44
Speaker 2: doesn't mean you should do something. And I just have
1:49
Speaker 2: to tell you that if the tides were turned, I
1:51
Speaker 2: always try to be mister consistency on this. If a
1:54
Speaker 2: Democrat president we're going about deploying American troops in some
1:58
Speaker 2: way that I don't approve of, well, first of all,
2:02
Speaker 2: I'm a media guy. We talk for a living, so
2:05
Speaker 2: I would have an opinion or two. But if I
2:08
Speaker 2: were in actual Congress, I don't think I could bring
2:11
Speaker 2: myself to be part of a war powers resolution to
2:15
Speaker 2: instantly interrupt something that was just days underway unless and again,
2:20
Speaker 2: it's not apples and apples. This is a Trump operation.
2:23
Speaker 2: It's completely well founded, it is completely justified, it is
2:27
Speaker 2: completely sensible, and that doesn't mean everybody has to like it,
2:30
Speaker 2: but there's a solid foundation for it. I suppose in
2:33
Speaker 2: my imagination I could envision a Democrat president doing something
2:37
Speaker 2: that I just thought was horribly reckless, which they say
2:42
Speaker 2: they do about this, but they're just provably wrong, and
2:46
Speaker 2: they've proven it by their own rhetoric. Over the years,
2:48
Speaker 2: you have Democrat after Democrat after Democrat, and Trump hating
2:51
Speaker 2: Republican after Trump hating Republican who has said many, many,
2:55
Speaker 2: many times, the Iranian leadership has to go. It is
2:58
Speaker 2: good for the Iranian people, have self determination. The world
3:02
Speaker 2: will be a safer place when the Mullahs are replaced
3:05
Speaker 2: in Iran. So now we're doing that, and so what's
3:07
Speaker 2: the problem. The problem is Trump did it. The problem
3:11
Speaker 2: is that Trump did it an Orange man bad, Orange
3:16
Speaker 2: man bad. And when that is guiding your thinking, When
3:19
Speaker 2: something that you know in your heart and in your
3:22
Speaker 2: brain is good suddenly becomes bad because of your TDS, man,
3:27
Speaker 2: it is time to look in the mirror. It is
3:29
Speaker 2: time to check yourself and just think a second and
3:33
Speaker 2: third time. So we have all of this laid out
3:36
Speaker 2: before us, and meanwhile, in the actual war zone, we
3:40
Speaker 2: are sinking boats with submarines. Have you seen us sink
3:44
Speaker 2: an Iranian boat with a submarine? First time since World
3:47
Speaker 2: War Two? We're doing all It's funny because in a way,
3:51
Speaker 2: this modern era of warfare is a very modern era
3:55
Speaker 2: of warfare. So many drones, and I know a lot
3:58
Speaker 2: of people are saying, you know, the war's never have
4:00
Speaker 2: been one with pure just with air superiority. That's true,
4:04
Speaker 2: meaning in the old world that at some point you
4:07
Speaker 2: got to kick in with some boots on the ground.
4:09
Speaker 2: I don't know that that is. I don't know that
4:13
Speaker 2: that's true these days with with with drones. I mean,
4:16
Speaker 2: haven't we all read forty seven articles that say that
4:20
Speaker 2: drone warfare it's not going to supplant and completely replace
4:24
Speaker 2: the notion of boots on the ground. But there's a
4:26
Speaker 2: long list of strategic things that we are able to
4:28
Speaker 2: do with drones that make boots on the ground not
4:31
Speaker 2: necessary in a wide variety of scenarios. So as we
4:35
Speaker 2: take a look at the long list of successes that
4:41
Speaker 2: we have had just in the opening days of Operation
4:44
Speaker 2: Epic Fury. Can we maybe have it's just excuse me
4:47
Speaker 2: for a minute, can we can we maybe not urinate
4:50
Speaker 2: on it for a while. Can we maybe sit tight
4:52
Speaker 2: on that for just a little bit? Can get if
4:55
Speaker 2: you're if you're dead, Listen if any Democrat says, I've
4:58
Speaker 2: heard people and this is what dry additionally crazy they say.
5:02
Speaker 2: You know, I hope for it to succeed. I pray
5:05
Speaker 2: for it to succeed, but I don't think it will.
5:08
Speaker 2: You know, orange man bead Trump's doing it. He's a liar,
5:12
Speaker 2: he's an income poop, he is corrupt because he's doing it.
5:15
Speaker 2: I just know it's going to be terrible. Hakeem Jeffries
5:18
Speaker 2: the other day, dragging us into war that is doomed
5:21
Speaker 2: to fail, doomed to fail. Is that what an American says,
5:27
Speaker 2: with our armed forces on the ground, in the air,
5:31
Speaker 2: with our armed forces deployed, is that what an American
5:34
Speaker 2: properly says, is that the right thing to say or do?
5:39
Speaker 2: Pete hegseth this morning, let's do this. I got a
5:42
Speaker 2: couple of highlights about what's going on here. In Texas
5:44
Speaker 2: Cornyn and Paxton, and I got to tell you something
5:46
Speaker 2: Trump may be about to make an endorsement. I'll tell
5:50
Speaker 2: you it's who it's likely to be. No matter who
5:53
Speaker 2: it is, it's going to be an earthquake. We don't
5:56
Speaker 2: have earthquakes in Texas, but for this, we're going to
5:58
Speaker 2: come close. Because no matter whom Trump would endorse and
6:03
Speaker 2: according versus packs and race, it's going to be a
6:05
Speaker 2: big shive in the ribs of somebody. And I don't
6:08
Speaker 2: know how that's going to go, so we'll see. But anyway,
6:11
Speaker 2: I believe it was cut twelve. Dwayne has a moment
6:15
Speaker 2: of pete hegseth this morning at the Department of War.
6:18
Speaker 3: I get it.
6:18
Speaker 4: The press only wants to make the president look bad,
6:21
Speaker 4: but try for once to report the reality. The terms
6:25
Speaker 4: of this war will be set by us at every step.
6:30
Speaker 4: As I said Monday, the mission.
6:31
Speaker 2: Is laser focused.
6:34
Speaker 4: Obliterate Iran's missiles and drones and facilities that produce them,
6:37
Speaker 4: annihilate its navy and critical security infrastructure, and sever their
6:41
Speaker 4: pathway to nuclear weapons. Iran will never possess a nuclear bomb,
6:46
Speaker 4: not on our watch, not ever. And this is why
6:50
Speaker 4: President Trump's moral clarity and Iran today is so vital.
6:54
Speaker 4: Unlike the past, where vague redlines and endless negotiations let
6:57
Speaker 4: Iran fund terror and inch ever so slightly toward a bomb,
7:02
Speaker 4: this president sees the threat plainly, enacts decisively. No more
7:06
Speaker 4: half measures, especially when Iran is at its weakest, No
7:10
Speaker 4: more letting Tehran play for time while our people pay
7:13
Speaker 4: the price. His leadership ensures that we finish what we start,
7:18
Speaker 4: and that we protect our war fighters by crushing the
7:21
Speaker 4: enemy before they can strike again. Our offensive operations, refined
7:26
Speaker 4: through months of relentless preparation, are unstoppable, and our defensive
7:31
Speaker 4: efforts are unprecedented.
7:36
Speaker 2: So that line at the beginning of Secretary Hegseth saying,
7:39
Speaker 2: I know what happens in the media. You know, if
7:41
Speaker 2: a drone sneaks through and we have a moment of
7:43
Speaker 2: tragedy like you're going to have in wartime, it's front
7:46
Speaker 2: page news. This led Caitlin Collins, so get ready of
7:49
Speaker 2: CNN to ask Caroline Levitt, is it the position of
7:53
Speaker 2: this White House that we're not supposed to cover, you know,
7:57
Speaker 2: troop deaths. And they went back and forth for a
7:59
Speaker 2: couple of month. You know isn't part of the story.
8:02
Speaker 2: We're not doing it to dishonor them. Yes, you are
8:05
Speaker 2: a hostile media culture and a hostile Democrat party is
8:08
Speaker 2: holding up these six precious lives that we've lost, and
8:12
Speaker 2: there will be more, I'll tell you there will be more.
8:15
Speaker 2: And they are using them to weaponize the war effort
8:17
Speaker 2: against the president. And of course they lift these these
8:21
Speaker 2: names up and they cherish these names, but not in
8:23
Speaker 2: the way that you and I might not as heroes
8:26
Speaker 2: for a good cause, for a noble cause, for a
8:28
Speaker 2: just war. The left holds up these names as people
8:31
Speaker 2: they can weaponize and deploy and say, look at these
8:34
Speaker 2: poor people. They bravely and courageously withstood the orders of
8:38
Speaker 2: an insane president. So spare me the triangulations from CNN
8:43
Speaker 2: and Caitlin Collins. All right, with about like a minute here,
8:46
Speaker 2: it's going to be Corning and Paxton, and a runoff
8:48
Speaker 2: won't be determined until May twenty sixth. Paxton has the
8:52
Speaker 2: inside track at the moment because it is the more
8:54
Speaker 2: MAGA friendly conservative voters that tend to come back for
8:57
Speaker 2: the runoff. And they finished like forty two to forty one,
9:00
Speaker 2: Wesley Hunt way behind there may be a Trump endorsement,
9:03
Speaker 2: and it may be Cornyn. I mean, the news is
9:05
Speaker 2: filled with this today. Will that be helpful to Cornyn?
9:08
Speaker 2: Of course it would. Is it Cornyn's only chance of
9:11
Speaker 2: survival in the runoff? It might be. Will it cause
9:14
Speaker 2: a major alienation in Trump's Texas Paxton loving base? Yes?
9:20
Speaker 2: Is he aware of that? I don't know. That's just
9:23
Speaker 2: a little of what's going on. You could say, some
9:24
Speaker 2: things are happening. Mark Davison for Hugh Hewett, and we
9:27
Speaker 2: are chronicling it all on the Wednesday Hugh Hewitt Show.
9:29
Speaker 2: Thanks for being here on the Salem News Channel along
9:44
Speaker 2: Salem Radio Network. It's the Hugh Hewitt Show for this Wednesday,
9:48
Speaker 2: the fourth of March. Mark Davis filling in. I mentioned
9:50
Speaker 2: that we have a whole lot of talented people to
9:52
Speaker 2: talk to, smart people to run a number of things by,
9:54
Speaker 2: and they don't get any smarter or more valuable than
9:57
Speaker 2: a gentleman I've been reading for a long long time
9:59
Speaker 2: with a new gig. It's Joel Pollock, who now on
10:02
Speaker 2: the business card, says opinion editor at the California Post.
10:06
Speaker 2: We'll have to ask Joel what that is for those
10:08
Speaker 2: who are not blessed to know. But meanwhile, it's just
10:11
Speaker 2: great to talk to you again, Joel. Welcome. How you doing.
10:15
Speaker 5: Great, It's good to be with you.
10:16
Speaker 2: It is nice to have you. So we're almost a
10:19
Speaker 2: week into this whole epic fury thing. How do you
10:22
Speaker 2: think it's going over there? And how do you think
10:24
Speaker 2: it's going over here?
10:27
Speaker 5: Well, it's too early to tell.
10:29
Speaker 6: The real test will be what happens in the rebuilding effort,
10:34
Speaker 6: because I do think the Iranian regime will eventually fall,
10:38
Speaker 6: and then the.
10:39
Speaker 5: Question is what replaces it. That's always been the tricky part.
10:43
Speaker 6: We are, of course, much better than we were at
10:46
Speaker 6: knocking over these regimes. The Maduro replacement, if you will,
10:51
Speaker 6: was an example of really pinpoint attention to that.
10:55
Speaker 7: But George W.
10:57
Speaker 6: Bush was pretty good at knocking over dictatorship. She just
11:00
Speaker 6: wasn't that good at rebuilding societies. And Trump is not
11:04
Speaker 6: interested in nation building. So what happens next that's really
11:07
Speaker 6: the puzzle. But so far, from a military perspective, it
11:10
Speaker 6: has been a stunning success. Of course, there are about
11:13
Speaker 6: half a dozen American soldiers who've lost their lives, and
11:17
Speaker 6: more have been wounded by Iranian missiles.
11:19
Speaker 7: We lost three.
11:20
Speaker 6: Aircraft to friendly fire from our Kuwaiti allies. So all
11:25
Speaker 6: of that is to be mourned and hopefully to be
11:28
Speaker 6: avoided in future. But thus far, militarily it has been
11:31
Speaker 6: a stunning success. And also I think in the broader
11:35
Speaker 6: geostrategic picture of things, I think this is a major
11:38
Speaker 6: blow to Russia, which gets its drones from Iran. It's
11:41
Speaker 6: also a blow to China, which gets its oil from Iran.
11:44
Speaker 6: So President Trump may be resetting the global chessboard in
11:48
Speaker 6: a way that's advantageous to the United States in more
11:52
Speaker 6: ways than one.
11:53
Speaker 2: There's very little here not to like on the list
11:56
Speaker 2: that you've made. And yet, and yet we don't ever
11:59
Speaker 2: expect us unanimity of support. But your use of language
12:02
Speaker 2: was perfect in going to the notion of nation building.
12:06
Speaker 2: A lot of people, maybe it's generational. If somebody's twenty
12:08
Speaker 2: five or even thirty five, all they remember is Iraq
12:12
Speaker 2: and were there any weapons of mass destruction? And that
12:14
Speaker 2: looked like nation building, looked like we were trying to
12:16
Speaker 2: turn Iraq into Indiana. That was never going to happen.
12:19
Speaker 2: We don't like foreign entanglements. There's a new kind of
12:23
Speaker 2: youth based so called new right isolationism. I think that's
12:27
Speaker 2: where a lot of the grumbling comes from. But how
12:30
Speaker 2: do you think this is going to play out in
12:32
Speaker 2: terms of broad public opinion.
12:37
Speaker 6: You know, Americans don't have particularly strong views on interventionism
12:43
Speaker 6: versus isolationism. Americans want to win, So if.
12:47
Speaker 5: Your strategy is successful, people will support it.
12:50
Speaker 6: If it fails, if it involves heavy costs and long
12:55
Speaker 6: periods of time, then people won't support it.
12:57
Speaker 5: So I think the test of the war with.
13:00
Speaker 6: Iran is going to be again whether this is successful
13:04
Speaker 6: or not. President Trump has done a good job of
13:07
Speaker 6: framing the Venezuela intervention as being very successful, because not
13:11
Speaker 6: only did he get Maduro, but he also got tens
13:15
Speaker 6: of millions of barrels of oil from the Venezuelans and
13:18
Speaker 6: a much more cooperative Venezuelan regime.
13:22
Speaker 7: With Iran, there.
13:24
Speaker 6: Is a possibility that you could see a transition to
13:28
Speaker 6: a stable government, perhaps a democratic government, but at any rate,
13:32
Speaker 6: a stable government that is not constantly trying to attack
13:35
Speaker 6: its neighbors and plant terror cells all over the world
13:39
Speaker 6: and launch missiles against Israel and perhaps even Europe, maybe
13:43
Speaker 6: eventually the United States, or you get a disintegration of
13:48
Speaker 6: the Middle Eastern state that is perhaps one of the
13:52
Speaker 6: most strategic places in the world, and then you have
13:56
Speaker 6: a free for all. So I think we still have
13:59
Speaker 6: to see where this is going and what kind of
14:01
Speaker 6: leadership can emerge from among the Iranian people themselves. But
14:06
Speaker 6: I just think the president had decided that there was
14:09
Speaker 6: no more faith to be placed in the Hamoni regime,
14:15
Speaker 6: and that's why he acted the way he did. I
14:19
Speaker 6: had been a proponent of a diplomatic solution, and I
14:22
Speaker 6: think the Trump administration really tried hard, but in the
14:25
Speaker 6: end ran out of options, and the Iranians, by the way, pushed.
14:29
Speaker 3: All the wrong buttons.
14:30
Speaker 8: I said before the war that the only way.
14:32
Speaker 6: I could see a war happening, because I didn't think
14:33
Speaker 6: Trump wanted one, was if the Iranians miscalculated, and it appears.
14:38
Speaker 9: That they did.
14:39
Speaker 6: They came out, they made public statements about how they
14:41
Speaker 6: weren't compromising, they weren't going to give up nuclear enrichment,
14:44
Speaker 6: they weren't going to give up their missiles, you know,
14:46
Speaker 6: and with Trump, if you do that, then you're essentially
14:50
Speaker 6: begging for some kind of a response, and they got it.
14:55
Speaker 2: You could say everybody likes diplomatic solutions, and I don't
14:59
Speaker 2: think it was inherent unwise to remain hopeful for one,
15:02
Speaker 2: but the Trump calculus was. I think we've tried quite
15:05
Speaker 2: enough for about forty seven years. Now it's time for
15:07
Speaker 2: something different. Joel Pollock is here, there's something different in
15:10
Speaker 2: your life. Let's take our final sixty seconds. If somebody
15:12
Speaker 2: looks at California Posts, they go, oh, that looks just
15:15
Speaker 2: like the New York Post logo, precisely tell everybody what
15:18
Speaker 2: the California Post is.
15:21
Speaker 6: The California Post is the California edition of the New
15:24
Speaker 6: York Post.
15:25
Speaker 3: But it's not just reprinting the New York Post.
15:28
Speaker 6: It is a California news organization that's not just online
15:33
Speaker 6: but also in print. And it's really taken the California
15:37
Speaker 6: media by storm, and it's producing dozens and dozens and
15:41
Speaker 6: dozens of new articles every day, hard hitting journalism, investigative pieces,
15:46
Speaker 6: exposs and it's already changing the landscape of California politics.
15:51
Speaker 6: And I get to see that firsthand as the opinion editor,
15:54
Speaker 6: and it's really interesting to see.
15:56
Speaker 5: What an impact it's made already.
15:58
Speaker 6: Really just providing an alternative voice to the generally left
16:02
Speaker 6: of center publications that dominate local media in California. We
16:06
Speaker 6: are now providing something of a corrective to that, I think,
16:10
Speaker 6: and I feel that people are very happy with it.
16:13
Speaker 3: It's been very warmly received.
16:14
Speaker 2: Well well, every blessing for success. California Post dot com
16:17
Speaker 2: and follow Joel on the exit at Joel Pollock p
16:20
Speaker 2: o LLAK. Great to talk to you, Joel, Thank you
16:22
Speaker 2: very much. You know it occurs to me with Joel
16:24
Speaker 2: doing a lot of things that are California centric but
16:27
Speaker 2: also have a lot to do with the entire country.
16:30
Speaker 2: I'm going to tie California to the entire world. I
16:32
Speaker 2: just want to ask you something. This could be a
16:34
Speaker 2: useful question. Can you imagine a troubling moment like this
16:37
Speaker 2: around the world and Gavin Newsom is President of the
16:40
Speaker 2: United States? Or how about another Californian Kamala Harris? Thank
16:44
Speaker 2: God Trump one, Thank God Trump one, Thank God Trump won.
16:48
Speaker 2: Mark Davison for you, Salem News Channel, Salem Radio Network,
16:51
Speaker 2: be ride Back. It is the Wednesday edition of a
16:59
Speaker 2: u US show, Mark us filling in here from Thriving
17:01
Speaker 2: DFW and we are a wash in topics and it's funny.
17:05
Speaker 2: Operation epicy Fury is like one subject with twelve different
17:09
Speaker 2: subsets of things we can talk about and people we
17:11
Speaker 2: can talk to. What a pleasure it is to go
17:13
Speaker 2: to the Reagan Institute. Roger Zachheim is its director, Roger,
17:17
Speaker 2: Pleasure to me, Jehi, Mark Davison for.
17:18
Speaker 3: You, Good day to Mark, Thanks for having me.
17:21
Speaker 5: Great to meet too.
17:22
Speaker 2: My absolute pleasure. With a place that bears of Ronald Reagan,
17:26
Speaker 2: it is probably a good idea to sort of revisit
17:29
Speaker 2: a Reaganesque worldview. And I know a lot of people
17:32
Speaker 2: over plenty of beers or plenty of coffee talk about
17:35
Speaker 2: the ven diagram overlap of Reagan world versus Trump World.
17:39
Speaker 2: But I am brought to one Reagan quote, and that
17:42
Speaker 2: is that the world was never made more dangerous because
17:45
Speaker 2: America was too strong. Strength plus virtue is what I
17:49
Speaker 2: think we see here. I saw you on Fox New
17:51
Speaker 2: Sunday this past week making a few points about that.
17:54
Speaker 2: So what do you want people to know today?
17:57
Speaker 10: Well, peace through strength is fundamentally built upon the notion
18:02
Speaker 10: that you need to have a real peace, that simply
18:06
Speaker 10: taking peace at any cost ultimately undermines our interests. And
18:09
Speaker 10: from a Reagan standpoint, it means that you're going to
18:12
Speaker 10: compromise American freedom. And I think that is the framework
18:15
Speaker 10: in which President Reagan approached foreign policy. He wanted America
18:19
Speaker 10: to be strong, as you said, so no enemy, no adversary,
18:22
Speaker 10: would ever challenge the United States. And I think when
18:26
Speaker 10: it comes to Iran, that has been missing for decades.
18:30
Speaker 11: In President Reagan's.
18:31
Speaker 10: Time, he was dealing with sort of the emergence of
18:34
Speaker 10: the threat pose by iron.
18:36
Speaker 3: Of course, he came to.
18:37
Speaker 10: Office shortly after the revolution took place. We had our
18:42
Speaker 10: hostages held for four hundred and forty four days, were
18:45
Speaker 10: released on President Reagan's inauguration day. The first evidence of
18:49
Speaker 10: Hesbolottok place in Lebanon, of course, with the attacks on
18:52
Speaker 10: the marine barracks, the bombing there as well as our embassies.
18:55
Speaker 10: So we saw that emerge some forty plus years ago.
19:00
Speaker 10: And the reality is no president since has ever really
19:03
Speaker 10: confronted Iran until President Trump.
19:06
Speaker 3: And now I think.
19:07
Speaker 10: We have an opportunity to see a true piece play
19:10
Speaker 10: out in the Middleast because we're taking on the driver
19:13
Speaker 10: of the instability in that region.
19:15
Speaker 2: You may be in a particularly valuable position to answer
19:20
Speaker 2: the following question that I get a lot and I
19:21
Speaker 2: have my answer, But I think yours will be better.
19:23
Speaker 2: And that is Hey, Mark, people will say so, I'll say, hey, Roger,
19:27
Speaker 2: how can this President Donald Trump, who said no more
19:31
Speaker 2: wars of regime change. I don't like war, and here
19:35
Speaker 2: he is starting a war to some Well, I think
19:38
Speaker 2: I just gave you the answer. He ain't starting one,
19:40
Speaker 2: he's finishing one. But we are at war and that
19:42
Speaker 2: seems too many to be a disconnect. Help people out
19:46
Speaker 2: with that if you could, please.
19:48
Speaker 10: Well, I think what you heard for decade plus after
19:52
Speaker 10: Iraq and Afghanistan, the wars in rock Afghanistan, Republican and
19:56
Speaker 10: Democratic presidents have said we don't want forever wars or
19:58
Speaker 10: endless wars. It would be a mistake, I think, though,
20:01
Speaker 10: to say that is what President Trump is doing here.
20:04
Speaker 10: And as you alluded to, Iran has been at war
20:07
Speaker 10: of the United States for forty seven years. What we're
20:10
Speaker 10: doing now is finally getting into the fight and trying
20:14
Speaker 10: to bring it to an end. So this is not
20:15
Speaker 10: an endless war. This is a war that I think
20:17
Speaker 10: President Trump is trying to end. That is one other
20:20
Speaker 10: point here as well, which Iraq and Afghanistan, and particularly
20:23
Speaker 10: the politics around Iraq and Afghanistan in the years after
20:27
Speaker 10: the end of combat operations in those countries has essentially
20:31
Speaker 10: created what I think of as Iraq syndrome. In other words,
20:34
Speaker 10: we've been told that we have this false binary choice
20:37
Speaker 10: between doing nothing or doing something that involves one hundred
20:43
Speaker 10: thousand boots on the ground for decades long war.
20:46
Speaker 11: In other words, there was really no choice.
20:48
Speaker 10: It was trying to use Iraq to paralyze our foreign policy.
20:51
Speaker 10: What President Trump has done, really since January of twenty
20:55
Speaker 10: twenty five, since he came into office, has blown up
20:58
Speaker 10: that Iraq syndrome. Demis to the American people that we
21:01
Speaker 10: could affect events in the world. We could engage our
21:05
Speaker 10: military to drive outcomes that benefit America's prosperity and American
21:08
Speaker 10: peace by engaging our military, and it doesn't have to result
21:12
Speaker 10: in a long Iraq or Afghanistan type operation. We might
21:16
Speaker 10: not expected that to come from President Trump when he
21:18
Speaker 10: ran for office, certainly the first time or even this
21:20
Speaker 10: go around.
21:21
Speaker 11: But that's the impact and a broader standpoint.
21:23
Speaker 10: Of what he's doing in ran right now with the
21:26
Speaker 10: Operation up at Fury and the Midnight Hammer operation absolutely
21:29
Speaker 10: resolve in Venezuela as well. Americans are learning to win
21:32
Speaker 10: with the military again, and then understand our military can
21:35
Speaker 10: do great things.
21:36
Speaker 11: Without sort of being bogged down in an endless conflict.
21:40
Speaker 2: That is superbly put because somewhere between isolationism and quagmire,
21:45
Speaker 2: somewhere between the inertia and forever war, is a quick strike,
21:50
Speaker 2: a brief operation that is so successful and so concise
21:53
Speaker 2: and so effective in its brevity that it hits a
21:56
Speaker 2: reset button for the entire region that is of benefit
21:59
Speaker 2: to the region, of benefit to the world, and of
22:02
Speaker 2: benefit to America. Why is this so hard?
22:07
Speaker 11: Well, I think our elected leaders have told us this
22:11
Speaker 11: for a decade plus that that's the choice, and so
22:15
Speaker 11: the American people have come to think of any time
22:17
Speaker 11: we engage in military operation, it's going to have to
22:20
Speaker 11: be this endless conflict.
22:21
Speaker 3: And there's another level to this as well.
22:23
Speaker 10: You know, you look at our amazing military personnel, the
22:25
Speaker 10: operations that they're carrying out right now as we speak,
22:28
Speaker 10: what took place in June to twenty twenty five with
22:31
Speaker 10: Midnight Hammer or the Operation Absolute Resolve of Venezuela. What
22:35
Speaker 10: our military is able to do is best in class.
22:38
Speaker 10: There isn't a close second in the world. That's what
22:42
Speaker 10: people in uniform want to be known for that. They
22:44
Speaker 10: are the best military the world has ever seen. They
22:48
Speaker 10: don't want to be people that have simply sort of
22:50
Speaker 10: applauded and looked as victims because they got wounded in combat.
22:54
Speaker 10: Of course, our society should be sympathetic, should be supportive,
22:58
Speaker 10: should support whatever ofver therapy and needs the military has.
23:02
Speaker 5: But the military is not fragile.
23:05
Speaker 10: These are the strongest, most capable fighting men and women
23:08
Speaker 10: in the world's ever seen. That's what they want the
23:10
Speaker 10: sit intury in this country to know them for. And frankly,
23:12
Speaker 10: that's what the world is seeing right now as we
23:15
Speaker 10: talk during this operation.
23:17
Speaker 2: Roger Zachheim, thank you so much and thanks for being
23:19
Speaker 2: with us, and thanks for everything you do at the
23:20
Speaker 2: Reagan Institute, at Reagan Institute on X and at Roger
23:24
Speaker 2: Zachheim zakhg. I am there on X. So just check
23:28
Speaker 2: all those good people on keeping the name, the concept,
23:31
Speaker 2: the beliefs of Reagan alive. If you want to start
23:33
Speaker 2: a conversation, what would Reagan think of Trump? If Reagan's
23:38
Speaker 2: walking around today? And I can't pretend to know a
23:41
Speaker 2: detailed answer of that, but I'm old enough to remember
23:44
Speaker 2: Reagan with clarity and still coherent enough to understand what's
23:48
Speaker 2: going on with Trump. Are there stylistic differences, to be sure,
23:52
Speaker 2: but as far as the goal overlap, I think I've
23:55
Speaker 2: used ven diagram like three times just in his first hour,
23:58
Speaker 2: the ven diagram of overlap between Reaganism and trump Ism,
24:02
Speaker 2: peace through strength, making sure that our foreign policy is
24:06
Speaker 2: something that involves American interests first. And that doesn't mean
24:11
Speaker 2: America only. It means domestically and internationally doing things that
24:15
Speaker 2: benefit the what we now have roughly three hundred and
24:18
Speaker 2: fifty million Americans. Right, we are underway, and glad you
24:22
Speaker 2: are here on the u U Show. Mark Davis filling
24:24
Speaker 2: in from DFW here on Salem News Channel, Salem Radio Network,
24:27
Speaker 2: and we will be right back. It is the u
24:29
Speaker 2: UH Show. It is the second hour on this Wednesday,
24:32
Speaker 2: the fourth day of March. Glad you are here keeping
24:36
Speaker 2: track of a number of things in a number of places.
24:39
Speaker 2: Obviously we have things to cover, continue to cover, and
24:42
Speaker 2: we're going to with regard to the warfront and what's
24:45
Speaker 2: going on on the Home front and the Middle Eastern Front.
24:48
Speaker 2: But also just before, in the two hours before we're done,
24:51
Speaker 2: President Trump has been hosting an energy round table and
24:54
Speaker 2: we played a little clip of him talking about the
24:56
Speaker 2: latest from Iran. And obviously we're very Iran heavy, very
24:59
Speaker 2: heavy on the the portions of news that are coming
25:03
Speaker 2: from that. But we may here on the day after
25:06
Speaker 2: what I gave you a little bit of a lesson
25:08
Speaker 2: about here in my state of Texas, about the corn
25:10
Speaker 2: versus Paxton race, Trump may be about to endorse Cornan
25:14
Speaker 2: and that will be uplifting to the corn fan base,
25:18
Speaker 2: It will be dispiriting to the Paxton fan base. It
25:21
Speaker 2: will be alienating to I want to say, the majority
25:24
Speaker 2: of Trump voters in Texas. And he either I don't
25:27
Speaker 2: want to say he doesn't care about that. Everybody cares
25:29
Speaker 2: about everything. But there are no solutions in life. There
25:32
Speaker 2: are trade offs. And if Trump is willing to do this,
25:35
Speaker 2: he obviously believes that Cornyn will be every bit the
25:37
Speaker 2: loyal soldier that he has been so far in Trump
25:40
Speaker 2: two point zero. And we'll see how that works out.
25:43
Speaker 2: But we're seeing how a lot of things work out.
25:44
Speaker 2: Let's see how things are working out over at the
25:47
Speaker 2: Strauss Center of the Strouss Center for International Security and Law.
25:51
Speaker 2: Simone Ledeen is there, Simone Mark Davison for you, welcome.
25:53
Speaker 2: It's so nice to talk to you.
25:55
Speaker 8: Hi.
25:57
Speaker 3: Hi.
25:57
Speaker 12: Thanks, it's great to talk to you as well.
26:00
Speaker 2: I've been taking a look at various things that you've
26:02
Speaker 2: been tweeting and the things that you've been putting up there,
26:04
Speaker 2: and a Newsmax appearance on various things. I like to
26:08
Speaker 2: ask a very quite literally, as we're bombing people thirty
26:12
Speaker 2: thousand foot level question of your assessment of these opening
26:15
Speaker 2: days of Operation Epic Fury through the lens of your
26:19
Speaker 2: daily pursuit of stories that are of interest to you.
26:24
Speaker 13: Sure well. I had the privilege of serving in the
26:28
Speaker 13: first Trump administration as the deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense,
26:32
Speaker 13: so I have a sort of a particular.
26:35
Speaker 12: Lens through which I'm looking at all this. I find this.
26:41
Speaker 13: I find these opening days of this campaign to be remarkable,
26:47
Speaker 13: remarkably successful. I'm so impressed by our military and our
26:52
Speaker 13: partnership with the Israeli military and what they're accomplishing. I
26:57
Speaker 13: think I was listening before the show to the press
27:03
Speaker 13: conference that Secretary Heigseth and General Kane gave earlier today
27:08
Speaker 13: talking about the particulars of this military campaign and how
27:13
Speaker 13: really they've been focused these last few days on taking
27:16
Speaker 13: out the immediate threat of the ballistic.
27:18
Speaker 12: Missiles and also these one way drones.
27:21
Speaker 13: Which both of which have the attacks have reduced significantly.
27:26
Speaker 13: I think they gave percentages that were everything above fifty percent.
27:31
Speaker 13: Everything's been reduced over fifty percent, which is fantastic. That's
27:35
Speaker 13: what's been killing people across the region. So now, given
27:40
Speaker 13: they've mostly removed that threat, and certainly the air and
27:46
Speaker 13: missile defense on the Iranian side has been taken out
27:51
Speaker 13: to a very large degree, they're expanding their operation. They're
27:56
Speaker 13: expanding their campaign to now include not just stand off munitions,
28:01
Speaker 13: but munitions that they can drop from overhead.
28:04
Speaker 12: They don't have to be.
28:05
Speaker 13: A long distance away, and that will really be helpful
28:10
Speaker 13: in increasing the you know how precise these munitions can be.
28:17
Speaker 13: These are very precise munitions. Now the standoff ones are
28:22
Speaker 13: a little less sometimes, so that also reduces the risk
28:25
Speaker 13: of civilian casualties, which is incredibly important in this type
28:31
Speaker 13: of a campaign where our government wants to encourage and
28:34
Speaker 13: they have said publicly they're encouraging the Iranian people to
28:38
Speaker 13: eventually rise up against the regime.
28:41
Speaker 2: That would be the best scenario, and the likelihood of
28:45
Speaker 2: that a week or two ago is probably close to zero.
28:47
Speaker 2: The likelihood of it now is exponentially greater. What do
28:51
Speaker 2: you think, especially with Pentagon service in your background, what
28:55
Speaker 2: kind of flexibility might the President and Secretary Hegseth need
28:59
Speaker 2: on the four or five week time frame they put out.
29:03
Speaker 2: As soon as I heard that, I started to take
29:05
Speaker 2: calls on my own show from people saying, is that
29:08
Speaker 2: a commitment that we're totally done in four or five weeks?
29:11
Speaker 2: Absolutely not, That's not the way war goes. Give us
29:15
Speaker 2: some of your thoughts about that. It's the oldest quote
29:18
Speaker 2: in the world that no battle plan ever survives the
29:20
Speaker 2: actual battlefield. So your thoughts about I'm not asking you
29:24
Speaker 2: how long it might go, but just your thoughts about
29:26
Speaker 2: when people make estimates on how long it might go.
29:31
Speaker 13: Sure, I am absolutely not a I don't like to
29:37
Speaker 13: predict those things. Sorry, sorry to you in the audience.
29:42
Speaker 13: I think that they are hoping for four to five weeks,
29:47
Speaker 13: and that is what the plan is. But as you say,
29:50
Speaker 13: plans change. I have heard a number of folks I'm
29:53
Speaker 13: sure you have two saying it's going faster than we thought.
29:58
Speaker 13: I think that was Secretary Ruby who said that yesterday.
30:02
Speaker 13: That's great if true, that's that's fantastic. There's also you know,
30:07
Speaker 13: there's also something called military deception, which plays a role
30:11
Speaker 13: in war and and we're seeing that as well. There
30:15
Speaker 13: was a video shared on social media yesterday of I
30:20
Speaker 13: don't know if it was US or the Israelis bombed
30:23
Speaker 13: what we thought was a helicopter, but it was actually
30:26
Speaker 13: the shadow of a helicopter painted into the ground. These
30:30
Speaker 13: are things that militaries do. Uh, that's pretty common actually.
30:34
Speaker 12: Uh, So they'll they'll be more of that.
30:37
Speaker 13: Assessments that are made from the United States and from Israel,
30:42
Speaker 13: from from you know, outside of Iran will change once
30:45
Speaker 13: once we get closer and we're able to see what
30:49
Speaker 13: we were right about, what we were not right about.
30:52
Speaker 12: And the enemy also is not destroyed right now. They're shifting.
30:57
Speaker 12: They're clever and uh and we're seeing.
31:00
Speaker 13: Them protect different sites, protect move certain things and certain
31:05
Speaker 13: people to other locations.
31:08
Speaker 3: Uh.
31:08
Speaker 12: And we'll see how that how that plays out.
31:10
Speaker 13: I've seen reporting I haven't seen it validated yet, but
31:14
Speaker 13: I've seen reporting that the some regime elements have been
31:17
Speaker 13: moving to schools and to hospitals. That's we saw Hamas
31:23
Speaker 13: doing that during the guys of war with Israel.
31:26
Speaker 6: Uh.
31:27
Speaker 13: And this is something that you know, the Iranian regime
31:31
Speaker 13: is a terrorist regime.
31:32
Speaker 12: I don't need to tell you.
31:33
Speaker 13: So the terrorists are are This is one of the
31:37
Speaker 13: things that they do. They want to drive draw fire
31:40
Speaker 13: to civilian location so then they can turn around and say, oh,
31:44
Speaker 13: look at the evil Americans.
31:46
Speaker 12: You know, bomb to school, bomb to hospital.
31:49
Speaker 3: Uh.
31:50
Speaker 13: You know, it just happened to be their new headquarters
31:52
Speaker 13: for their military operations.
31:54
Speaker 12: But let's leave that part out of the announcement.
31:57
Speaker 13: So that's that's something that unfortunately, uh is I'm sure
32:01
Speaker 13: that our leaders have planned for that.
32:03
Speaker 12: Uh, just like I'm sure that our leaders have planned
32:06
Speaker 12: for the day after.
32:07
Speaker 13: I know a lot of a lot of us are
32:09
Speaker 13: concerned about what happens, you know after we're asking people.
32:13
Speaker 5: To rise up the history.
32:16
Speaker 13: You know, our history with that has has been checkered
32:19
Speaker 13: at best. I I served, uh, I served in Iraq.
32:22
Speaker 13: My both of my brothers are were served in the
32:24
Speaker 13: Marine Corps in Iraq and Afghanistan. So I uh, I
32:28
Speaker 13: have a particular Uh.
32:31
Speaker 12: I think we all, I think a lot of us do.
32:33
Speaker 13: We're concerned about what comes next and what what do
32:36
Speaker 13: we have in mind? I believe there's a plan, and
32:40
Speaker 13: I also think that I know that the population of Iran,
32:45
Speaker 13: they have tried to rise up many, many, many times
32:48
Speaker 13: over the years. There have been many, uh there have
32:52
Speaker 13: been many demonstrations of different kinds. But there's been the
32:57
Speaker 13: Women Life Freedom, There's been the Green Movie. There's been
33:02
Speaker 13: this new round of protests where tens of thousands of
33:07
Speaker 13: Iranians have been killed in the process.
33:09
Speaker 12: So the desire is there, but they.
33:12
Speaker 13: Have it's been impossible for them to overcome the uses.
33:16
Speaker 2: And with the iron absolutely here, here might be their
33:19
Speaker 2: first real chance. Simone Ledein at the Strauss Center, wonderful
33:23
Speaker 2: time spent with you man. Thank you so much for
33:24
Speaker 2: your wisdom and your insights. Mark Davis, looking for your
33:27
Speaker 2: wisdom and insights. One one hundred and five to two
33:29
Speaker 2: oh one two three four. We'll wedge you between some
33:31
Speaker 2: of these guests that we are enjoying today. On this Wednesday,
33:34
Speaker 2: March fourth, you Uit Shoe will continue on the Salem
33:36
Speaker 2: Radio Network and Salem News Channel. It is Wednesday, it
33:51
Speaker 2: is the fourth of March twenty twenty six, and if
33:55
Speaker 2: the video gods are smiling, we're going to go straight
33:57
Speaker 2: to Tel Aviv, where it is about twenty after eleven.
34:01
Speaker 2: If I'm doing my time zones right for a visit
34:03
Speaker 2: with a gentleman who we value, you is value? Do
34:07
Speaker 2: I have valued talking to him when I'm guest hosting,
34:09
Speaker 2: listening to him when I'm driving around Ambassador doctor Michael Oran. Well,
34:12
Speaker 2: they'll give me the heads up here on that. But
34:15
Speaker 2: I was watching ambassador or an interviewed I think it
34:18
Speaker 2: was on Fox News over the weekend or something, when
34:21
Speaker 2: the missiles were just beginning to fly, and he had
34:24
Speaker 2: his phone with him, just as I have mine here
34:27
Speaker 2: with me, and I know, and then his phone goes off,
34:31
Speaker 2: and that's hey, it might be time to head to
34:33
Speaker 2: a bomb shelter. I have had the great gift of
34:37
Speaker 2: going to Israel one time, and it's made me want
34:40
Speaker 2: to go back twenty times, and I will indeed get
34:42
Speaker 2: around to it. It was in two thousand and three.
34:45
Speaker 2: It was a time of particular tension. The Jewish Community
34:48
Speaker 2: Relations Council here in Dallas helped me go over there
34:51
Speaker 2: and do a week of shows from Jerusalem. And I mean,
34:56
Speaker 2: I was a supporter of Israel before I went obvious
34:59
Speaker 2: supporter of Israel after I came back. Going to Israel
35:01
Speaker 2: didn't make me a supporter of Israel. It may be
35:04
Speaker 2: a smarter supporter of Israel. It gave me. It gave
35:08
Speaker 2: me experiences that we would all do well to understand,
35:11
Speaker 2: because we in America don't want to live under a
35:13
Speaker 2: threat of our phones going off, that maybe there's an
35:16
Speaker 2: Iranian missile heading toward us in Texas, heading toward us
35:19
Speaker 2: in New York. Ambassador Michael Lauren is here, Doctor ra
35:21
Speaker 2: and Mark Davison for you. So nice to have you.
35:23
Speaker 14: How you doing, sir, Good to be with you, Mark,
35:26
Speaker 14: Good to be that we're up and run here.
35:28
Speaker 3: Not many missiles tonight, only a few.
35:31
Speaker 2: Recounting having watched you in a previous interview a couple
35:33
Speaker 2: of days ago where your phone literally did go off
35:36
Speaker 2: you like, you know, it's like, hey, we have to
35:38
Speaker 2: put on the helmets and hit the bomb shelter. That
35:40
Speaker 2: is the reality of having Iran as a neighbor. I
35:44
Speaker 2: know it's a tense few days, but can you feel
35:47
Speaker 2: that we're on a continuum where you and everyone in Israel,
35:50
Speaker 2: and in fact everyone in the Middle East will indeed
35:53
Speaker 2: be safer within weeks.
35:57
Speaker 14: Well, I say you, I'm going to quote an imminent
35:59
Speaker 14: source for my cab driver. It's really cab drivers are
36:03
Speaker 14: very our unique brand. By the way, we all listen
36:06
Speaker 14: to them, we all quote them, and it's simply is this.
36:08
Speaker 14: He said, we're not living during historical times. We're living
36:10
Speaker 14: during biblical times. And I think it's true. What we're
36:14
Speaker 14: living through is something that nobody ever imagined. Not only
36:18
Speaker 14: is the Iranan regime, you know, sort of on its
36:20
Speaker 14: hind legs here, and the missiles have gone down about
36:23
Speaker 14: two weeks ago, two days ago, we were going to
36:25
Speaker 14: the bomb shelter about thirty times a day. Now it's
36:28
Speaker 14: only about five to seven.
36:29
Speaker 3: Times a day. But that's just the beginning of it.
36:32
Speaker 14: It's the fact that Arab countries, beginning with Katar this evening,
36:37
Speaker 14: to be followed by other Arab acaders, are joining in
36:40
Speaker 14: the fight on Israel's side against the Islamic Republic of Iran.
36:45
Speaker 14: And who would have imagined such a thing? Who would
36:48
Speaker 14: have imagined that? The United States tonight and israel I
36:52
Speaker 14: just listened to Secretary of War Hegseth talking about his
36:55
Speaker 14: alliance with Israel. How were the ideal allies, the strongest allies.
36:58
Speaker 3: That America has in the world, world.
37:00
Speaker 14: These are biblical times, and we've just celebrated a Jewish
37:04
Speaker 14: holiday forum where we remember going up against a Persian
37:08
Speaker 14: evil ruler who tried to kill us and we won.
37:12
Speaker 14: So this is quite a remarkable period for the state
37:14
Speaker 14: of Israel.
37:15
Speaker 2: I can only imagine. And you're the perfect person to
37:18
Speaker 2: help us navigate something where some people still need a
37:21
Speaker 2: little bit of help in understanding how allies work and
37:25
Speaker 2: how they often speak with the same voice and sometimes
37:28
Speaker 2: the same heart beats within a shared chest. And here's
37:31
Speaker 2: what I mean. It's what Marco Rubio had to work
37:34
Speaker 2: his way through there in the last forty eight hours,
37:36
Speaker 2: the notion of who went first, whose idea was it first?
37:40
Speaker 2: Did Israel come up with the idea that it's go
37:43
Speaker 2: time to take out the Iranian regime? And did that
37:45
Speaker 2: mean that America was just kind of riding shotgun and
37:48
Speaker 2: letting Israel lead us around by the nose? Marco Rubio
37:52
Speaker 2: exploded that myth. But I'd like your take on that
37:55
Speaker 2: myth and why you think it was pervasive.
37:59
Speaker 3: I think that the question is moot to you.
38:01
Speaker 14: The frankly, you know, who got who into the war
38:04
Speaker 14: first is actually irrelevant.
38:07
Speaker 3: The important point is that the Prime.
38:08
Speaker 14: Minister and this now went to the President last February
38:11
Speaker 14: and said, listen, Iran has completely rebuilt, it rebuilt its
38:15
Speaker 14: ballistic missics program. Each one of these missiles takes down
38:18
Speaker 14: not an apartment building, but an entire neighborhood. Iran is
38:21
Speaker 14: trying to get thirty thousand of these rockets. They get
38:23
Speaker 14: thirty thousands of rockets, Israel will not be able to
38:25
Speaker 14: stop Iran from making a nuclear weapon. It will not
38:27
Speaker 14: be able to stop Iran from supporting terror that is
38:31
Speaker 14: trying to destroy us on our borders.
38:34
Speaker 3: We have to interdict.
38:36
Speaker 14: We have to preempt this ballistic missile threat before it
38:39
Speaker 14: gets out of hand.
38:40
Speaker 3: It'll be too late.
38:41
Speaker 14: And the President said to the Prime Minister, Okay, I
38:44
Speaker 14: understand that you've got a green light from me.
38:46
Speaker 3: So Israel, at some point, what's going to act.
38:49
Speaker 14: And you can guarantee that when Israel did act, the
38:51
Speaker 14: Iranians would take with extract vengeance not against just the
38:54
Speaker 14: State of Israel, but also against the United States. So
38:56
Speaker 14: it's kind of a mood point. Who went first. I'm
38:59
Speaker 14: willing to believe what the President said that he was
39:01
Speaker 14: the one who acted first. Israel followed at the end
39:05
Speaker 14: of the day, it doesn't matter. We are allies where
39:07
Speaker 14: allies in the fullest sense of the world, and allies
39:09
Speaker 14: stand up for one another. And when President Trump saw
39:12
Speaker 14: that his ally was facing a potentially existential threat from Iran,
39:16
Speaker 14: he gave us full backing.
39:18
Speaker 2: Next thing, that's kind of a from the diplomatic lexicon.
39:21
Speaker 2: How can an operation be very very much about regime
39:24
Speaker 2: change and not be a dreaded regime change war that
39:29
Speaker 2: is such a bugaboo these days.
39:32
Speaker 14: Well, it seems to me that in my father's generation
39:35
Speaker 14: Americans fought a very successful regime change war, in fact,
39:38
Speaker 14: to regime change war, once against Nazi Germany, once against
39:41
Speaker 14: Imperial Japan.
39:42
Speaker 3: So you know, regime I've got a bad name.
39:45
Speaker 14: I guess because of Iraq, But doesn't mean it.
39:47
Speaker 3: Hasn't worked all the time.
39:48
Speaker 14: It seems in the Civil War there was also maybe
39:50
Speaker 14: I shouldn't say this in Texas, but there was also
39:51
Speaker 14: a regime change in the Civil War too, It wasn't there, Mark, Yes,
39:55
Speaker 14: So in Texas I tread lightly and that, you know,
40:03
Speaker 14: it's kind of bad. That doesn't mean the regime change
40:05
Speaker 14: is going to happen here. Because the regime change here
40:06
Speaker 14: because there are no boots on the ground, least not
40:08
Speaker 14: a massive amount of boots. It has to come from
40:10
Speaker 14: the Iranian people themselves, and I think that the White
40:13
Speaker 14: House and Israel leadership are are in agreement on that.
40:16
Speaker 14: And we cannot, you know, forge the Iranian the RUnni
40:20
Speaker 14: people's destiny for themselves, but we can facilitate their ability
40:23
Speaker 14: to forge it for themselves, which is what we're happening
40:26
Speaker 14: here now. Barring that, there are very concrete goals in
40:29
Speaker 14: this war. That is, to prevent Iran from getting nuclear weapons,
40:31
Speaker 14: to prevent Iran from getting a ballistic missile capacity that
40:34
Speaker 14: will threaten US and other neighbors, and to stop and
40:37
Speaker 14: running and support for terror. Those are three very solid
40:40
Speaker 14: goals that make perfect, perfect sense, fully justified, and I
40:44
Speaker 14: can't imagine any logical person anywhere saying that these that
40:48
Speaker 14: the United Stations and Israel are not justified and seeking
40:50
Speaker 14: those goals.
40:51
Speaker 2: I hope it is the most peaceful of knights in
40:53
Speaker 2: Tel Aviv, with many more to follow, Doctor Michael laur
40:56
Speaker 2: And I'm joy to talk to you, Thank you, sir,
40:57
Speaker 2: and thank you for being with us on exit. Doctor
41:00
Speaker 2: Michael orn O, r E and former Israeli ambassador to
41:04
Speaker 2: the United States. So that was a great explanation because
41:08
Speaker 2: and by the way, I have a lot of latitude
41:10
Speaker 2: that I give to a lot of people calls to
41:12
Speaker 2: the show that I host here on six sixty Am
41:14
Speaker 2: The Answer in Dallas Fort Worth, whenever I'm hanging out
41:16
Speaker 2: here along the Salem Radio Network and Salem News Channel platforms,
41:20
Speaker 2: taking calls from people just sort of on the fly,
41:23
Speaker 2: and if anybody wonders about something or if they're just
41:26
Speaker 2: getting because this is not everybody has the opportunity to
41:28
Speaker 2: dive in and do deep dives into every angle of
41:31
Speaker 2: the news and listen to forty seven interviews every day.
41:33
Speaker 2: And if somebody did get sort of hog tied around
41:37
Speaker 2: this notion of you know, was it preemptive? Was there
41:40
Speaker 2: something that was about to happen? Did the thing I
41:42
Speaker 2: want to leave you with in this segment. There did
41:45
Speaker 2: not need to be a finger hovering above the button
41:47
Speaker 2: or an Iranian mullow with a finger poised above the
41:50
Speaker 2: button to justify this operation. This was an operation whose
41:54
Speaker 2: time had come. Here's a break whose time has come.
41:58
Speaker 2: And then the more of your thoughts and more a
41:59
Speaker 2: guest and more things to talk about when we come back.
42:02
Speaker 2: Mark Davison for you, Mark Davison for Hugh HEWITTT On
42:06
Speaker 2: this Wednesday, the fourth day of March. You is back tomorrow.
42:08
Speaker 2: What a pleasure it is today, especially with just the
42:10
Speaker 2: litany of wonderful people that we get to talk to.
42:13
Speaker 2: Let's head over to n our own National Review Online
42:16
Speaker 2: editor Philip Klein is here. Phil. Welcome sir, How you doing.
42:22
Speaker 5: Doing okay?
42:23
Speaker 3: How are you?
42:23
Speaker 5: Thanks for having me.
42:24
Speaker 2: Man Tazzy is a joy to have you. So anytime
42:27
Speaker 2: I'm in for you or even on my own show
42:29
Speaker 2: and I'm about to talk to somebody, I always figure
42:31
Speaker 2: it's kind of a stream of consciousness to see the
42:33
Speaker 2: kinds of things that they have been posting. So do
42:37
Speaker 2: me a favor, peel back to curtain, if you will,
42:38
Speaker 2: because you've been paying a lot of attention to what
42:41
Speaker 2: people have been saying about Steve Whitcoff, the negotiations that
42:46
Speaker 2: he's been a vital part of, and just sort of
42:49
Speaker 2: the moving parts of how all of this has come about.
42:52
Speaker 2: And then we'll just sort of go in a flow
42:54
Speaker 2: chart from there.
42:57
Speaker 15: Yeah, I mean, it's pretty a remarkable because Steve Whitkoff
43:01
Speaker 15: throughout this process. Throughout Trump's presidency has been seen as
43:05
Speaker 15: the kind of soft liner, the person who's.
43:08
Speaker 5: Always been sent out there to cut the deal.
43:12
Speaker 15: So it was kind of surprising for him to say
43:15
Speaker 15: that when he sat down for him and Jared Kushner
43:21
Speaker 15: sat down for their meeting with the Iranians, that was
43:26
Speaker 15: right before Trump made the final decision to authorize the attack.
43:33
Speaker 15: That in that meeting, the Iranian negotiators apparently came in
43:39
Speaker 15: and said that they had enough in Richmond to give
43:43
Speaker 15: to make eleven bombs, and that they didn't want to
43:46
Speaker 15: give up in Richmond, and that was that's their starting point,
43:51
Speaker 15: and that when wit Gooff relayed that to President Trump,
43:56
Speaker 15: he was sort of done with the talking at that point.
44:00
Speaker 5: Now, as we I mean, it's possible.
44:03
Speaker 15: That that was just Iran trying to boast because as
44:09
Speaker 15: we know, they were hit hard.
44:12
Speaker 5: Last June in an.
44:14
Speaker 15: Israeli operation that America joined at the tail end to
44:19
Speaker 15: deliver a huge strike to its fort Ouse.
44:24
Speaker 5: Facility, which is the sort.
44:26
Speaker 15: Of heavily fortified bunker facility in the mountain region of Iran.
44:32
Speaker 5: And so you Trump had said it was obliterated. So
44:39
Speaker 5: it's quite possible.
44:40
Speaker 15: That both things are true that it was deeply devastated,
44:44
Speaker 15: but that Iran was at least boasting that they had
44:49
Speaker 15: all of this material. Maybe it was material that they
44:53
Speaker 15: had hid somewhere that was previously enriched, or perhaps they
44:59
Speaker 15: were just lying to just sort of act you defiant,
45:04
Speaker 15: But either way, it sort of clearly demonstrated to Trump
45:10
Speaker 15: that there was no cutting a deal with them, that
45:13
Speaker 15: no deal would be a deal that would be something
45:18
Speaker 15: that Trump was prepared to live with.
45:21
Speaker 2: That is touching on that takes me exactly where I
45:24
Speaker 2: wanted to go, because so many people have said, hey,
45:26
Speaker 2: you crazy conservatives. All of a sudden, you people who
45:29
Speaker 2: voted for Trump because you didn't want any new wars,
45:31
Speaker 2: Now all of a sudden you're talking about, Hey, this
45:33
Speaker 2: has been terrible for forty seven years. Why didn't you
45:36
Speaker 2: call for it five years ago? Why didn't you call
45:38
Speaker 2: for it ten years ago? First of all, some people did,
45:41
Speaker 2: but I think the reason is nobody dreamed it was possible.
45:44
Speaker 2: Trump is redefining what is on the table, what's within
45:47
Speaker 2: the overtin window. One might say, we now have a
45:50
Speaker 2: president willing to take this kind of bold action. We
45:53
Speaker 2: pray that it works out well. I think every American
45:56
Speaker 2: should hope that it works out well. But what is
45:58
Speaker 2: your thought about my brief riff there on the notion
46:01
Speaker 2: of people who have suddenly been brought to an appreciation
46:05
Speaker 2: for interventionism.
46:07
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean, look, I think that a lot of
46:10
Speaker 5: stuff that Trump said a lot of different.
46:14
Speaker 15: Things, and I think we backed up sort of to
46:17
Speaker 15: where conservatives were laid Obama era after.
46:25
Speaker 5: Conservatives had seen what had happened.
46:27
Speaker 15: During the Bush era and what had happened to the
46:31
Speaker 15: Obama era.
46:32
Speaker 5: And Trump clearly didn't like either approach.
46:35
Speaker 15: He didn't like the sort of vast wars where there
46:40
Speaker 15: was we were stuck there for decades, it cost trillions
46:43
Speaker 15: of dollars, and we tried to do democracy promotion and
46:47
Speaker 15: nation building.
46:48
Speaker 5: He was clearly not on board with that. But clearly he.
46:52
Speaker 15: Thought that Obama was let America be stepped on all
46:57
Speaker 15: the time, and so a lot and so he clearly
47:02
Speaker 15: was talking about, you know, bombing the blank out of Isis,
47:07
Speaker 15: he was talking about water boring terrorists.
47:11
Speaker 5: He was no sort of.
47:13
Speaker 15: Buchananite on foreign policy, and I think people took some
47:18
Speaker 15: of his criticism of Iraq war and sort of dumb
47:22
Speaker 15: endless forever wars and assumed that he agreed with the
47:27
Speaker 15: sort of non interventionist for Strainer's isolationists.
47:31
Speaker 5: Buchananies, whatever term you want to give them.
47:33
Speaker 15: But people thought that he was on the same page
47:38
Speaker 15: as they were. But Trump, I mean, you could go
47:41
Speaker 15: back to even before he was a candidate for anything,
47:44
Speaker 15: talking about how Iran couldn't be allowed to get a
47:47
Speaker 15: nuclear weapon.
47:49
Speaker 5: He was very critical.
47:51
Speaker 15: Of Obama's negotiations with Iran and the deal that was
47:55
Speaker 15: cut with Iran. He said many occasions, Iran could never
47:59
Speaker 15: get a nuclear weapon, and what happened clearly, I think
48:03
Speaker 15: Mark Arubio the other day did a good job of
48:06
Speaker 15: sort of suctinctly explaining what the issue was here that
48:11
Speaker 15: prompted the action. It's not necessarily that right now they
48:16
Speaker 15: were weeks away from a nuclear weapon, but the issue
48:21
Speaker 15: was that they were building up their ballistic missile.
48:26
Speaker 5: And drone program.
48:28
Speaker 15: And he, according to what Mark Arrubio said, they were
48:32
Speaker 15: building one hundred ballistic missiles a month, whereas we could
48:37
Speaker 15: only produce six or seven missile interceptors a month. And
48:41
Speaker 15: so what their plan was was to build up a
48:44
Speaker 15: vast arsenal of ballistic missiles and drones.
48:50
Speaker 5: That they could use as a shield.
48:52
Speaker 15: To effectively grant them immunity to go back to build
48:56
Speaker 15: rebuilding their nuclear program. If they had a large enough
49:01
Speaker 15: stock of doing of ballistic missiles, then the costs of
49:08
Speaker 15: striking them would be much higher.
49:11
Speaker 2: And you know, one could almost ask why, we could
49:17
Speaker 2: ask how long are we supposed to wait? Precisely Philip Prime,
49:20
Speaker 2: news at a National Review Online editor at NRO, author
49:23
Speaker 2: of Fear of Your Future. Thanks so much, Phil Klein
49:26
Speaker 2: there at NRO. Appreciate you, and we're going to come
49:28
Speaker 2: back talk a little bit some breaking news. The Senate
49:30
Speaker 2: has failed to pass a war powers resolution. Details next.
49:34
Speaker 2: Mark Davison for u UIT, Salem News Channel, Salem Radio
49:36
Speaker 2: Network and our number three, our final hour together on
49:41
Speaker 2: the Wednesday h Hewitt Show, and what a broadcast it
49:44
Speaker 2: has been. Mark Davison for you, who is back tomorrow?
49:48
Speaker 2: I Junior here in the building or the Salem News
49:50
Speaker 2: Channel and the Salem Radio Network have their headquarters, and
49:53
Speaker 2: where my happy little morning show happens each morning on
49:55
Speaker 2: six sixty am, the answer and where I always enjoy
49:58
Speaker 2: finishing up and going about my business and listening to
50:01
Speaker 2: Hugh Hewitt in the afternoons and showing up to do
50:04
Speaker 2: the show whenever the bat signal hits the sky and
50:06
Speaker 2: they want me to come in. It's always a pleasure
50:08
Speaker 2: to be here to talk to you, to riff on
50:11
Speaker 2: a few things that are making news. The War Powers
50:14
Speaker 2: resolution in the Senate has apparently failed. Will there be
50:18
Speaker 2: one in the house. Let's talk about all these things
50:20
Speaker 2: through this hour with a number of great guests. Michael
50:22
Speaker 2: dorn Is, the Senior Fellow and Director of the Center
50:25
Speaker 2: for Peace and Security in the Middle East. Mike, pleasure
50:27
Speaker 2: to have you.
50:27
Speaker 7: How you doing, sir, Oh great, great to be here.
50:31
Speaker 7: Thank you.
50:32
Speaker 2: It's a real pleasure. Listen. I always ask, with all
50:34
Speaker 2: the great interviews we've done, I kind of like to
50:37
Speaker 2: open at the wide end of the funnel and ask
50:39
Speaker 2: if there's anything that jumps out at you from these
50:42
Speaker 2: opening days of Operation Epic Fury, that is the most
50:45
Speaker 2: important what is Is there anything that the public is
50:47
Speaker 2: not getting? Is there something you'd like to see get
50:50
Speaker 2: more attention? How's it all working out for you? Well?
50:54
Speaker 16: I think the public is getting the main story, which
50:57
Speaker 16: is just that this has been a phenomenally success full
51:01
Speaker 16: military operation at a level of unprecedented cooperation between Israel
51:07
Speaker 16: and the United States.
51:08
Speaker 7: We've never seen this before. They're operating together.
51:10
Speaker 16: Like one military and the two of us together are
51:14
Speaker 16: a lot stronger.
51:15
Speaker 7: So basically, so far, it's a good news story. I
51:19
Speaker 7: am a little.
51:21
Speaker 16: Part of my job as a Middle East analyst and
51:25
Speaker 16: these situations is to remind everybody when things are going
51:28
Speaker 16: really well militarily that the real the hardest challenge in
51:32
Speaker 16: these situations is to translate military victory into lasting political change.
51:38
Speaker 7: We have some challenges there.
51:39
Speaker 16: But that's not meant in any way to criticize what's happening.
51:43
Speaker 16: I think it's a phenomenally successful operation.
51:46
Speaker 2: It is after midnight in the Middle East, and you
51:48
Speaker 2: noticed on your own Twitter feed Door animated, which is fantastic.
51:51
Speaker 2: Love that title. Tonight, you say twice in one hour
51:54
Speaker 2: Israel attacked has Bola targets in Beirut. What do you
51:58
Speaker 2: make of the the geographic breadth of some of the
52:02
Speaker 2: Israeli operation.
52:05
Speaker 16: Well, this is a war not just against the Iranians,
52:10
Speaker 16: but their entire network, which of course includes his Bela Hamas,
52:14
Speaker 16: the Houthis militias in militias in Iraq.
52:19
Speaker 7: I'm sorry, I just got a call coming through. I
52:21
Speaker 7: don't know if you heard that, Uh.
52:24
Speaker 16: And the Israelis have been frustrated, as I was just
52:28
Speaker 16: saying about their inability or the difficulty they've been having
52:31
Speaker 16: translating their military success in Lebanon into a lasting political change.
52:36
Speaker 7: His Billah is trying to come back.
52:38
Speaker 16: It wants to grow its capabilities again with the help
52:41
Speaker 16: of the Iranians, and they're using this opportunity.
52:44
Speaker 7: To try to put his Billah back in his box.
52:50
Speaker 2: Is there a Muslim nation that is to be spared
52:54
Speaker 2: from this odd conniption fit that Iron is throwing. Earlier
52:58
Speaker 2: about about seven or eight hours ago, apparently over Turkish airspace,
53:03
Speaker 2: an Iranian missile was like headed for istanbuler Ankorra or
53:07
Speaker 2: something like that, and the Turks of worn the Iranians
53:09
Speaker 2: that they will respond to such attacks. Help help me
53:13
Speaker 2: understand the universe in which it makes sense for Iran
53:16
Speaker 2: to drive just about everybody into our camp.
53:21
Speaker 16: Well, there there is a method to this madness, although
53:24
Speaker 16: I have to say that that one surprised me. But
53:28
Speaker 16: there is a method here, and that one of the
53:30
Speaker 16: one element of the regionalization strategy of the Iranians is
53:36
Speaker 16: just to force the United States to burn in its
53:38
Speaker 16: allies to burn through interceptors. There's a global you know,
53:43
Speaker 16: there's a finite number of interceptors, and that the Iranians
53:47
Speaker 16: have more missiles than we have interceptors to uh to
53:51
Speaker 16: take them down. And as part of their strategy of
53:53
Speaker 16: waiting out the Americans, they want to put pressure on them.
53:56
Speaker 16: They want they want our stockpiles to run to run short,
54:00
Speaker 16: and so they're doing this to a certain degree on purpose.
54:05
Speaker 16: They also want to bring maximum diplomatic and political pressure
54:09
Speaker 16: to bear on Donald Trump. The calculation is that the
54:13
Speaker 16: Turks don't want to be drawn into this, and they
54:18
Speaker 16: will be angered by what the Iranians are doing in
54:20
Speaker 16: the short term, but in the long run they they'll
54:23
Speaker 16: put pressure on Donald Trump to bring this to an
54:25
Speaker 16: end sooner rather than later.
54:27
Speaker 2: Let's talk a little bit about pressure of another type.
54:29
Speaker 2: I can only imagine, and I've not been in the
54:32
Speaker 2: habit of trying to sort of channel the Chinese or
54:35
Speaker 2: figure out to be a whisperer for them. I mean,
54:38
Speaker 2: I understand the basic logic of the CCP and a
54:42
Speaker 2: communist regime and their global positioning. But if you'd have
54:46
Speaker 2: told me six months ago we're going to do something
54:48
Speaker 2: really aggressive about Iran. I would have expected a lot
54:51
Speaker 2: of Russian pushback, an enormous amount of Chinese pushback. How
54:57
Speaker 2: do you explain the fact that it's almost the Chinese
55:00
Speaker 2: seem very nearly compliant, apparently willing to offer to sort
55:05
Speaker 2: of negotiate a lowering of the temperature. What is going
55:08
Speaker 2: on in China.
55:11
Speaker 16: Well, the Chinese have always stayed one step removed from
55:14
Speaker 16: these conflicts in the Middle East. They benefit from them greatly,
55:18
Speaker 16: and they benefit from building up the Iranians.
55:20
Speaker 7: They have a vested interest here in the regime.
55:24
Speaker 16: They are very very significant supporters of Iran's ballistic missile program.
55:31
Speaker 16: They provide targeting data to the Houthis. For example, there
55:36
Speaker 16: are only two entities in the world that have anti
55:39
Speaker 16: ship ballistic missiles. That is a weapon that is designed
55:43
Speaker 16: for one thing and one thing only, and that is
55:46
Speaker 16: to attack American aircraft carriers when they are maneuvering in
55:49
Speaker 16: confined waterways. And those two entities are the Chinese and
55:54
Speaker 16: the Houthis. And so they're following all of the Houthi
55:57
Speaker 16: activities very closely.
55:59
Speaker 7: They're supporting them through the Iranians with.
56:04
Speaker 16: Component parts for the missiles and and some of the
56:08
Speaker 16: chemicals needed to build solid fuel, propellant.
56:12
Speaker 8: And so on.
56:14
Speaker 16: So the Chinese are there in the background. They're also
56:17
Speaker 16: buying Iranian oil at a steep discount. They benefit from
56:20
Speaker 16: that greatly, but they are always reluctant to get.
56:23
Speaker 7: Directly involved in these conflicts.
56:25
Speaker 16: So what they want to see right now is they
56:27
Speaker 16: just want to see the conflict come to an end
56:30
Speaker 16: and the regimes survive so that they can again rebuild
56:34
Speaker 16: their missile program in a way that will benefit the Chinese,
56:37
Speaker 16: and that.
56:37
Speaker 7: They will sell their oil to the Chinese.
56:39
Speaker 2: Last thing, I'm glad to get it to fit this
56:41
Speaker 2: in in a world filled with people who very understandably say,
56:44
Speaker 2: I have no idea how this is going to work out.
56:46
Speaker 2: I have no crystal ball, and let the game come
56:48
Speaker 2: to me. I have no idea. Not twenty four hours ago,
56:51
Speaker 2: you wrote a piece called Trump's Endgame, in which you
56:54
Speaker 2: take a look at your tea leaves and give it
56:57
Speaker 2: and share a little bit about how you think this
56:59
Speaker 2: all played out. So please share with the class.
57:03
Speaker 16: I think that Donald Trump, in let's say about a week,
57:08
Speaker 16: maybe a few days less, maybe a few days more,
57:11
Speaker 16: I think he will declare victory, and he will begin
57:13
Speaker 16: negotiating with the regime about ballistic missiles and the nuclear
57:18
Speaker 16: program and support for proxies. And I think he will
57:21
Speaker 16: move away from support for revolution in Iran. He doesn't
57:25
Speaker 16: want a huge revolution, could turn into civil war. It
57:28
Speaker 16: could then turn into a problem that can't be managed
57:30
Speaker 16: for many years. He's going to run over the Iranians
57:37
Speaker 16: with a herd of elephants and then prop him up
57:39
Speaker 16: a little bit and try to see if he can
57:40
Speaker 16: cut a deal with him. We can argue about whether
57:43
Speaker 16: that's the wisest way to go about it or unwise,
57:45
Speaker 16: but that's what I think he's going to do.
57:46
Speaker 2: Well. There are no solutions, there are only trade offs,
57:48
Speaker 2: and that may be less satisfying to the gut than
57:51
Speaker 2: hanging in there and then watching American flags and Iranian
57:54
Speaker 2: flags as they build statues to Donald Trump. We may
57:57
Speaker 2: get to that point, but what you've described I think
57:59
Speaker 2: may accentuate the positives and eliminate the negatives. As the
58:03
Speaker 2: old song lyric goes, Mike Doran, thank you so much,
58:05
Speaker 2: thanks for all you do. Pleasure to spend time with
58:08
Speaker 2: you today. Thank you, sir, thank you. We are in
58:12
Speaker 2: what we call the home stretch, the final half hour
58:14
Speaker 2: of the Wednesday Hu Hewitt Show, Mark Davis in for You,
58:17
Speaker 2: who returns tomorrow. Gee, what will he talk about? We've
58:20
Speaker 2: just settled everything happening. That's the way it goes around here.
58:23
Speaker 2: Every day is a fresh gift of stuff for all
58:26
Speaker 2: the hosts to talk about. Hugh will return tomorrow. It's
58:28
Speaker 2: been a joy being here with you, Mark Davis in
58:31
Speaker 2: for You again on the Salem News Channel and the
58:34
Speaker 2: Salem Radio Network. Following me in the world of X
58:36
Speaker 2: at Mark Davis, Mark Davis, And it's funny. I don't
58:39
Speaker 2: know if I'm like always here on Wednesday, but it
58:40
Speaker 2: seems like talk about a great development. Seems like I'm
58:44
Speaker 2: talking to Sarah Bedford all the time, and it's a
58:46
Speaker 2: real pleasure to do so. She's the investigations editor for
58:48
Speaker 2: DC Examiner. Hello, Hello again, Sarah. Nice to be in
58:51
Speaker 2: to talk to you. How you doing.
58:54
Speaker 9: Hello, Thanks for having me.
58:55
Speaker 2: So this is actually quite the palette cleanser. We have
58:59
Speaker 2: been so steeped in Iran. I've thrown everybody some thoughts
59:03
Speaker 2: about Cornyn and Paxton and the Senate primary in my state.
59:08
Speaker 2: I want to go into some of what you've been
59:10
Speaker 2: paying some attention to and the kind of things that
59:12
Speaker 2: tend to be your cup of tea. Help me with
59:14
Speaker 2: something that was a story, seemed like a big story
59:17
Speaker 2: a couple of a few days ago, and then I
59:20
Speaker 2: don't know if it vanished or whatever. The notion of
59:23
Speaker 2: the Biden FBI secretly obtaining Susie Wiles's phone records other
59:29
Speaker 2: people's phone records. Did that happen and what should come of.
59:34
Speaker 9: That that did happen? We learned from the House Judiciary Committee,
59:40
Speaker 9: who obtained documents from the Justice Department that under Biden,
59:44
Speaker 9: FBI was being even more aggressive in surveilling conservatives and
59:48
Speaker 9: people associated with Donald Trump's twenty twenty four campaign. Then
59:52
Speaker 9: we even knew.
59:53
Speaker 5: And I think one.
59:54
Speaker 9: Of the reasons why stuff like this doesn't break through
59:57
Speaker 9: is because people have sort of largely accepted that the
59:59
Speaker 9: FBI was aggressively going after Donald Trump, but because he
1:00:03
Speaker 9: won re election, people are, I guess, sort of willing
1:00:07
Speaker 9: to write that off. But it's a pretty serious thing
1:00:09
Speaker 9: that the FBI was able to go after the now
1:00:13
Speaker 9: FBI Director Cash Mattel and the now White House Chief
1:00:16
Speaker 9: of Staff Susie Wiles during the heat of a presidential campaign,
1:00:20
Speaker 9: and particularly in the case of Susie Wiles, who was
1:00:23
Speaker 9: not part of Donald Trump's first administration, it's not really
1:00:28
Speaker 9: clear why the Biden DOJ would have needed to see
1:00:32
Speaker 9: who she was calling and texting on her cell phone
1:00:36
Speaker 9: while she was running Trump's campaign. There were even reports
1:00:39
Speaker 9: that the FBI listened in on one of the phone
1:00:42
Speaker 9: calls that she had with her lawyers and claims the
1:00:45
Speaker 9: lawyer had given them consent, the lawyers denying that. So, yeah,
1:00:48
Speaker 9: it's really surprising that that hasn't broken through more. I
1:00:52
Speaker 9: guess it shouldn't be surprising in this day and age,
1:00:54
Speaker 9: but a shocking thing that happened under the Biden DOJ.
1:00:57
Speaker 2: EXE. Where is the bar set for surprise? I mean,
1:01:00
Speaker 2: we're at war. You'll have to alert me when something
1:01:03
Speaker 2: else happens. I don't know. I just all right, then,
1:01:05
Speaker 2: let's give this a try. You've been paying some attention
1:01:08
Speaker 2: to some House hearings, one in which the Governor of Minnesota,
1:01:12
Speaker 2: Tim Walls, didn't seem to remember when he first learned
1:01:15
Speaker 2: about the entire Feeding our Future fraud. And there was
1:01:18
Speaker 2: a pretty interesting exchange when the Attorney General of Minnesota,
1:01:21
Speaker 2: Keith Ellison was asked to explain his past comment that
1:01:25
Speaker 2: fraud I believe the quote is not a serious thing.
1:01:28
Speaker 2: How is that working for the Minnesotans.
1:01:33
Speaker 12: Well, it's not really working.
1:01:34
Speaker 9: I mean, it was sort of remarkable that Tim Walls,
1:01:37
Speaker 9: who has had months to prepare for this hearing. Obviously,
1:01:41
Speaker 9: fraud started becoming a scandal in Minnesota years ago, and
1:01:44
Speaker 9: in the past few months, not just a Minnesota scandal,
1:01:47
Speaker 9: but a national one, and Mark Walls came in unprepared
1:01:52
Speaker 9: to answer questions about how much federal money his state
1:01:56
Speaker 9: was allocating towards autism services, towards some of these nutrition programs,
1:02:01
Speaker 9: and the other social service programs that have been targeted
1:02:05
Speaker 9: by fraudsters, particularly in Minnesota, which had some pretty lax oversight,
1:02:10
Speaker 9: to put it charitably, of these types of programs. Walls
1:02:13
Speaker 9: didn't have any of those numbers. Wals didn't really have
1:02:17
Speaker 9: answers to any of those tough questions, like when he
1:02:19
Speaker 9: learned about the largest pandemic era fraud scandal in the
1:02:23
Speaker 9: entire country, which unfolded on his watch.
1:02:26
Speaker 12: There were some combative.
1:02:27
Speaker 9: Political bonent moments, but it's pretty clear that Walls and
1:02:30
Speaker 9: Ellison still don't really have answers for how so much
1:02:33
Speaker 9: money was able to be stolen during their administration.
1:02:39
Speaker 2: So, noticing a theme that could be put to some
1:02:42
Speaker 2: use both politically and practically, President Trump announced the establishment
1:02:46
Speaker 2: I believe. I don't know if this is on the
1:02:47
Speaker 2: business cards the Office of the Fraud Czar. Do we
1:02:53
Speaker 2: have enough fraud to occupy there their long in their
1:02:56
Speaker 2: long and busy days, and how might that even work?
1:03:00
Speaker 9: Yes, there's plenty of fraud. I mean, the dirty little
1:03:02
Speaker 9: secret is that this type of fraud is not limited
1:03:06
Speaker 9: to Minnesota, and it's not even limited just to Blues states.
1:03:10
Speaker 9: There's just not a ton of oversight over a lot
1:03:13
Speaker 9: of these programs, like programs under Medicaid for example, or
1:03:16
Speaker 9: other social services programs, will mostly rely on people attesting
1:03:21
Speaker 9: to their own details.
1:03:22
Speaker 12: So there's plenty of fraud to go around.
1:03:24
Speaker 2: Makes sense, Well, listen, and plenty of stories to go around,
1:03:26
Speaker 2: keeping you busy. Sarah Bedford, investigations editor for the DC Examitor,
1:03:30
Speaker 2: Thank you. It's always a pleasure to talk to you, Sarah,
1:03:32
Speaker 2: And if history is a prolog I will again soon
1:03:35
Speaker 2: at some point here on the Hugh Hewitt Show, Mark
1:03:37
Speaker 2: Davis filling in Salem News Channel, Salem Radio Network. We
1:03:40
Speaker 2: will continue.
1:03:41
Speaker 1: You've heard me talk a lot about Consumer Cellular how
1:03:43
Speaker 1: you can switch your carrier save money without the sacrifice.
1:03:46
Speaker 1: That's because Consumer Cellular uses the same towers as major carriers.
1:03:50
Speaker 1: Make the switch today and get twenty five dollars off
1:03:53
Speaker 1: at Consumer Cellular dot Com slash you if you're over fifty,
1:03:57
Speaker 1: get one line of unlimited talk, text and data for
1:03:59
Speaker 1: thirty five plus an additional five dollars per month off
1:04:02
Speaker 1: for the first five months. When you visit Consumer Cellular
1:04:05
Speaker 1: dot Com slash shoe, use the promo code Q twenty five.
1:04:09
Speaker 1: Consumer Cellular ranks number one for network coverage and consumer satisfaction.
1:04:13
Speaker 1: According to ACSL, You'll be working with an actual human
1:04:16
Speaker 1: being when you switch, based right here in the US,
1:04:19
Speaker 1: So get one line of unlimited talk, textan data for
1:04:22
Speaker 1: only thirty five dollars per month, plus an additional five
1:04:25
Speaker 1: dollars off per month for the first five months. Think
1:04:28
Speaker 1: of all the money you will save. Go to Consumer
1:04:30
Speaker 1: Seular dot Com slash Shoe promo Q twenty five or
1:04:35
Speaker 1: called one eight hundred and four to one one forty
1:04:37
Speaker 1: four fifty four. Consumer Cellular dot Com slash shoe. Clean
1:04:41
Speaker 1: water is not complicated, but it is essential. Without it,
1:04:44
Speaker 1: public health suffer, education declines, economic stability well it weakens
1:04:49
Speaker 1: if it doesn't collapse. Across Latin America and the Caribbean,
1:04:52
Speaker 1: families are facing that reality of unclean water every day.
1:04:57
Speaker 1: Mothers walk miles for clean water. Children are exp those
1:05:00
Speaker 1: preventable diseases because they haven't got it. Communities are held
1:05:03
Speaker 1: back by the absence of basic clean water access. But
1:05:06
Speaker 1: strategic compassion changes outcomes. Through food for the poor, your
1:05:11
Speaker 1: gift provides safe and living water, improving house strengthening communities,
1:05:16
Speaker 1: and supporting gospel centered transformation through trusted local partnerships. This
1:05:21
Speaker 1: is a measurable impact with lasting results. Your gift to
1:05:24
Speaker 1: fifty dollars ensures two people have safe and living water,
1:05:28
Speaker 1: or four one hundred dollars a family of four will
1:05:30
Speaker 1: be transformed for a year.
1:05:32
Speaker 2: I hope you act.
1:05:33
Speaker 17: Text Hewitt Hgwitt, that's Hewitt Hgwitt to five to one
1:05:39
Speaker 17: five fifty five, that's Hewett to fifty one five five five,
1:05:43
Speaker 17: or visit hewit dot com right now and click on
1:05:46
Speaker 17: the blue giving living Water banner at the top to
1:05:49
Speaker 17: provide living water today. And thank you.
1:06:08
Speaker 2: Precious minutes remain. We might have an opportunity to pop
1:06:11
Speaker 2: back on the phone with you at one one hundred
1:06:13
Speaker 2: and five two h one two three four in the
1:06:14
Speaker 2: final segment or here in our final quarter hour. But
1:06:17
Speaker 2: there is one more person making the list of wonderful
1:06:20
Speaker 2: folks that we've had the opportunity to talk to. Vice
1:06:23
Speaker 2: Chair of Public Interest Declassification, Adjunct Fellow at the Hudson Institute,
1:06:26
Speaker 2: Ezra Cohen, is here fresh off a plane or something.
1:06:30
Speaker 2: This was like down to the second, Ezra, welcome, It's
1:06:33
Speaker 2: so nice to have you, Mark Davison for you, welcome,
1:06:36
Speaker 2: good evening. Mark. So I've asked everybody the same very
1:06:40
Speaker 2: thirty thousand foot question from your perspective, paying attention to
1:06:43
Speaker 2: what you pay attention to, with a priority list of
1:06:45
Speaker 2: things that are important to you. How's this first week
1:06:47
Speaker 2: of epic fury working out for you? How is the
1:06:49
Speaker 2: world different? And how's it playing over here in the USA?
1:06:54
Speaker 18: Well, we were five days into this and we already
1:06:57
Speaker 18: have complete airs priority in Iran. But also, I mean,
1:07:03
Speaker 18: you know, I'll tell you other countries that perhaps were
1:07:07
Speaker 18: thinking of taking action that was against the US interest
1:07:10
Speaker 18: or definitely taking note here, and especially as the US
1:07:14
Speaker 18: just absolutely routes the Chinese military technology and hardware.
1:07:19
Speaker 8: That the Iranians were equipped with.
1:07:21
Speaker 18: I think it's sending a very very strong message to
1:07:24
Speaker 18: a lot of other countries around the world.
1:07:26
Speaker 2: There's something really timely about you being here right now,
1:07:29
Speaker 2: because I've been this is my second talk show of
1:07:31
Speaker 2: the day. I've talked to a lot of people, I've
1:07:32
Speaker 2: thought about a lot of things. I'm really in the
1:07:34
Speaker 2: mood to tie sort of a bow around things just
1:07:36
Speaker 2: for this calendar day. So help me out with this one.
1:07:40
Speaker 6: In a world.
1:07:41
Speaker 2: Where there are some people who seem isolationist, who didn't
1:07:44
Speaker 2: really want to do anything, and there are other people
1:07:46
Speaker 2: who are deeply concerned about a forever war, a quagmires
1:07:49
Speaker 2: being you know, boots on the ground for years. Isn't
1:07:52
Speaker 2: there a third way? Isn't there a way to navigate
1:07:54
Speaker 2: a wonderful in between space where we take a limited engagement,
1:07:59
Speaker 2: a limited action that is so decisive and so successful
1:08:02
Speaker 2: that he hits a reset button and things are recognizably
1:08:05
Speaker 2: better within months.
1:08:08
Speaker 18: Well, this is President Trump's doctrine, right, I mean, everybody
1:08:12
Speaker 18: and all of these you know, commentators online wanted to
1:08:15
Speaker 18: put him in one bucket or another. I mean, either
1:08:17
Speaker 18: he's an interventionalist or you know, he's an isolationist. The
1:08:20
Speaker 18: bottom line is the President Trump wants America to win,
1:08:23
Speaker 18: and he's only going to pick objectives that allow America
1:08:26
Speaker 18: to win. And we've seen this really from the beginning
1:08:28
Speaker 18: of his administration, whether you know most recently the Maduro raid,
1:08:32
Speaker 18: but the strike on the nuclear facilities last summer. All
1:08:37
Speaker 18: of these are discreete, well defined actions that based on
1:08:41
Speaker 18: you know, the military best military advice he's getting from
1:08:43
Speaker 18: Chairman Kine and Secretary of Hegseth, and he knows that
1:08:46
Speaker 18: these are things that the US is able to achieve
1:08:49
Speaker 18: and able to win. And you know, that's what he's
1:08:51
Speaker 18: focused on. So look, I think you're exactly right. He's not,
1:08:55
Speaker 18: you know, shooting for the moon or doing something unrealistic.
1:08:57
Speaker 18: He's just picking discrete, real lifes, stick objectives, and that's
1:09:01
Speaker 18: been his winning strategy and he's clearly sticking with it here.
1:09:04
Speaker 2: I've had one crystal ball that yielded a scenario where
1:09:09
Speaker 2: as soon as maybe a week or two, President Trump
1:09:12
Speaker 2: sort of pivots. He doesn't pull out or say okay,
1:09:15
Speaker 2: that's enough, but goes looking for maybe some element, some
1:09:19
Speaker 2: you know how transactional he could be. Yeah, and I
1:09:22
Speaker 2: know the Delsea Rodriguez of Tehran is a tricky Venezuelan
1:09:26
Speaker 2: comparison because I don't think there is one, but just
1:09:28
Speaker 2: some way to get to a phase that says, I'm
1:09:30
Speaker 2: looking for ways to manage the next chapter and not
1:09:34
Speaker 2: have it happen in a year.
1:09:38
Speaker 18: Well, look, and this is actually this started at the
1:09:41
Speaker 18: end of President Trump's first term. If you go back
1:09:44
Speaker 18: and look there there were a lot of critics saying, oh,
1:09:46
Speaker 18: President Trump's trying to start a war at the end
1:09:48
Speaker 18: of his first term. Actually, he was just trying to
1:09:51
Speaker 18: leave options for the next administration to make sure that
1:09:54
Speaker 18: this Iranian problem would not persist for many more generations
1:09:58
Speaker 18: to come. And I I think that's what he's trying
1:10:00
Speaker 18: to do here. He is trying to make sure that
1:10:03
Speaker 18: not only are we just going in and having this
1:10:05
Speaker 18: military victory, but he's going to he wants to leave
1:10:07
Speaker 18: a lasting situation in Iran that's going to be stable again.
1:10:11
Speaker 8: You know, we may not like you know who's there.
1:10:14
Speaker 18: She might not be perfect in Venezuela, but the bottom
1:10:16
Speaker 18: line is that it's much more stable and much more
1:10:19
Speaker 18: in the US interests than it was six months ago.
1:10:22
Speaker 8: And I think he's looking for the same type of.
1:10:23
Speaker 18: Thing in Iran. Now we're clearly not there yet. There's
1:10:26
Speaker 18: a lot more work that needs to be done that
1:10:28
Speaker 18: you know, as Secretary Hegseeth and Chairman Kane have said,
1:10:31
Speaker 18: this is a way more complex operation, certainly just in
1:10:35
Speaker 18: terms of the capability that the Iranians had.
1:10:37
Speaker 8: So it's going to take some time.
1:10:39
Speaker 18: But the President isn't looking to create you know, another
1:10:42
Speaker 18: Afghanistan or Libya, right. He wants to leave a very
1:10:46
Speaker 18: very stable, lasting situation where the US can actually have
1:10:50
Speaker 18: you know, positive relations with with the government that's left
1:10:53
Speaker 18: in place there.
1:10:54
Speaker 2: As ra Colan on Twitter on exs Ezra A Cohen
1:10:57
Speaker 2: and in going and paying a visit over there, I
1:10:59
Speaker 2: found a little chunk that you posted of your conversation
1:11:01
Speaker 2: I think just yesterday with the BBC. Do you get
1:11:05
Speaker 2: a feeling of not that the BBC represents all of
1:11:07
Speaker 2: Europe or even all of the UK. How did that
1:11:09
Speaker 2: conversation go of the people who just really don't like
1:11:13
Speaker 2: Trump in this country, around Europe and the UN and
1:11:15
Speaker 2: blah blah, blah blah blah. What kind of tone do
1:11:17
Speaker 2: they come at you with as you showed them a
1:11:20
Speaker 2: little bit of the logic that you're sharing with us.
1:11:23
Speaker 18: Well, you know, the BRIT's like to be provocative. You
1:11:26
Speaker 18: just have to remain very calm when you're dealing with them,
1:11:28
Speaker 18: and I think they don't expect that from most Americans,
1:11:30
Speaker 18: but you just remain calm. Look, the Europeans and especially
1:11:35
Speaker 18: the Brits realized that they made a massive error.
1:11:39
Speaker 8: They thought that they were going to you know.
1:11:40
Speaker 18: Cast out and really call into question President Trump's the
1:11:44
Speaker 18: operation that President Trump is leading right now. They immediately
1:11:49
Speaker 18: regretted it, mainly because within you know, less than a day,
1:11:55
Speaker 18: the Iranians started striking British bases in the mediterran Granian
1:12:00
Speaker 18: they and the Brits because they stayed out of it stupidly,
1:12:04
Speaker 18: they had no forces pre deployed there, they had nowhere
1:12:08
Speaker 18: to protect their bases. And you know, had they allowed
1:12:11
Speaker 18: the US to preposition and strike from Diego Garcia rather
1:12:15
Speaker 18: than having to fly all of these aircraft on these
1:12:18
Speaker 18: very long sorties from the United States, we may have
1:12:20
Speaker 18: been able to stop more of those one way attack
1:12:23
Speaker 18: drones and missiles that ended up hitting British bases, so
1:12:26
Speaker 18: they really hurt themselves.
1:12:28
Speaker 8: I think they realized that now.
1:12:30
Speaker 18: At the same time, they're also getting the Brits especially,
1:12:34
Speaker 18: are getting pulled by mac cron into his sphere of influence.
1:12:38
Speaker 18: It's not working well for them at all.
1:12:41
Speaker 2: You just yesterday on the same day, retweeted a wonderful
1:12:44
Speaker 2: somebody who floated a famous Churchill quote, never be separated
1:12:48
Speaker 2: from the Americans. Well, we are glad to be joined
1:12:51
Speaker 2: at pahip with you and everybody the Hudson Institute. Thank you,
1:12:54
Speaker 2: very very much. It is Ezra Cohen pleasure spending time
1:12:57
Speaker 2: with you, sir, and our time together is about done.
1:13:01
Speaker 2: So I tell you what, as we wrap up this segment,
1:13:03
Speaker 2: and we've got about three four minutes to spend on
1:13:05
Speaker 2: the other side, today's program has been just a glorious
1:13:08
Speaker 2: opportunity to talk to so many smart people, and to
1:13:11
Speaker 2: talk to a good number of people who are smart
1:13:13
Speaker 2: out there in the listening audience. I hope to rise
1:13:16
Speaker 2: to that level of smartness and share a couple of
1:13:18
Speaker 2: things too, as I say, tie a little bow or
1:13:20
Speaker 2: on this amazing day in history. But aren't they all