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

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  Speaker 1: Welcome to today's podcast sponsored by Hillsdale College. All things
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: Hillsdale at hillsdale.edu. I encourage you to take advantage of
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  Speaker 1: the many free online courses there and of course to
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: listen to the Hillsdale Dialogues. All of them at hueforhillsdale.com
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: or just google Apple, iTunes, and Hillsdale. Morning, Lauren, evening, Grace, America,
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  Speaker 1: Hugh Hewitt. I am sitting in the same building flanked
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  Speaker 1: by Dwayne and Adam as I was on the morning
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  Speaker 1: of 9-11 25 years ago this past Friday and This
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  Speaker 1: is the Big Weekend Pod, and we've got a lot
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  Speaker 1: for you, and a lot that was not on yesterday's
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  Speaker 1: program that I think you will enjoy. Of course, I
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  Speaker 1: kick off with John Ellis of News Items. Eli Lake
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  Speaker 1: is here from the Free Press and Breaking History. Matt
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  Speaker 1: Continetti of the Wall Street Journal. Ben Dominich of the
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  Speaker 1: Daily Wire, Fox News contributor. Tarzana Joe is along as well.
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  Speaker 1: And a special interview with Victor Davis Hanson. His brand-new book,
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  Speaker 1: The Counter-Revolution, is out, The Fall and Rise of Donald
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  Speaker 1: Trump and the MAGA Movement. And VDH's The Counter-Revolution is
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  Speaker 1: already on the bestseller list. It'll be probably number one
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  Speaker 1: in the New York Times list next week, if they're
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  Speaker 1: at all honest. Selling, selling, selling. And I will talk
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  Speaker 1: to him about the book, but I'm going to talk
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  Speaker 1: to him about 9-11. Now, I have posted at HughHewitt.com,
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  Speaker 1: and Generalissimo talked about it in the Dwayne's World After Show.
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  Speaker 1: You have to be a member of the universe to
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  Speaker 1: listen to that. What happened to us 25 years ago,
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  Speaker 1: which was nothing compared to everyone else. But we were
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  Speaker 1: on the air, and it's an unusual thing to be
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  Speaker 1: on the air three hours live contemporaneous with the event
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  Speaker 1: that defines a generation. Then we came back, Adam Duane
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  Speaker 1: and I did, later in the afternoon. We do not
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  Speaker 1: have the audio of that. That was a local show
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  Speaker 1: that we preempted. I'm not sure if it got picked
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  Speaker 1: up on the network, but mine was the network show
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  Speaker 1: that was 9 to noon. So I haven't listened to
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  Speaker 1: it because I know it was wrong. I thought 50,000
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  Speaker 1: people were dead, and it was 3,000 terrible, tragic fatalities
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  Speaker 1: from the Islamist murderers, terrorists. But a lot has happened
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  Speaker 1: in the 25 years since, and I hope to cover
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  Speaker 1: some of that in the course of today's broadcast and program.
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  Speaker 1: So settle in for a big, big weekend pod. America
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  Speaker 1: is clearly under attack this morning, America.
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  Speaker 2: This is Hugh Hewitt from the West to the rest
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  Speaker 2: of the country watching with you live feeds from New York.
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  Speaker 2: A second plane has crashed into the Second World Trade Center,
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  Speaker 2: obviously demonstrating that this is an intentional and well-organized assault.
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  Speaker 1: Acts of terrorism. It cannot be other. Morning, glory, and evening,
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  Speaker 1: Grace America. That was me 25 years ago from the
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  Speaker 1: same building with Dwayne on my right 25 years ago,
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  Speaker 1: Adam on my left 25 years ago. Harley's new. We're
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  Speaker 1: on television now and new as well. John Ellis, whose
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  Speaker 1: news items this morning, the indispensable newsletter, was full of
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  Speaker 1: lookbacks at 9-11 from a guy who does nothing but
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  Speaker 1: find the best John, what is the best thing to
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  Speaker 1: read or things to read about 9-11 25 years later?
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  Speaker 3: I think the best book to read is Lawrence Wright's
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  Speaker 3: The Looming Tower, which is sort of the history of Al-Qaeda.
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  Speaker 3: And it's just, you can't put it down. It's an
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  Speaker 3: extraordinary piece of work. I think it took him about
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  Speaker 3: five years to do all the reporting. And if I
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  Speaker 3: had to say there's one book that you have to
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  Speaker 3: read about 9-11, that would be it. I also think
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  Speaker 3: that the oral history that the 9-11 memorial put together,
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  Speaker 3: it's obviously very lengthy. But if you are of the
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  Speaker 3: mind to what happened to all sorts of different people
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  Speaker 3: on that day, it's riveting. And it's very, very emotional
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  Speaker 3: to read it. And then there's a particular column by
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  Speaker 3: a novelist named Ian McEwan that he wrote on 9-15,
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  Speaker 3: so four days after 9-11, obviously. And it was published
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  Speaker 3: in The Guardian. And I think of all the newspapers
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  Speaker 3: I've read over the course of many decades, I think
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  Speaker 3: that's the best column I've ever read in my life.
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  Speaker 1: That is high praise. All of it is linked at
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  Speaker 1: news items. Go and find it, including... the first of
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  Speaker 1: many messages left on message machines reproduced. I put it
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  Speaker 1: on X today, on my X account. And I've also
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  Speaker 1: put on my X account the three hours I was
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  Speaker 1: doing broadcasting that morning. We can't find the four hours
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  Speaker 1: I did in the afternoon shift, but we do have
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  Speaker 1: the three hours contemporaneous. So, John, I want to go
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  Speaker 1: from there to now. Last night, President Trump, Vice President Vance,
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  Speaker 1: wrapped up two days of, it's all about us versus them.
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  Speaker 1: I think he's wrestled a swamp of alligators in the
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  Speaker 1: media from the referendum narrative to the comparison, contrast, and
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  Speaker 1: choice election, Trump versus El-Sayed. What do you think?
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  Speaker 3: I think the narrative that the media has put forward
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  Speaker 3: that Trump is making this huge mistake about making the
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  Speaker 3: election about him is exactly wrong. I think that the
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  Speaker 3: thing that the Republicans really, midterm elections are turnout elections.
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  Speaker 3: So if more Democrats turn out than Republicans, then Democrats
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  Speaker 3: will win. Obviously, the reverse is true. And so what
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  Speaker 3: the voters that Republicans need most to turn out are
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  Speaker 3: Trump voters in rural counties. Rural voters went 70-30 for
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  Speaker 3: Trump in the 2024 election. And if 10% of them
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  Speaker 3: or 20% of them don't show up, then that's a
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  Speaker 3: real problem. So making himself the issue is a way
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  Speaker 3: of energizing his base. Whether it works or not, we
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  Speaker 3: don't know, but it's the best option available to him.
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  Speaker 3: Casting the election in terms of us versus them uh, is,
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  Speaker 3: is I think the most advantageous, uh, for the Republicans
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  Speaker 3: and for the president himself. Um, and that, you know,
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  Speaker 3: you have to make LCA, uh, you know, every candidate
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  Speaker 3: in every Senate race that will decide, uh, who has
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  Speaker 3: the majority, that's going to be more difficult, I think, than, uh, And,
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  Speaker 3: you know, it's not going to be that simple.
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  Speaker 1: You can't do it in North Carolina. You can do
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  Speaker 1: it in Maine.
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  Speaker 4: No.
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  Speaker 1: Against Troy Jackson, maybe in Minnesota, against Flanagan, Texas, against Tallarico.
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  Speaker 1: You can't do it in North Carolina against Roy Cooper.
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  Speaker 1: Won't fly. Shouldn't try.
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  Speaker 3: No, and I think it's tough to do it in Ohio.
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  Speaker 3: You know, Michigan is, you know, sort of the apex
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  Speaker 3: of the us versus them message. But whether it carries...
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  Speaker 3: I don't know. We'll have to wait until October to see.
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  Speaker 5: All right.
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  Speaker 1: Now, I don't know anything about AFD other than I'm
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  Speaker 1: worried that every account says they're pro-Putin. I don't even
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  Speaker 1: know if that's true, but I don't want them to
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  Speaker 1: win if they're pro-Putin. Are they pro-Putin or are they
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  Speaker 1: just anti-immigrant? I just don't know.
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  Speaker 3: The reason that they won so, you know, they had
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  Speaker 3: such a substantial vote in that East German state is
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  Speaker 3: because it's an East German state so there's more acceptance
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  Speaker 3: if you will of extreme politics but they are in
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  Speaker 3: fact pro-Putin and they are a very dangerous force I
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  Speaker 3: think in German politics the idea that you could build
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  Speaker 3: this firewall so they couldn't participate in governance has basically
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  Speaker 3: collapsed they will end up I think in some kind
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  Speaker 3: of coalition. They really only need three votes to run
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  Speaker 3: that state. And we'll see what the next two state
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  Speaker 3: elections that are coming up will tell us a lot more.
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  Speaker 3: But the big story really in Germany is the collapse
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  Speaker 3: of the Christian Democratic Party, which saw their vote halved
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  Speaker 3: in the recent election and will likely see the same.
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  Speaker 3: So it's a breakup of the way Germany has run
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  Speaker 3: for you know, since Adenauer.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, John, did you know Vernon Walters, General Walters at all?
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  Speaker 1: I met him once.
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  Speaker 3: I don't know him.
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  Speaker 1: Well, I worked with him in 78, 79 when I
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  Speaker 1: was a kid. And General Walters once looked me in
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  Speaker 1: the eye. A brilliant autodidact, seven languages, deputy director of CIA,
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  Speaker 1: Nixon's right-hand man, says to me, Hugh, somewhere in a
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  Speaker 1: cave in Bavaria right now, the Germans are building a
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  Speaker 1: death ray. Never forget it. So I always wondered about
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  Speaker 1: the Germans. They're the Germans, right? Is the AFD those Germans?
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  Speaker 3: Well, I remember talking to one of President George H.W.
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  Speaker 3: Bush's senior advisors, and this was when the reunification of
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  Speaker 3: Germany was being executed, essentially, under the president's leadership and
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  Speaker 3: working with Helmut Kohl. And This advisor said to me,
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  Speaker 3: you know, it didn't really work out well the last time.
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  Speaker 1: Maybe this isn't a good idea. Forewarned is forearmed. Okay, forewarned.
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  Speaker 1: The AI existential, as you point out, not L.A. Confidential.
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  Speaker 1: I've read Jacob Cox and I've read the takedowns. I've
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  Speaker 1: read the takedowns of the takedowns. I have no idea
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  Speaker 1: what to believe. What does John Ellis believe? Is he
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  Speaker 1: legit or is he a front?
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  Speaker 3: Oh, no, I think he's absolutely legit. I mean, I'm
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  Speaker 3: on the board of a company at MIT that's being
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  Speaker 3: birthed at MIT, and we were talking about this, and
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  Speaker 3: one of the people there had just been out in
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  Speaker 3: the valley talking to basically the top leaders. of the
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  Speaker 3: frontier labs the anthropics and you know it's a thinking
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  Speaker 3: machines Altman's thing and open AI and one of those
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  Speaker 3: senior leaders one of those CEOs said to him I'm
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  Speaker 3: not sure even I can get this horse back in
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  Speaker 3: the barn. So I think Mr. Cookson and the others who,
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  Speaker 3: I mean, here's the thing. You have a lot of
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  Speaker 3: people who are saying this is overhyped. The reason they're
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  Speaker 3: doing this is because they want to increase the price
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  Speaker 3: of their IPO. And I mean, there's a whole sort
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  Speaker 3: of range of ideas of why this is all sort
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  Speaker 3: of fantasy and it has these other motives. And the
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  Speaker 3: thing about the people who are telling you that it's
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  Speaker 3: actually a real thing, are the people who know the
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  Speaker 3: most about it. And that goes all the way back
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  Speaker 3: to the founder, essentially, of large language models, Jeffrey Hinton,
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  Speaker 3: who has a manifesto coming out, I think, in March
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  Speaker 3: that will make the case explicitly in book form. I'm
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  Speaker 3: looking forward to reading it. But Jeff Hinton is not
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  Speaker 3: doing this for alternative motives. He's doing it because he's
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  Speaker 3: really concerned.
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  Speaker 1: So, John, why don't we just say, to the AI people,
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  Speaker 1: instruct all of your AI agents to go and destroy
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  Speaker 1: all of China's AI agents and make it impossible for
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  Speaker 1: China to develop new AI agents. Why don't we do that?
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  Speaker 3: Well, I think a non-proliferation treaty of some kind with
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  Speaker 3: China is something that will be on the agenda in
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  Speaker 3: the Xi-Trump meeting. I think it should be. I think
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  Speaker 3: we should press it as hard as we can. There's
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  Speaker 3: a lot of equal concern in China about the horse
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  Speaker 3: being out of the barn. The problem is that there
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  Speaker 3: are a lot of free agents out there, and there
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  Speaker 3: are a lot of free models that you can use
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  Speaker 3: to build bioweapons or hack into water systems or whatever.
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  Speaker 3: So the question is, is there a way to get
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  Speaker 3: the horse back in the barn? And I hate to
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  Speaker 3: say this, I think the answer is no.
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  Speaker 1: Well, there were buffaloes across the plain once. is shoot
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  Speaker 1: them all.
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  Speaker 4: This is true.
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  Speaker 1: This is true. I don't know if you can shoot
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  Speaker 1: all the AI agents, but it's not your problem. But boy,
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  Speaker 1: oh boy, I appreciate news items because to the extent
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  Speaker 1: that I understand AI, which is not much, it's because
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  Speaker 1: of news items. If you want to read in America, newsitems.substack.com.
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  Speaker 1: John Ellis, thank you. I am coming right back with
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  Speaker 1: Eli Lake. America, stay tuned. Welcome back, America. On this
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  Speaker 1: 9-11 25th anniversary, I'm happy to be talking with Eli Lake,
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  Speaker 1: a great historian in his own right. Breaking History is
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  Speaker 1: the podcast I always listen to. Follow Eli on X
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  Speaker 1: at Eli Lake. Read him in the free press. Eli,
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  Speaker 1: I've already listened to the commentary pod from today because
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  Speaker 1: I'm on the West Coast. I was fascinated by the conversation.
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  Speaker 1: They put you on there, by the way, as kind
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  Speaker 1: of the brake on the engine plane wheel so that
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  Speaker 1: they don't roll off the airway. The little blocks that
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  Speaker 1: they put under the wheels, that's Eli's job. But when
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  Speaker 1: you were talking about the radicals of the 60s and
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  Speaker 1: the 70s, a thought occurred to me. I'm going to
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  Speaker 1: ask Victor Davis Hanson about this. We had antibodies in
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  Speaker 1: our system. All of our dads had gone to war.
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  Speaker 1: All of our mothers had been alone for four years.
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  Speaker 1: They'd been through the Depression. Those kids of the 60s
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  Speaker 1: and the 70s were put nothing– over the guys who
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  Speaker 1: occupied Japan, fought in Okinawa and Iwo Jima, or went
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  Speaker 1: through the Ardennes. Do you think that's why it didn't
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  Speaker 1: work then, and maybe we haven't got those antibodies anymore?
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  Speaker 6: That's a great theory about it. I do think there's,
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  Speaker 6: I mean, the other part of it is that half,
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  Speaker 6: I mean, the radicals of the 60s and 70s, you know,
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  Speaker 6: were not really the full representatives of their generation, because
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  Speaker 6: there's another bunch of kids who were fighting in Vietnam.
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  Speaker 1: And actually resented them.
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  Speaker 6: I mean, there was the horrible scenes of, you know,
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  Speaker 6: people spitting on Vietnam veterans as they returned from war.
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  Speaker 6: So that was another part of it, which is that, like,
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  Speaker 6: you know, there was, I think, frustration with the Vietnam War.
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  Speaker 6: We certainly, as a country, we paid a big price
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  Speaker 6: because there was a draft. But I also think that
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  Speaker 6: the anti-patriotism really did turn off a lot of those
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  Speaker 6: people as well. And you saw that kind of channeled
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  Speaker 6: after the Vietnam War into... efforts to try to get
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  Speaker 6: the POWs, and that was a huge social issue, and
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  Speaker 6: part of our culture. I mean, you know, movies like Rambo,
• 14:41
  Speaker 6: which were huge, First Blood, all of that was part
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  Speaker 6: of that other, you know, part of America. So some
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  Speaker 6: of that's there. I do think that we have this
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  Speaker 6: volunteer military, which is a good thing for a number
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  Speaker 6: of reasons, but it means that there are a lot
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  Speaker 6: of families who don't know what it's like, military sacrifices.
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  Speaker 6: Because I've covered wars and I've been bedded with U.S. forces,
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  Speaker 6: I am fortunate that I do know what it's like.
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  Speaker 6: But a lot of people don't, and it's hard for
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  Speaker 6: them to imagine the choices that are made in war.
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  Speaker 6: And so when you just present them with a series
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  Speaker 6: of things that are done by one side, they immediately say, oh,
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  Speaker 6: war crimes, genocide, et cetera, et cetera. And you couldn't
• 15:25
  Speaker 6: do that in that generation where If the baby boomers,
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  Speaker 6: their parents, were actually fought in World War II, you.
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  Speaker 1: Couldn't get rid of them. No, you couldn't. I'm merging now,
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: Commentary Thursday and Commentary Friday. I don't know who said
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: what when. But I kept thinking to myself, Richard Nixon
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  Speaker 1: could go on November 3, 1969, and talk to the
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: whole country and make the great silent majority speech and
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: persuade a country. No one can do that. Not even
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: Donald Trump can get 25 million people on a good night.
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: as someone mentioned, the NFL is our actual civic religion,
• 15:59
  Speaker 1: probably continuity. No one can go up against the NFL
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  Speaker 1: and do that. Trump tries to do it, but it's
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  Speaker 1: just not an option to be a great rhetorician anymore,
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  Speaker 1: or even a competent workman like Nixon, right? You can't
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  Speaker 1: do it.
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  Speaker 4: Well, you know, there's one exception.
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  Speaker 6: I think if there was a huge national crisis, God forbid,
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  Speaker 6: a terrorist attack, a horrible earthquake with casualties in the
• 16:24
  Speaker 6: several thousands or something like that. I think that is
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  Speaker 6: a moment when Americans will tune in and they need
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  Speaker 6: a national leader. And the rhetoric really matters.
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  Speaker 7: Well said.
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  Speaker 1: True.
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  Speaker 4: Good point. But you're right.
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  Speaker 6: I mean, we're all in our silos at this point.
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  Speaker 6: And I think that that's one of the reasons there's
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  Speaker 6: this huge disconnect. I'm watching the ads for Michigan and
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  Speaker 6: I'm seeing Mike Rogers. I'm nodding along and I'm thinking, God,
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  Speaker 6: that sounds like most Americans would agree that But there
• 16:51
  Speaker 6: is a whole constituency of Americans that I'm aware of
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  Speaker 6: that sort of see that, and the first thing they
• 16:57
  Speaker 6: think of is this is Islamophobia, because they are in
• 17:02
  Speaker 6: a kind of information silo. That is, in many ways,
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  Speaker 6: one of the downsides of our information.
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  Speaker 1: Your boss yesterday, Barry Weiss, two days ago, said, I
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  Speaker 1: want a news source to speak to 75 percent of
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  Speaker 1: Americans who play between the 40s. I think it's 90%
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  Speaker 1: of Americans who play between the 20s, myself, but I
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  Speaker 1: know where she's going, and I think it's possible, and it's, gosh,
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  Speaker 1: it's not for my generation. It's for the next generation. Boy,
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  Speaker 1: do they need it. My generation has Walter Cronkite memory.
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  Speaker 1: The next generation doesn't, and I'm hoping, and I work
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  Speaker 1: for Fox, I hope she succeeds, that they buy CNN
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  Speaker 1: and the other people learn. We're playing between the 20s,
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  Speaker 1: and her examples of Dana Loesch and Alan Dershowitz, there
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  Speaker 1: are lots of people like that. who are between the 20s, right?
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  Speaker 6: Right, and I just want to say, though, before we,
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  Speaker 6: you know, the era of Cronkite, you know, in some
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  Speaker 6: ways there were a lot of advantages, but, you know,
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  Speaker 6: I do think that the, you know, the criticism of
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  Speaker 6: people like Buckley at the time was that there was
• 18:03
  Speaker 6: an effort to try to make sure that there was
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  Speaker 6: no serious kind of conservative voices for a long time
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  Speaker 6: in that media. And they hated Nixon.
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  Speaker 1: They hated Nixon after his.
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  Speaker 4: They did hate Nixon, yes.
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  Speaker 6: So there's a downside to that as well. But at
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  Speaker 6: the same time, what we have now where there is
• 18:25
  Speaker 6: no center is dangerous because you're going to get, I think,
• 18:29
  Speaker 6: more and more extreme kind of candidates because they're going
• 18:31
  Speaker 6: to just kind of talk to the tribe, and that's... So.
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: Eli, last question. You read everything. Did you read John
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: Updike's novel, The Terrorist, from 2006?
• 18:40
  Speaker 8: No, I didn't read that.
• 18:43
  Speaker 4: I do like Updike, but I have not read that.
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: He would not dare write that book today. That was wholly,
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: wholly anti-Islamist fanatic and talked about how Islamist fanatics are
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: manufactured in tiny little storefront mosques. He would be run
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: out of town. So, people had permission... to condemn evil
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: for five to 10 years, and we're not allowed to
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: do it anymore. Although last night, Noah Rothman, we were
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: commenting on it before the show. Tell people what you
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: thought about that.
• 19:13
  Speaker 6: I was somewhat shocked that Abby Phillips didn't know what Islamism,
• 19:17
  Speaker 6: she didn't appear on, and people, when they're on air,
• 19:19
  Speaker 6: I get it. Sometimes your brain freezes, but Islamism is
• 19:23
  Speaker 6: a term that refers to people who are adherents of
• 19:26
  Speaker 6: political Islam, which is a I think, an evil ideology
• 19:30
  Speaker 6: and a dangerous and expansive, expanding ideology. And I think
• 19:33
  Speaker 6: that Noah Rothman was making a very, you know, a hundred,
• 19:37
  Speaker 6: you know, very persuasive case, but she could only hear Islam.
• 19:41
  Speaker 6: And I think that, you know, listen, there are some
• 19:43
  Speaker 6: people in the public debate who will deliberately conflate the
• 19:47
  Speaker 6: entire religion of Islam with an ideology which is driven,
• 19:51
  Speaker 6: you know, by what I like.
• 19:52
  Speaker 4: To call political Islam.
• 19:55
  Speaker 6: But for the most part, I do think that it's
• 19:57
  Speaker 6: largely an effort to try to silence the side of
• 20:01
  Speaker 6: the debate to say there's an ideology behind October 7th, 9-11,
• 20:06
  Speaker 6: and the wave of jihadist terror that the civilized world faces,
• 20:11
  Speaker 6: and we need to address that as well. And I
• 20:14
  Speaker 6: think there is an effort in trying to have everybody
• 20:17
  Speaker 6: not notice that and to have them not.
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: Be part of that conversation.
• 20:21
  Speaker 6: And unfortunately, that was a little bit the vibe that
• 20:23
  Speaker 6: I got out of that CNN conversation, although I just
• 20:26
  Speaker 6: want to allow, let's have some grace, people who are
• 20:29
  Speaker 6: on air for many, many hours a day or whatever,
• 20:32
  Speaker 6: That sometimes, you know, you just maybe hear something a
• 20:34
  Speaker 6: different way.
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: There you are. You're being the brake on my jet plane.
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: I have no brakes for that. I have absolutely no
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: sympathy for people. I'm Team Noah, nonetheless. Because, look, if
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: you're going to take that job, read some books. Like
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: The Looming Tower, it's not that long. If you're going
• 20:51
  Speaker 1: to take that job, read some books. But I just,
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: I don't know about you. I watched it, but I thought,
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: I was like, she just doesn't understand what Islamism is.
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: That's what I, yeah. Or she's never heard it.
• 21:02
  Speaker 7: Right.
• 21:03
  Speaker 6: And maybe she only heard Islam.
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: I don't know.
• 21:06
  Speaker 4: I mean, that was my.
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: Noah is very articulate and don't interrupt him and try
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: and listen. It's like a lost art. Sometimes I lose it, too.
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: Eli Lake, I always listen to you, and I listen
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: to Breaking History, and I read them in the free press,
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: and I follow them, as you should, on X at
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: Eli Lake. Come right back. Continetti is next. Welcome back, America.
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: I'm Hugh Hewitt, and this is the 25th anniversary of 9-11.
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: As I mentioned before, my three hours in the morning
• 21:36
  Speaker 1: contemporaneous with the attack on America are posted at HughHewitt.com.
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: I am joined by Matt Continetti, who yesterday was on
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: the commentary podcast. I'm going to begin there, Matt. We'll
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: come back to the 25th anniversary in a moment. But
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: yesterday you offered advice to President Trump on if you
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: want to win the election in November, win the war
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: with Iran before that. And I said, I almost shouted
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: yes in the car. I was going to interview John Kennedy,
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: Senator Kennedy at the time. Expand on it. I know
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: what that means, but expand on what you meant by
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: win the war.
• 22:10
  Speaker 8: Well, Hugh, the conventional wisdom is that President Trump can't
• 22:14
  Speaker 8: take any dramatic action in the Persian Gulf against Iran
• 22:18
  Speaker 8: until after the midterm election because of the potential fallout
• 22:23
  Speaker 8: for energy prices, bond market, for our regional allies, and
• 22:27
  Speaker 8: of course, for the safety of our troops in the region.
• 22:31
  Speaker 8: But I take a slightly different view. I think if
• 22:33
  Speaker 8: he wants to solve those problems, he needs to show
• 22:37
  Speaker 8: that he is resolute and he is willing to take
• 22:40
  Speaker 8: whatever steps necessary in order to achieve his goals in Iran.
• 22:45
  Speaker 8: And right now we're in a situation where the Iranians
• 22:49
  Speaker 8: are firing missiles at our ships. Fortunately, none have gotten through.
• 22:54
  Speaker 8: But each missile fired sends the oil market up higher.
• 22:58
  Speaker 8: And we had some panic prices, it seems, yesterday. They've
• 23:02
  Speaker 8: come down a little bit. The markets reacted positively. But
• 23:05
  Speaker 8: this is just not a good situation for the president strategically.
• 23:10
  Speaker 8: It's also not a good situation politically, because I think
• 23:12
  Speaker 8: if you want to have momentum, going into the midterm election,
• 23:17
  Speaker 8: you're going to want to show some progress opening the
• 23:20
  Speaker 8: strait and taking the fight to the Iranian regime.
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: I agree 100%. I asked Ambassador Oren yesterday, why is
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: Iran afraid to fire at Israel, but they're not afraid
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: to fire at us? I heard his answer. What's your answer?
• 23:39
  Speaker 8: Well, I think it's because, as Ambassador Oren said, the
• 23:43
  Speaker 8: Iranians are fearful of what would happen if they began
• 23:48
  Speaker 8: launching missiles at Israel again. And the Iranian regime knows
• 23:52
  Speaker 8: that Israel would not stand for that and that Israel
• 23:56
  Speaker 8: is ready to go back into Iran and not necessarily
• 24:01
  Speaker 8: follow all of the United States' instructions about targets, about
• 24:06
  Speaker 8: the type of escalation measures about support for the Iranian people,
• 24:11
  Speaker 8: for example, to rise up against the government that the
• 24:13
  Speaker 8: Israelis followed during the four weeks of full operational activity
• 24:19
  Speaker 8: after the launch of Operation Epic Fury at the end
• 24:22
  Speaker 8: of February. So I think Israel has successfully deterred Iran.
• 24:26
  Speaker 8: By the way, Israel has made incredible strides against Hezbollah,
• 24:30
  Speaker 8: the Iranian proxy that's in Lebanon. And so they're weakening
• 24:35
  Speaker 8: Iran on that front as well. And meanwhile, the Iranians
• 24:40
  Speaker 8: believe that they can exert political pressure on President Trump,
• 24:43
  Speaker 8: interfering in the election, there's no question, by firing on
• 24:47
  Speaker 8: our vessels, firing on other tankers, and thereby escalating the
• 24:52
  Speaker 8: oil price, getting gasoline prices up higher, contributing to the
• 24:56
  Speaker 8: information space in the United States, which is almost lopsidedly pro-regime,
• 25:03
  Speaker 8: and talks about Iranian resilience, Iranian strength, Iranian power. that
• 25:09
  Speaker 8: doesn't even exist, to the exclusion of all the good
• 25:13
  Speaker 8: gains our military has made and the tightening vice over
• 25:18
  Speaker 8: the Iranian economy that our blockade of Iranian ports has imposed.
• 25:24
  Speaker 8: So that's what Iran is doing. And I think if
• 25:26
  Speaker 8: President Trump wants to change that equation, then he should
• 25:29
  Speaker 8: contemplate going back to major combat operations, doing something that
• 25:34
  Speaker 8: would establish new facts on the ground. President Trump's very
• 25:37
  Speaker 8: good at that. But right now he seems content to
• 25:41
  Speaker 8: allow Iran and the straight to be on the back burner,
• 25:45
  Speaker 8: even if it means that it's going to continue to,
• 25:49
  Speaker 8: I think, slowly erode at the Republican position heading into
• 25:53
  Speaker 8: the midterms.
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: All right. My theory. One more missile aimed at our ship.
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: Every tanker, every tanker. There are 25, I believe, goes
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: to the bottom. What do you think? We have a minute, Matt.
• 26:04
  Speaker 8: No, I think that's right, because there's one there's a
• 26:07
  Speaker 8: few things we know about President Trump. One of them
• 26:09
  Speaker 8: is he will not stand for an attack on our troops.
• 26:12
  Speaker 8: If one of our troops dies, then President Trump will escalate.
• 26:16
  Speaker 8: We've seen that throughout his presidency, both terms. I would
• 26:20
  Speaker 8: like us to escalate before one of those missiles gets
• 26:24
  Speaker 8: through and hits our ships in order to prevent that,
• 26:27
  Speaker 8: to deter that. But we know that the president will
• 26:30
  Speaker 8: not stand for American deaths. And yes, I think you're right.
• 26:33
  Speaker 8: We've already established the tanker for tanker policy. If an
• 26:36
  Speaker 8: American is killed... It will be every tanker down at
• 26:40
  Speaker 8: the bottom of the street.
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: Do you think they understand that?
• 26:44
  Speaker 7: No, they don't.
• 26:45
  Speaker 8: They think they continue to manipulate our politics in a
• 26:48
  Speaker 8: way favorable to them.
• 26:49
  Speaker 1: I agree. And I'm going to talk with Matt during
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: the break. He's going to come back on the other side.
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: We're going to talk about 9-11 on the other side
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: and the literature of it. But don't go anywhere during
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: the break. I've got a different question for him. I'm
• 26:59
  Speaker 1: back with Matt Continetti during the break. You know, Matt,
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: when you talk on the podcast about talking to young people,
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: I need to take more relief factor because if they're
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: young to you, that makes me like Methuselah. So my
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: question is how representative people have to listen to the
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: commentary podcast. You're going to have to tell people in
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: three minutes about the youngster and how representative the youngster
• 27:19
  Speaker 1: is just because they're at TPUSA doesn't mean they know
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: much yet.
• 27:24
  Speaker 8: Well, yeah, I mean, college freshmen or sophomores, they're called
• 27:29
  Speaker 8: that for a reason. They're just beginning their education. I've
• 27:31
  Speaker 8: had a very interesting conversation with an 18-year-old Turning Point
• 27:35
  Speaker 8: member this week, and I was just fascinated to hear
• 27:38
  Speaker 8: what his thoughts about the 2028 election, about J.D. Vance,
• 27:43
  Speaker 8: about President Trump. And he was saying to me that
• 27:46
  Speaker 8: from his cohort, the 18-year-olds, the 19-year-olds, the 17-year-olds, President
• 27:52
  Speaker 8: Trump's the establishment.
• 27:53
  Speaker 4: Yeah, that's wild.
• 27:57
  Speaker 8: That kind of just set my hair on fire because
• 27:59
  Speaker 8: I was like, whoa. But it's absolutely true. You know,
• 28:02
  Speaker 8: this is an 18-year-old. He has no experience of politics
• 28:04
  Speaker 8: other than President Trump, right? And he said that the
• 28:08
  Speaker 8: young people he knows are kind of disillusioned by President Trump.
• 28:12
  Speaker 7: Why?
• 28:13
  Speaker 8: Because he hasn't delivered on his promises. Now, I hear that.
• 28:16
  Speaker 8: I say, what are you talking about? President Trump closed
• 28:19
  Speaker 8: the border. He's deporting the illegal immigrants Biden let in.
• 28:22
  Speaker 8: He has unleashed the economy. He's unleashed American energy. He
• 28:27
  Speaker 8: has attacked the Iranian nuclear program. He is the first
• 28:30
  Speaker 8: president since the Iranian revolution to take the fight to
• 28:33
  Speaker 8: the mullahs. I think he's delivered on almost all of
• 28:36
  Speaker 8: his promises. But the promises that this young man singled
• 28:39
  Speaker 8: out were the populist ones. He wanted President Trump to
• 28:42
  Speaker 8: go after the corporations. He thought the data centers were
• 28:46
  Speaker 8: negative because of their environmental impacts. You know, I'm ready
• 28:49
  Speaker 8: to help shovel the coal. But now I'm hearing that
• 28:51
  Speaker 8: younger conservatives are concerned about the environmental impacts of data centers.
• 28:56
  Speaker 8: And he talked about the betrayal that many conservatives feel,
• 28:59
  Speaker 8: young ones in particular, about launching the war in Iran,
• 29:04
  Speaker 8: Operation Epic Fury. That echoes of what you could hear.
• 29:08
  Speaker 1: Did you ever read highlights in the dentist's office? Remember highlights?
• 29:12
  Speaker 8: Yeah, I was a charter subscriber.
• 29:16
  Speaker 1: Do we need a highlight? I got National Review in
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: high school. Do we have anything for younger people that
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: is like the Bible if you want to be a conservative?
• 29:28
  Speaker 8: Well, we had Charlie Kirk, Hugh. I mean, that's what's
• 29:30
  Speaker 8: so fascinating, so sad on this memorial of the first
• 29:34
  Speaker 8: anniversary of his assassination is Charlie was acting as a
• 29:37
  Speaker 8: leader for many young people, young men in particular. and
• 29:40
  Speaker 8: he was guiding them to a populist conservatism that was
• 29:44
  Speaker 8: both populist and conservative. My worry is that since his death,
• 29:49
  Speaker 8: you have all these competing voices, and the voices that
• 29:52
  Speaker 8: are having most purchase on young audiences who get all
• 29:55
  Speaker 8: of their information from social media are the ones that
• 29:57
  Speaker 8: are emphasizing the populism And not the conservatism, not the constitutionalism,
• 30:03
  Speaker 8: not the free enterprise, not the patriotism and belief in
• 30:06
  Speaker 8: American pride and strength abroad. And so I think it's
• 30:11
  Speaker 8: incumbent on conservative leaders to try to reach this audience,
• 30:15
  Speaker 8: understanding where they're coming from, but also saying, hey, we
• 30:18
  Speaker 8: have this great tradition of American conservatism that is grounded
• 30:22
  Speaker 8: in what makes this country exceptional and special.
• 30:25
  Speaker 4: You're right.
• 30:25
  Speaker 8: And we want you to be a part of it.
• 30:27
  Speaker 1: I nominate Spencer Clavin. By the way, no one else has,
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: but I nominated him. He's great.
• 30:31
  Speaker 8: Yeah, he's very good at it.
• 30:32
  Speaker 1: For that age demo, I'll be right back with Matt Continetti.
• 30:35
  Speaker 1: Stay tuned. Welcome back, America. I'm Hugh Hewitt with Matt
• 30:39
  Speaker 1: Continetti on the 25th anniversary of 9-11. If you are
• 30:43
  Speaker 1: just listening to the program, all of my three hours
• 30:46
  Speaker 1: of live broadcasting, Contemporaneous with the Attacks on New York,
• 30:49
  Speaker 1: are posted at HughHewitt.com. Voice is different. I haven't listened
• 30:53
  Speaker 1: to it, but I'm in the same building 25 years ago.
• 30:56
  Speaker 1: Dwayne's on my right. Adam's on my left. Harley is new.
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: Matt Continetti wasn't able to buy a beer then, but
• 31:02
  Speaker 1: he's back now. Matt, during COVID, the Washington Post asked
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: a bunch of us, what did you read during COVID?
• 31:08
  Speaker 1: And for the first time, I read Men at War,
• 31:10
  Speaker 1: the trilogy. As I recall, you liked Men at War
• 31:13
  Speaker 1: a lot, Elon Musk's trilogy. Has anyone mediated the 25
• 31:18
  Speaker 1: years since 9-11 for us in fiction? I asked Eli
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: Lake about John Updike's The Terrorist, a book I don't
• 31:25
  Speaker 1: think he would write today. Neil Young wouldn't write Let's
• 31:28
  Speaker 1: Roll Again. Is there a novel out there that gets it?
• 31:33
  Speaker 8: I don't think I can name a specific novel, Hugh.
• 31:36
  Speaker 8: Elliot Ackerman, who's a writer, a novelist, he writes for
• 31:39
  Speaker 8: the Free Press, he's published some novels about the veteran
• 31:45
  Speaker 8: experience during the War on Terror. I can't say I've
• 31:48
  Speaker 8: read them. I've read other of his books that I
• 31:50
  Speaker 8: thought were very good. But you're right to say that
• 31:53
  Speaker 8: there's kind of a gap there. where I think the
• 31:57
  Speaker 8: people who have lived through this era, especially the people
• 32:00
  Speaker 8: on the front lines, the first responders, the soldiers, the
• 32:05
  Speaker 8: intelligence officers, they haven't really turned to fiction to describe
• 32:09
  Speaker 8: the moment. They've gone into politics and activism, it seems
• 32:13
  Speaker 8: to me, instead.
• 32:14
  Speaker 1: You know, I wrote on X yesterday, Peggy Noonan, I
• 32:16
  Speaker 1: was reading one of her old columns. Peggy Noonan and
• 32:18
  Speaker 1: Charles Krauthammer got to a plateau that very few people reached.
• 32:21
  Speaker 1: George Welch, Joseph Epstein, these are great writers of our generation.
• 32:25
  Speaker 1: But a novelist hasn't stepped forward the way Tom Wolfe
• 32:28
  Speaker 1: got the 80s, right, in Bonfire of the Vanities. He
• 32:31
  Speaker 1: just captured it. Do they not exist? Is there no
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: market for a Mark Halperin, Soldier of the Great War
• 32:37
  Speaker 1: kind of novel anymore?
• 32:41
  Speaker 8: Well, there are a lot of changes in publishing, as
• 32:43
  Speaker 8: I'm sure you're aware, Hugh. And one of them is
• 32:45
  Speaker 8: that the type of audience for this novel, this kind of,
• 32:48
  Speaker 8: you know, novel deep, epic novel, The Lonesome Dove, if
• 32:53
  Speaker 8: you will, to describe the war on terror. That doesn't
• 32:55
  Speaker 8: really exist anymore. The public is elsewhere. They want romanticy
• 32:59
  Speaker 8: and fairy books. Funny, you mentioned Tom Wolfe, though. Tom
• 33:02
  Speaker 8: Wolfe's last novel, published in 2012, was called Back to Blood.
• 33:07
  Speaker 8: And it's actually worth revisiting.
• 33:10
  Speaker 1: I never read it.
• 33:11
  Speaker 8: It's excellent. It's about immigration in Miami. And Wolfe, as always,
• 33:17
  Speaker 8: saw a lot of what was coming in... Frames of
• 33:21
  Speaker 8: reference to identity politics, immigration, kind of absurd left wing,
• 33:27
  Speaker 8: woke art even. So I recommend our audience pick up
• 33:32
  Speaker 8: that book. Back to Blood. Tom Wolfe, of course.
• 33:34
  Speaker 1: That's a recommend I stole from commentary. I will be
• 33:37
  Speaker 1: sued by John Podhortz now. All right. Last and defining
• 33:40
  Speaker 1: question of the day. Is 9-11, the war that began
• 33:44
  Speaker 1: or surfaced on that day, began in the 90s. We
• 33:46
  Speaker 1: just didn't know it. Is that connected with the war
• 33:50
  Speaker 1: in Iran? I am of the opinion it's the same
• 33:52
  Speaker 1: war with the same enemy, and they go by different brands,
• 33:56
  Speaker 1: and sometimes they work together, and sometimes they kill each other.
• 33:59
  Speaker 1: Zarqawi wanted to kill the Shia, and the Shia wanted
• 34:03
  Speaker 1: to kill him. But generally, Hamas and Hezbollah get along
• 34:06
  Speaker 1: under the direction, as do the Houthis of Tehran. What
• 34:09
  Speaker 1: do you think? One war or many different wars?
• 34:12
  Speaker 8: No, it's one war. The enemy is radical Islam. Radical Islam...
• 34:17
  Speaker 8: The Sunni branch struck us on 9-11, but radical Islam,
• 34:20
  Speaker 8: the Shiite branch, the Iranian branch, has been at war
• 34:23
  Speaker 8: with the United States since 1979. And, you know, it's funny, Hugh,
• 34:27
  Speaker 8: I've been wondering today, 25 years, and I went back,
• 34:32
  Speaker 8: Americans didn't remember the 25th anniversary of Pearl Harbor the
• 34:36
  Speaker 8: way that we remember the 25th anniversary of 9-11, commemoration-wise.
• 34:41
  Speaker 8: The fact that we still have all of our presidents
• 34:44
  Speaker 8: go to 9-11 memorials, as the names are read aloud,
• 34:48
  Speaker 8: as the moments of silence are observed, a quarter century
• 34:53
  Speaker 8: after the event, what does that say? It means many things. One,
• 34:58
  Speaker 8: about the violence and the tragedy of that day, and
• 35:00
  Speaker 8: also the heroism involved, especially of the passengers on Flight 93.
• 35:06
  Speaker 8: But it also means that the war isn't over. I
• 35:09
  Speaker 8: think one reason why in 1965, 1966, you didn't see
• 35:16
  Speaker 8: these commemorations of Pearl Harbor in the same way that
• 35:19
  Speaker 8: you see the commemorations of 9-11, is that World War
• 35:22
  Speaker 8: II ended with a victory, with the Japanese surrender.
• 35:26
  Speaker 1: I have another theory for you. You're still in the war.
• 35:28
  Speaker 1: My dad's part of the Greatest Generation. Never heard of shot, fire,
• 35:32
  Speaker 1: and anger, but he went everywhere. He occupied Japan. His
• 35:34
  Speaker 1: brothers flew missions. Everybody went to war. The Greatest Generation,
• 35:38
  Speaker 1: 8 million men went to war. No one would dare
• 35:40
  Speaker 1: call attention to themselves. They just didn't do it.
• 35:44
  Speaker 8: That is true. And I had a very close great
• 35:47
  Speaker 8: uncle who was a World War II veteran, and he
• 35:50
  Speaker 8: never wanted to talk about his experience. And that is
• 35:53
  Speaker 8: slightly different. We do like to talk about things unlike
• 35:57
  Speaker 8: the greatest generation. But there is, I think, this... There's
• 36:02
  Speaker 8: also the universal aspect. Another difference, Hugh? Pearl Harbor, of course,
• 36:06
  Speaker 8: the people who experienced Pearl Harbor were the men and
• 36:08
  Speaker 8: women on base or on the island. Every American... experienced
• 36:13
  Speaker 8: 9-11 through television. And that, I think, is why it
• 36:18
  Speaker 8: still has such a lasting impact. And our job, for
• 36:21
  Speaker 8: those of us who lived through it, is to communicate
• 36:24
  Speaker 8: the lessons of that day to the next generation.
• 36:26
  Speaker 1: Are you surprised? Look, we didn't do this on the
• 36:28
  Speaker 1: 10th or the 12th. I mean, we did it, but
• 36:30
  Speaker 1: we didn't do it this way. Are you surprised we're
• 36:32
  Speaker 1: doing it this way?
• 36:35
  Speaker 8: No, I'm not surprised. I mean, I think it's fascinating
• 36:38
  Speaker 8: that every year, No matter the commemoration, no matter whether
• 36:43
  Speaker 8: it has a five or a zero at the end,
• 36:45
  Speaker 8: Americans do take a moment. But this is special, 25 years,
• 36:49
  Speaker 8: and you think it's a whole new generation. I am
• 36:52
  Speaker 8: just stunned when I come across that statistic that 100
• 36:55
  Speaker 8: million Americans were not alive during 9-11. That's a third
• 37:00
  Speaker 8: of the country. And so it's something that I think
• 37:05
  Speaker 8: it's a helpful moment for the country. that we all
• 37:08
  Speaker 8: pay attention to what happened that day, and we all
• 37:10
  Speaker 8: try to learn what caused the event, the repercussions of
• 37:15
  Speaker 8: the event, but also that moment of unity America felt
• 37:19
  Speaker 8: lasted about six months, where we put everything aside and
• 37:23
  Speaker 8: we understood ourselves as being part of a shared civic project,
• 37:28
  Speaker 8: all citizens of this country. That is, I think, another
• 37:31
  Speaker 8: reason why we observe the memorials in the way we do,
• 37:34
  Speaker 8: is that part of us wants to kind of recapture that. moment,
• 37:38
  Speaker 8: even though it was amidst such tragedy and evil.
• 37:42
  Speaker 1: Very well and fully said, Matt Continetti. Thank you from
• 37:45
  Speaker 1: the American Enterprise Institute, where he is rightly described as
• 37:48
  Speaker 1: a poobah by John Podhortz, columnist for the Wall Street
• 37:51
  Speaker 1: Journal in their free expressions vertical. That actually just means
• 37:54
  Speaker 1: he writes for the paper online. Go read Continetti in
• 37:57
  Speaker 1: the journal and listen to him Thursdays on the Commentary
• 38:00
  Speaker 1: Podcast and Tuesdays and Fridays when we are lucky here
• 38:03
  Speaker 1: on the Hugh Hewitt Show. Go nowhere, America. I'm Hugh Hewitt.
• 38:06
  Speaker 2: The Second World Trade Center, obviously demonstrating that this is
• 38:10
  Speaker 2: an intentional and well-organized assault, acts of terrorism.
• 38:14
  Speaker 1: It cannot be othered.
• 38:16
  Speaker 8: Morning, Lauren.
• 38:17
  Speaker 1: Evening, Grace America. Hour two, 25 years later. That was
• 38:20
  Speaker 1: me 25 years ago in this same building with Dwayne
• 38:23
  Speaker 1: on my right and Adam on my left. And now
• 38:25
  Speaker 1: we are joined by Harley Duran in the video and
• 38:28
  Speaker 1: Ben Dominich from the East Coast. Ben, 25 years ago,
• 38:32
  Speaker 1: we talked about with you. Did you happen to watch
• 38:36
  Speaker 1: Abby Phillips and Noah Rothman from last night?
• 38:41
  Speaker 7: No, I did not, actually.
• 38:43
  Speaker 1: Abby doesn't appear to know the difference between Islam and Islamist.
• 38:46
  Speaker 1: Noah was talking about Islamist-adjacent people like Abdul Al-Sayed, and
• 38:53
  Speaker 1: Abby was accusing him almost of Islamophobia, not explicitly, but close.
• 38:58
  Speaker 1: How can that be in this age?
• 39:03
  Speaker 7: Well, I mean, isn't that an indictment that says everything
• 39:07
  Speaker 7: about the fact that we forgot 9-11 issues? far too quickly.
• 39:12
  Speaker 7: And certainly the people who I work with today, who
• 39:17
  Speaker 7: are young people who were, several of them were born
• 39:22
  Speaker 7: after 9-11. Several of them were far too young to
• 39:25
  Speaker 7: remember anything about 9-11. Because they work at the Daily Wire,
• 39:28
  Speaker 7: they know the difference between those two things. But I
• 39:32
  Speaker 7: think that the public at large does not. And I
• 39:35
  Speaker 7: think that a large part of that has been driven
• 39:37
  Speaker 7: by an absolute redefinition of any questions being raised as
• 39:42
  Speaker 7: being Islamophobic, as being reflective of some form of bigotry
• 39:48
  Speaker 7: and racism. when they are actually based in history, they're
• 39:51
  Speaker 7: based on the behavior of America's enemies, and calling them
• 39:56
  Speaker 7: out is absolutely something that we need to have more of.
• 39:58
  Speaker 7: In fact, I think that Ted Cruz's speech at the
• 40:01
  Speaker 7: convention was one of the few that I think really
• 40:05
  Speaker 7: grasped this as much as it ought to be. There
• 40:08
  Speaker 7: are people who I think ought to be speaking out
• 40:10
  Speaker 7: about it more. And with this anniversary, Hugh, I think
• 40:15
  Speaker 7: I really feel like it's an indication of how much
• 40:19
  Speaker 7: we've fallen apart as a country. My friend Patrick Ruffini
• 40:22
  Speaker 7: put out a piece, which will be republished at the
• 40:25
  Speaker 7: Daily Wire later today, about the polling numbers in advance
• 40:29
  Speaker 7: of 9-11. Did you know that 72% of Americans said
• 40:32
  Speaker 7: that the country was on the right track before 9-11? 72%.
• 40:37
  Speaker 7: That's a country that's completely gone to us. And, I mean,
• 40:41
  Speaker 7: I think that, you know, there's this revisionist history that says, oh,
• 40:43
  Speaker 7: we all came together after 9-11. Well, the truth was
• 40:46
  Speaker 7: we actually were pretty much together before that, too.
• 40:48
  Speaker 1: That was W's compassionate conservatism. He's going to be the
• 40:52
  Speaker 1: education president. We were playing Little League on the South Lawn.
• 40:55
  Speaker 1: That's what that was. You know what's interesting? The Abby
• 41:00
  Speaker 1: Phillips-Noah Rothman blowup is over Ted Cruz's speech. Because Noah
• 41:04
  Speaker 1: was saying it's a great speech, and Abby was saying, oh, no,
• 41:08
  Speaker 1: I don't want to put words in her mouth. People
• 41:10
  Speaker 1: listen to it. I'm shocked. I'm just absolutely shocked that
• 41:14
  Speaker 1: she doesn't know what she doesn't know.
• 41:17
  Speaker 7: Well, you know, Hugh, the thing that really I feel
• 41:20
  Speaker 7: like we miss about, and I say this as someone,
• 41:24
  Speaker 7: you obviously, you know, you lived through it in your
• 41:26
  Speaker 7: own way. But for my generation, you know, I... I
• 41:32
  Speaker 7: was 19, my sister was 17, my brother was 15,
• 41:35
  Speaker 7: and it changed our lives. I left school and went
• 41:38
  Speaker 7: to the White House. My sister went into the Defense Department.
• 41:41
  Speaker 7: My brother joined the American military, and.
• 41:45
  Speaker 4: That was that.
• 41:46
  Speaker 7: It changed the paths that we were on in fundamental ways,
• 41:49
  Speaker 7: and that's true of a lot of people of my generation, including.
• 41:52
  Speaker 4: By the way, J.D.
• 41:53
  Speaker 7: Vance, who was speaking at the convention last night. His
• 41:56
  Speaker 7: life was changed by that just as much as so
• 41:58
  Speaker 7: many others in his age range have. And I think
• 42:01
  Speaker 7: that we just kind of assume on a certain level
• 42:04
  Speaker 7: that this is the way that things have always been
• 42:06
  Speaker 7: when it wasn't the case. It really was not the
• 42:09
  Speaker 7: case that we had a country that was this divided
• 42:11
  Speaker 7: in the days before that. And I think that, frankly,
• 42:16
  Speaker 7: Americans have lost hope in the idea that we'll ever
• 42:19
  Speaker 7: get back to that point where we have that kind
• 42:21
  Speaker 7: of unity again.
• 42:22
  Speaker 1: Well, part of this goes right to the collapse of
• 42:24
  Speaker 1: secondary and primary education in America's public schools and what
• 42:28
  Speaker 1: do they teach and the pedagogy that they learn by
• 42:30
  Speaker 1: which they teach. Matt Continetti just made the point before
• 42:33
  Speaker 1: you came on. Charlie Kirk was filling that void when
• 42:36
  Speaker 1: he was murdered. And he was teaching people what they
• 42:40
  Speaker 1: needed to know and demonstrating that ignorance makes you look
• 42:43
  Speaker 1: stupid on campuses every day. And I know because I
• 42:47
  Speaker 1: don't have a lot of nominees. I nominated Spencer Clavin.
• 42:50
  Speaker 1: We need some people to step up and they've got
• 42:53
  Speaker 1: to be smart, Ben, and they got to be young.
• 42:55
  Speaker 7: Well, and one of the things that I think we
• 42:59
  Speaker 7: should understand is there's this impression that's fomented in the
• 43:03
  Speaker 7: media just because the craziest things tend to happen in
• 43:07
  Speaker 7: at these elite universities that are frequented by and attended
• 43:11
  Speaker 7: by far-left individuals. But the truth is that what Charlie
• 43:15
  Speaker 7: Kirk was doing and the role that he had and
• 43:17
  Speaker 7: the role that we really need, it isn't just about
• 43:19
  Speaker 7: that population. It's actually about the big state schools. It's
• 43:22
  Speaker 7: actually about the common American student in terms of their
• 43:26
  Speaker 7: experience who are not being educated or taught the real
• 43:30
  Speaker 7: history of this country or the real history of our
• 43:34
  Speaker 7: capitalist success. I think it's taken for granted, and it's
• 43:37
  Speaker 7: one of the reasons why socialism has such purchase at
• 43:40
  Speaker 7: this moment among that very cohort.
• 43:43
  Speaker 1: There is a great textbook, Wilford MacLeay, Land of Hope,
• 43:48
  Speaker 1: a great book. And I just don't think it's taught widely,
• 43:51
  Speaker 1: and I happen to think we need homeschooling and Catholic
• 43:55
  Speaker 1: education to come back big time because I don't think
• 43:57
  Speaker 1: you can save public education in a lot of America.
• 44:00
  Speaker 1: There are some great spots, but not generally.
• 44:03
  Speaker 7: The good– The good thing is, and I'd say this
• 44:07
  Speaker 7: as someone who was homeschooled at a point where this
• 44:09
  Speaker 7: was not the case, the effect that one of the
• 44:13
  Speaker 7: silver linings of the horrible experience that COVID had was
• 44:18
  Speaker 7: the explosion of homeschooling to an unprecedented degree in terms
• 44:23
  Speaker 7: of the uptick. Now, how long that's going to last,
• 44:26
  Speaker 7: we'll have to see, but there's also just so many
• 44:28
  Speaker 7: more resources available. So many more, you know, parents who
• 44:31
  Speaker 7: are coming together, you know, in a communitarian way to
• 44:36
  Speaker 7: teach their kids, to educate their kids, to guide them
• 44:38
  Speaker 7: through programs that are being made by and created by
• 44:42
  Speaker 7: a lot of people who understand the real history of
• 44:44
  Speaker 7: the United States, of the West, and of the world.
• 44:47
  Speaker 7: And those are all, I think, things that are of
• 44:48
  Speaker 7: a great benefit. But I do think that they have
• 44:50
  Speaker 7: to last, and that's the real test.
• 44:52
  Speaker 4: All right.
• 44:52
  Speaker 1: Microdose of Ben Domenech today because Victor Davis Hanson is
• 44:55
  Speaker 1: coming up to talk about his book. So here's my
• 44:57
  Speaker 1: last question, the big question. Was 9-11 a different war
• 45:01
  Speaker 1: than the one we were fighting in Iran? Because they
• 45:03
  Speaker 1: were Sunni extremists and Iran is run by IRGC Shia extremists.
• 45:08
  Speaker 1: Or is it one war? I am of the one
• 45:10
  Speaker 1: war view. What is Ben Domenech?
• 45:14
  Speaker 7: I'm of the one more view as well. I think
• 45:16
  Speaker 7: this is all connective tissue between this, and I think
• 45:22
  Speaker 7: you can pull back from it and look at it
• 45:25
  Speaker 7: and understand it as such. You can split hairs and
• 45:29
  Speaker 7: make arguments that this is of a different kind. But fundamentally,
• 45:34
  Speaker 7: I think this is about the survival of Western civilization
• 45:36
  Speaker 7: in the face of a socialist Islamist threat, one that
• 45:40
  Speaker 7: now is unfortunately infecting our own politics in a way
• 45:43
  Speaker 7: that is unprecedented and that requires more than just mocking
• 45:48
  Speaker 7: it or making fun of it or pretending like it's
• 45:49
  Speaker 7: not a real threat. And look, I know it's a
• 45:52
  Speaker 7: single moment, but just seeing that laughter from AOC and
• 45:55
  Speaker 7: Mandani during the calling out the most somber occasion that
• 45:58
  Speaker 7: we have here in this anniversary of the listing of
• 46:02
  Speaker 7: the names in New York City. It just reminded me
• 46:05
  Speaker 7: in every way why I'm still angry about what happened.
• 46:08
  Speaker 1: We have that tape. We're playing it right now. It's
• 46:11
  Speaker 1: only 16 seconds. What were they thinking? By the way.
• 46:14
  Speaker 1: This happens at every public event. At the funeral for
• 46:17
  Speaker 1: Ronald Reagan, Arnold was working the crowd. And it happened
• 46:21
  Speaker 1: with Bill Clinton at Ron Brown's. What is wrong with people?
• 46:24
  Speaker 1: You don't do that.
• 46:25
  Speaker 7: I don't understand the context. But I think, again, for this,
• 46:29
  Speaker 7: it's faded into the background. And the people who were participants,
• 46:35
  Speaker 7: and I know many people who were either part of
• 46:38
  Speaker 7: the either part of firefighter units or part of police units,
• 46:42
  Speaker 7: part of search and rescue units afterwards on 9-11, you know,
• 46:48
  Speaker 7: people who I still stay in touch with, if they
• 46:50
  Speaker 7: could have seen what was going to happen 25 years
• 46:53
  Speaker 7: later in their own city, I think they would be horrified.
• 46:56
  Speaker 1: Okay, Ben, is it fair to play that tape of
• 46:58
  Speaker 1: Mamdani and AOC again and again and again? I played
• 47:01
  Speaker 1: it twice. We'll play it a third time right now.
• 47:03
  Speaker 8: Is it fair?
• 47:03
  Speaker 7: Why? Yes, I think it's fair because I think it shows–
• 47:08
  Speaker 7: It shows how glib they are about all of this.
• 47:11
  Speaker 7: They don't take it seriously. They don't understand the gravity
• 47:15
  Speaker 7: of it or the way that it is appreciated by
• 47:18
  Speaker 7: anyone who is connected to it. They dismiss it. And
• 47:20
  Speaker 7: deep down inside them, and you know this, Hugh, they
• 47:24
  Speaker 7: think that we deserve it. They don't actually disagree with
• 47:26
  Speaker 7: anything Ahsan Piker says about this stuff. They'll distance themselves
• 47:30
  Speaker 7: from it. They'll pretend like they don't agree. But when
• 47:32
  Speaker 7: they say that, they are lying to you. They actually
• 47:35
  Speaker 7: do believe this is blowback. This is just, you know,
• 47:37
  Speaker 7: this is what you get for getting too close to Israel.
• 47:40
  Speaker 7: This is what you get for, you know, America, you know,
• 47:43
  Speaker 7: believing that we ought to export, you know, our views
• 47:45
  Speaker 7: about the way that the world ought to be. And
• 47:48
  Speaker 7: that's something that I think is fundamental to their understanding
• 47:51
  Speaker 7: of the world, and it's why it is so easy
• 47:54
  Speaker 7: for them to just laugh about this and treat it
• 47:56
  Speaker 7: as if it is not.
• 47:57
  Speaker 1: The conversation that it is. I don't do telepathy, but
• 48:00
  Speaker 1: I do Columbo. And based on my Columbo, you are right.
• 48:05
  Speaker 1: That's just the piecing together of the jigsaw puzzle. One
• 48:08
  Speaker 1: more thing. One more thing. We don't need it with
• 48:11
  Speaker 1: El Sayed or Mamdani or AOC. We got the record.
• 48:15
  Speaker 1: Ben Dominic from The Daily Wire, where he edits the
• 48:17
  Speaker 1: opinion pages, Fox News contributor, host of the Big Ben podcast,
• 48:21
  Speaker 1: which you should listen to, read him, and follow him
• 48:23
  Speaker 1: on X at B Dominic. Welcome back, America. I'm Hugh Hewitt,
• 48:30
  Speaker 1: joined by the poet laureate of The Hugh Hewitt Show
• 48:33
  Speaker 1: over these many years, Tarzana Joe. Hello, Joe. Hello, Hugh.
• 48:37
  Speaker 9: I don't know if you recall, but the poem we
• 48:40
  Speaker 9: did the week before 9-11 was a poem honoring volunteer soldiers, sailors,
• 48:48
  Speaker 9: and airmen who served in peacetime. It was called Peacetime.
• 48:54
  Speaker 9: We want to travel back in time. not to the
• 48:57
  Speaker 9: days of yore, but to that age of innocence we
• 49:01
  Speaker 9: call the day before. When upon reflection, the world seemed
• 49:07
  Speaker 9: somehow fairer, and planning each tomorrow, second thoughts were rarer.
• 49:13
  Speaker 9: When we could look into the air and watch a
• 49:16
  Speaker 9: plane glide by, and not even imagine there was horror
• 49:20
  Speaker 9: in the sky. But now we're in an underworld, a
• 49:24
  Speaker 9: place we've never been, where anger looks like virtue and
• 49:28
  Speaker 9: forgiveness seems a sin. And yet we are forgiving folk.
• 49:33
  Speaker 9: It's what we've learned to do. Respectful of the way
• 49:36
  Speaker 9: you pray, we ask the same from you. Now, I
• 49:40
  Speaker 9: don't mind the waiting line. Each time I'm going through it,
• 49:43
  Speaker 9: it gives me time to say a prayer for why
• 49:46
  Speaker 9: we have to do it. Bow your head a little
• 49:49
  Speaker 9: and take a moment, please, remembering the lost from both
• 49:53
  Speaker 9: destruction and disease. Once I wore a bracelet, perhaps you
• 49:58
  Speaker 9: did the same, engraved on it the letters of a
• 50:01
  Speaker 9: captured soldier's name. Listen to the roll call, pick one
• 50:07
  Speaker 9: for a friend, Imagine their salvation upon your prayers depend.
• 50:13
  Speaker 9: And when you think you've prayed enough, pray a little
• 50:16
  Speaker 9: more for those who lived so lovingly back in the
• 50:22
  Speaker 9: day before. That's September 10th, dedicated to my friend Mark
• 50:28
  Speaker 9: Schirmeier by Tarzana Joe.
• 50:30
  Speaker 1: Still good, Tarzana Joe. And I'm going to post that
• 50:34
  Speaker 1: at TarzanaJoe.com.
• 50:37
  Speaker 9: It is there, and I think I'm going to post
• 50:39
  Speaker 9: other poems that we've done for 9-11. The poem I
• 50:43
  Speaker 9: did for the police department in search and rescue at Rosemead,
• 50:48
  Speaker 9: one of the first people in the air going to
• 50:52
  Speaker 9: what they hoped was a search and rescue operation in
• 50:55
  Speaker 9: New York, one of the first planes back in the
• 50:58
  Speaker 9: sky from right here in Rosemead, California. And they have
• 51:01
  Speaker 9: an I-beam from 9-11 and from the Royal Trade Center
• 51:05
  Speaker 9: that they dedicated Then.
• 51:07
  Speaker 1: I will be visiting TarzanaJoe.com later in the afternoon. Put
• 51:11
  Speaker 1: everyone in the collection. It's an inspiring and noble collection, Joe,
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  Speaker 1: and your work has been much appreciated by everyone who
• 51:18
  Speaker 1: cares about the day. Tarzana Joe has been doing this
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  Speaker 1: for a quarter century, so don't miss any of his
• 51:24
  Speaker 1: great works on matters great, small, troubling, inspiring, and everything
• 51:29
  Speaker 1: in between over at TarzanaJoe.com. If you need a poem,
• 51:33
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  Speaker 1: Welcome back, America. I'm Hugh Hewitt, joined by Professor Victor
• 54:44
  Speaker 1: Davis Hanson. Professor Hanson is a classicist, a historian, public intellectual.
• 54:50
  Speaker 1: He is our own Publius Utilius Rufus. Look it up
• 54:53
  Speaker 1: if you don't know what that means. Professor Hanson, welcome
• 54:56
  Speaker 1: and congratulations on the publication of The Counter-Revolution from the
• 55:00
  Speaker 1: top books at Amazon. It will be on the number
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  Speaker 1: one New York Times bestseller nonfiction next week. Are you
• 55:07
  Speaker 1: pleased with the response to the book?
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  Speaker 4: So far, yeah.
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  Speaker 5: It's just been four days, but I'm mildly surprised that
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  Speaker 5: it was on number one for three days.
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  Speaker 4: And I think that was.
• 55:19
  Speaker 5: largely because the president tweeted, and then I was on
• 55:22
  Speaker 5: a couple of Fox shows. But I think people will
• 55:25
  Speaker 5: like the book. It's well-documented. But it's a large book.
• 55:30
  Speaker 5: I mean, it's not a casual read, so I was
• 55:33
  Speaker 5: a little worried about that.
• 55:35
  Speaker 1: It's a riveting read, though. And I can tell people,
• 55:38
  Speaker 1: I read it four months ago in pre-publication, and Victor
• 55:41
  Speaker 1: and I have talked about it a couple of times.
• 55:42
  Speaker 1: I'll get into it again here. But as it's the
• 55:45
  Speaker 1: 25th anniversary of 9-11, Victor, I wanted to begin with that.
• 55:50
  Speaker 1: With an unusual question, I said you're a classicist. When
• 55:55
  Speaker 1: did Athens realize it had lost the war with Sparta?
• 55:58
  Speaker 1: Why did they lose it, and was that loss inevitable?
• 56:04
  Speaker 5: I think people realized that after the end of the
• 56:08
  Speaker 5: Sicilian expedition, and they had gone to Sicily in 415 AD,
• 56:16
  Speaker 5: and they lost 40,000 over a two-year period, 40,000 soldiers,
• 56:22
  Speaker 5: sailors of their empire and Athenians. They lost their entire fleet.
• 56:27
  Speaker 5: Then they didn't think they could win after that. They
• 56:30
  Speaker 5: didn't think they were going to lose. In fact, the
• 56:31
  Speaker 5: war went on for another almost eight years, and they
• 56:36
  Speaker 5: had some successes. But at that point, the democracy kind
• 56:42
  Speaker 5: of spun out of control, and they started They executed
• 56:47
  Speaker 5: the generals at Argonusa after a great victory. They recalled
• 56:51
  Speaker 5: Alcibiades and tried to execute him. So it was a
• 56:54
  Speaker 5: defunctional society after that. They could not win, but it
• 56:57
  Speaker 5: wasn't inevitable that they lost, except every time they had
• 57:02
  Speaker 5: an opportunity to get a reasonable peace after a victory,
• 57:07
  Speaker 5: they refused it.
• 57:09
  Speaker 1: So is there... Is there any parallel for America to
• 57:13
  Speaker 1: draw from that? The first class I had from Stanley Hoffman,
• 57:16
  Speaker 1: who was a freshman long ago and far away, was
• 57:18
  Speaker 1: the Melian Dialogue. And he said, we are Athens, and
• 57:22
  Speaker 1: the Soviet Union at the time is Sparta, and you
• 57:24
  Speaker 1: should read this. What do you think?
• 57:27
  Speaker 5: That we are Athens, and the Soviet Union was Sparta?
• 57:34
  Speaker 4: No, I don't think so. That dialogue, the Melian Dialogue,
• 57:38
  Speaker 4: which is.
• 57:39
  Speaker 5: in Book 5, Section 81, it's really misunderstood. It's placed
• 57:48
  Speaker 5: there because the Athenians will go on to Sicily in
• 57:50
  Speaker 5: the next chapter and lose, so it's kind of a
• 57:54
  Speaker 5: warning that imperial hubris of slaughtering the Melian captives will
• 58:02
  Speaker 5: have nemesis. But that being said, it's more Thucydidean exploration
• 58:08
  Speaker 5: of the way human nature works. And he has the Athenians,
• 58:11
  Speaker 5: they're very cold-hearted, and we don't expect that from democratic leaders,
• 58:14
  Speaker 5: but they say, essentially, we didn't really pick these roles,
• 58:18
  Speaker 5: the strong dictate to the weak and the weak obey
• 58:20
  Speaker 5: as they must. And that's the way it is. And
• 58:24
  Speaker 5: people have argued the Melians could have made a deal.
• 58:27
  Speaker 4: All they had to do was say, We will.
• 58:30
  Speaker 5: Not allow Spartans to come into our neutral city, and
• 58:33
  Speaker 5: we will join the empire. And people who joined it
• 58:36
  Speaker 5: were very happy for the most part. So there were
• 58:39
  Speaker 5: a lot of backstories about it. But Athens was not
• 58:42
  Speaker 5: going to let— and then there's another message, and they said,
• 58:45
  Speaker 5: you'll find out very quickly what kind of allies the
• 58:48
  Speaker 5: Spartans are. They do nothing when the risk is considered
• 58:53
  Speaker 5: too great for their own interests. So they're basically not
• 58:56
  Speaker 5: going to come.
• 58:56
  Speaker 4: To help you.
• 58:58
  Speaker 5: But it's so raw– the argumentation is so raw and
• 59:02
  Speaker 5: brutal about human nature that people have suggested maybe the
• 59:05
  Speaker 5: Athenians were evil. But really it's– and we don't know
• 59:08
  Speaker 5: who they are.
• 59:08
  Speaker 4: They're anonymous.
• 59:09
  Speaker 5: But people have argued that Alcibiades may have been one
• 59:12
  Speaker 5: of the diplomats that's talking to the Median.
• 59:15
  Speaker 1: So, Victor, I bring that up to make an argument
• 59:17
  Speaker 1: or a proposal to you. The war that OBL, bin Laden,
• 59:20
  Speaker 1: started against America goes back to the 1990s. It manifests
• 59:24
  Speaker 1: itself in a way we can't deny 25 years ago today.
• 59:28
  Speaker 1: It continued through Afghanistan and Iraq. I, Hugh Hewitt, nobody else,
• 59:32
  Speaker 1: believes that it is the same war that we're in
• 59:34
  Speaker 1: with Iran today and all across Africa. Do you agree
• 59:38
  Speaker 1: with any or all of that?
• 59:41
  Speaker 4: A lot of it I do.
• 59:42
  Speaker 5: I think what's even scarier is no one on– I
• 59:47
  Speaker 5: don't think if I was on this program on 9-11
• 59:50
  Speaker 5: and I said to you, you, in 25 years from now,
• 59:54
  Speaker 5: we're going to have radical.
• 59:57
  Speaker 4: Islamicists in Iraq. in government. And Rudy Giuliani's city is
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 4: going to be run by Mr. Mondami. And we're going
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 4: to have Mr.
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 5: Hassan Piker, who's the heartthrob of a lot of candidates,
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 5: say that we sort of deserve 9-11. And there's going
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 5: to be rampant, 50% of all hate crimes in New
• 1:00:16
  Speaker 5: York are going to be directed at Jews. And I
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 5: could go, Ilhan Omar is going to be in the Congress,
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 5: and she's going to say, well, something happened on 9-11.
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 4: You know, basically a big deal.
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 5: I didn't think I would– I don't think anybody could
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 5: predict the rise of the Islamist wing of the new
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 5: socialist democratic party with.
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 4: Piker and El-Said.
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 5: And Mondami and Ilhan Omar and Millet, Kiros, and all
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 5: of them.
• 1:00:46
  Speaker 4: I just don't think anybody would have anticipated that.
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 1: Now, you are a constant figure in these 25 years.
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 1: People may not know this. W had you to the
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 1: White House. How often did he have you to the
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 1: White House to talk about the war picture?
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 5: Well, he had a group, and the rule was if
• 1:01:01
  Speaker 5: you didn't say you were going, that's what I was
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 5: told by an aide, if you didn't say you were
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 5: going in, you would go in twice a year. So
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 5: I never told anybody I went in. So I went
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 5: in for seven of the eight years.
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 7: Okay.
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 5: And Charles Kutheimer was one of the people like that.
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 1: Who else besides you and Charles can you tell me?
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 5: Yeah, the late Fuad Ajami. The three of us were
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 5: the final ones. There were other people initially, but I
• 1:01:27
  Speaker 5: think when W's popularity began to die, they didn't want
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 5: to come, or they were talking about that they had
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 5: been grandstanding. I'm with the president, and they didn't like that.
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 5: So Fuad and Charles and I, we didn't tell anybody,
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 5: but we did go in there, and we talked about it.
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 5: And every time we went in there, what was remarkable,
• 1:01:49
  Speaker 5: he asked what to read, and people would give him suggestions.
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 5: And when the next time we came in six months later,
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 5: W had actually read it and was quite informed and
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 5: was asking us questions.
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 1: So I would like you to compare W and Trump,
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 1: about whom you've written two books, versus Obama and Biden.
• 1:02:10
  Speaker 1: Obama of the infamous, they're the JV team, and Biden
• 1:02:13
  Speaker 1: of the infamous Afghanistan scamper.
• 1:02:17
  Speaker 5: Well, Biden is very different than Obama, but Obama, I think,
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 5: far better represents the left-wing view.
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 4: Of what you've talked about this quarter century.
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 5: In Obama's view, the problems in the Middle East were
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 5: a result of European colonialism and American imperialism. And therefore,
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 5: as he viewed the world as a binary of the
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 5: oppressed and the oppressors, he looked at the Middle East
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 5: and he said, the Shia minority Persians are the oppressed
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 5: and they're kindred Arab Shia minorities. So I'm going to
• 1:02:50
  Speaker 5: come in, and I'm going to promote a kind of crescent.
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 5: And that will be, Nancy Pelosi went over to see
• 1:02:58
  Speaker 5: the Assad's, Hafez al-Assad's family, that clique. So it was
• 1:03:03
  Speaker 5: basically Iran, and then Syria, which is quasi-Shia, and then
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 5: it was Lebanon, Hezbollah, and then it was Hamas, and
• 1:03:14
  Speaker 5: then it was the Houthis. And Not that they were
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 5: avidly for that, but they thought that they would have
• 1:03:20
  Speaker 5: creative tension with the Sunni Gulf states and democratic Israel.
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 5: And then from time to time, the United States would
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 5: come in and adjudicate. But there would be no moral
• 1:03:29
  Speaker 5: difference from the two groups. And I think you can
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 5: make the argument, given the money he gave to Iran
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 5: and dropping the sanctions and things, he.
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 4: Favored that latter.
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 5: They were more radical and authentic, I think, to Obama. Biden,
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 5: I don't think, had any idea. what was going on,
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 5: other than as an old Democrat, the traditional support for
• 1:03:52
  Speaker 5: Israel was now taboo. And he had people in his
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 5: administration that would undermine Israel because they were telling him,
• 1:04:00
  Speaker 5: it's not your party. You and Schumer and Pelosi are dinosaurs, ossified, calcified.
• 1:04:05
  Speaker 5: You don't understand what's going on with this party. We
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 5: are a socialist Islamist base now. And so they began
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 5: to back off.
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 4: A little bit.
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 1: So, Victor Davis Hanson, I enormously admire W. I think
• 1:04:17
  Speaker 1: we were blessed to have him as president on 9-11.
• 1:04:20
  Speaker 1: I don't know that anyone could have done any better
• 1:04:21
  Speaker 1: than he did or his team. I also have grown
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 1: to like Trump quite a lot, although I disagree with
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 1: him on many things, including birthright citizenship. He is simply wrong,
• 1:04:31
  Speaker 1: and I've told him that. But the creative tension is
• 1:04:34
  Speaker 1: good for me as a journalist. They don't like each other,
• 1:04:37
  Speaker 1: but they ought to in my view. What do you think?
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 4: You mean that they're similar in some ways?
• 1:04:43
  Speaker 7: Yeah. Yeah.
• 1:04:45
  Speaker 5: Yeah, I think they're similar in that they both feel
• 1:04:48
  Speaker 5: that radical Islam, both its manifestation in Western countries as
• 1:04:54
  Speaker 5: immigrants and terrorists, not all immigrants are terrorists, but as
• 1:04:59
  Speaker 5: terrorists who come into the West, I think there's been
• 1:05:01
  Speaker 5: 4,000 or 5,000 incidents. Some people say quite a lot.
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 5: And what they're doing in the Middle East are the same.
• 1:05:09
  Speaker 5: The only difference is Trump, because he has hindsight, given
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 5: the misadventures in Afghanistan. He has a taboo that he
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 5: will not put ground troops on the ground anywhere in
• 1:05:21
  Speaker 5: the Middle East.
• 1:05:22
  Speaker 4: He feels that's just going to destroy his administration.
• 1:05:27
  Speaker 5: He will wage war in the air. He will negotiate.
• 1:05:31
  Speaker 5: Whereas W, I don't think W would do the on-and-off negotiation.
• 1:05:37
  Speaker 4: His idea was to go in there with ground troops
• 1:05:39
  Speaker 4: and win.
• 1:05:41
  Speaker 5: And I don't think you can win really if you
• 1:05:43
  Speaker 5: don't fight a Western-style war in the Middle East.
• 1:05:45
  Speaker 1: So that's a good thing. I think that Iran– W's
• 1:05:51
  Speaker 1: greatest mistake was not keeping going and going to Iran
• 1:05:53
  Speaker 1: because we've been at war with these people, Shia and
• 1:05:56
  Speaker 1: Sunni extremism, since 1979. And we fight intermittently and with
• 1:05:59
  Speaker 1: one hand behind our back. And maybe Donald Trump isn't
• 1:06:02
  Speaker 1: going to finish the war this way. What do you
• 1:06:04
  Speaker 1: think he's– A, do you agree with that, that it's
• 1:06:06
  Speaker 1: all one war? Shia and Sunni extremist ally when they
• 1:06:09
  Speaker 1: want to, and they fight each other as Arkali when
• 1:06:11
  Speaker 1: they want to, but they both want to kill the
• 1:06:14
  Speaker 1: West and Israel. But that Iran is the problem. If
• 1:06:17
  Speaker 1: you remove the problem, the Middle East will get kind
• 1:06:19
  Speaker 1: of calm.
• 1:06:20
  Speaker 4: Yeah, well, that's a good question.
• 1:06:24
  Speaker 5: When I was writing the book, I said to myself,
• 1:06:26
  Speaker 5: why are Americans in Syria? Why are they in Iraq?
• 1:06:30
  Speaker 5: We're not afraid of the Iraq government, really. And now
• 1:06:33
  Speaker 5: with this new Syrian government, whatever it is, it doesn't
• 1:06:36
  Speaker 5: seem as American.
• 1:06:36
  Speaker 4: anti-American.
• 1:06:38
  Speaker 5: And then the answer is, it's Iran. Take away the
• 1:06:41
  Speaker 5: equation and bring it back to the Iran of the 1960s.
• 1:06:46
  Speaker 5: And we didn't have any major bases there because it
• 1:06:51
  Speaker 5: was a stabilizing rather than a disruptive force. And so
• 1:06:55
  Speaker 5: you're absolutely right. Most of our concern after we... And
• 1:07:00
  Speaker 5: we did a lot of damage to radical Sunni terrorism.
• 1:07:02
  Speaker 4: We got.
• 1:07:03
  Speaker 5: Trump, to his credit, bombed the blank, as he promised,
• 1:07:06
  Speaker 5: out of ISIS. Al-Qaeda doesn't rear its head much. It's
• 1:07:11
  Speaker 5: basically the Houthis and Hamas and Hezbollah and Iran. And
• 1:07:16
  Speaker 5: if Trump can neutralize this with this new anaconda strategy
• 1:07:19
  Speaker 5: that I think is viable and it's sustainable, he could see...
• 1:07:25
  Speaker 5: I mean, they don't have gasoline now, and we're worried about...
• 1:07:28
  Speaker 5: There's people in the West who say, well, we're worried
• 1:07:30
  Speaker 5: they're all going to starve, but the same... That doesn't
• 1:07:33
  Speaker 5: jive with what they've been saying, that it doesn't work,
• 1:07:36
  Speaker 5: we've lost. So I think even the left is starting
• 1:07:39
  Speaker 5: to see that Iran is in desperate straits. It's just
• 1:07:41
  Speaker 5: a question, when are they going to implode? And you
• 1:07:45
  Speaker 5: know what? Trump said, well, they're going to implode after
• 1:07:48
  Speaker 5: the election because they'll do anything to last because they
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 5: think the Democrats are going to be elected and call
• 1:07:55
  Speaker 5: me off or whatever. But they could implode. There's a
• 1:07:58
  Speaker 5: chance they could implode before the election because the people
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 5: would say, If Trump loses, we're going to lose support
• 1:08:04
  Speaker 5: in the United States. Not that Trump will be completely hampered,
• 1:08:07
  Speaker 5: but we better do something before the election. That's another
• 1:08:10
  Speaker 5: argument as well.
• 1:08:11
  Speaker 1: Matt Continetti made the argument on the commentary podcast yesterday.
• 1:08:14
  Speaker 1: The best thing that Donald Trump could do before the
• 1:08:16
  Speaker 1: election is win the war with Iran. I believe that
• 1:08:18
  Speaker 1: is correct. And by winning the war, I mean established deterrence.
• 1:08:22
  Speaker 1: They're afraid to hit Israel. They won't strike Israel. They'll
• 1:08:25
  Speaker 1: shoot at us because we have not established deterrence. Trump
• 1:08:28
  Speaker 1: can establish deterrence. Do you think he can? Yes.
• 1:08:31
  Speaker 4: Oh, yeah, he can do it in one day.
• 1:08:32
  Speaker 5: He can say, I'm going to follow the Bill Clinton
• 1:08:35
  Speaker 5: model because it went on 45 days and nothing was done.
• 1:08:39
  Speaker 5: And then he decided to hit the bridges in the Danube.
• 1:08:41
  Speaker 5: And then that gave him some motion. And then he
• 1:08:44
  Speaker 5: hit all of the generation and took out. I mean,
• 1:08:47
  Speaker 5: the left was not angry that their president took out
• 1:08:50
  Speaker 5: all the power grid for days at a time in
• 1:08:52
  Speaker 5: a million person Belgrade. All he has to do is
• 1:08:55
  Speaker 5: take out one day. He just says there's going to
• 1:08:58
  Speaker 5: be no key bridges.
• 1:08:59
  Speaker 4: I want one. And take them out.
• 1:09:00
  Speaker 5: And then if they keep shooting the missiles, he can
• 1:09:03
  Speaker 5: say this particular power plant will have no power. And
• 1:09:06
  Speaker 5: that will get their attention. And then he can also
• 1:09:11
  Speaker 5: get a list of people he wants to target from
• 1:09:13
  Speaker 5: the Israelis.
• 1:09:14
  Speaker 4: They know who they are.
• 1:09:15
  Speaker 1: He can do that very easily. Before I go back
• 1:09:18
  Speaker 1: to the counter-revolution, because I got a lot of questions
• 1:09:19
  Speaker 1: about it, I want to ask you one more question
• 1:09:21
  Speaker 1: looking forward. On the bench behind President Trump, J.D. Vance,
• 1:09:25
  Speaker 1: Tom Cotton, Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, Mike Pompeo, Dave McCormick,
• 1:09:30
  Speaker 1: on the bench behind whoever the Democrats are is Mamdani, El-Sayed, Tallarico, Flanagan, AOC,
• 1:09:37
  Speaker 1: and the squad. That's a political cage match. Now, there
• 1:09:40
  Speaker 1: are fights among the Republicans and there are fights among
• 1:09:43
  Speaker 1: the Democrats, but the blue versus red, I can't see
• 1:09:47
  Speaker 1: the blue jerseys winning. It's not in our DNA. It's
• 1:09:51
  Speaker 1: not in the Declaration of the Constitution. They're sworn to
• 1:09:54
  Speaker 1: overthrow the Constitution. They want to put five justices on
• 1:09:57
  Speaker 1: the Supreme Court. I think that's unconstitutional, but they want
• 1:10:00
  Speaker 1: to do it. Do you think it's even close in
• 1:10:02
  Speaker 1: this country?
• 1:10:04
  Speaker 4: I don't.
• 1:10:05
  Speaker 5: I'm not sure that everybody, the majority agrees with me,
• 1:10:08
  Speaker 5: but I agree with you. I mean, they want to
• 1:10:10
  Speaker 5: destroy the Electoral College. How can they talk casually about
• 1:10:12
  Speaker 5: doing that when it's unconstitutional? They've got to get two-thirds
• 1:10:16
  Speaker 5: of the Congress, and they've got to get three-quarters of
• 1:10:18
  Speaker 5: the states. They think that doesn't exist. They want to
• 1:10:20
  Speaker 5: bring in two new states. They can't do that. There's
• 1:10:22
  Speaker 5: a constitutional method that would never be possible, even if
• 1:10:27
  Speaker 5: they had the White House, without a huge majority of
• 1:10:30
  Speaker 5: the governors and stuff. So they just talk casually about
• 1:10:34
  Speaker 5: all this stuff. And when you look at the DSA agenda, you,
• 1:10:38
  Speaker 5: and you look at what the Democrats have actually done,
• 1:10:40
  Speaker 5: I can't think of anything other than– abolish the Pentagon,
• 1:10:45
  Speaker 5: and abolish the Senate.
• 1:10:48
  Speaker 4: That distinguishes them.
• 1:10:50
  Speaker 5: Because I think the Democratic Party was calling for packing
• 1:10:53
  Speaker 5: the court, ending the filibuster, ending the electoral college, bringing
• 1:10:56
  Speaker 5: in new states, defunding the police, stopping fracking, phasing out
• 1:11:03
  Speaker 5: internal combustion engines, cutting off. There were people who wanted
• 1:11:07
  Speaker 5: to cut off Israel. So I think the DSA just
• 1:11:10
  Speaker 5: came in and said, you know, I like this agenda.
• 1:11:14
  Speaker 5: I just don't like these old fuddy-duddies, and we're going
• 1:11:17
  Speaker 5: to get a youthful shot of energy into it.
• 1:11:20
  Speaker 4: But there's a reason, I guess.
• 1:11:22
  Speaker 5: It's not called the Socialists of America or the Republican
• 1:11:25
  Speaker 5: Socialists or the Independent Socialists.
• 1:11:27
  Speaker 4: So there's a lot of affinity.
• 1:11:28
  Speaker 5: There were pre-existing affinities there, and that's why they so easily,
• 1:11:33
  Speaker 5: there wasn't really a fight. They were just welcomed in,
• 1:11:36
  Speaker 5: and everybody said they were terrified. Schumer, Pelosi, Jeffrey, they
• 1:11:41
  Speaker 5: weren't so much terrified. They thought, you know, What's the
• 1:11:45
  Speaker 5: big deal? This is the big tent. They're not that
• 1:11:47
  Speaker 5: much different than what we've been trying to do. And
• 1:11:50
  Speaker 5: we impeached Trump twice. We raided his home. We tried
• 1:11:53
  Speaker 5: to de-ballot him. We had five law fairs. They did
• 1:11:57
  Speaker 5: things that were extra-constitutional. So I think that there was
• 1:12:00
  Speaker 5: a natural bonding there. They're off the scale now. They're
• 1:12:07
  Speaker 5: far more left-wing than the McGovern's 72 campaign.
• 1:12:10
  Speaker 4: Yes.
• 1:12:10
  Speaker 1: Thank you for saying that. Ted Cruz has a new
• 1:12:12
  Speaker 1: book about Clarence Thomas, which I read. And in that,
• 1:12:15
  Speaker 1: Justice Thomas recommends that Senator Cruz read the book Reconstruction,
• 1:12:19
  Speaker 1: America's Unfinished Revolution by a fellow named Foner. I'm listening
• 1:12:22
  Speaker 1: to it. I didn't know anything about Reconstruction. But now
• 1:12:26
  Speaker 1: that I do, I'm more convinced than ever it is
• 1:12:29
  Speaker 1: unconstitutional to raise the number of justices above nine based
• 1:12:33
  Speaker 1: upon what was clearly happening between 1866 and 69. Three
• 1:12:37
  Speaker 1: statutes and the 14th Amendment. It's intended to embed nine.
• 1:12:42
  Speaker 1: Have you ever looked into that or made that argument, Victor?
• 1:12:45
  Speaker 1: Because if they move to 14, that's the end of
• 1:12:47
  Speaker 1: the rule of law.
• 1:12:49
  Speaker 5: Well, I've looked at, I think, and you can correct me,
• 1:12:52
  Speaker 5: I think even before the 9 that was solidified in 1869,
• 1:12:57
  Speaker 5: I think we had four or five iterations. In other words,
• 1:13:01
  Speaker 5: about every eight years there would be six or nine
• 1:13:04
  Speaker 5: or eight. So that 1869 decision was to stop. three
• 1:13:11
  Speaker 5: quarters of a century because any time the majority power
• 1:13:14
  Speaker 5: got control and it was zealous, it just packed the court.
• 1:13:19
  Speaker 5: And then the others came in and unpacked the court
• 1:13:21
  Speaker 5: in their favor. So I don't think it's possible to
• 1:13:26
  Speaker 5: do that without a constitutional amendment. I know it's not
• 1:13:31
  Speaker 5: with the two new states that they mention all the
• 1:13:34
  Speaker 5: time and then to get rid of the Electoral College.
• 1:13:37
  Speaker 5: I think the National Voters' Pact, where they're going to say– Unconstitutional.
• 1:13:43
  Speaker 4: Yeah, it has to be unconstitutional.
• 1:13:45
  Speaker 1: And the only thing in the Constitution that is explicitly
• 1:13:47
  Speaker 1: unamendable is the Senate. And so they are revolutionaries. That's
• 1:13:51
  Speaker 1: why your book, The Counterrevolution, comes along at exactly the
• 1:13:55
  Speaker 1: right time because the DSA are revolutionaries. Now, you do,
• 1:13:59
  Speaker 1: in the course of this, talk about other revolutions. Let's
• 1:14:01
  Speaker 1: go back to Jackson. Once defeated, you start with him
• 1:14:04
  Speaker 1: on page 35, the once-defeated Andrew Jackson's defiant 1828 victory.
• 1:14:11
  Speaker 1: Is that more like 2016 or 2024 in your book?
• 1:14:16
  Speaker 5: I think it's more like 2016 because he brought in–
• 1:14:21
  Speaker 5: that was the end of the Virginia aristocracy and the founding–
• 1:14:26
  Speaker 5: the aristocrats not that they were all wealthy but this
• 1:14:30
  Speaker 5: was somebody from a completely different milieu and a different
• 1:14:34
  Speaker 5: attitude and he had different followers and it was it
• 1:14:37
  Speaker 5: was a reflection that the united states had decided that
• 1:14:40
  Speaker 5: it was going to be more than an eastern seaboard
• 1:14:43
  Speaker 5: country and it was already out to the ohio valley
• 1:14:46
  Speaker 5: and really it was all the way to the mississippi
• 1:14:48
  Speaker 5: river under jackson and he and then of course the
• 1:14:52
  Speaker 5: spanish acquisitions florida and georgia So it was an expansionist confident,
• 1:14:57
  Speaker 5: and to be that way, he had to say that
• 1:15:01
  Speaker 5: the real power in America is the frontiersman, the homesteader.
• 1:15:05
  Speaker 5: It's not anymore the British or Anglified aristocracy, which brilliant
• 1:15:11
  Speaker 5: as they were and as necessary as they were to
• 1:15:13
  Speaker 5: the revolution, there was more to America that Jackson was arguing.
• 1:15:17
  Speaker 1: Let's tease that out a little bit more. He was
• 1:15:18
  Speaker 1: also a dualist. He had an incredible raging temper. His
• 1:15:22
  Speaker 1: enemies were his enemies. And he was not shy about
• 1:15:25
  Speaker 1: declaring that. There is a very distinct connection between his
• 1:15:30
  Speaker 1: approach to the presidency and Trump's.
• 1:15:33
  Speaker 4: Yes, he was.
• 1:15:34
  Speaker 5: And he was very, as you know, he had a
• 1:15:39
  Speaker 5: wife of a dubious background and any slight to her
• 1:15:42
  Speaker 5: was considered a cause for a duel or worse. And
• 1:15:46
  Speaker 5: he was unapologetic like Trump. Everybody on the left is
• 1:15:49
  Speaker 5: always apologizing. We see that with Tallarico now. And we're
• 1:15:53
  Speaker 5: seeing it with LCA. But Donald Trump is like Jackson.
• 1:15:56
  Speaker 5: He just says things and then he lets you digest them.
• 1:15:59
  Speaker 5: But he doesn't go back and say, I'm sorry I
• 1:16:01
  Speaker 5: said that.
• 1:16:02
  Speaker 1: No, he doesn't.
• 1:16:04
  Speaker 4: He doesn't. I've never heard him say that.
• 1:16:06
  Speaker 1: He does not say that. All right. The thing you
• 1:16:10
  Speaker 1: remark upon is Donald Trump's remarkable energy. September 2024, Donald
• 1:16:16
  Speaker 1: Trump staged 21 public campaign events, including interviews. Contrast, Harrison
• 1:16:21
  Speaker 1: and running mate Waltz Together conducted 20. Vance did another 41.
• 1:16:27
  Speaker 1: As one senior advisor noted, the boss, Trump, doesn't sleep.
• 1:16:30
  Speaker 1: So you try not to sleep. The pace is punishing.
• 1:16:35
  Speaker 1: I don't know anyone in my lifetime who's kept up
• 1:16:38
  Speaker 1: this pace in public life. And I'm 70. You and
• 1:16:41
  Speaker 1: I are of the same age cohort. Did anyone do this?
• 1:16:45
  Speaker 4: No, no. And he is.
• 1:16:48
  Speaker 5: On rare occasions, he's called me, and I look at
• 1:16:50
  Speaker 5: the clock, and I think, what is the time? And
• 1:16:58
  Speaker 5: he will say, I call people, but he calls very
• 1:17:01
  Speaker 5: late at night, and he's sincere, and he's sharp as
• 1:17:04
  Speaker 5: a tack, and he's got all of this energy. I mean,
• 1:17:08
  Speaker 5: he's 80 years old. He got up and talked for
• 1:17:10
  Speaker 5: two hours the other night, and he didn't miss a beat.
• 1:17:14
  Speaker 4: And then he gives interviews.
• 1:17:16
  Speaker 5: And I don't– everybody said that 10 years ago they
• 1:17:20
  Speaker 5: said this was not sustainable. But it apparently is sustainable
• 1:17:23
  Speaker 5: because he's outworked– he made Harris look like a slothful candidate.
• 1:17:29
  Speaker 5: And she had all this support, but he just simply
• 1:17:33
  Speaker 5: out-campaigned her. And I don't think the left understands that.
• 1:17:35
  Speaker 5: I know that all of the odds that they're going
• 1:17:37
  Speaker 5: to take the midterms, but he will go out there
• 1:17:40
  Speaker 5: and he will campaign again. Far more than all of
• 1:17:43
  Speaker 5: the national democratic figures combined going into districts.
• 1:17:48
  Speaker 4: He will.
• 1:17:49
  Speaker 5: And they will not have– I mean Bernie Sanders has
• 1:17:51
  Speaker 5: a rally now and then, but he won't do it
• 1:17:53
  Speaker 5: every single day. And I don't– so we'll see.
• 1:17:58
  Speaker 7: Okay.
• 1:17:59
  Speaker 1: So the big question in counterrevolution, is Donald Trump the
• 1:18:03
  Speaker 1: cause or the effect of the tectonic plates in America colliding?
• 1:18:08
  Speaker 1: What do you think?
• 1:18:09
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 1:18:10
  Speaker 5: That was a good question, too, and I wrestled with that.
• 1:18:12
  Speaker 5: There were certainly precedents that he adapted and learned from.
• 1:18:19
  Speaker 5: One was the Buchanan movement against George H.W.
• 1:18:22
  Speaker 4: Bush.
• 1:18:23
  Speaker 5: Another was Ron Paul. Another especially with the Tea Party.
• 1:18:27
  Speaker 5: But he looked at all of those populist movements, and
• 1:18:30
  Speaker 5: there were things. I think there was an anti-Semitic. I
• 1:18:34
  Speaker 5: don't know Pat Buchanan himself, but there was an anti-Semitic
• 1:18:37
  Speaker 5: strain to the Pat Buchanan movement. and surely an isolationist,
• 1:18:43
  Speaker 5: although Trump adopted a lot from Buchananism. I think the
• 1:18:46
  Speaker 5: Tea Party, he saw what good is a popular... movement
• 1:18:52
  Speaker 5: when there's not a national leader. The big thing he
• 1:18:54
  Speaker 5: was practical, though, or tactical, he said to himself, you
• 1:18:58
  Speaker 5: can't win as a third party. He threatened that for leverage.
• 1:19:03
  Speaker 5: These were third party movements, and you can't win. So
• 1:19:06
  Speaker 5: he ruled that out. He also said, you can't recover
• 1:19:10
  Speaker 5: if you challenge a Republican incumbent, as Buchanan was doing.
• 1:19:14
  Speaker 5: And you don't have a very good chance if the
• 1:19:17
  Speaker 5: Democrat is an incumbent, the odds being what they were.
• 1:19:21
  Speaker 5: So he talked about running for years, but he waited
• 1:19:24
  Speaker 5: until 2016 when there was neither a Republican incumbent of
• 1:19:29
  Speaker 5: his party nor an oppositional incumbent. It was wide open.
• 1:19:32
  Speaker 5: And as he did in 2024, he got lucky with
• 1:19:34
  Speaker 5: the Clinton campaign, it was almost as inept as the
• 1:19:41
  Speaker 5: Harris campaign when she said, you know, the basket of deplorables,
• 1:19:46
  Speaker 5: I'm going to shut down the coal industry in West Virginia,
• 1:19:50
  Speaker 5: et cetera, et cetera. She was a very poor candidate.
• 1:19:53
  Speaker 5: And there was no incumbent, so that really helped him.
• 1:19:56
  Speaker 8: And he knew that.
• 1:19:57
  Speaker 4: That's why he chose to run in that particular year.
• 1:19:59
  Speaker 1: There was no Victor Davis Hanson in 1974 when Richard
• 1:20:04
  Speaker 1: Nixon resigned the presidency. He had to wait. and if
• 1:20:07
  Speaker 1: you're lucky enough to have been a young aide to
• 1:20:09
  Speaker 1: Nixon as I was in his exile, I've gotten to
• 1:20:12
  Speaker 1: see the second look. Young Trump aides might be around
• 1:20:16
  Speaker 1: for 50 years to see the second look. Do you
• 1:20:19
  Speaker 1: think the second look... This is a precursor. Counterrevolution is
• 1:20:23
  Speaker 1: a precursor to the second look. How do you think
• 1:20:26
  Speaker 1: that second look will go? Like Grant? Like Hamilton? That way?
• 1:20:31
  Speaker 5: Or.
• 1:20:31
  Speaker 1: No, he was Andrew Johnson and there's no redeeming the guy.
• 1:20:35
  Speaker 5: No, I think he's... I think he will look back
• 1:20:39
  Speaker 5: and see that his first term, I think the best
• 1:20:42
  Speaker 5: word would be workmanlike. It was a political effort to
• 1:20:46
  Speaker 5: undo things, and it was very successful in many ways.
• 1:20:49
  Speaker 5: But he did not close the border as he did
• 1:20:51
  Speaker 5: the second time. He did not radically put troops in.
• 1:20:56
  Speaker 5: When Jim Mattis and other camp managers said, we don't
• 1:20:58
  Speaker 5: want troops, he didn't put them in. And he lowered
• 1:21:01
  Speaker 5: the crime rate in a way that no one thought.
• 1:21:04
  Speaker 5: He ended illegal immigration. the first term he would not
• 1:21:09
  Speaker 5: have removed Maduro, I don't think. And when he came
• 1:21:12
  Speaker 5: into office in 2017, they had this pink tide expression.
• 1:21:17
  Speaker 5: I think there were only five nations of the 32
• 1:21:20
  Speaker 5: Latin American countries, from the Caribbean to Central Americans, that
• 1:21:24
  Speaker 5: were pro-American and right or conservative. Now I think there's
• 1:21:28
  Speaker 5: only four that are not. Cuba, Nicaragua... Brazil, and maybe Mexico.
• 1:21:37
  Speaker 5: All the rest are in transition, and that's amazing. He
• 1:21:40
  Speaker 5: gets no credit for that, but he really flipped Venezuela.
• 1:21:44
  Speaker 4: He got the.
• 1:21:45
  Speaker 5: Chinese out of the Panama Canal efforts they were making,
• 1:21:49
  Speaker 5: and I don't think he would have done that the
• 1:21:52
  Speaker 5: first term. I don't think he would have done things
• 1:21:54
  Speaker 5: like add a wing to the White House or restore
• 1:21:59
  Speaker 5: the monuments or go after the universities' endowments and tax
• 1:22:03
  Speaker 5: them or tax remittances So this was a full-fledged counter-revolution military.
• 1:22:09
  Speaker 5: Look what he did to the military. We were down
• 1:22:12
  Speaker 5: 40,000 soldiers. Suddenly we have a surplus of recruits. He
• 1:22:17
  Speaker 5: didn't just question DEI. He got rid of it. And
• 1:22:21
  Speaker 5: so this is a full-fledged counter-revolution economic, social, cultural, political.
• 1:22:27
  Speaker 1: Now let's talk about the counter-revolution. You devote Chapter 4
• 1:22:31
  Speaker 1: to the armies of anti-Trumpers. I understand that. most easily
• 1:22:37
  Speaker 1: why so many senior officers do not like the president
• 1:22:41
  Speaker 1: who have retired. That is because they spend their lives
• 1:22:43
  Speaker 1: being trained in deportment, deferral, civility, keeping your passions in check.
• 1:22:51
  Speaker 1: It's a warrior class, judicious public behavior. I think that's
• 1:22:56
  Speaker 1: an aesthetic repulse. What do you think?
• 1:23:01
  Speaker 4: I think a lot of that is. A lot of
• 1:23:03
  Speaker 4: it is.
• 1:23:04
  Speaker 5: And I do think, however, that that tradition in the
• 1:23:12
  Speaker 5: military has been intolerant of people like George Patton or
• 1:23:18
  Speaker 5: Matthew Ridgway or Curtis LeMay, people who were not that
• 1:23:22
  Speaker 5: way and turned out to be saviors and brilliant people.
• 1:23:27
  Speaker 5: So I'm not suggesting that... I don't think the military
• 1:23:31
  Speaker 5: gives enough space for mavericks and.
• 1:23:35
  Speaker 4: But you're right.
• 1:23:36
  Speaker 5: But notice one thing you– I list all of things
• 1:23:41
  Speaker 5: that they said, and they were quite extraordinary, comparing them
• 1:23:44
  Speaker 5: to the architects of Auschwitz, Mussolini, Leier, Nazis. One famous
• 1:23:52
  Speaker 5: admiral whom I highly respect said that he should leave
• 1:23:56
  Speaker 5: sooner than later, even though we have elections coming up.
• 1:24:00
  Speaker 5: But they don't say that now. Nobody's talking about that
• 1:24:03
  Speaker 5: because simply– When they came in, Pete Hexeth, during the
• 1:24:07
  Speaker 5: Kelly video, said, I'm going to enforce Article 88 of
• 1:24:13
  Speaker 5: the Uniform Code of Military Justice. If you public insult
• 1:24:17
  Speaker 5: your commander-in-chief, even if you're retired, you're subject to court-martial.
• 1:24:21
  Speaker 4: And I will do it. And all of a sudden,
• 1:24:23
  Speaker 4: we haven't heard a word as we did the first term.
• 1:24:26
  Speaker 1: Victor, my theory on this is that having been trained
• 1:24:29
  Speaker 1: in deportment, and I mean for 30 years in civility
• 1:24:32
  Speaker 1: and deference to civilian leaders. They're not very skilled in
• 1:24:37
  Speaker 1: the public square and throwing lefts and rights, but not
• 1:24:41
  Speaker 1: below the belt. In other words, it's not what they
• 1:24:45
  Speaker 1: come from. It's not 30 years of doing panels on
• 1:24:47
  Speaker 1: TV or lectures and seminars. They don't say anything, and
• 1:24:50
  Speaker 1: then they're suddenly thrust forward. They're going to make mistakes,
• 1:24:54
  Speaker 1: and I think there may be regret. Do you?
• 1:24:56
  Speaker 4: I do think there are regrets.
• 1:24:58
  Speaker 5: I know some of them, and I do think they
• 1:25:01
  Speaker 5: feel regret, and I think They're not upset that they're
• 1:25:04
  Speaker 5: quiet now. I think they feel that they have no...
• 1:25:07
  Speaker 5: And I know they're under pressure to speak out. And
• 1:25:10
  Speaker 5: I think they feel not only would they be cited
• 1:25:14
  Speaker 5: for violating the Uniform Code of Military Justice, but they
• 1:25:18
  Speaker 5: feel that they overreached and that somehow it hurt their stature.
• 1:25:23
  Speaker 5: And I think it did. And I think it hurt
• 1:25:25
  Speaker 5: the military stature. And I think they're going to be
• 1:25:28
  Speaker 5: quiet now and... Lodge their criticisms against Trump through back channels,
• 1:25:34
  Speaker 5: et cetera, et cetera, or in private lectures or something.
• 1:25:37
  Speaker 4: Yes, I think you're absolutely right.
• 1:25:40
  Speaker 1: A second group you identified, page 137 and 135, fear
• 1:25:46
  Speaker 1: and hatred of Trump deeply embedded in government agencies. Now,
• 1:25:51
  Speaker 1: we remember Stroke and Page. They were not outliers. They
• 1:25:56
  Speaker 1: were representatives. And I don't know that you can get
• 1:26:00
  Speaker 1: that out of a permanent bureaucracy other than the Doge
• 1:26:06
  Speaker 1: demolition team. And by the way, it's unfortunate. Some people
• 1:26:09
  Speaker 1: get swept along. You've got to blow up USAID. You've
• 1:26:12
  Speaker 1: got to do stuff like that and blow up, metaphorically.
• 1:26:15
  Speaker 1: Or you'll never get rid of these people. And they're
• 1:26:17
  Speaker 1: not with the Constitution. They're with the Wilsonian appendix of
• 1:26:23
  Speaker 1: the Constitution, which doesn't exist.
• 1:26:26
  Speaker 4: No, they are.
• 1:26:26
  Speaker 5: They're right out of the French 19th century bureau. That's
• 1:26:30
  Speaker 5: what they are. And we had the anonymous, he was
• 1:26:33
  Speaker 5: bragging to the New York Times on two occasions that
• 1:26:36
  Speaker 5: he could thwart any executive order he felt he disagreed with.
• 1:26:40
  Speaker 5: And he said, I have a legion of supporters that
• 1:26:42
  Speaker 5: do the same. One person that worked for him who
• 1:26:48
  Speaker 5: did not agree with him said one thing to me.
• 1:26:51
  Speaker 5: There's two types of people in the government right now,
• 1:26:54
  Speaker 5: both appointed and senior bureaucrats, those who disagree with him
• 1:27:00
  Speaker 5: but feel that to be patriotic, you have to use
• 1:27:02
  Speaker 5: your expertise to facilitate and fuel his directives. And he said,
• 1:27:09
  Speaker 5: I'm one of those. And then there's the other, and
• 1:27:12
  Speaker 5: he said the majority, they use their expertise of navigating
• 1:27:16
  Speaker 5: the bureaucracy to stop Trump, and they don't listen to him.
• 1:27:19
  Speaker 5: And really what he was telling me was they're trying
• 1:27:22
  Speaker 5: to stage a veritable coup And we had people, remember,
• 1:27:27
  Speaker 5: we had a Pentagon lawyer who on day 11 of
• 1:27:32
  Speaker 5: the inauguration, she wrote in Foreign Policy that there were
• 1:27:38
  Speaker 5: three ways to get rid of him. There was impeachment,
• 1:27:42
  Speaker 5: which would take too long. There was the 25th Amendment,
• 1:27:45
  Speaker 5: which would take too long. And there was a military coup.
• 1:27:49
  Speaker 5: And that was published by Foreign Policy. And then we
• 1:27:53
  Speaker 5: had two colonels that were removed from their private sector
• 1:27:57
  Speaker 5: jobs for advocating that. They said that they should have
• 1:28:01
  Speaker 5: armed officers to meet Donald Trump and then walk him
• 1:28:05
  Speaker 5: out of the White House the day that his tenure
• 1:28:08
  Speaker 5: ended because he would resist them.
• 1:28:10
  Speaker 4: It was a crazy time. It really was. It did
• 1:28:12
  Speaker 4: a lot of damage to the military. I really think
• 1:28:15
  Speaker 4: it did.
• 1:28:16
  Speaker 1: There's damage done as well, and I want to go
• 1:28:18
  Speaker 1: now gently. I don't want to name any names. The
• 1:28:21
  Speaker 1: armies of anti-Trumpers from Wall Street Republicans. There's Wall Street Republicans,
• 1:28:27
  Speaker 1: Main Street Republicans, and Build the Wall Republicans. There are
• 1:28:30
  Speaker 1: a lot of different Republican parties. But some of them
• 1:28:34
  Speaker 1: never reconciled to their disintermediation of influence. I think I've
• 1:28:38
  Speaker 1: used this analogy before.
• 1:28:39
  Speaker 7: Sure.
• 1:28:40
  Speaker 1: Cliff in the Northern Mariana, where the Japanese just threw
• 1:28:44
  Speaker 1: themselves over the cliff rather than face defeat. I think
• 1:28:47
  Speaker 1: that's deeply embedded in a few places, and it's a brokenness, Victor,
• 1:28:54
  Speaker 1: that I don't know if you can fix it.
• 1:28:57
  Speaker 4: I asked how.
• 1:28:59
  Speaker 5: Where I work, I've met a lot of donors, so
• 1:29:01
  Speaker 5: I have to– and I ask them exactly that question
• 1:29:04
  Speaker 5: because I thought finance and investment were inherently conservative occupations.
• 1:29:09
  Speaker 5: And one person said it's our spouses and our social life.
• 1:29:13
  Speaker 5: He's so crude. He says such things that when we
• 1:29:18
  Speaker 5: go to Nantucket or Martha's Vineyard or Palm Beach or
• 1:29:23
  Speaker 5: the desert, it's just not socially acceptable to say you're
• 1:29:27
  Speaker 5: for Trump because– A spouse will say, have you heard
• 1:29:30
  Speaker 5: what he tweeted and something. I don't know if that's true,
• 1:29:33
  Speaker 5: but they surely didn't like him. And you can see it.
• 1:29:38
  Speaker 5: I'll be frank. I'm exempting the Wall Street Journal editorial writers,
• 1:29:44
  Speaker 5: but the news coverage in the Wall Street Journal and
• 1:29:48
  Speaker 5: Forbes magazine and The Economist, they all reflect this consensus
• 1:29:54
  Speaker 5: of I'm not talking about Main Street business, but Wall
• 1:29:58
  Speaker 5: Street business. And there's a social snobbery or there's some
• 1:30:04
  Speaker 5: type of repugnance that they hold for Trump. And it predated,
• 1:30:08
  Speaker 5: I think, even his presidency. They knew him in New
• 1:30:12
  Speaker 5: York or things. I've had people say that.
• 1:30:14
  Speaker 1: I think it's aesthetic. I think part of.
• 1:30:17
  Speaker 4: That is aesthetic. I do. I said it in the book.
• 1:30:20
  Speaker 5: I said when they see that comb-over, the orange skin,
• 1:30:22
  Speaker 5: the red tie, the blue suit, The Queen's accent, it
• 1:30:26
  Speaker 5: just says that he's not one of us.
• 1:30:29
  Speaker 4: All right.
• 1:30:30
  Speaker 1: So I want to go to the more important thing.
• 1:30:32
  Speaker 1: The fourth opposition, by the way, are the Ben Rhodes
• 1:30:35
  Speaker 1: silly people on the left. And we've talked about them.
• 1:30:38
  Speaker 1: They are lost. President Obama is lost. And I don't
• 1:30:42
  Speaker 1: think I don't want to make this specific of President Obama.
• 1:30:46
  Speaker 1: I think a lot of the people who are lost
• 1:30:48
  Speaker 1: and I see them on TV every night are ignorant,
• 1:30:50
  Speaker 1: not stupid. ignorant. They haven't done any work. They haven't
• 1:30:53
  Speaker 1: read anything. If you ask them, why are the Jacobins
• 1:30:57
  Speaker 1: the Jacobins? They won't even know what you're talking about.
• 1:31:00
  Speaker 4: No, they don't.
• 1:31:01
  Speaker 1: This is the problem, Victor. How do we get out
• 1:31:03
  Speaker 1: of this hole where the talking, chattering class doesn't know anything?
• 1:31:08
  Speaker 4: I don't know.
• 1:31:08
  Speaker 5: I think when you look at the curriculum of the
• 1:31:11
  Speaker 5: Stanford School of Journalism or the Columbia School of Journalism,
• 1:31:15
  Speaker 5: and I do a lot, it's not in how you
• 1:31:20
  Speaker 5: use sources and how you attribute quotes, how you weigh
• 1:31:24
  Speaker 5: one source's reliability or authenticity against another. That was what
• 1:31:28
  Speaker 5: journalism was. Instead, it's DEI and the New Green Deal
• 1:31:36
  Speaker 5: type stuff. We're going to try to slant the story
• 1:31:40
  Speaker 5: for the environment. Now, in the age of Trump, it
• 1:31:44
  Speaker 5: has one common denominator.
• 1:31:45
  Speaker 4: It's anti-Trump.
• 1:31:47
  Speaker 5: For them, it's the emblem, the satanic force that combines
• 1:31:51
  Speaker 5: all of their pet peeves. And so it always ends
• 1:31:55
  Speaker 5: up in some way deprecating Trump. And I don't know
• 1:31:59
  Speaker 5: how you deal with that, but to be fair, I
• 1:32:01
  Speaker 5: won't name names out of politeness, but you and I,
• 1:32:05
  Speaker 5: I'm 73 now, we grew up with some of our
• 1:32:06
  Speaker 5: people on the conservative side that were iconic. And I
• 1:32:21
  Speaker 5: would say if you sat them down now after a
• 1:32:24
  Speaker 5: decade and said, Trump did this, this, this, this, I
• 1:32:29
  Speaker 5: can find a quote where you supported that for your
• 1:32:32
  Speaker 5: whole life.
• 1:32:34
  Speaker 4: Whole life.
• 1:32:35
  Speaker 5: Lower crime, tax cuts, deregulation, strong military. I could go
• 1:32:40
  Speaker 5: on and on. And yet you've wiped out that whole
• 1:32:43
  Speaker 5: legacy because of him. And they would probably say yes.
• 1:32:49
  Speaker 5: And it's the strangest phenomenon when you see these people
• 1:32:53
  Speaker 5: who we believe for years who said, if we don't
• 1:32:56
  Speaker 5: get a conservative president or conservative agenda, if you don't
• 1:32:59
  Speaker 5: listen to me, we've had it. And now they've disowned
• 1:33:02
  Speaker 5: their entire prior half century agenda. And they've either gone
• 1:33:08
  Speaker 5: over to the left or they're out in the wilderness
• 1:33:10
  Speaker 5: and gnashing their teeth.
• 1:33:12
  Speaker 1: It's very strange. A theory about America writ large, not
• 1:33:15
  Speaker 1: just our elites, is that when you and I were
• 1:33:18
  Speaker 1: kids growing up, everybody, every adult male we knew who
• 1:33:23
  Speaker 1: was under the age of 50 or 55 had gone
• 1:33:26
  Speaker 1: to war, had seen the world, had a moral education.
• 1:33:30
  Speaker 1: That was an antibody in the body politic to strike
• 1:33:34
  Speaker 1: down stupidity. And mercilessly throttle the SDS and the weathermen
• 1:33:41
  Speaker 1: and the idiocy of the campuses in 67, 68 through 74.
• 1:33:44
  Speaker 1: I mean, the revolution happens with Vietnam, but that was
• 1:33:49
  Speaker 1: an antibody. It's not there now, although a lot of
• 1:33:52
  Speaker 1: people have been to war. Does a country without factory frontier, farmer,
• 1:33:57
  Speaker 1: and military force veterans survive?
• 1:34:03
  Speaker 5: That's another thing that I think is a great question.
• 1:34:06
  Speaker 5: So I write in the book, and I've written elsewhere,
• 1:34:09
  Speaker 5: I can be at Thanksgiving, and here's my father who
• 1:34:12
  Speaker 5: flew 40 missions in a B-29, and he's talking about
• 1:34:16
  Speaker 5: my namesake, Victor, who was killed on Okinawa. Then his
• 1:34:20
  Speaker 5: brother-in-law says.
• 1:34:20
  Speaker 4: Well, I rode with Patton. That was tougher.
• 1:34:23
  Speaker 5: The other brother-in-law said, I was in the Aleutians. And
• 1:34:25
  Speaker 5: then Belden, who had damage from dengue fever in the
• 1:34:28
  Speaker 5: Philippine campaign, sat mute. That was everybody's Thanksgiving. Yep. They
• 1:34:33
  Speaker 5: all had one thing in common, Yu. They were very confident.
• 1:34:36
  Speaker 5: They went over there. They didn't start the war, but
• 1:34:38
  Speaker 5: they won.
• 1:34:40
  Speaker 4: And they won.
• 1:34:40
  Speaker 5: And I remember my grandfather telling my dad, I said, well,
• 1:34:45
  Speaker 5: what did Grandpa say? Well, he was gassed and the
• 1:34:49
  Speaker 5: Musa are gone. He said, whatever you're going to do,
• 1:34:51
  Speaker 5: you've got to win. And when he went to war,
• 1:34:55
  Speaker 5: and he had won, but he was severely disabled. But
• 1:34:58
  Speaker 5: the same thing with the Great Depression. That was the
• 1:35:00
  Speaker 5: other second experience. They came out of abject poverty. And
• 1:35:04
  Speaker 5: they rebuilt the economy. They won the war. They came
• 1:35:07
  Speaker 5: back to this. Everybody said we'd have another depression, pre-depression years.
• 1:35:13
  Speaker 5: They didn't do it. The economy boomed in the 50s.
• 1:35:16
  Speaker 5: They were a very confident success and had a lot
• 1:35:19
  Speaker 5: to be confident about. And JFK kind of represented that.
• 1:35:24
  Speaker 5: I remember that no matter how conservative you are, JFK
• 1:35:27
  Speaker 5: was a can-do, confident, pay-any-price for all the criticism you
• 1:35:31
  Speaker 5: can make of him. We're going to go to the moon.
• 1:35:33
  Speaker 5: We're going to beat the Russians. I don't see any
• 1:35:36
  Speaker 5: of that today.
• 1:35:37
  Speaker 1: Have you followed Rahm Emanuel at all? Because if there's
• 1:35:41
  Speaker 1: one Democrat.
• 1:35:41
  Speaker 4: Yes, I have.
• 1:35:42
  Speaker 1: What do you think of Rahm?
• 1:35:45
  Speaker 5: I think he's in a very difficult position because I
• 1:35:48
  Speaker 5: think privately he's abhorred where the socialist Islamists are going.
• 1:35:54
  Speaker 5: But he thinks that people, the old Christian, I think
• 1:36:00
  Speaker 5: he thinks that the Democratic Party is still him or
• 1:36:02
  Speaker 5: Mark Pinn or reasonable people like that, and it's not.
• 1:36:08
  Speaker 5: And they're going to have to have a– it's much
• 1:36:13
  Speaker 5: more severe than the Republican divide.
• 1:36:18
  Speaker 4: They have to be defeated.
• 1:36:19
  Speaker 5: They have to suffer a McGovern landslide to discredit them,
• 1:36:24
  Speaker 5: and I'm hoping that's what will happen in 2028.
• 1:36:27
  Speaker 1: I want to finish up that on the people should
• 1:36:29
  Speaker 1: read the counterrevolution because it's a comprehensive, it's actually grounding
• 1:36:33
  Speaker 1: that is not in passing. It's not about whatever yesterday's
• 1:36:36
  Speaker 1: headliner speech was or the controversy about the East Wing.
• 1:36:40
  Speaker 1: And it's not about $ 5, 000 check. It's about the counterrevolution.
• 1:36:44
  Speaker 1: But here's the big question. No matter how you count,
• 1:36:47
  Speaker 1: we've either got one, two or three enemies, China, China
• 1:36:49
  Speaker 1: and Russia, China, Russia and Iran. And no matter how
• 1:36:53
  Speaker 1: you divide up American domestic politics, those three want to
• 1:36:56
  Speaker 1: kill us, and they want to dominate us, and they
• 1:36:59
  Speaker 1: wouldn't mind if we kind of collapse like Athens into irrelevance.
• 1:37:04
  Speaker 1: How do you foresee the next 25 years vis-à-vis those
• 1:37:08
  Speaker 1: three competitors?
• 1:37:11
  Speaker 5: Well, I think we can handle easily Iran. I think
• 1:37:14
  Speaker 5: there's going to be a change, a collapse of that
• 1:37:17
  Speaker 5: government if we continue what we're doing, this anaconda. And
• 1:37:21
  Speaker 5: I think Russia is so exhausted. I don't know if
• 1:37:23
  Speaker 5: they're going to lose in Ukraine, but there'll be some settlement.
• 1:37:27
  Speaker 5: And then they will, I think we can isolate them.
• 1:37:31
  Speaker 5: They only have, they have demographic, but China is, China,
• 1:37:37
  Speaker 5: I don't think Russia believes it can, it wants to
• 1:37:41
  Speaker 5: restore the Soviet Union's area. I don't think it feels
• 1:37:43
  Speaker 5: that even privately it can take over from America as
• 1:37:47
  Speaker 5: the world. China does believe that. And the problem with China,
• 1:37:51
  Speaker 5: they're doing things, you, that Russia never did. During the
• 1:37:55
  Speaker 5: Cold War, we did not have 300,000 Russian students in
• 1:38:00
  Speaker 5: our major STEM programs, Harvard, Yale, Stanford, MIT, Caltech. They
• 1:38:04
  Speaker 5: weren't there. And we didn't have the Canadian premier saying
• 1:38:09
  Speaker 5: that he's going to forge a new relationship, which I
• 1:38:12
  Speaker 5: understand today may include military affairs.
• 1:38:16
  Speaker 4: As well, Canada.
• 1:38:19
  Speaker 7: So.
• 1:38:20
  Speaker 5: And we didn't have the Europeans terrify.
• 1:38:24
  Speaker 1: Old Europe, not New York, not Poland and Finland, but
• 1:38:27
  Speaker 1: old Europe, France and Britain.
• 1:38:28
  Speaker 4: Yes. old Europe.
• 1:38:32
  Speaker 5: And then in the Cold War, if the Soviet Union
• 1:38:35
  Speaker 5: had a gain-of-function virus and they unleashed it in the
• 1:38:38
  Speaker 5: world and it was controlled by the Red Army, the laboratory,
• 1:38:43
  Speaker 5: everybody would have been condemning them. When China does it,
• 1:38:47
  Speaker 5: the first thing they say is this is just– more
• 1:38:50
  Speaker 5: racism from the western world in the u.s you had
• 1:38:53
  Speaker 5: the yellow peril and you should be ashamed of yourself
• 1:38:56
  Speaker 5: accusing us and we owned basically they own who and
• 1:39:01
  Speaker 5: they're very insidious every time i look at one of
• 1:39:04
  Speaker 5: their new tanks or new jets or new frigates i
• 1:39:08
  Speaker 5: just say to myself that is just a knockoff from
• 1:39:11
  Speaker 5: an american design or a european design and and it's
• 1:39:15
  Speaker 5: not that they're they're less formidable.
• 1:39:18
  Speaker 4: Maybe they're more formidable, but they have a vast, uh, area.
• 1:39:23
  Speaker 4: They have a vast area.
• 1:39:24
  Speaker 5: They cover for espionage technology, cat patent, copyright infringement. Um,
• 1:39:30
  Speaker 5: and they're insidious. They, they never stop. They never sleep.
• 1:39:34
  Speaker 5: They never close their eyes. So I, I think they're the,
• 1:39:37
  Speaker 5: the most formidable. They're more formidable than all of our
• 1:39:40
  Speaker 5: other worries put together.
• 1:39:41
  Speaker 1: All right. I'm going to close by thanking you for
• 1:39:43
  Speaker 1: counter revolution. I have a suggestion, Victor. Um, You have
• 1:39:47
  Speaker 1: followed four presidents pretty quickly, R.N., Reagan, W., and D.J.T.,
• 1:39:54
  Speaker 1: and they're all two-term presidents, though they've had interruptions and differences.
• 1:39:59
  Speaker 1: I'd love for you to sit down and write a–
• 1:40:01
  Speaker 1: like your general's book, because I don't know if you
• 1:40:05
  Speaker 1: ever talked to Nixon or Reagan, but you spent so
• 1:40:07
  Speaker 1: much time with W. and talking to D.J.T., it would
• 1:40:11
  Speaker 1: be a gift to historians down the road if you
• 1:40:15
  Speaker 1: wrote that down.
• 1:40:16
  Speaker 5: I will, but could I ask you a question before
• 1:40:18
  Speaker 5: we go?
• 1:40:19
  Speaker 1: Oh, sure.
• 1:40:21
  Speaker 5: When you are watching the present Democratic Party in the
• 1:40:24
  Speaker 5: scene and you remember all the things that Bill Clinton
• 1:40:28
  Speaker 5: bothered you and some of his crazy people in these left–
• 1:40:32
  Speaker 5: and he maybe have kindled some of the left wing.
• 1:40:35
  Speaker 5: But put that in context looking back, balanced the budget
• 1:40:38
  Speaker 5: for four years, was opposed– does he, in your mind,
• 1:40:42
  Speaker 5: that eight years– It doesn't seem nearly as bad as
• 1:40:47
  Speaker 5: I or you might have thought at the time.
• 1:40:50
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I overestimated the– what did Anthony say? The evil
• 1:40:56
  Speaker 1: that men do lives after them. The good is often
• 1:40:58
  Speaker 1: interred with their bones. Well, the good of Bill Clinton
• 1:41:00
  Speaker 1: is interred with his not-yet-interred bones. He was not that bad.
• 1:41:04
  Speaker 1: Obama was worse than I expected.
• 1:41:06
  Speaker 4: That's my point.
• 1:41:07
  Speaker 1: That's where it started. So much worse.
• 1:41:10
  Speaker 4: I think that's where it started.
• 1:41:12
  Speaker 9: Yeah.
• 1:41:12
  Speaker 7: Yes.
• 1:41:13
  Speaker 4: I do, too.
• 1:41:14
  Speaker 1: I'm just a talking head. You're a historian, serious guy.
• 1:41:17
  Speaker 1: But we sensed the same thing. That was the turning.
• 1:41:20
  Speaker 1: I just think we're turning back. Are we fast enough?
• 1:41:24
  Speaker 1: Are we fast enough to turn back?
• 1:41:27
  Speaker 5: Yeah, absolutely. We can do it in one big defeat
• 1:41:31
  Speaker 5: for the left. If they were to be humiliated by
• 1:41:35
  Speaker 5: the Republicans in 28, they would turn on these leftists.
• 1:41:39
  Speaker 4: Look at McGovern.
• 1:41:40
  Speaker 5: After he lost in 72, they brought a guy. They said,
• 1:41:43
  Speaker 5: we only can win if the guy has a Southern accent,
• 1:41:45
  Speaker 5: so we'll find Carter. Not that he was very good,
• 1:41:49
  Speaker 5: but they went back to the idea, we only win
• 1:41:51
  Speaker 5: if we have a Southern accent. Clinton runs, Gore runs,
• 1:41:55
  Speaker 5: LBJ runs, et cetera. Carter wins because the country was
• 1:42:01
  Speaker 5: so suspicious of Democrats. They wanted some mark that they
• 1:42:04
  Speaker 5: were conservative Democrats.
• 1:42:06
  Speaker 1: Well, J.D. Vance said last night, common sense versus crazy.
• 1:42:09
  Speaker 1: And I think it's a great construct, but I don't
• 1:42:12
  Speaker 1: want the Democrats to be crazy.
• 1:42:15
  Speaker 4: I don't either.
• 1:42:15
  Speaker 5: I don't either, because in a two-party system, they will win.
• 1:42:19
  Speaker 5: And when they win, you want somebody like Harry Truman
• 1:42:22
  Speaker 5: or JFK or Bill Clinton.
• 1:42:25
  Speaker 1: Well, a good point to end on. Congratulations. I think
• 1:42:28
  Speaker 1: it'll be number one on the New York Times list
• 1:42:30
  Speaker 1: next week, if it's fair, because you can't hang around
• 1:42:33
  Speaker 1: at Amazon on number one to number five for a
• 1:42:36
  Speaker 1: whole week and not be number one on the Times.
• 1:42:38
  Speaker 1: But I don't put anything past the left, Victor, do you?
• 1:42:40
  Speaker 1: I don't either.
• 1:42:42
  Speaker 5: I've had books that were on the New York Times
• 1:42:45
  Speaker 5: that I don't think anybody knows what the New York
• 1:42:48
  Speaker 5: Times is based on with this.
• 1:42:50
  Speaker 4: But it's not just book sales.
• 1:42:52
  Speaker 1: No, it's people around a witch's cauldron throwing in, you know,
• 1:42:55
  Speaker 1: Eye of Newt. Victor Davis Hanson, follow him on Exit V.D.
• 1:42:59
  Speaker 1: Hanson and go get The Counter-Revolution today. Let's make the
• 1:43:03
  Speaker 1: New York Times. acknowledged the fact he's America's preeminent historian.
• 1:43:07
  Speaker 1: Thank you, Victor.
• 1:43:09
  Speaker 4: Thank you, Hugh. I appreciate it once again.