Latest / The Hugh Hewitt Show: Highly Concentrated / The Week of the 25th Anniversary of 9/11

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The Week of the 25th Anniversary of 9/11 · The Hugh Hewitt Show: Highly Concentrated

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Welcome to today's podcast, sponsored by Hillsdale College. All things
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: Hillsdale at hillsdale.edu. I encourage you to take advantage of
• 0:06
  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 Hugh
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: for hillsdale.com or just Google Apple, iTunes, and Hillsdale. Good morning, glory,
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  Speaker 1: and even grace, America. I'm Hugh Hewitt. This is the
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  Speaker 1: week of the 25th anniversary of 9-11.
• 0:24
  Speaker 2: And 9-11.
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  Speaker 1: Is like any trauma that anybody suffers. We all suffer
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  Speaker 1: that collectively if you're over the age of 10. You
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: eventually box it up and you put it away on
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: a shelf and you take it out occasionally and we're
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  Speaker 1: taking it out this week for the benefit of people
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  Speaker 1: who are new to the program, new to me. I'm
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  Speaker 1: thinking of my friends in Las Vegas on 106.9 FM,
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  Speaker 1: my new affiliate there. You don't know anything about me.
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: I was on the air With Dwayne and Adam, same game.
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: Harley is new with our video production now, but at
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  Speaker 1: the time it was just a radio show with 100 affiliates.
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  Speaker 1: And I was on the air from 9 to noon,
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  Speaker 1: East Coast time, and 6 to probably 10 or 11,
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  Speaker 1: we can't really remember, and we've never listened to tape.
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: We've got the tape. I'll play some of it on
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  Speaker 1: Thursday and Friday. But I was walking up the steps
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  Speaker 1: of the studio when I pulled into the parking lot
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  Speaker 1: and the on the All Talk News 24-7, 365, said
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  Speaker 1: a plane had hit the World Trade Center, walked into
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  Speaker 1: the studio, told Dwayne, somber music today, some idiot flew
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: their plane into the World Trade Center. It's going to
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  Speaker 1: be very difficult to get those people out. Then we
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  Speaker 1: were live when the second plane hit, and immediately, boom,
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  Speaker 1: you know it's terrorism when the second plane hits and
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  Speaker 1: you're watching it. So we just stayed on the air
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  Speaker 1: for three hours telling people, I still get people coming
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  Speaker 1: up to me to this day, I heard about 9-11
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  Speaker 1: from you, And in a situation like that, AM radio
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  Speaker 1: is where you go. You go for updates and serious
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  Speaker 1: people just give you play-by-play and what's going on and
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  Speaker 1: how awful it is. I got eight hours or nine
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  Speaker 1: hours of me talking to Dwayne that day, a little
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  Speaker 1: bit of Adam, and maybe we'll pull that out. But
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  Speaker 1: it is, I listened to the commentary podcast this morning.
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  Speaker 1: They're talking about what it did and what it didn't do.
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  Speaker 1: I'll be asking everyone that today because it's really part
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  Speaker 1: of our election in two months. I mean, really. Usually
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  Speaker 1: it's a referendum election on a president in their sixth year.
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  Speaker 1: This is a choice election. The choice is between Donald
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  Speaker 1: Trump and the GOP and seriousness on national security, including
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: the battle with Iran, and Abdul El-Sayed and his Democratic Party.
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  Speaker 1: Here's Abdul El-Sayed and his Democratic Party, cut number 13.
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  Speaker 3: 9-11 scarred our country in profound ways. But what we
• 2:55
  Speaker 3: did after 9-11 scarred millions of other people. When we
• 2:58
  Speaker 3: talk about 9-11, we often fail to.
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  Speaker 1: I don't think we need to talk about centering on them.
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  Speaker 1: Play it again in case you think I'm not making
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  Speaker 1: this up. Abdu'l-Sayed, cut number 13.
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  Speaker 3: 9-11 scarred our country in profound ways. But what we
• 3:13
  Speaker 3: did after 9-11 scarred millions of other people. When we
• 3:17
  Speaker 3: talk about 9-11, we often fail to.
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: We often fail to center them. Okay, he shouldn't be
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  Speaker 1: anywhere near the United States Senate. Donald Trump, representing serious
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  Speaker 1: people on 9-11, gave a speech on the mall today
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  Speaker 1: on the 20th anniversary start of the week. Cut number nine.
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  Speaker 4: On 9-11, nearly 3,000 precious souls were stolen from us,
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  Speaker 4: killed by evil terrorists at the World Trade Center, the Pentagon,
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  Speaker 4: and on Flight 93. All of these years later, we
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  Speaker 4: gather on another.
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  Speaker 2: Tuesday.
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  Speaker 4: Morning in September to reaffirm the sacred vow we made
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  Speaker 4: a quarter of a century ago.
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  Speaker 2: We will never forget.
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  Speaker 5: We say it and we mean it.
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  Speaker 4: We will never forget those we lost and we will
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  Speaker 4: never forget the immortal heroes of September.
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  Speaker 2: 11th, 2001.
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  Speaker 1: Good for the president. Longer cut. Number six.
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  Speaker 4: Today, we also remember another hero of 9-11. After the
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  Speaker 4: plane hit the South Tower, a group of people on
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  Speaker 4: the 78th floor were trapped with broken bones, charred skin
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  Speaker 4: and eyes and lungs filled with black smoke.
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  Speaker 2: Death was all about them. It was certain. They were
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  Speaker 2: sure they were going to die. Then suddenly a rescue appeared.
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  Speaker 2: They call him the man in the red bandana. Have
• 4:42
  Speaker 2: you heard that term?
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  Speaker 4: The man in the red bandana has become more famous
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  Speaker 4: than me.
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  Speaker 2: I don't like it.
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  Speaker 4: Very unhappy, but he's become much more famous than me. Now,
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  Speaker 4: as the man in the red bandana, he had found
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  Speaker 4: the only stairwell that barely survived. The stairwells were all
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  Speaker 4: knocked down. You couldn't get by, impassable. He found an
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  Speaker 4: opening in one of the stairwells, and the impact was
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  Speaker 4: so great, there was no other way down. But this
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  Speaker 4: one little opening, this one little hole, and traveled down
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  Speaker 4: from the 104th floor to look for those trapped and dying.
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  Speaker 4: When he heard cries for help on the 78th floor,
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  Speaker 4: he began extinguishing the fires, blocking the exit, directing survivors
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  Speaker 4: who could walk, of which there weren't that many. He
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  Speaker 4: helped some out physically. They literally pulled them out toward
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  Speaker 4: the only working stairwell and carried those who couldn't walk
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  Speaker 4: And he just did things that people said were not
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  Speaker 4: even imaginable because they knew they were dead. They said,
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  Speaker 4: we're goners. One guy was screaming, we're goners, we're goners.
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  Speaker 4: He didn't know that those he helped and nor.
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  Speaker 2: Who would have known.
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  Speaker 4: But he willingly made all of these trips up and down,
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  Speaker 4: up and down, up and down, over and over again,
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  Speaker 4: saving life after life.
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  Speaker 2: That rescuer was.
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  Speaker 4: A 24-year-old equities trader and volunteer firefighter from Rockland County
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  Speaker 4: named Wells Crowther. And Wells' father, also a firefighter, great firefighter,
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  Speaker 4: had given him that bandana as a very special tribute
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  Speaker 4: when he was a boy. He probably knew something about
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  Speaker 4: his son. When asked why he always kept it, Wells replied,
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  Speaker 4: with this red bandana, I'm going to change the world.
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  Speaker 4: I'm going to change the world with this bandana. Little
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  Speaker 4: did he know, on September 11th, Wells saved many, many
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  Speaker 4: people before losing his own life in the South Tower
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  Speaker 4: lobby when the building came down. He was in the
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  Speaker 4: lobby and that building came down. Thousands of tons of steel.
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  Speaker 1: Let me then go to cut number seven to the
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  Speaker 1: president today.
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  Speaker 4: In the course of history, there are a few moments
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  Speaker 4: that divide time into really what came before. When you
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  Speaker 4: look at what took place that day, nobody will ever
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  Speaker 4: even think of such a thing being able to happen again.
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  Speaker 4: And we're going to do everything in our power to
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  Speaker 4: make sure it doesn't. That was a day like no other.
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  Speaker 4: September 11th was one of those days. Moments in time,
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  Speaker 4: we always, everybody knows exactly where they were.
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  Speaker 5: I know exactly where I was.
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  Speaker 4: I was watching and looking and it was a beautiful,
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  Speaker 4: beautiful morning. And I looked out and then all of
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  Speaker 4: a sudden I saw an alert on television. I looked
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  Speaker 4: out my window and I saw things that I never
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  Speaker 4: want to see again. We're never going to see them again.
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  Speaker 4: But in just over 100 minutes, 175,000 tons of steel
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  Speaker 4: and concrete were reduced to ruin and 3,000.
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  Speaker 2: Lives were extinguished, immediately extinguished.
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  Speaker 4: The world we knew and the nation that we loved
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  Speaker 4: had changed. I said it to myself. And I looked
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  Speaker 4: and I said, well, the world has changed forever. So
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  Speaker 4: many things have changed because of that day. Yet this
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  Speaker 4: battered piece of steel here today on the Ellipse is
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  Speaker 4: a reminder that America is blessed with a strength no
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  Speaker 4: fire can consume, no evil can conquer, and no terror
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  Speaker 4: can destroy.
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  Speaker 1: One more cut from the president, cut number eight from
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  Speaker 1: this morning.
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  Speaker 4: For the past few months, Tunnels to Towers has taken
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  Speaker 4: the steel across the nation to remind Americans of what
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  Speaker 4: we overcame that day and what our heroes did. And
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  Speaker 4: on September 11th, 23 members of the New York Police Department,
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  Speaker 4: 37 members of the Port Authority Police, three court officers
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  Speaker 4: and 343 members of the New York Fire Department made
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  Speaker 4: the ultimate sacrifice.
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  Speaker 2: And they knew what they were getting into. They saw it.
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  Speaker 4: They knew what was going to happen. They were running
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  Speaker 4: up those stairs and they knew what was going to happen.
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  Speaker 4: There wasn't one of them that thought otherwise. The bravery
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  Speaker 4: is really incredible. But their photos are all around us
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  Speaker 4: today of these incredible people, men and women, but just incredible,
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  Speaker 4: brave people. You never know about bravery until you really
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  Speaker 4: test it.
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  Speaker 2: You don't know.
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  Speaker 4: We're deeply honored to be joined this morning by more
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  Speaker 4: than 150 first responders from New York, along with dozens
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  Speaker 4: more from Washington, D.C., Arlington and Pennsylvania, who carry on
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  Speaker 4: the mission of their fallen comrades.
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  Speaker 2: I've been to all three.
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  Speaker 4: I speak to all three on every we pick one
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  Speaker 4: or sometimes two.
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  Speaker 2: And we speak on that very special day.
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  Speaker 4: And we're also joined by more than 200 proud members
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  Speaker 4: of the United States military who.
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  Speaker 2: Were there and some were not there.
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  Speaker 4: And some are here just because they want to honor
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  Speaker 4: the people that were.
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  Speaker 2: Would you all stand up, please? Everybody, please stand up.
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  Speaker 1: That's great.
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  Speaker 2: Anybody that was there. Great. Thank you very much. Thank
• 10:09
  Speaker 2: you very much.
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  Speaker 1: He's speaking about the entire country and thanking them. I'm
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  Speaker 1: going to spend some time talking with Rich Lowry, Brett Baer,
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  Speaker 1: others throughout the day about this. Tudor Dixon will be
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  Speaker 1: in for me tomorrow as I fly back to California. And,
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: of course, I'll be spending a lot of time on
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  Speaker 1: Thursday and Friday as well. Pivotal event. My life has
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: three parts. Cold War, the holiday from history from 1991
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: to 2001, and post-2001. Because everything changed 25 years ago,
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  Speaker 1: and it remains changed. And I'll tell you more about
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  Speaker 1: that after the break right here on the Hugh Hewitt Show.
• 10:43
  Speaker 3: 9-11 scarred our country in profound ways. But what we
• 10:46
  Speaker 3: did after 9-11 scarred millions of other people. When we
• 10:49
  Speaker 3: talk about 9-11, we often fail to center them.
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: Welcome back, America. I'm Hugh Hewitt. That was Abdul El-Sayed.
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: And I'm joined by Rich Lowry, editor-in-chief of National Review,
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: host of the Editor's Podcast and the McCarthy Report. When
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: it comes back, I don't know where it's been. Rich, welcome.
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  Speaker 1: I have been posing to the audience that normally a
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: six-year of a presidential term is a referendum election. This
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: seems to me like a choice election between Trump and
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: the GOP, which is serious about national security, and Abdu'l-Sayed
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  Speaker 1: and the Democratic Party, which isn't. What do you think
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  Speaker 1: of my framing?
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  Speaker 2: I think that's correct.
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  Speaker 6: The question is whether the voters are going to see
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  Speaker 6: it that way, and Republicans need to do everything they
• 11:32
  Speaker 6: can to make sure that they do. And I think
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  Speaker 6: the The upside scenario for Republicans here, Hugh, is not great.
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  Speaker 6: It's basically a 2022-type outcome where you limit your losses.
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  Speaker 6: But if you limit losses in the House and the
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  Speaker 6: whole of the Senate, I think that's a good night.
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  Speaker 6: And if that happens, it'll be all about Democrats having
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  Speaker 6: made themselves even more radioactive when their image was already
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  Speaker 6: in the toilet in 2024 and it's gotten worse since then.
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  Speaker 4: Yeah.
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  Speaker 1: How much do you think the summer of the DSA
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  Speaker 1: and the rise of Piker– and El Sayed defined this election.
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  Speaker 1: The Tallarico was kind of a weird psychedelic backdrop.
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  Speaker 6: Yeah, I think that's, I think that's right. Again, it's just,
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  Speaker 6: do voters feel about it that way?
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  Speaker 1: Or is it for them?
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  Speaker 6: It's just a referendum about how they're feeling about the
• 12:18
  Speaker 6: economy and, and prices. I fear it's going to be
• 12:21
  Speaker 6: more of the latter, but what's happening in the democratic
• 12:24
  Speaker 6: party is highly consequential, right? The most significant movement within
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  Speaker 6: the democratic party is the DSA, which is basically run
• 12:30
  Speaker 6: by communists. These are, two nesting operations trying to subvert
• 12:34
  Speaker 6: one another. The DSA is nesting within the Democratic Party
• 12:36
  Speaker 6: and trying to subvert it, whereas you have no kidding
• 12:40
  Speaker 6: communists nesting within the DSA and trying to take it over.
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  Speaker 1: So, Rich, now I want to jump. I was on
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  Speaker 1: the air on this program on 9-11 for between six
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  Speaker 1: and nine hours broadcasting live. And 25 years later, I
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  Speaker 1: was 45 then, I'm 70 now. And this whole 25
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  Speaker 1: years has been defined by 9-11. Where were you on 9-11?
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  Speaker 1: And has your 25 years been defined by 9-11?
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  Speaker 6: I was in downtown Manhattan at 14th between Union Square
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  Speaker 6: and 5th. And the first plane came screaming down 5th Avenue.
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  Speaker 1: I heard it.
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  Speaker 6: And I thought to myself in the back of my head,
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  Speaker 6: you know, that's the sound that, that's a really loud plane.
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  Speaker 6: That's the sound people describe before they hear plane crashes.
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  Speaker 6: I didn't hear anything because it was too far downtown.
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  Speaker 6: And then, Hugh, my last.
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  Speaker 6: Pre-9-11 thought or statement, if you will, was I was
• 13:30
  Speaker 6: direct messaging with my dear colleague Jonah Goldberg, and he
• 13:33
  Speaker 6: just said, turn on the TV. I was like, what station?
• 13:36
  Speaker 6: He said, no, no, no, you don't understand. Just turn
• 13:37
  Speaker 6: on the TV. I turned it on, immediately saw the
• 13:40
  Speaker 6: Tower of Flame and realized, well, that was the plane
• 13:42
  Speaker 6: I heard. So I watched a little bit. Then I
• 13:44
  Speaker 6: went downstairs to go down Fifth Avenue, which had a
• 13:47
  Speaker 6: perfect view. And then I didn't understand what happened because
• 13:49
  Speaker 6: in between leaving my apartment and getting on the street,
• 13:52
  Speaker 6: the second plane had hit. And, Hugh, one thing that
• 13:54
  Speaker 6: really shocks people but is kind of true, Walker Percy,
• 13:57
  Speaker 6: the great novelist and social critic, wrote about this. Parts
• 14:00
  Speaker 6: of people get excited by natural disasters or things that
• 14:04
  Speaker 6: are different. There are people from staffers from the grocery
• 14:08
  Speaker 6: store underneath me who are running laughing to Fifth Avenue
• 14:11
  Speaker 6: to get a look at this. I still remember there
• 14:13
  Speaker 6: was a truck. You don't see many pickup trucks in Manhattan,
• 14:16
  Speaker 6: but for some reason there was a pickup truck. And
• 14:18
  Speaker 6: the guys that stopped the truck, two or three of
• 14:20
  Speaker 6: them had gotten out to sit on the cab So
• 14:23
  Speaker 6: someone could take a picture of them with the flaming
• 14:26
  Speaker 6: World Trade Center behind them. And I think part of
• 14:28
  Speaker 6: this was people really not– I mean it was obviously
• 14:30
  Speaker 6: something awful that happened but not realizing the true severity
• 14:34
  Speaker 6: of it. I went back upstairs to write a little
• 14:36
  Speaker 6: blog post about.
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  Speaker 1: What I had seen.
• 14:38
  Speaker 6: And then when I was on the streets next, they
• 14:41
  Speaker 6: had collapsed and people were weeping on the sidewalks. I
• 14:44
  Speaker 6: still remember a young couple with a girl. They hadn't
• 14:49
  Speaker 6: been down there. They hadn't been affected directly. by it,
• 14:51
  Speaker 6: but they realized what had happened, and she was just
• 14:53
  Speaker 6: weeping in his arms as they were walking along. Subways
• 14:56
  Speaker 6: were shut. I walked, you know, 20 blocks up to
• 14:59
  Speaker 6: our National Review offices, but the rumors, you know, it
• 15:03
  Speaker 6: was like a movie, as people say about everything like this, right?
• 15:06
  Speaker 6: Cabs were stopped in the streets with the doors open,
• 15:09
  Speaker 6: and the news radio turned on so people could gather
• 15:11
  Speaker 6: around to hear what might be happening or happening next,
• 15:14
  Speaker 6: and there were rumors of more planes coming to Manhattan,
• 15:18
  Speaker 6: and that night, You know, all of Manhattan was shut down.
• 15:21
  Speaker 6: I remember you just heard these sonic booms from jet
• 15:23
  Speaker 6: airplanes patrolling over the streets of Manhattan, which would have
• 15:27
  Speaker 6: been something unimaginable 12 hours earlier. But, of course, our
• 15:30
  Speaker 6: entire world had changed.
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: So, Rich, you get a whole three minutes to answer
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: this question. After 9-11, I was on the air that day,
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: said everything has changed and it won't change back. But,
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: in fact, it did change and the country split in two.
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: And some people are on the side of, like Jim
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: Garrity wrote the book Voting to Kill. Some people on
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: that side have ended up on the other side now.
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: That meaning they oppose the war with Iran. The serious
• 15:59
  Speaker 1: 9-11 hawks understand it's all one war. It still is
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: all one war. What happened to split some of those
• 16:06
  Speaker 1: people from the Voting to Kill party to the America's
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: the Problem party?
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  Speaker 6: Well, first of all, I remember talking to Norman Bedortz,
• 16:18
  Speaker 6: our late great friend, in the weeks after November 11th.
• 16:21
  Speaker 6: Everything was united, and he's like, wait, there'll be anti-war
• 16:24
  Speaker 6: protests before you know it. And this is just when,
• 16:26
  Speaker 6: even before we'd gone into Afghanistan, I guess, and he
• 16:29
  Speaker 6: was totally right. So the country is divided over it.
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: And then you've had.
• 16:32
  Speaker 6: Elements of the right, you know, not unreasonably, in my view,
• 16:34
  Speaker 6: looking especially at the experience of Iraq and saying, well,
• 16:37
  Speaker 6: that was too painful and costly, and we didn't know
• 16:38
  Speaker 6: what we're doing. Let's be careful about doing that again. But, Hugh,
• 16:43
  Speaker 6: I do think there have been surprises in the Iran war.
• 16:45
  Speaker 6: Maybe Trump wouldn't do it again, certainly not the way
• 16:48
  Speaker 6: he's done it. But there's still a chance he could
• 16:50
  Speaker 6: crack that regime. And if you had that regime fall,
• 16:53
  Speaker 6: you could have a real chance for a normal Middle East.
• 16:56
  Speaker 6: I think that would be a huge bookend from what
• 16:59
  Speaker 6: we're talking about we experienced on September 11th to now.
• 17:02
  Speaker 6: It would be an epic historic change forged by multiple
• 17:05
  Speaker 6: administrations by hook and crook.
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: Now, I want to close with this question, which I'll
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: be asking all week. Could anyone have done a better
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: job than George W. Bush did for the entirety of
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: someone elected in a contested election a year earlier?
• 17:22
  Speaker 5: Yes.
• 17:23
  Speaker 6: I think if you went back, you'd do the Iraq
• 17:26
  Speaker 6: war differently or maybe you wouldn't do it or you'd
• 17:29
  Speaker 6: wait longer. So I do think that overwhelmed his presidency.
• 17:32
  Speaker 6: But in terms of keeping us safe, right, I mean– Again,
• 17:36
  Speaker 6: it's easy to forget, but we were all on tenterhooks
• 17:40
  Speaker 6: expecting another attack.
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: There'd be rumors, don't go on.
• 17:42
  Speaker 6: The subway today because there's going to be a terrorist attack,
• 17:44
  Speaker 6: and it never happened. We hardened our defenses.
• 17:47
  Speaker 2: We did more surveillance.
• 17:48
  Speaker 6: We took the fight to them overseas. They were downsized
• 17:52
  Speaker 6: with a lot of costs and blood and treasure, but
• 17:55
  Speaker 6: another one hasn't occurred. We would have been shocked by
• 17:57
  Speaker 6: that in the immediate aftermath of September 11th and is
• 18:01
  Speaker 6: a big victory.
• 18:02
  Speaker 1: I'm going to stand on that line all day. I
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: don't think anyone could have done better than W because
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: the ultimate measurement is, was the homeland attacked in a
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: significant way from abroad since then? And the answer is,
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: I believe, no. But that could be over in a day, right?
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: That's a day-by-day issue. Yeah, absolutely. Different way to grow up.
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: Rich Lowry, I look forward to the editors this week.
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: By the way, next week we've got to come back
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: and talk about the weird water discussion because I thought,
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: You could have let Michael Brendan-Doherty and Charles C.W. Cook
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: go for a couple of hours and I would have
• 18:35
  Speaker 1: listened to that. That was that good.
• 18:38
  Speaker 6: Yeah, I feel as though I could let it go
• 18:41
  Speaker 6: for as long as I reasonably could. But everyone thinks
• 18:43
  Speaker 6: the argument should go on longer.
• 18:44
  Speaker 1: Well, I understand what a break is. We're coming up
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: on a break. And I understand that you've got to
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: run the show. I just want you to go back
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: and do it again. But I don't know it'll get
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: that sparky. Charles doesn't get sparky very often. But that
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: was fabulous. A long nightmare as ever, Chris. The McCarthy
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: Report's back this week.
• 19:01
  Speaker 4: Oh, good.
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: Thank you. Because I want to know, somebody asked him,
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: Shannon Bream asked him yesterday, why is Khalid Sheikh Mohammed
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: still alive? And Andy needs to talk to you about
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: that at length. Rich Lowry, follow him on Exit. Rich Lowry,
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: Editor-in-Chief of National Review. Listen to the editors and come
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: right back to The Hugh Hewitt Show. Welcome back, America.
• 19:19
  Speaker 1: That music means Lilacs is in the house, as in
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: James Lilacs, National Review columnist, funny man, humorous, Substack proprietor
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: of jameslilacs.substack.com. A longtime friend of mine and of the program, James,
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: I do not think we had been introduced on 9-11.
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: When did you start showing up on the Hugh Hewitt Show?
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: The year after?
• 19:39
  Speaker 5: It was six or seven or so months afterwards. Yes,
• 19:44
  Speaker 5: it was. It was quite close to the actual event.
• 19:46
  Speaker 5: So it's been 25 years.
• 19:47
  Speaker 1: You introduced me to Arms for the Love of America.
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: and we used that for your music for a long time.
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: We might find a way to cue that up here.
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: I want to play for you Abdul El-Sayed from 2021,
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: a clip that surfaced today, cut number 13.
• 20:00
  Speaker 3: 9-11 scarred our country in profound ways. But what we
• 20:04
  Speaker 3: did after 9-11 scarred millions of other people. When we
• 20:07
  Speaker 3: talk about 9-11, we often fail to center them.
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: All right, James, do we need more context than that?
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: Is that enough?
• 20:17
  Speaker 4: No.
• 20:18
  Speaker 7: People were scarred by the bombing of London during the Blitz,
• 20:23
  Speaker 7: but people were scarred by Pearl Harbor, but everything that
• 20:30
  Speaker 7: comes after the other thing that goes before the but
• 20:31
  Speaker 7: is meaningless, because the but, the fulcrum of the but,
• 20:34
  Speaker 7: is what you have to concentrate on. The fact that
• 20:38
  Speaker 7: some people did something and then we did something after
• 20:40
  Speaker 7: that is unacceptable to these people because what we should
• 20:44
  Speaker 7: have done is just simply lie back and realize that
• 20:46
  Speaker 7: we had deserved it. And now maybe we're even. Now
• 20:48
  Speaker 7: maybe we can clear the slate. But that wasn't the
• 20:51
  Speaker 7: case at all. The fact of it is, is that,
• 20:53
  Speaker 7: you know, we're still fighting this war. We're fighting around
• 20:57
  Speaker 7: right now, which shows that, you know, imagine waking up
• 21:02
  Speaker 7: in 1970, 25 years after D-Day, and realizing that we
• 21:06
  Speaker 7: were still fighting Germany, some little rogue state in Germany.
• 21:09
  Speaker 7: And in the meanwhile, the world's attentions were concentrated on
• 21:12
  Speaker 7: the Sudetenland, because France, our ally, had gone into the
• 21:16
  Speaker 7: Sudetenland to wipe out some terrorists who would be incomprehensible
• 21:18
  Speaker 7: to us.
• 21:19
  Speaker 5: But yet here we are, a quarter century, still.
• 21:21
  Speaker 7: Going on with this, with the world never really ever
• 21:25
  Speaker 7: taking the side of the people who carry forth the
• 21:29
  Speaker 7: liberal values that they supposedly embodied.
• 21:32
  Speaker 5: They always come back to a defense of societies that.
• 21:34
  Speaker 7: Are broken, that are patriarchal, misogynistic cultures that can only
• 21:41
  Speaker 7: lash out at cultures such as the West and then
• 21:44
  Speaker 7: claim a victim status when they're swatted back by a
• 21:47
  Speaker 7: very thickly rolled starched newspaper.
• 21:50
  Speaker 5: The but. Always the but, of course. Always the but.
• 21:53
  Speaker 5: As though this just came out of nowhere, really. And
• 21:55
  Speaker 5: it either came out of nowhere, or it came out
• 21:57
  Speaker 5: of the fact.
• 21:58
  Speaker 7: That the original sin of the founding of Israel, for
• 22:00
  Speaker 7: which we must be held personally accountable.
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: I've got two follow-ups. The first follow-up is, Abdul El-Sayed
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: has made this, turned an election in two months from
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: a referendum on Donald Trump to a choice between Donald
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: Trump and his Republican Party. And Abdul El-Sayed and his
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: Democratic Party, that's how I see it. Do you see
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: it that way? Do you think voters see it that way?
• 22:22
  Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah. I think so. I think so, yeah.
• 22:26
  Speaker 7: I mean, he's providing a new flavor of what it
• 22:28
  Speaker 7: means to be the opposition party, one that does not
• 22:31
  Speaker 7: seem particularly rooted in the values that.
• 22:33
  Speaker 5: The Democratic Party used to have 25, 30 years ago.
• 22:35
  Speaker 7: But this is the natural direction of the left, always,
• 22:38
  Speaker 7: always to find the fault in the institutions that they
• 22:41
  Speaker 7: can't stand and to desire the replacement of those institutions
• 22:45
  Speaker 7: with a utopia that they've got in their back pocket. So, yeah,
• 22:47
  Speaker 7: I do.
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: All right. Second question is what broke among the people
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: who were very together on the need to fight the
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: long war in 2001, two and three and where we
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: are today with people who want us to declare we've
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: lost Iran when in fact I think we've won and
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: it's unfolding over the course of six months. But there's
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: a break in America now. When did that happen and
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: to what do we attribute that? Is it just Donald Trump?
• 23:16
  Speaker 7: No, no, it was a long time ago, long before that.
• 23:18
  Speaker 7: While people were saying, yes, let's go into Afghanistan, they
• 23:21
  Speaker 7: understood that. Everything that followed afterwards was confusing to some people.
• 23:24
  Speaker 7: And the moral high ground, according to some, was lost
• 23:26
  Speaker 7: at Abu Ghraib and by Gitmo and by enhanced interrogation.
• 23:30
  Speaker 7: Why were waterboarding them? We're no better than they are.
• 23:33
  Speaker 7: And people who at the earliest possible opportunity got to
• 23:35
  Speaker 7: jump ship on this because while they said that something
• 23:39
  Speaker 7: must be done, this can't stand, At the back of
• 23:42
  Speaker 7: their minds was this horrible feeling.
• 23:43
  Speaker 5: That, oh, my God, the flags are coming out. Oh,
• 23:45
  Speaker 5: my gosh, the patriotism is surging in this country. I
• 23:48
  Speaker 5: don't like exactly what I see.
• 23:50
  Speaker 7: And so they reverted to norm, which is to not
• 23:52
  Speaker 7: like the United States, but to like sort of this
• 23:55
  Speaker 7: general principle of the West that we could become if
• 23:58
  Speaker 7: we did all the right things.
• 23:59
  Speaker 5: And what they saw under George W.
• 24:00
  Speaker 7: Bush, an attempt to fight back against militant Islamism, they
• 24:03
  Speaker 7: just eventually couldn't sit with it.
• 24:05
  Speaker 5: So, I mean, this goes way, way back. This goes
• 24:08
  Speaker 5: back to John Kerry.
• 24:08
  Speaker 7: This goes back to the way they turned on the
• 24:10
  Speaker 7: whole process of trying to stamp out radical Islamists, which,
• 24:14
  Speaker 7: you know, we argue whether or not we did it
• 24:15
  Speaker 7: the right way or whether or not it was even possible,
• 24:17
  Speaker 7: but we weren't just going to do.
• 24:18
  Speaker 5: A one-and-done where we bomb Kabul and say, okay, now
• 24:21
  Speaker 5: we got you.
• 24:22
  Speaker 7: So, yeah, it was the long, grueling nature of it
• 24:25
  Speaker 7: and the fact that some things had to be done
• 24:27
  Speaker 7: or were done that people didn't like.
• 24:29
  Speaker 5: They didn't feel, they didn't sit with them quite right.
• 24:32
  Speaker 7: And so all of the horror that we felt inside
• 24:34
  Speaker 7: dissipated quickly on that side.
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: Of the aisle. Of the big four, Jim. James Lilacs
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: of the big four. I was talking about Jim Garrity.
• 24:45
  Speaker 5: It's been very nice. Thank you very much.
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: Jim Garrity wrote the book, Voting to Kill. James Lilacs
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: was going to comment on it. Voting to Kill came
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: in when the big four were George W. Bush, Dick Cheney,
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: Donald Rumsfeld, Colin Powell, and maybe Condoleezza Rice is in there.
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: some of them have left the scene, others have changed.
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: I continue to believe George W. Bush did as good
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: a job as any American president could have done for
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: the next seven and a half years. What say you?
• 25:13
  Speaker 5: In general, yes. In general, yes.
• 25:15
  Speaker 7: And yet I'm of the mind that there wasn't enough
• 25:18
  Speaker 7: that was done, actually, that there was more. We had
• 25:21
  Speaker 7: Iran right between, we had Afghanistan, we had Iraq, that
• 25:24
  Speaker 7: we had a perfect, perfect opportunity to be able to
• 25:26
  Speaker 7: do something instead of waiting 22 years.
• 25:29
  Speaker 5: There was the problem of debathification. Was that actually necessary?
• 25:32
  Speaker 7: I mean, maybe these guys all would have evaporated into
• 25:35
  Speaker 7: the woodwork anyway, but the troubles that followed in Iraq,
• 25:38
  Speaker 7: could that have been solved by leaving the bathys structure
• 25:41
  Speaker 7: in place and just sticking, you know, one of them,
• 25:43
  Speaker 7: he may be a bastard, but he's our bastard in
• 25:45
  Speaker 7: the slot. Maybe that would have worked well than trying
• 25:48
  Speaker 7: to do this process of turning them into a Western democracy.
• 25:51
  Speaker 7: We tried that in two instances, and I think we're
• 25:52
  Speaker 7: pretty much shot on the concept of doing that again.
• 25:56
  Speaker 5: But yeah, in general, I mean, I.
• 25:59
  Speaker 7: Supported George Bush then, and I support him now, and
• 26:01
  Speaker 7: I'm regarded as a dinosaur.
• 26:04
  Speaker 5: And an idiot for that, but I don't know. I'm
• 26:06
  Speaker 5: not going to take back what I said in 2001.
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: Do you think the Iran battle is part of the
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: war that began on 9-11? I do. Do you?
• 26:15
  Speaker 5: It's part of the war that began in 1977.
• 26:16
  Speaker 7: It's part of the war that began an awful long
• 26:19
  Speaker 7: time probably before that. It's probably the war that began
• 26:22
  Speaker 7: the minute that that one idiot went to America and
• 26:24
  Speaker 7: saw people square dancing and decided that we were a
• 26:27
  Speaker 7: society that had to be destroyed.
• 26:30
  Speaker 5: So, I mean, this is a.
• 26:30
  Speaker 7: Long civilizational clash, and people don't like civilizational clashes because
• 26:34
  Speaker 7: they have to choose.
• 26:35
  Speaker 5: And unfortunately, yes, you do.
• 26:37
  Speaker 7: And the one that you choose is the one that
• 26:39
  Speaker 7: provides the most liberal opportunities for all, and that is
• 26:42
  Speaker 7: this one, and it ain't that.
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: Well said, Lilacs. As always, jameslilacs.substack.com. Read them in National
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: Review or read them at jameslilacs.com or on substack at jameslilacs.substack.com.
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: Come right back. I'm Hugh Hewitt. I'm Hugh Hewitt. Jennifer
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: Griffin of Fox News reporting. Senior U.S. officials to Fox.
• 27:02
  Speaker 8: U.S.
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: Military has struck targets near Karj Island and Jask. The
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: targets include Iranian oil tankers. I'm joined now by Brett Baer.
• 27:10
  Speaker 1: host of Special Report, which you see every night on
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: the Fox News Channel at 6 p.m. Brett, anything to
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: expand on what Jennifer has posted on X?
• 27:20
  Speaker 9: Not specifically. I mean, they're taking out a couple of
• 27:26
  Speaker 9: oil tankers after they were fired upon. And that has
• 27:29
  Speaker 9: been the.
• 27:32
  Speaker 2: M.O.
• 27:32
  Speaker 10: For the U.S.
• 27:33
  Speaker 9: Military. If the Iranians fire on U.S. ships or.
• 27:40
  Speaker 9: Any kind of U.S. vessel, then the military fires back.
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: So this is a response. I hope at an X
• 27:51
  Speaker 1: factor there. Brett, what I'm doing all this week, and
• 27:55
  Speaker 1: I'm sure you're doing some of it on Special Report,
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: is looking back 25 years ago to when the world changed.
• 28:01
  Speaker 1: And I've begun by telling people, everyone I know who's
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: an adult or actually from fourth grade on knows exactly
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: what they were doing and where they were doing it.
• 28:08
  Speaker 1: I've heard your story before, but we just picked up,
• 28:10
  Speaker 1: for example, an affiliate in Las Vegas, brand new on
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: this trip. So tell people what Brett Baer was doing
• 28:14
  Speaker 1: on 9-11.
• 28:15
  Speaker 8: Yeah, on 9-11, I was the hero report for Fox,
• 28:22
  Speaker 8: covering the Southeast and South and Central America, bouncing around
• 28:26
  Speaker 8: all the time.
• 28:27
  Speaker 9: And the first plane hit, and I was asked to
• 28:30
  Speaker 9: back up in New York for Fox affiliates, thinking that
• 28:35
  Speaker 9: they would want a shot about this anomaly that a
• 28:40
  Speaker 9: plane hit the World Trade Center. So we booked a
• 28:43
  Speaker 9: plane from Atlanta to New York, a flight, and then
• 28:50
  Speaker 9: the second plane hit, and they told us to get
• 28:51
  Speaker 9: in the car and drive. So a producer and myself
• 28:54
  Speaker 9: got in the car from Atlanta, and we started driving.
• 28:58
  Speaker 9: Outside Atlanta, as we're driving north, the third plane hits,
• 29:02
  Speaker 9: and we get rerouted to the I started doing live
• 29:06
  Speaker 9: reports outside the burning Pentagon that night with Fox affiliates
• 29:11
  Speaker 9: around the country, and I never left. Eventually, they made
• 29:15
  Speaker 9: me the Fox Pentagon correspondent. I was traveling with then-Defense
• 29:20
  Speaker 9: Secretary Rumsfeld overseas as he made the case for war
• 29:23
  Speaker 9: in Afghanistan, and they moved me, Fox did, from Atlanta
• 29:28
  Speaker 9: to D.C., and that started my career there.
• 29:31
  Speaker 8: But that day.
• 29:33
  Speaker 9: changed the world in a number of different aspects including.
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: For me i'm curious about the drive Brett, from Atlanta
• 29:40
  Speaker 1: to D.C. and your producer. You're getting news from AM
• 29:45
  Speaker 1: and FM radio. That's all I'm doing that day is
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: doing AM and FM radio. I have an Atlanta affiliate,
• 29:49
  Speaker 1: but you were gone from Atlanta pretty early. I don't
• 29:51
  Speaker 1: know when you picked up my next one. But what
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: did you think was happening and what were you doing?
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: This is really pre-cell phone days. It's not very good.
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: in 2001 to be on the phone. You run out
• 30:02
  Speaker 1: of juice.
• 30:03
  Speaker 8: No.
• 30:03
  Speaker 6: Yeah, yeah.
• 30:04
  Speaker 9: No, I had one of those giant phones with the,
• 30:08
  Speaker 9: it looked like a bread basket.
• 30:10
  Speaker 1: Yeah, the Seinfeld phones. Yep.
• 30:12
  Speaker 9: Yeah. And, you know, we had some incoming. We stopped
• 30:18
  Speaker 9: and I made calls. But you're right. AM, FM radio,
• 30:23
  Speaker 9: we were tuning each state that we went through to
• 30:27
  Speaker 9: a different news station. that was giving us the latest.
• 30:33
  Speaker 9: And at that time, we were worried about the planes
• 30:37
  Speaker 9: that were still up. And as we took off and
• 30:40
  Speaker 9: got rerouted to the Pentagon, Shanksville still hadn't happened. And
• 30:47
  Speaker 9: then we heard about that. So as we pull into D.C.
• 30:51
  Speaker 9: to get to the Pentagon, you can see the plume
• 30:54
  Speaker 9: of smoke And we start at the Sitco station right
• 30:58
  Speaker 9: across from the Pentagon with a clear view of the
• 31:02
  Speaker 9: site where the plane went in to that ring of
• 31:05
  Speaker 9: the Pentagon.
• 31:06
  Speaker 1: I'm kind of amazed you got that close. About a
• 31:09
  Speaker 1: month later, the Marine Corps Marathon, which I ran that
• 31:13
  Speaker 1: year for the last time, went around the Pentagon. It
• 31:15
  Speaker 1: was just a nightmarish hole in that. But there's also
• 31:19
  Speaker 1: Don Rumsfeld's finest hour. And I want to talk to
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: someone like you who spent 25 years covering this. I
• 31:25
  Speaker 1: think W did as well as any American president could
• 31:29
  Speaker 1: have done in the aftermath of that. What do you think, Brett?
• 31:32
  Speaker 1: You've interviewed them all.
• 31:35
  Speaker 9: Yeah, I do think so. You know, I mean, if
• 31:37
  Speaker 9: you think back to the let's look at the defense
• 31:41
  Speaker 9: secretary's hearing, you know, confirmation hearing, Afghanistan was not brought
• 31:47
  Speaker 9: up once, you know, to change. on a dime and
• 31:54
  Speaker 9: change to a war footing that day, you know, I
• 31:59
  Speaker 9: think you look back and say what the Bush administration
• 32:03
  Speaker 9: managed to do was to prevent attacks to the homeland
• 32:08
  Speaker 9: for a number of years. And it took a big
• 32:12
  Speaker 9: effort to change to that footing. I think, you know,
• 32:17
  Speaker 9: I spent a lot of time traveling to Afghanistan and
• 32:20
  Speaker 9: eventually to Iraq. I saw a lot of young military
• 32:26
  Speaker 9: folks taking on big responsibilities in the wake of 9-11.
• 32:30
  Speaker 1: Now, Brett Barrett, as I said, you've talked to every president,
• 32:34
  Speaker 1: but you also talked to Secretary Powell, eventually Secretary Rice,
• 32:37
  Speaker 1: Vice President Cheney, George Tenet, everyone involved in that decision
• 32:42
  Speaker 1: to go into Iraq. I still believe they made it
• 32:45
  Speaker 1: in good faith on the basis of bad information. Has
• 32:48
  Speaker 1: anything you've ever reported made you think otherwise?
• 32:54
  Speaker 9: Not really. I mean, I know that they really obviously
• 32:56
  Speaker 9: wish that the WMD was there. And I don't think
• 33:02
  Speaker 9: in the prism post-9-11 of watching what Saddam Hussein was
• 33:08
  Speaker 9: doing and saying that, you know, that group of people
• 33:13
  Speaker 9: felt like they could take the chance. I know there's
• 33:17
  Speaker 9: a lot of people who say that decision was wrongheaded,
• 33:21
  Speaker 9: but in the wake of 9-11, it really took on
• 33:25
  Speaker 9: a different look as you looked at that threat data.
• 33:30
  Speaker 1: The last question, Brett, I think I'm going to talk
• 33:32
  Speaker 1: to you tonight on a special report, and this may
• 33:34
  Speaker 1: or may not come up. I think the battle with
• 33:36
  Speaker 1: Iran today is connected to 9-11, and I can lay
• 33:39
  Speaker 1: out the dots. I don't know how many people agree
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: with me on that, and I don't know if you've
• 33:43
  Speaker 1: expressed an opinion on that, but what percentage of Americans
• 33:47
  Speaker 1: do you think connect the Iran battle with what happened
• 33:51
  Speaker 1: 25 years ago Friday?
• 33:55
  Speaker 2: I don't know.
• 33:55
  Speaker 9: I think it's a little distant. And you look at
• 33:58
  Speaker 9: a lot of young people that, you know, we have
• 34:00
  Speaker 9: to instruct what happened in 9-11. My kids, I had
• 34:05
  Speaker 9: to explain what happened. And it's not as visceral as
• 34:10
  Speaker 9: it is for a lot of us 25 years later.
• 34:13
  Speaker 9: There's been a lot of stories about Iran harboring al-Qaeda terrorists.
• 34:19
  Speaker 9: There's been a lot of stories about all kinds of things.
• 34:23
  Speaker 1: Iran.
• 34:24
  Speaker 9: definitively is the biggest state sponsor of terrorism in the
• 34:27
  Speaker 9: world and has been. So in that prism, looking back
• 34:31
  Speaker 9: at 9-11, you don't want it to happen again.
• 34:36
  Speaker 1: Exactly. It's all about fanatics who want to kill Americans,
• 34:40
  Speaker 1: as many as they can, wherever they can find them.
• 34:43
  Speaker 1: And that battle goes on across the world. Brett Baer,
• 34:46
  Speaker 1: I'll talk to you a little bit later tonight on
• 34:47
  Speaker 1: Special Report. Thank you for sharing that perspective with us.
• 34:55
  Speaker 1: Welcome back, America. I'm Hugh Hewitt, joined by Alex Gray.
• 34:58
  Speaker 1: Alex is the president and CEO of American Global Strategies.
• 35:02
  Speaker 1: He was the chief of staff of the National Security
• 35:04
  Speaker 1: Council in President Trump's first term. Alex, I wanted to ask,
• 35:08
  Speaker 1: and I'm asking most people today, you're on the younger
• 35:10
  Speaker 1: end of my demo. What were you doing on 9-11,
• 35:13
  Speaker 1: and how did you find out about the attack on America?
• 35:18
  Speaker 11: Yeah, I was in junior high, Hugh. I remember it vividly.
• 35:23
  Speaker 11: the teachers were all whispering to each other. And of
• 35:26
  Speaker 11: course the bunch of kids had no idea what was
• 35:28
  Speaker 11: going on. And I think there started to be whispers
• 35:33
  Speaker 11: that the first plane, you know, originally a small plane
• 35:37
  Speaker 11: was supposedly going to have hit the tower and it
• 35:40
  Speaker 11: was an accident and a tragedy and people kind of
• 35:42
  Speaker 11: moved on. And when the second plane hit the tower,
• 35:44
  Speaker 11: then the Pentagon people's parents started coming to pick them up. And,
• 35:49
  Speaker 11: you know, it was, well, One of those days where
• 35:53
  Speaker 11: no matter how young you are, no matter where you were,
• 35:55
  Speaker 11: if you have a vivid recollection of it, it binds
• 35:59
  Speaker 11: all of us together as Americans who experienced that day.
• 36:03
  Speaker 1: Now, my question to you takes you fast forward through
• 36:06
  Speaker 1: your years in the Trump White House. When you're the
• 36:08
  Speaker 1: chief of staff of the National Security Council, you see everything.
• 36:11
  Speaker 1: You have the highest clearances available to anyone in the country,
• 36:15
  Speaker 1: every compartment and sensitive, whatever you want to call it.
• 36:18
  Speaker 1: You get to see it. So I've seen it all.
• 36:20
  Speaker 1: You've been out for a while. Do you think if
• 36:23
  Speaker 1: we had AI in 2000 and 2001 and we had
• 36:28
  Speaker 1: built out our data centers and we had our big
• 36:31
  Speaker 1: tech companies, we would have had a warning of what
• 36:34
  Speaker 1: was coming?
• 36:37
  Speaker 11: You know, it's tough to say, Hugh. I think it
• 36:39
  Speaker 11: would have given us a greater advantage. And I think
• 36:43
  Speaker 11: certainly having AI-enabled intelligence collection and some of the things
• 36:47
  Speaker 11: that are attendant with that would absolutely give us an advantage.
• 36:52
  Speaker 11: But I think what it would primarily do, and this
• 36:55
  Speaker 11: is why it's so important today versus 25 years ago,
• 36:58
  Speaker 11: is it's going to give us an advantage with nation states,
• 37:01
  Speaker 11: with peer competitors like the Chinese and the Russians. I
• 37:04
  Speaker 11: think when you're dealing with something like al-Qaeda, like ISIS,
• 37:08
  Speaker 11: these non-state actors that are able to operate in a
• 37:12
  Speaker 11: different frequency, so to speak, I think the advantage may
• 37:15
  Speaker 11: be a little bit less pronounced. So look, I think
• 37:19
  Speaker 11: Any of those tools, 25 years, if we went back
• 37:22
  Speaker 11: in a time machine and we could apply them to
• 37:24
  Speaker 11: the 9-11 era, I'm sure they would have helped, particularly
• 37:27
  Speaker 11: when we were trying to sort out some of the
• 37:29
  Speaker 11: noise that the 9-11 Commission said after the fact. If
• 37:33
  Speaker 11: only we'd interpreted some of the chatter correctly, we may
• 37:36
  Speaker 11: have had a better chance of success of supporting it.
• 37:39
  Speaker 11: I think some of the AI technologies now could certainly
• 37:42
  Speaker 11: help with that. But I think what we're primarily going
• 37:44
  Speaker 11: to see AI make an absolutely incredible difference is is
• 37:48
  Speaker 11: when it comes to nation states, like our greatest adversary,
• 37:52
  Speaker 11: the Chinese Communist Party.
• 37:53
  Speaker 1: Okay, so I want to tease out my thought here.
• 37:57
  Speaker 1: I remember from years ago reading that hundreds of thousands,
• 38:01
  Speaker 1: if not millions of documents that we seized in the
• 38:04
  Speaker 1: long wars in Arabic have never been translated because we
• 38:09
  Speaker 1: simply don't have the capacity. Will large language models change that?
• 38:14
  Speaker 1: Will it assist the NSA and every intel collection agency?
• 38:18
  Speaker 1: And at least knowing what we've got?
• 38:22
  Speaker 11: I think it's going to make an extraordinary difference. And
• 38:25
  Speaker 11: we're already seeing the IC, the intelligence community, apply some
• 38:29
  Speaker 11: of the lessons that we're learning from artificial intelligence, from LLMs,
• 38:35
  Speaker 11: large language models, to the collection process. And so you
• 38:39
  Speaker 11: think about it, Hugh, it's not just the collection process
• 38:42
  Speaker 11: where it's so valuable. And it absolutely will be. but
• 38:46
  Speaker 11: it's the analysis. It's being able to do analysis of
• 38:49
  Speaker 11: this vast quantity of data that oftentimes, as you said
• 38:53
  Speaker 11: in that example, it just sits there and no one
• 38:56
  Speaker 11: knows what to do with it because we don't have
• 38:58
  Speaker 11: the manpower to sift through something and we don't even
• 39:01
  Speaker 11: know what we don't know. It's like Secretary Rumsfeld said,
• 39:04
  Speaker 11: it's unknown unknowns. And so we have this massive amount
• 39:08
  Speaker 11: of information and we don't even know what we're looking for.
• 39:11
  Speaker 11: So having artificial intelligence applied to that problem That will
• 39:15
  Speaker 11: be significant, analyzing it, and then consumers of intelligence, the
• 39:20
  Speaker 11: policymakers who actually make decisions on what to do with
• 39:24
  Speaker 11: that intelligence, I think that's the final step. We're allowing
• 39:27
  Speaker 11: policymakers to utilize intelligence. AI, intelligence tools is going to
• 39:33
  Speaker 11: help get us better policy outcomes. It doesn't take humans
• 39:36
  Speaker 11: out of the loop, but it'll help make better decisions
• 39:39
  Speaker 11: in real time about such difficult questions where there are
• 39:43
  Speaker 11: a lot of unknowns and a lot of variables.
• 39:46
  Speaker 1: All right. Now, Alex Gray, you serve as sort of
• 39:48
  Speaker 1: one of the primary interfaces between big tech, high tech,
• 39:52
  Speaker 1: and our IC. That's a lot of what American Global
• 39:55
  Speaker 1: Strategy does and your clients as well. Do the long-serving,
• 40:00
  Speaker 1: very patriotic veterans of the IC welcome or are they
• 40:04
  Speaker 1: a little bit afraid of AI either getting it wrong
• 40:08
  Speaker 1: or displacing their necessities?
• 40:13
  Speaker 11: Well, I don't think the people I've talked to in
• 40:14
  Speaker 11: the ICU are worried about being displaced. I think that
• 40:17
  Speaker 11: they're worried about not adopting these technologies fast enough to
• 40:23
  Speaker 11: keep pace with our adversaries. I think that they're more
• 40:26
  Speaker 11: worried about not being allowed to use these tools as
• 40:32
  Speaker 11: effectively or as holistically as they'd like to be able
• 40:35
  Speaker 11: to get ahead of the technologies and the trends that
• 40:39
  Speaker 11: we're seeing. And you can bet the Chinese Ministry of
• 40:42
  Speaker 11: State Security, the Chinese armed police, they are using intelligence
• 40:47
  Speaker 11: and large language models. They're using that for state control,
• 40:51
  Speaker 11: for social control, for social credit scores. They're using that
• 40:54
  Speaker 11: to spy on Americans and Chinese dissidents abroad. So it's
• 40:58
  Speaker 11: not like this stuff is not being used by our adversaries.
• 41:01
  Speaker 11: The question is, are we going to beat them to it,
• 41:03
  Speaker 11: deploy it effectively, and use these tools? And I think
• 41:07
  Speaker 11: The question I have heard posed by our intelligence community, again,
• 41:12
  Speaker 11: is not about them being displaced because humans are going
• 41:14
  Speaker 11: to have to be in the loop. There will always
• 41:16
  Speaker 11: have to be human judgment applied to these analytical and
• 41:19
  Speaker 11: policy questions. I think, again, the biggest challenge is a
• 41:23
  Speaker 11: worry that as the politics of AI begin to shift,
• 41:27
  Speaker 11: you will see impediments placed on our ability to stay.
• 41:32
  Speaker 11: at the tip of the spear and at the forefront
• 41:35
  Speaker 11: of the AI revolution. And that's where a lot of
• 41:38
  Speaker 11: us in national security are starting to worry about this
• 41:41
  Speaker 11: political debate that I think is really moving in a
• 41:44
  Speaker 11: direction that could be very dangerous if we don't get
• 41:47
  Speaker 11: ahead of it.
• 41:48
  Speaker 1: Last question, Alex. Data centers, I'm spending as much time
• 41:52
  Speaker 1: as I can trying to persuade people, not only is
• 41:54
  Speaker 1: it a source of enormous Economic growth and tax revenue.
• 41:58
  Speaker 1: It's vital to national security. Is that argument making progress anywhere?
• 42:02
  Speaker 1: We've got to have these things or the CHICOMs are
• 42:05
  Speaker 1: going to beat us to everything that they represent.
• 42:09
  Speaker 11: You know, Hugh, I think it's important. It's a great argument.
• 42:13
  Speaker 11: I think it is the ultimately it is the right argument.
• 42:16
  Speaker 11: And it's why this matters at the biggest level, the
• 42:19
  Speaker 11: highest strategic grand strategic level. But I'll tell you, when
• 42:22
  Speaker 11: I go home to Oklahoma and I talk to voters,
• 42:25
  Speaker 11: they don't care. And so I have stopped making that
• 42:28
  Speaker 11: argument when I talk to people back home. And I'm
• 42:31
  Speaker 11: now trying to make it about. And I think this
• 42:33
  Speaker 11: is where President Trump is going. I think this is
• 42:35
  Speaker 11: where Vice President Vance is going. This argument needs to
• 42:38
  Speaker 11: be about jobs. It needs to be about higher quality
• 42:41
  Speaker 11: of living, higher standards of living. It needs to be about.
• 42:45
  Speaker 11: rural communities especially, while at the same time making sure
• 42:49
  Speaker 11: that they are getting a fair deal, like with the
• 42:52
  Speaker 11: president's ratepayer protection pledge, where the costs of these data
• 42:55
  Speaker 11: centers and the power usage and the water usage are
• 42:58
  Speaker 11: shared between the companies and the localities, making sure those
• 43:03
  Speaker 11: things are implemented. And we're talking about the economic and
• 43:06
  Speaker 11: social benefits of these data centers, not just the national
• 43:10
  Speaker 11: security side.
• 43:11
  Speaker 1: Alex Gray, President and CEO of American Global Strategies. Thank you, Alex,
• 43:15
  Speaker 1: for joining me, formerly Chief of Staff at the National
• 43:18
  Speaker 1: Security Council and Trump One. Always love talking to Alex.
• 43:21
  Speaker 1: Don't go anywhere, America. I'll be right back on the
• 43:23
  Speaker 1: Hugh Hewitt Show. Welcome back, America. John Burns is with
• 43:26
  Speaker 1: the ConcernedVeteransForAmerica.org, part of the AFP Network, our great sponsor. John,
• 43:32
  Speaker 1: welcome back. I want people to remember ConcernedVeteransForAmerica.org. That's C
• 43:37
  Speaker 1: as in Charlie, V as in veteran, the number four. cva4a. org.
• 43:44
  Speaker 1: Where were you on 9-11, John?
• 43:47
  Speaker 12: Well, eventually I was down at ground zero before midnight,
• 43:50
  Speaker 12: but I started the morning off on the Upper East
• 43:53
  Speaker 12: Side at Hunter College, and the first kind of notification,
• 43:57
  Speaker 12: first signal that there was a problem was an incessant
• 44:00
  Speaker 12: stream of sirens going down Lexington Avenue, and somewhere around
• 44:04
  Speaker 12: 925 or so, one of the kids in the class
• 44:08
  Speaker 12: announced that a plane had hit the World Trade Center,
• 44:10
  Speaker 12: and that was like the beginning of my day that day.
• 44:14
  Speaker 1: So everybody's life changes on 9-11. Yours took what direction
• 44:19
  Speaker 1: from that day forward?
• 44:22
  Speaker 12: Well, you know, I was in college as an adult student.
• 44:25
  Speaker 12: I was in the National Guard, responded that day. Didn't
• 44:29
  Speaker 12: necessarily have the intent to make the National Guard a career.
• 44:34
  Speaker 12: I'd been in the the Marine Corps earlier, and I
• 44:36
  Speaker 12: was kind of double dipping, getting state benefits from the
• 44:39
  Speaker 12: Guard and federal benefits to pay for school, which was
• 44:42
  Speaker 12: a great deal. And of course, I saw a deployment
• 44:45
  Speaker 12: to Iraq, a deployment to Afghanistan, multiple Homeland Security mission
• 44:49
  Speaker 12: deployments starting that day for two weeks down there at
• 44:52
  Speaker 12: ground zero. And then, you know, the subways, the airports,
• 44:57
  Speaker 12: on and off for almost 10 years.
• 45:00
  Speaker 1: So, John, we now have a generation of veterans who
• 45:04
  Speaker 1: joined up or became involved in combat and many serving
• 45:08
  Speaker 1: right now, still in the same war, in my view.
• 45:10
  Speaker 1: What does Concerned Veterans for America do for them and
• 45:13
  Speaker 1: for us?
• 45:16
  Speaker 12: Well, we have quite a few people, not like myself
• 45:20
  Speaker 12: who were there that day, but quite a few people
• 45:21
  Speaker 12: who joined in the immediate aftermath. We have a couple
• 45:24
  Speaker 12: of people who were actually just starting their military careers there.
• 45:28
  Speaker 12: But this is a huge generation of vets, right? I mean,
• 45:30
  Speaker 12: we're talking about 25 years of folks who've served in
• 45:33
  Speaker 12: the military. A lot has gone on. They fought a
• 45:36
  Speaker 12: lot overseas. And we work really hard to mobilize them
• 45:40
  Speaker 12: for better policies, to those who care, to fight for
• 45:43
  Speaker 12: America's prosperity, to fight for a better economy, to fight
• 45:46
  Speaker 12: for a better foreign policy, and to take care of
• 45:48
  Speaker 12: their fellow veterans. But 9-11 is really about reminding the
• 45:52
  Speaker 12: rest of America what happened that day, making sure that
• 45:55
  Speaker 12: we never forget.
• 45:57
  Speaker 1: Do you think the country has?
• 46:01
  Speaker 12: I don't think the country has, but I think we're
• 46:03
  Speaker 12: in danger of it slipping back into a darker part
• 46:06
  Speaker 12: of the memory. Obviously, my niece was born a couple
• 46:10
  Speaker 12: of weeks before September 11th in 2001. She just graduated
• 46:14
  Speaker 12: law school a couple of weeks back. Her experience with
• 46:19
  Speaker 12: that whole date is different. I was born in the mid-60s.
• 46:22
  Speaker 12: In my experience with 1942 and World War II and
• 46:27
  Speaker 12: Pearl Harbor was very, very different. But this was a
• 46:29
  Speaker 12: Pearl Harbor for a generation. And it's a very distant
• 46:33
  Speaker 12: memory to a lot of folks. Much of Generation Z
• 46:38
  Speaker 12: was born after the fact. And it's that kind of
• 46:40
  Speaker 12: past historical marker. So we need to remind folks, always
• 46:44
  Speaker 12: remind folks of the emergency first responders who died that day,
• 46:47
  Speaker 12: 343 firemen, 22 Port Authority police, 37 New York City
• 46:53
  Speaker 12: police officers, and the thousands of first responders from across
• 46:57
  Speaker 12: the entire metropolitan area, including the National Guardsmen who responded
• 47:00
  Speaker 12: that day and just sacrificed time and, frankly, some mental
• 47:05
  Speaker 12: health and physical health.
• 47:07
  Speaker 5: Just a lot of issues happened. A lot has passed.
• 47:10
  Speaker 12: And we're still feeling the effects of that.
• 47:11
  Speaker 8: 25 years later.
• 47:13
  Speaker 1: And John, last question. I think that the soldiers, sailors,
• 47:16
  Speaker 1: mostly sailors and Marines, but there's a lot of airmen,
• 47:19
  Speaker 1: a lot of soldiers as well, who are in this
• 47:21
  Speaker 1: battle with Iran are part of a continuous line of
• 47:24
  Speaker 1: veterans that are all united by, they put their hands up,
• 47:28
  Speaker 1: they volunteered, and this is a long war and it
• 47:30
  Speaker 1: doesn't look like it's going to be over soon. So
• 47:33
  Speaker 1: Concerned Veterans for America Matters, cv4a. org, cv4a.
• 47:36
  Speaker 13: Org.
• 47:37
  Speaker 1: Is that your view of it, that those those 18
• 47:43
  Speaker 1: year olds on the deck of the Washington, which has
• 47:46
  Speaker 1: replaced the Lincoln. They're part of the same veteran group
• 47:50
  Speaker 1: that responded on nine 11 with you.
• 47:53
  Speaker 12: Well, there's certainly a, the next generation and America has
• 47:57
  Speaker 12: a huge tradition in history of service. I will say this,
• 48:01
  Speaker 12: that I think that every, or just about every single
• 48:04
  Speaker 12: foreign policy decision, foreign policy venture, certainly in the Mideast
• 48:08
  Speaker 12: and North Africa and some other places around the world, uh,
• 48:11
  Speaker 12: is a hangover from that date, right? That changed the
• 48:14
  Speaker 12: way we approach the Mideast. It changed the way we
• 48:15
  Speaker 12: approach terrorism. It's changed America's behavior. And it's certainly, there's
• 48:20
  Speaker 12: a through line that connects us to Iran today.
• 48:23
  Speaker 1: And I think if you want to know how to
• 48:25
  Speaker 1: serve veterans or how, if you are a veteran, you
• 48:27
  Speaker 1: want to be involved in an organization that actually represents you,
• 48:31
  Speaker 1: go and check out the Concerned Veterans for America, cv4a. org. ConcernVeteransForAmerica.org,
• 48:40
  Speaker 1: part of our AFP network. And we're so glad to
• 48:43
  Speaker 1: have you back, John Burns. Thank you for going downtown
• 48:45
  Speaker 1: that day 25 years ago on Friday and for serving
• 48:49
  Speaker 1: continuously since. I'll be right back, America. Stay tuned. Welcome back. America,
• 49:03
  Speaker 1: Hugh Hewitt, joined by Byron York, Fox News contributor, Washington Examiner,
• 49:07
  Speaker 1: columnist and daily newsletter writer. Byron, you've been talking to
• 49:10
  Speaker 1: me for most of the 25 years the program's been on,
• 49:13
  Speaker 1: actually 27 years. Where were you on 9-11? How did
• 49:17
  Speaker 1: you spend that day?
• 49:20
  Speaker 14: I was home in Washington. And in those remote days,
• 49:25
  Speaker 14: I was in the habit of actually reading news printed
• 49:29
  Speaker 14: on paper that had been delivered to my house.
• 49:31
  Speaker 1: Yep.
• 49:32
  Speaker 14: It was a bizarre system. Wasn't reading the Internet. I
• 49:37
  Speaker 14: wasn't watching TV or anything like that. I actually literally
• 49:40
  Speaker 14: found out about it when a friend from London called
• 49:42
  Speaker 14: me up about it. I started talking to people on
• 49:46
  Speaker 14: the phone. I learned not too long afterwards that a
• 49:51
  Speaker 14: friend of ours, Barbara Olson, had been on the flight
• 49:56
  Speaker 14: that was bound for California that struck the Pentagon. She
• 50:01
  Speaker 14: was a real firecracker. She was involved in a lot
• 50:06
  Speaker 14: of things. A lot of the investigations on Capitol Hill,
• 50:10
  Speaker 14: Republican staff member, wife of Ted Olson, the superstar Republican lawyer.
• 50:18
  Speaker 14: And then I walk outside, and around the corner from
• 50:24
  Speaker 14: my house, my neighbor was sitting on the front porch,
• 50:28
  Speaker 14: and he had a 1,000-yard stare. It was the most
• 50:30
  Speaker 14: amazing thing. expression on his face what they sometimes call
• 50:37
  Speaker 14: a thousand-yard stare and uh... as it turned out his
• 50:41
  Speaker 14: wife uh... had been on the flight that was all
• 50:43
  Speaker 14: over california as well so uh... you know there was
• 50:47
  Speaker 14: there was a lot of contact with it in and
• 50:53
  Speaker 14: then i had to go do something in virginia i
• 50:57
  Speaker 14: live in the district of columbia had to go cross
• 51:00
  Speaker 14: memorial bridge and uh.
• 51:03
  Speaker 14: Stupid thing to do but i did And the Pentagon was,
• 51:07
  Speaker 14: you could see smoke from the Pentagon to the left.
• 51:10
  Speaker 14: And it was the world's worst traffic jam. It was
• 51:13
  Speaker 14: like a scene from War of the Worlds. And, you know,
• 51:17
  Speaker 14: in this bizarre, terrible day, there were thousands of people
• 51:22
  Speaker 14: stuck in traffic trying to get out of Washington, D.C.
• 51:25
  Speaker 14: Because they all feared, I was running it kind of
• 51:28
  Speaker 14: an errand, but they all feared that another attack was coming.
• 51:32
  Speaker 14: quite soon. So it was just a surreal, long, and
• 51:35
  Speaker 14: terrible day.
• 51:36
  Speaker 1: Now, Byron, anthrax followed soon thereafter, as did Muhammad and Malvo,
• 51:41
  Speaker 1: I believe. I don't think my chronology is wrong there.
• 51:44
  Speaker 1: I think the snipers started showing up as well. So
• 51:47
  Speaker 1: was that the strangest three months of your journalistic profession?
• 51:51
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 51:52
  Speaker 14: You know, the anthrax thing was kind of extraordinary, and
• 51:57
  Speaker 14: there was a lot of bad reporting about it, and
• 52:00
  Speaker 14: it was just a mess. The sniper thing was really
• 52:04
  Speaker 14: the most bizarre thing in the Washington area because, I mean,
• 52:12
  Speaker 14: people were afraid, and they had reason to be afraid,
• 52:14
  Speaker 14: that if they did something like stop and put gas
• 52:17
  Speaker 14: in their car, you know, that they would be shot
• 52:20
  Speaker 14: because that actually did happen. And, you know, you would
• 52:23
  Speaker 14: see people putting gas in their car and then kind of,
• 52:26
  Speaker 14: you know, pacing around or kind of jumping up and down,
• 52:28
  Speaker 14: walking around, you know, not to be standing in one
• 52:31
  Speaker 14: place the whole time. So, I mean, it was on
• 52:34
  Speaker 14: everybody's mind all of the time, and it took a
• 52:37
  Speaker 14: long time. I can't remember. Maybe you've checked. It took
• 52:40
  Speaker 14: a long time to find the sniper, but it really,
• 52:44
  Speaker 14: really had the whole place on edge.
• 52:47
  Speaker 1: And that duo went everywhere. I mean, they just were random,
• 52:50
  Speaker 1: and that made it difficult to find them, but it
• 52:53
  Speaker 1: was wild. All right, I guess that backdrop, I want
• 52:56
  Speaker 1: to play for you the most recent addition to the
• 52:58
  Speaker 1: 2026 campaign, tape of Abdul El-Sayed from... five years ago,
• 53:04
  Speaker 1: talking about 9-11, cut number 13.
• 53:05
  Speaker 3: 9-11 scarred our country in profound ways, but what we
• 53:10
  Speaker 3: did after 9-11 scarred millions of other people. When we
• 53:13
  Speaker 3: talk about 9-11, we often fail to center them.
• 53:16
  Speaker 1: All right, that has been surfaced by the RNC. I
• 53:19
  Speaker 1: don't believe we need more context than that, though it
• 53:22
  Speaker 1: certainly will interest me what he said next. Impactful or
• 53:26
  Speaker 1: not impactful, Byron?
• 53:29
  Speaker 14: Well, we know that his good buddy, Hassan Piker, went
• 53:35
  Speaker 14: a step further and said the United States deserved 9-11.
• 53:39
  Speaker 14: So I think it's just going to kind of fit
• 53:41
  Speaker 14: with what we already know about Abdul Al-Sayed. And, you know,
• 53:50
  Speaker 14: the legacy of the United States government response to 9-11 is,
• 53:57
  Speaker 14: you know, how should we say this, messy, not perfect, whatever.
• 54:02
  Speaker 12: I saw a.
• 54:02
  Speaker 14: Video today of George Bush coming out almost a week after,
• 54:05
  Speaker 14: maybe less than a week afterwards, talking about Islam. He
• 54:08
  Speaker 14: visited the mosque on Massachusetts Avenue in Washington, talks about
• 54:11
  Speaker 14: how Islam means peace. And I just look at it,
• 54:15
  Speaker 14: and it still gets under my skin. I think, why
• 54:18
  Speaker 14: in the world did he think it was necessary to
• 54:20
  Speaker 14: say that at that moment? And then the United States
• 54:27
  Speaker 14: undertakes military action in Afghanistan, and there is Virtually unanimous
• 54:31
  Speaker 14: support for that across the country. We had to take
• 54:35
  Speaker 14: action in Afghanistan. And I just don't know of many
• 54:39
  Speaker 14: people who would ever have thought the United States should
• 54:42
  Speaker 14: not retaliate in Afghanistan. And yet it turned into this
• 54:46
  Speaker 14: long war, morphed into nation-building at some time, and just
• 54:50
  Speaker 14: had an ignominious end under Joe Biden. And then, of course,
• 54:57
  Speaker 14: the war in Iraq started. People have all sorts of
• 55:00
  Speaker 14: different opinions about it. George W. Bush admitted, you know,
• 55:04
  Speaker 14: I started a war based on intelligence. It was false.
• 55:07
  Speaker 14: He wrote that in his memoir. So the reaction to
• 55:13
  Speaker 14: 9-11 was long and sometimes tortured. It took a long
• 55:17
  Speaker 14: time to find Osama bin Laden, which I thought and
• 55:20
  Speaker 14: still think was job number one after 9-11 was to
• 55:23
  Speaker 14: find and kill everybody who had anything to do with it,
• 55:26
  Speaker 14: planning it, executing it, financing it. and just make sure
• 55:31
  Speaker 14: everybody is found by the United States and killed by
• 55:34
  Speaker 14: the United States. And it still irritates me to this
• 55:36
  Speaker 14: day that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the architect of 9-11, is
• 55:40
  Speaker 14: sitting in Guantanamo Bay alive, never having been tried, and
• 55:46
  Speaker 14: he's going to die in jail, never having paid beyond
• 55:51
  Speaker 14: that for what he did.
• 55:53
  Speaker 1: Thank you, Justice Anthony Kennedy. I just wanted to say that.
• 55:59
  Speaker 9: Yes, you're right.
• 56:00
  Speaker 14: You're right. This is a Supreme Court of the United
• 56:02
  Speaker 14: States issue. And, you know, the reason, and to his credit,
• 56:07
  Speaker 14: President Obama killed bin Laden was that if they captured
• 56:11
  Speaker 14: bin Laden, there would be a question about where to
• 56:14
  Speaker 14: bring him, and there would be a huge, significant movement
• 56:16
  Speaker 14: to bring him in the United States and give him
• 56:18
  Speaker 14: full United States constitutional rights and maybe get him out
• 56:20
  Speaker 14: of bail in New York City. So it was an
• 56:23
  Speaker 14: outrageous situation.
• 56:25
  Speaker 1: It was, and we can thank Justice Kennedy, who did
• 56:28
  Speaker 1: wonderful service on First Amendment and terrible, terrible jurisprudence by
• 56:33
  Speaker 1: making it up on 9-11 criminals. Byron, good to talk
• 56:37
  Speaker 1: to you. Follow him at Byron York. Follow me in
• 56:39
  Speaker 1: the next segment on the Hugh Hewitt Show. If you've
• 56:41
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• 58:39
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• 59:10
  Speaker 1: Welcome back, America. I'm Hugh Hewitt, joined now by Ambassador
• 59:14
  Speaker 1: Robert C. O'Brien, Chairman of the Board of American Global Strategies.
• 59:18
  Speaker 1: My former law partner 1,000 years ago, and most importantly,
• 59:22
  Speaker 1: Ambassador O'Brien was Donald Trump's National Security Advisor for the
• 59:26
  Speaker 1: close of his first term, remains on the President's Intelligence
• 59:30
  Speaker 1: Advisory Board to this day. Ambassador O'Brien, welcome back. I
• 59:34
  Speaker 1: wanted to go to the news of the moment. Iranian
• 59:37
  Speaker 1: officials have told the Wall Street Journal that they are
• 59:41
  Speaker 1: using electro-optical seekers to try and maneuver their cruise missiles
• 59:46
  Speaker 1: towards our ship, and they fired at some today. We've
• 59:49
  Speaker 1: responded by sinking a number of Iranian tankers. What do
• 59:52
  Speaker 1: you imagine would be Donald Trump's response if the Iranians
• 59:55
  Speaker 1: succeeded in striking an American naval ship?
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 10: It'll be overwhelming.
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 13: And I think the response to date has been incredibly
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 13: generous of President Trump. He's been very reticent to use
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 13: force against the Iranian people because he understands what war means.
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 13: And he's been trying to keep this under control. But
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 13: if the Iranians push this too far, they're going to
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 13: have hell to pay. And my advice to the Iranian
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 13: regime is don't strike an American warship.
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 1: I agree with that advice. I don't know who's running that. Now,
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 1: you've studied the Iranian problem, and you've also studied our
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 1: American Navy for decades. Do you think we have what
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 1: it takes to maintain what is the largest blockade, I believe,
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 1: in the last 150 years? It might have been bigger
• 1:00:46
  Speaker 1: on the Confederacy during the Civil War, but it's a
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 1: much bigger operation than the Cuban Missile Blockade. Can we
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 1: keep this up?
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 10: We can keep it up indefinitely, Hugh.
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 13: And the Iranians think that when the midterms come, that
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 13: if the Democrats win, that they'll be free from the blockade.
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 13: As you know, the president has his greatest power in
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 13: foreign affairs and in defense of the United States. The
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 13: blockade's not going to end. Scott Besson's economic.
• 1:01:18
  Speaker 10: Outcast is not going to end.
• 1:01:20
  Speaker 13: And the Iranians are going to find no relief from.
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 13: American sanctions from the blockade and from our military responses
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 13: to any provocations that they make. The interesting thing is, Hugh,
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 13: this war was about defeating the Iranian nuclear program.
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 10: That's under rubble. It was about diminishing their ballistic missile program.
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 13: That industrial base has been wiped out, and they have
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 13: very few missiles left, and.
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 10: They've depleted or had destroyed all their missiles.
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 13: Their Navy's been sunk. Their Air Force has been sunk.
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 13: And we wanted to contain their proxies. Hezbollah is on
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 13: its last legs. The Israelis captured a major Hezbollah bunker
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 13: and tunnel complex just 10 miles from Israel over the weekend.
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 13: Hamas has agreed to disarm. So this has been a
• 1:02:12
  Speaker 13: total win for the United States of America. And the
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 13: Iranian regime has redefined winning as regime survival. This was
• 1:02:19
  Speaker 13: never about regime change. It was never a goal.
• 1:02:22
  Speaker 10: If it happened, great. But it was never the President's goal.
• 1:02:25
  Speaker 13: He wasn't going to put American Marines and soldiers on
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 13: the ground in Iran to.
• 1:02:30
  Speaker 10: Be shot at and have IEDs blown up on us.
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 13: And so they've redefined victory as a regime of survival.
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 13: And amazingly, the legacy media, the Democrats, have agreed with
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 13: the Iranian definition of victory rather than a military or
• 1:02:47
  Speaker 13: diplomatic version of what actually happened.
• 1:02:51
  Speaker 10: And we're winning now.
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 13: And the Iranians, the legacy media, the Democrats are defining
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 13: it as a loss.
• 1:02:58
  Speaker 10: It's quite amazing.
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 1: So, Ambassador O'Brien, you were in the White House when
• 1:03:03
  Speaker 1: the maximum sanctions campaign kicked off. You were there when
• 1:03:08
  Speaker 1: Qasem Soleimani was taken out in Iraq and then Biden
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 1: came in. How much did the Biden years allow Iran
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 1: to recover from the damage done to it by maximum sanctions?
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 13: It was dramatic, Hugh, and we saw it, unfortunately, on
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 13: October 7th when the Iranian-backed proxies attacked and committed genocide
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 13: that we haven't seen since World War II in Israel.
• 1:03:36
  Speaker 13: The slaughter of over 1,000 innocent women and children, men,
• 1:03:40
  Speaker 13: young people at music festivals. Remember, that October 7th tragedy occurred,
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 13: the terrorist attack occurred just weeks after the Biden administration
• 1:03:52
  Speaker 13: paid multi-billion dollars in sanctions to the Iranians. And at
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 13: the time I said, unfortunately, it's going to encourage more
• 1:04:00
  Speaker 13: hostage-taking and it's going to encourage more terrorist activity in
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 13: the region.
• 1:04:04
  Speaker 10: And it did both.
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 13: Hundreds of hostages were taken on October 7th. And it
• 1:04:09
  Speaker 13: was the largest terrorist attack since 9-11. So, you know,
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 13: when you feed the terrorists and you try to appease them,
• 1:04:17
  Speaker 13: you only.
• 1:04:17
  Speaker 10: Get more hostages. terror and horrific damage as a result.
• 1:04:22
  Speaker 10: And unfortunately, that's what happened during the Biden administration.
• 1:04:25
  Speaker 1: So I know you would only refer to open source information,
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 1: but I always say that when I have Senator Cotton
• 1:04:31
  Speaker 1: on or you on the Intelligence Advisory Board or anyone
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 1: in the government, I know you would only use open source.
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 1: In your view, how crippled is the Iranian regime? Are
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 1: they like a fighter in the 12th round who's taken
• 1:04:44
  Speaker 1: 100 blows to the stomach and a couple to the head?
• 1:04:48
  Speaker 1: Are they going to buckle?
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 10: Well, we'll see if.
• 1:04:52
  Speaker 13: They buckle or not, because remember here, they're different than
• 1:04:56
  Speaker 13: the Venezuelans or the Cubans or even the Russians or
• 1:04:59
  Speaker 13: the Chinese. They're not motivated by ideology. They're motivated by
• 1:05:02
  Speaker 13: religious fervor and fanaticism. And so the regime is reportedly
• 1:05:09
  Speaker 13: split between the extremists and the fanatics and the thugs. And,
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 13: you know, whoever wins that, the extremists, the fanatics, the thugs,
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 13: it's not going to be a good outcome for us
• 1:05:21
  Speaker 13: or for the Iranian people. So we have to keep
• 1:05:23
  Speaker 13: an eye on them. But they're badly damaged.
• 1:05:27
  Speaker 10: And they know it. We know it.
• 1:05:30
  Speaker 13: It's a difficult situation to see them recovered from. What
• 1:05:34
  Speaker 13: hasn't happened yet is the economic, you know, One-two punches
• 1:05:40
  Speaker 13: being delivered with the blockade and the Operation Outcast. Scott
• 1:05:44
  Speaker 13: Besson tracking down all the mullahs and the ayatollahs and
• 1:05:48
  Speaker 13: the Revolutionary Guard generals' accounts that are the Caymans and
• 1:05:51
  Speaker 13: the Cypress and Panama and Dubai and all these places
• 1:05:56
  Speaker 13: around the world, all the money they stole from the
• 1:05:57
  Speaker 13: Iranian people that belongs to the Iranian people, belongs to
• 1:06:00
  Speaker 13: the victims of Iranian terrorism. Scott Besson's going to freeze
• 1:06:04
  Speaker 13: all that money and bring it back. He's also sanctioning
• 1:06:07
  Speaker 13: all the front companies from shipping companies in Hong Kong
• 1:06:11
  Speaker 13: and Singapore and Indonesia and Malaysia to airlines like Mahan Air,
• 1:06:15
  Speaker 13: which is sanctioned today, and banks like the aptly named
• 1:06:18
  Speaker 13: Global Golden Bank in Turkey that was funneling Chinese money
• 1:06:22
  Speaker 13: to Iran. All that is being shut down, so the
• 1:06:26
  Speaker 13: Iranians are going to find themselves in a very difficult situation,
• 1:06:29
  Speaker 13: and it's hard to see how they can recover or
• 1:06:32
  Speaker 13: even survive.
• 1:06:32
  Speaker 1: Okay, we've got a minute, Ambassador O'Brien. does AI enable
• 1:06:38
  Speaker 1: Secretary Besson and the others on the sanctions watch to
• 1:06:41
  Speaker 1: track money more effectively and quicker and cut it off?
• 1:06:46
  Speaker 10: Absolutely.
• 1:06:48
  Speaker 1: I just want people to understand, when we talk about AI,
• 1:06:51
  Speaker 1: there's stuff like that. That application that the ambassador just said,
• 1:06:55
  Speaker 1: they've got to keep in mind. Robert O'Brien, always good
• 1:06:57
  Speaker 1: to see you. Follow him at RCO, Robert O'Brien, over
• 1:07:00
  Speaker 1: on Exxon and American Global Strategies. Thank you, Mr. Ambassador.
• 1:07:03
  Speaker 1: Coming up, Matt Connetti. Now, you bet, sir. Coming up,
• 1:07:07
  Speaker 1: Matt Continetti, Wall Street Journal columnist, also Thursday contributor to
• 1:07:12
  Speaker 1: the Commentary magazine, also head of domestic policy studies at
• 1:07:16
  Speaker 1: American Enterprise Institute. He's young, meaning that he's under 50.
• 1:07:20
  Speaker 1: So I want to ask him where he was on
• 1:07:23
  Speaker 1: 9-11 and what he was up to. Not so young
• 1:07:26
  Speaker 1: that he's in college, I think. But we'll find out
• 1:07:28
  Speaker 1: from Matt Continetti at that point. We continue to look
• 1:07:32
  Speaker 1: backwards at 9-11, forward. hopefully to the collapse of the
• 1:07:35
  Speaker 1: Iranian regime. Stay tuned to America. I'm Hugh Hewitt. Welcome back.
• 1:07:40
  Speaker 1: Hugh Hewitt on this Tuesday of the 25th week of remembering,
• 1:07:45
  Speaker 1: 25th anniversary of the disaster that was 9-11, and it's
• 1:07:48
  Speaker 1: going to be a week full of this. Matt Continetti
• 1:07:51
  Speaker 1: joins me now, columnist for the Wall Street Journal, Free
• 1:07:54
  Speaker 1: Expressions Vertical. You also read his work at American Enterprise Institute.
• 1:07:57
  Speaker 1: You hear him on the Thursday Commentary Podcast. You hear
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 1: him on this program once or twice a week. Matt,
• 1:08:03
  Speaker 1: I'm wondering, did you listen to the commentary podcast from
• 1:08:05
  Speaker 1: this morning yet? I haven't yet, Hugh.
• 1:08:09
  Speaker 16: It's on my to-listen list.
• 1:08:11
  Speaker 1: Well, it's 9-11 heavy and some big, profound questions. I'm
• 1:08:16
  Speaker 1: setting the table for a week of this. Where were
• 1:08:19
  Speaker 1: you on 9-11? What do you recall of the day?
• 1:08:23
  Speaker 16: Well, I recall everything. I was in a dorm in
• 1:08:28
  Speaker 16: Columbia University on 114th Street. And the dorm had 13 floors.
• 1:08:33
  Speaker 16: I was on the 13th floor. It had 15. And
• 1:08:36
  Speaker 16: I was awakened by a friend because I had had
• 1:08:39
  Speaker 16: an intern interview scheduled downtown. And the friend said, oh,
• 1:08:44
  Speaker 16: you shouldn't go. A plane just hit the World Trade Center.
• 1:08:47
  Speaker 16: And then for the next 16 or so hours, I
• 1:08:51
  Speaker 16: had a front row seat, as it were, from our
• 1:08:53
  Speaker 16: dorm room. And I was in charge of about 35
• 1:08:57
  Speaker 16: first years, 18-year-olds.
• 1:08:58
  Speaker 1: Oh, yeah.
• 1:09:00
  Speaker 14: The RA.
• 1:09:00
  Speaker 1: I was a junior.
• 1:09:04
  Speaker 16: Yeah, I was a junior. And I had about 35 18-year-olds.
• 1:09:09
  Speaker 16: This was their opening memories of New York City. It
• 1:09:13
  Speaker 16: was 9-11 from the south-facing windows of our dorm.
• 1:09:17
  Speaker 1: I don't know if you've ever written about this, Matt.
• 1:09:20
  Speaker 1: I don't know if you've followed those kids. Were any
• 1:09:23
  Speaker 1: of them New Yorkers or was everyone from away?
• 1:09:28
  Speaker 16: Well, a bunch of students were from Long Island or
• 1:09:31
  Speaker 16: New Jersey, but many were from abroad, you know, from
• 1:09:35
  Speaker 16: outside of New York and the East Coast. I remember
• 1:09:37
  Speaker 16: one student was from Ohio in particular. The smart one.
• 1:09:41
  Speaker 1: You always remember the smart one, Matt, the Ohio one.
• 1:09:44
  Speaker 6: Exactly.
• 1:09:45
  Speaker 16: Yeah, exactly.
• 1:09:47
  Speaker 1: How did they react? as 18 year olds to what
• 1:09:51
  Speaker 1: is you know last night i was at a gathering
• 1:09:53
  Speaker 1: of 10 people everyone knows exactly where they were and
• 1:09:56
  Speaker 1: what happened to them that day if you are over
• 1:09:57
  Speaker 1: a certain age and i believe that age is third
• 1:10:00
  Speaker 1: or fourth grade so how did the.
• 1:10:01
  Speaker 16: 18 yeah well absolutely and i think it was the
• 1:10:04
  Speaker 16: same with those 18 year olds of you know of
• 1:10:06
  Speaker 16: course we were in shock columbia university was in shock
• 1:10:09
  Speaker 16: they they closed uh the classes they closed down the
• 1:10:12
  Speaker 16: campus um you know our memories of that day if
• 1:10:16
  Speaker 16: you were in new york you heard the f-16s uh,
• 1:10:19
  Speaker 16: and F-15s patrolling, uh, the skies of New York, which
• 1:10:23
  Speaker 16: was a very odd, um, uh, sight or experience and sound. Uh,
• 1:10:29
  Speaker 16: the phones were down, you know, and of course, this
• 1:10:31
  Speaker 16: is 2001. And so, uh, you, you remember Hugh, uh,
• 1:10:35
  Speaker 16: but many of our listeners may not. The internet was
• 1:10:38
  Speaker 16: still fairly primitive. And so, uh, we were able to
• 1:10:41
  Speaker 16: kind of communicate through our families through emails, uh, and
• 1:10:45
  Speaker 16: let them know we were safe. But of course, uh,
• 1:10:48
  Speaker 16: Once the towers fell and all you could see was
• 1:10:52
  Speaker 16: the pillar of smoke from the south end of Manhattan,
• 1:10:57
  Speaker 16: a lot of people just were glued to their TVs,
• 1:11:00
  Speaker 16: even in New York City, even on that 13th floor
• 1:11:03
  Speaker 16: of John Jay Hall.
• 1:11:04
  Speaker 1: Did the sense of peril that was in downtown Manhattan,
• 1:11:09
  Speaker 1: did that reach the Upper West? I lived at 110th
• 1:11:11
  Speaker 1: and Broadway at Columbia for a summer. And that's a
• 1:11:14
  Speaker 1: long way away for the benefit of people who don't
• 1:11:16
  Speaker 1: know New York. It could as well be a different world.
• 1:11:19
  Speaker 1: But did the sense of peril reach to the Upper
• 1:11:22
  Speaker 1: West Side? Oh, absolutely.
• 1:11:25
  Speaker 16: I mean, like I said, you could hear the jets
• 1:11:27
  Speaker 16: flying above. Immediately, many Colombians went to the nearby hospital,
• 1:11:33
  Speaker 16: Columbia Presbyterian, and began donating blood. There was a kind
• 1:11:38
  Speaker 16: of confusion on campus, of course. And actually, one of
• 1:11:42
  Speaker 16: our most famous students at that time was Monica Lewinsky.
• 1:11:46
  Speaker 16: She was spotted on College Walk kind of talking into
• 1:11:49
  Speaker 16: a cell phone trying to get, I guess, directions or
• 1:11:53
  Speaker 16: tell people that she was safe too. So it was distraught.
• 1:11:59
  Speaker 16: I mean, there was certainly a sense of trauma. Of course,
• 1:12:01
  Speaker 16: I had nightmares about the day that went on for
• 1:12:06
  Speaker 16: several years. But I would say there was also kind
• 1:12:09
  Speaker 16: of a feeling of resolve A lot of people joined
• 1:12:14
  Speaker 16: up from that 9-11 generation, including Colombians. And so there
• 1:12:19
  Speaker 16: was a sense that America had been attacked. And, of course,
• 1:12:23
  Speaker 16: in those early hours of the morning of 9-11, we
• 1:12:26
  Speaker 16: still didn't understand the scale of the attack. And so
• 1:12:29
  Speaker 16: there were, of course, the reports coming in from the
• 1:12:32
  Speaker 16: Pentagon shortly after the plane struck the towers. We didn't
• 1:12:38
  Speaker 16: quite know what happened to Flight 93 yet. but there
• 1:12:42
  Speaker 16: were kind of scattered reports of other attacks in the D.C.
• 1:12:46
  Speaker 1: Area.
• 1:12:46
  Speaker 16: I remember Brit Hume reporting. And so the sense that
• 1:12:50
  Speaker 16: we were in for a long haul, I think, became
• 1:12:53
  Speaker 16: very clear. And let's not forget, we had anthrax in
• 1:12:57
  Speaker 16: New York City not long after the initial 9-11 attacks.
• 1:13:00
  Speaker 1: And then we had the shooters in D.C. not long thereafter.
• 1:13:05
  Speaker 1: I'll be right back with Matt Continetti, because now I
• 1:13:07
  Speaker 1: want to ask him the impact 25 years down the road,
• 1:13:10
  Speaker 1: what he thinks it was. Don't go anywhere. I'm Hugh Hewitt.
• 1:13:16
  Speaker 1: Welcome back, America. I'm Hugh Hewitt. Matt Continetti is my guest.
• 1:13:19
  Speaker 1: Follow Matt on Exit Continetti. Listen to him on commentary
• 1:13:22
  Speaker 1: on the podcast on Thursday. Read him in the Wall
• 1:13:25
  Speaker 1: Street Journal where he writes at least weekly. Matt, you
• 1:13:29
  Speaker 1: came in late. Earlier in the program, I explained I
• 1:13:32
  Speaker 1: spent 9-11 on the air with Dwayne and Adam. for
• 1:13:35
  Speaker 1: at least six and probably nine hours, because I had
• 1:13:38
  Speaker 1: the morning shift, nine to noon East Coast time, and
• 1:13:40
  Speaker 1: then the afternoon shift, six to nine on the East Coast.
• 1:13:45
  Speaker 1: And we just went on and on and on. So
• 1:13:48
  Speaker 1: I've got hours and hours of me talking, and so
• 1:13:50
  Speaker 1: I know the impact it had on me very well.
• 1:13:53
  Speaker 1: I am curious, the discussion on commentary, the impact that
• 1:13:56
  Speaker 1: it has had on the country and whether or not
• 1:13:58
  Speaker 1: it was hijacked. by decisions made by media corporations not
• 1:14:03
  Speaker 1: to show the footage again and again and again. What
• 1:14:05
  Speaker 1: do you think?
• 1:14:08
  Speaker 16: I think it had a tremendous impact on the country, Hugh,
• 1:14:10
  Speaker 16: and I think the events of that day reverberate 25
• 1:14:13
  Speaker 16: years later. You know, I'm struck by a few things.
• 1:14:18
  Speaker 16: This anniversary is happening a week after the anniversary of
• 1:14:22
  Speaker 16: the infamous Durban Conference in South Africa. which was billed
• 1:14:27
  Speaker 16: as a conference on anti-racism. It occurred one week before 9-11,
• 1:14:32
  Speaker 16: but instead was devoted to ostracizing and demonizing Israel and
• 1:14:36
  Speaker 16: actually accusing the state of Israel of all the same
• 1:14:38
  Speaker 16: things it's accused of today by the far left, colonialism,
• 1:14:43
  Speaker 16: even genocide. And I remember at the time thinking, well,
• 1:14:47
  Speaker 16: that's odd that people would spend so much time demonizing Israel.
• 1:14:51
  Speaker 16: And then a week later, we have this attack on
• 1:14:54
  Speaker 16: the United States, And, of course, the same forces that
• 1:14:58
  Speaker 16: want to destroy the state of Israel want to destroy
• 1:15:00
  Speaker 16: the United States of America. The two countries are linked.
• 1:15:03
  Speaker 16: And I think that we still see that today in
• 1:15:05
  Speaker 16: our fight in the Middle East against Iran, a theocracy
• 1:15:09
  Speaker 16: which is pursuing a nuclear bomb so it can destroy
• 1:15:11
  Speaker 16: the state of Israel, and, of course, which spends all
• 1:15:14
  Speaker 16: of its anti-American rallies chaining death to America, death to
• 1:15:17
  Speaker 16: the great Satan.
• 1:15:19
  Speaker 1: That's us.
• 1:15:19
  Speaker 16: So we're still in the same conflict. That conflict has
• 1:15:24
  Speaker 16: always been It was called the Long War early on,
• 1:15:28
  Speaker 16: you remember, after 9-11. It is a long war. But
• 1:15:33
  Speaker 16: despite all the ups and downs, I actually think America
• 1:15:37
  Speaker 16: has done a pretty good job not only protecting the
• 1:15:40
  Speaker 16: homeland against attack, but also destroying the threat of radical
• 1:15:46
  Speaker 16: Islam in its various forms. It's a brutal fight. It's
• 1:15:50
  Speaker 16: a fight that has tremendous costs. But I do think
• 1:15:53
  Speaker 16: we should feel that we have achieved much in the
• 1:15:57
  Speaker 16: war on terrorism 25 years after 9-11, and we can't stop.
• 1:16:02
  Speaker 1: Well, I'm going to agree with you, but add as
• 1:16:05
  Speaker 1: an addendum, except in Africa. We are not watching Africa
• 1:16:10
  Speaker 1: as fundamentalist Sunni Islam spreads across the continent and radicalizes
• 1:16:19
  Speaker 1: Islamists from... Atlantic to Pacific coast of Africa, and it's
• 1:16:23
  Speaker 1: going to be a problem for the next 25 years. Matt,
• 1:16:27
  Speaker 1: I wanted to close with this. I believe the battle
• 1:16:29
  Speaker 1: with Iran is actually the final battle in the first
• 1:16:33
  Speaker 1: front of the long war because that's inextricably tied. I
• 1:16:37
  Speaker 1: know it's Shia versus Sunni, but it's all wrapped up
• 1:16:39
  Speaker 1: in Islamist fundamentalism, and so I think it's connected. Do
• 1:16:43
  Speaker 1: you share my belief it's connected? It is connected.
• 1:16:48
  Speaker 16: I would say, though, that, you know, as Bernard Lewis,
• 1:16:51
  Speaker 16: the great scholar of the Middle East, once pointed out,
• 1:16:54
  Speaker 16: Islam's bloody borders. And so I don't think even if
• 1:16:57
  Speaker 16: we're successful, as it appears we are being successful in
• 1:17:00
  Speaker 16: Iran right now, in squeezing that regime, exerting tremendous economic
• 1:17:04
  Speaker 16: pain and pressure on that regime, we're still in for
• 1:17:07
  Speaker 16: a long fight against radical Islam, which has its designs
• 1:17:12
  Speaker 16: to destroy the West. There's no question about it, to
• 1:17:14
  Speaker 16: destroy America, to destroy Israel. and everybody in between. And
• 1:17:19
  Speaker 16: so there I think we have to look not just
• 1:17:22
  Speaker 16: to Iran, not just to the threat in Africa, as
• 1:17:26
  Speaker 16: you rightly point out, Hugh, but we have to think about,
• 1:17:29
  Speaker 16: you know, are we submitting to the same anti-American ideologies
• 1:17:37
  Speaker 16: that you saw present at that anti-racism so-called conference in Durban,
• 1:17:42
  Speaker 16: which attacked Israel the week before 9-11? and then which
• 1:17:45
  Speaker 16: you see play out in all of bin Laden's rhetoric
• 1:17:48
  Speaker 16: surrounding 9-11. We can't allow ourselves to be captured by
• 1:17:53
  Speaker 16: the ideology even as we defeat the radicals on the battlefield.
• 1:17:59
  Speaker 1: So this is the summer of the DSA, Hassan Piker,
• 1:18:01
  Speaker 1: and Abdu'l-Sayed, as well as DSA-adjacent people. Are we fighting
• 1:18:06
  Speaker 1: about 9-11 in proxy campaigns right now about who is
• 1:18:11
  Speaker 1: responsible for 9-11? Because I think we are, but I
• 1:18:13
  Speaker 1: don't know if you agree.
• 1:18:14
  Speaker 16: Well, no, I think there's no question about it. I mean,
• 1:18:17
  Speaker 16: think about one of the most, among many controversial things,
• 1:18:21
  Speaker 16: how Sam Piker said, is that America deserved 9-11. Now,
• 1:18:25
  Speaker 16: all of a sudden, after that comment surfaced, Abdel Al-Sayed,
• 1:18:28
  Speaker 16: the candidate in Michigan, is saying, oh, Piker's just some
• 1:18:31
  Speaker 16: social media guy in California. He knows that most Americans
• 1:18:35
  Speaker 16: hear something like that, and they don't want to reward
• 1:18:36
  Speaker 16: it at all. And that's why I think the Michigan
• 1:18:39
  Speaker 16: race continues to be a toss-up, and Mike Rogers... has
• 1:18:42
  Speaker 16: a chance of defeating Abdul El-Sayed because voters can see
• 1:18:46
  Speaker 16: that El-Sayed is a radical. He claims he's not a socialist,
• 1:18:48
  Speaker 16: except he has all socialist policies, and he clearly has
• 1:18:52
  Speaker 16: affiliations and associations with people who are radical, despisers of
• 1:18:57
  Speaker 16: this country, and want to destroy the state of Israel.
• 1:19:01
  Speaker 16: There's no question about that. So we have to have
• 1:19:04
  Speaker 16: that fight in politics. I think even as we've established
• 1:19:08
  Speaker 16: a lot of facts on the ground fighting political Islam abroad. And,
• 1:19:13
  Speaker 16: of course, I shouldn't go remiss in not mentioning we
• 1:19:17
  Speaker 16: gave up Afghanistan to the Taliban, and that was a
• 1:19:19
  Speaker 16: serious defeat. That happened under Joe Biden, and I think
• 1:19:22
  Speaker 16: we're going to have to pay for that down the road.
• 1:19:25
  Speaker 1: And a quick exit question. I continue to recommend Lawrence
• 1:19:28
  Speaker 1: Wright's The Looming Tower as the one best book on
• 1:19:31
  Speaker 1: where it came from. Do you have a competing recommendation?
• 1:19:36
  Speaker 16: The Looming Tower is excellent. You know, one of the
• 1:19:39
  Speaker 16: big books that was influential on me was Bernard Lewis's
• 1:19:43
  Speaker 16: What Went Wrong? about the Middle East. And then the
• 1:19:50
  Speaker 16: other good book is a book called Terror and Liberalism
• 1:19:53
  Speaker 16: by Paul Berman. He was one of these liberals on
• 1:19:56
  Speaker 16: the other side of the aisle after 9-11 who was
• 1:19:58
  Speaker 16: mugged by reality. And I think that book holds up
• 1:20:01
  Speaker 16: very well and it shows you this liberal instinct to
• 1:20:05
  Speaker 16: simply appease not just violent aggressors abroad, but also these
• 1:20:10
  Speaker 16: radical socialists, Islamists here at home.
• 1:20:15
  Speaker 1: Bonus question. I think W did as well as any
• 1:20:17
  Speaker 1: president could have done. Do you agree or disagree with me?
• 1:20:21
  Speaker 16: I absolutely agree. I mean, President Bush's big mistake was
• 1:20:26
  Speaker 16: in not sending enough troops to Iraq initially and then
• 1:20:29
  Speaker 16: waiting two years to change his strategy and to send
• 1:20:31
  Speaker 16: more forces into Iraq. That cost us a lot, but
• 1:20:34
  Speaker 16: he finally got it right with the surge of And
• 1:20:36
  Speaker 16: now we don't have to worry about Iraq in the
• 1:20:38
  Speaker 16: same way we did before. We have to focus on Iran.
• 1:20:41
  Speaker 1: Amen to that, Matt Continetti. I hope we talk to
• 1:20:44
  Speaker 1: you on Friday on this very poignant week. I appreciate
• 1:20:47
  Speaker 1: your time today. Don't go anywhere, Merrick. I'll be right back.