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The Big Weekend Pod · 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 Hillsdale dot ed or I encourage you to take
0:06
Speaker 1: advantage of the many free online courses there, and of
0:08
Speaker 1: course I'll listen to the Hillsdale dialogues, all of them
0:11
Speaker 1: at Hugh for Hillsdale dot com or just Google, Apple
0:14
Speaker 1: iTunes and Hillsdale, Martin Glory and even Grace America. The
0:19
Speaker 1: big weekend pod is here. I'm Hugh hewittt. What a
0:22
Speaker 1: lot of news, but what a lot of stuff hanging
0:24
Speaker 1: in the air. It was briefed by a senior administration
0:27
Speaker 1: official on Friday, as where many journalists briefing officials mean
0:32
Speaker 1: one thing that they really do believe a memorandum of
0:36
Speaker 1: understanding is close. So I will be surprised if it
0:39
Speaker 1: doesn't hit. But what ought we to think about that?
0:41
Speaker 1: I'll talk with Eli Lake, Matt Continey, Ben Dominic all
0:45
Speaker 1: about the various ups and downs of the last week
0:48
Speaker 1: and the setting of the stage that is now forty
0:52
Speaker 1: eight hours into a lot of roller coaster that you
0:55
Speaker 1: just got to go with. I'll tell you about in
0:59
Speaker 1: the course of this what I asked, what I heard
1:02
Speaker 1: from the senior Administration official on background. And I'll also
1:06
Speaker 1: talk with John Ellis about some other stories that are
1:08
Speaker 1: out there, and with Shannon Breen, Fox News Sunday host,
1:13
Speaker 1: a legal correspondent for Fox News and author of a
1:16
Speaker 1: brand new book, Nothing Is Impossible with God. For a
1:19
Speaker 1: little bit of palate cleanser. After all the politics and
1:22
Speaker 1: the dealing with the religious fanatics of Iran, let's talk
1:26
Speaker 1: to an upbeat women of faith, Shannon Breem. Don't miss
1:29
Speaker 1: even a minute of this big weekend pot gorging back America.
1:38
Speaker 1: You and Eli Lakey's with the Free Press and he
1:41
Speaker 1: has a great new breaking history today about one of
1:44
Speaker 1: the more annoying people in the media, mister Parcy. But
1:48
Speaker 1: I'm going to go right to the roller coaster Iran deal, Eli.
1:51
Speaker 1: Earlier today, a senior administration official on background had a
1:55
Speaker 1: conference call with a bunch of the people who take
1:57
Speaker 1: national security seriously, and the end was al of that
2:00
Speaker 1: was for me, I was a bit more reassured. I'm
2:04
Speaker 1: very assured that the Iranian propaganda is crap, but I
2:08
Speaker 1: do believe that they believe all of the uranium, the
2:13
Speaker 1: three point six percent and the highly enriched was at
2:15
Speaker 1: the three sites that were destroyed, and that inspections regime
2:19
Speaker 1: will encompass Pickaxe Mountain. Not so sure about missile limits,
2:24
Speaker 1: but I just I heard a lot of detail, but
2:28
Speaker 1: a lot of vagueness too. What's your understanding after a
2:32
Speaker 1: thousand reporters have been brief today.
2:36
Speaker 2: Well, I mean, I've also seen the senior official transcript.
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Speaker 2: I was not on that call, but colleague sent it
2:43
Speaker 2: over to me, and I think the most important thing
2:46
Speaker 2: is that what we got from that official, who we
2:51
Speaker 2: have to be careful here, but represents Lem's to say,
2:54
Speaker 2: the part of the administration that is more dubbish for
2:58
Speaker 2: lack of a better word, on these matters, make assurances
3:02
Speaker 2: that there would be no deliverables in terms of sanctions,
3:05
Speaker 2: relief or cash to Iran until they delivered on nuclear
3:12
Speaker 2: on proxies and on the straight.
3:14
Speaker 1: Of four moose.
3:15
Speaker 3: So that's important.
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Speaker 2: That they're not being paid simply to negotiate, and that
3:20
Speaker 2: they're not being paid just for doing something they shouldn't
3:24
Speaker 2: have been done in the first place, which is reopening
3:26
Speaker 2: the Straight of four moves. So I'll put that in
3:29
Speaker 2: the somewhat reassuring category. What I'm worried about is, you know,
3:36
Speaker 2: if this turns into a long term deal. And the
3:40
Speaker 2: phrase that was used by that senior administration official was
3:44
Speaker 2: this will be a long term piece for the region.
3:48
Speaker 2: You're never gonna get a long term piece of these
3:52
Speaker 2: people are in power. So if Trump can get a
3:56
Speaker 2: deal to open the straight and by and again, that's
3:59
Speaker 2: not great because as the Iranians can can close it
4:02
Speaker 2: whenever they want, they can say, they can threaten, and
4:04
Speaker 2: they can drive insurance up. So I still think that
4:07
Speaker 2: there needs to be some sort of military solution there.
4:09
Speaker 2: But if you can get stabilized gasoline prices and give
4:14
Speaker 2: America and its allies time to replenish our stocks of
4:19
Speaker 2: interceptors and precision munitions, which is a real issue you
4:23
Speaker 2: and we've talked about on the show before, with the
4:26
Speaker 2: understanding that America or maybe just Israel and the United
4:31
Speaker 2: Arab Emirates will at some point finish the job, and
4:35
Speaker 2: hopefully the Iranian people will finish the job. Maybe not
4:39
Speaker 2: in a year, maybe in a year, a year and
4:41
Speaker 2: a half. But let's keep that in mind as the
4:43
Speaker 2: ultimate thing. But we can't having a long term deal
4:47
Speaker 2: with these fanatics and terrorists is just it's just not.
4:52
Speaker 3: It's not going to work.
4:54
Speaker 2: So it's wishful thinking, and I worry that Trump is
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Speaker 2: going to you know, sort of grab the shiny object
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Speaker 2: instead of thinking kind of in the long term sense
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Speaker 2: and strategically.
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Speaker 1: Okay, a couple of points from that transcription. As you've seen,
5:13
Speaker 1: the senior Administration official noted, Israel there will be a
5:17
Speaker 1: ceasefire Lemanon, but it has the law shoots at Israel.
5:20
Speaker 1: Israel gets to shoot, it has below. That's that's the
5:22
Speaker 1: whole game right there, because Israel's in place to hold
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Speaker 1: the piece if they don't have those directed things. So
5:29
Speaker 1: that's a big deal for me number.
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Speaker 2: Two to say, yeah, yeah, yeah, Israel gets say south
5:37
Speaker 2: south of Latani there their forces were mean and okay,
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Speaker 2: that's important.
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Speaker 1: All right, number two. The John Roberts and Fox there's
5:47
Speaker 1: just you had the best question because it was the shortest.
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Speaker 1: Who are you talking to? Senior Administration official did not say,
5:53
Speaker 1: could not say, said we want to uh, we want
5:56
Speaker 1: to reserve the you know, I don't know the privacy
5:59
Speaker 1: of the people were dealing with. That's not reassuring because
6:02
Speaker 1: we don't know who they're dealing with. But the good
6:05
Speaker 1: news is I asked about Pickack Mountain and after a
6:08
Speaker 1: little bit of back and forth, what are you talking about, Well,
6:11
Speaker 1: the one they're digging that's so deep that our massive
6:14
Speaker 1: ordinance predurator can't get to it. So, oh yeah, that's
6:17
Speaker 1: on the table. That's the four sites. There's a fourth
6:19
Speaker 1: site on the table for instructions. If we get inspections
6:24
Speaker 1: of the other three and pick acts, isn't that a
6:27
Speaker 1: big win?
6:29
Speaker 4: Yes?
6:29
Speaker 2: And also, by the way, combine that big win, never
6:33
Speaker 2: lose sight of the fact that we also destroyed so
6:38
Speaker 2: much of the program. There's so many of their top
6:40
Speaker 2: scientists have been killed, so the idea that they could
6:43
Speaker 2: break out. This is why you can't compare it to
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Speaker 2: Obama's JCPOA, because what Obama did was legitimize a program
6:50
Speaker 2: they built illicitly, and then it gave them a green
6:53
Speaker 2: light to continue to make better and more pphicients interviews
6:56
Speaker 2: is et cetera, et cetera. What Trump did is destroy
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Speaker 2: and take away the program built up under the JCPOA
7:02
Speaker 2: and before the JCPOA, And so they are much farther
7:06
Speaker 2: away from putting a warhead on a ballistic missile at
7:10
Speaker 2: this point. So it's like, I'm not saying that the
7:13
Speaker 2: nuclear issue is an important of course it's important, but
7:16
Speaker 2: it's you can't compare it to where Obama was because
7:20
Speaker 2: most of that program is rebel to Trump and Israel's
7:24
Speaker 2: credit at this point, and.
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Speaker 1: Senior Administration official also brought up the fact that missiles
7:28
Speaker 1: are on the table. Let me ask you about the glare.
7:31
Speaker 1: I thought the Achilles Heel of jc API was the
7:34
Speaker 1: Inspections regime, which wasn't The Iranians just declared military bases
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Speaker 1: off limits. They wouldn't let the IEA go where there
7:40
Speaker 1: were suspected sites. Do you think we will not make
7:44
Speaker 1: the same mistake again, No sanctions relief until we have
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Speaker 1: IAA people on the ground at the three bomb sites
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Speaker 1: and in Pickaxe Mountain.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't. I'm very worried about this because if
7:59
Speaker 2: we say, all right, you're we're gonna we're gonna halt
8:02
Speaker 2: the sanctions relief, or we're putting the sanctions back on,
8:05
Speaker 2: or we're gonna freeze the unfrozen account that you were
8:08
Speaker 2: counting on, then they'll just shoot at a tanker in
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Speaker 2: the straight up our moose. So they've got a leverage
8:15
Speaker 2: in that respect. And that's why, ultimately, the way to
8:18
Speaker 2: think about.
8:18
Speaker 3: This is.
8:21
Speaker 2: A limited I mean, I think it would almost be
8:23
Speaker 2: better to have a limited deal that at least kind of,
8:26
Speaker 2: you know, has some opening of the straight up our
8:28
Speaker 2: moves than to get into anything long term, because eventually,
8:31
Speaker 2: the strategic interest of the world, not just America and
8:35
Speaker 2: the region is for this regime to be over. And
8:38
Speaker 2: they were very close to I think they were. They
8:41
Speaker 2: were really teetering at the end of twenty twenty five,
8:45
Speaker 2: and we got to just sort of focus on that.
8:47
Speaker 2: That's what we need to come back to.
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Speaker 1: So all right, So I do want to give a
8:51
Speaker 1: plug to your new Breaking History podcast with Jay Shaloman
8:55
Speaker 1: on Iran's favorite Washington Pundit. I don't know much about
9:01
Speaker 1: Trida Parsi, but what I now know because of your
9:04
Speaker 1: podcast is don't believe anything he said. What's he doing
9:07
Speaker 1: in the country.
9:10
Speaker 2: First of all, it's weird that you keep getting a
9:13
Speaker 2: green card for twenty five years. I mean, the part
9:15
Speaker 2: of the green card is like if you're going to
9:16
Speaker 2: be a permanent like when you don't want to be
9:18
Speaker 2: a citizen, or can you or maybe he knows he
9:20
Speaker 2: won't be allowed to be a citizen. How is that happening?
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Speaker 2: So that's point number one, and point number two is
9:27
Speaker 2: when I originally did stuff on him, like more than
9:30
Speaker 2: fifteen years ago. I did a big piece for the
9:31
Speaker 2: Washington Times. When I was there. I couldn't find the
9:34
Speaker 2: money connection, like from the State of Iran or Iranian businesses,
9:38
Speaker 2: but I definitely found activities that Trita Parsi was engaged
9:42
Speaker 2: in setting up meetings with Irani and Iran's ambassadors in
9:46
Speaker 2: the UN at the time, javadza Reef, and he was
9:48
Speaker 2: doing that when Javadza Reef was the Foreign Minister. They
9:52
Speaker 2: you know, he was with their delegation during the negotiations
9:55
Speaker 2: on the nuclear deal. So you know, this is a
9:57
Speaker 2: guy who then puts on an hand. He goes on
10:01
Speaker 2: you know, CNN or evening news and pretends to be
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Speaker 2: some sort of you know, academic analyst, when in fact,
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Speaker 2: I think he's very much part of the messaging more
10:09
Speaker 2: messaging machine for the irrinting.
10:11
Speaker 1: I am persuaded he is, I'm not. I don't follow him,
10:13
Speaker 1: I don't listen to him. I've always got my shorts
10:17
Speaker 1: very carefully aligned on Huran. But it's a great episode
10:20
Speaker 1: of breaking history. You and Jay did a good job.
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Speaker 1: I want everyone to go and listen to it Elilake
10:25
Speaker 1: follow him on Ecaid Eli Lake, And.
10:35
Speaker 5: Then the real reason I wanted to bring it up
10:37
Speaker 5: was this documentary is a reminder to me, someone who
10:42
Speaker 5: did not live through them, of just how bizarre the
10:46
Speaker 5: nineteen seventies were in the United States of America.
10:50
Speaker 3: I mean truly bizarre.
10:53
Speaker 5: The New Age spirituality, the cultish aspects of American life
10:58
Speaker 5: in the nineteen seventies. Of course, the costumes, but also
11:03
Speaker 5: kind of the you just the grim, griminess of America
11:07
Speaker 5: in the nineteen seventies.
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Speaker 3: It all comes through.
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Speaker 5: And it's just a it's just a fascinating I mean,
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Speaker 5: I wanted to just briefly write what was up?
11:16
Speaker 3: What was going on? Was I said to my wife
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Speaker 3: last night? Was there something in the water in the night?
11:21
Speaker 3: Welcome back of it?
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Speaker 1: Yeah. That's Matt Continetti on the commentary podcast yesterday slandering
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Speaker 1: my decade. If you cut a boomer, do we not bleed?
11:31
Speaker 1: If you rip on a boomer's high school and college years,
11:35
Speaker 1: do we not real backwards in dismay? Honestly, Matt at
11:39
Speaker 1: two CONTINENTI doesn't anyone, don't you know any seventies.
11:42
Speaker 5: People you're gonna You're gonna appear on your show and
11:46
Speaker 5: argue for the normalcy of the nineteen seventies.
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Speaker 1: You yeah, In fact, I have exhibit. I have exhibit one.
11:53
Speaker 1: I came prepared. Here's a clip from a nineteen seventy
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Speaker 1: football game, the Steelers in the Browns where you see
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Speaker 1: me and Joe Deeing kicking of Brown's right where it hurts,
12:03
Speaker 1: and no one gets penalized in this game. Then we
12:06
Speaker 1: have a physic that's real football. That was right.
12:09
Speaker 3: That is real football. I'll grant you that.
12:11
Speaker 5: And of course it's the Nixon era as well, so
12:14
Speaker 5: there was this double story happening. On one level, you
12:18
Speaker 5: had the silent majority and the new majority and Nixon
12:22
Speaker 5: meeting Elvis late stage, Elvis in the White House, and
12:25
Speaker 5: the real NFL football you just played on it. But
12:29
Speaker 5: then you have kind of the nuts. So a new
12:33
Speaker 5: age spirituality, the me decade as Tom Wolfe called it,
12:37
Speaker 5: and bands like earth Wind and Fire, which I love,
12:40
Speaker 5: and the new documentary about earth Wind and Fire is
12:43
Speaker 5: why I went on that little rant there on the
12:45
Speaker 5: commentary podcast. It's an extraordinary decade. And I should say too, Hugh.
12:49
Speaker 5: You know this book there's a great book by David
12:51
Speaker 5: Frum called How We Got Here, The History of the
12:54
Speaker 5: nineteen seventies, and I think that's always worth reading as well.
12:58
Speaker 1: Well, there were serial killers, grant you that there were
13:00
Speaker 1: a lot of serial killer.
13:02
Speaker 3: Yeah, but there was.
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Speaker 1: The best music. And we'll continue that conversation and segment
13:07
Speaker 1: number two. I did hear earth Wind and Fire live
13:11
Speaker 1: at the Beach Ball in Carl's Bat. It's the loudest
13:14
Speaker 1: room I have ever been in matt because I got
13:16
Speaker 1: like a thousand instruments in that band. But you did
13:18
Speaker 1: persuade me to go and find this documentary before we
13:21
Speaker 1: turn to serious subjects. What's its title again? And Barack
13:25
Speaker 1: Obama does the nominate just the narrate, just the beginning
13:28
Speaker 1: or the entirety.
13:30
Speaker 5: The Obama's are spokespeople, they're they're narrating or part of
13:35
Speaker 5: the documentary, not the entirety of it, but there's some
13:37
Speaker 5: they're among the experts quoted. The document is called earth
13:41
Speaker 5: Wind and Fire, and then there's a more complicated subtitle.
13:44
Speaker 5: But it's appearing on HBO Max and it's one of
13:46
Speaker 5: a series of music documentaries that are produced and directed
13:50
Speaker 5: by Questlove.
13:52
Speaker 3: The drummer.
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Speaker 5: Uh, and he's quite a very good he's a very
13:55
Speaker 5: good filmmaker. I've enjoyed all of the documentaries he's put out,
13:58
Speaker 5: including this one.
14:00
Speaker 1: Into that in segment three, let's go to the big
14:02
Speaker 1: story of the weekend, A senior administration official briefed on
14:06
Speaker 1: background this morning a few journalists who are interested in
14:09
Speaker 1: the subject in detail. And I was asked immediately afterwards
14:14
Speaker 1: by Steward Varney, what did you think? I said, well,
14:15
Speaker 1: I'm a bit reassured, and so I said, that's initially
14:18
Speaker 1: my that's just a bit because there's a lot of
14:21
Speaker 1: details missing. Matt and the rollercoaster is I guess vertigo inducing?
14:28
Speaker 1: What do you make of this?
14:30
Speaker 5: And whiplash isn't really quite the right word to describe.
14:33
Speaker 5: We need something whiplash squared to describe what's going on
14:39
Speaker 5: with our Iran policy in this phony ceasefire. To go
14:43
Speaker 5: from Fox and Friends this yesterday morning where we were
14:47
Speaker 5: about to invade carg Island to just a few hours
14:50
Speaker 5: later saying that the deal was imminent piece was at
14:54
Speaker 5: hand was a wake up call. And then we go
14:57
Speaker 5: from news of the deal, which of course reassured mar
15:00
Speaker 5: markets to a very I think appropriate post on True
15:04
Speaker 5: Social by President Trump later earlier today where he said, look,
15:09
Speaker 5: the Iranians are double talkers, They're putting out propaganda. They
15:12
Speaker 5: need to get their act together. I am still skeptical
15:16
Speaker 5: a deal will happen, Hugh. I have to tell you,
15:18
Speaker 5: I'm reserving judgment on any agreement until there is an
15:21
Speaker 5: actual agreement that everyone can read. And that's not just
15:24
Speaker 5: a question of being briefed by various sources or contrasting
15:31
Speaker 5: different narratives coming from Tehran or Washington, d C. And
15:34
Speaker 5: the reason I remained skeptical is you have two nations
15:38
Speaker 5: whose interests are fundamentally different. The interest of the Iranian
15:43
Speaker 5: regime is survival and resistance, and the interest of the
15:47
Speaker 5: United States is to open the Strait of Hormus and
15:50
Speaker 5: to end the Iranian nuclear program.
15:53
Speaker 3: How those two.
15:54
Speaker 5: Interests reconcile, I can't see, and we haven't seen it
15:58
Speaker 5: happen yet.
15:59
Speaker 1: Yeah, before we can get to the trust but verify portion,
16:03
Speaker 1: we have to read first, and then we can trust
16:05
Speaker 1: and verify. I'll talk with Matt during the break. He'll
16:08
Speaker 1: be back. More defense from back CONTINENTI of his plander
16:12
Speaker 1: on the seventies when we come back, don't go anywhere.
16:14
Speaker 1: So Matt Continetti, as the senior administration official, takes questions.
16:20
Speaker 1: My turn comes around, and I said, does the current
16:24
Speaker 1: language of the MoU reference all of the enrichment radium,
16:28
Speaker 1: including the three point six percent? Does it reference a
16:33
Speaker 1: cap on missiles and drones? And does it reference Pickaxe Mountain?
16:38
Speaker 1: And the senior administration officials at Pickaxe Mountain sort of
16:42
Speaker 1: like question mark. I said, the deeply, the new one,
16:44
Speaker 1: the one they're building so deep that it would defeat
16:46
Speaker 1: our penetrators. And I got the assurance on the last part,
16:50
Speaker 1: Yes it does. And I got the assurance on the
16:53
Speaker 1: first part that the US believes all the uranium at
16:58
Speaker 1: every level. Was it the three sites that were destroyed
17:01
Speaker 1: over the last two years? How do you react? I
17:04
Speaker 1: did not get assurance on missiles and drones. My turn
17:06
Speaker 1: came in, Left, what do you make of that exchange?
17:10
Speaker 1: Because I'm glad that Pickaxe is on the radar?
17:14
Speaker 5: Well, I am too, And it's interesting that the administration
17:18
Speaker 5: official told you that, Hugh, because in other reporting there
17:22
Speaker 5: have been signs that this memorandum of understanding is limited
17:26
Speaker 5: to the Strait of Hormuz and leaves a lot of
17:28
Speaker 5: the nuclear questions for further negotiation. I'll just say this,
17:32
Speaker 5: you know the nuclear dust, as Donald Trump calls it.
17:35
Speaker 3: As one part of the story.
17:36
Speaker 5: We also have to look at whether the Iranian nuclear
17:39
Speaker 5: infrastructure will be dismantled or destroyed. We need anywhere, anytime inspections,
17:44
Speaker 5: We need a full disclosure of Iranian nuclear activities, and
17:48
Speaker 5: we need to have some understanding that the permanent ban
17:54
Speaker 5: on enrichment will be enforced. So for the nuclear agreement,
17:59
Speaker 5: I'm looking at all of those different aspects, and again
18:02
Speaker 5: I'm waiting to see what the actual memorandum of understanding says.
18:06
Speaker 5: I have a feeling that the conditions I laid out,
18:09
Speaker 5: while I think entirely appropriate for the United States, will
18:12
Speaker 5: be deal busters for the Ayatola. And at the end
18:15
Speaker 5: of the day, this agreement relies on the approval of
18:19
Speaker 5: two parties, President Trump and the Ayatola, the new NEPO
18:24
Speaker 5: baby Ayatola, who is controlled by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps,
18:29
Speaker 5: who as we know, has no interest in any agreement,
18:32
Speaker 5: has no interest in any cooperation with the United States,
18:34
Speaker 5: and is still firing off drones and closed keeping the
18:38
Speaker 5: strait of hormones closed months after the Iranian agreement said
18:43
Speaker 5: that the strait would be open as part of the
18:46
Speaker 5: original ceasefire agreement back in April. So yes, trust, but verify,
18:50
Speaker 5: but we still need an actual product to verify.
18:54
Speaker 1: The very best question on the call that I was
18:57
Speaker 1: on came from Fox News John Roberts, who said, very, misters,
19:00
Speaker 1: senior administration official, mister senior administration official, miss senior administration official,
19:05
Speaker 1: who are you talking to? And we didn't get an answer.
19:09
Speaker 1: We don't know that they did not.
19:11
Speaker 4: That's the key, Hugh.
19:12
Speaker 5: We're talking to one group of people, but those aren't
19:15
Speaker 5: necessarily the people in Iran with the guns. And if
19:19
Speaker 5: we know one thing from realism, realism is the people
19:23
Speaker 5: who have the guns have the power. And the people
19:27
Speaker 5: who have the guns in Iran they're not interested in words.
19:31
Speaker 3: They only speak the language of force.
19:33
Speaker 5: And that's why we got the Iranian's attention earlier this
19:36
Speaker 5: week when we were retaliating for their.
19:38
Speaker 3: Attack on our Apache helicopter.
19:42
Speaker 1: YEP. I agree, and I hope, I really hope that
19:45
Speaker 1: more force will be used the moment they do anything
19:48
Speaker 1: in their mosaic defense like attack Kuwait like they did
19:51
Speaker 1: last night, stand by.
19:52
Speaker 3: Matt psalvation and chief can give me a lethal dose.
19:56
Speaker 1: I often apply innocence.
19:58
Speaker 3: I've got repaid with scorn come in and she said, oh,
20:01
Speaker 3: give your shut up boom.
20:03
Speaker 1: Welcome back America. I'm here here, we are here to
20:06
Speaker 1: give shelter from the storm. At Matt continent, he will
20:08
Speaker 1: encounter if other boomers here is Slanders on the seventies.
20:12
Speaker 1: That's Bob Dylan from Blood on the Tracks, the greatest
20:15
Speaker 1: album of the seventies. And I believe Dylan is the
20:19
Speaker 1: only rock and roller from America to be a Nobel
20:22
Speaker 1: Laureate poet as well. So I just put you Matt
20:26
Speaker 1: Cottony has a talent like Dylan come out of any
20:29
Speaker 1: other decade, I know, the sixties claiming, but he really
20:32
Speaker 1: comes into his own with the Rolling Thunder review in
20:34
Speaker 1: the seventies.
20:36
Speaker 3: Well that's it. That is a debatable proposition, my friend.
20:40
Speaker 5: But obviously Bob Dylan is an American treasure, an American original,
20:46
Speaker 5: and he had some excellent albums, including Blood on the
20:49
Speaker 5: Tracks in the nineteen seventies.
20:51
Speaker 3: Nineteen seventies was also his.
20:53
Speaker 5: Christian moment, which is very interesting and speaks to the
20:57
Speaker 5: spirituality of the nineteen seventies. When I think of the
21:00
Speaker 5: nineteen seventies increasingly, I think of it as a religious explosion,
21:05
Speaker 5: and this was part of that Tom Wolf essay in
21:07
Speaker 5: the decade. It also had a lot to do with
21:09
Speaker 5: Jimmy Carter's assent coming out of nowhere and winning the
21:12
Speaker 5: nineteen seventy six presidential election his initials JC. He's the
21:17
Speaker 5: event self identified evangelical Christian running for the Democratic nomination
21:22
Speaker 5: and then the presidency. It was an era of a
21:25
Speaker 5: lot of the Jesus freaks on the corners.
21:28
Speaker 3: As they were, as they were called.
21:30
Speaker 1: And in the ocean, and in the ocean with U. Smith.
21:35
Speaker 5: It was a religious explosion which we had to go
21:37
Speaker 5: through a lot of turmoil, but then it gets us
21:40
Speaker 5: the more majority in Ronald Reagan in nineteen eighty.
21:43
Speaker 1: Now there is one figure that connects still to this day,
21:47
Speaker 1: the seventies, and that is about whom you wrote in
21:49
Speaker 1: Today's Wall Street Journal, the one, the only Bernie Sanders,
21:53
Speaker 1: the indestructible man. I don't know when he got into Congress.
21:56
Speaker 1: It had to be in the seventies, right, I.
21:59
Speaker 5: Think he was elected in the eighties. I think he
22:01
Speaker 5: was still Mayor of Burlington there in the seventies for.
22:04
Speaker 1: Okay, he enters elected office. I went, I went to
22:06
Speaker 1: Vermont for the host.
22:07
Speaker 3: He's always been a politician.
22:09
Speaker 1: He's always been there, and he's still there. I pointed
22:12
Speaker 1: out to John Ellis earlier. Today we are in the
22:15
Speaker 1: era of Trump. But you are right, you are so
22:17
Speaker 1: on the nose in your column today. It's the age
22:19
Speaker 1: of Sanders too. He has changed the Democratic Party in
22:23
Speaker 1: ways more profound than any other Democrat since Bill Clinton
22:28
Speaker 1: brought it to the middle. Bernie Sanders has taken it
22:30
Speaker 1: off the left, cliff.
22:32
Speaker 3: He really has.
22:33
Speaker 5: And you know, in some ways it's different than Clinton.
22:38
Speaker 5: I mean, Clinton was still operating within kind of you know,
22:40
Speaker 5: the forty yard lines of American politics. Bernie Sanders has
22:45
Speaker 5: brought socialism into the American mainstream, into one of America's
22:49
Speaker 5: two major parties, in a way that it never really
22:52
Speaker 5: has occurred in American history. There have been socialists before,
22:55
Speaker 5: socialist mayors Eugene Debs way back in the early twentieth century,
22:59
Speaker 5: but not part of the actual Democratic Party, one of
23:02
Speaker 5: the oldest political party in many ways.
23:05
Speaker 3: In the world. So what has he done.
23:07
Speaker 5: He's created this cadre of young people who are inspired
23:12
Speaker 5: by his message and are now entering politics. From Graham
23:16
Speaker 5: Platner to Zoron Mamdani to Alexandria Okazio Cortes. These Democratic
23:21
Speaker 5: Socialists of America candidates winning congressional primaries in New Jersey
23:25
Speaker 5: and Pennsylvania. In California, it's becoming there's a civil war
23:30
Speaker 5: happening in the Democratic Party, Hue. But we are on
23:32
Speaker 5: the verge of replacing the Democratic Party that you and
23:36
Speaker 5: I know with a Democratic Socialist party, which is anti Israel,
23:43
Speaker 5: borders on anti Semitism, that sometimes explicitly anti Semitic, is
23:47
Speaker 5: socialistic and redistributive for Medicare for All, that is ending
23:51
Speaker 5: private health insurance in the United States, and that is
23:54
Speaker 5: radical and its attitudes towards this country, towards America. We
24:00
Speaker 5: celebrate America's two hundred and fiftieth birthday. I think we
24:03
Speaker 5: need to identify Sanders for what he is. He's a
24:06
Speaker 5: threat to the American experiment, and that means that we
24:09
Speaker 5: have to mount a defense, an intellectual and political defense
24:15
Speaker 5: of what makes America unique. It's not socialism, that's for sure.
24:19
Speaker 1: He is also holy secular, as is this left wing
24:23
Speaker 1: fringe Jimmy Carter, of course, famously evangelical, Bill Clinton, famously
24:28
Speaker 1: carrying his Bible. There was never a break with religious
24:33
Speaker 1: America as fundamental as this. Does the Democratic Party recover
24:38
Speaker 1: from this kind of a break with its past?
24:42
Speaker 5: This is the big question of twenty twenty six because
24:45
Speaker 5: as successful as Sanders has been in shifting the Democratic
24:49
Speaker 5: Party to the left, Sanders is not successful nationally.
24:54
Speaker 3: He never got the.
24:55
Speaker 5: Democratic nomination in his two campaigns. He hasved mainstream legislative success.
25:03
Speaker 4: Right.
25:03
Speaker 5: He's pushed the party to the left, but he hasn't
25:06
Speaker 5: gotten anything passed. And he now has these rank and
25:09
Speaker 5: file candidates appearing in key contests who are to the
25:13
Speaker 5: left of the median voter. And it's going to be
25:16
Speaker 5: a question in Maine, is Graham Platner he is the
25:19
Speaker 5: Nazi tattoo able to defeat Susan Collins. If Sanders' candidate
25:24
Speaker 5: in Michigan, Al say Ed, wins the Michigan primary, there
25:29
Speaker 5: is he going to beat Mike Rogers for this open
25:32
Speaker 5: seat in Michigan. The record of these socialist candidates when
25:37
Speaker 5: they're actually have to face a general electorate that is
25:41
Speaker 5: not just deep blue, is very poor, and so Bernie Sanders,
25:46
Speaker 5: as successful as he is in shaping his party, could
25:50
Speaker 5: actually be the reason that the Democratic Party underperforms later
25:55
Speaker 5: this year in the twenty twenty six midterms.
25:57
Speaker 1: All Right, Matt Conney, looking ahead to twenty twenty eight.
26:00
Speaker 1: I read about this for Fox News yesterday. Vice presidents
26:02
Speaker 1: don't get to walk in unless theyre Kamala Harrison, Joe
26:05
Speaker 1: Biden is infirm. George H. W. Bush had to fight
26:07
Speaker 1: out Bob Dole, Walter Mondale had to fight out Gary Hart.
26:11
Speaker 1: We had Al Gore having to fight out Bill Bradley.
26:13
Speaker 1: So I actually think that Ron de Santis, Glenn Youngkin,
26:16
Speaker 1: Brian Kemp, Mike Pompeo, maybe Senators Cruz and McCormick, maybe
26:23
Speaker 1: members of the cabinet, Rubio and Bergham, they all take
26:25
Speaker 1: a shot at JD. Vance. Do you agree with me
26:27
Speaker 1: that it's going to be a wide open field in
26:29
Speaker 1: twenty twenty eight On the GOP side.
26:32
Speaker 3: I think that JD.
26:33
Speaker 5: Vance begins as the front runner for sure as the
26:36
Speaker 5: incumbent vice president, but he will face challengers.
26:39
Speaker 3: I don't know how many, Hugh.
26:41
Speaker 5: I don't know whether they'll be coming from the cabinet
26:44
Speaker 5: or whether they'll be coming from the Senate and from
26:46
Speaker 5: the governor's mansions. I'm probably leaned toward the ladder there,
26:49
Speaker 5: but there will be a contest. The X factor, of course,
26:53
Speaker 5: is President Trump, because he wants to be the decider.
26:56
Speaker 5: His endorsement is the most powerful force in Republican paulas
27:00
Speaker 5: and so a lot is going to depend on what
27:02
Speaker 5: he says after the midterm campaign and how he reacts
27:07
Speaker 5: to when these first candidates who are outside the Trump
27:10
Speaker 5: administration declared their presidential ambitions. That is going to shape
27:14
Speaker 5: the battlefield. And I'll be watching you. Is jd be
27:18
Speaker 5: sitting next to Donald Trump at UFC?
27:20
Speaker 3: Or is Marco Rubio sitting next to you?
27:22
Speaker 1: But be watching the Martin Scorsese and Bob Dylan a
27:28
Speaker 1: documentary this weekend. Just so you get straight on the seventies.
27:31
Speaker 1: Matt Continetty. Follow Matt at Continetti on X Readam and
27:34
Speaker 1: the Wall Street Journal Reader Stuff at the American Enterprise
27:37
Speaker 1: Institute as well, and listen to him on the Thursday
27:40
Speaker 1: commentary podcast Gray Tune n G. Walter Back in America.
27:44
Speaker 1: I'm joined now by Ben Dominic, as we know, the
27:48
Speaker 1: host of the Big Ben podcast Fox News contributor. He
27:51
Speaker 1: is the Daily Wire opinion page editor as well. And
27:54
Speaker 1: now I know that he is a CBS veteran of
27:57
Speaker 1: Election Night twenty sixteen, and I was listening to Big
28:01
Speaker 1: Ben podcast. I did not know we shared this experience
28:03
Speaker 1: in common. I was over at NBC that night on
28:06
Speaker 1: set with James Carvill and Chuck Todd, Lester Old, Sarah, Samanagultrie,
28:12
Speaker 1: and Tom Brokaw all night, and you know, I was
28:15
Speaker 1: a leper. It was like the Leper Colony. It was
28:18
Speaker 1: the craziest thing I've ever been involved with. It sounds
28:21
Speaker 1: like CBS was the same way stun silence trained to hostility.
28:25
Speaker 1: I thought I might get thrown out the third floor.
28:28
Speaker 4: Well, the defense that I will offer is that the
28:31
Speaker 4: actual non on air staff was actually very good at
28:36
Speaker 4: warning the anchors that, like, hey, your suppositions are not
28:40
Speaker 4: necessarily accurate. You know, Anthony, who's the head of their
28:44
Speaker 4: pulling still to this day. So a lot of is
28:47
Speaker 4: somebody who you know, came in and just kept saying, no,
28:50
Speaker 4: you can't say that. No, we're not gonna you know,
28:53
Speaker 4: we're not going to probably call that state right away.
28:55
Speaker 4: We're not going to probably you know, be it's like
28:57
Speaker 4: cautioning all the anchors who were just champion at the bit,
29:01
Speaker 4: get this thing over with. I don't know if they
29:03
Speaker 4: had reservations for you know, dinner or something like that,
29:07
Speaker 4: or they wanted them to, you know, make it to
29:09
Speaker 4: the Javia Center, but it's the sort of thing that
29:11
Speaker 4: it was just a very starring experience. There's one thing,
29:14
Speaker 4: I mean, the scene that I still remember the most
29:17
Speaker 4: is coming out at two am. I may get the
29:21
Speaker 4: time wrong. Two am, three am, and they have the
29:23
Speaker 4: black car waiting for me, and there's a there's a
29:25
Speaker 4: guy who's waiting to drive me home or back to
29:30
Speaker 4: my then fiance's apartment in Tribeca, and and I get
29:34
Speaker 4: in the car and I said, yeah, wow, that was
29:36
Speaker 4: that was an incredible night. And I said, what do
29:39
Speaker 4: you think about the new president elect? And the guy
29:42
Speaker 4: who was driving it says, oh, he will make a
29:45
Speaker 4: great and a jeep Eastern European accent. Was just like, okay,
29:53
Speaker 4: all right, I'm going.
29:55
Speaker 1: To say and raise you, Ben, I'm going to say
29:57
Speaker 1: and raise you. The next morning, I pull I got.
30:00
Speaker 1: I left NBC at three am. I had a six
30:02
Speaker 1: am ship from my own radio show At nine am
30:05
Speaker 1: I leave, I'm down in Lower Broadway and I am
30:08
Speaker 1: accosted for the first time in my life by a young, angry,
30:13
Speaker 1: angry white guy yelling at me. You did this, you
30:16
Speaker 1: did that. You know I didn't do anything. I didn't
30:18
Speaker 1: even vote.
30:18
Speaker 4: And California, what are you talking about? Oh my gosh,
30:25
Speaker 4: it was.
30:26
Speaker 1: It was a wild reaction.
30:28
Speaker 4: Across will say something that which is that I and
30:31
Speaker 4: I still I still wish I had paused or had
30:36
Speaker 4: the presence of mine at three am to pause and
30:38
Speaker 4: take a picture of this. The route back to my
30:43
Speaker 4: then fiance's future wife's apartment took me by the Javit Center, which,
30:47
Speaker 4: of course I don't know time. Ben Roads outside crying,
30:52
Speaker 4: Ben Rhodes outside crying. But if I had had my
30:55
Speaker 4: phone at the ready, I would have loved to just
30:57
Speaker 4: sort of tap it up and to have a bill,
30:59
Speaker 4: you know, the incredible night.
31:02
Speaker 1: So the Kennedy School at Harvard and the instudent politics
31:05
Speaker 1: will often do the post mortem where they bring in
31:08
Speaker 1: the consultants. I think they ought to bring in all
31:11
Speaker 1: the people are on the air in twenty sixteen, because
31:13
Speaker 1: that was the wildest night. And I've been doing this
31:15
Speaker 1: in Fine any.
31:16
Speaker 4: Years you know, that's actually that's a phenomenal suggestion, and
31:19
Speaker 4: I think that we would all have stories and pocuses
31:22
Speaker 4: on it, and and you know, one of the things
31:24
Speaker 4: that was really you know that I appreciated. I don't
31:26
Speaker 4: I don't get to I didn't get to interact with,
31:29
Speaker 4: you know, Payningnuton and all that much. You know, I
31:30
Speaker 4: was on with her pretty regular faced the nation, but
31:33
Speaker 4: she was obviously a Trump's skeptic in terms of his appeal.
31:38
Speaker 4: But as the night went on, you know, it was
31:40
Speaker 4: sort of interesting because it was like the two of us,
31:43
Speaker 4: you know, I was I was basically the first right
31:46
Speaker 4: person that they had, and she was sort of saying, no,
31:49
Speaker 4: you said, listen to him. He's he's kind of warning
31:51
Speaker 4: you on this. And it was funny because we both
31:54
Speaker 4: had the same reaction to this, which is which was that,
31:57
Speaker 4: of course, Donald Trump was a surprise, as the rest
32:00
Speaker 4: of us at this is not something that he anticipated.
32:05
Speaker 4: I still believe that to this day. I don't know
32:07
Speaker 4: if you will, actually I don't know if you would
32:09
Speaker 4: ever admit that. I still believe it, and I think
32:12
Speaker 4: it was just something that quite frankly, you know, was
32:16
Speaker 4: an indication of how much of a true outsider he
32:19
Speaker 4: was in that moment, And.
32:20
Speaker 1: Did you do one of the pre election shows, because
32:23
Speaker 1: we had Kelly Ann on Chuck and I were talking
32:26
Speaker 1: to Kelly Anne before the eleance and she didn't sound happy.
32:29
Speaker 1: I mean I took from her the queue.
32:32
Speaker 4: No, I was, in fact, I actually felt like I
32:35
Speaker 4: was kind of an outlier of saying, well, there's actually
32:37
Speaker 4: you know that there's a path for him, you know
32:38
Speaker 4: if you look at if you dig down into these
32:40
Speaker 4: things there and I wasn't necessary and I was I
32:43
Speaker 4: don't want to, you know, sort of put myself up
32:46
Speaker 4: too much. I was not declaring that he was going
32:47
Speaker 4: to win. It was more just like this is far more,
32:51
Speaker 4: this is far closer than people are willing to admit,
32:54
Speaker 4: and that, you know, put you on an outlier. And
32:57
Speaker 4: the idea that that was even something that was conceived
33:00
Speaker 4: was something that the New York staff rejected. And to
33:03
Speaker 4: be quite honest, those same people are the same people
33:07
Speaker 4: that are being cleared out right now.
33:09
Speaker 1: That's what you explain on the Big Ben podcast, and
33:11
Speaker 1: that's why people should listen to it. I'm going to
33:14
Speaker 1: talk with Ben about the Knicks and the world wrestling
33:17
Speaker 1: that is the NBA during the break, and then we're
33:20
Speaker 1: gonna come back and talk about Mark Wayne Mullen and
33:22
Speaker 1: the amazing interview Ben did with him this week. Don't
33:24
Speaker 1: go anywhere on sto doing. I'm back with noted NBA
33:27
Speaker 1: conspiracy theorist Ben Dominic and he got another bit of
33:31
Speaker 1: evidence this week when the Knicks came back from a
33:33
Speaker 1: twenty nine point deficit. I think that it was like
33:37
Speaker 1: the Cavaliers Game one against the Knicks where the refs
33:40
Speaker 1: just went blind for a quarter. What did you think
33:43
Speaker 1: about that?
33:46
Speaker 4: So as much as I am an NBA conspiracist and
33:49
Speaker 4: as much as it would make sense and a conspiracy
33:52
Speaker 4: NBA environment to say, we want positive memes of Taylor
33:58
Speaker 4: Swift and her T shirt and Jerry Seinfeld and Larry
34:01
Speaker 4: David and Timothy Shallomey and Jenner and of course you know, uh,
34:06
Speaker 4: Michael Bloomberg looking offward to the entire thing before Yeah, yeah, yeah,
34:14
Speaker 4: exactly which kind of loafers do you wear?
34:18
Speaker 2: The thing?
34:18
Speaker 4: The thing that the thing that stuck out to me
34:21
Speaker 4: was just the hubris of the Spurs in the second
34:25
Speaker 4: half taking all of those threes. I mean, I agree
34:29
Speaker 4: completely with Charles Barkley's analysis. I don't know if you
34:32
Speaker 4: saw that, where you know, he's just like, this is
34:34
Speaker 4: one of the dumbest approaches. They needed to take the
34:37
Speaker 4: air out of the ball. They needed to say, you know,
34:39
Speaker 4: we're not we're not going to be putting up any
34:41
Speaker 4: threes at any point here. We're going to make you
34:44
Speaker 4: foul us. We're gonna do We're gonna do things that
34:46
Speaker 4: slow down the game. We're not going to give you
34:48
Speaker 4: the opportunity. And by the way, I hate the idea
34:52
Speaker 4: that sort of a game hinges on one play, but
34:56
Speaker 4: the decision by Fox to try to lay up in
34:58
Speaker 4: that situation is just absolutely criminal. And it's something I
35:02
Speaker 4: don't know they're gonna have to trade have been the
35:04
Speaker 4: off season. I don't know what they're gonna have to do,
35:06
Speaker 4: but it's just a situation where, well.
35:08
Speaker 1: What do you make of the criticism that the coaching
35:12
Speaker 1: in the finals in the last two rounds has been terrible.
35:15
Speaker 1: You know, Kendy Atkinson and the Cavs gave away a
35:18
Speaker 1: twenty three point lead. He didn't call it time out.
35:20
Speaker 1: It was crazy.
35:22
Speaker 4: It was absolutely crazy. And look, you know, I am
35:26
Speaker 4: you know as you are correct, I am an NBA conspiracist.
35:29
Speaker 4: I do not think this was a conspiracy because it
35:31
Speaker 4: would be too impossible to consider as a conspiracy. And
35:35
Speaker 4: the one thing that I do think that we can
35:38
Speaker 4: take away from this is we shouldn't have the assumption
35:42
Speaker 4: based on prior Spurs experience, prior Spurs teams, we all
35:47
Speaker 4: have this. It's the same thing that happens with the
35:50
Speaker 4: great you know, images of the of the great franchises
35:53
Speaker 4: in the NFL. We see these teams that come back
35:56
Speaker 4: in and it's like, well, they've been here before. Well
35:59
Speaker 4: have they really? In the case of the Spurs, they haven't.
36:01
Speaker 4: They're an incredibly young team, they are not used to this,
36:05
Speaker 4: and I think in that moment, you know, the simple
36:08
Speaker 4: fact is that they needed to make different decisions. And Mitch,
36:10
Speaker 4: I mean, he didn't have the kind of wherewithal to say,
36:15
Speaker 4: we've got to pull back, we've got to shrink the ball,
36:17
Speaker 4: we've got to turn things into a very slow game.
36:21
Speaker 4: They didn't do it, and they ended up and look,
36:24
Speaker 4: they still almost won. You know.
36:27
Speaker 1: They're going to win.
36:29
Speaker 4: It doesn't get that throw in at the end. I'm
36:31
Speaker 4: not sure that they wouldn't. Still it pulled it out,
36:34
Speaker 4: which well, I mean, they're going.
36:36
Speaker 1: To get Game five and then it's going to be
36:38
Speaker 1: a game six conspiracy test, right, They've gotta win in
36:41
Speaker 1: New York. Will New York be standing the next day?
36:43
Speaker 1: That's my thirty second question.
36:46
Speaker 4: I think that New York is going to win five
36:50
Speaker 4: despite what the what the conspiracy would suggest here, just
36:53
Speaker 4: because just because it would be it would be such
36:57
Speaker 4: a definitive win for them, and it would be so
36:59
Speaker 4: satisfying for them. But maybe James Dolan just you know,
37:02
Speaker 4: maybe he just gets that one more round of earning
37:05
Speaker 4: money out of this. I mean, that's insane. I do love.
37:09
Speaker 1: That's what I shut out. Stand By Ben, we're coming
37:11
Speaker 1: back on the net. Welcome back America. I here here.
37:15
Speaker 1: You got to listen to the Big Weekend podcause Ben Dominic,
37:19
Speaker 1: NBA conspiracist, has kind of walked back from the conspiracy edge.
37:23
Speaker 1: He thinks the spurs are that you think the Nets
37:25
Speaker 1: are going to win in five? I think they're going
37:27
Speaker 1: to win in six because the NBA wants that sixth game.
37:30
Speaker 1: I just I worry about the city of New York
37:32
Speaker 1: burning down. I'll finish that question. You know that five
37:35
Speaker 1: guys got trashed. What do you think Ben it does
37:37
Speaker 1: got them.
37:39
Speaker 4: I don't. I don't think they want more images of
37:41
Speaker 4: Nick sin punching his first chance in the faith. I
37:45
Speaker 4: also don't think they want more incidents of contentious relationships
37:50
Speaker 4: with Zora Moumdani of canceling watch parties and having the
37:54
Speaker 4: backlash of that. I think they just want this thing
37:56
Speaker 4: to be over, and they want it to be kind
37:58
Speaker 4: of an early lesson for the you know, generational player
38:03
Speaker 4: who is wimpy and who is going to you know, look,
38:08
Speaker 4: maybe he needs to just go into another park and
38:10
Speaker 4: draw some more images of a statues that are there.
38:13
Speaker 1: And well, Lebron had to lose a couple Lebron had
38:16
Speaker 1: to go to the finals a couple of times to
38:17
Speaker 1: forty one. So you're right, all right now, I want
38:19
Speaker 1: to get to your mark. Wayne Mullin, Secretary Millen was
38:21
Speaker 1: on with Ben Dominic on the Big Ben podcast. Boy,
38:24
Speaker 1: he's a good communicator, I mean, justin and then I
38:27
Speaker 1: saw him the next day at the DOJ presser after
38:30
Speaker 1: he had previewed it with you three hundred thousand kids
38:31
Speaker 1: missing in the United States. I think he is genuinely
38:34
Speaker 1: scandalized by this. Ben.
38:36
Speaker 4: Did that come through yes, and he's also one of
38:40
Speaker 4: these people. I mean, you always hear this from politicians
38:42
Speaker 4: of like, I didn't choose a career in politics. I mean,
38:46
Speaker 4: it was one of the questions. It was one of
38:47
Speaker 4: the first questions I asked about. You know, you get
38:49
Speaker 4: to be a US center. You're one of one hundred.
38:52
Speaker 4: You know, you could be that for the rest of
38:54
Speaker 4: your life. From Oklahoma. You're popular enough to just hold
38:56
Speaker 4: up as long as you want. Why do you go
39:00
Speaker 4: to this other job? And he said, you know, because
39:02
Speaker 4: he thinks it's important, but also because he didn't plan
39:05
Speaker 4: to be a lifetime politician. I believe all of that.
39:07
Speaker 4: There's another thing that was interesting about this to me,
39:11
Speaker 4: you know, his communication approach. He is somebody who understands
39:15
Speaker 4: that you have to cut through a lot of the
39:17
Speaker 4: bs that the legacy media puts up, and the only
39:20
Speaker 4: way to do that is to put the numbers in
39:22
Speaker 4: front of them and to force them to deal with it.
39:24
Speaker 4: When it came to the DOJ press conference that you're referencing,
39:28
Speaker 4: and I would encourage everybody to watch it, I just
39:31
Speaker 4: think it's it's a jarring thing to learn. I mean,
39:35
Speaker 4: he said it was criminal. I'm inclined to reserving regarding
39:39
Speaker 4: the approach that the Biden administration used that let so
39:44
Speaker 4: many of these migrant children into situations where they were
39:48
Speaker 4: not just physically abused, they were not just emotionally abused,
39:53
Speaker 4: they were sexually abused. And I mean, in this situation,
39:57
Speaker 4: can you know, can anyone in that adminis can anyone
40:01
Speaker 4: associated with this is one of the rare reasons why
40:04
Speaker 4: I disagreed with my friend my Gallagher at the time
40:07
Speaker 4: about whether Alejandro and Mayorka should be impeached, and I said,
40:11
Speaker 4: there are rare examples where a cabinet secretary is actually
40:16
Speaker 4: working at odds, not just with the law, but with
40:20
Speaker 4: the United States of America. If there is not a
40:23
Speaker 4: cabinet secretary who should be impeached, is it not him?
40:27
Speaker 4: We disagreed about that. He since, I think has come
40:31
Speaker 4: a little bit more in my direction because we've learned
40:32
Speaker 4: more about what happened under his watch. But look, it's
40:35
Speaker 4: absolutely abhorrent, and I'm so glad that the president chose
40:39
Speaker 4: to put him in this position because I think that
40:41
Speaker 4: he's someone who firmly believes that they can achieve something better,
40:45
Speaker 4: that they can do as best as they can to
40:47
Speaker 4: make things right, but there's also a need for account.
40:50
Speaker 4: Democrats are going to try to dodge it. The people
40:52
Speaker 4: who are in charge of it are going to try
40:53
Speaker 4: to dodge it. This should be a career ending moment
40:58
Speaker 4: for anyone who had any authority over anything that went
41:01
Speaker 4: on in this situation. I hope that it is.
41:03
Speaker 1: You know, a former religion reporter at the La Times,
41:07
Speaker 1: Bill Abdell, frequent guest on this show in the years
41:10
Speaker 1: that he was working for the La Times, would always
41:13
Speaker 1: talk to me about the struggle within the Times about
41:16
Speaker 1: the details you ought to post about the Catholic child
41:20
Speaker 1: abuse sex scandal and ought you not to be graphic
41:24
Speaker 1: in order to deliver the news. And I think they're
41:29
Speaker 1: struggling with that as well on this scandal, because three
41:33
Speaker 1: hundred thousand is still a big number. That four hundred
41:35
Speaker 1: and fifty thousand children on a company minor they've recovered
41:38
Speaker 1: out in fifty thousand of them. Three hundred thousand of
41:40
Speaker 1: them are missing, many believed to be in labor trafficking,
41:44
Speaker 1: others to be in sex trafficking, but they don't tell
41:46
Speaker 1: you the detail. That's a little sanitized. What do you
41:49
Speaker 1: think Ben about being more graphic, more specific about what
41:52
Speaker 1: has happened to these children.
41:56
Speaker 4: You are you saying on the movie Sacario.
41:59
Speaker 1: Oh no, I can't watch that.
42:00
Speaker 4: No, I'm just telling you there is an absolute need
42:06
Speaker 4: to be graphic about the degree to which these things
42:09
Speaker 4: go on. And that is something that I've learned covering
42:13
Speaker 4: the border in the past, you know, for megal pass
42:15
Speaker 4: and going on both sides of it. I think that
42:18
Speaker 4: you know, Bill Mallusin has seen things that he will
42:22
Speaker 4: not text, that he will not sweet out, but he
42:24
Speaker 4: will not talk about on the Fox network because it
42:28
Speaker 4: would be the kind of things that would raise everyone's
42:32
Speaker 4: blood pressure to a degree that it was unacceptable. But
42:35
Speaker 4: it is the truth. And that is what we know
42:39
Speaker 4: about the way that these cartels work. They when we
42:42
Speaker 4: say they are human traffickers, I think people don't understand
42:45
Speaker 4: what we actually mean.
42:47
Speaker 1: And that's what I'm That's why, Well, maybe we'll both
42:51
Speaker 1: follow up with Mullen and do that. And it makes
42:54
Speaker 1: my stomach clench.
42:55
Speaker 4: No, I encourage you to. I encourage you to do it.
42:58
Speaker 4: I think he's one of the best communications on the
43:01
Speaker 4: right today and there's a reason why he was put
43:03
Speaker 4: in that position because he has to deal with things
43:06
Speaker 4: that are that. Would you know they make your blood uncold.
43:12
Speaker 4: You don't want to have to look at it, but
43:13
Speaker 4: you have to look at it because it's real.
43:15
Speaker 1: And this okay, final question, Ben, I want you to
43:18
Speaker 1: channel your inner John McCain, I don't know if you've
43:20
Speaker 1: been on one of the briefing calls today with a
43:22
Speaker 1: senior administration official. I was, I have my I've already
43:25
Speaker 1: told my take on the emerging lou what's yours.
43:31
Speaker 4: I'm I'm very hesitant about this, Hugh. I'm worried about this.
43:37
Speaker 4: I don't I don't trust the Iranians. I understand that
43:42
Speaker 4: there is a degree of buying here that might be
43:45
Speaker 4: higher than what has previously been discussed. But I share
43:49
Speaker 4: a lot of the concerns with the folks over at
43:51
Speaker 4: our friends, our friends over at fvdout the way that
43:55
Speaker 4: this is going to play out. And I mean this,
43:58
Speaker 4: I don't want to say. This is not born out
44:01
Speaker 4: of a desire for more destruction or more loss of
44:04
Speaker 4: human life. It's born out of a skepticism of faith
44:07
Speaker 4: of any kind in the Iranian authorities. I do not
44:11
Speaker 4: believe they will live up to their obligations. And I
44:13
Speaker 4: don't think that we should take them at their work.
44:15
Speaker 1: And if I were the Trump administration, I would get
44:18
Speaker 1: a senior administration official on the record with Mark Dubowitz
44:21
Speaker 1: to talk about the deal. That is what I would do,
44:25
Speaker 1: because otherwise.
44:26
Speaker 4: Do that, by the way, instead of going on the view.
44:29
Speaker 1: Yes yes, yes, yes yes yes yes. Hey. Ben Domini's
44:34
Speaker 1: good to talk to you. Thank you for joining me
44:36
Speaker 1: from a great episode of the Big Ben podcast. That
44:38
Speaker 1: Daily Wire continues to shine. You'll see him on the
44:41
Speaker 1: Fox News Channel as well. Stay tuned this morning, rit
44:45
Speaker 1: Iman Grace America. I'm Hugh Hewittt. It's going to be
44:48
Speaker 1: quite a weekend of news, especially on the Iran US
44:51
Speaker 1: MoU front. I spend time Friday with a senior administration
44:55
Speaker 1: official getting briefed about this, as did many other journalists
44:58
Speaker 1: of the Beltweg Department. More on that later. I begin, however,
45:04
Speaker 1: with John Ellis, editor in chief of News Items, because
45:07
Speaker 1: this weekend brings US news from across the world, including
45:10
Speaker 1: in Switzerland. John, I did not know this until you
45:13
Speaker 1: told me Switzerland might put a cap on the number
45:17
Speaker 1: of people who can live there. Won't that just absolutely
45:20
Speaker 1: reject the EUS come one, come all rules.
45:24
Speaker 6: I think right now, the population in Switzerland is nine
45:27
Speaker 6: point one million people. There's a referendum on the ballot.
45:31
Speaker 6: Voting is on Sunday that would cap the population at
45:35
Speaker 6: ten million. If the population gets to nine point five million,
45:40
Speaker 6: things tighten up a bit, rules essentially on asylum and
45:45
Speaker 6: family reunification. If it gets to ten million, according to
45:50
Speaker 6: this referendum, then what's called the Free Movement of Persons Agreement,
45:57
Speaker 6: which is an EU agreement and enables people to work,
46:00
Speaker 6: work and study and live in Switzerland, that would be broken.
46:06
Speaker 6: So it's an enormously important vote, not just for Switzerland
46:12
Speaker 6: or the people of Switzerland, but also for the EU
46:15
Speaker 6: because it's a sort of mini breakup. It's kind of
46:17
Speaker 6: a mini Brexit, if you will, and it's a real
46:21
Speaker 6: test of uh, you know, European politics essentially. So it's
46:27
Speaker 6: one to watch very closely, I think. And the good
46:30
Speaker 6: news about the Swiss is it's not California, so we'll
46:33
Speaker 6: know the results almost immediately.
46:36
Speaker 1: Well, now, would the EU take immediate exception where it
46:40
Speaker 1: to pass? Do they throw down the gauntlet like they
46:43
Speaker 1: did on the Brexit negotiations If Switzerland even hit leans
46:48
Speaker 1: towards an EU busting measure like this.
46:53
Speaker 6: I don't think so, because I think that Switzerland is
46:55
Speaker 6: an important, you know, economic engine of the EU, although
47:00
Speaker 6: you know, despite its small numbers, it's a very successful country.
47:05
Speaker 6: So I think, you know, Brussels would have a thousand
47:07
Speaker 6: meetings and you and I board to death.
47:11
Speaker 1: All right, Let's go further around the world to North Korea,
47:15
Speaker 1: where Jijinping has gone to meet Kim Jong un. Not
47:18
Speaker 1: Kim Jong un going to be a jingg to meet Jijinping.
47:22
Speaker 1: That's kind of a role reversal, isn't it.
47:25
Speaker 6: Well, she is famous for not wanting to go anywhere, right,
47:29
Speaker 6: He's a man who likes to sleep in his own bed.
47:32
Speaker 6: So the fact that he's going, you know, the leader
47:35
Speaker 6: of a major power is going to the leader of
47:39
Speaker 6: a albeit nuclear minor power, is you know, that's it.
47:46
Speaker 6: I think everybody was surprised by that. And the reason,
47:49
Speaker 6: of course, is that Russia has been wooing Kim and
47:53
Speaker 6: they've been doing a lot of work together. The North
47:57
Speaker 6: Koreans have provided troops for the Ukraine War, and Russia
48:01
Speaker 6: reportedly has supplied North Korea with quote nuclear expertise China
48:09
Speaker 6: g you know, the Russians and the Chinese are supposedly
48:14
Speaker 6: in sync as a kind of you know, a love arrangement,
48:18
Speaker 6: as it was once called. But the fact is that
48:20
Speaker 6: G looks upon Putin and the nation of Russia as
48:26
Speaker 6: a sort of second team player. So the fact that
48:29
Speaker 6: he'ssing he Peutin is closing up with.
48:32
Speaker 1: Kim a nois G.
48:34
Speaker 6: And thus G has gone to North Korea to say,
48:38
Speaker 6: I think to Kim, get with the program. You know,
48:41
Speaker 6: Russia may be your friend, but we're your next door neighbor.
48:45
Speaker 6: All right, now, let's come to domestic politics. You sent
48:48
Speaker 6: me a Pew Research Center self diagnosis, and Pew does
48:53
Speaker 6: good work, and they've always done good work, and they
48:55
Speaker 6: break people into nine different categories. I took the quiz
48:59
Speaker 6: and I exactly where I would guess.
49:04
Speaker 1: I would be pragmatic and polite. Right, I'm not sure where.
49:08
Speaker 4: You were with me?
49:08
Speaker 1: Both? Yeah, okay, you me both? So why do you
49:13
Speaker 1: like this? And why do you urge people? And by
49:16
Speaker 1: the way, I will try and post a link over
49:18
Speaker 1: on my ex account. Why do you like it so much?
49:20
Speaker 1: What do you think it does that other self diagnostic
49:23
Speaker 1: poles do? I don't.
49:25
Speaker 6: I don't know that you know that it's all all
49:28
Speaker 6: that important, but I think it's helpful in the sense
49:31
Speaker 6: that right now we have blue, red, and you know,
49:34
Speaker 6: sort of purple, right, that's sort of how people think
49:37
Speaker 6: about politics.
49:38
Speaker 1: This is a little bit more.
49:40
Speaker 6: You know, the electorate is obviously a lot more complex
49:43
Speaker 6: than just blue, red and purple. And this is I think,
49:48
Speaker 6: you know, a good effort to say, well, what is
49:50
Speaker 6: the electorate really like? You know, when you take the
49:53
Speaker 6: when you take the quiz, which I urge people to do,
49:56
Speaker 6: it's fun. You there are questions that you think, well
49:59
Speaker 6: that that's trying to put me in a category, right
50:02
Speaker 6: that I don't really fit with. So you know, it's
50:06
Speaker 6: not it's not perfect, but it's a more complex portrait
50:11
Speaker 6: of the electorate that I think is you know good.
50:13
Speaker 1: I mean, it's it's just good. True. It's a spectrum.
50:17
Speaker 1: And that's what I like about it is it doesn't
50:19
Speaker 1: you're not red or blue. It's got gentle evolutions from
50:23
Speaker 1: category to category, which would actually be a better way
50:26
Speaker 1: to think about American politics and Republican and Democrat, red,
50:29
Speaker 1: blue and purple. However, I would like to meet some
50:34
Speaker 1: people who scored on the far left the Bernie Sanders. People,
50:37
Speaker 1: you are writing about Bernie Sanders today, as Matt Continetti
50:41
Speaker 1: did today in the Wall Street shore Line. I don't
50:42
Speaker 1: know if you saw Mats It's the Age of Sanders too,
50:46
Speaker 1: article in which he said, yeah, it's the age of Trump,
50:49
Speaker 1: but it's the age of Sanders, and which Sanders effectively
50:52
Speaker 1: took over the Democratic Party in ways small and unnoticed
50:55
Speaker 1: but nevertheless very very real, and not just in New
51:01
Speaker 1: Jersey congressional district, but Senate rages across the country. Yeah,
51:06
Speaker 1: he had.
51:07
Speaker 6: He stood by Graham Plattner up in Maine when everybody
51:11
Speaker 6: else is running for cover. Platinner blew the doors off
51:15
Speaker 6: and the Democratic primary got more than seventy percent of
51:17
Speaker 6: the vote. That was I mean, I don't think that
51:21
Speaker 6: had I don't think Bernie Sanders engineered that. But he
51:24
Speaker 6: was certainly the beneficiary of the press coverage, let's put
51:29
Speaker 6: it that way. But the fact of the matter is,
51:31
Speaker 6: it's a very interesting fact about Bernie Sanders, which is
51:35
Speaker 6: Gallup does this survey of you know, newsmakers, do you
51:40
Speaker 6: have a favorable or unfavorable opinion of these newsmakers, and
51:44
Speaker 6: they're you know, twelve or fourteen of them, there are
51:47
Speaker 6: only two that have a net positive. One is Pope
51:53
Speaker 6: Leo and the other is Bernie Sanders. Everybody else is negative.
51:58
Speaker 6: So he's he's you know, he's portrayed as this cranky
52:05
Speaker 6: old left wing guy with big mittens or whatever, but
52:08
Speaker 6: he's a force and in the Democratic Party, he's head
52:12
Speaker 6: and shoulders above the others. I mean, if you put
52:15
Speaker 6: up Bernie Sanders in a poll. I'm not sure that
52:18
Speaker 6: in an election this would work, but in a poll,
52:20
Speaker 6: if you put Bernie Sanders up against all of the
52:23
Speaker 6: people that are running or supposedly running for the Democratic
52:27
Speaker 6: presidential nomination, he would slaughter them two to one, three
52:32
Speaker 6: to one.
52:32
Speaker 1: I mean, let's talk I agree with that, but let's
52:34
Speaker 1: talk about Graham Platner a little bit. I like to
52:37
Speaker 1: think I know Maine a little bit. I've lived other
52:39
Speaker 1: places longer, California, Ohio, Virginia, but then I've lived in
52:43
Speaker 1: Maine more than I've lived in Massachusetts, Michigan or DC.
52:46
Speaker 1: Those are the only places I've actually lived. So I've
52:48
Speaker 1: lived in Maine a considerable bit. And I think Susan
52:51
Speaker 1: Collins is Saint Susan, and that there's a silent Susan
52:54
Speaker 1: vote in November, because she's made ten thousand votes in
52:58
Speaker 1: a row. She's a moderate, she votes for the state,
53:01
Speaker 1: she gets stuffed done. She's on the Intel Committee with
53:04
Speaker 1: Angus King, the only state in the Union has two
53:07
Speaker 1: senators on the Intel Committee, because they're both so respected
53:09
Speaker 1: and trusted. Do you really think Platner, with his Nazi
53:13
Speaker 1: tattoo and his domestic abuse and who knows what he
53:16
Speaker 1: put on kick, is going to beat Susan Collins. I
53:20
Speaker 1: think it's possible.
53:22
Speaker 6: I think that Susan Collins has a terrific record to
53:27
Speaker 6: run on, and she has delivered more federal largests than
53:31
Speaker 6: any legislature, any legislatur in the history of Maine. There's
53:37
Speaker 6: a reporter who did a survey of a historical review
53:42
Speaker 6: of it is astonishing what she's done for the state.
53:45
Speaker 6: So if she runs on that, then she should win.
53:48
Speaker 6: What's happening is that people in Maine, a lot of
53:53
Speaker 6: the voters in Maine get the sense that the system
53:56
Speaker 6: quote unquote is trying to kill him, and you know,
54:01
Speaker 6: he's become an underdog story. And every time you have
54:04
Speaker 6: an underdog story, you have to pay attention.
54:07
Speaker 1: Well, the system up until now has been the Democratic
54:10
Speaker 1: Party ne otherwise, Jenet Mills unearthed the appo on him first.
54:14
Speaker 1: I don't think the Republicans will find the kick messages
54:16
Speaker 1: until conveniently September or October, do you.
54:20
Speaker 6: I think they've already started negative and I think that
54:24
Speaker 6: that's the mistake. I think if they're going to make
54:26
Speaker 6: a mistake, if you run Susan Collins as somebody who
54:30
Speaker 6: is very effective, serve the state, well respected, et cetera,
54:35
Speaker 6: then she should win because in twenty twenty, when President
54:38
Speaker 6: Trump was losing Maine by ten points, she was winning
54:42
Speaker 6: it by nine. That's astonishing. But the underdog story is
54:47
Speaker 6: the one to watch.
54:49
Speaker 1: Those items from John Ellis begin your morning with it
54:52
Speaker 1: six days a week. It's invaluable. It is well worth
54:55
Speaker 1: the subscription. Find a substack news items John Elichis do
55:00
Speaker 1: Thank you. John. Now, I want to take a moment
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Speaker 1: back America on Hugh Hewitt drawing on a song reference
56:39
Speaker 1: to him referenced and Shannon bream brand new book Nothing
56:43
Speaker 1: Is Impossible with God. Now you know, Shannon is the
56:47
Speaker 1: hard question asking tough follow up Fox News Sunday House
56:52
Speaker 1: and is the chief legal coursepondentor Fox News. But she's
56:55
Speaker 1: also the author of four previous books about her life
56:58
Speaker 1: and faith. And now this one thing is impossible with God,
57:01
Speaker 1: and I know or is the most delightful person to
57:03
Speaker 1: welcome people on descent. Shannon. I did not know though
57:07
Speaker 1: about your deep Christian faith until I read this book.
57:11
Speaker 1: And that may just be you know, ships passing in
57:14
Speaker 1: the bookstore. But how when did you make the decision
57:17
Speaker 1: to go public about being an evangelical?
57:21
Speaker 7: Well, Hugh, thank you for having me.
57:23
Speaker 8: You know what, It's been at the center of my
57:25
Speaker 8: life for as long as I can remember.
57:27
Speaker 7: I grew up in a household that was very faith centered.
57:30
Speaker 8: There was a time along the way in my career
57:33
Speaker 8: that I was encouraged to be less quote Jesus y
57:36
Speaker 8: less churchy and I might have kind of tamped down
57:39
Speaker 8: there for a little bit, not leading with that as much,
57:42
Speaker 8: but there came a point where I felt real conviction
57:44
Speaker 8: about that, Like, listen, if this really is the moral
57:46
Speaker 8: compass and the center of my life, I've got to
57:49
Speaker 8: just be organic about that, be transparent and joyful about that.
57:54
Speaker 7: And I just kind of at some point said, I'm
57:56
Speaker 7: not going to apologize for it. I'm just going to
57:57
Speaker 7: be who I am.
57:58
Speaker 8: And I'm really glad that it's connected with other people
58:01
Speaker 8: through these books and just you know, every opportunity to
58:03
Speaker 8: share faith.
58:05
Speaker 1: Well, I think that especially nothing is Impossible with God,
58:08
Speaker 1: is going to end up as the study book for
58:11
Speaker 1: thousands of book studies that that tens of thousands of
58:14
Speaker 1: churches across the country. Let me also tell you, though
58:17
Speaker 1: I had never even heard of map dot, fingerpit, fingerprint,
58:22
Speaker 1: point distrophy, fingerprint distriphye until I read your intro. You've
58:27
Speaker 1: got it's a chronic condition. You've got it under control? Now,
58:29
Speaker 1: how long did it take to get it under control?
58:32
Speaker 1: Because it sounds awful.
58:33
Speaker 8: Yeah, it's really difficult. I lived with chronic pain for
58:37
Speaker 8: you know, really a couple of years before at least
58:39
Speaker 8: started to get it under control, and it took me
58:42
Speaker 8: a while to get diagnosed. And I think everybody can
58:44
Speaker 8: relate to something like that as struggle in your life,
58:46
Speaker 8: whether it's you or someone that you love. It may
58:48
Speaker 8: be emotional pain, it may be physical pain, as it
58:51
Speaker 8: was in my.
58:51
Speaker 7: Case, it led to both. But it was a really,
58:54
Speaker 7: really difficult dark place. I would say the toughest point
58:57
Speaker 7: in my life.
58:58
Speaker 8: Feeling like I was survived, I sometimes a minute at
59:01
Speaker 8: a time, an hour at a time, because it was
59:03
Speaker 8: living in a ten at a ten pain scale. And
59:06
Speaker 8: it really sharpened my faith, drew me closer to the
59:09
Speaker 8: Lord and made me feel and experience Him in deeper
59:12
Speaker 8: ways than I had. I wouldn't choose that journey or
59:14
Speaker 8: that burden, but I could see the silver lining of it,
59:17
Speaker 8: just knowing His presence and growing and maturing in faith.
59:20
Speaker 8: And so when I finally found a doctor to diagnose
59:23
Speaker 8: me correctly, I was so thankful for that.
59:26
Speaker 7: And I always tell him he's my answer to prayer, which.
59:29
Speaker 8: Sometimes meets with awkward giggles, but he really was. I mean,
59:33
Speaker 8: I prayed to the Lord, if you're not going to
59:34
Speaker 8: heal me, which I understand is not always your plan,
59:36
Speaker 8: we at least lead me to a medical professional who
59:39
Speaker 8: can help me. And within days I found doctor Thomas
59:41
Speaker 8: Clinch here in d C. And he got me on
59:43
Speaker 8: the path to really being able to manage this pain
59:46
Speaker 8: and something that is, you know, genetic. I'll never get
59:48
Speaker 8: rid of it, there's no cure for it. But he's
59:50
Speaker 8: been a godsend. Literally.
59:53
Speaker 1: Well, what I appreciate about it when you tell people
59:55
Speaker 1: about that, it's a mainline shot of authenticity into the
59:59
Speaker 1: book Nothing is Impossible with God. And then you follow
1:00:02
Speaker 1: it up and this is the curious charge in me.
1:00:04
Speaker 1: You mentioned how a Netflix seria to become an obsession
1:00:08
Speaker 1: and you realize it wasn't good for the soul and
1:00:11
Speaker 1: you had to stop one. Was it, in fact Succession
1:00:13
Speaker 1: or was it Game of Throat?
1:00:15
Speaker 7: No, it's older than both of those. It actually free
1:00:18
Speaker 7: day both of them.
1:00:19
Speaker 8: But but you know how these shows are, My goodness,
1:00:21
Speaker 8: they release so addictive.
1:00:23
Speaker 7: I remember the old days when you know, like Dallas.
1:00:26
Speaker 8: Was a big scandalous thing that we will watch on
1:00:28
Speaker 8: Friday nights.
1:00:29
Speaker 7: And if our VCR did not tape correctly, you missed it.
1:00:32
Speaker 8: You couldn't go anywhere to watch it. It wasn't going
1:00:34
Speaker 8: to re air, so it was like appointment television. Now
1:00:37
Speaker 8: you get these things released in man, you could just
1:00:39
Speaker 8: binge through the whole thing.
1:00:40
Speaker 7: It takes real discipline.
1:00:41
Speaker 8: But yeah, it may sound silly to the average person
1:00:45
Speaker 8: out there, but you know, some of these things, they.
1:00:47
Speaker 7: Become cultural phenomenons. You want to watch it.
1:00:49
Speaker 8: It's very addictive, but some of these I feel like, gosh,
1:00:52
Speaker 8: it's sort of soul crushing, really despicable behavior and terrible
1:00:56
Speaker 8: language and all kinds of compromising evil situations.
1:01:00
Speaker 7: And that was fun show to talk about, you know.
1:01:02
Speaker 8: In the book that felt to me like gosh, this
1:01:04
Speaker 8: is cratering my soul, not helping it, and I feel convicted.
1:01:08
Speaker 8: Like it may sound silly to people, but I thought
1:01:10
Speaker 8: I got to quite watching.
1:01:11
Speaker 7: No, we're bringing the show now.
1:01:13
Speaker 1: I've had to clear my throat. I'm an evangelical Roman
1:01:16
Speaker 1: Catholic Presbyterian, which means I go to Mass on Saturday,
1:01:18
Speaker 1: into the Presbyterian church on Sunday. But I've had to
1:01:20
Speaker 1: clear my throat whenever I brought up certain series because
1:01:23
Speaker 1: people look at you, what are you watching that for?
1:01:26
Speaker 1: That's pornography like Game of Thrones, or that's just evil, ambition,
1:01:29
Speaker 1: greed and lust in succession, and I, well, you know,
1:01:32
Speaker 1: I'm pretty old. It doesn't really bother me that way,
1:01:34
Speaker 1: but I like that. Let's get into the specifics. The
1:01:38
Speaker 1: feshial Mostiere and I taught Sunday school for decade and
1:01:41
Speaker 1: usually kids from second grade through sixth grade wouldn't go
1:01:45
Speaker 1: into middle school. Not good for anyone's soul. But the
1:01:49
Speaker 1: you know, making characters come alive in scripture and teaching
1:01:52
Speaker 1: them the story. You do that again for adults. And
1:01:55
Speaker 1: I want to begin with Gideon as the answer to
1:01:58
Speaker 1: imposters syndrome. Why don't you explain that and how he
1:02:01
Speaker 1: got from thirty three thousand guys to twenty three thousand
1:02:04
Speaker 1: guys to ten thousand guys to three hundred guys with
1:02:06
Speaker 1: trumpets because you did a very fine job.
1:02:09
Speaker 7: Well, thank you.
1:02:10
Speaker 8: And Gideon was really my peg for this entire book,
1:02:12
Speaker 8: the idea of overcoming, because we're all going to have
1:02:15
Speaker 8: things that we have to fight to overcome. And I
1:02:17
Speaker 8: think you know the verse for the book is John
1:02:20
Speaker 8: sixteen thirty three, where Jesus says, you know you're going
1:02:22
Speaker 8: to have trouble in this world, but take heart, because
1:02:25
Speaker 8: I've overcome.
1:02:26
Speaker 7: I think Gideon is just one of those first journeys
1:02:27
Speaker 7: in a story.
1:02:28
Speaker 8: I've always lashed onto because when we meet him, he's
1:02:30
Speaker 8: in a dire situation. Israel is being oppressed, they're way
1:02:33
Speaker 8: off track, they're frightened, and he's hiding out doing his
1:02:37
Speaker 8: work of threshing wheeds. And the Angel of the Lord
1:02:39
Speaker 8: appears to him and addresses him as a mighty warrior, like,
1:02:42
Speaker 8: you're going to be the one to take us out
1:02:44
Speaker 8: of this bondage in the situation, and Gideon's literal reply
1:02:48
Speaker 8: to him, at least in the English translation, is pardon me, like,
1:02:51
Speaker 8: I'm not the guy for you. And he's very fearful,
1:02:53
Speaker 8: and he has good reason to be. But God walks
1:02:56
Speaker 8: him through and we see his faith tested, and slowly
1:02:59
Speaker 8: it grows. Ask God, please reassure me that what I
1:03:02
Speaker 8: think you're calling me to is the real thing. He's like,
1:03:05
Speaker 8: I'm the least person in my family. My family's the
1:03:07
Speaker 8: least in my tribe. I don't know why you're calling
1:03:09
Speaker 8: me to this, but we do see him. He gathers
1:03:12
Speaker 8: this army of tens of thousands of Israelites who are
1:03:14
Speaker 8: willing to go into this battle with him, and God
1:03:16
Speaker 8: keeps honing it down like nope, you got too many people,
1:03:19
Speaker 8: and everything requires getting in to take another step of
1:03:22
Speaker 8: faith until as you said, they get down to just
1:03:24
Speaker 8: three hundred warriors that are going to take on this
1:03:27
Speaker 8: entire army of oppression, and with God's help, they do it.
1:03:31
Speaker 8: But it requires GeTe in to step forward and say,
1:03:34
Speaker 8: I'm trusting you.
1:03:35
Speaker 7: When he started out with so little faith. You know,
1:03:37
Speaker 7: his journey.
1:03:38
Speaker 8: His art reminds us that, you know, if we too
1:03:40
Speaker 8: have a little faith, but we can trust God and
1:03:42
Speaker 8: just ask him to help us with each next step.
1:03:44
Speaker 8: He can use ordinary people to do extraordinary things, and
1:03:47
Speaker 8: thank goodness, he uses blog people because that's all of us.
1:03:50
Speaker 1: And I'm going to continue my conversation with Shannon Bream
1:03:54
Speaker 1: and put it on the podcast, maybe probably it on
1:03:56
Speaker 1: Monday as well. So I'm going to post it over
1:03:58
Speaker 1: at my YouTube channel as well. Magnificent book. It's right here.
1:04:02
Speaker 1: I can't reach it. You can do anything. I want
1:04:06
Speaker 1: to make sure to get the pederal Nothing is impossible.
1:04:08
Speaker 1: With God, It's wonderful