Latest / The Hugh Hewitt Show: Highly Concentrated / Winning the A.I. race, El-Sayed and Talarico's latest faceplants

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Winning the A.I. race, El-Sayed and Talarico's latest faceplants · 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. Morning, glory,
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: and evening grace, America. I'm Hugh Hewitt. Thank you for
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: watching the program today. I'm going to dive right in
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: this hour into American politics with a future United States Senator,
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: I think, Michelle Tafoya. Michelle is running in the great
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  Speaker 1: state of Minnesota. We are on Minnesota air right now
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  Speaker 1: on AM 1280, The Patriot. We're up in Duluth, throughout
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  Speaker 1: West as well. So, Michelle, welcome back. Let's start with
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  Speaker 1: the fact that a poll came out today. It says
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  Speaker 1: you're down one point, which is a statistical noise, and
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: that the Libertarians got 2% and undecided at 14. This
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: is fabulous news. Peggy Flanagan, your ultra-left-wing opponent, must be scared.
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  Speaker 1: How do you feel about this?
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  Speaker 2: Well, maybe she is. We are trying to set up
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  Speaker 2: some debates. We don't know if she's going to show,
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  Speaker 2: but we'll be there regardless. We feel great. Our message
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  Speaker 2: is resonating. Peggy Flanagan has been in office for 20
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  Speaker 2: years in some way, shape or form. We taxpayers in
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  Speaker 2: Minnesota have been paying her paycheck. And for the last
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  Speaker 2: eight years, she has been Tim Walz's right hand and
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  Speaker 2: the state is on the brink of collapse. We've had fraud.
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  Speaker 2: We've had test scores decline in a state that prizes education.
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  Speaker 2: And we've had crime go up. So she's had her chance, Hugh.
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  Speaker 2: Peggy Flanagan, and many people now like to call her
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  Speaker 2: Peggy Fraudigan, has had her opportunity, and it's failing. It's
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  Speaker 2: not sustainable. It's taken us backwards. People are ready for change.
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  Speaker 2: And I want to just point out that in those polls,
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  Speaker 2: I think we're up among independents by like 11 points.
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  Speaker 2: So we feel very good.
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  Speaker 1: I had on former Governor Pawlenty yesterday a different topic.
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  Speaker 1: But at the end of it, I just threw out, look,
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  Speaker 1: you're a moderate guy from Minnesota. You won. What do
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: you think about Michelle Tafon? I said, I think this
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  Speaker 1: is the first time we've had a good, honestly great
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  Speaker 1: shot in Minnesota for a long time. And so obviously
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  Speaker 1: suburban voters matter a great deal. What are you saying
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  Speaker 1: to them? What matters to them? You'll get the rural
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  Speaker 1: people on the gun vote because Peggy Flanagan wants to
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  Speaker 1: drive around, pick up their guns. But what about the
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  Speaker 1: suburban people?
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  Speaker 2: It's amazing. I just came from a meeting. It was
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  Speaker 2: a two-hour sort of forum. Myself and our gubernatorial candidate,
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  Speaker 2: Lisa Damoth, were sitting and talking to suburban women. I
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  Speaker 2: think there might have been three men there, but these
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  Speaker 2: women had great questions. And a lot of them they
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  Speaker 2: just found out things. They said to us afterwards, wow,
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  Speaker 2: I learned a lot today. It's a point of really
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  Speaker 2: just hammering these things home to them and they understand.
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  Speaker 2: So we feel good about the independence. Again, I'll just
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  Speaker 2: use this anecdotal. We were at the state fair, had
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  Speaker 2: hundreds and hundreds of people come by our booth. Peggy
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  Speaker 2: Flanagan didn't have a booth.
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  Speaker 1: We did.
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  Speaker 2: We were there every day. And we talked to voters.
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  Speaker 1: She didn't.
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  Speaker 2: So we were there every day. We talked to voters
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  Speaker 2: and We had Democrats come to us and say for
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  Speaker 2: the first time, I'm thinking of voting out of my
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  Speaker 2: party because my party doesn't resemble what it once was.
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  Speaker 2: And I hear that a lot, Hugh. So we're going
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  Speaker 2: to continue to send our message out there.
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  Speaker 1: I'm sort of astonished, and this is a little inside
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  Speaker 1: baseball for our AM1280, the Patriot, and our other Minnesota listeners.
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  Speaker 1: I've been to the Minnesota Fair and broadcast from there
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  Speaker 1: a dozen times over 27 years. And it's a thing.
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  Speaker 1: I mean, Al Franken would show up on the corner.
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  Speaker 1: I'd chat with Al and Norm would be on the
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  Speaker 1: other corner. Why is Peggy Flanagan? Does she have something
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  Speaker 1: against cows?
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  Speaker 2: Well, I think she made an appearance on the first day,
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  Speaker 2: so she checked that box. But for me, it was
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  Speaker 2: about talking to voters. And again, I'll just throw this out.
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  Speaker 2: I went and did a radio interview at the fair
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  Speaker 2: and the host told me he had booked her, too,
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  Speaker 2: but she backed out. She backed out. I think that
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  Speaker 2: it's very tough for her to run from her record
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  Speaker 2: right now, Hugh. And if people are going to come
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  Speaker 2: question her on the fraud, she doesn't have good answers.
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  Speaker 2: If they're going to question her on law and order,
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  Speaker 2: she doesn't have good answers. If they're going to question
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  Speaker 2: her on social issues that are infecting our kids' classrooms
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  Speaker 2: here in Minnesota, she doesn't have good answers. And I
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  Speaker 2: think she knows that. So her whole line of attack
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  Speaker 2: is going to be just trying to find something to
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  Speaker 2: attach me to someone that she thinks is a boogeyman.
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  Speaker 2: And that's going to be it. We're going to continue
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  Speaker 2: to promote this message that better days are ahead for
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  Speaker 2: Minnesota if we can get this right.
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  Speaker 1: Now, Michelle, how is she attacking you? She's got the
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  Speaker 1: fraud connection. I'll come back to that. But you are
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  Speaker 1: a fresh face. You have no ties to anybody. You're
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  Speaker 1: not a George W. Bush Republican. You're not a Donald
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  Speaker 1: Trump Republican. You're Michelle Taflea. You're new to politics. How
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  Speaker 1: does she possibly attack an NFL broadcasting pro and a
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  Speaker 1: professional woman of 30 years? How do they come after you?
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  Speaker 2: She's going to try to attach me to Trump in
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  Speaker 2: any way she possibly can. And to her, I would say,
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  Speaker 2: you know, there are two names on the ballot, Peggy.
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  Speaker 2: mine and yours, not Trump's. And only one of us
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  Speaker 2: lost $ 9 billion of our taxpayers' money. Only one of
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  Speaker 2: us allowed our schools to get to the point where 50%
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  Speaker 2: of our kids can't read at grade level, can't do
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  Speaker 2: math at grade level, and have taken 9-11 out of
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  Speaker 2: social studies. There are two of us on this ballot,
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  Speaker 2: and one of us can define a woman. So I
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  Speaker 2: think she, again, has a lot to answer for. She's
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  Speaker 2: going to try to attack me in any way she can,
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  Speaker 2: try to tie me to this current administration. But guess what?
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  Speaker 2: I will be the senator for the next six years.
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  Speaker 2: And no matter which party is in the White House,
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  Speaker 2: I will go after fraud. I will go after crime.
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  Speaker 2: I will support law enforcement. And I will try to
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  Speaker 2: boost our schools across America because we are getting schooled
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  Speaker 2: right now by other countries and other states.
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  Speaker 1: Let's talk about money. MichelleTofoya.com, small donors matter. And by
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  Speaker 1: the way, Peggy Flanagan is welcome to come on to
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  Speaker 1: this program. I'm not obliged to invite her on, but
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  Speaker 1: she is welcome to come on anytime for as much
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  Speaker 1: time as she would like. I will ask her the
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  Speaker 1: same question I'm about to ask you. Is the fraud
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  Speaker 1: issue resolved? Do people in Minnesota believe that the fraud
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  Speaker 1: issue has been fixed?
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  Speaker 2: No, they don't because it hasn't. I mean, we've only
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  Speaker 2: seen the tip of the iceberg, just the feeding our
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  Speaker 2: futures scandal issue. has had the most arrests and people
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  Speaker 2: put in jail or prison, and probably not for as
• 6:47
  Speaker 2: long as they deserve. So as someone put it, their
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  Speaker 2: return on investment is pretty good. If you only have
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  Speaker 2: to spend six months in jail after you stole a
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  Speaker 2: million dollars and the million dollars has been shipped overseas,
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  Speaker 2: that's You know, people are going to be willing to
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  Speaker 2: do that. So, no, this has not been resolved. And
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  Speaker 2: I know there's more coming. And I think most importantly,
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  Speaker 2: what I hear from voters around the state is that
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  Speaker 2: who is being held accountable? I mean, yeah, Tim Walz said, OK,
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  Speaker 2: I guess I won't run for governor for a third term,
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  Speaker 2: but he hasn't fired anybody. And every commissioner who's been
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  Speaker 2: in office overseeing this disaster of trying to steward people's
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  Speaker 2: money and instead giving it to criminals is and hollowing
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  Speaker 2: out these very important social programs that we agree these
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  Speaker 2: are important programs, but not if they're not getting funded,
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  Speaker 2: not if the money is bypassing the programs and going
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  Speaker 2: into the hands of criminals. We know this is continuing.
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  Speaker 2: And so far it's been the feds, Hugh, who have
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  Speaker 2: come in and really dug this out. Well, the feds
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  Speaker 2: and the kid from California, Nick Shirley, who just brought
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  Speaker 2: an iPhone to the Quality Learing Center and woke up
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  Speaker 2: everybody to the fact that this was going on. But
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  Speaker 2: it has not been resolved.
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  Speaker 1: Talk to me a little bit about finances because, as
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  Speaker 1: I said, MichelleTafoya.com for small donors. But have you begun
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  Speaker 1: to see the groups come in? I know you can
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  Speaker 1: coordinate now with Senator Thune and the NRSC. Have you
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  Speaker 1: begun to see it? It's a fairly expensive state because
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  Speaker 1: the Twin Cities is expensive and you've got to cover it.
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  Speaker 1: I think you've got to use North Dakota stations. Duluth
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  Speaker 1: has got a media market. How do you cover the
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  Speaker 1: state that's so big?
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  Speaker 2: Listen, small dollars matter. And I have been just overwhelmed
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  Speaker 2: because I get to look at what comes in and
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  Speaker 2: I see people donating five bucks. I have someone, you know,
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  Speaker 2: come up to the fair and give us a $ 10
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  Speaker 2: bill and say, this is my contribution. That is moving
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  Speaker 2: to me. That is, that means as much to me
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  Speaker 2: as any contribution could possibly mean, because these are people
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  Speaker 2: that want to save this state from the direction that
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  Speaker 2: it's going. But yes, the NRSC has been in from
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  Speaker 2: the very beginning. Tim Scott endorsed me right when I
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  Speaker 2: got into the race. I'm proud of that. We have
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  Speaker 2: some big names coming to the state of Minnesota in
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  Speaker 2: the future. I don't want to get ahead of those
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  Speaker 2: and announce them before everything's set in stone. But we've
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  Speaker 2: had some great fundraisers. We've had some great endorsements. I'm
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  Speaker 2: endorsed by the Farm Bureau of Minnesota. Peggy Flanagan is not.
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  Speaker 2: I'm endorsed by the Minnesota Peace and Police Officers Association.
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  Speaker 2: Peggy Flanagan is not. I'm endorsed by the Minneapolis Federation
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  Speaker 2: of Police. Peggy Flanagan is not. So we're very proud
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  Speaker 2: not only of those endorsements, but of the finances, the financial,
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  Speaker 2: the funds that we have raised. And we're going to
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  Speaker 2: continue to do that because in order to defeat the Democrats,
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  Speaker 2: you got to be well funded. That's just the bottom line.
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  Speaker 2: It's it's you know, there's the world as it is
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  Speaker 2: here in the world as we wish it would be.
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  Speaker 2: The world as it is means campaigns cost money.
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  Speaker 1: And you're going to need volunteers on Election Day. Minnesota
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  Speaker 1: Progressive Farm Labor Party, they have a way with ballots.
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  Speaker 1: That's all I'm going to say. And so you're going
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  Speaker 1: to need some volunteers watching that. I'm sure when you
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  Speaker 1: got the $ 10 bill at the fair, you had staff
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  Speaker 1: ready to fill out the contribution form. I'm sure you're compliant.
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  Speaker 2: They did.
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  Speaker 3: They did.
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  Speaker 1: Absolutely. But do you have a good volunteer base to
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  Speaker 1: help you on Election Day, not only get out the vote,
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  Speaker 1: but to watch the polls?
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, we do. And we're thrilled about that. Anyone that
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  Speaker 2: wants to volunteer should go to the website. There's a
• 10:06
  Speaker 2: volunteer link there. If you want to be involved, please do.
• 10:09
  Speaker 2: We're hearing from a lot of people. It's really, truly humbling, Hugh,
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  Speaker 2: to be involved in this and to be a part
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  Speaker 2: of what Minnesota feels is a need for drastic change.
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  Speaker 2: And so I'm proud to be a part of that.
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  Speaker 2: And anyone that wants to support us with any amount
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  Speaker 2: of money is welcome. And we'll see you on MichelleTafoya.com.
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  Speaker 2: So thanks for that little plug.
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: MichelleTafoya.com. Follow her at Michelle underscore Tafoya, but the website
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: is just her name, MichelleTafoya.com. Thank you, Michelle. We'll talk
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: again soon. Don't go anywhere, America. Welcome back, America. Just
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: this past week, I was in California recommending Ruthless Podcast
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: on my left, Ruthless Podcast on my right. I'm telling
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: all my friends, listen to Ruthless Podcast. I'm going down
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: to Great Clips, getting my hair cut today. I'm listening
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: to Tuesday edition of the Ruthless Podcast, and I almost
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: drive off the road because it turns out that the
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: fellows were in Texas for the convention, and they got
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: Shanghai down to Austin. And they participated. They went through
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: the Longhorn Tunnel, and they participated in firing the Longhorn Cannon.
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: They were part of the debacle. And Josh Holmes, the
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: leader of the gang, you are, I think you've heard
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: of suborning perjury, Josh? You have suborned football treason. Because
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: Johnny Ashbrook is a Buckeye, and he was involved in this.
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: And we have the tape, I think. Oh, no. There's tape.
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: There's tape. Well.
• 11:45
  Speaker 4: Look, let me first of all say, in Johnny's defense,
• 11:48
  Speaker 4: he looked a little out of place because he didn't
• 11:50
  Speaker 4: wear any longhorn colors. Now, the rest of us, of course,
• 11:54
  Speaker 4: when you're given such an offer, you want to be
• 11:56
  Speaker 4: generous to somebody who's generous to you. We all wore
• 11:59
  Speaker 4: the gear that the governor would prefer, and we enjoyed
• 12:03
  Speaker 4: ourselves on the sidelines.
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  Speaker 5: An incredible offer. But Johnny went incognito. He wore neutral colors.
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  Speaker 1: You are not now, nor have you ever been a prosecutor,
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: have you? The fact that you're not wearing the gear
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: does not actually get you out of the crime when
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: we have the pictures at the cannon. It doesn't work.
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: Did he say to anybody, maybe I should, if I
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: ever want to go to Skyline Chili again, maybe I
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: should move over here?
• 12:31
  Speaker 4: Well, he did have, I think he had a frown
• 12:33
  Speaker 4: on his face when we stood at the 50-yard line
• 12:35
  Speaker 4: after the victory.
• 12:37
  Speaker 5: For whatever that's worth.
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: Maybe a.
• 12:39
  Speaker 4: Maybe a mitigating circumstance and sentencing for what you're talking
• 12:44
  Speaker 4: about here.
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: He should have been flat on his back like I was.
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: He should have been prostate like all of Ohio. That
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: was a heck of a game to go to. You
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: are now a curse. It is the ruthless curse. And
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: I'm afraid.
• 12:59
  Speaker 5: Think of it the opposite way, though, Hugh.
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  Speaker 6: You can think about it.
• 13:02
  Speaker 5: Look, let this be a lesson to all the red
• 13:04
  Speaker 5: state governors out there. You got a real big game.
• 13:07
  Speaker 5: You got all the celebrities in town. You got a
• 13:11
  Speaker 5: bunch of stuff. You know, it's a whole the weight
• 13:13
  Speaker 5: of the world on your shoulders. You really got to deliver.
• 13:17
  Speaker 4: Why not just invite the Ruthless Variety program down there
• 13:20
  Speaker 4: just to make sure things turn out OK?
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: OK, that's a good spin. As my friend, my Democratic friend,
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: Mark Darin, would say whenever I came up with an answer,
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: it's a good spin. Good spin. That might work. That
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: might work. But I don't think they're going to be
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: inviting you to Ohio this year. That's for sure.
• 13:36
  Speaker 7: Uh.
• 13:36
  Speaker 8: josh really should they should you went to the convention
• 13:41
  Speaker 8: tell me about whether or not you said i'm michelle
• 13:45
  Speaker 8: to play she got a new bullshit down one in
• 13:47
  Speaker 8: a new poll in the coefficient and she's close in
• 13:50
  Speaker 8: other polls do you think that's doable i mean we
• 13:53
  Speaker 8: have a one said norm coleman in minnesota what do
• 13:55
  Speaker 8: you think but.
• 13:57
  Speaker 4: I was on that campaign with norm call you are
• 13:59
  Speaker 4: my one and only minnesota campaign i was on.
• 14:01
  Speaker 5: It in two thousand two uh.
• 14:04
  Speaker 4: And I will say I've been critical of my Minnesota
• 14:06
  Speaker 4: Republican friends for years because of their inability to nominate
• 14:10
  Speaker 4: a candidate who can simultaneously persuade folks in that third district.
• 14:14
  Speaker 4: It's kind of a suburban Minneapolis district at the same
• 14:17
  Speaker 4: time of unifying that new Trump coalition that has taken
• 14:20
  Speaker 4: over the Iron Range, the western part of the state,
• 14:23
  Speaker 4: southern part of the state, Rochester and everywhere else.
• 14:26
  Speaker 5: They have not been able to do that.
• 14:27
  Speaker 4: They've focused on a whole bunch of candidates that can captivate.
• 14:31
  Speaker 4: certain elements of it, but that third district in particular
• 14:34
  Speaker 4: has been elusive. She is the first and best candidate
• 14:38
  Speaker 4: that Minnesota has– Republicans have nominated since 2002. And if
• 14:45
  Speaker 4: it's doable, only she can do it. Now, you've got
• 14:49
  Speaker 4: a ton of headwinds, a bad environment, a historical problem
• 14:52
  Speaker 4: in both Minnesota and midterms when you're in control. All
• 14:56
  Speaker 4: that being said, it is a very real race, Hugh.
• 14:59
  Speaker 4: And I think the Democrats should be petrified about what
• 15:02
  Speaker 4: happens if you give this lady the microphone.
• 15:04
  Speaker 5: She is captivating.
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: She's terrific. We have three candidates, we being Republicans, in Tafoya,
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: Susan Collins, and John Sununu, who are independent of President Trump.
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: I don't think you can merge those brands. You can't
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: attach Donald Trump to those three candidates. It's a little
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: bit easier with Ashley Henson and John Husted. Races we
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: have to win, and I think we feel pretty good.
• 15:29
  Speaker 1: It's very easy in Texas, but that's just going to be–
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: they have to close the Alamo if Tallarico wins. What
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: do you think of our three non-Trump-aligned candidates in the
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: upper parts of the country?
• 15:42
  Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean, first of all, Susan Collins' brand speaks
• 15:45
  Speaker 5: for itself. She's got a whole closet full of skeletons
• 15:48
  Speaker 5: of the demise.
• 15:50
  Speaker 4: Of political opponents who thought they were a shoe-in to
• 15:53
  Speaker 4: defeat her over the years.
• 15:54
  Speaker 5: She's a tough campaigner.
• 15:55
  Speaker 4: I think she showed that in a couple of interviews
• 15:57
  Speaker 4: that she did where she was– Talking about how she's
• 15:59
  Speaker 4: certainly not going to bring up the fact that her
• 16:02
  Speaker 4: opponent has children with their second cousin.
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: Cousin Troy.
• 16:05
  Speaker 4: She is– I mean she's really, really good and has
• 16:10
  Speaker 4: been forever. Also a perfect ideological fit for Maine if
• 16:13
  Speaker 4: you think about it. Michelle, first time on the scene,
• 16:17
  Speaker 4: but incredibly impressive, incredibly polished, and doing it for all
• 16:21
  Speaker 4: the right reasons. If you're going to elect somebody– to
• 16:24
  Speaker 4: break the mold of what Minnesota has been dealing with,
• 16:27
  Speaker 4: with the fraud, the corruption, the just mismanagement of the state.
• 16:31
  Speaker 4: I think she's perfect for that. And then what was
• 16:35
  Speaker 4: the third one that you mentioned?
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: Sanunu. Oh, Sanunu.
• 16:38
  Speaker 4: So we've been talking about New Hampshire for three months,
• 16:42
  Speaker 4: and I know you have too, but not really many
• 16:44
  Speaker 4: other people in national media have, in large part because
• 16:47
  Speaker 4: I think it benefits him at some level to keep
• 16:50
  Speaker 4: this thing a little bit under the radar. so Democrats
• 16:52
  Speaker 4: don't just all scramble and throw all their.
• 16:54
  Speaker 5: Money into New Hampshire. But you've got a couple of
• 16:56
  Speaker 5: things happening.
• 16:57
  Speaker 4: Kelly Ayotte up there, very, very popular, gubernatorial, on the ballot,
• 17:03
  Speaker 4: coupled with the name, the brand of Sununu, and himself,
• 17:08
  Speaker 4: who is just an independent thinker, somebody who fits the
• 17:11
  Speaker 4: ideological mold of New Hampshire.
• 17:13
  Speaker 5: And Democrats are sleeping on this bad boy.
• 17:16
  Speaker 4: I mean, they're spending all of their time talking about
• 17:19
  Speaker 4: Ossoff in Georgia or Tallarico or El Sayed in Michigan,
• 17:24
  Speaker 4: they're sleeping on this situation.
• 17:26
  Speaker 5: I think he snuck up on them.
• 17:27
  Speaker 4: And now you're kind of within the window where if
• 17:29
  Speaker 4: that campaign is adequately resourced, that literally could save the
• 17:34
  Speaker 4: majority for Republicans in the Senate.
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: All right. We've got a minute, Josh. Alaska is so small.
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: I don't know anything about Dan Sullivan is a grade
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: A candidate. five-star recruit senator who protects Alaska and the
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: national security and does so with intelligence and charm. But
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: Alaska's rules are so weird. How do you win there?
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: Do you just have to go door to door and
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: talk to 300,000 people?
• 18:00
  Speaker 5: Yeah, ground game's really important.
• 18:01
  Speaker 4: You can't underestimate the intelligence of the Alaska electorate. You
• 18:05
  Speaker 4: recall a decade, more than a decade ago, when Lisa
• 18:08
  Speaker 4: Murkowski won a write-in campaign.
• 18:12
  Speaker 9: And it required all of her voters to spell her
• 18:17
  Speaker 9: name correctly on a ballot in order to defeat the
• 18:21
  Speaker 9: nominees of the Democrat and the Republican Party.
• 18:23
  Speaker 4: And they did it and they did it with a margin.
• 18:26
  Speaker 4: Democrats have tried some sneaky stuff here. Put another Dan
• 18:29
  Speaker 4: Sullivan on the ballot. Pretend like he's a Republican despite
• 18:32
  Speaker 4: a lifelong record as a Democrat.
• 18:34
  Speaker 5: I don't think they appreciate that.
• 18:36
  Speaker 4: And I think they're a lot more tuned in than
• 18:38
  Speaker 4: the national media is giving them credit for. I expect
• 18:42
  Speaker 4: Sullivan to win this thing, but I expect Democrats to
• 18:44
  Speaker 4: throw absolutely every monkey wrench into it to try to
• 18:48
  Speaker 4: defeat him.
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: Thank you, Josh Holmes. And please tell your partner, Mr. Ashbrook,
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: he better go to Vivek and talk pardon now. Because
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: that was a stunner. That was an absolute stunner.
• 19:04
  Speaker 4: Let it be a message to all the governors.
• 19:07
  Speaker 6: Invite us. You win.
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: It's easy. Hadn't thought about that, but you're right. Just
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: got to pick it. Just got to pick your games well.
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: Josh Holmes, good to follow you, friend. Holmes Josh on X,
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: the Ruthless podcast. Should be a must-listen every day. Stay tuned, America.
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: Welcome back, America. I'm Hugh Hewitt. That music means David
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: Drucker is in the house. David, of course, senior writer
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: for The Dispatch. David, an hour ago, Van Jones, widely
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: admired on both the left and the right, though he's
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: a lefty. wrote an impassioned plea for the government to
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: do something on AI. It's the tailwind of the AI
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: bubble that I think has blown over and blown up
• 19:47
  Speaker 1: over the weekend. But what did you make of this
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: push to please, please regulate us from big AI?
• 19:57
  Speaker 10: Well, you know, we have a history in this country
• 20:00
  Speaker 10: of big business requesting government regulation so that they can
• 20:04
  Speaker 10: be grandfathered in to the rules and have all the
• 20:07
  Speaker 10: advantages and keep out future competition.
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: So there's that.
• 20:12
  Speaker 10: I also think that given the public's concern about artificial intelligence, Hugh, and,
• 20:17
  Speaker 10: I mean, it is a huge political brush fire out
• 20:19
  Speaker 10: there on the right and the left.
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: I've experienced it.
• 20:22
  Speaker 10: I've talked to voters, Republican and Democrat, who will show
• 20:25
  Speaker 10: up at town halls and rallies and, like, what's your
• 20:28
  Speaker 10: number one issue? It's AI and data centers. And they're
• 20:32
  Speaker 10: trying to inoculate themselves. I think these firms– from public blowback.
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: See, we're just following the rules.
• 20:37
  Speaker 10: Don't get mad at us. What I would say politically
• 20:42
  Speaker 10: is I wouldn't discount this as an issue that is
• 20:44
  Speaker 10: driving voters. It's just not your typical left-right or right-left issue,
• 20:49
  Speaker 10: and so it's hard to say how it's going to
• 20:51
  Speaker 10: play out, and I think it could play out differently
• 20:54
  Speaker 10: in different races, meaning I think there are some races
• 20:56
  Speaker 10: where it might help a Democrat, and there are some
• 20:58
  Speaker 10: races where it might help a Republican, and there are
• 21:00
  Speaker 10: some races where it might cancel itself out, but It's
• 21:05
  Speaker 10: really this huge issue.
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: Well, I divide it into two. Data centers are there
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: because we are producing a lot of data, and it's
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: got to go somewhere, and I'd rather it be stored
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: in the United States that produces jobs and revenue. AI,
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: the end-of-the-world stuff, I'm not buying it, and I'm not
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: buying the need to rush in because there is a
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: Senate Intelligence Committee and a House Intelligence Committee that seems
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: to me the natural place to go in and discuss
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: whether or not you stand up a new regulatory framework.
• 21:36
  Speaker 1: But going slowly is a feature, not a bug, of
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: our legal system, David Drucker. What do you make of
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: the demand that they go fast? Because that's just counterintuitive
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: to me.
• 21:47
  Speaker 10: Well, I agree with you that going slow is a feature,
• 21:51
  Speaker 10: not a bug. And I'd say I think it's a feature,
• 21:54
  Speaker 10: not a bug, of our Constitution and the government and
• 21:58
  Speaker 10: the fact that it takes so long to get anything
• 22:00
  Speaker 10: meaningful done. I mean, that's kind of the point.
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: Remember some years.
• 22:04
  Speaker 10: Back, California rushed into electricity derag. I'm not arguing against
• 22:08
  Speaker 10: derag here, but they rushed and they made a lot
• 22:10
  Speaker 10: of mistakes. I'd say the other side of that, though,
• 22:15
  Speaker 10: let's say that it turns out it's important for the
• 22:18
  Speaker 10: government to do something at some point, like to reach
• 22:21
  Speaker 10: a conclusion after careful and methodical deliberation. Over the past
• 22:26
  Speaker 10: 25 years, the U.S. government, meaning the Congress and the
• 22:30
  Speaker 10: executive branch, has shown a real inability to tackle big
• 22:35
  Speaker 10: issues and reach a consensus of some sort. And, you know,
• 22:40
  Speaker 10: some people might say, well, we're better off for that. But, look,
• 22:42
  Speaker 10: I remember going through this with cybersecurity during the Obama
• 22:46
  Speaker 10: administration where both Republicans and Democrats felt this, you know,
• 22:49
  Speaker 10: new emerging danger of threats from foreign adversaries, cyber attacks
• 22:56
  Speaker 10: and the like required some sort of regulatory regime and
• 22:59
  Speaker 10: some sort of legislation that helped protect us. They could
• 23:02
  Speaker 10: never get anywhere, even though they all agreed it was
• 23:03
  Speaker 10: a problem and something needed to be done. So there are,
• 23:06
  Speaker 10: I guess, two ways to look at this.
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: So I guess the backdrop, we were wrong about COVID,
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: we being the federal government. We were wrong about the
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: housing collapse and the Great Recession. We were wrong about
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: WMD in Iraq. We were wrong. I mean, you can
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: keep going backwards as far as you want. They're often wrong,
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: very rarely right. They can occasionally do a Social Security
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: reform with Pat Moynihan and things like that. But who
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: has credibility? I mean, if you had four people stand
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: up and say, we're going to go to work on this,
• 23:36
  Speaker 1: the way that Susan Collins and Marco Rubio and a
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: couple of Democrats got together and did the Payroll Protection Act,
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: are there four people in the House and the Senate
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: that you would trust to come up with a decent
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: AI regulatory framework?
• 23:51
  Speaker 10: Well, I mean, look, first I'd have to take a
• 23:53
  Speaker 10: look at expertise and staff and qualifications. I think there
• 23:56
  Speaker 10: are members with credibility, right? I think of Senator Tom Cotton.
• 24:00
  Speaker 10: who's a very thoughtful legislator and thinks deeply about policy.
• 24:08
  Speaker 10: I think Mark Warner, the Democratic senator from Virginia, also
• 24:13
  Speaker 10: thinks deeply, and he's not a lefty per se. He's
• 24:17
  Speaker 10: very liberal, but he's a Democrat, but he's very thoughtful
• 24:20
  Speaker 10: on intelligence matters. In the House, there are a few
• 24:25
  Speaker 10: that I could think of as well that have this
• 24:28
  Speaker 10: sort of framework as legislators and approach that I think,
• 24:35
  Speaker 10: you know, would be worth letting them explore something. But,
• 24:37
  Speaker 10: you know, we have to see who these people are,
• 24:41
  Speaker 10: what the process would be. But I think some of
• 24:43
  Speaker 10: them exist, not as many as there used to be
• 24:45
  Speaker 10: right now, but they're still there.
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: Yeah, the Senate Intel Committee and the House Intel Committee
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: together are 42 members. It's a select committee. They're put
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: on by the leaders. Typically, those people are have the
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: respect of their own caucus and not a little bit
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: of respect from the other caucus, and they're smart. That's
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: typically the case. All right, there's going to be a
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: worse member of the 42, but you just mentioned Warner
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: and Cotton. They're the minority ranking and chairman of the committee, respectively.
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: I think it ought to go there, and I think
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: they ought to go to the skiff and talk about it,
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: but that's it. Other than that, I just don't buy
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: it from these folks, and I'm not going to I'm
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: not going to be panicked into saying free enterprise won't
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: sort this out. And by the way, the Chinese aren't
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: slowing down. Last word to you, David.
• 25:32
  Speaker 10: Look, I'm not necessarily arguing here, but just to make
• 25:34
  Speaker 10: it interesting, sometimes there are issues where the public is
• 25:38
  Speaker 10: so up in arms that politicians are in the service business,
• 25:42
  Speaker 10: and they at least have to show voters that they're
• 25:46
  Speaker 10: heeding the concerns being expressed to them. and just dismissing
• 25:50
  Speaker 10: it as this doesn't need to be done because of X, Y,
• 25:54
  Speaker 10: and Z is often insufficient. You can eventually say, listen,
• 25:59
  Speaker 10: here's why we should go slow, here's how I looked
• 26:01
  Speaker 10: into it, here was the research, here's what we've discovered,
• 26:04
  Speaker 10: and here's what we're monitoring. So you can show concern
• 26:07
  Speaker 10: without doing something drastic, but you can't dismiss it or
• 26:10
  Speaker 10: voters get very upset.
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: I think you're right. That's why I would say the
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: Senate Intelligence Committee is getting their staff ready. They will
• 26:18
  Speaker 1: be taking classified testimony from everyone who's got a fear.
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: We'll talk to this kid who came out of nowhere
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: and had a rollout, and we'll find out whether or
• 26:25
  Speaker 1: not that rollout was orchestrated, and we'll get to the
• 26:28
  Speaker 1: bottom of it. I imagine the dispatch will get there first.
• 26:31
  Speaker 1: David M. Drucker, follow him on X, read him in
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: the dispatch. Thank you, my friend. Don't go anywhere, America.
• 26:36
  Speaker 1: I'll be right back. Coming up next, our Brett Baer
• 26:39
  Speaker 1: is going to join me, former national security advisor. Robert C.
• 26:42
  Speaker 1: O'Brien will be along, Byron York. Matt Continetti in Hour 3.
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: We've got so much more ahead. Don't go anywhere. You're
• 26:47
  Speaker 1: listening to the Tuesday edition of The Hugh Hewitt Show. Morning, Lauren.
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: You've been great. It's America. I'm Hugh Hewitt. One issue
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: has dominated the last 96 hours in America, and it
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: is not the Ohio State lost to Texas, though that
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: did take up a lot of time. It is whether
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: or not the AI acceleration threatens all of humanity. One
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: program has dove in deep, and that is Special Report.
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: The host of Special Report, Brett Baird, joins me now. Brett,
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: after last night's program, which I ended up watching in
• 27:18
  Speaker 1: many segments over the course of them being posted, you
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: heard from everybody. What's your take on this right now?
• 27:25
  Speaker 1: Are we facing Y2K 2.0, or is it the nuclear
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: age dawning?
• 27:32
  Speaker 3: Listen, I think trying to get to the bottom of that,
• 27:36
  Speaker 3: I think– From my perspective, just looking at it, it's
• 27:39
  Speaker 3: somewhere in between. But there is real concern, you know,
• 27:44
  Speaker 3: and there's real concern from the leaders of these companies
• 27:48
  Speaker 3: and from others who have seen this technology. And you
• 27:52
  Speaker 3: have to trust that they're in good faith saying what
• 27:55
  Speaker 3: they're seeing. But there's also a lot of skepticism about
• 27:59
  Speaker 3: the motivation behind this kind of what seems like an
• 28:02
  Speaker 3: orchestrated push to slow down. And there is skepticism about
• 28:07
  Speaker 3: why these company heads are not slowing down themselves or self-regulating.
• 28:13
  Speaker 3: And then there's the president who believes that we as
• 28:16
  Speaker 3: a country cannot lose to China in this race. And
• 28:19
  Speaker 3: then there are the Chinese who are coming in next
• 28:22
  Speaker 3: week and have already signaled that they want AI to
• 28:25
  Speaker 3: be a part of the agenda. on this summit with
• 28:30
  Speaker 3: President Trump. So, you know, I think there's somewhere in between,
• 28:35
  Speaker 3: and you don't have to get to Terminator 2 to
• 28:41
  Speaker 3: have concerns about, you know, self-assured and self-knowledge AI that
• 28:49
  Speaker 3: can do its own thing. There are a lot of
• 28:51
  Speaker 3: stories and various stories about that.
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: So you talked to the co-founder of Anthropic. who is Dario,
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: their other co-founder, made the big push, opened it up
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: with the open letter before Altman and Elon Musk came
• 29:04
  Speaker 1: in behind him. And he went to the, I've got
• 29:07
  Speaker 1: kids and I'm worried. Well, I've got grandkids and I'm
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: worried that we not fall behind the Chinese. I'm kind
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: of a skeptic of going fast on this, Brett. Actually,
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: I'm a big skeptic because we didn't see 9-11 coming.
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: We were wrong on WMD. We didn't see the Great Recession.
• 29:23
  Speaker 1: Obamacare didn't work. COVID was screwed up. I mean, who
• 29:27
  Speaker 1: do you trust? I mean, I kind of like Cotton
• 29:30
  Speaker 1: and Warner. If they kick this over to the Intel Committee,
• 29:33
  Speaker 1: I think they'll be serious about it. But there aren't
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: a lot of people to trust anymore.
• 29:38
  Speaker 3: That's true. And, you know, on Capitol Hill. they're not
• 29:40
  Speaker 3: exactly ai experts um and there's there's a lot of
• 29:45
  Speaker 3: uh knowledge that has yet to um you know be
• 29:49
  Speaker 3: realized up on capitol hill when it comes to this
• 29:52
  Speaker 3: issue uh I don't think, you know, I think for
• 29:56
  Speaker 3: the people who think that government is not great when
• 29:59
  Speaker 3: it comes to regulations, you know, there's a track record
• 30:04
  Speaker 3: there that skepticism about how the government handles overseeing some
• 30:09
  Speaker 3: of this stuff. It seems like it should come from
• 30:12
  Speaker 3: the company up. And that's what many Republicans are saying.
• 30:15
  Speaker 11: I hear the president.
• 30:18
  Speaker 3: He likes to use the word hoax. I think that
• 30:21
  Speaker 3: that's a little black and white because there clearly are
• 30:25
  Speaker 3: people in this industry who are raising alarm bells. And
• 30:28
  Speaker 3: it's not just one company. It's several. And it's Google.
• 30:33
  Speaker 3: It's Microsoft. It's others who say we need to make
• 30:39
  Speaker 3: sure we have controls here. You have to be able
• 30:42
  Speaker 3: to pull the plug. You don't have to slow down progress.
• 30:46
  Speaker 3: But there's got to be a fail safe, doesn't there?
• 30:49
  Speaker 1: I think they're done. Brett, let me ask you about
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: the language of the tech titans. If I hear control
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: the weights one more time by a tech person who
• 30:57
  Speaker 1: doesn't bother to explain to the average smart American what
• 31:00
  Speaker 1: the hell they're talking about, do you find that they
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: make an effort to try and talk to people where
• 31:05
  Speaker 1: they are, which is not in one of the frontier labs?
• 31:10
  Speaker 3: No, that's one of the reasons that this issue has
• 31:13
  Speaker 3: become such a political issue, I think, because they've done
• 31:17
  Speaker 3: such a horrible job of being out there on messaging,
• 31:20
  Speaker 3: especially on data centers and what it means to these communities.
• 31:25
  Speaker 3: I think there is some level of Chinese propaganda that
• 31:28
  Speaker 3: has flowed into TikTok and X and Instagram that has
• 31:33
  Speaker 3: made this, you know, not in my backyard, really prevalent.
• 31:37
  Speaker 3: much more than maybe it would have been. But some
• 31:40
  Speaker 3: of these communities that have hosted data centers are seeing
• 31:45
  Speaker 3: the benefits financially of no taxes, of a number of
• 31:50
  Speaker 3: different financial benefits as well as benefits to the community.
• 31:55
  Speaker 3: Others are concerned about it, and it crosses party lines.
• 31:59
  Speaker 3: I mean, you've got Republicans and Democrats.
• 32:01
  Speaker 1: I know you prep, prep, prep, prep, prep. I don't
• 32:03
  Speaker 1: know if you had a chance to listen to the
• 32:05
  Speaker 1: All In podcast on this or their interview of Jensen Wang.
• 32:08
  Speaker 1: One of the things they rate, I think it's the
• 32:10
  Speaker 1: most interesting issue, but I'm a lawyer, and for 30
• 32:12
  Speaker 1: years I've watched my corporate partners spend up all night
• 32:15
  Speaker 1: long getting ready for a prospectus for an IPO. Did
• 32:18
  Speaker 1: they just blow up their IPO? Did Anthropic just disclose
• 32:21
  Speaker 1: a risk that they can't quantify? I don't know how
• 32:23
  Speaker 1: you go to market having just disclosed that your company might,
• 32:28
  Speaker 1: destroy the world. Do you?
• 32:29
  Speaker 3: Yeah, totally agree. I totally agree. And I think it
• 32:35
  Speaker 3: has screwed up that. I mean, OpenAI is pushing back
• 32:39
  Speaker 3: its IPO. And, you know, that's one of the a
• 32:49
  Speaker 3: true concern or is it somehow manufactured? And, you know,
• 32:54
  Speaker 3: there's all these people that are out there. This is
• 32:55
  Speaker 3: a PSYOP and this is an operation. I think it's
• 32:58
  Speaker 3: somewhere in between. And I've got a common ground tonight
• 33:02
  Speaker 3: on a special report where we deal with this issue.
• 33:06
  Speaker 3: And I'll have bipartisan efforts with California Republican Congressman Jay
• 33:11
  Speaker 3: Obernolte and Massachusetts Democratic Congresswoman Lori Trahan, and they're both
• 33:16
  Speaker 3: knowledgeable on this issue and are trying to come up
• 33:18
  Speaker 3: with legislation that helps cross the parties on what's reasonable
• 33:25
  Speaker 3: and what's not. But a lot of Republicans are now,
• 33:28
  Speaker 3: including Speaker Johnson today, saying it needs to come from
• 33:31
  Speaker 3: the industry up.
• 33:35
  Speaker 1: Well, I would like, I think, I would like to
• 33:36
  Speaker 1: have Alex Karp in the room with Sam Altman talking
• 33:40
  Speaker 1: to each other as opposed to pass to each other.
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: Here's Jensen Wang yesterday at the All In podcast live broadcast,
• 33:46
  Speaker 1: cut number two.
• 33:47
  Speaker 12: We contribute to everybody else's success, which we're very proud of.
• 33:50
  Speaker 12: And so those kind of core values people are attracted to.
• 33:54
  Speaker 12: But when you come and work in our company, there
• 33:56
  Speaker 12: are also some things that we don't appreciate that you do.
• 33:59
  Speaker 13: Like, for example, we.
• 34:00
  Speaker 12: Don't welcome political discourse inside our company.
• 34:04
  Speaker 13: Take it home.
• 34:05
  Speaker 14: You guys talk about politics outside the company.
• 34:16
  Speaker 13: The company is an apolitical company.
• 34:18
  Speaker 1: We're bipartisan.
• 34:19
  Speaker 13: We want America to succeed.
• 34:22
  Speaker 12: And we want whatever government is in place, we'll do
• 34:28
  Speaker 12: everything in our power to help America succeed.
• 34:30
  Speaker 1: So, Brett, I want to play one more thing. I
• 34:32
  Speaker 1: want to take the middle part of that out, cut
• 34:34
  Speaker 1: number one, and have you comment on this.
• 34:40
  Speaker 13: The company is an apolitical company.
• 34:42
  Speaker 1: We're bipartisan.
• 34:43
  Speaker 13: We want America to succeed.
• 34:45
  Speaker 1: So my question, Brett, we want America to succeed. Does
• 34:48
  Speaker 1: that have a common meaning? You have common ground tonight.
• 34:51
  Speaker 1: Does that have a common meaning anymore, we want America
• 34:53
  Speaker 1: to succeed?
• 34:56
  Speaker 3: You know, you would think it does. You know, you
• 34:59
  Speaker 3: would think that there is a ground truth of what
• 35:02
  Speaker 3: success looks like, but it's not. and there is different
• 35:08
  Speaker 3: values attached to success from where you look and the
• 35:12
  Speaker 3: prism from which you stare through. I think these two
• 35:17
  Speaker 3: lawmakers are sensible as far as they've been studying this
• 35:20
  Speaker 3: issue for a long time. I'll see where they stand.
• 35:23
  Speaker 3: We think that this issue is one that everybody's talking
• 35:26
  Speaker 3: about at home because it affects their kids, it affects
• 35:29
  Speaker 3: what's happening in schools, it affects all kinds of things,
• 35:33
  Speaker 3: and You know, let's be honest. It's a little scary
• 35:38
  Speaker 3: about technology that we don't have an insight into.
• 35:42
  Speaker 1: Comprehensive coverage like you've been doing is terrific. Exit question,
• 35:46
  Speaker 1: drawing on your Pentagon days. The military chiefs of Israel,
• 35:49
  Speaker 1: the U.S., Saudi Arabia, UAE, Bahrain, Qatar, Jordan and Egypt
• 35:53
  Speaker 1: held a meeting in Germany last week. They're talking about
• 35:55
  Speaker 1: the Houthis. Do you think they can get their act together, Brett?
• 35:58
  Speaker 1: You know how complicated that relationship is between UAE and Saudi.
• 36:02
  Speaker 1: Do they have to get their act together?
• 36:05
  Speaker 4: They do.
• 36:05
  Speaker 3: I mean, this East-West strike on the Saudi pipeline, massive.
• 36:09
  Speaker 3: The fact that the Houthis are being as active as
• 36:11
  Speaker 3: they are. There was an attack, a firing on Mecca today.
• 36:17
  Speaker 3: The Saudis are apoplectic about the Houthi action. They've struck
• 36:21
  Speaker 3: Houthi sites 52 times in the past 24 hours, and
• 36:25
  Speaker 3: they're looking for the U.S. to step up. So I
• 36:29
  Speaker 3: think they have to get their regional act together, but
• 36:32
  Speaker 3: I wouldn't be surprised if the U.S.
• 36:33
  Speaker 1: Assists. Admiral Montgomery suggested the B-2s, each one of them
• 36:37
  Speaker 1: can carry 20 F-35 weight of bombs. Do you expect
• 36:41
  Speaker 1: our B-2s to fly, Brett?
• 36:45
  Speaker 3: If this continues at this level, this Houthi engagement, I
• 36:50
  Speaker 3: wouldn't be surprised.
• 36:51
  Speaker 1: I wouldn't be surprised either. Brett Baer will be watching
• 36:53
  Speaker 1: on Special Report tonight, 6 p.m. on the Fox News Channel,
• 36:56
  Speaker 1: comprehensive coverage of the AI debate as well as whatever
• 37:00
  Speaker 1: is going on in the Middle East tonight. I did
• 37:02
  Speaker 1: not know that the Houthis had fired on Mecca. That's
• 37:05
  Speaker 1: a pretty, that's a big deal. And I didn't know that.
• 37:09
  Speaker 1: Thank you, Brett. I'll be right back, America. Stay tuned.
• 37:12
  Speaker 1: are discussing ways Jerusalem could assist Riyadh in confronting Houthi
• 37:17
  Speaker 1: of Anthos towards the Bab el-Mandeb Strait. To discuss this,
• 37:21
  Speaker 1: I'm joined by former National Security Advisor to President Trump,
• 37:24
  Speaker 1: Ambassador Robert O'Brien. Good to have you back, Mr. Ambassador.
• 37:29
  Speaker 1: In the first Trump term... You met with MBZ, the
• 37:33
  Speaker 1: ruler of the Emirates, and with MBS, the ruler of
• 37:36
  Speaker 1: Saudi Arabia. Do you think those two can get back
• 37:39
  Speaker 1: together again on a Houthi strategy?
• 37:43
  Speaker 15: Well, I think so. It would make sense. They're natural allies.
• 37:47
  Speaker 15: They're basically cousins. Rivalries have maybe pushed them apart a
• 37:52
  Speaker 15: little bit, but they have the same long-term interest in
• 37:56
  Speaker 15: keeping a stable gulf. a stable region to export oil
• 38:00
  Speaker 15: to the world. And they have very, very, very common backgrounds.
• 38:05
  Speaker 15: So I think that they'll come together to defeat the Houthis.
• 38:09
  Speaker 15: And funny enough, with Israeli cooperation and with the U.S. cooperation,
• 38:15
  Speaker 15: I think that's very much in the cards.
• 38:18
  Speaker 1: Can the United States allow the Houthis to have control
• 38:22
  Speaker 1: of that strait? Even after we've won back control of
• 38:25
  Speaker 1: the Strait of Hormuz, can we afford to let that straight,
• 38:28
  Speaker 1: be under constant terrorist threat?
• 38:31
  Speaker 15: No, look, the Houthis are an arm of Iran. Plain
• 38:34
  Speaker 15: and simple, they're proxies of Iran, they're supplied by Iran,
• 38:37
  Speaker 15: their missiles come from Iran, their weapons come from Iran,
• 38:41
  Speaker 15: their tactics and doctrine come from Iran, their officers come
• 38:44
  Speaker 15: from Iran. So we're not going to allow the Houthis
• 38:48
  Speaker 15: to control that. We didn't go to all the expense
• 38:50
  Speaker 15: and hassle of securing the Strait of Hormuz only to
• 38:54
  Speaker 15: give the Iranians another choke point in the battle.
• 38:58
  Speaker 1: Okay, now I want to switch to AI, and I
• 39:01
  Speaker 1: know that you're on the President's Intelligence Advisory Board, and
• 39:04
  Speaker 1: I know that you're still in touch with all your
• 39:06
  Speaker 1: buddies in the White House, and you have different perspectives,
• 39:09
  Speaker 1: different clients. I am very skeptical of the call by
• 39:14
  Speaker 1: OpenAI and Anthropic to rush into regulation. I'm kind of
• 39:20
  Speaker 1: with Palantir and NVIDIA, On this matter and with David Sachs,
• 39:25
  Speaker 1: what's Robert C. O'Brien think about the debate that we're
• 39:29
  Speaker 1: all going to die?
• 39:32
  Speaker 15: Well, Hugh, the president came out very strongly on this
• 39:35
  Speaker 15: over the past couple of days and had a number
• 39:36
  Speaker 15: of tweets yesterday that were right on point. You know,
• 39:39
  Speaker 15: a lot of this is being ginned up in Beijing.
• 39:43
  Speaker 15: The Chinese were supposed to be, you know, almost even
• 39:48
  Speaker 15: with us in AI research. It turns out they may
• 39:50
  Speaker 15: be much farther behind us. There are press reports out
• 39:55
  Speaker 15: that the cheap Chinese AI companies are nothing more than
• 40:01
  Speaker 15: bots and pass-throughs and subsidized versions of getting chat GPT
• 40:05
  Speaker 15: or anthropic searched. So you go to a Chinese company,
• 40:10
  Speaker 15: their bots search the chat GPT or anthropic cloud and
• 40:15
  Speaker 15: come back with the answer.
• 40:17
  Speaker 1: And you pay less.
• 40:17
  Speaker 15: And so the Chinese are subsidizing your search of American AI. Oh,
• 40:25
  Speaker 15: that's interesting.
• 40:27
  Speaker 1: Now, you won't share anything. I always say this when
• 40:30
  Speaker 1: I talk with Senator Cotton, who's on the Intel Committee,
• 40:33
  Speaker 1: and with you on the Intelligence Advisory Board. I know
• 40:35
  Speaker 1: you won't share anything that's open source. But do you
• 40:37
  Speaker 1: folks talk about this? Is it even on the agenda
• 40:40
  Speaker 1: for the IAB?
• 40:41
  Speaker 9: No.
• 40:44
  Speaker 15: Hugh, it's definitely on the agenda. You know, quantum computing, AI,
• 40:50
  Speaker 15: the fact that we're ahead in these critical space, cyber,
• 40:55
  Speaker 15: it's very important that we stay ahead in these cutting
• 40:57
  Speaker 15: edge technologies to keep the American people safe and to,
• 41:02
  Speaker 15: you know, give our military the ability to accomplish our
• 41:05
  Speaker 15: mission of fighting and winning wars. And so it's very
• 41:08
  Speaker 15: important that we stay ahead on these things. It's always
• 41:11
  Speaker 15: on the president's agenda. And, and, You know, one of
• 41:15
  Speaker 15: the great things I've said to you, the reason we're
• 41:17
  Speaker 15: going to win and the communists in Beijing is going
• 41:20
  Speaker 15: to lose, it's kind of the old question that Reagan asked,
• 41:23
  Speaker 15: why do we win and they lose? We've got the
• 41:28
  Speaker 15: greatest entrepreneurs and tech people around. We've got, you know,
• 41:34
  Speaker 15: Peter Thiel, Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Alice Karp at Tesla.
• 41:43
  Speaker 15: We've got Jill Lonsdale and Andrew. We've got Palmer Luckey.
• 41:48
  Speaker 15: I mean, we have all these amazing tech entrepreneurs, you know,
• 41:54
  Speaker 15: the Bill Gates and the Sergey Brinzen. I mean, it
• 41:58
  Speaker 15: just goes on and on. And that's why China can
• 42:03
  Speaker 15: pour massive amounts of money into state-owned enterprises. They can
• 42:06
  Speaker 15: do things at scale. They're smart people, no doubt. But
• 42:09
  Speaker 15: they don't have the culture. that we have in the
• 42:12
  Speaker 15: entrepreneurial culture. That's what's going to keep us ahead in
• 42:15
  Speaker 15: this game.
• 42:16
  Speaker 1: I think you're right. I hope you're right. One last question.
• 42:20
  Speaker 1: Alex Karp, I always listen to him. It takes a
• 42:22
  Speaker 1: while because he takes a while to say things. Do
• 42:25
  Speaker 1: tech bros and tech leaders ever take lessons in not
• 42:30
  Speaker 1: using the language of tech to communicate with the ordinary
• 42:33
  Speaker 1: smart people?
• 42:36
  Speaker 15: You know, there's just a different level of smart. You
• 42:39
  Speaker 15: take Alex Karp, for example. I mean, these people are–
• 42:41
  Speaker 15: they're smart and there's, you know, Alex Karp smart, where
• 42:46
  Speaker 15: you learn German to do your dissertation in German. I mean,
• 42:49
  Speaker 15: that's really smart. So they may not be able to
• 42:54
  Speaker 15: communicate well with us normal people, but they sure– you know,
• 43:00
  Speaker 15: give America a heck of an advantage with their.
• 43:02
  Speaker 13: He tries.
• 43:03
  Speaker 1: You've just got to give them a lot of runway.
• 43:05
  Speaker 1: You've got to give them like a 10-minute answer field.
• 43:07
  Speaker 1: I watched him on CNBC yesterday. It was fabulous. But
• 43:11
  Speaker 1: only on CNBC do you get 10 minutes to answer
• 43:13
  Speaker 1: a question. Ambassador Robert C. O'Brien, always good to see you.
• 43:17
  Speaker 1: I appreciate it. Follow Robert at Robert C. O'Brien on X,
• 43:22
  Speaker 1: American Global Strategies as a company. I don't think the IAB,
• 43:25
  Speaker 1: President's Intelligence Advisory Board, puts out any kind of They
• 43:31
  Speaker 1: just talk to each other about things like this, and
• 43:34
  Speaker 1: that's why I like talking to Robert. Thank you, Ambassador O'Brien.
• 43:37
  Speaker 1: Don't go anywhere, America. I'll be right back. Stay tuned.
• 43:40
  Speaker 1: A lot coming up, Matt Continetti included, right here on
• 43:43
  Speaker 1: The Hugh Hewitt Show.
• 43:44
  Speaker 13: Welcome back.
• 43:45
  Speaker 1: I'm Hugh Hewitt. Byron York is a Fox News contributor,
• 43:48
  Speaker 1: columnist for The Washington Examiner, daily newsletter writer, and all-around
• 43:53
  Speaker 1: good guy. Byron, we've got a bit of tape for
• 43:55
  Speaker 1: you to play of candidate James Tallarico. out of Texas,
• 44:01
  Speaker 1: close for my favorite candidate of the year with Abdul El-Sayed,
• 44:04
  Speaker 1: but he may have moved into lead yesterday when, at
• 44:08
  Speaker 1: an event, he was asked a question by a stander
• 44:11
  Speaker 1: by cut number 12.
• 44:14
  Speaker 3: Mr.
• 44:14
  Speaker 10: Tallarico, so nice to meet you.
• 44:15
  Speaker 11: Sorry, I broke my head.
• 44:16
  Speaker 13: I was there when you defended the drags. Who's your
• 44:19
  Speaker 13: favorite drag queen in Texas?
• 44:20
  Speaker 6: Oh, my gosh, probably Alyssa Edwards.
• 44:22
  Speaker 1: Alyssa Edwards? I love Marky Mays.
• 44:23
  Speaker 6: Thank you so much.
• 44:25
  Speaker 1: So had you seen that before, Byron? Had you heard
• 44:27
  Speaker 1: that before?
• 44:29
  Speaker 11: You know, I actually had difficulty making that out. What
• 44:32
  Speaker 11: did he say?
• 44:33
  Speaker 1: He was asked, and I'll play it again for you.
• 44:35
  Speaker 1: He was asked, I was with you at the drag show.
• 44:39
  Speaker 1: Do you have a favorite drag queen in Texas? And
• 44:41
  Speaker 1: he said, oh, my gosh, yes, probably Alyssa Edwards. Now
• 44:45
  Speaker 1: that you know what he said, listen to it again.
• 44:47
  Speaker 1: Cut number 12.
• 44:50
  Speaker 12: I was there when you defended the drags.
• 44:53
  Speaker 13: Um, who's your favorite drag queen in Texas?
• 44:55
  Speaker 10: Oh my gosh.
• 44:56
  Speaker 6: Probably Alyssa Edwards.
• 44:59
  Speaker 1: All right. So who's your favorite drag queen in Texas?
• 45:02
  Speaker 1: Oh my gosh. Probably Alyssa Edwards. I think that's coming
• 45:05
  Speaker 1: to a screen near the people in Texas soon. What
• 45:07
  Speaker 1: do you think?
• 45:09
  Speaker 11: Well, I have to tell you, I'd never heard of
• 45:12
  Speaker 11: Alyssa Edwards before right now, but, uh, I think there
• 45:16
  Speaker 11: needs to be an Alyssa Edwards commercial for James Tallarico.
• 45:20
  Speaker 1: I think there will be.
• 45:21
  Speaker 11: He needs to own this, get ahead of it, and
• 45:24
  Speaker 11: do a commercial for her. And what can I say?
• 45:31
  Speaker 11: That's darn amazing.
• 45:32
  Speaker 1: It's so bad. How does he not have staff to
• 45:36
  Speaker 1: vet people who get on the set with him? How
• 45:39
  Speaker 1: does he not know not to answer questions like that?
• 45:43
  Speaker 1: Because I don't know what the drag queen cut is,
• 45:47
  Speaker 1: but I'll bet you it's 95-5.
• 45:52
  Speaker 11: When somebody's really extreme, the most revealing things always come
• 45:57
  Speaker 11: from friendly encounters.
• 46:00
  Speaker 1: Okay?
• 46:00
  Speaker 11: It's not like you can sit down and do a
• 46:02
  Speaker 11: really prosecutorial interview that will be deeply revealing. But a
• 46:06
  Speaker 11: lot of times a question like that, like, who's your
• 46:09
  Speaker 11: favorite drag queen? And they have an answer.
• 46:11
  Speaker 3: Right away.
• 46:12
  Speaker 14: Yes.
• 46:13
  Speaker 6: He doesn't have to think.
• 46:16
  Speaker 1: All right. Here's my second quote of the day. This
• 46:19
  Speaker 1: comes from my second favorite Senate candidate, Abdul El-Sayed, the
• 46:22
  Speaker 1: most radical major party candidate in history. Cut number 11
• 46:26
  Speaker 1: on the Ask Jen podcast with Jen Lau. I am Arab.
• 46:31
  Speaker 6: I'm also African.
• 46:32
  Speaker 16: And you can be both Arab and African, like anybody
• 46:35
  Speaker 16: from Morocco or Tunisia or Algeria or Libya or Egypt.
• 46:41
  Speaker 16: And I think we need to be thoughtful about not
• 46:45
  Speaker 16: just identity. Like I don't think people should vote for
• 46:49
  Speaker 16: me because I'm Arab or African. I want them to
• 46:52
  Speaker 16: vote for me because of a commitment that I have
• 46:55
  Speaker 16: to our communities that I've shown up for. And the
• 46:59
  Speaker 16: tough part about this conversation is that a lot of
• 47:01
  Speaker 16: times when people in the city interact with somebody who
• 47:03
  Speaker 16: looks like me, their experience is not great. It's like
• 47:09
  Speaker 16: from behind bulletproof glass at a liquor store, being catcalled
• 47:14
  Speaker 16: if you're a woman, watching your kids get sold Lucy's
• 47:17
  Speaker 16: out the back, being told there's not a bathroom when
• 47:20
  Speaker 16: you know there is one.
• 47:22
  Speaker 3: And that's a real problem.
• 47:24
  Speaker 1: All right, Byron, he's complaining about the black community in
• 47:28
  Speaker 1: Detroit treating him this way. Do you think that's a winner?
• 47:34
  Speaker 11: You know, when I listened to it, when he said,
• 47:37
  Speaker 11: I am Arab and I'm also African, My first thought was,
• 47:41
  Speaker 11: are you leaving anything out? Like maybe an American? Are
• 47:45
  Speaker 11: you leaving out the part that you're an American? So
• 47:50
  Speaker 11: I think that's the extraordinary thing about that. To me,
• 47:55
  Speaker 11: it's not, you know, I was mistreated by the majority
• 48:00
  Speaker 11: or another minority or anything like that. I think it's
• 48:03
  Speaker 11: the way he described himself. I think everybody knows that they...
• 48:09
  Speaker 11: describe themselves as an American, maybe talk about their heritage
• 48:14
  Speaker 11: in various ways. But when he says, I'm an Arab,
• 48:18
  Speaker 11: I'm also an African, you think, is there anything else?
• 48:22
  Speaker 13: Amazing.
• 48:23
  Speaker 1: He also, by the way, had a three-syllable pronunciation of Libya.
• 48:28
  Speaker 1: I want you to listen to that again. Cut number 11.
• 48:31
  Speaker 1: Arab and African, like anybody from, I am Arab, I'm
• 48:35
  Speaker 1: also African.
• 48:36
  Speaker 16: And you can be both Arab and African, like anybody
• 48:39
  Speaker 16: from Morocco or Tunisia or Algeria or Libya or Egypt.
• 48:46
  Speaker 1: So, Byron, Libya, this is one of those things that
• 48:50
  Speaker 1: drive me crazy when people affect a pronunciation that is
• 48:57
  Speaker 1: not ordinarily heard in America. Does it hit your ear
• 49:01
  Speaker 1: like a brick, like it hits my ear like a brick?
• 49:03
  Speaker 11: Yeah, you know, a million years ago, it's on YouTube.
• 49:06
  Speaker 11: There was a Saturday Night Live skit where they made
• 49:09
  Speaker 11: fun of news people who, you know, they're reporting from
• 49:13
  Speaker 11: some Spanish-speaking country or they're reporting from France or whatever.
• 49:17
  Speaker 11: And there's a few words they try to pronounce. correctly
• 49:21
  Speaker 11: in Spanish in the middle of their newscast. And they'll say,
• 49:27
  Speaker 11: you know, today protesters showed up in front of the
• 49:29
  Speaker 11: mansion of Daniel Ortega, you know, and then they continue.
• 49:32
  Speaker 11: This sounds ridiculous. And it was a joke, and this
• 49:36
  Speaker 11: sounded kind of that way.
• 49:38
  Speaker 1: He is, who's the worst candidate, Tallarico or Abdul? I'll
• 49:42
  Speaker 1: say it.
• 49:43
  Speaker 11: That's a great question. I have to say, when I
• 49:46
  Speaker 11: go and do some midterm reporting, which I haven't done yet,
• 49:53
  Speaker 11: those are really the two guys I want to see.
• 49:55
  Speaker 11: I mean, I'd like to see them in person, how
• 49:57
  Speaker 11: they campaign, who comes to their rallies, how they interact
• 50:00
  Speaker 11: with the people at their rallies.
• 50:03
  Speaker 1: Don't skip Maine, Byron. You've got to go see Cousin Troy.
• 50:07
  Speaker 1: You cannot skip Maine.
• 50:09
  Speaker 11: Well, it's very interesting that you mentioned Troy Jackson. I think,
• 50:13
  Speaker 11: to me, you know, it's lost a little bit with
• 50:19
  Speaker 11: Troy Jackson. I realize it's a very competitive race. Journalistically,
• 50:23
  Speaker 11: there's every region in the world to go to Maine.
• 50:25
  Speaker 11: But I have to say that the two people I'm
• 50:28
  Speaker 11: most interested in actually seeing on the campaign stump are
• 50:33
  Speaker 11: Tallarico and El Sayed.
• 50:35
  Speaker 1: You're right. Mr. Jackson is the most boring person I've seen.
• 50:39
  Speaker 1: That's why he finished third in the governor's race, why
• 50:42
  Speaker 1: he lost a primary for Congress, why he is a
• 50:45
  Speaker 1: perennial candidate who was run from and won only in
• 50:48
  Speaker 1: a small district. He is so boring.
• 50:50
  Speaker 11: So you're telling me I have to make a trip
• 50:51
  Speaker 11: to Maine to see the most boring candidate.
• 50:53
  Speaker 1: He is absolutely.
• 50:55
  Speaker 11: In politics.
• 50:56
  Speaker 1: Yeah, in politics. Byron York, thank you. Follow Byron at
• 51:00
  Speaker 1: Byron York. Read him in the Washington Examiner and, of course,
• 51:03
  Speaker 1: him on Fox News. Thank you, Byron. Don't go anywhere, America.
• 51:06
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• 54:31
  Speaker 1: Welcome back, America. I'm Hugh Hewitt, as promised. Matt Continetti
• 54:35
  Speaker 1: is with me. Matt, of course, columnist for The Wall
• 54:37
  Speaker 1: Street Journal. head of domestic policy studies at the American
• 54:40
  Speaker 1: Enterprise Institute, and all-around good guy. Matt, I read your
• 54:44
  Speaker 1: column on limited government conservatives versus nationalist conservatives. What about
• 54:52
  Speaker 1: Republican conservatives who just want to win? Is there a
• 54:55
  Speaker 1: third category? Because I'm for whatever wins. Sure.
• 55:00
  Speaker 17: That's a good category to have. Well, I would say, Hugh,
• 55:03
  Speaker 17: that political success is based on policy success. So if
• 55:09
  Speaker 17: you go into an election, you want to have good
• 55:11
  Speaker 17: policy that you can either advocate or brag about. And
• 55:16
  Speaker 17: I also think you want to be able to draw
• 55:17
  Speaker 17: a clear contrast with your opponent. You want to force
• 55:22
  Speaker 17: a choice, not be an echo, as Barry Goldwater famously
• 55:26
  Speaker 17: put it back in 1964. So that's where I think
• 55:30
  Speaker 17: the debate on the right is happening right now. You
• 55:32
  Speaker 17: said nationalist conservatives. I kind of identify them as the
• 55:36
  Speaker 17: big government conservatives. And That was a term that my
• 55:39
  Speaker 17: mentor Fred Barnes first introduced in 1990. So this debate
• 55:43
  Speaker 17: has been going on for many generations, and what we're
• 55:46
  Speaker 17: going to have in the 2028 cycle is just the
• 55:49
  Speaker 17: latest iteration of it.
• 55:51
  Speaker 1: So the policy that you kicked off on was the
• 55:54
  Speaker 1: proposal that $ 9, 000 tax credit available now to single moms
• 55:58
  Speaker 1: who are stay-at-home moms be available to married moms who
• 56:03
  Speaker 1: are also stay-at-home moms. And so in that third category
• 56:06
  Speaker 1: of I just want to win a majority because national
• 56:09
  Speaker 1: security and the courts matter the most, Republicans, does the
• 56:14
  Speaker 1: $ 9, 000 proposal help or hurt Republicans win elections? Because that's
• 56:18
  Speaker 1: my prism.
• 56:21
  Speaker 6: Well, I think you could argue both ways.
• 56:25
  Speaker 17: I think the first way you could say is, well,
• 56:27
  Speaker 17: maybe it would help because it would show that the
• 56:30
  Speaker 17: Republican Party is for stay-at-home pensions. parenting, that it wants
• 56:35
  Speaker 17: to help any mother raise their child, regardless of whether
• 56:40
  Speaker 17: they're a single mom or a married mom who stays
• 56:43
  Speaker 17: at home. The second argument, the limited government argument, would be, well, look,
• 56:50
  Speaker 17: it's just a kind of a shade of what Democrats
• 56:53
  Speaker 17: are already offering. And if you put down one marker
• 56:57
  Speaker 17: in the big government camp, then Democrats are just going
• 57:01
  Speaker 17: to come and up the ante.
• 57:03
  Speaker 6: And they're going to say, well, why.
• 57:05
  Speaker 17: Are you restricting it to, or rather, why are you
• 57:08
  Speaker 17: offering it to married women who work at home? Why
• 57:11
  Speaker 17: is it only $ 9, 000? And so on and so forth.
• 57:14
  Speaker 17: And kind of laying a predicate for big government action
• 57:19
  Speaker 17: could actually depress turnout among limited government conservatives. This is,
• 57:24
  Speaker 17: of course, the dilemma that faces any political coalition, Hugh,
• 57:27
  Speaker 17: is You need to satisfy all the groups in a
• 57:29
  Speaker 17: policy that might appeal to some voters, though it's hard
• 57:33
  Speaker 17: to know whether voters are going to be really based
• 57:37
  Speaker 17: on this one small little change to welfare policy. But
• 57:40
  Speaker 17: a policy that might appeal to some voters could actually
• 57:43
  Speaker 17: turn off a larger number.
• 57:45
  Speaker 1: I always go back to Florida in two thousand five
• 57:47
  Speaker 1: hundred and twenty seven votes or whatever it is, a
• 57:50
  Speaker 1: WB Corbi. So every every policy matters. I want them
• 57:54
  Speaker 1: all poll tested and focus group. Matt, I want to turn,
• 57:57
  Speaker 1: before I play you the clips I want to play
• 57:59
  Speaker 1: for you, do you have a position on the AI
• 58:02
  Speaker 1: war that broke out over the weekend, the operation, the pseudo-war?
• 58:07
  Speaker 1: I don't know what it is, but it was big
• 58:09
  Speaker 1: for 72 hours, now going into 96 hours. What's your
• 58:12
  Speaker 1: opinion on it?
• 58:14
  Speaker 17: Well, my position is I would like to attend my
• 58:17
  Speaker 17: son's high school graduation, which is scheduled for 2032, and
• 58:21
  Speaker 17: apparently these AI... Frequenzoids are telling me that the world's
• 58:25
  Speaker 17: going to end by then.
• 58:26
  Speaker 6: So, you know, I'm pro-world. Let's put it this way.
• 58:29
  Speaker 17: I want the world to survive, and I think that
• 58:31
  Speaker 17: this hysteria is not contributing to that.
• 58:35
  Speaker 1: So let me play for you. Jensen Wang was on
• 58:39
  Speaker 1: the All In podcast. Let's play the long version first.
• 58:42
  Speaker 1: Cut number two. This takes a minute.
• 58:45
  Speaker 12: And we contribute to everybody else's success, which we're very
• 58:48
  Speaker 12: proud of. And so those kind of core values people
• 58:51
  Speaker 12: are attracted to, But when you come and work in
• 58:54
  Speaker 12: our company, there are also some things that we don't
• 58:56
  Speaker 12: appreciate that you do.
• 58:57
  Speaker 13: Like, for example, we.
• 58:58
  Speaker 12: Don't welcome political discourse inside our company.
• 59:03
  Speaker 6: Take it home.
• 59:04
  Speaker 14: You guys talk about politics outside the company.
• 59:06
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 59:14
  Speaker 13: The company is an apolitical company.
• 59:16
  Speaker 1: We're bipartisan.
• 59:17
  Speaker 13: We want America to succeed.
• 59:20
  Speaker 12: And we want whatever government is in place, we'll do
• 59:26
  Speaker 12: everything in our power to help America succeed.
• 59:29
  Speaker 1: Let me focus in on the key line there. Let's
• 59:33
  Speaker 1: just play cut number one for Matt to comment on.
• 59:39
  Speaker 12: The company is an apolitical company.
• 59:42
  Speaker 1: We're bipartisan.
• 59:42
  Speaker 13: We want America to succeed.
• 59:45
  Speaker 1: Matt, I believe we want America to succeed is susceptible
• 59:51
  Speaker 1: of many interpretations. What do you think it means?
• 59:56
  Speaker 17: Well, I think what Jensen Wong is saying there is
• 59:59
  Speaker 17: he wants America to succeed economically, to have prosperity, to
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 17: be in the leading edge of innovation. And I think
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 17: he also wants America to succeed geopolitically by having a
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 17: qualitative edge in our technology over our primary geopolitical.
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 6: Adversary, the People's Republic of China.
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 17: And AI, artificial intelligence, Hugh, is one of a few
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 17: technological domains where America is, all sides agree, ahead of
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 17: the People's Republic of China.
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 1: So do you think Abdul El-Sayed, James Tallarico, Peggy Flanagan
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 1: in Minnesota, just had Michelle Tafoya on, Chris Pappas in
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 1: New Hampshire, Cousin Troy up in Maine, do you think
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 1: they want America to succeed?
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 17: Well, I think for the progressive and socialist left, American
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 17: success means more equality. It means fewer carbon emissions. It
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 17: means more group preferences. They have a very different metric
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 17: of success than I do.
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 6: And I think.
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 17: Empirically it would lead to a poorer, weaker America. So
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 17: I don't think that would help America succeed at all.
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 17: And those names that you mentioned, they happen to all
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 17: be a part of this backlash against data centers and
• 1:01:18
  Speaker 17: artificial intelligence that has kind of taken American politics and
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 17: media by storm just in the past month. And the
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 17: AI executives are playing into it for whatever their own reasons.
• 1:01:30
  Speaker 17: You know, I think that there's a point of discussion
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 17: here and debate. And I think the key word, Hugh,
• 1:01:37
  Speaker 17: was uttered by Speaker of the House Mike Johnson over
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 17: the weekend when he said, what we need is some deliberation.
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 6: Deliberation.
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 17: That is a core concept in the American political tradition,
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 17: and it has been thrown out.
• 1:01:49
  Speaker 6: The window by the AI doomers and hysterics.
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and moving slowly is a feature, not a bug,
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 1: of the American political system. We have a Senate Intelligence
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 1: Committee and a House Intelligence Committee. If AI doomerism is
• 1:02:03
  Speaker 1: even 1% right, ought those not to be the committees
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 1: in front of which the discussion is had?
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 9: Yeah.
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:02:10
  Speaker 17: You know, obviously, we have committees set up. And what's
• 1:02:13
  Speaker 17: also important, and I have to say, this is like
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 17: the first time in my adult life that I've agreed
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 17: with Lena Kahn, the Biden FTC chairwoman.
• 1:02:22
  Speaker 2: I know.
• 1:02:22
  Speaker 17: But she pointed out, look, we also have legal frameworks
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 17: in place that if a company unleashes some, you know, agent,
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 17: as they're called, that commits a cybercrime, well, that company
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 17: will be held accountable.
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 6: I worry in this rush.
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 1: Be careful, Matt. Lena Kahn talking about– that's like the
• 1:02:40
  Speaker 1: vampire asking you to spend the night. Do not go
• 1:02:42
  Speaker 1: with Lena Kahn.
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 6: Don't worry, Hugh. I won't let her in the house.
• 1:02:47
  Speaker 17: She's right to say we have legal frameworks already in place.
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 17: And my worry is the AI oligarchs want loopholes in
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 17: these new regulations that will allow them to get out
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 17: of the legal frameworks we already have.
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 1: Okay, I share that concern. That's the first time Lena
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 1: Kahn's ever been cited as an authority in 27 years
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 1: of the Hugh Hewitt Show. I've got to recover. I'll
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 1: be right back after the break with Matt Kahn. Don't
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 1: go anywhere. Welcome back. I'm Hugh Hewitt. Matt Kahn, Eddie,
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 1: is still with me. He'll be here next segment as well.
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 1: I saved the media's part for last Friday, Matt. You
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 1: and I discussed what you had said last Thursday, which
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 1: is the best thing President Trump can do between now
• 1:03:36
  Speaker 1: and the election is win in the battle with Iran.
• 1:03:40
  Speaker 1: Since then, the Houthis rolled out like Patton in the
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 1: movie going across Europe to relieve Bastogne. And they've gotten
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 1: to the coast and they're blowing all before them. I
• 1:03:52
  Speaker 1: read to you from a story today from Axios, the
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 1: military chiefs of Israel, the U.S., Saudi Arabia, the United
• 1:04:00
  Speaker 1: Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, Jordan, Egypt held a meeting
• 1:04:04
  Speaker 1: in Germany last week about the war with Iran and
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 1: regional tensions. Okay, I read that as the Houthis. Do
• 1:04:11
  Speaker 1: you think that group, and by the way, the most
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 1: important thing is they said Saudi Arabia and UAE were
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 1: meeting on military grounds again. Do you think that group
• 1:04:18
  Speaker 1: can get their act together vis-a-vis Yemen?
• 1:04:22
  Speaker 6: Well, I hope so.
• 1:04:23
  Speaker 17: I think we've seen an escalation in the war. I
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 17: think Iran has opened up a second front via their
• 1:04:31
  Speaker 17: Houthi proxy and the Houthi terrorist militia making a march
• 1:04:34
  Speaker 17: to the sea and threatening that second strategic choke point,
• 1:04:38
  Speaker 17: the Bab al-Mandeb Strait in the Red Sea, and also
• 1:04:42
  Speaker 17: threatening the Saudi cross-strait pipeline that was helping reduce oil
• 1:04:46
  Speaker 17: prices during the conflict in this fight over the Strait
• 1:04:50
  Speaker 17: of Hormuz on the other side of the Arabian Peninsula.
• 1:04:53
  Speaker 6: Peninsula.
• 1:04:53
  Speaker 17: And so something has to be done to counter this.
• 1:04:55
  Speaker 17: This is part of an ongoing conflict with Iran. That
• 1:04:58
  Speaker 17: is the head of the octopus is the Iranian regime
• 1:05:02
  Speaker 17: and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, which is now, I believe,
• 1:05:06
  Speaker 17: in charge of that regime. And so, yes, we need
• 1:05:10
  Speaker 17: the Saudis to take a more offensive approach. We need
• 1:05:13
  Speaker 17: the UAE to get back in there with boots on
• 1:05:16
  Speaker 17: the ground to fight the Houthis. We also need to
• 1:05:19
  Speaker 17: take the fight to Iran. I'm becoming more convinced of
• 1:05:23
  Speaker 17: this than ever. We cannot remain in this defensive crouch
• 1:05:27
  Speaker 17: and talk about how we're running out of interceptors when
• 1:05:31
  Speaker 17: we have the ability, Hugh, we maintain the ability to
• 1:05:33
  Speaker 17: go on the offensive. We're already squeezing Iran with the blockade.
• 1:05:40
  Speaker 17: But now they've countered, just as they've countered throughout this conflict,
• 1:05:43
  Speaker 17: they've countered now with the Houthis. So we need to
• 1:05:45
  Speaker 17: go and find a way to check the Houthis' advance
• 1:05:48
  Speaker 17: and then raise the cost to Iran, which I believe
• 1:05:50
  Speaker 17: needs to be done through kinetic action, and helping the
• 1:05:54
  Speaker 17: regime opponents organize.
• 1:05:57
  Speaker 1: Now, yesterday, Admiral Mark Montgomery, a retired two-star from the
• 1:06:01
  Speaker 1: United States Navy, was on. He said, you know, we've
• 1:06:03
  Speaker 1: got a bunch of B-1s, B-52s, and B-2s. And the
• 1:06:07
  Speaker 1: B-2s can fly there and back. And every B-2 is
• 1:06:10
  Speaker 1: between 15 and 20 F-35s in payload. And they can
• 1:06:15
  Speaker 1: do a lot of damage, and they can do a
• 1:06:17
  Speaker 1: lot of damage every night. And we do not lack
• 1:06:19
  Speaker 1: for JDAMs. We've got piles and piles of of directed
• 1:06:23
  Speaker 1: munitions that can strike with precision. He's wondering where they are.
• 1:06:27
  Speaker 1: I'm wondering where they are. We don't want the Houthis
• 1:06:29
  Speaker 1: on those islands. We're not supposed to take Karj Island
• 1:06:33
  Speaker 1: because we'd be sitting ducks. What are they? We don't
• 1:06:35
  Speaker 1: want them there. Should we be acting as the Admiral suggested?
• 1:06:40
  Speaker 6: I think we need to act. I listened to your
• 1:06:43
  Speaker 6: great interview with Mark Montgomery.
• 1:06:46
  Speaker 17: He pointed out that he thinks that our Arab and
• 1:06:49
  Speaker 17: Gulf partners should take the lead against the Houthis. They
• 1:06:51
  Speaker 17: have been fighting the Houthis now for over a decade.
• 1:06:55
  Speaker 17: My point is we need to take a more proactive
• 1:06:58
  Speaker 17: approach in general. And instead, I think that we're avoiding
• 1:07:03
  Speaker 17: this conflict, perhaps because we don't want attention being paid
• 1:07:07
  Speaker 17: to it in the media as the campaign ramps up.
• 1:07:10
  Speaker 17: But my point is we can't ignore it because think
• 1:07:13
  Speaker 17: about the economics of it.
• 1:07:15
  Speaker 6: You have oil now.
• 1:07:17
  Speaker 17: Both Brent crude and domestic above $ 100 a barrel.
• 1:07:20
  Speaker 1: $ 106, right.
• 1:07:23
  Speaker 17: Yeah, you have the 10-year yield. The price is low.
• 1:07:28
  Speaker 17: The yield is high, which is not good for the economy.
• 1:07:31
  Speaker 17: It's raising the cost of borrowing. You have the stock
• 1:07:34
  Speaker 17: market taking a tumble, all because they're expecting now the
• 1:07:37
  Speaker 17: Houthis and Iran behind them to control this other strategic
• 1:07:41
  Speaker 17: choke point.
• 1:07:42
  Speaker 6: That means America needs to lead. We need to get
• 1:07:44
  Speaker 6: our allies behind.
• 1:07:46
  Speaker 17: Ready to convoy ships to continue the convoy through the
• 1:07:49
  Speaker 17: Strait of Hormuz. We need to get the Gulf partners
• 1:07:52
  Speaker 17: to take a more proactive approach, take the fight to
• 1:07:55
  Speaker 17: the Houthis.
• 1:07:56
  Speaker 6: And then we need to enter the fight as well.
• 1:07:58
  Speaker 17: And we need to be ready to ask Israel to
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 17: help us because we know Israel will fight Iran and
• 1:08:04
  Speaker 17: the Houthis with no holds barred. And that's really the way,
• 1:08:08
  Speaker 17: in my view, to change the equation, which right now
• 1:08:11
  Speaker 17: is leading to political defeat and foreign policy quagmire.
• 1:08:16
  Speaker 1: And we don't. And we have 50 days. And drip, drip,
• 1:08:20
  Speaker 1: drip of nothing happening for 50 days is a recipe
• 1:08:23
  Speaker 1: to get hammered in the midterm. And we don't have to.
• 1:08:26
  Speaker 1: This is what do you think they've even pulled this?
• 1:08:28
  Speaker 1: I just don't think they're right. I think Americans love winning.
• 1:08:33
  Speaker 6: Of course, Americans love winning. They don't like a sense
• 1:08:37
  Speaker 6: of going nowhere.
• 1:08:38
  Speaker 17: And unfortunately, that's where we've been trapped in the Gulf
• 1:08:42
  Speaker 17: and now in the Red Sea for the past five months.
• 1:08:46
  Speaker 1: I'm going to run down the Senate scorecard with Matt
• 1:08:49
  Speaker 1: Continey next. Don't go anywhere, America. I'm Hugh.
• 1:08:53
  Speaker 16: Hewitt.
• 1:09:00
  Speaker 10: America.
• 1:09:00
  Speaker 1: I'm Matt Connetti. Staying around for one more segment today. Matt,
• 1:09:04
  Speaker 1: right before you came on, Michelle Tafoya was here. Michelle
• 1:09:08
  Speaker 1: is up– is down one point in the most recent
• 1:09:10
  Speaker 1: poll in Minnesota cold. And she's a fabulous on-air presence, right?
• 1:09:15
  Speaker 1: If people are watching on fast TV, they got blown away.
• 1:09:18
  Speaker 1: If they're listening in their car– I am 1280, the Patriot,
• 1:09:21
  Speaker 1: or up in Duluth. I'm all over Minnesota. They got
• 1:09:23
  Speaker 1: blown away. She's that good. Let me ask you, Peggy
• 1:09:27
  Speaker 1: Flanagan is a way left, wacko, radical person. Do you
• 1:09:32
  Speaker 1: think there's a shot here?
• 1:09:33
  Speaker 17: I think that if there is a shot, it would
• 1:09:35
  Speaker 17: be this year, Hugh, and here's why. That Tim Walz
• 1:09:39
  Speaker 17: and Peggy Flanagan are implicated in this incredible fraud story
• 1:09:45
  Speaker 17: that has, I think, shaken Minnesota politics to its core.
• 1:09:49
  Speaker 17: and of course has had national implications as well. And
• 1:09:53
  Speaker 17: Michelle Tafoya is the right candidate to make the case
• 1:09:56
  Speaker 17: for change in Minnesota because even though she's running as
• 1:10:00
  Speaker 17: a Republican, she has distanced herself from President Trump in
• 1:10:04
  Speaker 17: quite a few issues. And she has an independent separate
• 1:10:07
  Speaker 17: profile because, of course, so many people know her from
• 1:10:10
  Speaker 17: her role as a sports broadcaster for many years. So
• 1:10:13
  Speaker 17: she's not immediately linked in people's heads to President Trump
• 1:10:17
  Speaker 17: and the Trump administration. So the combination of those two things,
• 1:10:20
  Speaker 17: on the ground in Minnesota, the particularities of Tim Walz
• 1:10:24
  Speaker 17: and his administration, and Peggy Flanagan, who is, if it's
• 1:10:27
  Speaker 17: even possible, to the left of Tim Walz, and Michelle
• 1:10:32
  Speaker 17: Tafoya's independent character and candidacy, could actually make some history
• 1:10:38
  Speaker 17: here in Minnesota.
• 1:10:39
  Speaker 1: And they do throw up, whether it's Norm Coleman or
• 1:10:43
  Speaker 1: Rudy Boschwitz or David Durenberg, they have a tradition of
• 1:10:46
  Speaker 1: throwing up. A Republican senator every few years for six years,
• 1:10:50
  Speaker 1: this might be the year. Let's run down an order
• 1:10:52
  Speaker 1: of importance and I think probably lock up as well.
• 1:10:55
  Speaker 1: I think Susan Collins is going to beat Cousin Troy
• 1:10:58
  Speaker 1: pretty easily. What do you think?
• 1:11:00
  Speaker 17: I think it's looking pretty good for Susan Collins. She
• 1:11:03
  Speaker 17: has an independent, again, that independent stature in Maine. She's
• 1:11:07
  Speaker 17: not known as just part and parcel of the Trump administration.
• 1:11:11
  Speaker 17: She has Joe Manchin, the other great independent former senator
• 1:11:14
  Speaker 17: of West Virginia. He's coming to campaign for her. I
• 1:11:17
  Speaker 17: think Susan Collins has the race where she wants. She
• 1:11:20
  Speaker 17: needs to really emphasize how she's going to be good
• 1:11:22
  Speaker 17: for female voters, women voters in Maine in particular, unlike
• 1:11:27
  Speaker 17: the radical Troy Jackson.
• 1:11:28
  Speaker 1: You know, Matt, I've got a week left in Maine.
• 1:11:30
  Speaker 1: I go back to the Beltway. And so I watched
• 1:11:33
  Speaker 1: the Ohio State-Texas game and the Browns. I can't call
• 1:11:36
  Speaker 1: it a game. I saw the Browns get wiped out
• 1:11:37
  Speaker 1: by the Jaguars. And I saw a million ads, a
• 1:11:41
  Speaker 1: million Maine ads, about five to one Susan Collins versus
• 1:11:44
  Speaker 1: Troy Jackson. And the Troy Jackson ads I swear to
• 1:11:48
  Speaker 1: you that five out of the six people talking were
• 1:11:53
  Speaker 1: women with gray hair over the age of 60. That's
• 1:11:56
  Speaker 1: not the demo they need to win this thing.
• 1:11:58
  Speaker 17: Well, yeah, it's interesting that he's emphasizing that because I
• 1:12:01
  Speaker 17: think that means that he understands the weakness. Look, Jackson is,
• 1:12:04
  Speaker 17: you know, Graham Platner without the charm. And I think
• 1:12:07
  Speaker 17: that's going to be a big problem for his candidacy
• 1:12:09
  Speaker 17: is he's just not a very exciting candidate. And he's
• 1:12:13
  Speaker 17: got real flaws as someone who's been around forever in Maine.
• 1:12:17
  Speaker 6: Not to the state's credit.
• 1:12:19
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Okay, second most important race, and one that Joe
• 1:12:23
  Speaker 1: Manchin waded into as well, Mike Rogers, former chair of
• 1:12:27
  Speaker 1: the House Intelligence Committee, longtime member of Congress, versus Abdul El-Sayed.
• 1:12:32
  Speaker 1: Abdul gives me material every day because he just cannot
• 1:12:35
  Speaker 1: stop saying stupid things. But Ben Dominic and other smart
• 1:12:39
  Speaker 1: people say, oh, I'm worried, I'm worried. I don't want
• 1:12:42
  Speaker 1: to be worried about this. Are you worried about this?
• 1:12:45
  Speaker 1: He should not be in the Senate.
• 1:12:46
  Speaker 6: Yeah, I'm a little. I'm a little worried, Hugh. One,
• 1:12:49
  Speaker 6: it's Michigan.
• 1:12:50
  Speaker 17: It's become a swing state and presidential, not so much Senate.
• 1:12:55
  Speaker 17: It's been many, many years since Michigan sent a Republican,
• 1:12:58
  Speaker 17: the great Spence.
• 1:12:58
  Speaker 6: Abraham, to the Senate.
• 1:13:01
  Speaker 17: The second thing I'm worried about is a little bit
• 1:13:02
  Speaker 17: the Rogers campaign. He's focusing a lot on bio. And
• 1:13:06
  Speaker 17: this is a guy who just ran for office two
• 1:13:07
  Speaker 17: years ago. He shouldn't have to feel the need to
• 1:13:09
  Speaker 17: introduce himself once again to the state.
• 1:13:12
  Speaker 6: If I were giving advice to Mike Rogers.
• 1:13:14
  Speaker 17: I'd say, look, You go after El-Sayed on Medicare for All,
• 1:13:17
  Speaker 17: which is going to take away everyone's health care and
• 1:13:20
  Speaker 17: replace it with a high-tax, low-choice system. And I want
• 1:13:23
  Speaker 17: you to emphasize the Second Amendment in particular in Michigan,
• 1:13:27
  Speaker 17: where it's very important, especially for rural Michiganders.
• 1:13:30
  Speaker 6: And then I want you to talk, too, about how
• 1:13:33
  Speaker 6: you're independent.
• 1:13:34
  Speaker 17: You're going to have your own agenda and ideas that's
• 1:13:37
  Speaker 17: not just going to be whatever President Trump says.
• 1:13:40
  Speaker 6: And those three things, I think, are the ingredients.
• 1:13:43
  Speaker 17: For a successful campaign for Mike Rogers, that he needs
• 1:13:46
  Speaker 17: to go on the offense rather than simply talk about
• 1:13:51
  Speaker 17: his biography and history.
• 1:13:52
  Speaker 1: I agree.
• 1:13:53
  Speaker 6: I agree.
• 1:13:53
  Speaker 1: And he needs to start doing conservative media. He's afraid
• 1:13:57
  Speaker 1: of getting painted as a conservative, but that doesn't win, actually.
• 1:14:01
  Speaker 1: Ken Paxton versus Soy Boy. And Mr. Tallarico is also
• 1:14:06
  Speaker 1: the gift that keeps on giving. However... However, Ken Paxton
• 1:14:09
  Speaker 1: had a decent convention. He's just not a very good candidate.
• 1:14:13
  Speaker 1: On the other hand, Tallarico is an EPA super site.
• 1:14:19
  Speaker 1: What do we do about this? What do you think
• 1:14:20
  Speaker 1: about this?
• 1:14:22
  Speaker 17: Well, I think Ken Paxton is going to need resources,
• 1:14:24
  Speaker 17: and I think that that will divert funding from other
• 1:14:27
  Speaker 17: critical races such as Michigan, which to me is the
• 1:14:30
  Speaker 17: race of the cycle.
• 1:14:32
  Speaker 6: It's still Texas, though.
• 1:14:33
  Speaker 17: And Tallarico, I think, has a pretty steep hill to
• 1:14:37
  Speaker 17: climb to win statewide in Texas.
• 1:14:39
  Speaker 6: And Paxton, though he's not the strongest candidate, of.
• 1:14:42
  Speaker 17: Course, has won statewide on several occasions. So if you
• 1:14:46
  Speaker 17: give Paxton the resources and he draws the clear contrast
• 1:14:51
  Speaker 17: between what Tallarico's far left agenda represents and kind of
• 1:14:56
  Speaker 17: the Texas approach, the red state model, if you will,
• 1:14:58
  Speaker 17: that Paxton, for all of his flaws, will.
• 1:15:01
  Speaker 6: Continue to pursue. I think eventually Paxton will be victorious.
• 1:15:05
  Speaker 1: If Tallarico wins, they have to close the Alamo. How
• 1:15:08
  Speaker 1: about in our Midwestern, our H's, Husted and Hinson in
• 1:15:11
  Speaker 1: Ohio and Iowa, respectively? I'm not too worried about Hinson.
• 1:15:15
  Speaker 1: I'm actually not worried about Hinson because Sherrod Brown is old, old,
• 1:15:18
  Speaker 1: old Sherrod Brown. He's starting to look a little Biden-ish.
• 1:15:21
  Speaker 1: What do you think?
• 1:15:23
  Speaker 6: Yeah, in Ohio, you know, Brown is around.
• 1:15:27
  Speaker 17: I think there, for John Husted, he kind of needs
• 1:15:31
  Speaker 17: to kind of raise his profile a little bit more.
• 1:15:34
  Speaker 17: You know, even though he's statewide, he's been around for
• 1:15:37
  Speaker 17: a while as well. Again, going on the offensive would
• 1:15:39
  Speaker 17: help for him. The problem with both Iowa and Ohio
• 1:15:43
  Speaker 17: is that there are gubernatorial races where the Democrat is
• 1:15:47
  Speaker 17: doing pretty well. And I worry that both Hinson and
• 1:15:52
  Speaker 17: Houston will get caught in the undertow of Democratic victories
• 1:15:55
  Speaker 17: at the statehouse that would deny Republicans seats in the
• 1:15:59
  Speaker 17: United States Senate.
• 1:16:00
  Speaker 1: Yeah, the doctor in Ohio has fallen on her face
• 1:16:03
  Speaker 1: a couple of times this weekend, but I don't know
• 1:16:05
  Speaker 1: much about Iowa. Finally, Dan Sullivan, Michael Watley, and Michael Collins.
• 1:16:12
  Speaker 1: I'm pretty confident about Sullivan. 30 seconds, Matt. Are you
• 1:16:15
  Speaker 1: confident about any of them?
• 1:16:18
  Speaker 6: Sullivan, I think, still has tools to play from the toolkit.
• 1:16:23
  Speaker 6: Collins and Watley, I think those are going to go
• 1:16:26
  Speaker 6: to the Democratic side.
• 1:16:28
  Speaker 1: There are only six points, but it's a big six points.
• 1:16:31
  Speaker 1: We'll keep talking to him. Matt Continetti, follow him on
• 1:16:33
  Speaker 1: Axe of Continetti. Listen to him on Thursday's commentary podcast.
• 1:16:36
  Speaker 1: Read him in the Wall Street Journal and come right
• 1:16:38
  Speaker 1: back to the Hugh Hewitt Show. Thank you, Matt.